“I want to look at that URL on a computer. Can I borrow yours?”
“Still haven’t pulled it up?”
“I figured we’d look at it together.”
Tousuke booted his computer that was sitting on the desk, while I cracked open a canned coffee. After a few moments of waiting in silence, we heard the familiar Windows boot sound.
“All yours,” he said.
As directed, I sat down in a chair that had probably come from Nitori and loaded up one of my fresh new burner accounts. This account, incidentally, I had crafted under the guise of a brainy third-year university girl.
“I still can’t believe this actually worked,” Tousuke said, peeking over my shoulder.
“Me neither. I feel bad for anyone who joins these companies.”
I hovered the cursor over the URL I had received from the idiot HR rep. Then, I clicked, my mind prickling with the sudden fear that this might somehow be a trap.
Naturally, it was not a trap, but what I found was still a bit different from what I had imagined.
“Aw man, seriously?” I griped.
“What’s up?”
“Needs a password. We can’t view the register without it.”
Of course, stupid as that HR person was, at least they were not stupid enough to hand over the key to the final lock, I thought calmly, though I was panicking slightly at this unexpected complication. I had imagined this would simply be a matter of opening up the webpage, downloading the register, and then discussing with Tousuke how to disseminate it.
“Guess we’ll have to crack it.”
“Code breaking, huh? We’re like spies,” he laughed, but this was no laughing matter. If we took too long, one of those HR people would probably contact someone from Moai to confirm things, and they would change the storage location. We had to figure this out before that happened.
Passwords…passwords…
“What sort of theme do you think it’d have?”
“Well, when we had these sorts of things in seminars, it’d be phrases that were popular at the time.”
“I’d have no idea about that then.”
I tried entering their head honcho’s nickname, hero, but I hesitated to click, wondering if there was a limit to the number of log-in attempts.
“Tousuke, did you use this site in your seminars?”
“Yeah. I don’t know a whole lot about it, though.”
“Is there a limit to the log-in attempts?”
“Don’t think so. One time I forgot my password and had to try reentering it a bunch of times.”
This was good news. Turns out Tousuke’s information mismanagement had come in handy. Relieved, I hit the Enter key, but sadly, no dice. Next I tried entering the name of our university, at which point I learned that there was an 8-character limit.
That also was not it.
“I think we’ve got a long road ahead of us here.”
“…Well, let’s take our time, the register isn’t going anywhere.”
It actually might, I wanted to say, but there was no real reason to make him understand that, so I kept my mouth shut. Instead, I asked a more vital question.
“If it’s not some well-known phrase, what do you think they’d use as a password?”
“Hmm, maybe it’s not something related to Moai.”
“I mean, if not, then the possibilities are endless.”
“Maybe some kind of catchphrase?”
Though I was sure it wouldn’t be correct, I tried entering risou—ideals. Of course, it was wrong. From there, I tried entering every Moai related term I could think of, but I made exactly zero headway on breaching the register’s authentication wall.
Maybe it was impossible to do this just by brute force. We would probably have to wait until someone showed up who was stupid enough to give us the password. But did we have that kind of time?
“What to do…”
I knew there was no point in getting worked up now. I stood up from the chair for a moment, cracking open the other canned coffee I had purchased. It was already pretty lukewarm, but I could feel the sweetness stoking my brain.
While I took my break, Tousuke took a turn entering any passwords he could think of, but of course the gates were not going to open for us that easily. I sat down on the floor, thinking. A password for Moai—I realized it was important to consider who would have come up with it. If it was Ten, then we were more or less done for. I had no way of understanding the principles of a guy like that. If it was someone else though, someone much higher up…
Still sitting, Tousuke gave a big stretch.
“Hmm, I wonder whether it is something related to Moai. If it is, I feel like you’re the only one of us who can solve it.”
“…Do you think they would use a date as the password?”
“Oh, you got somethin’?”
“June 21st.”
I worried that I might be letting too much hope creep into my voice. Before asking me what those numbers meant, Tousuke entered them. I watched his finger as he pressed the Enter key. The tiny clicking sound sounded disproportionately loud.
“Mm, doesn’t look like it.”
I was rattled with disappointment as the “Incorrect Password” error message appeared on the screen for the umpteenth time, letting us know that yet again we had failed.
“So, what’s with the numbers?”
“The anniversary of Moai’s founding.”
“Well, you’ve got a good memory. Oh, then, how about this?” he asked, once more entering English characters into the field.
moai0621
Again, he struck the Enter key.
“Oh!” he gasped, surprised. Behind him, I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I gasped in air, swallowing spit along with it. The login screen we saw on the monitor was now different from all the times before. There was a list of file names with one among them reading “Corporate Shared Register.” Without saying anything, Tousuke hovered over the file and clicked. What popped up was an Excel spreadsheet full of student contact information.
“Kaede…! Kaede, you’re amazing!” he said to me, turning around. I had no words to offer him in reply, partly as I was not accustomed to being praised and partly because I did not think it was all that amazing to remember the founding date of the organization I helped found.
However, that was beside the point. I was overcome by a different feeling.
“I mean, I didn’t actually expect that to work.”
It was something like joy…but only something like it. In other words, it was not actually joy. I don’t know that Japanese even possesses a word I could use to describe that feeling, but it was perhaps one that I had felt before, albeit on a smaller scale. When would I have felt something like this, somewhere between the joy that some inkling of our will was still intact and the bewilderment of confirmation that Moai as an organization would be cooperating in these illicit corporate acts?
When?
Was it when Akiyoshi had run after me after class that day? No, I doubt it. What I felt then was only shock and confusion. So then, when did I feel this feeling?
“Oh, there’s you, Kaede.”
This was not the time to be sorting out my feelings. I peeked at the screen, and sure enough, there was a row of the spreadsheet with my name, department, and contact information. “Save this,” I directed Tousuke, and a file labeled “Corporate Shared Register (For the Resistance)” appeared on his desktop. The evidence was now secure.
“So, what do we do with this?” asked Tousuke, dying to take action. I looked at him and told him what I had been thinking.
“We post this up online, along with the e-mail from that HR rep. I think if we get this up on some message boards and Twitter, the school will probably start getting some angry calls, which should deal a blow to Moai.”
“Right, I see,” he said curtly, the tone of his voice dropping, though he had been the one to ask the question. I wondered what was up, if perhaps he might have been stricken by the fact that our final battle was on the horizon. I tried not to search for too deep of a meaning in it.
Still, Tousuke breathed in deep, and then sighed. He clearly had something on his mind.
“Hey, Kaede.”
“What?”
“Um, maybe it’s a bit late for me to be saying this, but I’ve been thinking. Mind if I…?” he started, not looking at me. I couldn’t imagine what he would have to say at a time like this.
“Sure, what is it?”
Tousuke looked back at me with a smile that said so many things he could no longer hold back.
“I…”
For an instant, the prickling silence seemed to halt even time itself in its tracks.
“Don’t you think…it’s about time to stop?”
“Wha…?”
The sweet scent in the room had long since vanished.