It was the social networks where it blew up in the earliest, most obvious way. Someone who saw the posting told someone else who was unaware of it about it, then that someone told someone else, and then it reached some radical account with tons of followers, from where it exploded all at once—an inciting incident which then set the message boards alight. I started seeing articles from web news outlets aggregating the various threads as well. The images were proliferated endlessly, and whether or not they were real accounts, more and more people who claimed to have been burned by Moai in the past began to appear, fueling the notion that this was not just an isolated incident and that Moai had been this sort of organization from the start.
As a matter of course, eventually people began asking Moai, the university, and even the company that had e-mailed me to comment directly on the matter. Some of them actually called or sent e-mails, asking whether this was true or not. However, it did not seem that any of them received any meaningful reply, and at that point, even Kawahara-san was only aware that there was “something going on.”
Just when it seemed things were dying down, however, there was a secondary explosion. A weekly publication that was probably in need of a story sniffed out the commotion online and wrote an article, albeit a small one, about Moai. Reading the article, they appeared more concerned about the fact that they so shamelessly accepted this information from students, more than the fact that it was Moai that had done it. I have no idea where they sourced their information, but they had recorded proof in the form of comments from related parties that Moai members were receiving preferential treatment at interviews. I believe that the reason that people who only learned of this scandal through the article began to argue online that both Moai and the corporations were evil was probably because they believed it was the latter who were originally to blame. Humans truly are strange creatures, unable to abide the idea that someone else might be benefitting more than they are. Moai truly was becoming fodder for the people who, as Kawahara-san complained, enjoyed laughing at other people’s misfortune.
Once again, this had far surpassed anything I had imagined.
I had never imagined that actual news outlets would report on this. The fact that real adults would be baited in this easily was proof that there was little difference in interest and motivation between us and those not far removed from us in age.
After Kawahara-san left, I quietly rode my bike home in solitude. I had not seen Tousuke since that day—nor Pon-chan, obviously. I wanted so badly to ask the two of them how they felt about all this, but I doubted I would get the chance to. There was nothing that I could do about it at this point.
I picked up some half-price bento from the supermarket without much incident, washed my hands and gargled, then immediately turned on my computer. The bento would have gotten soggy if I heated it up, so I ate it cold.
I opened my social media, and through my original, still clean account, did a search on Moai. More and more Moai haters were appearing by the day. Online, there was vitriol and derision—just looking at it was enough to put me in a hypnotic state. My mind swam, my heart rate rose, and I began to feel nauseated.
There were some defenders too, as well as the general consensus that all universities and corporations these days were doing things like this, but even that was drowned out again by the haters within a single scroll.
Moai had gone from being just another obscure organization to a source of entertainment.
I, too, was participating in this circus of questioning society. Just this morning, I had released another bit of bait out into the world. The effects could be felt everywhere.
This was my way of keeping the game close at hand as I was reluctant to let things grow so big that they might expand to a place beyond my reach. That said, I did not do anything especially new and fresh. I screenshotted an e-mail from a different company than the one I had originally edited into the image set and posted it from an internet café.
This posting had only one image and was a bit bland, so I appended a bit of text to the image as well.
“What are Ideals? A Question of Righteousness.”
At first, I considered just leaving it there, but in a fit of emotion my fingers moved a little longer.
“What are the values of those who so brashly approach others, selfishly affirming or denying them?”
That was the end of the post. There was a bit of irony in there as well, directed toward Tousuke and Pon-chan. Once more, the self-styled heroes of the internet ran wild with this new image.
I assumed that this image would reach Akiyoshi at some point. I hoped it might help her have a change of heart. I hoped it would cause her some regret. I began peeking through a number of her socials, to see if there weren’t any signs yet of said reflection or regret. However, she had not posted anything in some days. All that I came across were boring updates on recent meet-ups and other trivial nonsense.
Maybe it would take a little more time, a little more of an explosion. As I pondered this, continuing to enter “Moai” into search bars and scrolling, I saw it.
I thought I was just seeing things when I first scrolled past it. However, when I moved the scroll bar back up, I realized frivolously that my kinetic vision was less useless than I imagined it to be.
I stared, amazed.
Beyond my reach, there in the cyber sea, was an image.
There was no mistaking it.
It was a picture of Akiyoshi and Ten.