The next day was sunny, with a light breeze.
The gentle sunlight was always so fair. It passed through the atmosphere, bringing every bit of warmth to the world. Along with the soft, warm breeze, it all made people feel lazy.
However, Sogo Doma, who enjoyed more sunshine than most people, felt rather melancholy...
Anyone would feel melancholy after being targeted by a genius girl whose brain was nearly running at full capacity and who could master any necessary skill in almost no time. It was even worse when the girl's family controlled a terrifying conglomerate worth 200 trillion yen.
In a country where capital reigned supreme, as long as the other three Great Zaibatsu didn't interfere, the Shinomiya Conglomerate, with its 200 trillion yen, could even manipulate the appointment of the prime minister.
Of course, the Doma Main Family was no pushover either. Under Sogo Doma's deliberate guidance, the Doma Conglomerate still lagged a little behind the Four Great Zaibatsu, but if it went head-to-head with one of them, both sides would probably suffer heavy losses, leaving the other three to swoop in and swallow them up.
That was why Kaguya Shinomiya had given up on revenge as Sogo Doma grew older.
Ah, speaking of which, it seemed he'd just revealed that someone named Chika Fujiwara had once come to help Lady Kaguya get revenge, only to be tricked by Sogo into going on an Antarctic expedition.
He still remembered how the young lady of the Fujiwara Family had stood righteously before Sogo Doma.
"Wahh, I heard freezing rain is falling in the North Pole, and the penguins and kangaroos are almost frozen to death. Look, Lady Kaguya... she's even crying." Sogo Doma used his deception skill with great sorrow.
"You're lying!" Chika Fujiwara looked innocent, but she wasn't that stupid.
"Impossible. If I were lying, why would I have a picture of Lady Kaguya? And it's a picture of her crying, too." Sogo Doma sounded even more righteous than she did.
"You're definitely lying. What do penguins have to do with freezing rain in the North Pole?" Chika Fujiwara said with certainty. "You're actually trying to get Lady Kaguya's attention, so you deliberately made up this story to trick me, right?"
Sogo Doma: "??"
"I'm going to teach you a lesson for making Lady Kaguya..." The loyal little girl, who fancied herself a love expert, gave the bewildered Sogo Doma a terrifyingly kind smile. She cracked her knuckles, apparently ready to get serious.
But she underestimated how shameless Sogo Doma could be.
"Huh?" Sogo scratched his head, wearing an utterly sincere expression. "Looks like I remembered wrong. It's actually freezing rain in the South Pole. The penguins and kangaroos are so pitiful. Lady Kaguya was even crying."
Fujiwara, love expert, Chika felt like she didn't have enough brains for this.
Was what he said true? But it was absurd to say Lady Kaguya had cried over a bottle of cola. Could it be that Lady Kaguya really liked penguins that much? That had to be it! Now it made sense. The rumors going around were all false. Lady Kaguya couldn't possibly have shed tears over cola!
Watching Chika Fujiwara reboot herself, Sogo Doma sighed.
"Ah, so could you stop blocking me? I still have to go to the South Pole to save the penguins!"
Chika Fujiwara was startled. No way. She absolutely couldn't let the guy who'd made Lady Kaguya cry go to the South Pole. Who knew what kind of scheme he had up his sleeve? What if he really used penguins and kangaroos to charm Lady Kaguya away?
Watching Chika Fujiwara board a plane bound for the South Pole, Sogo Doma grinned. "Idiot. There aren't any kangaroos in the South Pole!"
Had she gotten the wrong idea?
These little acts of revenge were harmless.
By the time the Shinomiya Family had really wanted to deal with Sogo, the Doma Family had already grown into a conglomerate only slightly weaker than theirs.
The Shinomiya Family had wisely chosen to forget about what happened before.
Sogo Doma had thought the past was behind them and the matter settled. But he hadn't expected Kaguya Shinomiya to come looking for him as soon as he moved out of the Doma Main Family. She really had inherited the Shinomiya Family's lack of magnanimity.
"Better not tempt fate." What if Kaguya Shinomiya really did deal with him?
As if one misfortune weren't enough, what made Sogo Doma even more melancholy was the news Ryunosuke Akasaka brought him afterward.
It was still the previous day. On the screen, Ryunosuke looked at Sogo Doma.
"Heh..." Sogo Doma gave another couple of awkward laughs. "It's just Kaguya Shinomiya. Petty, narrow-minded, heartless..."
Ryunosuke Akasaka said, "Aside from the Doma Group, I've also taken on work from the Shinomiya Family... If there are any rumors complaining about you, Sogo-san—"
That one sentence cut off Sogo Doma's complaints. After a moment, Sogo awkwardly said,
"What kind of work could those old-fashioned people in the Shinomiya Family have?" That was the truth. Apple Biting was almost selling worldwide, and My Desk had started building a global community. Only the Shinomiya Family still clung to its outdated businesses. Of course, that was the Shinomiya Family's strength.
Who could blame the Shinomiya Family for having mines—and a whole lot of them?
Japanese people were often far more conservative than innovative. With all those mines, plenty of old-fashioned people in the Shinomiya Family really might not be able to accept all those new things.
As far as Sogo Doma remembered, he was already using a smartphone, while Kaguya Shinomiya was still using a brick phone—a Nokia. "Blow up outer space and protect the Earth. You deserve a Nokia."
That was the truth!
Maybe many people no longer remembered that time. Maybe many people had forgotten the era when we fought to protect the Earth. But I clearly remembered it—our Five-Stripe Squad Leader threw his Nokia, and when it collided with the meteor, everyone fell down. When I woke up, the Nokia was still flying upward—
It blew up the meteor. It even tried to intercept the enemy spaceship. This was a secret from 2002, and something we experienced firsthand. Though people never spoke of that battle, I still hoped you wouldn't forget the name of that battle: Secret That Cannot Be Told.
--
However, even though the Nokia had performed brilliantly, it couldn't escape the tide of being left behind by the times. Smartphones had long since taken over the market. Only someone like Kaguya Shinomiya, forced to use an antique, would care so much about it.
Sadly, we'd never see that kind of scene again—the one where someone hurled a phone, watched it collide with a meteor, then waited for it to intercept an alien spaceship. Perhaps we could only see that with Samsung.
I heard that, so people wouldn't forget the war, they had specially designed several phones that couldn't be observed and exploded according to Schrödinger's principles.
Sogo Doma was also thinking about this kind of weapon.
"Should I switch to one of those that's highly flammable and explosive?"
However,
Ryunosuke Akasaka was the first to interrupt his wandering thoughts. "Sogo-san, just as you told me, people change. Once the Shinomiya Family realized the wealth of the Information Age..."
Sogo Doma said, "What could those old geezers possibly realize?"
Watching Sogo Doma argue back, Ryunosuke Akasaka took a bite of his tomato. "..."
The Smart Maid appeared again. "Lord Ryunosuke says, 'We have Sogo-san to thank for helping those people finally understand what wealth means in this day and age.'"
Sogo Doma: "..."
"Are you going to deny that you broke into the Shinomiya Family twice and cost the Shinomiya Zaibatsu hundreds of billions of yen?" Ryunosuke Akasaka took another bite of his tomato, then stared silently at Sogo Doma.
For some reason, after eating tomatoes, the pressure Sogo Doma used to feel from him seemed to have faded quite a bit.
Sogo Doma gritted his teeth. "..."
Akasaka really was the king of the Information Age! Still, he hadn't broken into the Shinomiya Family. At most, he'd just set a few traps.
Though that was what he thought, Sogo Doma still wore a smile. "Deny what? If I'd gotten my hands on that much money, would I still be living here?"
Before you continue