Beatless: Volume 1 by Satoshi Hase

Author:Satoshi Hase [Hase, Satoshi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction
Publisher: J-Novel Club
Published: 2019-12-25T00:00:00+00:00

Phase6「My Whereabouts」

To Shiori Kaidai, her home was a place full of light.

In the home of the Kaidais — the family responsible for founding MemeFrame — she and her brother, Ryo, were raised with love by caring parents. Both of them had also been used to constantly being in the eyes of the public since their earliest memories. They had been told since they were very young that they would someday inherit the massive international corporation just as their father, Tsuyoshi Kaidai, had inherited it from their grandfather, Usui Kaidai.

It was the company’s ultra high-performance AI, Higgins, that allowed it to be so. Higgins was the actual power behind the innovations of the company. No matter who sat as the president of MemeFrame, Higgins would continue to provide them with powerful products to dominate the market.

Once, right after Shiori entered elementary school, her brother had said, “I don’t want to work with something that doesn’t belong in our world.”

At the time, she had found it impossible to understand. Shiori had always been putting in her best effort to keep up with her brother, who was always ahead of her no matter what she did. Yet, after that moment, he had given up, walking away from his effortless success.

There were pictures all over the walls of Shiori’s massive room. They followed a timeline, showing Shiori’s entrances and graduations from elementary and middle school, her holding prizes and trophies from various concours and tournaments, and memories of the few family trips they had been on.

In her younger pictures, Ryo was always there, holding a bigger trophy than hers. Piano, foreign languages, athletics or school tests, it didn’t matter the subject; even with only a single year between them, Shiori could never compete with her brother. In the pictures, her younger self, with longer black hair, was always shooting sour looks at her brother.

Somewhere along the way, he vanished from the competition photos, leaving her alone holding the trophies. At the same time, a friendly-looking new boy started to show up in the family photos. It was Arato Endo, her brother’s best friend, who often came to play at the Kaidai house during those years.

“It’s so mysterious, the way people’s lives can be connected,” she murmured to herself.

When she focused her gaze on one of the pictures, it activated and played a video. It was from a piano concert when she was in middle school. Her family couldn’t make it, but Arato and his sister had come in their place. Standing beside him, Shiori had a natural smile. Yuka Endo had been frightened of the hIE taking the picture, and was hiding behind Arato’s back.

It was strange to think about how much his fate had changed recently.

Shiori’s terminal vibrated quietly. She threw a coat on over her dressing gown before ordering her home system to display the call on a screen.

A 3D image of a man appeared near her door.

〈Good evening, Ms. Shiori. Is now a good time?〉 the man asked. Despite being somewhere in his fifties, the man looked unkempt.

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