【T.C.】【The Red-Haired Girl with No Place to Belong】T.C.-14

Akemi walked alone through the entertainment district.
Prism-colored holograms scattered their lights around her.
Her red hair swayed in the wind.

—It was a windy day like this.
She remembers the day she met Kiryu.

Akemi always liked computers.
Only computers treated her as a human being.

Red hair—that was her trademark.
Since when? Middle school?
Ah… was it the last day of junior high?

She recalled the homeroom teacher’s words:
“Akemi-san worries me. I can’t imagine her becoming a decent adult.”

…So that’s how they saw her.
But really, would you say that to someone?

Her father was a physics professor.
Her mother was a bar hostess—nothing more than a “mistress.”
She never had a real father.

They lived in a small 2DK apartment.
Her mother often brought men home.
Akemi would put on her headphones, shut herself in her room—
games, the internet, anything logical.
She saved up from part-time jobs, bought a computer,
and kept building systems.
Typing code soothed her.
Random numbers. Algorithms. Geometry.

But she couldn’t even get into high school.
She worked in the city instead.
People probably thought she was stupid.

Wanting to live alone,
she worked at a lounge—drinking with men until morning.
She felt herself getting dirtier.

Middle-school graduate.
Akemi is dumb—
She laughed and played along for tips.

One day, she happened to meet a man named Kiryu.
She was drinking at a bar after her shift,
and he was sitting next to her.

They talked about computers.
Kyosuke Kiryu—graduate school, research papers,
AI systems, shimmering brilliance… and sorrow.

She looked him up later—read his papers online.
The words she understood were:
“System-based governance.”
Her heart raced.

Sometimes they drank together.
She once told him she built systems.
She was dead drunk.

He said:
“I’d like to see your work.”
No way. Why?
But she opened her bag, took out her computer,
and ran her program.

Breakchain.
A name she gave it for fun—
A conceptual system capable of penetrating any other system.
Really just a modified version of programs found online.
Hypothetically, it could neutralize digital defenses.

He said:
“Amazing. You learned this on your own?”
She nodded.

After a silent pause, he said:

“Come with me.
Get proper training.”

She doubted her ears.
She said:
“That’s impossible. I’m stupid.”

He replied quietly:

“A stupid person could not have built this.”

While working nights with red hair flashing in the neon,
Akemi began attending a night technical school.

That was a long time ago.

How many years since she met Kiryu?

“Let’s go, Akemi.”
Kiryu called her.
“Yeah, yeah…”
Every time he called, she followed.

Then Gunjo—whom Kiryu brought from overseas—
made the third member of their team.

And then—
their dream collapsed.

In the end, Kyosuke Kiryu was called
the Instigator of the Great War.

Even so—
Even then—
she still follows him.