I breathed in and out, in and out, letting that sink in. This was how Jin had created a bad rendering of me.
“I would never have known, if one of his thugs didn’t come around one day showing me that poorly made image of you. When you still had the longer hair, dyed blond.” She was speaking to a point behind me, beyond my shoulder, not looking in my eyes. “He wanted to know if I recognized the boy in the photo. If I could tell him anything at all. To think hard.” She made a derisive noise. “He gave himself away like a bad chess player staring too long at the piece he wants to move next. My father had told me I had fainted that evening at the night market, even though I’d never fainted before in my life. When I tried to ask more questions, I couldn’t. All three of my bodyguards had been replaced. My friend Marie, who was with me that night, kept telling me it was exactly how my father said.” She paused. “But she distanced herself from me, and I saw the fear in her eyes.”
I lay on my back, gazing up at the domed ceiling, saying nothing.
“I was suspicious,” she said. “My father left his MacFold open one morning while taking a business call and I went in and made myself admin, giving myself remote access. He never suspected a thing.” Daiyu gave a bitter laugh. “So I went through his files, and found the recording of the kidnapping, all of it. And his messages sent directing his men to search for you, to find you, and to kill you. The money was secondary. It was a matter of principle and pride. How could some worthless kid make a fool of him like this? My getting kidnapped was also secondary. It was about him. In the end, it’s always about him.
“I watched and listened to the recording hundreds of times,” Daiyu continued. “So many times that I have our entire conversations memorized. I would never have been able to recognize your face from it, but your voice . . .” She pulled out her hair band, letting her ponytail loose, then proceeded to twist the band between her fingertips. “I thought you sounded familiar at the New Year’s party—but it was noisy. So I showed up at your apartment the next day to be sure. And I knew after that visit, it was the same voice from the boy who kidnapped me in the recording.” She glanced at me for a second, before her eyes flicked away.
“Daiyu,” I said, my voice hoarse.
“No. Don’t interrupt,” she replied. “Let me tell this.”
I let myself look at her then, and she went on, avoiding my gaze.
“You didn’t say a thing after you kidnapped me, but you talked on the whole way back,” she said.
Did I? I tried to think back to last summer, after I had jabbed the memory-wipe into her hand, when she had begged me not to. I remember catching her, lifting her into my arms, feeling both guilty and relieved. It was a long walk back, and I was exhausted and hot. I remembered stopping twice to rest, while the evening darkened around us. I couldn’t recall what I might have said to her.
“A running monologue the entire time. You kept apologizing. You explained you had to do this, for me to please understand. And that it was nothing personal and that you hoped I wouldn’t remember—that it wouldn’t affect me in any profound way.” She let out a wry laugh. “If I hadn’t found my father’s recording of the kidnapping, I probably would have moved on soon enough. After all, I remembered none of it. But instead, the exact opposite happened. I became obsessed. You told me all about your mom, about losing her to that terrible illness, how you’d been living on the streets for these last five years. You were at the center of this mystery.” She touched my shoulder then, startling me. “You never made it sound like you were stealing to keep the money for yourself. You talked as if you had a plan—a goal.”
“And you wanted to know what I was about,” I said.
She nodded. “It made absolutely no sense when you showed up at the party, so willing to befriend me. Pretending to be a you boy. But then you asked for a tour of Jin Corp—”
Daiyu had turned the tables, when I had thought I was being so cool, so sly.
“After the kidnapping, I had convinced my father to do the cheaper suits for the meis and stopped spying on him.” Daiyu’s mouth tightened. “But your showing up, and your interest in my father’s company, made me curious again. I began going through his files and saw that he wanted to add the image-and voice-recording enhance in all the cheaper suits. Without telling the consumer.”
“Gods. I’m sorry, Daiyu,” I said. Sorry that your father was a selfish, immoral asshole.
She gave me a half smile. “When I pointed out how wrong this was to my father, lying that I had overheard him talking about it in a business deal, he ignored me. It was a free addition! he declared. Something that could be used by the police in case of emergency or by the government to track any criminal activities. It was a free benefit with the suit. And in exchange, my father would be able to cull data on the consumer habits of the Taiwanese and all his clients worldwide.”
“Of course,” I said. “Data he could sell at a premium.” Not to mention have access to all the private moments and conversations between people.
She nodded. “My father made his own fortune. He’s always seen himself as the hero of his own story, and the rest of us, secondary characters existing only to serve him. The idea of privacy is ludicrous to him. How did this enhance hurt anyone? Privacy is a privilege that you could buy if you were rich enough.”
I snorted. “Like clean air, food, and water? Like good health care?”
“I don’t agree with him,” she said. “I never bothered to think through the implications of my father’s actions, of his business practices, until after my kidnapping.” Her cheeks colored. She was embarrassed, even though I was the criminal in this scenario. “I had always pretended I didn’t see, but it was only when I read the plans for this enhance, and confronted him, that I understood . . . how warped his thinking truly was. He believed it was in his right to lie to the people, bribe and intimidate politicians—do whatever was necessary to get the results he desired.” She was clutching the thin blanket between her fingers, staring at the pattern with unseeing eyes. “I could partially justify in my mind his wanting to . . . seek retribution for what you did. I made sure that your paths never crossed. But when I heard him casually say he’d kill you after questioning you . . . I couldn’t make any more excuses for him.”
I caressed her cheek with the back of my hand.
“There’s more, isn’t there?” she whispered. “More that I don’t know.”
I nodded.
“Tell me everything,” she said. “Later.”
“All right,” I replied. From the beginning, I had thought we were on opposite sides, fighting against each other, when all along Daiyu had wanted what my friends and I had wanted. My heart had trusted her long before my mind would allow it.