Adam did not answer Shinju right away.
Still in the old-man disguise, he looked at all four of them before speaking. Kenji was still carrying the sha of what had happened. Davin looked tired but alert. Sera was quieter than usual. Shinju’s eyes remained steady, though the strain of the day had not fully left her either.
"My son already told what happened here," Adam said at last.
Then he looked at Kenji first and let his voice soften a little.
"You are doing better than you think. All of you are. And I should apologize too. I could not give you open support from outside, even when you needed it."
The room went still.
Adam kept going.
"But don’t worry about that now. I have already thought of a better plan. You needed a push, and I will give you one. After that push, I know you will work even harder and take this company farther than it can go on its own."
Kenji’s expression changed first.
He still looked worn out, but so of the weight on his face shifted. Shinju lowered her eyes for a second, as if she were deciding whether to trust that reassurance or not. Davin and Sera both looked less stiff than they had a minute earlier.
Adam gave them one more line before leaving.
"Rember this," he said. "This company is not only mine. It is yours too. So grow it that way."
He did not stay for questions.
He turned and walked out with the sa slow old-man pace that had already beco familiar to them.
Once he stepped into the street, his face lost the last trace of warmth.
Now he checked behind him again and again.
He crossed one road, then another. He used shop windows, bus stop glass, and parked car mirrors to see whether anyone was following him from the office. He doubled back once, changed direction twice, and kept moving until he was satisfied no one had fixed themselves behind him.
Only then did he head toward a public toilet in a crowded side lane.
Inside, he changed fast.
The old hair ca off. The false age on his face disappeared. The bent back straightened. When he stepped out again, the old man was gone.
This ti he wore the middle-aged face.
He moved into the crowd without hurry and let the city swallow him.
’I got lucky today,’ Adam thought.
He understood that clearly now.
If Bruno had co to that office with a different purpose, if he had arrived with killing in his mind instead of desperation, then Adam would have had no room left to play with words. He would have been forced to use his last ergency asure.
And he had not wanted that.
After walking through two more blocks, Adam opened the system and looked into his inventory while keeping his pace steady.
The first slot was different now.
The chip copies were there, but one place no longer held a normal object icon. Instead, a new label sat in the slot.
[Electric Spark]
Adam lowered his eyes to his hand.
There was a faint burn mark there.
He had hidden it well enough under the old-man sleeve before, but seeing it now was enough to remind him what that ergency choice really ant.
’This was only for ergency,’ Adam thought. ’Good thing I didn’t need to use it. Explaining that would have been far worse than the fight itself.’
He closed the system and kept moving.
Even after that, he did not head straight toward the next task. He wandered the city for a while, partly to make sure no one was on him and partly because his own habits were still working against him.
At one point he stepped toward a telephone booth and stopped.
Then he almost laughed at himself.
He no longer needed it.
The realization felt stupidly late.
His biggest advantage was in his own hands, and yet he was still moving like a man who had nothing but public booths and luck to rely on.
Adam shook his head and stepped away from the booth.
’I have to build this habit properly,’ he thought.
A few minutes later, he spotted a man walking with a phone in his hand while checking the ti and changing a song at the sa ti.
Adam stepped in front of him.
"Sorry," he said. "Can I see the ti on your phone for one second?"
The man frowned imdiately. "Why?"
"My watch stopped. Just one second."
The man looked irritated, but he turned the phone outward anyway.
That was all Adam needed.
He touched the edge of the phone lightly as if steadying it to read the screen.
He copied it, stepped back at once, and said, "Thanks, I saw it."
The man muttered sothing rude and walked off.
Adam turned into a side street before testing anything.
When he pasted the copied phone into his palm, his eyes sharpened imdiately.
The state had remained the sa.
The screen was still on. The song player was still open. Even the place where the previous owner had left it stayed unchanged.
That made Adam much happier than the phone itself.
Copied objects did not reset. They stayed in the sa condition as the mont of copying.
’Good,’ Adam thought.
That ant he had far more room to work with than he had first assud.
After that, he did not bother returning to the booth.
He used the copied phone and dialed Gonda’s number directly.
The line connected after a few rings.
Gonda picked up.
Around him, a few of his own n were standing nearby, listening without appearing to listen. One of them was rek, who handled transport, and the other was Solan, a quieter man Gonda used whenever he wanted a job done without extra noise.
Adam lowered his voice until it sounded heavier than usual.
"I heard you’ve been looking for ," he said. "Or should I say you’ve been looking for my organization."
For the first ti in several seconds, the room around Gonda seed to disappear from his attention.
He straightened in his chair at once.
"May I know who’s speaking?" he asked.
Adam waited just long enough to make the silence press on him.
Then he answered.
"My na is Wil. I am the person you’ve been trying to find."
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