The fact that Sebastian flat-out admitted that he was hiding something from Mikomi left him in shock. As if he didn’t have a ton of questions floating around in his mind already, one more forced its way in there among the others. Before he could question just what Sebastian was hiding from him, Sebastian interjected rather hastily.
“But….” said Sebastian with a bit of a pause. “Whether or not I tell you depends on your actions from here on out. I’m not quite ready to tell you just yet but when the time comes, I will make good on my promise to tell you the final piece of information. Trust me when I say that you are far from ready to hear it.”
Mikomi sighed in disappointment as he rubbed the back of his head knowing that there wasn’t anything he could do about it just now. He was just going to have to trust Sebastian’s judgment on this one.
“I guess that can’t be helped. Thanks. I should get back to the table before my father wonders if I’ve fallen in.”
Sebastian gave a nod to Mikomi and then disappeared into thin air. Mikomi flushed the toilet and headed back out. His mother was absorbed in watching her favorite show on the television so it didn’t look like he raised any suspicion from her. He casually made his way back to the kitchen where he sat down with his father and continued to look over the applications. He grasped Alice’s application in his hands and began to stare at it. He looked over her credentials carefully and then something caught his eye.
“Alice graduated from high school at 16!? She’s about to enter her sophomore year of college for an Associate Degree in Business!? I knew Alice was smart but is this one of the differences of this world?”
Mikomi spent an extra amount of time on Alice’s application before shifting it to the bottom of his pile. His father gleaned over at Mikomi for a moment and then went back to reading his pile. One by one, the two of them looked through the potential candidates and then swapped piles as promised. Eventually, they reached the end. Ryunosuke pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a bit of a sigh.
“Now that we’ve gone through every application, what do you think, Mikomi?”
Mikomi sat there a bit nervously. He knew he had to make his choice knowing full well what the weight of this decision was. This decision may be trivial to his father but he also didn’t have an entire future to shape. Alice could still end up being his secretary so it may be best just to pick her but that would mean erasing Janice from history. This was a heavier decision than he had anticipated. Mikomi was taking quite a long time to make a decision which caused his father to chuckle.
“Not so easy, is it Mikomi? Now you understand just one of my plights! To give you an idea of the things I have to deal with daily, a difficult decision like this is one of the easiest I have to make.”
Still, his father was pretty amused at Mikomi’s indecision. Mikomi gave his father a slight nod as if to agree with him and then went back to pondering his decision. If only his father knew what this decision truly meant, then he wouldn’t have said such a thing to him. Mikomi recalled Sebastian’s words about shaping the world and not having to be so cautious about doing so. With that in mind, Mikomi took a deep breath and reached for Alice’s application. He grabbed it and showed it to his father.
“I think she would be a great fit, dad.”
Ryunosuke took hold of the application and gave it the once over. He quickly tossed it back down onto the kitchen table.
“No good.”
Mikomi’s heart almost stopped. It was as if time itself stood still for but a brief moment. The shock of hearing two simple words caused the world around Mikomi to become muffled. He quickly became lost in his own thoughts as they swarmed and enveloped his mind.
“No good!? I mean, sure… she’s no Janice but she served me very well. She was very capable and she truly cared about me. She did a remarkable job as both a secretary and a friend. Why would Dad reject her now but accept her in the other timeline? I thought there were supposed to be a lot of things here that were similar. Alice could play a key role in finding out who shot me so I can’t imagine this timeline would just eliminate her from the equation like this. There has to be a way I can convince my father that his judgment is a mistake!”
“Mikomi? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Was my reaction that shocking?”
Mikomi shook his head, snapping himself out of thought. Drifting off like that was a bad habit of his but he couldn’t help it. He lived most of his life in his head and was a deep thinker as a result.
“Yeah. I thought she would have been the perfect candidate. I was surprised you rejected her so quickly.”
“What makes you think she’s the perfect candidate?”
Mikomi knew that this was his chance. He had to come up with a convincing reason to hire Alice, otherwise, he would be facing an uncertain future that posed a significant challenge to him. He felt that Alice was a necessary piece to this puzzle and couldn’t let this opportunity just slip by.
“Well, I know she’s a bit young but her credentials are not only promising but impressive. She graduated high school early with top honors, already has a year of business training through college, and she’s starting her second year which would complete her degree. It seems the college courses are at night, otherwise, she wouldn’t be applying for this position. Placing her in an environment like your company would offer an invaluable experience for her. On the other side of it, you gain the benefit of molding and shaping someone impressionable. This means you can cultivate her with your company’s culture which would be even more valuable than someone who has had prior experience. This reduces conflicts such as some secretaries being set in their ways versus what you would expect of them in the company. Someone young and hungry is more likely to do what they can to succeed rather than just treat it as just another nine to five job.”
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“WAIT! I’m supposed to be in high school and I just spoke as if I were the CEO of the company! I think I overdid it!”
Mikomi’s father just sat there staring blankly at his son. It was as if time stood still once again. Mikomi’s mind was racing to try and find a way to explain all of this but suddenly, his father burst out laughing! It was so funny, his father even slapped his knee as he fought back tears. Mikomi didn’t know how to feel at this point. Was his father mocking him? Was his reasoning nothing more than pure fantasy?
“Oh, my. I need to come home more often. Mikomi, what have you been doing while I have been away?”
“What do you mean?” asked Mikomi with a puzzled look on his face.
Ryunosuke took a moment to collect himself. Mikomi’s parents had a habit of bursting out laughing during serious conversations. It was their way of lightening the mood when things seemed to get tense. It was a little nuance about them that Mikomi found annoying but it was one of the reasons the two of them fell in love with each other. They had that like-minded approach to life and it caused them to enjoy each other’s company. It’s kind of twisted if you think about it.
“I never thought I would hear reasoning like that out of my son at this age. If your voice were any deeper, I’d think I would be talking to an executive at my company!”
“Well, I kind of am the CEO after all…”
“That was brilliant deductive reasoning, Mikomi. I’m happy to say that you’ve passed the test.”
“Test?” said Mikomi with a blank stare.
“Yes. I noticed that you had taken a keen interest in that application straight away. You spent the most time on it out of all of them. I had a feeling you were going to pick that one from the very beginning. I was interested in knowing why you were spending most of your time on it so I made sure to review this application first. She’s young and I know in a few years, you would be eligible to be her boyfriend. I, honestly, thought it was just a young boy’s love at first sight but I never expected this!”
Ryunosuke chuckled a few more times before he continued.
“Imagine my surprise when your deductive reasoning matched mine. By telling you she was no good, I was trying to tease you a bit when in reality, my mind had already been made up. I was going to pick Alice all along! Needless to say, I’m proud of you, son!”
Ryunosuke patted his son on the shoulder. A huge rush of relief swooped across Mikomi’s body like a cool sensation. It was this relief that made him realize that it was nearly six o’clock and dinner was starting to smell good. Almost on cue, Karoline returned to the kitchen and opened the oven door. The smell of baked ziti filled the kitchen as she pulled the casserole dish out and set it on the countertop. Karoline then began to set the plates and dinnerware out on the table.
“That sure smells good,” said Ryunosuke. “Nothing beats your mom’s cooking!”
Mikomi smiled as each person took their turn getting their fill of ziti and salad.
“Something is still a bit off. The whole application thing worked out but that means there was never a Janice that worked at my dad’s company. Still, I can’t help but feel that there’s something big missing here. Like there was supposed to be…”
It was at that moment that it hit Mikomi like a ton of bricks. Mikomi had figured out the one thing that was missing from this entire conversation. The one reason why his father had come home on this day.
“THE ANNOUNCEMENT! He hasn’t made his announcement about developing the artificial intelligence software yet!”
After swallowing a generous bite of ziti, Mikomi decided that he needed to find out what was going on. He looked at his father and decided to break the ice.
“Has anything big happened at work lately, Dad?”
Ryunosuke was in the middle of chewing. Mikomi waited patiently for him to swallow his food. Once he did, his father let out a bit of a sigh.
“I wish I could say there was. The project I’m working on hit a pretty huge snag. We’re being left with two options: Go back to the drawing board and spend even more money, risking the company’s future… or abandon the project altogether.”
“Abandon the project!? But, this is where he was supposed to announce his breakthrough! That artificial intelligence could very well have been perfected! What happened!? Wait! Janice! She was probably the key! She had to have played some role in my father’s breakthrough. Since she never worked at the company, this means that the breakthrough never happened!? I even picked Alice over Janice in the applications so even if the breakthrough came at a point in the future, I just erased any chance of that happening!”
“I don’t think you should give up, Dad. After all, doesn’t it take many failures before you succeed?”
“I appreciate your encouragement, Mikomi but if I fail again, the company may go bankrupt. I’d love nothing more than to continue but I can’t put my family at risk like that. The company makes plenty of sales to keep the lights on and pay the staff but the profit margin is small. A project like this takes a tremendous amount of capital to fund and if I dig any more into our reserves then it would start tapping into the money I use to keep the company running. That means I would have to lay off workers and cut back on a lot of things all for the sake of trying to complete something that may not even be possible. It’s my job to put clothes on your back, a roof over your head, and more delicious ziti on the table. I can’t jeopardize all of that for my selfish ventures.”
After a brief pause, Ryunosuke let out a heavy sigh.
“I think it is in all of our best interests if I abandon the project.”
With that, Ryunosuke loaded his fork with another bite of ziti and placed it into his mouth.
“I sure would hate missing the taste of this!” he said with a smile, trying to cover his disappointment in his own decision.
They continued to eat until their plates were empty, all the while Mikomi sat there lost in thought. He knew he needed to fix this but he didn’t know how he was going to do it. Before Mikomi knew it, they had finished their dinner and he even offered to clean off the table. As the evening progressed, Mikomi found himself sitting on his bed in the darkness. The glow of the moonlight illuminated his face, revealing an angry and determined look. His eyes were filled with burning resolve as if he had come up with an idea.
“I’m going to save my father’s company!”
With that, Mikomi cracked a smirk. What did he have on his mind?