“Tell me why,” the man dressed as a ninja demanded of The Hermit, who was bound quite firmly to an alarmingly rickety wooden chair, “you are here in the office of the CEO of Kusuridayo Pharmaceuticals, spreading out confidential documents on the floor?”
The Hermit, whose real name was Takahiro Sato, thought of saying nothing. But then, the ninja had threatened to play songs by Kyari Pamyu Pamyu on his iPhone not five minutes earlier, and the threat did seem credible.
So The Hermit said, avoiding the question, “The documents show that the company is merely a tentacle. I need the head of the octopus.”
The ninja digested this slowly. Could there, in fact, be more to this apparent simpleton than met the eye? As far as he could tell, the documents had been randomly pulled from files in the filing cabinet, with no apparent relevance to each other. Could the intruder be lying? How much did he know?
Actually, although The Hermit was unaware of this, the ninja had his own reasons for being in the CEO’s office. It was bad luck, really, that the two had to meet this way — they had a lot in common, and would have been fine drinking companions in other circumstances.
The ninja snapped his fingers impatiently at one of his lackeys, whose mask was beginning to slip…
