108: Chapter 107 Saikai

As the float turned into the middle section of Japantown, V and Jackie approached the edge of the platform from two directions simultaneously.

This was the most critical time window of the entire operation.

The location Lin Yi had chosen was flanked by tall buildings on both sides of the road, casting irregular patches of light over the parade route.

The midday sun was refracted into fragments by the building glass, dancing back and forth across the float's platform; every sliver of light and shadow provided natural cover for the visual distortion of the Optical Camouflage.

Both of their Optical Camouflages activated simultaneously.

V from the right, Jackie from the left—their movements were almost perfectly mirrored. The Optical Camouflage completely covered Hanako's figure, including her hand gripping the railing, the hem of her kimono lifted by the wind, and the fine beads of sweat trickling down her temple.

The surveillance cameras on the platform captured nothing but a natural overexposure caused by the sunlight in that frame, with a margin of error of no more than two seconds.

Two seconds.

Enough for V and Jackie to get her off the float, enough for them to pass through the pre-arranged emergency corridor, and enough for them to enter the extraction point prepared in the Japantown underground parking garage.

Throughout the entire process, the float did not stop. The live stream did not cut.

The five live-stream cameras arranged around the float continued to output footage, aimed at the spot where Hanako had been standing just moments ago.

What was "standing" there now was a digital avatar seamlessly replaced by Lin Yi using pre-recorded AI-generated footage—every micro-expression, every flutter of the kimono's folds in the wind, and the arc of her wrist each time she waved at the camera matched the publicly available image data of Hanako that Lin Yi had captured beforehand, down to the millisecond.

No one noticed.

The underground parking garage was very quiet. The hustle and bustle of Japantown was filtered by the thick concrete into a distant, low hum.

Inside the armored van that Jackie had parked here in advance, the three of them had successfully retreated according to plan.

Hanako was settled into a seat, her back against the chair, the hem of her kimono carefully folded and placed to one side of her knees.

She did not struggle, nor did she scream. From the moment she was brought onto the vehicle until now, she hadn't asked a single word.

She just sat there quietly, looking at the three strangers in front of her.

Her breathing was a bit rapid, but that rapidity wasn't panic—it was more like someone who had been locked behind a screen for too long, suddenly pulled into the sunlight, their pupils not yet having had time to adjust to the light.

Lin Yi turned around, bringing his line of sight level with hers. He looked into this woman's eyes at close range.

Those eyes were almost identical to Yorinobu's—the same arc of the eye corners, even the same slight downward droop at the outer corners.

But in Yorinobu's eyes, there was a fire suppressed that hadn't burned out in decades, while in Hanako's eyes, there was no fire.

Only a layer of frosted glass; perhaps something was moving behind it, but nothing could be seen clearly.

It was a gaze that had been meticulously polished by others over the past forty-plus years, polished to the point where it could reflect any expectation projected onto it, but could never reflect itself.

"Ms. Hanako, what happens next might make you feel uncomfortable," Lin Yi said. His voice was softer than it had been over the headset, as if he were afraid of startling something. "But I assure you, when all this is over, I believe you will thank us."

He reached out and connected the data cable to the neural port at the back of Hanako's neck.

The metal contacts of the port engaged gently with the magnetic interface of the connector, emitting a faint "click."

Lockdown activated.

Baize's command entered Hanako's access port through the neural port, shutting down the signal pathways of her motor nervous system from within.

It started with her eyelids—her eyes remained half-open, pupils slightly dilated, but not focused on anything.

Then her neck, shoulders, and arms.

The entire process took less than three seconds; all the skeletal muscles in her body entered a state of relaxation, yet her vital signs showed no fluctuations whatsoever. Lockdown was not harm; it was a pause.

Taking a person's consciousness off their body temporarily, giving the brain a space where it could safely hibernate.

Three seconds later, Lin Yi initiated the puppet program he had prepared.

This was a solution he had reverse-engineered from that experience of having information "shoved" into him by Europa.

Europa was able to force decades' worth of information into his brain because the Transcendent AI's transmission protocol did not rely on the transmission limits of the human neural network.

But the reverse operation—not infusion, but removal—required far higher precision than infusion.

It required precisely locating those cognitive frameworks implanted by Saburo, peeling them away layer by layer from the bottom of Hanako's mind, while completely preserving her original personality structure and personal memories.

Not an inch too much, not a fraction too little.

Baize was operating as expected.

Lin Yi could feel the heat inside it diffusing evenly through the casing; that milky-white "suet" material was no longer turning into a very pale, warm yellow due to the load, as it had before.

A power consumption monitoring window popped up in the top-right corner of his vision—the current load was maintained at around thirty percent, within the safety threshold.

But this kind of precision operation consumed more attention than a purely high-load combat scenario.

He had to stare at the feedback data logs of every stripping step the entire time, adjusting the puppet's execution parameters at any moment.

Time slowed down significantly.

V leaned against the car door, Jackie stood at the entrance of the garage, and both of them tacitly made no sound.

The entire underground parking garage was filled only with the faint hum of equipment cooling fans and the steady, long breaths of Hanako.

When the hollowness faded, Hanako's eyes blinked.

Her pupils refocused, from blurry to clear, from scattered to concentrated.

The first thing she saw was Lin Yi directly in front of her, then the dim overhead light on the roof of the vehicle, and then V, who was standing outside the car door, leaning against the side and watching her.

She spoke. Very softly. As if she were afraid that speaking too loudly would shatter something.

The first sentence was in Japanese; because it was so soft, Lin Yi almost didn't hear it. But Baize's translation module automatically popped up a window in the corner of his vision: "I can speak now."

Then she looked up, meeting Lin Yi's eyes. She repeated it in English, her voice a little louder this time.

"Who are you?"

The tone had changed. It wasn't the "standard tone" of Hanako Arasaka that had been repeatedly polished by Saburo—where a decent distance was maintained between words, and every sentence sounded like a speech draft that had been vetted in advance.

Her current tone was like that of someone who had just woken up from a long dream, asking a stranger standing by the bed a question. Simply wanting to know the answer. No calculation, no probing.

Lin Yi looked at her eyes, which were finally no longer frosted glass, and was silent for a moment.

"Someone who has come to return your freedom," he said. "And a friend of your brother's."

Hanako blinked. Her eyelashes gently swept across her lower eyelids.

"Brother..." She repeated the word, her voice softening again.

No one spoke inside the vehicle. V lowered her gaze by the door, Jackie turned away to clear his throat, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.

Lin Yi gently unplugged the data cable, removing the connector from the port at the back of Hanako's neck. The magnetic click of the cable retracting sounded exceptionally clear in the quiet garage.

He pulled his hand back, stood up, and took two steps back, leaving Hanako enough space.

"Your brother has been waiting for you for a long time," he said.

The study in Arasaka Estate, the next afternoon.

Yorinobu stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, his back to the door. Outside the window was the estate's private garden, where meticulously pruned pine trees swayed gently in the afternoon breeze.

He heard the sound of the door opening but did not turn around.

When Lin Yi walked in, he left Hanako outside the door.

"You said you would give me a surprise," Yorinobu said, still looking out the window, his voice carrying a tension that he was unsuccessfully trying to suppress.

"The surprise is at the door," Lin Yi said. "Whether to let her in, that's for you to decide."

Yorinobu turned around. He didn't look at Lin Yi's eyes, but instead looked directly at the door.

Hanako stood there, wearing simple casual clothes—the ones V had bought for her on the way, a gray long-sleeved shirt and black trousers, without any Arasaka logos.

"Oni-chan," she said.

This form of address made Yorinobu's body tremble almost imperceptibly.

Not "Yorinobu." Not "Brother-sama." Not even the respectful and distant "Onii-sama."

It was the term she loved to use most when they were children, before everything had been ruined by that old man.

Back then, she would chase after him, calling out in her childish voice, "Oni-chan, wait for me."

Later, Saburo said that wasn't proper enough and sent an etiquette teacher to correct her, and after that, she stopped calling him that.

Yorinobu's lips moved, but he didn't make a sound.

"They told me some things," Hanako said, walking into the study, taking each step slowly but steadily. "About Father's... resurrection plan. About what you have been doing in the company all these years."

She stood still in front of him. "I want to hear it from you. Tell me the whole story yourself, from the beginning, okay?"

Yorinobu looked at Lin Yi with an unreadable expression.

That look wasn't a plea for help, nor was it gratitude; it was that subconscious glance at the person most likely to understand him, occurring when one is struck by something and doesn't know what expression to wear when facing others.

Lin Yi nodded to him, turned, walked out of the study, and gently closed the door.

In the hallway, V was leaning against the wall waiting for him. She was wearing a thin black jacket, her hair tied in a casual ponytail, looking like she had just gotten out of the car and was waiting to the side.

"Did it work?"

"I don't know," Lin Yi said, shrugging.

He walked over to V, leaned his shoulder against the wall, and rested the back of his head against the cool surface. "It's up to them now."

V turned her head to look at him. At that angle, her cybernetic eye reflected a bit of the sunset light from the end of the hallway, the edge of her iris tinged with golden-brown.

She didn't reply immediately, just stared at his profile for a good while.

"How come you've gone soft this time?" she asked.

The tone didn't sound like criticism, nor did it sound like teasing. It was more like—she already knew the answer, but she wanted to hear him say it himself.

Lin Yi thought for a moment. The window at the end of the hallway was high, and the sunset shone in obliquely from outside, dyeing the entire hallway a color resembling amber. Dust floated slowly in the light.

"That's not quite it," he said, still leaning against the wall without turning to look at V. "It's just that—Yorinobu has had too much destroyed by Saburo. His brother. His mother. And finally, his own sister. Since one less can be spared, why not?"

"Besides, it's equivalent to me killing the original Hanako Arasaka, using a method similar to Soulkiller, only the process was painless," Lin Yi added, self-deprecatingly.

V didn't speak, but her body leaned in slightly. Her shoulder pressed against his through the thin jacket fabric, leaving no gap.

"Also," Lin Yi said, "you said 'soft-hearted' just now, not 'did something wrong'."

V gave a soft hum. The sound was somewhere between "not bothering to deal with you" and "you're right but I won't admit it."

Then she turned her head and leaned it against his shoulder, very lightly, as if she just happened to need a place to rest her weight.

The hallway was long. The sunset shone obliquely in from the window at the end of the hallway, stretching their shadows out long and thin. The shadows leaked out from under the crack in the study door, two dark, slender outlines lying side by side on the floor, motionless.

It was very quiet in Yorinobu's study. No arguing, no throwing things, not even the sound of their voices could be heard clearly. Only the occasional phrase in Japanese, the tone soft, as if two people were piecing together a relationship that had been torn apart for many years, bit by bit.

Lin Yi closed his eyes, letting the weight of his head rest completely against the wall. He felt V's hair brush against his jawline, carrying a hint of the shampoo she usually used—not the kind bought outside, but the bottle she picked up on the way back from their last vacation; she said the scent didn't smell "like Night City."

"Let's go, Lily," he said. "The rest is for them, the siblings, to reunite."