"That may not be necessary," Kuroda said. "The issue is witnessed and documented."

Orton rose, gathering his laptop. "I'm going to consult with our legal department."

"Leave the computer," Emi said.

He laughed. "You can't confiscate private property."

"No," she replied. "But I can tell you that destroying records after receiving a preservation notice creates problems much larger than tonight's disagreement."

He paused, then set the laptop down. It made a soft, humiliating sound against the white tablecloth.

Evelyn's phone rang. Her brother's name lit the screen. She stepped aside and answered.

"Hey, Ev," Isaiah said. "Dad's all right. But somebody just called our house asking if you were home."

Her pulse accelerated. "Who?"

"Wouldn't give a name. Said you should stop telling stories about Kobe."

Evelyn looked through the glass partition at Miles Orton. He was already watching her.

"Lock the door," she told Isaiah. "And don't tell anyone where I work."

She hung up. For the first time that night, she was frightened not of losing the wager, but of winning it.

Chapter 06  —  The Cost of a Correct Answer

By the time Evelyn finished her shift, strangers had seen the video. Not all of it: a woman at the neighboring table had posted only forty-three seconds, starting with Graham Voss saying a waitress could not understand Japanese and ending when Reina Kuroda declared the answer correct. Online, forty-three seconds was long enough to turn a person into a hero and far too short to make people understand why she was afraid.

The clip reached eleven thousand views before midnight. It reached three hundred thousand while she was riding the bus home. By the time she climbed the stairs to her apartment, her phone was too hot in her pocket and someone had created an account claiming to be her.

Her father sat at the kitchen table in a faded Seattle Mariners sweatshirt, his walker beside him. Walter Price had once climbed cargo cranes with the absentminded ease of a man crossing his own living room. Now he counted steps between rooms and pretended the counting did not matter.

"You look like you've met a ghost," he said.

"I met an old manager. Close enough."

Isaiah appeared from the hallway. Nineteen, tall and thin, he had spent the evening repairing a neighbor's broken laptop. He held up his phone, already open to the viral video.

"You did that? A million-dollar bet?" His voice cracked between disbelief and excitement. "Evelyn, this is ridiculous. You're all over the internet."

"It's a bet," she said, dropping her bag. "Not a wire transfer. Don't spend it."

Walter studied her face. "You know the look I had when a piece of equipment failed? The look when I knew somebody had seen a warning and turned it off? You've got that look."

She sat down beside him and explained about the untranslated safety condition, the old company, the forged certificate. Isaiah stopped smiling. Walter took her notebook when she offered it and read his own words on the first page. He did not speak for a long time.

"I worried that I pushed you too hard," he said finally. "Be exact. People will build things from your words. I wrote that like a father giving advice. Didn't understand how much it could cost you."

"You were right," she said.

"Being right shouldn't make you unsafe."

Evelyn told them about the anonymous call. Isaiah had saved the number and the voicemail. They agreed to forward it to counsel in the morning and to document anything else that happened. Walter insisted on changing the apartment door's faulty lock immediately; Isaiah found a screwdriver. In their small kitchen, doing one practical thing felt better than rehearsing worst-case scenarios.

Walter asked to see the still frame from the dinner video before Evelyn went to bed. He did not need the audio. He studied the machinery shown on the presentation screen, asked her to enlarge the corner and pointed with a hand that trembled slightly from his old injury.

"That triangle," he said. "We used something similar on the waterfront. Temporary clearance. You could run an empty test, not a loaded shift."

"It's not the same authority," Evelyn cautioned.

"I'm not saying it is. I'm saying every crew knows there are stages. The problem begins when a manager takes the word temporary out of the conversation."

Isaiah sat beside them and opened a notebook for the first time all evening without being asked. He sketched three boxes for the testing stages, then drew arrows in a loop. "What if the software displays the last successful stage as the current one?" he asked. "You could look at a dashboard and think nothing was missing."

Walter looked at his son with a mixture of pride and worry. "Then somebody ought to make it harder to get that wrong."

Evelyn had spent days thinking about how to fight wealthy executives. Here, at the kitchen table, the question became simpler and more serious: how to protect a tired worker from a dishonest screen. She asked Isaiah to keep the sketch. She wanted him to remember his idea came before anyone offered an internship or a camera interview. It belonged to him and to the crews who might someday trust the result.

At 1:16 a.m., Evelyn received a message from a number she recognized as Kuroda's hotel suite. It contained only a brief request: We need to speak tomorrow. Come with someone you trust. Our legal counsel will be present.

She slept for three hours. At breakfast a reporter had parked outside the building, and another waited by the bus stop. Evelyn made Isaiah walk to class by a different route. On television, commentators framed the event as a morality play about a businessman humbled by a brilliant server. None mentioned the altered safety condition; the video had ended before that.

"They've got the wrong story," Isaiah said, standing beside the screen.

"They've got the easiest story," Evelyn replied. "That isn't always the same."

Sloan called to say reporters were calling the restaurant. He offered her paid leave for the week. She wondered if he was trying to protect her or the dining room, then decided both intentions could exist together. She asked for the employee time log and the names of staff who had witnessed the signed bet. Sloan promised to send them.

At noon she went to the hotel with her friend Danielle Brooks, a public-interest attorney who had lived two doors from Evelyn through high school. Danielle had once defended a tenant against a landlord with three lawyers, and she brought the same unfussy determination into the hotel's marble lobby.

"I'm not your formal attorney yet," Danielle said. "But I can stop someone from convincing you that a handshake is a contract amendment."

"I don't think they'll try to trick me," Evelyn said.

"You met one of them last night."

"Fair point."

Kuroda's temporary conference suite overlooked the water. Emi sat at the end of a table with printed agreements and an interpreter from an independent agency, a professional courtesy Evelyn appreciated more than flattery. Kuroda greeted them both. Jun was there too, his shirt sleeves rolled, a stack of engineering records beside him.

"We have verified that the wording you identified was changed," Kuroda said. "The acquisition will not close tomorrow."

Danielle opened her notebook. "And the forged signature?"

"The standards committee is checking the archive. The original file does not appear to have been signed by Evelyn. But we need more time to establish the chain of custody."

Evelyn stared at the folder. "Why show it to me so quickly?"

Kuroda looked genuinely puzzled. "Because it concerns your name."