“No, of course not. There are quite a few people who reject the program. You can divide them into two groups. The first is antisocial. In English you’d call them ‘outcasts.’ They just can’t accept any form of constructive criticism, no matter what it is. They reject any kind of group discipline. It’s a waste of time to deal with people like that, so we ask them to withdraw. The other group is comprised of people who actually think on their own. Those it’s best to leave alone. Don’t fool with them. Every system needs elite people like them. If things go well, they’ll eventually be in leadership positions. In the middle, between those two groups, are those who take orders from above and just do what they’re told. That’s the vast majority of people. By my rough estimate, 85 percent of the total. I developed this business to target the 85 percent.”

“And your business is doing as well as you hoped it would?”

Aka nodded. “Things are working out now pretty much as I calculated. It was a small company at first, with just a couple of employees, but now it’s grown larger, as you can see. Our brand’s become pretty well known.”

“You’ve assessed the tasks that you don’t like to do, or the things that you don’t like to have done to you, analyzed them, and used this to launch your business. That was the starting point?”

Aka nodded. “Exactly. It’s not hard to think about what you don’t want to do or have done to you. Just like it’s not hard to think about what you would like to do. It’s a difference between the positive and the negative. A question of emphasis.”

I’m not too fond of what he’s doing. Tsukuru recalled Ao’s words.

“Aren’t you doing this, in part, to get personal revenge on society? As one of the elites, someone who thinks like an outcast.”

“You could be right,” Aka said. He laughed happily and snapped his fingers. “Great serve. Advantage Tsukuru Tazaki.”

“Are you the organizer of these programs? Do you do the presentations yourself?”

“In the beginning I did. I was the only person I could count on at that point. Can you picture me doing that?”

“No, not really,” Tsukuru replied honestly.