Did I? I tried to think back to last summer, after I had jabbed the memory-wipe into her hand, when she had begged me not to. I remember catching her, lifting her into my arms, feeling both guilty and relieved. It was a long walk back, and I was exhausted and hot. I remembered stopping twice to rest, while the evening darkened around us. I couldn’t recall what I might have said to her.

“A running monologue the entire time. You kept apologizing. You explained you had to do this, for me to please understand. And that it was nothing personal and that you hoped I wouldn’t remember—that it wouldn’t affect me in any profound way.” She let out a wry laugh. “If I hadn’t found my father’s recording of the kidnapping, I probably would have moved on soon enough. After all, I remembered none of it. But instead, the exact opposite happened. I became obsessed. You told me all about your mom, about losing her to that terrible illness, how you’d been living on the streets for these last five years. You were at the center of this mystery.” She touched my shoulder then, startling me. “You never made it sound like you were stealing to keep the money for yourself. You talked as if you had a plan—a goal.”

“And you wanted to know what I was about,” I said.

She nodded. “It made absolutely no sense when you showed up at the party, so willing to befriend me. Pretending to be a you boy. But then you asked for a tour of Jin Corp—”

Daiyu had turned the tables, when I had thought I was being so cool, so sly.

“After the kidnapping, I had convinced my father to do the cheaper suits for the meis and stopped spying on him.” Daiyu’s mouth tightened. “But your showing up, and your interest in my father’s company, made me curious again. I began going through his files and saw that he wanted to add the image- and voice-recording enhance in all the cheaper suits. Without telling the consumer.”

“Gods. I’m sorry, Daiyu,” I said. Sorry that your father was a selfish, immoral asshole.

She gave me a half smile. “When I pointed out how wrong this was to my father, lying that I had overheard him talking about it in a business deal, he ignored me. It was a free addition! he declared. Something that could be used by the police in case of emergency or by the government to track any criminal activities. It was a free benefit with the suit. And in exchange, my father would be able to cull data on the consumer habits of the Taiwanese and all his clients worldwide.”

“Of course,” I said. “Data he could sell at a premium.” Not to mention have access to all the private moments and conversations between people.