The basement level of Grandi-21 was a place where summer heat had been trapped beneath the ground. The concrete walls pushed back against the humid air, and fluorescent lights illuminated the corridor with uniform whiteness. This hallway, lined with athlete waiting rooms, would normally be filled with the flow of people before and after matches, but now it existed in a quiet gap with less than thirty minutes until the opening ceremony. The footsteps of athletes from other teams moving back and forth with their belongings echoed faintly in the distance, then faded. Kunimi Akira stood at the edge of the corridor, holding a vinyl bag in his hand. Inside the bag were seven years of numbers. Copies of accounting ledgers with Mikasa Ikuo's name stamped in the approval column for seven consecutive years. What Gasshu had protected in the old club building for three years now rested in Kunimi's hands. And Gasshu's smartphone—containing testimony audio data downloaded from the cloud. Gasshu