The spring of 1986 arrived late in Tokyo. Even in mid-March, a cold drizzle still fell at night, carried by the wind to slap against the windows of the Saionji Industries office in a fine, persistent patter.
Inside, the air hung heavy with the aroma of strong coffee and the faint, rich scent of Cuban cigars. Shuichi had recently adopted the habit of lighting one whenever he reviewed real-estate documents involving hundreds of millions of yen late into the night; the nicotine helped steady his nerves.
He sat behind the wide mahogany desk, gold-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, fountain pen hovering indecisively over the interior-decoration budget for the Akasaka Pink Building.
"Eight hundred thousand yen for a single imported Italian leather sofa…"
Shuichi muttered, brow furrowed. Though the Saionji family was no longer short of funds, the price still felt like outright robbery to a man raised in traditional restraint.
"Father, that sofa is for noble ladies to sit on while they wait for their beauty treatments," came Satsuki's voice from the sofa across the room. "If they are not comfortable, why would they willingly pay ten thousand yen for a manicure?"
Satsuki sat cross-legged, an all-English edition of The Wall Street Journal spread across her knees. She wore a loose grey sweatshirt, her long hair pinned back casually with a pencil. She looked more like a college student cramming for a thesis than the refined heiress she usually presented to the world.
Before her rested a black dedicated telephone line. The receiver lay off the hook on the coffee table, emitting a faint hiss of static—the direct transoceanic connection to Zurich and New York.
Shuichi shook his head helplessly and signed the budget sheet.
"Very well. Since you set the rules, we will follow them."
He set down the pen and glanced at the wall clock.
Tokyo time: 23:25.
New York time: 9:25 a.m.
Only five minutes remained until the Nasdaq opened.
"Is it Frank again tonight?" Shuichi asked, rising to stretch his stiff neck before settling on the sofa opposite his daughter.
"Yes." Satsuki kept her eyes on her wristwatch, watching the second hand tick forward. "I trust no one else with a sum this large."
"Twenty million dollars."
When Shuichi spoke the figure, his tone carried a complex weight. At current exchange rates that amounted to nearly four billion yen—enough in Tokyo to purchase two respectable office buildings or open ten first-class Ginza restaurants.
And now his twelve-year-old daughter intended to convert the entire fortune into shares of an American company he had never heard of before.
A company with no factories, no land, no machinery—only a handful of young men in jeans and glasses tinkering in a garage.
"Microsoft…"
Shuichi picked up the English-language prospectus from the coffee table. On the cover sat the company logo and a photograph of its founder: a baby-faced young man wearing large-framed glasses.
Bill Gates.
He looked exactly like the studious types Shuichi had seen at the University of Tokyo.
"Satsuki," he said, tapping the photograph, "are you truly prepared to wager four billion yen on this boy?"
"He is no boy, Father."
Satsuki did not look up; her gaze remained fixed on the telephone.
"He is a Tyrannosaurus Rex wearing sheep's clothing."
"As for what we are buying…" A faint, playful smile touched her lips. "It will be our ticket to the new world."
At that moment, noisy voices and the clang of bells sounded through the receiver—the unmistakable background din of the New York trading floor.
"Miss Saionji? Are you there?"
Frank's voice came through, tight with anxiety and barely contained excitement.
Satsuki lifted the receiver and switched on the speakerphone.
"I am here, Frank."
Her English flowed flawlessly, without the slightest accent, as calm as though she were a senior trader seated in a Wall Street office.
"Listen, Miss Saionji," Frank tried one final time. "The atmosphere on the floor is strange today. The IPO price is set at twenty-one dollars, but many institutions are holding back. After all, this is only a software company. Their balance sheet is too 'light'—almost no fixed assets to serve as collateral. If you wish to reconsider, we could still pivot to IBM or General Electric. Those are the stable choices…"
In this era, traditional bankers still placed faith in tangible assets. The value of something as intangible as software remained a mystery to the old guard on Wall Street.
Satsuki cut him off.
"Frank, I did not call for investment advice."
Her voice was quiet, yet the chill in it seemed to silence the clamor on the other end.
"Are the accounts I requested prepared?"
"They are ready… ten scattered offshore accounts to avoid drawing regulatory attention."
"Very good."
Satsuki glanced at her watch.
9:30 a.m.
"The market is open."
She drew a steady breath and issued the command.
"Buy. All in."
"No matter what the opening price is, purchase every share offered. I want the entire twenty million dollars converted into Microsoft stock before the market closes today."
"But… what if the price surges at the open?"
"Then chase the rise."
Satsuki's reply was decisive.
"Frank, remember my words. Even if you pay twenty-five or even thirty dollars today, ten years from now you will realize it was as good as picking the shares up for free."
The line fell silent for two seconds. Then Frank's voice rang out, barking orders to the traders.
"Buy Microsoft! Market order! Go! Go! Go!"
Shuichi sat nearby, listening to the frantic shouting from across the Pacific, feeling strangely detached.
He looked at the cup of black tea on the coffee table, still gently steaming.
In the time it would take for that tea to cool, four billion yen of family wealth was being transformed into lines of data floating somewhere on the far side of the ocean.
No land deeds. No keys. None of the reassuring weight of physical possession.
Is this how the new era is conducted?
"Does Father feel uneasy?" Satsuki asked, hanging up the phone and reaching for her tea once more. She seemed to read his thoughts effortlessly.
"A little," Shuichi admitted with a wry smile. He picked up a cigar and sniffed its end. "When buying land, one could at least walk the soil and smell the earth. Buying this… feels like purchasing air."
"Air can be very expensive if one cannot live without it."
Satsuki rose and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window. Rain still fell outside; the lights of Marunouchi shimmered hazily through the mist.
"Father, do you know what an operating system is?"
Shuichi shook his head. "Not really. Is it… some kind of machine part?"
"You could think of it that way."
Satsuki traced a long horizontal line on the moisture-covered glass with her finger.
"Imagine that all the computers of the future are like trains."
She drew several small squares along the line.
"Microsoft is not building the trains. Nor is it building the cargo they carry."
"It is laying the tracks."
She turned, leaning her back against the cold glass, and met her father's eyes.
"In the future, whether IBM is building computers, a writer is composing articles, or an accountant is balancing ledgers—as long as anyone wants that train to run, they will have to travel on Microsoft's tracks."
"For every computer sold, they will collect a toll."
"And these tracks will be universal, spanning the entire world. No borders, no tariffs. A single floppy disk can carry this hegemony to every corner of the planet."
Shuichi's fingers trembled slightly around the cigar.
Tracks. Tolls.
He understood those concepts perfectly.
In the business logic of the old world, they represented the most profitable and stable enterprises—controlling the Suez Canal or owning the sole main railway line.
He had never imagined the same principle could apply to something as novel as a "computer."
"A monopoly?" he asked cautiously.
"Yes. A monopoly."
Satsuki nodded.
"And it will be a legal, technical, and unassailable one."
"What we are buying tonight is not shares in a small company. We are acquiring the taxing rights of the future digital world."
Shuichi drew a long breath.
He finally understood his daughter's certainty.
If that young man named Bill Gates could achieve what she described, then twenty million dollars was indeed an extraordinary bargain.
"It seems I ought to learn how to use a computer," Shuichi said with a self-deprecating laugh. He struck a match and lit his cigar.
Blue smoke curled upward, mingling with the misty rain beyond the window.
Half an hour later the telephone rang again.
"Miss Saionji!"
Frank sounded as though he had just run a marathon—breathless, yet unable to conceal his excitement.
"It's insane! Absolutely insane!"
"The opening price jumped straight to twenty-one dollars, then kept climbing! The buying pressure is ferocious! We had to fight to secure our allocation!"
"What is the price now?" Satsuki asked, perfectly composed.
"Twenty-six dollars—and still rising!" Frank nearly shouted. "My God, in just half an hour we already show an unrealized gain of twenty percent! This is faster than robbing a bank!"
Shuichi's hand jerked; a long ash fell onto his trousers.
Half an hour. Twenty percent.
That meant… eight hundred million yen?
When he had purchased the Ginza building, drinking and negotiating with bureaucrats, exhausting every diplomatic skill for the renovation, the expected profit had been roughly the same sum.
And tonight he had merely sat on a sofa, made a telephone call, and sipped tea.
A powerful sense of unreality washed over him.
Is this the power of finance?
Is this the "new world" his daughter spoke of?
"Continue to hold," Satsuki instructed, her voice unruffled, as though the eight hundred million yen were mere dust on the floor.
"Do not sell. Not a single share."
"But…" Frank began, clearly tempted to suggest taking profits.
"Frank."
Satsuki's tone softened slightly yet remained impossible to challenge.
"Listen carefully. I want you to lock these shares away in a safe. They are a Saionji family heirloom. Do you understand?"
"Even if the price falls to zero tomorrow, you are not permitted to sell. Not unless I am dead."
"…Understood." Frank sounded bewildered, but the client was god—especially one who generated such handsome commissions.
Satsuki hung up.
Silence returned to the office, broken only by the steady rhythm of rain against the glass.
Shuichi looked at his daughter.
Satsuki had settled back onto the sofa and resumed reading The Wall Street Journal, showing no particular attachment to the financial miracle that had just unfolded.
She appeared so small, so delicate.
Yet in Shuichi's eyes her silhouette seemed impossibly tall—almost unfamiliar.
"Satsuki."
He stubbed out the cigar, his voice slightly hoarse.
"Yes, Father?" She looked up, eyes clear and calm.
"Nothing."
Shuichi shook his head, rose, and walked to her side. He reached down and gently patted her head.
"I simply feel… that your father has truly grown old."
He had believed he was rebuilding the family by acquiring Ginza properties, streamlining the Nagoya factory, and maneuvering within the House of Peers. He had thought those were the solid foundations of a new empire.
Tonight he realized that the bricks and mortar he had labored so hard to stack might be only the visible tip of the far greater structure his daughter was quietly constructing.
She was building a ship.
A vessel he could only call Noah's Ark.
When the bubble finally burst and the floodwaters rose, the lands and factories might sink beneath the waves, but this invisible equity and data would carry the Saionji family safely into the next century.
"Father is not old at all."
Satsuki set aside the newspaper, rose, and wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her face into the warm cashmere of his sweater.
"You are the captain."
Her voice was soft and sweet.
"I am merely the navigator who reads the charts. The one at the helm will always be you, Father."
Shuichi stood motionless for a moment, then felt his eyes grow warm.
He pulled his daughter close in a tight embrace.
Yes.
Whether she was a genius or something more unsettling, she remained his daughter.
That was enough.
"Very well, it is quite late."
He patted her back gently.
"Let us go home. Fujita has probably reheated the midnight snack for the third time by now."
"Mhm."
Satsuki nodded obediently, slipped on her shoes, and followed him from the office.
Sensor lights flickered on along the hallway, stretching their shadows long across the floor.
Shuichi closed the heavy mahogany door behind them.
Beyond it, the black telephone rested quietly on the coffee table.
It had just bridged two worlds.
The old world slept beneath the rainy night, while the new world stirred in distant radio waves.
And the Saionji family had secured the most expensive ticket aboard.
The elevator descended with a faint sensation of weightlessness.
Shuichi studied their reflections on the polished wall.
Suddenly he remembered something.
"By the way, Satsuki."
"Yes?"
"You called Bill Gates a… Tyrannosaurus Rex?"
"That is correct." Satsuki smiled, revealing two small, sharp canine teeth. "And a very, very hungry one at that."
"Then what are we?" Shuichi asked, curious.
Satsuki considered the question for a moment.
"We are the ones riding on the back of the Tyrannosaurus Rex…"
She tilted her head slightly.
"The Dragon Riders."