With the sound of the heavy door closing, the air in the conference room froze.

Cold lighting like a surgical shadowless lamp quietly illuminated the documents on the table.

At the center lay a single report. On the thick black envelope, silver embossing was engraved with the following words.

Cassandra Floresia: Rampage Incident · Emergency Report

“…It may be that the ‘flower’ bloomed far too much to be controlled.”

The one who muttered this with a trace of irony was a white-haired elderly gentleman seated at the far end of the long table.

His voice carried a mixture of pride born from countless accumulated ‘success cases’ and confusion at facing failure for the first time.

“During Phase 3 of ‘Cassandra Floresia,’ the subject individual—‘Hinako’—entered a state of psychological runaway. Personality divergence and identity collapse occurred, rendering the phase halt code invalid. A delay of 3.2 seconds occurred before forced termination.”

The voice reading the report aloud was cold, almost mechanical.

Yet everyone present understood heavily what had occurred within those few seconds.

“…So the ‘girlhood’ memories we designed collided with the remnants of the former personality known as ‘Gō.’ No, rather than a ‘collision’—it was attachment. That man could never fully discard boxing as his ‘self.’ That became the final wedge. However, as a result… Hinako did not ‘break.’ That alone should be recorded as a clear miracle.”

At those words, silence fell for a brief moment.

Even the hum of machinery and the low drone of the air conditioning seemed to stop, as if reconsidering something.

“A miracle, you say. Is that the sort of thing you expect when designing a program?”

A cool voice responded.

The speaker was a Central Bureau executive connected via monitor—Kamishiro Koujiro.

His face was unseen. Only the fingers of his white gloves slowly traced a single line of the report.

“—The sharp deviation spike in the romantic receptivity region during Phase 3. You do understand what that signifies, don’t you?”

“That ‘falling in love’ can become a convergence-disrupting factor for the program and all the more so if that ‘someone’ is ‘a being not defined as the opposite sex.’”

The atmosphere in the room grew heavier still.

“…Yuka, then.”

Someone muttered the name.

The existence that became the key to Hinako’s transformation.

Physical completion, mastery of psychological guidance and a capacity for acceptance so great it seemed almost like ‘acting.’

Yet that, too, should have been according to calculation—as a perfectly controlled ‘ideal female image.’

“Instead of destroying ‘Gō,’ her presence protected ‘Hinako.’ That’s putting the cart before the horse. Or perhaps that was the very essence of the ‘flower.’”

Suddenly, Maki spoke.

“‘Cassandra Floresia’ is a device that promotes ‘blooming.’ If so then it may be only natural that a flower, once it blooms, sways in the wind and grows in unpredictable directions.”

The elderly gentleman narrowed his eyes.

“…It seems Hinako has ‘bloomed’ beyond you.”

Maki did not respond to that.

She simply closed the report quietly and continued.

“The rampage was suppressed. The personality has been—provisionally—maintained in an integrated state. But the problem is──what we plant in her next.”

“Then…”

Kamishiro said.

“Next should be a ‘shackle.’ We should impose an even deeper restraint, one called ‘femininity.’”

“So not overwriting ‘memory,’ but reconstructing ‘meaning,’ then.”

“Exactly. ‘I am a woman.’ ‘The way of living as a man is already frightening.’ These realizations must be imprinted by tying them to every sensation of daily life. Not as thought, but as ‘sensory fear.’ Fix it there.”

Leaning heavily back against his chair, the elderly gentleman spoke in a low voice.

“Create a ‘woman who is afraid to remember.’ One who comes to want to forget on her own that she was once a man.”

No one objected to those words.

Silence once again filled the conference room.

At its center, only the report bearing the name ‘Cassandra Floresia’ remained as if still holding something that had not yet fully ‘bloomed,’ its silent petals trembling faintly.