"That if you become large enough, the people affected by your decisions become too small to matter. Too small to reach you. Too small to be worth accounting for." She paused. "Daisuke was small.
The people his network served were small. The damage done to them didn't register in any report you read. You because nothing in the structure you built was designed to register it." She looked at him directly. "But it happened.
It was real. And the cost of it wasn't carried by your balance sheet. It was carried by people." Takahashi did not look away. "I'm not asking you to feel guilty."
She said. "I'm asking you to see it. There's a difference." The room held that for a moment. Then Takahashi said carefully.
"And if I see it, what does that change?" "It changes what you do next." She said. "Which changes what we do next." He studied her.
"You're offering terms." "I'm offering a conversation, she said. The terms come from what we decide the conversation means. He was quiet for a long time. Long enough that she didn't fill the silence.
Daisuke had taught her about this, too. That silence in a significant conversation was not dead space. It was where the real thinking happened. You didn't interrupt it. You let it work.
When Takahashi finally spoke, his voice had a quality she hadn't heard in it before. Not broken. Not soft in the way that would have been a performance. Just stripped of the particular hard shine that it had carried all through the restaurant and into the beginning of this meeting. He was the only person in my early years who told me the truth, he said.
Not what I wanted to hear. What was actually true. He paused. When I made the offer, I told myself it was the right structure for both of us. That he'd benefit.