The change was not immediate. It was a subtle, creeping corruption of the manufactured bliss. For the tens of thousands of people swaying in the KlearMind Oasis, the first sign was a faint, almost unnoticeable drying sensation at the back of the throat. A moment later, it was followed by a strange, phantom taste, a ghost of a flavor that didn't belong with the euphoric synth-pop of DJ Neon Cthulhu. It was a taste that was earthy, vegetal, and deeply, deeply unpleasant.
Sato's neutralizer, the hyper-concentrated tannin from over-steeped green tea, had not failed. It had simply taken a moment to cycle through the complex atmospheric processing unit. Now, it was being pumped into the air, mixing with the KlearMind concentrate, creating a new, unintended, and truly horrifying chemical compound. It did not just neutralize the mood elevator; it inverted it. The chemical that had been designed to create a feeling of happy, suggestible clarity now produced a state of nauseous, bitter-tasting anxiety.
On the main stage, DJ Neon Cthulhu, a man in a giant, glowing squid helmet, dropped a particularly euphoric beat. A moment before, this beat would have sent a wave of collective joy through the crowd. Now, it was met with a confused, discordant murmur. The happy, hardcore music suddenly sounded grating and aggressive. The synchronized swaying faltered. People stopped smiling. They looked at their neighbors, their faces scrunching up in mild disgust, as if they were all simultaneously smelling something terrible.
"Is it just me," a young man said to his girlfriend, "or does the air suddenly taste like… like I've been licking old pennies?"
"My mouth tastes like I ate a bag of burnt leaves," she replied, her own beatific smile having been replaced by a grimace.
"And this music is giving me a headache."
The mass "bad trip" spread like a virus. The glorious, shared euphoria curdled into a mass, shared feeling of unease and mild nausea. The KlearMind Oasis was rapidly becoming the KlearMind Ordeal. People started coughing. The gentle swaying was replaced by a restless, agitated shuffling. A few people at the front of the crowd, closest to the aerosolizer vents, actually gagged.
From her perch, Sato watched the beautiful chaos unfold. It was more effective than she could have possibly imagined. A small, satisfied smile touched her lips.
Inside the dome, Ayame was still monologuing, completely oblivious to the sensory apocalypse she had just unleashed upon her own launch party.
"It's the end of conflict, you see," she was saying to a placidly smiling Kenji.
"The end of anxiety, of depression, of all the messy, inefficient emotions that hold humanity back…"
Her speech was cut short by a sudden, loud groan from the crowd outside, a sound of collective, discontented misery.
Her smile faltered.
"What was that?"
"It sounds like," Kenji said, his own fake smile widening into a real one as he felt the bitter taste hit his own tongue, washing away the chemical haze, "the sound of your customer base demanding a refund."
Ayame's head snapped towards the entrance. She saw the scene. Her perfect, placid sea of happy consumers was transforming into a confused, unhappy, bitter-tasting mob. They weren't dancing anymore. They were complaining. They were leaving. A steady stream of people was now flowing away from the Oasis, their faces masks of disgust and confusion.
"No," she whispered, her voice a strangled gasp of disbelief.
"It's not possible. The formula is perfect."
"Maybe your formula didn't account for the secret ingredient," Kenji said, taking a step back towards the exit.
"The truth. And sometimes, the truth is bitter."
This was it. The ultimate failure. She hadn't just failed to make them happy; her attempt had actively made them miserable. Her perfect system had produced the exact opposite of its intended effect on a massive, public, and deeply embarrassing scale. The news would be everywhere. KlearMind wouldn't be known as the drink of clarity; it would be known as the stuff that made eighty thousand people at a music festival feel sick.
Her composure, her life's work, her entire carefully constructed reality, shattered into a million pieces. "YOU!" she shrieked, her voice no longer a melodic purr but a raw, ragged sound of pure fury. She lunged at Kenji, her manicured nails outstretched like claws.
This was a Kenji she had never seen before. The placid, confused "prodigy" was gone. In his place was a man whose eyes were suddenly cold, hard, and utterly focused. As she lunged, he moved with a speed and efficiency that defied his clumsy persona. He sidestepped her attack, used her own momentum against her, and deftly spun her around, putting her between him and her two guards, who were now surging forward.
"Get him!" Ayame screamed.
Amidst the growing chaos of the unhappy, bitter-tasting crowd starting to push back against the Oasis, Kenji saw his chance to escape. He grabbed the nearest object—a ridiculously expensive, minimalist floor lamp designed to look like a glowing river stone—and hurled it at a large stack of bottled KlearMind, creating a noisy, green, slippery diversion.
As the guards slipped and stumbled, he bolted for the exit. He was almost clear when he felt a hand grab his arm. He spun around, ready to fight, and found himself face-to-face with Tanaka.
"Senpai!" she cried, her own face scrunched up from the bitter taste.
"What is happening? This clarity… it has a terrible flavor!"
"Embrace the bitterness, Tanaka!" Kenji yelled over the din, his mind working frantically.
"It's the taste of truth! Tell them! Tell everyone!"
Tanaka's eyes widened, a look of profound, earth-shattering comprehension dawning on her face. She turned to Kaito and the other society members.
"Did you hear that? It's another lesson! The bitterness IS the truth! She was selling them a sweet lie, but our senpai has given us the bitter truth! He has cleansed our palates!"
Kaito's eyes lit up.
"Of course! He has performed a mass, public palate cleansing! A forced deconstruction of a manufactured experience! It's his greatest work yet!"
As Kenji slipped away into the confused, complaining crowd, he could hear Tanaka and Kaito starting a new chant.
"EMBRACE THE BITTER! TASTE THE TRUTH! EMBRACE THE BITTER! TASTE THE TRUTH!"
A few nearby festival-goers, confused and looking for any explanation for the terrible taste in their mouths, tentatively joined in.
Kenji and Sato rendezvoused an hour later at a pre-arranged spot, a quiet bridge a kilometer away from the festival grounds. Ayame had escaped in the chaos, vanishing in her sleek black car. But her product was ruined. Her public launch was a catastrophe of legendary proportions.
"Well," Sato said, looking back at the distant, chaotic lights of the festival.
"That's one way to fail a product launch."
"I think I need another ramen," Kenji said, his voice hoarse. He had won.
He had stopped her. But he had also just accidentally started a new, even more bizarre chapter of his own cult. He had a terrible feeling that the next time he saw his disciples, they would all be carrying bottles of unsweetened, over-steeped green tea, praising its authentic, challenging flavor profile. His life was a never-ending, escalating farce, and he was tired of being the punchline.