"I've heard of them," Hiro said. "But they're not real."

Aya laughed. "Not real? Like, they're robots or something?"

"More like a rumor," he said. "The Sly Girls don't exist."

"What do you know about them?" she asked.

"Nothing. There's nothing to know about them, because they aren't real!"

"Come on, Hiro," she said. "Unicorns aren't real, and I know stuff about them. Like…they have horns on their foreheads. And they can fly!"

Hiro groaned. "No, that's Pegasus that flies. Unicorns just have a horn, which makes them a lot more real than the Sly Girls, who I can't tell you anything about. It's just a random phrase kickers use.

Like last year when someone was jumping off bridges wearing homemade parachutes, and no one ever figured out who. Everyone just said, The Sly Girls did it.' Because sly in English means clever or sneaky."

Aya rolled her eyes. "My English is a lot better than yours, Hiro-sensei. But what if they really exist?"

"Then they wouldn't be secret, would they? I mean, some cliques start off underground, and a lot of people pull tricks on the sly, but nobody stays anonymous forever." He swept his gaze around the apartment—the huge wallscreen, the garlands of paper cranes, the floor-to-ceiling window with its slowly shifting view. "Thanks to the reputation economy, they'd rather be famous. Did you know that every real criminal since the mind-ram has wound up confessing?"

Aya nodded.

Everyone knew that, and how they'd all hit the top one thousand for at least a few days. "But what if—?"

"It's not real, Aya. Whatever it is."

"So if I bring you some shots of the Sly Girls?" she said. "What are you going to say then?"

Hiro turned back toward the wallscreen. "The same thing I'd say if you stuck a plastic horn on a horse and started kicking unicorns: Quit wasting my time."