Chapter 9: Wipe

Sunny Weekend — Tokio’s Home

It was a warm, quiet Saturday. Sunlight spilled through the windows of the house. For once in a while, Tokio was alone.

No Anya. No Eater Memeko. Not even Blade spamming him for another round of deathmatch.

Tokio stood in the hallway, holding a basket of laundry and glancing around with a scowl.

“It’s actually quiet today… weird,” he muttered, looking over his shoulder. “No chaos. No yelling. No frying pans flying around. Not even Memeko chewing wires…”

He looked at the pile of clothes in his hands and sighed.

“…And now I have to clean up the mess they left behind? Damn it. I was gonna use them as manual labor today.”

Grumbling, he walked toward the laundry area.

“Whatever. I’ll just throw this junk into the washing machine first.”

But as he opened the lid, a torrent of heavy, rectangular objects came spilling out.

Hard drives. Dozens of them.

“What the hell!?”

Tokio stumbled back, eyes wide. A few of the drives scattered across the floor. He bent down and picked one up.

“HDDs? Why the hell are these inside the washing machine?!”

“Oops, sorry! I actually put them there to hide them from the Bossy,” Memeko said, sticking out her tongue.

“What? And when did you even get here?” Tokio asked.

“…Also, Blade and Hibe are here too,” Memeko added, nodding toward them.

“I knocked, but no one answered, so we just came in through there,” Blade said, nodding toward the open window.

Tokio glared. “So now you guys have devolved into thieves, huh?”

He sighed. “Anyway… what’s inside the hard drives?”

“Footage of the mall incident… Instead of wiping it, she just stole every drive from the control room,” Eyepatch said.

“Wiping it was a bad idea, you dummy. It could’ve been recovered with hardcore data tools. Besides, I was out of time,” Memeko said, pumped. She added, “Also, don’t say ‘stole’ just say I hacked it. That sounds way cooler.”

“And you hid them in the washing machine to keep them from the boss lady? What a brilliant idea… It’s been almost half a week, and I didn’t even find them by accident until today,” Tokio said.

“You know senpai~” she said blinking with her one eye showing her finger, “The most dangerous place is the most safest place?”

“Eh?” he replied. He added, “Anyway, what should we do with these now? Toss them into a fire?”

“I have a better plan… why don’t we sell them and throw a ramen party?” Blade suggested.

“No,” Memeko said, suddenly serious. “Just copy the data to my laptop first… then I’ll order some Kobe Wagyu Ramen,” she added, carelessly.

“What? Are you serious? Didn’t you steal these so no one could recover the data, even if they were formatted?” Tokio said.

“Wopsy… guess you’re right… My Kobe Wagyu Ramen…” Memeko sighed.

“Though there’s a way,” Tokio said. “If you expose those drives to a strong magnetic field, the data will be completely wiped. All the ones and zeros turn into permanent zeros.”

“What?! I didn’t know that,” Memeko said, eyes wide.

Memeko stood in front of the refrigerator, her eyes fixed on the colorful objects stuck to its surface.

“Fridge magnets…” she mumbled, as if in a trance.

Tokio narrowed his eyes. “Hey. Don’t even think about it.”

Memeko turned slowly, still dazed. “They’re… magnetic…”

Tokio sighed. “Fine, I’ll do something… but don’t touch my fridge.”

She stuck out her tongue. “Tch. Killjoy.”

A Few Minutes Later – Living Room

Memeko’s laptop sat open on the floor, hard drives lined up in a row. The hum of the cooling fan was the only sound as files copied rapidly onto the SSD.

“Copy complete,” Memeko said, stretching. “Time for execution.”

“Right,” Tokio nodded, already kneeling beside a setup made from what looked like a salvaged microwave transformer, several thick copper coils, and a series of repurposed magnets.

“If we want a complete magnetic wipe, we need a strong enough field to flip the domains in the platter’s ferromagnetic coating.”

Memeko blinked. “Hey genius, are you just making that stuff up?”

“I’m serious,” Tokio said, tightening a bolt on the frame. “Each hard disk stores data using magnetic domains. If you flip enough of them chaotically with a strong enough magnetic field, the stored binary becomes unrecoverable.”

Blade raised an eyebrow. “I don’t understand a single thing you said, but is it actually going to work?”

“More or less,” Tokio said. “I’m running AC current through this coil to create an alternating magnetic field. Plus, I’m using neodymium magnets to saturate the field strength. We only need a field of a few hundred milliteslas, but I’m going for overkill.”

“Cool,” Eyepatch said. “Dangerous, but cool.”

Tokio powered up the circuit. The copper coil buzzed with an electromagnetic field, and the field meter next to it jumped.

“All right. Drop the first drive in,” Tokio said.

Memeko hesitated, then tossed one of the drives into the coil.

A faint whine echoed through the apartment as the hard disk clinked against the inside of the coil, the field overwhelming its tiny memory structure.

“Okay… that one’s toast,” Tokio said. “Next.”

They repeated the process, one by one, until all the drives had been wiped.

Memeko plugged the drives into her laptop one by one and confirmed that all of them were now empty, like new.

Tokio unplugged the setup and stood up. “All right. All clean, ladies and gentlemen. No one’s ever gonna find a single byte.”