Page 54 of Bearly Out Loud

“He cited volume and chapter numbers from memory. For ‘security purposes.’”

“Reo Tanaka. The man who carries a weapon to brunch. Who texts in sentence fragments. That Reo?”

“He called it ‘culturally significant IP relevant to his employer’s business interests.’”

Nari put down her chopsticks. Pressed both hands over her mouth. Her shoulders shook.

“Don’t laugh at him.” His voice was doing that warm rumble again. “He’s sensitive about it.”

“I’m not laughing AT him. I’m laughing at the image of Reo Tanaka in his tactical pants curled up with Volume Twenty-Three, reading about the Void Gate with the same intensity he uses to sweep buildings for threats.”

“To be fair, his knowledge may have identified the theft before anyone else.”

“Oh, I’m hiring him as an expert witness. He’s going to hate every second. It’s going to be magnificent.”

Dojin laughed. Genuine, surprised, the sound filling the small room and bouncing off the low ceiling. Okada-san glanced over her shoulder, saw his face, and turned back to her kitchen.

He had a great laugh. Deep, unhurried, a little bit wrecked—the laugh of a man who didn’t do it often enough and had been caught off guard. She wanted to hear it again. She wanted to be the reason for it, every time, which was a thought that terrified her in a warm, expanding, chest-filling way.

They walked east after dinner.The city at ten p.m. in early spring—not quite warm, not quite cold, the air carrying the first hint of the season’s turn. Cherry blossoms were a week away. The East Village streets were loud with bar noise and music leaking from open doors and the low roar of a Friday night that didn’t care about corporate theft or stolen mythologies.

Nari carried the evidence folder under her arm. His jacket over her shoulders. The combination—legal ammunition and a man’s blazer—struck her as either the most absurd or the most honest summary of her current life.

They walked close. Shoulders brushing. Not touching deliberately, not avoiding it. The physical equivalent of two people who had spent an evening tearing down walls and hadn’t decided what to build in the empty space.

“What happens now?” she asked. The sidewalk narrowed around a tree planted in a square of dirt. He stepped behind her to let a couple pass, and his hand found the small of her back—brief, steadying, electric. Her spine held the imprint. “Legally, I mean. What’s the play?”

“Your father builds the legal case. Reo and I trace the evidence chain from Crane to Meridian to Mercer. We prove thetheft. We reclaim the IP.” He walked beside her again. Closer now. His hand hung at his side with an intentional proximity that suggested it wanted to find the small of her back again and wasn’t done making its case. “And you keep performing.”

“Performing the stolen character.”

“Performing your grandfather’s character. Giving Sora Nightwind a voice before anyone else tries to.”

She stopped walking. In the middle of the sidewalk, Friday night foot traffic splitting around them like a stream around a stone. He stopped two steps ahead. Turned.

“You want me to keep voicing Yua.”

“I want you to voice Sora. The real version. When we reclaim the IP and relaunch under Hideo’s name, I want your voice to be the first thing the audience hears.”

Her throat closed. Not from grief—from the vertigo of hearing a possibility she hadn’t allowed herself to imagine, spoken aloud by a man whose company she’d been building a case against forty-eight hours ago.

“That’s—”

“It’s the right thing.”

“Stop saying the right thing. I’m running out of ways to not be destroyed by you.”

His mouth twitched. “Is that a complaint?”

“It’s a warning. I have limited emotional bandwidth and you’re using it all on sashimi and grand creative gestures. Save some for the legal battle.”

They started walking again. The East Village gave way to the broader sidewalks approaching Union Square. The city sprawled ahead—lights, traffic, the grinding hum of the subway beneath their feet.

She reached for his hand.

Not thinking about it. Not calculating. The way you reached for warmth when you were cold, the way your hand found asurface when you lost your balance—instinct, not strategy. Her fingers slid between his. His hand closed around hers.

Large. Warm. His thumb traced a single line across her knuckles and stopped. Held.