Page 20 of Bearly Out Loud

A flush crept up Reo’s neck. He stood. Straightened his henley. “This conversation is classified.”

He walked to the door. “I’ll update the security rotation for Studio A.”

He left. Dojin finished the honey cake in the silence of his office and allowed himself, for the first time since the session, to process what had happened.

Her voice. The way she’d looked at him through the glass—guarded, interested despite herself. The Celestial Ronin quote delivered with the ease of someone who’d grown up inside the franchise. Her scent, lodged in his memory like a song he’d never unhear. The way “goodnight, Dojin Keiser” had sounded in her mouth—his name turned into a dare and a gift at the same time.

A decision had settled in the marrow of him that his brain hadn’t caught up with yet.

He hit send on the production memo—forty-percent increase in studio allocation, priority scheduling on all Yua solo sessions—and stayed there.

His phone lit up on the desk.

Reo:It’s manga. Not comic books. If you call it comic books again, I’m reclassifying Gerald’s feeding schedule as a non-essential operation.

Despite everything—the bear, the voice, the single performance that had dismantled his composure—Dojin laughed.

Dojin:Noted. Your secret is safe.

Reo:I don’t have a secret.

Reo:Goodnight.

He put the phone down. Outside his office windows, Chelsea spread out in the late winter dark—streetlights and gallerywindows and the faint noise of a city that never stopped moving. Somewhere in Tribeca, Nari Wixx was in a cab or in her loft or standing in front of her own recording booth, processing a performance that had left a room full of professionals silent, carrying knowledge she hadn’t shared, wearing red lipstick he was going to see every time he closed his eyes for the foreseeable future.

ELEVEN

DOJIN

Day one of formal production sessions, he brought coffee.

Black, no sugar, left on the mixing board before Nari arrived. The kind of gesture a producer made for a lead voice actress on a flagship project. Professional. Unremarkable. Priya glanced at the cup, then at Dojin in the back corner of the control room—the chair he’d never occupied for any other production—and said nothing.

Day three, the coffee came with a pastry and arranged fruit.

A good pastry. From the pâtisserie near Keiser Tower that Colette had championed into existence by sheer force of French indignation when the previous bakery closed. The fruit was cut and fanned on a small wooden board—not the studio’s catering; the studio didn’t have a wooden board. Nari looked at it, looked at him, and ate two strawberries without comment. Satisfaction settled through him, warm and stupid, completely unearned by sliced fruit.

“You’ve never sat in on sessions for any other project.” Priya pushed her glasses up her nose.

“This project is different.”

“Mm-hmm.”

She went back to her mixing board. The “mm-hmm” carried the weight of twenty years in the industry and a very clear opinion she had elected not to share.

Day five, Dojin crossed a line he could not uncross.

The bento box arrived at the studio before the 9:00 a.m. call time—arranged in the traditional compartments, rice on one side, grilled salmon and pickled vegetables on the other, and in the top corner, a small glass jar of honeycomb. Golden, still dripping, cut that morning from one of the rooftop’s stored harvest frames. He’d filled the jar himself, which was information he planned to take to his grave.

Nari opened the box during her break. Examined the contents with a slow, assessing gaze—she noticed details for a living. Picked up the honeycomb jar. Held it to the light.

“This is from a rooftop beehive.”

Dojin’s coffee cup paused halfway to his mouth.

“The wax pattern. The color—this is wildflower, but urban wildflower. Rooftop lavender, window-box herbs, whatever grows within the foraging range of bees kept above a city block.” She turned the jar. “Did you harvest this yourself?”

How does she know what rooftop honey looks like? Why does she know what rooftop honey looks like? This is not the reaction I prepared for.