Page 22 of Bearly Out Loud

“That console cost twelve thousand dollars.” Priya’s voice was level. Professional. She didn’t look up. “Just so you know.”

“I’ll replace it.”

“Third one this month.”

He straightened. Flexed his hands. “I’ll set up an equipment line item.”

Priya turned to face him fully. Glasses pushed up. The look of a woman who had been pretending not to notice for days and had decided, with surgical timing, that the pretending was over.

“Or,” she said, “you could deal with your feelings and save us the equipment budget.”

The associate director suddenly found his notes very interesting. The audio engineer became deeply absorbed in his screen.

“The project?—”

“You have a billion-dollar company to run.” Priya picked up her coffee. “You have attended every one of her sessions. You bring food that doesn’t come from any kitchen in this building. Your hands destroy my equipment when she performs emotional material.” She sipped. “At some point, Dojin, the production notes stop being about production.”

He could have argued. Could have cited the project’s strategic importance, the studio’s investment in the Voidborn property, the legitimate business reasons for a CEO to attend recording sessions.

Instead, he said: “How many consoles do you have in storage?”

Priya’s mouth twitched. “Two. I ordered a fourth after your first week.”

“You anticipated this.”

“I’ve been directing performers for twenty years. I know what it looks like when someone is listening with their whole body.” She turned back to her board. “You listen to her the way she performs—like nothing else in the room exists. Frankly, it’s affecting my equipment budget and my blood pressure. Do with that information what you will.”

She put her headphones on. Conversation over. Dojin stayed in his chair and watched Nari emerge from the booth five minutes later, eyes clear, chin up, voice steady as she asked Priya about the next scene.

The woman had cried in the booth and walked out armored. She rebuilt herself in five minutes. He wanted to wrap around her and never move.

You are in so much trouble.

He didn’t disagree.

TWELVE

NARI

Her loft, an hour before midnight. South-facing windows dark, the city’s glow pressing against the glass. Record player spinning Chet Baker—quiet trumpet, music that made the room feel like it was breathing. Nari sat cross-legged on the floor between her couch and the coffee table with two documents spread in front of her and a twist in her stomach that had nothing to do with the takeout pad thai going cold beside her.

On the left: the Voidborn script for episodes one through three. Character descriptions, world-building documents, the Yua Voidwalker design notes she’d been given during onboarding.

On the right: her grandfather’s notebook. The one with the soft leather cover and Hideo’s handwriting—small, precise, a mix of English and Japanese that switched languages mid-sentence because his mind switched between worlds. She’d taken photos of the relevant pages at the brownstone. Sora Nightwind’s character outline. The gate mythology. The sketches.

She laid the Voidborn concept art next to Hideo’s drawings.

Yua Voidwalker wore different armor. Her hair was longer, her stance adjusted, the weapon changed from a naginata to a dual-blade configuration. Surface differences. Exactly the changes a competent design team would make to disguise a source. But the composition—the way the character held space on the page, the angle of the head, the relationship between figure and background—was Hideo’s. Every artist had a fingerprint. Grandpa’s was in the negative space, how he left room for the eye to travel. This design had been drawn by someone who’d studied his work, but the bones underneath belonged to him.

The gate mythology was worse. The Voidborn documents described twelve gates “based on celestial alignments” with a missing thirteenth gate “erased from cosmic memory.” Hideo’s notebook, dated 2016: thirteen gates tied to the zodiac with a Void Gate “erased from the celestial record.” They’d changed “record” to “memory.” One word. Like swapping a serial number and calling it a new car.

They didn’t create this. They copied it, filed the edges, and called it original.

Nari pressed her palms against the floor. The hardwood was cool and solid—grounding, when her brain wanted to sprint ahead of her evidence.

The question that mattered: Did Dojin know?

She turned it over. Examined it from every angle, looking for the truth underneath the words.