Page 24 of Bearly Out Loud

He forgot his coffee. He’s watching me perform and he forgot to drink his coffee. The evidence was mounting.

She went homethat night and sat in her own recording booth with the door open and Hideo’s voice notes played through her monitors.

Grandpa’s voice filled the small space—warm, accented, sliding between English and Japanese whenever excitement took over. He was reading the Sora Nightwind introduction, doing the character voice he’d invented for her. Low and certain, with an edge of grief underneath.

Nari closed her eyes. Let it wash over her.

She was voicing a version of this character every day in the Keiser studios. Bringing Yua to life with words that had beenbuilt on Sora’s bones. And every day, she walked into that booth carrying knowledge that the man who watched her through the glass didn’t have—that the story he’d invested millions in had been stolen from a dead man’s notebook.

You should tell him.

The thought arrived clean and unwelcome.

You should walk into his office and lay the evidence on his desk and watch his face and know, one way or the other, whether you’re performing a stolen story for a man who knows it’s stolen.

But she wasn’t ready. She didn’t have the full chain yet. She knew thewhat—Voidborn was built on Hideo’s work—but not thehow. Someone had accessed Grandpa’s unpublished materials. Someone had copied them, transformed them, and sold them to Keiser Entertainment as original content. The question wasn’t whether the theft had happened. The question was who, and whether the man who brought her honeycomb was the buyer or the mark.

Hideo’s voice continued from the monitors. The Sora Nightwind introduction. The lines that Nari had performed as Yua three days ago, the words reshaped but the heart unchanged.

She opened her eyes. Picked up her phone.

Nari:Question.

Takumi:Answer.

Nari:If a man brings you food every day and watches you work through a window and positions himself between you and every door in the room, what does that mean?

Takumi:In what context

Nari:Any context

Takumi:It means he’s either in love with you or he’s the most wholesome person in Manhattan. Both are terrifying.

Nari:He runs a billion-dollar company.

Takumi:Billionaire version. Even better. Does he do the head-tilt thing?

Nari:Hedoesdo a head-tilt thing.

Takumi:I’m going to need a name, a photo, and a complete timeline of the food offerings. For science.

Nari:Goodnight, Takumi.

Takumi:THE BEES, NARI. REMEMBER THE BEES.

She put the phone down. Leaned back in her booth chair. The monitors had gone silent—Hideo’s recording finished, the room returned to the soft hum of standby equipment and the distant murmur of Tribeca past midnight.

The file on Dojin Keiser was getting complicated. On one side: the evidence. The stolen IP. The question of who knew what and when. On the other side: rooftop honey and matcha, and a man who listened to her perform with an attention so complete, it made her throat tight.

She reached into the desk drawer. Pulled out the framed photo she kept tucked behind her equipment manuals—Hideo and seven-year-old Nari in his studio, both of them laughing, ink on his fingers and marker on her nose. Private. Not displayed.

I’m going to find out what happened to your story, Grandpa. And I’m going to make sure whoever took it answers for it.

She put the photo back. Closed the drawer. Turned off the monitors and the booth light and walked through her dark loft to bed, carrying the weight of a performance she’d given that afternoon—Yua at the ruined gate, speaking to an absence—and how Dojin’s hands had tightened on the equipment when her voice cracked, and how she hadn’t been able to stop seeing it since.

Billionaire golden retriever.

She pulled the blanket over her head. The city hummed outside. Sleep came slowly, and when it did, she dreamed ofhoney and stolen gates and a man holding on to the edge of something, white-knuckled, like letting go was the one thing he wouldn’t allow himself to do.