Page 34 of Bearly Out Loud

Beyond the booth, the empty control room glowed with standby lights—green and blue pinpoints on the mixing board, the soft pulse of monitors in sleep mode. The rain had pickedup outside, audible even through the studio’s insulation as a distant, rhythmic wash.

She didn’t knowwho started talking first.

It happened the way the best conversations did—not launched, but grown. One sentence leaning into the next, the silence making it easier, the booth creating a space where words could land without the noise of the world cushioning the impact.

She told him about the weight. Not the details—not the investigation, not the evidence she was building, not the chain of custody she was tracking in her loft at midnight. The weight. The pressure of carrying a name that people recognized before they recognized her. The auditions where directors asked if she could sound “more like the Wixx tradition,” and she’d smiled and adjusted and wondered what her own tradition sounded like. The moments at industry events when people talked to her about Hideo, and she became the granddaughter instead of the artist, and the specific loneliness of being surrounded by people who loved her grandfather’s work and realizing none of them had asked about yours.

“I chose this career because of him.” Her voice was quiet. The booth absorbed everything but the essential. “But I stayed because of me. And some days, the line between those two things is so thin, I can’t find it.”

He was silent. Not the polite silence of a man waiting for his turn. The full, weighted silence of someone who understood exactly what she was describing.

“My father built this company from a regional media house into a national one.” His voice was close and warm and unhurried. “His father built it from a local radio station into aregional media house. Three generations of men who left their name on the letterhead and expected the next generation to make it bigger.”

She turned her head toward him. Couldn’t see his face, only the outline—the breadth of his shoulders against the acoustic panel, the shadow of his hands resting on his knees.

“When I expanded this company into animation, my mother toasted with champagne. My father’s first question was whether the profit margins matched traditional media. Elder Vuzen told me I was diluting the sleuth’s brand.” He sighed. “I love this industry. I believe in the stories we tell. And there are mornings when I sit in this building and wonder if I chose animation because I believed in it or because it was the only corner of the empire that didn’t have my father’s fingerprints.”

The booth held them—perfectly, silently, without judgment.

“That,” Nari said, “is the most relatable thing a billionaire has ever said to me.”

His laugh was low and surprised and it moved through the booth like warmth. “How many billionaires have you had floor conversations with?”

“You’d be the first.”

“I’m honored.”

“Don’t be. The competition was nonexistent.”

He laughed again. She smiled—her first since the twelfth line—and it loosened muscles in her face she hadn’t realized were tight.

She was shivering.

The booth’s climate control had been off since Priya cleared the room. March rain outside, no heating inside, and theadrenaline of the performance had burned off an hour ago, leaving her body running on fumes and cold air. She tucked her hands between her knees and tried to be subtle about it.

Fabric rustled. The shift of shoulders, the pull of lined wool, the particular sound of expensive construction being set aside. The jacket landed on her shoulders.

Warm. Heavy. Carrying his heat from wearing it all day—and underneath, a scent that reached past her defenses and settled into her chest with the ease of a key turning a lock.

The jacket was enormous on her. The shoulders hung past her own by three inches on each side. The sleeves would have swallowed her hands if she’d pushed her arms through. It was warm and heavy and smelled like him, and it was the single most comforting piece of clothing she had ever worn, and she was going to have a problem giving it back.

She didn’t give it back.

He didn’t ask.

They sat in the unlit booth—Nari wrapped in a jacket that cost more than her first apartment’s deposit, Dojin in his shirtsleeves, the rain outside, the city below, the standby lights of the empty control room casting a faint blue glow through the glass.

“The scene was extraordinary.” His voice, quiet and certain. Not a producer’s assessment. Personal. “You should know that.”

“I know.” She pulled his jacket tighter. “It’s the knowing that’s the problem. You give a performance like that, and afterward, you’re either proud of what you made or terrified of what you showed. I haven’t figured out which one yet.”

“Both can be true.”

She looked toward him. Couldn’t make out his expression but knew his eyes were on her—had been on her since he walked in, steady and warm and unflinching.

“Yeah.” She exhaled. “Both can be true.”

The rain eased. Between them, the mic stand rose like a boundary and the space between their shoulders had narrowed to inches without either of them moving—or maybe both of them moving, slowly, toward the only source of warmth in a cold room.