Page 47 of Bearly Out Loud

Short. Rough. More air than sound. But a laugh.

Reo pointed at him. “Don’t.”

“You knew about the similarities. And you didn’t flag them during acquisition.”

That landed. Reo’s expression shifted—the humor draining, replaced by a tightness around his mouth that Dojin recognized as the look Reo wore when he’d identified a failure in his own protocols.

“I wasn’t on the acquisition review. It came through business development. By the time I saw the materials, I—” He stopped. Rubbed the scar on his knuckles. “I noticed. I noticed the similarities. I told myself it was parallel development. Common mythological structures. Coincidence.”

“You told yourself.”

“Because the alternative was telling my boss that his flagship project—the one he’d committed thirty million dollars and two years of studio capacity to—was built on stolen work. Without proof. Based on a hunch from a guy who reads manga.” Reo met his eyes. No flinch. “I was wrong. I had the instinct and I talked myself out of it. That’s on me.”

Dojin held the look. His bear recognized what Reo was offering—accountability without excuse. The animal didn’t deal in blame. It dealt in loyalty, and Reo’s loyalty was the most reliable structure in Dojin’s life.

“You’re not wrong now.”

“No.”

“Then we fix it now.”

Reo nodded. Sat back down. Opened his laptop. The composure was back in place, but his shoulders had loosened—a weight redistributed, shared rather than carried alone.

“Meridian’s paper trail leads to Mercer. Voidborn’s creative DNA leads to Celestial Ronin. If the materials came from the Wixx estate archives, there’s a limited number of people who had access.” Reo typed. “Former employees. Archivists. Consultants.”

“Start there.”

“Already on it,” Reo said.

Dojin sat back in his chair. The anger was still there—banked, controlled, a forge instead of a forest fire. It paced through him. Mercer had used him. Used his studio, his team, his reputation as a shield. And worst: used Nari. Put her in a booth performing her own grandfather’s stolen legacy without knowing it.

She kissed me in that hallway, carrying all of this. The investigation, the suspicion, the weight of it. And she still chose to close the distance.

He picked up his phone. Stared at her contact. Her name on his screen. The photo she’d set herself during a session break—mid-laugh, one eye closed, peace sign thrown with casual irreverence. She treated other people’s phones as canvases for her personality.

He didn’t text. Not yet. When this conversation happened—and it was going to happen, soon, inevitably—it needed to be face-to-face. No screens between them. No glass. No mixing boards or production equipment or the comfortable buffer of professionalism they’d been hiding behind for weeks.

“Reo.”

“Yeah.”

“The voice actress who’s performing Yua Voidwalker. Her grandfather is Hideo Saito.”

Reo’s typing stopped. He looked up. Something moved across his face—comprehension, then alarm, then a complicated expression that was half security assessment and half fandom horror.

“Nari Wixx is performing her own grandfather’s stolen character.”

“Without being told.”

“She knows.” Not a question. “That’s why she asked about the origins.”

“That’s why she asked about the origins.”

Reo leaned back. Rubbed his jaw. “So she’s been investigating the property she’s performing. From inside the studio. For weeks.”

“While I’ve been bringing her lunch.”

Reo grinned.