Page 64 of Bearly Out Loud

She laughed. Wet, short, punched out of her. Her hand tightened on his lapel and for one second—one long, electric, perfectly terrible second—she pulled. A quarter inch. Enough that his mouth grazed hers. Not a kiss. The ghost of one. A promise written on skin.

Then Takumi’s voice floated up the stairwell: “The cat is getting restless and I’m giving you sixty more seconds before I start narrating this from down here!”

They broke apart. Nari laughed again—real this time, full, the sound bouncing off the hallway walls. She let go. Smoothed the fabric she’d wrinkled. Patted his chest once.

“Sixty seconds.” She stepped back. Her eyes were bright and wet and alive. “Takumi’s generous. I’d have given us thirty.”

She turned and walked down the hallway after Takumi, her sneakers quiet on the floor, her bag over one shoulder, her spine straight and her hands steady and the faintest tremor visible in the line of her jaw where the muscle tightened against the fear she’d been controlling all night. At the stairwell, she looked back. One glance. Quick, heated, unguarded—a look that said everything her sarcasm spent all day covering.

Then she was gone.

He stood in the hallway. The air still carried her. His pulse hadn’t steadied. The skin on his throat where her thumb had rested was still warm—a phantom pressure, a mark made of nothing but intention.

His phone buzzed.

Reo:Lobby footage pulled. Running facial recognition. Two males, no matches yet. I’ll have results by morning.

Dojin typed back:Mercer knows we’re close. This was desperation, not strategy.

Reo:Desperate people make mistakes.

Dojin:Make sure this is the last one he makes near her.

He pocketed the phone. Walked back into the loft one final time. Looked at the cels on the wall—Hideo’s art, bright and untouchable, worth a fortune and left behind by men who didn’t know what they were looking at.

Good. Be scared.

He locked the door behind him. Took the stairs. He hadn’t settled and he didn’t ask himself to.

The Wixx brownstonesmelled like dashi and miso and old paper. Akemi opened the door before he knocked—she’d beenwatching the street from the parlor window, he could tell by the angle of the curtain.

“She’s upstairs.” Akemi studied his face. Read whatever she found there without comment. “Third floor. The room with the blue door. She won’t sleep for hours. She never does when she’s angry.”

“Is she angry?”

Akemi’s mouth curved. The same sharp curve Nari inherited—the smile that meantyou already know the answer and I’m enjoying watching you arrive at it. “She’s been pacing for twenty minutes and she’s called her father’s office line twice. James is already drafting a motion. At midnight.” She paused. “There’s miso on the stove. Eat before you go up.”

Not a suggestion. He ate. Standing at the counter in the Wixx kitchen—green tea and old ink and the warmth of a family that had been building inside these walls for decades—and the miso settled into his bones while he listened to the sound of Nari’s footsteps two floors above, pacing, pacing, alive.

He found the blue door. Knocked twice.

“If that’s you, Mom, I already ate the miso and I don’t need a blanket.”

“It’s not your mother.”

Silence. Then footsteps. The door opened.

She’d changed. Oversized T-shirt—a faded Celestial Ronin graphic, Kaito Starborn in full color across her chest, worn thin by years and washing and love. Bare legs. Her hair was down, loose around her shoulders, still damp from a shower. No makeup. No armor. No performance.

This is what she looks like when no one’s watching.

The thought hit with a force that stole his breath. Because she’d opened the door anyway. Stood in front of him in a dead grandfather’s shirt with wet hair and bare feet and hadn’t hesitated.

“You ate my mother’s miso.” She leaned against the doorframe. Arms crossed. The shirt rode up on one hip. “I can smell it on you. Dashi and bonito and that specific miso paste she imports from Kyoto. You smell like my childhood kitchen.”

“Is that a complaint?”

“It’s an observation.” Her eyes moved down his body and back up—slow, deliberate, an appraisal she’d been doing since the first day but had stopped pretending was subtle. “You changed your shirt.”