Page 83 of Bearly Out Loud

Reo looked up from his phone. His voice was even in the way it got when what he was about to say was not. “One variable James doesn’t have full visibility on. Mercer runs private enforcement off the books—a contractor named Gregor Wevik. He’s been deployed before when legal exposure was building and the process was moving too slowly. Physical coercion. Not negotiation. If Mercer suspects a case is being built before we’re ready to file, Wevik is the next move.”

James, over the phone, without a pause: “Then we make sure he doesn’t suspect. And we compress the timeline.”

“Already watching him,” Reo said.

“So we smile.” Nari tapped her pen against the table. “We go to the studio. We record beautiful work. We act like nothing has changed.”

“Can you do that?” James’s question was practical, not patronizing. He knew his daughter. He knew her volume was directly proportional to her fury and that asking Nari Wixx to stay quiet about an injustice was like asking a fire to burn politely.

“Dad. I’m a voice actress. I pretend to be fictional people for a living.”

“You’re terrible at pretending to be calm.”

“I’m excellent at pretending to be calm. I’m terrible at maintaining it when someone says the wrong thing in my presence.”

“Which is every meeting.”

“Which is every meeting, yes.”

Dojin’s hand moved from her chair to her shoulder. A brief squeeze. Not patronizing—grounding. He’d watched her perform impossible emotional feats under studio lights. He trusted her to do this too. She covered his hand with hers for two seconds. Squeezed back. Let go.

The production table was covered in marked-up storyboards, legal timelines, Hana’s spreadsheet printed and flagged with Nari’s red pen, and two empty lunch containers that still smelled like rice and honey. The sun had shifted while they worked—late afternoon now, the studio’s west-facing windows casting long amber rectangles across the floor.

Hana stood. Gathered her laptop. Looked at Nari and Dojin, side by side, his hand resting on the back of her chair, her ankle hooked around his under the table in a tangle neither of them had initiated or untangled.

“You two are going to be unbearable.”

Nari pointed her red pen at Hana. “Was that a pun?”

“I don’t make puns.”

“You made a bear pun. In a room full of people building a legal case against a corporate predator. Hana Keiser, you made apun.”

Hana’s composure held for three seconds. Then the corner of her mouth cracked. She looked at Dojin. “Is she always like this?”

Dojin’s foot nudged Nari’s ankle. Warm. Amused. “Always.”

“You picked her.”

“I did.”

“Good.” Hana put on her headphones. Walked out. The compliment landed after she was gone—delayed, quiet, impossible to return. That was how Hana’s compliments always arrived.

Priya closed her tablet. Stood. Surveyed the table of evidence and strategy, and empty containers, and two people.

“Production resumes tomorrow at eight. Bring your game face.” She paused at the door. “And Nari?”

“Hmm?”

“Your grandfather would be proud of you. Not the voice—he always knew about the voice. The fight.”

Nari’s pen stopped. She looked at Priya. The director’s face was steady, professional, offering a truth she wouldn’t repeat. Nari nodded once. Her throat was tight but her eyes were dry. She would not cry about Hideo in a production room. She’d save it for the booth, where tears became performance and grief became art, because that was the Wixx way, and it was also, she was learning, her way.

Priya left. The studio was empty. The afternoon light had gone from amber to deep gold.

Dojin pulled her chair closer to his. The wheels squeaked against the floor. She didn’t resist—let herself be drawn in until their chairs were touching, until his arm was around her, until her head found the space between his shoulder and his neck that was rapidly becoming her favorite location in Manhattan.

“We’re going to win.” Her voice was buried in his collar.