Chapter 36 Goldilocks and the Three Possible Spies
Chapter thirty-six
Goldilocks and the Three Possible Spies
Nyomi
We entered the hallway and I checked out the three doors in a neat row, each with its own small nameplate in elegant script.
Yuki.
Mami.
Hina.
Time to snoop.
The hallway smelled faintly of jasmine.
The floorboards under my steps creaked in shallow sighs, each one too loud for my liking.
A prickling sensation crawled across the back of my neck. The kind one gets when they know they’re being watched—even if logic insists the area is empty.
I scanned the hallway and looked up.
The lights hummed low overhead, projecting elongated shadows that stretched toward the doors like reaching fingers.
Hiro stepped beside me. “Are you alright?”
“I feel like I’m being watched.”
“You may be.” Hiro pointed to the corners. “There are cameras here and here.”
A faint draft brushed against my ankles—too cool, too directional to be natural. Like air displaced by someone who had just moved.
My breath hitched.
The hallway felt inhabited in a way that made my skin tighten, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath with me.
I stiffened. “Can you do a favor for me?”
“Of course.”
“Ask Reo if the hallway footage was erased too—the same way the mansion footage was when the person took a picture of me.”
Hiro shifted, already pulling out his phone. He typed fast.
The phone buzzed a second later.
Hiro read the message, then looked at me. “Reo wants to know if we’ve found anything.”
My pulse ticked up. “Tell him I’m now thinking Mami might be a stronger suspect than Hina. However, it’s still just intuition. No concrete evidence yet.”
Hiro typed my words exactly, expression unreadable.
Another buzz.
A second message.
He lifted his gaze. “Reo says the Scales’ hallway footage was wiped clean too, during the same window of time. Yet, other camera areas were kept.”
“So. . .that definitely points to the spy coming in and out of here.”
Hiro put his phone up. “And whoever did it knew exactly what to delete.”
Somewhere deeper in the suite, a soft mechanical whir pulsed—a camera adjusting? A vent shifting?
Or something else entirely?
I couldn’t tell. That uncertainty tightened around my ribs like a slow-moving fist. A cold ripple dragged itself down my spine.
I glanced back at the cameras—silent, dark, watching everything.
“Great,” I muttered. “Let’s hope the new people in the security room aren’t spies keeping tabs on us because if we find the right thing. . .they might come down here and kill us before we can report it.”
Hiro didn’t smile. “Anyone coming for you dies first. I can kill four men before you take your next breath. Their blood won’t even have time to cool.”
I blinked.
“You’re safe, Nyomi. They’re the ones who should worry.”
“Okay.”
The air still felt too charged, too alert.
I continued on.
But, are we sure no one is in here?
The silence didn’t feel empty—it felt occupied. Like someone stood just out of sight, listening, cataloging each breath we took.
For some reason, I felt like Goldilocks sneaking into the three bears' cabin.
Except in the original story, Goldilocks had stumbled upon the cottage by accident—lost in the woods, hungry, innocent in her trespassing.
I was here with intent. Camera ready. Mission clear. About to rifle through the belongings of three women.
Besides, Goldilocks had been a little blonde white girl.
Of course she had.
Only a white girl would see an unfamiliar house in the woods and think, I'll just let myself in. Try the porridge. Test the chairs. Sleep in the beds. That level of false entitlement—that assumption of safety and welcome—wasn't available to everyone.
A Black girl would've seen that cottage and kept walking.
Would've thought: That's not mine. Those aren't my people. If I go in there and they come home, I'm not getting the benefit of the doubt.
She would've stayed hungry.
Stayed tired.
Kept moving through that forest until she found her own way out.
And then there would've been no story at all.
I stared at those three nameplates in their elegant script. Someone had chosen that font—someone who cared about aesthetic perfection even in the smallest details.
A second later, I felt Hiro’s attention shift toward me, like he was cataloging the exact way I was assessing the space.
Then, he spoke, “You surprise me more and more.”
I looked over at him. “How?”
“You are assessing EVERYTHING.” Hiro watched me the way a man watches a weapon he didn’t realize was loaded—cautiously, curiously, and with a heat he tried to disguise under restraint.
I swallowed.
His attention pressed against me like a palm at my lower back, guiding without touching.
Next, his gaze moved from the nameplates to the hallway décor, then back to me.
“Most people look at what’s obvious. You look at other things.
The décor. The walls. The books. The nameplates.
You read a room the way Reo reads a battlefield. ”
“Spaces don’t lie. People do.”
That made him still.
“I took Environmental Psychology in college. I thought it would be boring, but it was fascinating.” I gestured down the hallway.
“Everyone edits themselves in conversation. They perform. They choose how they want to be perceived. But living spaces? They don’t have that kind of discipline.
People reveal their truths in what they keep, what they hide, what they curate, what they let fall into neglect. ”
He considered this.
I could tell he was listening—not politely, but strategically.
Absorbing.
Analyzing me as I analyzed the Scales.
I continued, “If you want to understand someone, look at the objects they surround themselves with. Look at what they reach for instinctively. Look at what they haven’t thrown away.
Look at the pattern behind the pattern. A bedroom isn’t just where someone sleeps—it’s the blueprint of their personality.
Sometimes a bookshelf shows what the person wishes they were.
Many times a desk shows what they’re pretending to be. ”
“Explain.”
“Nightstands are the giveaways.”
“How?”
“Well. . .one example. . .if the nightstand is cluttered with half-finished books and medicine bottles, that’s someone overwhelmed. If it’s empty, that’s someone hiding themselves. And if it’s curated—candles, flowers, a single perfect book—that’s someone performing calm, not living it.”
“I like this.” Hiro’s gaze flicked over my face—eyes narrowing slightly, as if committing every word to memory. There was something hungry in that attention, not sexual exactly, but more fascinated. Like he was discovering a new way to read the world. “And something as small as these nameplates?”
“Let’s see.” I leaned closer. “The nameplates aren't identical.”
Hiro checked them out too. “Correct.”
“Yuki's is beautiful—elegant brushed brass with clean calligraphy.” I narrowed my focus. “Hina's matches Yuki’s more. Same brass, same style, yet much more professional and precise like the person was bored and finished quickly.”
“I can see that.”
“But Mami's nameplate is art.”
“Hmmm.” Hiro stepped closer to it. “Yes. I see that too.”
The brass had been hand-carved with delicate cherry blossoms wrapping around the letters. The petals looked three-dimensional, like they might fall off if I touched them. The script itself curved with more care and attention.
Someone had spent hours on Mami’s nameplate just to make sure it was special. If it were her, that would make complete sense. If it weren’t. . .well that would tell us a whole lot more to the story of these Scales.
I studied the cherry blossoms. "Who did the nameplates?"
"Sako."
Oh shit. That’s interesting.
I turned to look at Hiro. "Is Sako close to them?"
"He is. He was young too when he came into service and they would all sleep in the servant quarters."
"Are they more like siblings or has there been some steam with Sako and one of them?"
Hiro's expression shifted—something between sympathy and resignation. "I think that Sako is in love with Mami but Mami. . ."
"Is in love with Kenji."
He nodded.
My chest tightened. I looked back at the nameplate—at all those hand-carved cherry blossoms that Mami probably walked past every day without noticing. "Why do you think Sako loves Mami?"
"Same age, so they spent the most time together when the others would go off and do different things. Also. . .he would come to her defense most of the time if she ever got in trouble." Hiro's jaw tightened. "Once he took a beating for her from my father."
"What did she do?"
"When they were both ten, Mami had tried to run away. She wanted to go back and live with her sick mom." He sighed as if that memory made him sad. "Right when my father was about to hit her, Sako jumped between them and said that it was his fault and that he'd told her to run.”
“So then what happened?”
“The Fox beat him in front of Mami. Made her watch."
Oh God.
"So. . .you think your father believed Sako?"
"No way. He just did it because he knew that Mami would feel like shit as she witnessed the beating, and Sako would become resentful for taking the beating and may never stand up for Mami again."
I stared at him. "That's fucked up to do that to kids."
"Being fucked up is my father's specialty. Psychological warfare. Especially with children. Still. . .Sako would later continue to jump in the way and take beatings for her.”
“Seriously?”
Hiro frowned. “Yes.”
I considered that. Mami had watched a boy her own age get beaten for trying to protect her. Had probably carried that guilt ever since.
Guilt that deep doesn’t fade, it fossilizes. Becomes a shape a person grows around. And someone like Sako—who learned love through pain—would be loyal long after that loyalty stopped being logical.
And Sako, he had loved her enough to lie, to take the punishment, to carve cherry blossoms into brass thirty years later even though she'd probably never look at him the way she looked at Kenji.
My mind started spinning through possibilities.
If Sako loved Mami—had loved her for decades, unrequited—would he help her spy? A man who'd taken beatings for a girl wouldn't suddenly stop protecting her at forty.
Or maybe I had it backwards. Maybe Sako resented Kenji. Thirty years of carving cherry blossoms into nameplates while she painted dragons in tribute to someone else.
Either way, if Mami was the spy, Sako was involved. Devotion or resentment—both roads led to the same place.
I looked at that nameplate again and those cherry blossoms. “So. . .this is just a guess before entering the rooms but. . .if Mami is the spy, then, Sako is involved somehow.”
“Sako can’t be an option.”
I snapped my view to him. “Why not?”
“It would destroy my brother.”
“Then, let’s hope Mami has nothing to do with this.” I took a breath and stepped toward Yuki's door—the oldest.
A sudden thump sounded above us—directly overhead.
My head snapped up.
For one stretched second, neither of us breathed.
Then silence returned, heavy and waiting, as if the entire suite were holding something back.
“Don’t worry.” Hiro got closer to me. “You’re protected.”
For some reason, I thought back to Goldilocks. In that story, Goldilocks ran before the bears could catch her. But something told me the bears in this mansion already knew I was here and were plotting.
Fuck. What have I gotten myself into?