Chapter 40 The Nest of Snakes
Chapter forty
The Nest of Snakes
Nyomi
The third door read "Hina."
Hiro moved in front of me, gun raised, body coiled into that lethal stance I was beginning to know too well. "Stay."
I nodded, pressing my back against the hallway wall.
My mind was still reeling from Mami's sketchbook. Every time I blinked, I saw charcoal and red ink. Saw Kenji's hand wrapped around both their cocks. Saw Hiro on his knees. Saw the words bleeding crimson across the pages like prayers to a god who would never answer.
Focus, Nyomi. You're almost done.
The door clicked open.
Hiro disappeared inside.
I waited.
The silence pressed against my ears. My pulse still hadn't settled from the last room—from the spy phone, from the photos of me being stalked, from the reality that Mami had been watching all of us this whole time.
But was it just Mami? Fuck. The Eyes. Now Mami. How many more snakes are there?
The door opened.
Hiro holstered his gun. "Clear. And you can relax—this room is different."
"Different how?"
"You'll see."
I stepped inside, and the contrast hit me immediately.
Where Yuki’s room had been graying obsession over Kenji and Mami's room had been chaos wrapped in taboo passion, Hina's room was clarity.
Order.
Hope.
Young.
Modern.
Bright.
The walls were painted a soft cream.
Architecture books lined floating shelves in perfect rows—spines organized by color, then by author.
Blueprints were tacked to a corkboard above her desk, each one labeled with neat handwriting.
Scale models of sustainable housing projects sat on display shelves like tiny perfect futures waiting to be built.
This woman has her own life. In fact. . .she wants to change the world.
I moved further in, scanning everything with fresh eyes. "She's transparent. Everything about her is right here on display."
Hiro leaned against the doorframe. "That's Hina. She's never been good at hiding. Which is what shocked me about her possibly being the spy."
I took in more of the space. “She’s not obsessed with Kenji like the others.”
“I think she might be the only one that actually sees him as a big brother. Granted, she could have a soft crush for him.”
“And you?”
He snorted. “I hope not.”
London University materials covered her desk—course syllabi, remote learning schedules, design software guides.
Her laptop sat closed beside a stack of notebooks, each one labeled by subject.
A calendar hung on the wall with deadlines circled in different colored markers, exam dates starred, and little motivational notes written in the margins.
“You've got this!”
“Three more weeks until break!”
“Call Tomi about study group. Tell her your ideas!”
I checked systematically, but my heart wasn't racing the way it had in Yuki’s or Mami's room.
There was no dread here.
No creeping sense of wrongness.
Desk: covered in schoolwork and architectural sketches.
Closet: normal clothes—jeans, sweaters, a few nicer dresses still in dry-cleaning bags.
Under the bed: storage bins with textbooks and old class projects.
Bathroom: typical toiletries, a skincare routine organized in a little caddy, a single wilting plant on the windowsill that she'd clearly been trying to keep alive.
Nothing.
"She's clean," I said, more to myself than to Hiro.
"Good."
But something still nagged at me. That expression I'd seen on Hina's face back on the island. The worry in her eyes. The weight she seemed to carry.
What was that about, if not guilt?
Then I spotted it.
A journal sat on her nightstand. Hand-bound with a leather cover, the edges worn soft from use. A pen was tucked into the binding like she wrote in it every night before bed.
I shouldn't read it.
It was private.
But I picked it up anyway.
Hiro pushed off the doorframe. "Anything?"
"Maybe." I flipped through pages of architectural sketches—buildings that didn't exist yet, notes about load-bearing walls and sustainable materials, little doodles in the margins.
Class notes. Personal thoughts about missing her friends in London, about feeling homesick, about worrying she wasn't good enough to make it in her program.
Normal things.
Then I found recent entries among the sketches.
My hands steadied as I read them.
Two weeks ago:
Couldn't sleep. Went to get water around 2am and saw Sako coming out of Mami's room. Weird. What could he have needed at that time? Are they. . .messing around?
Ten days ago:
Sako again. Mami's room. Past midnight. They were whispering but stopped when they heard me in the hall. I waited. Mami came out and said he was fixing her window latch.
At 1am?
Five days ago:
This is the fourth time I've seen Sako go to her room late at night. When I asked Mami about it this morning, she said I must have been dreaming. But I wasn't dreaming. I know what I saw.
Are they in love?
Three days ago:
Saw Mami with a phone—not her regular one. Black, cheap-looking. When she noticed me watching, she shoved it in her pocket so fast she almost dropped it. Her face went pale. She didn't say anything. Just smiled and changed the subject.
I don’t think this is about love.
I'm scared.
I want to talk to Reo. He would know what to do. But if I'm wrong, I could ruin Mami's life. And Sako has always been kind to me.
Something is wrong. I can feel it.
Maybe I'll go to Kenji.
My throat tightened.
"Hiro." My voice came out rough. "You need to see this."
He crossed the room and read over my shoulder.
I felt his body go rigid beside me.
"Sako?" He sneered. "Not fucking Sako."
"Hina knew. Or at least suspected they were up to something." I closed the journal carefully. "That's what I saw on the island—not guilt. It was worry. The weight of suspecting people she loved and not knowing what to do about it."
"She was trying to protect everyone."
"Including Mami." I set the journal back exactly as I'd found it, smoothing the covers and adjusting the pen. "Poor Hina. She's been carrying this alone."
Hiro's jaw was tight. "And Sako's been slithering into Mami's room in the middle of the night. Whispering and plotting."
The clues clicked together in my mind like puzzle pieces finally finding their mates.
I blinked. "The packages."
"What?"
"During the meeting today, Sako came to tell me that he'd left packages in my office." My pulse quickened. "He offered to open them for me and place them on the shelves himself."
Hiro's eyes sharpened.
"He has access to my office whenever he wants. He can walk in, drop something off, and no one thinks twice about it. A servant delivering packages. Completely normal. Completely invisible. It would have been odd if Mami went into my office, but Sako going in. . .that’s fine.
That’s his job." I started slowly pacing.
"Mami might have taken the picture, but he's the one that tried to send the message to the Fox.
Reo said it came from my office. Sako could have just went into my office to drop off the packages, closed the door, and sent the message. "
"That makes sense. Even more, I think Sako has mainly been using the burner phone, not Mami. He can get around more than her."
"I can see that. They're working together. Sako does the actual spying—he has access to the whole mansion through those servant corridors—and Mami holds the phone for him. Takes the pictures when she can, stores everything in her room."
"That would explain why the phone was hidden in her pillow instead of somewhere more secure."
"Exactly. She's not the mastermind. She's the storage unit.
" I kept pacing, my investigator brain fully engaged now.
"Sako's the one with real access. The passageways run through the entire mansion.
He could go anywhere, see anything, and no one would question a servant moving through servant corridors. "
Then something else hit me.
Something worse.
"Then. . .we have the Eyes.” I stopped next to Hiro.
“They had to be the ones to have killed the men in the footage room. No one would suspect them of going in there.” Hiro's expression darkened. "The Eyes. Sako. Mami. Four fucking snakes."
“But is that all of them? Are we finally done?”
The words hung between us like smoke.
I thought about what Sako had told me during that first tour of the mansion. The warmth in his voice when he talked about young Kenji. The way he'd said "We basically grew up together" like it was something precious.
Had any of that been real?
Or had the Fox been whispering in Sako's ear since childhood—planting seeds of doubt, feeding resentments, slowly turning a childhood friend into a weapon?
"The Fox is a monster," I whispered. "He doesn't just destroy Kenji's enemies. He destroys everyone Kenji loves. Everyone who gets close to him. He turns them into betrayers."
"My father has been playing this game for a very long time. Decades of patience. Decades of manipulation. He knew exactly which people to target—the ones Kenji would never suspect."
"Because suspecting them would mean questioning his entire childhood."
"Yes."
I suddenly felt exhausted by the weight of what we'd uncovered. “Alright, but we’re not completely done.”
“What do you mean?”
"I want to check the passageways."
He shook his head. "No."
"If Sako's been using them to spy, then maybe there is more information that we can gather to—"
"No." Hiro stepped in front of me. "Absolutely not."
"There could be evidence in there. Hidden cameras. Recording equipment. A whole surveillance setup we don't know about."
"And there could also be Sako waiting in the dark with a knife.
" Hiro's voice went hard. "Those passageways are a maze. Dim lighting. Exits that the servants know by heart. Whereas I’m not in there much, neither are the twins. It would be new territory for us which is fine, if we are not carrying priceless cargo.”
I rolled my eyes. “Priceless cargo?”
“We can’t risk losing you or getting you harmed in any way.”