8. Nari
EIGHT
NARI
The studios were in Chelsea, which meant a fifteen-minute cab ride from Tribeca during which Nari applied lipstick twice, checked the Voidborn character packet three times, and reminded herself seven times that she was a professional walking into a job, not a detective walking into a crime scene.
Professional. You are a professional. You have voiced warlords and demon queens and a singing cactus for a children’s cereal commercial that paid more than the warlord and the demon queen combined. You can handle a table read.
The cab let her out on West 23rd. Cold air hit her face—clean and sharp, the kind of cold that made Manhattan look like it had been scrubbed overnight.
She wore a structured blazer in deep emerald over a black silk camisole, tailored trousers, and the Louboutins she reserved for situations where she needed to be taller than her confidence.
Red lipstick. Statement earrings. Hair down and unapologetic.
Anime royalty. She intended to look the part.
Keiser Entertainment Studios occupied a renovated industrial building—exposed brick, massive windows, the kind of space that had been a factory floor a hundred years ago and now housed millions of dollars in recording equipment and animation workstations.
The lobby was glass and warm wood, and the reception desk was manned by a young woman whose eyes went wide when Nari gave her name.
“Nari Wixx. I have a nine o’clock with the Voidborn production team.”
The receptionist blinked. Recovered. Smiled like she’d been trained to smile at clients but had forgotten the training because she was looking at someone whose voice she recognized from Phantom Veil.
“Ms. Wixx. Yes. Absolutely. Let me—” She knocked over a pen cup.
Caught three pens. Lost two. “Let me call up to the production floor.”
She’s a fan. File that under flattering-but-irrelevant.
Nari waited. The lobby smelled like coffee and fresh paint and a faint undercurrent of cedar and honey she couldn’t place.
Concept art lined the walls—Keiser’s animation catalog in framed prints.
She recognized three Celestial Ronin adaptations among them.
Grandpa’s compositions, rendered in other hands, behind glass.
Her chest tightened.
A short woman in a structured navy blazer appeared from the elevator, coffee in one hand, stopwatch in the other.
Dark eyes behind tortoiseshell glasses. Silver-streaked black hair in a practical twist. She moved like a person who had somewhere to be five minutes ago and had decided the world would accommodate her schedule.
“Priya Brayo.” The handshake was firm and over in one second. “We worked together on Iron Lotus. Season two. You did the death scene in one take, and I’ve been trying to get you on a project ever since.”
“That death scene gave me a sore throat for a week.”
“It gave my editor a religious experience.” Priya turned and walked.
Nari followed. Priya talked over her shoulder the way people did when they assumed you were keeping up, because why wouldn’t you be?
“The Voidborn team is small. Ten animators, three writers, two engineers, me. We record in Studio A—acoustically perfect, glass-walled booth, best equipment in the city. You’ll be working with my associate director on group sessions, but the Yua Voidwalker solo work is mine. ”
“You’re directing the lead personally.”
“I don’t hand my leads to associates.” Priya pushed through a set of double doors into the production floor.
Open plan. Storyboard walls. Light tables and digital stations side by side.
Animators at workstations, reference art tacked to every surface.
The energy was focused and creative and exactly the kind of organized chaos that meant people here cared about what they were making.
Nari’s trained ear cataloged the room’s acoustics automatically—high ceilings absorbed echo, the soft carpet killed footstep noise, even the HVAC was whisper-quiet. Whoever had designed this space understood sound.
Priya stopped at a glass-walled recording booth. Larger than standard. A Neumann U89 on the stand—not the U87 Nari kept at home, but close family. Proper pop filter. Quality monitoring speakers on the other side of the glass, where the control room bristled with mixing boards and screens.
“Nice mic.”
“The man who signs the checks has opinions about equipment.” Priya adjusted her glasses. “Speaking of whom.”
A door opened behind them.
Nari turned.
She had expected a suit with a spreadsheet.
A corporate type in wingtips who’d shake her hand, name-drop her grandfather, and ask how soon they could start recording.
She’d dressed for that man. She’d rehearsed her professional warmth for that man.
She had a whole arsenal of polite smiles loaded and ready for the executive who treated voice actors like line items on a production budget.
The man who walked in was not that man.
Tall. Broad. Shoulders that filled the doorframe before he cleared it.
Warm brown skin, close-cropped dark hair, a jaw that could have been designed by an animator who understood exactly how light should fall across bone structure.
He wore a charcoal henley with the sleeves pushed up past his forearms—no suit jacket, no tie, no corporate armor.
The watch on his wrist cost more than most people’s cars, but the sleeves-up said he’d forgotten about it the way people forgot about expensive things they’d always had.
Dark eyes. Warm. Not executive-warm—“warm” warm.
The kind that landed on you and made the room feel smaller and better-lit at the same time.
Oh no.
He smiled, and the room temperature went up three degrees. The heat landed in her sternum, which was an inconvenient place to feel things about a man she had come here to investigate.
“Nari.” He crossed the floor in three strides and extended a hand. “Dojin Keiser. Thank you for coming in.”
His hand swallowed hers. Not a power grip—the opposite. Careful pressure, like he was aware of exactly how much bigger he was and was being gentle about it. His palm was warm and rough, and she let go a moment too late and pretended that was normal.
“The studios are impressive.” Her voice came out even, which was a professional achievement she would never get credit for. “Priya’s already threatened to make me her personal project.”
“I don’t threaten.” Priya sat at the control room console. “I inform.”
Dojin’s attention stayed on Nari, and it was a physical weight.
Not predatory—present. Like he was giving her his full focus because that was what he gave everything, and she happened to be the thing in front of him.
“I watched your Empress Kira work before we reached out. Episode twenty-two specifically—the throne room monologue.”
Nari’s polite smile dropped into a real one before she could stop it.
That was a deep cut. A twelve-minute monologue recorded in a single take at three in the morning because the director wanted exhaustion in Kira’s voice, and Nari had delivered it by being, in fact, exhausted.
It wasn’t the clip people quoted at conventions. It was the one voice actors studied.
“Your breath control in the third movement is architecturally precise.” He said it the way someone said it when they meant it—no corporate sheen, no rehearsed flattery. “The way you shift from rage to grief without losing either one. Most performers choose one emotion. You carried both.”
“Thank you.” She held his gaze because she was Nari Wixx and she held everyone’s gaze. “That monologue was a single take at three in the morning. Best review of my career. Worth every second.”
She hadn’t expected that—the particular quality of his attention. Not executive interest. Recognition.
“Shall we read?” Priya’s voice cut through like a well-timed edit. “Or shall we continue the mutual admiration society until lunch?”
Dojin stepped back. Created distance. Nari appreciated the distance the way a person appreciated oxygen after holding their breath—necessary, restorative, and disappointing.