9. Nari
NINE
NARI
The script sat on the music stand in the booth. Yua Voidwalker’s introduction scene. Nari closed the soundproof door, adjusted the mic, and read the first page.
Her blood went cold.
No.
The character’s name was different. The world terminology had been filed down, sanded smooth, genericized in ways that might fool someone who didn’t know the source material.
But the bones were there. The thirteen-gate mythology—restructured, relabeled, but architecturally identical to the system Grandpa Hideo had created.
The Void Gate. The female ronin erased from history.
The guardian who chose exile over obedience.
This was Sora Nightwind.
This was her grandfather’s unpublished work, dressed in a different costume and walking across someone else’s stage.
Priya’s voice came through the booth speakers. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Nari’s hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her thighs. Breathed. Let the training take over—the muscle memory of a thousand sessions, the discipline that turned shock into fuel.
You are going to deliver this. And then you are going to find out who put it here.
She channeled the shock. Let the cold fury sharpen Yua’s introduction—a character emerging from shadows, declaring herself to a world that had forgotten she existed.
The rage wasn’t manufactured. The grief was not performed.
She gave the lines everything she had because the words belonged to a man she loved, and whoever had stolen them didn’t deserve the reverence she was about to pour into every syllable.
She finished. The booth was silent. The control room was silent.
Nari looked through the glass. Priya had taken off her glasses—a gesture Nari had never seen from a woman who treated her tortoiseshells like a surgical instrument. Dojin was standing in the back corner of the control room. Motionless. His hands on the edge of the console, his knuckles blanched.
The silence held for six seconds. Nari counted.
“Is the silence good or should I update my resume?”
Priya put her glasses back on. Pushed them up her nose. Took a breath. “That was acceptable.”
From anyone else, an insult. From Priya Brayo, a standing ovation.
Nari filed that away and kept her face neutral, because inside, she was shaking with a fury that had nothing to do with professional accomplishment and everything to do with the stolen bones of her grandfather’s last story sitting on the stand in front of her.
Dojin said nothing. His eyes held hers through the glass—warm, stunned, searching for a word that apparently hadn’t been invented yet—and Nari looked away first because she was not going to have feelings through a soundproof window about a man whose company might be built on her family’s stolen IP.
Might. Investigate first. Feel later. Way later. Preferably never.
She pulled out her phone during the five-minute break Priya called.
Nari: The character is Grandpa’s. I’d bet my Louboutins.
Takumi: You love those shoes more than most humans.
Nari: Exactly.
Takumi: How sure?
Nari: Thirteen-gate mythology. Void Gate guardian. Female ronin who chose exile over obedience. They renamed everything and changed nothing.
Takumi: Shit.
Nari: Eloquent.
Takumi: I’m processing. Give me a sec.
Takumi: Ok processed. How’s the CEO?
Nari: What does that have to do with anything?
Takumi: You texted me about stolen IP and didn’t mention leaving. You’re still there. Something’s keeping you. Is it the evidence or the executive?
She stared at her phone. Hated that he was perceptive. Hated more that she didn’t have an answer.
Nari: He quoted Episode 22.
Takumi: Nobody quotes Episode 22.
Nari: That’s what I said.
Takumi: Deep cut. Either he’s a genuine fan or his assistant prepped a very thorough dossier.
Nari: Which is worse?
Takumi: Depends on how good-looking he is.
Nari: I’m not answering that.
Takumi: You answered it.
She pocketed her phone. Went back to the booth. Delivered three more scenes with the precision of a woman who had decided to be extraordinary and furious at the same time.
In the break between scenes, the production team assembled in the control room for notes.
Nari stood near the doorway, still running hot, when Dojin appeared beside her.
Not crowding—he left a respectful gap—but close enough that she caught his scent for the first time.
Cedar and honey and warm skin. Her brain did a hard restart.
He smells like a high-end candle someone would name “December Cabin.” Stop smelling the client.
“The Yua performance.” His voice was low.
Private. Not a CEO voice—a voice for a conversation between two people in a room full of others.
“You brought a specificity to the mythology that wasn’t in the script.
The way you shaped the gate incantation—that rhythm isn’t written anywhere in our materials. ”
Nari’s pulse spiked. He’d noticed. Of course, he’d noticed—the rhythm she’d used was Grandpa’s.
The way Hideo had read the original Celestial Ronin scripts aloud, the music he’d put into the words that she’d absorbed at twelve years old, without knowing she was learning it.
She’d performed it on instinct, and this man had caught it in real time.
“I have a background in the franchise.” Careful. Truthful. Revealing nothing. “As Kaito once said to the fourth gate guardian—‘the path remembers even when the walker forgets.’”
Across the room, a chair creaked. Nari glanced over. The man Priya had introduced as head of security—Reo, built like a cage fighter, face like a closed fist—had gone rigid. His jaw tightened. One hand gripped the armrest hard enough that the leather dimpled.
Dojin looked at his security chief. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” The word came out clipped. Controlled. The voice of a man exerting visible effort over invisible forces.
“You’re gripping the chair.”
“Strong hands.” Reo released the armrest. Flexed his fingers. “Bear thing.”
Nari filed that under “interesting, investigate later.” The security operative with the cage-fighter face had reacted to a Celestial Ronin quote like she’d pulled a pin on a grenade.
She didn’t know what a “bear thing” was, but she knew a tell when she saw one, and that man was holding a very good hand very badly.