13. Nari
THIRTEEN
NARI
Dojin: I’d like to show you the creative inspiration space. Available today?
Nari stared at her phone from the depths of her couch, coffee in one hand, legs tucked under her, Chet Baker spinning on the record player because Saturday mornings required jazz and zero responsibilities.
Creative inspiration space.
She’d been inside Keiser Tower exactly once—the lobby, on her way to a meeting that got rerouted to the Chelsea studios.
The building was forty stories of glass and steel in Midtown.
A creative inspiration space inside it probably meant a conference room with a whiteboard and motivational quotes in a tasteful sans-serif font.
Nari: Define “creative inspiration space.”
Dojin: Better experienced than described.
Nari: That’s either intriguing or a liability.
Dojin: 2 PM? I’ll have coffee.
He would have coffee. Of course, he would.
The man had turned caffeine delivery into a performance art over the past two weeks, each offering more precise than the last, and if she was being honest with herself—which she tried to be, even when honesty was inconvenient—the matcha latte had rattled her.
Nobody memorized a recipe from across a room. Nobody with a casual interest, anyway.
Nari: Fine. But if this is a conference room with a vision board, I’m leaving.
Dojin: Noted.
She forwarded the exchange to Takumi.
Nari: He’s showing me his “creative inspiration space” today.
Takumi: Is that a euphemism
Nari: It’s a ROOM. In his BUILDING.
Takumi: A billionaire is inviting you to his private space on a Saturday and you think it’s about ARCHITECTURE
Nari: I think it’s about the project.
Takumi: Wear the good jeans.
She wore the good jeans.
The elevator required a biometric scan, which was the first indication that this was not a conference room.
The second indication was that the elevator went up. Past the corporate floors, past the number she associated with Dojin’s office, past everything recognizable, to a floor marked only with a small-engraved bee.
The doors opened onto the sky.
Not a room. Not a conference space. Not a whiteboard in sight.
The entire top floor of Keiser Tower was a garden—enclosed by glass panels, some retracted to let in the February air, the space stretching from one end of the building to the other.
Planters ran along the perimeter, dormant now in late winter but structured with the geometric care of a landscape architect who took their craft personally.
Raised beds. Herb boxes. A gravel pathway winding between wooden trellises that would be heavy with green in a few months.
And along the south wall, arranged in a neat row with six inches of precision between each one: beehives.
The ones she’d read about somewhere. White-painted wooden boxes with copper roofs, nine of them, each angled to catch the afternoon light.
The bees were sluggish in the cold—early-season activity, workers beginning to stir after winter—but the hives were alive.
Dojin stood near the nearest hive with two cups of coffee and an expression caught somewhere between rehearsed casual and visible hope.
Nari’s observations began before she could stop them. They were a reflex. She’d been doing this since childhood—walking into a space and cataloging it aloud, narrating the world as if the world needed a voiceover.
“You keep bees.” She said this as if this was the first she’d heard of it.
He handed her a coffee. “I do.”
“You’re a billionaire CEO who maintains beehives on a Manhattan rooftop.” She took the coffee. Turned in a slow circle. “There are lavender plants between the hives. You landscaped for the bees. Those are custom copper roofs. Someone hand-fitted those. Is that a—”
She stopped. In the center of the garden, on a low wooden table between two benches, sat a tasting board.
Not a commercial product. Handmade—carved from a single piece of dark wood, with small circular wells for different honey varieties, a section for comb, and a groove for a tasting spoon. It was beautiful. It was absurd.
“Is that a handmade honey tasting board?”
“The sleuth woodworker—”
“You had someone build a BOARD for the HONEY from your PERSONAL BEES and you don’t see how this looks?”
He tilted his head. The head-tilt. Takumi was right about the head-tilt. “How does it look?”
“Like you’re the most aggressively wholesome person I’ve ever met and I don’t know what to do with that information.”
The smile that crossed his face was quiet and real, and it did a specific, targeted thing to her pulse that she elected not to examine.
He walked her through the garden. Light slanted low through the glass panels, turning the gravel paths gold. The air smelled like cold earth, beeswax, and the faint sweetness of dormant lavender—and underneath it, him. Cedar and warmth and something clean-skinned she couldn’t categorize.
He explained the hives with a warmth that made expertise sound like affection.
Nine colonies, three varieties of bees, seasonal harvest schedules.
He knew the queens by temperament. He described one as “productive but opinionated” and another as “a diplomat” with the sincerity of a man discussing colleagues.
He’s giving personality assessments to his bees. He has named the queens. I am standing on a rooftop in Midtown Manhattan listening to a billionaire describe bee politics and I am—
Charmed. She was charmed. The word arrived like a verdict.
Absolutely not.