23. Nari
TWENTY-THREE
NARI
Green tea and miso and the ghost of sandalwood incense. The Wixx brownstone smelled like every important conversation Nari had ever had.
She spread the documents across the dining room table—the one that seated twelve, the one where Hideo used to sit at the head and draw on napkins during family dinners while Suki pretended to disapprove and kept every single napkin.
Saturday morning light angled through the west-facing windows, casting gold bars across the tablecloth.
Nari’s hands were steady. Her pulse was not.
Her parents sat across from her. James, in his weekend uniform—rumpled blazer over a henley, reading glasses already on, coffee untouched.
Akemi beside him in an ivory silk blouse with the Celestial Ronin kanji pendant resting against her collarbone.
She’d come straight from a Foundation board meeting and hadn’t changed.
When Nari called and said “I need to show you both something, and you need to not be anywhere else for three hours,” Akemi had cancelled a lunch without asking why.
“On the left.” Nari tapped the Voidborn concept art—the pitch deck pages she’d photographed, printed, and annotated in red. “Voidborn Requiem. Acquired by Keiser Entertainment last year through a company called Meridian Creative. On the right—”
She didn’t need to say it. Akemi was already leaning forward, her hand hovering over Hideo’s notebook.
The sketchbook was open to the Sora Nightwind character designs—the originals, in her father’s hand, dated 2016.
Ink on paper. His handwriting in the margins, mixing Japanese and English the way his thoughts mixed languages.
Akemi’s fingers trembled. She touched the edge of the page—not the drawing itself, never the drawing, you didn’t touch the artwork—and made a sound. Small. Unbidden. A daughter recognizing her father’s hand in a place it had no business being.
“That’s Papa.”
Not a question. Akemi’s eye could identify Hideo’s work from across a gallery, in reproductions, in student imitations she corrected at Foundation workshops. She’d grown up watching those hands draw. She knew his linework the way Nari knew voices—in her bones, below conscious thought.
“The composition is his. The negative space. The way the figure holds the page.” Akemi moved to the next comparison.
Her expression had gone still—the artist’s assessment replacing the mother’s shock.
“They changed the armor. Hair, weapons, surface details. But the skeleton is his. The proportions. The relationship between figure and background.” She looked up.
“Nari. Where did you get the Voidborn materials?”
“The production office. I photographed the pitch deck.”
James removed his glasses. Cleaned them on his henley. When James Wixx removed his glasses and cleaned them, the room’s temperature dropped three degrees. This was not a nervous habit. This was a man switching modes.
“Walk me through the chain.”
Nari did. She’d printed each step. Highlighted the connections. Built the timeline on a separate page with dates and arrows because James processed information in linear chains, and she’d been watching her father build legal arguments her entire life.
James laid the pages out in sequence. Read them once. Read them again. His mouth thinned to a line Nari recognized from childhood—the expression he wore when opposing counsel filed a bad-faith motion and he was deciding which of twelve possible responses would cause maximum devastation.
“Who had access to your grandfather’s unpublished materials?”
“Family.” Nari counted on her fingers. “You, Mom, Baa-chan, me. And the archive.”
“The archive that Tomas Crane catalogued for six years.”
The name landed in the kitchen like a stone in still water.
Tomas Crane. The archivist who’d spent half a decade handling Hideo’s unpublished work with reverence and white cotton gloves.
Who’d proposed a full restoration of The Forgotten Gate and been declined.
Who’d left the Wixx estate’s employ three years ago with a handshake and a reference letter and, apparently, a camera full of stolen genius.
“We gave him access to everything.” Akemi’s voice was quiet. “The sketchbooks, the voice notes, the unfinished manuscripts. We trusted him with Papa’s legacy.”
“We trusted him because he loved the work.” James put his glasses back on.
Picked up his pen. Started making notes in the margin of Nari’s timeline—short, clipped annotations in his precise handwriting.
“Love and loyalty aren’t the same thing.
I’ve seen enough IP cases to know the most dangerous thieves are the true believers.
They don’t think they’re stealing. They think they’re saving. ”
Nari watched her father work. The transformation was complete—James, the weekend dad, had been replaced by James the entertainment lawyer, and entertainment lawyers did not comfort. They documented.
Akemi turned another page of Hideo’s notebook. Studied a sketch. Looked at the corresponding Voidborn concept art. Looked back.
“Your father is very attractive when he’s angry.”
Nari’s head snapped up. “Mom. We’re in crisis.”
“I can acknowledge crisis and attraction simultaneously.” Akemi didn’t look up from the sketches. Her voice was serene.
James, still writing: “Thank you, darling.”
This family. This impossible, inappropriate, devastatingly timed family.
Nari pressed her palms flat on the table. “Dad. What do we need?”
James capped his pen. Set it down. The list came without hesitation—he’d been building it while writing.
“Authentication of the sketchbooks. We need three independent experts to verify Hideo’s hand and date the materials.
The voice notes—digitized, timestamped, chain of custody documented.
A forensic analysis of Meridian’s corporate filings to establish the Mercer connection on the record.
And Crane’s employment records from our estate files. ”
“That’s a legal case.”
“That’s the beginning of one.” He looked at her over his glasses. “You said Keiser Entertainment licensed the Voidborn concept. Dojin Keiser.”
Nari held his gaze. “Yes.”
“Does he know what he bought?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so, or you don’t want to think so?”
The question hit a nerve James couldn’t have known existed—or could have, because James Wixx missed nothing about his daughter, which was both his finest quality and the most irritating thing about him.
“I asked him directly. About the pitch. Where it came from. He told me Meridian, external acquisition, standard process. His answer was clean. No hesitation, no deflection.” She crossed her arms. “I’ve spent weeks performing across a recording booth from this man.
I’ve heard him talk about the project, about the characters, about creative direction.
His investment is genuine. If he knew the source material was stolen, he’s the best liar I’ve ever encountered, and I grew up around entertainment lawyers. ”
James almost smiled. Almost. “High bar.”
“The highest.”
Akemi closed the sketchbook with careful hands. “We should call your grandmother.”
Suki answered on the second ring. The speakerphone on the kitchen counter broadcast her voice into the room—clear, unhurried, measured. Eighty-six years of living had taught her that most urgency was manufactured.
“Someone stole Grandpa’s work.”
Silence. Then the sound of liquid being poured. Tea. Grandmother made tea during crises the way other people took tranquilizers. It was more effective and involved better cups.
“Find the truth first. Weapons second.”
“Baa-chan. They took the Sora Nightwind materials. The gate mythology, the character designs—everything he was building before he died. They’re producing it right now as a new property.”
Another sip. Nari could picture her grandmother in the upstairs sitting room—white hair in its neat bun, Hideo’s wedding ring on the chain around her neck, the morning light falling across her face.
“And someone else may not know that.” Suki’s voice carried no anger. It carried precision. “Those are different problems.”
“They’re connected problems.”
“Connected is not identical. Your grandfather taught you that. The person who stole and the person who bought are not the same story. Find the thief first. The buyer tells you his own story, if you let him. Invite the bear for tea.”
Nari’s spine locked. “How do you KNOW about the bear?”
“Your mother tells me everything. You tell your mother everything. This family has no secrets.” Suki paused. Nari could hear the smile.
“Except from the men.”
James looked up from his notes. “I’m right here.”
“Yes, dear.” Suki’s voice was warm. “Make your daughter eat lunch. She hasn’t eaten. I can hear it in her voice.”
Nari opened her mouth to argue, then stopped. Because Suki was right. She hadn’t eaten. And two people had now told her they could tell—Dojin from scent, Suki from sound—and neither had required her confirmation. She was apparently a woman whose hunger broadcast itself without her consent.
“I’ll eat.”
“When you invite the bear,” Suki added, “make sure he brings honey. Hideo would have liked that.”
The line went dead. Suki Saitō did not say goodbye. She said what needed saying and hung up, and the silence afterward always carried more weight than the words.
Akemi stood. Moved to the kitchen. Started pulling miso paste from the fridge. When Akemi cooked without asking if anyone was hungry, the situation was serious. Her hands needed to work while her mind caught up.
James was already on his phone. Texting his paralegal. On a Saturday. The paralegal would not complain, because James Wixx’s Saturday texts preceded Monday morning victories.
Nari sat at the table surrounded by evidence of her grandfather’s stolen legacy and her father’s forming counterattack and her mother’s grief transformed into miso soup, and she pulled out her phone.
Takumi: Status report. Are your parents lawyering or panicking?
Nari: Both. Simultaneously. Dad’s entered terrifying-calm mode. Mom told him he’s attractive when angry.
Takumi: In the middle of the crisis reveal??
Nari: She said she has range.
Takumi: Your mother is an icon. Protect her at all costs.
Nari: Baa-chan wants me to invite Dojin for tea.
Takumi: Did she call him the bear
Nari: Yes.
Takumi: Suki Saitō is the most powerful woman in Manhattan. I’m cross-stitching “Invite the Bear for Tea” and hanging it in my studio.
Nari pocketed her phone. Looked at Hideo’s notebook, still open on the table. His handwriting. His drawings. His ideas, stolen and repackaged and sold to a man who kept bees on a Manhattan rooftop and kissed her in a hallway and might be either the answer to this problem or its architect.
Find the truth first. Weapons second.
She picked up her father’s pen. Started her own list.