Chapter 28: Nat
The western service gate was a smaller, formidable thing of aged iron and dark wood, set into the towering stone wall. Akiji Amiya was already there, looking incongruously serene next to a hulking, silent guard in a dark suit. He was checking his watch, but his head snapped up as they approached.
His eyes, practiced and assessing, swept over Hikaru in the butler’s suit. A flicker of professional approval. Then they landed on Ren.
Everything about Akiji softened. His posture loosened. A genuine, warm smile touched his lips, the kind that didn’t seem to belong in this place of arranged marriages and silent guards. “Ah. The new assessment team. Right on time.” His voice was polite, directed at Hikaru, but his gaze kept drifting back. “I trust the uniforms were acceptable?”
Hikaru gave a short, crisp bow, her voice lowered into a convincing, gender-neutral register. “Perfectly, sir. We appreciate the opportunity to survey the grounds.”
“Of course.” Akiji’s attention finally settled fully on Ren. He took a half-step closer, his voice dropping into something almost confidential. “And you… you look quite lovely today. That uniform suits you remarkably well.” He sounded utterly sincere, a man admiring a rare painting. “Should you ever desire part-time work in a more… refined environment, my family’s estate could always use someone with such a diligent air.”
Inside the maid’s dress, Ren’s soul cringed. The frills felt like they were crawling. Every instinct screamed to tell this hopeless romantic exactly where he could shove his part-time offer. Rena’s shy persona warred with Ren’s trash-talking id.
The words that came out were in her soft, high voice, but laced with a dryness that was pure Ren. “That is… kind of you to say, sir. But I believe such an offer exists only in one’s dreams.” He kept his eyes demurely on the gravel path.
Next to him, Hikaru made a sound. A choked, deliberate cough that was unmistakably a laugh disguised as a throat-clearing. It was a low, masculine ‘hmph’ of pure amusement.
Akiji, misinterpreting the tension as maidenly modesty, simply smiled wider. “A dream worth having, perhaps. Come. I will escort you to the main hall. My associate will remain here.”
The guard, a mountain of a man with a scar over one eyebrow, gave a single nod and took a position by the gate, effectively blocking it.
They passed through into another world.
The noise of Kyoto died. The Yamato estate unfolded in a breathless hush of raked gravel gardens, ancient pines bent by centuries of wind, and still ponds that mirrored a cloudless sky. The air smelled of damp moss, pine resin, and an underlying note of expensive, sandalwood incense. Their footsteps on the gravel path were the loudest sound.
Akiji walked a respectful step ahead, playing the part of the gracious host. “The main house is through the inner gate. The family quarters are to the east. The tea ceremony rooms are to the west, where my meeting will be held.” He spoke quietly, his words carrying clearly in the stillness. “The household staff are accustomed to consultants. Do not engage unless engaged. Keep to your roles.”
“Understood, sir,” Hikaru replied, her clipboard held at a perfect angle.
Ren just walked, trying to mimic the dutiful, half-step behind Hikaru he’d seen in period dramas. The maid shoes were mercifully flat, but every crunch of gravel felt like a drumbeat announcing his fraudulence. He focused on the back of Hikaru’s suit jacket, a dark anchor in the serene, oppressive beauty.
They rounded a corner where the path split, one branch leading across an arched wooden bridge over a koi pond. And there, walking slowly from the opposite direction, were two figures.
One was an older man, perhaps in his fifties, dressed in a severe, traditional montsuki kimono. His posture was rigid, his face a mask of stern authority. His gaze was fixed straight ahead, seeing the estate, not the garden.
Beside him, looking small and somehow folded in on herself, was Suki.
Her usual airy distance was gone, replaced by a palpable melancholy. Her shoulders were slumped. The hair covering her eyes seemed less a stylistic choice and more a curtain. She moved like a ghost, her steps silent on the path, not looking at the koi swirling in the water below the bridge, not looking at anything.
Then, as if sensing their presence, her head turned slightly.
Her gaze passed over Akiji, over the tall butler. It swept past, then snapped back. It landed on Ren.
For a heartbeat, nothing. Ren felt a cold splash of panic—had she seen through him? Was she about to cry out?
Then, it happened. A transformation.
From behind the curtain of her hair, Suki’s eyes—usually so distant and dreamy—widened. They focused with a startling, sharp clarity. They met Ren’s, and in that split second, a silent, frantic conversation took place. Confusion. Recognition. Disbelief. Then, a dawning, explosive hope that lit up her entire face.
The profound sadness didn’t vanish, but it was suddenly edged with a fierce, luminous light. The corners of her mouth, which had been turned down, twitched. Not into a full smile, but into something tense and alive. She looked from Ren to Hikaru and back again, and her small chin lifted just a fraction of an inch.
Her father, noticing her pause, glanced down. “Suki?”
The light in Suki’s eyes didn’t dim, but she smoothly tilted her head back down, the hair falling to re-shield her eyes. “It is nothing, Father. A beautiful carp.” Her voice was its usual soft, pleasant tone, giving away nothing.
But as she allowed her father to guide her forward onto the bridge, passing the little group, her hand, held loosely at her side, flicked out. A quick, subtle gesture. Two fingers tapping twice against her thigh.
A rhythm. A specific one. The opening four beats of Pixel Heart, C4’s biggest hit song.
Then she was past them, continuing her mournful walk, the connection severed but the signal blazing in the quiet air.
Akiji, who had bowed politely as the Yamato patriarch passed, glanced back at his two ‘staff.’ “The young mistress,” he murmured, a note of pity in his voice. “The weight of tradition is heavy on the young. This way.”
Hikaru’s stride didn’t break. Ren’s didn’t either, though his heart was hammering against the stiff bodice of the maid dress. He chanced one look back over his shoulder.
Suki was already at the far end of the bridge. She didn’t turn. But her posture was different. The defeated slump was gone. Now, she walked with a straight back, a new tension in her shoulders that spoke not of sorrow, but of readiness.
Hikaru’s voice, low and only for him, came as they followed Akiji toward the looming shadow of the main house. “She knows. She’s waiting.”
Ren swallowed, the taste of the garden’s pine-scented air suddenly sharp and promising. The mission was no longer an abstract plan on paper. It had a face now, and it had just looked at them with a spark of rebellion.
He gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod, his eyes forward. The map in his mind was no longer just lines and gates. It had a destination.