Choosing

The word landed heavy, the command a reprimand. She inhaled, smoothing the tremor that wanted to betray her. When she spoke, her voice was almost casual, “At least you chose one I know. My driver.” She didn’t say his name. Didn’t even look at him when she said it, though her chest ached with effort. Even if Takumi decided to twist it all anyway, she was attempting to protect him.

Cillian stepped forward a fraction, bowing respectfully, voice measured, “Cillian Kelly.” Rei let the palest smile curve her lips, feigning indifference, “Ah. Yes of course. I knew that.” She turned, the perfect hostess mask settling over her face, “Thank you for your service. And… please forgive Takumi-sama for complicating a simple work arrangement.” Takumi’s gaze hardened with reprimand; his expression carved in stone. He let the silence hold until Rei bent at the waist, a perfect bow of respectful apology, the ritual obedience he demanded in front of others. When she straightened, her eyes sparkled with a dangerous calm.

Four choices, four candidates for the favor.

“I can’t really choose,” she said lightly, “not before all the men introduce themselves. And…”, she let the pause linger, just shy of scandalous, “before I try a kiss with each.” The stillness that followed was thick with tension. Takumi’s mask didn’t crack, but Rei saw it. The faintest tap of his ring finger against the glass he held. A tell; he was either excited, furious or both. “Cooperate,” he ordered the men, voice absolute, and the four straightened, the boardroom suddenly an arena.

The first man Yamamoto, a towering broad-shouldered guard, stepped forward. His movements were precise, disciplined, as though the entire sequence was a drill.

He bowed, murmured his name and occupation, then closed the distance, reaching out to place a hand behind Rei’s neck as his lips pressed against her mouth firmly, staying there longer than a soldier’s courtesy required. His mouth was stiff at the beginning, but the sheer length of the kiss forced it into intimacy.

Rei tilted her head slightly, allowing it, letting her lips soften under his. Her eyes closed slowly, intentionally, as if savoring something that wasn’t there. When she broke away, it was with a faint, lingering brush of her lower lip against his. She opened her eyes to glance not at Yamamoto, but at Takumi.

Takumi turned the sake glass in his hand once, the faint chime of the ice cubes in crystal cutting the silence, nodding at the next guy, willing him forward. Shoma, the second guard, was bolder. He smirked as he approached, confidence radiating from the square set of his jaw.

Without hesitation, his hand went to the side of her neck, tilting her face up. His kiss was deeper, warmer, lingering with a hungry rhythm. Rei allowed him to lead, matching his heat just enough to make it seem real, her lips moving against his in a slow exchange. Her fingers brushed his lapel briefly, a hostess’s touch, enough to draw out the kiss, to make it stretch into something almost indecent under Takumi’s scrutiny. When she finally pulled away, her breath was quicker, her lips faintly parted. She smiled politely, as if it had been nothing but duty, but the flush on her cheeks told a different story.

Takumi shifted back in his chair, the ring on his finger tapping once against the glass. His eyes gave nothing, but Rei caught the faint set of his jaw, the tiny muscle twitch betraying irritation or desire. Tanaka, the sales manager, swallowed as he stepped forward, already blushing. His apprehension was palpable, his hands uneasy as he adjusted his blue tie before leaning in.

Tanaka’s kiss began tentative, a brush of lips, but Rei leaned into him, deliberately extending it. Her lips parted slightly, guiding his to follow. His breath caught audibly as she drew the moment out, her hand settling lightly on his chest, pressing just enough to feel the thud of his racing heart. She lingered there, kissing him slowly until his nerves melted into hunger, then she pulled back smoothly, leaving him dazed, lips reddened, breath shallow.

Takumi’s hand tightened around the glass. He didn’t drink, didn’t speak. But his stillness was thunderous. Rei could feel it, his control stretched thin, exactly where she wanted him. Now only Cillian remained.

He approached quietly, no smirk, no bluster. Just that calm, measured presence. When his hand touched her elbow, it wasn’t commanding, it was a grounding hold. His lips met hers carefully, as though testing her resolve. The kiss was steady, lasting longer than all the others, unhurried but full of tension. Rei’s breath hitched.

She leaned in, too much, too real, her lips parting to taste him, to let the kiss deepen just enough to betray how she relished it. For a heartbeat, they weren’t acting. Her hand brushed his wrist, holding him there. When she broke the kiss, her lips lingered, brushing a last stolen second before pulling away. Her eyes found his and stayed there, green meeting black, both of them speaking what they could not say aloud.

Unfolding like a predator uncoiling from stillness, Takumi rose. His eyes swept the line of men, then stopped on Rei. With an unreadable expression, he walked over beside her. “Now for the decision”, he said in a commanding voice, smooth as ever, but carrying a lethal edge. Rei smiled demurely, bowing slightly, while in her chest, hope and fear tangled. She had pressed Takumi, tempted fate, and from the cold fire in Takumi’s stare, she knew he had felt every second of it. After all, they had never kissed, their mouths never met.

The memory of the last kiss transformed into a hum, an insistant high-frequency tone in Takumi’s ears. He watched Rei’s lips part from Kelly’s, saw the microscopic tremor in her throat as she swallowed, the way her eyes lingered on the driver’s for a fraction too long. It was not a performance. That final kiss with Kelly had been a quiet, devastating confession conducted in the breath between their mouths.

Takumi set his glass down. The click of crystal on polished obsidian was a gunshot in the hush. With unhurried grace he started moving, feeling the tailored drape of his suit settle around him like an armor. He needed the height, the dominance of standing over her, over all of them. The data stream from the Bicoca set; heart rate, dermal conductivity, neural spark patterns, was a secondary, buzzing annoyance in his periphery. The raw, human truth in the room was far more compelling and considerably more enraging.

The data was why he’d orchestrated this. Not for the jealousy, though that now burned like a brand, but for the calibration. Eidolon was not a simple pleasure-bot, it was to be a masterpiece of empathetic mimicry. It needed to understand not just the mechanics of desire, but the politics of it. The hesitation in Tanaka’s touch, the arrogant ownership in Shoma’s, the repression in Yamamoto’s, and the quiet heat in Kelly’s. Each kiss was a dataset. Rei’s physiological responses, captured by the choker at her throat, earrings and the bracelet on her wrist, were the key.

But numbers were inert. Her analysis would give them meaning. Why did Yamamoto’s stiffness become compelling? Why did Tanaka’s nervousness trigger a deliberate, guiding prolongation? Her articulated reasons would create a psychological map. He could feed that map into Eidolon’s core matrices, teaching it not just to react, but to interpret, to manipulate. Her subjective experience was the final, irreplaceable layer of data he needed before the next synthesis cycle. It was, objectively, a brilliant next step.

That was the clean, corporate rationale he would cite if ever questioned. The truth was more complex and presently clawing at the inside of his ribs. Takumi had watched another man’s hand on the back of Rei’s neck, had watched her lean into another man’s hunger. He had seen her lips grow pliant and flushed under mouths that were not his. All while he, who owned the room, her contract, her very presence; he had never tasted her.

Takumi had orchestrated every intimate detail of her life for weeks, yet he had denied himself that fundamental claim. A strategic patience, he had told himself. Now, he felt the staggering weight of that calculation. She had used his own clinical exercise to demonstrate her power, had made him watch her give away pieces of what he considered his.

Asking for her evaluation would be a reclamation. It was a forced autopsy of her own treachery. By making her dissect each kiss, vocalize every sensation, she would have to relive them under his gaze. Takumi would invade the experience retroactively, inserting himself into the memory as its ultimate auditor, turning her rebellion into a report.

He would hear her categorize what she felt with them, especially with Kelly, and watch her try to lie, minimize it; or more deliciously, he would watch her try to tell the truth in a diplomatic way. That information would be the most valuable of all; it would tell him the depth of the problem, tell him how far he needed to go to erase it.

Takumi remained standing, hands clasped behind his back, gaze sweeping the room as though the men before him were nothing more than prototypes on display. “Well,” he said, his voice a controlled blade, “A demonstration is incomplete without analysis.” He looked at Rei, at the convincing calm in her eyes that fueled the storm in his gut, “Rei, send them away, one by one, but not before you tell me why.”

He paused, letting the command hang, letting her understand the full scope of the ambush, “Honesty is expected, every detail is useful for refining the data. One thing is the numbers and graphs,” he concluded, in a quiet but dense tone, filling the room like smoke, his grey eyes pinning her, “Your perceived experience might uncover more.”