A New Environment

The first weeks settled into a different rhythm, a life partitioned as neatly as her Kuroda schedule. Rei’s days were a blur of controlled glamour and stolen hiatuses. Under the bright lights of investor meetings and promotional halls, Rei was Eidolon’s Muse. She wore corporate suits, fitted gowns and a flawless smile.

In the evenings, she had somewhat increased freedom in her assigned lodging. The kitchen had been stocked with her requested ingredients, allowing her to cook simple meals in the short evenings she was granted off work. Some mornings she woke up at dawn to get the most out of the gym membership Takumi had allowed her.

The state-of-the-art gym and pool at Kuroda Plaza were a monument to corporate wellness, all gleaming chrome, mirrored walls, and filtered air that smelled of chlorine and ambition. With the pass Takumi had granted after a skeptical, scrutinizing look, Rei gained access to this new ecosystem. It was a different kind of stage, one where the masks of the boardroom were swapped for lycra and sweat.

At first, she was a spectacle. As she moved between the weight machines or swam laps in the pristine pool, she felt the weight of stares. The whispers were rarely subtle. “Servus slut”, a woman in a designer workout set would murmur to her friend, not even bothering to lower her voice as Rei passed. “Takumi’s pet is allowed to use the facilities?” another would sneer in the sauna, the steam doing little to hide her contempt. The words ‘hostess’, ‘cheap’, and ‘dirty’ were hissed like curses, branding her as something soiled and beneath them.

The men were no better, though their approach was different. Their eyes, hungry and assessing, tracked the swing of her hips or the line of her back as she swam. They’d mutter comments about her ‘assets’ to each other, a crude appraisal of Takumi’s taste. But a palpable fear kept them at a distance. None dared approach; touching the executive’s favorite, was a career-ending move.

Rei endured it. She focused on the burn in her muscles, the rhythm of her strokes, using their disdain as fuel. They treated her as simultaneously invisible and hyper-visible. Over time, as she became a consistent presence, the novelty wore off. The overt bullying gave way to a colder, more casual indifference. It was in this space that the more interesting whispers began to reach her ears, snippets of conversation from those who assumed she was too far beneath them to understand their world and words.

She heard Cillian’s name one afternoon near the free weights. Two senior analysts were discussing security rotations. “…still with the exiled Kelly, I see” one said, shaking his head, “Takumi’s shadow. Can’t seem to shake him.” Exiled, the word stuck with her, painting a picture of Cillian’s past she knew nothing about.

But the most revealing whispers were about Takumi himself. In the hazy quiet of the sauna, she heard two mid-tier executives, their voices low and carefully casual, “The Bride-Prince is in a mood today,” one sighed, wiping sweat from her brow, “The old man must have denied another proposal.” The ‘old man’ was clearly the CEO, Takumi’s father-in-law.

The title ‘Bride-Prince’ was delivered with a delicate blend of fear and profound disdain. It was a narrative she pieced together over days: Takumi was revered for his ruthless efficiency and feared for his temper, but he was never truly considered one of them. He was an outsider who had married into the Kuroda dynasty, his power seen as borrowed, not earned. The respect he commanded was laced with the bitter resentment of old money for the brilliant, brutal interloper who now held the reins.

Standing under the shower’s spray afterwards, Rei turned these revelations over in her mind. The Plaza gym crowd saw Cillian as a disgraced exile, Takumi as a pretender to the Kuroda throne and her as a cheap toy; but in their whispered judgments, she found not only insults, but leverage. Understanding the cracks in the foundation of the world that held her captive was the first step to finding a way out. The gym had become more than a place to train her body; it had become her most valuable intelligence gathering post.

As the weeks continued to pass by, her existence in the Kuroda Plaza settled into a rhythm that was less a life and more a meticulously scheduled simulation. Rei existed in compartments.

By day, she was the Muse wearing the tailored dresses, the charcoal suit, the emerald gown, whatever fabric and cut best embodied the investor fantasy Takumi needed to sell. She smiled, poured coffee and offered calibrated insights on ‘user experience’ that were always vague enough to be intriguing, specific enough to sound informed. The Bicoca jewelry was a constant, warm presence against her skin, a silent scribe documenting every forced laugh, every measured pause, every spike of anxiety when a shareholder’s gaze lingered too long.

By night, she returned to the penthouse. Her sanctuary was the kitchen, now continuously fully stocked with pristine ingredients that arrived via silent, automated delivery. She cooked the meals she had planned for Takumi: seared scallops with yuzu foam, unagi don with fried capers, a delicate chawanmushi studded with ginkgo nuts. She plated them beautifully, for one. She ate at the vast dining table, the clink of her cutlery the only sound in the cavernous space. The ingredients did not go to waste; she savored them, but the act felt like a rehearsal for an audience that never arrived.

She tried, subtly, to invite him. “The kabayaki glaze turned out perfectly yesterday,” she’d mention as they wrapped up a late strategy session in his office, the city a diamond-studded void outside, “I have enough for two.” Takumi wouldn’t even look up from his slate, “Another time, Rei. The Oslo team requires my attention until midnight.” His tone was not unkind, just utterly preoccupied. The Helix Apex collaboration was a ravenous beast, and he was its sole handler.

When she pressed further, daring to ask about the ‘test,’ the sensual data that was her ticket to weekends of relative freedom, his dismissal was swift and final. “The baseline data is crucial,” he’d say, his grey eyes flicking to the choker at her throat, “You’re providing it simply by living. Focus on your ambassadorial duties. The rest will follow in due course.”

He was a fortress, buried in work, and the drawbridge was up. The man who had shared an espresso and discussed the poetry of flavor was gone, replaced by the Bride-Prince, fighting to secure his borrowed throne. The distance was a calculated tactic, she was sure. It kept her off-balance, longing for the attention he could withdraw so completely.

It also, perversely, fed her plan. Let him believe his indifference was a punishment, let him grow accustomed to her presence as a polished, compliant fixture. The longer he waited, the more potent her eventual ‘surrender’ would need to be. But the loneliness was a physical ache, a cold space in the penthouse that even the finest climate control couldn’t warm.

Cillian’s distance was a different kind of chill. It was meticulous, professional and utterly frustrating. He was there, a constant in the periphery, driving her to events, standing guard at doorways, a silent presence in the elevator bank. But the easy camaraderie was gone. When she slipped into the front passenger seat after a gala, hoping to reclaim their old banter, his responses were polite, deadpan and closed.

“Long night,” she’d sigh, kicking off her heels. “Indeed”, he’d murmur, making a turn. “That investor from Shanghai wouldn’t stop talking about his visions for adult entertainment. I nearly fell asleep with my eyes open”, Rei would try with a cautious smile. “A common hazard”, he would reply. “You could at least pretend to be amused, Cillian”, Rei pouted. A faint smile might touch his lips, but it never reached his eyes, “My apologies. On the inside I’m entertained, on the outside I must be the ever vigilant guard.”

He was a wall, a handsome, capable, infuriating wall. On the rare drives where he relaxed enough for a dry observation about the traffic or a particularly garish new holographic billboard, it felt like a glimpse of sun through storm clouds, brief and painfully missed when it vanished.

Cillian never lingered, he would deliver her to the penthouse door with a crisp,“Goodnight, Rei.” His turn on his heel was a military maneuver, leaving her standing alone before the door even clicked shut behind her. Never giving enough time for an invitation for tea, for whiskey, for a game of cards she would inevitably lose and avoiding any reference to the night they had spent talking in the dark.

Of course she understood. Takumi’s jealousy was a silent, ever-present threat, a sword he’d doubtlessly already hung over Cillian’s head. If Takumi had given a direct order to maintain distance, Cillian would follow it to the letter. His career, his safety, perhaps even his life, depended on it. Rei didn’t blame him, but the loss of her only real friend within the corporate cage carved a hollow space inside her.

So, she was alone. Her nights and her mandated weekends in the penthouse stretched out, empty and quiet. The silence drove her to the gym at dawn, where she could lose herself in the burn of exertion and the poisonous whispers of the corporate elite. It drove her to the kitchen, where she cooked elaborate meals, the scents of garlic, ginger and soy sauce failing to fill the emotional void.

Memories of the Den, of Karasu’s cunning smile and their shared, sharp-edged understanding, would surface with a painful clarity. She craved the soup dumplings from The Golden Pavilion, not just for their taste, but for the thread they represented, a lifeline to a world where she was seen as a person, not a perfect doll in the making. But she didn’t dare order the dim sum. The penthouse, her clothes, the very air she breathed felt monitored. A coded message in a food order was a risk she couldn’t take, not presently.

Instead, she focused. Rei practiced her katas in the living room and in the gym dojo, the movements a meditation on control and potential violence. She gathered the glossy corporate magazines left in the lobby and cut them up, creating strange, surreal collages of skyscrapers, food, and fragmented tech schematics, a visual diary of her fractured existence.

She listened in the gym, filing away every scrap of intel about Cillian’s past, Takumi’s precarious standing and the rotten foundations of Kuroda. She was observing, waiting, and slowly, quietly, getting stronger. The loneliness was a cold fire, and she was learning to burn it as fuel.