Eidolon

As Rei listened to Bjorn’s detailed tale of Gustav Thorne’s talents, she felt Hisako’s glare burn a hole through her skull. The memories surfaced not as a story, but as a sensory assault: the sterile scent of chlorine, the humid drip of condensation from the sauna ceiling, the muffled thump of bass from the gym’s sound system. 

Rei had just finished a punishing set of laps, her muscles singing with a clean, honest fatigue. The women’s sauna at the Kuroda Plaza gym was empty when she entered, a haven of cedar-scented heat. She draped her personal towel over the highest rack in the rinsing area, a thick, luxurious Kuroda-embossed cotton, entered the sauna and sank onto the pre-towelled bench, closing her eyes. The door hissed open. 

Cool air, followed by the clipped cadence of heeled spa slippers on tile, and the bright, vapid chatter of Hisako and her coven. Rei didn’t need to look. She knew the voices: Miko from Legal, with her razor-sharp bob and sharper tongue, Aiko from Finance, who measured a person’s worth in quarterly reports; and Hisako, the ringleader, whose ambition was matched only by her capacity for petty cruelty. Their conversation died the moment they saw her. 

“Well,” Miko drawled, her voice slick with faux surprise, “The facilities really are for everyone now, aren’t they?” Rei kept her eyes closed, regulating her breath while calming herself with an inner mantra, you’re steam on the glass. She heard the rustle of their towels, the creak of the bench as they sat opposite. The heat seemed to amplify their whispers, carrying them across the small room. 

“I heard Executive Takumi had to personally authorize her pass,” Aiko murmured, “Can you imagine? Bypassing all protocol. It sets such a… precarious precedent.” “Precedent?” Hisako’s laugh was a short, cold sound, “It’s not a precedent, it’s a privilege. One she clearly didn’t earn professionally – look at her, flaunting those curves, behaving like this is her spa.” Rei felt their stares like physical touches, crawling over the sheen of sweat on her skin, judging her nakedness, hunting for the old scars from a life before chrome and glass. 

She waited ten minutes, until the heat threatened to boil her composure, then stood. As a bare minimum of civility, she nodded politely and pushed through the heavy door into the cooler tiled shower area. Her towel was gone. She stood there for a moment, sweat gleaming on her skin, staring at the empty rack.

From the sauna, she heard a muffled, vicious giggle. They’d taken it in a small, childish act of domination. On her left, Rei saw it at the bottom of a bin, a full to-go cup of macha latte tossed on top. Without a towel, she’d have to walk, exposed, past the banks of lockers and the vanity mirrors, past the bathroom to reach the stock room. A path during which she would have to pass the afternoon crowd undoubtedly getting ready to leave the gym by now. 

Rei’s jaw tightened. She showered angrily then walked, back straight, to the far wall where a stack of thin, scratchy paper towels sat by a utility sink. She dried herself with the coarse sheets, each rustle a declaration of war. Later, when she passed the vanity, Hisako was applying a perfect coat of blood-red lipstick, her eyes meeting Rei’s in the mirror with icy triumph. 

“What, do you need something?” Hisako asked, sweetness dripping like poison. Rei didn’t answer. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only time Hisako, Miko and Aiko decided to cruelly prank her. Another day, in the main gym. Rei was on the lateral pull-down machine, focused on the burn between her shoulder blades, her water bottle sitting on the floor beside her. She saw Hisako and Aiko pass by on the adjacent treadmills, their conversation a meaningless buzz. When she finished her set and reached for her bottle, it was empty with a pool of water beneath it. She lifted to inspect the bottom. Just as she suspected, they had poked a series of holes along the base. They must have done it while her eyes were closed in concentration. 

At the hydration station, as she tossed the old and filled a new one, she heard Miko’s stage-whisper to a male executive on a nearby elliptical, “…like a stray that followed someone home. Now it’s gotten used to eating from the good bowls.” The man had chuckled, but his eyes, as they flicked to Rei, held a different kind of heat, a hungry, resentful appreciation. That was the true currency of that place: contempt laced with envy. 

They hated her for what she represented, a breach in their ordered, meritocratic façade, but they also, secretly, wanted the power of the allure that had granted her entry. Rei screwed the cap on her new bottle, the plastic cracking under the pressure of her grip. Without even glancing at them, she returned to the machine, lifted heavier, pushed harder. Their words were meant to make her feel small, dirty, out of place. Instead, they calcified her resolve. Their hatred was a mirror, and in its cruel reflection, she saw the outline of her own strength. 

For Hisako, the gym was a different kind of theater. It was where the hierarchies of the boardroom softened into the hierarchies of physique and seduction, where she could observe, strategize and feed her own carefully curated image. She always wore the latest, most expensive performance wear, her makeup flawless even in the sauna, a walking testament to discipline and taste. It was here she first witnessed the Rei Phenomenon. 

Hisako was on a treadmill, pretending not to watch as Rei moved through a series of free-weight exercises with a fluid, unselfconscious grace that seemed to defy the sterile environment. A group of mid-level managers, men Hisako knew, men who’d taken her to expensive dinners and made vague promises, were clustered by the weight racks. “That’s the one, right? From the Eidolon project?” one said, his voice low. “Morita, yeah, Takumi’s new… special project,” another replied, the pause speaking volumes. “Lucky bastard,” a third breathed, not even trying to hide his stare as Rei performed a deep, controlled squat, “I mean, look at the architecture on that. It’s not fair.” There was a round of gruff, agreeing laughter. “Tell me about it. He gets the top floor office, the CEO’s daughter, and that? The universe has a sick sense of humor.” 

“Bet she costs a fortune in upkeep,” the first man sneered, trying to reclaim some moral high ground, “Probably high-maintenance as hell.” But his eyes never left her. They all watched, a mixture of disdain and want. Their jealousy of Takumi was palpable. He had claimed a prize they now couldn’t touch, and it grated on them. In that moment, Rei wasn’t a person; she was the ultimate luxury asset, and Takumi’s ownership of her was a brutal reminder of their own relative impotence. 

Hisako felt a hot spike of satisfaction. Even they know what she was, a beautiful, expensive trophy. But the satisfaction curdled as she noticed their lingering gazes. The disdain was undercut by fascination. They called her a ‘project’ a ‘cost’ but their attention was unwavering. It was the same attention Hisako worked for hours to earn, with her witty remarks and strategic flattery, and this woman commanded it simply by existing. 

And then there was Shoma. The memory was a shard of glass in her heart. Hisako had believed, for a few glorious, foolish weeks, that she was different. Shoma, with his easy smile and lightning-quick reflexes, his reputation as the Plaza’s untamable casanova. She’d shared his bed, thrilled by the danger and the status it conferred. She’d let herself imagine more: power couple, his physical prowess complementing her strategic mind, a union that could climb to the very top of Kuroda’s cut-troat ladder. 

She’d tried to broach the subject over post-coital cocktails. “This is… good, isn’t it?” she’d ventured, tracing the rim of her glass, a hand on his knee, “We make a good team.” Shoma had given her a lazy, devastating smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Hisako, you’re fantastic, a force of nature. But this?” He gestured between them, “This is just casual fun. I made that clear the first time we hooked up. You know I’m a free spirit. Serious relationships just aren’t for me.” The rejection had been a professional and personal annihilation. It told her that for all her accomplishments, she was still just entertainment; a more sophisticated one than Rei, perhaps, but ultimately disposable. The rumor, heard just before the Oslo trip, was the final, twisting knife. Shoma and the Morita girl seen at The Aerie, looking cozy, then left together hand in hand. The words had echoed in Hisako’s skull, drowning out all reason. 

That vixen, that Chochin gutter-snipe who had already ensnared Takumi and was now somehow charming Bjorn Jorgensen, had also touched her remnant, her wounded pride. Shoma, who had refused her offer of something real, was apparently not above sampling Takumi’s favourite. It confirmed everything Hisako needed to believe: Rei wasn’t just ambitious, she was a predator, a social virus spreading through the body of Kuroda, infecting every man of worth with her cheap allure. She consumed attention and influence like oxygen, leaving none for anyone else. Her poise at lunch was the practiced manipulation of a courtesan, and the men, for all their power, were too blinded by her perfect body, ruby hair and mesmerizing eyes to see it.