Yuna's fingers hovered over her keyboard, her attention nowhere near the editorial calendar she was supposed to be finalizing. She was halfway through an email to the art department—"can we please stop putting serif fonts on covers, it's not 1999"—when the door to Hana's bedroom creaked open.
She looked up.
Dress shirt. Pencil skirt. Hair tamed into something almost legally acceptable. Lipstick subtle, but dangerous.
Hana looked like she was on her way to seduce a boardroom and ruin a few lives before lunch.
Yuna blinked once. Twice. And grinned.
"You look hot. What's the occasion?"
Hana was already halfway to the mirror, inspecting her collar like it might be plotting betrayal. "Sato-san asked me to present to a client later," she said, excitement barely hidden beneath the casual tone. She tried for nonchalance, but her eyes were glowing like a kid who'd just been given her first lightsaber.
Yuna leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, watching her best friend transform from chaos goblin to high-functioning business threat in real time.
"You really need to introduce me to this Sato guy. I'm serious."
Hana scoffed, straightening her sleeves. "Not until I'm convinced he's good enough for you."
Yuna laughed. "I dated the man who bought me a goldfish and then dumped me because I forgot its name. I think the bar's low."
Hana turned, head tilted. "Am I at least presentable?"
Yuna sat up straighter, the warmth behind her smile laced with genuine admiration. Hana didn't see it—she never did—but when she got like this? Focused, polished, eyes alive with sharp intent? She didn't just look presentable. She looked unstoppable.
"Your boss will have a heart attack," Yuna said, and meant it. Katsuki Hasegawa was probably going to internally combust. And he would deserve it.
Hana grinned, sly and wicked. "Wait until you see the shoes."
And then—like a magician about to pull the final card from her sleeve—she bent down and pulled a box from under the coffee table. Manolo Blahnik. White ribbon. Zero subtlety.
Yuna's mouth dropped open.
"Are those actual Manolos?" she said, voice pitched somewhere between awe and righteous indignation. "As in—Sex and the City, stomp-on-the-patriarchy, financially-irresponsible shoes?"
Hana glanced down, completely unbothered. "Mm-hmm."
Yuna stared. "You let him bribe you."
"They're Manolos," Hana said, tone flat like this was basic math. "If he handed me a restraining order with a red sole, I'd probably still sign it."
Yuna clutched her chest. "You're enabling his emotionally repressed power complex."
Hana didn't blink. "I'm enabling my arches. And if necessary, I will also use these heels to pierce his skull. These are multipurpose."
Yuna barked out a laugh, something bright and full, the kind of sound that made people turn in restaurants. "Kill them, babe."
Hana blew her a kiss, that signature smirk curling at the edge of her lips as she turned back toward the mirror. Efficient. Lethal.
Yuna watched her for a moment longer.
It wasn't just the outfit. Or the confidence. Or even the fact that Hana somehow made silent rage look like couture.
It was the brilliance. The way her eyes sharpened when she talked about contracts. How her fingers twitched when she was thinking, like her brain moved too fast for her body to catch up. She was meant to be in rooms like that. Built for them.
But every time someone tried to tell her that, she waved it off. Shrugged. Laughed.
Too many disappointments. Too much silence in the moments that mattered. She'd been let down enough to stop reaching.
She hadn't taken the bar again. Yuna never brought it up. Not directly. But she saw it—how Hana poured everything she had into being enough, and still didn't believe she was.
She deserved better.
And maybe, if that ice-cold bastard boss of hers was smart enough to buy her those shoes, he'd figure the rest out eventually.
Still watching her, Yuna tilted her head.
I should borrow those shoes for the party this weekend, she thought, already planning her outfit.
-----
Katsuki sat at the head of the conference table, posture sharp, gaze sharper. His expression was impassive, calculated—his default setting. His assistant, however, had just hijacked the room.
Again.
Hana was mid-response, voice steady, inflection carefully neutral—too carefully. She was answering a logistics question about regional compliance codes. Which was not, in any universe, her job.
And yet the client—their third-largest, bloated with self-importance and capital gain—was smiling at her like she'd just solved world hunger and invented carbon-neutral air travel in the same breath.
He didn't look at her. Not directly. Just tracked her through his peripheral vision, cataloguing the way she stood, spine straight, arms relaxed, voice pitched just above the room's ambient hum. Her shoes—those shoes—clicked against the floor with a kind of smug precision.
Buying them had been a mistake.
He seldom admitted mistakes.
But this one? Textbook tactical error.
They made her taller. Sharper. More noticeable. And now - she had become the de facto lead on a client meeting that was supposed to be nothing more than a technical formality.
Worse, the client liked her.
He remembered, with distinct irritation, exactly how it happened.
"Hey, Sukehiro—want to take this one?" Kai had said, far too casually, flipping through the pre-meeting packet like it wasn't premeditated sabotage.
Hana's head had snapped up. Bright eyes. Brighter smile. "Of course."
Of course.
Like it was a gift. Like it wasn't bait.
Kai had just grinned. That lazy, smug, sunshine-slicked grin he wore whenever he was setting something on fire and walking away from the smoke. He handed her the files without a glance in Katsuki's direction.
"It is for next week. Prepare and dress up, will you?" he'd added.
The audacity.
Back in the present, Katsuki didn't blink, didn't sigh, didn't move—but his blood pressure climbed by at least eight points.
"She's getting good, isn't she?" Kai murmured beside him, low enough that only Katsuki heard it.
He didn't answer. Not aloud.
Yes, she was getting good.
Too good.
Good enough to field contracts. To negotiate beneath the radar. To parry questions with enough tact and teeth to make junior partners look like interns.
And lately—too often—she was learning it from Kai.
They were getting close. Closer than they needed to be. Whispers in the hallway. Laughter in the elevator. Private jokes that Katsuki had not authorized. Her eyes always softened around Kai, and Kai had started using that goddamn tone with her—light, instructive, friendly.
It wasn't jealousy.
It was a simple, practical acknowledgment that his best friend—a manipulative bastard with no business mentoring anyone—was spending too much goddamn time with his assistant.
If Kai thought for one second that he was going to swoop in and turn Hana into some pet project—
Snap.
The pen cracked in his hand, a clean, clinical break that echoed across the room with the sound of a tiny, precision-engineered fracture.
Silence.
Twelve heads turned.
Hana's eyes flicked to his, and of course—of course—she looked amused.
He exhaled, slow. Controlled. Dropped the pen on the table like it hadn't betrayed him.
"Wrap it up," he said, his voice calm and final. He was already pushing to his feet, done with this meeting, this client, this entire goddamn theatre of productivity.
Hana just smirked. That infuriating, lip-curled half-smile that always meant she'd noticed everything.
"Copy that, boss."
He ignored the way her voice sounded too pleased.
-----
The conference room cleared in waves—executives filing out, still murmuring about compliance zones and quarterly projections. Katsuki stayed where he was, fingers steepled in front of him, watching as Kai pulled Hana aside.
They stood by the windows, framed by the city skyline like two actors in a closing scene.
Hana listened intently, iPad still tucked under her arm, head tilted, nodding at regular intervals. She wasn't interrupting. She wasn't correcting. She was absorbing.
Which was worse.
Kai, smiling, gestured as he spoke, hands slicing through the air like a conductor cueing the rhythm of a better performance.
"You had them, but you gave them the answer too early," Kai said, voice low and smooth. "Let them sit in the silence a beat longer. Makes them think it was their idea."
Hana nodded, eyes focused. "Like a power pause?"
"Exactly. A beat of dead air makes nervous men fold faster than bad poker hands. You want to be the silence that unnerves them."
She grinned. "You say that like I'm not already terrifying."
Kai laughed. "You are. But now you're learning how to weaponize it."
Katsuki stared, unmoving.
She was picking up Kai's tactics.
She was learning how to manipulate the room.
Which, on paper, was excellent. Strategic. The kind of skillset Hasegawa & Sato needed in their future leaders.
But in practice?
It felt like watching someone siphon water from his private well.
His jaw tightened.
Kai reached for the packet in Hana's hands, brushing her wrist as he pointed out something—something Katsuki couldn't hear but didn't need to. The closeness was too casual. Too comfortable.
He stood, then. Straightened his cuffs. Walked out without a word.
He didn't need to stay.
He already knew everything he needed to know.
And his next move would be calculated accordingly.