Riku did not write that night.

He opened the draft, outlined three possible angles for the article, and deleted each of them in turn. None felt precise enough. The hearing had not given him a scandal but something more difficult — a man who answered every question without defensiveness and without visible strain.

That should have made the piece easier to construct. Instead, it complicated it.

He leaned back in his chair and stared at the blinking cursor, aware that the delay in disclosure was still real, still measurable, still worth scrutiny.

He stood and moved toward the kitchen, pausing halfway when the memory resurfaced with unwelcome clarity. Not the words exchanged in the corridor, but the physical correction — the steady hand at his side, the deliberate timing of its withdrawal.

It had not been intimate or improper. Yet it had not felt accidental either.

Without fully intending to, he touched the side of his waist, pressing his fingers lightly against the fabric of his shirt as if confirming the absence of anything tangible. The sensation was gone. The awareness was not.

He lowered his hand. 

He had not stepped away...

His phone vibrated on the counter.

The screen lit up with a familiar name. Hiro Tanaka.

Riku let it ring once more before answering.

“You’re hesitating,” Hiro said without greeting.

“I’m revising.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

Riku leaned against the counter, gaze unfocused. “The hearing didn’t give us a clean angle.”

“It gave you nine days of delay,” Hiro replied. “That’s enough for questions.”

“It’s also enough for context.”

There was a pause on the other end.

“You sound different,” Hiro said finally. “Did something happen?”

Riku’s jaw tightened slightly. “No.”

“Good,” Hiro replied. “Because Kiyose won’t stay quiet much longer. If we publish, it has to be deliberate.”

After the call ended, the apartment felt smaller. Riku returned to his desk, but before he could reopen the draft, another notification appeared. 

A message from an unfamiliar number. He stared at it for a moment before opening it.

Takamori:
You’re reconsidering the angle.

It was not phrased as a question. Riku felt his pulse shift from the certainty embedded in the statement.

He typed a response, deleted it, then wrote another.

The reply came almost immediately.

Emotion complicates strategy.

Riku read the message once, then again, as if expecting additional context to follow. None did. The statement stood on its own, direct and unadorned.

He let out a quiet breath and set the phone down on the desk, irritation surfacing more quickly than he liked. The phrasing was typical of Takamori — efficient, impersonal, structured to sound like a principle.

Was that what he had been accused of?

Emotion.

Riku leaned back in his chair, replaying the afternoon in his head. The hearing had not been reckless. The questions had been measured. The article he was drafting was built on facts.

And yet he had hesitated.

Not because the timeline was unclear, because the man behind it was.

He picked up the phone again but didn’t type. If emotion complicated strategy, then perhaps strategy was exactly what Takamori was offering and testing.