The train to Saitama was emptier than Ren expected.
Monday afternoon, just past three o'clock. The rush hour hadn't started yet. The salarymen were still in their offices, the students were still at their clubs, the mothers were still collecting their children from elementary school. The carriage swayed gently as it pulled away from Shinjuku station, the city shrinking behind them like a memory.
Ren sat by the window, his reflection a ghost superimposed over the passing suburbs. Hikari sat beside him, close enough that their thighs touched. She had stopped apologizing for the proximity. He had stopped minding.
"Tanaka Yui," Hikari read from Ren's phone. "Age thirty-one. Former executive assistant at Tachibana Real Estate Holdings. Left the company two years ago, six months before my father's arrest." She looked up. "The timing is suspicious."
"Everything about Kenji is suspicious." Ren's eyes were fixed on the landscape, but his mind was elsewhere—running calculations, probabilities, scenarios. "She filed a lawsuit against the company three months after she left. Sexual harassment. Hostile work environment. The case was settled out of court, which means Kenji paid her to keep quiet."
"Or my father paid her."
"Maybe. But your father was still in charge two years ago. If Tanaka Yui had a problem with Kenji, she would have gone to your father first. She didn't. She went straight to a lawyer." Ren finally turned to look at her. "That means she was scared of someone. And she didn't think your father could protect her."
Hikari's expression flickered—pain, anger, something softer underneath. "My father wasn't a bad man. He just... he trusted the wrong people. He trusted Kenji."
"Trust is expensive," Ren said. "Most people can't afford it."
The train rattled on. Hikari was quiet for a long moment. Then she reached over and took his hand.
"You trusted me," she said. "You let me stay. You're going to Saitama with me to talk to a stranger about things that hurt. That's not expensive. That's just... brave."
Ren looked at their intertwined fingers. His hand looked pale and thin next to hers. Hers looked warm and alive.
"I'm not brave," he said. "I'm just too tired to run anymore."
"That's the same thing."
The train announced their station. Omiya. The heart of Saitama city, a sprawling concrete maze of department stores and office buildings and narrow alleyways where the real city lived. Tanaka Yui worked at a small accounting firm on the fourth floor of a building that had probably been built in the 1980s and hadn't been renovated since.
They walked from the station in silence. The wind was cold, biting through Ren's thin jacket. Hikari wore a coat she had bought at the mall—simple, navy blue, surprisingly warm-looking. She noticed him shivering and rolled her eyes.
"I told you to buy a coat."
"I told you I don't shop."
"You shopped for clothes."
"Because you made me."
"I'm making you again. We're buying you a coat after this." She pulled her scarf from her bag—a soft cream-colored thing that smelled like her—and wrapped it around his neck. "There. Now you look slightly less like a homeless person."
"I don't need—"
"You need a lot of things, Ren. Warmth is one of them." She walked ahead, not waiting for his response.
Ren touched the scarf. It was still warm from her skin.
He followed.
---
The accounting firm was called "Asahi Tax Services." The name was painted in faded gold letters on a frosted glass door. Inside, the office was small—two desks, a filing cabinet, a single computer that looked older than Ren. A woman sat at one of the desks, her fingers moving across a calculator with practiced efficiency.
She was in her early thirties, with short brown hair and glasses that kept sliding down her nose. Her face was tired in the way that came from years of waking up early and going to bed late and never quite catching up. But her eyes—behind the glasses, behind the exhaustion—were sharp.
"Excuse me," Hikari said. "We're looking for Tanaka Yui-san."
The woman looked up. Her gaze moved from Hikari to Ren, then back to Hikari. Something flickered in her expression—recognition, maybe, or fear.
"I'm Tanaka Yui," she said. "Who's asking?"
Hikari stepped forward. "My name is Tachibana Hikari. Tachibana Hiroshi's daughter."
Tanaka Yui's face went pale. She set down her calculator slowly, carefully, like it might explode if she moved too fast.
"You should leave," she said. "I don't talk about that place. I don't talk about those people."
"I'm not asking you to talk about my father." Hikari's voice was steady, calm, the voice of someone who had learned to beg without sounding desperate. "I'm asking you to talk about Kenji. My stepbrother. The man who was your boss."
Tanaka Yui's jaw tightened. "I signed an NDA. Non-disclosure agreement. If I talk to you, I could be sued. I could lose my job. I could lose everything."
"You already lost everything once," Ren said quietly. "That's why you're here. In this office. With this calculator. Doing someone else's books instead of running your own department."
Tanaka Yui's eyes snapped to him. "Who are you?"
"Someone who wants to hurt Kenji as much as you do."
The office was silent. The only sound was the hum of the old computer and the distant rumble of traffic on the street below. Tanaka Yui stared at Ren, her sharp eyes searching his face for something—a lie, a trick, a reason to throw them out.
Then she laughed. It was a bitter sound, dry and cracked, like something that had been broken a long time ago.
"You're a kid," she said. "Both of you are kids. You don't know what you're getting into. Kenji Takahashi isn't just a bad boss. He's connected. He knows people. People with money. People with power. People who can make problems disappear."
"Then help us make him disappear first." Ren stepped closer, his hands in his pockets, his posture relaxed but his eyes intense. "You filed a lawsuit against him. You know what he did. You know what he's capable of. And you know that he's going to do it again—to Hikari, to someone else, to whoever gets in his way."
Tanaka Yui looked at Hikari. Her expression softened, just slightly.
"You look like your mother," she said. "I met her once. At a company party. She was beautiful. And sad. Very sad."
Hikari's throat moved. "Please. I'm not asking you to testify in court. I'm not asking you to break your NDA publicly. I just need to know—what kind of man is Kenji? What is he hiding? What can I use to protect myself?"
Tanaka Yui was quiet for a long time. She took off her glasses, cleaned them with a cloth from her drawer, put them back on. Then she stood up and walked to the door.
"Lock this," she said, turning the lock on the frosted glass door. "And sit down. Both of you."
They sat.
Tanaka Yui didn't return to her desk. She leaned against the filing cabinet, her arms crossed, her eyes distant.
"I started at Tachibana Real Estate when I was twenty-four," she said. "Fresh out of university. Bright-eyed. Naive. I thought I was going to change the world." A bitter smile. "Instead, the world changed me."
She talked for forty minutes.
She talked about Kenji's temper. His charm. The way he could make you feel like the most important person in the room, and then, five minutes later, make you feel like garbage. The way he touched her shoulder a little too long, stood a little too close, made comments that could be interpreted as jokes or threats depending on who was listening.
She talked about the night he cornered her in the copy room. The things he said. The way his hand moved. The way she froze, because she didn't know what would happen if she fought back.
She talked about the lawsuit. The settlement. The money that bought her silence and her shame and her new life in this small office in Saitama, where no one knew her name and no one asked about her past.
"I have proof," she said finally. Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper. "I recorded him. Not the whole conversation—I was too scared to get everything. But enough. Enough to prove what kind of man he is."
Ren leaned forward. "Where is the recording?"
"In a safe place. A place he'll never find." She looked at Hikari. "I kept it because I thought someday I might need it. To protect myself. To protect someone else." She paused. "I think that day is today."
Hikari's eyes were wet. "Why are you giving this to us? You don't know us. You don't owe us anything."
Tanaka Yui smiled. It was a sad smile, but there was something else underneath—a flicker of hope, maybe, or justice.
"Because I was you once," she said. "Young. Scared. Alone. And no one helped me. No one believed me. I don't want that to happen to you."
She walked to the filing cabinet, unlocked a drawer at the very bottom, and pulled out a small USB drive. Black. Unmarked. She held it out to Hikari.
"Take it. Do whatever you need to do. But be careful. Kenji has eyes everywhere. If he finds out you have this—"
"He won't," Ren said. He took the USB drive from Tanaka Yui's hand. His fingers brushed hers. They were cold. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me." Tanaka Yui walked back to her desk and sat down. She picked up her calculator, her fingers hovering over the keys. "Just make sure he pays for what he did. Not for me. For the next girl. For all the girls."
"We will," Hikari said.
Tanaka Yui didn't look up. "The lock is off the door. Let yourselves out."
They stood. Hikari bowed deeply—a full ninety degrees, the kind of bow reserved for funerals and deepest gratitude. Ren didn't bow. He just looked at Tanaka Yui for a long moment, memorizing her face, her tired eyes, her trembling hands.
Then they walked out.
---
The train back to Tokyo was crowded.
The rush hour had begun. Salarymen in dark suits pressed against each other, their faces blank with exhaustion. Schoolgirls gossiped in high-pitched voices. An old man snored in the corner, his head lolling.
Ren and Hikari stood near the doors, pushed together by the crowd. Hikari's back was against the wall. Ren stood in front of her, his arms on either side, creating a small pocket of space that the crowd couldn't invade. He wasn't touching her—not exactly—but he was close enough that she could feel his breath on her forehead.
"We did it," Hikari whispered. "We actually did it."
"We have evidence," Ren corrected. "Evidence isn't victory. It's ammunition. We still need to use it correctly."
"How?"
"I don't know yet." He looked down at her. In the dim light of the train, her eyes were dark, almost black. "But we have time. Kenji gave us a week. That's six more days."
"And after six days?"
"After six days, we show him that he made a mistake." Ren's voice was flat, but there was something underneath—a coldness, a certainty, the same voice he had used in boardrooms at eleven years old. "You don't threaten someone who has nothing to lose."
Hikari reached up and touched his cheek. Her fingers were warm. He didn't pull away.
"You're not nothing," she said. "You've never been nothing."
The train announced their station. Shin-Okubo. The doors opened. The crowd surged. And Ren took Hikari's hand—not because he had to, not because the crowd forced him, but because he wanted to.
They walked home through the neon-lit streets, the USB drive burning a hole in Ren's pocket.
The warmth of unwanted things.
He was starting to understand what that meant.