Chapter 50: One Remaining Priority

POV: Kaito Minami

The office was empty.

Not mine—not anymore. The corner suite I had once treated as a command center now felt like a staged replica of itself, stripped of intent, reduced to walls and furniture that no longer answered to me. The city stretched beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows in gray layers of steel and glass, but even that familiar view felt distant, like something I was no longer permitted to claim.

I sat at the edge of the desk rather than behind it. The chair felt wrong. The leather was cold through the thin fabric of my dress shirt, a reminder of how long I had been sitting still, staring at nothing. The surface of the desk was bare—no documents, no tablet, no neatly aligned schedule dictating the next twelve hours of my life.

The news had come fast.

A short meeting. Polite language. Carefully neutral expressions. My name removed from executive authority with surgical efficiency. There had been no room for argument, no leverage to apply, no pressure point to exploit.

My father’s judgment had fallen like a silent gavel.

Final.

I accepted it because there was nothing else to do.

And still, my thoughts refused to settle anywhere but her.

Hana Fujimura.

Her name surfaced unbidden, pressing against my consciousness like a question I could not answer. I pictured her as I had last seen her—quiet, observant, composed in a way that concealed more than it revealed. The image lodged itself in my chest, sharp and persistent.

I had no idea what she had endured.

No messages.
No calls.
No sign that she had even seen the chaos that erupted the moment my position collapsed.

I didn’t know she had been followed. That cameras had turned toward her. That strangers had spoken her name as if it belonged to them. I didn’t know the media had traced lines between us with greedy precision, reshaping her existence into a footnote of my downfall.

All I knew was that she hadn’t contacted me.

Not once.

At first, I told myself that was for the best.

I had sent her away deliberately. Seven days of silence, calculated and controlled, designed to keep her outside the radius of impact. I had convinced myself that distance equaled safety. That if I removed myself from her life, the storm would pass without touching her.

That was what I told myself.

But the absence had weight.

It pressed against me constantly, a dull ache beneath my ribs that no amount of rationalization could dull. The longer the silence stretched, the more it felt like something essential had been taken from me without my consent.

The overhead lights cast sharp shadows across the room, turning the glass walls into cold mirrors. I caught my reflection briefly—tired, rigid, unfamiliar. A man without leverage. Without armor.

I had nothing left to protect her with.

No authority.
No corporate shield.
No resources I could deploy with a single call.

Not even influence.

And yet—

I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

The quiet moments in the penthouse returned uninvited: the soft sound of her footsteps, the way she occupied space without demanding it, the faint warmth that lingered after she left a room. She had never tried to claim anything that wasn’t offered. Never demanded reassurance or protection.

Even when I had kept my distance, she had remained constant in my thoughts—steady, unyielding, untouched by the strategies that governed the rest of my life.

I had failed her.

Every decision I had made with the intention of control, every calculated retreat, had led me here—powerless, stripped, uncertain. And in that uncertainty, one truth stood with painful clarity.

I had to see her.

I had to know she was safe.

The realization settled deeper than any boardroom consequence I had ever faced. My career was dismantled. My position erased. Years of precision undone in a matter of days.

None of it mattered.

If Hana Fujimura was in danger, the rest was irrelevant.

I stood slowly, muscles protesting the movement. Fatigue lingered in places I had long ignored, a reminder that I had not allowed myself rest—not during the crisis, and certainly not now. Outside the windows, Tokyo continued in muted motion, indifferent to my personal defeat.

Inside me, something had narrowed and hardened.

I needed her.

If the world placed obstacles in my way, I would navigate around them. If I had lost the structures that once made movement effortless, then I would move without them.

Because losing control of everything else meant nothing—

Compared to losing her.