Tides Turning, Part Three

There’s a truck parked outside the building when she clocks in the next morning.

“What—no, I wanted it gone by 7, why is it still here,” Kirishima’s lizard of a PA is hissing into his phone when she passes. “I don’t care if it’s not violating any parking laws, I want it gone. Yesterday. If it isn’t gone in an hour, I’ll— Ah. Hakaze,” he says, smooth. “I’ll be with you to explain in a moment.”

“You don’t have to,” she says, amused. “It’s pretty self-explanatory.”

On the truck is a huge picture of Neonite. Over it, a banner hangs: Let Neonite out of the dungeon please!

More staff members are rolling in, pausing in their mid-morning daze to look up at it. A few faces get the same pinched, unhappy look that Kirishima’s PA has: the rest –producers and technicians, choreographers, even some Marketing people she knows by sight—look extremely amused. So does Mamoru, who shuffles toward her with a weary grin.

“Neonite’s fans are shockingly polite even when they’re giving ultimatums,” Mamoru says. “You think this is gonna come up in today’s meeting?”

“Which one,” Hakaze says blandly, and he laughs. The world’s lizardiest PA had scheduled a million in the days prior, clearly working with some internal deadline that she wasn’t aware of.

She could guess, though.

“The deadlines to go ahead for the survival show’s sponsors are at the end of the week,” he says. “They haven’t found a single one that doesn’t ask for a Neonite appearance. And now this.”

She rocks back on her heels. Sakura will probably be here soon, and Hakaze doesn’t want to be spotted with her. Not when things were so close.

“Do you want to go get coffee before it starts?”

The kitchenette on the fourth floor smells faintly of citrus cleaner and old sugar, and some kind of air freshener that smells vaguely of lavender. There’s been a laminated sign over the espresso machine that reads TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE for about a month now, and both she and Mamoru blithely ignore it in favor of hitting it a couple times till it works, spitting out extremely watery coffee.

Kirishima’s PA joins them while they’re drinking it in grim silence. He’s clutching his tablet like a shield, and tenses when he spots Mamoru.

“Sorry to disturb you, I just wanted a small clarification on Manufacturing’s behalf before the meeting begins,” he says.

Mamoru groans. “On what.”

“Timeline,” he says. Then, hesitating, “Tentative timeline.”

Hakaze adds sugar and stirs it vigorously.

“Will that tentative timeline lose us more money,” Mamoru says, resigned.

“Projections say the losses are within expected range,” the PA says, expression impassive when Mamoru groans. “Which is why if—if something were to move forward, it would need to be before the survival show wraps. Otherwise the narratives cannibalize.”

Mamoru waved a hand. “Narratives always cannibalize. That’s what PR is for.”

“Yes,” the PA said, scrolling. “But this one would cannibalize expensively. The projected losses are...above an acceptable threshold. Mr. Kirishima met with the shareholders yesterday, and they’re...displeased. I was hoping to clear things as much as possible before today’s alignment meeting.”

Hakaze feels almost bad for him. “Rough morning you’re having over there. Did the truck go away?”

“No,” he says, intensely annoyed for a beat before the impassive mask slips back into place. Hakaze ought to tell him not to bother: his perfectly-gelled hairstyle’s been ruined by him running his fingers through it.

“So it’s true? We have a tentative date?”

The PA swallows. “Mid-quarter. Second Friday.”

Mamoru laughed, sharp and disbelieving. “That soon? Do you even have a product to release?”

They both look at Hakaze, who shrugs. “Album’s ready to go whenever. It’s been greenlit for weeks, the suppliers and distributors would probably be willing to negotiate.”

Mamoru and the PA both sigh, before the latter checks his watch and hurries into the conference room. Hakaze and Mamoru follow.

The real meeting begins as meetings always did at Astreon: punctual to a tee, titled badly, everyone shuffling in with very little idea of what was going on.

The conference room is one of the long white affairs that Hakaze regards with no fondness. A screen at the far end displays a slide deck titled NOISE REVIEW, which, okay. If the goal was to be oblique, home run. Mamoru sits next to her and rolls his eyes violently when he flips through the handout on the table. Not long after, Fuma staggers in and takes the seat on her other side, pushing her one of her energy drinks without a word.

Kirishima arrives last. He cuts an intimidating figure: easily clearing 6 feet, his navy-blue suit and cashmere tie impeccable. He’s handsome in a dignified, polished way, carries himself with utmost grace despite being on the very verge of being fired with great prejudice.

Hakaze privately thinks being fired would be too good for him; he needed to be arrested.

“Good morning, everyone,” he says. “I’m sure you’ve all heard the rumors of what we’re here to talk about today. Even if you hadn’t, there’s a truck parked outside that would bring you up to speed.”

A few polite titters. Their corner of the table stays dead silent.

The first slides concerned Harua.

Harua appeared only as an aggregate. His individual behaviors collapsed into averages and his deviations absorbed into revised assumptions. Risk-adjusted projections replaced raw engagement numbers. Someone had built the model so that it favored consistency over reach, retention over visibility. Whatever made him difficult to predict had been engineered out of the dataset.

A woman from Marketing — Hakaze didn’t know her name, only that she always wore white sneakers with her suits — cleared her throat. “We’re seeing unusually low volatility,” she said, sounding faintly offended by it. “Normally rumor cycles look more… serrated.”

She gestured, clicking. The line smoothed obediently.

Mamoru leaned forward. “It’s because it’s not aspirational yet. Fans aren’t arguing about what it means. They’re just… anticipating.”

“Anticipating what,” Kirishima asked.

Nobody answered right away.

Hakaze watched the room do its thing: producers shifting in their seats, someone from Legal tapping a pen and then stopping when they noticed they were doing it, the PA hovering on the edge of the table like a nervous bird.

“The album,” the Marketing woman said finally. “Hypothetically.”

Kirishima nodded once. Grave. Encouraging. “Continue.”

The next slide layered sentiment analysis. Words like healing, return, finally floated up in pastel bubbles. Someone from Digital muttered, “That’s new,” under their breath.

“This wasn’t seeded,” Mamoru said again, sharper this time. “I want that on record.”

A man Hakaze didn’t recognize — Finance, maybe, or Strategy — adjusted his glasses. “It doesn’t read as planted,” he said. “This is the first time we’re seeing these. It almost seems sincere. The truck helps, too.”

Sincere. Hakaze almost smiled.

The PA raises a hand, half-apologetic. “There is… another variable.”

The slide changed.

The photo filled the screen.

There was a quiet, collective intake of breath — not scandalized, not excited. Appraising. The kind of sound professionals made when they realized something would be annoying to deal with.

Ren’s profile was caught mid-turn, sharp and luminous even in bad lighting. Hakaze herself was half out of frame, unguarded, eyes soft with exhaustion. The timestamp glowed faintly at the bottom.

All the heads in the room turn to her.

She smiles. “That’s really tasteful, thanks for picking that one.”

“It’s already circulating,” the PA said. “Not aggressively. Fan reception is mixed, with a majority of the sentiment being anomalously positive. That is also, unfortunately, being slated as part of Neonite’s radio silence, and even a dating rumor is being welcomed.”

“Hence the truck,” Hakaze murmurs.

“Hence the truck,” the PA agrees, his shoulders twitching in the motion of a shrug.

Kirishima leans back in his chair, crosses his legs thoughtfully. “That introduced unwelcome noise nonetheless.”

“It introduces a distraction,” the head of PR, Ms. Fukunaga in her stylish green blazer, says. She’s a lady with the vibe of a glamorous auntie. Hakaze had tried to pull her harmless-burnout act on her some years prior to try to weasel into her confidence, but found her too shrewd for Hakaze’s bullshit to fly.

That’s becoming a running theme in her life.

She goes on, clicking her pen. “Ren and Hakaze being spotted in public means there’s still room for doubt, in the public’s eyes. As she keeps insisting, she’s a sound engineer. We could build the noise towards hype for Harua’s album. Meet me after this, by the way,” she adds, to Hakaze, who finds herself in the rare position of a direct confrontation. She’s bad at those. She nods meekly.

The PA pulls up another overlay, where it’s a graph of audience attention. “Early evidence supports Ms. Fukushima’s claims. Eclipse had a reputation for being good seniors and colleagues, so that contributes to a not insignificant amount of excitement for a potential collab.”

“With me?” Hakaze blurts. “I’m just a—”

“Sound engineer, we know,” the PA says, even as Mamoru and Fuma mouth along. A sense of betrayal kicks in her chest: not hard, but petulant. Did everyone see through her that clearly?

“What does it do to Harua’s numbers?” Kirishima asks. His voice is an Arctic wind that makes everyone’s grins freeze.

His PA sighs.

The numbers, when he reveals the slide, make someone in the room suck air through their teeth loudly. Mamoru laughs, surprised.

“They’re improving in older demographics,” one of the analysts cowering behind the PA says. “And female fans over twenty-five.”

“Define improving,” Kirishima says.

“The churn of those demographics has significantly dropped off since the rumors began circulating on social media, and support for Neonite is stronger than ever.”

The room loosens, just a fraction.

Hakaze felt it then — a subtle shift, like noticing a current under still water. This wasn’t panic. This was recalibration.

Kirishima steepled his fingers. “So,” he said evenly, “we suppress the photo.”

The head of PR shakes her head, making Kirishima look briefly, nakedly furious. She ignores him. “Suppression freezes it. Then it becomes the thing. If we let it breathe, it dilutes.”

“And then that becomes the story,” Mamoru adds. “Frozen assets are harder to manage.”

Kirishima’s jaw tightens. Only a millimeter. “Then we redirect.”

“To what,” he asked, already knowing.

Mamoru exhaled. “To Harua. If the album proceeds.”

The PA swallowed. “There’s also the sponsor clause.”

A few groans, both theatrical and genuine.

“The survival show sponsors are asking — again — for a Neonite appearance,” the PA said. “They’re… unusually unified.”

“Unified how,” Kirishima asked.

“They’re framing it as risk mitigation,” the PA said carefully. “They believe Neonite stabilizes the volatility of an untested rookie group. We were in talks with the networks, but the flipped in the past few days and have insisted on Neonite as well. We suspect it might be because of their past experiences working with Neonite, and Ren in particular.”

Hakaze feels something click into place. Ren.

She pictures him in some glass-walled office, posture perfect, voice mild, saying exactly the right thing to exactly the right person. He was all major TV networks’ golden boy, how could they ignore him? He hosted almost every other live music show last year. Just his face could get your viewers to triple.

She feels crazy again. That specific thrill in her blood: see, Prince, wasn’t that easy after all?

Mamoru rubbed his temples. “Coincidentally, album promotions would mean Harua trends again, which could mean even more viewership for the survival show if he appears.”

“And if we delay?” Kirishima asked.

The room is quiet. Kirishima shows nothing on his face, but a blind man could tell he’s furious: his face is white, lips pale.

Finally, the answer comes from the speaker in the room; the sudden burst of noise makes Hakaze start. She’d forgotten this was being shared on Zoom.

The screen switches to the video call, and their CEO’s face pops up, looking tired in the grainy webcam. Hakaze wonders if his laptop’s even older than hers.

“Increasingly, Kirishima, album postponement is not looking like an option. It almost seems as if the initiatives to strip Neonite of relevance and push a newer group into the limelight has backfired.”

“It makes me wonder,” he says, quiet, “what heights Eclipse could have risen to if they’d not been disbanded under similar circumstances.”

Hakaze’s ears ring.

The PA cleared his throat. “Manufacturing would need final confirmation today. For a mid-quarter release.”

“What date,” the CEO asks.

“Second Friday next month.”

Kirishima nods. He recovers fast; his face in no way conveys that he was called out for what could be a career-ending blunder. “That aligns. Then we proceed,” he says crisply. “With the album.”

The CEO nods and says a brief goodbye, and drops from the call.

The meeting ends.

As chairs scraped back and people gathered their things, looking shellshocked, Mamoru leans toward Hakaze. “Well,” he murmured, sounding faintly dazed. “That was… efficient.”

Hakaze thinks back to a balcony, a scowling man. “It wouldn’t be his style if it wasn’t.”

Outside, somewhere below them, a truck horn honks cheerfully.