I had to walk past the lobby twice before the absurdity of it hit me. Toshiro Holdings rose above the city in front of me. The last time I hadn't set foot in here willingly. I was once a child in a silk dress with practiced smiles pasted on my face by my mother's merciless schedule. Coming back under my own feet felt like walking through someone else's memory, only this time I wasn't a pawn they could move.
The receptionist looked at me like she had seen ghosts, polite breathing and all the training in her posture.
"Do you have an appointment?"
"I'm Himeko Toshiro."
The woman's eyes went to the security desk, to a screen where my face—neatly optimized for recognition—lit up. The clerk's professional smile trembled on the edge of a question.
"Miss—"
"Well, my sister has come."
Hayato, my brother, came down the corridor in a suit cut to eat money. He has the same indifferent smile he'd worn for as long as I could remember.
"Himeko, what a surprise. Cancel the afternoon with Yamazaki. I'll take it. Let her pass."
The woman moved like a puppet pulled by invisible strings and opened the way.
We rode the elevator in silence. When the doors opened to his office, the room hit me first with musk, expensive cologne and the tasteful decay of a room that had breathed in too many secrets. My senses as a Fluxer picked up details the others missed. I could smell the faint residue of tobacco on one armchair and the undernote of a floral perfume that didn't match a wife's closet.
"Why are you here?"
"I'm back for the annual dinner."
It was the truth and not the truth. I'd come for the ritual, yes. It was the display of lineage and smile-work that passed for affection in our world but I'd come for more, too. Hayato laughed.
"You never come to these things. Why now, Himeko? Feeling nostalgic for the fairy lights? Or running out of rent money?"
He sat down at the enormous desk and the change in him was sudden and slick. The casual warmth of the hallway fell off him like a cloak, and the mask of family-mock concern snapped into a cool, clinical, polite cruelty. It was the same man who'd been taught to smile while rearranging fortunes. I had memorized every expression he kept for the shareholders and the ones he gave only to the finance press kits.
"You know, we pay your rent. You should be grateful, little Himeko. We make sure the lights are on, and you repay us with a fondness for dramatic returns. We did well without you. It's just business
Why are you sniffing around? Looking for gossip to pin on me? Are you broke enough to trade our family's reputation for rumor?"
"Answer me, Hayato."
"Answer what?"
The room smelled different to me suddenly, like it had been scrubbed. The secretary's footsteps in the corridor were precise and distant. The world tightened. In one motion I was at his side, pressed so close his perfume flared like a burning wick. My fingers were light as paper when they found his collar.
Hayato's eyes widened. He had the look of a man who misjudged the angle of gravity.
"H-Hine—"
"You better tell Mom and Dad about your affair with your secretary. Tell them, or I will reveal it myself."
He laughed with the sort of brittle sound a man makes when he's trying to make a twig of the thing that terrifies him snap.
"You think you can threaten me? You? The girl who left for an apartment and a dream? You think... I can survive any scandal. We all know how the board eats the weak."
"Tell them everything or I'll tell them what the secretary won't ever say. I'll tell them who's been buying all the flights, who's been leaving late with your name on his lips. And if you try to make any move to kill me, I will make sure you do not survive to hear your next board meeting."
For a second the world held its breath. His eyes, so used to looking through people for their liabilities, searched my face for the safe knobs he had always found. He expected tears. He expected a bargain. He did not expect the sort of threat like this.
"Oh, Himeko. You don't mean that. You think threatening me will make me obedient?"
"No."
I released him then, letting him slide down the wall like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He landed in a heap on the rich carpet and stared at me.
"You should choose your women better. Your wife is hotter and she has more sense than what you paraded through the staff room last week. If you can't be discreet, be at least tasteful."
"You've always had a savage tongue
You think this is strength? You think silence was your salvation? You're still the same empty thing, Himeko. You'll never inherit anything that matters."
"Better empty than complicit. And you should remember. We both grew up in the same house. You're not the only cold person in the family."
He finally sat upright. He was a man who had always believed problems could be fed into a machine and turned into profit. To him, every scandal was a line item. He looked at me long enough for the clock to tick twice. Then he said, carefully,
"You'll tell them tonight?"
"Tonight. So I suggest you come with a good excuse or I'll use your affair as an advantage."
I left his office. Maybe there's a reason why I'm back here. I'm not weak anymore. I have the power to destroy part of the city if I go all out. But I won't do that.
Instead, I'm going to kill everyone who has made my life a living hell. If I can't go back, then I might as well become a villain, right?