Aoyama Hiroto did not have an office so much as a room that had decided to be an office through sheer force of accumulated authority.
Fifteenth floor. Corner. The kind of view that said something about the person who had arranged to have it. Floor to ceiling windows. A desk that was large enough to be a statement and clean enough to suggest the real work happened somewhere else — in his head, in phone calls, in the particular quality of attention he directed at situations he found interesting.
Kaito sat across from it.
Satsuki sat beside Kaito — not quite between them, but present, the composed energy of a woman who had engineered this meeting and was monitoring it with the focused attention of someone who had a document open in her head titled father-Kaito meeting: expected outcomes.
Hiroto looked at Kaito.
Kaito looked at Hiroto.
The assessment was mutual and both men knew it.
