AUTHOR
The air in Kenji's study was still and silent, scented with aged wood and the faint, expensive aroma of single-malt whisky. Reomen Daki sat sprawled in a low-slung, modern armchair that seemed to defy the room's traditional Japanese aesthetics, a testament to Kenji's own contradictory nature.
One hand loosely cradled a crystal tumbler, the amber liquid within untouched for the better part of an hour.
His body was present, but his mind was a ghost, haunting a different space entirely. Sixty stories up, in a penthouse that felt like a museum of his own failures. The conversation with Kenji—a detailed, strategic breakdown of the Rimestone Co.
stock's accelerating plummet—was nothing but a distant hum, a radio playing in another room. He heard the words "liquidity crisis" and "hostile takeover," but they held no weight. What did any of it matter? He had won the war and lost the only thing that had ever made the victory taste sweet.
