The family suite is a room pretending to be a philosophy. Tatami over carbon composite. A tea alcove that hums when it performs the ritual of humility. Calligraphy on the wall—brushstrokes executed by a machine taught to simulate the tremor of human imperfection. The window is the wall. Night City is the view, which means Night City is the art.
His father stands with his back to all of it. The positioning is deliberate—it communicates ownership without the vulgarity of claiming it.
"Kaito."
"Father."
A service drone glides past, its chassis reflecting nothing. Tea pours itself, steam rising like small prayers that won't be answered. His father doesn't drink. The cup cools in the space between acknowledgment and insult.
"You will apologize to Ms. Nomura," his father says, still addressing the city rather than his son. "Publicly. Clearly. Without attempting to recontextualize your contempt as cleverness."
"Understood."
"Explanations are what people offer when they've already lost." His father's shoulders shift slightly. "Your left pocket is six grams heavier than it should be. If I inventory it, am I confiscating a fixer's bribe or documenting evidence of poor judgment?"
"It's a professional courtesy. From Mirko."
His father turns. The face Kaito inherited looks back at him, stripped of whatever softness Kaito might have once possessed. The implants along his cheekbones are subtle in the way that expense is subtle—present but not announced, modifying reality without acknowledging the modification.
"There are two types of stairs," his father says. "The ones you climb because someone called your name from above. And the ones they claim you climbed after they've pushed you down them."
"I prefer elevators."
"Elevators are for people who confuse speed with progress." Something that might be amusement crosses his father's expression. "Hanako Arasaka will see you in eight minutes. You will be punctual. You will not bring items from the street into a room with her."
"Is she that sensitive?"
"Don't be provincial."
The tea has stopped steaming. Time has passed in the way it passes in rooms where nothing happens accidentally. Kaito places the datachip on the table. The drone registers it, recalibrates its position to block the window's sightline.
His father steps closer, adjusts Kaito's collar with precision. "There's a mural near Megabuilding H4," he says, his tone suggesting casual observation. "You will never be photographed near it."
"I don't seek documentation."
"Others document without asking. Don't provide them with narrative."
The warning remains unelaborated. The room breathes with the tower. Kaito nods—choreography they've performed before.
The elevator to Hanako's level is private, lined with materials that absorb sound and probably also record it. A woman in a slate-grey kimono meets him at the landing. Her voice is soft. Her eyes are not.
"Kuroda-sama. Please follow."
The corridor is carpeted in something that costs more than apology. He watches himself pass in lacquered panels, choosing which reflection to believe. Guards exist by the door—present in the way that high-end security is present, noticed only if you've been taught to look for the places where attention pools.
The room is less room than statement. A low table. A chair positioned for someone who isn't arriving. A screen diffusing light into something that forgives nothing.
Hanako Arasaka stands by the window, hands folded in the way people fold their hands when they've never needed to grip anything. She doesn't turn. Kaito recognizes the technique.
"Kuroda," she says. Not his given name. A designation.
"Hanako-sama."
The window frames Night City the way a perfect lie frames truth—completely, beautifully, with absolute control.
"There is a photograph," she says, still addressing the glass, "of my brother. He was standing where you stand now. He was younger than you are, older than he understood. The photographer died before developing it. We kept the negative. We archive history when we choose to."
He doesn't respond. Response would be cheaper than silence.
"You've been invited to attend a program," she continues, the word "invited" positioned exactly one degree away from "commanded." "We call it orientation. It's an inadequate word. The heart doesn't orient by compass. It orients by recognizing what it should fear."
"My heart has been well-trained."
She turns slightly—enough to offer profile, nothing more. "Training is borrowed. Instinct is owned. We will stress both and observe which survives the fiscal quarter."
On the low table: a single sheet of paper. Actual paper, in a room that could project law into the air. Ink that smells like archived arguments.
He picks it up. One sentence, perfectly centered:
Silence outperforms loyalty over distance.
He waits. The person who speaks first has already conceded negotiating position.
Finally: "A window or a mirror, Kuroda?"
He considers. "A mirror confirms you're still wearing the face you selected. A window reminds you who owns the weather. I intend to maintain both and charge admission to those who want to look."
Something that might be approval crosses her expression. "You were instructed to apologize this morning."
"Yes."
"You will." The smallest inclination of her head. "But structure it as a gift, not submission. Allow them to wonder whether they extracted something from you or whether you left it deliberately. Doubt produces more sustainable obedience than fear."
He folds the paper. He doesn't ask if it's his to keep. Asking would make it less his.
"You will also attend a gathering this evening," she says, and the fact that she knows about an event he hasn't confirmed attending is its own form of possession. "There will be people who style themselves as artists. They will perform rebellion with the authentication tags still attached. Don't be cruel to them. Cruelty is inexpensive. Be curious. Curiosity extracts more value."
"Should I document my observations?"
"Bring an eraser, not a notebook," she says, and for a moment their reflections align in the glass before the light edits them both into different people.
He bows—the angle that says I comprehend the instruction, not I submit to it. The door, which no one touched, recognizes that the conversation has concluded.
The woman in slate accompanies him out. "If I may, Kuroda-sama," she says without making eye contact. "In this building, anyone who laughs is either powerful or stupid."
"How do I differentiate?"
"Allow them to finish. Then count who repeats the joke."
The elevator returns him to air with more oxygen and more opinions. The family suite has been sanitized—drones pretending they were never there, the chip gone from the table in the way that evidence goes when it's been properly archived.
He rides the public student elevators deliberately. Let them see him. Let them begin calculating whether to hate him now or later. A maintenance drone memorizes his gait. In the atrium, a janitor removes a sticker from the wall—yellow and black, a jacket drawn by someone who loved the symbol more than they understood the person. The drone assists, chirps, erases without judgment.
Ethics seminar is theater where everyone pretends they haven't been given a script. Ms. Nomura is precise and small and wears a watch that ticks audibly to remind the room that time remains a hardware problem. Kaito stands when the moment structures itself correctly.
"Ms. Nomura," he says. "This morning I substituted metaphor for respect. That was a category error. I apologize."
A pause calibrated to be almost too long. The room waits to see if he'll add anything that would cheapen it.
"I accept, Kuroda," she says, and if she recognizes that the apology performed multiple functions simultaneously, she doesn't indicate it.
Emi messages him: You didn't kneel. Then: Acceptable.
He doesn't respond. The instructor discusses case studies where loyalty outperformed mathematics until the calculations learned shame. Kaito watches reflections. In one, he can almost see a boy in a yellow jacket asking if anyone has time to spare.
Lunch is status performed as nutrition. He takes a seat where visibility is minimized and access is optimized. Students cluster at high tables like code looking for compilation. He ignores them, manipulating the datachip between his fingers beneath the table until it tells him the shape of the lock it will open.
A shadow interrupts his sightline. Padre's courier—rosary visible at the wrist, cologne absent, which makes him more dangerous and less performative.
"Word," the boy says, tone friendly in the way that confessions are friendly. "My employer says you're learning the city's public face. He says it's important to learn both faces."
"I've reviewed the promotional materials."
"Tonight isn't promotional." The boy places a coaster on the table, face down, the material too thick to be only material. "If you turn it over, it means you'll attend. If you leave it like this, it means you'll attend and pretend it was accidental."
"Options are useful."
The boy stands. "Don't bring your driver," he adds, like mercy. "He breathes like he's wearing a muzzle."
After class, a server in a lounge too expensive to admit it charges money glides over with a check for coffee Kaito didn't order. Beneath the slip: a tiny strip of lacquer with a stamp you feel more than see—the Afterlife's skull, polite as a handshake. Rogue doesn't leave messages. Rogue leaves plausible deniability. The stamp warms once against his palm, recognizes him long enough to forget him.
He walks the vertical garden. Beneath artificial leaves: cameras, sensors, the tranquil conscience of a corporation that recycles. A girl in a too-new uniform angles herself for a photograph that will show the city, the plants, the idea of a future. He watches her review the image, adjust, review again, delete. Perfection is the easiest job Night City offers—you only have to fail continuously.
Evening arrives like a bruise developing into art. The suite is empty. The driver waits with the car, already knowing the route Kaito won't take.
"Family dinner?" the man asks, making conversation sound like protocol.
"Not tonight."
"The schedule indicates—"
"Schedules don't bleed," Kaito says. "People do."
The driver studies the rearview mirror like a screen he's been hired to perform in. "Destination, sir?"
Kaito touches the chip, the coaster, the lacquer stamp warming once in his pocket like a pulse. Stairs. Elevators. Drops that feel like flight if the brain chemistry is properly modified.
"Downtown," he says. "Somewhere that doesn't want me there."
"Yes, sir."
They slide into the night. The city lowers its blade and lets them pass. Somewhere between one light and the next, the window becomes a mirror. He doesn't look away.