6:29 am.

The morning sun lit up his office, reflecting off the framed diplomas and expensive canvas art, sending glimmers of colours into the otherwise dull room. Sakai Mireo was used to bland – his life was bland, his music taste was bland, the rice he cooked was bland. One tone and mellow was all he knew in life. It was also the reason why his business had almost plateaued. Without new ideas, new innovations, his company was dead in the water.

Adopting Sen had been the best thing to happen to the company. She came in with fresh eyes, fresh thoughts, fresh feelings. While his other employees were lacking in creativity and moral, she had enough of it to give out. She lifted his company to new heights, with new partners, new investors, new products.

Looking at his blinking office phone, filled with messages of missed meetings, he wonders if adopting Sen had also been the worst thing to happen to the company. She had done too many changes, too quickly. She was cut-throat and savage with those who would not bend to her whims, she was strict with her reign and even stricter with herself. She simultaneously stressed Mireo out while also relieving all the burdens from his shoulders.

Until now.

Now, he saw the appointments she had skipped, the phone calls she didn't return, the proposals she did not reschedule.

He had told her, once, that she could quit if she could not handle it. She was a teenager, and teenagers were not meant to run businesses. They were meant to fail and make mistakes and be awful in nature. But he knew she was never one to break under the pressure, never one to disappoint him, even when the worst had happened in her life.

Except now.

Now, he stared at the picture in his personal email. She disobeyed him, she thought to hide it from him. Was that why he had been unable to contact her the night before? Was it because she was out gallivanting with that scum of a child? How did she even find him?! He had asked her – no, if he was honest, he had forbidden her – from seeing any of those orphanage rats again.

They would poison her, taint her, change her. She had been rowdy, untameable, uncontrollable before he met her. She had been fire-fuelled passion, when he had needed her to be ice cold concentration.

But here, a photo taken by the investigator he had hired to document the progression of Sen and the Ootori boy clearly revealed she was seeing more than just the boy she was forced to marry.

Despicable. Hadn't he changed her? Hadn't he formed her into something more respectable during their year away? Hadn't she learned anything about his expectations of her?

But he would not punish her, no. Part of him was still raising the destructive Sen, the stern teen who destroyed his home and possessions countless times, who made him breakdown, who made him weep with self-pity. But part of him was raising the destroyed Sen, the disheveled little girl who was afraid of anyone who came too close, who guarded herself, who did not know a single word other than "yes father" for the longest time. That was the Sen her wanted to keep in private, but it was not the Sen that would benefit his company. That disheveled little girl was too timid to take what was not hers, was too scared to demand a trade with harsh words and harsher penalties.

So he would not punish her, he would nurture her. He needed some fire to enter her frozen soul. He needed that ice to melt, to turn back into the raging river she had been, bending to no one, slowing for nothing.

6:35 am.

It would be only a few hours until she returned to him, until she walked into his office and awaited her trial of treason. He knew she would confess, even without knowing of the tail he had sent on her. He knew she would be as afraid of his wrath as she had been every other time in the past year, but he did not know how she would react when that wrath never came.

And for the rest of the day, Sakai Mireo checked the clock, waiting.