10:42 a.m.

"Ne, Miho-chan, that's pretty dramatic, isn't it?"

Yuu-chan was staring at her from behind a saucer-like pair of glasses as they stood at the counter, waiting for the Apple Genius bar worker to come back with the test results. Of all the times for her phone to malfunction—admittedly, again—she could not have chosen a worse time.

"Which part?" Mihoko rubbed her eyes tiredly. At least her watch was now working; she'd fixed it herself after she came back from the "dinner," too infuriated to fall asleep. The work had done her mind some good, and she thought she gained tranquility as she tucked herself into bed. But the more she thought about the night before, the more irritated she found herself growing at not having slapped the smug son of a bitch in the face.

"All of it, but especially him following you into the rainy street." Yuu-chan, despite being a sympathetic soul, was also something of a romantic, and couldn't help but place everything within the frame of manga pages. Her eyes already possessed a faraway look, a telltale sign that she was considering a potential "love-love." "He knew he was going to get wet, but he followed you anyway."

"I imagine that, for profit, he would gladly stand in the rain for several hours."

"Don't say that, you don't know what's going on in his head, Miho-chan."

"I don't particularly want to."

"Also," Yuu-chan leaned closer to her, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "How handsome is he? I looked him up after you mentioned him the last time, you know, and I wasn't sure if I should bring it up, but his jaws." Yuu-chan sighed. "I would strip naked just for those jaws. And his piercing eyes."

"I'm sorry to tell you this, Yuu-chan, but you deserve so much more than that heartless, amoral machine."

"The reviews online say otherwise."

"Reviews? What reviews?" Mihoko said, irritated that she was even continuing the conversation.

"There's a forum," Yuu-chan whispered, looking around. "If you know where to look. Which I do." Of course she did. "Where people rank… other people, if you know what I mean."

It took Mihoko a few seconds to fully comprehend what she meant. "What?!" she shouted in disbelief. "Excuse me," she added, noting the irritation of people around her.

"Not of everyone, that would be impossible. Just… certain famous people."

"Famous?" Mihoko scoffed. "Him?"

"He is the third son of the Ootori family, Miho-chan. Didn't you know?"

Mihoko had to admit that she didn't know. So the asshole was a royal asshole. Great. "I figured he was related to the company."

"He's the third-in-line to inherit everything. Which is such a shame, because, according to… other sources, he's the most talented of the three brothers."

"Are these gossip magazines?"

"Maybe," Yuu-chan said. "But still, you can imagine so much drama there. The ambitions of the youngest son. The shadow of his family and tradition. I can feel a manga writing itself."

"I have too much drama here, Yuu-chan, to really get involved with his drama there."

"His drama does concern you, Miho-chan, because without it he wouldn't have been compelled to take actions like the one he pulled with your company!"

"So I'm supposed to be okay with the fact that his family dynamic is the direct reason for my work being invalidated?"

"I'm sorry, Miho-chan," Yuu-chan said, her face falling.

"It's fine," Mihoko said, feeling guilty about making Yuu-chan feel bad. Despite their differences, Yuu-chan was one of the few friends she had, and she knew that Yuu-chan was trying to make her feel better. "So what do the reviews say?"

"Well, some people aren't sure if this Ootori Kyouya is the Ootori-san they slept with, naturally."

"Naturally," Mihoko agreed, deadpan.

"Nevertheless, the reviews are outstanding. I didn't read after the first page, but I figured that was enough."

"There were multiple pages?!" But before Yuu-chan could respond, the worker finally came back.

"So, Tenri-san," he said, sitting down in front of her. "I have no other way of saying this, but your phone, its time in the world is over. Sorry."

11:50 a.m.

"Stupid phone," Mihoko muttered, looking at her shiny new phone. Yuu-chan was also looking admiringly.

"It was about time," Yuu-chan said consolingly. "You work in tech, and you carry a phone that's eight years old!"

"It worked fine," Mihoko said petulantly, knowing that her reasoning didn't sound sane to anyone from this century.

"Anyway," Yuu-chan said. "Don't you think that guy over there looks like Ootori Kyouya-kun?"

At the mention of Ootori's name, Mihoko jumped and looked at the direction Yuu-chan pointed. To her relief, it was just a guy with a pair of glasses. He looked a bit like Ootori, she supposed. It wasn't likely that the royal asshole would have lunch in a tiny restaurant like this, anyway.

"I guess," she said dully, "Ootori looks slimmer, though."

"So you noticed how handsome he was!"

"I noticed that he used his looks to get what he wants," Mihoko retorted. "Which I did not appreciate, by the way."

Yuu-chan drummed her fingers on the table.

"Ne, Miho-chan," she eventually said. "If I were in your position, I'd choose Ootori-kun over Hirose any day."

The mention of Hirose's name made Mihoko's heart clench uncomfortably. "How come?"

"In this case, at least, you know exactly what you're getting with Ootori-kun. That Hirose dragged you along for far too long."

"Did he? I thought I was just stupid and infatuated," Mihoko said drily.

"Miho-chan," Yuu-chan admonished her.

"At least with Hirose, I was actively setting myself up for failure. I chose to pine pathetically. I didn't choose to give up my company, Ootori did that all by himself."

"I don't know if you had any power over pining over Hirose, either, Miho-chan…" Yuu-chan said, but didn't add anything else until the lunch was over.

5:47 p.m.

A few days had passed. Mihoko adjusted her flannel and checked her watch. They were a few minutes late, but she supposed that not everyone was unemployed, like her. The word left a sour taste in her mouth. Another reason why she didn't want to get a new phone was the effect it would have on her bank account. Sure, Ichiru assured her that she would get her share of the company back, but it took time to liquidate the assets, and, from her bank statement, no one was in a rush to do it. Meanwhile, her savings were slowly disappearing into groceries, rent, daily life…

Mihoko held back a sigh. She'd already gone down this path before, and knew that nothing was going to make her feel better.

Most simply speaking, she needed a job to pay the bills. The obstacle to her getting a job was Ootori Kyouya, who was making every job application impossible. She could try to sidestep him, use a different name, hack into company servers, even, but the illegal means would probably catch up with her, bringing undesirable consequences. There was one job that she could take, that one offered by Ootori. Whatever it was that he wanted her to do.

To be honest, his idea itself didn't sound like the worst idea in the world. A team that could quickly mobilize and pursue projects while bypassing the necessary steps to creating a team itself sounded… intriguing, to say the least. But she supposed she had to reserve her judgments until the end of this meeting.

Sugimoto Mao-san was a middle-aged woman, seemingly unpossessing, and her two small children were following her, hand-in-hand. Sugimoto-san had said that she didn't have much time until the dinner, and Mihoko knew that her willingness to talk with her was a sign of professional respect for which she would have to show her humble acknowledgement, when the time came.

"Tenri-san," Sugimoto-san said, taking her hand. Mihoko shook it lightly.

"Sugimoto-san, it's wonderful to meet you in person. I've heard so much about you."

"Likewise," Sugimoto-san responded, before seating the children down on the next table. "Wait for Mommy, won't you?" she said, and the children surprisingly nodded and took out their respective amusements to occupy them. A book for the girl, a rubik's cube for the boy.

"Sorry that we could only meet in such a chaotic environment," Sugimoto-san continued. "It's been a big transition, you can imagine, with me leaving the Mitsubishi lab, and my husband and I moving—we knew that it was going to happen, but we didn't anticipate that it would come at this time…"

"I understand," Mihoko said. "And that already gets to what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Yes," Sugimoto-san nodded. "You told me over the phone that one Ootori Kyouya approached you several weeks ago with a business proposition. You must know, then, that he came to me with a similar one."

Mihoko nodded back. "I was wondering what made you accept his proposition."

Sugimoto-san sighed. "It's a long story," she said. "But simply put, my children are growing up, and they're going to require more things. I also want to spend more time with them, and my current position as the head didn't allow me to do that. I also wanted to go back to the blackboard, instead of managing people. And Ootori-san also guaranteed my children a place in Ouran, I'm sure you know the institution… That was a big bonus, as well."

Mihoko swallowed her disappointment. "Was that all?" she asked quietly. Was the only currency in this trade give-and-take of things people wanted. "What about his idea for… the think tank itself?"

"I wasn't given very clear details about that, but according to Ootori-san, it sounded as if it would be a very flexible situation." Sugimoto-san shrugged. "I'm ready for that."

7:02 p.m.

"Exciting," Chiba-san said, nodding his head energetically. "Most exciting, at least in my opinion."

Chiba Koshiro was one of the more distinct oddballs of the Japanese engineering world, odd enough that even Mihoko, who tended to ignore most publishing unless they were academic, had heard of his eccentric dietary restrictions. She was certainly getting a frontal view of it as they sat at a raw food restaurant. Chiba-san had already slurped down his "grass green shot"—it was certainly green and tasted like grass, Mihoko thought—and was getting a head start on the avocado and daikon mousse with gusto. Mihoko reluctantly picked up her chopsticks, wondering if Chiba-san would take it as a personal offense if she offered him most of the portion.

"How so, Chiba-san?" she asked politely. She had to wait for Chiba-san to chew and swallow his large mouthful.

"Well, it's a new take on the production of scientific knowledge and innovation, you know? I don't know if it'll be entirely successful, it is a small-scale model that Ootori-kun has proposed, as you already know, but jumping over a few steps in the design stage can mean that, well, important projects get put on the table in a presentable shape instead of getting thrown in the garbage during the infancy stage. Does that make sense?"

"Yes," Mihoko said, carefully chewing on a piece of daikon.

"In fact, I want to say that it's in the same vein as the business model you and Hirose-san introduced, Tenri-san," Chiba-san had already taken another mouthful of food, but his enthusiasm somehow allowed him to talk and eat at the same time. "I remember hearing you talk in Kyoto two years ago about your company and your emphasis on small-scale businesses making faster judgements regarding the industry in order to meet the demands of the present moment. It's a bit like that, but instead of trying to take on the load of running an entire company, you're severing the brain from the rest—to generate ideas after ideas that other companies then can make possible. But complete freedom within the brain, mind you. Complete freedom."

"Didn't you have that with your own company?" Mihoko said. Didn't he miss his freedom, his self-determination?

Chiba-san sighed, looking something other than excited for the first time. "I've had my company for over twenty years, Tenri-san, and I've watched it grow… at a certain point, I was being bogged down by bureaucracy and board members. Of course, it was possible to appoint a new CEO and step down into a more project-based role, but I didn't think that would allow me to steer the company in the direction I wanted it to go. Of course, one can't have both at the same time, but… When Ootori-kun approached me with his idea, he reminded me of why I began the whole thing in the first place. So I quit. Let the company fall where it may."

"And it did fall," Mihoko pointed out.

"My employees were highly qualified individuals, and I know for a fact that more than half of them obtained a new position within a month. And Ootori-san assured me that they would have a place in the Ootori industry, if any of them ever chose to apply there."

"He has the resources to pull all these strings," Mihoko said. "But that doesn't mean his vision will be a practically applicable one outside of this—test case."

Chiba-san nodded. "I know. Freedom from the institution made possible only through very, very close ties with the institution. Is that irony? Maybe, but Tenri-san, I confess that a backing from someone like Ootori Kyouya is an appealing possibility, even to an old man like myself."

Chiba-san must've seen the skepticism on her face, because he continued without her prompting him. "It's not that the Ootori family owns the Ootori medical company, it's that the family is Japan's—and, if they have their way, the world's—medical industry."

"It's a monopoly," Mihoko said. She was no communist or any idealist who opposed capitalistic ventures, and she had to admit that the monopoly Ootori family possessed didn't bother her before. But now, having Ootori Kyouya's face on it made it simply detestable.

That detested man—but why was he so insistent on having her on board, anyway?

"It's a monopoly that's always improving," Chiba-san conceded half-way. "I don't know if Ootori-kun mentioned this to you, Tenri-san, but from what I have gathered from bits and pieces he let on, he envisions this project to be outside of the usual Ootori purview."

Mihoko frowned. "What do you mean?"

Chiba-san shrugged. "I'm not sure. I talked to Matsui a few months ago about it, when Ootori-kun first approached him about it, and it seems that Matsui might know more about it than I do, but he's something of an eccentric, you must know."

Watching Chiba-san dip dried ginger chips into apple and banana mush as if he were having a bowl of nachos, Mihoko couldn't help but raise an incredulous eyebrow at the level Matsui's eccentricity must be. More than ginger apple nachos, one must imagine.

"I've tried to get a hold of him to ask him about his opinion," Mihoko responded. "He was the last name that Ootori mentioned. I was told by his wife that he is… up in the mountains?"

Chiba-san laughed. "That must be it, then. No cell connection there."

For a short moment, there was a pause.

"Now, Tenri-san."

"Yes?" Mihoko said, surprised at the change in tone.

"Why are you distrustful of Ootori-kun?"

Mihoko hesitated. It certainly was public knowledge that her company was sold—or went down, depending on how one looked at it. But not everyone knew the dealings Ootori had in it, and she wasn't sure if she wanted others to know of that particular failure. "I have reasons to believe he played a role in the fall of my company," she said finally.

"It was sold, wasn't it?"

"That wasn't what I was told originally. We were meant to secure funding in exchange of a product."

Chiba-san's thick eyebrows knit together. "How was Ootori-kun involved?"

Mihoko sighed. "He told me he had leverage. That could make my partner… more open to other possibilities. He wasn't directly involved in the deal, but he gave Nakajima the power."

Chiba-san was quiet for a while.

"You know, Tenri-san, what he did certainly wasn't pleasant," he said, pausing over the last word. "But one thing I learned while being the director of my company, is that business is rarely pleasant. In fact, it's a world that you can survive by not having feelings. That's part of the reason why Ootori-kun's suggestion was so appealing to me. I could finally get out of that system."

"I understand why you'd be sympathetic," Mihoko said politely, but Chiba-san shook his head.

"No, Tenri-san. Pardon me for being so bold, but it was Hirose-san who was involved in the business side of your company, wasn't he? You dealt with research and development. And that is wonderful, it really is." Chiba-san looked straight into her eyes. "But you should know that Ootori-kun did not mean a personal attack on you by what he did."

Yes, Tenri-san. You should.

The quiet admission in the dark car had surprised Mihoko, but she'd dismissed the admission almost as quickly, chucking it in a bin full of "shit Ootori Kyouya probably says to everyone." But the contemplative look on his face didn't escape her notice, even in the dark.

He said he respected you, her mind said.

Nonsense, the other part of her mind scoffed.

"Why did you decide to be an engineer, Tenri-san?" Chiba-san surprised her again with this question. Startled, Mihoko hesitated.

"At first I knew that I liked to fix things that were broken." Oh, how that was true in so many more ways than one. "My watch, for instance, often stopped running. And then in middle school, high school, I learned that fixing could also mean improving, if you had the creativity… I was in the robotics club in high school. I was good at math." Mihoko shrugged. "It seemed like the most natural decision for me. I wanted to create things that made the world a better place."

The answer brought out in her past memories that she didn't revisit often, because it often seemed meaningless to dwell in the unchangeable past; moments from her childhood where her father taught her how to use basic tools, experimenting with sand castles on the beach with her mother, very small moments…

But the train of thought was broken as Mihoko noticed Chiba-san's probing gaze. That man has perception, Mihoko realized. Despite his oddball appearance.

"Do you think Ootori-kun imagines anything else than exactly that for this project?" he asked.

Mihoko sighed. "If I were any more suspicious, I'd accuse you of colluding with Ootori to get inside my head," she said.

Chiba-san laughed. "He did sit through an entire course at this restaurant, I will say. You barely made it past the entree!"

8:49 p.m.

Later that night, Mihoko sat by her usual bench by the river, the same place that Ootori first approached her. Damn him for ruining this place for her. But the night sky was still peaceful, the spring air was sweet, and the river still flowed quietly.

Mihoko sighed and looked at the business card that Ootori had given her.

Call. Not call. Call. Not call.

"Yes, Tenri-san?" He answered within the second ring.

"I have a few conditions," Mihoko blurted out without thinking. Just as well, there was no point trying to save face in front of him now. She cried in front of him, for crying out loud. What mortification.

Without missing a beat, Ootori replied.

"I'm listening."

"I'll send you the salary requirements. Number of paid leaves that applies to everyone. And I want it in writing that you will not interfere with the direction of our work."

"And?"

She'd expected him to object, and wasn't prepared for further demands.

"Bimonthly evaluation of the work that's being done and my right to terminate the contract at any moment."

"And?"

"I need your guarantee that once I step off of this, you will not try to hinder my future prospects. You will not ruin an interview, or threaten a person within a company, or anything else."

"I've never threatened anyone," Ootori said breezily. "I just lay out what's best in their interest."

"I want that guarantee in writing," Mihoko barked.

"You trust me that little, Tenri-san? That's disappointing."

"Please understand, Ootori-san, that after what happened with my last professional venture, I want more safety nets than I previously thought necessary." Especially with you. But she wasn't going to say that part.

"Tenri-san, I realize that this project won't last forever, and that you may wish to leave. I'll arrange it so that you'll have nothing to worry about until you find the next position that's of interest to you."

"That's…" Nice? "Reasonable."

"Do we have a deal, then?" Was it just her, or was there excitement in his voice?

She herself was nowhere near excited, but somehow, Chiba-san's argument still reberverated in her head. She could feel that this was something new. Perhaps not something good, but something new. A new beginning.

"We have a deal."

11:26 p.m.

After depositing Kyouya-sama at his apartment, Tachibana headed toward the main house, leaving Hotta in charge of securing the premise. This late-night call has become something of a regular occurrence, and Tachibana still didn't know whether he should inform Kyouya-sama about it. On the one hand, it concerned him, and Kyouya-sama detested people going behind his back—not that it even happened very often.

On the other hand, he had very little desire to get caught in the crossfire between the elder and the younger Ootori.

Kyouya-sama's relationship with his father was complex, and, having served the family since Kyouya-sama's birth, Tachibana liked to think that he understood his master's soft spots and hard lines. When it came to his father, however, Kyouya-sama was abnormal, even as a boy. Never running toward him for affection, never pestering him with questions or demands for playtime. It was as if they had an implicit understanding since Kyouya-sama's infancy that the father was not meant to be approached, only approached by.

But Tachibana understood Kyouya-sama's ambitions and perseverance, and he vowed to support him in any way he could for as long as he could.

He wasn't sure if this late-night meeting was supporting or hindering him.

"How is Kyouya?" Ootori Yoshio asked without looking up as Tachibana entered.

"He's well, Ootori-san."

"And his project?"

Seeing as Kyouya-sama did not mention his project to anyone within the family, Tachibana had a sense that Ootori Yoshio was not meant to be in the know. Should he warn Kyouya-sama about this? Or was that just more entanglement that would further separate the boy from his father?

"Well, I think," Tachibana said reluctantly. "Tenri Mihoko contacted him this evening. I believe he's sent the details over to his lawyers."

"She's accepted, then?"

"I believe so."

Yoshio finally looked up.

"If you can, Tachibana-san," he said slowly. "Protect her from Kyouya's ambitions. You know how reckless he sometimes gets."

Tachibana started.

"Reckless, Ootori-san?" he repeated, trying not to sound too skeptical. He was talking to Ootori Yoshio, after all. But the two words Kyouya and reckless did not go together well.

"Intense," Yoshio amended.

Intense made more sense. Kyouya wore himself out on many occasions trying to get something done, even if no one else might have noticed—finding Tamaki-sama's mother in France, preparing his first start-up venture, planning for Tamaki-sama's wedding, even.

"Perhaps I'm letting my hopes get the better of me," Ootori Yoshio muttered, so low that Tachibana wasn't certain.

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Nothing, Tachibana." Ootori Yoshio adjusted his glasses in an eerie duplication of his son. "It's nothing."

A/N: Thank you, Citizen of Clay, for your encouragement! I don't personally come from STEM background, so I would appreciate any feedback, good or bad, if something jumps out:)