June 23rd, 2022

Mion yawned as she flung the curtains open, letting sunlight stream into the room, glancing off wooden tables polished to a mirror shine and carpets so startlingly white you might have thought that they had been bought and installed yesterday.

"Gneh." A grumpy lump of blankets uttered from the second bed.

"Mm…" A second voice rose from a nest of blankets on the sumptuous leather couch, and a few seconds later, a head rose with it, copper-auburn hair tousled lightly around a sleepily-blinking face.

"Rise and shine, early birds!" Mion called, turning away from the curtains with a grin that showed she had not lost even an iota of her teenage enthusiasm in the last ten years.

"Morning, Mi-chan." Rena hummed, rubbing her eyes. "What time is it?"

"Just past seven." Mion said, stepping past the foreign bed which she had so recently been sleeping on and over to the second luxurious mattress. "C'mon, Kei-chan! Rise and shine!"

At the last word, she grabbed the heavy duvet and snapped it up with a grunt, exposing the drowsing figure of a man about her age, defensively huddled beneath what had once been the covers. He groaned, pulling an arm over his face as the bright sunlight radiated into his once-dark and cozy nest.

"Go'way, Mion."

"Nope!" Mion replied, as sunny as the golden light streaming in through their huge window. "We've gotta get ourselves put together and then go downstairs for our meal before 8.30. We can't cross swords with the Sumadera group without a good breakfast!"

"Mngh. Why we gotta cross swords when we're here for busineszzz…" Keiichi's words trailed off into a snore.

"Oh, Kei-chan." Mion sighed, touching her face as though he had given her a coherent response instead of a drowsy mumble. "Our business is crossing swords. How else can we punish them for trying to shortchange our fine Sonozaki Co., headed by the beautiful and ultra-competent Mion Sonozaki?"

"Dun' fuck wi' S'nozakiszzzz..." Keiichi mumbled drowsily into his pillow as one arm stirred in a hazy fistpump against the sheets, apparently on reflex. Mion laughed and punched the air with much more exuberance.

"That's the spirit!" she agreed. "Rena, come drag sleeping beauty out of bed while I get ready."

Leaving Rena to advance upon the bed and its drowsing occupant with a certain glint in her eye, Mion sashayed into the en suite bathroom to freshen up. When she emerged fifteen minutes later, a groggy Keiichi was waiting gallows-eyed and unshaven at the door, passing her without a word as Rena, standing in front of the glit mirror, whisked a comb through her short auburn hair.

With a care for the open window that looked out upon the busy city street, Mion started getting dressed, wrapping the simple black folds of her business kimono around herself with the ease of long practice. Rena, with the disturbing perky chipperness that she was known for in the mornings, had already donned her prim business suit and skirt, an equally-serious dark purple as she fussed a little with her hair. By having Rena and Keiichi wear traditional Western formal wear, Mion's reputation was enormously enhanced, and in the world of commerce, she needed every tool that came to hand.

Batcha had entrusted the family business to her at long last about three years ago, and Mion had set out with grim determination to repair the shadier aspects of her family's name. Oh, her father may have been on a certain side of the law, and Mion may or may not have some personal acquaintance with any number of yakuza delinquents, but she had decided that it was more than time for her generation to remove some of the tarnish on the Sonozaki family's reputation.

With her characteristic grit and guts, not to mention the unflinching support of Keiichi and Rena at her back, Mion had blown away her family's expected profit margins in the first year. By the second, she had tripled their income, and now, in her third year of taking the reins, the Sonozaki Cooperation was one of the most famous and wealthy in all of Japan, fitting in with both the old and the new. Some clients prized the traditional values and ancient heritage of her family, while others enthused over how a young, modern businesswoman was revamping the entire industry, but either way, they were equally in the palm of her hand.

She, Rena, and Keiichi were currently staying in one of the most exclusive hotels in Tokyo, something that would have been unthinkable when Mion was still a child. The Sonozakis were powerful in Hinamizawa, sure, with almost unparalleled authority in the community, but that was just it. They controlled the community of Hinamizawa. Their influence barely stretched outside of Okinomiya at all, and never mind across Gifu.

Mion had changed all that. Seizing companies and distributing assets, Mion truly had become something of a modern-day general, and Keiichi and Rena were her two right-hand subordinates. There was no challenge they couldn't face, no enemy they couldn't crush. Really, her largest problem was keeping the business of running a company from getting too boring, and for that, Mion turned once again and always to her club's games. If only some of her business partners could have seen the Sonozaki queen and her two minions in her penthouse office on some occasions, playing card games with increasingly humiliating and ridiculous punishments for the loser long into the night.

For now, though, Mion strode confidently through the plush carpeted halls, Rena's low heels clicking sedately beside her and Keiichi, sharp-eyed and bound up in a dapper suit, marching on her other hand. She was a jet-setting, high-flying CEO that was known throughout Japan, and the Sumaderas had another thing coming if they thought they could deceive her.

8.40 AM, USA Central Time

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