Chapter 101 | Withness

Chapter 101: Chapter 101 | Withness

He stood at the table.

He looked at the empty bowl.

He looked at the door.

He looked at Shira.

Shira said, to the window: "She invited him back."

"Yes," Kai said.

"She corrected your steep in front of him."

"Yes," Kai said.

"So he’d know she was paying attention," Shira said.

Kai looked at the hallway.

He looked at Mira’s door.

He said: "Yes."

Shira looked at the window.

The corner of her mouth did the thing again.

She went to run the form.

====

Denko called at noon.

"The hearing date is confirmed," he said. "Three weeks from Thursday. Both wives listed as primary witnesses. Testimony order: Shira Voss, then Mira Elys, then node documentation as supporting exhibit."

"Carson told us this morning," Kai said.

A pause.

"He came."

"Yes," Kai said.

"How was it."

Kai looked at the table. At the three bowls still sitting there because nobody had cleared them yet. At the board Mira had left face-down on the corner.

"He ate breakfast," Kai said.

A longer pause.

"Right," Denko said. "I’ll send you the formal hearing documents tonight."

He hung up.

====

That afternoon the Renmei family did something.

Kai found out through a news notification at two. He read it three times.

He went to the living room.

"Shira."

She turned from the form.

He held out his phone.

She read it.

She read it again.

She handed the phone back.

She looked at the window.

The patriarch had issued a statement. Public. His legal team’s language, not his — but his name on it. He did not admit wrongdoing. He called the prosecution politically motivated. He named Kai by name. Called him an opportunist who had married two discarded women to build a legal case for profit. The statement had been picked up by three outlets.

"He named you," Shira said.

"Yes," Kai said.

"He called us discarded," she said. Not a question.

"Yes," Kai said.

She looked at the window.

She picked up her physio sheet.

She set it back down.

She looked at the window.

"Nothing," she said.

He looked at her.

"We do nothing," she said. "He is trying to move us before the hearing. Trying to make us react publicly in a way his legal team can use." She looked at the window. "Don’t respond. Don’t send anything to Denko about it. Don’t give it any more weight than it already has."

He looked at her.

"Okay," he said.

She looked at the window.

He went to tell Mira.

==

Mira read the notification on Kai’s phone.

She held it.

She handed it back.

Her board appeared.

He named you.

"Yes," Kai said.

What are you going to do.

"Nothing," Kai said.

She held the board.

Good, it said.

She ate the apple she had been holding since before he knocked. She had apparently been eating an apple in her room.

He looked at the apple.

She looked at the wall.

She said the same thing, Mira wrote. Not a question.

"Yes," Kai said.

We were always going to say the same thing, the board said. He knows that. That’s why he named you. He thought one of us might react differently if it was personal.

He looked at the board.

We’re not different on this, it said.

He looked at the board.

He looked at the apple.

He went back to the table.

===

At four Dorothy Callahan slid a note under their door.

Kai picked it up.

It was in Dorothy’s handwriting, which was extremely neat and gave no quarter.

It said: I read the statement. The man has never seen a clean floor join in his life.

Kai stood at the door with the note.

He stood there for a moment.

Then he went to Mira’s door and knocked.

She opened it.

He read the note out loud.

Mira looked at him.

She looked at the board.

She looked at the note.

She looked at the ceiling.

She wrote something and held it up.

He read it.

He read it again.

He sat down on the hallway floor.

Not because his legs gave out. Just because it was closer than the table and he needed to be somewhere low for a moment.

He sat on the hallway floor and looked at the ceiling and made no sound because there was no sound appropriate for what had just happened to his face.

Shira appeared from the living room.

She looked at Kai on the floor.

She looked at Mira in the doorway.

She looked at the board.

She read it.

She turned around and went back to the living room.

From the living room came one sound — small, sharp, rapidly contained.

Mira lowered the board.

She looked at the hallway ceiling.

She was deeply, profoundly unbothered.

She went back to her room.

Kai sat on the floor.

He looked at the note.

He looked at the board which Mira had left in the hallway.

He picked it up.

He read it again.

===

From the living room Shira’s voice: "What did she write."

"I’m not repeating it," Kai said.

A pause.

"Kai."

"No."

Another pause.

"Was it about the floor joins."

"Tangentially," he said.

Silence.

Then from Shira’s direction, very quiet, rapidly suppressed — something that was not the form and was not the physio sheet and was not anything that had come from that room before.

=====

That evening the system chimed.

『 Bond Level — Shira Voss: 4.4 / 10. 』

『 Bond Level — Mira Elys: 4.4 / 10. 』

『 MULTIPLIER: ×2,000. ACTIVE. 』

『 The system notes: 』

『 Carson Webb came on Tuesday. 』

『 He ate breakfast. He noticed the air pressure shift from the hallway. He said nothing about it. 』

『 Mira Elys corrected the steep timing in front of him. 』

『 Then invited him back. 』

『 The system notes she waited until he was leaving to do both. 』

『 The patriarch issued a statement. Named Host. 』

『 Shira Voss said: nothing. We do nothing. 』

『 Mira Elys said: good. 』

『 The system notes they said the same thing before either of them knew the other had said it. 』

『 Dorothy Callahan wrote: the man has never seen a clean floor join in his life. 』

『 Mira Elys wrote something in response. 』

『 The system observed Host sit down on the hallway floor. 』

『 The system observed Shira Voss make a sound from the living room and rapidly contain it. 』

『 The system will not record what Mira Elys wrote. 』

『 Some things belong to the hallway. 』

『 The hearing is in three weeks. 』

『 The patriarch will not be in the room. 』

『 The system notes: his absence will be. 』