Hayate's office was not in the towering Miyazaki headquarters downtown — the one with his name carved in steel that the media worshipped. No, his true workspace was three blocks away, disguised as a bland glass building with no logo, no security guards at the entrance, and nothing to suggest its importance.
Most employees who worked here didn't even know who owned it. To them, Hayate was "Mr. Kuroda," an eccentric private investor who liked to drop by unannounced. Only the uppermost circle — men and women he trusted with his silence — knew the truth.
And they knew better than to say his name outside these walls.
"Morning, sir," murmured the receptionist as he walked through. She did not meet his eyes.
"Morning," Hayate replied with a faint nod.
He took the elevator to the top floor, where the real work happened: walls of servers humming softly, whiteboards covered in equations and diagrams, a handful of engineers bent over glowing screens. Artificial intelligence was the future, and Miyazaki Innovations wasn't following the trend. They were defining it.
"Status report," Hayate said as he entered the conference room.
The lead engineer, a bespectacled man named Sakamoto, straightened immediately. "The adaptive model has reached eighty-nine percent accuracy on predictive patterns. Still struggling with edge-case data, but we're refining the feedback loops."
"Eighty-nine?" Hayate's tone was mild, but his gaze sharpened. "That's six points below last month's projection."
Sakamoto swallowed. "Yes, but—"
Hayate raised a hand. "No excuses. Just solutions. Reallocate your team's bandwidth. Shift resources from the secondary project if needed."
"Yes, sir."
Another engineer spoke up timidly. "Sir, the investors are pushing for a demo by the end of next quarter. They want proof of scalability."
Hayate's lips curved faintly. Investors were impatient by nature. "They'll have it. But on my timeline, not theirs. If they can't wait, they can leave."
The room went silent. Everyone knew better than to argue.
As the meeting ended and the engineers dispersed, Kazehiro lingered in the corner, hands in his pockets. "You terrify them, you know."
Hayate glanced at him. "Good. Fear keeps them sharp."
Kazehiro smirked. "You say that, but I've seen you haul driftwood in the rain with a girl who couldn't cook rice without burning it. You didn't terrify her."
Hayate said nothing. His mask — calm, unreadable, absolute — stayed firmly in place. But Kazehiro's grin widened.
"Don't look at me like that," he added. "I'm just saying: the island version of you was a man. This version?" He gestured to the servers, the sterile walls, the nervous engineers outside. "This is a machine."
Hayate's gaze flicked to the city skyline through the tinted glass. "A machine built to protect the man."
When Kazehiro finally left him alone, Hayate sank into the leather chair behind his desk. For a while, he studied the graphs on his monitor, the endless strings of numbers and predictions. They should have been comforting. Numbers always told the truth.
But today, they felt hollow.
His mind betrayed him, conjuring the image of Rin standing in that marble hall, holding a glass of champagne like it was a sword, her stubborn eyes flashing despite her uncertainty.
She did not belong here. And yet, in a way, she belonged more than anyone. Because she was real. Genuine. Unpolished in a world that worshipped polish.
Hayate rubbed his temple with a faint sigh. Dangerous.
Later that afternoon, he attended a board meeting at the official headquarters — the gleaming skyscraper his name crowned.
Of course, he didn't sit at the table. He never did. Instead, he stood in the shadows at the back of the room, arms crossed, listening as his CEO, a polished figurehead named Ishida, spoke on his behalf.
To the board, Ishida was the visionary. The genius. The man behind Miyazaki Innovations.
Hayate preferred it that way. Let Ishida smile for the cameras, bow for the investors, pose for magazines. Hayate had no patience for such things.
From the shadows, however, he directed everything. Quietly. Efficiently. Absolutely.
As the meeting ended and the directors filed out, Ishida approached him with a respectful bow. "Everything is in order, Mr. Miyazaki. As always."
Hayate nodded once. "Good. Keep it that way."
On his way out, Kazehiro fell into step beside him again.
"You know," he said lightly, "for someone who hates the spotlight, you do an impressive job of holding the world in your palm."
Hayate glanced at him. "And your point?"
"My point is," Kazehiro said, "that sooner or later, Rin's going to see this side of you. The empire, the shadows, the masks. What then?"
Hayate's footsteps didn't falter. "Then she'll decide for herself."
"And if she decides she doesn't want this world?"
Hayate's lips curved faintly. "Then I'll build her another one."
That night, back in his penthouse, Hayate poured himself a glass of whiskey and stood by the window, the city glittering beneath him.
The storms of business, of politics, of rivals — he could navigate them all. He had built his life on patience and strategy.
But the storm named Rin Nishina? That was different.
That was the one he could not control.
And for the first time in years, he wasn't sure he wanted to.