The estate agency office was quiet at ten AM on a Wednesday.
One other couple waiting. A potted plant that had been there long enough to have opinions about the furniture. The particular hush of a place where significant things happened in ordinary rooms.
Kaito sat across from the estate agent — the same woman who had shown him three properties, who had learned his questions and his silences and had stopped trying to read his age into his decisions.
The paperwork was on the desk.
Considerable paperwork. The kind that had multiple sections and required multiple signatures and had, at several points, numbers on it that would have caused Riku to sit on the floor.
He read it.
All of it.
The estate agent had learned not to rush him.
He read with the focused attention of someone who had once managed forty-three subsidiaries and knew what happened when you signed things you hadn't fully read. Page by page. Every clause. Every condition.
She watched him read.
