The meeting ended, but Ren's thoughts didn't.
Long after the others had filed out with polite nods and carefully guarded expressions, he stayed in the boardroom, unmoving. His fingers still rested on the same page of his notepad from nearly an hour ago. The ink had stopped flowing, but his chest hadn't.
Aika.
She had been there—present, commanding, utterly unshaken.
And she hadn't seen him.
Not really.
She had looked directly at him when addressing her legal points. But she hadn't seen him. Not the boy she once saved from bullies many times. Not the boy she bandaged his wound seventeen years ago. To her, he was just another systems specialist, another staff member in a room full of company faces.
To him… she was everything.
Ren returned to his desk afterward in a fog. He barely heard the soft chime of elevator doors or the clicking of keys from his neighbouring cubicles. Everything was muted, muffled behind the weight of what had just happened.
He didn't know what to say to himself, much less anyone else.
He should've spoken. Said something. Anything.
But what? Hi, remember me? You saved me more than once that I can imagine, and I've spent every year since drawing shadows of your face I could never quite forget?
No.
It would've sounded pathetic and weird.
Or worse—like he'd clung to the past while she soared far beyond it.
So he stayed silent.
Just like always.
The next meeting came sooner than expected.
The internal audit committee wanted immediate updates. The employee misconduct case was evolving fast, and Aika had scheduled another session with IT and systems personnel—Ren included—to assess data trail gaps and possible breaches.
This time, it wasn't a quiet boardroom.
It was a smaller conference space. More claustrophobic. More tense.
Ren arrived early, as usual. He took the space near the door, half-hoping he could disappear into the walls. His laptop was open, login screen glowing. His hands hovered over the keyboard but didn't type.
Across from him, two senior tech managers muttered in low tones.
One of them, a man named Kento, leaned back in his chair with a sigh of mock exhaustion. "I swear, if this thing blows up, they'll pin it on us. Or worse—on him."
He nodded pointedly at Ren.
The other laughed. "Wouldn't be the first time. Look at him—always so quiet, hiding behind those glasses and wheelchair. What's he even doing on this team? Should've been in data entry or something soft like compliance."
Ren didn't react.
He never did.
His face remained neutral. His gaze fixed on the loading screen. But the silence wasn't ignorance. It was armour.
And it cracked the moment she walked in.
Aika.
Dark blazer again. Tucked hair. Pen clipped to her folder with surgical precision.
She nodded at the room. "Let's begin."
She didn't look at Ren.
At least not yet.
Kento leaned back again, folding his arms. "Before we do, I just want to raise a concern. There's a repeated discrepancy in the logs. And—pardon my bluntness—but it always seems to trace back to Ren here. Either he's not logging properly, or… well. You can draw your own conclusions."
The other man chuckled. "Maybe it's intentional. I mean, no offense, but quiet types, they're usually hiding something. Why do we even need him here on this meeting?"
Ren looked down. His palms stung from the pressure of his fingernails digging in.
He wasn't surprised.
He never was.
But it still hurt.
Before he could speak—before he could defend himself, even if just to say no—Aika turned.
Her voice cut through the room like cold steel.
"I've reviewed those logs."
Silence.
She placed her folder on the table. "And I suggest you re-read the audit report before making careless insinuations."
Kento blinked. "I—excuse me?"
"Ren's timestamp discrepancies were flagged, yes. But the variance occurred during a system-wide rollback triggered by your own department's server migration error." She flicked a tab in the binder. "Page fourteen. Subsection 2.3."
She didn't raise her voice. She didn't even sound angry.
But every word hit like a hammer.
She turned to Ren then—just a glance.
Not warm. Not familiar.
Just… precise.
"Your input helped narrow that down. Thank you," she said professionally.
And then she continued with the meeting as if nothing had happened.
But to Ren, everything had.
He stared at her—not in shock, but in awe. Not because she defended him. She'd done that before. Not even because she did it so cleanly, so factually, without a single wasted breath.
It was because she still did it.
Even now.
Even seventeen years later, in a completely different setting, in a life that had veered in impossible directions—she still stood between him and the world when it tried to crush him.
She didn't remember him.
He was sure of that now.
She had no idea he was the boy from school.
She was just doing what she always did—what made her who she was.
Protecting the ones no one else would.
Ren didn't cry.
But he wanted to.
Not from sadness. Not even from longing.
It was something quieter. Something warmer and deeper.
A kind of recognition—not hers of him.
But his of her.
She hadn't changed.
Not the part that mattered.
And maybe… just maybe… there was still time.
She doesn't remember. But what happens when the heart starts to speak louder than memory?