On Friday morning, the villa in Karuizawa woke up buried beneath a thick, heavy layer of fresh snow that had fallen relentlessly throughout the night. The fir trees surrounding the property stood bent under the weight of the ice, and the north wind whistled through the house's large windows with a melancholy murmur. Despite the white silence and winter serenity enveloping the mountains of Nagano, the atmosphere inside the dining room continued to hum with the static electricity of the media crisis threatening to devour everything.
Taishi finished adjusting the knot of his dark tie with obsessive precision in front of the hallway mirror. His face, usually impenetrable, bore deep marks of fatigue after spending the entire night awake analyzing the sports committee's bylaws. However, his eyes retained the relentless, calculating coldness of a strategist preparing to step into the trenches—he would protect his pupil no matter the cost.
