He doesn't turn when the instructor calls his name.
He keeps his eyes on the glass—floor-to-ceiling, manufactured clarity, the kind of window you only get when a megacorporation owns the sunlight. Beyond it, Night City performs its morning ritual: neon veins pulsing beneath polluted dawn, aerial vehicles carving the sky into territories, the streets below transforming into a runway for people who mistake vehicles for identities.
A Rayfield Aerondight arrives first, its paint reflecting the world back at itself in lies. Then a Herrera, gull-wing doors exhaling open like chrome lungs. A Mizutani follows, its street modifications so precisely understated they become their own form of violence. Bodyguards emerge and dissolve into formation. Students pour from the NCART trams in their regulation black uniforms—red throat patches, sakura pins—their eyes tracking the cars with the focus of scholars studying a future they've been promised they can purchase.
"Mr. Kuroda," the instructor repeats, his voice carrying the exhaustion of recycled air. "Your analysis."
"Militech's quarterly wasn't a catastrophe," Kaito says, still watching the street theater below. "It was a controlled narrative. They'll frame the loss as strategic repositioning, then announce an acquisition to redirect attention. The stock will recover within two quarters, assuming their network security chief stops hemorrhaging telemetry to market analysis algorithms."
Someone in the room almost laughs, catches themselves. You don't say things like "hemorrhaging telemetry" at Arasaka Academy. You certainly don't call shareholders anything but stakeholders.
"Your reasoning?" the instructor asks.
"Market share erosion. Three points across their East Asian operations over six months. The data signature suggests internal compromise, but they'll blame market volatility or regulatory pressure." He pauses. "Both are acceptable fictions."
Another ripple through the classroom. The instructor makes a notation on his datashard. "Adequate."
The word hangs in the air like a judgment that doesn't quite believe itself.
Kaito finally allows himself to see his reflection in the glass. Black hair engineered to look effortlessly arranged. Uniform tailored within regulation but unmistakably custom. The faint line along his cheekbone that isn't a scar—a micro-mesh panel installed after he fell down marble stairs at seven. He remembers fragments: the copper taste of blood, his father's voice through a comm link saying, "Enhance the bone structure while you're addressing the damage."
They upgraded him like you'd upgrade firmware.
Below, a fixer he recognizes leans against a Quadra Type-66. Mirko "Half-Life"—radiation damage has claimed half his body, leaving the other half to operate on spite and neural patches. Mirko doesn't conduct business near educational institutions. If he's visible, he's sending a message to someone, or he is the message.
The door chimes. "Kuroda. My office. Now."
Chairs scrape. Students part. The air smells like expensive hygiene products and the particular anxiety of people afraid they might be ordinary.
The hallway displays curated history—grainy footage of steel frameworks and cherry blossoms, boardrooms photographed like religious spaces, executives smiling with the confidence of people who've never been told no. A vertical garden climbs toward the ceiling like capital demonstrating growth. Everything is quiet, controlled, peaceful—which means somewhere out of sight, something violent is being processed efficiently.
The office is small enough to feel like intimacy, large enough to maintain hierarchy.
"Kaito," the instructor says, using his given name like a gift. "Hanako Arasaka has requested a brief conversation with you following your family debrief. You will attend."
He nods.
"You will also apologize to Ms. Sato for your language during seminar."
"I can clarify the historical context—"
"You will apologize." The instructor's expression doesn't change. "Talent is tolerated here. Contempt is not. In this family—" He stops himself. "In this institution."
The datashard on his desk pulses. He glances at it, frowns slightly. "Your extracurricular activities are... extensive."
"Networking is part of the curriculum," Kaito says.
"Social events are not intelligence gathering."
"That depends entirely on your definition of intelligence." He waits. "I'm documenting behavioral patterns. It's anthropology with better lighting."
"The administration will conduct a security review of your residential suite."
"They already do. Twice weekly. The micro-drones in the ventilation system are running outdated stealth protocols." He lets that settle. "I document their documentation."
A pause. The instructor's jaw works slightly. "Dismissed."
Back in the corridor, students flow around him like executable code through a network node. He moves with them, then separates, becoming absence rather than presence. In the atrium, a security drone rotates to track him, then its programming tells it to pretend it didn't.
Downstairs, the outside air tastes like battery acid and ozone.
Mirko peels himself away from his vehicle. "Young master," he says, his voice damaged by whatever made him half-ghost. "Your father still laundering souls for the ancestors, or has he moved on to just laundering money?"
"You'd need to consult our accounting department," Kaito says. "Possibly also a priest."
Mirko's smile only works on half his face. "Got an invitation for you. Private braindance circle tonight. The kind of people who decide where the city ends and the wasteland begins. Thought you might be interested in that sort of conversation."
"I'm familiar with that demographic."
"Not yet, you're not." Mirko presses a datachip into Kaito's palm. "Hanako Arasaka's in the tower. When someone like that enters a space, gravity changes. Some people rise. Others discover that rising and falling look identical from certain angles. I'm offering you navigational assistance."
"Navigation implies uncertainty about the destination."
"No," Mirko says, and his laugh sounds like neon tubes dying. "It implies you don't know what you'll be when you arrive."
The family driver stands beside the Aerondight, maintaining perfect posture, his eyes carrying the exhaustion of someone who's seen too much and been paid to forget it. He opens the door.
Kaito looks past him at Night City. The towers rise like accusations aimed at an indifferent sky. The smog tastes like technology digesting itself.
He slides into the car. The interior smells like leather and carefully maintained fear. The door seals, creating a pocket of silence in a city that never stops screaming.
"Family suite," the driver says.
"The roof first."
A muscle in the driver's jaw tightens, releases. "The roof."
They ascend through the garage's spiral, entering a private elevator that hums in frequencies designed to communicate expense. When the doors open, the Academy's roof spreads before him—helipad markings sharp against permacrete, wind cutting across the space like something hunting.
He walks to the edge. The barrier recognizes his implant, sends a polite warning: please maintain safe distance. He ignores it.
Below, the city performs itself: nomad vehicles hammering the highway, Tyger Claws arranged on motorcycles like a tableau, a netrunner standing motionless on a corner with milk-white eyes, a girl in a counterfeit uniform crying into a phone that stopped working, a billboard promising salvation through consumer electronics.
His personal agent notifies him of calendar updates. FAMILY DEBRIEF 09:00. Then, marked in red: HANAKO A. 09:30 — ORIENTATION.
Orientation. The word they use when they're going to reshape something.
He closes the calendar.
He thinks about parties—bodies and noise and transactions disguised as pleasure. About glass floors suspended over aquarium tanks filled with expensive, dying fish. About drugs he observes others consume, sex he participates in without fully inhabiting, the specific scent of power when you're close enough to taste the copper in it. About his father's voice that never requires volume because it carries edges.
The wind attempts to disorder his hair. He allows it.
Somewhere below, Mirko merges into traffic. Somewhere above, an aerial vehicle adjusts its trajectory to account for the weight of passengers who believe they've transcended physics.
He touches the chip in his pocket. Stairs and elevators. All the ways descent can be reframed as ascension if the lighting is managed correctly.
His comm chimes. Emi: Don't be late. Then, after a moment: Good luck.
Luck. As if chance has anything to do with what happens in rooms where Hanako Arasaka decides to notice you.
"We should go," he tells the driver.
The Aerondight accepts him. The Academy activates every camera it owns, smiling.