Chapter Text
Inside the SUV with its dark-tinted windows, the city seemed to revolve around him like a constructed set. As they crossed Shibuya, the glow of the billboards reflected off the leather seat and the cold metal of his phone, but all he had to do was lift his eyes to see himself in countless forms.
On the first giant screen, he appeared in profile, wrapped in an impeccably cut black Yves Saint Laurent overcoat, the high collar covering his neck and a silver chain disappearing beneath the silk. Twenty meters farther on, he walked through the mist of a gray beach for a perfume campaign. Beyond that, in black and white, a six-story photograph covered the entire facade of a building: his hair parted by the water, lips slightly open, and his dark eyes fixed on the crowd crossing the street below without ever reaching his gaze.
There was no name printed on any of the images, the brand knew it was unnecessary. Sasuke's face was the logo itself.
Two steps below the main display, two girls waiting at the light pointed upward and raised their phones with an excited little hop. One of them carried the same structured leather bag Sasuke had worn when he landed at the Paris airport three months earlier, the piece that had sold out completely in boutiques across four continents after a single paparazzi photo circulated for two hours.
He lowered his gaze to his phone screen.
One hundred and eighty-six million people followed his every move. His latest post, an unstudied shot taken on the floor of a dressing room, knees bent and the heavy runway boots still on his feet, had passed eight million likes before he finished breakfast. Beneath it, a storm of comments in dozens of languages piled up: praise for his flawless skin and feverish speculation over who the blurred masculine hand in the background belonged to.
It was only Kenji, his fifty-five-year-old hairstylist, holding a can of hairspray.
Sasuke slid his thumb across the screen and locked it. He lightly adjusted the high collar of his coat, feeling the fabric against the nape of his neck. Just below his hairline, perfectly concealed, a transdermal inhibitor patch pressed against sensitive skin. It was the invisible price of moving through that world as an omega at the absolute summit of the global market.
Where the natural signature of his essence should have been, a rare note of lily of the valley and frozen jasmine, there was only sterile emptiness. Untouchable and inaccessible to every alpha in the room.
When the car finally stopped in front of the private studio, security had already sealed off half the block. Two assistants were waiting beside the door when the electronic lock clicked open: one held out a thermal cup of lukewarm coffee; the other kept an umbrella open over his head to shield him, although there was not a single cloud in the Tokyo sky.
Beyond the metal barricades, dozens of fans calling his name rose in a shrill wave, accompanied by the intermittent flash of cameras and outstretched arms holding flowers and designer boxes that would be inspected down to the last millimeter before they reached his dressing room.
Sasuke did not slow down. He merely adjusted his sunglasses and walked straight through the tempered-glass doors.
The inside of the studio resembled a temple of contemporary art: polished steel panels reflecting the high ceiling, and immaculate cold lighting calculated to flatter every angle of his face. At the center of the space, a floating staircase had been built solely for him to descend during filming. Along the sides, racks hidden beneath protective covers held millions in wardrobe, while two armed guards watched over a table where exclusive jewelry and sapphire watches were arranged on black velvet.
Karin appeared at his side in quick strides, the click of her heels echoing across the polished floor as her eyes moved between a tablet and two phones.
"Balenciaga delivered the entire winter collection to your dressing room," she said, keeping pace without losing her breath. "They want you to choose the look for your next arrival in Shanghai. The team needs to know which suitcase and which coat you'll use."
Sasuke removed his sunglasses with an effortless motion and handed them to the assistant following half a step behind him.
"Nothing from Balenciaga. You know I didn't like the new creative director."
Her thumb moved rapidly over the touchscreen.
"I'll tell them you're narrowing down the options." she knew Sasuke was not easily bent. "Bottega topped that Milan offer in exchange for exclusivity and British Vogue wants the November cover finalized by the end of the day."
An assistant approached with practiced movements, carefully sliding the heavy coat from Sasuke's shoulders while another knelt to undo the leather buckles of his boots.
"Another forty-seven boxes arrived at the apartment," Karin continued without pausing. "Prada, Miu Miu, Margiela, Tom Ford, and a conceptual Danish brand that sent a custom-designed armchair."
Sasuke stopped in the center of the dressing room and allowed them to adjust his posture.
"An armchair?" He raised an eyebrow.
"They said the leather-and-steel structure matches your aura."
"Send it back."
"The armchair?"
"The brand."
Karin gave a dry little smile, made a quick note in the management app, and indicated the makeup chair with a tilt of her chin.
Sasuke sat before the mirror. Within seconds, a small team began orbiting him in a silent ballet: one makeup artist prepared his skin with imported serums, another aligned every strand of hair with millimetric precision, an Italian tailor pinned the sleeve of an overcoat still hanging on its rack, while the creative director leaned beside him and explained, in an almost pleading tone, that the season's campaign had to convey "absolute desire and the pinnacle of contemporary privilege."
Beneath the flawless layer of makeup and the constant pressure of the patch at his neck, Sasuke's body did not so much as waver.
With a subtle movement, he picked up his phone and opened TikTok.
The first video on his feed showed a woman in a beige linen dress, her hair tied back with a soft silk ribbon, making homemade jam in a spacious kitchen flooded with natural afternoon light. On her finger, a rough-cut diamond ring gleamed discreetly, an expensive enough piece to pay a family's rent for years. In the background, beyond broad glass doors, stood an immaculate garden with an infinity pool, and a staff member in a discreet uniform carrying tea on a silver tray.
Sasuke turned up the volume.
"Please keep your forehead relaxed," the makeup artist asked, bringing a soft brush toward his face.
He relaxed his expression without taking his eyes off the screen.
In the next video, another woman stepped out of a luxury SUV in front of a country estate. The next cut showed her in a private Pilates session, then gathering fresh flowers from a bed that plainly required an entire gardening staff to maintain.
The caption at the bottom read: A quiet morning caring for the house and my three children.
"Saint Laurent wants to renew your exclusivity for another three years," Karin announced, appearing beside the mirror with her digital pen poised. "The contract value is thirty percent higher than last season."
On the phone screen, a nanny crossed the back of the garden carrying a rosy-cheeked child. Sasuke paused the image, rewound three seconds, and played it again, watching the scene loop.
"Sasuke?" Karin called, puzzled by his silence. "Three years. Saint Laurent. Can we sign?"
He kept watching the woman on the screen, who was now carefully arranging five flower stems in a ceramic vase as though that quiet, meticulous task were the only demand placed on her entire day.
"Later."
Karin blinked, her hands going still over the tablet. That was unprecedented. Sasuke Uchiha never put off business decisions or major contracts until later.
On the sixty-inch industrial monitor in the corner of the studio, the final cut of the commercial began playing silently as a test. The Sasuke on-screen, an imposing three-meter figure, walked through an endless corridor of polished mirrors in a flawless suit. A vision the entire world worshiped.
Meanwhile, the real Sasuke remained there, motionless, surrounded by four professionals touching his skin with gloves and brushes, adjusting his posture to turn him into the perfect image of perfection.
On his phone, the woman served tea on the vine-covered veranda of her estate. Sasuke continued scrolling with the tip of his thumb.
Another sunlit garden. A country house. Private stables. Quiet flights aboard executive jets.
Charity lunches beside the pool. A private pottery lesson on a Wednesday afternoon.
He slowly raised his head and met his own reflection in the mirror, framed by the studio lights and the shadow of the monitor displaying his image to the world.
Millions of people would have given anything for that life, but Sasuke felt... bored.
...
The photo shoot began twenty minutes later.
Sasuke put on the first look, a structured tailored jacket with sharply defined shoulders. He allowed them to fit the high collar close against his nape, over the discreet edge of the inhibitor patch, then walked to the exact tape mark on the floor.
The photographer raised the lens beneath the cold lighting. He asked Sasuke to turn his face a few degrees to the left, then to the right. To relax his shoulders while preserving the proud rigidity of his posture.
The flashes erupted in a deafening sequence.
Sasuke knew that stage better than anyone, how to lengthen his neck to flatter the cut of a collar, how to alter his expression without moving anything but the intensity of his dark eyes. How to make a piece of velvet look like the pinnacle of desire and luxury even when the fabric prickled against his skin and the Italian leather shoes, half a size too small, crushed his feet with every step.
"Perfect. Absolutely perfect, Sasuke!" the photographer repeated like a mantra, the sound of continuous shutter clicks filling the studio.
Sasuke turned slightly, shifting his weight from one leg to the other.
The next day's schedule was already burning in his memory: three sessions back to back. The first at seven in the morning for a South Korean cosmetics brand; the second, an editorial shoot for a prestigious French magazine; the third, at night, would require a drive to Yokohama and would not end until well after midnight.
He would need to sleep early. Six in the evening, if logistics allowed.
It would be better to decline the event dinner and have something prepared directly at his apartment. Steamed fish, vegetables, no salt; he was still on the strict diet for Paris Fashion Week. The tailor had already scheduled another fitting in five days, and losing a few more millimeters from his waist would improve the drape of the closer-cut pieces.
He raised his arm when the lighting assistant signaled, rotated his wrist slightly, and tilted his chin.
He considered canceling that night's session with his personal trainer, but he knew the cost: he would have to make up for it the next morning, in the narrow gap between the first and second campaigns. Karin would find room. She always found a way to squeeze time tighter.
"Five-minute break!" production called, and the main light went dark at once.
Sasuke returned to the makeup chair in slow steps. An Egyptian cotton towel was placed over his shoulders, and someone offered him coconut water in a glass bottle. Another person brought a dryer close to touch up the alignment of the hair at his nape, a few centimeters from where his omega nature remained properly smothered.
He unlocked his phone. The woman in the video was still making the pie; Sasuke had left the app running in the background.
Now she was taking the pan from the oven in padded floral mitts while the warm light of midafternoon bathed the kitchen's oak-framed windows. Flour lay scattered like snow across the marble counter, and a dirty bowl rested in the stainless-steel sink.
She cut a thick slice before the pie had even cooled, placed it on a hand-painted ceramic plate, and sat down right there. On a Wednesday, in the middle of the afternoon. She ate the pie while it still steamed and spoke to the camera the children playing on the veranda, and the vacation she would take at the end of the month to a private island.
Without cleaning the table, weighing the slice by the gram, or calculating how many hours of cardio she would have to pay for so the sugar would not affect the glow of her skin.
Sasuke watched the clip again.
"Lift your chin a little, please," the makeup artist said, bringing the concealer sponge closer.
He obeyed without moving his gaze from the glowing screen.
It was not the kitchen he coveted, nor merely the rustic estate, or the enormous diamond flashing on the woman's ring with every forkful.
Sasuke wanted the privilege of eating pie on a Wednesday.
He wanted to wake in the morning without an entire team having already parceled out his eight, ten, and two o'clock. He wanted to eat lunch without three photographers documenting the aesthetics of his plate, to spend an entire afternoon sprawled in a beautiful house without every room being treated as the set for the next editorial.
He wanted the supreme luxury of resting without rest being merely the maintenance required for the next workday. The realization settled over him.
Sasuke was exhausted.
Not tired of that particular session, but saturated from being the engine of something that only grew larger the higher he climbed. His resounding success had not bought his freedom; just more refined obligations, a more expensive team to manage him, eight-figure contracts. Five-star hotel suites where he barely managed four hours of sleep before boarding an international flight.
He closed TikTok and opened the calendar app.
The coming weeks looked like a suffocating mosaic of colored blocks. Tokyo. Paris. Milan. Seoul. New York. Global campaigns, gala dinners, couture fittings, and travel that left no room even for an unhurried lunch.
He slid his thumb across the screen. What if he simply did not have to continue?
He already had money. Enough to disappear for years, provided he agreed to slow down, cut extravagant luxuries, and live "only" as an ordinary young multimillionaire.
But Sasuke did not want to reduce his spending. He wanted to increase it. Triple it.
He wanted the country estate and the pedigreed horses. A private jet waiting in the hangar and an international chef who would make the pie, or simply leave the kitchen immaculate and empty while Sasuke tried to bake something from scratch. He wanted enough staff that a table dusted with flour was no one's concern.
He wanted a life in which wealth was so colossal that even time became an abundant, insignificant resource.
The problem was that no fashion campaign, however astronomical, could deliver that level of life. He could work himself senseless for another ten or fifteen years, invest and multiply his fortune, but it would still be his labor sustaining it. He would still have to manage, still have to produce.
The woman in the video did not seem to have a single productive thought in her head. She simply existed, upheld by a structure of old and unshakable wealth.
The photo shoot continued in the background. Karin never stopped moving, the heel of her pump clicking against the studio's polished concrete floor as she followed half a step behind Sasuke, shifting her gaze between the iPad screen and Saint Laurent's wardrobe board.
"Prada wants tomorrow's travel look finalized by six," Karin said without looking at him, her thumb flying over the screen as she fired off emails. "The black suit or the structured overcoat?"
Sasuke did not answer immediately. He raised an arm so the makeup artist could mist thermal water over his face. He closed his eyes, feeling the cold moisture settle over his perfect skin, then lowered his hand slowly, the phone held between two fingers.
"Neither." His voice was low, nearly swallowed by the studio's industrial fan.
Karin stopped abruptly. The clicking heel went silent, and she finally looked up from the tablet, her digital pen suspended in the air.
"What do you mean, neither? Sasuke, the driver is coming to the apartment at five in the morning. The suitcase has to be ready today."
"Cancel it."
"Cancel Prada?" She gave a short, humorless laugh, adjusting her glasses at the bridge of her nose with one finger before resuming her furious typing. "Have you lost your mind? They topped Dior's offer!"
Sasuke turned toward the dressing-room mirror, watching the makeup brush trace the line of his jaw. With his other hand, he unlocked his phone without looking at the screen, feeling only the device's vibration beneath his thumb.
"That man," he murmured.
"What man? Vogue's director or the jewelry representative?"
"The one from the cryptocurrency platform." Sasuke tipped his head back and let the assistant adjust his coat collar. "The one from Kyoto."
Karin's wrist froze. This time she turned her entire body toward him, holding the tablet against her chest as though using it as a shield.
"The alpha who spent two hours trying to guess your perfume brand and nearly spilled wine on your trousers?"
"Is he still sending messages?"
Karin blinked twice, baffled. She raised the tablet again, swiped through three pages of reports so forcefully the glass made a sharp sound, and jabbed at a folder marked in red.
"His assistant calls the office every other day. He sent an orchid arrangement this morning that I had thrown into the lobby trash." She stepped half a pace closer and lowered her voice so the makeup artists would not hear. "Sasuke, you called him unbearable in the car. You told me to delete his number."
Sasuke picked up the glass bottle from the counter, twisted the metal cap until the seal broke with a click, and took a small sip without wetting his already painted lower lip.
"Answer him."
Karin blew air sharply through her nose, her patience visibly at its limit.
"Say what? That you remembered he exists?"
"Tell him I accept the dinner invitation."
The digital pen slipped from Karin's fingers and landed with a dull thud on the dressing-room carpet. No one moved to pick it up. She stared at Sasuke as if he had just announced that he was leaving fashion to become a monk.
"Has the Paris diet driven you insane?" She bent slightly, bracing her hands on her thighs so she could stare at his reflection in the mirror. "The man is insufferable. He never stops talking about Bitcoin and how many cars he has in his garage. Why the hell do you want to waste two hours of your evening with him?"
Sasuke set the glass bottle on the makeup table. He picked up his phone, locked the screen with a dry click, and met the producer's gaze through the mirror, his expression empty.
"Market research," he said, rising from the chair before she could even formulate the next question.
...
The first date ended before dessert was even brought out.
The cryptocurrency entrepreneur arrived twenty minutes late. He offered an automatic apology without the slightest trace of genuine regret and dropped two phones onto the restaurant's mahogany table with a hard thud before he had even pulled out his chair.
One vibrated harshly during the starter; the other, without pause, in the middle of the main course.
"This is a crucial moment for the company," he explained, his thumb moving incessantly over the lit glass. "We're finalizing another investment round with an Asian group."
Sasuke tilted his head slightly, watching the reflection of notifications in the man's lenses. Neither the perfectly tailored suit nor the expensive woody cologne could conceal the exhaustion lurking beneath his eyes.
"You still need investors?" Sasuke asked, his voice measured.
The man finally looked up, mildly surprised.
"Every respectable corporation needs to expand."
The answer sounded like a business-manual cliché. It answered nothing.
For the next forty minutes, Sasuke had to endure an uninterrupted monologue about expansion into the Singapore market, loopholes in financial regulation, market volatility, and an American fund that might acquire a substantial stake in the company.
The man boasted, with almost bizarre pride, that he rarely slept more than four hours a night, as though that were the highest trophy of his journey.
Sasuke maintained his flawless posture and took a sip of mineral water.
"And when do you rest?"
The man gave a derisive little laugh.
"Rest is a luxury for people who haven't reached the top yet."
Sasuke glanced at the luxury watch on his wrist, the tailored jacket, and the two devices once again trembling frantically on the linen tablecloth.
Then, in truth, that man had not reached anywhere at all.
"I see."
Sasuke adjusted his high collar, rose with his usual cold grace, and crossed the restaurant's private dining room before anyone could even think to offer the coffee menu.
The second prospect was the direct heir to an enormous network of diagnostic medicine centers and private clinics.
He was refined, had impeccable table manners, and owned a cinematic estate in Karuizawa that he insisted on showing Sasuke through seven detailed, high-resolution photographs on his iPad. However, he worked twelve-hour days, was opening two new branches in the Kansai region, and spent more than half the dinner urgently replying to his father's messages.
"In a few years, I intend to take command of the entire global operation," he said with a focused expression.
Sasuke drew his brows together discreetly, the crease almost invisible beneath the beautiful makeup.
"In a few years?"
"Of course. I still have to prove to the board that I'm ready for the position."
Prove.
The word struck like a bitter taste. Sasuke began to trace a profoundly irritating pattern.
The third candidate ran a rapidly rising technology startup. The fourth invested in luxury restaurant chains. The fifth had inherited enough capital to spend the rest of his life in comfort, but nowhere near enough to sustain the lavish standard Sasuke demanded without continuing to oversee things every day.
All of them had money. Some possessed genuinely impressive sums. But none of them were rich in the right way.
Sasuke already owned a penthouse atop one of Tokyo's most expensive buildings, a fleet of sports cars, well-established investment portfolios, pieces that traveled directly from the runway to his closet, and multimillion-dollar contracts capable of guaranteeing his comfort for decades.
He did not need another man whose schedule was strangled by meetings, much less to share breakfast with a partner who joined global conferences at six in the morning and came home exhausted after midnight.
For that kind of routine, he would rather remain alone. His own schedule was already a suffocating nightmare.
By the end of the second week of disastrous dinners, Karin stopped asking how the dates had gone. She only had to notice the tension in his jaw and the apathy in his eyes when he slammed the door of whichever luxury car had brought him back that evening.
That night, as he slid into the back seat, Sasuke leaned against the soft leather and opened TikTok before he even bothered to remove his sunglasses.
The screen displayed another pastoral scene: a woman arranging wildflowers on a rustic stone countertop. In the background, beyond a sunlit veranda, two blond children ran across the immaculate lawn while a discreetly uniformed nanny followed at a respectful distance.
Karin, seated in the front passenger seat, turned slightly, her profile cut by the city lights.
"Since when do you spend time watching this kind of content?"
Sasuke did not bother answering. The bluish reflection of the screen shone in his dark lenses as he scrolled.
Another video: a woman trying on three haute couture dresses for a charity luncheon in the middle of the afternoon. Then a visual diary of the restoration of a historic estate in rural France. An heiress riding on a sunny Thursday morning and mentioning that she would have a private art history lesson with a renowned curator afterward.
Karin continued watching him through the center rearview mirror.
"Is this some kind of market study for the next campaign?"
Absolute silence.
"Are you thinking of changing the aesthetic of your contacts network?"
Sasuke merely raised the volume, covering her voice with the clip's soft piano music. Karin clicked her tongue and turned forward again, giving up.
Beyond the tinted windows, Tokyo passed in an uninterrupted sequence of neon, steel, and concrete. The car rounded two avenues where Sasuke's face adorned illuminated storefronts belonging to international fashion houses. Then they passed an electronic billboard over ten meters high, where a giant version of Sasuke in Saint Laurent stared at the metropolis with distant, unreachable eyes.
Sasuke did not even lift his head to look.
He continued scrolling, the feed repeating the same succession of slow, wealthy, carefree lives, until he felt the driver brake more firmly.
Traffic had backed up ahead because of road closures. Enormous dark wooden barriers with acoustic shielding surrounded nearly the entire length of that upscale block, but the monumental structure under construction already rose proudly above them.
Several towers of smoked glass and steel were connected in the air by boldly designed suspended walkways. On the roof of the tallest block, a sky garden was already taking shape, with mature trees being delicately lifted by industrial cranes. The main entrance, still being finished, had a sumptuous scale, combining polished pale stone with slats of noble wood that reinterpreted the architecture of ancient imperial gates through modern, imposing lines.
Sasuke slowly lowered the phone and rested it on his thigh.
"What are they building there?" he asked, genuine curiosity entering his voice.
The driver glanced at him through the rearview mirror before answering.
"It's the new corporate and commercial complex, Mr. Uchiha."
Sasuke turned toward the window, fixing his gaze on the immense construction site. A complex, but not one with the scale of an ordinary shopping center.
It looked like the design for a private citadel embedded in the center of Tokyo, with three integrated corporate buildings, the frame of an ultra-luxury hotel still surrounded by scaffolding, and an open plaza large enough to contain an urban park.
Heavy cargo trucks entered and left through separate underground access points. Dozens of workers, visible beyond the barriers, moved through the structure. The high-performance mirrored-glass facade alone must have cost more than the annual budget of many mid-sized companies.
"Slow down," he ordered.
The driver complied immediately, reducing the car's speed to the lowest permitted. Sasuke studied every detail of the project with an analytical gaze, because this was not the kind of ostentatious wealth displayed on a watch face or in the roar of a sports car.
It was immense wealth: the kind that bought an entire block in the heart of the world's most expensive capital, arrived with bulldozers, reduced everything to dust, and rebuilt the space in its own image.
The kind of capital that employed hundreds of people and moved the economy before the doors even opened to the public. A massive, self-sustaining fortune that would continue generating rivers of money every second, even if its owner decided to spend every Wednesday of his life eating pie on a sunny veranda.
Sasuke leaned forward and strained to read the metal sign installed beside the suppliers' main gate.
Uzumaki Developments.
He picked up the phone again with an analytical motion.
"Karin."
She turned her head at once.
"Yes?"
"Find out exactly who owns this."
Karin stared at the scale of the construction through the window before looking back at him.
"The commercial complex?"
"The entire company."
"Why the interest?"
Sasuke kept his eyes fixed on the imposing structure as it gradually fell behind while the car accelerated.
Until that exact moment, he had been looking for rich men. That had been his miscalculation.
He did not need someone at the peak of his energy trying to build a fortune or prove his worth to boards and shareholders. He wanted someone who already owned something too large to collapse. Someone whose empire ran on autopilot.
"Mere curiosity," he replied in a neutral tone.
Karin narrowed her eyes, sensing something more behind the question, but opened the tablet without pressing him and began typing rapidly.
Sasuke returned his attention to his phone. In the TikTok clip, the woman cut another slice of pie on the flour-dusted counter, smiling at the camera without the slightest hurry.
This time, however, Sasuke barely registered the scene. His mind had already changed direction.
Someone capable of raising a structure of that magnitude did not merely have money in an account. They possessed the kind of financial power under which work ceased to be a daily obligation and became, at most, an optional pastime.
...
His dinner was waiting, flawlessly served on the black oak table, the moment he stepped into the apartment.
One hundred and twenty grams of steamed white fish, boiled vegetables without a single drop of sauce, and a portion of brown rice smaller than his hand. Beside the porcelain plate sat a bottle of imported mineral water, two nutritional supplements separated by scheduled time, and a printed note from his nutritionist reminding him that exactly eleven days remained before the trip to Paris.
Sasuke unbuttoned his coat with a fluid motion, let it slide from his shoulders, and sat down.
Beyond the immense floor-to-ceiling glass wall, Tokyo stretched infinitely below him like an ocean of lights, neon, and concrete. The apartment occupied nearly the entire top floor of the most exclusive residential building in Minato. Designer Italian furniture, catalogued contemporary sculptures, and an immaculate kitchen that rarely saw flame except when a private chef came to prepare his diet meals.
It was a stunning space, extraordinarily quiet. Absurdly expensive. And yet, on that particular night, it felt suffocating and small.
Sasuke cut a slice of fish slowly and chewed without hurry or enthusiasm. The phone on the table vibrated, lighting the polished surface. Karin had sent a six-minute voice message.
He pressed play and left the device on the placemat.
"Tomorrow, the armored car arrives at exactly five twenty. Hair and makeup will meet you directly at the first studio, so you don't need to bother receiving anyone there. The South Korean cosmetics campaign begins at seven, but the director wants a few backstage shots in the dressing room first. At ten thirty, you go straight to the editorial fitting for the French magazine. Lunch will be served in transit because the schedule is overbooked, but I've already confirmed the restricted menu with your nutritionist..."
Sasuke cut another exact piece of fish.
"...At precisely three p.m., we have that crucial teleconference with the Paris board. At five, the fitting for the custom suit for the Cartier dinner. The night session in Hokkaido has been moved forward by forty minutes, so with luck you'll be able to release the team before midnight, but the producer requested full availability in case they need reshoots..."
Sasuke tapped the screen and stopped the recording. Absolute silence reclaimed the room. He finished the fish without bothering to listen to the rest of the report.
A few moments later, he walked firmly to the living room, settled onto the leather sofa, and opened the search tool on his tablet.
Uzumaki Developments. The result filled the screen instantly.
A corporation founded more than two hundred years earlier. Publicly traded, with controlling stakes in ultra-high-end residential megaprojects, commercial complexes, and luxury hotel chains spread across the world's major capitals. They were responsible for restoring protected historic landmarks, building entire master-planned districts, and managing some of the most valuable and coveted square footage in the country.
Sasuke navigated the group's corporate website. It contained dozens of striking photographs of its developments: mirrored towers piercing the clouds, resorts along the Mediterranean coast, gated communities, and estates surrounded by private woodlands that seemed to vanish into the horizon.
People, however, were rarely visible.
He scrolled to the board of directors tab. Only a few senior executives appeared in sober official portraits: middle-aged men and women with elaborately titled positions and discreet faces.
Minato Uzumaki was listed as chairman of the board and executive founder.
Sasuke tapped the name and found only an image several years old, taken during an international economic forum. Minato stood behind a podium in profile, with neatly cut blond hair and a politely distant smile. Beyond that, there were only two more photographs: the ribbon cutting for a corporate complex and a record of him speaking at a symposium on urbanism and sustainability.
Nothing else. No gossip, no trace of a private life.
Sasuke returned to the search bar and typed: Minato Uzumaki wife. Generic, irrelevant results. Uzumaki Developments family. Only a business-magazine article mentioning that control of the company's shares remained tightly protected under the founding family's management. No specific names were given.
Uzumaki heirs. No useful information. Sasuke rested his chin on his closed fist and frowned. It made no sense at all.
Executives with a fraction of that fortune made a point of displaying heirs, vacation mansions, superyachts, and holiday photographs for anyone who cared to look. Technology magnates turned their breakfast routines into daily content for engagement. Old-money families competed for space in society columns, lavish weddings, and fashion-magazine covers.
The Uzumaki, by contrast, owned entire sections of major cities and apparently had no public face.
Sasuke opened the company's corporate Instagram profile. The official account had fewer followers than a fan page devoted exclusively to analyzing detailed photographs of his hands.
They posted only models, public-park inaugurations, sustainable landscaping, and environmental reports. Not a trace of any family member.
He opened his contacts and called Suigetsu. The call was answered on the fourth ring.
"Do you have any idea what time it is?" the voice on the other end grumbled.
"No."
"Excellent. I've lost track too. What happened that made you call me at this hour?"
"I need you to investigate a family."
A brief silence followed on the line.
"That sounded like you're hiring me for a criminal investigation."
"You work in image and media management."
"Which does not make that sentence any less suspicious, Sasuke."
Sasuke simply ignored the irony.
"The Uzumaki family. Owners of Uzumaki Developments."
"The major property developer?"
"The entire company."
"There's a brutal difference between a construction firm and an investment corporation."
"Find every detail."
Suigetsu gave a muffled laugh on the other end.
"And what exactly do you want to know about them?"
Sasuke looked at the tablet screen, the company's sober logo glowing in the darkness of the room.
"Absolutely everything."
"'Everything' is a very broad concept."
"Family structure, genealogy, unlisted assets, heirs, private events, social circles, unfiltered photographs."
"Are you planning to buy an entire floor in one of their buildings?"
"No."
"Then why the hell—"
"Just gather the information."
Suigetsu sighed deeply.
"This little project is going to cost you considerably more."
"Send the bill to my team."
"That is exactly why I love working with you."
Sasuke ended the call without saying goodbye. The next morning, while he waited for the makeup team at the studio, he received a preliminary file that was almost empty.
Two days later, Suigetsu appeared in person at Sasuke's apartment carrying a state-of-the-art tablet and a visibly irritated expression.
"Your family of billionaire ghosts is absolutely unbearable to track," he declared.
Sasuke looked up from his cup of tea.
"Did you find anything useful?"
"Technically, yes, but it was hell."
Suigetsu dropped onto the sofa without waiting for an invitation and unlocked the encrypted folder.
The first image was slightly blurred. It showed Minato Uzumaki getting into the back of an armored sedan after giving a lecture at an elite university.
The second photograph was even worse: a discreet group of officials at a charity gala dinner, photographed from a great distance. Minato stood at the center of the frame. Beside him, a tall woman with long red hair and impeccable posture was partially obscured by another guest.
"Kushina Uzumaki," Suigetsu said, tapping the screen with his index finger. "The wife. She chairs two private foundations: one dedicated to restoring national historic heritage and another to early-childhood education. She never gives in-person interviews and has no public social-media accounts."
Sasuke enlarged the image and studied the woman.
"And children?"
Suigetsu swiped to the next page of the file.
"This is where the story gets genuinely interesting."
Sasuke paused.
"Name?"
"Naruto Uzumaki."
The screen displayed a photograph more than five years old. Naruto appeared to be just over eighteen at the time, wearing a classically cut suit and holding ceremonial scissors beside his father as they cut the ribbon at a residential complex.
The image resolution was low, but Sasuke used his fingers to enlarge the face. Bright, unruly blond hair. Young, striking features. A smile too open and spontaneous for the solemnity of the event.
"Is this the only picture?"
"I got three more through industry contacts."
The second photograph showed Naruto in the background of a banquet hall, speaking with a diplomat.
In the third, he wore a dark overcoat and entered the lobby of a five-star hotel, nearly obscured by a private security guard. The fourth looked as though it had been taken covertly on an old phone in the auditorium of a graduate course.
None of the photographs were professional quality or revealed his face in full, crystal-clear detail.
Sasuke moved between the files, his gaze intent.
"He doesn't have private social-media accounts?"
"If he does, he uses an untraceable pseudonym and posts no photographs of his face."
"Interviews?"
"None on public record."
"Relationships? Appearances with partners?"
"Nothing listed. No girlfriends, no former fiancées, no recorded scandals."
"What does he do in the company?"
"A few occasional appearances. He often accompanies his father to investment forums and private dinners with international investors, but he rarely takes the microphone. He works actively within the group, holding a leadership position in the prospecting and development of new megaprojects. His name appears in several formal sets of board-meeting minutes."
Sasuke returned the file to the ribbon-cutting photograph.
"Estimated family net worth?"
Suigetsu gave a long, low whistle.
"It's almost impossible to calculate without access to the Swiss vaults. The percentage of directly held shares the family owns in the publicly listed company would be enough on its own to guarantee that the next ten generations never had to lift a finger. And that doesn't include private properties, real-estate funds, galleries, and islands registered through offshore entities."
"What is the approximate figure?"
"We're talking multiple billions of dollars."
Sasuke raised his dark eyes and stared at him.
"How many multiples?"
"Enough to buy the fashion house you work for and still shut down the entire block."
"Be more precise."
"That is as precise as you're going to get unless I hire a hacker to break into the central bank's system."
Sasuke returned his attention to Naruto's image. The man was not a myth. He existed. And he was single... the sole heir to the Uzumaki empire.
His family controlled an established corporate structure that was enormous, profitable, and immune to superficial market fluctuations or tabloid gossip. And, incredibly, the outside world knew almost nothing about him.
The vague interest Sasuke had felt upon seeing the shopping complex's construction site transformed instantly into stubborn determination. It was no longer mere curiosity. It was a matter of logic.
For years, every detail of Sasuke's life had been documented, analyzed, and exposed to the public. The clothes he chose for the airport, what he ordered at restaurants, the way he tilted his head. Entire social-media accounts existed solely to catalogue the jewelry he wore and theorize about his private life.
Meanwhile, Naruto Uzumaki, the future owner of a multibillion-dollar empire, moved through the world as a blurred figure in the background of photographs taken from a distance.
Pure injustice.
"I want a complete dossier," Sasuke declared.
Suigetsu blinked in surprise.
"Man, this was already absurdly difficult to obtain. I had to call in old favors."
"Hire a specialist agency."
"Specialized in what?"
"Obtaining information the ordinary internet cannot provide."
Suigetsu stared at him for several long seconds, trying to decipher the model's expression.
"Sasuke... why the hell are you investigating the life of the Uzumaki heir?"
Sasuke raised his teacup with perfect composure.
"I'm still assessing my options."
It was a polished lie.
That same afternoon, Sasuke authorized a bank transfer to hire an elite corporate-intelligence agency. He requested nothing illegal, only a meticulous survey of strategic information: board memberships, professional routine, academic background, restricted social circles, institutional events he attended, associated properties, and any history of personal connections.
The confidential report reached his hands one week later.
Naruto Uzumaki, twenty-four years old. Bachelor's and master's degrees in Business Administration and Urban Planning from Harvard. Current Director of Strategic Development at Uzumaki Developments.
Sole heir to the family fortune.
Marital status: Single. Secondary gender: Alpha.
No record of scandals or legal disputes. No history of public ostentation at parties. Board member of two philanthropic institutions. Attends, without exception, the closed annual fundraising dinner of the Historic Preservation Foundation chaired by his mother.
A recent photograph was attached to the report.
Taken from a medium distance at a side angle, it showed Naruto leaving the company's corporate headquarters. The sleeves of his white dress shirt were rolled to his elbows, his tailored jacket was slung carelessly over one shoulder, and he was laughing openly at something said by the man walking beside him.
Sasuke enlarged the image on the tablet until he could see his face clearly.
He was undeniably attractive, but not with the polished refinement of the Paris runways. Naruto's smile occupied nearly his entire face, open, warm, and disarming. His blond hair looked as though it had been combed in the morning and completely forgotten for the rest of the day, with unruly strands falling over his forehead.
Sasuke kept the image open for several long minutes, studying every detail.
Then he picked up the hardbound notebook he used exclusively for personal notes and opened it to an entirely blank page.
At the top, in his elegant, precise handwriting, he wrote:
ACTION PLAN: THE HEIR
Beneath it, he drew a straight, firm line.
Target: Naruto Uzumaki.
He held the pen above the page for several moments, arranging the steps with the same precision he used to plan his international campaigns and began listing them in bullet points:
Gain direct access to his restricted social circle.
Map and assess his personality traits.
Create a genuine and unattainable point of interest.
Become an indispensable presence in his routine.
Marriage and consolidation of assets.
Sasuke read and reread each listed item. They seemed perfectly structured and executable. Beside the fifth point, he added a note in smaller letters:
Estimated execution period: 12 to 24 months.
He closed the notebook with a dry snap and looked at his calendar, crammed with commitments. Now it no longer seemed like a means of imprisoning him. In truth, every appointment, every dinner, and every photograph was merely another step toward constructing his final exit.
Because Sasuke was going to win himself a billionaire.