He woke up to French.
Not a dream. Not the faint remnants of some cultured hallucination. Actual French. Spoken fluently. Casually. Like it wasn't 6 a.m. in Oslo and he hadn't just spent the night with a small, jetlagged furnace burrowed into his chest.
Eyes still closed, he listened.
"Non, Maman, je vais bien. Il fait froid, mais l'hôtel est magnifique…"
Switch. Sharp. Fluid.
"Ren, seriously? I can't bring you back a Viking."
And then in crisp, annoyed Japanese, "Nii-san, no, we have different rooms."
Katsuki snorted into the pillow.
Right. Different rooms.
As if she hadn't just spent the entire night curled into the space between his shoulder and neck, drooling on his collarbone like it was her God-given right. As if his arm didn't still hurt from being pinned under her for seven straight hours.
He cracked one eye open.
She was standing near the balcony door, tablet in hand, still on the call, her curls pulled back in a messy half-twist. Dressed—he noted—with mild irritation—in an actual dress shirt and skirt like she'd been up for hours preparing to run the goddamn G20 summit.
When she noticed him stirring, she held a finger up to whoever was on the line and said in Japanese, "I have to work. I'll call again soon. I'll bring something back. Love you."
Click.
Silence.
Well—relative silence.
Because Hana turned around with the energy of a startup intern and immediately launched into—
"Okay, so I've already answered twenty-three emails, fixed the Lerwick doc Naomi flagged, reviewed the Yamato contract draft—they still don't understand clause 14, it's tragic—and I've updated our shared files to match their template system. Also, your Norwegian contact spelled your name wrong again but I fixed it because I knew it would annoy you."
He glitched for a second.
"What time did you wake up?"
"Two."
She handed him a cup of coffee like waking up at two in the morning is perfectly normal.
"...and you haven't slept again since then?"
"Jet lag," she chirped. "And because you're snoring."
"I do not snore."
"You make stressed breathing sounds."
"That's called being alive."
She just smiled, completely unfazed. Then picked up her tablet and started scrolling.
"Anyway. Agenda for today: breakfast with the Lerwick execs at 8. Then I'm briefing their legal and ops leads on the Yamato integration plans—Henrik asked for slides. I already sent them. I have backups. Also, their board meeting's at 2 p.m.—I'm updating them on cross-border implications, so that explains this shirt."
She gestured down at her tucked-in dress shirt like she was explaining something basic to a toddler.
He said nothing. Mostly because she looked unreasonably good for 6 a.m. And also because his brain was still booting up.
"Still waiting for final confirmation from Henrik's secretary about the rest of our schedule," she went on, scrolling through his calendar like she was reviewing a war strategy. "But everything looks set through next Friday. Oh, and—"
She paused.
Frowned.
Tapped her screen.
"…Why do you have a three-day block on your calendar?"
His eyes narrowed. "What?"
She turned the tablet toward him, smug.
"Right there. Thursday to Saturday next week. Marked private."
He sipped his coffee. Stared at the screen. Then at her.
"It's private."
"Yeah," she said slowly. "I can read. But what is it?"
"I'm not telling you."
She raised one brow. Just one. Deadly. Curious. Dangerous.
"So we're keeping secrets now?"
"It's. Private."
The silence that followed wasn't loud—but it throbbed.
She stared at him a beat longer, clearly trying to extract the answer through telepathy. Then she just shrugged.
"Okay."
No protest. No follow-up.
Which meant—
It was not okay.
He watched her walk off, tablet under her arm, curls bouncing like she didn't just set off every mental alarm in his brain.
She was planning something.
She was definitely planning something.
And whatever it was?
It was going to be loud.
He took another sip of his coffee and stared at the spot where she'd been standing, already calculating how much damage she could do in three days if left unsupervised.
He should've locked her access to his calendar.
Too late now.
-----
By Thursday, Katsuki had officially decided: Norwegians were a threat to national security.
Specifically, one Norwegian.
Henrik Andersen of House Lerwick.
The man was a walking maritime shampoo commercial. Tall, charming, immaculately groomed in that I sail yachts on the weekend and still make six figures on Tuesdays sort of way. The kind of man who smiled with his whole face. The kind of man who called Hana "Miss Sukehiro" like it was a secret.
And Hana?
Hana was doing that stupid hair tuck thing again.
Tuck. Behind the ear. With a soft laugh like she'd just heard a particularly polite joke. Like she hadn't weaponized sarcasm for a living since the first day she walked into his office.
Henrik said something in that slow, easy rhythm of a man who'd never had to be efficient a day in his life. Hana laughed again. Tossed her curls. Tilted her head like she wasn't aware that men had died for less.
Katsuki stared across the conference table, every muscle in his jaw clenching like a vice.
Henrik Bjornsson of House Should-Know-Better, he thought grimly. King of the White-Collar Fjords. Lord of Unnecessary Proximity. Slayer of Boundaries. Father of Passive-Aggressive Scheduling Conflicts.
He was going to kill him.
Or the next one of Lerwick's in-house legal team who opened their mouth.
Because they were useless. All of them. One looked like he'd never seen a court document before in his life. Another confused "subject to applicable law" with "anything goes if we're international." And the third—
Oh, the third.
That idiot, somewhere between HR disaster and unintentional sex crime, had the audacity to lean over and ask Hana—in a whisper he must've thought was smooth—if she'd ever considered calling someone "onii-chan."
Katsuki's pen almost snapped in his hand.
And he was halfway across the table before Hana, without blinking, looked the guy dead in the eye and said, "After you've drafted a decent clause. I can do better than this after a bottle of sake." then she handed him a heavily redline draft complete with passive agressive notes.
Silence.
The idiot paled. Katsuki sat back down.
Handled, he thought. Still imagined punching him anyway. Just once. For closure.
To be fair, the rest of the week was going smoothly. Too smoothly, actually. The kind of professional momentum that made him suspicious. Kai, predictably, was handling the Yamato side like a circus ringmaster with a law degree. Fujimoto hadn't imploded yet. No fires. No lawsuits. The Lerwick-Yamato venture was stabilizing, on track, and surprisingly well-received.
He should've been pleased.
But instead, he was preoccupied with—
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Because Hana hadn't mentioned the three-day calendar block again.
Not once.
Which meant she hadn't forgotten.
She was waiting.
He hated that.
Worse, Henrik had started requesting her.
Directly.
Asked if she could shadow Lerwick's internal legal ops team for a day. Just her—because of her "cross-cultural insights," apparently. Which was code for your boss is terrifying and we want someone approachable.
Katsuki, of course, had been stuck in a meeting between Yamato and Lerwick so long it qualified as psychological warfare.
And Hana?
Did the full-day shadowing.
Then went to dinner.
With Henrik.
And his assistant, thankfully, but that barely helped. By the time Katsuki got back to the hotel and saw the calendar update—"Dinner w/ Henrik (don't worry, his PA is coming, I'm not that hot)"—he'd already pulled up the Norwegian GDP out of pettiness.
She strolled in an hour later. Hair wind-blown. Still glowing with the kind of infuriating energy only she possessed.
He didn't even look up from his laptop when he said, "What did you two talk about?"
"Work," she said sweetly, like she wasn't hiding a nuclear secret.
He narrowed his eyes. "What else?"
She shrugged. Smiled like a cat who just discovered fire.
"It's private."
The words hit him like a slap wrapped in silk.
Private.
His own damn word. Used against him like a mirror to the throat.
She just kept smiling. Grabbed a chocolate from the mini-bar. Popped it into her mouth and walked away like she hadn't just shattered every rule of emotional containment.
He stared at her retreating form.
So this was war.
Fine.
Let the lights show up next week.
Let the sky burn in her favor.
But until then?
Henrik Andersen, Lord of the Hair Tuck, was on thin fucking ice.