>>5631253In the end, Kaiba being embarrassed for a bit is preferable to her losing her trust in you.
Besides, you’ve already seen it, right?
As long as you keep your reaction tame, you’ll be able to limit the emotional damage you inflict on Kaiba.
<span class="mu-g">“Kaiba-san,”</span> you say as gently as possible, <span class="mu-g">“I’m not sure if you heard, but before I worked as your manager, I actually worked at human resources here at Matsuno Inc.”</span>
Kaiba peeks between her fingers, glancing at you, <span class="mu-g">“Is that how you know HR-san? The green-haired girl?”</span>
<span class="mu-g">“Yes, I used to work with Kitabayashi Yui-san,”</span> you say, nodding, <span class="mu-g">“But that’s not why I mentioned it.”</span>
You make your best effort at a no-nonsense expression, <span class="mu-g">“Because I worked at HR, I know that sharing the location of your fellow idols like you did could put them in harm’s way. Endangering a fellow idol like this are grounds for immediate termination. You could lose your job as an idol over this.”</span>
<span class="mu-g">“Even I, being responsible for you, could lose my job over this,”</span> you add for emphasis.
Whatever embarrassment she still felt is immediately replaced with pure dread.
<span class="mu-g">”N-no,”</span> she says, eyes widening and tearing up, <span class="mu-g">“That…c-cant, please, I didn’t mean to…”</span>
Face stern, you nod, <span class="mu-g">“It’s true,”</span> you say, <span class="mu-g">“The best I can do for you now is damage control, that’s why I need to see the chat. I need to know what else you said.”</span>
Kaiba’s tears are flowing freely now and sitting in her chair is nothing but a scared, little girl.
She makes eye contact with you for a brief moment, nods, props her knees up, hides her face in her arms, and sobs quietly.
Whether she cries because her job is at risk or because she thinks she’ll almost assuredly be forced to cut ties with EmikoDesu you don’t know.
Having her consent to read the private chat you’ve already read in secret, you spend a few minutes slowly re-reading the chatlog to make it seem like you’re reading it all for the first time.
It’s a long, grim tale in chat message format about somebody making a lonely girl feel special only to then constantly threaten to take that feeling away if they put up a fight to any suggestions.
Having read it this morning, most of it is known to you and you try to gasp and frown where appropriate.
Scrolling through this all completely stone-faced would probably seem suspicious.
However, much to your surprise you eventually hit upon a block of chat messages you haven’t seen before.
The timestamps puts them between 10:15 AM and 11:39 AM, with the last message being responsible for the noise that tipped you off on the chat at the start of this confrontation.
These all happened a short time after you read the chat and began watching cat videos.
