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Night after night, it was always the same damn thing.The same ugly drunks at the bar bitching about the same problems they’d rather drink away than try to fix. The same groups of girls out on the dance floor hopelessly drifting from dance partner to dance partner as if they might luck, or rather fuck, their way into finding their soulmate in one of them. The same assholes who'd hands brushed her ass every time she walked by carrying drinks between the bar and the crowd. And of course, it all left her with the same bitter feelings of regret. The stagnant monotony of it all felt like a hand closing around her throat. This was not how her life was supposed to turn out, but she really had no one to blame but herself.In the beginning, she’d gotten through each night by telling herself it was temporary.But now, damn near a year later, those words were beginning to taste as fake and stale as the boxed macaroni and cheese she’d lived on back when she’d studied abroad in the States in college. Back when she still had hopes and dreams. Back before she knew how shitty the world and just about everyone in it really were.The reality was, she didn’t know if her life would ever go back to normal—whatever the hell that even meant—because she didn’t know if he would ever stop looking for her. And if he did, would she still ever be able to stop from looking over her shoulder watching for him ?At least for the foreseeable future, she didn’t have many choices. It was this, or likely death, and that goddamn stubborn part of herself that clung to life, meaningless as it currently was, still refused to accept that."Yo, Nakamura. Nakamura!” It took her a second to register that anyone was talking to her, since she still wasn’t used to that name. “Get your head out of your ass and deliver these drinks downstairs to the red room."Mira Nakamura, as she went by now, tore her eyes away from the unseeing point they'd been fixed on in the middle of the dancefloor and glanced at the drinks on the counter, then up to the angry face of her boss, red and puffed up as it usually was on a busy Saturday night. With a sigh no one heard above the thundering bass, she loaded them up on a tray one by one, carefully, considering she knew that if a group was in the red room, they were high rolling enough to have ordered top shelf booze.As she descended down the stairs to the club's private rooms, each color separated by intended use–gambling, “business” meetings, drug deals, and other unsavory pursuits—she found it in herself to feel a shred of relief that her destination was a business room; she'd seen a little too much in the green room to do anything but cringe anytime she had to go there.Even so, she sighed and steeled herself to whatever crowd she might find inside—always half expecting to open the door and find him standing there. But even when it never was, it still wasn’t people she cared to associate with. She wasn’t an idiot. She knew exactly the kinds of people that booked those private rooms, that could afford a tray of drinks that alone cost more than her entire month’s paycheck.They were gangsters, Yakuza, pimps, drug dealers, and any other kind of important person in Tokyo’s underworld. She’d certainly seen enough of it to know, even before life landed her there. Upstairs, normal people cut loose after a long week at work. But downstairs? That was where the real work began for these sorts of people.That was just the reality of working at a shady little nightclub in Yoshiwara. Again, not that she had all that many other options. At least here, she could blend in. Here, amidst all the other hopeless lost souls and those looking to get lost, she wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.She opened the door to see a man down on his knees, his head yanked back exposing the taught column of his throat, stepping across the threshold just in time to catch a flash of silver dragging across it leaving behind a fountain of red the same color as the walls spraying out in its wake. The figure collapses to the floor, a pool of blood blossoming across the glittered black tile as quickly and vibrantly as the cherry blossoms in March.Before Mira could even process what she’d seen, the tray of drinks crashed to the ground and a blur of a figure streaked to her left and there was suddenly a hand fisted in her own hair, jerking her head back to expose the pale skin of her neck, where she felt the cold sharpness of a knife come to rest. Something hot trickled down into the collar of her shirt and she couldn’t tell if it was her own blood or that of the man now lifeless at her feet.
Fuck.
She tried to calm the swelling rhythm of her heart, inhaling deeply through her nose and slowly breathing it out. Panicking never did any good in these sorts of situations. People like this—gangsters most likely—were leeches that fed on panic. Give them a taste of it, and they’d suck you dry. No, she wouldn’t show fear.She refused to. Focus on the details, she told herself, talking herself down off the proverbial cliff like she had so many times before. What do you see? There were eight of them–no, nine. She’d almost missed one huge man hulking in the shadows almost in her blindspot. Just about all of them sported tattoos sprawled across the patches of exposed skin, scars littering anything left blank. All of their hair was dyed or cut in some kind of unnatural way and the indomitable swagger with which they each held themselves was infuriatingly cocky.Yep, gangsters for sure. She could pick them out a mile away—which, coincidentally, was about as close as she wanted to be to any of them these days. She’d learned that the hard way, but she supposed she hadn’t really learned anything at all, because there she was, handing them sickeningly expensive drinks night after night on a silver platter. And once again, it had landed her here, completely at their nonexistent mercy. She really was hopeless.“A shame when little doves find themselves flying into somewhere they can’t get out of. An innocent mistake, but a fatal one nonetheless.” She could feel the pressure of the knife at her throat increase just a little, just enough to pierce the skin with a sting and for a fresh trickle of something warm to run down the hollow of her throat.“I swear I won’t say anything,” Mira choked out against the sharp pressure. “You think I haven’t seen fucked up shit working here? I promise none of it leaves this basement.”“Hm, I do love it when they beg. Maybe I should make you beg for something else before I kill you.” The words snaked into her ear, slinking down her spine like spiders as his free hand moved from his twisted grip in her hair to slide down her neck, her chest. But the time it reached her stomach, she felt like she was going to throw up.“Sanzu,” a bored voice said and Mira snapped her gaze to a small-set man who had swiveled his head toward them, a frame of white-blond hair falling in front of his delicate features and coal rimmed eyes, not eyeliner but dark rings of exhaustion rimming their hollow, inky black depths. Compared to everyone else in the room, he was downright unassuming—except for those eyes, black whirlpools crackling with radio static that instantly set her teeth on edge and gave her the the impression that of all the thugs in this room, he was the one to be most feared. “Stop playing with your prey and get on with it. We have business to get back to.”“Sure, boss,” he drawled. “Sorry, dove. Time to clip those wings of yours.” The pressure against her neck increased.“Jesus, Sanzu,” another voice cracked through the room as sharp as lightning.“You have a problem, pretty boy?“Yeah, the usual one. Your ugly ass face. I know murder makes you hard and all, but try to keep it in your pants. She’s just a fucking waitress.”“A waitress who’s seen our faces and something else she shouldn’t have.”“What, your dicks?” Mira quipped, unable to help herself. “Because if so, I missed it, but that’s not a surprise considering the knife’s gotta be compensating for something.” The knife pressed in even harder. Mira had a bad habit of making jokes at the exact wrong time, but hey, it was how she dealt with stressful situations.
Maybe all this should have frightened her more than it did—on second thought, it definitely should have—but for Mira, it all just sort of felt like a bad memory. Same shit, different shitstain holding the knife. After everything she had endured, this was nothing.“You have quite the mouth on you, little dove. Maybe I should make it look as big as it acts, huh?” he moved it, sliding the blade up the curve of her jaw and hooking the tip into the corner of her mouth. “What do you say? Want to be my twin?” The scars on each side of his mouth made him look like the Chesire cat as he grinned cruelly at her.Then a hand closed around his wrist.“You want to be next, Kononoi?” he growled out the left side of mouth, the scar there rippling with the movement.The man, Kokonoi, had risen from his seat at the end of the couch, running a hand through the long, curling black and white strands of hair flopped over on the right side of his asymmetrical undercut, a long silver chain dangling from his exposed left earlobe glinting in the light as he moved. Most of the guys in the room looked like gangsters, with horrendous scars on their faces and tattoos etched on every blank, visible patch of skin below the jaw. They wore long white coats or baggy, unassuming streetwear.But this guy? In his pinstripe charcoal three-piece suit with a red waistcoat that matched the winged red eyeliner accenting his already sharp and narrow eyes? He looked more like a model. Or a pimp. Or both.“Let the girl go, Sanzu,” he said, in an even, almost bored tone.Someone else whistled. “Ten thousand yen says Sanzu cuts his dick off then slices her throat without even cleaning the knife first,” a man with slicked back hair spoke through a milky cloud of white smoke drifting from the cigarette dangling from his lips. “Nah. Twenty says Koko’ll shove that knife up his ass before he gets the chance ♡,” someone else said in a sing-songy voice that sounded almost delighted at the events unfolding before him.“Thirty says you’re all fucking idiots,” came a board voice from the opposite end of the couch from where Kokonoi had been sitting. He had ankle resting across the knee of his other leg and his elbow propped on the armrest, supporting his head as he tugged absentmindedly at a strand of purple hair and chewed on the finished remains of a Takoyaki stick.“Quit bein’ a buzzkill, Wakasa.”All the while, Mira stood still as a statue, feeling rage rise slowly through her numb body, restoring feeling to it. Here she was, apparently about to die and they were here making bets and mocking each other. The fucking nerve of every single one of them. God, she hated gangsters. They were all the same, treating the world like a replaceable playground, reducing it to rubble and fucking laughing at those screaming as they suffocated beneath it.“Mikey, for fuck’s sake,” Koko said, his voice rising above the ruckus. “Call off your guard dog.”“Can’t do that, Koko. You know she’s a liability now.”“Then I’ll take responsibility for her.” If she hadn’t already been taught as a bowstring, hyper aware of every single person and movement around her, that would have really got Mira’s attention. “Until she proves she’s not.”Mikey, that unassuming runt who was apparently their fucking boss, raised an intrigued eyebrow over his pitch black eye, sitting forward and planting his elbows on his splayed knees, clasping his hands loosely in the space between. “And just why would you do that, Koko?”Koko narrowed his already slim, slanted eyes, a movement that only served to accent how sharp his features were. A muscle in his face rippled as he clenched his jaw. “Does it matter?”Mikey surveyed him carefully, humming lowly in his throat. “Suppose not. Call me curious. You don’t do anything unless you stand to gain something from it.”The man took another step toward her, brushing the backs of his black gloved fingers down her cheeks. His gaze swept across her features, lingering a little longer at the slim silver scar following the arc of her right cheekbone, reminding her of how she’d gotten it. “Killing her would be a waste. I might have a use for a pretty face like this.”The gaunt man continued to study them, those hollow eyes flickering between the snide, unreadable face of the man offering to save her and her own stony facade, one on which she refused to show fear. “Fine,” he said finally. “Let her go Sanzu. As long as she’s with you, Koko, none of us will touch her, but just know if we catch her outside, not under your supervision, I’ll have no choice but to assume you lost hold of the leash.”“Fine. So long as you don’t lose hold of his leash, either,” Koko said icily, glaring over Mira’s shoulder at whoever was behind her.The pressure against her throat vanished and she took a quick two steps away, turning to see the rage-filled green eyes of the pink-haired man practically shooting daggers at the dalmation-haired man now standing in between them.“Well, then if we’re done here, I think I’ll just excuse myself from this little meeting,” Koko said, roughly wrapping his hand around her wrist and hauling her toward the door. If Mira hadn’t been a little numbed by the shock of everything that had unfolded in—what, five fucking minutes?–-she might have resisted, but all she could do was let his momentum propel her obedient legs to follow.“Koko.” He halted briefly at the door at Mikey’s soft, low voice. “I trust you, you know.” Mira didn’t even know these people, and yet somehow she already knew enough to hear the unspoken words of warning at the end of that phrase. So don’t fuck this up. It wasn’t until they got to the base of the basement stairs that reality crashed back onto Mira, flooding her limbs with the ability to move, to fight.“Wait. Hold on! Where the fuck are you taking me? WHO ARE YOU?!” she said, each question getting progressively louder as she pulled against the bruising hold leading her up the stairs before finally severing her wrist from his gloved grasp, rubbing her wrist at the friction burn.At the top of the stairs, he whirled to face her. “I’m the man who just saved your life, little dove ,” he spat the name the pink haired man had been calling her condescending, almost shouting over the thumping bass that rattled through her skull. “And if you have an ounce of brains in that pretty little head of yours, you’ll take that for the blessing it is, shut the fuck up, and follow me. Before Mikey changes his mind.”He didn’t give her the chance to respond before immediately setting back into motion, roughly towing her behind him as they maneuvered through the tightly packed sweaty bodies grinding and jumping up and down in any available space.From somewhere over the bone-shattering bass, she heard the angry voice of her boss. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going, Nakamura?!”“She quits,” she heard Koko say, but wasn’t sure if he’d said it loud enough for anyone else to hear.They broke free from the dark, crowded space, the shockingly cool and refreshing night air clearing her head just a little as it kissed her damp, sweat-sheened skin. What the fuck had just happened. What was still happening??Everything felt lost to the white static that had filled her head, broken only by a double beep as a car unlocked and when she raised her head from her feet to look, she saw it wasn’t just any car. It was the kind of car you saw in luxury ads and K-pop music videos. She had to snap her jaw closed when she realized she was staring. Just how important was this guy?While she stood rooted to the sidewalk, Koko got in and rolled down the passenger window and leaned across the center console. “Make your choice, girly. You can either get in or get to running, but either way, I’m driving away in three seconds. Three.”Did she get in the car—that really nice car—or take her chances like she’d been doing for the last year of her life?“Two.”Fuck, every nerve in her body screamed to run, but she was so damn tired of doing just that. Of running and running and running and not getting anywhere for it, as tonight made painfully clear. “I must be fucking insane,” she muttered to herself as she lifted the handle, the door swinging not open to the side but up, and slid into the black leather seat just as Koko said, “One.” Then without waiting to see if she would change her mind, he hit a button that closed her door, threw the car in gear, and stepped on the gas so hard, the momentum threw her head back against the headrest as he swerved out into traffic. Great, so he was a maniac behind the wheel, too. Was it too late to change her mind? Spectacular work, Mira, she said sarcastically in her head. You’ve managed to have the worst luck in the world yet again. Hajime Kokonoi was furious.Partly at Sanzu—that goddamn bloodthirsty freak who couldn’t have waited to off that guy until later, when cleanup would be a helluva lot more inconspicuous. Now’d he’d have to waste money to get the goddamn place cleaned. And cleaner rates tripled when the location wasn’t private or inconspicuous. What a waste of money. But despite all that, he was mostly furious at himself. As if he didn’t have enough shit to deal with right now, what with whispers of Braham starting to reform and the new Rokuhara Tandai starting to edge intoBonten’s turf, if for no other reason, it seemed, than to stir up trouble. Now he had to add babysitting a stubborn, unruly woman who seemed to have more attitude than sense to his very long list of shit he already didn’t have time for. Or patience.He had no fucking clue what he was doing or thinking. Yet there he was, unlocking the door to his penthouse apartment and holding it open for a complete stranger. Sure, he’d been toying with the idea of taking some chick home that night—it had been a long week and he was really feeling the need to unwind—but this wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind.She had spent the whole car ride looking at him like he was off his rocker and frankly, he didn’t blame her. Why the hell had he stepped in and saved this woman? It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen plenty of fucked up shit at Sanzu’s hands or that innocent people were never victims of Bonten’s business dealings. Power—like money—didn’t come without a cost. Normally, he didn’t bat an eye at it.So why had she been any different? Why had seeing her there in Sanzu’s clutches, face completely unafraid and unyielding, stirred something in him that wanted to save her from that fate? And why had he put his own ass on the line to do it, when historically he was known for looking out for that ass and no one else’s? Fuck , he mentally groaned to himself for the hundreth time over the last half hour. But there wasn’t time to wallow in it. Because that damn woman was staring at him in the middle of his living room, hand cocked on her hip and eyebrows raised as if to say, ‘ Now what, asshole ?’ Now what in-fucking-deed.“There are two empty bedrooms down the hall on the right. Take your pick and make yourself at home there.”She screwed her mouth together in a side pinch thoughtfully as she looked around, nodding her head slowly. “Riiiight. Make myself at home with my kidnapper. I’ll get right on that.”“I didn’t kidnap you,” he said tersely, removing his gloves and slapping them aggressively down on the slim table that lined the entry hallway. “You came voluntarily.”“Is it really voluntary if it was an ultimatum in which my other choice was death?”He didn’t gratify that with an answer, mostly because he knew the only one he could give would prove her point. “Look, I’m going to make this very clear for you in hopes that you stop acting like an ungrateful brat. You’re not a prisoner here. You can leave anytime you wish. But just know that if you walk out that door,” he pointed to it and fixed her with a hard stare, “what happens to you is out of my hands. And I won’t come to your rescue again.”“Don’t make it sound so noble,” she sneered. But after holding his gaze for a few moments, he saw the anger release a little from her face as she swept her eyes around the suite. “So do I even get a proper introduction to my knight in shining armor or is that a privilege the dainty princess hasn’t yet earned?”He stared at her for a second, trying to push down the irritation rising through him like a geyser. It wasn’t her fault she was here, he reminded himself. And if he’d been her, he probably would have been pissed and confused, too. Instead, he straightened his spine and forced his shoulders to relax as he took three long, slow strides toward her and extended his hand. “Hajime Kokonoi. But everyone calls me Koko.” She stared at his hand with a skeptical look as if it were a snake that might bite, but eventually, she lowered her guard just a little and took his hand, shaking it twice. “Mira Nakamura."“Nakamura-san,” he said, dipping his chin deferentially, but as he walked away, his mind whispered her first name as he wondered what it would feel like to let that roll off his tongue instead. Mira.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Mira almost could not believe her own damnable luck. Escaped from one gang only to land right back in with another. What a cosmic fucking joke.At least this time, if she hadn’t known she was as good as a gang prisoner, she wouldn’t have actually been able to tell. Between the absurdly fancy penthouse apartment, the car they’d taken to get there, and the damn silk sheets twisted around her legs at the moment, it certainly wasn’t the hell she’d come from. Maybe if she told herself she’d won a sweepstakes for an indefinitely long getaway in a luxury hotel, she might start to believe it. It didn't seem that bad at first last time either, a wary voice whispered in the back of her mind.She flipped her body over on the mattress for probably the hundredth time since she’d laid on it. It wasn’t that the bed was uncomfortable–in fact, it was the most absurdly comfortable thing she’d slept on in her entire life—but circumstances being what they were, she couldn’t shut off her brain long enough to catch more than maybe an hour of sleep at a time. It felt like every time she nodded off, exhaustion pulling her wearing head into the sweet oblivion of darkness, some question rattled jarringly through her head, pulling her out of that tender embrace of sleep as abruptly as a bucket of cold water. Who was this guy exactly? Why the fuck had he saved her? What was his end game? She knew better than to think it was out of the goodness of his heart. Gangsters didn’t do nice things just for the hell of it so what was his ulterior motive? How long was he planning on keeping her here? What did this mean for everything else? What did it mean for him? Finally, she heard a faint clatter of what she assumed to be dishes and fumbled for her phone, clicking the side button to see the screen light up a piercing blue, the numbers 6:37 staring back at her. Fuck . Might as well get up now.Part of her debated staying in bed, at least until the noises outside died away and signaled that maybe he left for the day, but a bigger part of her knew there was no sense in avoiding the issue.She rose, groaning at the tight, achiness in her muscles and the pain that speared through her skull from not getting enough sleep and slipped into the bathroom annexed off the room. She looked like a disaster, her makeup smudged beneath her eyes from not having properly removed it the night before and the short, choppy layers of her hair tangled in a messy frame around her face since she hadn’t been able to brush it after that pink-haired monster had fisted his hand in it. She could still feel the sting in her scalp where he wrenched her head backward to expose her throat. Her hand drifted there, one thumb running absentmindedly along the scab that had formed where he’d shallowly broken skin. Another scar to add to the collection.She really had almost died last night. Before she could dwell too long on that fact, she washed her face, wiping away the remains of her makeup as best she could with some toilet paper—thankfully she never wore much to begin with—and combed her fingers through the tangle of hair, beginning at the black roots and running them down where the black faded into a gradient of silver near her ears that ran down to the the tips that tickled the tops of her shoulders.When she’d run a year ago, she’d cut her hair and dyed it silver, with purple under layers to help disguise her appearance. But now, the purple was gone and silver had half grown out. She’d been telling herself for months she needed to touch things up again, but what would be the point now?At the door, she inhaled deeply, steadying the nerves she felt trilling through her body, and stepped out into the hallway. In the main room, Kokonoi was sitting at the long dining room table, the Yomiuri Shimbun open and held up in front of him. As she shuffled into the room, he glanced up at her over the top of the newspaper. His face was casual, like her being there was nothing out of the ordinary, but his eyes said something else altogether. They were sharp, wary, perceptive…dangerous.She noticed he was wearing a suit again, though this one was a lighter gray, paired with a lavender waistcoat that somehow made him look no less soignée and his hair perfectly tossed over the right side of his head, looking like the most intentional tussle job she’d ever seen. Of course he looked irritatingly immaculate, which only made her feel all the more like a slob getting ready to embark on a walk of shame—though even worse, because she wouldn’t even have the reprieve of not having to see him again. “Breakfast is on a plate staying warm in the oven. And there’s an espresso machine on the counter if you want coffee. There’s already grounds in the portafilter ready to go.”“Do I fucking ever,” she muttered grumpily to herself and wandered into the kitchen, starting to fiddle with all the knobs and components of the shiny metal machine, pushing just about every button on the damn thing before it rumbled to life and a stream of sweet, liquid gold drippled out. She found the water knob, filling the rest of her Americano and took a sip, savoring in the rich, deep flavor. This sure wasn’t the instant shit she was used to buying. She’d have to be careful lest she get addicted and become the kind of coffee snob her income couldn’t afford.She pulled the tray-covered plate out of the oven, grabbed her coffee, and took a seat in the chair next to Koko. She could have sat farther away, but if she was going to feel uncomfortable then dammit, so was he. But he didn’t even look up from the article he was reading to acknowledge her.“What no, ‘Was the bed comfortable?’ or ‘How did you sleep?’ Some host you are.”He folded the paper with an irritated ‘tch’ and set it down, fixing her with a piercing stare. "How did you sleep?" he asked slowly, each word dripping with false honey.“Like shit, thanks,” she said, returning his saccharine tone. She lifted the lid on the plate to find an omelet, still steaming a little and covered with little dices of green onion and parsley. It looked good. Too good. “What, is it poisoned?”“Yeah, because I’d go through all the effort of saving you last night only to poison you over breakfast.” When all she did was stare at him skeptically, he grabbed the chopsticks from the side of her tray and took a bite from her plate. “Happy?”“Never.”“I'm beginning to get a sense of that.”She glared at him as she took a bite, making a measurable effort not to moan at how good the omelet was. God, he looked like that, lived in a place like this, drove a car like that, and he could cook? If he weren’t a gangster—and thus a representation of everything Mira found reprehensible about men and the modern world—she might have fallen head over heels right then and there. What a damn shame.“So,” she said, swallowing the bite. “Who exactly is my knight-in-shining-armor Hajime Kokonoi? Four-diamond chef? Pimp? Cat killer? Closet kiddy fucker?”“Someone who really hates mouthy women,” he said in a blase tone. “What are you getting at?”“I’m not an idiot. It’s clear you’re in a gang. I want to know which one.”He finally looked up from his paper with another irritated ‘tch’. Maybe she should start counting how many times she could make him do that. “Bonten. Happy?”Happy wasn’t the word she would have chosen. Mira knew that name—knew it a little too well, in fact—and there was pretty much only one other name in the gang world that he could have said that would have made her bones feel any more like lead.“And what, pray tell, is your position in the infamous Bonten?” He was upper echelon, that much was at least certain. Meetings like the one she’d interrupted that night weren’t typically open to grunts and the way his boss, Mikey she thought she remembered, had spoken to him meant that Kokonoi was much more than the average piece of muscle—as if his looks and the keen glint in his eyes hadn’t already told her as much.“I guess you could say I’m their accountant.” “Why do I get the feeling that involves a whole lot more than balancing quarterly budgets and running payroll?” In response, a small crooked smile curled around one side of his mouth, confirming her suspicions. “Fine, don’t tell me,” she sulked, taking another big bite. “What exactly happens now? How long am I expected to be your little pet?”“As long as you need to be until Mikey decides you’re not a threat—or Sanzu decides you’re too much of one. Whichever comes first.”“Comforting,” she deadpanned. “So what…I just live here for the indefinite future? Go to work each night with you chaperoning me like a fucking child?”“You won’t be going to work,” Koko said, as if it were a stupid notion.She scoffed and looked around the lavish apartment, even more spectacular with the light of day streaming in through the entire wall of windows on the opposite side of the living room, Tokyo stretching out like a sea between them and Mount Fuji. “I know you probably don’t understand this concept, but some of us have to work for a living to pay the bills in our shitty little existence.”He fixed her with a hard stare, eyes narrowed in what almost looked like offense. “I’ll cover any expenses you need. I’ll pay your rent wherever you were living if you want to keep the place.”“And when this little arrangement is done? What then, you just boot me out without a job and say, ‘Good luck!’?”He sighed, knitting his eyebrows together. “Then I’ll give you an allowance until you figure out a new job.”“What, do you just have infinite money or something? Trust fund kid or something?”“Yes. And no.” The second answer came out sounding a little dark. “Everything I have, I’ve earned .” The hairs that now stood on end on the back of her neck told her it was best not to ask how. Instead, she went with, “So why would you waste it on me? Some stranger you don’t even know?”“You ask a lot of questions.”“You evade a lot of them. And forgive me if I find it incredibly fishy and suspicious that you’re just doing all this for me out of the good of your heart. No one’s that charitable, least of all a gangster. So why?”He cocked his head as he studied her, as if she were some sort of interesting new specimen he hadn’t yet encountered. “Because it was my idiotic decision to bring you here so I'm taking responsibility for it. I may be a gangster, but I’m also a fucking adult.”“So you admit it was idiotic?“Has anyone ever told you you're infuriating?”She thought for a moment, dramatically looking upward as she tapped her forefinger against her chin. “Just about everyone I've ever met.”“I believe it. Speaking of….what about your friends and family? We’ll need to come up with a story you can tell them about why you’re not working or living at your place.”“No need. Don't have any of that,” she said brusquely, her skin prickling at the topic, hoping he would get the hint and drop the subject.Unfortunately, her caginess only seemed to evoke his interest more. “You want to elaborate on that?” he asked, giving her a keen, knowing glance.“Nope,” she said, popping the P in a definitive way and taking another bite of her omelet, not finishing chewing before she said, “and I don’t think it’s any of your business.”He rolled his shoulders back as if trying to force the tension out of them and stood. “Fine, have it your way. Those boxes on the couch have some outfits for you. Should be your size, or at least close, but we can go shopping later for other stuff you may want.”“What if I just want my clothes from my apartment?”“Then I’ll send someone to fetch them for you.”“Oh no. I’m not having you or one of your little pervy gang buddies sifting and sniffing through my underwear drawer.”He was trying to keep his cool, but she could see she was getting under his skin by the subtle tick in his jaw. She was good at reading subtle mood changes in people; she’d had to get good at it as a matter of survival, once upon a time. “Fine, then I’ll take you there myself later when I have the time.”“Later? Why not now?” she protested, cringing a little at how her voice suddenly took on the tone of a petulant child.“Because I have to go to work.”“So what am I supposed to do?”“Make yourself at home. Bake some muffins. Take a bath. Fuck yourself. I really don’t fucking care as long as you don’t burn the place down or leave this apartment,” he said in a low, smooth voice that send an odd tingle down her body—especially one of his suggestions. “Just behave and I’ll see you later.”And with that he was gone, without waiting for so much as a nod of acknowledgement. He seemed to be catching on to her stubborn nature enough already not to expect one.Mira finished the now luke-warm omelet, muttering little words to herself between bites things like ‘pretentious’ and ‘self-important prick’ before she put the plate into the dishwasher and meandered back to the room—her room, she supposed she was meant to think of it, but it felt wrong. But there was at least one good suggestion in Kokonoi’s list of suggested activities. Okay, maybe two given how tense she felt…but she was sooooo not going there. But a bath, she could get on board with. She still felt scummy with sweat from the half-night of work at the club, not to mention the disgusting feeling that came over her when she remembered the pink-haired man—Sanzu, she thought she remembered Kokonoi calling him?—running his hand down her body. She shivered just thinking about it, and stripped off the oversized sleep clothes and stepped into the shower. It was at least twice the size of the shower in her apartment, and there wasn’t an ounce of mold on the sparkling black and white tiles in sight. Hell, there wasn’t even any soap-scum clouding the edges of the frosted glass door. And rather than a mineral crusted shower head that barely spit out enough water to wash the shampoo from her roots like she was used to, the rainfall shower head covered almost the entire ceiling.Better yet, the water was still hot after five minutes, so she continued to stand there, letting the droplets fall all around her, sucking her into that peaceful, weightless trance that only a long, hot shower could provide, as if her entire life hadn’t gotten turned upside down not twelve hours ago—again.Finally, as felt her fingers beginning to prune, she reluctantly shut off the water and grabbed an almost absurdly plush towel off the rack and wrapped her body in it, before timidly wandering back out into the living room, peering around the corner to ensure Koko hadn’t returned in the time she’d spent practically cooking herself into a lobster in the shower. He hadn’t, so she grabbed the stack of boxes from the hall table and retreated to her room, opening the first, nestled in tissue paper, the softest cream-colored sweater she had ever seen. The fabric seemed to shimmer under the light, and as she lifted it out of the box, it felt almost impossibly soft and weightless in her hands, like holding a cloud.She felt inside the bottom hem for a tag: 100% cashmere. Of course. Given everything she had already surmised about Koko, that didn’t surprise her in the least.A small tag dangled from the collar. Mira turned it over, and when she saw the price, she almost choked and dropped the sweater onto the bed. Was that a real price people paid for clothing? It was more than she had ever spent on a single item of clothing—more than she’d probably spent on her entire current wardrobe.Picking it back up, she held the sweater against her chest, feeling the softness against her skin, but the number on the tag kept flashing in her mind. It was beautiful, yes, but could she really wear something like this? Something so… extravagant? Then again, if she was all but a prisoner here, she might as well take advantage of the perks, she supposed, uncurling her hair from the towel it was wrapped in and gently pulling on the knit fabric over her head.Now, to explore the place and try to get some answers.After an hour, she’d just about exhausted the place—at least the parts of it she could access. There were two doors that remained locked, one of which was presumably his bedroom in the same hallway as hers, and the other his office, on the other side of the living room.For such a massive place, there was surprisingly little in it, and certainly not much that gave her any real sense of the man with whom she was now residing.But one thing was certain: nothing in it was cheap. He’d spared absolutely no expense, on anything from the designer drapes to the top-tier theater television that took almost an entire wall. If she was a bird in a cage, it was at least the fanciest damn birdcage she’d ever seen.If she hadn’t already known it by the clothes on her body and the way he’d so casually offered to basically be her sugar daddy without anything clearly expected in return, this place screamed that Hajime Kokonoi had money. She found herself wondering exactly how he’d come to acquire it. He’d seemed offended earlier by her accusation that it was all inheritance, but this level of wealth transcended the usual gang officer salary, even an executive level one—at least in her experience, which was fairly considerable on the matter.The one area she found the place to be severely lacking, however, was the pantry. After opening no fewer than every damn cabinet and drawer in the whole kitchen, turning up nothing but whole foods, organic soba noodles, and the like, she hoisted her butt up on the counter with a groan.No snacks? No junk food? Not even any ice cream so she could at least eat to cope with how laughably tragic her life was? How fucking depressing. But that was probably why his body looked as trim as it did. She could tell that his body, even through the full-body coverage of a three-piece suit, was lean and taught. Not bulky or overly muscular, but fit nonetheless.Ugh, how boring though. God she could really go for some taiyaki or instant noodles. Maybe she could just pop out and get some…Surely Sanzu wasn’t wasting his time staking out the place or anything.And if she was going out anyway, she might as well just go and get her belongings from her apartment at the same time, right? She opened her map on her phone to check her current location, since the drive here last night had been somewhat of a confusing blur. Asakusa? That was just a stone’s throw from where she lived in Arakawa. A few stops on the subway and she’d be there.Still…Kokonoi hadn’t exactly set many ground rules, so was it really a good idea to break one of the only ones he had?She hopped off the counter and paced back and forth for a minute, thinking.Fuck it. Kokonoi didn’t own her. And she had had more than her fair share of men controlling what she did.Before she could change her mind, she headed out, trying not to think too hard about how she was going to get back inside without a key before taking the elevator down and speeding past the doorman, lest he be under any instructions to try to stop her.An hour later, she was standing in the front room—rather, the only room—of her shitty little studio apartment, the memory of Kokonoi’s luxurious penthouse seemingly like a faraway dream. Maybe she should just stay and pretend none of it had ever happened. It wasn’t like he knew where she lived—she didn’t think. She could just go back to work tonight and carry on with business as usual as if the whole thing had never happened. Maybe it had all been bluster, threatening to track her down and kill her.A more naive version of herself would have believed that, but Mira knew too much about gangs to swallow that horse pill of a lie, so with a huff, she hauled two suitcases out of her closet and began haphazardly packing up everything she owned. Again. Which wasn’t saying much since she didn’t really own much to begin with. Between starting completely over a year ago and living paycheck to paycheck on a waitress wage, amassing things hadn’t exactly been a possibility, let alone a priority, for her.Once she’d packed up her closet, her laptop, a few favorite books and manga she’d collected from second hand stores over the last year, and every ounce of junk food she had in the house, she zipped up the suitcases and stood. Somehow, it hit differently looking at almost everything one owned condensed into such a meager pile.A sound behind her made her jump, but it was the voice that came after that froze her blood to absolute ice. “Hey Kakucho, ever notice how doves usually travel in pairs?” The voice was casual, amused even. “That’s ‘cuz it’s dangerous to travel all alone.” She whirled around to see Haruchiyo Sanzu leaning against the frame of her door, the smile on his face almost as wicked as the gleaming knife in his hand. “Long time no see, little dove.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Last night, after he was sure she’d fallen asleep, Koko had crept into her room and grabbed her phone off her nightstand, installed a tracking app on it, then put it back in place. No harm, no foul.He figured it would come in handy, sooner or later. He just hadn’t expected sooner to mean the very next fucking day. Koko had been in a…business meeting when it happened, circling predatorily around the man now tied to the chair in the center of his office. In the background, Shuji Hanma leaned against his desk, running the pad of his thumb contemplatively along the wicked edge of a knife, a smile on his face as he waited.“The thing about offering employment in return for our services,” Koko was saying, “is that you have to be competent enough to be more valuable than your money, and sorry to say you're not. So either pay your debt or Hanma here will give you a little sneak preview at–”The sudden incessant vibrating of his phone in his pocket scattered Koko’s thoughts. He pulled it out and looked at the screen.TARGET OUTSIDE APPROVED ZONE. Fuck. Koko scowled at the notification. Already? It hadn’t even been a full twelve hours and she’d already broken one of only two rules he’d set? He couldn’t tell who was the bigger idiot: her or himself. He should have just let Sanzu slit her throat and be done with it.But it was too late for that now, so without saying anything, he made for the door.“Where’re you going?” Hanma drawled, looking up from the blade for the first time in a good five minutes.“Something I have to take care of.:“Aw, trouble in paradise for the newlyweds?”“Mind your own business and wrap this up. I don’t want to see any evidence of it by the time I’m back.” Hanma’s wicked smile was his only confirmation but Koko knew Hanma had heard him and would obey. That was practically his reward for sitting through what he otherwise considered to be a boring meeting.And sure enough, he could hear screaming before the elevator doors even slid shut.“Long time, no see, little dove.”If Mira had to list everyone on the face of the earth, starting with whom she would have most dreaded hearing those words from, Haruchiyo Sanzu would have been the second from the top. But“Where is our dear little Dalmation, anyway?”“Koko?” she said, trying to sound casual and unafraid. “He’s parking the car. In case you haven’t noticed, this place is lacking in valet services.”“Still a little smartass, aren’t you? Guess you didn’t learn anything about being a mouthy bitch last night. ” he crooned. “Come now, we both know that’s a lie seeing as we followed you on the subway here.”Shit, they’d been following her that long? Why hadn’t she noticed? Was she really that bad at picking up on a tail? She must be, especially considering that between his bubblegum pink hair and nasty scar arching down from his partner’s hairline, they had to be the least inconspicuous pair possible. And she still hadn’t noticed. What an absolute idiot she was.Mira reached into her pocket and pulled out the knife she kept on her at all times—at least for the last year—pressing the button and letting the spring loaded blade deploy into action. She brandished it out in the space in front of her, her jaw set and her fist clenched tight around the handle in hopes it might still the slight tremor she felt reverberate up her arm at the thought of using it.She’d stabbed someone with it before; surely she could do it again. But all Sanzu did was smile, sliding his eyes to the scarred and frankly pretty terrifying man with two different colored eyes next to him, before slightly jerking his chin.The man stepped forward, his face impassive as a hand darted out, snatching her wrist just as she made to swipe the knife in his direction and twisting it deftly behind her back. Pain seared through her wrist until her grip faltered and the knife clattered to the floor, but still, the man didn’t release his hold, one hand holding her wrist between her shoulder blades just on the precipice of what felt like it breaking and the other now wrapped around the front of her shoulders, barring her firmly against his broad, muscular chest.“Now, maybe you’ll behave,” Sanzu sang. “If you do, I’ll make this nice and quick. If ya don’t…well, no promises about the condition they’ll find your body in.”“Fuck you,” she snarled. No way in hell was she going to bow down to an asshole like that just because of the threat of a little pain and punishment. She’d endured more than a lifetime’s worth of that already, so what was a little more. “That can be arranged, too,” he said contemplatively, punctuating the phrase with a twisted smile. “Kakucho, hold her nice and still, would ya?”“Jesus, Sanzu, this wasn’t in the job description when you asked me to lend you a hand today.” The man holding her sounded disgusted but resigned, his deep voice vibrating up her spine from how close he was to her back. Just close enough… She was probably only going to get one shot at this, so she had best make it count. In one fluid explosion of movement, she rose up on her tiptoes and thrust her head back as hard as she could, not stopping until the felt the back of her skull connect with the cartilage of his nose with a crunch.“FUCK!” he yelled and instinctively let go of her to clasp his nose, now gushing a steady stream of blood, just as she’d been banking on. Before either of the men could react to the sudden turn of events, she turned, jamming her knee into Kakucho’s groin. He dropped to the floor with a moan and thud. One down.Unfortunately, that was about as far as her plan went. She had no idea what she was going to do about Sanzu, especially since he had that damn knife and was more than eager to use it. She wasn’t going to win in a fight against that, which meant only one choice: create an opening and run. She grabbed the top of one of the nearby upright suitcases and threw it across the room into his legs. He dodged deftly, but not fast enough to do the same for the second one that came careening into his shin bones and took us his feet out from underneath him.Without pausing to see how long it might take him to recover, she took off for the door, her socks peeling out on the slick linoleum of the hallway. Just as her hand closed around the handle and pulled the door open, a hand fisted in her hair, dragging her back with an excruciating pull at the roots as he threw her back into the room. She staggered, but managed to keep her feet at least.“That, little dove, was a very, very stupid decision,” Sanzu said in a lilting voice that made her shudder, even over the adrenaline pumping like hot lava through her veins. “Now, I promise I’ll make this hurt as much as possible." She quickly looked around her, Kakucho was back on his feet barring her escape to the bathroom and Sanzu now stood in the middle of the room, precisely in between her and the open door. Should she scream? Would anyone hear? More importantly, would anyone care?The kinds of people that lived in this building were people like herself, which meant they were so wrapped up in their own misery, in their own futile efforts to just survive, that no, they wouldn't care. And they certainly wouldn’t come running to help. As always, she was on her own.Sanzu was twirling the knife now, flicking it up in the air so that the wicken edge caught against the sunlight pouring in through the open drapes before catching it neatly between his fingers. “You remind me of my little sister, you know.” He took two steps toward her. “And if there’s one thing I hate in this world, it’s people like her.” Another step. “Little bitches with more attitude than power to back it up.” All at once, he lunged. Her eyes shut automatically, physically and mentally bracing for a pain that she could only hope would at least be mercifully brief before she died—despite his promise to the contrary.But no pain came and the only utterance that suggested it did hadn’t fallen from her lips at all.Her eyes flew open at the deeper snarl that tore through the room and instead of finding Sanzu bearing down on her, there was a new, third body in between them, clad in a gray suit with a head of black and white striped hair.Kokonoi.He’d sidled himself in between them and, just before the Sanzu was about to bridge the last of the gap between his knife and her neck, stopped it. Its red stained silver point was now sticking out through the back of his hand where he held it suspended still in space and only mildly shaking with the opposition of their two forces. In his other hand, was a gun, the hammer cocked back and the barrel pointed right at Kakucho, who stood frozen in mid-step toward Mira. “Move and you’re fucking dead,” he warned.“Koko,” Sanzu mused, his voice smooth and unconcerned as if he weren’t currently; pushing a knife through the flesh of Koko’s hand. “We were just wondering where you were.”“Get the fuck out of here, Sanzu. You heard Mikey’s orders. You don’t get to lay a finger on her while I’m here.”He hummed in something that straddled the line between agreement and disappointment,, then pulled the knife out of Koko’s palm, wiping the blade off on a handkerchief he’d produced from his pocket. “A shame you didn’t show up just a minute later then.Your timing is as annoyingly impeccable as ever. Let’s go, Kakucho. We’ll leave the little dove to fly another day,” he said, sounding suddenly bored again. “But she should really enjoy the flight, seeing as it’s only a matter of time before she’s shot down,” Sanzu went on, Mira bared her teeth at the pair. ”She’ll make to shit on your head plenty then in the meantime,” she snarled. “That hair does provide quite the easy target after all.”Sanzu’s lip curled into a sneer, the scars at the corners of his mouths making it look all the more viscous, but he didn’t say anything. Just turned about-face and stalked from the room, Kakucho following lazily on his heels with long, unconcerned strides. Finally, Koko turned to her, something curiously like anxiety sparking in his eyes as they swept down her body and he asked, “Are you hurt?”She did a quick mental scan of her body, paying close attention to see if the adrenaline roaring through her veins was hiding any pain or injury. Her wrist ached a little from the angle he’d been holding it, but nothing seemed broken or even sprained. She finally shook her head side to side. Whatever measure of concern had been in his eyes moments ago quickly melted into a simmering rage, one that he was clearly putting a lot of effort toward controlling as he ground out between his teeth, “Then what the hell were you thinking?”“I…I just wanted some snacks and I figured if I was going out anyway, I might as well just come and get my stuff, so we didn’t have to deal with it later and…” Even as she said it, she could hear how pathetic and stupid it all sounded. She cast her eyes down, to the floor—and the growing puddle of blood on it beneath his hand. This was her fault.“I told you…I told you it was too dangerous to go out alone.”“I know!” she said quickly. “I know. I just…I didn’t believe that they’d actually want me dead so bad that they’d be following me like that.”“And?” His voice was quiet. Too achingly quiet. “Do you believe it now?”“Yes,” she whimpered, feeling tears welling in her eyes, refusing to look up at him. Refusing to let him see her cry. To show tears was to show weakness and to show weakness was to show someone exactly how to use you.He sighed, raking his non-bloody hand through his hair. “This everything?” he asked, nodding to the toppled suitcases in the middle of the room. She nodded affirmatively and he stood one upright, extending the handle and placing it in her hand. “Then get in the car,” he said tightly, but his voice carried a dangerous undercurrent of command. “Your hand,” she whispered, using the softness of her tenor to hide how much her voice was shaking. “I said get in the fucking car!” he snapped, and in that moment, Mira was reminded of the very crucial fact that just because Kokonoi had saved her life twice now did not mean he was not also a threat to it in his own right.She left the room in a hurry, loaded her suitcase into the trunk of his car, and got in. Koko followed a few moments later with her other bag, his hand now sloppily wrapped in what looked to be her old dish towel, the checkered blue linen now hardly visible through the red seeping across the threads.Just as they’d been the night before, they were silent the entire drive, though Mira could feel the tumult rolling off Koko’s aura in waves. When they pulled up to the curb in front of his luxury apartment building, Koko cut the engine, but didn’t move, just sat there with hands still braced on the steering wheel and his eyes fixed ahead through the windshield at nothing.“I’m sorry,” she whispered, eyes glued to her lap, where her hands were clasped, nervously picking at the loose skin flaps around her thumb cuticles. “I didn’t mean to get you hurt. Didn’t mean to drag you into this mess.”She heard him sigh then suck his tongue off the back of his teeth. “It’s my gang, so technically it’s my mess you got dragged into but let’s not argue over semantics. Just do me a favor and listen to me next time. If this is going to work, you have to meet me halfway here. I promised I'd protect you but you have to let me. Which means no impromptu field trips, got it?” She nodded, still refusing to meet his eyes then heard him sigh again. “Let’s just get inside so I can get this cleaned up.”Inside the building, the elevator doors closed with a soft thud, sealing them into a cocoon of awkward silence. The hum of the machinery was the only sound as they ascended, but the air between them buzzed with unspoken words.She leaned against the mirrored wall, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the glowing numbers above the door. Her reflection revealed the tension in her shoulders, the tightness around her mouth. She could still feel the rush of adrenaline, the shock of the moment when he had materialized practically out of nowhere in between her and what she was certain was going to be her death,He stood opposite her, one hand in his pocket, the other raised above his head, glancing at her with concern that bordered on discomfort."Thank you," she finally said, her voice quieter than she intended. It was the first thing she'd said since they stepped into the elevator, and it felt inadequate, almost trivial.“If you want to thank me, then stop putting yourself in situations where I have to come to your rescue. Fuck, is it really that hard?”Guilt needled into her ribs at the very same moment a thread of realizations stitched through her thoughts. “Wait…hold on, how did you know where I was?”He fidgeted, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as his eyes slid sideways and away from her.“Last night I…may have installed a tracking app on your phone. It alerted me when you left the building.”She swiveled her gaze to him, any former note of guilt and apology washed away with a tide of disbelief and anger. “You bugged my phone?” she asked incredulously. When the hell had he even managed that? She’d hardly slept more than an hour at a time.“I downloaded an app. Don’t it sound like some illicit thing. And besides, it’s a damn good thing I did.” “That’s not the fucking point!” she snarled, storming into the hallway outside the suite the second the elevator door slid open, Koko stalking after her“You're pissed at ME? What, for saving your life? Again?! ”“No, I’m pissed at you for being a creep. Putting a tracker on my phone is a complete violation of privacy!”“Well that violation of privacy ,” he mocked in a nasally voice, “is the only reason you aren't laying there in a puddle of your own blood for the cockroaches and feral cats to start feeding on your corpse, so you could try saying thank you.”“How about ‘fuck you’? That close enough?”He shoved the key into the lock. “God, you’re fucking infuriating,” he murmured as he opened the door, holding it open for her. But all she did was stare stubbornly at him, arms crossed angrily in front of her chest. He signed again and raked a hand through his hair. “Are you really going to make me do something as undignified as drag you inside, because don’t think I won’t.”“Oh, I know you would. Because you think that just because you’re some hotshot gangster, you can do whatever the fuck you want to whomever you want. You’re all the fucking same.”“Really? All the same?” Her fiery rage fizzled at the sudden ice in his tone, at the absolute blue flame burning in his gaze that scorched through her as he fixed a stare on her.. “You think anyone else in my circles would have bothered to save your life, twice ? You think anyone else would have taken a fucking knife for someone who acts like a goddamn spoiled brat?” He held up his hand in the space between them, the fabric of the cloth around now complete crimson and beginning to drip from the edges.“I–” Her words fell silent because, no, she didn’t think that, In fact, she knew the very opposite was sure to be the case when gangsters were involved, which only made processing what this man had done for her— again— all the more mystifying.Guilt needled between her ribs so rather than argue any further, she dropped her head and walked through the door he was still holding open for her. Koko followed on her heels, but his way right for the kitchen sink, flicking on the tap and plunging his wounded hand under the stream with a sharp hiss between his teeth.“Does it hurt?” she asked thickly, knowing very well how stupid the question was but being unable to think of anything else to say and equally unable to stand the tense silence that had settled between them.“You ever been stabbed?” he asked rhetorically, turning his hand over with another grimace and the water poured into the opposite site of the wound. “Of course it fucking hurts.” After a minute, he turned off the water and pulled a fresh kitchen linen from the drawer. “Goddammit, I can’t do shit with my left hand,” he cursed and she looked over to see him, one end of the towel in his mouth as he desperately tried to keep the material taught enough to wrap around his right hand.“It’s not a paper cut. He stabbed through your hand. You can't just slap a bandage on that and think it's going to suffice. You should be going to the hospital.”“I’m not going to the hospital for something minor like this,” he mumbled around the cloth. “They ask too many questions.”Her eyes rolled skyward. Something minor … Typical. “Just hold on,” she said with a sigh, then disappeared down the hallway before returning a minute later with a big red bag with a white cross on it.“How’d you know exactly where that was?” he asked, as she set it down on the counter and began rifling through its contents.“You told me to make myself at home. Obviously step number one is always to snoop through the bathroom cabinets. Fastest way to learn about a person.” He exhaled in a sharp puff of breath through his nose, but for just a second, she could have swore she saw the edges of his lips quirk upward. “Besides, you can’t just rinse it out with water. It needs to be disinfected, considering that pink-haired freak seems to love that knife so much he probably fucks himself with it.This time, he made no effort to hide the smile that graced his lips—a sly, lovely smile that turned up the corners of his mouth and cut tiny little crinkles into the cheeks above, one made her pulse quicken just a little—and said, "Probably." But it quickly vanished when she dumped antiseptic into the wound, dissolving into a grimace and a string of foul words.She watched as the peroxide bubbled and hissed against the raw, gaping edges of flesh, going in one side clear and falling through the other stained pink. She snuck a glance at him. He was trying to keep his face impassive but she could see his pain in the slight flickering of the muscle in his jaw and in the way his nostrils would curl upward every so slightly. But even despite all that, there was no denying that he was gorgeous, his features all angles and honed to razor sharpness—his mercurial eyes most of all, so much so that she felt something split open somewhere deep inside her chest when they met hers for a brief moment.She tore her gaze away, back down to his hand and let it follow the diagonal arch of the wound across his palm up the mounds and down his long, elegant fingers. Jesus, blood aside, even his hands were lovely. Without meaning to, she found herself imagining what those fingers would feel like splayed across her skin. What the hell, Mira? She shook her head, mentally chastising herself the second she realized what she was thinking. Once the wound was more or less clean, she fished around the kit again, pulling a sealed packet with a triumphant little, “Aha!”, tearing it open and laying out a suturing string on a clean paper towel as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves. “Woah. You know what you’re doing with that?”“Shut up and hold still,” she said, taking his hand once more and pushing the needled end into the edge of the wound, starting with the meaty, palm side first. He looked away to hide his flinch but didn’t utter a sound.After a few more stitches, the door flung open and Mira jumped, jabbing the needle too deep. He let out another string of curse words. “Relax, it’s just Hanma.”“Han-who?” she asked, then turned at the sound of footsteps across the marble floor to see a tall, lean man crossing the room.Like Koko, he was wearing a well-tailored three-piece suit but unlike him, he didn’t let that business-like appearance distract from the dangerous swagger with which he held himself that was so acutely gangster, practically anyone would recognize him for what he was. There was a lithe and eerily confident air to the way he moved, like a cat stalking a bird with a broken wing. She just really hoped she wasn’t that bird. He initially had both hands in his pockets, but upon entering the kitchen, he pulled them out and Mira could see two distinct characters tattooed on each one: sin and punishment.Comforting.She vaguely recognized him from the dark room the previous night, if only for the fact that he had been only one wearing glasses, thin, round wire rim frames that were almost invisible on his face except for when he lifted his chin to appraise the situation and the lenses glinted against the light.First his gaze fell on Mira and she couldn’t stop the shiver that trilled down the length of her spine from the cold amusement glittering there,before it fell to the counter.“Aw, look at you two holding hands. How cute.” When he spoke, his words were low and drawn-out, suffused with both amusement and anarchy.“She’s stitching up my stab wound.”“Jeez, she stabbed ya already? How’d you fuck up that bad?”“I didn’t!” they both cried indignantly at the same time before Mira carried on. “It was that pink-haired maniac. He was trying to stab me . Kokonoi just sort of…got in the way.”“Way to make my heroic act of jumping in to save you sound like I’m an incompetent jackass,” he grumbled, jerking his hand as she pushed the next suture a little too deep.“I told you to shut up and hold still.” The nerve of this woman to talk to him like that. He was a member of Goddamned Bonten. No one spoke to him like that and got away with it—and yet here he was obeying like a pathetic puppy. But before he could say anything, she turned her waspishness to Hanma, who was peering curiously over Koko’s shoulder at her work. “And who are you anyway?”She felt an arc of satisfaction zing through her at the way his eyes widened a little, as if he wasn’t used to people talking to him like that. “Damn, look at you acting like you own the place already. Shuji Hanma,” he crooned with a sideways grin. “The pleasure is all yours. ♡ ”“Riiiight, because it’s been such a pleasure meeting all you Bonten assholes,” she crooned, a saccharine sweetness to her voice. “How lucky of me.”“Why are you here, Hanma?” Koko cut in, an edge of annoyance in his voice, especially since she had finished up his palm and had now moved on to sticking the much thinner, more tender backside of his hand.“Well, you left in a pretty frantic rush earlier so I figured I best see what was goin’ on.”“Because you care so much about my wellbeing, is that right?” Koko asked flatly.“No, but I do care about that hefty little paycheck I get from you directly,” he said, placing a cigarette between his lips and sparking it to life with a lighter. No sooner did the tip flare red as he inhaled when Koko snatched it from his lips and threw it into the sink.“No smoking in my house,” he said, in an exasperated tone that suggested it was far from the first time he’d said it.“Yeah, yeah. Such a buzzkill. ‘Sides…isn’t watching your scrawny ass partly what you pay me for?”“No, I pay you to do what I say. Sometimes that includes watching my ass, and sometimes that means leaving it the fuck alone…like right now.”He shrugged, but instead of making for the door, he wandered over the couch and flopped down on it, stretching his two spider-like legs out on the coffee table and reaching one arm along almost the entire length of the back cushions. Koko pinched the bridge of his nose with his good hand. Between the two of them, he was starting to get one hell of a headache.Mira finished stitching up hand, then applied a generous slather of antibiotic ointment across both wounds and wrapped it in a thick coil of gauze.“Well I’m going to take a shower and wash the pink-haired ick off myself. Unless I need supervision to do that, too,” she said, giving him a pointed glare.“I volunteer,” Hanma said, raising a hand into the air and lolling his head back to look at her upside down, a leering grin on his face. They both ignored him.“Depends,” Koko said. “Are you capable of doing it without endangering your own life? Perhaps by slipping and hitting your head on the tiles?”She flipped him off, which Koko responded to by sticking out his tongue like the very mature gangster he was. “Damn brat,” he muttered after she’d stomped down the hall and slammed the door of her bedroom shut. “Sneaks out and almost gets herself killed and somehow I’m the asshole here.”Hanma just laughed in a slow, cruel way of his. “This little impromptu arrangement is going to be even more entertaining than I thought.”Koko ignored him—that was generally the best way to stay sane in the presence of Shuji Hanma, in his experience. Instead, he poured himself a glass of water from the RO filter tap on his sink, popped four painkillers, and sat down at the dining table, threading his fingers lightly together on propped up elbows and resting his forehead against them.What kind of life had this woman led that gave her that much experience to effortlessly stitch him up like that? She hadn’t even blinked when it came to pinching together the angry red layers of flesh, which was more credit that he could give even some of the men he knew. In fact, given the fact that she’d been threatened with a knife twice now in the last 24 hours, she seemed remarkably calm about all of it. He thought back to the dingy apartment she called home, to its bare, peeling wallpapered walls and moldy ceiling. To the two meager suitcases that had seemingly held just about everything she owned. She clearly didn’t have money, and, if her off-the-cuff remark about no one to miss her was truthful, didn’t seem to have much of anything at all.But Koko was beginning to get the feeling that there was a lot more to this woman than met the eye.“Yo, earth to moneybags. Anyone home?” He blinked, realizing Hanma was staring at him, half turned over the back of the sofa “You’re either working up a shit or thinkin’ about something serious, so which is it?”“I’m thinking I want you to find out everything you can on one Mira Nakamura. Where she comes from, who her family is, and what’s being said about her within our own ranks. Discreetly. I don’t need any of it getting back to Sanzu.”“And what do I get in return?” he asked, rising from his seat and approaching the table. “... Seein' as you're a businessman and all that and this goes above and beyond the work you already pay me for.”Koko appraised him carefully, then rifled through a stack of papers at the end of the table pulled out a manilla envelope, tossing it down on the countertop between them, the heft of the stack of files within it striking the marble with a dull thwack . Hanma arched one eyebrow and slowly stretched out one lanky arm, grabbing the envelope with the hand that said, “Punishment”.“What’s this?”“See for yourself. Unless you need me to help you read it.” The upper of his lip curled in something between a sneer and a smirk as he pulled out the stack of documents, flipping through them, his face lighting up as he saw the contents. “I’ve been compiling data on all the strongest fighters in Tokyo—taken from fighting rings, gangs, prison incident records, the usual places. Should keep you occupied for a while, if you want it.”A slow, sly grin spread out across Hanma's face, like a drop of blood dispersing in a pool of water. “You got it, pretty boy. I’ll be your ears, let you know all her dirty little secrets..” he strolled casually toward the door. “Tell the princess I said goodbye and I’ll see her next time. You two have fun now. I know I will.♡” Then the door clicked shut behind him.Koko sighed and dropped his head against the propped up fist of his uninjured hand, lifting it and letting his forward drop roughly back against it, once, then twice. What a fucking shit-show this was all turning out to be. Especially because now he had to bring Hanma into all of this.Hajime Kokonoi didn’t have friends—not anymore, at least—but if he had to call any of his colleagues something along those lines, Shuji Hanma would come the closest—which pissed Koko for a whole laundry list of reasons.First and foremost of which being he was Shuji fucking Hanma, known psychopath and destroyer of anything and everything he came into contact with.But in a lot of ways, he was a good man to ally with and had become a valuable tool at Koko’s disposal. He took the world as one big cosmic joke, meandering from one adrenaline rush to the next. What happened in between? Hanma didn't give two shits about that. He wasn't loyal to a fault like Sanzu or principled like Kakucho or even greedy like he himself was. His needs were simple: to seek out and fight strong people, as if it were a way of validating his very existence, and to ally himself with those who would help him do just that.Koko knew, of all the Bonten members, he ironically was probably the only one who wouldn't pose much of a threat to the girl simply because she didn't offer him any of that. Shuji Hanma may have been one crazy motherfucker, but he was mostly only dangerous if he perceived you as being worthy enough to be a threat. Mostly. And if nothing else, at least his motivations were simple enough to understand and manipulate.Hanma liked creating chaos, plain and simple, but as fun as creating chaos was, creating it to an end was what he really found delight in. Insanity within structure. He enjoyed helping others achieve their goals—as long as he was given free, unfettered rein to do as he pleased in the pursuit. Which suited Koko just fine, because, as the business face of Bonten, it was usually better if Koko’s hands remained unsoiled. Not that that was always possible.He wasn’t quite sure when Hanma had become his right hand man, but it was sometime after Tetta Kisaki died all those years ago—which left Hanma a bit adrift and without purpose—and the dissolution of many of Tokyo’s major players into Bonten. But before Harichiyu Sanzu had stepped up to be Mikey’s right-hand man and started making it go rotten.Koko was, of course, well aware of what was happening. He was a top exec, too, and money trails never lied. But as long as funds flowed into his bank account, he couldn’t care less. His job was to make money, not to lead, and certainly not to police morals. Besides, he’d given up the right to do that a long time ago, the day he’d donned a red Tenjiku uniform and squared off with his best friend.He shook his head, realizing his fists were clenched in his lap. He hated thinking of Inupi but somehow even after all these years, his face managed to pop up from time to time. Which inevitably meant her face, too. What a stupid, hopeless man he was.On top of all that, the pain in his hand was only growing more intense without all the adrenaline and distractions, the fire of the wound scorching up his forearm and leaving his nerves tingling all the way up to his shoulder.Koko was really beginning to regret that reckless decision to save her. Why had he anyway? That question still itched in his head but for some reason, he was afraid to scratch too deeply in pursuit of the answer, unsure what he might unearth.After a long, scalding shower that she hoped had scorched whatever diseases those two assholes likely carried off her skin, Mira finally stepped out of the shower to find her suitcases waiting for her just inside the door. Koko must have thought better about going any further into her room this time, after the fit she’d thrown learning about how he’d bugged her phone.Right, she still had to find and delete that app.She was still plenty pissed about that, but at the same time, she begrudgingly did have to admit that if he hadn’t, she would probably be dead at that very moment. That admission brought a swell of nausea ballooning through her gut, made only worse by the thought of going out and facing him again. Setting down her pride, pathetic and unfounded as it was, was never a skill Mira had developed a particular aptitude for. But sucking it up and giving him a proper apology seemed the least she could do.She sifted through one of the suitcases, pulling out two of her favorite comfort things as if wearing them might possibly make up for the tremendous level of discomfort everything else about her life had devolved into. She pulled a pair of bike shorts and a sweatshirt on, its oversized fit dwarfing her petite frame and nearly making it look like she wasn’t wearing pants with how low it hung down on her thighs. It was a far cry from the luxury garments that still lie in boxes on her bed, but she was well beyond caring. Just because Koko was possibly the most well put together individual she had ever met didn’t mean she was going to follow suit, and if she was going to live here for the time being, he was going to have to accept her as she was.She found Koko slumped down on the couch, his head tipped plaintively against the back cushions and his injured right hand resting on a pillow out to his side. Upon seeing her, he quickly straightened his spine, retracting his hand into his lap.Mira sat down on the opposite end of the sectional, trying to ignore the way she could feel the phantom weight of his stare prickling down her spine. “I am sorry, you know,” she muttered meekly. And she was, truly. She’d fucked up and he’d gotten hurt because of it.She heard him sigh. “I know this is going to sound like an absurd question considering you’ve known me all of 18 hours, but do you trust me?”She finally dared to look at him, the collision of their gazes infusing the air with a crackle of static.“I don’t trust anyone.”He held her gaze stoically before an almost imperceptible grin cracked the his concrete expression. “Good answer. Let me rephrase my question then: do you trust that I won’t let anyone else lay a hand on you?”Let anyone else touch her, she noted. What about him? Even so, he had saved her life twice and that was worth something. Even if all her demons were screaming at her that this was some elaborate trap, it didn't necessarily make their words true. Demons were demons, and trauma had the tendency to give birth to the most vile of them. And that wasn’t his problem.“Yes,” she said finally. She could have swore she saw a small degree of tension fall from his shoulders. “Then we’ll go from there. I promise I’ll keep you safe, Nakamura-san, but you have to let me.”“Mira,” she said in a small voice. Then louder, “Just call me Mira. If I'm going to be your roommate or prisoner or whatever you want to call this little fucked-up arrangement for an indefinite period of time then drop the formalities. This is awkward enough already.”“Mira,” he said hesitantly, rolling the word across his tongue, enjoying the way it tasted as he did so. “Alright, but that means you have to call me Koko.”“Deal,” she said. “Okay but before we seal this truce, we seriously need to address the whole food stock situation in this house.”
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Before Mira knew it, two weeks had gone by, and much to her surprise, life wasn’t a total nightmare. At least compared to how things could have been for her basically being a gang prisoner—as she knew from experience—it really wasn’t so bad. Especially not after Koko had finally stocked the kitchen with things she wanted to eat.For the most part, she was left to her own devices, which largely meant binging television, mindlessly scrolling on her phone, and having the occasional dance marathon when she was fairly certain Koko wouldn’t reappear to witness the embarrassment. Which wasn’t hard considering he was rarely around. Koko was either gone by the time she woke up or left shortly after, and returned late enough at night that they really didn’t interact much beyond exchanging a few bits of banter on any given day.But by the time the second week had rolled around, Mia found herself with another somewhat unexpected problem: complete and utter boredom. She’d always thought it would be nice to never have to work again, but now she saw just how downright dull things could be without anywhere to go—even if you hated that place. She never thought she’d see the day where she longed for that shitty club that smelled like vomit and sex, yet there she was. Sure, she appreciated not needing to look over her shoulder or be on the run for her life for the first time in over a year, but damn, was this really all that held? Was her life bound to become just as predictable as the K-dramas she’d lost count of watching over the last two weeks? If so, what was the point?It was during that long-gone train of existential thought that Koko and Hanma found her, lying on her back with her legs propped up against the wall so that her thighs were flush against the plaster. She had two arms outstretched toward the ceiling fan spinning above, as if she might be able to catch the shadows each blade carved out of the light as it spun.Hanma leaned down over her, cocking his head as he looked at the odd position of her body. “This that yoga shit I hear women talk about?” Hanma asked. She snapped herself out of her thoughts, hauling them back and into the present to frown at him. “Yeah, it’s a pose called nama-stay the fuck away from me, you perv.”He whistled. “Feisty. I do like that in a woman. Sure you don’t want to come stay with me instead of this lame brain? Promise I’ll make it fun ♡”. She pulled one leg off the wall and jabbed her heel at him, which barely missed his midsection as he sucked it back and out of the way with a chuckle.This was more or less how interactions between Hanma and herself had gone over the last couple of weeks. He wasn’t a permanent fixture in the penthouse by any means, but he did stop by from time to time, usually unannounced and usually, it seemed, to mostly annoy Koko under the guise of some trivial matter of conveyance of minor information. Mira didn’t ask too many questions about him or exactly how his relationship with Koko worked because frankly, she was a little scared to find out.“Both of you behave and come eat.”“Yes, Mom,” they droned in tandem, then shared a small smile. Mira still wouldn’t go so far as to say she and Hanma got along, per se. He was still an arrogant asshole with a predatory vibe about him that she couldn’t quite get over, even if she didn’t really feel threatened by him. But the one thing they could always find common ground on was teasing Koko.“Ooh, sushi and katsu?!” she squealed as Koko unpacked the takeout bags, plopping down in the chair cross-legged and clapping her hands in front of her chest. “Thank you for the meal!”Then without waiting for anyone else to chime in, she picked up her chopsticks and dove in, ignoring the way Koko shook his head disapprovingly at her. It was only shortly after she’d arrived that he’d made a joke about food being her sole motivator in life and she hadn’t disagreed.“I just noticed you guys have matching earrings,” she said, talking over a mouthful of food. “Did you go get your ears pierced together at the mall?”Koko gave her blasé look as he swallowed the bite he was chewing. “Very funny.”“I thought so.”“Me, too,” Hanma said with a smirk. She gave him an appreciative smile.“So anyway, how long do we think this little indefinite sleepover has to last anyway? I am one episode of One Piece away from clawing my eyes out in boredom.”Koko looked up from his plate. “What, would you like me to order you a bouncy castle? Maybe a dancing animal troupe? Oh! I know, Bozo the clown,” he said, giving her a goading smile.“Mhm,” she hummed in mock agreement. “Tying you up and letting Hanma use you as a pinata sounds pretty good, too.”At that, Hanma let out a loud rolling laugh. “I like her.”She flashed Koko a beaming, triumphant smile. “That’s not the compliment you think it is,” he said, sticking out his tongue at her in response to her own childishness.“Stop dodging my question. What am I supposed to do to keep me from jumping off that balcony?”“Well, there might be somethin’ you could do that would spice up your life a little,” Hanma’s smooth words crooned from the far end of the table.She lifted her head in his direction. “And that would be? And I swear, if this is going where I think it’s going, I will throw this shōchū in your face.”“Hanma,” Koko warned tersely.“What, were you really not going to tell her? At least give her the choice.”Now she turned back to Koko, sitting back in her seat to stretch her spine tall. “Not going to tell me what ?”Koko held her angry stare for a moment, before sighing and shaking his head. He hadn’t planned on telling her. Didn’t even like when Mikey suggested it earlier that day in their meeting, but when he’d given voice to his concerns, Mikey just said, “Freedom doesn’t come without a price. You know that, Koko.” Fuck, Hanma was right. He had to at least give her the choice.Folding his hands in front of him on the table, he inhaled. “There’s a gathering coming up. A friendly card game between some members of rival gangs. We usually do it once a month or so. But this time, we’re also working.”“Okaaayy… And how, pray tell, do I play into this?”He chewed the inside of his lip. “You’d basically be a diversion.”“For what?”“For us to plant something on one of the guys there.”“Plant what?” she pressed back in rapid succession, but this question gave Koko pause.He opened his mouth then halted and considered, before settling with a vague, “The fewer details you know, the better.”“Right, so you want me to go on some dangerous mission–”“ Potentially dangerous.”“Fine, some potentially ,” she mocked making air quotes, “dangerous mission and I don’t even get to know what the mission is for? God, I fucking hate gangsters,” she mutttered more to herself than them but certainly didn’t make any effort to keep them from hearing it. “Do I get to at least know how I’m supposed to distract them. Flash my tits? Jump up on the table and do a Russian hat dance? Standup comedy, perhaps? I am quite funny, you know.”“Hilarious,” Koko deadpanned, but Hanma’s smile grew genuinely wider. His head was propped up on his hand as he gave Koko an antagonizing look. “You would be my…escort,” he said finally with a little cough, as if uncomfortable with having to say it out loud.She stared blankly at him, blinking once, then twice. “Escort…as in…”“Pretendin’ you guys are fuckin’,” Hanma finished bluntly.“Do you have to make it sound so crude?” Koko asked exasperatedly, trying to stop the flood of heat he felt in his face.“Euphemisms don’t change facts. They just make ‘em sound prettier.”“So let me get this straight,” Mira said in a wry, no-bullshit tone, clasping her hands in front of her takeout dish at the edge of the table. “You want me to try to distract a bunch of hardened criminals and degenerates with my feminine wiles by pretending I have sex for a living, even though my own sex life is deader than your boss Mikey’s eyes? Man, you have a lot of faith in my acting ability,” she said, earning another long chuckle from Hanma, who Koko hadn’t heard laugh this much without violence and bloodshed involved in…well, ever. “Well if ya feel like ya need to get some practice in, I suppose I could take one for the team,” Hanma drawled, his glance cutting to Koko to measure his reaction. And sure enough, Koko shot him a withering look but Hanma was only able to enjoy it for a second before a piece of sushi plopped against his glasses. “It’s a good thing you’re cute, darling,” he crooned to Mira, who was looking rather smug about her well-aimed shot, before pulling a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit and removing his glasses. Once he’d finished cleaning the soy sauce and fish slime off the lenses, he pulled out a cigarette and lit it.“Hanma, if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand fucking times,” Koko started in, “put that shit out in my house.”“God, why are you such a p–”“And what do I get if I do this?” Mira blurted, dousing the early flames of argument before it could fan into an inferno. Both of their gazes slid to her. “Does Mikey call off the attack dogs and I get to have my freedom?”A muscle ticked in Koko’s jaw. “Not quite. Mikey isn’t just going to let you go just because you did one little favor for us. But it's a step in the right direction to show him you’re trustworthy.” Great , so she wouldn’t even really get anything out of this. But still…it would at least break up the monotony and that was something.“I’ll do it,” she said with a resolute nod. “I’ll pretend to be your escort or whatever. Just tell me what exactly I need to do.”They spent the rest of the evening walking through the plan, filling Mira in on who would likely be there, what she could expect of how they’d treat her, what she was expected to do, and so on. They’d even come up with a few signs and phrases they could speak in different contexts to convey a message.“Don’t worry about a thing, darlin’. I’ll be there to protect ya if anything goes awry,” Hanma had told her as Koko finished summarizing the usual members who attended these card games, none of whom sounded like anyone Mira wanted to encounter in a dark alley. Then again, she wanted to encounter Hanma in one even less, and yet there they both were.“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”“If it doesn’t, I can do something else that will.♡”She threw him a rude gesture and with that, they called it a night.The next day, Koko was gone before she woke up, but returned early in the evening with Hanma in tow, three large white boxes stacked in his arms. “I ain’t your fucking bellhop, ya know,” he growled tossing the boxes down with a loud clunk on the kitchen table. “You're right. I pay you far too much to just be a bellhop. I could correct that if that would make you feel better,” Koko said smoothly, lips curling into a challenging smile.“Fuck off,” Hanma mumbled, placing a cigarette in between his lips before a cold look from Koko stopped him dead, and he begrudgingly returned it to the pack in his pocket.“What’s in the baahhhhx?” Mira said, rising from her seat on the couch to join the two of them around the table. They both gave her a blank stare, as if she’d gone mad. "What, haven’t you guys ever seen the movie Se7en? You know Brat Pitt..." Silence. "Oh whatever, I’m funny. Get some taste in foreign films, you uncultured assholes.”As was becoming his default any time she got her feathers ruffled and started yelling at them, Koko ignored her attitude. “Potential outfits in there. Try them on and we’ll decide which one will suit the occasion best.”“Yes, sir,” she said with a mocking salute, before grabbing the boxes and taking them huffily to her room. She threw them onto the bed and tossed off the tops, sequentially lifting out each garment one by one. Oh hell, the boxes were more tissue paper than fabric, she realized as she looked at each one. She immediately stormed back out into the living room.“There is no way in hell I am wearing a single one of these dresses! if you can even call them that.”Koko didn’t even look up from the papers he had spread out on the table in front of him. “What did you expect, a kimono? You’re a 21st-century escort, not a geisha.”“Well haven’t escorts ever heard of leaving a little to the imagination?”Koko gave her a cool, dismissive look. “If you’re scared, back out then. No one’s forcing you to do this.”“I’m not scared!” she retorted hotly. She wasn’t scared; she just…didn’t like showing that much of herself. Not anymore…“Then just humor me and try them on. If they’re all that bad, I’ll buy you something else.”She wasn’t sure what pissed her off more: being ordered around by Koko or how utterly calm and unconcerned he sounded while doing it. “Pompous prick,” she muttered under her breath and she stomped off back toward her room.Still grumbling to herself, she examined all the discarded garments in turn and settled for the one that seemed to have the most amount of fabric—even if the majority of it was sheer. And at the very least, it seemed to cover most of her front. Keeping that covered was priority number one, with her considerable lack of frontal endowment being the least of her concerns. Before letting herself think too much about it, she slipped it over her head and looked in the standing floor-length mirror. The dress was a dark, deep purple that flowed like water at dusk down her front but left her back completely exposed but for a single, elegant strap that draped just beneath the bladed juts of her shoulders, holding each side of the back together.The main skirt ended just below the cheeks of her ass, but a translucent overlay that matched that of its long sleeves continued on all the way to her ankles, with two splits up each side all the way to her hip.It was…stunning—in a scandalous sort of way, of course. It just wasn’t her. She examined the blank patches of skin it left, searching for the scars she wouldn’t be able to hide in it. From the front, things were all hidden, save for the few slim silver lines across her throat that she never made an effort to hide anyway, so that was a relief. The modest neckline of this one was why she’d chosen it. As for the back, only a few thin, white lines stood out around her shoulders.She frowned, disliking the idea of anyone seeing them—not because she cared how they looked but because she didn’t want to have to lie when they inevitably asked what happened. But seeing her other options, this was as good as she was likely to get, so she opened the door and strutted down the hallway, hoping Koko would agree.“Alright, here. Dress number one,” she announced dramatically, strolling into the room with her arms spread wide to her sides as she did a little twirl, stopping when she was facing Koko once more.“Damn, doll,” Hanma crooned appreciatively. “Koko, you sure you won’t want to switch jobs tomorrow night? I’d love to have that hanging off my arm all night.”Koko, surprisingly, said nothing. Just stared at her, a dark look clouding over him as his pupils ballooned to eclipse nearly the entirety of each iris. The weight of his gaze felt so heavy that every thought in her head vanished in an instant. There was nothing in the room, just her and him and that look that consumed and became everything that existed at that moment in time.“Wear that one,” he finally said, his voice low and throaty, before he tried to clear it.“But you haven’t even seen the others.”“I don’t need to. That one will do.”Suddenly she felt like her skin was on fire, sweat immediately beading along the bare strip of thigh that poked through the double sides of mesh. “Erm… right, well, good. Then that’s settled. I’m just…going to go change,” she said awkwardly and retreated to her room before either of them could pick up on how flustered she suddenly felt.But she certainly wasn’t the only one. The second she disappeared, Koko’s body went boneless as he slumped down in his chair, trying to think over the thundering echoe of his heart in his head. Fuck, Koko thought. Hanma let out a long whistle. “Doesn’t look like you’ll be doing much pretending at all about wanting to fuck her.”“Shut the fuck up and keep your voice down,” Koko hissed. “This whole living situation is awkward enough without you putting false ideas like that in her head.”“Mmhmm, false,” he mused, a disbelieving twinkle in his eyes.“Yes, false,” Koko repeated with a hard emphasis on the word. “And if I hear another peep about it, I’m docking your pay.”“Whatever you need to tell yourself.”Before he could let himself give in to the sudden very powerful urge he had to punch Hanma right in his smug face, Koko went outside onto the balcony, letting the cool evening air take the heat off his mind and body. He wasn't blind. Anyone with eyes could see that Mira was a very attractive woman, perhaps even more so because she seemed to be the only one not clued into that fact. She didn't flaunt herself or try too hard, but there was a natural grace about her, a kind of wild, unpolished femininity that was striking and so opposite the types of women Koko usually found himself surrounded by. She reminded him of Akane in some ways—if Akane had been allowed to grow up and acquire a few of the inevitable jagged edges that came with the process—and that was why he couldn't afford to let himself get further caught in her gravity. Because being attracted to something and letting anything come of that attraction were two completely different things. One was physical, instinctual, irrational. The other could be overcome with enough reason and willpower toward emotional suppression, and if there was one thing in the world Koko had more than money, it was that.Even so, he had a feeling tomorrow was going to be a long night.
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The day came and Mira stood staring at herself in the mirror in disbelief. She looked like an entirely different person, thanks entirely to the person Koko had hired to come in and do her hair and makeup. “It’s not that I don’t think you’re capable, but she knows the look we need to go for,” he’d told her, which she had only half believed. Not that she could blame him, since she hadn’t put on makeup since coming to live with Koko (who was she trying to impress) and even barely ran a brush through her hair.She couldn’t say much to the young woman’s conversational skills, considering she hardly said more than “chin up” repeatedly as she was fussing with Mira’s hair—but damn if she wasn’t good at her job.She’d spent the better part of two hours, meticulously pinning each of the short flyaways and choppy layers that Mira had cut into her hair herself, loosely curling the ends so that the silver tips cascaded down like tiny springs of water sparkling in the afternoon sunlight.When she was finally done painting a swipe of dark red stain across Mira’s lips, she turned her around so that she could see in the mirror. The person staring back at her was not someone who had nothing. It wasn’t the nobody she was—the nobody she had been so careful to ensure she looked like for the last year. Now, she looked like someone. And she couldn’t decide if that thrilled or terrified her.Before she could get cold feet, she slipped into the stiletto high heels Koko had bought that matched her dress, secretly hoping she wouldn’t fall flat on her face and make a fool of herself in them, and left the room.Koko was waiting at the mouth of the hallway, anxiously pacing the length between the front door and the living room. He was wearing a jet-black satin suit embroidered with fine golden filigree that matched both the gold waistcoat he wore beneath it and the gold wings of eyeliner that shimmered faintly in the warm hall light as he turned to meet her. It should have been garish and horribly tacky, but as with anything she’d seen him in, he made it work. Mira swore he could put on a plastic garbage bag and somehow still look posh—and ridiculously sexy. She shook that thought away as quickly as it flitted into her brain of its own accord.“Well?” she asked bluntly, sweeping her arms out to the sides as she did a little twirl. “Do I look like a whore?”His dark eyes swept her up and down—those piercing eyes so sharp they could cut a damn diamond in half, now glittering with something that made Mira’s stomach flop upside down on itself. Without saying a word he took one step, then two, and with three he was standing right in front of her, so close she could feel the heat rolling off his body on the naked patches of skin. A muscle twitched in his jaw, and with it, one in between her thighs. Uh-oh. “A whore wearing Valentino,” he purred, a low, breathy rumble that slunk down her spine. “Which is exactly the point.” “I suppose I’ll take that as a compliment for the evening.”“You should. I have one last finishing touch. Turn around.” That sounded a bit ominous but she did it anyway and he pulled from a velvet-lined box a necklace studded with more diamonds than she had ever seen in her life. “Please tell me these aren’t real diamonds.”“Dove,” he scoffed lightly, as if the very notion of them being anything else offended him. He gently laid the cold stones across her collar and fastened it behind her neck, his fingers lightly brushing away a silver-tipped curl that lay in the way, lingering for just a moment longer than necessary.She shivered at the sensation, at how close he was, at how…intimate it all felt. She knew in less than an hour she’d have to drape herself over him like a cheap jacket and make it very very clear how they were spending the rest of the night, and yet this moment alone with him and the supercharged bubble of energy that had encased them somehow felt so much more intimidating. “Perfect,” he breathed as she spun back to face him, then looked surprised, as if he hadn’t meant to say that out loud. He cleared his throat and put a relieving amount of distance between them. “But looks are the easy part. Are you sure you’re up for this? Last chance to back out.” When he spoke there was a breathy quality to his voice, like he was the one reconsidering this whole thing.“Spare me,” she said coolly, injecting far more confidence into her tone than she felt to back it up. “I can handle it.”The car ride was as tense as the first night he’d taken her to his apartment—or maybe that was just how car rides with Kokonoi were. It wasn’t as if she had really gone on anymore beyond that and the next day when he’d saved her from Sanzu…again.But still, it felt different. The tension didn’t feel directed at her but rather manifested in an oppressive sort of worry that made her all the more nervous about the evening than she already was.By the time they pulled up to the valet booth, Mira was crawling out of her skin and desperately in need of some air. As soon as Koko slid the gear shift into park, she reached for the handle, but a hand on her elbow stopped her. “Wait here. I’ll get it.” Right, she was supposed to be used to being pampered. That was how high-end escorts were treated, Koko had told her. But dammit she wished he would hurry. The walls of the car just felt like they were collapsing in on her little by little, and when he finally circled around the hood and opened the door, extending a hand to help her out, she had to physically force herself not to draw in a giant gasping breath. Calm the fuck down, she scolded herself. You have been through way too much shit to let this intimidate you. Koko stepped close, threading his arm behind her back and tugging her into his frame as he handed the keys to the valet with his other hand. And for some reason, the closeness quelled at least some of the nerves skittering through her body. “Last chance to back out,” he said quietly in her ear as they approached the door.Instead, she threw her chin up defiantly and picked up her pacing, forcing Koko to do the same if he was to stay with his arm looped around her.Together, they stepped into the casino, Mira’s breath catching as her eyes took in the sheer opulence around her. The ceilings soared, adorned with chandeliers dripping with crystal, casting a shimmering glow over velvet carpets and gold-trimmed walls. The air smelled faintly of cigars and expensive perfume. Everything here felt polished, glittering—definitely not the seedy sort of the places she’d ever spent her evenings.She squeezed Koko’s arm, instinctively drawing closer. He, of course, seemed completely at ease, his tailored suit draped effortlessly over his lean frame. An almost cocky smile tugged at his lips, a picture of calm confidence. Mira tried to emulate that coolness, but inside, her heart was hammering.“You still with me, little dove?” he asked, his voice barely more than a breath over the whoops of winners and dings of the slot machines.Mira gave a small nod, her throat too tight with nerves to speak—not that she was ever going to show that to Koko. As if everything wasn’t bad enough, someone walked up to them immediately, walking with that distinct swagger Koko had described to her before. Mira froze for half a beat. The uneven cut of his greasy, stringy blonde hair was similar to Koko’s own with its asymmetrical half-shaved cut, but not nearly so meticulously styled. But his most distinct feature was the tattoo curling up the left side of his face and neck. Classy, she thought sarcastically, congratulating herself for keeping that thought inside. A wide grin split his face as he spotted them—or rather, as he spotted her— making him look every bit the unhinged man Koko had warned her about.Shion Madarame—the Mad Dog, as Koko had said, as if that little tidbit would do anything other than ramp her nerves to full tilt.“Relax,” Koko murmured, his grip on her hand tightening for just a second, then raised his voice to greet him coolly. “Madarame.”Mira met Mad Dog’s eyes, icy blue and narrowed. They swept over her in a way that made her skin prickle. He sauntered over, confidence rolling off him in waves, his grin widening as he stopped before them."Well, well," he drawled, his voice a smooth, slow burn. "Koko, you always did have a thing for cheap thrills." His gaze flicked back to Mira, lingering in a way that felt like a hand running over her skin. The words hung in the air, dripping with condescension. Mira fought the urge to recoil, forcing her lips into a small, tight smile, as she stepped out of Koko’s grip, despite his effort to keep hold of her waist. “I know you’re implying that I’m cheap with that statement, but trust me when I said I am very expensive,” she purred, stepping close to Madarame and hoping she wasn’t allowing confidence to bleed into the realm of stupidity with the move.. “And worth every penny.” she walked her fingers up his chest seductively with each word. “If you ever decide I’m worth it, ask Koko for my number. But considering how…cheap this looks,” she said wrinkling her nose as she tried to look disdainfully at what even she could tell was a cheap, rumpled suit, “I won’t hold my breath.”He looked up at Koko, lips curling in a jealous, insulted sneer.As they walk away, Mira’s pulse suddenly slammed through her head, almost buckling her knees. “Holy shit,” she whispered to herself, feeling like electricity was coursing through her veins. “Was that too much?” She glanced at him and he held up his thumb and index finger pinched together. “Should I not have done that?”“It’s fine. If you hadn’t I would have. Madarame’s an asshole. No one likes him, so you’re not about to make any enemies by feeding him what he deserves.” She could have said something about how, from her perspective, they were all kind of assholes, but decided now wasn’t the time for that. She released the breath she was holding out of fear that she had already let her mouth run away and fuck up the mission. She felt Koko’s grip on her waist tighten again, his fingertips crawling a little further, a little more possessively around the curve of her hip bone, his thumb making a long, gentle caress across the skin of her lower back. “Just keep acting like that. You’re doing great, little dove,” his voice came soft and encouraging in her ear. The praise should have gone to her head, but instead, it went straight between her thighs and made her feel like her body could set the entire damn place on fire.The atmosphere, the role, the fact that Koko looked that fucking good as he grinned sidelong at her, tugging her even tighter against his side…Oh and the fact that she hadn't let anyone so much as think about touching her the way he was now for the last year… All of it combined into a potent drug that was starting to give her the very hot, very bothered feeling that she was in over her head—and not because of all the other dangerous people she was about to be in a room with.He led her through the club, all the way to the back, to a set of black upholstered double doors guarded by one of the largest men Mira had possibly ever seen.“Arms up, Kokonoi,” he said by way of greeting. “Your little friend, too.” “It’ll be neutral turf,” Koko had told her. “ No one is allowed to bring a weapon.” “Why does that not comfort me?” “Good. It shouldn’t. That rule is mostly just a pretense because I can promise you everyone in that room will still be armed.”
“You included?”
“Of course.”
She hadn’t asked what exactly he’d meant by that or how exactly anyone got around the little pat-down rule, half because she trusted he wasn’t lying and half because she didn’t really want to know.Inside, her eyes swept around the dark room, all black except for the green-topped card table in the center, immediately looking for exit points, places she didn’t want to get trapped in, and more than anything, the people she didn't want to get trapped there with. Only about half of them seemed to be there, if she could assume that every seat was to be occupied because at the moment, only about half the seats held bodies.She scanned them, trying to connect the dots of who they were from everything Hanma and Koko had told her about who to expect might be there. There was Madarame, who she’d already had the displeasure of meeting, strolling in right behind them and taking a seat opposite of the chairs Koko was pulling out from her and himself, throwing Mira a cruel smile.There were Ran Haitani and his brother Rindou. They were part of Bonten and she recognized them from that first time she’d fallen into this whole mess. But even if she hadn't, Hanma's description of Ran and his ‘pigtails that make him look like a little girl’ would have helped her identify him immediately.There was one other woman there, presumably an escort judging by her plumped lips painted an ostentatious pink that matched her tacky dress. Clearly, she didn’t have a luxury stylish for celebrities on speed dial like Koko did.But no one really seemed to pay her much mind, least of all the man built like a brick shithouse with a mostly shaved head inked with a dragon tattoo across his scalp whose thigh she was currently petting. That must have been Ken Ryuguji, more widely known as Draken, of the newly reforming Brahman. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to be another pathetic set piece like that woman. Mira’s job that night was to be noticed so she’d be damned if everyone was going to ignore her like that. So rather than sit neatly next to Koko in the chair he’d pulled out for her as the other woman was doing with her gentleman friend, Mira took a deep breath and boldly planted herself right on Koko’s lap, ensuring her long bare legs slipped free from the split in her skirt as she crossed one knee over the other and draped an arm around his neck, giving him a sultry smile.This wasn’t remotely part of the plan they’d discussed, as Koko’s suddenly rigid posture beneath her made painfully apparent, and she hoped she hadn’t just fucked up. But as she watched the way his eyes scanned the room for everyone’s reaction, she felt him relax beneath her if only a little. And sure enough, intrigued eyes had all swiveled their way. At least she’d gotten their attention. Now to keep it.She drummed her fingers where they rested on Koko’s far shoulder. That was their agreed-upon silent signal to check if she was doing okay. If this was okay. If this was an appropriate action for her position.He tapped back on her tight, once, then twice rapidly. You’re doing fine.Then as if to reassure her more, he pulled her more tightly into him, snaking his left hand around so that it rested on her far hip, the pads of his long fingers stretching all the way out past where the hem of her dress had ridden up to near vulgar length so they scalded right against her skin. She felt a flood of moisture accumulating between her thighs. Stop it, stop it, stop it , she willed her body to quit responding to his touch like that. This was sooooo not the time and she prayed she wouldn’t soak through onto his pants. It’s just an act, she reminded herself. And you are NOT becoming attracted to another gangster. “My, my,” a deep voice said from the door and before she even turned her head a few degrees to slide her eyes to the door, she somehow knew exactly who it was going to be. South Terrano—the guy they were supposed to plant the flash drive on—looking every bit as dumb and dangerous as Koko had made him out to be. He was carrying a briefcase, which made Mira's heart sink a little. Of course it couldn’t just be some back with an open pocket. Somehow, Hanma was going to have to get that open to plant the flash drive without anyone , not just Terrano, seeing. The mission sounded so simple but now, it felt like anything but. Still…she was determined not to fail—or at least not have it fail because of her.Mira still had no idea what was on that flash drive, but he looked like a sadistic brute if ever she’d seen one—and she had—so she hardly cared what kind of trouble it was about to get him in. “And here I thought the game was going to be our only source of entertainment tonight.” Good, she thought, as his eyes swept her up and down and landed finally to rest on the long bare planes of her thighs, and where they v’ed into a tight notch. He’s noticed me already, that’s good. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”She met his leering gaze with a bold, sultry look, batting her eyelashes twice. Confidence is key, Koko had told her. As long as you act like you know your worth, no one there will question it. “Whatever you want it to be…provided you can pay for the privilege.”Koko ran finger down her arm in approval, leaving a trail of stinging heat like a match on a strike strip.“You always know how to pick ‘em, don’t you Kokonoi?” He always knew how to pick them, huh? So this was a somewhat common occurrence for Koko. Mira tried not to dwell too long on how strangely uncomfortably that notion sat in her stomach as she swallowed it.“It’s not particularly difficult if you have any refined sense of taste, which I know you don’t.” Koko gave him a winning smile, his tongue poking into the side of his cheek.“Always a mouthy little shit, too,” he growled.“So they tell me. Though perhaps if you were better with your mouth, you might be able to land a woman like this.” Mira was just starting to think these gangsters acted more like high school boys, the way they poked at each other and posured themselves like peacocks, but the sudden sensation of Koko’s lips skimming the skin of her neck shoved every coherent through from her brain, short circuiting it entirely as if he’d zapped an electric pulse through her nervous system.Terrano’s upper lip curled into a snarl though it was impossible to say whether it was the insult or the way Koko was looking at him mockingly as he peppered slow kisses beneath her jaw or the slow jeering laugh as Hanma strolled into the room, his hands shoved casually into the pockets of his navy blue suit. “Looks like I arrived just in time for the fun.”“Tch, and here I was starting to think it might be a peaceful evening without me getting sick over your ugly mug,” Draken piped up for the first time. “Aw, is someone feeling cranky?” Hanma drawled, sending a wicked side grin Draken’s way. “What, your boyfriend Take-bitchy couldn’t make it so you’re stuck with her?”Hanma was sure talking big and bold considering what he’d told her about Draken. “Despite how he looks, he’s a real gentleman. He’d certainly never lay a hand on you, but that don’t mean he ain’t plenty dangerous. Draken’s one of the only people who’s ever beat the shit out of me. Granted we were still kids back then, but still.” She wasn’t sure what she found more surprising about that confession—that the indomitable Shuji Hanma whom Koko had made out to seem invincible was actually beaten, or the fact that Hanma said it with more respect in his tone than she’d perhaps ever heard.“Watch your tongue before I cut it out, you two-toned freak,” he growled in a low voice.“Ooh, now that sounds like fun. You know I’m always down for a rematch, baldie. Just name the time and pla–” Ahem , someone cleared their throat loudly, severing Hanma’s cocky words, and everyone’s eyes swung to see the dealer taking his spot in the center of the table. “If everyone is here, shall I deal the first hand?” Mira couldn't help but notice how much he absolutely looked like he didn’t want to be there. Though she supposed she wouldn’t want to be stuck in a room with a bunch of dangerous criminals who didn’t get along just for the sake of a job that surely didn’t pay enough to put up with that kind of bullshit. Not when this room was one giant powder keg just waiting for the wrong kind of spark to set it off.But funnily enough, everyone respected the man, and took their seats, quietly dishing up hors d'oeuvre from the plates scattered around the table as the man dealt their cards. This whole situation was so strange to Mira.
“You mean a bunch of rival gangs get together and play cards once a month without anyone killing each other?” she had asked incredulously when Koko and Hanma were briefing her. That would have been an absolute joke among the kind of the gangs—or really just one—she was used to dealing with.
“Yeah, well, that’s exactly what was happening anytime any members of these organizations clashed. Until a few years back, we all decided there had to be some kind of neutral zone in which we could interact without it getting messy. We all may want to see each other crash and burn, but it’s equally as helpful to ourselves if we can keep an eye on everyone in a relatively risk-free space.” Relatively being the operative word, she’d thought at the time and nothing about the stifling tension in the room so far had sought to change her mind.Koko lifted the corners of his cards off the table, keeping their values obfuscated from even Mira—which was fair, considering her limited experience playing strip poker with friends back in college had done nothing if not teach her she had a horrible poker face—before laying them all back down flat. “I’ll raise,” he said cooly, pushing in a pile of chips larger than the ones anyone else had bet. Muira had to suppress the urge to roll her eyes.“Sorry I’m late,” a new voice said, as the doors opened and quickly closed. “Deal me in for the next round.”Koko didn’t move so much as a fraction of an inch to see who it was, but he stiffened into a statue beneath her all the same.. She glanced at him, and found his eyes staring so fiercely in the opposite direction on the card table of where the newcomer was seating himself that she half expected the felted spot to spontaneously combust under the heat of his gaze.She slid her eyes back to the man now seated two seats to their right, finding he was staring directly at her—no, not her. At Koko, with an oddly unsettling mixture of anger and pity in his eyes. She didn’t recognize him, with his pale almost white-blond hair that didn’t look bleached like most who sported such a color. And with the large, fleshy scar that poked its way from beneath the bangs on the left side of his face, almost consuming his entire left eye, she was fairly certain she would have remembered if this was someone they’d described to her.“Rare for you to make an appearance, Inui. Didn’t you bitch out on the gang world a long time ago?” Terrano garbled around half a mouthful of sashimi.“Someone sane has to show up every once in a while to make sure you lot aren’t scheming up ways to destroy the whole city.”She glanced at Koko questioningly but found he was still staring at that one spot, his fingers now pressing so hard into hip she thought they might leave little round bruises in their wake. Something about this Inui was clearly upsetting him, and as curious as she was as to why, none of them could afford for Koko to be off his game at that moment. She had to get him to refocus, to get him back on task so that they would get this whole nightmare of a night over with.“Hajimeeee,” she whined, then watched his pupils expand as the word floated into his ears as his eyes finally shifted to her face. “I’m bored. Can we leave and go have fun yet?” she said, pressing out her bottom lip in what she hoped was a sultry pout and not the face of a sulky child. “Yeah, Hajime,” Madarame mocked. “Take your whore and get out of here if she's going to be an annoying bitch, before I decide to teach her how whores are supposed to act. No matter how expensive they think they are,” he hissed, meeting her eyes with a cutting stare.Rage shot through her with all the force of an explosion, and she felt Koko’s whole body go rigid beneath her, but before either of them could do anything, there was already a fist closing around the back of Shion’s head, slamming it face first into the table.“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Hanma?!” he sputtered, raising his now blood-streaked face as more continued to pour from his nose.“Teaching you how to act in the company of a lady, Madarame. First lesson’s on me, since I know ya don’t have much experience with that particular sex.”“The fuck did you say to me?” On the expletive, he slammed his palms down on the table and stood, leaning forward to tower over Hanma as if believed he could actually intimidate him. But Hanma just looked bored, flicking his eyes up to Shion’s blood-dipping nose and fuming expression, then back to where his hand clawed into the felt of the card table. Then without so much blinking, he snatched the chopsticks from his plate of sushi and slammed the pointed ends right into the back of his hand.Maradame howled, jerked his hand back and staggering away from the table so suddenly, he stumbled over his chair, toppling both him and it.Everyone was rising to their feet now, everyone except her, Koko, and Hanma. Fuck, the plan was going to shit. None of it would mean anything if everyone got pissed and either left or started beating the shit out of each other. Koko had warned her that was a very real possibility, but she wasn’t willing to accept that. Not when it meant no progress toward freedom. So Mira went off-script—again—and turned around, pressing her lips to Koko’s, hard and desperate.After a long, tense moment, she pulled back just a little, searching his eyes—and trying not to read too much into what she found there. There was shock, mostly, but also something else. A smoldering undercurrent that sucked her into those dark depths and made the increasingly damp space between her legs tingle. Well, at least it made it easier to keep going and it certainly wouldn’t hurt her goal of making things more convincing.She kissed him again, but this time Koko was ready for it, meeting her lips with as much eagerness and pent-up energy as she was putting into it. He pulled her closer to him, fingers sprawling fully across her naked lower back as he did so. Fuck, this was so beyond the script, they weren’t even in the same movie anymore. And yet…it felt so fucking easy. That was a major problem in its own right, but one to address another time—one when they weren’t risking getting their brains blown out.Then she felt herself tipping backwards, as Koko cradled his hands in the small of her back and guided her down onto the table, crawling over top of her without letting their lips separate. She vaguely heard a long, slow whistle in the background—fucking Hanma, probably, judging by the low, sluggish snicker that followed it—but she was way too far gone to think about it for any longer than a second, before Koko’s lips moved from her mouth to her neck, to the thundering pulsepoint that he latched onto and expelled every single thought in her head with nothing more than a little suction and flick of his tongue.His hand snarled tighter into her hair, no doubt undoing all that hard work from earlier, but it hardly mattered now. Nothing did, nothing except for the knee he slotted in her between legs, so close to where she scorched to be touched but not nearly close enough to quell the ache growing there even a little. She couldn’t help the plaintive keen that passed through her already swollen, parted lips before Koko crashed back into them with his own, swallowing the noise as his satin tongue swept into her mouth and punched what little air remained from her lungs.He drew back a little, whether to catch his breath or reangle himself or pull away entirely Mira wasn’t sure. She was only sure that she didn’t want him going anywhere, so before his mouth could fully withdraw from her own, she ensnared his lower lip between her teeth, dragging them gently across the sensitive flesh and drawing a low growl from somewhere deep in his chest. Fuck, that noise triggered something feral inside her and she wanted to make him do it again, wanted to make Koko—ever so perfectly put together—come undone in her hands. She arched her back, pressing her chest tighter to his and giving the hand that was still cradling her lower lumbar the freedom to skim up her side, skating along the seam between the fabric covered front and where it opened to reveal the bare flesh of her back, now burning hot and riddled with goosebumps.She found of her hands tangling in the flopped over curls around his jawline, the other stretching out over her head, as if extending it would extend the plane of her body infinitely so that he never had to stop touching her, so that his hand could keep traveling along her body infinitely…Until it clashed into something cold and hard, knocking it over with a clatter of ice cubes and a slosh of liquid that splashed across her forearm.“Fuck!” she heard someone that sounded like Terrano yell, but what exactly was happening was a hazy blur because nothing else in the room existed—the job, the leering eyes that were locked voyeuristically on the display in front of them, nothing. Just her and Koko and the heady feeling of pure unbridled desire suffusing every nerve in her body.“Well, ain’t this turning out to be quite the eventful gathering. We should make all of ‘em like this.” It was the lilting, indolent sound of Hanma’s voice and it slowly registered to her horny brain that that was one of the scripted phrases—one that meant the job was done. The words didn’t immediately sink through the lust clouding Koko’s senses, either, because it took a moment for him to finally pull back, lips parted and panting as he stared down at her disheveled form with a muddled mixture of raw desire and disbelief clouding his hugely dilated eyes. Then he straightened, and helped Mira up and off the card table, brushing off the queen of spades that had plastered itself to the sticky skin of her back.“Well, somehow I think I’ve lost interest in tonight’s game,” he said smoothly, carefully ironing out the wrinkled gruffness of his voice. “And sorry to say I don’t believe in giving you all a free showing.”Mira’s lips parted and closed once, then twice, like a fish taken from its tank and utterly befuddled about what was happening to it. It wasn’t until Koko had guided her from the room and the door closed behind them that she found her voice.“Koko-”“Just keep walking,” he instructed in a clipped voice without looking at where he’d curled her into his side. “We’re not out of this yet.”Dammit, why did he look so composed now? How was it that he could think so measured and calm after what had just happened, when Mira couldn't summon a thought more intelligible than, What the fuck was that? “Koko!” A voice cried from behind them, but Koko ignored it, continuing to pull Mira along toward the door they were almost to. “Koko, wait, dammit!”He whirled around, tucking Mira behind his back as he stepped defensively in between her and the scarred man who had come into the game late. “Fuck off, Inupi. I’m not doing this with you right now.”“You never want to do this, but I have to talk to you about something,” he insisted.“What part of ‘fuck off’ did you not understand?” he snarled, then turned and dragged Mira away at an even more hurried pace, the both of them bursting through the doors and into the evening air that hit Mira’s sweat-slicked skin with a shocking blast. Had she been breathing properly as it was, it might have knocked the wind from her.There were two elephants in the car once they finally got safely inside, and it was hard to say which line of questioning seemed more futile. No, scratch that, there was clearly one that was way more awkward and something Mira would never ever, so long as she lived, bring up again.“Who was that? The man with the scar?”“No one.”“Wow, popular guy if no one knows your name.”“It’s not your fucking business,” he snapped, harsher than she expected, and, judging by the look on his own face, harsher than he’d expected as well. “Just part of a past Kokonoi that doesn’t exist anymore.”“Well he seems to think you do.”“Yeah. Damn hopeless optimistic bastard.”Mira sensed she wasn’t going to get him to open up any more about that, so they drove home the rest of the way in silence. When he finally pulled into his front parking spot in the lot outside his building, Koko didn;t move from the seat, didn’t even take his hands from the steering wheel, as if that grip was all that was holding him together.“I apologize for getting carried away back there,” he said finally, not looking at her.Mira shifted uncomfortably in the leather seat, the searing sensation between her legs back in full force as her mind conjured back the sensations of his lips on her neck, his tongue commanding her mouth, his knee in between her legs. “Not like it was just you,” she muttered, also keeping her gaze out the window so he couldn’t see the redness that stained her cheeks far more heavily than she could blame on the rouge.“I know that wasn’t exactly what you agreed to but, uh” he cleared his throat, “Good job.” And for a second, she didn’t know if he was complimenting her from the perspective of her quick thinking and distraction skills or the perspective of something much more literal and simple—which ironically was the far more complicated view of the two. “I didn’t know things were going to shit like that, but I guess I should have, considering Hanma was there. That was quick thinking on your part. And I’ll make sure Mikey knows it.”She could feel heat rising to her cheeks. “Yeah, well, I’d say anytime but we both know that’s not true.” The lie tasted bitter even as she said it. Because if in the next moment he surged across the center console and pulled her onto his lap or God forbid into the backseat, she knew damn well there wasn’t a single part of her that would stop him from taking her right there in the car like a couple of fucking horny teenagers at the complete mercy of their sexual urges. Finally, he turned to look at her. “Don’t worry, I promise I won’t touch you like that again,” he said, giving her a half smile, one that seemed tainted with some sort of disappointment. Or maybe she was just reading too much into things.But the strange, tightness in her chest as he got out and walked toward the building without opening her door for her suggested that perhaps she was just projecting her own disappointment onto him.Fuck. The night was finally over and yet Mira still didn’t feel like she was any less in over her head.
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To say Mira didn’t sleep well would have been the understatement of the damn century. Every time she felt herself begin to fall off the edge of the cliff, the memory of the sensation of his damn thigh in between her legs jarred her back to reality, making her twist and turn uncomfortably in the sheets as she imagined herself grinding down on, finding friction where her body had craved it.Dammit, why did he have to be so attractive? Why did that stupid hairstyle somehow work on him? Why did that damnable lazy, overconfident smirk of his make her want to wipe it off his face equally with a slap or a kiss. It’s just because it’s been so long since anyone has touched you like that , she reasoned to herself. Sexual repression had a way of draining every ounce of common sense from one’s head. But, she also reminded herself, there was a damn good reason it had been so long. Because the last time had been a complete and utter fucking disaster that had almost ended, and at the very least ruined, her life. But how very like her than to learn absolutely nothing and find herself attracted to a no-good gangster.Again.But she didn’t plan on breaking her strict celibacy rule at the moment for anyone —least of all a gangster. Least of all Hajime Kokonoi.The most solid sleep Mira finally found was close to morning, just as a hazy purple light began seeping through the small gaps between the trim and the curtains, when her adrenaline and desire wired mind finally succumbed to the exhaustion that had come from being on edge for damn near 24 hours, drifting away to somewhere deep and finally dreamless.At least until she was jolted from sleep by a hand on her shoulder. On instinct, her hand shot to the pillow on the opposite side of the bed, fumbling clumsily for a moment until her fingers closed around something cool and metal. She whipped out a knife, swinging it in a wild arc in front of her body all in the brief timespan of the fluid motion that it took her to sit bolt upright.“Woah, easy! It’s just me!”With her free hand, she pushed the scraggles of hair and sleep out of her eyes to see it wasn’t Sanzu or any of the other scary Toman members or even him , the face that plagued her nightmares all too often, but Koko, his hands held up in surrender. “Jesus fuck, what the hell, Koko?! Don’t you know not to wake a captive woman like that? I could have fucking stabbed you!” she snapped, dropping both her hand and the knife onto the duvet with a muffled thump.“Yeah, or yourself. What the hell are you doing with a bare-bladed knife under your pillow anyway?” Then his voice piqued incredulously. “Is that my chef’s knife?”“Well a girl’s got to have a failsafe and my knife got left at my apartment because someone was in such a hurry for me to ‘get in the fucking car’,” she mocked, in a deep voice, “So what was I supposed to do?”“I don’t know, ask me?”“Yeah, because I was fairly certain you wanted to hand over a weapon to me.”“Well at least maybe pick something other than what I use to chop vegetables then.”She stared at him flatly. “Is there a reason for this rude little wake up call? Or do you just get off on watching me sleep? Look I know last night was fun and all, but you’re the one that promised you'd never–”“Get dressed,” he commanded, cutting her off in that sudden no-nonsense, all-business tone of his. The one he only used when he was unhappy or on edge about something. A bad feeling was settling in the pit of her stomach.“Why the hell should I?”“Mikey is here and he wants to talk to you.”“Mikey…” she muttered groggily. He meant… Oh fuck. Manjiro goddamn Sano was there and wanted to talk to her ? Now? Why? Did she do something wrong? Had she fucked up last night and not even known it? She must have allowed that fear to flash across her face because Koko put a warm hand on her thigh under the blankets, a little higher up than he probably meant to. Not helping. “You’re not in trouble,” he said quickly, reading the panic she wasn't able to scrub from her expression. “I wouldn’t have let him in if I thought he was going to hurt you.”“So what does he want? A replay of last night’s show?”Koko gave her a pinched, sardonic smile. “Cute. Try to keep remarks like that to a minimum around him. Mikey’s a pretty easy-going guy, but if he decides to get pissed, I’m sure as hell not capable of stopping whatever he might feel inclined to do.”“Not helping.”“Just hurry up and put on some clothes,” he said, leaving the room.Mira scrambled out of bed and looked at the clothes still piled on top of her two open suitcases. She’d been there for weeks but still refused to put anything away in any of the dressers or closets in the room. Somehow that felt like admitting she was going to be a fixture there for a while and Mira wasn’t ready for that. Now what exactly did someone wear for a meeting with a notorious gang leader?Too anxious to spend much time rooting through the pile, she pulled on her favorite pair of ripped black jeans and the cashmere sweater Koko had bought for when she’d first arrived that was still folded neatly in the tissue paper lined box on her dresser. She’d been avoiding wearing that stuff, too, but frankly, she felt like she could really use the comfort of its softness. Satisfied with her look that said ‘ I tried to look nice to show I respect you but not too nice because you are still why I’m being held captive so I don’t respect you THAT much’ , she went into the bathroom, splashed a little water on her face, ran a couple of strokes of the brush through her hair to tame the lingering curls and flips that remained from her updo last night, and went out into the living room where Mikey was standing at the end of the sofa, along with Mr. Bubblegum Head himself, Sanzu. The scowl she was trying so hard to keep off her face deepended.Seeing her enter the room, Mikey squared to her. Mira braced herself for some kind of reprimand, so she was beyond surprised when he bowed. Not all the way, but still…deference of any kind from a gangster was practically unheard of. “Nakamura-san,” Mikey said. “Nice to see you again.”He was wearing a baggy black sweatshirt and a pair of faded blue jeans—once again, looking nothing like how she pictured an infamous gang leader. Definitely the polar opposite from the one she had experience with, but she tried not to let that put her at ease, because there was still something very off putting about Manjiro Sano.Frankly, she wasn't sure what to do with his niceties so she continued to regard him skeptically, her arms crossed stubbornly over her chest, her mouth pulled into a thin, tight line. Koko had told her to watch her mouth but she didn't need her mouth to still make it very clear that she wasn't going to roll over for them. Reading her body language and rigid posture as he straightened, Mikey gave her a small, knowing smile and held his hands up in surrender. "I come in peace. Please, have a seat."Mira shifted her gaze to Koko again, who was now standing at the end of the dining room table, his right hand tucked into a pocket of his pants mere inches from where she knew she kept his pistol stashed at his waist. She briefly wondered that if it came down to it, if he would really pull it. If it came to choosing between herself and Mikey, would he actually choose her over his boss?Seeing Koko’s ‘ just do what he says and don’t be a pain in the ass ’ look, Mira took a seat across from him on the sofa, though she wandered over to the far side of where the sectional bent into an L. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this little early morning chat?” She hadn’t meant the words to come out sounding quite as sarcastic as they did.“I wanted to ask you something.”"You know they make these things called cell phones. Pretty nifty little gadgets." She ignored the stern look of reprimand Koko shot her over Mikey’s shoulder.But Mikey gave an easy shrug. "You could just say I'm old fashioned. I prefer to look a person in the eye when I talk to them. Easier to tell if they're lying." She tried not to shiver at the thinly veiled threat lacing his words."Alright, you have my eyes then. I’ve been told they’re stunning.” She pretended not to see the way Koko rolled his eyes.”So shoot.""I heard you did a great job last night." Her eyes shifted to Koko. "Not from Koko. From Ran Haitani. He’s not easily impressed but he said you gave quite the, uh, performance.” His voice was acute, the lightness of it in no way diminishing the razor sharp knowing tone beneath it. She flushed at the implication—at the memory of the molten glide of Koko’s hands across her bare thighs and hips. So not the time , she reminded herself sternly, keeping her face hard.“So did you enjoy the job last night?” Yes, was the answer her mind jumped to, once again feeling the searing phantom whisper of Koko’s lips on her neck. “I don’t know if ‘enjoy’ is quite the right word,” she bit out, her gaze briefly flickering to Koko to see his reaction, but his face was as annoyingly placid and unmoved as ever.Mikey chuckled short and soft. “Then I’ll rephrase my question. Are things like that something you’d be interested in continuing to do for us?”“Depends. Do I have to keep wearing heels and dresses?”Mikey huffed a quiet laugh, though the sound was so half-hearted she doubted he actually found it funny. His loss, she thought. I’m fucking hilarious. Stupid wet-blanket gangsters.HE hadn’t found her very funny either. “We can try to find you jobs that don’t involve dresses.”Mira thought for a moment, studying Mikey’s face carefully to absolutely no avail. Somehow, he was even less readable than Koko.“If I say yes, what do I get out of it?”“Think of it as working off your debt.”“Damn, I didn’t know being in the wrong place at the wrong time was akin to defaulting on a mortgage,” she muttered bitterly, again pretending she didn’t notice the way Koko closed his eyes in frustration.But Mikey went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “You do enough work until I feel you aren’t really a threat to us, then I’ll let you go.”“You mean until I do enough work for you that you have enough dirt on me to ensure that if I ever decided to rat, I’d be digging my own grave, too, right?” Again, Koko gave her yet another sourly disapproving look from over Mikey’s shoulder, but not nearly as sour as Sanzu’s. He’d been remarkably quiet and obedient thus far, but she could tell there was an ever-building amount of venomous vitriol poised on his tongue, just barely contained behind his gnashed teeth.But again, Mikey looked unaffected, then gave her a thin, loaded smile. “However you choose to think of it.”“How about this? I’ll keep working for you on the condition you don’t lie to me about my situation. If I’m going to be used as a pawn, don’t try to treat me like the queen when I know you’d sacrifice me in a heartbeat anyway.”“You little slut,” Sanzu finally snarled, taking two stalking steps toward Mira. Koko crossed the room as quickly as the snap of a whip, positioning himself between Mira and Sanzu.“Sanzu,” Mikey said in an eerily level voice. It wasn’t a bark or even a reprimand but there was something chilling about it. Mira found herself wanting to know more about Manjiro Sano. On the surface, he was friendly. Charming even. He certainly didn’t look like a gangster. But there was something about the preternaturally calm way he spoke, about the dark void of his eyes, that suggested something wasn’t quite right about him. There was undeniable unsteadiness there. Something violent and volcanic—dormant, but not extinct. Never that. Mira only hoped she’d be long clear of the blast radius by the time he finally exploded.“Out of the fucking way, Kokonoi,” Sanzu went on as if Mikey hadn’t spoken. “She needs to learn she can’t just talk back like a little bitch to the boss and get away with it.”“Down boy,” Koko sneered, his lip curling upward.“How’s your fucking hand, anyway?”“Well enough to beat the shit out of you with.”“Watch your fucking mouth before I cut your tongue out.”“In my own home? How rude,” he said, far more playfully than Mira felt the situation demanded.“You piece of sh–”“That’s enough, both of you!” Mikey snapped and stood, his tone harsh enough this time to even make Sanzu flinch a little. “We’re leaving, Sanzu.”Sanzu’s nostrils flared slightly, clearly torn between his desire to be obedient and his desire to rip Koko’s head off. Finally, he took one step back deferentially, shifting his cold gaze from Koko to Mira. “Enjoy your time here whoring yourself to our little bank boy. He’ll get bored of protecting you soon enough and then you’ll get what’s coming to you.”For a long moment after the door clicked shut, neither Mira or Koko moved. Then wordlessly, Mira rose and wandered to kitchen, beginning to open each of the kitchen cabinets in succession. But seeing as how fucking massive his kitchen was, that could take a while. Seriously, he could feed an entire restaurant from it. “Where do you keep your booze?”“It’s not even nine.”“Okay, Judgey McJudgepants,” she sneered, ignoring the way he rolled his eyes. “I have no job, no friends, no life outside these maddeningly boring luxury white washed walls of yours–”“It’s called minimalist.”“It’s called lifeless as fuck. As I was saying , I have nothing, except an impending death threat looming over me and apparently an employment contract with a goddamn gang. Time has no meaning to me. I could wake up at four in the evening and sleep all day and it literally wouldn’t matter one bit so fucking SUE me if I want a goddamn drink in the morning after that lovely chat with one of the most dangerous men in Tokyo!” At that, she threw open the last cabinet and triumphantly pulled down a rather fancy looking bottle of clear liquid, popping off the cork, and pressing the bottle to her lips, relishing in the fire that coursed down her throat as she chugged, all the while not breaking eye contact with Koko, as if daring him to criticize her.Koko just stared at her after that little outburst, before finally surrendering with a sigh and wandering over to another cabinet. He opened it, and pulled down two rocks glasses, setting them down on the marble-topped island. “Then at least pour me one, too.”“But it’s not even nine ,” she mocked.“Fuck off. I need it if I’m going to put up with your crabby antics.”Mira threw back her head and downed the entire glass she’d poured in one gulp. “Well forgive me, but I think I’ve earned the right to be a little crabby,” she rasped over the stinging of her throat as the booze settled hot and viscous just below her sternum. “Given last night and now this morning.”Koko didn’t argue against that because he seemed to know as well as she did that any argument he could have possibly made didn’t have a leg to stand on. Her life was turning into a real shitshow…again. What would it take just to earn herself a little peace?That was why she’d agreed to keep working for Mikey when needed. As ironic as it was, working for a violent gang seemed to be the only way she might finally get it.“I’m not going to get bored of protecting you, by the way,” Koko piped up, breaking her swirl of thought. She looked up from the crystalline liquid in her freshly refilled glass. “I gave you my word, and I’m not the kind of guy to go back on it. So just…don’t worry about that at least.”“I wasn’t,”she said, simultaneously realizing it was the truth. Somehow, she had come to trust Koko with her life. Even if he was a no-good gangster, even if she had been betrayed and hurt by gangsters she trusted in the past, for some reason, she had no reservations about trusting Koko.Maybe she was a complete moron.Or maybe…Maybe Koko really was different. Maybe he actually wanted to keep her safe—for seemingly no gain of his own. Maybe, just maybe… “Well as tempting as it is to stay here and get shit-faced all day,” Koko began, cutting off her rambling thoughts at the knees, which was probably a good thing, before she could get too sucked into what was starting to feel like a dangerous one-way sinkhole. “I have work to do. Try not to give yourself alcohol poisoning while I’m gone. I’m not taking you to the hospital to get your stomach pumped.” He knocked back the last of his drink, picked up his briefcase, and made for the door, casting one last glance back at Mira with a typically unreadable expression on his face,Goddammit that woman just didn’t know when to keep her mouth shut. She was lucky Mikey was a pretty patient guy—at least until he wasn’t. And that was exactly why Mikey was so dangerous anymore. He’d become unpredictable—moreso than he ever had been before. No one, not even Sanzu and his most trusted men, could predict when Mikey’s easy-going demeanor would crumble to instant dust beneath the immense darkness that lurked inside.Koko felt no shame in admitting he was terrified of Mikey at times, which was exactly why he was probably even less thrilled than Mira had been at the rude surprise of finding Mikey at his door that morning. He didn’t think Mikey had ever been to his place, so the fact that Mira had motivated him to drop by unannounced was more than unsettling.Mikey didn’t take an interest in the grunt work. In fact, he rarely asked about the specifics of what Koko did at all. As long as there was ample money in the accounts that let him move whatever pieces on the chessboard he saw fit, he didn’t care what or how shit got done—which was largely why Bonten had become such a dangerous near lawless organization.So him being here meant he felt Mira was important enough to notice. And not just notice, but take a trip out of his way to talk to personally . The whole situation left Koko’s gut roiling—perhaps most of all because he still couldn’t figure out why in the hell it bothered him so much. Why her wellbeing was such a concern to him.The day drug by at the most torturous pace imaginable. He wanted to go home. He wanted to see her, to be near her, to see that she was still okay and to know that Mikey hadn’t sent Sanzu back after they’d left to clean things up. He knew Mikey wasn’t the type to go back on his word. Even so, he couldn’t shut out the whisper of worry that became the soundtrack of his work day.Finally, he finished balancing the books, for both his own nightclub and for Bonten, making a list of anything amiss on the financial front and texting it to Hanma to sort out before grabbing his coat and heading anxiously for home.“KOKOOOOO!” Mira exclaimed as he entered the living room, standing up with her arms thrown wide, before wobbling and plopping right back down on the sofa in a fit of giggles.He set down his briefcase and hung the jacket he’d had slung over his shoulder across the back of the sofa. “Jesus, how drunk are you?” His eyes landed on the empty bottle on the coffee table. “That was full when I left this morning.”“Surrree was,” she slurred. “Please tell me you invited a friend over to help. Even some guy. Long as you didn’t fuck on the couch. It’s too expensive to just throw it away.”“Nooope!” she said, popping her P loudly. “All me, babyyy! ‘Sides, noone else ‘wanna fuck, anyway.”Koko froze, a jolt of lightning traveling down his spine as he processed her drunken words. No one else . What the fuck did she mean by that? Nothing, he told himself adamantly. She’s just shit-faced and doesn’t know what she’s saying. He wandered back over to the bar cabinet and pulled down another bottle, not bothering with glasses this time. He was too fucking tired for that. Then he trudged over to the couch, plopped down beside her.She reached for the bottle but he quickly lifted it up and out of her reach. “Ooohhh no, sweetheart, you’ve had enough. This is for me.”“Not yer sssssweetheart,” she said indignantly, waggling her hand helplessly toward the bottlebefore dropping it dejectedly to her side and pushing her lip out in a pout. Goddammit if he didn’t want to take it in between his teeth…“Yeah yeah, just an expression. Don’t get your panties in a twist,” he sighed, then tipped back the bottle and took a big mouthful, having to once again swivel his body away as she made to grab it from him.“Thinkin’ ‘bout my panties, huh?” she taunted, a wide flirtatious smile gracing her features.He almost choked, quickly tipping the bottle down as he fought to swallow.His gaze snagged against hers, and even though her eyes were unfocused, the lids drooping shut every once in a while, that contact charged the whole room with a precipitous current of energy. Fuck. He suddenly felt like he couldn’t breathe, like some invisible force was choking him.As if it was all his suit’s fault, he popped open the top two buttons of his shirt, hooking two fingers behind the knot of his tie and loosening it so that it sagged a few inches from the hollow of his throat—a hollow he suddenly couldn't help but imagine Mira's lips pressed against. He ran a hand across his scalp, pushing back the long curls on the right side and letting them flop back into place.“Hajime.”He jolted. “What?” he managed, more than a little startled. No one called him that. Not even Inupi used to. Not since… nope. Now was not the time to start thinking about her, he told himself, pushing her smiling blond-framed face from his mind.“Hajime. ‘S’yer name, innit? Y’call me b’my fffffirst name s’I wanna, too. ‘Ssonly fairrr. Haaa-jiiii-meee.” She sounded it out slowly, as if savoring the taste of each syllable on her tongue and Koko felt all the blood in his body rush south, completely numbing his hands. “I llllike it. Sssounds nice. Means beginning. My beginning.”He swallowed thickly, feeling like his tongue had swollen to twice its normal size. “Well then tell you what. You can call me that, but not around anyone else.”Fuck, he shouldn’t have said that. Inviting her to call him that—when they were alone no less?—was a very, very bad idea. Especially when just a few utterances of it made him feel like that , like he could bend her over the sofa right then and there and make her moan it for him over and over. He was surrounded every goddamn day by some of the most dangerous people in all of Toyko and yet none of them—not one of those single trigger happy, doped out, unhinged, overmuscled, and undereducated fucks—brought him to his knees half as fast as she apparently could.Mira’s face was flushed, her lips parted as if waiting for something—maybe even an answer. She looked at him, a glimmer of something both bold and vulnerable in her eyes, like she’d been ready to unravel for him all night.He ran a hand through his hair, feeling the ache of restraint spreading through his muscles. The whole day had left him on edge, but seeing her like this—her guard down, her body relaxed and inviting—was pushing him to the brink. She was still wearing the sweater he’d bought her that first night, the long hem just skimming the tops of her bare thighs where she’d apparently shed the jeans she’d been wearing earlier, and the sight made his pulse throb. He forced himself to keep his gaze steady.“Little dove,” he said softly, reaching out to tilt her chin up. Her eyes were half-lidded, her lips curling into a soft smile, and he could smell the sake on her breath. She didn’t pull away; instead, she leaned into his touch, her fingers wrapping around his wrist.“Wa’ issit, Hajime?” Even slurring, her voice was warm, almost tender. Yep, it was definitely a bad fucking idea giving her permission to use his first name. Hearing it whispered from her lips like it was some secret meant only for him, made him clench his jaw.He felt himself leaning in, his hand slipping from her chin to cup her cheek. The heat between them simmered, a fragile, unspoken promise hovering in the space between their mouths. Her gaze flicked to his lips, and he knew if he just moved an inch closer, just let himself give in…But her eyes fluttered, and suddenly her grip on his wrist slackened. Before he could react, Mira’s head lolled forward, her body slumping into his chest. A soft, contented sigh escaped her as she melted against him, her breathing growing slow and steady.Kokonoi closed his eyes, a mix of relief and disappointment flooding him as he held her weight. With a soft chuckle, he whispered, “Of course you’d do this to me, huh?”He sighed, slipping one arm under her legs, the other around her shoulders, and lifting her up. She was light, almost delicate in his hold, and as he carried her to the bedroom, he found himself glancing down at her peaceful face. She looked serene, far from the reckless storm of fire and impregnable obsidian she normally kept cast over her features. “Hajimmmme…” came a soft, sleepy murmur, as she nuzzled her face into his chest, a gentle motion that felt so very violent with how it speared through his lungs and drained the air from them so quickly it felt like he was an astronaut who’d just removed his helmet in space.What was this feeling? Being around women wasn’t new to him but this? This was. When he brought a woman home, it was because he needed a good fuck, and nothing else.But with Mira, he didn’t know what he wanted. Because if it was just about fucking her, he would have just done it the night before and gotten it out of both of their systems, but something was stopping him—something much more than just the awkwardness it might infuse their already awkward living situation with. Something that said if he gave in, it wouldn’t be a one-time thing. There wouldn’t be any going back from it.Koko had never been in love before. Not since Akane at least, and Koko wasn’t even sure that counted considering he’d been a kid who didn’t even know what love was. Hell, he still didn’t know what love was. But even so, he'd always been at least fairly certain that it was the closest he’d ever come and that his ability to love had been burnt to ashes alongside Akane’s already incinerated flesh.Now he wasn’t so sure.He gently laid her in bed, pulling the covers up and tucking them around her before taking a seat on the edge of the bed. She was completely passed out now, soft, deep breaths passing between her parted lips. Without thinking, Koko found himself reaching a hand toward her, letting his knuckles graze softly across her cheek, lingering just a second too long."Goodnight, Mira," he murmured, feeling the weight of what almost happened linger like smoke in the air.Kokonoi hovered by her bedside for a moment longer, watching the steady rise and fall of her chest, the way her fingers curled softly around the blanket. She looked so calm, so utterly defenseless, and he couldn’t help the faint, bitter smile that crept onto his lips. She deserved more than this life, more than the hell he’d drug her into.With a sigh, he forced himself to turn away, leaving her room with quiet, measured steps. He felt the weight of their almost-kiss heavy on his skin, a dull ache pulsing beneath every thought of her. Even in the cavernous space of the living room with its high vaulted ceilings and glass paneled walls that overlooked Tokyo, the apartment felt stifling, thick with the echoes of what had almost happened.Of what he’d wanted so achingly bad to happen.A shower. That’s what he decided he needed, as if it could possibly wash away the impure thoughts he had every time he was around her—and virtually every second he wasn’t.The bathroom light flickered on, casting a cold, sterile glow over him as he closed the door behind him. Stripping off his shirt, he turned the water as hot as he could bear and stepped beneath the punishing spray. He shut his eyes, letting it wash over him like it could burn away the scent of her hair, the softness of her breathing against his chest, the sound of her voice as she’d so intimately called him by the name no one did.All of it felt too dangerous, the kinds of memory that would cling no matter how much he wanted to wash it away.He pressed his palms flat against the tile, willing the heat to do something, anything, to quiet the storm churning inside him. But even as the near scalding water drummed against his skin and deadened the nerve endings there, he knew that one shower wouldn’t cleanse away the way she’d undone him tonight."Get a grip, Koko," he muttered to himself, jaw tight as he scrubbed a hand through his hair.But as the steam thickened around him, his thoughts meandered back to the memory of her in that damn dress he’d made her wear—more to his undoing than hers—and the way it had left her back completely exposed, as if inviting him to run his hands across her skin, across the sharp outlines of her shoulders, down the delicate arch of her spine. But more than anything, he thought about those scars across the pale planes of her shoulders he’d seen as he fastened the necklace. Long, thin scars.Like someone had taken a knife to her.The back was an unusual place to have scars like that and he once again found himself wondering just who in the hell Mira Nakamura really was. What was she hiding? What had she endured?He wanted to know. He wanted to know everything about her, to see everything she was hiding. He wanted her . Shit, he mentally cursed. He really needed to get his head on straight, and considering his neglected dick hadn’t felt truly flaccid since the previous night before she’d walked out in that damn dress, taking care of that seemed to be at least a decent place to start.His hand drifted down to his hardened length, fingers curling around it and moving in slow, languid strokes.This was bad. He should not be feeling these things for her, let alone gratifying those feelings with any kind of release. Fucking her—hell, even just wanting to fuck her, regardless of whether he acted on it or not—would make their already complicated situation all the more so. She didn’t need that, and neither did he.He wouldn’t think about her, he decided. Just because he desperately needed the physical relief didn’t mean she had to have anything to do with it. He would think about other women, any other woman. He’d been with some of the prettiest, most expensive escorts in Tokyo, after all, so surely one of them would be enough to get the job done. But as his strokes grew faster, more desperate, drawing little grunts from his lips as the hot water careened off them, their faces grew more faded. And by the time he was spilling himself against the shower wall, it was Mira’s face—that beautiful face, flushed red and panting as it had been last night looking up at him from the card table—staring back at him in his mind.
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Mira's eyelids felt like sandpaper as she cracked them open, her head pounding in time with her heartbeat. The dull throb in her temples was bad, but the taste in her mouth—a vile cocktail of stale alcohol, acid, and regret—was worse. Her tongue scraped against her teeth, and she groaned, rolling onto her side and clutching her head.That’s when she saw him.Koko was perched in the corner of her room, slouched in an ottoman that sat in the corner with one leg crossed over the other, arms folded, and a look on his face that could only be described as amused disapproval.Mira shrieked—or tried to. It came out more like a hoarse croak as she scrambled upright, clutching the blanket to her chest. “What the fuck?! Were you—were you watching me sleep?”“Tch, don’t flatter yourself. Someone had to make sure you weren’t going to choke on your own vomit,” Koko said, unbothered, with only a moderate amount of judgment in his tone. He straightened, uncrossing his legs. “You're welcome.”Mira’s face went from pale to beet red in record time. “Oh my god,” she muttered, hiding her face in her hands. Her brain struggled to catch up, but every fuzzy fragment of memory from last night only made it worse.”So I threw up in front of you?“Oh yeah,” he said, as if it were common knowledge. “Multiple times, in fact.”“Oh my god,” Mira repeated, muffled through her palms. “Relax,” Koko added with a sigh, standing up and stretching like he hadn’t spent the night keeping vigil in her room. “No judgment. We’ve all been there.”“Yeah, but I haven’t been there since I was 23,” she moaned. And that was four years ago now.“Just figured you’d rather wake up alive and embarrassed than…you know. Dead. Would make all this effort we’ve both been putting in over the last month a hell of a waste.”She wanted the earth to swallow her whole, but judging by the dry heave that followed, her stomach had other plans. The bathroom tiles were ice against Mira’s bare feet as she stumbled in, gripping the door frame for support. Her stomach lurched violently, giving her no time to even shut the door behind her. She dropped to her knees, barely noticing the pain as bone struck tile, before a fountain of acid came careening up her gullet. The retching came fast and hard, and her whole body shuddered with the force of it. She was too focused on not dying—or at least, it felt like dying—to notice the soft shuffle of footsteps behind her.A hand brushed her shoulder, and suddenly her hair was being swept back in one smooth motion. Mira didn’t have to look to know it was Koko. The warm pressure of his hand held her hair steady as she gagged again, too nauseous to feel embarrassed. When it was over, she slumped sideways, her cheek coming to rest against the cool porcelain of the toilet seat. Her breath came in shallow gasps, and every muscle in her body felt limp and soggy, like overcooked somen.“Here.” Koko’s voice was quiet, and when Mira cracked one eye open, he was crouched beside her, holding out a glass of water. His face was softer than before, concern replacing the smirk that had lingered earlier.Mira pushed herself up just enough to take the glass. Her shaking hands barely managed to hold it steady as she sipped, the cool liquid soothing her parched throat. She handed it back with a muttered, “Thanks,” before collapsing against the toilet again. “I’m never drinking again,” she moaned.Koko snorted. “Sure, you’re not.”“Just leave me here,” Mira mumbled, waving a weak hand in his general direction. “Let me die in peace.”He sighed, long and suffering as if he were the one who’d just thrown up half his body weight. Without warning, his arms slid under her legs and back, and Mira barely had time to register what was happening before she was being lifted off the ground.“Put me down,” she protested weakly, though she lacked the energy to thrash.“Just let me help,” he said annoyed, then muttered more quietly under his breath, “Stubborn woman.”She let her head fall against his chest, too exhausted to fight. “You’re the worst.”“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, easing her back onto her bed with surprising gentleness. He pulled the blanket up over her without a word, and for a second, Mira thought she saw the faintest hint of a smile on his face. He could be a smug asshole, but…he could also be pretty damn sweet. Mira lay curled up on her side, half-buried under the covers as her body slowly stopped screaming at her. The lingering humiliation of the morning clung to her, but exhaustion won out, keeping her pinned in place. She turned her head slightly and caught sight of Koko sitting in her desk chair again, this time with his laptop balanced on his knees.His posture was relaxed, his light and dark dichotomous hair slightly mussed, and he was wearing a plain grey button-down and a pair of slacks. He looked… average. Normal. Mira was ashamed to admit how much she liked the look on him. As much as she appreciated a well-dressed man in a three-piece suit, somehow this looked even nicer on him.Maybe because it felt more intimate. Like she was seeing a version of him he didn’t usually show the world.She rolled onto her back with a groan, both to distract herself and to stop thinking about him. “Why are you still here, anyway?” she asked, her voice raspy. “Don’t you have to work?”“I am,” Koko replied, nodding to his laptop without looking up. “Perks of being in charge means I can work from home.”“So why do you go every day?”“Gets me away from you.”Mira snorted. “Ha. Ha. You’re so fucking funny. And yet here you are, voluntarily hanging around here when you’re not wanted.”“Maybe I just like seeing you suffer,” he said, finally glancing at her with a smirk that made her want to throw her pillow at him.She scowled. “Sadist.”“Gangster, remember?” he said easily, turning back to his screen.She studied him for another second. The usual sharpness in his features was muted, relaxed. It caught her off guard, and made her chest tighten with something she didn’t quite want to name.“So did I…. do or say anything stupid last night?”“You always say something stupid.”This time she did chuck the pillow at him.He caught it with one hand, tossing it back onto the bed with a casual flick, but his eyes didn’t quite meet hers. Now the smile was definitely there on his face, but something about it felt unsteady, like he was holding back the full weight of whatever he wasn’t saying. “You didn’t do anything you’d regret,” he said finally, the edges of his voice softer than usual.Mira blinked, confused by the way her chest tightened at his words. The hazy fragments of the night before were all tangled up in her mind—her own slurred voice, his steady hands guiding her when she could barely keep herself upright, the faint but memorable taste of his first name on her lips. Hajime. Something told her he wasn’t sharing everything, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to ask.“Good,” she muttered, settling deeper into the bed. Her eyes flicked toward him again, narrowing slightly. “But you’re not going to tell me what I said, are you?”“Not a chance.” His smirk was back, the mask firmly in place.But before she could say anything, he started typing. “Get some sleep,” he said, the casual edge in his tone back in place. “You’ll need it.”“For what?” she asked suspiciously, her voice muffled by the pillow.“You’ll see.”She watched him for a moment, the rhythm of his typing oddly soothing.Mira’s eyes slipped closed, her mind still spinning in that half-dazed, half-curious way, but exhaustion pulled her under before she could chase the thoughts any further.The faint click of his keyboard followed her into the quiet dark.By the time she woke again, her head feeling considerably (mercifully) less like death, the late afternoon sun had bathed Asakusa in a warm golden light, the air drifting in through her cracked window crisp with the promise of autumn. Mira stood in front of the mirror, brushing out her hair, when Koko appeared in the doorway, leaning casually against the frame with his arms crossed.“You look alive again,” he remarked, the corner of his mouth twitching into a grin.“Ha-ha,” she deadpanned, setting down the brush. “I don’t know whether to thank you or throttle you for this morning.”“You can thank me by getting dressed.” He nodded toward her worn pajama pants. “We’re going out.”“Out?” Mira blinked, the suggestion catching her off guard. “Why?”“Because you’ve been cooped up in here for weeks, and I can’t have you getting shit-faced to the point of needing your stomach pumped every time you need to stave off the boredom.”She rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t deny the flicker of excitement she felt flit through her chest. “Fine. Where are we going?”“Up to you,” Koko said with an easy shrug, though there was a teasing glint in his eye that made her stomach flip. “What do you want to do?”Mira hesitated. She’d lived in Tokyo for a year, but she still knew virtually nothing about the city. In fact, she hadn’t explored much beyond the limited stretch between the nightclub and her apartment. Even for her, exploring had seemed like a pretty dumb idea given the whole point of moving to Tokyo in the first place had been to lay low. But Koko didn’t know that, and she still didn’t exactly want him to find out.“Uh... I don’t really know,” she admitted, a little embarrassed. “You pick.”He pushed off the doorframe, his grin widening. “Dangerous words. Don’t complain later.”The market was a bustling maze of stalls and vendors, the air alive with sizzling sounds and mouth-watering smells. Mira’s eyes lit up as they stepped onto the crowded street. Her nose caught the rich aroma of grilled skewers, sweet taiyaki, and savory okonomiyaki, mingling with the sharper tang of pickled vegetables.“Figured you’d like this,” Koko said, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. “You’re always stuffing your face with something.”“Hey!” Mira elbowed him lightly, though she was already scanning the vendors, her stomach growling. “It’s called appreciating food. And this place is amazing.”They stopped at a takoyaki stand first, Koko handing her the little paper tray with a casual, “Here, before you faint from hunger.” As Mira bit into the crispy, gooey goodness, her eyes fluttered shut, and she let out an unintentional groan. It had been almost a full 24 hours since she’d eaten anything and after all but throwing up her very stomach itself, it was quite possibly the most delicious thing she’d ever eaten.“Good?” he asked, his voice dipping just enough to make her cheeks flush.She opened her eyes to find him watching her with an intensity that sent a jolt through her chest. His expression was unreadable, somewhere between amused and... something else. Something that made her heart skip.“It’s amazing,” she said quickly, shoving another ball into her mouth to avoid talking more.They wandered through the market, sampling everything that caught Mira’s eye. The atmosphere grew warmer between them, easy banter mingling with a quiet tension she couldn’t quite name. It wasn’t until they rounded a corner that Mira spotted the arcade, its flashing lights and blaring music impossible to miss. She gasped audibly.“Koko!” she turned to him excitedly. “We have to go in!”“No, we don’t,” he said, already shaking his head.“Please?” Mira clasped her hands together, giving him the most exaggerated puppy-dog eyes she could muster. “You asked where I wanted to go and I want to go there. Otherwise I’m dragging you to karaoke.”His face told her she had been correcting in assuming he’d like that even less. “You’re unbelievable,” he muttered, though there was no hiding the small smile tugging at his lips. “Fine. But only for a little while.”“Aw, worried you’ll spoil your big bad gangster reputation?” she teased as she grabbed his arm and pulled him across the street. “You know it won't kill you to loosen up and have a little fun once in a while.”“I have plenty of fun. Just in a more…adult way.”She flushed at the implication of that, deciding it was best not to respond as she pushed through the door.The arcade was chaos in the best way—bright, loud, and full of people yelling at machines. Mira darted from game to game like an overexcited kid, dragging Koko with her as she tried everything from skiball to rhythm games. Kyoto had arcades, but not like Tokyo did. And even so, Mira probably hadn’t been inside one since high school.She bounced ahead of him, her energy fully restored, stopping abruptly in front of one of the many claw machines lining the wall. Her eyes sparkled with excitement as she clasped her hands together, her focus locked on a prize inside.“Look!” she said, practically vibrating. “This one is all anime-themed!”“I didn’t take you for an otaku.”“Well, I didn’t take you to be a judgy asshole. Oh wait, yes I did.”He squinted his eyes in a look that said he wasn’t amused, then leaned on the side of the machine, stuffing his hands in his pockets and watching as she fed in a few coins. “You know these things are rigged, right?”“I’ve got this,” she said, gripping the joystick with determination.He folded his arms, smirking as she maneuvered the claw, only for it to miss the target entirely. She tried again. And again. Each time the claw dropped limply beside her chosen prize, and her frustration grew.“Stop, stop, stop,” Koko said, exasperated, finally stepping in to push her aside. “That’s not how you do it.”“Hey!”“These things are all about finesse,” he said, taking over, his hand firm on the joystick.She raised an eyebrow. “If you’re so good, then prove it, oh great Koko-sensei.”He smirked, rolling his shoulders. “Fine, I will. What one do you want?”She thought for a moment, scanning the prizes before pointing to a stuffed Gojo that was mostly head and hair. “That one!”Koko stared at it in mild disbelief. “Jesus, what is it with you women and Gojo?”“Um, hello? Have you seen him?”“He’s not real.”“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Real men suck. Fictional men are where it's at.”“I’m a real man.”“I rest my case.”He scowled, a faint twitch of amusement tugging at the corner of his lips. “Tch. Keep talking and I won’t help.”Mira made a zipping motion across her mouth, grinning smugly.Koko muttered something under his breath, focusing on the claw machine as if it were a mission of utmost importance. He nudged the joystick with precise, deliberate movements, the claw hovering directly over the plushie. After a moment, he hit the button, watching as the claw descended, hooked neatly around Gojo’s oversized head, and lifted it up.It teetered precariously for a second, but he didn’t blink, and neither did she. Finally, it dropped into the chute with a satisfying thunk.“You actually got it!” Mira squealed, her delight infectious. She grabbed the plushie as he handed it to her, holding it up triumphantly.Her smile speared through him, bright and unguarded, hitting him somewhere deep and unfamiliar. He didn’t know why seeing her like this—so happy, so full of life—felt like a sucker punch to the chest. But it did.He looked away, rubbing the back of his neck as if it might help him recover from whatever the hell that was. Before he could dwell on it further, his phone buzzed in his pocket, pulling him back to reality.Fishing it out, he glanced at the screen. UNKNOWN NUMBER. That was odd. “I need to take this,” he said, stepping away without waiting for a response.As he walked toward the quieter side of the arcade, he risked one last glance over his shoulder. Mira was still standing by the machine, cradling the ridiculous plushie and grinning like she’d just won the lottery.The unfamiliar ache in his chest only deepened as he tapped the screen and placed the phone to his ear, half expecting to hear Hanma’s drawl, but the voice on the other end—low, unfamiliar, and far too calm—sent a chill racing down his spine.“Enjoying your day out?” the voice said.Koko’s blood turned to ice, though his grip on the phone remained steady. He didn’t reply immediately, his mind already racing. The voice didn’t belong to anyone he recognized, and the audacity of the call told him everything he needed to know: this wasn’t a friendly conversation.“Who the fuck is this?” Koko asked, his voice sharp, cold.“Just someone who thought you should know how easy it’d be to ruin that little outing of yours. She looks like fun, by the way. Might have to get better acquainted.”The words hit like a slap, and Koko’s jaw clenched so tightly it hurt. His free hand curled into a fist at his side, but he didn’t let the anger explode. Anger was a weapon, one better wielded with precision.“You’re dumber than you sound if you think threatening someone under Bonten’s protection is a good idea,” Koko said, his tone so icy it could’ve frozen the air between them. “Do you have any idea who the fuck you’re dealing with?The caller chuckled darkly, the sound making Koko’s grip on the phone tightened.“Guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”The line went dead.Koko stood there for a moment, his mind buzzing. Who the hell was that? Someone bold enough to watch them, bold enough to call him, bold enough to know how to get his private number, but not bold enough to show their face. Could Sanzu be behind this? Nah, that wasn’t his style. Sanzu didn’t work through others. That was a coward's way to him. If he was going to threaten someone, he preferred to do it himself.But if it wasn’t him, then who was it? And what did they want?His stomach churned as he shoved his phone back into his pocket and turned toward her. Mira was still by the claw machine, clutching the plushie and grinning at it like a kid. The sight struck him in a way he couldn’t afford right now.He walked up to her, his steps quicker than usual. “We need to go,” he said curtly.Her smile faltered, confusion flashing across her face. “What? Why? Did something happen?”“Not here,” he said, voice clipped. His tone left no room for argument, and he could see her starting to bristle.“Koko, you’re freaking me out. What’s going on?”“Just trust me.” The words came out harsher than he intended, and he regretted it immediately. But he couldn’t stop the panic clawing up his spine, sinking into his bones. He needed to get her somewhere safe—now.Reluctantly, she nodded, following him out of the arcade. He kept her close, his hand hovering near her back as if ready to pull her out of harm’s way at any second.They arrived outside a nightclub fifteen tense minutes later. The neon sign above the door cast a harsh glow, and Mira looked up at it, wide-eyed. “You’re taking me clubbing?” she asked flatly. “No offense, but I’m a little night clubbed out after working in one.”“We’re not here to club. I need to grab something from my office.”“Your office. Then this is your club?” she asked, her voice tinged with surprise. “You mean I finally get to see this elusive office you’re always ducking away to? And here I was starting to think it was just a code word for a love hotel.”“Ha ha very funny. You really think I’m tasteless enough to bring a woman somewhere as tacky as a love hotel? As if I don't have the money for a real one.”“So is this a legit business or…a front for Bonten?” she asked as they stepped through the front doors. It was still early in the evening, so the place was quiet, a few staff moving about cleaning and prepping for the evening. Mira’s curiosity was palpable as she glanced around, but Koko was too keyed up to give her a tour. “Can’t it be both?”He led her upstairs to his office, unlocking the heavy door just past the desk of a young man who didn’t look like he could be any older than 18. He jumped to his feet at the site of Koko, immediately dropping into a full ninety-degree bow. “Kokonoi-sama.”Koko waved his hand. “Pretend I’m not here, Tamaki.” Then he held the door open for Mira before stepping inside himself.The office was nothing like Mira expected. When Koko had mentioned he owned a nightclub, she’d pictured something sleek, maybe even sterile—glass walls, chrome finishes, kind of like his house. Instead, the office was warm, almost cozy, with dark wood paneling, low lighting, and a massive desk cluttered with papers, a computer, and a half-empty ashtray. That was for Hanma, she had to assume.Mira hesitated in the doorway. “So…this is where the magic happens?”He ignored her attempt to lighten the mood, closing the door behind her and locking it, she noted.She obeyed, but her expression was tense. “Koko, what’s going on?”He didn’t answer, moving to the desk and pulling out his phone. He needed to figure out who the caller was, and fast. But as he sat down on the black leather couch in the center of the room, his eyes flicked to Mira. She was clutching the plushie, her knuckles white, and the sight made something twist in his chest.“What was that phone call about?”“Don’t worry about it. I just need to check something here really quick then we can go home.”“That’s not an answer,” she snapped, rising to her feet. “Who the hell was it?”Koko’s fingers paused over the keyboard for a fraction of a second, so briefly she almost missed it. When he spoke, his tone was clipped. “The less you know, the better.”Mira let out a short, incredulous laugh. “Right. Of course. God forbid you tell me anything.”His jaw tightened, but he didn’t respond. The silence only made her irritation boil over.“You know what? Forget I asked. You’re being an asshole.”That got his attention. Koko’s head snapped up, his eyes narrowing. “I’m being an asshole?”“Yeah, you are!” she fired back, stepping closer to the desk. “You’re always dodging my questions, acting like I don’t even deserve an explanation. In case forgot, it wasn't exactly my choice to be here.”He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Right. I’m such an asshole for taking you out, buying you dinner, winning you that stupid doll, and let's not forget, holding your hair back while you puked your guts out.”“Don’t—” she started, but he cut her off.“No, really, Mira. Poor you. I’m such a monster for giving a damn.”“You’re twisting this!” she shot back, her voice rising. “You act like everything you do for me is some kind of favor I didn’t ask for, and then you use it to shut me up anytime I push back.”He stood abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor as he towered over her. His voice dropped to a low growl, sharp and cold. “I didn’t have to save you.”“You’re right, you didn’t!” she hurled right back. “So why did you? Why didn’t you just let that pink-haired freak put a bullet between my eyes the second I tried to back out of that room? I’m sure you’ve seen him kill others for less. You wouldn’t have even had to get your hands dirty, seeing as I know you hate that.” Koko opened and closed his mouth like a fish, but no sound would come out. “Was it because you felt sorry for me? Or maybe because you thought I was cute enough that you could whore me out and make a quick buck on it?”That insult brought his voice back and he snapped, “Then why haven’t I? If it was my intention to sell you like a cheap whore then tell me why the fuck I’ve done anything and everything in my power to make you feel safe and welcome in my home, huh?”“Maybe you decided you’d rather have a new little trinket all to yourself. You do love owning things, after all. Why should I think I’m any different?” “God, would you shut the fuck up?!” Anger erupted from Koko's chest, setting his bones ablaze as he slammed his palm against the surface of his desk, which he didn’t fail to notice made her jump a tiny bit, much as he tried to seem unaffected. Then the last frayed ropes of self-restraint snapped and he surged forward with the speed of a coiled serpent, his lean but powerful hands snarling into the fabric of her waist and hauling her flush against his frame. Then all thought and thread of common sense utterly fucking abandonded him as he found himself leaning down to crash his lips into hers.She stiffened in shock, and just as she began to melt into the sensation, he pulled back an inch, not yielding control of the way he kept her body pulled against his. “You want to know why ? Well. So. Do. I,” he said, each word so razor sharp they sliced through the air around her. “Why would I, someone who only cares about making money, do something for someone that has not only not made me any money, but actively costs me it? If you had an answer that felt like anything close to the truth, I’d love to hear it because I don’t fucking know. ”The words slammed into her like a physical blow, sucking the air out of the room. For a moment, neither of them moved, the space between them charged with something raw and electric.“But I do know,” he continued, stepping somehow even closer, “that for the past two damn days, this is all I’ve been able to think about doing.”Before she could process his words, his hands were on her, one sliding around her waist, the other curling into her hair. His lips crashed into hers, and it was like a powder keg exploding.There had been a spark between them since the night of the plant operation—a dangerous, electric thing they both pretended wasn’t there. That night had been an act, a ruse to sell their cover. Sure, they’d gotten a little carried away at the moment, but it hadn’t been real.This, however, was very, very fucking real. No pretenses, no bullshit, no restraint.Mira’s hands found their way to his shirt, fisting the fabric as she pulled him closer. The kiss was hungry, messy, filled with all the things they hadn’t said and probably never would. He backed her up until she hit the edge of his desk, his hands gripping her hips as if afraid she might pull away.She didn’t want to. She couldn’t.Her fingers moved to his hair, tangling in the strands as she kissed him harder. Koko groaned against her mouth, the sound vibrating through her and sending a shiver down her spine. It was heady, overwhelming.Then a knock on the door shattered the heavy silence, but Koko didn’t so much as break rhythm for a second, completely ignoring the sound as he moved his head from her lips to her jaw, then down to the tender skin of her neck, his open mawing mouth emitting a wash of warm breath than sent shivers down her spine and right to her pelvis. But then the knock came again. Mira froze, her breath ragged. Koko pulled back slightly, his forehead resting against hers as he cursed under his breath.“The fuck is it, Tamaki?” he snapped to his young assistant, now poking his head through the cracked doorway, drawing his head away from her skin in an irritated jerk.“Kokonoi-sama, someone named Takemichi Hanagaki is here to see you,” a voice called through the door.“Tell him to fuck off,” he growled into Mira’s skin, where he’d once again found his mouth.“He insists it’s urgent, sir. Says he’ll sit out here all night if he has to.”They both froze for a minute, but then Koko pulled his lips away, cursing under his breath, “Goddamn persistent little cockroach. Never knows when to quit,” then raised his voice. “Fine, but tell him he has five minutes.” She knew which he would choose long before he did, but that didn't stop that sliver of disappointment that pierced her heart Koko’s hands tightened on her hips before he reluctantly let go, stepping back. His eyes met hers, dark and stormy, and it took everything in Mira not to pull him back in. He took another step back, this time fully separating from her body and, trying to still the tremor that rocked through his entire body, looked at her, at her swollen lips, her shining eyes, the tiny little bruise beginning to form just below her ear where he’d let himself lose control another degree. Fuck, why did his chest feel so tight? Not to mention his pants…But the one thing he knew was that he had to protect her, even from someone as seemingly harmless as Takemichi Hanegaki. “Dove, I hate to ask this of you, but I need you to wait in the closet.”She cocked a hand on her hip. “You’re kidding.”“Afraid not,” he said, grabbing her by the shoulders and steering her toward the coat closet behind his desk. “Look, it’s better if your presence stays as hidden and secret from other gangs as possible. I have enough on my plate protecting you from danger from the inside; I don’t need you in danger from the outside, too.”“Well sorry to be such an inconvenience to you.”“Look you can be a brat and throw a tantrum and cuss me out about this as much as you want later, but right now I am asking you to please get in the fucking closet and keep quiet.”And there was something so genuinely concerned and insistent in his expression that any icy anger she’d felt about the idea of keeping her in the dark—literally—melted. Just like that.Wordlessly, she let him push her in among the folds of tweed and silk and wool that smelled like vetiver and pine—just like he did, only minutes ago as he’d devoured her lips like a man starving. God, the scent was like a fucking drug with how completely it dissolved her will to fight.As he began closing the doors, he held her eyes through the narrowing opening. “And If you’re good, I might even make it up to you,” he purred before the last two inches of light disappeared and the door clicked shut. It felt like her lungs fell out of the bottom of her stomach at that implication. And without meaning to, she found herself picturing what it might be like to have his head between her thighs, to feel his long, delicate digits pushing inside–“This better be good, Hanagaki.” She was spared from having the time to let her imagination run further away with itself by Koko’s voice, only a little muffled by the layers of solid wood and coats.“Nice to see you, too, Koko-kun,” he muttered, a tad nervously it sounded like. Mira didn’t know who this guy was or how he could possibly be so important as to be able to address Koko so informally, not when he still sounded like a teenager who hadn’t fully made it through puberty. “Mikey’s gone off the rails, man. You know it, I know it, and now the whole gang world is starting to know it, and pretty soon, all of Tokyo is going to suffer for it.”“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”“Don’t play dumb. Bodies are piling up left and right. Mutilated, tortured corpses. And there’s only two people I can think of capable of doing that.”“You mean Sanzu and Hanma,” Koko sighed, boredom infused with his 'no-shit' tone.“Damn right. The old Mikey would never allow that. Would never allow his gang to do the kinds of awful shit Bonten is doing now.”“Am I supposed to care? I was never one of Mikey’s little playmates. Just because I was in the original Toman for about as long as it takes you to cum in your girlfriend, doesn’t mean I’m sentimental to the good old days like you and the founders are.”“Look, if you’re not willing to do it for Mikey’s sake then do it for Bonten. For the sake of keeping the peace. Because Brahman is back and on to it now. And we won’t be able to sit by for much longer. We don’t want to start this war, but we might not have a choice.”So this kid was with Brahman, huh? That was another name Mira knew, even if only in whispers about what they’d done in the past. Maybe this dweeby-sounding brat was a bit more than met the eye… er, ear.“What about me being a gangster makes you think I give a flying fuck about peace? And if Brahman’s so concerned, why are you here talking to me? Why isnh’t that bratty little bitch boss of yours here instead?”“Same reason I’m talking to you instead of Mikey. Look Koko-kun, I know there’s still a good guy buried in there. And I know Inupi believes it, too.”Inupi. Something about that word made the tone shift so dramatically, Mira could feel it in even the closet. “This meeting is over,” Koko said icily, pushing his palm down on his knee as he stood. “Koko-kun, just wait–”“Get the fuck out Hanagaki while you can still walk to do it.”Mira heard the door close, then waited a few long moments in heavy silence before the door to the closet opened from the outside to Koko standing before her, his face looking considerably more wane and thin than just moments before when it had been buried in her neck.“Don’t suppose there’s any chance you didn’t hear all that?”She sucked in an intentionally audible breath through her teeth. “About as much chance as Pink Boy and I have of becoming besties.”He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Then I need you to pretend you didn't.”She was quiet for a long moment. “Well…if there were to be something that was said which I definitely did not hear, would that something be true?”“Drop it,” he said, his voice measurably more threatening than the first time. “I’m not fucking around. If a rumor gets out—true or not—that Mikey is showing any signs of weakness, it’ll be a bloodbath.”“Sounds like it’s already on that path.”“Stay. Out. Of. It. I won’t ask nicely again.”“Jeez, that’s you asking nicely? I’d hate to hear what you not asking nicely sounds like.”“You want to find out?” His voice was lower now, filled with a decadent sort of darkness that practically sucked her body toward his. Yes. No. Yes…. No. No! Fuck, don’t go there, she scolded herself.“Look, I’m just worried, Hajime.” He froze at the sound of his first name. "If your leader is breaking down, aren't you in danger, too?"“Am I in danger? I'm a high-profile member of one of the most notorious gangs in Tokyo and single-handedly responsible for making a lot of people either really wealthy or really poor. Of course I'm in fucking danger. I’m always in danger. That's nothing new.”“If you're in danger, I'm in danger.”“That why you care so much? Self-preservation?” His voice sounded suddenly bitter. She gave a half-shrug, hoping it looked a lot more indifferent than the reality of her pounding heart. “Dove, I hate to break this to you, but you're in danger here all on your own.”She chewed the inside of her lip because he was right. And he didn't even know just how right he was. If he did, well, he might decide he agreed with Sanzu that she was far too much of a liability to keep around. "So is that why I'm your prisoner? Why he won't just call off his fucking guard dog? Because he's off his rocker?”Was that the only reason she cared? Because he was currently her only form of protection from Haruchiyo fucking Sanzu? Fuck, he hated that pink-haired prick. “That your only concern? Then how about I ship you off to America, give you enough money to start a luxurious new life over there? That’s the only way right now to get you out of harm’s way, so if that’s what you’re so concerned about here, say the word.” For offering something so generous, he sounded awfully acrid and hurt as he did so.“God you’re so frustrating,” she gritted to herself. “ I’m frustrating?!” he cried, carding his right hand through the long side of his hair. “If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle fucking black.”“Yeah, you’re frustrating because you’re too damn pig-headed to see that’s not even half the truth.” The angry downturn in his brow faltered for just a moment as they instead pinched in confusion. “Did it not even occur to you that I don’t want to see anything happen to you any more than you wanted to see something happen to me? That maybe I don’t know fucking why either? But I do know this. You’re an asshole, but you’re better than this, Hajime. You may be a criminal but you’re not a cold-blooded killer–”“You don’t know me,” he cut in, his voice barely more than a stoney whisper. “So stop talking like you have any fucking idea the kinds of shit I’ve done.”She took one slow step toward him. “I would if you’d tell me.”“You shouldn’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”Another step. “I’m not afraid of you, Hajime.”“Mira–”“I didn't ask to be in this situation, but If I’m stuck with you for the foreseeable future, then I want to know more about you. I want you to stop pushing me away. I want to stop feeling like a stranger in my own fucking life!” By now, they were standing toe to toe, her arms bent at a ninety-degree angle as they gently brushed the fabric of his suit sleeves. “Please.”He reached up, wrapped his hands around her wrists, and moved her hands back to her sides. “I've said it before. The less you know, the better—and that includes about me.”“Hajime–” She began, but he picked up the phone on his desk, hit one button, and spoke into the receiver. “Send a car around back. I’m taking Miss Nakamura home.”Well. That effectively ended that conversation. Like a cold shower to a boner.Which was exactly what both of them felt like they needed after it.The entire ride back, he was silent, leaning against the window opposite her and staring out at the streaks of headlights as if they held all the secrets of the universe.When the car pulled up to the front of his building, he got out and opened the door for her, his body stiff and formal as she passed. Only once she’d reached the front door of the building did Mira realize Koko wasn’t following her. Instead, he had slid back into the car but was staring after her with the door still open, like a guard dog faithfully waiting until she was safely inside the building.“Where are you going?”“Back to work,” he said, and the unspoken end to those three words made the night feel ten degrees colder.
The less you know the better.
The doorman ushered her inside, but still, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the tormented look on his face as he closed the car door and it drove off, disappearing all but for the blood-red taillights into the inky darkness.And he didn’t come home for three days.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Fuck Hajime Kokonoi.Fuck him and fuck his ridiculously sexy suits (that she really wanted to see off him for a change) and fuck his stupidly posh hair (that she just wanted to tangle her fingers in). Fuck his stupid earring (she wanted to nip as she nibbled on his earlobe), and fuck his stupid mouth (that she could NOT stop imagining fucking her). And more than anything, fuck him for not coming home for three fucking days and making her worry about him. Fuck fuck FUCK!Those were more or less the thoughts that streamed on an endless loop as Mira paced anxiously back and forth, back and forth. It was after 10 pm on the third day since she’d last seen Koko—even heard from him—and that had her anxiety ramped so high up, if there were any carpet in the place to speak of, she would have worn permanent tracks in it by now.They had kissed. Again. Then argued. Again. And then, just for a change of pace, argued some more—with some well-placed innuendos that still made her squeeze her thighs together when she thought about them.Finally, she surrendered to the idea that he was, yet again, not coming home and crawled into bed. Fucking prick. But her sleep was just as hopelessly restless as the rest of her. She laid there for what felt like hours, tossing back and forth, angstily throwing her pillow over top of her face as if it might be able to smother her thoughts, then throwing it off her entirely when the deprivation of air only made her more anxious. Back and forth she went until a sound outside stilled her as quickly and completely as death.She strained her ears, hearing a loud thump followed by a string of unintelligible words, sending her heart thundering through her body. She reached under the opposite pillow and pulled out the knife reliably stashed there—not a kitchen knife, but a real knife. A switchblade she deployed with a quick flip of her wrist. She’d found it the day after the meeting with Mikey, when changing the sheets on her bed, and she could only assume Koko had made the switch. But he hadn’t said anything and she didn’t ask.Quietly, she slipped from underneath the covers and stole to the door, opening it just a crack and peering out. Empty.Timidly, she opened the door. Nothing. She opened it wider, just wide enough to slip her slim body through and crept quietly down the hall, thankful for once for the utterly soundless marble floors. At the end of the hall, awash in a blue glow, she peered around the corner to see a figure sitting on the sofa, his back to her and his head silhouetted by the blue glow of the television, its sound turned so low she could barely hear it. But she’d recognize that shape of that hair anywhere.“Koko?” she called quietly, lowering the knife and tucking the blade back in on itself. When he didn’t answer, she stepped around the corner and rounded the couch.It was Koko, except…not. At least, it wasn’t any version of Koko she’d ever seen before. His jacket was off, slung haphazardly over the back of the sofa and the usually pristine white undershirt beneath it was so splattered and stained with blood, one might have thought him to be just wearing a red shirt. His face, too, was splattered in little drops of crimson, but even that wasn’t quite as horrifying as how gaunt and sallow his skin looked beneath it, even in the dim blue light. The rings below his closed eyes were dark as shadows, and his hair was greasy and matted with blood, especially visible on the white streaks.Slowly he opened his eyes, which looked dull and clouded, then blinked once, twice, as if trying to focus on who it was that stood before him. Finally, a small shred of recognition flickered through those dark hollow depths and he lifted his head from where it rested tiredly against the couch's back cushions. “You should be sleeping,” he said, in a voice so raspy it sounded as though he either hadn’t spoken for three days or had been screaming for the entirety of them. “Sorry’f I woke you.”“I was already awake,” Mira said quickly, unable to scrub out the panic that skittered through her bones at seeing him looking so disheveled, so completely and utterly fragile— like already fractured glass on the verge of shattering. “Jesus, what happened? Are you hurt?”“Not my blood.”“What do you mean…” She trailed off because she realized the question was incredibly stupid. Of course, she knew what that meant.“Told you. ‘M’no better than anyone else in the underworld. No better'n that fucking eraser head.” His head lolled backward again, eyes blinking slowly.“Are you drunk?”“Not nearly enough.”So yes. “Hajime…” she said, sitting on the sofa next to him, keeping a careful distance from this wild, dark version of the man she didn’t yet know.“Y’shouldn’t call me that. ‘Know I said you could but… ya shouldn’t.” His voice grew thicker as he spoke, suffused with so much pain—and something she couldn’t make out. Why did he sound so tormented? What had he seen over the last few days? What had he done?“What happened?” she asked again, more forcefully this time. At his silence, she clucked her tongue in irritation. “Let me guess… the less I know the better ? God, you’re so fucking predictable. You know what? Fine.” She slapped her hands on her thighs and stood. “If you want to brood like some bratty teenager, then be my guest. I’ll just go fuck myself.” Not literally. Well… maybe not? At least not right now, not while she was so unbelievably pissed at him. She shook her head, regretting her choice of words. “God I don’t know why I was losing sleep worrying about you. Not like you’d ever show me the same consideration.” She stormed away from the couch, rage pumping through her veins like liquid fire. She had been making herself sick with worry for three fucking days, and for what? For him to show back up unannounced, looking like he belonged on death’s door, and not even offer the vaguest of explanations as to why, or where he’d been?Let alone the tiniest hint of an apology.If she’d said it once, she’d said it a thousand times by that point: Fuck Hajime Kokonoi.Then a soft string of slurred words stopped her in her tracks. “Yer wrong. All I do is worry ‘bout you.” She froze at the mouth of the hallway, heart jumping into her throat. She clenched and unclenched her fists, drew in sharp breath through her nose, and turned around, stomping back over to the couch, and hauled him gruffly up by the arm.His limbs were leaden and heavy, but he didn’t fight her as she maneuvered him down the hall and into his bathroom and threw on the light. Koko winced, squinting his eyes against the sudden flood of light that stabbed through his retinas, which she used to her advantage to steer him into the shower, clothes and all, and threw on the water without so much as letting it warm up first. He lurched, body thunking into the frosted glass door as he tried to evade the cold stream. “Jesus, fuck! The hell, Mira?”Good, so he was still alive in there.She waited another moment for the water to finish warming, then stepped into the shower with him and fiddled with the knob to get the temperature just right. “Seriously, the hell are you doing? You’re getting soaked,” he mumbled in confusion. “Oh, how tragic,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she wagged her hands mockingly. “I’m not the Wicked Witch of the West, you know. A little water isn’t going to make me melt.” The way he was staring at her with that dark glean in his eye, however, well that just might make her do so.“Now shut up and strip.”He stared at her, a dumbfounded expression on his face, only blinking to clear the water from his eyes, running in pink rivulets as it slowly loosened and washed away the blood soaking every part of him. Except his soul. It couldn’t wash away that. Nothing could wash away that.“Ugh, you’re useless,” she muttered and began undoing the remaining bottom buttons on his shirt herself. Once she’d freed the last one, she peeled the wet fabric open and off his shoulders and arms, dropping the soaked bundle in the corner of the shower and turning her attention to the skin beneath. Skin… and muscle. Hard lines of corded muscle crested over his shoulders and cut down his chest, his arms, his abs…Oh, hell.Mira realized then that the most she’d ever seen of him was his forearms, even then on the only rare occasions where he shed his suit coat and rolled the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows. When hidden under clothes, his body looked taut but unimpressive, at least compared to all the other muscled out or tall, hulking giants she knew mostly made up the gang world. She’d just assumed he was the brains, not the brawn, but she realized now how perfectly capable he probably was in a fight, too. He may have been small in stature, but every part of him was built as solid as brick.Then she noticed something else she’d never had the luxury of seeing: a tattoo. A half-sleeve that started at his left elbow, bold black strokes of flame licking up his bicep and curling out across his collar bone, the tips ending just below where his collared shirts stopped to reveal the column of his throat.Koko wasn’t like pretty much all the other gangsters she’d met so far, who clearly had tattoos littering their whole bodies, snaking down their arms, poking up across their necks from the collar of their suits. Other than the small Bonten symbol on his scalp etched right in between two rows of hair, she hadn’t known he had any others. It wasn’t until she felt water dribbling into her mouth that she realized her jaw was hanging open a little. Snapping it shut, she began running a washcloth over his biceps, his collarbone, his chest, loosening any stubborn flakes of dried blood that clung there. If she just focused on square inch by square inch, things were fine.But if she focused on the whole package… woof. Neither of them needed that right now.Other than his knuckles, which seeped lines of red atop the stretched red and purple skin, at least there weren’t any wounds, which meant all that blood really hadn’t been his. That raised a whole host of questions on its own but for another time. For now, she would just focus on what was right in front of her, on raising those scarred, battered knuckles into the stream of water to wash out all the flecks of dirt and grime, sneaking a glance up to watch him try to conceal the wince as the hot water washed out the wounds. Once his left was done, she switched to his right, letting her fingers whisper along both sides of the lumpy scar that now decorated both the back and palm of his hand. A scar he’d gotten saving her. A scar he’d have forever…because of her.Finally, she turned off the shower and looked at him, only to find he was already staring, with eyes that were now not only alert but downright sparking with awareness—of him half naked, of her, basically as close to naked as possible while technically still being fully clothed.They were trained on her body, on where her t-shirt was plastered to her torso, and she was never more thankful in her life that the majority of the clothes she owned were black. But even still, she felt suddenly exposed with the way the wet fabric clung to every curve, every little feature down to her pebbled nipples in full rebellion against the cold chill penetrating the areas not currently awash under the warm stream of water, leaving little to the imagination.Feeling more a little panicked by the sudden vulnerability, she moved to open the door to the shower stall, only for Koko to move across the stall like lightning, roughly palming an outstretched hand against the wall between her and the door, caging her in with his body. His fingers were splayed wide, the middle joint bowed upward just a little as if he were trying to claw his nails into the black and white tiles.His long silver and black strands of hair hung like a curtain veiling his eyes, dripping water down on her face. But when he tilted his head up into the light, she could see the unraveling threads of restraint around the edges of his dark pupils, now blown to twice their normal size as they flickered between her eyes and her lips—like he was going to kiss her.
Oh no, you don’t get to kiss me, then fight with me and disappear for three damn days without so much as fucking word that you were even alive and then show back up and kiss me again. Abso-fucking-lutely not.
That was what she should have said, but instead, her voice was just gone, utterly crushed under the weighted intensity of his gaze and the terrifying, all-consuming realization that, despite all that, she wanted him to kiss her. In fact, in that one hopeless moment, she wanted nothing more than for him to close that last tortuous gap between them until she could feel his naked body against hers—feel his feverish skin burn into her own like a brand. She really was hopeless when it came to her taste in men. His head dipped lower, and it took everything Mira had not to surge up on her tiptoes and meet him halfway, but just as she felt the ghost of his lips against the skin of her cheek, his head drooped, forehead falling to rest against her shoulder as he drew in deep, strained breaths, each one washing a warm wave of air over the damp, chilling skin of her neck.She could feel him shaking, and she only wished she knew why. Was it the same reason she felt a tremor in her own bones, a potent, intoxicating cocktail of nerves and desire she felt anytime she was this near to him? Was it because of whatever shit he’d gone through for the last three days? Both? Neither?Part of her didn’t want to say anything, didn’t want to even shift her weight for fear of scaring him off, like a wild animal. But he looked like he was about to pass out, so she tilted her head down to whisper into his ear. “Come on. Let’s get you dried and into bed.”She led him out of the shower and draped one of his luxuriously fluffy towels over his head, ruffling it against the right side to absorb the water in the long parts of his hair, before wrapping another towel around herself. Then she led him to his room, dug out a pair of sweats and a clean t-shirt she found after searching several of the drawers—she had never actually seen what he slept in, since by the time he was up, he was already clad in a three-piece suit—but she figured he wasn’t in the state to be picky. “Put these on.”Then she vanished. Koko looked at the pile of clothes in his arms as if he didn’t know what they were for, then, mechanically, stripped off his pants and underwear and put on the clean, dry ones. Sweats…he couldn’t remember the last time he’d worn sweats. Usually, he worked all day, every day, so that all he had to do was take off his suit, collapse in bed naked, and do it all over again the next day. God, what he wouldn’t give to collapse in bed naked with her…A soft knock on the door mercifully scattered those dirty thoughts along with any shred of dignity he’d managed to maintain. “Are you decent?” No. “Yeah,” he yelped out around the fast-returning knot of desire in his throat. She entered, now wearing a loose pair of grey joggers and a boxy fit black cropped tank that more than showed off the pristine white skin of her stomach that sank between two, delicate hip bones protruding out from where her joggers sat low down on her hips.
Fuck, this woman…
And what was more, she seemed to have no idea the kind of effect she was having on him. She just gave him an easy smile and walked over to his bed as if that simple act did not make him so painfully hard he had to grit his teeth to bear it.She reached out for his hand and guided his body into the bed, pulling up the covers around him.“Get some sleep. I’ve seen dead bodies that look more alive than you right now. And, if you’re feeling generous, maybe you’ll actually be here when I wake up and we can have breakfast together.” She forced a smile, hoping he might return even the faintest glimmer of one, but he didn’t, just tucked his chin a little deeper into the covers.Just as she was about to turn and leave, a hand shot out and snagged her wrist. “Stay,” he said with the firmness of someone who was too accustomed to giving orders. But this wasn't an order, just a foolish request by a foolish, unstable, affection-starved man who softened and tried again. “Please. Just…stay. Just for tonight.”She cleared her throat. “Inviting me to your bed, now are you?” she said shakily, trying to diffuse the unbearably thick sexual tension with a joke, but he was dead serious when he answered.“Not to fuck,” he clarified. “Just…so I’m not alone with my thoughts right now. We can stay on our own sides if you want.” Every single word sounded like such a laborious feat that it made her own chest tighten—and for someone like Hajime Kokonoi who subsisted on pride and money, maybe casting one of those aside really was the most painful thing. “You know what? Forget I asked. It’s stupid.”She rolled her eyes and pulled her hands from his to circle around to the other side of the bed, throwing back the covers and crawling in, shimmying her body up against his back to ward off the chilling cool of the fresh silk sheets. And ward it off he did, with skin so searing hot she had to fight back a sigh as she curled one arm over the dip above his waist, matching the fetal curve of his body with her own and melted into him. It took a few minutes, but eventually, she felt him surrender and relax beneath her as well.And for the first time in three long nights, they both slept. Just…slept.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Koko woke up the next morning with something tickling his face and as he cracked his eyelids open to see what it was, the memories of the previous night came flooding back.
The blood on his hands, the look of abject terror that filled her eyes when she saw him as she’d sat on the sofa by his side, and of course, the way he’d brushed off her concerns as if they didn’t matter.
As if they didn’t always fucking matter to him.
He especially remembered the look of hurt that had flashed across her face before she got up and walked away, presumably to go back to bed because he was such a hopeless piece of shit. Good. That was absolutely for the best.
So he was beyond surprised when she reappeared within his frame of vision and wordlessly tugged him up and led him to the bathroom, threw him fully clothed into the shower, and stepped in after him.
The way her body had looked as the water soaked through the thin fabric of her sleep clothes….
Goddammit, he was instantly hard just thinking about it, so he was perhaps most surprised of all that he was able to fight the impulse that shuddered through his entire body—a carnal need to throw her up against the shower wall, to tear off those skimpy little sleep shorts of hers, to fuck her hard and rough until she could barely incoherently babble his name…then carry her to the bed and do it again and again.
He didn’t think he had that much self-restraint left in him, not after the shit he’d seen the last few days.
Not after the things he’d done.
It had been easy enough for Koko's tech connections to trace even the unknown number that had called him back to its source. It had been easier still for Hanma to track him and his friends down. They were nobodies, thugs for hire who worked with whoever was willing to pay them. No wonder they were sloppy and hadn’t covered their tracks well.
Koko wasn’t concerned about them; he was more concerned about whoever had hired them in the first place. And it wasn't enough to let Hanma handle it. Not this time. They'd made this personal first so he needed to make it very clear that no one fucked with Hajime Kokonoi.
Just because he wasn’t usually on the violent front lines of Bonten didn’t mean he couldn’t hold his own on it.
But how could he tell her that when she'd asked where he'd been?
He knew she was frustrated, sad, angry… lonely. Knew she felt like he didn’t trust her.
It was just…how the fuck could he look her in the eyes—in those dark grey eyes that reminded him of storm clouds, both in how soft and somehow still ominous they looked—and recount those kinds of horrors? How could he tell her that he’d spent the last few days cooped in a dank, blood-stained warehouse bending people until they broke?
How could he recount how he’d smashed each of their fingers with a ballpene hammer or how he’d held an electric sander to the blank patches of their skin until it wore away then taken handfuls of rock salt to smear across the angry, gaping wound?
Over and over.
Until the screams started to sound like white noise, no different than the dull roar of traffic or the television.
Right from the beginning, she hadn't been afraid of him. She had never looked at him the way other people did, and maybe that was why he'd felt so drawn to her. But he definitely knew he couldn’t bear the thought of her seeing him as the monster he was. Hell, he didn’t like seeing himself in that light. That was why he usually wasn’t the one to get his hands dirty with such matters—at least not literally. He paid Hanma handsomely for precisely that reason and he could tell that Hanma was just as confused when Koko had insisted he stay for the part he usually happily turned his back to.
But he had to know who was behind all this. How much they knew—about him, and more importantly, about
her
. Idle threats like that weren't Brahman’s style. Was it South Terano and the rest of the psychos in Rokuhara Tandai? Or was Hanagaki right and Mikey was more off the rails than he’d thought and was now working through other people to put a stop to what he saw as a threat?
Whoever it was was obviously terrifying enough for the group of thugs he’d captured to prefer enduring days and days of torture rather than talk.
It wasn’t until one of the men bit his tongue off and Koko watched as he sputtered and finally drowned in his own blood that he’d finally broken down, throwing a chair across the warehouse and smashing his knuckles into the wall in frustration. That was when Hanma had stepped in and sent him home.
“This ain’t your game, Koko. Know when to fold and walk away,” he’d told him before promising he’d do what he could with the remaining three guys and clean up.
But Koko hadn’t gone home. Instead, he'd gone to his club. No one there questioned why he was covered in blood. No one so much as mentioned it. No one dared.
And there, he'd thrown back so many shots back to back that he didn’t actually remember how long he stayed or when he finally did go home.
All he remembered was that she was the reason he had. That the desire to see her, to hear her voice, to fucking smell her (as batshit insane as he knew that made him sound) was what had finally made him drag himself off the barstool and stagger down the neon-drenched streets of Tokyo back to his suite.
He hadn't gone home to act on those impulses. He just…needed to be near her. Needed to be in the same space she occupied. Nothing more.
It was bad enough that his resolve had finally cratered at the very end when he asked her in such a pathetic little voice to stay. He may not have invited her into his bed in his first imagining of the phrase, but he’d still done so nonetheless.
But he had needed it.
Needed her warm body to ground him, to remind him she was still alive—here, with him—that there was a reason for all this godforsaken carnage.
It was selfish of him, but if there was one indelible, infallible truth about Hajime Kokonoi that every gangster in Tokyo knew, it was that he was a selfish, greedy bastard.
As it was, it was taking everything he had not to give in further, to resist the palpable temptation to dip his head just a little further down and bury his face into the back of her neck, breathing in the scent that he knew clung there, a scent he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since that night in the club when he’d first smelled it. For a brief moment, he gratified his fantasies, imagining himself kissing her there, imagining her instinctively responding to his touch by tilting her chin upward and stretching out her neck just a little to give him greater access to continue kissing down the taught, sinewed column that stretched from her jaw to the point of her shoulder where her oversized t-shirt had slipped off.
He imagined her slowly waking as he did it, rolling over in his arms and, with a sleepy smile on her face, returning the kiss, pulling his body on top of hers, canting her hips upward to press her pelvis into the bulge between his legs…
Fuck, he really should get up—before he was either stupid enough to try to make that fantasy a reality, or before she woke and read too much into the tightness with which he cradled her into his chest. Before she could blink open her eyelids and give those sleepy bedroom eyes that might tempt him into making this more than a one-time thing.
He couldn’t allow himself to do that, no matter how much he wanted it. He’d already lost his control too many times around her and with each one, it felt harder to rein his selfish impulses back in.
A slamming door reeled Koko out of his spiral of shameful desire and self-loathing, and he quickly untangled himself from her body to reach for the gun on his bedside table.
“Yoohoo! Anybody home?”
Goddammit. Hanma.
He set the gun back on the nightstand.
“That Hanma? W’times’it?” Mira muttered sleepily, stirring as he fully extricated himself from the bed.
“Still early. Stay here and sleep for a bit,” he said, his voice still thick and raspy with sleep himself. “I’ll deal with him.”
He grabbed a fresh pinstripe black suit off the hanger in his closet, quickly dipped into the bathroom to dress and fix his hair, and then left the bedroom, forcing himself not to turn back and look at her as he left the room.
Feeling the sudden absence of Koko’s warm body beside her, Mira stirred. Her mind drifted in that hazy space between sleep and wakefulness, thoughts sluggishly weaving through the remnants of her dreams. It had been so nice, lying there with him. She hadn’t slept that well in years—no tossing, no turning, just deep, uninterrupted rest. The kind of sleep she thought she’d forgotten how to have.
Hajime.
His name echoed softly in her mind. He’d told her not to call him that anymore, but the more she thought about that, the more she wanted to. There was something so satisfying about saying it, like sneaking a bite of dessert before dinner. A private indulgence. The way his face tensed, a flicker of something unreadable in his dark eyes when she said it—well, that only made it sweeter.
Hajime.
Beginning.
And in many ways, he was exactly that. Another beginning of hers in a life chock full of them.
How fucking poetic.
Mira was used to new beginnings. It felt that was all she’d ever done. Start beginnings without bothering with an ending for what came before. Her life was like a dozen novels, each missing their needed sequel. But this time, it felt different and she didn’t know why.
Or maybe she did and just refused to admit it to herself.
But then the drowsy fog in her mind began to clear, and reality set in with the abruptness of cold water. Her eyes snapped open, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings. Koko’s bed. She was in Koko’s bed. Hajime Kokonoi’s bed, of all places. And Hanma was out there in the living room.
Panic rose like a tide. She needed to get up. She shouldn’t be here. Not like this.
Throwing off the covers, she scrambled to her feet, trying to make as little noise as possible. Cracking it open just enough to peek through to make sure Hanma wouldn’t see her leaving his room rather than her own, she heard the unmistakable voices of Koko and Hanma, their conversation laced with the usual sharp barbs.
“Nice suit, Kokonoi. Did you dress up just for me?” Hanma’s voice was a singsong mockery as per usual. Sometimes she wondered if the man ran on batteries.
“You know, that joke is just as unfunny as the first time you told it to me,” Koko shot back coolly. “And every time since.”
Mira slipped out into the living room without bothering to greet either of them, trying to act cool and collected as if she hadn’t just left
Hajime Kokonoi’s fucking bed
.
She needed coffee—desperately. Thankfully, the espresso machine on the counter gleamed like a beacon of salvation and Koko and Hanma were in the living room, not in her way of reaching it.
Slipping past silent and fiddling with the buttons, she managed to start a shot brewing, the warm aroma already calming her nerves a little. She kept her back to the living room, hoping neither of them would acknowledge her just yet.
Still, the low hum of their bickering buzzed in her ears as she waited for her coffee.
“So, who’s the unlucky victim you dragged here last night?” Hanma asked in a tone dripping with faux curiosity. “Usually you’re up and at’em by this time, so I can only assume you have a pretty little bed bug squirreled away in there.”
“Mind your own business,” Koko said flatly.
Mira’s fingers tightened on the edge of the counter. She took a deep breath, willing herself to keep her cool. The coffee machine beeped, and she grabbed her cup, taking a slow sip. The warmth spread through her, grounding her.
She turned, finally facing them, giving them a tight-lipped smile over the rim of her coffee mug. “Good morning,” she said, her voice steadier than she expected.
Two pairs of eyes turned to her, one mildly amused, the other unreadable.
“Morning,” Hanma replied with a sly grin, his gaze flicking between her and Koko, reading the unspoken tension that may as well have been a brick fucking wall with how obvious and practically tangible it was. “Oh? How interesting.”
Koko’s expression didn’t change, but there was a subtle twitch in his jaw.
Mira took another sip of coffee, trying not to cringe at how it scaled her mouth. But at least that was some form of distraction from the way her heart hammered in her chest. “Well as fun as your company is bright and early in the morning, I’m going to go take a shower.”
“What, you need another shower already?” The words left Koko’s mouth on impulse and he immediately regretted them—if not for the toothy smile Hanma was now giving him then certainly for the way she turned around and just looked at him with a bright, piercing look that made half-hard under the table.
“Don’t make assumptions!” she snapped when Hanma started snickering. “That’s not what he meant. Tell him that’s not what you meant,” she ordered Koko. When he stayed silent she cocked a hand on her hip at Hanma. “He was a fucking mess when he got home last night. I only helped him clean the blood off so he didn’t crawl in bed like that.”
Hanma whistled. “Kinky.”
“Oh fuck off,” she scoffed, taking her mug of coffee and stomping back to her room muttering something about it being too early for this shit.
“Hey I don’t kink shame!” he called as she brushed past him, holding up his hands in defense, his glasses glinting in the light as he lifted his head a bit to smirk at Koko. “After all, I’m the last person in the world who has any right to judge on that front.”
Koko grimaced. Having seen the sort of shit that entertained him, he didn’t even want to so much as begin to imagine what Hanma’s kinks were.
When he pulled his eyes away from the empty wake she'd left behind, Hanma was staring at him, a wide, wicked grin splitting his face.
“Not a goddamn word, Hanma.”
“So you finally fucked her?” he asked after a brief pause to make certain she was gone, as casually as if he were asking about the weather.
“What about ‘not a goddamn word’ was confusing to you?” But finally, he surrendered to the weighted, devilishly disbelieving stare Hanma was giving him. “No," Koko bit out, his voice as tight as his pants after that little shower comment and all the memories it brought back. "And I'm not going to.”
“Tsk. Damn shame. Pretty little thing like prancing around here in a top like that and you haven't laid a hand on her? Might start thinkin' all the rumors are true,” he said in that sing-songy voice that made Koko want to punch him.
"What rumors?"
"Oh, you know... that you prefer balls to boobs.”
"Jesus," Koko scoffed. "What are we, fucking teenagers again?" Koko was well aware of the things people said about him, especially back in the day when he was attached to Inupi like a magnet to metal. It didn't help, of course, that he'd never bothered to contradict them on the matter or set the record straight—in every meaning of the word. Besides, what was he supposed to say? I don't want to fuck Inupi but I did want to fuck his older sister who he just happens to look a lot like? So alike that I once kissed him and pretended it was her? That wouldn't have exactly helped his case.
He frowned thinking of Akane.
"Look, I don't give a fuck what people think or say about me. Won't change the fact that they all want what I can get them. Besides, it's poor form to mix business and pleasure, you know that.”
"That all she is to you? Business?" Hanma arched an eyebrow condescendingly as if he were calling a bluff. "'Cuz last I checked, you went against the
business
the second you interfered and saved her. Business would have been letting Sanzu carve up that pretty porcelain skin of hers with that overcompensating-for-something knife of his."
Koko couldn't deny that. “Alright, Hanma is there a point to this visit?”
“There have to be a point to visit with a friend?”
“You don’t have friends. And if you did, I sure as shit wouldn't be one of them.”
He placed one large inked hand on his chest in mock injury. "You're hurtin’ my feelings here."
"Boo hoo. Cry me a river, then cut the shit and tell me why you're here. Have you learned something?"
"Maaayyybeee..."
"Hanma," Koko warned, his voice lowering.
“Have you two had…
the talk
?”
“The talk? Like is she on birth control because I told you, nothing is going–”
“No, I meant the talk as in the dreaded ex talk.” At Koko’s blank look, he went on. “I couldn’t find a whole lot on her family, other than that her dad died about four years ago, but I did find something else you might find interesting. Do you happen to know who our little dove’s ex-boyfriend is?”
“No, I don’t. We haven’t exactly had a slumber party where we gossip about all our exes.” He waggled his hands in the air dramatically. “Why does that matter?”
“It matters,” he paused dramatically, a roguish grin playing on his handsome face, “Because his name is Souya Nase. And from what I hear, he ain’t too thrilled about his ex now being sighted with Bonten.”
The world hollowed out around Koko. Souya Nase? The leader of Kitsune West?
“You’re fucking with me.”
Hanma gave him a wry half smile and shook his head. “I wish I could make up shit half this good to ruffle those little feathers of yours.”
Shit. Shit shit
shit.
If that was true, it was really fucking bad. Kitsune West controlled everything from the outskirts to Tokyo all the way out to Kyoto and just because their paths didn’t cross that often with Bonten’s, didn’t mean Koko wasn’t acutely aware of how fucking dangerous that gang was.
It would certainly explain the threatening phone call—and why one of the men he’d tortured would just as soon drown in his own blood than talk. If Nase found out he’d betrayed them, it would certainly be much worse than whatever hell Koko was capable of throwing them into.
“Where the hell did you learn that? Can you trust the source?”
“I got a few acquaintances who owed me a little favor for not ripping their guts out a while back inside Kitsune West. And they know if they lie to me I’ll be sure to go back and rectify that mistake. ‘Sides… I did my own looking through some old records, security footage, shit like that, and they definitely used to be together.”
“When?” he asked, trying to keep his voice calm, which was really fucking hard considering the hot rage that boiled in his chest, threatening to spill over and bleed all over every part of the way he acted.
“Is that jealousy I’m hearin’ in your voice?”
“
When
, Hanma?” His voice cracked through the room like a whip, and even Hanma’s spine stiffened ever-so-slightly.
“About a year ago now, so don’t worry. You’re not her sloppy seconds or shit like that.”
“If they broke up a year ago, why does he suddenly care?”
“‘Cuz it wasn’t exactly mutual. She ran away. Changed her last name and everything as far as I can tell, then laid low. He’s only now just caught her trail. She didn’t give him a choice in the matter and Nase wasn’t too happy about losing something he saw as his.”
“She’s not his,” Koko bit out, steadily clenching and unclenching his fists beneath the table.
“Doesn’t matter if she is or ain’t. It only matters what he thinks and from what I’ve been told, he don’t like anyone touching anything that is or ever was his. One of them
if I can’t have her no one can
type of fuckers. He’d rather see her dead than living free, let alone in our hands.”
“So why is this the first time we’re hearing of this? Why hasn’t he been tearing up Tokyo looking? That's what I'd expect given what we know about him.”
“You really think Nase wants it known that he let something slip through those razor-sharp claws of his?”
Half of Nase’s power lay in his unhinged reputation alone. The other half in the fact that his maniacal actions actually merited it.
“No, I suppose not.”
Hanma tossed a manilla envelope on the table between them. “That’s everything I could find on her. Have to admit, she did a pretty good job of scrubbing out available information on herself.”
Koko looked at him skeptically, before pulling out a slim stack of papers with some basic files on her: a copy of her birth certificate—reading not Mira Nakamura, but Mira Kuroda—some basic school records, college transcripts written in English, and a handful of CCTV footage captured as photographs. The first was dated 2020 and the woman in it was Mira without a doubt, but she looked happy. Even through the grainy, grey-washed lens, he could see the brightness in her eyes as she was looking at a tall man with hair as black as a crow’s and piercing eyes. Koko had no idea what Nase looked like—few people did, from what he’d heard—but he knew in an instant that was him. Even through the photo, he could see the cruelty and bloodlust secreted away behind that stare.
The next photo’s timestamp placed it two years later, in 2022, and Mira’s eyes no longer looked bright and happy. Instead, they looked scared. Nase’s grip on her had gone from a gentle hand at the small of her back to a vice-like grasp around her forearm as he apparently forced her along somewhere.
The last one was dated 2023—just over a year ago, so it couldn’t have been taken long before she left. This one made Koko’s stomach plummet to the lowest point yet because in it, her eyes held nothing. No joy, no fear, no anger, just…nothing. A hollow and hopeless void that made something in Koko’s chest crumble as he stared at it.
Unable to keep his angry, nervous energy confined to the chair anymore, he stood and started pacing the length of the kitchen.
Souya Nase.
Of all the people she could have fucked in her past, why did one of them have to be Souya fucking Nase? The shit he did to maintain control over his huge territory made Sanzu look like a fucking Care Bear.
He now wondered if the spike in bodies Takemichi had mentioned to him had anything to do with that. He wasn’t an idiot—he knew violence in and by Bonten was escalating, but if all of it wasn’t actually them? The recent instances certainly matched Kitsune's ostentatiously cruel style.
Aside from how downright infuriating the thought of Souya Nase getting his filthy hands on Mira was, there was also the larger picture to consider. If Mikey thought harboring Mira might bring the whole of Kitsune West down on their heads and start a very, very messy war, he likely wouldn’t continue to entertain Koko’s protection deal. If it meant keeping their territory secure, he’d sell her out in a heartbeat.
And what the fuck was Koko supposed to do then?
“Goddammit,” he muttered, continuing his laps.
“Shit, you really got it bad for her, don’t you?” Hanma said with a lazy smile. “Didn’t think I’d ever see the day when Hajime Kokonoi cared for anything outside his bank account.”
“Fuck off, Hanma.”
“Why do people keep telling me that? Here I’m being nice and sharing all this information with you and you’re bein’ rude. Tsk tsk. That ain’t the proper way to treat your business partners, now is it?” Koko just threw him a rude gesture. ”All I’m saying is you better start watching your back as well as hers. Because as big and brassy as the balls on Sanzu are, he won’t cannibalize his own. Nase, however, won’t hesitate to chew you up and spit you out.”
“Find out everything you can about him. Track his movements. I want to know his habits, his patterns, his officers, his friends, his places of business. But keep it elusive. The last thing we need is for him to know we’re on to him. Or for word to get back to Mikey.”
“Soundin’ like a lot of work there, boss man. Especially since Nase is a bit of a ghost. He never makes an appearance personally. My little rats inside don’t even know where he holes up.”
“It wasn’t a request,” Koko said coldly. “And Hanma, I know you practically subsist on the chaos you create, but do me a favor and don’t mention this to her just yet. Not until we know more.”
“Wouldn’t dream of depriving you of the pleasure of that task, boss, though I would pay money to be around for that conversation,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.
“Don’t call me boss,” he sighed tiredly.
Just then, Mira emerged from the hallway, her hair tied up in a white towel and wearing a pale grey sweater large enough that it slouched off her right shoulder. Koko quickly shoved the files back into the envelope and dropped it into his briefcase. She halted, eyes flickering back and forth between the two. “Jeez, what’d I miss? I can practically feel the tension in here. You two in the middle of breaking up or something?”
Amusement flashed through Hanma’s eyes. “Nah. Just playing a little guessing game about whether you’re a thong or cheeky-cut panty kind of gal. He ain’t too amused if you can’t tell.”
“You’re a pig,” she said flatly.
“Just call me Babe.♡” She pretended to gag when he winked at her. “Anyway, I got places to be. People to maim. You know…the usual. See you later, sweetness. Try not to wet those little panties of yours too much thinkin’ ‘bout me in the meantime.”
She flipped him off as he passed her down the hall, but even then she couldn’t fully scrub the grin off her face.
Once the door had clicked shut behind him, she turned to Koko, who was rubbing his temples, his eyes squinted shut at the headache he felt clanging through his skull. As if being hungover and dealing with Hanma’s constant headache of an ass wasn’t bad enough, now there was this.
“Sorry about him,” he murmured.
“Hm. I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it, but I kinda like him.”
“Don’t ever tell him or anyone else that. His ego is inflated enough and anyone else will commit you to an insane asylum.”
“What, don’t you like him?” she asked, sitting down at the table across from him.
“I don’t like anybody. Least of all him. Nobody
likes
Shuji Hanma.”
“Riiight…That’s why he's the only other Bonten member I've seen coming around here on the regular.”
“He's useful.”
“You're totally frenemies.”
He stuck his tongue out of his mouth at an angle at her, which made her giggle, a sound that, just for a moment, lifted the crushing weight in his head. A reminder of the reason why he was enduring all this.
“Just because he’s lesser of all the available evils, doesn’t mean he’s not still evil,” he said, rising with a stretch. “You'd do well to remember that.”
But as much as Koko hated to admit it, he was immensely glad to have Hanma on his side, now more than ever. Because even amidst Bonten, there weren’t a lot of people willing to break the peace on such a cataclysmic fucking scale as it would mean going to war with Kitsune.
But not Hanma. He thrived on violence—got off on the prospect of laying his life on the line to prove he was the strongest. If an unwinnable war was what it came to, he knew Hanma would still stand by his side, if for no other reason than to satisfy his selfish need to revel in the carnage.
He reached for his briefcase and took two steps toward the hallways before pausing and turning back, noticing how hard she was staring at the now second mug of coffee cupped in her hands. “Hey.” She looked up. “I promise I’ll be back tonight. I’ll even pick up dinner. What do you want?”
She blinked at him in surprise, before a timid smile broke across her face. Typical. Only food could make her grin like that. “Yadoroku. I haven’t had their onigiri in forever.”
“Right, Yadoroku it is then. See you tonight,” he said gruffly, trying not to feel flustered at her smile as he retreated down the hallway and out the door, sagging against the elevator wall as the floors dinged past.
What the fuck have you gotten yourself into, Kokonoi?
Koko had meant to get work done at his office—work he’d neglected over the last week while he was busy torturing people—but in reality, all he’d really managed to accomplish was to drive himself more up the wall with all the fucking unknowns about Mira and her past with Souya Nase.
He let out a frustrated sigh, pressing the palms of his hands into his eyes. Maybe she wasn’t exactly
in
the gang world like he was, but she was certainly a lot more adjacent to it than he'd previously thought.
Which made this already fucked-up situation a whole lot more fucking complicated than it already was.
The files and photographs Hanma had given him were spread out across his desk, along with what little other information he’d managed to dig from his files on Kitsune West. Mostly grim news stories of the carnage they left wherever they went. Bodies tortured and carved up then burnt and left in obscene positions in public places. Real fucked up shit that leaped far beyond lines even Sanzu and Hanma didn’t cross.
And not just foes either. Seemingly innocent people. Women, teenagers, even one eight-year-old kid.
But it wasn’t those stories his eyes kept gravitating back to; it was the photos of her. Especially the first one, the one where she was smiling so big and carefree as she looked up at Nase’s laughably handsome face—annoyingly apparent even in the shitty quality of the CCTV captures—like he was the entire sky above her.
He’d never, not once, seen her smile quite like that. Was that because he hadn’t earned it? Or had Nase just broken her of that ability altogether? And what exactly had he done to cause such a radical transformation in just a couple of years?
A violent, cold rage snaked through his insides, wrapping its slimy tendrils around his lungs and squeezing until it felt like a great effort to draw any breath at all.
I don’t trust anyone.
It all made so much more sense now: her absolutely depressing apartment, the fact that she owned practically nothing, the lack of friends and family, the fact that she’d surrendered her entire life to come to live with him relatively easily—attitude aside—and why she hadn’t told him jack shit about her past.
She probably assumed that if he knew, he’d toss her out on the street to be dealt with by Sanzu. And he could hardly blame her. No sane person would want to position themselves in between Nase and his prey.
But then again, Koko wasn’t quite sure he qualified as sane these days.
A knock on the door startled Koko out of the mired dredges of his thoughts and he quickly swept all the files into the top drawer on his desk. “What is it?”
“Kokonoi-sama, someone is here to see you on business.”
Donning the mask of indifference he had become so used to wearing, he couldn’t actually tell how much of a mask it was anymore, he straightened. He swept the photos together and tucked them underneath the open ledger on his desk, before leaning back into his chair and attempting to look casual as he wagged two fingers to let him in.
But when he saw the bubble gum pink hair walk through the doorway, that look melted into a scowl. “The fuck do you want?”
“Is that any way to treat a valued colleague?”
“Heh, valued,” he purred condescendingly.
The corner of Sanzu’s lips curled into something between a smile and a sneer. “Careful, Koko. I might start thinking you don’t like me.”
He leaned forward, setting his elbows on the edge of his desk and hunching over them in a predatory kind of way. “That would be a real tragedy, wouldn’t it?”
“Hm, tragedy, indeed. Speaking of, how’s our little dove doing in her cage, by the way? Started plucking her own feathers in boredom yet?”
“Why are you here?” Koko ground out, infusing every ounce of no-bullshit possible into his tone as possible. If there was one thing he certainly was not in the mood for, it was to humor Sanzu’s sick little head games—especially any that involved Mira.
“Ah, all business as usual, then. You’re never any fun,” Sanzu said with a dramatic sigh, plopping down in the seat across from his desk. “I’m here because I need all your information and payment records on these five businesses.” He slid a piece of paper across the smooth, mahogany finish. “Mikey’s orders.”
“Payment records? Since when has Mikey cared about that kind of shit?”
“Since when has it been your fucking business to question what Mikey cares about?” Sanzu fired back icily.
Koko narrowed his eyes at Sanzu, before reluctantly picking up the piece of paper and typing the names on his computer. All of them showed up in the red—overdue on their protection payments.
But that wasn’t really a cause of concern. They ran protection for hundreds, nearing thousands, of businesses across Tokyo. It—along with drugs, which was the Haitani’s domain—was how they funded most of what they did, without getting into less savory pursuits like prostitution and human trafficking—which as far as Koko was aware, was a line they still hadn’t crossed.
And with such a massive client base, it wasn’t unusual for a number of them to fall behind on payments. In fact, that was largely the kind of shit Koko had Hanma out taking care of.
But what was odd about all this was that Sanzu and Mikey never took much interest in it. They trusted Koko to do his job so that they could focus on the larger picture stuff—so why were they asking now about something as petty as a missed protection payment?
“Why the sudden interest?”
“Maybe I wasn’t clear enough before…not your fuckin’ business, Kokonoi.”
“If they’re behind on protection payments, it is quite literally my business,” Koko said, choosing his words carefully, each one reinforced with steel.
“Your balls have grown pretty big as of late. I’d be careful they don’t lead you to get hung up on something. Be a real shame if we had to waste your looks by turning you into a eunuch,” he said, smiling cruelly. Koko was sure Sanzu would love the opportunity to chop his balls off, but for now, he knew it was all gusto. Whatever degree of insubordination he’d displayed toward Mikey since that night when he’d first met Mira still paled in comparison to his own worth, and he knew it.
Sanzu did, too, which was probably why he acted like such a complete dickhead toward Koko.
Koko clicked a few things and the printer whirred to life, spitting out page after page of all the data Koko had, then handed the stack over the Sanzu. “If that’s all, I’ll kindly ask you to get the fuck out so I can get back to work.”
Sanzu’s smile didn’t falter as he stood slowly and stretched his arms high above his head, making a show of how little he cared for Koko’s urgency to get him out, but as he finally reached the door, he looked back over his shoulder. “Tell the little dove I said hi.”
Koko raised his hand in a rude gesture, but Sanzu was already gone.
Fucker.
But he had bigger concerns than him now. Much bigger.
Starting with the fact that Mikey was poking his nose into a realm he never did.
Koko turned back to his computer screen and clicked on a few filters on his spreadsheets, and sure enough. There were nearly a hundred businesses across those they worked with that had missed their last month’s payment—so why the interest in these five? At first glance, they didn’t seem to share much in common. An insurance company, a small-time brokerage firm, a used car lot, a dental office, and a chiropractor. What was the common thread?
An idea occurred to him and his fingers flew back to the keyboard, pulling up a map and typing in each of the locations before slumping back in his chair at the results. All of them were in Sugimani—right on the border of Bonten’s and Kitsune West’s territories.
Shit
.
It might be a coincidence, but what were the odds? And if it was Kitsune edging into their turf, was it just an inevitability of their ever-expanding reach, or was it because they knew Mira was with them now?
And the fact that Sanzu and Mikey had picked up on the connection left Koko with a sinking feeling in his gut. Like his insides were being sucked down by quicksand. He had to keep her safe—he’d promised her that much. If he couldn't make her happy or give her back the life that had been taken away from her, he could at least make sure she didn’t lose any more of it.
Even if it killed him, he absolutely would not let Souya Nase get his hands on her ever again.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Setting an absolute record for himself, Koko had come home at a reasonable hour every night for the last three, each one carrying a different bag of requested take-out. It was refreshing, really, not to spend the evenings stress or sadness eating all alone over yet another mindless binge of whatever anime or K-drama or shitty Japanese reality show had sucked out part of her brain that day.Yet despite his newfound effort to actually be there physically, Mira couldn’t help but feel like he was still somewhere far away in his mind. She could sense it in the sometimes hollow, distracted way he would half-respond to her conversation and in the distant look in his eyes that were for some reason fixed on her more often than not, staring at her with a look constantly brimming with some unspoken question she couldn’t decipher.Like he was doing right then, his cheek resting on his propped up first, head angled to the right to stare at her. “What, do I have something on my face?” she asked, self-consciously raising a napkin to her lips.They were eating takoyaki, sitting cross-legged at the coffee table rather than the dining table, as they had done for the last two nights. “I know you eat there while I’m gone anyway,” he’d told her with a resigned sigh as he set the takeout on the low table the first night he’d come home with it. When she gave him an innocent, puzzled look, he said, “You’re not really that good at cleaning up after yourself.”“Yeah well, what kind of rich person cleans his own house? Shouldn’t you be able to hire a housekeeper for that?”“Then it wouldn’t get done how I like,” he’d said matter-of-factly, sticking his tongue at her.She loved it when he did that, because it was such a rare instance of complete normalcy. Seeing him cast off the cool guy gangster act to do something as childish as stick his tongue out…something about it just made her heart flip.He shook his head, as if pulling himself back from the outer reaches of his mind. “Nah, just wondering how someone can eat like that and still look the way you do.”She felt heat rise to her cheeks at the implication hidden shallowly behind his blase tone."I missed the boat on a lot of physical genetics…” She shoved another bite in her mouth, mumbling over the mass of fried dough and octopus, “buh ‘least ag‘ood ‘etabolism wudn’t one.”She finished shoveling down the rest of her dinner, eating at least twice as much as Koko did, who found his appetite considerably lacking those days—at least his appetite for food, anyway.When she set her chopsticks down with a clatter on the marble tabletop, she rose, clapping her hands together as she made for the kitchen.“Alright, time for ice cream!”“You are a bottomless pit.”“Make sure you write that on my gravestone once Sanzu kills me,” she called, head buried in the freezer for a few moments before triumphantly pulling out a tub of hojicha ice cream. She returned with the tub and spoon, popping the lid off and stabbing the spoon down into the light green cream.“You're going to eat straight from the tub?“Of course. Unless it's on a cone, this is the correct way to eat ice cream," she said, shoving a bite in her mouth to prove a point, mumbling around it, "’can gedyu 'nother spoon'fyouwan?" "Don't talk with your mouth full.” He plucked it out of mouth and placed it in the tub, scooping up a big bite of ice cream and holding it poised in front of his lips. "And don't bother. Not like we haven't let our mouths get far more personal than this before." Then, meeting her eyes and with a degree of deliberation that made it feel like someone had dropped a heat pack in between the space of her crossed legs, placed the bite in his mouth.Maybe he hadn’t meant to say that out loud, because she didn’t miss the tinge of pink that dusted his cheeks as he swallowed, her eyes following the way his adam’s apple bobbed with the motion.God, did being around her make him feel the same way? Did he want her like she wanted him?Come to think of it, he’d never brought anyone home with him in all the weeks she'd been living there. From what she’d gathered from passing comments from Hanma, she knew it wasn’t like he was some celibate saint or anything. Was he depriving himself just because she was there, unceremoniously crashing his lifestyle? Or was he getting his fix at love hotels any time he left for days at a time? These were paths she found her mind wandering down far more often than she’d like to admit during the long, dull days she spent by herself.“You know…it’s not like you have to refrain from bringing people home. You’re a guy. You have needs. I get it.”“The fuck are you on about?” he mumbled, swallowing a spoonful of ice cream.“I’ve been here for, what, two months now? Thereabouts? You don’t have to refrain from what…usual nightly activities you enjoy just because I’m here. I am an adult and I’ve had roommates before.”He cleared his throat and handed her the spoon back after taking another bite. “Trust me, dove, if there was anyone else I wanted to bring back here, your presence wouldn’t stop me. But there's not, so just drop it.”Anyone else . Him and those damn linguistic subtleties that made the world go hollow and silent around her, save for the thundering of her heart that filled the space around her with an almost visceral pulsing. She might have believed a less intelligent person to use them by accident—but not Koko. She was far too precise and intentional of a person to say anything he didn't intend to.“I don't understand. Why–”“Why I do or choose not to do things isn't your concern.” Then he pushed himself up with a low groan, collecting the dishes and carrying them to the sink. “You should get to bed,” he huffed, his voice sounding noticeably off. Okay. Dismissed. Got it , she mentally muttered to herself as she, too, found her feet and stalked off to her room huffing a quick "thanks for dinner” that didn't sound all that grateful. But she refused to say goodnight.Especially when it was far from a good night.Mira went to bed feeling more energized from her agitation than she'd been all day, laying awake and staring at the ceiling as her thoughts swirled in a drainless pool—around and around and around. Thoughts about Hajime Kokonoi.He drove her mad. He drove her wild.He was completely infuriating.He was infatuating.And half the time she had no idea if she wanted to flog him or fuck him. Like tonight when he'd gone from being so warm to colder than the ice cream they'd devoured together—from the same spoon. Fuuuuccckkkk. She slammed the pillow over her head, a feeble attempt to drown out the thoughts that cycled on the most maddeningly repetitive loop—like a broken record that kept skipping back just before the best part of the song. But with every day, it was getting harder and harder to silence those incessant whispers that there was something far more complex taking root between them.How long would this last? How long could it? Before one of them finally cracked under the pressure. How long could they stay dancing on what was clearly the crumbling edge of more?The only problem was, that if they made that leap, there wouldn’t be anything to catch them on the other side. And neither of them knew just how high the ledge they were standing on was, or how far from it they'd fall. Surely too far to claw back out.This was the sort of thing she tried not to think about, because in a lot of ways, she was happy now—at least happier than she could remember being in a very long time. Her life was easy. She didn't have to work, didn't have to worry about bills, didn’t have to look over her shoulder for him every five minutes. The rarely going out part wasn't even so bad, especially when Koko was actually around and spent time with her.But it was also those moments that reminded her why she couldn't get used to it all. As much as some moments—like earlier just that night—made her feel like she could stay there, living like that forever, she knew she couldn't. Because that was all there would and could ever be for them—and it wasn't enough. Because it hurt too fucking much to vacillate between gratifying those fantasies and being acutely aware of the fact that she and Koko held no future together. Playing house was still just playing—even if one enjoyed the game.In another life, she thought, she could have seen herself falling in love with Hajime Kokonoi. But not this one. Not this blood and violence-drenched world neither of them would likely ever escape from, at least not until that violence was finally turned on them. Death was the only real release from this kind of life.The sooner they were free of each other, the better. That was at least what she told herself to quell the strangely nauseating ache that filled her chest every time she thought about the prospect of never seeing him again.The sooner the better, indeed. Mira woke with a start, her breath strangled painfully in her throat as a silent scream tore at her chest. The dream had been so vivid: his twisted smile, the metallic tang of blood in the air, the weight of his hand gripping her throat like a vice. She shot upright, her damp hair clinging to her neck, and pressed a trembling hand to her chest, trying to slow the frantic rhythm of her heart.The room was dark, quiet except for the faint hum of the fan. But the echoes of her nightmare lingered, sharp and suffocating, as though Souya’s shadow had followed her into waking life yet again. She rubbed her eyes, willing the images to fade, but as usual, they clung stubbornly. It was far from the first time she’d had that nightmare but it was the first time in a long while—since she’d come to Koko’s, in fact. Ironically enough, being there made her feel safe, far safer than she’d felt in that shitty little apartment with its dinky locks for the last year. And certainly far safer than she’d felt for the years before that one.Her mouth was dry, her throat raw, and the need for water finally pushed her out of bed. The cold floor beneath her bare feet was a shock, grounding her as she tiptoed toward the kitchen. She didn’t want to wake Koko, but as she passed the hall outside his room, a muffled sound stopped her in her tracks.She froze, her heart thudding. Voices? No—just one. Koko’s. Low and guttural, the sound seeped through the door, curling into her ears and sending an unwelcome flush of heat to her cheeks. “Akane.”Mira’s mind raced. He had someone in there. Of course, he did. She’d just given him permission to do that very thing.So why did it feel like acid was suddenly eroding away at her veins?Her better judgment begged her to keep walking. It was none of her business, how he spent his nights or who he spent them with. But curiosity burned like acid in her veins, hot and bubbling, as a strange sensation rose in her chest, tightening around her lungs and making it hard to breathe.Jealousy.She shook her head, angry at herself for a feeling she had no right to, and pressed her palm flat against the cool wood of the door, just for a moment. The sound came again, softer this time, and before she could stop herself, her fingers curled around the knob. Slowly, as if moving through water, she turned it and cracked the door open, just wide enough to see inside…And see she’d been totally off-base.There was only one figure in the bed, tangled in the sheets. His lean, muscular limbs thrashed wildly, his damp hair plastered to his forehead, and his bare chest heaved with ragged breaths. The soft neon glow from the surrounding high-rises pouring in the window cast shadows across his sharp jaw and furrowed brow. She recognized the sheets instantly—silken, faintly scented with sandalwood. The same sheets she’d rested in this morning, comforted by the warmth he’d left behind.Then she heard him muttering.No, not muttering. Moaning.“Akane,” he rasped, his voice breaking on the name. “Akane, don’t go. Please. I’ll earn the money. I swear. Just hang on a little longer. Please…”Mira’s heart twisted at the raw desperation in his tone. Who was Akane? The name was unfamiliar, but the pain lacing it was unmistakable. She couldn’t stand to see him like this—not Koko, who always seemed so untouchable, so unshakable.Before she could think better of it, she slipped into the room and stopped by his bedside. Her fingers hovered over his flushed face before she finally placed her hand gently on his cheek. His skin burned under her touch, feverish and clammy.“Koko,” she whispered, her voice soft but firm. “Wake up.”His eyes shot open, wild and unfocused. In an instant, he moved, snatching the gun from its faithful resting place on his nightstand and placing the cold barrel soundly against her head.Mira’s breath hitched, her entire body locking. Koko’s chest heaved as he stared at her, his dark eyes slowly clearing as recognition set in. “Mira?” His voice was a growl, rough and raw. Then, realizing himself, he lowered the gun with a panicked jerk, letting it drop from his shaking hands and onto the bed. “Are you trying to get yourself fucking killed?!” he snapped, his voice cracking. “What the hell are you doing here?”Mira swallowed hard, her pulse still hammering in her ears. “You were having a nightmare,” she said quietly. “I heard you from outside and I just… I thought I could help.”Koko stared at her, his expression unreadable. For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the labored rise and fall of his breaths. Then he reached up, dragging a hand through his damp hair.“Don’t do that again,” he muttered, his voice low but less harsh. “I could’ve…” He trailed off, his gaze dropping to the gun on the bed.“You didn’t,” Mira said softly, her eyes searching his. “You wouldn’t”.Before he could argue, Mira stood, her resolve settling like a warm weight in her chest. Without asking, she peeled back the edge of the sheet and climbed into the bed beside him. Koko stiffened immediately, his entire body going taut.“What the hell are you doing?” His voice wasn’t unkind, but the tension in it was unmistakable.Mira didn’t look at him. Instead, she eased herself under the covers, turning to face him, her movements deliberately slow. “I know when I have nightmares,” she began softly, “All I can think about is how much I wish someone—anyone—would hold me. So that’s what I’m doing for you.”“You don’t have to,” he said at last, his voice rough like sandpaper.“I know,” she whispered, then rested her head against his shoulder, feeling the warmth radiating from the bare skin of his chest, and began humming a soft, low tune, filling to space with a calm that wrapped around them both like a cocoon.“What’s that?” Koko’s voice was quieter now, almost hesitant.“A song my dad used to sing to me when I had bad dreams,” she murmured. “I don’t know what it’s called. Just that it always made me feel safe.”For a moment, Koko didn’t respond. His breathing was still heavy, but the erratic edge was softening. Mira dared a glance at him, and her heart ached at the vulnerability etched into his face.“Not your mom?”A pause as Akane drew in a breath that felt both too deep and too shallow. “My mom died in childbirth.”The rising and falling motion of his chest beneath stalled for a moment as the breath lodged in his throat. He finally said, “I’m sorry.”She scoffed. “Why? Did you kill her?” The words came out sounding even more bitter than they tasted. “Sorry, I’ve just always hated that that’s our default as humans when we don't know what else to say in the face of something that makes us uncomfortable. It’s illogical and stupid in the context of death. Besides, not like I ever knew her. Hard to mourn someone you've never met.”“But you can mourn the loss of something you never had.”She supposed that was true, but this whole line of questioning was putting her on edge. So far, she hadn’t told Koko anything about her past—and despite how angry she was about him shutting her out, she knew deep down she had no right to complain for that very reason. This felt…dangerous. Because if she told him about her mom, she might tell him about her dad, which meant she might tell him about what happened to him, and where it all led her…“Who’s Akane?” she asked suddenly, hoping to redirect the questioning off her own life. A beat.“Where do you know that name?”“You were moaning it in your sleep. That’s how I heard you. At first, I thought you had a woman in here with you but then…” she trailed off, recalling the bone-chilling level of agony in the word as he’d apologized over and over.Another beat. “Just someone from another life. Someone I failed to save.”Him and his vague non-answers. But still…any possible angry response she might have had lodged itself tightly in her throat at the note of torment in his eerily quiet voice. There was something about the haze of memory that clouded his shining eyes that, even in the darkness, said there was a story behind that—a big one. But this didn’t feel like a matter that she should needle into with sarcasm and jokes like she usually did. After a long, pregnant pause, she rolled over, nesting her body against his side.“Is that why you saved me? Why you keep saving me? As some kind of atonement for that?”He punctuated the thick, stifling darkness with a humorless laugh. “Fuck if I know. Maybe.” After a long pause he asked, “What do you have nightmares about?” The question felt loaded, but with what, she couldn’t quite tell. She hesitated. How much was too much to admit here? Was any of it too close to everything she was hiding?“You’re not the only one with a past you’re running from.” A piece of the truth, one as small and frustratingly vague as he'd given her. And finally, his body followed hers, one arm settling around her as he slotted his body against the fetal curve of her own.And slowly, she felt the drawn bowstring that was Koko’s body relax, the tension in her own releasing with it as she melted into his warmth, surrendering to how damn nice it felt to be held again. They lay there together, letting the silence slowly lull them back to sleep, but just before the darkness fully closed around Mira’s conscious mind, she could have swore she felt his lips press into the back of her skull and a whisper half muffled by hair and pillow that said, “I’ll keep doing it. I’ll keep saving you no matter what.”Mira couldn't say how long they slept like that... until a great BANG sounded from somewhere else in the apartment.“What’s going on? Who’s here?” Mira muttered sleepily as she sat upright. Koko was already on his feet, hastily pulling on a t-shirt. “Don’t know.” Best case scenario, it was Hanma, drunk or high and looking for mischief. Worst case scenario, well, he took up the handgun he kept on his bedside table and opened the top drawer, pulling out one more.He pulled back the slide to check for a bullet in the chamber, flicked off the safety, then folded the gun into her hand. “You know how to use one of these?” he asked, his voice hushed.She looked at him blearily, eyes still sleepy, but nodded. “Point and shoot, right?”He nodded. “Preferably not at yourself. Or me. Or the oven.”“Thank you, oh wise Koko-sensei.”“Is no situation too serious for your fucking wisecracks?” he whispered, tucking an extra magazine for his gun into the waistband of his sweats, then stole quietly across the room to the door. As Mira tried to follow him, he put out an arm. “Stay here. No matter what you hear out there, you do not leave this fucking room, got it? And if anybody that’s not me comes through that door, you shoot first and ask questions later.” Even though he was whispering, the words rang as loudly in her head as if he’d yelled them. Then he was gone, out the door, and vanished into the darkness. Mira stood beside the bed, her feet feeling as though they were physically rooted into the polished hardwood.Her fingers twisted tighter around the cold metal handle of the gun, and she was thankful for the textured grip—considering her palms felt so sweaty she swore she was going to drop it.As she stood there waiting in the heavy, damn-near-suffocated silence, time ceased to have any meaning. Had it been 30 seconds? Three minutes? When did she go to see if Koko was okay?Then a gunshot cleaved the thick vacuum of space around her in two and before Mira could even think about what she was doing ro recall Koko’s strict orders to stay put, she was out the door and sprinting down the hall toward the living room, her heart hammering so loudly she swore it might drown out any other sound. "Koko?" she called, her voice trembling and small. She skidded to a stop, her eyes catching on a crumpled figure sprawled on the floor. Her breath caught in her throat.
No. No, no, no.
She forced herself forward, her knees feeling as though they might buckle with every step. The light from the city outside cast a pale glow over the room, just enough for her to see the body clearly. But as she got closer, her heart skipped. The man was too big, far too broad-shouldered to be Koko.Relief barely had time to take root before an arm snaked around her from behind, yanking her backward. Cold metal pressed against her temple, and her entire body went rigid.“Don’t move,” a gruff voice hissed in her ear.Her breaths came shallow and fast, panic spreading through her veins like wildfire. “Let me go!” she shouted, trying to twist away, but the man’s grip was ironclad.“Mira.”Her name, spoken low and calm, froze her more effectively than the gun against her head. She turned her eyes toward the voice and saw Koko standing in the doorway to his office, his own gun trained steadily on them.“I’d be very careful where you point that gun, Bonten bitch. Wouldn’t want to accidentally shoot our lovely little lady here, now, wouldya?” His rotten breath washed down her neck as he spoke.“Little dove,” Koko breathed, his tone unnervingly steady, his gaze sharp and unyielding. “I need you to hold real still for me, alright?”
Wait, what?
But before she could protest, before she could even comprehend his words, a gunshot cracked through the air. Her ears rang painfully, and she felt the man’s grip loosen and then fall away completely.She stumbled forward, catching herself on the back of the couch, her knees threatening to give out. When she turned, the man who’d held her was on the ground, blood pooling beneath him.But then her gaze snapped back to the other body—the one she’d thought was dead.The man was moving. Slowly, painfully, but moving. His bloodied hand clutched a knife as he staggered to his feet, his eyes burning with a dangerous determination. Before Mira could shout a warning, he threw himself forward, crashing into Koko.They went down in a chaotic blur, the knife slashing wildly as they grappled. Mira froze, her mind a mess of fear and adrenaline. Koko twisted to block the blade, but the man’s sheer size and desperation gave him an edge.Suddenly remembering the gun that was still grasped in her right hand, she raised it, her hands shaking violently as she tried to aim. For a moment, Mira couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t move.“Koko!” she cried, her voice breaking.He didn’t answer. The two of them were still locked in a brutal struggle, and she knew this was her only chance.Her finger hovered over the trigger, and she sucked in a breath, praying she wouldn’t hit him—before the sound of her gunshot tore the room in two.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Her bullet had struck true, right in the back of his skull, shattering apart the bone in a spray of blood and brain matter that now splattered the elegant white marble of the floor.
“I killed him,” she whispered, as Koko shoved the heap of bloody, dead weight from atop his legs and stood.
Something in his face softened as he looked at her, and a flash of pain whispered across his features as the wild adrenaline-crazed look faded from his eyes. Lowering his voice, he took the gun from her trembling hands and set it on the table, then pulled her into his chest.
“If you hadn’t, he probably would have killed me,” he muttered into her hair. “For whatever it’s worth, thank you.”
Mira realized Koko was probably saying that to comfort her thinking she was in shock over what she had done—that she hadn’t ever taken a life.
How shocked would he be to learn that simply wasn’t true?
It wasn’t that she hadn’t killed anyone. It was just that she had never really realized how goddamn easy it could be to take a life. To snuff out someone’s entire existence with no more effort than it took to turn on an oven.
The last—and only other—man she’d killed when she had finally made her escape from Souya, she’d done so with a ballpoint pen, driving the blunt plastic tip through layers of sinewed muscle that ran down the side of the neck until it stuck itself in his jugular. She could still feel the crunch of it, feel the effort the swing of her arm had cost her.
But this? This hadn’t felt like taking a life at all—and that was even more frightening.
After a moment that felt both too long and not long enough in his arms, he finally let her go, moving his hand to brace on her shoulders as he looked her up and down.
“Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head, and a visible wave of relief crossed his face. Fuck, if she hadn't come to check on him when she’d heard him having him. If she hadn’t insisted on staying. If he hadn’t allowed her to…
He felt sick. He stilled the tremor in his hands as he let go of her shoulders, then grabbed his cell phone and punched the screen a few times, then held it to his ear. “Yes, I know what time it is,” he snapped. “Get your ass over here now. Bring the Haitani brothers.” He hung up without waiting for a reply, since there was only one possible one that he’d accept anyway.
She looked down at the two corpses. “Do you know them? Are they with Bonten?”
“No, I don't recognize them. Which could mean Sanzu hired some gun thugs from the outside, but I doubt it. He gave his word that he wouldn’t hurt you as long as you were with me or in my house.”
She scoffed. “Yeah, because he strikes me as the type to honor his word.”
“He will,” Koko said solemnly. Catching the look of disbelief that crossed her face, he went on. “Look, gang morals may be fucked up by regular people standards but even we have a code. Agreements and treaties are to be honored, and if Sanzu broke his, even Mikey would back me on that.”
She snorted as if she still didn’t believe him. “Well, if Sanzu didn’t do this, then who would?”
He turned to face her for the first time since he’d let her go.
“Mind making us some coffee while I go clean up?” he said, nodding down at his blood-splattered bare chest. “I think it’s time we have a talk.”
A talk? She had just had her life threatened by two hulking beasts with guns—and killed one of them with her own two hands—and yet something the way he said it sent a shiver of fear deeper down her spine than anything else that had happened that rather eventful evening.
A talk
almost never meant anything good.
But she got the feeling they were going to have this talk whether she wanted it or not, so she wordlessly did as he asked, methodically grinding up the beans to a fine dust, tamping them down, and locking the portafilter into the espresso machine.
By the time she topped both mugs with piping hot water, Koko had already changed into a black button-down shirt and grey suit pants and was waiting for her at the table, his hands folded together in front of him.
She set his coffee down, then took her own seat at the far end of the table opposite him.
After a pregnant pause, he took an audible breath and uttered two words that made Mira’s blood run completely cold. “Souya Nase.”
Her jaw tightened, her pulse jumping into her throat so violently it ached. "What about him?"
“You know who I’m talking about then.”
“What. About. Him," she repeated more firmly, not a question but a demand this time. Her heart was accelerating, her skin breaking out in a cold, clammy sweat that made her feel too hot and too cold all at once.
"Is it true that you used to be his girlfriend?”
She fought the urge to scoff as an acidic geyser disgust rose up her gullet. Girlfriend, fuck toy, punching bag, belonging…they all meant the same thing to Souya.
“Where did you hear that?” she whispered.
“So it’s true.”
She couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Not him, not now, not
ever
.
He’d ruined her life once before. He
would not
ruin it again.
But the fact that Koko was asking about him in the aftermath of what had just transpired likely meant that he was trying; that all the hell she had gone through getting away had been for fucking
nothing
.
“Hey.” Koko’s voice hauled her thoughts back from where they were circling the drain. There was no harshness, no judgment, no note of rebuke in it, and she looked up to find he’d risen and now knelt next to her chair. It wasn’t until he laid a steady hand over the one she’d fisted into the fabric of her lap that she realized how much she was shaking. "Tell me what happened."
“I…” Her mouth felt dry and she took a sip of coffee as if it might help, but all it did was add to the bitter, acrid taste of bile that clung to her tongue.
What happened?
How the fuck could she even begin to answer that question?
As if sensing the overwhelming enormity of it all, he squeezed her hand and said quietly, “You don’t have to tell me everything. But I do need to know why and how things ended between you two.”
She swallowed thickly and took a deep steadying breath, staring down at their layered hands, unable to look him in the eye. “Souya Nase is a monster in human skin.”
Albeit very sexy human skin, which was why she’d found herself in that mess in the first place. She didn’t say that part to Koko.
“I’m aware of his reputation. How’d you end up in that situation?”
She let out a single exhale of a humorless laugh. “How does any woman end up in an abusive relationship? He starts off sweet, and then when he starts to do things that aren’t so sweet, they say, ‘It’s just a one-time thing. It won’t happen again.”
Mira had always thought women who stayed in abusive relationships were fucking morons for allowing it to get that far—until she became one herself and realized how easy of a trap it was to fall into.
“I didn’t even know he was a gangster at first, but by the time I realized the kind of man I was dealing with, it was too late. Shit, it would have been too late had I realized it on our first date. Once Souya gets his claws into something, he doesn’t let go. He will tear that thing to bloody ribbons before that.”
“So how did you get away?” His thumb was now scaling the mountains and valleys of her knuckles, rubbing soft, soothing lines across her skin.
“I sacrificed everything—my life, my friends, anything I had left that he hadn’t already taken—and I ran. Changed my last name, cut and dyed my hair, then came to Tokyo and tried to disappear. Where better to do that than a city with a population of almost 40 million? Why do you think I just accepted giving up my life to come here and live with you so easily? Because I had already long given up anything I had to care about and the life you saw when I came here was just the one I had to adopt to survive.”
He nodded slowly, as if she’d only confirmed something he knew all along. How long
had
he known anyway?
“So you definitely think it’s them, then? Not Sanzu?”
He nodded. “Hanma has ears everywhere, and a little birdie told him that they’ve figured out you’re in Tokyo. So unless there’s some third party that wants to see you dead that you haven’t seen fit to disclose to me yet...”
“Does the third-grade teacher who I put a live frog in their desk drawer count?”
“Unbelievable,” he said, in a breathy, pinched voice. “You just survived a kidnapping attempt from someone that apparently scares even you and here you are still making jokes.”
She shrugged. “We all have our copes. I like to think of my indomitable sense of humor as my only redeeming quality.” Koko didn’t say anything for a long time and Mira was too scared to look up from where her gaze was fixed on their stacked hands.
“Why didn't you just tell me all this?”
“Why do you think?” she snapped, finally looking up, and instantly regretted the venom behind the words as soon as she saw the hurt flare briefly across his face. "Look, Souya is one of the most formidable and terrifying men in Japan—if not THE most. You seem to know that. There’s not a goddamn gangster in all of Japan that doesn’t. Most people wouldn't want to touch someone he's looking for with a ten foot pole and it's not exactly like I blame them."
"You thought I would sell you out?” he flared softly. “Hand you over to someone who clearly made your life hell? Abandon you and run away with my tail between my legs like a fucking
coward
?"
She sighed and looked at her lap again, not wanting to see the look on his face at what she was going to say next. Because no matter what way he reacted to it, she knew it would hurt. "If I'm being honest, I'm still not sure you won't. I would if I were you. Self-preservation and cowardice aren’t always the same thing.”
“Do you remember what I asked you on your second day here? After I saved you from Sanzu for the second time?”
She thought back. “You asked if I trusted that you wouldn’t let anyone touch me.”
"Look at me and fucking listen because I'm not going to say this again.” As he said it, he took her chin between his fingers, tilting her head up firmly to look at him. “That promise wasn’t made with any kind of caveat about who it was good for. I said I would protect you, and I will—even if it means from Souya fucking Nase, got it?”
“Will Mikey feel the same way?”
“Fuck Mikey,” he hissed venomously. “This isn’t his business.”
Her throat suddenly felt tight and tears prickled behind her eyes. “Hajime, I–”
She was spared having to dislodge some kind of choking response from behind the sobs she was barely keeping caged in her throat by the sound of the door opening. She jumped, but Koko squeezed her hand as he stood. “Relax, it’s just Hanma.”
And sure enough, seconds later, Hanma strolled casually into the living room, trailed by the even taller and leaner figure of Ran Haitani, Rindou following just on his older brother’s heels. They surveyed the scene, muttered something between themselves and went back out.
“Damn, looks like I missed out on all the fun,” Hanma said, adjusting his glasses as he surveyed the scene. Then his eyes shifted to Mira. “How ya doing, princess?” he said, arching an eyebrow her way.
“Well considering my ex-boyfriend just sent two men to kill or kidnap me—which one is yet to be decided—one of whom I had to then kill, just peachy.”
Hanma stepped on a gangly pinstripe-clad leg over the body in the living room, then the other. “
You
shot him?" he asked, sounding surprised and, if she wasn't mistaken, a touch impressed. She nodded. "Atta girl."
And for some reason, her heart swelled at that. Sure, she'd just killed a man, but on the bright side, Shuji goddamn Hanma was proud of her for it. She mentally smacked her forehead at how fucked up every part of that was.
“And you told her about Nase without letting me be here to watch? And I thought we were friends.”
“Not like these two bozos left me much choice,” he said nodding to the bodies. “Also no we aren’t.”
“And just how long have
you
known?” Mira shot accusingly at Hanma.
“Babe, I'm the one that told
him
.”
“Since when?”
He looked at Koko. “What, a few days ago? A week? Something like that. The days tend to blur together in this line of work.”
“And you didn't tell me you knew?
“He's my boss, not you.”
Koko massaged his temples. “I’m not your boss. Would you quit telling people that? You'll soil my reputation.”
“Hate to break it to you, my monochromatic tiger, but your reputation ain't so spotless as is.”
“Exactly, which is why I don't need people thinking all the crazy shit you do is on my order. I have enough trouble on my hands as is right now,” he said, glancing quickly to Mira before dropping his eyes back to the blood-splattered white marble floor.
Mira cut in with an irritated cluck of her tongue. "As adorable as it is watching you two bicker like an old married couple, can we stay on task and figure out what the fuck we're going to do now that my psycho ex knows where I am?!"
"Now don't go gettin' all hysterical on us," Hanma drawled lazily, walking over and throwing an arm around her shoulders. "Ain't nothin to worry about with me here to protect ya."
She picked up his arm and removed it from her shoulder, unceremoniously dropping it back at his side. "No offense but you have no idea the kind of stuff Souya is capable of. You think you're tough shit? Him and his men—which make up nothing less than a small army, by the way—will destroy you and everyone you love."
"That sounds like a challenge," he said, his eyes twinkling with dark mischief. "Lucky I don't love anyone."
“I’m warning you, Hanma. Souya is
not
to be taken lightly.” How could she possibly impress upon them exactly how dangerous he was? They hadn’t lived through what she had, hadn’t seen the kinds of things she had. They only knew the rumors, the reputation, but as bad that was, it was still nowhere near as bad as the reality.
“Relax, toots. Just let us handle this and you keep standing there looking pretty.”
“That’s not–” she started, looking desperately at Koko but Hanma cut her off.
“Yo Koko. Let me move in here.”
“What?” His pinpoint eyes narrowed ever further. “No fucking way.”
“Aw, ya upset 'cuz I didn't ask you to marry me before asking to move in together? And here I thought ya were a modern man.“
“Hanma, I am reeeeaally not in the mood for your shitty jokes,” he said darkly.
“Or maybe you’re just mad ‘cuz then you won't get the pretty princess all to yourself.”
A precipitous current of threatening energy rolled off Koko’s body as he took a single step toward Hanma. ”I won't say it again.”
“Or maybe–” Mira would never know what Hanma was going to say, because Koko had crossed the room as fast as a crack of lightning and had Hanma slammed against the wall behind him faster than Mira could blink.
"Stop fucking around," he seethed, tightening the hand already fisted in the collar of his shirt. "This is serious—gang war inciting level serious—and if you can't treat it as such, then get the fuck out right now."
"You sure you want to kick out the only ally you have? That don't seem like a smart
business
decision,” he said cockily, the taunt practically tangible in his tone.
This time, anger snapped through Mira. Here she was still shaking not even an hour after an assassination attempt, and they were arguing like children. "Alright, that's enough, both of you!" She stomped over to the pair and yanked Koko’s hand from Hanma’s shirt, wedging her body in between the two. "If we're going to start fighting amongst ourselves then
I'll
be the one to get the fuck out. I’d rather just take my chances on the street against Souya's men than here with you two dipshits."
"Don’t forget Sanzu."
“Ah yes, how could I have forgotten about the OTHER PERSON THAT WANTS TO KILL ME? So can you two stop measuring dicks for five minutes so we can maybe focus on that very big, very pressing problem?”
Neither of them said anything, looking away and nodding submissively just as the Haitanis walked in, now carrying two folded blue tarps and a black duffle bag.
“Good. Now Hanma, why did you ask to move in here?”
“Tch. S'only logical, ain't it? So there's always someone here protecting you. When he can't be here, I can and vice versa. Come on, Koko, don't be so pigheaded. You clearly need more security now. Did ya even stop to think about where the fuck your guys downstairs were tonight? Probably paid to be elsewhere by someone with deeper pockets than even you. If–” he glanced warily where the Haitanis were hauling the first body into the tarp and lowered his voice, “y
ou know who
is behind this, you can't trust anyone and you know it.”
"How do I know I can trust you?" Mira didn't jump down this throat because it didn't actually sound like he was trying to start an argument. The gravity of his tone said he very much wanted—no, needed—to know the answer. “You just said I can’t trust anyone, so how do I know you aren’t included in that?”
"You don’t but ya really think I'd give up the chance to take on the guys of Kitsune West for what, making an enemy of your pussy ass? You know me better than that. And 'sides. I happen to like the little lady's company and it would be a damn shame if I didn't get to enjoy it for much longer. She’s a hell of a lot more fun than you are.”
If Mira had been less shaken, she might have smiled at that, but before she had to respond, Hanma strolled down the hall, muttering something about checking out his new digs.
Koko took the brief reprieve from his overbearing presence to pick up with the gun he’d taken from her earlier and hand it back to her. “I want you to hang on to this. In case this shit happens again.”
“First you didn’t even want me to have a kitchen knife and now you’re giving me a gun?”
“Well this might end up being my fatal mistake, and please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m at least fairly certain you’re not going to shoot me in my sleep by now.”
She gave him a mock contemplative look, trying to suppress the grin that tugged at the edges of her lips. “Maybe. Can I at least shoot Hanma if he gets too mouthy? Or handsy?”
“Only if I’m here to witness it.”
“I heard that, you shits,” Hanma’s voice came from down the hallway, moments before he reappeared at its dark mouth. “Though if that’s what turns you on, doll, I’ll try anything twice,” he said with a wink.
“You’re an asshole,” she replied, matching his sing-songy tone.
“From the A to the E, babe.”
Mira rolled her eyes and stood. “Aannnd with that, I think I’m going to go take a shower. Play nice, you two,” she said, patting Hanma’s shoulder as she brushed by him to retreat to her room, careful to step over the pool of blood now congealing into a sticky mess on the floor. The Haitanis had just left with the bodies, but they hadn’t gotten around to cleaning up that part yet.
“Hanma,” Koko began somberly once he heard the shower turn on. “If this little fucked up arrangement is going to work, there’s going to be some ground rules.”
Hanma’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead as if to say,
go on.
“Number one: no smoking inside. You want to do that shit, there’s a balcony right fucking there.” He pointed emphatically at the large windowed wall, to which Hanma rolled his eyes. “Number two. You don’t lay a hand on Mira.”
“Yeah, yeah don’t worry. I may be a shameless flirt but I ain’t trying to steal your girl.”
“Number three–”
“Should I be writing all this down?”
“–you stop calling her my girl and hinting at something that isn’t true.”
Hanma waved a dismissive hand in the air and said in a bored tone, “Sure, whatever ya say.”
“And finally, you don’t bring anyone else over, ever.”
“Yeah, ‘cuz I got so many friends outside this apartment.”
“I’m not your friend.”
“Wasn’t talking about you anyway, so don’t worry your pretty little pinstripe head.”
Koko pinched the bridge of his nose, willing away the headache he could feel creeping up as Hanma continued lounging on the arm of the couch, one leg bouncing casually like he didn’t have a care in the world. The distant sound of the shower running offered a brief reminder that Mira was momentarily spared from Hanma’s antics—not that she wouldn’t have her own barbs ready when she reappeared.
When Mira finally emerged, dressed but still toweling off her damp hair, the silver strands darkened to a soft pewter shade as they fell back to frame her face, Koko caught himself staring for half a second too long before quickly averting his gaze.
Hanma, however, leaned forward with a wolfish grin. “Look at you, all squeaky clean. Didn’t know you could scrub off that much sass.”
“Guess I missed a spot, then,” Mira shot back, hanging the towel around her neck as her sharp gaze landed on Hanma.
Before either of them could continue their banter, the Haitani brothers reappeared, exchanging looks with Koko before nodding toward Hanma.
“Need you to step out for a minute,” Rindou said, his tone neutral and completely unbothered by the fact that they’d just hauled out two dead bodies.
“Don’t miss me too much while I’m gone,” Hanma quipped as he stood, following them toward the door. As he passed Koko, he grinned. “You especially.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Koko muttered, watching the door close behind them. He exhaled heavily, shaking his head. “I can’t believe I’m letting him live with me.”
“You don't have to do this…” Mira whispered, cringing at how unsteady and meek she sounded.
“Yeah, I know but he’s right. It makes the most sense–
“No, I mean
, this
.” She gestured dramatically to the space between them, then around them. “ALL of this. You don’t have to keep protecting me. You’ve been protecting me from your own gang, but this…”
Her words faded, because how could she possibly impress upon him what a Herculean feat protecting her from Souya would be? It was like gambling at a casino. Sometimes, he might let you win a hand or two to boost your confidence, to lure you into raising the stakes, to let you feel that sense of false hope.
But in the end, the house always won.
She’d seen too many people try to go up against Souya—seen too many of them die in horrible, gruesome ways that still haunted her—to believe it was even possible to win against him. She took a deep breath to try to steady herself, but it felt futile.
“What this means…I would never ask you to do that for me.”
“Last I checked, you didn’t. I volunteered.”
He said it as if that made it better. As if that would magically encase him in some kind of Nase-proof armor. But it wouldn't. Nothing could protect anything from him, and she knew that better than anyone—felt the stinging memories behind that truth clawing up her throat vehemently, violently.
“You don’t know,” she said in a strangled voice, desperately trying not to let the panic consume her.
“I know what he’s done.”
“But you don’t know
him
!” she insisted, a little more panic loosing itself from her restraint. “Souya is unhinged. A complete psychopath.”
“So's Hanma. And Sanzu. And 99% of the people I work with. Hell, when I think about it that way, I'm probably a psychopath, too.”
“Not like he is. Souya
lives
for torturing people. That’s his purpose, his goal. He’s a hunter, and once he decides something is prey, he’ll never stop. Violence isn’t just a means to an end for him; it’s the end all by itself. I was going to be here until Mikey decided I’m not a threat but now that doesn’t even matter, because there is no end to this.”
“I’ll figure something out.”
“There’s nothing to figure out!” she insisted hysterically, feeling tears tell in her eyes and begin to leak traitorously from the corners. “Short of killing him there’s nothing to be done.” His silence at that fell across her shoulders like a tangible weight, pressing down, forcing the bony balls of her feet painfully into the tiles. “You’re not…seriously thinking about killing him are you?”
“You let me worry about that.”
“It’s suicide,” she eeked out. “The number of people defending him is astronomical. You’ll never get to him and even if you could, he’ll just kill you first. He’ll rip you apart and leave you just alive enough for rats to feed on your battered remains until you’re begging for death.”
Her head was now flashing with images. She’d seen him do just that. Beat someone so badly they couldn’t move, leaving him with legs bent at odd angles and flesh hanging from his body in ribbons, then set rats loose to eat him alive. Sometimes at night, she woke up to the memory of those screams, and before she knew it, she lost all control, her breath coming harsh and fast—too fast—so fast she was getting dizzy, swaying on her feet until something solid appeared in front of her and crushed her tight against a solid, warm frame.
“Breathe, little dove. Just breathe,” Koko murmured into the crown of her head, his arms tightening, drawing her even tighter into his chest as if he might absorb her into it. God, if only he could. Maybe then he could feel like he was actually capable of keeping her safe from Souya.
“Why?” she choked, pulling back just enough so that she could look up at him.
“You asked me that once before and I told you I didn’t know.
“Well then figure it out!” she cried, a fresh wave of tears scalding down her cheeks as she bunched the fabric of his shirt around her fingers. “It was one thing when the only thing at stake was your privacy and a little money, but this is different and you know it. Because if I’m going to let you risk your life for me, I have to know there’s a fucking
reason!
”
“YOU are my reason!” he burst, then placed his hands on both sides of her jaw, cradling her head gently in between his palms. The look in his eyes blazed with such an intensity that it felt like it scorched right through her, reducing her insides to ash that crumbled and fell away leaving only a vacuous space for him. He whispered a thumb along her cheek, his voice softer but equally resolute as he went on. “Keeping you alive
is
my reason. Don’t make it more complicated than it has to be.”
But it
was
complicated.
By the very nature of that admission, it was all the more fucking complicated because it meant neither of them could keep pretending they weren’t already in far too deep. Because it made her want to stop running—even knowing she shouldn’t, now more than ever.
Even knowing there was no future for them inside this hellish world of violence and the struggle for power.
But even so, it made her want to try. It made her want to fight tooth and nail to stay in his world, no matter how bloody that world was or would become.
Before she knew it, she was being drawn to him, some unseen and unstoppable gravitational force pulling their faces together slowly. But just as his lips ghosted across hers, the door opened and he stepped back, smoothing the wrinkles where she’d fisted his shirt, the desperate look that had been on his face just moments ago already dissolved into a stony brick facade.
“Honey, I’m home!” Hanma’s voice came from down the hallway, and in that moment, Mira thought she really might kill him. But as much as it felt like her insides were wilting at having been so close—again—to that nerve-electrifying lightning he emitted that her body wanted so badly it ached, it was for the best. Given everything that had just happened between them, it might have already been too late for either of them to turn back, but if they’d been left any longer to their own devices, it most certainly would have been.
Even so…she could still see the hint of that wild, impulse-crazed look in his eyes as she caught Koko’s stare for just a moment and it almost made her stride right back across the room and plant her lips on his, Hanma’s presence be damned,
Distance. She desperately needed distance from him and his goddamn magnetic aura that she was virtually powerless against. Yeah, just a little distance would do the trick—and maybe a cold shower.
One thing at a time.
She strode out of the kitchen and sat down on the couch,
“What’s up, roomie?” Hanma asked as he plopped down beside her, slinging his gangly arm around where her back rested on the sofa cushion and tilting his head at her. “Looking a little consternated there.”
“Gee, I didn’t even think you knew words that big.”
“Big things are my specialty, toots,” Hanma said with a grin that was all teeth. “I keep trying to convince you to let me show you.”
“You’re a pig.”
“Yeah, I think I recall you saying something to that effect not that long ago.” He propped his feet up on the coffee table, entirely too at home for someone who didn’t actually live there—yet.
Koko scowled at him. “If you’re going to loiter here, at least make yourself useful. Go get your shit or clean the toilet or something.”
Hanma snorted. “Relax, boss. I’ll swing by my place later and grab my essentials. Should be moved in by the end of the day.”
“You could at least pretend to be sorry about invading my home,” Koko muttered, his tone edged with irritation as he tapped something on his laptop. “And stop calling me boss.”
“But why would I pretend something that isn’t true?” Hanma replied with a grin that stretched a little too wide, clearly enjoying Koko’s frustration.
Mira couldn’t resist adding fuel to the fire. “Aw, come on, Koko. Isn’t it kind of nice? You’ll get to boss around a live-in bodyguard.”
“More like a live-in headache,” Koko grumbled.
“Don’t worry,” Hanma interjected. “I’ll even chip in for groceries.”
Mira chuckled, shaking her head and already imagining how much of a sitcom this little fucked up living situation was devolving into. “What’s your place like, anyway?”
His glance slices toward her, a mischievous twinkle in it. “What do you think it’s like?”
“Hmmm…” she mused, tapping her finger on her knee. “I’m envisioning black walls and chains hanging from the ceiling.”
“Ooh, so a sex dungeon?”He waggled his eyebrows at her.
“I was thinking more along the lines of
torture chamber,
but sure, I guess it could be multi-purpose. You seem like a practical guy.”
“Well, now I’m a bit disappointed in myself that I don’t live up to your expectations. Might have to use all that extra money I’m making babysitting you to hire a decorator.”
“You should film a renovation. Submit it to Before After so I can watch it. I can see the episode description now: Violent gangster transforms humble abode into a den of debauchery, a hallmark of hedonism, a spectacle of sin."
His smile spread wider. “Don't forget punishment," he said raising his right hand to show her the ink on its back.
"Ah, how could I forget? A...picture of punishment, then."
"Tell ya what…I’ll give you a personal VIP tour once the remodel is done,” he said, shooting Mira a wink that made her face break into a reluctant grin.
“You’ll do no such thing,” Koko muttered, picking up his briefcase and suit jacket as he stood.
“You’re invited, too, Koko. We can make a whole party out of it. I’ve heard sex dungeon parties are all the rage these days.”
Koko’s black eyes rolled skyward as Hanma and Mira giggled softly between themselves—well, at least as close as Hanma got to giggling. Then he headed for the door, muttering something about how he would almost rather take his chances against Souya. “I have to work. Behave, you two,” he instructed before the door closed behind him, asking himself now more emphatically than ever what the fuck he’d gotten himself into.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
(The audience claps as the scene opens. Hanma is standing in the kitchen, rifling through the fridge, which is suspiciously divided into two neatly organized sections—one stocked with clean, fresh produce, the other an absolute shrine to processed junk food.)
HANMA
“Why do you have eight kinds of cheese but no beer? What kind of monster are you?” (Audience laughs)
KOKO
(Not looking up from the paper sprawled out on the table in front of him) “The kind that doesn’t cater to freeloaders.”
HANMA
“Ouch. Also is it free if I’m not only not paying to stay here, but actually being paid to?”
KOKO
“Don’t remind me.”
HANMA
"Why? You’re easily the best sugar daddy I’ve ever had.”(The audience laughs uproariously as Hanma holds up a bottle of sparkling water) “What is this? Fancy soda?”
KOKO
“It’s imported sparkling water. Put it back.”
HANMA
(Opening it and taking a sip)“Oh, yeah. Tastes like privilege.”(Pulls out a weirdly shaped vegetable, squinting at it. The audience chuckles.)
KOKO
(deadpan)“It’s called a vegetable. I would have thought a string bean like yourself would recognize his kin.”(Audience laughs)
HANMA
(mock surprise)"A vegetable? No kidding.”(He tosses it over his shoulder into the fridge without care, then grabs a bright pink package of Daifuku Mochi and starts eating.)“So let me guess—this is the Princess’ shelf, then.”(He gestures toward the junk food section before popping another mochi in his mouth.)“No wonder I like her better than you.”(The audience laughs as Koko rolls his eyes. Mira struts in wearing a bathrobe, her damp hair wrapped in a towel. The audience whistles and cheers.)
MIRA
“Alright, Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dumb-fuck, which one of you emptied my underwear drawer while I was in the shower?”(The audience oohs and chuckles. Mira plants her hands on her hips, glaring at Hanma.)“And that’s rhetorical because I know which of you two pervs it was.”
HANMA
(casually, mouth full of snacks)“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
MIRA
(grabbing a throw pillow from the couch and launching it at his face)“Give them back, you prick!”(A big WHUMP as the pillow smacks Hanma. The audience laughs.)
HANMA
(grinning, hands up in surrender)“Fine, relax, toots. It was just a little joke. They’re in a box just inside the door to my room.”(Pauses, smugly.)“Promise they’re all there. Ya can even count ‘em if ya want.”(Mira eyes him suspiciously.)
MIRA
“Can you promise you didn’t sniff them?”(Hanma whistles innocently and turns away. The audience erupts in laughter.)“Ugh, forget it. I’m just going to burn them now. Koko?”
KOKO
(immediately, without looking up from his paper)“Yeah, I’ll get you new ones.”(The audience awws.)
MIRA
(Goes up and gives Koko a friendly kiss on the cheek, grinning broadly. The audience oohs and ahhs as Koko's face turns bright red as he freezes, looking over the newspaper blankly toward the audience)(Mira, smirking, notices Koko's embarrassment)“Guess that just means I’ll have to go without underwear for the time being then.”(The audience whoops and whistles. Mira flashes a maliciously sweet smile at Hanma and winks at Koko, who rubs his temple in frustration.)
HANMA
“You’ll get no complaints from either of us, right Koko?”
KOKO
(impatient, resigned)“Go get dressed or you’ll just keep encouraging him.”(Turns to Hanma, exasperated.)“And you—shut up before I shove a sock in your big fuc—”
HANMA
(wags finger, interrupting)“Ah, ah, ah! This is family-friendly television, after all.”(The audience laughs as Koko glares at him.)
KOKO
“Fuck yourself.”
HANMA
(grinning smugly)“Every night.”(The audience howls.)
KOKO
(disgusted)“Gross.”
MIRA
“Well, I am going to get dressed. Not because you told me to, but because I don’t really feel like standing here and playing couples’ therapist to your fucked-up little bromance right now.”(Mira turns to leave, flipping Hanma off as she disappears down the hallway. The audience cheers.)
HANMA
(calling after her)“All dressed except the underwear though!”(More whoops from the audience as Hanma leans back on the couch, looking way too pleased with himself. He turns to Koko, smirking.)“Come on, don’t tell me you ain’t picturing that.”
KOKO
“No, what I’m picturing is shoving this pair of chopsticks through your eye.”
HANMA
Which rule of living here did that violate? You’ve got so many, I can’t keep track.
KOKO
(grumbling)Third rule.
HANMA
(thinking, then grinning)“Wait—is that the ‘don’t leave your dirty socks everywhere’ rule? Or the “‘ get blood on the couch’ rule?”
KOKO
"It’s the 'don’t make me want to murder you in my own home' rule.
HANMA
(mock gasp)“Ohhh, that one.”(Beat.)"Well, shit, I’ve been breaking that one since day one."(The audience howls with laughter. Koko just rubs his face like he’s debating his life choices. Koko sat bolt upright in bed, the last strangles of a dying scream fading from his mouth. "Oh, thank god... just a nightmare,” Koko muttered himself."Yo, what’s with the screaming?” Hanma’s voice called from the hall before the door opened. “Wet the bed or somethin’?"He slowly turned his head to see Hanma standing in his doorway, eating a bag of Mira’s junk food. Mira walked past in the hallway behind him in nothing but an oversized T-shirt, mid-yawn as he muttered. “Keep it down, Koko. Just because you get up at the ass-crack of dawn every day doesn’t mean we all do. Some of us need beauty sleep."Koko groaned, flopping back onto the pillow, and pulling the blanket over his head. "I hate my life."
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“I want to learn how to fight,” Mira announced firmly upon marching into the dining room first thing the next morning, as if announcing something so simple and nonnegotiable as how she wanted her eggs cooked.Koko looked up over the top of his newspaper, failing to hide the scrutinizing look of displeasure that creased his brow. Hanma just smirked around the rim of his coffee cup.“Mornin’ to you too, toots. Have good dreams about me?”“Bite me,” she said sweetly, which only made Hanma burst out laughing.She marched over to Koko’s chair and planted her hands on her hips. “I’m serious, Koko. I want someone to teach me how to defend myself in case that ever happens again.”“Mira–”“Shit yeah. I’ll teach her,” Hanma cut in, having sobered himself from his little fit of chuckles. At the slicing look Koko gave him, he raised his hands innocently. “What? I think it’s a good idea, for all our sakes. Hers included. Another capable fighter is always a pro in this line of work—even if we weren't going up against who we are. And you never know when Mikey is going to ask for her help again on something he deems her useful toward. Easy to keep her safe when she's locked in her cage, but what are you gonna do if Mikey wants her out and about?”Mira had been thinking about that, too. Part of her found it strange Mikey hadn't yet given her another assignment, especially after coming all that way to ask her about the matter. She had just assumed that Koko had secretly put the kibosh on the thing given the new developments of the last couple of days. And honestly, she didn't blame him. Souya being aware of her location changed the game entirely as far as she was concerned. All the more reason to learn how to protect herself to some extent.“I didn’t say it was a bad idea. I just don’t know if you being in charge of it is a good one.”Hanma pushed his bottom lip out in a mock pout. “Ye of little faith.”“Damn right,” he scoffed.“If not me, then who? You?”“You know I can’t. I’ve got enough shit on my plate as it is,” he groaned, giving Mira an apologetic look. “Exactly. Whereas I’m going to be sitting here twiddling my thumbs playing babysitter for the foreseeable future. No offense, toots,” he said, seeing the scowl that scrunched her features at the term ‘babysitter’. “If ya don’t want me to destroy the house in boredom, it would be a good idea to give me something to keep me occupied.”“When can we start?” Mira asked, her excitement practically bubbling over her words.Koko wanted to argue, to tell her no, that it was a terrible fucking idea to give Shuji Hanma, of all people, free, unfettered reign of anything even tertiarily related to violence. But he just didn’t have the heart to do it—not with her eyes looking more bright and exuberant than they had since he’d won her that stupid stuffed Gojo doll.“Today, if ya want. I’ll give Kakucho a call and see if we can borrow some equipment from the Bonten gym.”Her curiosity piqued. “Bonten has a gym?”“Of a sort. Technically it’s a fight club. Members only, no rules except no killing allowed, that kind of shit.” She couldn’t help but note the tinge of disappointment in his voice as he relayed the whole ‘no killing’ part. “Gives us a place to let off a little steam, but there’s a basement gym there, too, so we can train if we need.”“I could buy whatever you need,” Koko chimed in. He wasn't thrilled about bringing any other Bonten members into the fold on this, no matter how fringe and inconsequential the role.A mocking smile played on Hanma’s face. “Appreciate the generosity there boss man, but why buy when you can borrow?”“Why borrow when you can steal?” Mira added.Hanma’s smile went from mocking to genuine as he raised his phone up to his ear. “Have I told ya how much I like ya?”“Hanma, I don’t think we should–”“Yo, Kakucho,” he greeted as someone answered, turning his attention away from Koko without acknowledging his rebuttal. “Need a favor.”While Hanma was on the phone, Mira took the opportunity to wander over to the espresso machine and brew herself a cup of coffee. As she finished topping off the creamy brown liquid, she turned around to find Koko standing right behind her.“Jesus!” she yelped, jerking her hands in surprise just enough that a bit of the steaming hot liquid splashed out and onto her hand. “Fuck!” she hissed, but before she could do anything, Koko was pulling the mug from her hand and moving it under a stream of cold water from the tap.“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” He looked genuinely sorry, too, the space between his brows furrowed as he stared at the red patch of skin forming on the back of her hand.She pulled her hand from his, drying it off before retrieving her mug of coffee. “It’s fine. Hardly even a burn.”“Mira…are you sure about this?”“What, about drinking my coffee? Of fucking course I am.”“No, I meant…about training with Hanma. I said I would protect you and I will. You don’t have to–”“This has nothing to do with that, Koko,” she said resolutely. “It’s not because I don’t believe you or trust you to protect me. It’s because I have spent the last four years of my life feeling weak and helpless and afraid—and I’m fucking tired of it. Please believe me when I say this isn’t about you. It’s about me. This is something I just feel like I have to do.”Something in Koko’s face softened and she couldn’t tell if it was guilt or pity or understanding or all goddamn three.“Alright. If it’s what you want. Just…promise me you’ll be careful. I know you—for some unfathomable reason—actually like Hanma but keep in mind that his nickname is the Reaper. He didn't earn that by being gentle.”He was really worried about her, she realized. That thought dropped warm stones into her stomach and she had to fight the urge to twist at the sensation. He cared about her—truly. God, what the fuck was she supposed to do with that?She cleared her throat, refusing to think more on that. “He’s harmless. At least to me. Mostly. I think.”Koko gave her a look that said, Yeah fucking right. Calling Hanma harmless was a bit like calling a rattlesnake cute—absurd at first but he supposed if you squinted reeeeaaallly hard from a certain angle…She sipped her coffee. “Don’t look so worried. All you talk about is his fighting prowess, so there should be no one better to teach me.”“It’s not the fighting part I’m worried about. It’s the teaching part. And you’ve never seen anyone on the other side of that fighting prowess.”As he said it, Hanma was shoving his phone back into his pocket and sauntering over to them.“Alright, toots, we're all set. Kakucho’ll be here in about an hour with some mats and stuff.”“Already breaking my second rule about no one else coming over, huh?” Koko needled, still sounding annoyed and apprehensive. “Kakucho’s fine.” At Koko’s flat expression, he added. “I’ll make him wait in the hall if it’d make ya feel better.”Koko knew Hanma was probably right. Of all the Bonten upper echelon, Kakucho was definitely the most tame and trustworthy—though the bar was exceedingly low. In fact, Koko really didn’t know what Kakucho’s motivation for even being in Bonten was. It made sense back when they were teenagers and he’d followed his best friend Izana into Tenjiku without question. But after Izana was killed, there didn’t really seem to be much else binding Kakucho to the gang world other than habit and a lack of belonging anywhere else.On second thought, Koko understood exactly what was driving him. It was more or less the same thing that kept Koko there—the simple fact that he didn’t know what the hell he’d do with himself if not be in a gang. He didn’t have friends, or family, or hobbies. In fact, he didn’t have any reason whatsoever to exist outside of it.Despite having more faith in Kakucho than the majority of his comrades, he’d also been there that day when Sanzu had almost killed Mira in her apartment—and Koko couldn’t just overlook that either.But Mira was already running away with the whole thing, gulping down the rest of her coffee and rushing off to shower and change so she could be ready when Kakucho got there.Hanma rose, too, presumably to change from a suit, but Koko stopped him. “Hanma. A word.” He halted and turned, arching an eyebrow to Koko. “Just so we're clear, if you hurt her, I’ll do tenfold to you.”Hanma’s golden eyes rolled upward. “Look if she wants to learn, she’s going to get a few bumps and bruises. She won’t learn how to survive if I pull all my punches completely.”“Don’t be an asshole. You know what I mean.”“Jeez, waduddya, expect me to do? Beat her bloody? Break her bones? Carve my initials in that pretty smooth skin of hers? Fuck's sake, Koko, I ain’t a total dick. Beating up women ain’t my style.”Koko gave him a flat look. “Forgive me if I don’t have much faith in your ability to moderate yourself,” he said in a bland, mildly sarcastic tone. “Self-restraint has never been your strong suit.”“Maybe I just don’t often have a reason to exercise it. Doesn't mean I can’t.” If Koko wasn’t mistaken, Hanma was actually a little offended. “She’s probably about as good of a reason as I’ll ever get.”“Look just…don’t get carried away. She’s been through a lot of shit—a lot more than she’s telling either of us, I’m fairly certain, so what she doesn’t need is you being too rough and dredging up a whole host of fucked up shit from her past.”“I ain’t planning on beating her bloody or anything of the other number of horrors I’m sure he subjected her to.” Hanma’s voice was tight, and Koko noticed the ripples across the kanji figures on each hand as his fists tightened. So he was just as pissed at Nase as Koko then. Well…good. It suggested he actually cared about Mira, not just the orders he was getting to protect her. For the first time, Koko realized that all this time, those jokes Hanma kept making about liking her and wanting to keep her safe weren’t just jokes. He genuinely cared about her. In what exact capacity, Koko wasn’t sure—nor was he sure he wanted to, given the little green monster living in his chest that rattled the bars of his ribs anytime he thought about her with someone else.Regardless of the details, the fact that Shuji Hanma cared was a miracle not to be taken for granted in and of itself, so Koko heaved a sign and decided he would trust Hanma—yet again. He hadn’t failed him yet so he owed him that much.“Fine. Just keep in mind that my initial threat stands.” With that, Koko left, trying not to think about what he would be returning home to that evening.The scent of lavender shampoo lingered in the air as Mira emerged from her room, her damp hair pulled into a loose clip—the most she could manage to tie it back given how short it was still—and a bounce in her step that made it clear she was positively buzzing. Dressed in leggings and a matching black fitted tank, she looked ready to conquer the world.Hanma lounged on the edge of the couch, his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, spinning a butterfly knife in his hand with almost lazy precision. His dark grin widened as he looked up at her.“Well, don’t you look all ready to kick some ass,” he mused, his tone sing-song and laced with amusement.“Better believe it.” Mira planted her hands on her hips, trying to look tough.Hanma tilted his head, his grin turning teasing. “Just so we’re clear, you know this isn’t an anime training montage, right? No dramatic music, no skipping to the part where you’re suddenly a badass. This is going to be hard work, and I’m not going to go easy on you.”“Hey, I’m ready to work for it,” Mira shot back, rolling her shoulders in a stretch. “You just better be a good teacher.”“Oh, I’m the best,” Hanma said with mock seriousness, flipping the knife once more before tucking it into his pocket. “You’re in excellent hands, toots. Just try not to cry when you can’t keep up.”“Ha, ha. Very funny.” She flopped down into a chair across from him, practically vibrating with impatience. “How long until Kakucho gets here? I wanna start already.”Hanma checked his watch, though the exaggerated way he did it made it clear he wasn’t in any rush. “Should be here soon. Maybe. He said he’d come when he could.”“Well he should hurry the fuck up,” Mira said, crossing her arms. “This is important.”“Oh, very important,” Hanma agreed, his voice lilting again. “Can’t have the little dove wandering around defenseless in a world full of big, scary cats.”Mira narrowed her eyes, but the corner of her mouth twitched in a reluctant smile. “Are you all going to keep calling me that forever?”“Forever and always,” Hanma said with a wink, then perked up at the sound of a knock on the door. “And there’s our man of the hour.”Hanma opened the door, and Kakucho stood there along with a few other men in the background, hauling an impressive stack of equipment: rolled-up mats, a punching bag, and several duffle bags filled who the fuck knew what.“Got everything you asked for,” Kakucho said, his tone polite but carrying a faint edge of irritation. “Mind telling me why I’m the one schlepping this stuff around like your personal delivery service?”“Because you’re so good at it,” Hanma said with a wicket grin, clapping Kakucho on the back. “And because I’ll kick your teeth in if you don’t.”“What the hell is all this for anyway?”“I got a princess who wants to learn to be a knight.”At that, Hanma stepped aside just slightly so that his body was no longer shielding Mira, standing there with her hands cocked on her hips like she was ten feet tall and bulletproof. And considering the man in the door had almost been involved in her death, she hoped he believed that more than she did.“You?” Kakucho’s voice betrayed his surprise. “You really did a number on my nose, you know.”Mira’s eyes narrowed, her excitement fading slightly as the tension of their last meeting seeped back in. “Well, considering I was almost raped and murdered, thanks in no small part to you, let’s just call it even,” she sniped, bitterness sharpening her tone.Kakucho winced and shifted the weight of the gear on his shoulder. “Yeah…I’m really about that,” he said sheepishly, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck as he refused to meet her eyes. “If I had known what Sanzu had in mind when he asked me to be his backup that day, I wouldn’t have agreed to go. Forgive me.” The apology was surprising enough, but what really floored Mira was what happened next. Kakucho bowed— not just a little obligatory bob of his torso, but a full 90 degree bow at the waist, deliberate and contrite.Mira blinked, caught off guard. For a moment, she didn’t know what to say. Then she crossed her arms and huffed. “Fine. Just… don’t do it again. And if you happen to get the chance to punch that pink-haired prick in the face for me, I wouldn't complain.”Straightening up, Kakucho gave a curt nod and handed the equipment over to Hanma, who had been leaning casually against the wall, watching the exchange with a wide grin that bordered on delighted.“Got everything you asked for,” Kakucho muttered, his tone still subdued. “I expect it back when you’re done.”Hanma clapped him on the shoulder with exaggerated enthusiasm. “Don’t worry, buddy. You know I’m great at taking care of things.” Then he winked.Kakucho didn’t dignify that with a response, but as he turned to leave, Mira called out after him. “Hey, Kakucho.”He stopped, glancing back at her.“You don’t seem half bad,” she admitted begrudgingly. Then, with a pointed look at Hanma, she added, “What the hell are you doing with these fuckers?”Hanma’s head snapped toward her, an incredulous laugh bubbling up. “I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that second part.”Kakucho, for his part, just sighed and shook his head before heading out the door, closing it behind him without a word.The room fell into an awkward silence, Mira’s last words hanging in the air like smoke. Hanma tilted his head slightly, his grin sharpening as he studied her with a predator’s curiosity, the kind that made it impossible to tell whether he was amused or annoyed.“You’ve got guts, I’ll give you that,” he said finally, his tone light but laced with something darker. Mira crossed her arms, trying to ignore the way his gaze seemed to peel her apart. “So I've been told.”Hanma’s eyes glinted, his grin widening. “Yeah? Well, not everyone knows when to keep their guts inside. Before someone decides to spill them on their behalf.”Her throat tightened slightly at the thinly veiled threat, but she didn’t flinch. Instead, she raised an eyebrow, meeting his gaze with cool defiance. “Is that right?”His grin split wider, teeth flashing as he tilted his head and studied her. “You really ain’t afraid of me, are ya?”Mira met his gaze evenly. “Should I be?”Hanma’s grin widened, and he took a slow step toward her. Then another. Mira stepped back, her heart starting to race, until her back hit the wall.Before she could react further, Hanma lifted his tattooed hand—the one marked “punishment”—and wrapped his long, spider-like fingers around her throat. The pressure wasn’t enough to hurt, but just hard enough to press against the soft tissue beneath her jaw, cutting off her airflow for a moment.His smile was practically predatory as he leaned closer, looking down the bridge of his angular nose through the glinting lens of his glasses. “Do I really need to answer that?”Then he released her throat and… booped her nose? Honestly? Mira blinked, stunned, before snapping her teeth at his retreating finger, once again struck by the utter duality that was Shuji Hanma.“So feisty.” Hanma’s laughter filled the room, warm and mocking at once. “You’re lucky that’s why I like ya.”Mira rolled her eyes, shoving him lightly as she stepped around him. “Come on, let’s get started. I didn’t get out of my sweatpants for nothing.”Together, they rolled out the thick, vinyl mats that Kakucho had brought over, shoving the sofa up against the windowed walls and turning the living room into their own makeshift training studio.“Alright, toots,” Hanma said, spinning around and gesturing to the space they’d cleared. “Let’s see what you’ve got. Show me your best punch.”She hesitated, uncertain. “Wait… like, just punch you?”“I know ya been dreaming about it.” His grin was as taunting as ever. “So don’t wuss out now.”Mira squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and snapped her arm forward, right into Hanma’s stomach.His eyebrows shot up, his lips parting in surprise as he hunched over ever so slightly. “Not bad,” he rasped tightly.She snorted indignantly. “What, you thought I spent three years in the cradle of Kitsune West and didn’t at least learn how to throw a decent punch? Give me a little credit here.”Hanma snickered. “Thought I just did. And besides, I wouldn’t be here volunteering to train ya if I didn’t, love.”“Well, you could sound less surprised next time,” Mira retorted, planting her hands on her hips, a smug grin plastered across her face.In one swift motion, Hanma grabbed her arm, swept her legs out from under her, and pinned her to the mat, the air rushing from her lungs the second her back slammed down.“Don’t get cocky, my dear,” he said, his grin feral, offering a hand down to her. “Throwing a decent punch is only one very small part of what it means to be a good fighter. Fighting’s just as much about not getting hit as it is doing the hitting.”Mira glared up at his hand and swatted it away. He clucked his tongue at her. “Now, now, don’t be a sore loser or you’re gonna be in for a tough time in these lessons. Pride has no place here—especially not for a weakling like you.” he squatted down next to her, his eyes boring into her own. “So, are ya gonna be a big girl about this, set down that pride of yours, and accept the fact that me kicking your ass repeatedly is exactly how you’re gonna learn?” She screwed her mouth to the side but finally nodded and took his still outstretched hand. “Good,” Hanma said as he stood and hoisted her up with him, his tone almost fond despite the teasing edge. “Now let’s make a fighter out of you.”The training session unfolded with Mira determined to land a punch on Hanma, but he moved like smoke. No matter how quick or deliberate her strikes, he dodged effortlessly, his movements languid yet precise, taunting her with every step.“Come on, toots. You’re gonna have to do better than that,” Hanma teased, sidestepping another punch.Mira’s frustration flared. She grit her teeth, clenched her fists tighter, and adjusted her footing, trying to anticipate his movements. Each swing came closer, the ghost of his jacket brushing her knuckles as his dodges became less and less gratuitous.“Good girl,” Hanma murmured, his grin sharpening. He was still faster, but there was something in the way his dodges started to tighten, his teasing slowing just a hair.Mira’s breathing was heavy now, her muscles burning, but she didn’t stop. Not when she could feel herself improving, getting closer with every punch.Finally, with one last effort, her fist grazed the edge of his sleeve.Hanma chuckled, throwing his hands up. “Close, but no cigar. That’s all for today.”She dropped her hands to her knees, panting but grinning through the sweat.“Not bad for day one,” he added, pulling her up by the arm and ruffling her hair like she was some kid.“You mean every day will be like this?” she groaned, though the spark in her eyes betrayed her eagerness.“Oh, darlin',” Hanma drawled, his lazy smile turning wicked. “I’m just getting started.”Kokonoi came home to find Mira curled up on the couch, an old episode of Cowboy Bebop playing on the TV. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair mussed, and there was a telltale mottling of bruises on the side of her face that made his chest tighten.He crossed the room in four long, quick strides, crouching in front of her. “What the hell happened?” he demanded, worry threading his voice.Mira looked up, startled by the sudden intensity in his tone. Before she could answer, his hand cupped her chin, tilting her head up and sideways to get a better look at the bruise.She winced slightly. “Koko, it’s not what you think.”“What I think is that Hanma’s not allowed to train you,” he muttered darkly, his eyes narrowing as he scanned her face.“ Allowed ? What gives you the fucking right?” Mira huffed a laugh incredulously, gently swatting his hand away. “I tripped trying to hit him and smacked my face on the arm of the sofa. And I know that sounds fake but it's not. Trust me, I know all about making up bullshit to cover bruises, but I’m not lying this time. Pinky promise,” she said lightly, a note of question to her voice as she held up her pinky finger.Koko’s lips pressed into a thin line, his hand lingering on her chin for a moment longer before he let it fall. He didn’t like this—didn’t like her getting hurt, even by accident. He’d seen too much violence, too many people break under it. He damn sure wasn’t about to add her name to that very long list. But then he really looked at her. Despite the bruise, despite the sweat still drying on her skin, she was glowing. There was an energy in her he hadn’t seen before, something alive and electric that made her eyes shine brighter than he thought possible.And that’s when he felt it: the itch.The craving that had lain dormant, buried under layers of self-control and repression, started to stir. The sight of her like this—the rush, the fire—reminded him of the way it felt to let loose. To hit and get hit. To lose himself in that primal, violent release.“Are you sure about this?” he asked quietly, his voice softer now.Mira tilted her head, confused. “Sure about what?”“Hanma. Fighting. All of it,” he said, his gaze searching hers.She gave him a lopsided grin. “Honestly? Yeah. It felt good. Not just the fighting, but knowing I’m just a little closer to protecting myself if I need to.”He nodded slowly, though the tension in his jaw didn’t ease. He wanted to argue, to tell her to let him protect her, but the words stuck in his throat. Because the truth was, he couldn’t. Not always.And as much as he hated the idea of her learning to fight, he hated the idea of her being powerless even more.Still, the itch was there now, crawling under his skin.“I’m glad,” he said, forcing a small smile, the irony not lost him that as much he suddenly wanted to fight, he still hated the idea of her doing it.She gave his arm a playful shove. “Right, because you sound so convincing.”He chuckled, but the sound was hollow. As he sat back, watching her settle into the couch with that lingering post-fight glow, he couldn’t shake the restless energy building inside him.Maybe he’d hit the gym first thing tomorrow before he had a meeting. Or maybe he’d find somewhere less structured, somewhere he could let loose.He really fucking needed that.Tomorrow, he promised himself.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Mira shuffled out of her room like a zombie, her entire body screaming in protest with every step. Muscles she didn’t even know she had ached like they’d been put through a meat grinder, and honestly, that might’ve been preferable.
She groaned as she reached the living room, one hand bracing against the wall for support. Hanma was already there, sitting on the couch with his feet up on the coffee table, casually sipping from a steaming mug of coffee like he hadn’t spent the previous day torturing her.
“Morning, sunshine,” he said, grinning over the rim of his mug. “Sleep well?” Mira stared at him, dead-eyed. Hanma snorted. “That bad, huh?”
Mira dragged herself to the nearest chair and collapsed into it, wincing. “I think I pulled something in my soul yesterday.”
Hanma took another slow sip. “Good. Means you’re doing it right.”
Mira groaned, dropping her head onto the table. "I hate you. I’ve never been this sore in my entire life.” And that was saying something considering the state Souya sometimes left her in ... not that she was going to admit that part out loud to Hanma. She had the feeling they both already pitied her enough for the whole thing; no need to add fuel to that fire.
“Not the first time a woman has said that to me in the morning.”
“If it didn’t hurt so goddamn much to lift my arms, I’d flip you off right now. So do me a favor and just imagine that I did.”
He snickered, low and silky as he rose languidly and wandered into the kitchen.
“Want to know what the best cure for soreness is?”
“I swear to God if you say sex I’m going to smother you in your sleep just as soon as I regain feeling in my arms.”
“Not what I was gonna say, but now that you mention it—”
“Hanma,” she growled.
“Relax, toots. I was going to say ‘getting moving again’.”
She groaned. Another lesson was the absolute last thing she felt like doing, but she knew he was right.
"That's the spirit," Hanma said cheerfully, pressing a mug of coffee into her hands. "Now drink some coffee before you actually die. I don’t need Koko blaming me for your dramatic ass keeling over. You have twenty minutes before I expect you on the mat.”
“Have I mentioned how much I hate you?”
His grin widened. “Once or twice, but you know I always like hearin’ it. It’s my love language, or whatever that shit is you women always talk about.”
Mira grumbled something that was lost against the ceramic rim of her coffee mug but sounded a lot like, “Fucking psychopath.”
Exactly twenty-
three
minutes later—because fuck Hanma if he thought he could boss her around—she was standing on the mat, dressed in a pair of leggings and an oversized hoodie.
“I know you said you weren’t going to go easy on me, but I am begging you not to be a dick today.”
“I don’t think I even know how to do that,” he teased. “But relax. We’re not sparring today. Won’t be any fun with you at half-speed at best. Today we’re just going to get you moving and work on your form and stamina.” He slapped the heavy bag he had rigged up to the rafters the day before, rattling the chains as it vibrated with the movement. “Meet your new best friend.”
“A step up from you, anyway.”
“Ha ha very cute. Now c’mere and give me your hands.”
“Aw, I guess that's one very direct way to ask someone to marry you. But my answer is no.”
Hanma cocked his head to look at her. “Are ya done bein’ a smartass?”
“Never.”
Hanma smirked, holding out the roll of hand wraps. “Gimme your hands, princess, and don’t make me ask again.”
Mira rolled her eyes but complied, letting him take her right hand first. He worked quickly, wrapping the cloth snugly around her knuckles, wrist, and thumb with a practiced ease.
“Wouldn’t boxing gloves be easier?” she asked as he started on her left hand.
Hanma snorted. “Gloves throw off your weight too much. Best to train with what you’ve actually got—your fists. If you ever need to use ‘em for real, you won’t have ten extra ounces of padding to help you out.”
Mira hummed, flexing her fingers experimentally as he secured the last wrap.
“And before you get any ideas, I ain’t doing this out of the kindness of my heart,” Hanma added with a lazy grin. “I just don’t need Koko tearing me a new one for lettin’ you bust your knuckles open on day two.”
Mira smirked. “How considerate of you.”
Hanma let out a short chuckle but then gave her an appraising look. “Y’know, most women don’t—”
“Yeah, well, not to sound like a bad Mary Sue cliché here,” Mira cut in, her tone dry but carrying a faint trace of bitterness, “but I’m not like most women if you haven’t noticed.”
Hanma’s smirk faded for a split second, something unreadable flashing across his face before he tied off the last wrap and gave her wrist a light slap.
“No, ya most certainly ain’t,” he said. Then, just as quickly, his usual cocky grin was back. “Now quit yappin’ and start punchin’—that bag ain’t gonna hit itself.”
Mira slammed her fist into the heavy bag, the impact rattling up her arms. She had to admit, for as sore as she was when she woke up, the constant movement was slowly loosening her muscles. Her legs still ached, and her shoulders burned, but the steady rhythm of hitting the bag was making it easier to ignore.
At least until the sting started creeping into her knuckles. Even with the wraps, each strike sent a sharp ache buzzing beneath her skin. It wasn’t unbearable, but it was definitely making itself known.
Hanma, leaning lazily against the wall with his arms crossed, watched her with an amused smirk. “Feelin’ it yet?”
Mira rolled her shoulders and swung again. “I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh. That’s why you’re startin’ to pull your punches, right?”
She grit her teeth and threw a harder hit, more out of spite than anything. “Shut up.”
Hanma chuckled. “Just sayin’, I ain’t the one you’re tryin’ to impress here.”
Mira huffed but didn’t dignify that with an answer. Instead, she fell back into the steady rhythm of punching. She focused on controlling her breathing, keeping her stance solid, shifting her weight properly—it was methodical.
A few minutes passed before she spoke again.
“I take it no word on Souya over the last couple of days?”
“Nope.” Hanma’s smirk faded slightly. “None of my guys seem to be able to pinpoint even a rough area of Kyoto he’s based in. And why don’t you know where the fuck he holes up anyway?”
Mira hit the bag again, the sting flaring up in her knuckles. “He moves around all the time.” Another punch. “While we were together, we lived in…” she trailed off, counting on her fingers. “Seven different places.”
“Fuck’s sake,” Hanma scoffed. “And I thought Koko was a freak.”
Mira smirked but didn’t argue.
By the end of the day, her entire body was one giant ache—again. Even so, there was a satisfied sort of exhaustion humming beneath her skin.
She stood in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up as she carefully ladled miso broth into a bowl of fresh ramen noodles. Hanma, sitting at the counter, watched with raised eyebrows.
“Didn’t know you could cook,” he mused. “You order takeout every damn day.”
“I was poor my whole life,” Mira said, not even looking up as she placed a slice of chashu pork on top. “Of course I’m going to take advantage of having the city's best food at my fingertips for free. Just because I choose not to cook doesn’t mean I can’t.”
Hanma whistled. “Fair enough.”
She finished preparing the second bowl, this one covered with a traditional tent-top ramen cover for Koko. She placed it on the counter and gave Hanma a look. “For when he gets back.”
Except Koko didn’t get back.
After fifteen minutes, Hanma stretched and leaned over the counter. “We should eat before this shit gets cold and soggy. Snoozes, he loses.”
Mira sighed but nodded, pulling her bowl toward her. They sat on the couch, eating while watching some mindless reality show marathon show on TV.
“It’s Ainori Love Wagon!” he explained to Hanma.
“You mean you seriously watch this brain-rotting shit? And here I thought ya ‘weren’t like other women’,” he mocked, but there was still a hint of fondness to his tone.
“Well yeah, Yuki is going to choose who she wants to be with in the finale tomorrow and I missed the last couple of episodes, so sue me if I take a modicum of interest in the love lives of total strangers given mine is about as hopefully fucked up as it could be.”
“Women,” he muttered, but he didn't argue further as he settled into the sofa and turned his attention to the wall of a TV anyway.
As the hours passed, Mira’s muscles began to stiffen and grow cold once more, and, by the time they’d caught up to the most recent episode, sleep was beginning to tug at all of her senses.
“Gonna crash,” she muttered, getting up.
Hanma didn’t miss the disappointment lacing her words like a fine gauze as she said it. He waved her off with a halfhearted “night.”
She disappeared down the hallway, leaving Hanma alone with the flickering glow of the TV.
Hours passed, tracked only by the growing pile of cigarettes in the ashtray near where his feet were propped up on the coffee table.
Eventually, the front door clicked open, and Koko stepped inside, looking worn but not particularly surprised to see Hanma still lounging on the couch, arms folded, eyes sharp despite the lazy grin stretching across his face.
“Took your sweet ass time tonight,” Hanma drawled.
Koko’s eyes flicked down to the glowing ember at the tip of the cigarette dangling from Hanma’s lips, displeasure instantly creasing his brow.
“Tell me, do you even speak Japanese? Is there a language in which I can better communicate to you that there is NO FUCKING SMOKING inside my house?”
“Lower your damn voice before ya disrupt the little lady’s beauty sleep. Not that she needs it,” he said, though the last part sounded more to himself than Koko. Koko stepped into the dim circle of light cast by the single lamp Hanma had left on its lowest setting, just enough to illuminate a mottle of bruises on his left cheek and the faint dried traces of blood from his nose.
Hanma moved his feet from the coffee table to the floor, planting his elbows on his knees as he hunched forward to look at Koko more closely, a knowing look glimmering in his eyes.
“Been fighting in the Pit, haven’t ya?”
Koko’s eyes snapped to him. “How can you tell? Maybe somebody just punched me while I’ve been out trying to gather intel.”
“Getting into fights and fighting for sport are my specialties. I know the damn difference between the two.”
Koko exhaled sharply through his nose, neither confirming nor denying Hanma’s accusation, but the slight twitch in his jaw told Hanma all he needed to know.
“Been a while since you’ve gone on a bender there,” Hanma mused, tapping the ash off the end of his cigarette directly onto the table out of spite. “You must be really fuckin’ stressed.”
Koko ignored him yet again, his eyes shifting past the couch to the table. His usual spot had a single ramen bowl sitting in front of it, a traditional tent-top ramen cover still intact.
He frowned slightly, stepping closer. “What’s this?”
“Dinner,” Hanma answered easily, leaning back again. “Mira made it. She left it for you since she actually gives a shit if you eat or not.”
Koko’s frown deepened, but he said nothing as he slid into his seat and lifted the cover. The rich, savory scent of miso broth immediately filled his senses, thick with the depth of dashi and a hint of garlic. The noodles had probably softened a little from sitting, but the golden chashu pork still glistened on top, alongside thinly sliced scallions, a half-moon of narutomaki, and a soft-boiled egg marinated to perfection.
He picked up his chopsticks and gave the noodles a cautious stir before lifting a mouthful to his lips. The broth clung to the strands, cold by now but still rich, and the first bite practically melted on his tongue. The miso base was balanced—neither too salty nor too overpowering—with just the right amount of oil skimming the top to give it a silky mouthfeel.
He let out a quiet sigh through his nose. It was good. Really good.
Fuck, he couldn’t remember the last time someone had made him a home-cooked meal. Had anyone done it since he was a kid? He didn’t think so.
Hanma, still watching him like a damn cat watching a mouse, smirked. “Didn’t know she could cook, did ya? Neither did I, to be fair, but then again, I haven’t been living with her for months.”
Koko didn’t answer immediately, taking another sip of the broth, letting the layers of flavor settle in his mouth. Even cold, the depth of the miso, the hint of sweetness from the mirin, the way the pork had absorbed just enough of the broth’s richness without losing its tenderness—this wasn’t just a thrown-together meal. Mira knew exactly what she was doing.
“She orders takeout all the time,” he finally muttered.
Hanma laughed. “Yeah, well, she said somethin’ about growin’ up poor and takin’ advantage of free food when she’s got it. Just ‘cause she doesn’t cook don’t mean she can’t.” He exhaled a stream of smoke. “Smart woman. Though you’d never know it by her choice in television. Made me watch some shitty Asshole Love Wagon show, or somethin’ like that.”
Koko didn’t respond, just kept eating, his movements slower now, more deliberate.
Something about the meal settled a part of him he hadn’t realized was wound tight. Maybe it was the food itself. Maybe it was the fact that Mira had even bothered to leave it for him at all.
Either way, he finished every last drop, then methodically rose to wash his bowl in the sink and padded off toward his bedroom.
“Hey Hanma.,” he paused at the mouth of the hallway, one step from its darkness swallowing him entirely. “Tell her… tell her thanks for the ramen. It was really good.”
“Why can’t ya tell her yourself?”
“I’ll be gone before she’s up. I have an early meeting.” That much was true, though he supposed “meeting” was a bit too generous of a term for a convert meetup in a love hotel with an informant he’d hired to tail Sanzu to see how much he knew about this whole mess.
“Then tell her when ya get home. Which I assume you’ll make sure you do tomorrow if you have an ounce of brains in that big skull of yours.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Yeah, alright.” Koko shut the door to his room behind him and exhaled, running a hand through his hair before collapsing onto the bed. The room was dark, save for the faint neon glow slipping through the blinds, casting fractured streaks of color against the ceiling.
His body was exhausted, but his mind wouldn’t quiet.
He felt… unstable. Like he was balancing on a knife’s edge, and every damn thing happening lately was just pushing him closer to slipping.
Every day was a goddamn exercise in self-restraint—not to tear Tokyo apart, not to put someone in the ground, not to completely fucking lose it until he was certain every threat against Mira had been utterly eliminated—and by the time the day was over, he wasn’t sure he had enough left in him to be around her without doing something really fucking stupid.
That was the problem, wasn’t it?
Because he wanted to be around her. He wanted to be the one training with her, watching her get stronger, cooking dinner with her. Hell, even just sitting on the couch with her, getting drunk and watching some shitty reality television listening to her babble on about who was who and who she liked and hated and other things Koko didn't give a good goddamn about but would gladly listen just to hear her talk.
What he wouldn’t give to be the one experiencing those moments that were so painfully normal to most people and yet so foreign to Koko.
But he wasn’t.
Instead, Shuji Hanma, of all people, was the one who got to be there, day in and day out, while he was stuck running around the city, chasing ghosts and threats and hoping to god he wasn’t too late to stop whatever the hell was coming for her.
And fuck, he felt guilty. For leaving her alone with Hanma every day. For being absent. For whatever role he played in putting her through all this in the first place.
He stared at the ceiling, inhaled deep, and shut his eyes.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, he’d be better.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
But tomorrow came and Koko wasn’t, in fact, better. He still didn’t come home, nor was he there the morning of the following day when Mira grouchily dragged herself from bed.
Which was exactly what brought her to the mat, even despite Hanma’s insistence that she finally give her body a day to rest—to which she’d told him she didn’t need his help and set to work punching at the bag, not caring if she was necessarily getting better or stronger. She just needed something to direct her energy toward.
By afternoon, she’d been at it for hours. Her fists ached, each strike now sending sharp shooting pains up her arms despite the thick but admittedly sloppy layers of fabric she’d wrapped them in, but she didn’t stop. The rhythmic thud of her punches against the heavy bag was the only thing keeping her from spiraling. If she hit hard enough, maybe she could knock out the growing ball of frustration and worry twisting in her chest.
Where the hell was Koko?
Two days. No calls. No texts. No “hey, just figured I’d let you know your murderous psycho ex hasn’t beheaded me. I’m just busy.” Just radio silence.
She knew he was getting himself in the middle of some dangerous shit, on top of his regular Bonten duties, which would necessitate more working hours. She understood that sometimes he had to disappear, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Didn’t mean she had to sit here and pretend it didn’t piss her off—didn’t make her stomach churn with the fear that one day, he just wouldn’t come back at all.
Her next punch landed too hard, sending the bag swinging wildly.
“Damn, you realize that's not me you're punching right?”
Hanma’s voice dragged her back to the present. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, watching her like she was the most entertaining thing he’d seen all day.
Mira ignored him, stepping back into position, rolling out her shoulders before slamming another hit into the bag.
“If you’re looking to release some stress, I have a much better suggestion. Something that ain’t gonna break your knuckles.”
“I’m not fucking you, Hanma,” she said matter-of-factly, punching the bag again.
He stopped its swing with his body, the chains rattling as it fell to stillness. “Not actually what I had in mind, but everyone needs a plan B.”
“Again.” Another punch. “Not happening. The last scary gangster I hopped into bed with landed me here.”
“So ya admit I’m scary now?”
“No, but everyone else seems to think you are.”
“Ever consider they’re right and that maybe you should, too?” She couldn’t tell if it bothered him or pleased him that she wasn’t afraid of him. Maybe a bit of both.
“Fine. Pray tell, what is your great plan to stop my great personal crisis over here?” she snapped sarcastically.
He fished around in his pocket and drew out a small black plastic cylinder, from which he pulled out a green joint, plopping down on the couch punctuated by the metallic strike of his lighter.
After he’d taken a couple pulls to ensure the flared end was lit strong and even, he offered her the joint. For a moment, she regarded it skeptically. She hadn’t been high in a long time. Certainly not in the last year—weed would have made her way too paranoid given her whole ‘in hiding from a psycho ex’ situation—and not for a while before that, either. Not since things with her and Souya had really gone south.
But fuck him. And fuck Koko, too, if he had any problem with this.
She took the joint defiantly, placing it to her lips and inhaling long and slow. After a few moments holding the smoke in her throat, she exhaled it with one forceful puff, which quickly turned into a series of side-splitting coughs as fire seared through her throat. She always hated that part.
“Damn that’s fucking strong,” she said in a raspy voice once she could find it over the tight burn in her throat and chest. Her head was already feeling insanely light, way lighter than it should have so quickly, and she found herself sinking onto the couch, her legs suddenly unwilling to support the now two-fold feeling weight of her body.
He plucked the joint back from her fingers and took a seat on the other end of the sofa. “Haitani Brothers always have good shit.”
Mira let her head fall back against the cushions, staring at the ceiling as the high settled in, warm and numbing. The tension in her shoulders melted first, then the tightness in her jaw. She let her eyes slip shut for a moment, just breathing.
For the first time in what felt like forever, her mind wasn’t running a million miles an hour. No Souya. No Sanzu. No threats. No Koko and the sickening confusing feelings she felt toward him.
She let the high carry it all away—submerge it into a thick, weighted fog that smothered out her worries, her fear, her rage—leaving just the quiet hum of the penthouse and the slow buzz working its way through her limbs.
Hanma stretched out beside her, taking another hit before exhaling toward the ceiling, watching the smoke curl and dissipate.
“You’re quiet,” he mused. “Weird.”
She let out a slow exhale, blinking her eyes open. “Just… tired.”
“Yeah, no shit.” He passed the joint back to her, watching as she took another, slower pull. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised, though. I don’t imagine it’s particularly restful spending a year on the run from a guy like Souya Nase. Not to mention all the other Bonten guys you’ve been dealing with since.”
She smirked lazily. “You included.”
“Obviously.” He grinned, flashing a sharp tooth. “Though, I’d say I’m the most fun out of the bunch. At least moreso than Mr. Wet Blanket Kokonoi.”
She hummed noncommittally, the words to argue slipping through her fingers like water. Everything felt soft and slow, like she was floating.
Then, with a quiet sigh, she muttered, almost absentmindedly, “Koko’s such an asshole.”
“In a lot of ways, sure. But don’t fault the guy because he has the communication skills of a goldfish. He’d just not very good with women–”
“Tch,” she cut him off, rolling her eyes.
“Let me finish. He’s not very good with women
he cares about
. Because there haven’t really been any of those. Not as long as I’ve known him anyway.”
Her face suddenly felt hot and she refused to look away from the flaring red embers of the tip of the joint still pinched between her fingers. “Koko doesn’t care about me,” she finally said in a small, distant voice. “If he did, he’d at least let me know he’s fucking alive.”
“Dollface, I know you're sulking right now and all, but you and I both know neither of us would be here if he didn’t.”
“Yeah, well, he has a funny way of showing it,” she said grumpily, feeling her speech already slowing as the weed continued to penetrate every muscle in her body, slowing things down as if she was moving through a heavy, viscous liquid.
“Look, Koko can be a real oblivious shithead sometimes, but I’ve never seen him care about
anyone
the way he cares about you—himself included. So take from that whatever you will.”
“You’re being uncharacteristically defensive of Koko,” she said, narrowing her eyes in suspicion.
“Yeah well, maybe I’m just tired of watching you two eye fucking each other anytime you’re in the same room and neither of yas being brave enough to do anything about it.”
Shuji Hanma: Grim Reaper and Matchmaker Extraordinaire. Who knew?” She shot him an amused smile, her eyebrows crawling up her forehead. “
“No one outside you, and unless you want a demonstration of my first nickname, I suggest you keep it that way, toots. Can’t have you diminishing my reputation.”
“Mm-hmm, sure,” she said, exhaling a puff of smoke into his face. “You wouldn’t hurt me. The fact that Koko would literally kill you aside, you like me too much.”
“That I do,” he hummed in resigned agreement. “But even so, don’t push your luck.”
Then he smiled that kind of smile that bordered between something genuine and something vicious. That smile had made her feel apprehensive when she’d first met him, but now, she saw it as just another oddly charming idiosyncrasy of the infamous Shuji Hanma. Everyone knew Hanma as a murderer, a psychopath who revelled in the joys of carnage, but that wasn’t all he was. She wondered if anyone had ever really given Hanma the chance to prove that before her.
Mira just returned his smile, feeling it split her face wide, stretching her lips and cheeks more than she could remember a smile doing in a long time.
The second the elevator doors opened with a ding, Koko was smacked in the face by the smell of weed.
“Goddammit, Hanma,” he muttered under his breath, his already foul mood sinking even lower. “What have I told you about smoking in the house?” he snapped the second he opened the door.
“It’s not a cigarette,” Hanma called back.
“Yeah, thanks, the smell gave that much away the second I got off the elevator. Not the point. The rule isn’t limited to just cigarettes, dumbass.”
“Sounds like he needs some of this, too,” Mira drawled as Koko entered the living room, her head lolling back on the cushions of the sofa as she met his gaze upside down.
“Jesus, Hanma, is she high, too?” he demanded, throwing down his briefcase with a little more force than seemed necessary.
“Calm the fuck down. She needed it. Worrying herself sick over your pussy ass.” Koko didn’t miss the way his eyes flickered down to his cheek, which now bore a pretty nasty bruise and cut where he’d taken a fist to the face that split the skin against his cheekbone.
“What did you give her?” he asked accusatorially, sitting down on the couch between the two of him, snaking his head to the side to try to look more closely at her face, studying just how fucked up she was.
Hanma sucked in another drag off the now second joint he’d lit, his voice deepening from his usual baritone to a dense, rumbling bass as he spoke through the mouthful of smoke. “S’just weed, so relax.”
“From where?”
“Where do ya think? The Haitani Brothers.”
“So who knows what else is laced in there,” he bit out, keeping a string of curse words gnashed behind his teeth. He’d promised himself he would start controlling his temper—especially around her. If he could control that around her, maybe he could control other things about himself around her, too.
“Chiiilllll, mooooom,” Hanma drug out the words, long and slow. “Ran knows better than to sell me any of that cut shit. It’s just strong, but she’s fine… aren’t ya, darlin’?” He threw a goofy grin at Mira, who wasn’t paying attention at all, just laying on her back on the couch next to Koko with her arms outstretched toward the ceiling and a languid grin on her face.
“Hmm?” she hummed. “You say something?”
“Nevermind, Little Miss Muffin.”
“Little Miss Muffin?” she repeated slowly, confused.
“Yeah, ‘cause you’re so baked.”
Koko rolled his eyes at the toothy grin on Hanma’a face but Mira seemed to enjoy it because she broke into a fit of giggles and rolled onto her stomach, pushing herself up on her elbows so that her head almost bashed right into Koko’s chin. He froze and so did she, inches from his face. Her eyes were soft and distant, and the smile on her face was real—not forced, not wry, not flirtatious.
Real.
He wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen it before, and he couldn’t lie to himself that it wasn’t nice. Even if it wasn't completely untainted, even if it was just the high talking…that didn’t mean he didn’t want to keep seeing it.
Finally, she knocked her shoulder into his, reaching across his lap for the blunt into Hanma’s fingers, plucking it out and offering it to him. “You want me to bake you, too, Koko?”
A surprise bubble of laughter jerked itself from his chest before Koko could stop it and his half-laugh only made her smile wider. He was keenly aware of how his heart accelerated right alongside the size of it.
He tore his gaze away, looking down at his lap as he shook his head. “You’re a pain in the ass.”
“That a no?” she drawled, placing it instead to her lips and beginning to inhale before he plucked it from her fingers and passed it back to Hanma.
“Someone has to be an adult and keep his guard up for you two brats tonight.” Then before he could stop himself, found himself playfully pinching the pout that had formed in her lips.
Dammit, Koko…
he scolded himself, but she just smiled and laid her head down on his lap, making his back go ramrod straight. She reached up to flick the silver chain that dangled from his ear, like a cat batting at a feathered toy.
“Weeelllll,” Hanma said languidly, rising and stretching. “Looks like you got this under control so I think I’m going to hit the hay.”
“Creating a mess for me to clean up as usual, eh?” Koko said, though there wasn’t any bite behind the words.
Hanma stopped and looked at the two of them, his eyes falling to where Mira’s head was on his lap and then back to Koko’s face, a sly half smile growing all the while. “But you’re so good at it. Wouldn’t want to deprive you of being part of the team.” Then he winked and disappeared down the hall.
Winking at him…what the hell did he know?
Meddling asshole.
It had been what, a week? And he’d already broken almost every rule Koko had set.
Realizing no one had spoken for a few moments, he cleared his throat. “You should get to bed, too.”
“Ughhhhhh,” she moaned dramatically. “Stop talking like my dad. Can’t I just have fun? Life kinda sucks right now, ya know? A girl’s gotta take what she can get.”
Something lanced sharply through Koko's chest, making his ribs crumble inward on his lungs: guilt.
She’s miserable and I’m only making it worse.
Sure, he was protecting her, but what good was protecting a life that wasn’t worth living? He was helping her live but not exactly doing much to give her anything to live
for.
“I’m sorry,” he exhaled, so quiet he wasn’t even sure if she’d hear him. “You can stay up if you want, and I’ll get out of your hair. I’ll be awake and in my office in case anything happens.”
His hands drifted to her head, readying to lift it off so he could slide out from under it.
“And what if I want to have fun with you?” He froze, heart leaping into his throat and…other areas. “You’re never around. You’re gone by the time I get up and barely back before we go to bed—and that’s if you come home at all.” Her words carried the light wistfulness of the weed, but underneath that artificially happy veneer, he could hear the sadness in them, so bright and clear he felt himself wither inside.
“I know…I’m sorry,” he said again, finally releasing the tension he’d been holding in his body since trying to stand, sagging back into the cushions. But he didn’t move his hands. Those he kept lightly tangled in her soft hair, fingertips making micromovements back and forth along her scalp. He had no right to do this—to take comfort in her presence when he hadn’t offered the same courtesy in return, but he couldn’t help himself.
Again.
But then she sighed and nuzzled her head closer to his hands. “Feels nice,” she mumbled, her eyes drifting shut peacefully, and for a few minutes, he wasn’t sure if she had fallen asleep or not. So he just kept teasing his fingers through her hair, relishing every second he could steal of this—this moment, this feeling, this connection that he couldn’t foster.
Just this once.
She finally mumbled, “You don’t have to be sorry, Hajime. You just have to be here sometimes. I know you’re dealing with a lot of shit—most of it on my behalf—and I’m really grateful for it. I am. And I know you can’t be here all the time, but I’m
worried
about you. You can’t even be bothered to send me a text to let me know you’re alive, and then you come home looking like this,” she said, reaching up and gently brushing her fingers over the dark bruise staining his left cheek. “I won’t ask how you got this—mostly because I think it will just worry me more—but every once in a while, I just…”she trailed, her voice barely above a whisper when she finished the thought. “I need you.”
I need you. I need you. I NEED you. I need YOU.
Fuck, she couldn’t be saying that. She didn’t know what she was saying. She didn’t know him well enough to say something like that. If she did…well, no one ever needed Hajime Kokonoi for anything besides money. No one had ever needed
him.
He should deny it, shouldn’t let her form that thread of dependency, not when she didn’t know the whole truth. Not when he could never be what she needed—what she deserved.
But there, gazing down at her face, somehow both so peaceful and so fragile at the same time, he couldn’t make himself say those words. Instead, he said, “Alright,” hating how tight and raspy his voice sounded. “You have me now. So what do you want to do, then?”
She hummed thoughtfully. “How about we play ‘truth or dare’?
He scoffed. “You’re fucking kidding. What are we, in middle school?”
“No,” she pouted. “Though I’m sure you were just as much of a party pooper back then, too.”
“Tch, you can be such a brat sometimes, you know?” he muttered. “Fine, but then I get to start.”
“Fine.”
“Fine. Truth or dare?” God, the words sounded so childishly silly as he said them. He didn’t even think he’d ever played this game when he was a kid—then again, he’d sort of been forced to grow up faster than most.
She hummed again. “Truth.”
“What the hell did you see in Souya Nase, anyway?” Tension snapped through the room with all the force of a bomb, and even her lithe, weed-relaxed body stiffened a little where it lay stretched out next to him and across his lap. But if he was going to play this stupid game, he was at least going to get some answers out of it.
“So that’s how we’re going to do this, huh? Just diving right off the deep end?” she drawled slowly, a quiet resignation to her still intoxicated speech patterns. “And here I was gonna ask your favorite color. Fine, guess I deserve that. Well, it’s not exactly like I hopped into bed with him knowing he was a psychopathic murderer and notorious gang leader. When we met, he was actually sweet. It’s true!” she said pressingly at the look of disbelief on Koko’s face. “Plus, I was at a pretty low point in my life. My dad had died a few months before that and with him, the last of my family, so I was in a bit of a spiral. Numb, going through the motions, drinking and doing a lot of drugs, that kind of shit.
“Then one night in some shitty bar in Kyoto, there was Souya, in all his brazen
the world is mine for the taking
glory. And at least for a little while, he wrapped me in that invincibility and made me remember what it felt like to live again. Before he showed his true colors at least.”
As much as she hated him—and he could tell she truly did—there was a part of her, he realized, that still loved him. Or at least loved a version of him he’d once been to her. Or maybe a version of herself she’d once been with him.
He could hear in the sad way her voice tumbled off the edge at the end. But when she spoke again, she had shaken away that sadness as she tried to jokingly say, “It didn’t hurt, of course, that he looks like a Greek God.”
“Tch.”
“Aw, jealous?” she teased, reaching a hand up and poking his cheek. He swatted it away with an annoyed huff, less annoyed at the fact that she’d said it and more at the fact that there was a grain of truth to it. He hated the way it made him conjure the image of that photograph in his head, with her dreamy gaze that he’d never once seen directed at him. “Don’t worry, Koko, you’re very pretty, too.”
“Oh, fuck off.” He injected every ounce of annoyance he could in his voice, but with the way his heart seized in his chest as she said that, he wasn’t sure even that made it convincing.
“My turn then. Truth or dare?” The flustered feeling melted almost instantly into aprehension, like chucking an ice cube in a pot of boiling water. That was the bad part of this game. Even though it gave him a chance to learn more about her, the reverse was also true, and he wasn’t sure how much of certain parts he was ready to reveal. Not because he didn’t trust her, but because he didn’t trust himself. She could ask him about Akane—a question he knew was still burning in her mind, and one he’d done his damnedest to evade every time it came up. Dodging the truth was one thing, but the idea of outright lying to her put a sour taste in his mouth.
But even worse, she might ask him how he truly felt about her. And what the hell was he supposed to say then?
Still, the idea of what she might dare him to do scared him even more.
“Truth.”
But instead, she asked something that surprised him. “Why don’t you like people smoking around you?” He quirked one eyebrow up as he looked down at her. “Just seems like an odd thing for a gangster. Damn near everyone in the gang world smokes to some degree or another. You’d think you’d be used to it by now.”
Koko took a moment to consider his answer as he kneaded his fingers through her hair, focusing on how the silken strands slipped between his fingers. “I tolerate it around others, but not in my office or house.”
“What, like you don’t already smell like it just from being around everyone else?”
“It’s not the smell or smoke that bothers me. It’s the fire.”
“Why?”
“That’s more than one question, dove,” he said, and even though he was trying to keep his voice nonchalant, he couldn’t quite scrub out the sharp edge of warning in it, one that he hoped wouldn’t only make her double-down on her curiously and pursue it with her next question. She held his eyes for a moment, and though they were still red and dilated, there was a gleam of sympathy in them.
“Truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
“Those scars on your back…How’d you get them?”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment, and he wondered if he’d already gone too far. But rather than scolding him or shutting down, her hands drifted to the hem of her sweatshirt, pulling up the oversized terry fabric, revealing the expanse of soft skin all the way up to just below her breasts, and for just a tiny second, Koko found himself willing her hands to keep going. But that was until his eyes landed on all the scars littered across her skin—a collage of round white puckers and thin silver lines that wound between them, rising about the smooth pale planes.
Fucking hell.
“I’m sure you can already guess Souya gave these to me. Not all at once, of course. A cigarette burn or two here and a shallow slice of his switchblade there—whatever he felt like at the time.”
“Why?”
“Why,” she repeated without the questioning inflection, her voice distant and hollow. “You know, I used to ask that, too. All the damn time.” The words were nearly a laugh, dry and humorless. “Until one day, I realized there wasn’t a reason and that trying to find one only made it all the more painful. Sometimes, he did it when he thought I was being bad or when we were fighting. Others came out of nowhere when things seemed fine.” She tilted her head, nestling it just a little deeper into the slot between his thighs and she turned her eyes up to his, swimming with ghosts he couldn’t see.
His breathing felt shallow, his heart pounding so loudly in his ears that he had to strain extra hard to hear her words over it.
“I told you… Souya isn’t like any of the monsters you know, and that’s because it’s not just that he
likes
punishing and inflicting pain on others like Sanzu or Hanma. It’s that he literally doesn’t understand the
difference
between pleasure and pain. They’re the same thing to him, so he figures they must be to everyone else, too. That’s why it didn’t matter if he thought he was punishing or pleasuring me. The result was the same.”
Without even realizing what he was doing, he reached out and trailed his middle finger down the longest, deepest looking one of the bunch, one that carved the slanting space between her navel and her hip bone. But she didn’t jerk away or yank her sweatshirt back down or even flinch at his touch.
“Ugly, aren’t they?” she said, her tone still light and airy, but undeniably a little sad
“Not at all,” he said quietly, that shaky feeling back in his throat. “Scars are badges of honor at what we’ve endured. The only thing ugly about them is the person who gave them to you.”
A dusting of pink settled over her cheeks, but she didn’t respond to the statement directly. Even so his heart became a noticeable presence in his chest at the thought of making her blush.
Then she suddenly asked, “Truth or dare?”
Which was probably a good thing because it stopped him from blurting out that there wasn’t a single part of her he didn’t find achingly beautiful. Not even that infuriating mouth and monstrously stubborn attitude of hers.
“Truth.”
“Why did you join Bonten?”
Another question that surprised him but one he was grateful for, because it hopefully meant she was dropping her earlier line of inquiry. Still, it wasn’t exactly like this was a simple question either. Just how
had
he ended up here? He thought back through the years, the conflicts, and the rise and fall of different gangs and how he’d switched sides and traded hands along the way, just the money everyone coveted him for.
Finally, he took a long, slow inhale through his nostrils. “Well, I’ve been in gangs since I was a teenager. I joined because Inu–a good friend—asked me to. It was a group called Black Dragon and my friend really believed in their goals, in their leader. Trouble was, the Black Dragon we joined wasn’t the one he remembered. It had changed leaders a number of times and, along the way, had slowly gone rotten. We were defeated in a conflict by the Tokyo Manji Gang, which ironically, was the original gang Mikey created, back when his goals were a lot more noble and innocent than they are now.
“After Black Dragon went down, In–my
friend
and I joined Toman, but that didn’t last long for me. Not after another rival gang decided they wanted to use my financial talents. They threatened my friends so I left to protect them and I never looked back. That gang was called Tenjiku and we had some of the nastiest, most intimidating delinquents in Japan outside proper Yakuza. Even so, Toman eventually stomped them out of existence, too, but… some real bad shit happened leading up to that conflict and Mikey was never the same after it.”
He couldn't help but remember Hanma's role in all that. That Mikey had not only not murdered him for helping Kisaki kill his sister, but let him join his gang still surprised Koko. Even if Mikey forgave him, remembering that was always a good reminder for Koko if he ever found himself getting a bit too trusting of Hanma.
Like now.
“Afterward, he disbanded Toman. Most of the Toman leaders and founders moved on and found other pursuits in life, but not Mikey. Instead, he spent the next few years slowly gathering up us scattered remains of Tenjiku to form what we called back then the Kanto Manji Gang, hand picking those of us with the most talent that could help him accomplish his goal.”
“And just what is his goal?”
“To rule the criminimal underworld of Japan, of course. Beyond that, I don’t think a single one of us could tell you. Sometimes, I’m not sure even Mikey knows anymore. But anyway, now here I am, a decade and a half later, doing the same shit people have always wanted me to do since I was 14—make them money.”
Mira let his words settle in the thick, hazy air between them, her expression unreadable in the dim glow of the city lights filtering through the window. Koko wasn’t sure if she was mulling over what he’d just told her, or if she was just waiting for the next question.
She’d been honest with him—more than he’d expected her to be. Maybe it was the weed loosening her tongue, or maybe she just wanted someone to finally know, to hear the truths she had buried for too long. Either way, it felt like they were standing at the edge of something raw and unspoken, their shared silences holding just as much weight as their words.
So after she picked truth once again, he asked, "Why did you finally decide to run away? I get that you probably only stayed for so long because you were afraid of what he’d do if you tried, so what changed?”
She inhaled slowly. “I decided I wasn’t afraid anymore. Because nothing he could do to me was worse than what he already had. There was no hell he could cast me into that I wasn’t already burning alive in, so I figured, why not try? Worst case scenario, I was back where I started. Or I died—which at the time, didn’t really seem like a worst case scenario to me.”
Again, something in Koko’s chest crumpled upon hearing her admit she could have rather died than stayed. He hated it, hated everything she had endured, and more than anything else, hated Nase for it all. It was such a fierce, burning kind of vitriol that he didn’t know how to handle it. Koko had spent most of his life trying to remain indifferent and ambivalent to everything that happened to and around him. That was the mechanism he had developed to cope with things he’d endured, and after so much time, he’d forgotten what it was like to feel something so intense—something so deep and primal—it felt like it was splintering out of the very marrow of his bones.
It wasn’t enough just to keep her safe from him. It wouldn’t be enough until he had killed Souya Nase with his bare hands in the most drawn-out and painful way possible for what he’d done to her. Torture had never been to Koko’s otherwise refined taste—he paid Hanma handsomely enough for that—but in this case, he was more than happy to make an exception.
Realizing she was staring up at him with those wide doe eyes filled with concern, he cleared his throat and ran his free hand through his hair. “Your turn.”
There were so many things he could say in response to what she’d just told him, but he didn’t trust himself with any of them. They weren’t her burden to bear.
“Okay,” she said, a little hesitantly. “Truth or dare then?”
“Truth.”
“Are you just going to keep being boring and picking truth?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, was there a rule that I had to pick dare at some point?”
“No, it’s just lame is all. But fine. Do you like your life? Like what you do with Bonten?”
That one halted the gears grinding in Koko’s head. Did he
like
his life? What the hell did that mean? Did anyone like their life? Wasn’t life just something you endured and tried to make as bearable as possible? People like Hanma seemed to enjoy theirs well enough—but Hanma was also a fucking nutjob, so was he really the standard by which he should be holding himself?
No, he knew he wasn't like Hanma—who did this because he genuinely enjoyed it. He did it because what the fuck else was he supposed to do with his talent? Become a banker? A stockbroker? Ironically, Koko felt more morally sound being part of a literal criminal enterprise than that. Both were criminals; one was just a legal lie, while the other made no pretense about what it was.
He must have looked as confused as he felt, because she quickly retracted. “Forget I asked that. That’s not really a very fair question, is it? Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. You just took me by surprise. I just…guess I’ve never really thought about it before. The way I’ve always looked at it, is that this is just what I’m meant to do. Money obviously has value and because I’m good at making it, that means
I
have value. This job…it gives me purpose. It’s using the one skill I have to fulfill a role in the world and whether I like it or not has never really entered into the equation.”
“You think that’s your only reason for being alive? To make money for other people?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Well, when you say it like that, it sounds sad.”
“It is sad,” she said quietly. “It’s sad because it means you’re unvaluing yourself. I think you’re good for a lot more than just your money.”
“Well, then you’d be about the only one.”
“One is better than none. I don't have anyone left alive to value me.”
“Not true. You've got me. And Hanma, I guess.”
Koko wasn’t sure what to say to that. He wasn’t used to being valued for anything beyond what he could provide. It was a strange, foreign concept—one he wasn’t sure he had the capacity to believe, even if Mira did.
But before the silence between them could stretch too long, he exhaled through his nose and shook his head. “Had enough emotional damage for one night yet?”
Mira let out a quiet laugh, the tension easing just slightly. “Emotional damage is my constant companion. I’m used to it.”
He reached for the lighter on the table, flicking it open and shut absentmindedly.
You and me both
. “Truth or dare then?”
“Truth.”
“Are you just going to keep being boring and picking truth?” he playfully mocked her own words back at her, trying to bring lightness back to the conversation that kept taking such dark and depressing turns.
“I have an excuse.”
“And that is?”
“That I’m coming down off of being really fucking high right now and your lap is super comfy and if I say dare, I’m probably going to have to leave it.”
He chuckled at that, fingers finding the splays of her hair once more. “If you could go back in time, back to the night we met, and not enter that room, would you?”
“No,” she said, and the surety and immediateness of her reply startled him. “I’d take that tray of drinks down to that room in a heartbeat.”
“Why?”
She pushed herself off his lap slowly, instead resting her cheek on the point of her shoulder as she looked at him with a lazy, sleepy smile on her face. “Because then I wouldn’t have met you.” An invisible fist closed itself around his throat, squeezing him into utter silence. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected her to say, but it wasn’t that.
It wasn’t her looking at him like that—like he was something good. Like meeting him had been a stroke of fortune instead of just another cruel twist of fate.
He swallowed hard and forced out a laugh, trying to shake off the way his chest felt too tight. “You must still be high if you think meeting me was a good thing.”
Mira smiled, slow and lazy. “Maybe. But if you asked when I’m sober, I promise my answer will be the same.” Her eyes were drooping, her voice getting softer and more suffused with drowsiness as she murmured, “Truth or dare?”
He looked at her—
really
looked at her—debating if he should say what was on the tip of his tongue. “Hypothetically speaking…what if I were to say dare?”
“I’d do what any good middle schooler would do." A slow, smile spread across her face. "I’d dare you to kiss someone.”
“Dear God, I hope not Hanma,” he managed to rasp out despite the fact that his lungs felt suddenly completely emptied of all oxygen.
She hummed a sleepy chuckle. “Don’t worry. He’s not who I had in mind.”
Koko’s stomach fell through the floor, like a cinder block dropped on tar paper, and he could suddenly feel the heat radiating off her skin like a wildfire, the way her breath fanned against his cheek as the space between them narrowed. His pulse hammered in his ears, drowning out every rational thought. It would be so easy—so fucking easy—to just give in. To let go.
For once in his goddamn life, he wished he could be irresponsible. He wished he could forget about everything—the past, the future, all the razor sharp edges of the present—and just get high with her. Kiss her, again,
finally
. Just turn it all off. Tell his inhibitions to go fuck themselves and let the world blur at the edges until racing thoughts slowed to something bearable. Drown in the warmth of not just her body but her presence, in the way she was looking at him, in the fleeting illusion that things could be simple.
But that was exactly why he couldn’t.
Because if he let himself slip, even for a second, he didn’t know if he’d be able to pull himself back.
Before he could make a choice, she was already asleep, her head dipping forward onto his shoulder, breath evening out in soft little exhales. The moment—whatever it had been—was gone. And maybe that was for the best.
Exhaling through his nose, Koko shifted carefully, scooping her up in his arms. She barely stirred, curling instinctively against his chest, trusting him in a way that made something in his ribs ache yet again.
He carried her to her room, setting her down gently and tucking the comforter up around her shoulders. For a long moment, he just sat there at the edge of her bed, watching the steady rise and fall of her breathing, his fingers hovering near her hair before finally brushing away a stray lock that had fallen across her face.
Leaning down, he pressed his lips against the warm skin of her forehead.
“There. You didn’t specify where."
She didn’t stir.
He sighed, letting himself linger for just a second longer before murmuring, “Goodnight, little dove.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Mira woke up the next morning and remembered it all—with more than a slight degree of embarrassment.
The haze of the night before clung to her mind like the smoke of the weed, thick and inescapable. The weight of exhaustion pressed against her limbs, but her mind refused to stay quiet, replaying the details over and over. The things he’d said. The feeling of his hands in her hair. On her naked torso, tracing the scars the last person she’d allowed to get so close had given her.
And then there was Koko himself—the way he haunted her thoughts, tangled up in emotions she couldn’t quite name. The way he’d looked at her, hurt and compassion so visceral in his eyes as he’d stared down at the things she’d never shown to anyone. The way he’d so clearly
cared
.
She shut her eyes and exhaled slowly.
That should have made things easier, right? Knowing he cared? It should have settled something inside her, but it only made the questions worse. Because even if that was true, what did it mean? What did it
change?
Fucking nothing.
She turned onto her side, staring at the wall, willing herself not to get caught up in it.
But then there was Akane.
The name he uttered in his sleep. The name she couldn’t get out of her own mind since she’d heard it.
She had wanted to ask who she was. What she was to him. But even in the moment, Mira had known better. That name felt like stepping too close to a live wire, or fragile glass, something that would shatter if she pushed too hard. Koko could be like that, too—cold and untouchable until you said just the wrong thing, turned just the wrong way. One minute, he was pressed against her, burning at the edges. The next, he was gone, a ghost slipping through her fingers.
And she didn’t want that.
Whatever that name meant to him, it was enough to wake him in a panic. Enough to keep him up at night, chasing sleep he never seemed to catch.
Still, she had learned some things about him. Some pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place, even if the full picture still eluded her.
He didn’t like fire. She had felt it in the way he stiffened at Hanma’s lighter, the way his eyes flickered toward the flame like it was a threat. Which made the flame tattoo on his arm all the more puzzling.
She flushed, warmth creeping up her neck at the thought of it. Not just the tattoo, but the skin beneath it—the way it stretched over his muscles, the way the ink moved with him. It was burned into her mind, impossible to ignore.
Nope.
Not going there.
Instead, she latched onto another thought: the man at the club. The one with the white hair and the face with what looked suspiciously like a burn scar. Was that connected? It had to be, didn’t it?
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe she was just overthinking it. But the connection nagged at her, setting her on edge.
Still, none of it gnawed at her more than
the
question. The one that curled at the edges of her thoughts, the one that had been there for weeks, growing heavier with every glance, every unspoken moment between them.
How does he feel about me?
She didn’t want to ask.
Not because she didn’t want to know, but because she was afraid of the answer.
Because no matter what he said, it would change everything.
If he said he didn’t care, it would hurt. More than it should. More than she had any right to let it. And even though she
knew
that was the best answer—the safest, the smartest—it wouldn’t change the hopelessly naive girl still buried inside her. The one that kept hoping. The one that wanted to believe in things she had no business believing in anymore.
And if he admitted he
did
care…
Well, that was a whole other problem.
Koko actually came home for the next few nights after that. She didn’t ask why. Maybe he was trying to make up for disappearing. Maybe he just didn’t want to fight. Maybe he just needed a place to crash. Maybe it was something else entirely.
She wasn’t sure it mattered.
All she knew was that he was there—even though she was certain at times he didn’t want to be.
She caught the way his jaw would tighten, the way his fingers twitched like they were aching for a fight. The way he would look at her sometimes, like he both loved her and loathed her (or maybe himself) for it.
She had been so preoccupied with his ghosts that she had almost forgotten about her own.
The nightmare came for her on the third night he’d come home, fast and violent, a whirlwind of memories she could never escape, no matter how far she ran.
But this time, it was different.
She stood in the middle of a darkened street, the neon lights of Kyoto flickering and buzzing like dying fireflies. The air was thick with smog and the putrid scent of sewage, choking her lungs, stinging her eyes. She knew this street. She had walked it before, when blood had covered the hand still clutching the ballpoint pen she’d shoved through one of his men’s necks with a white-knuckled grip.
Run.
The word echoed in her skull, but her legs wouldn’t move.
Then she saw him.
Souya.
His jet black hair reflected off the neon yellow street lights like the noon-day sun off a raven’s feathers.
He stood across from her, just beyond the glow of a flickering street lamp. His face was cast in shadow, but she knew those eyes—empty, bottomless, swallowing her whole. He was grinning.
Something dripped from his fingertips. Thick. Dark. A slow, steady rhythm, like the ticking of a clock. It wasn’t until he stepped forward that she saw what he was holding, and her stomach turned to lead.
A head—with a single dangling earring glinting in the streetlights as he moved it and black and white hair that was sickeningly familiar. Koko’s lifeless eyes stared up at her, mouth slightly open like he had been about to say something. Blood dripped from his severed neck, splattering onto Souya’s shoes.
“No—” The word barely made it past her lips.
Souya cocked his head, smile widening. “You didn’t really think he could save you, did you?”
She tried to take a step back, but her feet were stuck, being swallowed by the pavement that had turned into thick, viscous liquid like black quicksand, pulling her down.
He lifted Koko’s head higher, tilting it toward her like he was showing off a prize.
“He looks surprised, doesn’t he?” Souya mused, twisting the head slightly. “Like he didn’t see it coming. Funny, huh?”
Her breath came in sharp, shallow gasps.
This wasn’t real.
It isn’t real. It isn’t real. It isn’t real…
But it
felt r
eal. The blood smelled real. The weight of Souya’s viscously cold stare pressed against her, pinning her down.
Then, with a sharp jerk of his wrist, he threw the head at her.
She screamed, and the world shattered around her.
Mira woke with a strangled cry, body tangled in the sheets, hands scrambling at nothing. She was still gasping, still trying to claw her way out of the dream, when the door slammed open.
Two figures. Guns drawn. For a brief, fractured second, she thought she was still in the dream. That Souya had followed her out of it, until reality snapped into place.
Hanma.
Koko.
Their eyes scanned the room, fingers hovering just over their triggers. But there was nothing here. No blood. No body. Just her, shaking and drowning in sweat and terror and memory. She pressed a trembling hand over her mouth, turning slightly so they might not see the tears streaming down her face as she fought for control.
Koko didn’t say a word. Just tilted his chin toward the door in silent command. There was something wild in his expression—something raw, like he was still caught between instinct and understanding.
Hanma hesitated, then shrugged and muttered something inaudible before disappearing into the hall. The door clicked shut behind him.
And then Koko moved.
Crossed the room.
Sat on the edge of the bed, and, without a word, pulled her into his arms. And suddenly she could breathe again, if only just a little.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered into the folds of his t-shirt. “I thought I was over this by now. It’s been so long since I had one of these…I thought I was finally healing even just a little. It’s been over a fucking
year
. I should be past this part by now.”
“Now how this shit works. Trauma is a bitch,” he paused and began rubbing small, soothing strokes into her back. “And you never have to apologize for yours. Ever.”
She felt the muscles in her throat constrict to the point of pain so she didn’t say anything. She just let him hold her, as she let the fear, the anxiety, and anger over what utter shit her life had been for the last five years—everything negative she’d been holding inside for so long—burst from her chest like a ruptured pipe.
“I’m sorry,” she babbled into him. “I’m so stupid. So fucking weak and stupid.”
“You’re not, so stop fucking saying that,” he said, but his voice was kind.
Mira barely realized when they shifted, when he laid back against the pillows and took her with him. His warmth seeped into her, steady and solid, grounding her in the present. He smelled faintly of cologne and cigarette smoke, something sharp yet familiar.
She wasn’t sure how long they lay there in silence before he finally spoke.
“You wanna talk about it?”
“No,” she said, voice a little hoarse from screaming.
He didn’t press. Just let out a quiet exhale, his fingers brushing idly over her arm. “That’s fine. Just…know I’m here if you change your mind.”
“You don’t have to stay. I’ll be okay.”
“Aren’t you the one who told me when you have a nightmare all you want is for someone to hold you? I’m not singing for you though—trust me, you don’t want that either:”
She smiled despite herself. “I know, but… I know you’re busy and have a hard time finding time to sleep as it is so–”
“Stop over complicated everything. Do you want me to stay or go? That’s all this boils down to.”
Mira turned slightly to look up at him, but his expression was unreadable. Just shadows and half-truths in the dim light. It was a loaded question and they both knew it. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to answer that,” she admitted cautiously, and she heard the slight hitch in Koko’s breath at it. He adjusted his arm around her, pulling her closer.
She should have been able to sleep now. Should have felt safe, tucked against him like this.
But instead, she felt warm. Too warm.
It started as a slow, creeping heat, spreading from where his fingers brushed against her arm, down to where her bare legs tangled with his under the sheets. She hadn’t realized just how close they were. How his body fit against hers, the steady rise and fall of his chest pressing into her back.
Her stomach fluttered.
She tried to ignore it, to focus on the quiet, on the rhythm of their breathing.
But she was so acutely aware of him now—of the solid weight of his body, the faint rasp of his breath against the back of her neck, and the warmth of his hand resting just above her hip, fingers curled loosely but there.
She swallowed, her mind growing hazy.
Before she even thought about it, she shifted slightly—just enough to press her hips back against him.
Koko went still.
“Mira.” His voice was low, edged with warning.
She ignored it, pressing back again, slower this time.
He inhaled sharply, fingers tightening on her hip. “Don’t.”
But he didn’t pull away. She could feel him now—hard against her lower back. A thrill shot through her.
“Go to sleep,” he muttered, but it lacked conviction.
She turned her head slightly, enough to catch his gaze in the dim light. “And if I’m too afraid to sleep?” she admitted softly.
Koko clenched his jaw, and for a moment, she thought he’d shove her away.
Instead, he exhaled through his nose, muttering a curse before suddenly wrapping his hands firmly around her hips, and forcing them down into the mattress, and using them to leverage his body up and over hers, until he was poised right over the top of her like a predator over its prey. He moved his right hand up from its near-bruising grip on her hip and wrapped his long, spider-like fingers around her throat with a deadly delicacy as he squeezed just enough to make the heat between her thighs roar into an inferno.
“Is this what you want?” he breathed. “You want me to fuck you?”
Yes. No. Yes. No, no no!
God yes.
He leaned over her, his breath hissing in her ear. “To ram into that pretty little pussy until you can’t walk? You want me to use you as my own personal fuck toy?” Yes, yes,
yes.
“To be exactly the kind of man you assumed I was when I took you in?”
Yes, ye–wait.
“The kind that you have nightmares about?”
She froze beneath him, for the first time taking a second to examine the enraged sparks smoldering beneath the cloud of lust in his dark eyes.
Those eyes said they wanted her—there was absolutely no doubt about that and he seemed to be just as aware as she was at how poorly he was hiding that fact—but they also said he knew he shouldn't and that he would goddamned if he would ever stoop to a level that make him akin to Nase. That tug of war between intellect and impulse, reason and pure, carnal pleasure, but was visible it may as well have been a reflection shimmering on the surface of the dark pools.
Koko’s chest rose and fell heavily, his breath coming out in slow, measured exhales as if trying to force control over himself. His fingers flexed once around her throat before he released her, the warmth of his hand vanishing as he suddenly pushed up and off her.
The weight of him disappeared, leaving behind only the ghost of his touch and the electric charge in the air. He moved swiftly, shoving himself up to sit on the edge of the bed, elbows braced on his knees as he dragged both hands down his face before letting them fall, hanging loosely between his legs.
His head dropped forward, his black and white hair falling over his eyes as he stared down at the floor, chest still rising and falling.
"Fuck," he muttered under his breath, voice low, guttural.
Mira was still frozen in place, her body throbbing with an ache she now knew would never be relieved. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.
Humiliation crashed into her all at once. Her skin prickled, her stomach twisting as shame crept up her throat, thick and suffocating.
What the actual hell was that?
She had never thrown herself at anyone like that before. Never felt herself slip into a trance so deeply that she stopped thinking altogether. She had practically begged him, writhed against him like some pathetic, desperate thing.
And now—
Now he sat there with his head in his hands like he regretted every second of it.
Like he regretted
her.
A hot flush of embarrassment burned across her face, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe. She had to get out of there. She couldn’t lie here, drowning in the weight of his rejection, of her own mortification.
When she moved to sit up, the sheets clinging to her heated skin, Koko’s voice cut through the air like a whip.
"Stay."
She stiffened, her fingers curling into the sheets as she turned her gaze toward him. His back was still to her, broad and tense beneath his thin shirt. His hands were no longer in his hair but clenched into fists at his sides.
Mira swallowed. “I should go,” she murmured, voice barely above a whisper.
His shoulders tensed.
"You shouldn’t," he said, still not looking at her. His voice was tight, like he was gripping onto the last threads of his restraint. “It’s your room.”
Mira exhaled sharply, biting the inside of her cheek. "Yes, but I’m the one who—” She cut herself off before she could finish, the sting of humiliation growing more fierce by the second. "I should go," she repeated, moving to swing her legs off the bed.
And then, before she could even blink, he moved. Faster than she could react, his hand shot out and caught her wrist, firm but careful.
Mira inhaled sharply, her pulse hammering against her ribs as she looked at him.
Finally, he turned his head just enough for her to see his profile, his jaw locked, eyes still dark with something unreadable.
"Stay," he said again, quieter this time.
Mira swallowed past the lump in her throat, willing her voice to stay steady. "Why?"
Koko let out a slow, controlled exhale, his grip on her wrist tightening just slightly before he let go.
"Because if you leave, you're going to think this means something it doesn't."
Her stomach dropped. She hated how easily he could read her. How easily he could dismantle her defenses with nothing more than a few carefully chosen words.
Mira forced herself to keep her chin up. “And what does it mean, then?”
Koko’s lips pressed into a thin line. Finally, he sighed, rubbing the back of his neck as he turned his gaze toward the ceiling.
“It means…” he began cautiously, voice low, then turned to look at her, eyes sharp, unwavering. “That just because I’m not going to fuck you—when you're afraid, when you’re vulnerable—doesn’t mean I don’t want to be near you. I’m capable of enjoying a woman’s company without wanting to get off from it. And I have no intention of using you or taking advantage of you—especially when you’re not in your right mind.”
Mira stared at him, her throat tight, heart hammering against her ribs.
He was saying it wasn’t rejection. He was saying it was restraint.
And God, what the
fuck
was she supposed to do with that?
She let out a slow, shaky breath, nodding once, even if she wasn’t entirely sure what she was nodding to.
Koko held her gaze for a long moment before finally exhaling, rubbing at his face again before standing up.
"Come on," he said, reaching for the blanket and tossing it over her. "Go to sleep."
Mira hesitated but eventually laid back down. She watched him for a moment as he turned away, running a hand through his hair. And then, just when she thought he was going to leave—
He sighed heavily and climbed back into bed, settling down beside her.
Not touching her. Not pulling her close. Just there.
And somehow, that was enough.
“Koko–”
“Sleep.”