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Chapter 10 : I don't wanna hurt you but you live for the pain, I'm not tryna say it but it's what you became
TW : suicidal thoughts, mentions of eating disorders.
Tbh, I always get a little anxious right before hitting publish.. Sometimes I worry that the direction of the story or the choices I make won't resonate with you. That's why your comments mean the absolute world to me. They help reassure me and keep me motivated to write. Please let me know your thoughts, even if it's just a few words, it would honestly make my day. Take care fellas.
Setsuko lay stretched along the length of the sofa, one leg slightly bent to make room for him, while Manjiro was half on top of her, sprawled on his stomach with his head resting low against her chest. One of her arms rested loosely across his back, more from comfort than intention, while her other hand moved absently through his hair. One of his hands rested loosely at her side, shifting every now and then in small, absent movements against the fabric of her shirt. She would never stop being amazed that Manjiro could be so incredibly clingy and obsessive sometimes, yet also incredibly avoidant and elusive.
He hadn’t said much since he’d joined her in the suite. He was tired. More than usual. They had ordered food out of habit more than hunger, barely touching it, the silence stretching without either of them trying to fix it, and at some point he had just let himself sink onto her, head resting against her breasts like the effort of holding himself upright had become optional. Setsuko couldn’t help thinking he hadn’t taken his benzodiazepines, or whatever he usually used to keep himself together.
For a while, neither of them said much. She played absently with the soft ends of his hair, then let her nails drift lightly beneath the hem of his shirt, tracing idle, shallow lines against the warm skin of his back, and he stayed still beneath her touch.
After a long silence, she murmured, “You know, no one really knows what happened,” she shifted slightly beneath him, adjusting her shoulders against the cushions as his head pressed more fully into her chest, “after you dissolved Toman,” she said. “Before Bonten. Nobody knows where you were or what you were doing.”
Manjiro answered without any real inflection, voice slightly muffled, dulled by the fabric of her shirt and the fact that he hadn’t even lifted his head from where it rested against her. “I know.”
That made her smile faintly. “Obviously.” Her fingers returned to his hair more slowly this time. As they moved, they caught for a brief second on uneven skin beneath, the faint ridges of old scars she hadn’t noticed before. She didn’t comment. Her hand just softened slightly after that. “I want to know.”
Still, he didn’t answer right away. When he finally did, his voice was low and flat in the way it always was when he said something just to annoy her on purpose. “You’re not the only one.”
She tipped her chin down slightly to look at him, though all she could really see was the top of his head. “Did I not earn special treatment ?”
“No.” The answer came too fast and he made no attempt to defend himself.
She huffed, a little offended, and sank into the cushions. “Fine. Keep your secrets, then.”
He let the silence stretch, long enough to be irritating. Then, just as she was about to speak again, he said, “I went to Manila.” Setsuko went still. Her hand, which had been idly scratching just beneath his shirt, stilled flat against the warmth of his back. He kept his eyes on the sofa's backrest. “I stayed there for a while.”
“With who ?”
“With people who knew more than I did.”
That was such a Manjiro answer that Setsuko almost rolled her eyes. “What people ?”
This time, he actually answered. “The mafia.”
The word settled between them more quietly than it should have. Setsuko felt something shift in her chest, not shock exactly, she had always known what he was capable of, but something close to vertigo all the same. She looked down at him more carefully now. “And they just… took you in ?”
He gave the smallest shake of his head. “No. I made myself useful.”
Setsuko was quiet for a second, then asked, “What does that mean ?”
Manjiro didn’t answer immediately, and she could feel the change in him before she heard it. Just a subtle withdrawal inward, like he was stepping into a room in his own mind he didn’t visit often. “It means I did what they asked,” he said at last. “I learned fast. I didn’t complain. I didn’t hesitate.” His tone never changed and that, more than anything, made it worse.
Setsuko swallowed. “What kind of things ?”
He was quiet for a moment. “The kind that made them trust me.” Every now and then, the back of his foot knocked lightly against the sofa in an absent, irregular rhythm.
“Like an initiation ?”
“Something like that,” he said. “Only no one had to force me into it.”
That was enough to make her chest tighten a little. She didn’t press right away. Instead, she let her hand move again, slower now, a quiet anchor more than a distraction. Manjiro didn’t acknowledge it, but he didn’t pull away either.
“How old were you ?”
He seemed to think about it. “Don’t remember. Maybe somewhere between seventeen and nineteen.”
Too young, far too young for whatever version of him had ended up in Manila trying to learn from monsters because he’d decided that was the only path left.
Her hand softened in his hair without her meaning it to, and after a second she bent her head just enough to press a brief, absent kiss to the crown of his head. “And that was enough ?” she asked after a while. “Just proving you could handle it ?”
“No,” then, with the same unnerving calm, “they wanted loyalty too.”
Setsuko frowned slightly. “How do you prove that ?”
Manjiro didn’t answer right away. For a second, the only thing she could hear was the quiet rhythm of his breathing against her. “By not stopping once you start,” he said at last. “You do what they ask. You don’t flinch. You don’t decide which parts you can live with and which parts you can’t. You do it until they stop watching you like they’re waiting for you to crack.”
Setsuko was quiet for a moment, her fingers moving more slowly through his hair now, less absent-minded than before. “And that was enough ?”
“For most of them, yes. For the rest, I learned what they wanted before they had to say it.” That sounded harmless on paper, but Setsuko knew it absolutely wasn’t. “I watched how they spoke to each other. Who got listened to, who didn’t. What they respected. What they were afraid of. What made them feel insulted.” His voice stayed low and matter-of-fact, stripped of any self-importance. “You can learn a lot if you shut up long enough.”
She let that sit for a second, adjusting one of her legs beneath his weight when the position started to pull uncomfortably at her hip. “So you were just there,” she murmured after a while. “Doing whatever they asked.”
“Mm.”
“What did you even do when you weren’t working for them ?”
This time, something quieter passed through his face. Not softness exactly. Just a subtle shift, as though the answer belonged to a different part of the story. “There was a girl.” The words landed more softly than she expected, but not softly enough. She didn’t stop touching him. She did, however, become very aware of her own hand in his hair. “She was the sister of one of the men above me. She liked to go out. Parties. People. Noise. She took a lot of shit.”
“Drugs ?”
“Yes.” He stayed quiet for a second. “She liked trying things. So I did too.” Setsuko was quiet. Majiro had a way to make self-destruction sound very casual. She almost said something, then thought better of it. It would have been a little rich coming from her, considering she’d had her own brief affair with cocaine when she was younger. If she cared to look too closely, there was probably something unflattering to be said about her too.
“Wait. Is that why you know so much about drugs ?”
“That’s exactly why. She had tattoos, like, everywhere,” he added after a second. “And she changed her hair color often.”
That was so far removed from anything she associated with him that it almost made her smile. With a dryness that was just a little too deliberate, she couldn't help but say, “that is… deeply not my aesthetic.” Being Setsuko, comparing herself to that stranger had been inevitable. She genuinely tried not to feel jealous of some reckless girl from years ago but there was still a slightly twisted part of her that couldn’t help wanting to be the only woman he had ever given his attention to.
Manjiro stayed still. “I know,” he said. “She was fun and easy to be around. That was all that mattered.”
Setsuko hummed softly, not because she found that particularly convincing, but because she knew exactly what kind of girl he meant now. Loud, reckless, half-destructive and probably beautiful in a way that looked accidental. The kind of person who could make a city like Manila feel less lonely if you were eighteen and too numb to call it that. “Did that help you with them ?”
“No.” That answer came immediately. “She had nothing to do with any of it. I was with her because I wanted to be and because I could.”
That sat heavier than it should have. Setsuko looked away for a second, then back down at him again. He had been with her because he had wanted to. Asshole. “Were you in love with her ?”
This time, he was quiet long enough that she almost wished she hadn’t asked. “No, we weren't actually dating. We just drifted through the city, drinking, getting high, and fucking. She was teaching me Filipino. Love was off the table.” he said eventually.
After a moment, because now she needed the answer whether she liked it or not, she asked, “So what was she, exactly ?”
“She was the first girl I touched,” he answered after a moment, his tone unchanged. “The first who touched me.”
Setsuko didn’t speak right away. For some reason, that detail felt far more intimate than if he’d phrased it more crudely. “Was she in love with you ?” Too many questions came at once. Had he been gentle with her or rough ? Had he looked at her with the same intensity he looked at Setsuko ? Did that girl shiver as much as she did whenever his lips lingered against her neck ? Did he nibble at her hipbone the way he sometimes did with her ? Was she thinner than her ? Manjiro interrupted her thoughts before they could spiral any further.
“No.” He lifted his head slightly then, just enough to angle a look up at her as he added with a raised eyebrow, “you’re getting strangely invested.”
“I’m curious, Manjiro,” she said lightly. “It’s not every day you tell me about your past.”
“Mm.” He didn’t sound convinced. “Of course,” he muttered as he let his head drop back down against her breasts, the words coming out more muffled this time before he resettled more comfortably against her.
Setsuko gave the back of his shoulder a light, offended tap for that. She forced herself to refocus the conversation. There was no way she was going to make herself sick over something that had happened years ago. Manjiro loved her. He had told her so, and she believed him.
“And her brother trusted you because of her ?”
“Eventually.” He went quiet for a second, then added, “Not just him. The man above him liked me.”
That phrasing alone made her stomach turn a little. “The boss ?”
“Yes.”
She felt a strange little chill at that. “And you wanted him to bring you into… what, exactly ?”
“Everything.” He said it so simply that she almost hated him for it. “At the end of my… initiation, he told me that if I ever built something of my own, I’d owe him a place in it.”
Setsuko’s fingers stopped entirely now. She looked down at him, frowning more openly. “So what happened ?”
Manjiro was quiet for just long enough to make the room feel slightly colder. Then he said, in the same voice he’d used for everything else, “I put a bullet in his head.” Setsuko stared at him, knowing he could probably feel her heartbeat speeding up. How little it seemed to cost him to say it. He didn’t move. Didn’t look up at her this time. “He thought he’d have a say in Bonten. I made him believe that would be what would happen, but it was never my intention.” Manjiro straightened up slightly then, just enough for his gaze to find hers properly. For the first time since he’d started talking, there was something darker in it. “I don’t share,” he said.
Setsuko should have been disturbed, probably. She was, a little. But underneath that was something worse, something she didn’t want to examine too closely, the uncomfortable awareness that this, too, was intimacy with him. Not softness. Not sweetness. Quieter now, she murmured, “that’s terrible.”
Manjiro’s expression didn’t change, but he closed his eyes again and settled more comfortably against her, as if that qualified as a conversation ending naturally. “You wanted to know,” he said.
Slowly, she slid her hand out from beneath his shirt and let it travel up just behind his ear before her thumb drifted lower, brushing once over the tattoo at the nape of his neck, lingering there without thinking. “I did.”
And now she wasn’t sure what was worse, the fact that he had told her, or the fact that some part of her was already wondering what else he had never said out loud.
“No more questions now. I need to sleep.”
Setsuko smiled softly. Manjiro could shift so abruptly from something frightening to something almost deceptively young. “Here ? Like this ?”
“Here,” he muttered, eyes half-shut. “Like this.”
When Setsuko woke up, the room was still dark. For one disoriented second, she thought she had slept through the night entirely, but then she noticed the thin gray light leaking around the curtains and realized it was already afternoon. She stayed exactly where she was, curled on her side beneath the blankets, staring blankly at the wall across from her. The memory of Rindou’s face came back slowly. Then his voice. Then the look in his eyes when he realized the truth. Setsuko shut her eyes immediately.
Beside her, Manjiro shifted slightly. She felt him before she heard him, the mattress dipping faintly beneath his weight. “You’re awake,” he said eventually.
Setsuko made a small noise that wasn’t quite an answer.
The silence stretched again after that. Neither of them moved. Outside, rain tapped against the windows.
At some point, Manjiro reached for his phone on the nightstand. She heard the vibration coming in one after another. He looked at the screen for maybe two seconds before locking it again and tossing it aside. “You should eat something.”
Setsuko’s throat tightened instantly. The idea of food felt grotesque and impossible. “I can’t.”
Manjiro didn’t argue, didn’t tell her she had to. For a moment she thought he was going to get up instead, but the mattress shifted again and suddenly warmth settled behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat of him without him fully touching her. One of his hands came to rest lightly against her forearm.
Setsuko pressed her mouth hard against the sleeve of the sweatshirt she was wearing as the first sob finally forced its way out of her chest. Small at first and humiliatingly weak. “I’m so tired,” she whispered, “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to survive anymore.”
Then another sob. Her shoulders started shaking violently beneath the blankets. She struggled to breathe. She had no desire to do anything, didn’t know what to do, didn’t want to sleep, didn’t want to stay awake. She didn’t want to be alone, and she didn’t want to see anyone. She felt as if she were living on borrowed time.
The hand on her arm tightened slightly, thumb brushing once against her skin in a slow, absent movement. “You’re thinking too much,” he murmured quietly.
This was exactly how it always happened : he hurt her, the world collapsed, and then somehow he became the only place left where she could survive it.
Setsuko cried harder, muffling the sound against the fabric while the bed dipped slightly behind her as Manjiro lowered himself back against the pillows without letting go of her arm.
And the worst part, the truly unbearable part, was that she silently begged him never to let her go.
Eventually, after hours of silence and crying herself into exhaustion beneath the blankets, she had stopped saying no every time he quietly asked her to come sit in the living room instead.
The apartment was dim when she finally curled up at one end of the couch, still wrapped in the oversized sweatshirt she had slept in, her hair tangled, her face swollen from crying. Manjiro sat beside her without crowding her, one arm stretched lazily across the back of the sofa while his phone rested face down on his thigh.
Setsuko stared blankly at the cup of tea cooling between her hands.
“You haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
“I said I’m not hungry.” Her tone came out sharper than she intended. A sob escaped her before she could stop it and suddenly she was crying again, covering her eyes with both hands like she was ashamed of how easily she kept falling apart.
Manjiro watched her for a second before finally reaching over. His hand settled instead at the back of her neck, fingers sliding slowly into her hair, grounding.
Setsuko folded toward him almost immediately, forehead pressing against his shoulder while her breathing shook violently. “I’m sorry,” she whispered against the fabric of his shirt. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t answer. His hand just kept moving slowly through her hair while the apartment darkened around them by degrees, afternoon dissolving into evening without either of them really noticing. At some point he managed to make her drink a little water. Later, food arrived, neither of them really touched, the containers abandoned half-open on the table while muted television light flickered silently across the room. The silence between them changed shape throughout the day, sometimes heavy, sometimes almost peaceful, exhaustion slowly dulling the sharpest edges of the disaster.
By the time rain started again outside, Setsuko was curled beneath a blanket with her head resting heavily against Manjiro’s lap, her body folded into itself along the couch while he sat beside her in silence, one hand moving absently through her hair.
At some point, he dragged a hand back through his own hair and exhaled quietly. “They’re getting long.”
Setsuko glanced at him without much interest. “Since when do you give a shit about your appearance ?” The bitterness slipped out automatically.
Manjiro ignored it completely. “Will you cut it ?”
Setsuko frowned immediately. “I’m not a hairdresser.”
“I know.”
“If I fuck it up, that’s your problem.”
A faint shrug. “Fine.”
She stared at him for another second, almost suspicious of how normal the conversation felt. “…okay.”
Without another word, Manjiro stood up and disappeared down the hallway. She heard drawers opening, cabinets shutting, things moving around. A minute later he came back carrying electric clippers, a pair of scissors, and a towel slung over one shoulder.
The sight of it almost made something in her chest ache. It was so stupidly domestic, so painfully ordinary.
Manjiro dropped everything before sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the couch like this was the most natural thing in the world.
Setsuko sighed softly through her nose and pushed the blanket away before sliding down behind him and reached automatically for his hair.
He handed her a hair tie without turning around. Setsuko gathered the silver strands together slowly, twisting them into a ridiculous little palm tree at the top of his head before securing it there. She swallowed hard. “You look stupid,” she muttered.
“Yeah ?”
“Like a depressed pineapple.”
A soft breath left him. The sound settled somewhere warm and painful inside her chest. Manjiro switched the clippers on then, the sudden buzzing noise filling the room as he adjusted the guard before handing them to her.
For a while, neither of them spoke. There was only the vibration of the clippers beneath her fingers, almost-white strands falling slowly onto the towel around his shoulders, the steady warmth of his body sitting between her legs.
And little by little, without her fully noticing when it started happening, the pressure inside her chest loosened. Not gone, but quieter. Because cutting his hair required attention and precision. Her hands stopped trembling after a while because they had something concrete to do besides hold grief.
When she finally switched the clippers off, the sudden silence felt soft instead of oppressive. She released the rest of his hair from the tie, strands falling loose again around his face.
Manjiro stayed still while she leaned closer, carefully trimming the uneven pieces around his jaw. “You’re concentrating really hard,” he observed quietly.
“I don’t want you blaming me if you end up ugly.”
“Mm.” His voice sounded lower now without the buzzing filling the room. After a while, he spoke again. “Rindou called me twenty-two times today.”
Her hands paused for half a second. “…what did you do ?”
“I turned my phone off.”
That almost made her laugh. Rindou had never been the kind of person who talked when he was hurt. He broke things. He drank. He vanished for days. But calling over and over again like that meant something worse. Desperation, rage rotting into panic.
For one terrible second, all she could picture was him alone somewhere in the city, chain-drinking and smoking himself sick while replaying the previous night over and over in his head. And despite everything, guilt flooded her so violently it almost made her cry again. The scissors resumed their slow movement, but more carefully now. “Can you promise me something ?”
Manjiro’s eyes lifted slightly, watching her reflection vaguely in the dark television screen across the room. “Depends.”
Setsuko swallowed once before speaking. “If Rin comes for you, don’t hurt him.”
Silence. The scissors stopped moving entirely this time. Manjiro stayed facing forward for a few seconds before speaking. “You really think I don’t know he put his hands on you ?”
Setsuko’s throat tightened instantly. “That’s between me and him.” She forced herself to continue anyway, fingers tightening slightly around the scissors resting against his shoulder. “Please,” she said quietly. “Just promise me.”
Manjiro finally tilted his head back enough to look up at her properly. He didn’t like this, she could feel it immediately and for a second she genuinely thought he might refuse. A long breath left him quietly through his nose. “…fine.” The answer came flatly, reluctantly.
Setsuko stayed still behind him. “That’s not a promise,” she insisted.
“You always do this,” he muttered tiredly, “you always make me say things out loud.”
She leaned forward until her forehead rested against his shoulder, closing her eyes for a second. “Manjiro, please.”
Another silence. Then finally, “I won’t hurt him.” The words sounded restrained, almost dragged out of him against his will.
She lowered her gaze immediately after, blinking hard once before returning to his hair like concentrating on the uneven strands in front of her suddenly mattered very much.
When she finally finished, Setsuko leaned back slightly to look at her work. “There,” she murmured softly. “Done.”
Manjiro ran a hand through the shorter strands, testing the weight of them before tilting his head slightly. “Not bad,” he decided.
Setsuko rolled her eyes faintly. “High praise.”
His hand closed lightly around her wrist before she could pull it away completely. Manjiro lowered his head just enough to press a kiss against the inside of her wrist.
Setsuko smiled sadly at him then reached for her phone while he stayed seated on the floor between her legs. “Koko wants to get drinks tomorrow,” she said after a moment of scrolling.
“Are you planning to go ?”
“I think so, if I feel better.”
A short silence followed. “What are you gonna talk about ?”
Setsuko blinked once, already hearing the unpleasant shift in his tone. “I don’t know, Manjiro,” she replied, “I haven’t written the script for my future conversation yet.” Her eyes lifted toward him with deliberate false innocence. “Why ? Are there specific topics I should avoid ?”
His expression didn’t change. “You’re gonna talk about us.”
A sharp laugh escaped her immediately. “Oh, sorry,” she snapped, “I didn’t realize the subject was confidential, you know, considering you already blew up my entire fucking life by announcing it to your little subordinates.”
A small muscle shifted in his jaw. “First of all,” he said quietly, “change your tone.” The calmness of it only made her angrier. His eyes stayed on hers. “Second, you still didn’t answer.”
“First of all,” she shot back immediately, “fuck off.” She didn’t lower her eyes. “Second, it’s none of your business what I talk about with Koko !”
His dark eyes burned into her. “It becomes my business when you start needing another man to deal with me.”
The sentence hit exactly where it was supposed to. Setsuko immediately moved away from him. “Oh my God,” she laughed bitterly. “You cannot possibly be jealous of Hajime.”
“I’m not jealous. I don’t like him getting involved. If you wanna talk, then talk to me.”
And somehow that pissed her off even more because there was indeed no jealousy in his voice. No emotion at all. Just that horrible detached tone he slipped into whenever he wanted her to feel guilty without openly accusing her of anything. “Oh, right, I forgot I’m not allowed to have a friend !”
Manjiro stood up slowly from the floor and Setsuko immediately hated that she had to tilt her head back slightly to keep eye contact with him. “You think Kokonoi knows you better than I do ?”
“No, I think Hajime actually knows how to speak to people without turning everything into some fucked-up psychological power game !” Setsuko stared at him, the romantic illusion of his protection from today suddenly dissolving into the harsh reality of who he actually was. He wasn't just keeping her safe, he was tightening the perimeter of her cage. “You spend the entire fucking day acting caring and gentle and then the second another person tries to help me, you start this shit again ! You know what ?” she continued bitterly. “I was actually gonna tell Koko that despite your insane fucking temper, I was gonna tell him I had good reasons to love you, but when you get like this…” She stopped herself abruptly. “Fuck this” she said, grabbing the blanket beside her roughly. “I genuinely cannot do this today. I'm tired and your face is giving me a headache.”
Manjiro watched her stand up. “Stay here.”
“No.” Her voice cracked violently. She hated that, and hated him seeing it. “I can’t try not to drown just for you to start acting like this because someone else was nice to me for five fucking minutes.”
Setsuko turned away before he could say anything else and walked back toward the bedroom with fast, uneven steps.
She slammed the bedroom door behind her hard enough to make the wooden frame shudder in the quiet apartment. She let herself slide down onto the mattress, curling onto her side almost immediately and burying her face in her crossed arms. Her throat ached from the sob she had managed to swallow right before walking out.
Twenty, maybe thirty minutes passed, measured only by the sound of the rain heavy against the glass. Then, the bedroom door clicked open.
Setsuko didn't move. She didn't want him to see her face, didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he had completely shattered the fragile calm she had fought for all afternoon. She forced her breathing to slow down, relaxing her shoulders with deliberate, agonizing effort. She closed her eyes, pretending to sleep, letting him believe it. She felt the edge of the mattress give way as Manjiro sat down beside her. He didn't pull her into his arms, and he didn't continue the argument.
Her body still hummed from him, from the violence and the wanting. But her mind drifted elsewhere, to a memory of warmth, laughter, the faint scent of Ran’s cologne. And guilt came crashing back, familiar, suffocating.
She wished she could hate Manjiro, it would be easier. But she didn’t. And that, that was the real tragedy.
Mikey woke up feeling like he had only closed his eyes a few minutes ago to the sound of cupboard doors closing somewhere in the kitchen. For a few seconds he stayed still beneath the blankets, staring vaguely at the gray ceiling while his brain caught up slowly.
He got out of bed eventually and padded into the kitchen, shirtless and half-asleep, his sweatpants hanging low on his hips and his hair slightly messy from the pillows.
Setsuko was standing barefoot in front of the open pantry, clutching an oversized bag of kit-kat like she had been caught stealing.
For one strange second he just watched her. Because this was not normal. Setsuko usually ate like someone permanently trying to repair herself. Healthy food, expensive fruit, protein bowls. She read ingredients. Avoided sugar. Controlled portions without realizing she was doing it.
And now she was standing in his kitchen at eight in the morning aggressively eating super-chemical and sugary snacks straight out of the bag with swollen eyes and tangled hair.
The second she noticed him watching, embarrassment flashed visibly across her face. “I was hungry,” she muttered immediately.
Mikey leaned silently against the doorway. “I can see that.”
She glared at him in reflex and shoved another kit-kat into her mouth almost defensively.
Despite himself, something in his chest loosened slightly at the sight, because for once, she was eating without thinking about it. He opened the refrigerator quietly, grabbed a bottle of water, and held it out toward her.
Setsuko stared at it for half a second before taking it. “Thanks.” The silence after that felt awkward in a strangely peaceful way. Finally she looked away first. “I have an appointment today.”
“I know.”
She nodded slightly, still focused on the bag in her hands instead of him. “I need to stop by my apartment before. I left some paperwork there.”
Mikey watched her for a second. He understood immediately what she actually meant. Space. Air. A few hours away from him after yesterday. “I’ll drive you,” he said quietly.
That finally made her look up, the offer had clearly surprised her. “No,” she answered a little too quickly, “it’s okay, I don’t wanna bother you.”
His jaw tightened faintly at the wording. She could be so exhausting when she got like this. “You’re not bothering me.”
For a second she looked genuinely thrown by the answer before glancing away again. “I’ll be fine, really. You surely have things to do.” she murmured.
Manjiro stayed quiet for a moment before nodding once. “Fine.”
The fragile peace between them settled carefully back into place after that. Setsuko reached into the bag again before speaking. “I’ll probably come back to my place here after and sleep a little.”
Manjiro stayed leaning against the doorway, eyes resting on her a second longer than necessary. “Okay.”
Another silence followed. Then, because apparently she was physically incapable of letting things end normally, “and tonight,” she added, trying very hard to sound unaffected, “if I’m allowed, of course, I’ll go see Koko.”
Manjiro looked at her flatly. Setsuko took another bite of cookie with deliberate innocence. He ignored the obvious attempt to restart the argument. “You’re allowed.”
Then she smiled sweetly at him in the most irritating way possible. “Oh, thank you, sir, how incredibly kind of you.” A calculated piece of defiance meant to remind him that even if he owned the roof over her head, he didn't own her tongue.
So she still had enough energy left to test him after spending most of yesterday emotionally disintegrating in his apartment. Manjiro looked at her for a few seconds in silence with enough displeasure in his expression to make it very clear he didn’t appreciate the tone. “Save your sarcasm for Kokonoi.”
“Fine,” she muttered coldly. She shoved another biscuit into her mouth almost aggressively before dropping the bag onto the counter harder than necessary. “I’m gonna take a shower. Those things are gross anyway.”
Manjiro watched her brush past him toward the hallway without another word.
He stayed alone in the kitchen listening to the water start running behind the wall, jaw tightening faintly despite himself. Because somehow, even after all these years, Setsuko still had the unbelievable ability to create an argument out of fucking nothing.
His eyes rested vaguely on the half-open bag of kit-kat she had abandoned on the counter. Then he picked up his phone and finally called Rindou back.
The line connected almost immediately. “Hello ?”
Mikey immediately knew he'd woken him up. His voice was rough with sleep, low and unfocused. “You done blowing up my phone ?”
A grunt came through the speaker. “Yeah, sorry about that. Was drunk.”
“I figured.”
The mattress creaked faintly through the speaker. Mikey heard sheets rustle and imagined Rindou finally sitting up, still half-asleep and hungover, realizing there was no point in pretending he could go back to sleep now.
"You know, I’m trying to figure out which part pisses me off the most. Her ? You ? The fact that Ran's dead before I can punch him for being fucking blind ?"
“Ran wasn’t blind, he saw what he wanted to see.”
“Listen, I just wanna understand something. I’d like to understand how the girl who was practically letting herself die from grief can also run straight into another man’s arms.”
The words settled heavily into the silence. Mikey’s expression didn’t move. He had spent most of yesterday listening to Setsuko cry herself sick and had watched her stare at walls for hours. Whatever explanation Rindou was looking for, he wasn't going to find it from him. “Maybe you should’ve asked her that instead of treating her like a whore,” he said calmly.
Rindou inhaled sharply through his nose. “Ran would’ve done worse if he’d found out.”
Mikey could picture it perfectly. Ran's rage, the inevitable violence that would've followed. None of that mattered now. “But your brother isn’t here anymore.” The sentence landed with surgical coldness. And before Rindou could answer, he continued. “And if you’re that desperate to talk to him, Sanzu would be happy to send you where he is.”
For the first time since the call started, Rindou didn't immediately fire back. Mikey heard nothing but his breathing. He should have understood the threat. Good.
Unfortunately, his silence didn't last long. “For years, every time somebody crossed a line, or got greedy, or forgot where their loyalty belonged, you made an example out of them. You spent years lecturing us about loyalty more than anyone, and then, then you went and fucked your lieutenant's wife.”
“Be careful Haitani, don't forget that I don't owe you any kind of explanation. Neither does she, by the way. You're neither her husband nor her brother.”
“Is that a threat or a promise ?”
The bathroom door opened behind him. Mikey glanced over his shoulder to see Setsuko step into the hallway, a towel wrapped around her body. She walked past without acknowledging his presence, disappearing into his bedroom and quietly closing the door behind her.
His eyes lingered briefly on the closed door before crossing the apartment in silence. He stopped beside the living room window and looked out over the city below. The rain had started again sometime during her shower. Only then he lifted the phone back to his ear, lowering his voice slightly.
“I don’t have to make threats. People with brains figure it out on their own. But I’m gonna make an exception for you. Setsuko thinks I’m stupid enough to believe you didn’t touch her. She asked me to leave this alone, but If I ever find her the way I found her last night because of you again, we're gonna have a very different conversation.”
He heard Rindou exhale slowly through his nose. A tired sound, the one of someone smart enough to recognize exactly where the line had been drawn. “Now go drown your hangover in coffee and get your shit together. You have work today.”
A heavy silence followed, thick with unsaid words and a pride that had been utterly broken. Through grit teeth, Rindou finally swallowed his anger. “Yeah. Understood,” he muttered, and the line went dead.
Outside the hotel bar, rain streaked lazily down the windows overlooking Roppongi, blurring the neon signs into colored smears. They were in the kind of place where no one ever raised their voice, except Koko, apparently.
“I get that you couldn’t ask anyone for advice,” he said, tone already sharp, “but what the fuck were you thinking ?”
Setsuko stared at the bottom of her glass, the ice melting too fast. “I don’t know. He was just… there. You know, with those dark eyes and…”
“Oh so you’re telling me,” Koko cut in, incredulous, “that you blew up your marriage and destabilized the most powerful criminal organization in Japan for Mikey’s dead-fish eyes ?”
Her jaw tightened. “Stop yelling at me ! You have no idea how hard it was to resist !”
“Oh, fuck you,” he muttered. His patience cracked like thin glass. “Being friends with you is like having a five-year-old friend with a drinking problem. You idiot. I’ve known him for over ten years, you think I don’t know the effect he has on people ?”
Setsuko almost smiled at that, just a flicker. The truth in his words stung more than the insult ever could. She took a sip of her sparkling water. “I don’t have a drinking problem, I’m pregnant.”
Kokonoi had just taken a sip of his gin tonic when something seemed to click in his head. His eyes widened slightly as the realization settled. “Wait,” he said, leaning forward. “Yeah. Let’s talk about that baby, Setsuko. Who’s the father ?” Setsuko grimaced. Part of her wanted to unload the weight she’d been carrying for months, but dragging Kokonoi into it meant painting a target squarely on his back. She took five seconds to think. Five seconds too long. “Please tell me you had the basic intelligence to use protection with Mikey,” Kokonoi said flatly.
Setsuko squirmed uncomfortably in her chair. “Well, yes, at the beginning...”
Kokonoi inhaled sharply, then held up a hand to stop her before she could continue. “You know what ? Actually, don’t.” He rubbed his forehead with visible regret. “I have absolutely no desire to hear about the disgusting things you two do in bed. I also do not want to know who got you pregnant. I would really like to keep the fragile peace of my soul intact.”
Setsuko rolled her eyes. “Contrary to what you seem to think, there’s nothing disgusting about what Manjiro and I do. It’s actually pretty gentle and…”
“I said no !” Kokonoi cut in immediately, raising both hands now like he was physically defending himself. “That’s my limit. I’m begging you. Not another word.”
Setsuko gave him a sad smile before turning serious again. “We’re having… problems right now. Actually, that’s probably the understatement of the century.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I figured. When you walked into the Chinese restaurant the other day, it was unsettling.” Setsuko lifted her eyes toward him. “You looked like a frightened animal on its way to the slaughterhouse.”
A tight knot formed in Setsuko’s throat. She looked back down at the table. “He decided to make it public on his own,” she said after a moment. Her voice had lost some of its earlier sharpness. “It was a punishment. He’s angry with me.”
“Why ?”
Setsuko stayed quiet for a moment. Now that Koko knew, she realized, for the first time in months, that she actually had someone she could talk to. Though Koko was probably the worst possible person for comfort. He judged too easily and had very little respect for kindness. “Because he didn’t know I was pregnant,” she said finally. “I never told him.”
Koko looked at her for a second. “Again,” he said, “why?”
She sighed and leaned back in her chair, exhaustion settling visibly into her posture. “Because I was afraid of how he’d react,” she admitted quietly. “Because somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that having a child would be the end of whatever this is between us.” A small, bitter smile crossed her face. “And maybe I didn’t really want it to end.”
“I’d like to understand what’s actually going on between you two.”
Setsuko wet her lips and slowly stirred her drink. “At first, it was just sex. We’d see each other every now and then, and over time it became… more serious.”
“How serious ?”
She shrugged lightly. “Like two people who share a certain kind of intimacy for long enough, I guess.” Her gaze dropped briefly to the glass in her hands. “I think it happened naturally. We just… fell in love.”
Kokonoi looked genuinely unconvinced. “No offense, but the idea of Mikey being in love sounds completely impossible to me.”
A small laugh escaped her. “Oh, he’s definitely not… conventional,” she admitted. “In almost three years, I can count on one hand the number of times he actually told me he loved me.” She smiled faintly, something tired and fond mixing together in her expression. “He has a fucking terrible personality, he’s emotionally dysfunctional, and he likes punishing me way too much but…” Her voice softened slightly. “I know he loves me, in his own fucked up way.”
Koko grimaced immediately. “And when you say punishment…”
Setsuko rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, Koko, Manjiro doesn’t lock me in some weird red dungeon.” A tired laugh escaped her. “He just has this constant need to remind me that he’s the one in control.” She took a sip of her drink. “One night I was late meeting him, and he left without waiting for me. Didn’t warn me, didn’t answer my calls, nothing. He ignored me for almost a week.” Her mouth twisted at the memory. “And when he finally got over being pissed, the first thing he said to me was that I better not be late again.”
“Very mature of him,” Koko deadpanned. He sighed in resignation. “Listen, I’m not angry that you cheated on your husband,” Koko continued finally. His tone was almost calm, which was never a great sign. “That’s your business, and you’re a grown woman. I’m angry because you cheated on your husband with that sociopath. You’re putting you and all of us in danger.”
Setsuko’s fingers toyed with the straw in her glass, the ice clicking against the rim. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”
He exhaled sharply. “Yeah, you’re sorry, I’m sorry, everyone’s sorry. You are selfish as hell. Both of you.”
Maybe he was right. She had betrayed Ran, hurt Rindou, and turned half of Bonten against her. Somehow dragged Kokonoi into a situation he never asked to be part of. She couldn't even argue. And the worst part of all of that was that if she had the chance to go back and undo everything, she wasn't entirely sure she would.
“You make him sound like a monster and half the time I know you're right. And then he does something stupid like making sure I eat breakfast, or he remembers some completely insignificant thing I told him two years ago.”
“Setsuko.”
“Or he sits beside me for six hours while I cry and doesn't complain once.”
“Stop.”
A tiny laugh escaped her. “See ? That's exactly the problem. He’s not cruel with me,” Setsuko said quietly. “He’s still himself, but… softer.” Kokonoi rolled his eyes so hard it was almost theatrical. She ignored him and continued anyway. “He can even be almost funny, you know.”
Kokonoi pulled a face of pure disdain. “You’re so in love it’s disgusting,” he said flatly. Then he leaned a little closer, squinting at her suspiciously. “Do you have a microphone on you or something ? Bitch, blink twice if you think your life is in danger.”
For a moment Setsuko didn’t answer. She just gave him a small, sad smile. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Koko.” Her fingers tightened around the glass. “Ran and I… we had the world. We were young, rich, in love. I had everything I’d ever wanted in life.” She let out a small, shaky breath. “And then Manjiro walked into my life and everything became completely fucked up. I’m fucked up.”
“You’re not fucked up. Just stupid.”
“Yeah, I thrive off my own stupidity.”
Kokonoi reached into the pocket of his coat. “Here, before I forget,” he said. He placed a small fabric pouch on the counter between them. “This is for you.” Setsuko frowned slightly and opened the pouch. A small black stone slid into the palm of her hand, smooth and heavy despite its modest size. “It’s black tourmaline,” Kokonoi explained. “Supposed to protect you.”
She turned the stone slowly under the light, the surface catching faint reflections of her face. “Protecting me from what exactly ?”
Kokonoi lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “Everything.”
Setsuko gave a faint, tired smile. “Thanks, Koko. What am I supposed to do with it ?”
“Have it set into a pendant. Keep it in your pocket.” He took a sip of his drink, completely indifferent. “I don’t give a shit how you do it, just keep it on you.” His gaze drifted toward her for a moment. “You’re going to need it.”
Setsuko stayed silent for a moment and studied him with an expression that was almost exasperated. “You know you’re a fucking genius,” she said, out of nowhere. “You could be doing anything like tech, or politics, even finance. You could run a legitimate empire and people would applaud you for it ! And yet you’re here. I’ve never understood.”
Kokonoi’s eyes flickered with something faintly amused, faintly irritated. “It’s insulting,” he replied coolly, “that you think I’m not nine moves ahead and haven’t already considered what happens next.”
She narrowed her eyes slightly. “Next ?” she repeated and lowered her voice. “You think Bonten won’t last forever ?”
He exhaled slowly, the sound more tired than dramatic. “Of course it won’t,” he said. “These things always implode.”
She tilted her head. “What, you think that one day Manjiro’s going to get arrested ?”
“No,” he said quietly. “I always thought one day he’ll collapse. Now thanks to you I’m sure he will.”
“I’m touched you think I’m that important, but empires don’t collapse because of a woman.”
“That’s because you still think this is about love. Empires collapse because the people running them stop making rational decisions. Men like Mikey survive because they know how to separate emotions from business. The second they stop doing that, cracks appear. And honestly ? Your relationship should’ve never existed in the first place. The fact that it did tells me enough already.”
Setsuko stared down into her glass for a moment, watching the ice shift slowly beneath the amber liquid. “You make it sound like I’m some kind of natural disaster.”
“You said that, not me.”
A small laugh escaped her despite herself. Setsuko absentmindedly traced the rim of her glass with her fingertip. “I feel so lonely, Koko.” she admitted suddenly. “I have no one. No friends. Nothing.”
Kokonoi didn’t react right away. He took a slow sip of his drink before setting the glass down again with careful precision. “Sweetheart, I’m gonna stop you right there, we’re all in the same boat. Choosing this life means choosing loneliness. You knew that when you stepped into it. Those were your own words.”
“Yes, but I had a family,” she insisted. “I had Ran. I had Rin.” Her voice cracked slightly. “Now Ran is dead, and Rin thinks I’m the worst kind of whore.” She reached into her bag, pulled out a tissue and dabbed at the corner of her reddened eyes, trying to keep her composure even as her mascara threatened to betray her. “Everyone hates me.” She gave a small, bitter smile. “You want to know the worst part of all this ? They don’t hate me because I betrayed my husband,” she said calmly, arms folded, gaze fixed somewhere beyond the glass. “They hate me because I betrayed their feminine ideal.” Kokonoi tilted his head slightly, studying her. “They saw me as the gentle, perfect, devoted wife,” she continued. “Because I worked so damn hard to become the archetype of what a woman is supposed to be.” A faint smile curved her lips, but there was nothing warm about it. “The moment I stopped being that polished woman in their eyes and became just a human being, imperfect, capable of lying, hiding and wanting, that’s when they started despising me.”
Koko let out a quiet breath through his nose. “So what you’re saying, is that it’s just about fucking sexism ?”
“Of course it is, Koko.” Her tone was flat, almost bored. “That, and the fact that everyone sanctifies Ran because he’s dead. If he were still alive, they wouldn’t give a single shit.”
“No,” he said quietly. “That’s not true.” Setsuko frowned faintly. “They would still care,” he continued calmly. “Because this isn’t just some random affair.” He gestured vaguely between them with his glass. “You slept with the only man in this organization everyone knows you absolutely should not have touched. I’m serious. Ran was Mikey’s executive. One of the few people he trusted. And you, you were basically part of the furniture at that point. ”
Setsuko looked away toward the city lights beyond the window. “That’s exactly my point,” she murmured, “they’re angry because I ruined the fantasy, like I woke up one morning and decided to fall in love with him.”
“No,” Kokonoi admitted calmly. “That’s what makes this whole thing such a disaster.” Silence stretched between them, the kind that hummed louder than any music. “Mikey’s dangerous and unstable,” Koko said finally. His voice had dropped, quieter now, almost resigned. “Setsuko… you’re playing with the devil.”
“I married one. I can survive another.” Koko pressed his lips together, but she didn’t stop. “Ran killed someone with his bare hands when he was thirteen. Thirteen. You think I don’t know what my husband was capable of ? So yeah, Mikey kills people. So did Ran. So does Rin.”
“That’s a pretty fucking dark way to look at things.”
“Dark ? Koko, do I have to remind you of your line of work ?” She leaned back slowly in her chair, arms folding tightly across her chest now. “Do you know what’s funny ?” she asked softly. “Nobody ever expects morality from any of you.” Her eyes stayed fixed on him. “Ran was violent. Rin is violent. Sanzu’s completely fucking insane. Mikey is… Mikey.” A bitter smile appeared briefly on her lips. “But the second I become morally questionable, suddenly it’s shocking.”
Kokonoi sighed quietly. “That’s not what I meant.”
“No ?” she asked calmly. “Then what exactly did you mean ?”
Another silence settled between them. “I think,” he said carefully, “that somewhere along the way you got too used to surviving inside this world. To the point where you stopped realizing how fucked up some of this sounds when you say it out loud.”
Setsuko held his gaze for a few seconds. “Or maybe I just stopped pretending otherwise.”
Koko apparently had nothing to say against that. He finished his drink in one gulp and gestured to the waiter to bring another round.
She knew Koko was right about one thing. Somewhere along the way, something inside her had become fundamentally warped. Not just because of Manjiro or Ran. She had always felt that something wasn't quite right with her, and that feeling had only grown stronger over the last few years. And her pregnancy did nothing to help the situation. Her body didn't feel like hers anymore. Her emotions didn't feel like hers either. The thought lingered for a few seconds before she finally spoke. “I think he hates my body.”
Koko raised an eyebrow. “Pretty sure if Mikey hated your body, he never would’ve slept with you in the first place.”
“Maybe not before, but now…” Setsuko looked down at her drink. “The last time we had sex, he barely undressed me.”
“So ?” Koko shrugged. “Sometimes people just fuck without making a whole event out of it.”
“Not us,” she said immediately. “It’s never been like that with us.”
“Why would he suddenly hate your body ?”
She looked at him like the answer was obvious. “Because I’m pregnant and fat.” Her jaw tightened slightly. “He consciously avoided touching my stomach. I know he did it on purpose. Like he wanted me to understand that even his desire comes with conditions now.”
Koko dropped his head into his hands dramatically. “Oh fuck, no. We are not doing this again, okay ?” He looked back up at her. “First of all, you’re not fat.” He paused. “Does he know about your old eating issues ?”
“He does.”
“And you seriously think he’d risk pushing you back into that ?”
Setsuko hesitated. “In normal circumstances, I would’ve said no,” she admitted quietly. “But right now… I don’t know.”
“I think you’re looking at this from the completely wrong angle,” he said finally. Setsuko frowned slightly. “Setsuko… maybe it’s not your body.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Maybe it’s the fact that your body currently represents something he’s trying very hard not to think about.” Koko continued carefully. “You’re carrying a baby. And whether he admits it or not, I think that fucks him more than either of you wants to acknowledge.” He paused briefly. “Avoiding your stomach doesn’t necessarily mean he’s disgusted by you.” Another sigh. “It’s probably the only part of you he can’t look at without thinking about you and Ran.”
A wave of sadness washed over Setsuko. “Can I tell you something very very fucked up ?”
He encouraged her with a wave of his hand. “Go on…”
“If I weren't pregnant, I'd jump off a fucking bridge.”
Kokonoi's expression changed almost immediately. “Don't say shit like that.”
Setsuko let out a small laugh and took another sip of her drink. “Relax. Like I said, I'm pregnant. The bridge is safe for another six months.”
“That's not funny.”
“Good, because I wasn't really joking.” The answer lingered between them longer than either of them seemed comfortable with.
Kokonoi stared at her for a few seconds before reaching for his drink. “Well,” he muttered, “that's probably the most concerning thing you've said all evening.”
Setsuko lowered her eyes again, while her heartbeat climbed unpleasantly inside her chest. The question sat heavily at the back of her throat now, ugly enough that even thinking it felt disloyal somehow. For a few seconds she almost forced herself to let it go. It was the kind of suspicion capable of poisoning every memory afterward, every touch, every moment they had ever shared. But then Rindou’s voice echoed through her head, followed almost immediately by all the things she had tried not to think about, and before she could stop herself, she finally spoke again. “Rin thinks Manjiro might have been behind Ran’s death.”
That made him look at her and Setsuko immediately regretted saying it out loud. Not because she trusted Rindou’s judgment blindly. Rindou was furious, spiraling through betrayal and paranoia badly enough that half the things coming out of his mouth lately sounded self-destructive. She knew that. But still, the accusation now existed between them.
“Yeah,” he said at last. “I’d bet he did.”
Setsuko stayed silent for a long moment after that, her eyes fixed somewhere beyond the rows of bottles behind the bar. “Do you really think he’d be capable of that ?”
Kokonoi froze. For a second he simply stared at her, then leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath. He rubbed his temples, like he was already regretting the direction the conversation had taken. “Fuck, this is a very, very dangerous conversation we’re having right now, Setsuko.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “That’s why I need to know.”
Kokonoi let out a long breath through his nose and looked back at his drink as if the answer might be floating somewhere in the glass. “I don’t know,” he said finally. He shook his head slightly. “On one hand it makes absolutely no sense.” He paused, then lifted his eyes to hers again. “On the other hand…” His mouth twisted faintly. “…it’s completely plausible.”
And somehow that was already enough to make her stomach turn. Setsuko watched him for a long time. Somewhere between the clink of ice and the distant piano, she realized he wasn’t trying to comfort her, just to tell her the truth.
Hajime let out a loud sigh for the hundredth time of the evening. “I swear, you two are the most fucked up people I've ever known. And I specialize in fucked up.”
It was now or never. She knew she could trust Koko. She didn't yet know where her next words would lead, but she had to say them. “Hajime,” she said quietly, “you asked me if I thought my life was in danger.”
Across from her, every trace of irony vanished from Kokonoi’s face. The lazy amusement he had been wearing until now disappeared instantly, replaced by something much harder, much more attentive. His posture shifted almost imperceptibly, shoulders straightening as his gaze locked onto her. “Yeah ?” he said.
Setsuko exhaled a shaky breath. For a moment she didn’t move. The noise of the bar seemed to fade around them. Slowly, she lifted her eyes to meet his. “I think I could be. You know,” she said more quietly, “last night we kinda fought and after, I pretended to be asleep. And I’m pretty sure he spent the entire damn night just staring at me,” she continued, her voice dropping to something almost confessional, “like he was thinking about ways to hurt me.”
Kokonoi suddenly grew serious. “You know that if things go bad, I’ve got enough contacts to make anyone disappear.”
Setsuko stared at him in horror. The last thing she wanted was to drag Hajime into this mess and put him in danger because of her. “Koko, no.”
“Will you listen to me for a second ?” he cut in. “I can get you a new identity. It’s easy, you disappear, problem solved.”
The idea was insane. Leave the country ? Leave Manjiro ? A wave of nausea twisted violently through her stomach. “I don’t know if I could actually do something like that,” she admitted quietly. “And it would put you at risk too.”
Kokonoi reached across the table and rested a reassuring hand over hers. “Hey,” he said softly, “don’t worry about me, okay ?” A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth. “Out of all those fucked-up assholes, I’m the only one Mikey can’t replace. Without me, the whole organization sinks in six months.” He shrugged lazily. “I’m literally irreplaceable. I’ll be fine.”
Setsuko bit down hard on her lower lip, her thoughts racing so fast they made her dizzy. Could she really do something like that ?
Setsuko stood in front of the bathroom mirror in nothing but her underwear, one hand resting absently against the edge of the sink while the other adjusted the strap slipping from her shoulder. The apartment was quiet around her. The kind of silence that left too much room for thinking. She hadn't slept much; memories of her evening with Koko were spinning around in her head. Today, she would have to find the strength to face Manjiro.
Her eyes drifted over her own reflection without really seeing it. The slight curve of her stomach. The exhaustion still lingering beneath her eyes. The marks grief had left everywhere on her body despite the fact that she was still technically young, still technically beautiful.
Rindou’s voice would not leave her head.
If he’s the one behind Ran’s death, I swear I’ll fucking kill you.
She swallowed hard and looked away from the mirror immediately. She slipped on a silk robe and walked toward the altar she had built in memory of her husband. She stared at the photograph of Ran smiling broadly on their wedding day, hair slicked back, dressed in an Armani suit.
Being Ran’s girlfriend, then his wife, had been her pride for a very long time. For years, if someone had asked who she was, the answer had always started with him. Now she wasn't sure she deserved to carry his name at all.
But no matter how much she missed him or how much pain she was in, she never would have erased everything they ever had. Even if she was drowning in grief, she'd rather hang on to every moment that she ever held him, every laugh she ever heard, every shred of happiness they ever had. She would rather spend every moment in agony than erase the memory of Ran.
That was what made the thought so unbearable.
Because if Manjiro loved her like he claimed to, how could he possibly believe removing Ran from her life would ever make her happier ? How could he have watched her break apart afterward and still live with himself ?
No.
The thought infected everything. Every memory, every silence, every unreadable look on Manjiro’s face. The fact that there were still supposedly no leads after all this time. The way the investigation had dissolved into nothing almost immediately despite Bonten’s reach. The way Manjiro had asked her to move in with him so quickly afterward, calm and certain, as if he had already known exactly where she would end up. Even the unbearable tenderness he’d shown her these past few days suddenly felt strange in retrospect, almost impossible to separate from guilt.
No. No. Manjiro would never do that to her.
He could be cruel and possessive and manipulative in ways that left bruises somewhere much deeper than skin. But Ran’s death had destroyed her completely. Manjiro had seen it happen in real time. He had held her while she cried. He had watched her practically disappear inside herself afterward. He knew what Ran had been to her.
He would never. No, he would never. Would he ?
The thought alone made nausea twist violently through her stomach. Because the horrible thing was that once the possibility existed, even for a second, she could suddenly see the shape of it everywhere. And no matter how desperately she tried to reason herself out of it, another part of her kept whispering the same unbearable thing over and over again, echoing Koko's words.
It’s completely plausible.
The restaurant was crowded enough that nobody paid attention to them. Soft music drifted beneath the noise of overlapping conversations, glasses clinking against marble tables and waiters moving elegantly through the dim golden light.
Across from Setsuko, Ran had barely touched his drink. “I need to tell you something.”
She slowly lowered her chopsticks, instantly alarmed by the serious tone Ran almost never used unless something had gone catastrophically wrong. “What’s wrong ?”
Ran immediately noticed the tension in her expression and sighed. “Relax, it’s nothing bad.” He leaned back against the booth. “Just… don’t lose your shit.”
That did absolutely nothing to reassure her. “We’re getting married in a month,” she replied flatly. “If you have something to tell me, say it quickly.”
“It’s not about us, calm down.” He rubbed briefly at his jaw. “It’s about something Mikey asked from us.”
Setsuko picked her chopsticks back up cautiously. “I’m listening.”
Ran glanced briefly around the restaurant before continuing. “He asked us, or rather, decided for us, that we’re cutting ties with everyone close to us.”
Setsuko stared at him blankly. “Seriously ? That’s cruel.”
“Yeah.” He hesitated briefly. “And not just us. He was, ah, he was talking about you too.”
This time, Setsuko looked at him like he was genuinely stupid. “What people, Ran ?” she asked incredulously. “I didn’t need your boss to stop talking to my family.”
Ran carefully set his chopsticks down. “Cupcake, he wasn’t just talking about family.” Before she could answer, he continued. “He meant friends too.”
Setsuko blinked slowly. “I’m sorry ?”
“It’s too dangerous,” Ran replied simply. “The less contact we have with civilians, the safer everybody is.”
“But…” She frowned harder. “I don’t understand. I’m not supposed to see my friends anymore ?”
“No, baby.” His tone stayed calm. “You’re not.”
The realization hit her all at once. “Ran, I have like two friends in my entire life,” she said, staring at him in disbelief. “And you’re telling me I have to get rid of them ? Why ? Why me ?”
“Because you’re already associated with me.” His expression hardened slightly. “And soon you’ll be legally tied to me too.”
“What the fuck are you talking about ?” she snapped immediately. “I literally own like twelve fake IDs. Nobody’s gonna know whose wife I am if I use another name.”
It felt horribly unfair. Not just the rule itself, the fact it had apparently already been decided for her.
Ran slowly massaged his temples, a dangerous sign she knew too well. “Can you cooperate a little, please ?” he muttered. “People know your face.”
“Fuck your fucking Mikey !” she hissed. “He doesn’t even know me. He has absolutely no right to demand anything from me !” Her jaw tightened harder. “I can’t believe you agreed to this.”
“I didn’t agree to shit,” Ran shot back instantly. “We didn’t get a choice.” He exhaled sharply through his nose. “Setsuko, listen. You have me, you have Rin, and you have Koko.
“I don’t care !” she snapped. Several people glanced briefly toward their table before pretending not to. “I need to have girl friends, Ran. I need people who understand me and actually resemble me.” Her voice rose despite herself. “Who am I supposed to complain to when you’re being unbearable ? Your brother ? Who am I supposed to go drinking with ?”
“With nobody,” Ran answered flatly. “That’s over too. For the same obvious reasons.” And no more partying with Rin until dawn either.”
Setsuko let out a short laugh devoid of humor. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
“I managed to get you a reprieve. Until the wedding, you can keep going out and seeing your friends.”
“Great ! Thanks, Ran. Only one month left before I become a fucking nun.”
“What’s the problem anyway ?” Ran muttered, visibly starting to lose patience. “Those girls are bitches.”
“Ran…”
“No seriously. Do I need to remind you they’ve spent years criticizing our relationship ?”
“Because they don’t live in the same world as us, they were raised to marry lawyers and surgeons,” she shot back immediately. “That’s not against you and you know it.”
“That’s bullshit.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “If they were really your friends, you wouldn’t have needed to spend years making them believe your father was some fucking Italian shipping magnate.”Setsuko froze instantly. Because if there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was being reminded that most of her life had been fabricated just so she could fit into places never meant for her.
Ran saw the look on her face and exhaled tiredly. “Look,” he said more quietly now. “You like your life the way it is, don’t you ?” She stayed silent. “You like the clothes, the restaurants, all this shit.” His voice softened into something far more dangerous now, the tone he always used whenever he wanted her to stop resisting him. “You like making your dumb friends jealous.” Setsuko lowered her gaze toward her untouched bowl. “You like your manicures and your overpriced shampoos.” He tilted his head slightly. “Did you ever think I’d be able to buy you a Cartier watch for your twentieth birthday ?”
“Alright, stop. I got it. And stop cooing at me, I’m not a fucking pigeon.”
“No, listen.” He leaned slightly closer. “This is our life now, the one we wanted. And we’re only getting started, sweetheart.”
Setsuko swallowed hard. “But why do I have to sacrifice things ?”
Ran smiled faintly. “Let me tell you something. I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor.” He held her gaze steadily. “And I’ll choose rich every fucking time.” Then, calmer, “so if sacrifices need to be made for this life, we’ll make them together.” He gestured lazily toward her soup with his chopsticks. “Now smile for me and finish your soup.”
When Setsuko came back the next evening, the apartment was quiet except for the television murmuring somewhere inside. Mikey had been staying on his balcony for hours, one arm resting lazily against the chair while the Tokyo skyline flickered below him in blurred colors.
For hours, he had been replaying a conversation he’d had with Setsuko three days ago. What she’d said hadn’t made him react right away, but now that he thought about it, he realized something he’d been trying to hide from himself for two years
How easily she had said it. No accusation hidden beneath the words. She had taken his hand and placed it against her own throat as casually as if she were commenting on the weather. I know you're capable of it.
Mikey had spent years watching himself become someone capable of almost anything. He had broken lives, ordered executions, had cold-bloodedly killed both scum and simple civilians, he was even responsible for the daughter of a former enemy ending up as a hooker in Bangkok. He knew exactly how thin the line was because he'd crossed it more than could count.
The promise he had given her that night lingered unpleasantly in his mind. I'll never do that to you. So what would be left of him if he ever proved her right ?
The sound of the front door finally pulled him from his thoughts.
Setsuko stepped onto the balcony after slipping out of her shoes inside then walked toward him with a small tired smile already prepared on her face like she’d practiced it in her car. Immediately, something felt wrong. She seemed too calm. “Hi.”
Manjiro watched her carefully. “Hey.”
She leaned down to kiss him. And there it was. Tiny, almost imperceptible, but he felt it instantly. The hesitation, the distance.
She stood there for a second watching him silently, the city lights moving softly across her face. “Talking to the moon ?”
“I was thinking.”
“About what ?”
“Nothing.”
That made something flicker faintly across her expression. “It must be fun being you,” she murmured. The sarcasm was there, technically. But it sounded strangely hollow tonight, too tired to properly wound. Setsuko stepped past him toward the kitchen. “Are you hungry ? I brought food.” She didn’t even give him time to answer before continuing while unpacking containers onto the counter. “I got you a yasai itame. You need to eat vegetables.”
Mikey looked at her properly then, watching the irritated concentration on her face as she searched for chopsticks inside the bag. “Are you trying to put me on a diet ?”
Setsuko finally glanced at him, expression flattening slightly. “A diet ? Manjiro, you’re already all bones.” A quiet laugh escaped him before he could stop it. Setsuko’s features softened almost immediately afterward, irritation giving way to something quieter. “I just want you to take care of your health a little,” she muttered softly as she was bringing his food on the low table. “You have the eating habits of a thirteen-year-old teenager.”
Mikey watched her for a moment without saying anything. Setsuko had always done that. Not in obvious ways, she wasn’t the type to fuss over people or hover endlessly at their side. But over the years she had developed a habit of quietly fixing things around him. She did small, irritating acts of care he never asked for and never quite managed to stop her from doing. He still wasn't entirely sure what to do with that. “What did the doctor say ? You were supposed to keep me updated.”
“Yeah, sorry, I forgot. I was exhausted, I spent the whole day sleeping. Apparently I need to “reduce stress” which is objectively very funny considering my current situation. She also said I need to eat a little more. The baby’s fine.”
The conversation seemed to be over. He didn't try to push any further. Mikey nodded once. “Good.” He got back into the living-room and looked down at the steaming container of vegetables, then back up at her face, noticing the slight dark circles under her eyes. He didn’t argue. “And how was your evening ?” he asked eventually.
She opened the refrigerator without looking at him. “Fine.”
Too fast. Mikey’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Just fine ?”
“Koko psychologically analyzed me for two hours.” A pause. “So. Fine.” Normally that would’ve sounded amused. Tonight it sounded distracted. She stayed facing the refrigerator longer than necessary before finally taking out a bottle of water.
Mikey muted the television and Setsuko’s shoulders tightened almost invisibly. Interesting. “You’re acting weird.”
A tiny laugh escaped her immediately. “I’m pregnant, traumatized and sleep deprived. Weird is currently my baseline.” Deflection, again.
Manjiro was still watching her now with that awful stillness of his. Patient, so dangerous. “Setsuko.”
The use of her name pulled her brutally back into the room. She forced herself to shrug lightly. “He thinks you’re bad for me.”
“And ?”
She looked down at the bottle in her hands. “And nothing ? I told him he was being dramatic.”
The silence afterward stretched too long. Because now Mikey understood two things immediately. Kokonoi had absolutely said more than that and Setsuko had decided not to tell him what it was.
Setsuko hated when he got quiet like this because silence was the closest thing he had to a weapon sometimes. The less he spoke, the more impossible it became to tell what he was thinking.
"He called me this morning," he said, with feigned nonchalance.
A tiny, almost imperceptible tremor ran through her spine, but she caught herself quickly, forcing her expression to remain vacant. "Did he ?"
"Yeah. Business," Manjiro lied smoothly. In reality, Kokonoi had sounded exactly as he always did, calculated, professional, and entirely unbothered. But Manjiro knew how Koko operated. He knew his financial manager possessed a dangerous streak of pity when it came to shattered things. "He didn't mention about your drink."
"Yeah, I guess he has to get used to this... situation. Just like everyone else, I suppose," she whispered. She took a sip of water just to have something to do with her hands. “Listen, I don’t have the energy for a fight tonight.”
“A fight ?” Manjiro repeated calmly. “Interesting choice of words.”
Setsuko shut her eyes briefly. There it was, that terrifying ability he had to pull at tiny details until they split open. “I just mean…”
“I know what you mean.” His voice remained flat, but she could feel something underneath it now. Not anger yet, something colder.
Manjiro crossed the room slowly toward her. Setsuko watched him approach and for the first time in years, something cold moved unpleasantly through her stomach watching him walk toward her. Suddenly she realized she genuinely did not know what he was capable of anymore. The thought made her feel sick instantly.
Manjiro reached out, his fingers moving slowly toward her. Setsuko didn't flinch, didn’t pull away. She stayed perfectly still, watching his hand with a strange, clinical detachment as his fingers settled at the back of her neck. His thumb pressed against her skin, a heavy pressure. Usually, this touch grounded her, it reminded her that he was her refuge.
"You're tense," Mikey observed, his voice dropping lower, completely devoid of emotion. His fingers tightened slightly around her neck, pulling her just an inch closer to him.
"I’m fine," she lied, her voice cracking slightly as she finally forced herself to look at him, matching his empty stare with a desperate, hollow innocence of her own. She reached up, calmly but firmly wrapping her fingers around his wrist to pull his hand away from her neck.
Wrong answer. Setsuko was an excellent liar, which was exactly what made her lies so insulting. She was barely even trying. Mikey felt irritation flare hot beneath his ribs.
Cautiously, Setsuko moved past him and went to sit on the couch instead, curling one leg beneath herself like the weight of whatever was happening had suddenly become too exhausting to carry standing up. “We should eat before it gets cold.”
Mikey stayed where he was for another second, staring at her in silence before finally walking over to the coffee table.
Setsuko focused intensely on her food. Avoiding. Again.
Neither of them spoke. Minutes passed in complete silence before he finally set his chopsticks down against the edge of the container with a quiet click. “Are you planning to talk ?”
Setsuko didn’t look up immediately. “I don’t really have much to say.”
Another lie. A worse one this time. Something cold shifted behind Mikey’s eyes. Slowly, he leaned back against the couch, watching her with that terrible patience of his. “I can wait.”
Setsuko’s stomach tightened instantly. “Manjiro…”
“I mean it.” His voice stayed calm. Flat. “I’ll sit here all night if I have to.” Finally she looked at him. She looked disturbed, like someone trying very hard not to think too loudly. Mikey held her gaze without blinking. “I promise you, you’re not sleeping tonight,” he said quietly, “until you tell me what’s going on inside your head.” He wasn’t built for emotional archaeology, but he could be patient. Sometimes. And then, for one horrible second, he saw it. Not fear of him. Fear about him.
Setsuko took a sip of water just to buy herself another second. “Did they find anything about Ran ?”
“No, still nothing. You'd be the first person I'd tell.”
“Alright.” She stayed silent for a moment, as if searching carefully for the right words. “You know, if I’ve learned one thing in this world, it’s that spilled blood never dries.” She looked at the man in front of her, the silver hair she had trimmed, the dark, empty eyes that never revealed a single secret. She had always thought he would never hurt her because he knew it would break her heart. Now, she wasn't sure if he even cared about her heart at all. “And I get the feeling that Ran’s is already completely dry.” There was something underneath the sentence, he could feel it. “Can I ask you something ?”
Mikey watched her carefully. “Yes.”
Setsuko swallowed once. Her eyes lifted back toward him and somehow that single glance carried both the grief of everything they had shared and the ache of everything they never would. When she finally spoke, her voice was calm enough to make the entire room feel suddenly wrong. “Did you kill Ran ?”
Chapter 10 : I don't wanna hurt you but you live for the pain, I'm not tryna say it but it's what you became
TW : suicidal thoughts, mentions of eating disorders.
Tbh, I always get a little anxious right before hitting publish.. Sometimes I worry that the direction of the story or the choices I make won't resonate with you. That's why your comments mean the absolute world to me. They help reassure me and keep me motivated to write. Please let me know your thoughts, even if it's just a few words, it would honestly make my day. Take care fellas.
Setsuko lay stretched along the length of the sofa, one leg slightly bent to make room for him, while Manjiro was half on top of her, sprawled on his stomach with his head resting low against her chest. One of her arms rested loosely across his back, more from comfort than intention, while her other hand moved absently through his hair. One of his hands rested loosely at her side, shifting every now and then in small, absent movements against the fabric of her shirt. She would never stop being amazed that Manjiro could be so incredibly clingy and obsessive sometimes, yet also incredibly avoidant and elusive.
He hadn’t said much since he’d joined her in the suite. He was tired. More than usual. They had ordered food out of habit more than hunger, barely touching it, the silence stretching without either of them trying to fix it, and at some point he had just let himself sink onto her, head resting against her breasts like the effort of holding himself upright had become optional. Setsuko couldn’t help thinking he hadn’t taken his benzodiazepines, or whatever he usually used to keep himself together.
For a while, neither of them said much. She played absently with the soft ends of his hair, then let her nails drift lightly beneath the hem of his shirt, tracing idle, shallow lines against the warm skin of his back, and he stayed still beneath her touch.
After a long silence, she murmured, “You know, no one really knows what happened,” she shifted slightly beneath him, adjusting her shoulders against the cushions as his head pressed more fully into her chest, “after you dissolved Toman,” she said. “Before Bonten. Nobody knows where you were or what you were doing.”
Manjiro answered without any real inflection, voice slightly muffled, dulled by the fabric of her shirt and the fact that he hadn’t even lifted his head from where it rested against her. “I know.”
That made her smile faintly. “Obviously.” Her fingers returned to his hair more slowly this time. As they moved, they caught for a brief second on uneven skin beneath, the faint ridges of old scars she hadn’t noticed before. She didn’t comment. Her hand just softened slightly after that. “I want to know.”
Still, he didn’t answer right away. When he finally did, his voice was low and flat in the way it always was when he said something just to annoy her on purpose. “You’re not the only one.”
She tipped her chin down slightly to look at him, though all she could really see was the top of his head. “Did I not earn special treatment ?”
“No.” The answer came too fast and he made no attempt to defend himself.
She huffed, a little offended, and sank into the cushions. “Fine. Keep your secrets, then.”
He let the silence stretch, long enough to be irritating. Then, just as she was about to speak again, he said, “I went to Manila.” Setsuko went still. Her hand, which had been idly scratching just beneath his shirt, stilled flat against the warmth of his back. He kept his eyes on the sofa's backrest. “I stayed there for a while.”
“With who ?”
“With people who knew more than I did.”
That was such a Manjiro answer that Setsuko almost rolled her eyes. “What people ?”
This time, he actually answered. “The mafia.”
The word settled between them more quietly than it should have. Setsuko felt something shift in her chest, not shock exactly, she had always known what he was capable of, but something close to vertigo all the same. She looked down at him more carefully now. “And they just… took you in ?”
He gave the smallest shake of his head. “No. I made myself useful.”
Setsuko was quiet for a second, then asked, “What does that mean ?”
Manjiro didn’t answer immediately, and she could feel the change in him before she heard it. Just a subtle withdrawal inward, like he was stepping into a room in his own mind he didn’t visit often. “It means I did what they asked,” he said at last. “I learned fast. I didn’t complain. I didn’t hesitate.” His tone never changed and that, more than anything, made it worse.
Setsuko swallowed. “What kind of things ?”
He was quiet for a moment. “The kind that made them trust me.” Every now and then, the back of his foot knocked lightly against the sofa in an absent, irregular rhythm.
“Like an initiation ?”
“Something like that,” he said. “Only no one had to force me into it.”
That was enough to make her chest tighten a little. She didn’t press right away. Instead, she let her hand move again, slower now, a quiet anchor more than a distraction. Manjiro didn’t acknowledge it, but he didn’t pull away either.
“How old were you ?”
He seemed to think about it. “Don’t remember. Maybe somewhere between seventeen and nineteen.”
Too young, far too young for whatever version of him had ended up in Manila trying to learn from monsters because he’d decided that was the only path left.
Her hand softened in his hair without her meaning it to, and after a second she bent her head just enough to press a brief, absent kiss to the crown of his head. “And that was enough ?” she asked after a while. “Just proving you could handle it ?”
“No,” then, with the same unnerving calm, “they wanted loyalty too.”
Setsuko frowned slightly. “How do you prove that ?”
Manjiro didn’t answer right away. For a second, the only thing she could hear was the quiet rhythm of his breathing against her. “By not stopping once you start,” he said at last. “You do what they ask. You don’t flinch. You don’t decide which parts you can live with and which parts you can’t. You do it until they stop watching you like they’re waiting for you to crack.”
Setsuko was quiet for a moment, her fingers moving more slowly through his hair now, less absent-minded than before. “And that was enough ?”
“For most of them, yes. For the rest, I learned what they wanted before they had to say it.” That sounded harmless on paper, but Setsuko knew it absolutely wasn’t. “I watched how they spoke to each other. Who got listened to, who didn’t. What they respected. What they were afraid of. What made them feel insulted.” His voice stayed low and matter-of-fact, stripped of any self-importance. “You can learn a lot if you shut up long enough.”
She let that sit for a second, adjusting one of her legs beneath his weight when the position started to pull uncomfortably at her hip. “So you were just there,” she murmured after a while. “Doing whatever they asked.”
“Mm.”
“What did you even do when you weren’t working for them ?”
This time, something quieter passed through his face. Not softness exactly. Just a subtle shift, as though the answer belonged to a different part of the story. “There was a girl.” The words landed more softly than she expected, but not softly enough. She didn’t stop touching him. She did, however, become very aware of her own hand in his hair. “She was the sister of one of the men above me. She liked to go out. Parties. People. Noise. She took a lot of shit.”
“Drugs ?”
“Yes.” He stayed quiet for a second. “She liked trying things. So I did too.” Setsuko was quiet. Majiro had a way to make self-destruction sound very casual. She almost said something, then thought better of it. It would have been a little rich coming from her, considering she’d had her own brief affair with cocaine when she was younger. If she cared to look too closely, there was probably something unflattering to be said about her too.
“Wait. Is that why you know so much about drugs ?”
“That’s exactly why. She had tattoos, like, everywhere,” he added after a second. “And she changed her hair color often.”
That was so far removed from anything she associated with him that it almost made her smile. With a dryness that was just a little too deliberate, she couldn't help but say, “that is… deeply not my aesthetic.” Being Setsuko, comparing herself to that stranger had been inevitable. She genuinely tried not to feel jealous of some reckless girl from years ago but there was still a slightly twisted part of her that couldn’t help wanting to be the only woman he had ever given his attention to.
Manjiro stayed still. “I know,” he said. “She was fun and easy to be around. That was all that mattered.”
Setsuko hummed softly, not because she found that particularly convincing, but because she knew exactly what kind of girl he meant now. Loud, reckless, half-destructive and probably beautiful in a way that looked accidental. The kind of person who could make a city like Manila feel less lonely if you were eighteen and too numb to call it that. “Did that help you with them ?”
“No.” That answer came immediately. “She had nothing to do with any of it. I was with her because I wanted to be and because I could.”
That sat heavier than it should have. Setsuko looked away for a second, then back down at him again. He had been with her because he had wanted to. Asshole. “Were you in love with her ?”
This time, he was quiet long enough that she almost wished she hadn’t asked. “No, we weren't actually dating. We just drifted through the city, drinking, getting high, and fucking. She was teaching me Filipino. Love was off the table.” he said eventually.
After a moment, because now she needed the answer whether she liked it or not, she asked, “So what was she, exactly ?”
“She was the first girl I touched,” he answered after a moment, his tone unchanged. “The first who touched me.”
Setsuko didn’t speak right away. For some reason, that detail felt far more intimate than if he’d phrased it more crudely. “Was she in love with you ?” Too many questions came at once. Had he been gentle with her or rough ? Had he looked at her with the same intensity he looked at Setsuko ? Did that girl shiver as much as she did whenever his lips lingered against her neck ? Did he nibble at her hipbone the way he sometimes did with her ? Was she thinner than her ? Manjiro interrupted her thoughts before they could spiral any further.
“No.” He lifted his head slightly then, just enough to angle a look up at her as he added with a raised eyebrow, “you’re getting strangely invested.”
“I’m curious, Manjiro,” she said lightly. “It’s not every day you tell me about your past.”
“Mm.” He didn’t sound convinced. “Of course,” he muttered as he let his head drop back down against her breasts, the words coming out more muffled this time before he resettled more comfortably against her.
Setsuko gave the back of his shoulder a light, offended tap for that. She forced herself to refocus the conversation. There was no way she was going to make herself sick over something that had happened years ago. Manjiro loved her. He had told her so, and she believed him.
“And her brother trusted you because of her ?”
“Eventually.” He went quiet for a second, then added, “Not just him. The man above him liked me.”
That phrasing alone made her stomach turn a little. “The boss ?”
“Yes.”
She felt a strange little chill at that. “And you wanted him to bring you into… what, exactly ?”
“Everything.” He said it so simply that she almost hated him for it. “At the end of my… initiation, he told me that if I ever built something of my own, I’d owe him a place in it.”
Setsuko’s fingers stopped entirely now. She looked down at him, frowning more openly. “So what happened ?”
Manjiro was quiet for just long enough to make the room feel slightly colder. Then he said, in the same voice he’d used for everything else, “I put a bullet in his head.” Setsuko stared at him, knowing he could probably feel her heartbeat speeding up. How little it seemed to cost him to say it. He didn’t move. Didn’t look up at her this time. “He thought he’d have a say in Bonten. I made him believe that would be what would happen, but it was never my intention.” Manjiro straightened up slightly then, just enough for his gaze to find hers properly. For the first time since he’d started talking, there was something darker in it. “I don’t share,” he said.
Setsuko should have been disturbed, probably. She was, a little. But underneath that was something worse, something she didn’t want to examine too closely, the uncomfortable awareness that this, too, was intimacy with him. Not softness. Not sweetness. Quieter now, she murmured, “that’s terrible.”
Manjiro’s expression didn’t change, but he closed his eyes again and settled more comfortably against her, as if that qualified as a conversation ending naturally. “You wanted to know,” he said.
Slowly, she slid her hand out from beneath his shirt and let it travel up just behind his ear before her thumb drifted lower, brushing once over the tattoo at the nape of his neck, lingering there without thinking. “I did.”
And now she wasn’t sure what was worse, the fact that he had told her, or the fact that some part of her was already wondering what else he had never said out loud.
“No more questions now. I need to sleep.”
Setsuko smiled softly. Manjiro could shift so abruptly from something frightening to something almost deceptively young. “Here ? Like this ?”
“Here,” he muttered, eyes half-shut. “Like this.”
When Setsuko woke up, the room was still dark. For one disoriented second, she thought she had slept through the night entirely, but then she noticed the thin gray light leaking around the curtains and realized it was already afternoon. She stayed exactly where she was, curled on her side beneath the blankets, staring blankly at the wall across from her. The memory of Rindou’s face came back slowly. Then his voice. Then the look in his eyes when he realized the truth. Setsuko shut her eyes immediately.
Beside her, Manjiro shifted slightly. She felt him before she heard him, the mattress dipping faintly beneath his weight. “You’re awake,” he said eventually.
Setsuko made a small noise that wasn’t quite an answer.
The silence stretched again after that. Neither of them moved. Outside, rain tapped against the windows.
At some point, Manjiro reached for his phone on the nightstand. She heard the vibration coming in one after another. He looked at the screen for maybe two seconds before locking it again and tossing it aside. “You should eat something.”
Setsuko’s throat tightened instantly. The idea of food felt grotesque and impossible. “I can’t.”
Manjiro didn’t argue, didn’t tell her she had to. For a moment she thought he was going to get up instead, but the mattress shifted again and suddenly warmth settled behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat of him without him fully touching her. One of his hands came to rest lightly against her forearm.
Setsuko pressed her mouth hard against the sleeve of the sweatshirt she was wearing as the first sob finally forced its way out of her chest. Small at first and humiliatingly weak. “I’m so tired,” she whispered, “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to survive anymore.”
Then another sob. Her shoulders started shaking violently beneath the blankets. She struggled to breathe. She had no desire to do anything, didn’t know what to do, didn’t want to sleep, didn’t want to stay awake. She didn’t want to be alone, and she didn’t want to see anyone. She felt as if she were living on borrowed time.
The hand on her arm tightened slightly, thumb brushing once against her skin in a slow, absent movement. “You’re thinking too much,” he murmured quietly.
This was exactly how it always happened : he hurt her, the world collapsed, and then somehow he became the only place left where she could survive it.
Setsuko cried harder, muffling the sound against the fabric while the bed dipped slightly behind her as Manjiro lowered himself back against the pillows without letting go of her arm.
And the worst part, the truly unbearable part, was that she silently begged him never to let her go.
Eventually, after hours of silence and crying herself into exhaustion beneath the blankets, she had stopped saying no every time he quietly asked her to come sit in the living room instead.
The apartment was dim when she finally curled up at one end of the couch, still wrapped in the oversized sweatshirt she had slept in, her hair tangled, her face swollen from crying. Manjiro sat beside her without crowding her, one arm stretched lazily across the back of the sofa while his phone rested face down on his thigh.
Setsuko stared blankly at the cup of tea cooling between her hands.
“You haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
“I said I’m not hungry.” Her tone came out sharper than she intended. A sob escaped her before she could stop it and suddenly she was crying again, covering her eyes with both hands like she was ashamed of how easily she kept falling apart.
Manjiro watched her for a second before finally reaching over. His hand settled instead at the back of her neck, fingers sliding slowly into her hair, grounding.
Setsuko folded toward him almost immediately, forehead pressing against his shoulder while her breathing shook violently. “I’m sorry,” she whispered against the fabric of his shirt. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t answer. His hand just kept moving slowly through her hair while the apartment darkened around them by degrees, afternoon dissolving into evening without either of them really noticing. At some point he managed to make her drink a little water. Later, food arrived, neither of them really touched, the containers abandoned half-open on the table while muted television light flickered silently across the room. The silence between them changed shape throughout the day, sometimes heavy, sometimes almost peaceful, exhaustion slowly dulling the sharpest edges of the disaster.
By the time rain started again outside, Setsuko was curled beneath a blanket with her head resting heavily against Manjiro’s lap, her body folded into itself along the couch while he sat beside her in silence, one hand moving absently through her hair.
At some point, he dragged a hand back through his own hair and exhaled quietly. “They’re getting long.”
Setsuko glanced at him without much interest. “Since when do you give a shit about your appearance ?” The bitterness slipped out automatically.
Manjiro ignored it completely. “Will you cut it ?”
Setsuko frowned immediately. “I’m not a hairdresser.”
“I know.”
“If I fuck it up, that’s your problem.”
A faint shrug. “Fine.”
She stared at him for another second, almost suspicious of how normal the conversation felt. “…okay.”
Without another word, Manjiro stood up and disappeared down the hallway. She heard drawers opening, cabinets shutting, things moving around. A minute later he came back carrying electric clippers, a pair of scissors, and a towel slung over one shoulder.
The sight of it almost made something in her chest ache. It was so stupidly domestic, so painfully ordinary.
Manjiro dropped everything before sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the couch like this was the most natural thing in the world.
Setsuko sighed softly through her nose and pushed the blanket away before sliding down behind him and reached automatically for his hair.
He handed her a hair tie without turning around. Setsuko gathered the silver strands together slowly, twisting them into a ridiculous little palm tree at the top of his head before securing it there. She swallowed hard. “You look stupid,” she muttered.
“Yeah ?”
“Like a depressed pineapple.”
A soft breath left him. The sound settled somewhere warm and painful inside her chest. Manjiro switched the clippers on then, the sudden buzzing noise filling the room as he adjusted the guard before handing them to her.
For a while, neither of them spoke. There was only the vibration of the clippers beneath her fingers, almost-white strands falling slowly onto the towel around his shoulders, the steady warmth of his body sitting between her legs.
And little by little, without her fully noticing when it started happening, the pressure inside her chest loosened. Not gone, but quieter. Because cutting his hair required attention and precision. Her hands stopped trembling after a while because they had something concrete to do besides hold grief.
When she finally switched the clippers off, the sudden silence felt soft instead of oppressive. She released the rest of his hair from the tie, strands falling loose again around his face.
Manjiro stayed still while she leaned closer, carefully trimming the uneven pieces around his jaw. “You’re concentrating really hard,” he observed quietly.
“I don’t want you blaming me if you end up ugly.”
“Mm.” His voice sounded lower now without the buzzing filling the room. After a while, he spoke again. “Rindou called me twenty-two times today.”
Her hands paused for half a second. “…what did you do ?”
“I turned my phone off.”
That almost made her laugh. Rindou had never been the kind of person who talked when he was hurt. He broke things. He drank. He vanished for days. But calling over and over again like that meant something worse. Desperation, rage rotting into panic.
For one terrible second, all she could picture was him alone somewhere in the city, chain-drinking and smoking himself sick while replaying the previous night over and over in his head. And despite everything, guilt flooded her so violently it almost made her cry again. The scissors resumed their slow movement, but more carefully now. “Can you promise me something ?”
Manjiro’s eyes lifted slightly, watching her reflection vaguely in the dark television screen across the room. “Depends.”
Setsuko swallowed once before speaking. “If Rin comes for you, don’t hurt him.”
Silence. The scissors stopped moving entirely this time. Manjiro stayed facing forward for a few seconds before speaking. “You really think I don’t know he put his hands on you ?”
Setsuko’s throat tightened instantly. “That’s between me and him.” She forced herself to continue anyway, fingers tightening slightly around the scissors resting against his shoulder. “Please,” she said quietly. “Just promise me.”
Manjiro finally tilted his head back enough to look up at her properly. He didn’t like this, she could feel it immediately and for a second she genuinely thought he might refuse. A long breath left him quietly through his nose. “…fine.” The answer came flatly, reluctantly.
Setsuko stayed still behind him. “That’s not a promise,” she insisted.
“You always do this,” he muttered tiredly, “you always make me say things out loud.”
She leaned forward until her forehead rested against his shoulder, closing her eyes for a second. “Manjiro, please.”
Another silence. Then finally, “I won’t hurt him.” The words sounded restrained, almost dragged out of him against his will.
She lowered her gaze immediately after, blinking hard once before returning to his hair like concentrating on the uneven strands in front of her suddenly mattered very much.
When she finally finished, Setsuko leaned back slightly to look at her work. “There,” she murmured softly. “Done.”
Manjiro ran a hand through the shorter strands, testing the weight of them before tilting his head slightly. “Not bad,” he decided.
Setsuko rolled her eyes faintly. “High praise.”
His hand closed lightly around her wrist before she could pull it away completely. Manjiro lowered his head just enough to press a kiss against the inside of her wrist.
Setsuko smiled sadly at him then reached for her phone while he stayed seated on the floor between her legs. “Koko wants to get drinks tomorrow,” she said after a moment of scrolling.
“Are you planning to go ?”
“I think so, if I feel better.”
A short silence followed. “What are you gonna talk about ?”
Setsuko blinked once, already hearing the unpleasant shift in his tone. “I don’t know, Manjiro,” she replied, “I haven’t written the script for my future conversation yet.” Her eyes lifted toward him with deliberate false innocence. “Why ? Are there specific topics I should avoid ?”
His expression didn’t change. “You’re gonna talk about us.”
A sharp laugh escaped her immediately. “Oh, sorry,” she snapped, “I didn’t realize the subject was confidential, you know, considering you already blew up my entire fucking life by announcing it to your little subordinates.”
A small muscle shifted in his jaw. “First of all,” he said quietly, “change your tone.” The calmness of it only made her angrier. His eyes stayed on hers. “Second, you still didn’t answer.”
“First of all,” she shot back immediately, “fuck off.” She didn’t lower her eyes. “Second, it’s none of your business what I talk about with Koko !”
His dark eyes burned into her. “It becomes my business when you start needing another man to deal with me.”
The sentence hit exactly where it was supposed to. Setsuko immediately moved away from him. “Oh my God,” she laughed bitterly. “You cannot possibly be jealous of Hajime.”
“I’m not jealous. I don’t like him getting involved. If you wanna talk, then talk to me.”
And somehow that pissed her off even more because there was indeed no jealousy in his voice. No emotion at all. Just that horrible detached tone he slipped into whenever he wanted her to feel guilty without openly accusing her of anything. “Oh, right, I forgot I’m not allowed to have a friend !”
Manjiro stood up slowly from the floor and Setsuko immediately hated that she had to tilt her head back slightly to keep eye contact with him. “You think Kokonoi knows you better than I do ?”
“No, I think Hajime actually knows how to speak to people without turning everything into some fucked-up psychological power game !” Setsuko stared at him, the romantic illusion of his protection from today suddenly dissolving into the harsh reality of who he actually was. He wasn't just keeping her safe, he was tightening the perimeter of her cage. “You spend the entire fucking day acting caring and gentle and then the second another person tries to help me, you start this shit again ! You know what ?” she continued bitterly. “I was actually gonna tell Koko that despite your insane fucking temper, I was gonna tell him I had good reasons to love you, but when you get like this…” She stopped herself abruptly. “Fuck this” she said, grabbing the blanket beside her roughly. “I genuinely cannot do this today. I'm tired and your face is giving me a headache.”
Manjiro watched her stand up. “Stay here.”
“No.” Her voice cracked violently. She hated that, and hated him seeing it. “I can’t try not to drown just for you to start acting like this because someone else was nice to me for five fucking minutes.”
Setsuko turned away before he could say anything else and walked back toward the bedroom with fast, uneven steps.
She slammed the bedroom door behind her hard enough to make the wooden frame shudder in the quiet apartment. She let herself slide down onto the mattress, curling onto her side almost immediately and burying her face in her crossed arms. Her throat ached from the sob she had managed to swallow right before walking out.
Twenty, maybe thirty minutes passed, measured only by the sound of the rain heavy against the glass. Then, the bedroom door clicked open.
Setsuko didn't move. She didn't want him to see her face, didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he had completely shattered the fragile calm she had fought for all afternoon. She forced her breathing to slow down, relaxing her shoulders with deliberate, agonizing effort. She closed her eyes, pretending to sleep, letting him believe it. She felt the edge of the mattress give way as Manjiro sat down beside her. He didn't pull her into his arms, and he didn't continue the argument.
Her body still hummed from him, from the violence and the wanting. But her mind drifted elsewhere, to a memory of warmth, laughter, the faint scent of Ran’s cologne. And guilt came crashing back, familiar, suffocating.
She wished she could hate Manjiro, it would be easier. But she didn’t. And that, that was the real tragedy.
Mikey woke up feeling like he had only closed his eyes a few minutes ago to the sound of cupboard doors closing somewhere in the kitchen. For a few seconds he stayed still beneath the blankets, staring vaguely at the gray ceiling while his brain caught up slowly.
He got out of bed eventually and padded into the kitchen, shirtless and half-asleep, his sweatpants hanging low on his hips and his hair slightly messy from the pillows.
Setsuko was standing barefoot in front of the open pantry, clutching an oversized bag of kit-kat like she had been caught stealing.
For one strange second he just watched her. Because this was not normal. Setsuko usually ate like someone permanently trying to repair herself. Healthy food, expensive fruit, protein bowls. She read ingredients. Avoided sugar. Controlled portions without realizing she was doing it.
And now she was standing in his kitchen at eight in the morning aggressively eating super-chemical and sugary snacks straight out of the bag with swollen eyes and tangled hair.
The second she noticed him watching, embarrassment flashed visibly across her face. “I was hungry,” she muttered immediately.
Mikey leaned silently against the doorway. “I can see that.”
She glared at him in reflex and shoved another kit-kat into her mouth almost defensively.
Despite himself, something in his chest loosened slightly at the sight, because for once, she was eating without thinking about it. He opened the refrigerator quietly, grabbed a bottle of water, and held it out toward her.
Setsuko stared at it for half a second before taking it. “Thanks.” The silence after that felt awkward in a strangely peaceful way. Finally she looked away first. “I have an appointment today.”
“I know.”
She nodded slightly, still focused on the bag in her hands instead of him. “I need to stop by my apartment before. I left some paperwork there.”
Mikey watched her for a second. He understood immediately what she actually meant. Space. Air. A few hours away from him after yesterday. “I’ll drive you,” he said quietly.
That finally made her look up, the offer had clearly surprised her. “No,” she answered a little too quickly, “it’s okay, I don’t wanna bother you.”
His jaw tightened faintly at the wording. She could be so exhausting when she got like this. “You’re not bothering me.”
For a second she looked genuinely thrown by the answer before glancing away again. “I’ll be fine, really. You surely have things to do.” she murmured.
Manjiro stayed quiet for a moment before nodding once. “Fine.”
The fragile peace between them settled carefully back into place after that. Setsuko reached into the bag again before speaking. “I’ll probably come back to my place here after and sleep a little.”
Manjiro stayed leaning against the doorway, eyes resting on her a second longer than necessary. “Okay.”
Another silence followed. Then, because apparently she was physically incapable of letting things end normally, “and tonight,” she added, trying very hard to sound unaffected, “if I’m allowed, of course, I’ll go see Koko.”
Manjiro looked at her flatly. Setsuko took another bite of cookie with deliberate innocence. He ignored the obvious attempt to restart the argument. “You’re allowed.”
Then she smiled sweetly at him in the most irritating way possible. “Oh, thank you, sir, how incredibly kind of you.” A calculated piece of defiance meant to remind him that even if he owned the roof over her head, he didn't own her tongue.
So she still had enough energy left to test him after spending most of yesterday emotionally disintegrating in his apartment. Manjiro looked at her for a few seconds in silence with enough displeasure in his expression to make it very clear he didn’t appreciate the tone. “Save your sarcasm for Kokonoi.”
“Fine,” she muttered coldly. She shoved another biscuit into her mouth almost aggressively before dropping the bag onto the counter harder than necessary. “I’m gonna take a shower. Those things are gross anyway.”
Manjiro watched her brush past him toward the hallway without another word.
He stayed alone in the kitchen listening to the water start running behind the wall, jaw tightening faintly despite himself. Because somehow, even after all these years, Setsuko still had the unbelievable ability to create an argument out of fucking nothing.
His eyes rested vaguely on the half-open bag of kit-kat she had abandoned on the counter. Then he picked up his phone and finally called Rindou back.
The line connected almost immediately. “Hello ?”
Mikey immediately knew he'd woken him up. His voice was rough with sleep, low and unfocused. “You done blowing up my phone ?”
A grunt came through the speaker. “Yeah, sorry about that. Was drunk.”
“I figured.”
The mattress creaked faintly through the speaker. Mikey heard sheets rustle and imagined Rindou finally sitting up, still half-asleep and hungover, realizing there was no point in pretending he could go back to sleep now.
"You know, I’m trying to figure out which part pisses me off the most. Her ? You ? The fact that Ran's dead before I can punch him for being fucking blind ?"
“Ran wasn’t blind, he saw what he wanted to see.”
“Listen, I just wanna understand something. I’d like to understand how the girl who was practically letting herself die from grief can also run straight into another man’s arms.”
The words settled heavily into the silence. Mikey’s expression didn’t move. He had spent most of yesterday listening to Setsuko cry herself sick and had watched her stare at walls for hours. Whatever explanation Rindou was looking for, he wasn't going to find it from him. “Maybe you should’ve asked her that instead of treating her like a whore,” he said calmly.
Rindou inhaled sharply through his nose. “Ran would’ve done worse if he’d found out.”
Mikey could picture it perfectly. Ran's rage, the inevitable violence that would've followed. None of that mattered now. “But your brother isn’t here anymore.” The sentence landed with surgical coldness. And before Rindou could answer, he continued. “And if you’re that desperate to talk to him, Sanzu would be happy to send you where he is.”
For the first time since the call started, Rindou didn't immediately fire back. Mikey heard nothing but his breathing. He should have understood the threat. Good.
Unfortunately, his silence didn't last long. “For years, every time somebody crossed a line, or got greedy, or forgot where their loyalty belonged, you made an example out of them. You spent years lecturing us about loyalty more than anyone, and then, then you went and fucked your lieutenant's wife.”
“Be careful Haitani, don't forget that I don't owe you any kind of explanation. Neither does she, by the way. You're neither her husband nor her brother.”
“Is that a threat or a promise ?”
The bathroom door opened behind him. Mikey glanced over his shoulder to see Setsuko step into the hallway, a towel wrapped around her body. She walked past without acknowledging his presence, disappearing into his bedroom and quietly closing the door behind her.
His eyes lingered briefly on the closed door before crossing the apartment in silence. He stopped beside the living room window and looked out over the city below. The rain had started again sometime during her shower. Only then he lifted the phone back to his ear, lowering his voice slightly.
“I don’t have to make threats. People with brains figure it out on their own. But I’m gonna make an exception for you. Setsuko thinks I’m stupid enough to believe you didn’t touch her. She asked me to leave this alone, but If I ever find her the way I found her last night because of you again, we're gonna have a very different conversation.”
He heard Rindou exhale slowly through his nose. A tired sound, the one of someone smart enough to recognize exactly where the line had been drawn. “Now go drown your hangover in coffee and get your shit together. You have work today.”
A heavy silence followed, thick with unsaid words and a pride that had been utterly broken. Through grit teeth, Rindou finally swallowed his anger. “Yeah. Understood,” he muttered, and the line went dead.
Outside the hotel bar, rain streaked lazily down the windows overlooking Roppongi, blurring the neon signs into colored smears. They were in the kind of place where no one ever raised their voice, except Koko, apparently.
“I get that you couldn’t ask anyone for advice,” he said, tone already sharp, “but what the fuck were you thinking ?”
Setsuko stared at the bottom of her glass, the ice melting too fast. “I don’t know. He was just… there. You know, with those dark eyes and…”
“Oh so you’re telling me,” Koko cut in, incredulous, “that you blew up your marriage and destabilized the most powerful criminal organization in Japan for Mikey’s dead-fish eyes ?”
Her jaw tightened. “Stop yelling at me ! You have no idea how hard it was to resist !”
“Oh, fuck you,” he muttered. His patience cracked like thin glass. “Being friends with you is like having a five-year-old friend with a drinking problem. You idiot. I’ve known him for over ten years, you think I don’t know the effect he has on people ?”
Setsuko almost smiled at that, just a flicker. The truth in his words stung more than the insult ever could. She took a sip of her sparkling water. “I don’t have a drinking problem, I’m pregnant.”
Kokonoi had just taken a sip of his gin tonic when something seemed to click in his head. His eyes widened slightly as the realization settled. “Wait,” he said, leaning forward. “Yeah. Let’s talk about that baby, Setsuko. Who’s the father ?” Setsuko grimaced. Part of her wanted to unload the weight she’d been carrying for months, but dragging Kokonoi into it meant painting a target squarely on his back. She took five seconds to think. Five seconds too long. “Please tell me you had the basic intelligence to use protection with Mikey,” Kokonoi said flatly.
Setsuko squirmed uncomfortably in her chair. “Well, yes, at the beginning...”
Kokonoi inhaled sharply, then held up a hand to stop her before she could continue. “You know what ? Actually, don’t.” He rubbed his forehead with visible regret. “I have absolutely no desire to hear about the disgusting things you two do in bed. I also do not want to know who got you pregnant. I would really like to keep the fragile peace of my soul intact.”
Setsuko rolled her eyes. “Contrary to what you seem to think, there’s nothing disgusting about what Manjiro and I do. It’s actually pretty gentle and…”
“I said no !” Kokonoi cut in immediately, raising both hands now like he was physically defending himself. “That’s my limit. I’m begging you. Not another word.”
Setsuko gave him a sad smile before turning serious again. “We’re having… problems right now. Actually, that’s probably the understatement of the century.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I figured. When you walked into the Chinese restaurant the other day, it was unsettling.” Setsuko lifted her eyes toward him. “You looked like a frightened animal on its way to the slaughterhouse.”
A tight knot formed in Setsuko’s throat. She looked back down at the table. “He decided to make it public on his own,” she said after a moment. Her voice had lost some of its earlier sharpness. “It was a punishment. He’s angry with me.”
“Why ?”
Setsuko stayed quiet for a moment. Now that Koko knew, she realized, for the first time in months, that she actually had someone she could talk to. Though Koko was probably the worst possible person for comfort. He judged too easily and had very little respect for kindness. “Because he didn’t know I was pregnant,” she said finally. “I never told him.”
Koko looked at her for a second. “Again,” he said, “why?”
She sighed and leaned back in her chair, exhaustion settling visibly into her posture. “Because I was afraid of how he’d react,” she admitted quietly. “Because somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that having a child would be the end of whatever this is between us.” A small, bitter smile crossed her face. “And maybe I didn’t really want it to end.”
“I’d like to understand what’s actually going on between you two.”
Setsuko wet her lips and slowly stirred her drink. “At first, it was just sex. We’d see each other every now and then, and over time it became… more serious.”
“How serious ?”
She shrugged lightly. “Like two people who share a certain kind of intimacy for long enough, I guess.” Her gaze dropped briefly to the glass in her hands. “I think it happened naturally. We just… fell in love.”
Kokonoi looked genuinely unconvinced. “No offense, but the idea of Mikey being in love sounds completely impossible to me.”
A small laugh escaped her. “Oh, he’s definitely not… conventional,” she admitted. “In almost three years, I can count on one hand the number of times he actually told me he loved me.” She smiled faintly, something tired and fond mixing together in her expression. “He has a fucking terrible personality, he’s emotionally dysfunctional, and he likes punishing me way too much but…” Her voice softened slightly. “I know he loves me, in his own fucked up way.”
Koko grimaced immediately. “And when you say punishment…”
Setsuko rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, Koko, Manjiro doesn’t lock me in some weird red dungeon.” A tired laugh escaped her. “He just has this constant need to remind me that he’s the one in control.” She took a sip of her drink. “One night I was late meeting him, and he left without waiting for me. Didn’t warn me, didn’t answer my calls, nothing. He ignored me for almost a week.” Her mouth twisted at the memory. “And when he finally got over being pissed, the first thing he said to me was that I better not be late again.”
“Very mature of him,” Koko deadpanned. He sighed in resignation. “Listen, I’m not angry that you cheated on your husband,” Koko continued finally. His tone was almost calm, which was never a great sign. “That’s your business, and you’re a grown woman. I’m angry because you cheated on your husband with that sociopath. You’re putting you and all of us in danger.”
Setsuko’s fingers toyed with the straw in her glass, the ice clicking against the rim. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”
He exhaled sharply. “Yeah, you’re sorry, I’m sorry, everyone’s sorry. You are selfish as hell. Both of you.”
Maybe he was right. She had betrayed Ran, hurt Rindou, and turned half of Bonten against her. Somehow dragged Kokonoi into a situation he never asked to be part of. She couldn't even argue. And the worst part of all of that was that if she had the chance to go back and undo everything, she wasn't entirely sure she would.
“You make him sound like a monster and half the time I know you're right. And then he does something stupid like making sure I eat breakfast, or he remembers some completely insignificant thing I told him two years ago.”
“Setsuko.”
“Or he sits beside me for six hours while I cry and doesn't complain once.”
“Stop.”
A tiny laugh escaped her. “See ? That's exactly the problem. He’s not cruel with me,” Setsuko said quietly. “He’s still himself, but… softer.” Kokonoi rolled his eyes so hard it was almost theatrical. She ignored him and continued anyway. “He can even be almost funny, you know.”
Kokonoi pulled a face of pure disdain. “You’re so in love it’s disgusting,” he said flatly. Then he leaned a little closer, squinting at her suspiciously. “Do you have a microphone on you or something ? Bitch, blink twice if you think your life is in danger.”
For a moment Setsuko didn’t answer. She just gave him a small, sad smile. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Koko.” Her fingers tightened around the glass. “Ran and I… we had the world. We were young, rich, in love. I had everything I’d ever wanted in life.” She let out a small, shaky breath. “And then Manjiro walked into my life and everything became completely fucked up. I’m fucked up.”
“You’re not fucked up. Just stupid.”
“Yeah, I thrive off my own stupidity.”
Kokonoi reached into the pocket of his coat. “Here, before I forget,” he said. He placed a small fabric pouch on the counter between them. “This is for you.” Setsuko frowned slightly and opened the pouch. A small black stone slid into the palm of her hand, smooth and heavy despite its modest size. “It’s black tourmaline,” Kokonoi explained. “Supposed to protect you.”
She turned the stone slowly under the light, the surface catching faint reflections of her face. “Protecting me from what exactly ?”
Kokonoi lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “Everything.”
Setsuko gave a faint, tired smile. “Thanks, Koko. What am I supposed to do with it ?”
“Have it set into a pendant. Keep it in your pocket.” He took a sip of his drink, completely indifferent. “I don’t give a shit how you do it, just keep it on you.” His gaze drifted toward her for a moment. “You’re going to need it.”
Setsuko stayed silent for a moment and studied him with an expression that was almost exasperated. “You know you’re a fucking genius,” she said, out of nowhere. “You could be doing anything like tech, or politics, even finance. You could run a legitimate empire and people would applaud you for it ! And yet you’re here. I’ve never understood.”
Kokonoi’s eyes flickered with something faintly amused, faintly irritated. “It’s insulting,” he replied coolly, “that you think I’m not nine moves ahead and haven’t already considered what happens next.”
She narrowed her eyes slightly. “Next ?” she repeated and lowered her voice. “You think Bonten won’t last forever ?”
He exhaled slowly, the sound more tired than dramatic. “Of course it won’t,” he said. “These things always implode.”
She tilted her head. “What, you think that one day Manjiro’s going to get arrested ?”
“No,” he said quietly. “I always thought one day he’ll collapse. Now thanks to you I’m sure he will.”
“I’m touched you think I’m that important, but empires don’t collapse because of a woman.”
“That’s because you still think this is about love. Empires collapse because the people running them stop making rational decisions. Men like Mikey survive because they know how to separate emotions from business. The second they stop doing that, cracks appear. And honestly ? Your relationship should’ve never existed in the first place. The fact that it did tells me enough already.”
Setsuko stared down into her glass for a moment, watching the ice shift slowly beneath the amber liquid. “You make it sound like I’m some kind of natural disaster.”
“You said that, not me.”
A small laugh escaped her despite herself. Setsuko absentmindedly traced the rim of her glass with her fingertip. “I feel so lonely, Koko.” she admitted suddenly. “I have no one. No friends. Nothing.”
Kokonoi didn’t react right away. He took a slow sip of his drink before setting the glass down again with careful precision. “Sweetheart, I’m gonna stop you right there, we’re all in the same boat. Choosing this life means choosing loneliness. You knew that when you stepped into it. Those were your own words.”
“Yes, but I had a family,” she insisted. “I had Ran. I had Rin.” Her voice cracked slightly. “Now Ran is dead, and Rin thinks I’m the worst kind of whore.” She reached into her bag, pulled out a tissue and dabbed at the corner of her reddened eyes, trying to keep her composure even as her mascara threatened to betray her. “Everyone hates me.” She gave a small, bitter smile. “You want to know the worst part of all this ? They don’t hate me because I betrayed my husband,” she said calmly, arms folded, gaze fixed somewhere beyond the glass. “They hate me because I betrayed their feminine ideal.” Kokonoi tilted his head slightly, studying her. “They saw me as the gentle, perfect, devoted wife,” she continued. “Because I worked so damn hard to become the archetype of what a woman is supposed to be.” A faint smile curved her lips, but there was nothing warm about it. “The moment I stopped being that polished woman in their eyes and became just a human being, imperfect, capable of lying, hiding and wanting, that’s when they started despising me.”
Koko let out a quiet breath through his nose. “So what you’re saying, is that it’s just about fucking sexism ?”
“Of course it is, Koko.” Her tone was flat, almost bored. “That, and the fact that everyone sanctifies Ran because he’s dead. If he were still alive, they wouldn’t give a single shit.”
“No,” he said quietly. “That’s not true.” Setsuko frowned faintly. “They would still care,” he continued calmly. “Because this isn’t just some random affair.” He gestured vaguely between them with his glass. “You slept with the only man in this organization everyone knows you absolutely should not have touched. I’m serious. Ran was Mikey’s executive. One of the few people he trusted. And you, you were basically part of the furniture at that point. ”
Setsuko looked away toward the city lights beyond the window. “That’s exactly my point,” she murmured, “they’re angry because I ruined the fantasy, like I woke up one morning and decided to fall in love with him.”
“No,” Kokonoi admitted calmly. “That’s what makes this whole thing such a disaster.” Silence stretched between them, the kind that hummed louder than any music. “Mikey’s dangerous and unstable,” Koko said finally. His voice had dropped, quieter now, almost resigned. “Setsuko… you’re playing with the devil.”
“I married one. I can survive another.” Koko pressed his lips together, but she didn’t stop. “Ran killed someone with his bare hands when he was thirteen. Thirteen. You think I don’t know what my husband was capable of ? So yeah, Mikey kills people. So did Ran. So does Rin.”
“That’s a pretty fucking dark way to look at things.”
“Dark ? Koko, do I have to remind you of your line of work ?” She leaned back slowly in her chair, arms folding tightly across her chest now. “Do you know what’s funny ?” she asked softly. “Nobody ever expects morality from any of you.” Her eyes stayed fixed on him. “Ran was violent. Rin is violent. Sanzu’s completely fucking insane. Mikey is… Mikey.” A bitter smile appeared briefly on her lips. “But the second I become morally questionable, suddenly it’s shocking.”
Kokonoi sighed quietly. “That’s not what I meant.”
“No ?” she asked calmly. “Then what exactly did you mean ?”
Another silence settled between them. “I think,” he said carefully, “that somewhere along the way you got too used to surviving inside this world. To the point where you stopped realizing how fucked up some of this sounds when you say it out loud.”
Setsuko held his gaze for a few seconds. “Or maybe I just stopped pretending otherwise.”
Koko apparently had nothing to say against that. He finished his drink in one gulp and gestured to the waiter to bring another round.
She knew Koko was right about one thing. Somewhere along the way, something inside her had become fundamentally warped. Not just because of Manjiro or Ran. She had always felt that something wasn't quite right with her, and that feeling had only grown stronger over the last few years. And her pregnancy did nothing to help the situation. Her body didn't feel like hers anymore. Her emotions didn't feel like hers either. The thought lingered for a few seconds before she finally spoke. “I think he hates my body.”
Koko raised an eyebrow. “Pretty sure if Mikey hated your body, he never would’ve slept with you in the first place.”
“Maybe not before, but now…” Setsuko looked down at her drink. “The last time we had sex, he barely undressed me.”
“So ?” Koko shrugged. “Sometimes people just fuck without making a whole event out of it.”
“Not us,” she said immediately. “It’s never been like that with us.”
“Why would he suddenly hate your body ?”
She looked at him like the answer was obvious. “Because I’m pregnant and fat.” Her jaw tightened slightly. “He consciously avoided touching my stomach. I know he did it on purpose. Like he wanted me to understand that even his desire comes with conditions now.”
Koko dropped his head into his hands dramatically. “Oh fuck, no. We are not doing this again, okay ?” He looked back up at her. “First of all, you’re not fat.” He paused. “Does he know about your old eating issues ?”
“He does.”
“And you seriously think he’d risk pushing you back into that ?”
Setsuko hesitated. “In normal circumstances, I would’ve said no,” she admitted quietly. “But right now… I don’t know.”
“I think you’re looking at this from the completely wrong angle,” he said finally. Setsuko frowned slightly. “Setsuko… maybe it’s not your body.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Maybe it’s the fact that your body currently represents something he’s trying very hard not to think about.” Koko continued carefully. “You’re carrying a baby. And whether he admits it or not, I think that fucks him more than either of you wants to acknowledge.” He paused briefly. “Avoiding your stomach doesn’t necessarily mean he’s disgusted by you.” Another sigh. “It’s probably the only part of you he can’t look at without thinking about you and Ran.”
A wave of sadness washed over Setsuko. “Can I tell you something very very fucked up ?”
He encouraged her with a wave of his hand. “Go on…”
“If I weren't pregnant, I'd jump off a fucking bridge.”
Kokonoi's expression changed almost immediately. “Don't say shit like that.”
Setsuko let out a small laugh and took another sip of her drink. “Relax. Like I said, I'm pregnant. The bridge is safe for another six months.”
“That's not funny.”
“Good, because I wasn't really joking.” The answer lingered between them longer than either of them seemed comfortable with.
Kokonoi stared at her for a few seconds before reaching for his drink. “Well,” he muttered, “that's probably the most concerning thing you've said all evening.”
Setsuko lowered her eyes again, while her heartbeat climbed unpleasantly inside her chest. The question sat heavily at the back of her throat now, ugly enough that even thinking it felt disloyal somehow. For a few seconds she almost forced herself to let it go. It was the kind of suspicion capable of poisoning every memory afterward, every touch, every moment they had ever shared. But then Rindou’s voice echoed through her head, followed almost immediately by all the things she had tried not to think about, and before she could stop herself, she finally spoke again. “Rin thinks Manjiro might have been behind Ran’s death.”
That made him look at her and Setsuko immediately regretted saying it out loud. Not because she trusted Rindou’s judgment blindly. Rindou was furious, spiraling through betrayal and paranoia badly enough that half the things coming out of his mouth lately sounded self-destructive. She knew that. But still, the accusation now existed between them.
“Yeah,” he said at last. “I’d bet he did.”
Setsuko stayed silent for a long moment after that, her eyes fixed somewhere beyond the rows of bottles behind the bar. “Do you really think he’d be capable of that ?”
Kokonoi froze. For a second he simply stared at her, then leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath. He rubbed his temples, like he was already regretting the direction the conversation had taken. “Fuck, this is a very, very dangerous conversation we’re having right now, Setsuko.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “That’s why I need to know.”
Kokonoi let out a long breath through his nose and looked back at his drink as if the answer might be floating somewhere in the glass. “I don’t know,” he said finally. He shook his head slightly. “On one hand it makes absolutely no sense.” He paused, then lifted his eyes to hers again. “On the other hand…” His mouth twisted faintly. “…it’s completely plausible.”
And somehow that was already enough to make her stomach turn. Setsuko watched him for a long time. Somewhere between the clink of ice and the distant piano, she realized he wasn’t trying to comfort her, just to tell her the truth.
Hajime let out a loud sigh for the hundredth time of the evening. “I swear, you two are the most fucked up people I've ever known. And I specialize in fucked up.”
It was now or never. She knew she could trust Koko. She didn't yet know where her next words would lead, but she had to say them. “Hajime,” she said quietly, “you asked me if I thought my life was in danger.”
Across from her, every trace of irony vanished from Kokonoi’s face. The lazy amusement he had been wearing until now disappeared instantly, replaced by something much harder, much more attentive. His posture shifted almost imperceptibly, shoulders straightening as his gaze locked onto her. “Yeah ?” he said.
Setsuko exhaled a shaky breath. For a moment she didn’t move. The noise of the bar seemed to fade around them. Slowly, she lifted her eyes to meet his. “I think I could be. You know,” she said more quietly, “last night we kinda fought and after, I pretended to be asleep. And I’m pretty sure he spent the entire damn night just staring at me,” she continued, her voice dropping to something almost confessional, “like he was thinking about ways to hurt me.”
Kokonoi suddenly grew serious. “You know that if things go bad, I’ve got enough contacts to make anyone disappear.”
Setsuko stared at him in horror. The last thing she wanted was to drag Hajime into this mess and put him in danger because of her. “Koko, no.”
“Will you listen to me for a second ?” he cut in. “I can get you a new identity. It’s easy, you disappear, problem solved.”
The idea was insane. Leave the country ? Leave Manjiro ? A wave of nausea twisted violently through her stomach. “I don’t know if I could actually do something like that,” she admitted quietly. “And it would put you at risk too.”
Kokonoi reached across the table and rested a reassuring hand over hers. “Hey,” he said softly, “don’t worry about me, okay ?” A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth. “Out of all those fucked-up assholes, I’m the only one Mikey can’t replace. Without me, the whole organization sinks in six months.” He shrugged lazily. “I’m literally irreplaceable. I’ll be fine.”
Setsuko bit down hard on her lower lip, her thoughts racing so fast they made her dizzy. Could she really do something like that ?
Setsuko stood in front of the bathroom mirror in nothing but her underwear, one hand resting absently against the edge of the sink while the other adjusted the strap slipping from her shoulder. The apartment was quiet around her. The kind of silence that left too much room for thinking. She hadn't slept much; memories of her evening with Koko were spinning around in her head. Today, she would have to find the strength to face Manjiro.
Her eyes drifted over her own reflection without really seeing it. The slight curve of her stomach. The exhaustion still lingering beneath her eyes. The marks grief had left everywhere on her body despite the fact that she was still technically young, still technically beautiful.
Rindou’s voice would not leave her head.
If he’s the one behind Ran’s death, I swear I’ll fucking kill you.
She swallowed hard and looked away from the mirror immediately. She slipped on a silk robe and walked toward the altar she had built in memory of her husband. She stared at the photograph of Ran smiling broadly on their wedding day, hair slicked back, dressed in an Armani suit.
Being Ran’s girlfriend, then his wife, had been her pride for a very long time. For years, if someone had asked who she was, the answer had always started with him. Now she wasn't sure she deserved to carry his name at all.
But no matter how much she missed him or how much pain she was in, she never would have erased everything they ever had. Even if she was drowning in grief, she'd rather hang on to every moment that she ever held him, every laugh she ever heard, every shred of happiness they ever had. She would rather spend every moment in agony than erase the memory of Ran.
That was what made the thought so unbearable.
Because if Manjiro loved her like he claimed to, how could he possibly believe removing Ran from her life would ever make her happier ? How could he have watched her break apart afterward and still live with himself ?
No.
The thought infected everything. Every memory, every silence, every unreadable look on Manjiro’s face. The fact that there were still supposedly no leads after all this time. The way the investigation had dissolved into nothing almost immediately despite Bonten’s reach. The way Manjiro had asked her to move in with him so quickly afterward, calm and certain, as if he had already known exactly where she would end up. Even the unbearable tenderness he’d shown her these past few days suddenly felt strange in retrospect, almost impossible to separate from guilt.
No. No. Manjiro would never do that to her.
He could be cruel and possessive and manipulative in ways that left bruises somewhere much deeper than skin. But Ran’s death had destroyed her completely. Manjiro had seen it happen in real time. He had held her while she cried. He had watched her practically disappear inside herself afterward. He knew what Ran had been to her.
He would never. No, he would never. Would he ?
The thought alone made nausea twist violently through her stomach. Because the horrible thing was that once the possibility existed, even for a second, she could suddenly see the shape of it everywhere. And no matter how desperately she tried to reason herself out of it, another part of her kept whispering the same unbearable thing over and over again, echoing Koko's words.
It’s completely plausible.
The restaurant was crowded enough that nobody paid attention to them. Soft music drifted beneath the noise of overlapping conversations, glasses clinking against marble tables and waiters moving elegantly through the dim golden light.
Across from Setsuko, Ran had barely touched his drink. “I need to tell you something.”
She slowly lowered her chopsticks, instantly alarmed by the serious tone Ran almost never used unless something had gone catastrophically wrong. “What’s wrong ?”
Ran immediately noticed the tension in her expression and sighed. “Relax, it’s nothing bad.” He leaned back against the booth. “Just… don’t lose your shit.”
That did absolutely nothing to reassure her. “We’re getting married in a month,” she replied flatly. “If you have something to tell me, say it quickly.”
“It’s not about us, calm down.” He rubbed briefly at his jaw. “It’s about something Mikey asked from us.”
Setsuko picked her chopsticks back up cautiously. “I’m listening.”
Ran glanced briefly around the restaurant before continuing. “He asked us, or rather, decided for us, that we’re cutting ties with everyone close to us.”
Setsuko stared at him blankly. “Seriously ? That’s cruel.”
“Yeah.” He hesitated briefly. “And not just us. He was, ah, he was talking about you too.”
This time, Setsuko looked at him like he was genuinely stupid. “What people, Ran ?” she asked incredulously. “I didn’t need your boss to stop talking to my family.”
Ran carefully set his chopsticks down. “Cupcake, he wasn’t just talking about family.” Before she could answer, he continued. “He meant friends too.”
Setsuko blinked slowly. “I’m sorry ?”
“It’s too dangerous,” Ran replied simply. “The less contact we have with civilians, the safer everybody is.”
“But…” She frowned harder. “I don’t understand. I’m not supposed to see my friends anymore ?”
“No, baby.” His tone stayed calm. “You’re not.”
The realization hit her all at once. “Ran, I have like two friends in my entire life,” she said, staring at him in disbelief. “And you’re telling me I have to get rid of them ? Why ? Why me ?”
“Because you’re already associated with me.” His expression hardened slightly. “And soon you’ll be legally tied to me too.”
“What the fuck are you talking about ?” she snapped immediately. “I literally own like twelve fake IDs. Nobody’s gonna know whose wife I am if I use another name.”
It felt horribly unfair. Not just the rule itself, the fact it had apparently already been decided for her.
Ran slowly massaged his temples, a dangerous sign she knew too well. “Can you cooperate a little, please ?” he muttered. “People know your face.”
“Fuck your fucking Mikey !” she hissed. “He doesn’t even know me. He has absolutely no right to demand anything from me !” Her jaw tightened harder. “I can’t believe you agreed to this.”
“I didn’t agree to shit,” Ran shot back instantly. “We didn’t get a choice.” He exhaled sharply through his nose. “Setsuko, listen. You have me, you have Rin, and you have Koko.
“I don’t care !” she snapped. Several people glanced briefly toward their table before pretending not to. “I need to have girl friends, Ran. I need people who understand me and actually resemble me.” Her voice rose despite herself. “Who am I supposed to complain to when you’re being unbearable ? Your brother ? Who am I supposed to go drinking with ?”
“With nobody,” Ran answered flatly. “That’s over too. For the same obvious reasons.” And no more partying with Rin until dawn either.”
Setsuko let out a short laugh devoid of humor. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
“I managed to get you a reprieve. Until the wedding, you can keep going out and seeing your friends.”
“Great ! Thanks, Ran. Only one month left before I become a fucking nun.”
“What’s the problem anyway ?” Ran muttered, visibly starting to lose patience. “Those girls are bitches.”
“Ran…”
“No seriously. Do I need to remind you they’ve spent years criticizing our relationship ?”
“Because they don’t live in the same world as us, they were raised to marry lawyers and surgeons,” she shot back immediately. “That’s not against you and you know it.”
“That’s bullshit.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “If they were really your friends, you wouldn’t have needed to spend years making them believe your father was some fucking Italian shipping magnate.”Setsuko froze instantly. Because if there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was being reminded that most of her life had been fabricated just so she could fit into places never meant for her.
Ran saw the look on her face and exhaled tiredly. “Look,” he said more quietly now. “You like your life the way it is, don’t you ?” She stayed silent. “You like the clothes, the restaurants, all this shit.” His voice softened into something far more dangerous now, the tone he always used whenever he wanted her to stop resisting him. “You like making your dumb friends jealous.” Setsuko lowered her gaze toward her untouched bowl. “You like your manicures and your overpriced shampoos.” He tilted his head slightly. “Did you ever think I’d be able to buy you a Cartier watch for your twentieth birthday ?”
“Alright, stop. I got it. And stop cooing at me, I’m not a fucking pigeon.”
“No, listen.” He leaned slightly closer. “This is our life now, the one we wanted. And we’re only getting started, sweetheart.”
Setsuko swallowed hard. “But why do I have to sacrifice things ?”
Ran smiled faintly. “Let me tell you something. I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor.” He held her gaze steadily. “And I’ll choose rich every fucking time.” Then, calmer, “so if sacrifices need to be made for this life, we’ll make them together.” He gestured lazily toward her soup with his chopsticks. “Now smile for me and finish your soup.”
When Setsuko came back the next evening, the apartment was quiet except for the television murmuring somewhere inside. Mikey had been staying on his balcony for hours, one arm resting lazily against the chair while the Tokyo skyline flickered below him in blurred colors.
For hours, he had been replaying a conversation he’d had with Setsuko three days ago. What she’d said hadn’t made him react right away, but now that he thought about it, he realized something he’d been trying to hide from himself for two years
How easily she had said it. No accusation hidden beneath the words. She had taken his hand and placed it against her own throat as casually as if she were commenting on the weather. I know you're capable of it.
Mikey had spent years watching himself become someone capable of almost anything. He had broken lives, ordered executions, had cold-bloodedly killed both scum and simple civilians, he was even responsible for the daughter of a former enemy ending up as a hooker in Bangkok. He knew exactly how thin the line was because he'd crossed it more than could count.
The promise he had given her that night lingered unpleasantly in his mind. I'll never do that to you. So what would be left of him if he ever proved her right ?
The sound of the front door finally pulled him from his thoughts.
Setsuko stepped onto the balcony after slipping out of her shoes inside then walked toward him with a small tired smile already prepared on her face like she’d practiced it in her car. Immediately, something felt wrong. She seemed too calm. “Hi.”
Manjiro watched her carefully. “Hey.”
She leaned down to kiss him. And there it was. Tiny, almost imperceptible, but he felt it instantly. The hesitation, the distance.
She stood there for a second watching him silently, the city lights moving softly across her face. “Talking to the moon ?”
“I was thinking.”
“About what ?”
“Nothing.”
That made something flicker faintly across her expression. “It must be fun being you,” she murmured. The sarcasm was there, technically. But it sounded strangely hollow tonight, too tired to properly wound. Setsuko stepped past him toward the kitchen. “Are you hungry ? I brought food.” She didn’t even give him time to answer before continuing while unpacking containers onto the counter. “I got you a yasai itame. You need to eat vegetables.”
Mikey looked at her properly then, watching the irritated concentration on her face as she searched for chopsticks inside the bag. “Are you trying to put me on a diet ?”
Setsuko finally glanced at him, expression flattening slightly. “A diet ? Manjiro, you’re already all bones.” A quiet laugh escaped him before he could stop it. Setsuko’s features softened almost immediately afterward, irritation giving way to something quieter. “I just want you to take care of your health a little,” she muttered softly as she was bringing his food on the low table. “You have the eating habits of a thirteen-year-old teenager.”
Mikey watched her for a moment without saying anything. Setsuko had always done that. Not in obvious ways, she wasn’t the type to fuss over people or hover endlessly at their side. But over the years she had developed a habit of quietly fixing things around him. She did small, irritating acts of care he never asked for and never quite managed to stop her from doing. He still wasn't entirely sure what to do with that. “What did the doctor say ? You were supposed to keep me updated.”
“Yeah, sorry, I forgot. I was exhausted, I spent the whole day sleeping. Apparently I need to “reduce stress” which is objectively very funny considering my current situation. She also said I need to eat a little more. The baby’s fine.”
The conversation seemed to be over. He didn't try to push any further. Mikey nodded once. “Good.” He got back into the living-room and looked down at the steaming container of vegetables, then back up at her face, noticing the slight dark circles under her eyes. He didn’t argue. “And how was your evening ?” he asked eventually.
She opened the refrigerator without looking at him. “Fine.”
Too fast. Mikey’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Just fine ?”
“Koko psychologically analyzed me for two hours.” A pause. “So. Fine.” Normally that would’ve sounded amused. Tonight it sounded distracted. She stayed facing the refrigerator longer than necessary before finally taking out a bottle of water.
Mikey muted the television and Setsuko’s shoulders tightened almost invisibly. Interesting. “You’re acting weird.”
A tiny laugh escaped her immediately. “I’m pregnant, traumatized and sleep deprived. Weird is currently my baseline.” Deflection, again.
Manjiro was still watching her now with that awful stillness of his. Patient, so dangerous. “Setsuko.”
The use of her name pulled her brutally back into the room. She forced herself to shrug lightly. “He thinks you’re bad for me.”
“And ?”
She looked down at the bottle in her hands. “And nothing ? I told him he was being dramatic.”
The silence afterward stretched too long. Because now Mikey understood two things immediately. Kokonoi had absolutely said more than that and Setsuko had decided not to tell him what it was.
Setsuko hated when he got quiet like this because silence was the closest thing he had to a weapon sometimes. The less he spoke, the more impossible it became to tell what he was thinking.
"He called me this morning," he said, with feigned nonchalance.
A tiny, almost imperceptible tremor ran through her spine, but she caught herself quickly, forcing her expression to remain vacant. "Did he ?"
"Yeah. Business," Manjiro lied smoothly. In reality, Kokonoi had sounded exactly as he always did, calculated, professional, and entirely unbothered. But Manjiro knew how Koko operated. He knew his financial manager possessed a dangerous streak of pity when it came to shattered things. "He didn't mention about your drink."
"Yeah, I guess he has to get used to this... situation. Just like everyone else, I suppose," she whispered. She took a sip of water just to have something to do with her hands. “Listen, I don’t have the energy for a fight tonight.”
“A fight ?” Manjiro repeated calmly. “Interesting choice of words.”
Setsuko shut her eyes briefly. There it was, that terrifying ability he had to pull at tiny details until they split open. “I just mean…”
“I know what you mean.” His voice remained flat, but she could feel something underneath it now. Not anger yet, something colder.
Manjiro crossed the room slowly toward her. Setsuko watched him approach and for the first time in years, something cold moved unpleasantly through her stomach watching him walk toward her. Suddenly she realized she genuinely did not know what he was capable of anymore. The thought made her feel sick instantly.
Manjiro reached out, his fingers moving slowly toward her. Setsuko didn't flinch, didn’t pull away. She stayed perfectly still, watching his hand with a strange, clinical detachment as his fingers settled at the back of her neck. His thumb pressed against her skin, a heavy pressure. Usually, this touch grounded her, it reminded her that he was her refuge.
"You're tense," Mikey observed, his voice dropping lower, completely devoid of emotion. His fingers tightened slightly around her neck, pulling her just an inch closer to him.
"I’m fine," she lied, her voice cracking slightly as she finally forced herself to look at him, matching his empty stare with a desperate, hollow innocence of her own. She reached up, calmly but firmly wrapping her fingers around his wrist to pull his hand away from her neck.
Wrong answer. Setsuko was an excellent liar, which was exactly what made her lies so insulting. She was barely even trying. Mikey felt irritation flare hot beneath his ribs.
Cautiously, Setsuko moved past him and went to sit on the couch instead, curling one leg beneath herself like the weight of whatever was happening had suddenly become too exhausting to carry standing up. “We should eat before it gets cold.”
Mikey stayed where he was for another second, staring at her in silence before finally walking over to the coffee table.
Setsuko focused intensely on her food. Avoiding. Again.
Neither of them spoke. Minutes passed in complete silence before he finally set his chopsticks down against the edge of the container with a quiet click. “Are you planning to talk ?”
Setsuko didn’t look up immediately. “I don’t really have much to say.”
Another lie. A worse one this time. Something cold shifted behind Mikey’s eyes. Slowly, he leaned back against the couch, watching her with that terrible patience of his. “I can wait.”
Setsuko’s stomach tightened instantly. “Manjiro…”
“I mean it.” His voice stayed calm. Flat. “I’ll sit here all night if I have to.” Finally she looked at him. She looked disturbed, like someone trying very hard not to think too loudly. Mikey held her gaze without blinking. “I promise you, you’re not sleeping tonight,” he said quietly, “until you tell me what’s going on inside your head.” He wasn’t built for emotional archaeology, but he could be patient. Sometimes. And then, for one horrible second, he saw it. Not fear of him. Fear about him.
Setsuko took a sip of water just to buy herself another second. “Did they find anything about Ran ?”
“No, still nothing. You'd be the first person I'd tell.”
“Alright.” She stayed silent for a moment, as if searching carefully for the right words. “You know, if I’ve learned one thing in this world, it’s that spilled blood never dries.” She looked at the man in front of her, the silver hair she had trimmed, the dark, empty eyes that never revealed a single secret. She had always thought he would never hurt her because he knew it would break her heart. Now, she wasn't sure if he even cared about her heart at all. “And I get the feeling that Ran’s is already completely dry.” There was something underneath the sentence, he could feel it. “Can I ask you something ?”
Mikey watched her carefully. “Yes.”
Setsuko swallowed once. Her eyes lifted back toward him and somehow that single glance carried both the grief of everything they had shared and the ache of everything they never would. When she finally spoke, her voice was calm enough to make the entire room feel suddenly wrong. “Did you kill Ran ?”
Our hearts we have sold for diamonds and gold but, hey baby, take a look, we have it all. And haven't you heard? Hearts turn to dust along with the rest of your body, it's all claimed by the earth.
give love to ongoing fics too. not just one shots or completed works.
while “writers write for themselves first and foremost” and “fanfic reading is a form of self care and no reader should feel pressured to kudos or comment on the fic they read” are both true, kudos and positive comments are still so appreciated. and as a fellow writer, I can tell for a fact that while I do write for myself and my own enjoyment, seeing lovely comments from my readers always motivates me to write more and write faster.
unfortunately some people choose to avoid ongoing fics because they either want to wait for the whole thing to get posted first or they’re afraid writers will abandon the works and leave those works unfinished. but the thing is that if you want long, multi-chapter fics, letting writers know you love and appreciate their hard works by giving them kudos and commenting nice things on their ongoing fics will almost definitely always motivate writers to write. and also, writing can be hard. I know writers who pull all-nighters doing researches on their fics. I know writers who put so much time, effort and dedication into their fics. the fics they allow people to read for free. please let them know you love and appreciate their works if you can, especially with the raise of bots (it can be super discouraging for a writer to see that the only comments their fics get are from bots and scam).
kudos and comments help writers write more fics. appreciate fanfic writers. appreciate fan artists. appreciate ongoing fics.
Yuna wakes up in the world of Tokyo Revengers, and becomes part of the story whether she likes it or not.
*meme not mine
*dividers by @ cafekitsune
*member of @ maplewood-valley
"If you're that tired go back to bed. We always save you a plate."
"Yeah but you aren't there."
"You spent 14 whole years sleeping without me. It's not like I'm even here every night." Yuna laughs. Then she smiles, thinking about her plans with Wakasa for the evening.
"You should be." Mikey sounds grim. Yuna looks over her shoulder to see him frowning across the table
"Come on." She sighs. "You know I'm not going to argue with you about this again. I have a life outside of you and Toman. It includes Wakasa, whether you like it or not."
This is not the way she wants to start the day. If he's going to give me a hard time, I wish he would just go back to bed. Alone. Flicking off the burner, Yuna goes to the sink to wash the food residue off her hands.
"What does he have that I don't?" Am I going to be dealing with glum Mikey all day?
"He has my romantic and sexual interest, for one." Yuna snarks, feeling her ire start to rise. As much as she tries not to let Mikey get to her, nobody seems to irritate her the way he does. "And two, we don't have this weird roommate and foster-sibling relationship."
"I have never viewed you as either of those things." Mikey states
"I didn't know that you didn't until very, very recently." Yuna leans back against the counter. The scent of breakfast still tugs as her stomach, but it's not as pressing as getting this conversation over with before anyone else wakes up.
"I thought it was this unspoken thing between us." Mikey shrugs.
Chapter nine : Everybody said it would hurt in the end
TW : oral sex (m. receiving), light smut, verbal abuse, physical intimidation (hair grabbing, restraint)
Oh, and I'm happy to finally share the Like a Moth to a Flame soundtrack with you. I hope you’ll like it !
Setsuko hadn’t meant to come back, and yet she was here, sitting in the quiet of Manjiro’s apartment like the argument had never happened. It hadn’t been a decision so much as an erosion, something that gave way after too many nights alone with her thoughts, with Ran’s absence pressing into every corner of her own place until it stopped feeling livable, until even breathing there felt like remembering.
With Manjiro, it didn’t get better, it didn’t soften, it didn’t heal, but it disappeared, or at least enough of it did to make staying feel possible again. And maybe, somewhere under that, there was something else too, something smaller and far more dangerous, the quiet, stubborn hope that he might still look at her the way he used to, that he might touch her without distance, that there was still something left between them that hadn’t been completely ruined.
She knew better, knew exactly what he was and what this was, knew he hadn’t forgiven her and probably never would, and still she had come back anyway, not just to escape what she felt, but to see if there was anything left of what they had, even if it was only a fragment, even if it didn’t last.
Manjiro came out of the bathroom with a towel slung low around his hips and damp hair pushed carelessly back from his face, one hand still rubbing absently at the back of his neck. Steam followed him into the bedroom in a soft wave, carrying the clean scent of his body wash into the colder, dimmer air of the room. For one second, he looked almost painfully familiar.
Setsuko was sitting at the edge of the bed in one of his shirts, her legs bare beneath the hem, hands resting too neatly in her lap. She had been waiting for him in the version he liked best. It hadn’t taken her long to understand that he didn’t care about her clothes, not really, not the dresses, not the effort, not the way she had once tried to dress for him. He didn’t give a shit about all of that. What he liked was this, when she took something of his and wore it like it had always been hers, like the line between them didn’t quite exist. A t-shirt, nothing underneath but a pair of panties, something that could disappear if he wanted it to. Sometimes even that felt like too much.
The stillness in her posture wasn’t innocence, it was something closer to offering, intentional, the kind that didn’t leave much room to refuse. He stopped a few feet from her and looked at her without speaking, dark eyes steady, unreadable. Water still clung to the line of his abs and disappeared beneath the towel. The silence stretched, but it wasn’t awkward, that made her feel like he had already understood something she hadn’t yet said. So she smiled. “You look nice wet,” she said softly.
One corner of his mouth moved. “Do I ?”
Setsuko tilted her head and let her gaze drift slowly down the line of his chest before lifting back to his face. “You know you do.” His eyes stayed on her for a second too long, then dropped briefly to where the shirt had ridden slightly up her thighs. When he looked back at her, her voice was lower. “Come here.”
He stepped closer until she could feel the heat still clinging to his skin. Her fingers slid up his arm, slow, tentative, until they reached his shoulder. For a second, she hesitated, then she leaned in and kissed him. Soft at first, careful. Manjiro didn’t move immediately, then his hand came up, settling at the back of her neck, and he kissed her back. The same slow, deliberate pressure she knew too well it almost hurt. Setsuko melted into it without thinking, her hand sliding into his damp hair, her body pressing closer as if that alone could close whatever distance had opened between them.
Setsuko let her fingers drift lightly over his back and smiled softly. He didn’t move, didn’t pull away. That was all the permission she needed. She let her mouth brush his jaw, his throat, her hands sliding down his chest.
His eyes met hers. “What are you doing ?” he asked.
Setsuko lowered herself slowly to her knees in front of him. “Something you like.”
For the first time in what felt like weeks, something in his face changed. Not much, just enough for her to see that he hadn’t expected that exact choice. His eyes remained flat, looking down at her with a heavy, unreadable stillness that made her skin crawl. He exhaled slowly through his nose. “You don’t have to do that.”
She reached for the edge of his towel, her knuckles grazing the warmth of his skin as she let it fall to the floor. “I want to.” Setsuko’s fingers tightened slightly at his hips. He wasn't hard, not yet, forcing her to work for every inch of him. While she showered his abdomen with gentle kisses, she took him into her hand, her thumb stroking the length of him with a desperate, practiced grace, until she felt him finally stir, thickening and lengthening under her touch.
Manjiro exhaled sharply, a low groan vibrating in his chest as her mouth kissed his tip. She focused on her tongue swirling around the sensitive ridge as she took more of him, the wet, rhythmic sounds of her devotion filling the silence between them. He grew harder in her mouth, and she responded with a slow, deep suction.
There was something humiliating in how quickly her body remembered this role, this language, this old and dangerous fluency between them. How instinctively she reached for the version of them that had once existed in silences like this, where touch had always said what words made impossible. She needed him to come back to her, even if only for a minute, even if she had to drag him there herself, even if she knew she wasn't acting fairly, and that using sex to solve their problems would only make the situation worse.
She worked with a slow, agonizing focus, and Manjiro’s only response was the way his breath caught in his throat, a jagged, wet sound that betrayed how much he liked the feel of her mouth. One of her hands sliding up to grip his hip, while the other held him by the base, feeling the way his body reacted, the way he pulsed against her tongue. His hand found the back of her head after a while, not pushing, not forcing, just resting there with that familiar, possessive weight. The gesture alone was enough to make hope rise in her like something stupid and desperate.
Manjiro’s head fell back slightly, his thumb brushed lazily over her cheek. “You can be so good for me when you want to.” He wasn't really into dirty talk, and he wasn't very talkative during sex, so his words landed somewhere old and dangerously soft inside her. For one stupid second, Setsuko heard them the way she would have months ago, warm, possessive, almost indulgent. Something dark and familiar, something that used to make heat bloom low in her stomach and relief loosen every guarded part of her. And maybe that was what made it so easy to miss what he had actually meant.
His breathing changed first, then the tension in his body. He didn’t speak, but he didn’t need to. She knew his body too well. Knew every subtle shift, every inhale, every tiny fracture in his composure before he let himself fall fully into sensation.
When she locked eyes with his and slowly slid her tongue from his base to the tip, there was nothing delicate or vulnerable in her gaze. Pleasing the man she loved was probably the thing that made her feel most like a woman.
And when he finally touched her face, when his fingers curled beneath her jaw and he gently urged her upward before the moment could end where she had intended it to, something in her chest almost gave way from relief. “C’mere,” he said, “not like that.” Just like always.
Even though Setsuko had always loved blowing Manjiro, she had laid down one very simple rule : if he ever dared to finish in her mouth, she had sworn she would spit on his face before gouging his eyes out. No matter what, he had never dared to break that promise.
He lifted her onto the bed with quiet, effortless strength and kissed her in that slow, devastating way of his that had once made her feel chosen instead of doomed.
There you are, she thought wildly, there you are. Because for a few terrible, fragile minutes, he was almost himself again, or almost the version of him she missed enough to humiliate herself for. She kissed him back like someone trying to revive a body that had not yet fully gone cold. One hand cradled slowly into her hair, guiding her closer, the other slid beneath the shirt she was wearing, warm against the small of her back, pulling her closer until there was no room left between them at all.
He didn't take off her shirt; he just shoved it up to her waist, his bony hands heavy against her hips, as he guided her beneath him. His hands stayed careful, deliberate, everywhere except on her stomach, which he deliberately ignored. She chose to push that cruel realization far into the back of her mind.
He inserted himself into her with a slow, agonizing thrust, bottoming out with a soft, wet sound that made her toes curl. He kept his weight off her, his forearms braced on either side of her head, his endless eyes with the kind of focus that made her feel like the center of his entire world again. She could feel the way her own slickness coated his thighs as he slid in and out of her with a languid, passionate rhythm. It was quiet, save for the sound of their skin meeting and the broken high-pitched gasps she couldn't hold back. She kissed him like she was trying to breathe life into him, her fingers digging into his shoulders, her legs locking around his waist to pull him closer, deeper, until there was no room for secrets or silence.
In the heat of it, she let herself believe the lie. She felt the fracture in his composure, in the way he finally broke and whispered her name against her throat. Her fingers clutched at his shoulders, then slid upward into his damp hair, and when he made that low, quiet sound in his throat she nearly broke from the force of what it did to her. Because there he was again. In fragments. In muscle memory. In touch. In the shape of his mouth against hers.
As he moved inside her with that slow, inexorable depth, Setsuko felt the coil of tension inside her tighten until it was unbearable. Every slide of his skin against hers felt like a brand. She reached for him, her fingers digging into his shoulders, her breath coming in shattered, high-pitched sobs, imploring him to go harder.
Manjiro didn't look away. He watched the way her face fractured, the way her eyes clouded with pleasure. He adjusted his pace, his thrusts becoming shorter, more calculated, hitting the exact spot that made her back arch off the mattress. He was guiding her toward the edge with a terrifying, mechanical precision.
She brokenly whispered small pleas, her head tossing back against the pillows. The climax hit her with a violent, drenching force. She clamped around him in desperate, electric pulses that seemed to go on forever. She felt her vision go white, her entire world narrowing down to the place where they were joined.
He held her through it, his grip on her hips grounding her as she shook, his eyes never leaving hers, witnessing every tremor, every involuntary spasm of her body as she broke for him.
He sank deeper into her, his body rigid as he reached his peak, filling her with a slow, heavy heat that felt like a silent confession.
He stayed above her for a moment, breathing hard but controlled, his forehead resting briefly against her sternum. The room was quiet except for the soft, uneven rhythm of their breathing.
Setsuko’s fingers drifted lazily over his shoulder, then down the line of his arm, her touch absent and tender in the exhausted quiet that followed. She didn’t speak because speaking might shatter it. The illusion was too thin already, too beautiful in its fragility.
So when he finally rolled onto his back beside her, one arm still loosely draped over her waist, she let herself believe it. Maybe if she loved him correctly enough, carefully enough, physically enough, she could still keep away the worst of him.
His hand moved once against her side, slow and absent, like a final echo of something familiar. Then he said, very quietly, “that almost felt like before, don’t you think ?” Hidn’t sound angry. If anything, his voice was unnervingly gentle, almost affectionate.
Setsuko's blood went freezing cold. The silence after the sentence seemed to stretch around her. He had known. Every touch, every breath, every false note of tenderness she had tried so hard to disguise as instinct, he had seen it all. But he had let her continue anyway, let her kneel and hope.
Something hot and humiliating crawled up the back of her throat. For one wild second, she wanted to sit up and say something cruel, something cutting enough to save whatever remained of her pride. But she couldn’t. Anything she said now would only confirm what he already knew that she had been trying to manage him.
Her throat tightened. Setsuko swallowed hard and slowly, carefully, lifted his arm off her waist. Manjiro let her. She sat up with more composure than she actually felt, pulling the shirt back down over her thighs with trembling fingers before sliding off the bed. The room felt colder now.
When she bent to pick up her underwear from the floor, her vision blurred for a second. She blinked hard. Not here,not in front of him.
Behind her, his voice came again. Still calm and flat. “You should rest, your legs are shaking.”
Setsuko turned to look at him. He was lying exactly where she had left him, one arm tucked behind his head, gaze fixed on her face. He looked beautiful in the most infuriating, impossible way. Bare skin, damp hair, mouth still swollen from her kisses. As if she hadn’t just handed him the last soft thing she had and watched him tear it over in his hands. “You're disgusting,” she said quietly.
That got his attention. “What’s wrong ?” he asked. That tone, faintly confused, almost concerned, made something twist violently in her chest. That condescending, almost bored cruelty she fucking hated. If she’d had the strength, she would have thrown the bedside lamp straight at his face.
“Why are you like this ?” she asked. Her voice was tighter now, tears burning behind her eyes.
He watched her, that same faint, disdainful calm settling back over his features. “Because you tried to manage me,” He didn't look angry, which was infinitely worse. “And don't pretend you’re innocent,” he added, his gaze sharpening just slightly. “It insults my intelligence and it makes me very angry.” He shifted then, sitting up on the bed, leaning forward just enough for it to feel like a threat without actually touching her. “You have this habit,” he went on, quieter now, almost like he was explaining something obvious, something she should have understood already. “You tend to forget that nobody gets over on me. Nobody fucks me. Not even you.” He stood up without looking at her, picked up the towel she’d left on the floor, and tied it around his waist. Manjiro approached, and she realized she was shaking. He was most terrifying when he was at his quietest. He gently cupped her face in his hands and tucked her hair behind her ears. The gesture was so out of place under the circumstances that Setsuko felt nausea rising within her. “You’re not going to cry over your first night here, are you ?” The tears finally flowed, silently. Manjiro leaned down and tenderly kissed her cheek, tasting Setsuko’s tears as he did so. “Go to bed, you look exhausted.” And he left the room without giving her time to reply.
Setsuko hadn’t understood, at first, why Manjiro wanted her there. She had only received one of his usual cryptic texts.
Tonight. Nine p.m. Someone will pick you up. Don’t be late.
No explanation, no context and she knew better than to ask.
Things had been somewhat tense between them ever since their last night together. Manjiro hadn’t joined her in bed, and in the morning, he’d acted as if nothing had happened but hadn’t taken his eyes off her, as if he’d been waiting, with an unnerving level of patience, for her to lose her composure.
She had left early, had made up an excuse about an appointment for some lymphatic drainage, rambling on about its benefits. When he had offered to come back afterward, it was the post-massage fatigue that had come to her rescue. They hadn’t seen each other ever since, and their only exchanges had been sporadic and rather cold texts.
She stood in front of her closet longer than necessary, fingers brushing past fabrics she didn’t even register, her mind circling the same question without ever quite settling on it. Manjiro didn’t summon people without a reason. And whatever that reason was, it rarely allowed for mistakes.
In the end, she chose something safe. A long black silk skirt, fluid enough to move with her, paired with a fitted cashmere turtleneck that softened the severity without dulling it entirely. Chanel flats. Simple, polished. Neutral enough to belong anywhere. All black, of course, that color had become her signature.
She adjusted the sleeve slightly, glanced at her reflection, not out of vanity, but to check for there was nothing to correct. And still, something felt off.
A car had been waiting for her, engine still running. She recognized the driver the moment she got in, one of Manjiro’s men. The car pulled away without a word. Meguro slipped past the window in familiar lines at first, clean streets, late evening traffic, the quiet order she was used to. Setsuko let her gaze rest there without really focusing, her mind circling back to the same thought again and again, trying to make sense of something that didn’t quite fit.They had never met outside, so openly. Everything between them had always been contained, carefully kept out of sight, limited to corridors and hotel suites.
Her fingers shifted slightly in her lap, brushing against the fabric of her skirt as the car turned, the movement just enough to bring her back. Maybe he was taking her somewhere again. The thought settled in slowly, cautious, almost reluctant, as if she didn’t quite trust it herself. Just the two of them, away from the world, just like on their mini-break in Shizuoka. Maybe this time he’d take her somewhere snowy, Ainokura, perhaps ? He’d rent one of those traditional snow-country houses, and they’d spend a few days by the fireplace, warm and cozy, loving each other and sharing meals.
Setsuko shook her head. Given the problems they were currently facing, Manjiro was probably not in a romantic mood, and making Setsuko happy was hardly at the top of his priority list either.
Her gaze lifted again, more attentive this time, and she realized the city had changed. The streets had grown narrower, the buildings older, their facades worn, uneven, some half-lit, others completely dark. A flickering sign buzzed somewhere above a closed storefront. Trash bags were stacked too close to the curb. The sidewalks were empty.
The car slowed, then stopped. She didn’t ask where they were, she already knew the answer wouldn’t help.
Outside, the were a Chinese restaurant that looked forgotten, its front dim and tired, the kind of place you passed without noticing.
The driver turned slightly. “Wait here ma’am please.” Then he stepped out, leaving her alone with the low hum of the engine and the quiet that followed.
She exhaled slowly, her shoulders settling back against the seat, forcing her body into stillness, into something controlled, something deliberate. If this was a test, she wasn’t going to fail it by reacting too soon.
Outside, a car passed at the end of the street without slowing. The sound faded quickly, swallowed by the same heavy quiet. Minutes stretched. Manjiro had never done this before. Sent someone. Left her there. The thought lingered, quiet but insistent, settling into something she couldn’t quite dismiss.
When the driver finally returned, she straightened slightly. He walked around the car, opened her door, and stepped back to let her out. “You can go now.”
Setsuko stepped onto the pavement, the cool air sharper than she expected after the enclosed warmth of the car. The driver didn’t move to follow, he simply gestured toward the door.
She nodded once, more out of habit than necessity, then started toward the entrance. Her steps were steady, measured, the sound of them muted against the ground. Just before reaching for the handle, she paused. She turned slightly to watch the car already pulling away. Within seconds, it disappeared at the end of the street, swallowed by the dark as if it had never been there to begin with. Setsuko looked at the empty space for a moment longer, then turned back to the door and stepped inside.
The air felt warmer, heavier, carrying a faint mix of incense and something fried that lingered too long. The restaurant stretched out in front of her, larger than it had seemed from the outside, its decor frozen somewhere between dated and excessive. Painted dragons curled along the walls in fading gold and red, their bodies twisting through panels that had lost some of their shine. Paper lanterns hung low from the ceiling, casting a muted crimson light that flattened everything beneath it.
She knew Manjiro had no interest in Michelin-starred cuisine, but he knew her. What on earth had he been thinking, assuming she’d be thrilled to end up in a place like this ? She bit her tongue. Maybe the food was excellent after all. If he had been with her and she had made such a comment, he would surely have told her to stop being such a pain in the ass and appreciate the simpler things in life.
Maybe he had finally decided to leave her. Maybe he wanted to hurt her badly enough to do it in an ugly restaurant while she ate something that would make her sick for days afterward. Maybe this was how he’d do it. In a place that smelled like frying oil and old carpet.
Every table was set. White plates aligned with precision, glasses polished, chopsticks resting neatly on their holders as if the place were expecting a full service. And yet no one was there. No voices, no movement, not even the distant sound of a kitchen. Just silence, sitting too neatly on top of everything.
Setsuko took a few steps forward, her gaze moving across the room, and a waitress finally approached her. She didn’t look surprised. “Right this way,” she said softly, already turning, as if there was no need to ask who she was or why she had come.
Setsuko followed. Her steps echoed faintly against the floor as they crossed the dining room, past the perfectly arranged tables, past the lanterns that swayed almost imperceptibly in the still air.
Maybe he had privatized it. The thought came easily, fitting just well enough to be convincing. It explained the emptiness, the silence, the way everything seemed to be waiting. It made sense.
The waitress didn’t speak again. She moved toward the back of the restaurant, past the last row of tables, toward a darker section where the light thinned and the noise, what little there was of it, seemed to disappear entirely.
She stopped in front of a door, knocked and vanished into the very same void from which she had appeared. Setsuko looked at her, perplexed, then pushed the door open.
She felt the color drained from her face so quickly it almost felt physical, like something had been pulled out of her all at once. She didn’t move, just stood there, on the threshold, suddenly too aware of herself, of the room, of the silence.
For a second, her mind tried to make it something else, something simple, a reason that would make sense. Maybe there was some news about Ran ? The thought barely had time to settle before it collapsed. They were almost all there, seated around the table, already watching her. Sanzu. Kakucho. Takeomi and Koko.
Breath caught in her throat and without thinking, her eyes moved past them, to Mikey. He was sitting at the head of the table, exactly where he should be, still, composed. Setsuko took a step forward, more out of reflex than intention, her voice lower than she expected when she spoke. “What is this ?”
Nobody answered. Mikey’s gaze stayed fixed on her for another second before he lifted one hand slightly, calm, indicating the empty chair beside him. “Come sit.”
Setsuko didn’t move immediately. Her mind was trying to catch up too quickly now, thoughts colliding against each other hard enough to make her feel briefly nauseous. She looked from face to face instinctively, searching for something, any sign that would explain why she was there, but she could not find anything.
Setsuko became suddenly, painfully aware of her own body, of the way her pulse hammered against her throat, of the faint tremor beginning to spread through her hands no matter how hard she tried to steady them. She noticed that Rindou and Mocchi were missing. “Mikey,” she said again, “did something happen ?”
He didn’t answer the question, he simply looked at her for another second, waiting.
Setsuko swallowed hard, then finally forced herself forward. Each step toward the table felt strangely distant, disconnected from her body, like she was watching herself move from somewhere slightly outside of it. She could feel their eyes following her the entire way there, every inch of the room narrowing tighter the closer she got to him.
By the time she reached him, her hands were visibly trembling. The sound of the chair sliding lightly against the floor seemed absurdly loud in the silence. Setsuko kept her gaze lowered at first, trying to regain enough control to think properly, but she could still feel all of them looking at them.
Nobody understood what they were seeing yet, neither did she. Slowly, she looked toward Mikey who was already watching her completely calm in a way that made panic crawl colder beneath her skin. And then he smiled at her, barely there, but real enough to make something inside her drop violently.
Because in that exact moment, she knew, before he even opened his damn mouth, that he’d betrayed her. He had already decided, long before she walked through that door. Mikey finally looked away from her and toward the others seated around the table. “I’d rather make things short and clear. Setsuko stays with me now.”
The floor seemed to fall away beneath her. Everything she’d feared these past few days, exposure, betrayal, compressed into this one instant, where her name, her body, her life became a spectacle. Her heart stopped for half a beat.
Nobody reacted immediately. The words settled heavily across the table, absorbed into the silence, and for a strange second the entire room seemed to freeze around them.
Kakucho looked down first, to avoid staring directly at either of them. Takeomi’s cigarette remained suspended between his fingers, forgotten halfway to his mouth.
Koko leaned back slightly in his chair with the exhausted expression of someone realizing a situation had just become infinitely more complicated than it already was. “Setsuko ?” She could see the shock in his eyes as he searched in her face for a denial that wouldn't come.
She opened her mouth, ready to answer, but only a scream could have come out, so she slammed it shut. She could see her friend's incomprehension in his eyes, but she had no way to explain herself.
Only Sanzu looked untouched by it.
Tiny glances passed between them afterward, quick and restrained, the kind people exchanged when nobody wanted to be the first to openly acknowledge what had just happened.
Except Setsuko wasn’t looking at anyone else. She was staring directly at Mikey. Shame, fury, fear were all tangled in her throat with nowhere to go. It felt like a door had just closed behind her slowly, irreversibly.
“Ran hasn't even been gone that long... with all due respect, Mikey, this is going to cause a stir,” Takeomi grunted, finally dropping his cigarette into an ashtray, his gaze fixed respectfully on the table rather than challenging his leader's eyes.
Mikey didn't shift his posture. "I didn't ask for an opinion," he said, his voice flat and final. "I am telling you how it is."
Setsuko felt something hot and panicked, climbing rapidly into her throat. “What the fuck are you doing ?” she whispered tightly through barely parted lips. The words were almost soundless.
Mikey didn’t even look at her immediately. His gaze stayed on the table for another second before shifting calmly toward her, completely unbothered by the panic radiating off her in waves. “I’m ending the lies.”
Mikey gave a slight nod, a silent dismissal directed at his subordinates. It was a clear signal to get the fuck out, because immediately, chairs scraped and footsteps retreated.
The men stood in unison, offering a silent, disciplined bow toward the head of the table before filing out. Koko lingered for a fraction of a second, his gaze lingering on Setsuko with a mix of pity and warning, before the heavy wooden door clicked shut behind him, leaving only the two of them. She didn’t move.
When he finally turned toward her, his gaze went straight through her. “This is better,” he said quietly. “At least now, everyone knows where you stand.”
“You're pathological. You know that right ? You trapped me.” She said on the verge of tears.
“I didn’t–”
“Yes, you did ! How could you do this to me ? Do you have any idea what that feels like ?”
He didn’t answer. And when Setsuko searched in his eyes for an answer, all that she saw was the void.
The meeting ended not the usual kind, not the heavy quiet of strategy or exhaustion that often followed Bonten discussions, but something stranger, as if none of them had quite managed to leave the room mentally even after standing up from the table.
Outside, the night air felt colder than it should have. The four of them stopped near the entrance of the restaurant almost instinctively, unwilling to leave yet but equally unwilling to say aloud what they were all thinking.
Takeomi lit a cigarette first. Kakucho kept his hands in his pockets, gaze lowered toward the pavement, visibly tense. Koko leaned against the wall near the entrance, one hand pressed against the back of his neck, already looking exhausted by the situation. Only Sanzu seemed completely unaffected. Or at least unreadable. He stood slightly apart from them, gaze somewhere down the empty street, saying nothing.
Takeomi exhaled smoke slowly. “Well,” he muttered at last. “That was fucking weird.”
Koko let out a humorless laugh under his breath. “You think ?”
“She looked like she wanted to die,” Kakucho said quietly. The sentence settled badly between them.
Takeomi frowned slightly. “No shit.” He replayed the image unwillingly in his head, Setsuko standing in the doorway, going pale the second she understood what the room was, the way she looked at Mikey afterward like she had just realized too late that something irreversible had already happened.
Sanzu finally glanced toward them then, but didn’t comment.
Koko rubbed his face tiredly. “This is a fucking mess.”
Kakucho seemed to awaken. “Wait, guys, I don't get it. Have you ever seen them interact in public even once ? How long has all this been going on ?
Koko frowned. “Once, yes, I guess.”
Takeomi tried to make a joke. “Do you think it started before or after he slapped her in front of us ?”
“Oh my God,” Koko sighed.
Sanzu spoke up for the first time. “Maybe she likes it rough,” he grinned, earning a dirty look from Koko.
A car passed slowly at the end of the street, headlights briefly illuminating the faded dragons painted across the restaurant windows before disappearing into the dark.
Then Kakucho spoke carefully. “Rindou needs to know.”
Nobody argued. Because of course he did, Ran had been his brother and Setsuko was his family.
Takeomi cursed quietly under his breath. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I’ll call him.”
“Tomorrow.” Koko’s voice cut through the conversation immediately.
Takeomi looked at him. “What ?”
“Tomorrow,” Koko repeated calmly. “Not tonight.”
A brief silence followed. Takeomi frowned slightly. “You think waiting’s gonna make it better ?”
“No,” Koko said. “I think there’s already been enough fucking damage for one night.” That shut everyone up for a second. He pushed himself off the wall slowly, expression tightening in a way that suggested he was more affected than he wanted to appear. “Rindou’s reaction is gonna be violent,” he said flatly. “And if he learns this tonight, he’s gonna go looking for her before he goes looking for Mikey.”
Sanzu let out a mean little laugh. “Yeah. I’d like to see him try.”
Everyone fell silent, they knew Sanzu was right. Rindou didn't have a chance to touch Mikey. He had far more to lose than to gain.
Takeomi took another drag from his cigarette, slower this time. “…Tomorrow morning, then.”
Koko nodded once and nobody spoke after that. The conversation had reached the point where there was nothing left to say that wouldn’t make the whole thing worse.
The car door slammed shut behind them and Setsuko snapped almost immediately.
“What the fuck is wrong with you ?!” Her voice tore through the silence so violently that even the driver flinched slightly before masking it again. The car had barely started moving.
Mikey didn’t answer. He sat beside her with infuriating calm, one arm resting loosely against the door, gaze forward, posture relaxed in a way that felt almost cruel now.
Setsuko stared at him in disbelief. “You brought me in there blind,” she continued, louder now, her breathing already uneven. “You sat me in front of Sanzu and fucking Takeomi like I was some kind of, of,” She cut herself off with a strangled sound of frustration and turned abruptly toward the front. “Stop the car !”
The driver hesitated.
“Stop the fucking car !”
“Keep driving,” Mikey said calmly.
Setsuko let out a sharp laugh that sounded dangerously close to panic. “Oh my God. Oh my God, you actually think this is normal.” She shoved a hand through her hair violently, then pointed toward the window. “Drop me off. I don’t care where. Leave me on the side of the fucking road if you have to.”
Nobody answered. The city lights slid across the windows in blurred streaks while the car continued forward steadily, unbearably steadily, as if her breakdown wasn’t happening six inches away.
Setsuko turned back toward Mikey so fast her skirt twisted around her legs. “Are you even listening to me ?!”
“Yes.” Manjiro finally looked at her fully then, gaze steady, unreadable. “You tried to manipulate me. You thought you could play games with me. I don't like games."
Setsuko froze, then another disbelieving laugh escaped her. “Manipulate you.” She actually stared at him for a second after that, speechless from pure disbelief, then she laughed again. The sound came out sharp and ugly and completely unstable. “Did you seriously destroy my life because I sucked your dick ? That’s your excuse for this ?”
Manjiro’s expression didn't change. "Watch your mouth."
"Or what ? You'll tell the rest of the world I'm your whore ? It’s a bit late for threats, don't you think ?" Her voice cracked hard on the last word. Setsuko went completely still for half a second before her face twisted sharply. Her hand flew to her mouth suddenly. “I’m gonna throw up.”
“Stop being dramatic,” he muttered, finally turning his head to look at the window with mild annoyance.
She looked at him with genuine hatred. “I swear I will vomit directly on your fucking lap.”
Manjiro studied her for a second, and surely saw the green shade to her skin. “Pull over.”
The car slowed immediately this time. Setsuko barely waited for it to stop fully before shoving the door open and stumbling out into the cold night air. She made it three steps before doubling over violently near the curb. The sound made even the driver look uncomfortable.
Mikey watched her carefully through the window, expression unreadable, then nodded once toward the driver.
The man quietly grabbed a bottle of water and a packet of tissues from the front before stepping out and approaching her carefully.
Setsuko heard footsteps and recoiled instantly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as she turned sharply. “Don’t fucking touch–” The sentence died halfway through. Not Manjiro. Just the driver standing there awkwardly with the water bottle in one hand and tissues in the other. For a second, Setsuko only stared at him, breathing hard, mascara smudged beneath her eyes now despite how hard she’d fought not to cry. She took the bottle from him with shaking fingers. “How can you work for a fucking psychopath like him ?”
The poor man wisely said nothing.
Setsuko rinsed her mouth, spat into the dirt, and forced herself to stand up. She climbed back into the car, slamming the door with a finality that shook the frame.
Manjiro looked at her carefully.. “How do you feel ?” Setsuko ignored him completely. She leaned her head against the window instead, arms crossed tightly, eyes fixed outside while the car started moving again. "Setsuko."
Minutes ticked by. The only sound was the hum of the engine. Finally, without turning her head, she spoke in a cold, dead whisper. “If you don’t take me home, I’m never speaking to you again.” Her voice sounded scraped raw now, exhaustion replacing hysteria little by little. Setsuko shut her eyes. “I mean it.”
Another pause, Manjiro watched her profile. Then, he sighed. “Take her home.”
The driver nodded immediately.
Setsuko didn’t thank him. “I don’t forgive you. You can’t just decide things for me.”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I can.”
The simplicity of it hit harder than if he had yelled. Setsuko went completely still. Her breathing turned uneven as she stared at him, hurt overtaking anger so quickly it almost looked like whiplash. For a second, she genuinely felt young. Like someone who had just realized the ground underneath them had shifted permanently.
Manjiro seemed to see it immediately and despite everything, despite the fight, despite the damage already done, his expression softened almost imperceptibly. His hand moved toward her carefully, slowly enough to give her time to pull away.
She did.
The rejection lingered between them quietly as the car disappeared deeper into Tokyo night.
By the time Takeomi finally dialed Rindou’s number, Tokyo was fully awake again, grey light bleeding through the windows of the car while traffic crawled endlessly around them. He had been staring at his phone for almost five minutes before actually pressing the contact, cigarette burning slowly between his fingers while the driver kept his eyes fixed carefully on the road ahead.
“What ?”
Takeomi rubbed ash absently against the edge of the lowered window before answering. “You busy ?”
“It's nine a.m. asshole.”
Takeomi leaned back slightly against the seat. “There was a meeting yesterday.”
Something ugly lingered underneath the sentence already, irritation sharpened by exclusion more than curiosity.
Takeomi exhaled slowly through his nose. “Mikey announced something.”
Silence. Not interested yet, or pretending not to be. “What is it ?”
Takeomi looked briefly at his reflection in the darkened window before speaking. “He’s with Setsuko.”
For one strange second, there was absolutely no reaction on the other end of the line. No breath. No movement. Just dead silence, as if the sentence itself had failed to process correctly.
Rindou laughed suddenly under his breath, short and sharp and completely humorless, “…what ?” Like his brain physically refusing to assemble the words into something coherent.
“I’m not joking, Rin.”
The silence that followed stretched longer this time. Takeomi could almost hear him thinking through the phone, replaying the sentence over and over, trying to force it into a version of reality that actually made sense.
“When you say ‘with,’” Rindou said slowly, each word sounding tighter than the last, “what exactly the fuck do you mean ?”
Takeomi took another drag from his cigarette before answering. “I mean Mikey brought her into a room with Sanzu, Kakucho, Koko and me, sat her next to him, and told us she stays with him now.”
The silence afterward turned dense enough to feel physical. Takeomi frowned slightly and pulled the phone away from his ear for half a second to check the call hadn’t dropped.
Then he heard a sharp exhale, like someone getting hit hard enough to forget how breathing worked for a second. “No,” Rindou said quietly. The word sounded wrong coming from him, too thin. “No,” he repeated, harsher now, anger forcing itself violently into the cracks left by shock. “No. That doesn’t make any fucking sense.”
Takeomi shut his eyes briefly.
Another silence followed, but this one felt different, more dangerous. Then Rindou laughed again, the sound cut through the line hard enough to make Takeomi straighten slightly in his seat. “She let him say that ?”
Takeomi rubbed a hand slowly across his jaw. “She didn’t look like someone who knew what the meeting was about.” He stared out the window again, jaw tightening almost imperceptibly as the memory came back. “She looked mortified,” he said finally. The word still didn’t feel sufficient. “I think she walked in blind, saw all of us sitting there, and realized too late what he was doing.” Another pause. “She went completely white.”
Rindou went completely quiet. Takeomi heard movement on the other end suddenly. Drawers opening, keys. His expression darkened immediately. “Rindou.”
“No. She’s gonna fucking talk to me.” The words came calm enough to become genuinely frightening.
“Listen. I’ve known Mikey since he was a kid. He’s never done anything like this before.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean ?”
“It means that whatever’s going on between them, I think it’s serious.”
Takeomi very clearly heard Rindou punch the wall. “This is a fucking joke.”
“You’re angry, I get it, but showing up there like this isn’t gonna help anybody.”
“Help ?!” Rindou repeated. “You think I’m trying to help ? No, she’s gonna help me understand this !”
Takeomi could practically hear him pacing. “Rin, listen to me carefully. If Mikey’s telling the truth and you go after Setsuko, do you really think he’ll let you lay a fingernail on her ?” The sound of a door opening somewhere on Rindou’s side. Too late. “Rin, calm the fuck down.”
“What’s he going to do to me, huh ? Just because he’s fucking her, thinks he can do whatever he wants ?”
“I suggest being careful with what you say.” And there was a barely veiled warning in Takeomi’s voice. He really liked Rindou, and he wanted to help him but nothing would ever compromise his loyalty to Mikey.
“That’s my brother’s wife. If you can’t understand that, I can’t do anything.” And without another word, he hung up.
The silence that followed felt immediately unbearable. For a second, he just stood there in the middle of his apartment, phone still clutched tightly in his hand, breathing hard enough to make his chest hurt while Takeomi’s words kept replaying in violent fragments inside his head.
Then he opened his contacts again and hit call before he could think twice about it. Sanzu picked up on the third ring without greeting, just the faint sound of music somewhere in the background and his voice, flat with irritation. “I’m guessing you got Takeomi’s call.”
Takeomi’s call still echoed violently in Rindou’s head, every sentence replaying itself faster than he could process it properly. His grip tightened around the phone.
Rindou shut his eyes briefly, jaw tightening hard enough to hurt. “Listen, I know for you, maybe none of this brother shit matters,” Rindou continued, the words growing rougher the longer he spoke, anger constantly threatening to break through the restraint holding it together. “But Ran was my brother.” Rindou leaned forward slightly, pressing the heel of his hand against his forehead for a second before continuing. “If you know how long this has been going on…” His voice nearly failed him there, just for a second. “Tell me.”
The quiet on the line stretched long enough to become unbearable. When Sanzu finally spoke again, his tone hadn’t changed at all. "Haitani, if you have questions, don't ask me," his voice sharpened like a razor. "Go ask her. Go look into her eyes and ask her how long she’s been waiting for your brother to get out of the way." Rindou opened his mouth to bark another question, but Sanzu wasn't finished. He exhaled quietly, almost bored now. “But I’ll give you this much for free.” His voice lowered slightly then, smoother somehow, which only made it worse. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the kid she’s carrying comes out with black eyes.” For one horrible second, Rindou genuinely stopped breathing. Sanzu listened to it for a second. Then, he said, calmly, “don’t do anything reckless.”
Rindou let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “You think I’m worried about myself right now ?”
“No,” Sanzu replied flatly. “I think you’re emotional enough to become annoying. And Mikey’s already in a bad mood.”
Then the line went dead.
Steam drifted from the bathroom as Mikey stepped out, a towel slung low around his hips, hair still damp and clinging to his temples.
Setsuko didn’t look up from her iPad. She sat cross-legged on the bed, hair pulled back messily, focused on the screen like the world outside didn’t exist.
He paused in the doorway, one hand still absently rubbing a towel through his hair as he watched her. “What are you doing ?” he asked finally, voice low, lazy.
“Relooking,” she said, without lifting her eyes.
He frowned faintly. “For what ?”
“For you.”
That earned her a long silence. “You think I need that ?”
“I think,” she replied, fingers still typing, “that the head of Bonten could at least pretend he owns something more than five black Uniqlo t-shirts.”
He blinked. “They’re comfortable.”
“They scream I got dressed in the dark.”
Mikey tilted his head, unimpressed. “You really think I give a shit about what I wear ?”
“Oh I know you don’t,” she said simply. “That’s why I’m doing it for you.”
Setsuko knew it was dangerous. She knew she was starting to get attached to him. And she could have bet that, on his side too, he was beginning to enjoy their little meetings far more than he should.
At first, they would just fuck, and he’d leave right after, though he always let her keep the room for the night if she wanted. Then he started suggesting they order food. After that, he began taking a shower before leaving, and when she felt brave enough, she would sometimes join him and he let her wash his hair. And over time, they started talking a little, before or after, sometimes both.
Now they had reached a point where they saw each other in broad daylight, like today. And once, just once, they hadn’t touched each other at all. They had ordered dinner, eaten in the suite, and talked for hours like there was nothing strange about it. That had been the moment she should have stopped. But she hadn’t.
He laughed a quiet, dry sound. “You serious ?”
“Dead serious.” She finally met his gaze, chin tilted in mock defiance. “If I have to fuck a criminal, he might as well be a well-dressed one.” With a small tilt of her head, she motioned for him to sit beside her. “Look, there are t-shirts-”
“I don’t see the difference with the ones I already have,” he replied flatly.
Setsuko conceded and explained, patiently, “It’s about quality. The fabric is better here, it won’t lose its shape.”
“Mm.”
“I picked out some sweaters too,” she added, gesturing toward the screen, “I chose turtlenecks, to, you know, hide your tattoo… and in cashmere, so you won’t be cold,” she added more softly, almost shyly.
Manjiro looked at her a second longer than necessary, and something like tenderness passed through his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s a good idea.”
If someone had asked her why she was doing this, she wouldn’t have known how to give an honest answer. She wasn’t supposed to give a shit whether Mikey was too warm or too cold. He was a big boy, if he was cold, he should put a fucking jacket. And yet she did.
“Oh and, there’s a coat that I love,” she said suddenly, switching tabs. “What do you think ? It’s Yohji Yamamoto.”
Manjiro glanced at the black coat that had Setsuko so excited and shrugged. “It’s nice, I guess.”
“Nice ?” she repeated, offended. “You have no taste, that’s actually impressive. You can’t just call it nice. Do you have any idea how much work goes into this, or how many people are involved ?”
Manjiro sighed slightly, and Setsuko knew immediately she wasn’t going to like what came next. “We send people to work in garment factories in Bangladesh. I know exactly how many people can bleed for a jacket like that.”
Setsuko pressed her fingers to her temples. Why did he always have to be like this ? Why did he always have to ruin her fun ? Why did she like it this much ? She sighed, exasperated. “Okay, forget it. Do you like it or not ?”
Manjiro nodded.
“Great.” She added the coat to the cart, victorious. “I spared you the pants. Too complicated. But, and this is non-negotiable, you need, you absolutely need to own at least two shirts. I know the next wedding you’ll be invited to isn’t anytime soon, but what if you have to attend a funeral ?” She switched pages again. “One white, one black. It’s the bare minimum.”
Manjiro raised his eyebrows, almost amused by the contrast between their tastes and priorities. “Is it necessary for it to be Dior?”
Setsuko deadpanned. “Yes. You’ll look very elegant in them. Especially in the black one, if you ask me.”
Manjiro leaned back, propping himself up on his elbows. “If you say so. Are we done ?”
“Almost ! I got you a pair of sneakers. They’re-” she counted on her fingers, “simple, elegant, current, without making you look like a fashion victim, see ?”
He frowned. “Why did you buy me shoes ?”
“Because your toes are always… visible, Manjiro. It’s indecent. Nobody wants to see that. And I’m sure no one ever dares to tell you, but wearing flip-flops anywhere other than the beach is honestly ridiculous.”
She knew it was a privilege, to speak to him like that, to push back, to make fun of him sometimes without consequence. She knew he let her get away with things no one else would even attempt. And she knew she was being treated differently. She just wasn’t supposed to enjoy it as much as she did.
Manjiro frowned faintly. “That feels personal.”
“It is. Give me your card,” she added casually, like she was asking for the soy sauce. His brow arched. “Listen, I would have gladly bought all that for you, but it would be hard to explain to Ran why I'm buying men's clothes that wouldn't end up in his dressing room. So, I need your card, Manjiro.” She finally looked up, eyes steady. “Please ?”
Manjiro looked at her for a long second, unreadable. Then he bent down, reached into the pocket of his pants lying on the floor, and pulled out his wallet. The black card landed on her laptop with a soft tap. “There,” he said. “Happy now ?”
She gave him a wicked, proud smile. “Ecstatic.”
He didn’t smile back.
Setsuko’s lips softened into something that almost looked like kindness. She looked up at him. “Don’t worry,” she said quietly. “I won’t make you someone you’re not.”
Her eyes lingered on him, and he wasn’t even trying. Still damp from the shower, half-dressed, half-bored, standing in front of her like this was an entirely unfair use of power, a silent, arrogant display of everything he could take if he wanted to. It was the stillness that undid her, that quiet confidence, that control that never needed to be announced. She knew she was fucked. She was going to fall in love with him. He didn't even have to love her back, she was going to give him her heart. Fuck.
Her mouth curved a little more. “Besides,” she said, fingers finding the hem of the (his) t-shirt she wore before pulling it over her head in one smooth motion, her hands then drifting toward the edge of the towel at his hips, “I like you better without clothes anyway.”
Manjiro didn’t look surprised. He didn't move to help her, but he didn't stop her either. He just looked down at her, his eyes dark and focused.
“Is that so ?” he asked, his voice barely a murmur.
“Mm-hmm.”
She didn't wait for an answer. She pulled the towel loose. It hit the floor with a soft thud, leaving him standing bare before her. Manjiro reached out then, his hand closing around the back of her neck, not to squeeze, but just to anchor her. He pulled her a few inches closer, his lips warm against hers.
“Then stop talking,” he said.
Setsuko had spent the entire day waiting for it. In the beginning, she had tried to convince herself otherwise. Tried to move through the apartment normally, to shower, to answer two unread messages from Koko she ultimately deleted without sending, to make tea she never drank. But the hours kept passing and the dread only settled deeper beneath her skin, slow and poisonous, until every small sound in the apartment started making her heart jump violently against her ribs.
Because of course Rindou was going to find out. There had never really been another possible outcome after last night.
By late afternoon, she had given up pretending she was doing anything productive at all.
The dressing room looked like a disaster zone now, expensive black fabric spread across the floor and velvet bench in uneven piles where she had started unpacking drawers only to forget halfway through what she had been looking for. She kept touching things without seeing them properly, folding shirts before unfolding them again seconds later, moving dresses from one side of the room to the other with no actual purpose except keeping her hands busy enough not to shake.
Her phone remained face down beside her. Silent. The waiting had become unbearable by the time she finally heard the front door unlock.
Setsuko froze instantly and she knew before the footsteps even started. The sound moved sharply through the apartment, faster and heavier than usual, and panic surged through her so violently she nearly dropped the sweater still clutched in her hands. Rindou. Oh God.
“Setsuko !” His voice echoed through the apartment hard enough to make her flinch.
She looked around wildly, breathing too fast already, her mind jumping uselessly between impossible options, leave, hide, explain, lie, before instinct took over completely.
Ran’s drawer.
Her fingers fumbled against the handle badly enough that she almost missed it the first time before yanking it open. Watches. Papers. Lighters. Then finally, near the back, a small knife. Setsuko grabbed it immediately despite knowing, somewhere deep down, how absurd it was. She wasn’t going to use it on Rindou. The thought alone made her feel sick, but her hands needed something to hold onto before she fell apart completely.
“Setsuko !”
She backed herself into the corner beside the wardrobe, clutching the knife tightly enough for the metal to hurt her palm, tears already burning behind her eyes before he even appeared.
And then Rindou was there. He entered so fast the movement barely registered before his eyes locked onto the knife in her hand. His expression changed instantly. “What the fuck are you doing ?”
Setsuko opened her mouth automatically. “Rin, I–”
Rindou crossed the room in two strides.
The knife flew from her hand so violently it struck the opposite wall before clattering uselessly onto the floor somewhere behind him.
Setsuko gasped sharply, stumbling backward into the shelves hard enough to rattle hangers. Then she finally looked at him properly, and panic hit in full.
His breathing was uneven, chest rising too fast beneath his jacket, rage practically vibrating beneath his skin in a way that made the entire room feel too small to contain him.
But what terrified her most was the look in his eyes. She had seen Rindou angry before, she had seen him violent, but never like this.
“Since when ?”
Setsuko’s mouth opened soundlessly. “Rin…”
“I asked you a question.” He stepped closer again, enough to force her fully into the corner behind her. “How long were you fucking him behind Ran’s back ?” The tears she had been barely holding back finally spilled over. Rindou saw them and something in his face twisted violently. His fury only sharpened at the sight. “Oh, now you cry ?” he spat. “Too late, Setsuko. Way too fucking late.”
Setsuko pressed a shaking hand against her mouth, shoulders trembling hard enough she could barely breathe properly anymore.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen–”
“Really ?” His voice rose sharply for the first time. “So what, you accidentally ended up in Mikey’s bed ?” His hand dragged roughly across his mouth as he turned away from her for half a second, breathing hard now, trying and failing to process the image forming in his head.
Setsuko shut her eyes hard. “I love him !”
For the first time since entering the room, Rindou actually looked stunned. “What ?”
“I love him and, and he loves me, Rin. It’s complicated, and…”
Rindou’s reaction was immediate. He grabbed Setsuko by the hair and yanked her face toward his, tearing a cry of pain from her throat. “Are you fucking kidding me ? And Ran ?”
Setsuko desperately tried to pry his hand away. “Stop, please, you’re hurting me !”
For answer, Rindou pulled harder, violently jerking her head back. “My brother did everything so you’d never have to work a single damn day in your life, he gave you everything, treated you like a queen until the very end, and that’s how you thank him ? By fucking his boss ?”
Setsuko’s cries and sobs filled the room. “I loved Ran, Rindou, you know I did, please, you know I did !”
“How can you stand there and tell me you loved him ?” He shook her violently. “You’re not even ashamed ! You’re a fucking bottomless pit. You say you love both of them, but that’s bullshit. They just filled this sick fucking need you have to be loved. It’s pathetic. You hate yourself so much you need other people to do it for you.” Her eyes sought the floor, avoiding the fire in Rindou’s gaze, but her body betrayed a visceral fear. "I can’t even look at you, you disgust me."
He released her hair violently, sending Setsuko collapsing sideways onto the floor with a cry. Her hands immediately flew to her stomach on instinct and a crushing silence fell over the room. Rindou didn’t even look remorseful.
Setsuko curled up further, fear instinctively pushing her toward the floor, as if to protect herself.
Rindou took another step, almost touching her, fists still clenched, and for a moment she thought he might act. But he stopped a breath away, leaving the threat hanging in the air. "You know what, Setsuko ? I hope you’re really, really in love with your boyfriend, because let me tell you what’s coming, since you apparently haven’t figured it out yet : Mikey is never going to trust you, and do you know what happens to people he doesn’t trust ?” Setsuko was incapable of answering, sobs painfully lodged in her throat. “The second you step out of line, he’ll put a bullet in your head, and I’m willing to bet he’ll make me watch. Or maybe he’ll feel merciful enough to spare you and just dump you on some street corner, and trust me, for your sake, you better be making him a whole lot of money by then.”
Setsuko continued to whimper and sniff loudly. “I’m so sorry, Rin, I swear I could go back in time…”
“If we could go back in time, I’d tell my brother to leave you rotting in the street the day your mother threw you out.” Rindou leaned toward her, so close that Setsuko could feel the heat of his breath, hear the rapid beat of his heart like a war drum. “Pretty fucking convenient, isn’t it ? Your impossible little love story, and suddenly your husband ends up dead.” His fists were clenched, shoulders tense, and every muscle in his body seemed ready to snap at the slightest provocation. "If he’s the one behind Ran’s death, I swear I’ll fucking kill you."
She didn’t sob, the sound didn’t come. It was worse than that, a silent collapse, a grief with no shape, no air, no noise. Tears spilled fast, unstoppable, tracking down her face in hot, humiliating lines as she tried to steady herself, tried to breathe, tried not to hear Ran’s name thrown like a blade. No. Manjiro would never do that. He had every flaw imaginable, but he knew she loved Ran. He would never rip the other half of her away from her.
He rose slowly, his dark gaze fixed on hers, and the tension remained suffocating. Then, without another gesture, he turned on his heels, leaving behind an oppressive void, where fear, guilt, and unspoken danger intertwined, pressing Setsuko against the cold floor. “You’re fucking dead to me. Don’t ever speak to me again. Look down when you see me, and never let my name come out of your mouth again. You think you've lost everything ? You have no idea.”
The apartment stayed silent long after Rindou left. Well, not truly silent. Setsuko could still hear him everywhere.
The slam of the front door echoed faintly through the rooms, mixing with the sound of her own uneven breathing until she could no longer separate one from the other properly.
She remained curled on the floor for several seconds without moving, one arm wrapped protectively across her stomach while the other pressed shakily against her mouth, as if she could physically hold herself together hard enough to stop the panic spreading through her body.
Her scalp burned where he had grabbed her, but it was nothing compared to the rest.
You’re fucking dead to me. The sentence kept replaying over and over inside her head with brutal clarity. Setsuko squeezed her eyes shut hard enough to hurt.
Then, finally, she reached blindly for her burner. Her hands were shaking so badly she nearly dropped it twice before managing to call him. The line rang once.
“Yes.” The sound of Manjiro’s voice broke something instantly. Setsuko let out a sharp, ugly sob before she could stop it. Silence answered her for half a second, then his tone changed completely. “Setsuko.”
She tried to speak and failed immediately, breath catching hard in her throat. “He knows,” she choked out finally. “Rin knows, he came here and…” Another sob interrupted the sentence violently.
Manjiro was already moving on the other end of the line. She could hear it faintly, footsteps, keys, the abrupt shift in his breathing that meant he had stood up immediately.
“What happened ?” The question came calm that almost made her cry harder.
“He hates me,” she whispered brokenly. “Oh my God, he hates me.”
“Did he hurt you ?”
Setsuko pressed the heel of her hand against her eyes desperately. “No,” her voice cracked. “I mean, I don’t know, he just,” she stopped again, breathing unevenly and panicked. “He said I’m dead to him,” she whispered. “He said I disgust him.” Setsuko curled tighter against the floor. “This is all your fault.” The accusation escaped her suddenly through tears before she could stop it. “You did this to me.” Manjiro didn’t react, or if he did, she couldn’t hear it. ”You told everyone and now everything’s ruined and I…” she continued weakly, crying harder now that she had started.
“I know.” The words came low and steady, no defensiveness.
Setsuko covered her mouth again as another sob escaped her. For a few seconds, neither of them spoke, until Manjiro broke the silence. “Are you still home ?”
The question grounded her just enough to answer. “Yes.”
“I’m coming.”
Setsuko shut her eyes immediately. “I don’t want to stay here.” Her voice sounded small now.
“You won’t. Pack your things, I'm taking you to my place”
Something in the calm certainty of his voice finally made the panic loosen slightly around the edges, enough for her to force herself upright using the side of the wardrobe for support. Her knees almost gave out immediately.
“Manjiro...”
He answered instantly. “Yes ?”
Setsuko pressed trembling fingers against her mouth again. “I think everything’s falling apart.”
The silence on the other end lasted just long enough for her to realize he was choosing his words carefully. “No,” he said quietly. “It’s already fallen apart.” The honesty of it stole the remaining air from her lungs. “But I’m still here.”
And somehow, despite everything, despite the horror of the day, despite Rindou’s words still bleeding inside her chest, that was enough to keep her from collapsing completely.
The apartment was dark except for the low light above the stove and the flickering blue glow of the muted television. Setsuko saw him before he noticed her.
Manjiro was still on the couch, one arm stretched along the backrest, his body sunk into the corner like someone who had been sitting there for hours without moving. From the hallway, half-awake and disoriented, he looked almost unreal in the dark, more like a shape than a person. The city lights behind the windows cut pale lines through the room, catching against the sharp edge of his cheekbone, the quiet rise and fall of his chest, the metallic glint of the Zippo which had once belonged to his older brother turning lazily between his fingers.
For one second, Setsuko just stood there. Her throat still burned. Her stomach still felt hollow and sour and wrong. She was hot and clammy in the unpleasant way that always followed vomiting, her hair a mess around her face, one side flattened from sleep, the other tangled beyond saving. She knew she probably looked awful. She was too tired to care.
When he finally looked up and saw her in the doorway, his expression shifted almost imperceptibly. “Why are you awake ?”
Setsuko blinked at him, trying to gather herself enough to answer without sounding as miserable as she felt. “I had a nightmare,” she mumbled. “And then I threw up.” Then, because humiliation apparently hadn’t suffered enough tonight, she added in a rough little voice, “like a child.”
It was as if the pregnancy had been waiting for permission to exist, and now that Manjiro knew, it had begun unfolding without shame, with a slow, heavy certainty that left her feeling less like herself every day. Her waist had increased in size, her breasts felt fuller and kind of sore, and the nausea had grown worse, mirroring the roller coaster of her emotions.
Something flickered in his face. Not softness exactly, just something less closed than before. He reached out his hand toward her, “c’me here.” Manjiro was tactful enough not to ask her to tell him about her bad dream. He must have known that he was the source of both her sweetest dreams and her worst nightmares.
She didn’t think. She didn’t stop to ask herself whether she should, whether this was wise, whether anything about this apartment or this man or this life had earned the kind of instinctive trust her body still offered him when she was too exhausted to defend herself properly. Setsuko just walked toward him, barefoot and half asleep, with the graceless heaviness of someone who has just woken up.
By the time she reached the couch, she was already lowering herself beside him, then in his lap, folding automatically into the space beneath his arm like she had done it a hundred times before.
He let her. More than that, he adjusted immediately, shifting his body just enough to make room for her, his arm curving around her without hesitation, one hand settling at her neck as she tucked herself against his chest.
The familiarity of it was so immediate it nearly made her angry. She closed her eyes for a second as his warmth settled around her. His shirt was soft under her cheek. He smelled clean, the scent of his supermarket soap he always seemed to bring in with him no matter how long he had showered.
Oh, what she would have given to go back in time and stay in Manjiro’s embrace. He wasn’t always that tender with her, but before, when he still trusted her, when things were good between them, in those moments, she didn’t think about Ran, or Bonten, or the disaster that her life had become.
Today, all she felt was fear. Fear and despair at the realisation that she had surely lost the two men she loved and her family.
For a few seconds, they said nothing. Then he reached for the glass of water on the coffee table and held it out to her. Setsuko lifted her head just enough to take it, drank a little, then handed it back in a “thank you” and let herself sink against him again before she could think too hard about what she was doing.
His hand moved slowly over her back. Just a slow, repetitive pass from the middle of her spine to her waist and back again, the kind of touch meant more to soothe than to stir. It made her throat tighten anyway.
“You wanna eat something ?” he asked after a moment.
In response, she let out a little cry of protest.
His fingers slid once through the hair at the nape of her neck. “Alright.”
The room stayed quiet after that. Rain tapped faintly against the windows.The television cast a cold pulse of light over the room every few seconds, though she had no idea what was even playing. Some late-night movie maybe, neither of them was watching.
This was so bad, him still holding her, still opening her body with unbearable familiarity, still giving her enough tenderness to keep something stupid and hopeful alive in the weakest parts of her, while the silence underneath it said what he never would : you betrayed me, and I’ll make you pay for it until I get bored of it. I’m all you have left now, I’m the last constant in your life.
She was pretty sure Manjiro could kill for her, but would he one day forgive her ? The second one seemed much more challenging than the first one for him.
Setsuko stared at the dark fabric of his shirt and tried not to think. That lasted maybe thirty seconds. Then, because apparently misery made her honest in ways dignity never could, she said quietly, “I miss when this used to help.” The hand on her back stilled for a fraction of a second before continuing but he didn’t answer. She should have left it there, instead, she pressed her face more firmly against his chest and went on in the same low, tired voice. “It used to feel easier.”
Still nothing. She pulled back just enough to look at him, though not enough to fully leave the shelter of his arm. His face was unreadable in the dim light, his eyes still fixed somewhere ahead rather than on her.
Outside, the rain thickened against the windows. She could hear it now more clearly, a soft, steady pressure against the glass. “You make everything feel worse,” she said softly. “And you’re still the only person I want when it gets bad.”
It was humiliating how it made her sound weak and needy and stupid in a way she would have hated hearing from anyone else, let alone from herself. Because after everything that had happened between them in the past weeks, after the way he kept trying to fold her into a life she had never agreed to, she still sounded like this. He was killing her and keeping her from dying.
His hand moved up, slowly, and brushed a strand of hair away from her forehead. “You should sleep,” he said.
Setsuko closed her eyes. “See,” she murmured, too tired to even sound properly bitter. “That’s what I mean.”
This time he looked down at her. “What ?”
She hesitated, suddenly embarrassed by how close to tears she felt. “I say something real and you,” her fingers twitched against his chest, “you just go somewhere else.” Setsuko stared at the hollow of his throat instead of his eyes and said, before she could stop herself, “sometimes I think you hate me.”
The second the words left her mouth, she wished she could take them back. Not because they were untrue, because saying them out loud made them sound smaller than they felt inside her.
She felt his body go still around her. “I don’t and you know it.”
Setsuko swallowed. For a moment, she could only lie there and absorb the fact that he had answered at all. The words should have helped and they didn’t. If anything, they only left a deeper ache in their place. Because if this wasn’t hatred, then what was it supposed to be ?
His hand remained where it was at the back of her neck, warm and steady and impossible to reconcile with the rest of him. Setsuko hated that too. Hated that he could still hold her like this. Hated that some part of her still melted toward him automatically when he did. “I miss you,” she said quietly, “I miss you so much and I’m right in front of you.”
She felt his body shift almost imperceptibly beneath her. She was so tired, so fucking tired of reaching and reaching and never quite touching anything solid.
His voice came quietly above her. “Not now.”
She opened her eyes again. “What ?”
“You’re tired. You feel sick.” A pause. “Don’t do this now.”
There it was. The place he would let her approach but not cross. She should have moved away then. She should have sat up, put distance between them, salvaged what little pride she still had left tonight and gone back to bed before she humiliated herself further. Instead, she stayed. Because she was exhausted and lonely. Because the warmth of him still reached some stupid part of her. Because she had already spent so many nights telling herself she should stop needing things from him and had failed every single time.
“I’m so scared,” she whispered.
The sound of her voice seemed to trigger something in Manjiro. He shifted her gently until she was facing him. “Of what?”
“Of you.” She took his hand, the hand that had ended lives without a second thought, and guided it to her own throat, wrapping his fingers around the delicate column of her neck. She didn't flinch, she leaned into the pressure. “Because I know that you could, one day, just grab me here... and squeeze, squeeze until I can't breathe anymore. And you would just watch me with those beautiful eyes while you did it. I know you’re capable of it.”
Silence. Manjiro frowned. “Who’s terrifying now ?” he asks.
She meets his gaze without flinching. “You are,” she answers simply. “I just don’t lie to myself about it.” And it wasn’t even an accusation, it was just an ugly but real knowledge, laid bare between them.
He removed his hand and adjusted his arm around her immediately. “I’ll never do that to you.” It was simple, such a Manjiro response, but somehow she believed it.
Setsuko stared at the dark room and listened to his breathing. Little by little, the nausea eased and the sour taste in her mouth faded. She could feel sleep circling her again at the edges, not kindly, but insistently.
She only knew that his hand kept moving slowly over her back, once, then again, and that for a few fragile minutes, wrapped in the arms of the worst thing that had ever happened to her and the only place she still wanted to go when the night turned ugly, she almost believed that she had not lost him entirely.
