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a/n: Whoo!! I finally did it! Can you believe it? I can't. Lowkirks poured my heart and soul into this, I hope you love it as much as I do. Includes sexual content.
notes: bonten!mikey x fem!assassin!reader
The elevator rose without a sound, and that silence was always the first lesson Bonten taught anyone reckless enough to step inside its shadow, because true power did not need spectacle when it had already hollowed the city out from the inside, did not need to announce itself when every politician, every broker, every nightclub owner with trembling hands and bloodless smiles already felt it pressing at the back of their necks like the cold mouth of a gun; and as the mirrored walls reflected the severe black of your evening clothes, the glint of the knife sheathed against your thigh, and the expression you had spent years perfecting into something unreadable, you understood with the same steady certainty that had kept you alive through contracts, betrayals, and half-lit hallways slick with somebody else's fear that you were not being brought into an organization so much as lowered into the center of a machine, one whose gears were made of men dangerous enough to alter the shape of a nation simply by deciding where to place their hands.
Kokonoi Hajime had been the one to find you, though in truth men like him never found people by accident, because Kokonoi's talent had never merely been money but the terrifying elegance with which he could reduce human life into numbers, risk into percentages, loyalty into negotiated margins, and then make each equation yield a profit; he had invited you to a private room in a bar so discreet it seemed embarrassed by its own existence, sitting beneath low amber light with one leg crossed over the other, dark lashes lowered as he examined a tablet full of information that contained your life in neat columns and unfeeling summaries, and beside him stood Kakucho, silent in the way only truly formidable men could be, his scar cutting down his face like an old promise, his posture without waste, without posturing, without any need to impress because brutality worn honestly never had to perform. Kokonoi had spoken first, his voice smooth as polished glass and just as cold, telling you that your reputation for precision, discretion, and emotional detachment had reached people with higher standards than your usual clients, while Kakucho had watched you with the grave, assessing stillness of a man who had buried whatever softness he once possessed in loyalty to someone he could not abandon even after the world had rotted around him.
"You will not be asked to kill our leader," Kokonoi had said, as if he knew the shape of your skepticism before you voiced it, one elegant hand resting near his untouched drink. "If anything, your job will be to make sure no one else gets close enough to try."
It had been the first interesting thing anyone had said to you in months, and Kakucho, seeing the slight shift in your expression, had finally spoken in a low voice stripped of decoration, explaining that Bonten had enemies multiplying faster than they could be made examples of, that there were whispers of foreign groups testing the edges of their territory, internal leaks too careful to expose with ordinary methods, and a growing need for someone outside the existing hierarchy, someone skilled enough to operate independently and intelligent enough not to mistake proximity for trust. He had not threatened you, which made his honesty more dangerous than any threat would have been, and when he told you that accepting would mean your life ceased to be your own in every way that mattered, you believed him not because of the words themselves but because Kakucho was not the sort of man who wasted truth on theatrics.
You accepted because the money was absurd, because curiosity had always been your most expensive flaw, and because some instinct sharpened by years of surviving in the dark recognized that Bonten was not merely offering employment but access to a story already bleeding toward catastrophe, and there were times, rare and ruinous, when you found yourself drawn not to safety but to the exact place where ruin was gathering.
The first time you saw Sano Manjiro, it was not during a formal introduction, nor beneath the ceremony Kokonoi would have preferred, but through the narrow aperture of a half-open door at the end of a corridor so luxuriously sterile it felt surgical, where black marble met muted gold and every light fixture seemed chosen to flatter wealth while concealing violence. He sat at the far end of the room with one leg draped over the other in a posture almost indolent, almost careless, and yet the atmosphere around him was so unnaturally dense that it altered the dimensions of the space itself, turning the air into something difficult to draw into your lungs; his hair, pale beneath the low light, softened the severe line of his face in a way that would have made another man seem younger, gentler, perhaps even harmless, but there was nothing harmless in the vacancy of his eyes or the stillness of his mouth, because he carried emptiness the way kings carried crowns, with such absolute entitlement that everyone around him had learned to treat the abyss within him as a natural law.
You had heard things, of course. Every underworld in every city eventually learns the names of monsters and mythologizes them until fact and superstition become inseparable, and Mikey had become that kind of figure long before Bonten cemented itself into legend, but rumor had not prepared you for the unnerving contradiction of him, for the way he looked less like a man at the top of a criminal empire than a ghost inhabiting one, beautiful in the way winter lakes are beautiful when you know exactly how many bodies they could keep. Sanzu Haruchiyo stood at his side like a smile carved into a wound, pink hair falling across fever-bright eyes, his expression lit with that deranged devotion which made every room more unstable simply by entering it, while Ran lounged with languid amusement against the bar and Rindo, sharper and quieter, watched everything with the habitual irritation of someone who expected the world to inconvenience him at any moment. Takeomi Akashi remained near the windows with the poise of a man still clinging to the silhouette of status, though cynicism had long ago replaced whatever idealism once animated him, and Kakucho was positioned where he always seemed to be when Mikey was present: close enough to intervene, far enough not to presume.
No one announced you. Kokonoi merely stepped aside after murmuring something to Mikey, and those black, unreadable eyes moved to you at last.
The moment stretched, and it was absurd, almost insulting, that a simple glance could feel like being disassembled, yet that was what happened beneath his attention, as if every habit of concealment you had built over the years became briefly transparent under the weight of a man who no longer looked at human beings the way other people did. Most powerful men liked to be impressed, liked some glimmer of awe in the eyes of those around them because it reassured them their power was visible; Mikey did not seem to care whether he was feared, admired, or hated, which made him infinitely worse, because there was no appetite in him left for the ordinary rewards of dominance, only an exhausted and terrifying distance.
"So this is her," he said at last, his tone flat, not uninterested exactly but untouched by anything so easy as intrigue. "If Kakucho says she's useful, then fine."
Useful. Nothing more. No ceremonial welcome, no warning, no pointless posturing to establish hierarchy. He looked away before you could answer, dismissing you with the same simple finality one might use to extinguish a cigarette, and somehow that indifference lodged beneath your skin more effectively than any threat would have, because contempt could be fought, seduction could be manipulated, anger could be anticipated, but the hollow center of him offered nowhere to place your own defenses. It was like being ignored by a storm.
You learned quickly that Bonten's structure was not chaos, despite what lesser organizations liked to believe when they tried to comfort themselves with the idea that unstable men must therefore be sloppy men. Kokonoi managed the arteries through which money became influence and influence became immunity, his mind always three calculations ahead, his elegance unmarred by the filth of the work because he had perfected the art of standing adjacent to brutality without ever appearing stained by it. Kakucho handled operations with the exactitude of someone who mistrusted disorder on a moral level, often becoming the unspoken bridge between Mikey's sparse directives and the practical mechanisms required to enact them, and though he was feared, your impression of him sharpened over time into something more complex than fear, because his violence was never gratuitous; it had the bleak discipline of a man who believed he no longer deserved gentleness and therefore did not expect it from the world.
Sanzu, on the other hand, was not disciplined in any way recognizable to sane people, and yet dismissing him as merely unhinged would have been a fatal misunderstanding, because beneath the mania, beneath the widening grin and the gleeful glimmer of a mind forever tilting toward bloodshed, was an instinctive perception for danger and loyalty that made him indispensable to Mikey in ways no one else could replicate. He was at his most terrifying when quiet, when his smile turned thin and private and his attention fixed on one point like a dog scenting an injury beneath bandages. You understood almost immediately that Sanzu did not simply serve Mikey; he had built his entire identity around orbiting him, around preserving him as one preserves a sacred object and a weapon simultaneously, and that kind of devotion had long ago consumed every ordinary measure of sanity.
The Haitani brothers brought a different species of menace, all polished mockery and predatory ease, moving through Bonten's spaces with the confidence of men who found entertainment in the discomfort of others. Ran could make a room feel decadent and depraved simply by smiling in it, his voice lazy, his cruelty sharpened by taste rather than impulse, while Rindo's temper simmered closer to the surface, his expressions more openly disdainful, his attention often darting toward weakness with the practical eye of someone selecting where to strike. Together they created an atmosphere of amused corruption, as though violence for them was not merely necessity but an art form best appreciated with expensive liquor and impeccable tailoring.
Your role became clear within weeks. Officially, you were Bonten's outside specialist, a blade they could deny and a ghost they could deploy where their names would be too conspicuous, but in practice you became something stranger: a line drawn around Mikey that no one had asked him whether he wanted. The threats were real and accumulating, though rarely direct, because very few people were foolish enough to attempt an obvious attack on the head of Bonten. Instead there were accountants skimming information to sell abroad, a diplomat's son with ties to a trafficking ring who believed seduction would get him closer than guns, a security consultant bribed to map private entrances to Bonten-owned buildings, and lower-level operatives who mistook Mikey's withdrawal for vulnerability. Your work required patience more than spectacle, shadowing rumors until they condensed into names, following names until they led to rooms where people realized too late that the dark had been occupied before they entered it.
The city became a sequence of wet streets, private elevators, rooftop access doors, and hotel suites heavy with perfume failing to disguise panic. Tokyo under Bonten did not sleep so much as flicker, feverish and lacquered, neon reflected in rainwater like wounds trying to pass for decoration, and the atmosphere of your nights settled into something ritualistic: black gloves pulled tight over your hands, suppressed gun weighed and checked with familiar precision, messages from Kokonoi arriving in sparse encrypted fragments, Kakucho's occasional revisions stripped to operational essentials, and at unpredictable intervals the sensation of Mikey's gaze returning to you from memory, as if your body had not yet decided whether that first look had been dismissal or warning.
You did not often speak to him at first. He was present and absent in equal measure, appearing at meetings only long enough to render a decision no one would dare contest, walking through clubs or penthouses owned by Bonten with the detached silence of a man moving through a world already dead to him, and leaving behind an altered atmosphere every time, as if even air remembered him after he was gone. When he did address you, it was rarely more than a few words, and yet each exchange lingered with disproportionate weight because Mikey's voice never rose, never performed authority, never sought reaction. His power was too old in him for that. It had calcified.
The first true conversation happened after you returned from Osaka with blood drying beneath your cuff and a bullet crease burning hot across your ribs, the mission successful only because you had chosen the fall from a third-floor balcony over the two men waiting at the stairwell. You entered Bonten's private medical suite refusing assistance, more out of habit than pride, and found him already there, seated in a chair near the windows with the city spread behind him in fractured light. For a moment you thought perhaps the room belonged to him in some way you had not known, that you had intruded into one of the many silences people preserved around him, but he only looked at the blood on your sleeve and said, with that same eerie flatness, "You kept breathing. Good."
It should not have mattered, such a minimal acknowledgment, but after weeks of being measured chiefly in competence, the words touched some exhausted part of you that had not expected to be seen as anything but an instrument. You answered more sharply than intended, telling him that his standards for praise were miserly, and to your surprise his gaze settled on your face with the faintest shift in expression, not quite amusement but the shadow of a memory of it.
"Praise makes people sloppy," he said, and there was no condescension in it, only a kind of old weariness. "If you're still alive, that's enough."
The medic stitched your side while he remained there, silent for long stretches, and perhaps it was the pain or the late hour or the strange privacy of being observed by someone so devastatingly self-contained, but you found yourself studying him with a frankness that would have been dangerous in any other context. Up close, the emptiness in him was not simple coldness. Coldness implied force, intention, a deliberate turning away. Mikey felt instead like a room after fire, where all the oxygen had been consumed and what remained was stillness so complete it bordered on sacred. You realized then that whatever monstrous reputation he possessed, whatever sins he had committed and would yet commit, he was also carrying some internal absence so vast it had become structural.
He noticed your attention because of course he did, and his eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. "What."
"You don't look like a man who sleeps," you said before caution could intervene.
For a while he said nothing at all, and outside the windows the city burned in electric colors across the glass, making ghosts of both of you. Then he leaned back slightly, head angling toward the dark beyond the room, and replied in a voice so low it might have been intended only for himself, "I don't look like a lot of things anymore."
After that, he began appearing at the edges of your nights with increasing frequency, never in ways dramatic enough to be called pursuit and yet too deliberate to dismiss as accident. Sometimes you would leave a debrief with Kokonoi and find Mikey standing on a balcony alone, hands in his pockets, looking down at the city as though contemplating whether it deserved to continue existing. Sometimes he would enter the training level when you were there after hours, bruising your knuckles against a suspended bag because violence, when contained and repetitive, could resemble prayer. He never interrupted, only watched, and eventually his presence became its own language, one made of omissions, of unasked questions, of a recognition neither of you seemed interested in naming aloud.
It was dangerous, not because attraction itself was unusual but because whatever existed in Mikey had gravity without warmth, and you were not foolish enough to imagine yourself immune to being pulled toward broken things merely because you recognized the pattern. He was beautiful in the ruinous, unfair way some men are, but beauty had never been the problem; it was the silence around him, the sense that he had walked so far into darkness that the darkness now moved to accommodate him, and that on certain nights, in certain glances, he seemed to look at you not as a subordinate or even an ally but as something improbable that had appeared in the wasteland and refused to vanish.
Sanzu noticed before anyone else, because obsession makes a person exquisitely sensitive to changes in orbit. His hostility toward you did not begin as open challenge; it arrived instead in barbed comments delivered with smiling sweetness, in invasive proximity, in questions asked not for answers but to hear how your voice sounded under pressure. He cornered you one dawn in a corridor outside Mikey's private floor, his grin too sharp, the scar at his mouth making every expression look like it had been torn there rather than formed.
"You're getting comfortable," he murmured, tilting his head as he examined you with theatrical curiosity. "That's always ugly to watch, because people start thinking they mean something when really they're just standing in a place someone hasn't cleaned out yet."
You met his gaze without stepping back, though every instinct insisted that Sanzu was most dangerous when he seemed playful. "If you have a point, make it."
His smile widened. "My point is that Mikey belongs to nothing except what he decides to destroy, and people who forget that usually die confused."
There were many ways to answer a threat, and wisdom might have suggested restraint, but some impulses are born from survival rather than prudence. You leaned just slightly closer, enough that your voice would not travel, and told him that if he wanted you gone, he would have to do better than riddles in hallways. For one suspended second, his expression emptied of performance and revealed the raw, violent instability beneath, and you understood in full that Sanzu would absolutely kill you if Mikey ever gave him cause, not out of jealousy in any ordinary sense but because he regarded any unapproved claim on Mikey's attention as contamination.
What spared you was the quiet voice behind him.
"Sanzu."
That single word altered the entire corridor. Sanzu straightened at once, his manic brightness rearranging itself into obedience so seamless it was almost sickening, and Mikey approached with the same unhurried gait that always made other people look suddenly overanimated by comparison. He glanced once between the two of you, taking in the tension with insulting ease.
"You're in the way," he said to Sanzu.
It was not a reprimand by conventional standards, and yet Sanzu's face flickered with something close to wounded reverence as he stepped aside. Mikey stopped before you, his attention dropping briefly to the knife hidden in your sleeve, then returning to your eyes.
"Kakucho wants you in the conference room," he said.
You knew perfectly well he could have sent a message through anyone, could have ignored the exchange entirely, could have chosen not to intervene in something as trivial as corridor politics, and perhaps because he knew you understood that, his gaze remained on you one moment too long before he turned away. It was a minor thing. A meaningless thing. It sat in your chest like contraband anyway.
The assignment that changed everything began as a leak investigation and unfolded into rot embedded closer to Bonten's center than anyone anticipated. Financial records flagged by Kokonoi suggested someone had been diverting operational routes to a foreign syndicate, not enough to cripple revenue but enough to map movement patterns, and Kakucho, grim with the knowledge of what such information could become in the wrong hands, gave you authority to operate without disclosure even to certain internal members. The list of possible suspects was short, insulated, and politically inconvenient. Ran found the whole affair entertaining until one of his own distributions was nearly intercepted. Rindo grew viciously impatient. Takeomi drank more and pretended not to be offended by the implication that older loyalties had become indistinguishable from liabilities.
Mikey listened to the reports with his chin propped against one hand, expression unreadable, while around the long black table the others argued in shades of contempt and strategic disagreement. Kokonoi wanted speed and containment, Kakucho wanted certainty before blood, Sanzu wanted to start breaking bones immediately and sort the truth from the screaming, and the Haitanis, predictably, favored whichever path promised the most interesting spectacle. Through it all Mikey remained still, almost absent, until the room eventually exhausted itself into silence.
Then he looked at you.
"Find it," he said.
That was all. No embellishment. No guidance. The order settled over the room with more force than the others' arguments combined, because his trust, sparse as it was, had become public, undeniable, and deeply irritating to at least half the people present. You felt Sanzu's stare like a blade against the side of your face, but you answered Mikey without looking away, and from that moment forward whatever private tension had been building between you shifted into something harder to deny.
The investigation carried you through warehouses in Yokohama, hostess clubs used as message drops, and a luxury development in Minato whose shell companies looped back toward names Takeomi wished had stayed buried. It also carried Mikey unexpectedly into your orbit, because once the possibility of an internal breach touched his operations, he moved with a personal interest that transformed every space he entered into a field of tension. He accompanied you one night to an abandoned shipping terminal where a courier was meant to exchange data for safe passage, and the sight of him there among rusted containers and seawind, coat stirring faintly in the cold, felt so surreal that for a moment the world took on the quality of a dream too ominous to wake from.
"You didn't need to come," you told him quietly as you waited in the shadow between stacked freight.
His profile remained turned toward the dark water. "I know."
"Then why are you here."
At first you thought he might refuse the question, but the corner of his mouth shifted in that nearly-imperceptible way that had become, with him, the closest equivalent of exposed thought. "Because everyone lies differently when I'm in the room," he said. "I wanted to see which kind this was."
The courier never reached the designated point. Someone panicked early, shots tore through corrugated metal, and the dock erupted into sharp, ricocheting chaos lit by sodium lamps and the muzzle flash of men who knew they were already dead. You moved on reflex, pulling Mikey down behind a container only to discover with a jolt of disbelief that he did not need protecting in the way most men did, because the stillness that consumed him in meetings became something else in violence, something almost inhumanly precise. He rose from cover with no wasted motion, disarmed one attacker before the man understood the distance had closed, and drove him to the ground with such brutal efficiency that even you, who had long ago made peace with blood, felt a chill skitter down your spine.
The fight ended in minutes. It always did, when professionals were involved. What lingered was aftermath: groans swallowed by the harbor wind, blood thinning beneath scattered rain, your pulse loud in your ears as you searched the bodies and found the proof you had come for, evidence leading not to an external infiltrator alone but to a broker protected through one of Takeomi's old channels. When you turned, Mikey was watching you with rain silvering his hair and darkening the collar of his coat, his face splashed at the temple with someone else's blood. In that light he looked almost mythic, too starkly beautiful to be real and too terrible to be mistaken for anything humanly safe.
"You're hurt," he said.
Only then did you feel the hot line across your shoulder where a bullet had grazed through fabric and skin. "It's nothing."
He stepped closer anyway, and the world, already narrowed by adrenaline, constricted further until all you could register was the cold rain, the copper in the air, and the astonishing intimacy of his hand lifting to press two fingers just below the torn cloth as if measuring damage. His touch was not gentle exactly, but it was careful, which was somehow worse, because carefulness from Mikey felt like discovering a blade could hesitate.
"You say that a lot," he murmured.
"So do you."
That almost-smile flickered again, this time darker. "Maybe that's why you irritate me less than everyone else."
In another life, perhaps, that might have been enough to make you laugh. In this one it only made your heart beat harder, not from romance in any soft or innocent sense but from the recognition that something between you had crossed beyond plausible deniability into territory where desire and disaster were beginning to speak in the same voice.
The truth, once assembled, detonated with all the expected ugliness. Takeomi had not engineered the leak outright, but his debts, his vanity, and his inability to sever old opportunistic relationships had created the breach through which others crawled. He had been compromised in the most pathetic way possible, not by ideology or grand betrayal but by the slow erosion of self-respect, by believing he could manage obligations after he had already become their servant. Kakucho took the revelation like a knife turned inward, furious not merely at the danger but at the contamination of the structure he had spent years helping hold together. Kokonoi's disgust was icily practical; the financial cleanup alone would be tedious, and he hated tedium almost as much as incompetence. Sanzu was ecstatic in the vicious, bright way he always became when punishment hovered in the air, while the Haitanis received the drama with all the elegance of men attending a particularly expensive execution.
Mikey said very little.
That was what frightened everyone.
He sat at the head of the table while Takeomi tried, with increasing desperation, to frame his failures as temporary weakness rather than terminal disloyalty, and the silence that followed each excuse felt less like indecision than judgment descending slowly enough to make breathing difficult. You stood near the far wall, your shoulder bandaged beneath black fabric, and watched as Mikey's expression remained almost placid, which was always the final warning. Kakucho's jaw was set hard enough to crack. Sanzu looked nearly feverish with anticipation.
When Mikey finally spoke, his voice was so quiet the room leaned toward it.
"You knew the consequences."
Takeomi did not answer immediately, because there was nothing left to say that would make any difference. The end came quickly after that. Kakucho escorted him out not with triumph but with the brutal solemnity of a man who hated waste and hated necessity more, and no one asked where he would be taken because some endings did not require witness to be understood.
Afterward, the room emptied by degrees, tension dissolving into the quieter menace of aftermath management, until only you and Mikey remained with the city glaring through the glass. He did not look at you at first. He seemed suspended somewhere very far away, shoulders loosened not in relief but in fatigue so profound it resembled damage. You should have left. Every instinct trained into you by years among dangerous men said to leave him his silence and keep your own pulse out of the equation.
Instead you said, "You look tired."
His laugh, when it came, was so soft and brief it almost did not exist. "That's a boring word for it."
"Then give me a better one."
At that he finally turned toward you, and whatever had been held back between you for weeks, perhaps months, seemed to gather all at once in the stillness that followed. There was something rawer in his eyes than you had seen before, not softness, because softness was too simple, but an exhausted honesty stripped bare by the hour and by the fact that everyone else was gone.
"If I do," he said, "you won't like me."
The statement might have been arrogance from another man, manipulation from a worse one, but from Mikey it sounded like fact, as if he were naming the weather. You moved closer anyway, drawn by the terrible gravity of him, by the impossible desire to touch whatever inside him had survived becoming this. "You don't get to decide that for me."
For a moment he only watched you, and then all the distance he maintained so ruthlessly seemed to fracture along one thin, invisible line. He reached for you with a kind of restraint that felt more dangerous than hunger, his hand cupping the side of your throat, thumb resting below your jaw as though testing whether you would flinch. You did not. The city around you blurred into lights and glass and meaningless height. His face lowered, his forehead almost touching yours, and when he spoke again his voice had roughened into something intimate enough to wound.
"I don't know how to do this without ruining it."
The confession entered you like a blade slipping between ribs, not because it was romantic but because it was not, because it came without polish, without promise, without any attempt to disguise the damage at its center. You lifted your hand to his wrist and felt the living warmth there, the pulse that proved he was still made of blood despite everything ghostly about him.
"Then ruin me honestly," you whispered, staring into those dark, empty eyes of his.
When he kissed you, it was with the hesitation of a man unpracticed in tenderness and the intensity of one starved of it beyond language, and that contradiction nearly undid you on the spot. There was nothing polished in it, nothing performative, nothing resembling the easy heat of ordinary desire. It felt instead like standing too close to something that had been frozen for years and discovering, with shock and ache, that it still knew how to burn. His other hand settled at your waist, firm enough to claim and careful enough to betray fear, and you tasted all the restraint he had forced between himself and the world turning ragged at the edges.
The first time Mikey fucked you, was the beginning of endless nights spent together, attachments way too deep to sever and an endless cycle of undying passion that Mikey thought had died alongside the boy he used to be, buried beneath years of bloodshed, loss and and the crushing weight of the empire he had built.
You soon realised that being buried in your cunt, ramming his fat cock in and out of you for hours, making you cry of intense pleasure was where Mikey had found his peace. It had become akin to an addiction. Years upon years, Mikey had denied himself any form of physical affection, and it was your seeping cunt that had simply derailed him completely.
Mikey quickly realised that he could spend hours between those plush thighs of yours. Whether he was scissoring his fingers against that sweet spot deep inside of you, tongue greedily sucking up all you have to offer or fucking you until you could not form coherent thoughts anymore. It didn't matter which he was doing one thing always stayed constant: his eyes dragging up and down your face, almost mesmerised by the way your pretty features contorted into utter pleasure, and all because of him.
His favourite, however, came after the surge of lust. After he had claimed you with his cock, his seed spilling deep inside your squelching cunt with a groan so intimate, reserved for you only. He would simply stare at you, all fucked out with only one thought occupying his mind: mine, mine, mine.
He would always be so terrifyingly gentle with you after, scooping you into arms, throwing the bedsheets hastily over both of you and caging you in. Who were you to complain? After all, you were exactly where you wanted to be.
He was addicted.
Whatever existed between you unfolded in shadows, because neither of you were people built for bright and uncomplicated things. There were nights he summoned you under the pretense of operational review only to leave the reports untouched while silence pooled around you both, your body gradually learning the rare contours of his trust: the way he sat with his head bowed after violence, as though listening to some internal static no one else could hear; the way his touch always began with unnatural caution and ended in a kind of desperate possession once he believed you were real and staying; the way words, so sparse from him in public, changed texture in private, not becoming abundant but becoming precise, each one chosen with care that made it heavier. You came to understand that Mikey did not love like other people because he no longer inhabited himself like other people. Affection in him emerged through protection, through proximity, through the minute calibration of his attention toward your safety and your presence, and because it was Mikey, because it came from a soul so damaged it had forgotten ordinary hope, every offering felt stolen from the edge of an abyss.
The others, of course, noticed. Ran teased with feline amusement, delighted by scandal whenever it involved someone else's emotional risk. Rindo looked perpetually offended by the atmosphere yet too curious not to observe it. Kokonoi regarded the development with the resigned displeasure of a man who preferred his operational assets unentangled, though there were moments when you caught a flash of something almost sympathetic in his eyes, as if he recognized that some forms of ruin could not be balanced on any ledger. Kakucho said the least and understood the most, his loyalty to Mikey forcing him into silence even when concern shadowed his face. Only Sanzu turned truly dangerous.
It was inevitable that the fault line would split.
The confrontation came in a subterranean garage beneath one of Bonten's towers, all polished concrete and indifferent fluorescent light, after Sanzu intercepted you returning from a cleanup in Shinjuku with blood beneath your nails and exhaustion burning behind your eyes. He was not smiling this time. That alone made the air feel wrong.
"You should have left him alone," he said, and the absence of mockery in his voice was more alarming than any sneer.
You stilled, every sense sharpening. "He isn't yours to guard from choice."
A strange expression twisted across his face then, something fervent and furious and grief-struck all at once, as if the very premise of Mikey choosing attachment were obscene to him because it threatened the mythology through which he survived. "You think this is choice," he hissed. "You think you understand him because he lets you stand close. You don't understand what he becomes when something is taken."
There are warnings one is wise to heed, but by then the shadow between you and Mikey had already become indivisible from your own fate, and fear had long ago lost its authority over the parts of you that mattered most. "Maybe," you said quietly. "But neither do you."
The knife appeared in Sanzu's hand with predatory speed, and your gun was half drawn when another voice cut through the concrete silence with terrible calm.
"Stop."
Mikey emerged from the elevator as though conjured by the violence itself, coat dark, expression blank in the way that meant catastrophe stood only one breath away. Sanzu froze. You did too, though for a different reason entirely, because the stillness around Mikey had transformed into something lethal enough to blanch the fluorescent light. His gaze went first to Sanzu's knife, then to your hand on your weapon, and finally to your face, where fatigue and fury were evidently written too clearly to conceal.
No one spoke.
When Mikey moved, it was toward you. He took the gun from your loosened grip, slid it back into place at your side, and then turned to Sanzu with an unreadable expression that made even the concrete seem to hold its breath.
"If you touch her," he said softly, "I'll kill you."
It was not hyperbole. Not performance. Everyone present understood that instantly, and the horror of it was not merely in the threat but in the fact that Sanzu understood as well. His face went white beneath the fever of his devotion, his entire body caught between obedience and devastation, because to be warned away by the very person he worshipped was a wound deeper than blood. For one fractured second you saw the full tragedy of him, of what remained when loyalty became religion and religion demanded self-erasure.
He lowered the knife.
"Yes, Boss," he whispered, jaw clenched, his irises filled with pools of rage and hatred as he stared into your soul with pure jealousy.
Afterward, nothing in Bonten was quite the same. Power, once personal, always altered the architecture around it, and Mikey's decision to place you within the radius of what he would openly defend sent a tremor through the organization more profound than any formal decree. It made you vulnerable, certainly. It made you important in ways that could become fatal. It also made one truth impossible to deny: somewhere within the deadened landscape of Mikey's heart, something had chosen to live despite itself.
That truth frightened you more than bullets ever had, because love in a world like this was not sanctuary. It was exposure. It was finding the one place in your body no armor covered and handing someone the map. Yet perhaps because both of you were creatures made less by innocence than by damage, what grew between you did not resemble salvation so much as recognition. In Mikey you found not redemption but a mirror dark enough to reflect the parts of yourself you had stopped naming years ago: the exhaustion, the violence metabolized into skill, the terrible ease with which death could become routine. In you, perhaps, he found not light but company, and for a man drowning in a darkness no one else could touch, company was its own form of miracle.
Winter came quietly to Tokyo, laying a silver chill over the city and sharpening every night until the skyline looked carved from black glass and old regret. One evening, long after the Takeomi affair had been buried beneath newer crimes and more expensive silences, you stood with Mikey on the balcony of his private residence high above the sleepless veins of the city. Below, Bonten's empire moved invisibly through banks, ports, ministries, and back rooms, a living organism fed by fear and greed. Beside you, Mikey leaned against the railing with the wind stirring his pale hair, his profile beautiful and remote enough to break lesser people on sight.
He had been quieter than usual that night, though with him quiet had infinite shades, and you had learned to distinguish them. This one was not emptiness. It was thought.
"What is it," you asked at last, your voice low beneath the rush of distant traffic.
For a while he did not answer, and when he finally did, he kept his gaze on the city as if the words could only be said sideways. "When you first came here, I thought Kakucho and Koko were making a mistake."
You smiled faintly. "I'm devastated."
His hand found yours where it rested on the cold railing, fingers threading with a possessiveness that had become instinctive, though he still held on as if part of him expected loss without warning. "I thought you'd die fast," he continued, unoffended by your interruption. "Or you'd get bored. Or you'd see what this place really is and leave before it stained you."
You turned your hand, fitting your palm fully against his. "And now."
At that he looked at you, and the darkness in his eyes had not lessened, had not become anything easy or harmless, but there was something else there too, something raw and fiercely guarded and alive enough to hurt.
"Now," he said, "I think if you leave, I'll tear the whole city apart looking for whatever took you from me."
The words should have chilled you, and part of you recognized the madness threaded through them, the possessive violence, the ruined moral landscape from which they had grown. Yet there was honesty in them so complete it eclipsed fear, because Mikey had never once offered you false gentleness, never once pretended he was anything but a dangerous man trying, in his own fractured way, to keep one impossible thing from being destroyed. You stepped closer until the winter air could no longer move between you, lifting your hand to touch his face, your thumb brushing the sharp line of his cheek as the city glimmered below like spilled circuitry.
"Then don't lose me," you said.
He closed his eyes for the briefest moment, leaning into your touch with such hidden, devastating hunger that your chest ached around it, and when he opened them again, he drew you in against him as though the act of holding you was the only argument he trusted against the dark.
Far beneath the balcony, Tokyo continued its glittering descent into corruption, beautiful and diseased and merciless, while in the heights above it the head of Bonten held you with the care of a man who had destroyed too much to mistake fragility for weakness. The night wrapped around you both like black silk pulled over a blade, elegant enough to pass for luxury, lethal enough to cut to the bone, and in that suspended hour there was no redemption waiting at the end of the story, no promise that love could purify what violence had built. There was only this: the cold city breathing below, the empire of shadows at your backs, and Mikey's arms around you with all the ruin and reverence of a vow spoken by someone who no longer believed in life but still believed, against all reason, in you.
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â summary. when you find yourself alone in the safehouse for the day, you decide to stop simply surviving and start searching for answers. but you should know by now that nothing in this house comes without a price, and curiosity has always been a dangerous thing to indulge.
â warnings. extremely dark content, please read all the warnings. 18+ ; MDNI. bonten timeline. bank robbery. hostage situation. guns. kidnapping. chloroform. cigarettes. anxiety. panic attacks. objectification. misogyny. sanzu has a drug addiction. stockholm syndrome. brief mention of cancer. smut. dubious consent. alcohol consumption. spanking. edging. mocking & condescension.
â wc. 8.8k words
â author's note. i know it took me forever to update ( i literally rewrote this chapter three separate times ) but i really like how it turned out so i do think it was worth the wait in the end! i hope you guys agree after reading it <33 i'd like to thank everyone for all the kind comments and asks about the series. i sincerely appreciate your patience! also a reminder to read the warnings for this chapter before diving in!!
â° pretty hostage m.list | previous chapter | next chapter
You wake up thinking about Rindou.
The image is hazy at first, with vivid shades of violet slowly coalescing into a pair of hooded eyes framed by dark lashes. The memory of his hand cradling your face, his thumb skimming across your cheekbone. The warmth of him beside you under the stars, solid and real in a way that made everything else feel distant and dreamlike. The way heâd leaned in, close enough that you could count each individual eyelash in the moonlight. Close enough that you could feel his breath ghosting over your lips.
And then⌠the way heâd stopped.
You touch your lips now, lying in bed with pale morning light shining through the cracked curtains, and wonder what it would have felt like if he hadnât.
Would he have been gentle? Demanding? Would his mouth have been soft or rough, patient or starving? Would it have changed everything, or nothing at all?
Part of you is grateful that he had the decency to stopâ that he cares enough about your state of mind to exercise restraint. But a small, selfish part of you wishes he hadnât pulled away. It wishes he had just kissed you, consequences be damned.
But mostly, you feel the absence of it. The ghost of something that almost was.
You roll onto your side and stare at the slice of sky beyond the glass. Two weeks ago, the window had felt like a wound. A taunt. Proof of everything youâd lost and could no longer reach. Now it simply feels like part of the room, part of the life youâve stumbled into without ever deciding to live it.
You squeeze your eyes shut and exhale slowly through your nose.
Youâre already my choice.
The words still sit heavy on your tongue, bittersweet even now, as you force yourself out from the comfort of your bed and down the stairs.
The house is quiet this morning, devoid of its usual clatter. The only sounds that reach your ears are the muted scrape of cutlery against a plate and the soft creak of the stairs under your feet. By the time you reach the bottom step, thereâs a flutter low in your stomachâ a fizzing, traitorous sensation that climbs up into your chest and trips up your pulse before you can tamp it back down.
You canât remember the last time a man put this particular feeling in you. Not in months, maybe longer. And itâs ridiculous, to feel sixteen again over someone holding you hostage. But your body doesnât seem to be concerned with logistics.
You smooth down your hair and step into the kitchen.
Rindou is already at the table.
It stops you for half a second, because itâs wrongâ off-pattern. Heâs not fiddling with the coffee machine, hair still damp from the shower, moving through the motions of making breakfast for both of you. Heâs dressed, in a charcoal pinstripe suit with the jacket hung over the back of the chair beside him and his sleeves buttoned at the wrist. His lavender hair is dry and pushed back from his face, the mullet tamed into something presentable. Thereâs a plate in front of him, mostly empty, and a phone in his hand that heâs scrolling through with his thumb.
Heâs been up for a while. Long before you. Long enough to shower and dress and eat and settle into that chair like heâs been waiting out the clock. The realization lands strangely. He got up early. To avoid you, a small voice in the back of your head supplies, and you hate how quickly your chest tightens at the thought.
You wait for him to acknowledge you. For a glance, a grunt, the bare minimum âmorningâ youâve grown accustomed to during your time here.
It doesnât come.
His eyes stay fixed on his phone, his jaw set and the air between you charged. Itâs thick with everything left unsaid last nightâ with his hand on your face and the space between you closing and then, devastatingly, reopening. But he gives you nothing. Not even the courtesy of looking at you.
So thatâs how itâs going to be.
Forcing yourself to move, you cross the floor to the coffee maker. Thereâs a carafe still half full, and you pour yourself a cup. The ritual of it steadies youâ cream from the fridge, two spoonfuls of sugar, the spoon clinking against ceramic as you stir. Youâd hardly consider yourself spoiled, but the fact that he didnât make it for you this morning stings, the absence of that gesture louder than anything he could have said to your face.
Thereâs a pan on the stoveâ eggs and bacon, gone lukewarm, and a serving spoon congealed in grease. He didnât make you a plate either.
So, you serve yourself in silence, scraping the last of the eggs onto a plate with two strips of bacon, and carry it to the table. You could sit anywhere, and while the wise decision would probably be the island in the middle of the kitchen, you choose the seat directly across from him. You refuse to let him pretend you arenât there.
He doesnât look up.
You eat a few bites, chewing quietly. The eggs are good, even cold, fluffy and seasoned just right. When you take a sip of your coffee, you watch him over the rim of your mug, and the set of his shoulders is a wall youâre not stupid enough to think you can climb.
You break the silence anyway. Youâve never been good at leaving a wound alone.
âHowâd you sleep?â
He doesnât look up. âFine.â
You wait for more, but more doesnât come. â...Just fine?â
âYeah.â
Thatâs it. Thatâs all he gives youâ two words and an almost inaudible sigh. He sets his phone down, picks up his fork, and finishes the last bite of his breakfast, clearly having decided that the easiest way to handle whatever happened between you is to pretend it didnât.
You open your mouth to push, but footsteps on the stairs cut you off. Ran appears a moment later, donning a similar suit with his shirt unbuttoned just enough to show the ink adorning his throat. His hair is swept back, but a few strands have escaped to frame his face, and heâs fastening a watch around his wrist as he walks, attention split between the clasp and the room.
âGood morningâ he says to no one in particular. Then, to Rindou: âIs Sanzu still MIA?â
Rindou still doesnât look up. âHis bikeâs still gone.â
Ran exhales through his teeth before dragging a hand down his face. âMikeyâs not going to be happy.â
âMikeyâs never happy,â Rindou responds flatly.
âYou know what I mean.â
Rindou says nothing, which is its own kind of agreement.
You sit very still, the way youâve learned to when the conversation turns to their workâ quiet and unobtrusive, like a fly on the wall they tolerate but donât quite trust.
Walking to the stove, Ran surveys the sad remains in the pan and makes a face. âYou left me the dregs again. How charming.â
He pours whatâs left onto a plate anyway and stands at the counter to eat, fork in one hand and his phone in the other. His eyes flick to you between bites, and his expression shifts.
âDonât you look bright-eyed this morning,â he comments.
You donâtâ you slept badly and you know it showsâ but you donât correct him.
âWeâll be out most of the day,â he continues around a mouthful of eggs. âCleaning up after our wayward friend, among other things. Donât expect us back until late.â His sets his fork down, dabbing the corner of his mouth with a napkin. âWhich means youâll have the place to yourself. Try not to throw any parties.â
âWho would I invite?â Your tone is dry.
His mouth curves. âFair point. But remember, sweetheartâ there are cameras. So be a good girl while weâre gone, hm? Donât do anything you shouldnât.â
Rindou scoffs.
Itâs barely a soundâ a derisive snort as he rises from the table and gathers his plate and utensilsâ but Ran catches it, and his head tilts with predatory interest, like a cat thatâs heard a mouse in the wall.
âHave something to say, Rinnie?â
Rindou places his plate in the sink. âJust that youâre laying it on awfully thick this morning.â
Ranâs brow lifts. âMe?â He presses a ringed hand to his chest. âIâm being a gracious host. Forgive me for showing the lady a little warmth.â He pauses, and his smile sharpens. âBesides, I wasnât the one who took her stargazing.â
Rindou goes still at the sink, and you feel your face go hot as a blush creeps up from your throat to your cheeks. You stare very intently at your coffee.
But Ran is enjoying himself far too much to stop. He saunters closer to you, nonchalantly picking a piece of lint off his sleeve. âDid he show you Cassiopeia? Thatâs his favorââ
âRan.â
âWhat? I think itâs cute.â
Rindouâs glare isnât even directed at you, and the hair on the back of your neck still rises. The muscle in his jaw pulses, and for a moment you think he might actually square up against his brotherâ but instead he grabs his jacket off the back of the chair and shrugs it on, every movement tight.
âWeâre going to be late,â he says coldly. âMove.â
Ran sighs, the picture of long-suffering patience, and fishes a set of keys from his pocket. âSo sensitive,â he murmurs, but he heads for the door all the same.Â
Rindou follows without sparing you a second glance, and you sit there at the table with your cold eggs and your hot face.
At the door, Ran pauses and looks back over his shoulder.
âOhâ and if Sanzu does show up, tell him to call me.â
Then theyâre gone.
You hear the beep of the alarm being armed, the thunk of the deadbolt sliding home, and the muffled crunch of gravel as a car pulls out of the driveway. And then the house settles into silence around you, vast and empty and entirely yours.
Alone. For the rest of the day.
â
The silence of the house, once theyâre gone, is a living thing. You stand in the kitchen for a while after the car disappears down the street, just listening to itâ the tick of the clock, the hum of the refrigerator, the absence of voices and footsteps and that constant low-grade awareness of being watched. Youâve been alone in this house before, in stolen pockets of an afternoon. But never like this. Never with the whole day stretching empty ahead of you and no one due back for hours.
You decide to make the most of it.
You take a shower.
Not one of the quick, perfunctory rinses youâve been allowing yourself, but a long, indulgent soak under water hot enough to turn your skin pink. The bathroom fills with steam until the mirror fogs over and the world narrows to heat and water and the slow loosening of the knot that lives permanently between your shoulder blades.
For the first time in two weeks, you let yourself relax.
The bathroom is stocked with toiletries Ran bought youâ an impressive army of expensive products lined up along the edge of the tub, the kind you used to walk past in department stores and never let yourself splurge on. Shampoo that smells like lavender. A sugar scrub that smells like vanilla and leaves your skin impossibly soft. A razor that isnât disposable, and a conditioner youâre pretty sure your hairdresser actually recommended once.Â
You use all of it.Â
You shave your legs carefully, the way you havenât bothered to in weeks. You scrub yourself down until youâre silky and smooth and smell like a dessert.
Itâs a small rebellion, this self-care. Or maybe itâs surrender. You canât always tell the difference anymore. But standing under the spray with vanilla on your skin and lavender in your hair, you decide not to scrutinize it too closely. Youâre allowed this.Â
Youâve earned this much, havenât you? A single morning of feeling human.
When you finally step out, wrapping yourself in a bright white towel thatâs thick and plush, you almost feel like a functional person again.
You take your time in the bedroom, too. The clothes Ran bought you hang in the closet, and you pick through them with more attention than the act deserves before settling on a pleated skirt that falls just above your knees and a baby blue sweater. The cashmere is warm against your freshly-lotioned skin, and the fit is perfect.
Thereâs makeup as well, a tiny collection of essentials in a drawer youâve barely touched. You sit on the counter in the bathroom and study your reflection. Twin bruises of bad sleep sit beneath your eyes, and you dab concealer over them, blending until they disappear. A little mascara. The lightest touch of something on your cheeks. And a chapstick that smells like cherries, slicked over your lips and leaving them faintly tinted and shining.
When youâre done, you stare at yourself for a long moment.
You look good. Rested, even, in a way you havenât in weeks. The girl in the mirror could be anyoneâ someone with a normal life and a normal morning, getting ready for a normal day.
You wonder if Rindou would have looked at you longer this morning, if youâd been wearing this.
Shoving the thought away, you grab your book from your nightstandâ the Camus novel youâve slowly been working throughâ and descend the staircase, finding your way to the living room and making yourself comfortable on the couch. You curl up beneath a blanket with your soft clothes and soft skin, and you try to lose yourself in it the way you used to lose yourself in books, back when reading was an escape rather than a way to kill time.
Be a good girl, Ran had said.
And for about twenty minutes, you are.
But the silence of an empty house is a different kind of silence than the one youâre used to. Itâs one filled with opportunity, buzzing beneath your skin and impossible to ignore. With every page you turn, it grows louder, refusing to leave:
Youâre alone. Truly alone. For the first time in two weeks, no one is watching you.
Orâ are they?
You glance around at the corners of the room.
Curiosity killed the cat. You know this, but you also know something else, something thatâs been crystallizing in your mind ever since the rooftop, ever since you held a gun in your hands and didnât use it, ever since you started waking up thinking about pretty purple eyes instead of escape routes: You cannot afford to lie dormant.Â
You cannot simply close your eyes and hope this will all work outâ hope that these men will decide to be kind and that being cooperative and good will keep you alive. Thatâs not survival; thatâs just a slower kind of death.
You need knowledge. Itâs the only currency you have in this house, and youâve been letting it slip through your fingers, too frightened to reach for it.
But not today.
You close the book.
First, the cameras. If Ran was telling the truthâ if there really are eyes hidden throughout the houseâ then you need to find them before you do anything else.Â
You walk through the living room slowly, methodically, scanning the walls, the bookshelves, the light fixtures. You run your fingers along the underside of shelves and behind picture frames, pull books partway out and peer into the gaps behind them. You grab a chair from the kitchen and examine the smoke detector on the ceiling, the air vents, even the little decorative trinkets that dot the surfaces.
Nothing.
You move to the kitchen, checking the cabinets and repeating the process. You feel slightly insane doing it, paranoid and twitchy, but you keep going.
Still nothing.
You search the hallways next, scouring every nook and cranny, every seam in the molding. You check the entryway, the staircase, the little alcove with the coat hooks.
When you reach the front door, you stop. Your hand drifts to the handle without quite meaning toâ the old instinct resurfacing, the one that used to scream at you every waking hour of those first few days.Â
You try it, knowing itâs pointless. Locked. Deadbolted. The little keypad by the frame glows a steady, watchful red, and the thing that unsettles you isnât that you canât leave. Itâs how faint the wanting has becomeâ how the voice that used to scream now only murmurs, easy to ignore.Â
You take your hand off the handle and go back to looking for cameras. You look until your neck aches from craning and your eyes blur from squinting. And you find nothing. Not a single camera. Not a single lens, or wire, or even a measly blinking light.
You stand in the hallway, hands on your hips, and frown.
Maybe Ran lied. Itâs not out of the question. It couldâve been a bluff, a leash made of nothing but the suggestion of surveillance. A way to keep you in line without spending a yen on the hardware. Itâs exactly the kind of psychological warefare heâd find amusing.
But even as you think it, you know it doesnât matter. If you havenât found the cameras by now, youâre not going to find them in the time you have left. You can keep tearing the house apart looking for something that may or may not exist, or you can use the remaining hours youâve been given.
Fuck it.
You climb the stairs.
Youâve always kept to your room and the shared common spaces, a model prisoner moving through the parts of the house youâre permitted and never reaching for the parts youâre not. But today you reach.
You start with Rindouâs room, wrapping your hand around the doorknob and twisting only to find it locked.
Of course it is. Truly, you wouldâve been flabbergasted if it wasnât.Â
You circle around to try the bathroom, since it connects your bedrooms, but it doesnât budge either. The bastard locked that one too. Thorough, even in this.
Sanzuâs room is next, across the hall. You donât expect muchâ and you donât want to find Sanzu himself, who could theoretically reappear at any momentâ but you try the knob anyway.
Locked again.
Then, Ranâs officeâ the room with the heavy wooden door youâve never been allowed past, the room where his voice drops to that cold, clipped register through the walls. You donât even bother getting your hopes up as you try it.
Itâs locked, naturally.
You let out a frustrated breath, starting to think the whole expedition is a bust. Every door that matters is probably sealed against you, and youâll have nothing to show for your nerve but a racing heart and a guilty conscience.
But thereâs one more. Ranâs bedroom.
Itâs tucked at the end of the hall beside his office, and you almost skip it, certain itâll be locked like the rest. But you try the handle anyway, just for peace of mind.
It turns, and the door swings open.
Blinking rapidly, you stand in the doorway, hardly believing your luck.
Ranâs bedroom is larger than yours, and nicer, but it shares the same fundamental quality as the rest of the house: itâs beautiful yet impersonal, the bones of a luxury hotel suite dressed up to look lived-in. A safehouse, after all, is still a safehouse.Â
The bed is enormous, made up in slate-gray linens. Thereâs a sitting area near the window, a leather armchair, and a small square table. Thankfully, the heavy, blackout curtains have been pulled back to let light in, and you glance over a dresser, a nightstand, a wardrobe that takes up most of one wall.
But where the bones are anonymous, the contents are pure Ran.
Because Ran, youâve learned, is a man who likes things.Â
The top of the dresser is cluttered with themâ colorful bottles of cologne, a tray of silver rings and chains, a glass box with a dozen watches nestled in velvet. Thereâs a throw tossed over the armchair. Thereâs a pair of loafers by the door, butter-soft and clearly costly.
You step inside, easing the door shut behind you, and your heart is pounding so hard you can feel it in your throat.
You slide open his wardrobe first, and itâs exactly what you expectedâ a row of suits in dark, rich fabrics, organized by some system you canât decipher. Saint Laurent. Tom Ford. Dolce & Gabbana. Names you recognize from the magazines you used to flip through on your lunch breaks. Silk shirts. A drawer of folded ties in jewel tones. Everything immaculate, everything worth a fortune.
You close it carefully and move to the dresser.
This feels more like trespassing, somehow. Opening the bottom drawer, there are socks and boxer briefs, neatly folded, and the second drawer is more of the same. The third one is filled with accessoriesâ cufflinks, tie clips, and a small pouch of what look like very real diamonds. You donât touch those.
The nightstand is next. You crouch beside it and slide the small drawer open. Thereâs a charging cable, a pair of reading glasses youâve never seen him wear, and a bottle of lube. Nothing useful. You close it.
And then you notice the top of the nightstand.
Thereâs a stack of magazines thereâ glossy fashion ones, the kind with impossibly thin models and perfume samples tucked between the pages.
But itâs the thing sitting on top of the stack that catches your eye.
A folder. Plain and unlabeled. Manila, slightly worn at the corners, the kind of nondescript thing that could hold anything or nothing at all. Itâs sitting there in the open, as if it were just another magazineâ as if its owner never imagined anyone would be in this room to find it.
You stare at it as if it might lunge up and bite you.
This is it, you think. Everything up to nowâ the subtle snooping around, the trying of doors and windowsâ those are the sort of things they might expect, might even forgive with a roll of their eyes.Â
But this is something else. This is the kind of curiosity that gets people killed.
You pick it up anyway.
The first page is a list. It takes you a moment to understand what youâre looking at. Names arranged in a column with job titles beside them and numbers beside thoseâ large numbers, sums of money, with dates. As you read, the bottom drops out of your stomach.
Det. Supt. Kenji Aoki â Tokyo Metropolitan Police, Organized Crime Division. More figures. More dates.Â
Yuna Ishikawa â Public Prosecutor's Office.Â
Takeda â Customs, Tokyo Port.
Sato â Tax Bureau.Â
On and on, a column that runs the length of the entire page and onto the next, name after name after name. Councilmen. Police officers. Prosecutors and customs officials. Bureaucrats whose titles you only vaguely recognize from news broadcasts. At least three dozen of them. A whole apparatus of supposedly respectable people, each one with numbers and dates beside their name.
A payroll.
Youâre holding a payroll.
This is who they own. This is the machinery of Tokyo, bought and paid for and filed away in a manila folder on a nightstand. The customs official who waves their shipments through the port. The detective who loses the paperwork. The prosecutor who declines to press charges. The councilman who makes sure the right permits get approved and the wrong questions never get asked.
You understand, suddenly and completely, why no one has come for you. Why thereâs been no rescue, no investigation. You understand why the men who took you move through the world with such confidence. It isnât arrogance. Itâs true: they are untouchable, in the most literal senseâ they own the people whose job it is to touch them. The police you might have run to are on this list. The prosecutor who would charge them. There is no authority above them to appeal to, because theyâve already bought it out.Â
The thought is so overwhelmingly suffocating that you have to set the page down for a second just to breathe.
Warily, you start to sift through the rest of the folder. Behind the payroll are files. One for each name, you realizeâ or for some of them, the important ones. And these are not payments. These are insurance.
The first is Detective Superintendent Aoki. Thereâs a photograph clipped to the inside, and you turn it over and immediately wish you hadnât. Itâs a crime sceneâ or the aftermath of one. A womanâs bloody body and a face you recognize from the photo on the page: Aoki himself, caught in the frame, a knife in his hands. You donât understand the full story, and you donât want to.Â
The implication is enough: We have you. We can end you whenever we like.Â
You turn it face down with shaking fingers.
The next file is for Maruyama, the councilman. Heâs pictured in several photographs that were very clearly never meant to be seen, in compromising arrangements with people who are very clearly not his wife. You flip past them quickly, your face hot with rising nausea.Â
Some of the files hold financial records, evidence of embezzlement, of accounts that donât add up. Some hold photographs of things that turn your stomachâ violence, captured and catalogued and saved for a rainy day. Leverage, all of it. A blackmail file for the officials on payroll, so that even if the money ever stopped flowing, the silence never would.
You read through all of it.
You donât mean toâ you mean to skim, to get the jist of things and put it awayâ but you canât stop. Itâs like watching a car accident. Page after page, file after file, the full and terrible intricacies of how this organization holds an entire city in its fist. By the time you reach the end, thereâs a sour taste at the back of your throat.
This is what they are. Not just three men in a house.Â
Not just Ranâs charismatic charm and Rindouâs cold shoulder and Sanzuâs unpredictable mania. This is a criminal organization with the cityâs officials in its pocket.
And you are inside itâ not adjacent to it, not a bystander peering inâ inside.Â
Youâve been eating breakfast with these men. Pouring their coffee and setting their table, cooking them dinner. You nearly let one of them kiss you last night. The sheer scale of what they are makes your own situation feel suddenly, vertiginously smallâ a single miniscule cog caught in a machine this large.Â
They could make you disappear as easily as they made a prosecutor look the other way, and no one with the power to care would even know to ask.
You sit there on the edge of the bed for a while, the open folder in your lap and your heart hammering against your ribcage.
And then you do the only sensible thing you can. You close it.
You put it backâ carefully, exactly as you found it. You stand and survey the room, retrace your steps in your mind. The wardrobe, closed. The drawers, shut. The nightstand drawer, pushed flush. You smooth the spot on the bed where you sat, erasing the impression of your weight from the covers. Standing in the doorway, you look back and check it against the picture in your memory, making sure everything is precisely where it was when you walked in.
Then, you ease the door shut behind you and let out a breath you feel like youâve been holding for an hour.
In the living room, you take stock of yourself.
Your hands are mostly steady, the nausea has faded to a dull unease, and beneath it all, a startling sense of accomplishment.
You took a risk today, and it paid off. Youâve learned something tangibleâ something they donât want you to know, something that matters, even if you donât yet know how. Youâre not just surviving. Youâre playing the game.
The information sits in your chest like a coal, burning warm and dangerous. You donât know what youâll do with it, or if youâll ever be able to do anything with it at all. The knowledge that the whole city is bought is hardly a comfortâ if anything, it should crush whatever hope you had left. But it doesnât feel like crushing. It feels like clarity. Like for the first time, you can see the actual shape of the cage youâre trapped inside, instead of just its shadow.
Thereâs wine in the kitchen, a small cabinet stocked with bottles you wouldnât know how to choose between. Theyâve offered you alcohol beforeâ Ran, mostly, holding out a glass with that disarming smile, you look like you could use oneâ and youâve declined every time, always deciding itâd be better to keep your wits about you.Â
But youâre alone now, and you finally feel like youâve earned the right to let go of the rope youâve been white-knuckling.
You pick a bottle at randomâ a red with a label you donât bother to read, and you pour yourself a sizable glass. The first sip is rich and tannic, warming you from the inside out. Content with your choice, you carry both the glass and the bottle to the living room and curl up on the couch with your book.Â
The sunlight streaming in through the windows goes from white to gold to gray as afternoon fades into evening.
You finish your first glass of wine and pour a second somewhere along the way, the warmth of it loosening the remaining tension in your body until youâre just as soft on the inside as you are on the outside. A pleasant haze settles over you, and you sink into the couch with your book open against your knees.Â
You donât read much of it, mostly sitting with your thoughts, turning the day over and overâ the folder, the names, the photographs, the unexpected thrill of having done something forbidden and gotten away with it.
You donât notice how late itâs gotten until headlights sweep across the wall.
Twin beams slice through the dark before they die, the low purr of an engine cutting out in the driveway. Thereâs the chirp of the alarm disarming, the heavy clunk of the deadbolt, and the front door swings open on its hinges.
You instinctively straighten, setting your glass down on the coffee table.Â
Rindou comes in first, and he looks weary in a way this morningâs crisp suit no longer disguisesâ his tie gone, collar open, jacket slung over his shoulder by a hooked finger.
His eyes find you on the couch, and for the first time since the rooftop, he actually looks. They rake over you, taking in the skirt and the sweater, the makeup, the loose, clean fall of your hair. Something flits across his face, there and gone before you get a good look, but a crack in the blankness heâs been wearing nonetheless.
His jaw tightens, and he drags his gaze away before climbing the stairs without a word. A moment later, you hear his door click shut.
âDonât take it personally.â Ranâs voice draws your attention back to the doorway. Heâs shrugging out of his suit jacket and draping it over the back of an armchair. âHeâs been in a mood all day. Business always finds a way of souring it.â He loosens his tie next, dragging it free from his collar and flicking open the top two buttons of his dress shirt. âMe? I find it invigorating.â
âDid Sanzu ever turn up?â you ask.
Ran shakes his head. âStill in the wind, but heâll show up eventually. He always does.â He waves a hand dismissively, silver rings catching the lamplight. âBetter not to dwell on it. Heâs not nearly as interesting as my eveningâs shaping up to be.â
His eyes drop to the empty glass of wine on the table. âKenzo Estate, 2018. Good taste.âÂ
âI wouldnât know,â you admit.
âBeginnerâs luck.â He holds up a finger, disappearing into the kitchen and returning with another glass. âMost people assume the one with the flashiest label is the best. You, however, went for one that actually tastes good.â
Picking up the bottle, he proceeds to fill both glasses before sinking onto the couch beside you. Then, he hands you your glass and taps the rim of his against it with a soft clink. âGood instincts, doll.â
You hum, taking a sip to cover the warmth crawling up your neck.
âYou look lovely tonight, by the way.â His gaze drifts over you, slow and appreciative. âAlmost relaxed. Itâs a good look on you.â
You raise a brow. âThe wine?â
âThe ease. For two weeks, Iâve watched you tiptoe around this house like youâre waiting for the floor to give out, shoulders up to your ears.â Two lithe fingers trace along the curve of your shoulder, feather-light, and you feel it everywhere. âAll but flinching whenever someone walked past you. And now look at you. Glass of wine in hand, curled up on the couch like you own it. It suits you far better than the fear did.â
âWell⌠thank you,â you say, the words coming out softer than you intended. âI figured Iâd earned it.â
âOh?â He drapes his arm along the back of the couch, and his fingertips find a strand of hair at your temple, twirling it around. âAnd what exactly did you do to earn it?â
âNot much, really.â The lie comes easily, smoothed over by the alcohol. You take another sip to sell it. âTook a nice, long shower and gave myself some much needed TLC. It was quiet. Peaceful.âÂ
You glance up at him through your lashes, emboldened by the heat in your chest and the way his gaze is still fixed on you. âYou should leave me unsupervised more often.â
âIs that so?â
âIt is.â
âAnd here I was certain you couldnât stand it here.â
âI canât stand present company. The plumbing, though? Five stars.â
âWas that a joke?â Ran lifts a brow. âI didnât think you had any in you.â
You continue to trade barbs, falling into easy conversation. After a few minutes, your glass has gone low again, and he reaches for the bottle, refilling it until the crimson liquid laps near the rim.
âYou know,â you say, mock-serious. âA girl might start to think youâre trying to get her drunk.â
His mouth curves. âAbsolutely not. Though, I am a little wounded.â
You blink. âWounded?â
âTwo weeks of me offering you a drink, and you turned your nose up every time.â He clicks his tongue. âThen the moment Iâm out of the house, you help yourself to my cellar.â
âI did not,â you insist, and the corners of your mouth tip up despite yourself. âI was perfectly sober⌠until I wasnât. If you want to get technical, it was past five oâclock. That has to count for something.â
âIf weâre getting technical? Youâre telling me you earned a drink because you took a seven-hour shower?â
âOh my god, no! I told youâ TLC. Tender. Loving. Care.â
âWhich entailsâŚ?â
âWouldnât you like to know.â
âI would. Indulge me, doll.â
You roll your eyes. âFor starters, I tried out all the skincare products you got me. Every single one. The scrub was heavenly. The shea butter too; it smells amazing.â
âIt does,â he agrees readily, catching your wrist as you set your glass down on the table. He turns it gently to bring the inside of it to his nose and inhales deeply enough that you feel the brush of his breath against your skin. âMmm. Iâve always loved vanilla.â
Your heart stutters. âYeah?â
âMmhm, cherry as well.â His eyes lower to your lips, and you have to consciously work not to bite at them. Can he smell your chapstick too?
âYour choice of products makes sense now.â
âIt should.â Lilac hues lift back up to yours as he traces idle circles over your pulse point. âI merely chose the best. Itâs what any excellent host would do.â
âYouâre a kidnapper.â
âIâm an excellent host who happens to kidnap,â he corrects you. âThe two arenât mutually exclusive.â
That earns him a laugh, as morbid as the joke is. âYouâre trouble, thatâs what you are.â
âI beg to differ. Iâve been on my best behavior, unlike someone else.â
âNow, thatâs not true.â Your voice lacks conviction, too breathless to sound convincing. âIâve been as good as gold. Practically a saint.â
His smile curves wider, and he leans in, closing the last of the distance only for your breath to catch in your throat, lashes dipping as every nerve in your body anticipates the press of his mouth against yoursâ
But he veers past your lips at the last second, his cheek grazing yours until his mouth comes to rest against the shell of your ear. When he speaks, his voice is as smooth as honey.Â
âYouâre a terrible liar.â
It takes you a second to process what heâs said. The wine has dulled your edges, blurring the words together into jibberishâ and then the meaning catches up to you all at once, cold and jarring, like ice water down your spine.
You go rigid.
âWhat?â The question comes out thin. You pull back enough to look at him properly, and his expression hasnât changedâ still that charming smile, his eyes warm and amused.Â
Itâs the warmth that frightens you. Thereâs no anger in them, no accusation. Just a knowing smile, like heâs letting you in on a secret the two of you already share.
âCome now, letâs not play dumb.â When you only stare at him, he sighs. âThe cameras, darling. You spent such a long time looking for them, standing on chairs and running your hands along the walls. Truth be told, I found it incredibly endearing.â
You can feel the blood drain from your face, the wine curdling in your stomach.
âYou didnât find them because you werenât meant to,â he continues, conversationally. âBut I found you. Every room you tried. Every door you rattled. Every page you turnedâ and Iâm not talking about that old Camus novel youâve been pretending to read.â
The folder.
He knows.Â
He watched.Â
All of it. His bedroom, the drawers, the manila folder youâd been so careful to square back into place. The hours youâd spent congratulating yourself, pouring his wine, and basking in the satisfaction of a day well spentâ and heâd been watching the entire time. Letting you believe you were clever. Letting you walk yourself, step by smug step, right into his lap.
âRanââ
âShh,â he presses a single finger to your lips, silencing you, and his smile doesnât so much as flickerâ sickly sweet and patient but utterly without mercy. The hand at your wrist slides up, fingers threading into the hair at the nape of your neck. âYou had your fun today. Snooping around where you donât belong. Touching what isnât yours.â
His grip closes, and you gasp as your head is forced back, chin tilted up so youâre face-to-face. âSo now, Iâm going to touch what isnât mine.â
âWaitââ
Again, he cuts you off, this time by pressing his thumb between your lips. His skin is salty when it hits your tongue, and saliva floods your mouth at the taste.
âYouâre in no position to be giving orders, doll.â
Suddenly, the room feels too warm. The couch suddenly too soft beneath you. The wine in your system turns traitorous, leaving your thoughts slow and slippery as they struggle to catch up with the reality sitting in front of you.
âMe, on the other handâŚâ he hums, a low baritone that vibrates up from his chest as he watches panic flare in your eyes. âSpread your legs.â
You try to swallow, and he cants his head, regarding you with newfound interestâ like heâs waiting to see which version of you will emerge first. The one that had spent the afternoon creeping around forbidden territory, emboldened by curiosity. Or the one sitting before him now, pulse fluttering wildly beneath delicate skin, finally understanding just how thoroughly sheâs been outplayed.
âDonât make me ask again.â
Something hot and ugly unfurls beneath your ribsâ a heady mix of humiliation and anger. The sharp sting of realizing heâd sat beside you for nearly half an hour with this tucked behind his teeth, waiting for the precise moment to pull the rug out from under your feet.
Heâs expecting submission. Thatâs his mistake.
You let your lips part further around his thumbâ and then, you bite down. Hard. Hard enough that the coppery tang of blood blooms across your tongue, hard enough that you feel the give of skin beneath your teeth.
His smile slips as he grunts out a curse, brow twitching and lavender eyes sharpening, startled and bright. For one suspended second, youâve got himâ caught off guard by his own pet. The taste of it is sweeter than the wine.
But it lasts exactly that longâ one heartbeat, maybe twoâ before something shifts behind his eyes. The surprise morphs into delight, and his mouth curls again, his expression almost proud.
âThere she is,â he breathes.
You donât wait to hear the rest. You wrench back, twisting out from his hold and scrambling for the opposite end of the couch. You donât get far.
An arm hooks around your waist, and the world spins, and then youâre downâ chest pressed to the cushions, one cheek mashed against the armrest, the breath knocked clean out of your lungs. A large hand splays flat between your shoulder blades, pinning you with an infuriating ease, like your struggling is cute.
âRan..!â His name comes out muffled, partly swallowed by the upholstery.
âMm, keep wiggling. Itâs not helping you the way you think it is.â
You feel his free hand drag a path down the curve of your spine, lower until his fingers catch the hem of your skirt and tug it up. The backs of your thighs and your ass are bared to the cool air of the room, and you go hot all over as the humiliation intensifies, burning alongside something darkerâ something youâd never admit to.
His thumb is still bleeding. You can feel it smear, warm where it presses into your hip.
âYou quite literally bit the hand that feeds you.â His palm settles over the swell of your ass, squeezing the soft flesh roughly. âI shouldâve expected nothing less. You never do learn the easy way, do you?â
âDonâtââ
The first strike lands before your plea can materialize, and the crack of it splits the quiet, loud and obscene. The sting registers a moment laterâ a blistering heat that rips a gasp straight from your throat. Your hands shoot out, fingers fisting the blanket.
Ran hums again, smoothing his palm over the place he just struck like heâs admiring his work.
âThatâs one,â he says. âGo ahead. Count for me, darling.â
You donât.
You press your lips together, and you stare at the seam of the couch cushion an inch from your nose, giving him nothing. Itâs the only thing left thatâs yoursâ the silenceâ and you clutch it like the blanket twisted in your fists.
âNo? Stubborn thing.â
The second slap lands harder than the first. You jolt, a squeal tearing loose, but itâs not a number. A vicious sort of satisfaction spreads throughout your limbs.
You can take this.
Pain you understand. Pain has an edge, a place to brace against. So you brace.
The third comes, and then a fourth and a fifth. You breathe through your teeth as the sting stacks and burns, your knuckles white, your defiance the one thing you refuse to surrender.
âMy, oh my. You really are determined to make this difficult.â
âGo to hell,â you manage.
A deep laugh sounds. âWeâre already here, sweetheart.â
And then his tactic changes.
The next touch he doles out isnât a strike. Itâs a caress, the tips of the fingers grazing softly over the seat of your panties, and your whole body locks upâ because this, you donât have a brace for. This has no edge to push against. It slips past every defense youâd build against the pain, joining the wine and the heat simmering low in your belly.
âSensitive there, are we?â
You donât trust your voice, almost certain it will crack the moment you try to speak, so you start to struggle in earnest, thrashing around beneath the weight of him.
Some distant part of you knows itâs futile, but your body hasnât gotten the message your pride already has, so you fight. You buck against him and dig your knees into the cushions for purchase that isnât there.
And Ran lets you. Thatâs the worst part of it. He doesnât tighten his grip or snap at you to hold stillâ he just lets you ride it out, patiently, with his hand pressed firmly against the small of your back while you wear yourself down against him.
âAtta girl,â he croons. âGet it all out of your system.â
And thatâs exactly what happens.
You thrash until the fight drains out of you, until your limbs go heavy and your breath comes ragged. You feel the moment it leaves youâ the defiance. It leaks out of you like air from a puncture, and your forehead drops to the armrest as you stop.
His hand strokes up your spine. âWas that so hard?â
You donât answer. You canât. Your voice is somewhere you canât reach, lost beneath the hammering of your own heart.
âGood. Now, letâs see what weâre working with.â
A whimper escapes you as he pulls your panties to the side, the cool air causing you to jerk where it meets your heated folds. âWait, pleaseâ Iâm sorry, okay? I shouldnât have went through your things. It wonât happen again, I promise!â
âOh, I know it wonât. Still, I donât think youâre truly sorry. Not yet, at least.â He tuts at you. âIn fact, I think youâre enjoying this.â
âNo! Please, Ran!â
âPlease, what? Please stop?â Condescension colors his tone. âYou keep saying that, but this pretty little pussy is positively soaked.â
In the next instant, you feel him drag a finger between your folds, and when he holds it up to your face, you canât help the tears that prick at the corners of your eyes. To your absolute horror, the digit is wet and shiny, covered in the silvery slick dripping from between your thighs.
âSee? Look at that. You can lie to yourself all you want, but I wonât let you lie to me.â
Whatever retort you try to throw back dissolves into a moan as his finger drops back down, notching against your clit. He rubs over it, chuckling at the way it twitches under his attention. You try to clench your thighs together, but he plants a knee between your legs to keep them parted.
âThere you go. Go ahead and give in to it. Let me hear all of those sweet, angelic sounds. Iâm sure if youâre loud enough, Rin will too.â
Your head is scrambled, each swipe of his fingers over your clit sending delicious sparks of pleasure up your spine. Itâs damning, the control he has over you in this moment. Your legs start to tremble around his knee, your hips twitching as your body chases the friction.
âO-Oh fuck,â you stammer out, burying your face completely in the cushion.
âFeels good, doesnât it? You like it when I touch you here?â Itâs a rhetorical question, not that you could answer if you wanted to. Instead, a choked cry bubbles up from your chest as he abandons your clit, leaving it throbbing. âOf course you do. But you know what? Something tells me youâll like it even more if I touch you.. here.â
You arenât prepared for the way his finger sinks into youâ all the way to the knuckle.Â
Your walls clamp down around the intrusion, lashes fluttering as he curls it. âI.. Shit, I canâtâŚâ
âUse your words, pretty.â
But youâre panting now, writhing beneath him as a second finger joins the first. The stretch burns but only briefly, because heâs rightâ even with your long dry spell, youâre so wet that it slides in without much resistance. You donât even have the energy to be mortified at how obscene the sounds are as he starts to fuck them into you, controlled and measured and so much better than you would have guessed. They scissor open, and your toes curl, another muffled mewl expelled from your lips into the couch.Â
âI canât hear you.â His hand cards into your hair only to yank your head back to the side, and he leans down so his lips are by your ear. âI said, do you like it when I touch you here?â
Heâs working you, coaxing you, and it feels so good that your train of thought is reduced to a desperate, short-circuited refrain: More. Not enough. Too much.
âIâ Iââ
âYouâre close, I can feel it.â Thereâs an amused lilt to his voice. âHow long has it been since someone made you cum, sweet girl?â
You try to remember. Itâs a question that should make you bristle with embarrassment, bristle with shame of being so easily unspooled, but the answer is a hazeâ a memory so faded and irrelevant compared to the pressure of his fingers crooking inside you.
Itâs been months, you think. Maybe a year. The last guy you slept with was such a non-event you donât remember his name, let alone how he made you feel.
But you will remember this. Youâll remember this for the rest of your life.
âCome on, sweetheart. Say it,â Ran coos, his thumb finding your clit and circling it. âTell me how much you want it.â
He already knows. He must, with the way your walls pulse around his fingers, so tight it almost hurts. Heâs making a mess of youâ not just your body, but your mind, your dignity, your sanity.Â
You donât want to say it. Youâd rather bite your tongue off than hand him another ounce of control. But the words claw their way up your throat anyway, prying your mouth open and spilling out in a pained confession.Â
âI want it..!â You gasp, shuddering when he presses hard against that spot that makes your vision blur. âFuck, Ran, I want you toâ please, justââ
âGood girl.âÂ
Youâre so close. Itâs as if every atom in your body is gathering, bracing for that singular, shattering releaseâ
He withdraws his fingers, and the emptiness is so abrupt that you sob, a raw, broken sound torn from the depths of your soul. Itâs a betrayal so complete that for one dazed, breathless second, you simply donât understand whatâs happened.
â..W-what?âÂ
You can barely form words. The ache between your legs is hollow, the aftershocks of denied pleasure rolling through your body, like a tide dragged out too soon. You shift, reaching back for him mindlessly, but heâs already pulled away, his fingers slick and shining as he wipes them on the curve of your ass.
âYou didnât think Iâd make it that easy, did you?â His voice is syrupy, sated. âYou donât get to misbehave and walk away with a prize. Thatâs not how this works, sweetheart.â
You want to scream at him, curse him, beg him.
But every muscle in your body is spent and trembling. You can hear your heartbeat in your ears and feel it between your legs, blood roaring through your veins as another wave of humiliation washes over you.
You think he might say something elseâ a taunt, a lecture, a threat. But instead, he just stands and retrieves his suit jacket from the chair. He doesnât look back at you, striding toward the staircase.Â
He takes the first step and pauses with his hand on the banister, glancing over his shoulder, violet eyes hooded and unreadable. âI wouldnât stay there for too long, unless you want Rindou to see.â
Then heâs gone, leaving you there with your tear stained cheek pressed into the cushion and your thighs still parted around the ghost of his knee.
idk how present i can be on here or ao3 this summer. between moving (and adjusting to country life) and my kiddo having summer break i suspect i am probably going to have a tough time writing and being online. tumblr is my comfort site though so i don't think i could stay away if i tried.
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series synopsis - in a world where soulmates were real, fate ties you to ryomen sukuna like some cruel and twisted joke. where people felt their soulmates in soft touches and quiet comfort, all youâve ever known was phantom pain, sleepless nights, and a violent rage that didnât belong to you. by the time you finally meet the man ruining your nervous system, the city already knew him as its most feared underground boxer. how would you survive? [mdni 18+]
chapters
âĄď¸ â.Ë prologue
âĄď¸ â.Ë one - no surprises
âĄď¸ â.Ë two - coming soon
âĄď¸ â.Ë three - tbd
âĄď¸ â.Ë four - tbd
âĄď¸ â.Ë five - tbd
âĄď¸ â.Ë six - tbd
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credits: art by @/cinaillus | divider by @/uzmacchiato
