"Obata!" One of my men slapped me on the shoulder as a greeting as I walked into the headquarters house. I had left Ito back at her apartment building with a promise to call her after the meeting. Somehow I had been convinced to accompany her as she did her grocery shopping. I thought ahead to inviting her to sharing dinner with me, but I had to decide what I was going to say to her in regards to how I felt about kissing her, and give an answer as to why I did it. If I knew women, which admittedly I didn't past objectification, she would want a straight answer from me.

"Congratulations on a successful acquisition." He continued, keeping his hand on my shoulder as walked into the main room. "What is this I smell on you?"

"It's called a woman. You should experience it for yourself some time." I tried to act like it was all just part of the job.

He used the hand he hand on my shoulder to give me a shake. "Is that where you disappeared to last night?"

I looked down at my feet, partly to hide the smile that came to my face, and partly because I wanted to ignore his question. "It's not really what you think." I wasn't sure why I wanted to tell him the truth.

Under my arm I carried each deed to each of the Club Diamond franchises that we had earned through the raids. I waved off the men trying to show me respectful gestures and made my way down the hall to the back of house in solitude. Oda-sama's office was there, along with a safe that was anything but hidden. It was a large black polished steel eye sore in one corner of the room, and Oda-sama had at some point ironically placed a vase of flowers atop it. It had a dial type of locking system, and occasionally Oda-sama would change the combination without telling me, just to test my skill at lock picking and keep me sharp. It was an endearing game we had between us, but the skill had no real use in the world anymore. We were both getting old.

I set the stack of papers inside the safe and paused a moment to pat them with the palm of my hand. I felt no sense of accomplishment though. I could hear shouts of cheers and glasses clinking together from down the hall, and I wondered if I had just become so seasoned that even victory was dull. It seemed that every time I set foot in the headquarters house, I questioned any usefulness I had left to offer.

I took my seat at the head of the table next to Oda-sama and poured a cup of tea for him. One of the young men ran the length of the table from his spot standing in the corner of the room to take the teapot from me, and poured a cup for me. I took a moment to glance into the shadows where the young new recruits stood. They were all wearing cheap black suits, one of them with a bandaged hand. He wouldn't last if he was already bandaged like that. Most of them had accompanied the low ranking men, and they were being used as slaves to earn their place.

"Congratulations on the acquisitions of the Club Diamond franchise." I said. The room fell completely silent. "With this acquisition the Oda-kai now controls the entirety of the west side of Tokyo. Well done." I paused to bow, placing my hands atop my thighs as if I was in the martial arts club. "Renovations are already underway, and the clubs are set to open tomorrow night. A lot of damage was done. Now, we stay on high alert for a few days in anticipation of retaliation from another syndicate or gang. Then we can return to being gentlemen and getting to know our new clients."

Oda-sama stayed quiet and still, and it gave me the feeling that something was on his mind. The other group leaders gave their reports of each raid quickly, leaving them as detail-less as possible. They wanted to highlight their success, and they wanted to leave out the hiccups that were inevitable along the way to that success. I had no doubt that most of them were hiding bandages on their arms and ribs under their suits like I was.

As the meeting cleared, I sat with Oda-sama, trying to make it obvious that I was giving him space to speak his mind. I poured him another cup of tea, and attempted to ground myself, making my energy as peaceful as I could. He seemed to be getting older by the day, with a new set of wrinkles and a new patch of white hair every time I saw him. I wondered if the time would soon be coming for him to pass the title on, and I wondered if I needed to start preparing myself.

"A success." He said, but his tone was flat.

"A success indeed. But it feels undeserved."

He closed his eyes a moment, and it seemed as if he was pausing to feel the energy in the room. "Too easy. I think someone is lying."

"Lying about what? All the deeds are accounted for. I put them in the safe myself."

Oda-sama looked at my face, long enough to say he was studying my expression, and I wasn't sure enough of what he was looking for to be able to change it to suit him. "I'm not sure." He said. He continued to stare as if he was accusing me, waiting for me to admit to something. Locked in the cross hairs of his gaze though, I would have admitted to anything. "Watch your back. I just have a feeling we've gotten into something much bigger than we can handle. And I have a feeling we were lured there."

He was speaking distantly, as if he wasn't quite aware of it, some other entity channeling through him. "Can't we just say we've done this so many times we're all quite good at it now?"

It seemed to snap him back to reality. He nodded once. "For now."

I hadn't walked the streets of Kabuki-cho distracted in at least twenty years. Allowing myself to get distracted in my line of work meant putting myself at risk. It was at times like that I felt like a celebrity walking around in plain view, and although I had been dodging the protective watch of my men more and more in my older years, I fantasized about letting myself become increasingly distracted under their care again.