The world looked different as I exited the headquarters house. It looked like it was full of possibilities for the first time. It looked exciting, and relaxing. I reminded myself it would be a slow change, and I couldn't rely on the delusion that everyone else would suddenly know how I wanted life for the Yakuza to change.

I arrived at Ito's apartment close to five, about the time Club Diamond was opening for the night. She would be expecting me to spend the evening and night at the club, and I hadn't bothered to tell her I canceled my plans. I hoped that if she went out, it wouldn't be long before she returned home. I entered the building, and began to climb the stairs, and a feeling in the pit of my stomach began to form. I slowed my pace and listened to my intuition, letting my habits surface that kept me aware and safe in suspicious situations. The building was quiet, as it usually was, but I couldn't recall taking note of any people lingering outside, or vehicles that weren't usually present. I reached Ito's door and looked over both shoulders, told myself I was over reacting, and pushed the door open.

I was met with a scream and felt the air moving as something heavy came down on me. I lifted my arm to block it, and ducked away, trying to force my eyes to focus on where the attack was coming from.

"Oh, Kazu!" Ito's voice, sounding surprised. "I'm so glad it's you." And then nothing but crying.

Without hesitation, I gathered her against me, and she balled her fists into the back of my suit jacket. My eyes scanned the room. She had dropped a folded umbrella at my feet, which was likely what she had tried to hit me with. But why had she tried to attack? The apartment was in disarray. The couch in the living space had been turned over, the cushions on the floor. The kitchen table and both chairs met much the same fate. From what I could see in the kitchen, all the drawers and cupboards had been opened, the contents rifled through, and there were blankets and pillows on the floor in the doorway of the bedroom.

"I can't say I like how you redecorated." I said to her, reaching to hold her face with both hands so I could look at her. I knew if I didn't get her started, she would keep her face buried in my chest the whole night and never tell me a thing.

She squeezed her eyes shut after taking a look at me, and I kissed the frown on her lips that wasn't helping much in controlling her crying. "I'm sorry I tried to hit you. I wasn't expecting you here, you said you were going to the club."

"Akari, it's okay." I laughed a little, amused that she was more concerned over apologizing for trying to hit me with an umbrella than she was about the state of her apartment. "Even if you did know it was me, it's still okay." The door was still open behind us to the hallway, and I reached to push it shut, taking one last look for anything out of place. The lock was broken, likely from being forcefully kicked. "What happened? Are you okay?"

I wiped the tears off her cheeks with my thumbs. "I don't know what happened, it was like this when I got home. I don't know when it happened either. I stayed at the university after classes to have coffee with a friend, so I was a little late coming back." She started to cry harder again, and her words were almost unintelligible. "I'm so glad you're here. You were supposed to be at the club."

"I canceled after I talked to Ishikawa this morning. How long have you been here?"

She finally let me go as I asked her a question that required her to start thinking about something else. "I don't know. I left the university at four thirty. What time is it now?"

"Around five. Have you looked around? Is anything missing?" I took off my jacket and shirt, both soaked with her tears. I picked up the table just to have a surface to lay them across, but the task ahead seemed too daunting after just that small action.

I remembered the overnight bag and some clothes that I had stored in her closet, and moved to check the status of them. I found that every item in the closet had been thrown onto the floor from the hangers, but my suit had not been touched. It provided the proof that someone had been looking for to connect me to Ito. I wondered if I should tell her that I was the reason her life had once again become disrupted.

"I don't have anything of value." She said. "I don't think anything would be missing unless they took a pair of underwear or two." She joined me in the bedroom, curious about what I was looking at. "Oh, your suit! I'm glad it didn't get damaged."

"Akari, this is what they were looking for." I pointed to her club dresses in a pile on the floor of the closet, and my suit and overnight bag. "Proof that you live here, and that you have a connection to me." It wasn't concrete proof. I tried to lie to myself. My weapons and my syndicate pin were always on my person. I never left them anywhere that would make it easy for someone to identify them. It could have looked like any businessman who crossed paths with any hostess.

She didn't say anything. What would have happened if she had have been there? What would have happened if I had have gone to the club for the night like I was supposed to? How could I have let my guard down so quickly?

"Why didn't you call me?"

"I thought you were working. I knew you would be here eventually."

"What if they were still here, waiting for you to get home and see this?" She didn't say anything again, and I identified a gap in her training that I would have the unfortunate pleasure of filling in for her. "You shouldn't have stayed here. You should have called me right away and went to a convenience store or something. Somewhere with a lot of people."

She nodded to show that she understood what I was telling her, but she was beginning to cry again. "Okay. I know better now."

"You did the right thing trying to attack me at the door." I made her smile a little through her attempt at holding back another outburst. "It's good to be ready to fight. But if you can avoid a fight, it's better. Don't put yourself in a position where the only thing you have left is to fight."

I wondered if I was being too hard on her, that she didn't need to hear it in that moment, but I had her attention. "I didn't stay very calm in this situation, did I?" She said. "I didn't really think, I just reacted. I was upset, and scared."

"Get what you need for the next couple days. We'll go to my apartment." She looked around like she was frozen in place, overwhelmed with her options. Items were everywhere, scattered on the floor and tabletops, dishes were broken, a few of her plants were overturned and soil was stomped over the floors. I sensed that she would start to cry again if I didn't interfere with where ever her thoughts were running to. "Hey, it's still early. How about I take you to the department store and we can grab a few things?"

We walked the few blocks to the department store in Shinjuku, stopping at the first cafe I saw. I put a hot cup of sweet coffee into her hands, and she finally smiled. I kept her under my arm, close to me, to offer her a sense of safety, but also to appease my need to keep her in my sight. She squeezed my arm and told me she had some makeup in her purse so she could try to erase the evidence of her crying, and told me to wait for her outside of the washrooms. I leaned against the wall where I had a clear view of the door, sipped my coffee, and took note of how many other boyfriends were lingering there as well, waiting for the girls in the washroom. I smiled to myself at the view.

Ito smiled the rest of the time we toured the department store. I carried her modest bags of skin care products, underwear, and a few basic items of clothing. It was all I had wanted, to distract her even for just a moment from the danger she was in, and selfishly remind her that I cared for her even if I was responsible for putting her in danger. I tested the boundaries of my presence in the city, rolling up my sleeves to casually brandish the tattoo closest to my wrists, secretly gauging the reactions around us. No one seemed to care. No one even seemed to notice. Tattoos were becoming commonplace in the big cities, and as I spied on the people who passed, I counted more than a handful of young men with some type of tattoo.

We returned to my Kabuki-cho apartment, and though it was only a few blocks away from where she lived, it felt like a new world. It felt normal, but it felt like I was borrowing someone else's life for the night. We brought takeout to my apartment, and ate together. We got into the shower together, and I took the time to hold her face in my hands and intentionally look at her eyes. I wanted her to know, as she put her hands on me and pressed herself close, that the feeling of our bare skin together meant she had nothing to be scared of. I wanted her to know that my body was her shield, and she could hold me as tightly as she needed to.

I took her to bed straight from the shower, wrapped in our towels only to discard them on the floor. I let her sleep against me as I watched the news on my small TV with the volume down, and I closed my eyes now and then to drift in and out of sleep. The moment she rolled away from me, I made my escape from the bed, satisfied that she was comfortable enough to sleep through the rest of the night.

It was near two in the morning when I found myself inside her apartment again. I opened a bag to put broken glass and dishes into, and organized the cupboards in the kitchen. I picked up her plants and replaced the soil, and set them in the window in the bedroom so that as the sun rose in the morning, they would be nourished. I hung up her dresses in the closet, and folded the clothes that had been taken out of her dresser drawers. I set my overnight bag at the door, and neatly folded a few pairs of her underwear and bras to take back with me. For the small amount of time I worked, I was satisfied that when she got the courage to return, the experience would be less overwhelming.

"Fancy seeing you here." A voice at the open door surprised me as I stood in the middle of the room debating with myself if there was anything else I should pack. I swore at myself for being caught off guard.

"Genji. Do you come around looking for the next black eye I'm going to give you?"

He scoffed and leaned against the door frame, folding his arms. "Well I was hoping to see Ito here, not you. You're supposed to be at the club. And she's not working tonight."

"So I'm to assume this was your doing."

He took a few steps into the room and put his hands in his pockets, and I instinctively reached to draw my gun. "Relax, I'm not armed right now. I left my weapons with my bike so I wouldn't accidentally do something stupid to her." He paused to look around, and I wasn't sure if he realized I had corrected most of the damage done to the place. "No, Obata, I didn't do this. I was supposed to come in after and be the knight in shining armor to help her get to safety, because you were supposed to be otherwise occupied. All I did was tip off Abe-kai that they might find some interesting evidence here."

"My suit and bag. What if she had been here when they came? Did you think of that?"

Genji shook his head, still somehow so amused with the situation. "I was watching her. I knew she wasn't here and I knew they had time. I just wasn't counting on you." He looked at me sideways, sizing me up, trying to gauge whether I would tell him the truth. "So you are sleeping with her."

"Yes I am." I didn't hesitate. I wasn't giving him new information, I simply stopped denying what he already confirmed.

"Tch." He looked away from me as if he was hurt. I wondered if I read the expression on his face correctly, that he thought he still had a chance. "Aren't I stupid. I almost believed that you were just playing body guard for a minute there." He seemed to be trying to think quickly, his plans unraveling right in front of him. "For all those tattoos you got, you sure have turned soft. The old you would have shot me the second you drew your gun. Hesitation doesn't really suit you, old friend." He walked out.