I tugged on the lapels of my suit jacket to straighten it, and pressed into the office. It was better to break the seal quickly, I thought, but I ended up quickly dodging a heavy book hurling through the air toward me. I reminded myself to announce my presence if I should find myself in such a situation again, with a woman who trained in martial arts for self defense on the other side of the door. It was not the first time I was taught the lesson, but I was made a fool to underestimate her a second time.

"Kazu!" I took a look into the room to see Ito standing behind the desk with both her hands covering her face in embarrassment. "I'm sorry! I didn't know it was you."

I waved her over and gathered her against me, meeting her halfway around the desk. "I know, I really need to start announcing myself. You're going to get me good one of these times."

"Why do you always have to make such a mess of my club?" Ishikawa spoke up, revealing herself tucked in a corner, sitting in the desk chair.

"I didn't make a mess, I just got a little blood on a table." I spoke to her over Ito's shoulder as I began to rock my weight left to right, unwilling to let her go. "Besides." I continued. "It's my club."

I studied her expression in response, and I was sure she knew I was doing it on purpose. Not only had I cost the club the money from Ito's customer, but I was still under the pretense that Oda-kai and myself owned the Club Diamond franchise, according to Ishikawa. I wanted to test her, to see just how much she would reveal. I wanted to know what it took to make her angry enough at me to start talking.

"You two might as well call it a night." She said. "Obata-san, might I ask if you have the contact information for a cleaner?" She stood up out of the chair and ran her palms down the front of her kimono to smooth it.

I let Ito slip out of my hold, but I held her hand to be sure she wouldn't try to leave the office. I didn't want her in the club unsupervised in the lingering aftermath of the event. "I think you have the contact information for a good one already." I told her. "Ito-san is going to be taking some time off until this blows over. And I'm going to be keeping a closer eye on things around here."

I cracked open the door to survey the situation before opening it entirely. The club was quiet, the remaining guests too scared to cause trouble or speak out of turn. The energy was tense. I recognized that I had acted out of jealousy, that I didn't bother to observe my surroundings, and it would only serve me right if a handful of Abe-kai were waiting outside the door to retaliate. I wasn't convinced that I had simply gotten lucky if I had humiliated their second in command as the pin he wore suggested. It came to mind that Abe-kai as a whole was proving to be an Oda-kai copycat.

We were quiet as we travelled from the club to my apartment. Ito's energy didn't strike me as anger, it seemed like she was just thinking, trying to process everything that had happened. I shut the door gently behind me, and turned to her while she stripped off her dress while she made her way to the bedroom.

"I'm sorry." I said to her, lingering in the middle of room between the bedroom door and the front door. I didn't have anything else to say, and I was entirely sure how she felt.

"Sorry for what?" She asked me. She sounded dismissive, as if she didn't really care at all. I wondered if she didn't care that the event had occurred, or if she didn't care that I was sorry for causing it.

Maybe, I thought, I might have gotten away with it. "Did you see anything after you left the table?"

She had partly continued with her nightly routine, changing into her oversized t-shirt and clean underwear, and partly carried on the conversation to humour me. When I asked what she had witness though, she stopped what she was doing to give me her full attention. "I saw everything." She said. She sat on the bed, still visible in the doorway. "Next time, whatever you're going to do, do it in front of me."

"Akari, you don't need to see me do things like that." I wasn't sure what her angle was. She was brave, I knew that. She was fearless. But the things I did would only damage the way she felt about me. "Just pretend that part of me doesn't exist."

"I can't." She folded her arms across her chest as if she was angry. In that moment, I couldn't read her, and I didn't like that she had the ability to strip me of my power so easily. "It's disrespectful to tell me to leave the room like I'm just some delicate lady who's going to get traumatized if I see something scary. You are who you are, Kazu, I know what I signed up for."

"You are going to get traumatized if you keep witnessing things like that, but dear God, I love you for saying that." I stripped off my jacket and shirt and discarded them in the corner of the room, in case they had gotten blood on them. I would tend to the dry cleaning later. I felt like I needed to match her state of vulnerability, and I removed the belt from my pants, opened the top button, and allowed just the friction against my boxers to keep them up. "Your perspective of me is also going to change if you keep seeing me hurt people."

"I would storm out of here, because I know next you're going to say I'm young and I don't really know what I'm getting into, aren't you?" She pointed at me with an accusatory glare. I caught a half smile on her face, and I knew she was enjoying telling me off.

"Yes, I am."

She scoffed and looked away from me. I could see she was trying not to laugh with amusement. "Well I don't have anywhere to storm out to, it's dangerous, and I love you too, so I don't want to leave."

We were quiet for a while, in our respective rooms, staring at each other through the doorway. It was a familiar kind of dynamic between us. We lived together mainly through our experiences as they involved bedrooms, and we were still heavily in the process of understanding what our life together meant.

"What am I supposed to do about the club?" She asked me, breaking the silence. "I know who that man was. He was from the other syndicate."

"The other syndicate is copying our plans to dominate, but somehow they're one step ahead of us. It means they have a mole on our side, and I think I know who it is." I wondered if I should tell her all the details in the interest of keeping her safe, and keeping her trust reserved for the people who really earned it. "You're not going back to the club until I get that straightened out. I'll get it done very soon, I just need to be strategic so no one gets hurt."

"I need to work though."

"No you don't." She was determined to live normally, even if it meant completely ignoring my profession.

"I'm not going to rely on you for everything. That's not what I wanted you for."

"At least you have to give me a few days to make sure there's no retaliation for what I did. There is a real danger that someone will hurt you. It's just a long weekend, okay?"

"Fine. A couple of days." She just wanted answers, I told myself. She just wanted to know, to have as much say in what happened to her as I had. She didn't want her life to be in someone else's control. She didn't ask for that when she wanted to become my girlfriend. She wanted a man who would care for her and live life beside her, not for her.

"Fine."

I closed the space between us, reaching to cradle the back of her neck, holding her so I could kiss her, lay her down, let my hands wander her, and she received me with such desperation.