This story is a direct continuation of my previous story, Dog Days.

Might contain spoiler.

Dreaming in Scarlet

Sun rays had just begun filling the empty space between the blinds by the room inside a laboratory building in the outskirts of Tokyo. Skipped by its beam was a bed lying side to side with the wall where the window was attached, but its occupant could still sneak glimpse on the twinkling light the window glass let through.

The morning started shadily, and in serene. The only sound that was by chance audible was a reverberation of heavy breathing, there, from the bed.

The sound, so delicate yet heartrending, was manufactured by a figure of a lady lying on her stomach. Nothing was on her except a red satin fabric swaddling half of her trunk down to half of her thighs. There might be traces of perspiration all over her, but it wouldn't hinder you to see through her gleaming crystal skin. It was an alluring vista. And it really was, probably until you spotted her left hand gripping on the edge of the fabric. Trembling, like the rest of her body.

And when you escalated your gaze up to her dilated eyes, you would find her mydriatic pupils detrimental enough to pierce a wound to your core.

The sound of two solid objects colliding was then the only other noise during that moment, coming from an empty glass being put down on a thick acrylic table, just across the bed. The lady's company—whose silvery hair would have been stroked with the sun ray had the blind been more generously open—had just, albeit early, finished his favorite glass of wine. Eyeing its source bottle by the glass, he wondered if its taste was even a suitable one for his penchant; it was probably sweeter, dryer, and less strong.

But there was something beyond his grasp about the liqueur that had him so attached; something that resulted in his constant craving. Something that would make the pursuit of savoring even just a sip of it a focal priority of his. And this attachment had lasted for years. Maybe, he thought, since Stockholm, where he first met that woman in bed, now his main object of vision.

The gasps, the wincing air on her face, the flaxen hair he took a special fondness of, the whole picture only told him one truth. And he hated to acknowledge it.

Rather than pleasure, it was agony that was inside her.

The Little Favor

"You could have said no,"

The head of research development was deep in her thought before that question snapped her daydreaming.

"Huh?"

"You could have said no, if you don't like it. She said she could make you something else if you want,"

The man sitting in front of her had sacrificed a sum of his pride delivering the package his lover sent through him for her sister. He was a prided marksman after all—not a post officer. Yet he didn't feel the addressed recipient was grateful enough, for either his service or her sister's charity. "Instead you just sit there in silence and play princess."

Shiho had not had a chance to even open the bento box she found on her desk this morning, but from the smell she could tell it was something chocolaty; just as expected from Akemi to gift her little things she knew Shiho would love amidst the amok of her workload.

"Please tell her I loved it. I will meet her as soon as possible." Shiho didn't quite lie—she knew she would love whatever kind of compassion her sister was to shower her with. And she would have met her every day, if she hadn't had to over-labor herself into the project she had been getting so close to fruition with, in a laboratory out of town. "And thanks to you too, troubling yourself to get here to the lab,"

At the same time, Moroboshi Dai wouldn't be at the lab fetching Shiho her little present if he hadn't had to obtain the instruments he needed for the day's operation. He wouldn't spend the lunchtime there if he didn't find the M4 working erratically and was forced to wait for a replacement.

After quickly reminded that the weapon lab was just underground, Shiho had become aware of this fact. She shrouded from the thought that someone was going to die that night, again.

But then she remembered the last time she was with this specific operator of the org, when he was supposed to have someone executed, he made nothing less than a scar that would be healed in less than a month. She remembered her being the only one witnessing his true allegiance float in the air of trepidation.

That was the first time a wave of doubt had a relieving effect on her.

However, the closest thing to a confrontation was her upcoming question to him: "Is someone going to die tonight?"

The agent under the code name Rye wasn't even sure. It was not his mission in some way, but the role he would take in the operation would be a leap of progress to his mission. His real mission, to be exact. But he hadn't got a call from his real colleagues that assured whether the target chose to cooperate with their plan or chose to stand alone in the fight against the villains.

"Not my fight," He shrugged coldly. "I'm just a backup plan."

In fact, the lead executor for the night's operation was strolling attentively around the execution site—a nine level building in Chiyoda serving as a headquarter of Japan's leading newspaper agency—examining each inch of its walls, scrutinizing each object on its each hallway, tattooing each faces he encountered in his head, and calculating the tiniest possible interference to the plan. It was the 187 anniversary of the company, and everyone was preparing for the celebration elsewhere in the night.

It was only appropriate that one man, so ambitious in his pursuit of discovering the dark traces of one specific illicit establishment the executor was a part of, would be the one amongst few who would stay overnight at his company and continue his hopeless work in his hope of a great revelation. He might have in his hand one arguably strong hint on the organization's malevolence, but little did he know that the organization did have in their hand one arguably core aspect as to with which he could accomplish that ambition of his: his life.