A/N: This whole story, it ain't pretty. But I hope you guys like it :) Please read and review when you can!

Muther

Rest easily in the bed of another man's tired old queen

I cannot wait for love if it comes as fast as he did

Urumi Kanzaki woke up to the sound of her phone ringing. It's high-pitched screeching resonated within the room, causing her to fumble in the dark in search of the offending object. Shaking off her drowsiness, she flipped her phone open.

Yoshito.

Shit. She thought to herself. How long was I asleep?

She rejected the call and got out of bed, the sleepiness leaving her head the moment her feet touched the plush red carpet of the hotel room she's in. It was a stuffy hotel room where everything felt artificial. The lightness in her head and the citrus-laced gin in her breath assaulted her senses as she tried to stand. She started picking her clothes up from the floor.

Her panties by the foot of the bed.

Her dress by the nightstand.

Her jacket close to the door.

As she fumbled in the dark for her shoes, she heard her companion stirring in bed.

I can't even remember his name.

"Hey, Akane. Leaving so soon?" He asked, drowsily.

Akane. So that's the fake name I gave him at the bar.

"Yeah. Boyfriend's calling me."

"YOUR BOYFRIEND?!"

She was out the door before he could finish his sentence.

Rest easily in the bed of another man's tired old queen

I cannot wait for love but if it's coming as fast as he did well shit

That's two minutes well spent that she spent with him

Urumi braved the crisp morning air outside the hotel. She tugged on her jacket to give herself more warmth, but the coldness at the pit of her stomach beat out the coldness of the night air. She thought back at the events of the previous night. How she ended up in bed with a man she had just met.

She decided to have a drink by herself at a bar that was quite far from the apartment she and Yoshito shared. Yoshito had been busy that night, trying to fix a code for one of his clients. He'd been increasingly busy these past couple of weeks, though he'd never wavered in his affection towards her, though. He was still the same, sweet, affectionate guy that she had fallen in love with. He just happened to leave her to her own devices a little too often these days.

But despite all that, she wanted more. Not from him, but from the world around her. She wanted to see something for herself.

At the bar, she met a man who was around her age. He seemed respectable enough. He said he ran a business of some sort, hospitality or some other blandly boring field. Urumi didn't really care, but she feigned interest nonetheless. It was a skill she could never shake off. But he was attractive enough, and he seemed pliable enough to conduct her little experiment with.

A couple of beers and some hard liquor later, they were headed to a nearby hotel. He was pathetically excited to be sleeping with her. So they did what men and women are wont to do… for two minutes. Urumi didn't particularly mind. It wasn't the quality of the deed that she wanted, after all. It was the deed and what it entailed that she wanted to see for herself.

It's not that she didn't love Yoshito. She did. It's just that there was a part of her that wanted to know what she was missing out on. She wanted to explore. She wanted to see if what she felt for Yoshito was real, and not just something that followed because he had always been in love with him.

She wanted to know, most of all, if she would be any different. If falling in love for the first time would change how she would react to the guiles of another man. Does she still have it in her to push aside her feelings and coldly, calculatingly lure a man? After years of being with Kikuchi Yoshito, had she become rusty?

This is the first time she did this. And despite the fact that this had all been an experiment on the nature of her own emotions, she felt like her shoulders would give in to the weight of her actions.

Her knees nearly buckled as she entered the cab that would take her home.

So stay home

In bed alone

Sleep had come easy. As easy as it always does.

Hours later, Urumi awoke to the bright, crisp morning air, this time in the home she shared with Yoshito. A framed photo of them sat on the nightstand. It was a candid photo of them in mid-conversation. They had been talking and the photo was snapped in the instant right before they erupted into laughter. Somehow, it embodied the way their relationship was: just on the brink of extreme joy, but only they were privy to it.

They looked happy. They were happy. In her heart, she hoped they would stay happy. What she had done the night before was… it was empty.

But if it's empty, why is there such a heavy weight on my chest? Is this what they call guilt? It felt like a heaviness that lingered on her petite frame.

And all because of you, all because of you, now I can't stand it

She stretched her arm to reach out for Yoshito, who would usually wake up long after she did. Her arm touched nothing but an empty part of the bed. It was cold. He's been up for hours.

She got up and walked towards his home office. His door was slightly open, but the lights were off, as they usually were. She opened the door a little wider, and there she saw him.

He was facing his laptop, yet again. The glow of the screen gave him an eerie halo. She could her him furiously typing away at some code that she had once tried to understand, but never got interested in. It was the only place where he showed a flurry of emotions… Well, that and in the bedroom.

"Yosh—"

"There's breakfast in the kitchen if you want it. You must be hungover."

"I'm not."

"Well, it will wash away the taste of beer from your palate… Among other things."

She could practically taste the bile in his voice.

She wanted him to face her. She wanted to see if the hurt in his voice was real or imagined. In all the years she had been with him, it was his eyes that gave him away. She would just make him think that his glasses were effective at letting him hide what he felt. Only she could see right through them. She ventured, "Love, I—"

"I'm busy right now, Urumi. If you want to talk, we can talk later. I have to finish this. Go have your breakfast."

She didn't bother to push the subject.

In all that I do, all that I do, I see your scarlet branding

They spoke of the incident later that evening. They spoke calmly, as if they were both resigned to the fact. There had been no accusation, just a clinical laying down of the facts. Yoshito was leaning on the counter, and he refused to meet her gaze. Urumi was seated on a dining chair, idly stroking the rim of her glass.

Yoshito, for all his efforts of trying to remain stoic and unaffected, could hardly conceal the tears threatening to spill from his eyes as her admission came forth.

"Yoshito, I did it because I just wanted to know—"

"Urumi. I don't want to know anymore. All I'm concerned about is whether or not you're leaving me." He faced the sink and grabbed onto the counter. His knuckles growing whiter and whiter as he mustered all of his self-control.

Urumi got up and embraced him from behind, her tears wetting the back of his shirt. "Who said anything about leaving? I'm not leaving you. It was just something I had to do. I just wanted to make sure…" As she spoke, her tears spilled forth. She felt betrayed by her tears, but they kept coming anyway. She had never cried so much in her life, not even during that time when she was betrayed by a teacher in her youth.

"I'm so sorry, Yoshito. Please… I… I…" She had run out of words. Her mind was failing her as intense emotions took over. Her knees gave way and she fell onto her knees on the kitchen floor.

Yoshito, despite his anger couldn't bear to just leave her. He got down on the floor and pulled her into a tight embrace. "I can never really know what's going on in that mind of yours, Urumi. I may never truly understand the things you do. But I believe you when you say that you didn't do this to hurt me. Whatever your reasons were, I forgive you." He looked into her eyes and wiped some of her tears away with his thumbs. "I forgive you."

"Yoshito, I'm so sorry." She moved closer to him in an attempt to kiss him. But he moved his head up to place a light kiss on her forehead. It was all she could take before another torrent of sobs escaped her.

And mother you know I'm sorry but sorry's pregnant with remorse

and when remorse is born remorse won't see an ounce of child support

she won't no she won't no she won't

It took them both an entire week to try and bury the issue, and a couple more weeks before they slowly started to get intimate again. On the outside, no one could have known that they went through an ordeal. They had never been affectionate in public, after all.

Urumi had assured Yoshito that it would never happen again. All it takes was one time to prove her little theory. Yoshito believed her. He slowly started to understand why she did what she did. And it was a small form of consolation for him to realize that the fact that she stayed meant that her feelings for him were real. It was the pain that followed a realization, he supposed.

They were ready to never speak of the issue again, until one fateful morning.

Urumi woke up at 7am on a Tuesday. Yoshito would be awake in a couple of minutes, but she didn't want to relinquish his arm around her bare waist. She pressed her naked form closer to him, just to get a little more warmth.

"Yoshito, love, you'll be late for work." She said as she nuzzled his neck.

"If you keep doing that, I'll do it on purpose."

She giggled and moved to straddle his waist. But suddenly a wave of nausea hit her. She felt like she was about to topple off the bed. A rising influx of acid was rumbling in her stomach, and she made a dash for the bathroom.

She reached the sink just in time to throw up the contents of last night's dinner. She retched twice more, and on her final attempt to be rid of whatever was ailing her, her foot slipped on the rug and she fell onto the floor.

It took her a few minutes before she realized that Yoshito had been standing at the door for a while with a horrified look on his face.

It only takes one time, she had said.

Everything else was a wave of clinical coldness from Yoshito.

His insistence that it might be his.

Her empathic argument that she wouldn't dare risk it if it wasn't. They weren't ready. She doesn't want to go through it now. She can't take it now. It had to go.

"Yoshito, why are you so calm about this? If you want to hit me, hit me! Show me you're angry! But don't try to put up a façade of apathy! I'm sorry this happened, and I'm sorry I can't go through with this! I'm sorry! Do you feel so little for me that you can no longer muster up even an ounce of energy to be adamant about what you want? ANSWER ME!"

For the first time, Yoshito, for his 24 years of existence, had felt too tired to even think.

Yoshito had never seen Urumi become so emotional. I guess it's her hormones. He didn't want to waste another minute arguing. He grabbed her hand, hard. It was all he could manage to prevent any harsh words from making their way out of his mouth.

He ended the conversation on one final note.

"If you choose not to go through with it, I'll stand by your decision. It's your body after all. But remember that moment when the child is severed from you. It's the moment when I, too, could have severed myself from you. But I won't. Because I choose to see this as the consequence of an action we've already left in the past. Do as you wish, Urumi. You're smart enough to know what will happen afterwards."

He didn't come home for a week. Urumi wasn't scared that he had left her. They shared the lease on the house, after all. All his things were left where they belonged, all his gadgets, all his clothes and shoes. He had left everything in that home. But he didn't leave her.

She did the deed within that week. A few contraband pills from the black market, pain medication, and a ton of blankets. She even bothered with a private service for the child at an obscure temple on the far side of town. Buried, burned, whatever, she decided that the monk would know better what to do with it. And so she left the bundle with the monk without looking back.

Afterwards, she sent a text message to Yoshito. She could have called, but she was afraid of what she would hear in his voice. She figured a short message would suffice.

Come home to me.

Wait eagerly cause tonight I'm another man's brand new queen

Why should I wait for love if it comes as fast as he did?

A month passed, and then another, and soon after, an entire year had flown by.

Yoshito and Urumi decided to move to a new house. The memories of the old one had overwhelmed them both to the point that they just wanted to purge their surroundings of the incident. Of course, neither of them had said it out loud, but each of them knew what the other was thinking. Such became the nature of their relationship after the incident.

They moved. They worked. They made love like a pair of teenagers. They stayed together. There were no more incidents. It was as if it never happened. The only evidence that it ever did was the fact that the pair had become more loving towards each other. It was as it was during their stay at the Holy Forest Academy. Their bond was strengthened by an explosive event, and the explosion was never spoken of again.

On the eve of their fifth anniversary, Yoshito found the courage (and the words) to finally ask Urumi to marry him. There was no grand gesture, no fireworks, not applause from the crowd. They had been sitting on the terrace of their new apartment, drinking some beer. The stars were out, and the cool autumn breeze swept Urumi's hair back into a wave of gold.

Yoshito figured, rather nervously, now is as good a time as any other. He took her hand from across the table and said, "After all of this. Are you still happy with me?"

Urumi could feel the tension in his voice, but she didn't betray her knowledge. "Yes, of course, love."

"I see." Yoshito cleared his throat, but it felt like his heart had gone up to block it again. "Do you think… Do you think you can manage to spend another couple of decades with me, Urumi?"

She rested her chin on her hand, her sweetest smile in full swing, "Why of course. Do you think you can endure another couple of decades with me?"

Yoshito took out a small box from his pocket and slid it towards her. "Hai. If you would have me."

He said "wait she's with me," so send that other man walking with his two left feet

Now I hate my love and now the other man's floating in the dead man's sea

And he's floating face down cause he's a dead man, see?

They married in the winter. It was an intimate wedding. Though intimate would have been an understatement, as they had invited none of their friends. Their witnesses consisted of two of their neighbors, who were as much surprised as they were pleased that this odd, quiet couple had decided to marry.

They spent their honeymoon at home, doing what they usually do. Aside from the rings on their fingers and Urumi's change in surname, nothing had changed. Everything was as it should be…

Until the summer of the following year.

Yoshito had invited Urumi to an office function. It wasn't like him to attend one of these things, but there was a new client who was eager to meet their most prized programmer.

Urumi didn't want to go, but due to Yoshito's insistence that there would be no one of substance in the party that he could talk to, she relented. It was a formal gathering in one of the newly opened hotels in Tokyo. The client was a hotel mogul who needed top quality programmers to create a new software for their surveillance cameras.

They reserved a room at the hotel and decided to stay there for the night. It was a small consolation for the agony of having to try and be social towards the people at the party.

As Yoshito waited for Urumi to get dressed, he sat on the bed pondering. After this, it may be time to start talking about starting a family. I can see her desire to have a child of her own whenever we pass by a mother with her child on a stroller. I know she's trying to hide it, but I think having her own child would help erase the memory of the one she had lost.

The bathroom door disrupted Yoshito's reverie. As Urumi casually walked out, he marveled at her beauty. Her blonde hair was pinned up into an elegantly tasteful twist. She wore minimal jewelry and makeup, save for the pair of earrings he had bought her and a bit of lipstick. And her dress… What he'd give to not show up and just tear her little black cocktail dress off her.

"Shall we go?" Urumi asked.

"Hai, hai. Let's go." Yoshito said, as he offered her his arm.

The first thing they both noticed was that the men and women at the party were dressed in the most ostentatious finery. Huge precious stones dangled from ladies' necks and ears. Men wore Italian suits of the finest quality. It was like a grotesque pageant of riches, where each person tried to outdo the other.

The small talk was, predictably, unbearable. The couple decided to stay near the bar where the drinks were free, and no one was there to bother them as they talked. Yoshito, unfortunately, was hounded by his boss as the hotel mogul's son wanted to meet him.

A familiar coldness hit Urumi as the young man introduced himself. His face was unmistakably familiar. In his hand he held a shot of gin with a twist of lemon. A drink that long ago a persistent young man had offered her. It's him.

Yoshito went through the usual pleasantries, but he didn't let on to the fact that he noticed how Urumi looked at the man as if he were a ghost. It dawned on him that they had met before. It didn't take long for him to add two and two together.

The man turned to Urumi and said, "Such beautiful eyes! I met a woman once who had the same eyes. It's a shame that she once left without a trace. A strange woman to go with such strange eyes."

The barb was there. The arrow had hit its target. Urumi smiled pleasantly, though her eyes were as cold as glaciers. She couldn't resist the temptation to retort, "Ah, perhaps her departure lasted longer than her stay." And with that, she excused herself and headed up to the room they reserved for the night.

So stay home

In bed alone

How long is that function going to last? Urumi mused, four hours later. Her watch showed that it was already 3 in the morning, and yet her husband hadn't come up to their room yet. A part of her wondered if he would stray tonight. She shook her head and laid down on her bed, both dreading and anticipating her husband's return.

And all because of you all because of you now I can't stand it

In all that I do all that I do I see your scarlet branding

And mother you know I'm sorry but sorry's pregnant with remorse

and when remorse is born remorse won't see an ounce of child support

Urumi had once again fallen asleep. But she was jolted out of her slumber by Yoshito sitting down on the edge of the bed. He was typing away furiously at his laptop. And she noticed that he wasn't wearing a shirt.

She had never been one to look over his shoulder to see what he's up to. However, during this one instance, she was genuinely curious.

What she saw astounded her. On the lower right corner of the screen was a video footage. There were two men by the penthouse pool. They wore no coats, and their long sleeved shirts were rolled up at the sleeves. They were alone, illuminated only by the glow of the pool lights. The taller man seemed drunk as his movements were erratic. There didn't seem to be an argument.

All of a sudden, the man whose back was turned away from the camera suddenly threw what looked like a punch. The drunk man seemed frozen in his spot. The other man then nudged him backwards towards the pool, where he fell. The water around the fallen man seemed to darken. She surmised that it was blood. The other man turned and walked away, his glasses reflecting the light of the pool towards the surveillance camera.

Yoshito typed in a few lines and the video disappeared. It was replaced moments later with footage of the man walking towards the pool, a pixellated video that seemed corrupted, and then the footage of the man floating head down in the pool.

Urumi's stomach churned, and she dashed into the bathroom. Yoshito's shirt was in the sink, so she threw up in the toilet. Moments later, she smelled the acrid odor of bleach emanating from the sink. He's erasing the traces of blood on his sleeve.

As with the previous time this had happened, Yoshito was once again standing at the door. Only this time, his face was serene… More serene than she had ever seen before.

"You understand what I've done. It's your choice whether you choose to tell the authorities. I won't resist. Just say the word, and I'll go willingly. Just remember that I did this for you. For us."

Urumi's throat was dry and raspy. She genuinely didn't know what to say at that moment.

She groped for words, but all she could manage was, "There's evidence against you…"

"I've just deleted the evidence. No one knows that I have access to their surveillance system. And no one has proof of my motive against him… Except you. He had complained of a headache, so I gave him an aspirin. A heavy duty aspirin that thinned his blood and lowered his blood pressure significantly. By the time his autopsy is performed, it would have left his system. Add that to the exorbitant amount of alcohol he was consuming, and the little cut I had inflicted on his neck would have been the icing on the cake. He had rivals at the party, and they're far more likely to be blamed for this than me."

In that moment, he hated her for what she had driven him to do. He hated her for having such an effect on him. But at the same time, he loved her with a fiery passion. He loved her for making him realize just what he was capable of. She brought out the best and the worst of him, and joined them. She completed him.

"Yoshito, I—" She understood what this meant. His plan was genius, she had to admit. She couldn't have come up with a better way to cover his tracks.

"I scattered a video glitch throughout the entire footage from that camera. They'll believe it's a hardware problem, albeit an unfortunate one. I also added footage of myself entering our room three hours ago. I give you the choice of whether or not to give them my alibi."

"You're putting so much faith in me, after—"

"Yes. I don't know what you'll make of it. I leave this in your hands."

He turned to leave, but she caught him by the waist just as he turned around. He heard no sobs, but he knew from the moisture of his back that she was crying.

Turning to face her, he expected her to be crying tears of panic, of grief, of confusion. He expected that she'd be crying because he had done something unspeakable. He had murdered a man. When Urumi finally faced him, he was astounded.

Urumi's smile was genuine, serene, pure. She was crying for joy. She was crying out of happiness and gratitude for what he had done for her. This woman, this strange and unpredictable woman was, in that moment, shedding tears of pure happiness.

"Thank you, Yoshito." She said between tears, "I'm sorry for having to put you through this. I never would have expected that you were capable of this. But now… Now we can truly be happy. For all that you've done for me, in spite of me, thank you. Thank you, love. Thank you."

Tears welled in his eyes, but they, too were tears of happiness. She understood everything about him. From the best of him to the darkest depths of his soul.

They were both stained, in their own way. And that was what united them.

Don't you cry mama we'll,

We'll be ok

A/N: Yes, I turned 'em into murderers :| What d'you think? Please leave a review :3