There were exactly three persons who had her actual phone number in this city, and she knew them all by heart. Usually, she'd only get a call from one and one person only, and for very select reasons: SOL Technology's Zaizen. At least, that was what he was called in her phone, because there was no way she was only calling him "Zaizen" anymore.

To be fair, Ema was used to getting calls from him for diverse missions. These days, these were all about Aoi, his little sister, or about that Playmaker guy she had met once or twice before in Link VRAINS. She had some admiration for the latter: aside from the fact he had saved her life (she was never going to fall from her D-Board ever again), he had managed to escape any tracking anyone had ever tried to get on him.

She was working on hacking some social media database for a bounty – it was for someone trying to get some crap on his teacher, but she didn't really care about anything else but the reward at the end and the potentially embarrassing stuff she could keep in a secret folder to laugh at later – when her mobile phone vibrated.

In a quick and swift hand gesture, her hand picked it up. A rapid glancing at the screen informed her of the identity of the caller: none other than Akira Zaizen himself. What was it again? Maybe she could get some dirt on the network or on Playmaker (it had to be about Playmaker and-slash-or Ignises again, she refused to believe the opposite). Oh well, she could just get the call anyway, it didn't cost her anything to do so.

"Hello?" she spoke into the phone.

Despite all she had lived through in her life, Ema couldn't have expected the voice on the other side of the line.

"M-Miss Bessho…?" a timid-sounding female voice replied.

"Aoi?!"

Ema felt like her hand was just this close to dropping her phone. She forced her fingers to grip it harder. She could feel something was wrong, and she would have usually stayed far from it and watch it in a dead silence, but she pushed through. She could always back down later anyway.

"I… I'm sorry to call you, but…"

Aoi usually didn't have such a troubled voice. In fact, if she wasn't wrong, Ema could swear the girl was crying (or at least was about to), and this was unusual coming from her. Something was really wrong there, and Ema was going to find out why one way or the other. And, frankly, hearing Aoi cry was heart-wrenching.

"No need to apology," she replied as she gathered the most responsible parts of her she could get. "Just tell me what's wrong."

"W-well… It's about Brother…"

Ema would have lied if she had said she hadn't thought it was about Akira, considering Aoi was calling her from his phone, but her interest was even more picked than it was before.

"Go on."

"I… I was coming back from school, and, huh… I found Brother on the floor…"

This was starting to sound even stranger.

"On the floor? You mean, lying on the floor?" she asked, because Aoi's voice was starting to completely shatter. She had to guide the girl to where she wanted her to go.

"Y-yes… I shook him a bit, but he just won't wake up…"

Her fingers grabbed the phone so tightly she could hear it.

"Stay where you are, Aoi, okay? I'm coming!"

"H-huh…?"

"Trust me! Just keep an eye on your brother, I'm coming!"

Ema quickly hung up, gave up on her computer and ran outside her house and jumped onto her motorcycle. Before anyone around her knew it, she was driving at full speed towards the Zaizen residence, barely caring about traffic lights and everything that was a rule of driving. Her bike's roars weren't intense enough to reflect the spike of… what was that feeling anyway?

Her mind was racing at eighty-eight miles per hour, never stopping once to reflect on what that feeling could be (concern? Psh, that was bullshit). She barely parked her motorcycle before jumping out of it and rushing inside the residence. She had no time to waste on robotics guarding the place: it took less time to deactivate them through an always-ready device she always had on her in case she had to sneak into any private or confidential place. Quite the useful tool, would she say so herself.

Ema only stopped running when she actually came across the scene Aoi was struggling to describe to her. Her feet went from always needing to rush forward to completely immobile, as if stuck in ice or lead. She almost dropped the device she was still holding in her hand, only to gasp for air.

"Y-you arrived…" escaped Aoi's mouth drooling in worry.

The brown-haired girl was kneeled on the ground, slowly turning her head towards the third person in the room, reddened puffy eyes staring at the hacker as if she was her tragic saviour. Her hands were clutching the phone in one hand and her brother's in the other.

Aoi's distressed face and voice could be enough to make anyone's hearts quiver, but Ema's eyes were fixated on the person next to the high school student. Lying face down on the floor, dishevelled suit almost spilling on the carpet, was the one guy she had never though she'd see so down and so, well, vulnerable.

She rushed next to Aoi, whom she gave her shoulder to if it made her find comfort. Ema was no doctor, but she was one-hundred-percent certain he wasn't doing too good. In fact, when she leaned close to him, she could hear distressed pants and notice what seemed to be unnatural sweats. The room wasn't hot in any kind: this only meant trouble.

"Okay, so…" she started mumbling to herself. "How am I supposed to take care of an adult man by myself? I'll charge extra to the next mission he hires me for, that's for sure…"

She told Aoi through soft gestures to make stead as she took the latter's brother onto her shoulder. As she expected, he wasn't exactly easily transportable, and he felt more like a deadweight than anything else. In fact, if she had to compare him to anything in this situation, she'd pick "heavy ragdoll".

"Call a doctor," she called out for Aoi as she made her way to the closest bedroom (there was no way she was spending ages searching for his exact bedroom), "please."

"G-got it…"

Ema left the student to her own devices as she went back to the task at hand: taking care of a grown man on her own until assistance arrived in the form of someone actually qualified to tell what the flying hell was going on with Akira. Perhaps she should have asked Aoi about it but, frankly, it seemed as if the girl was permanently stuck into shocked mode, and there was no way she would force her to spill everything at the moment.

Okay, she had Akira in a bedroom (since it looked impersonal and barely used, she'd have guessed it was a guest room), but what next? She sure had never done that before, what was she supposed to do now?

She tried her hardest to remember what she'd do if she was sick. The first thing to come to her mind was getting comfortable inside good old pyjamas. Realizing that meant stripping him with her own two hands embarrassed her at first (like… she didn't want to do that, not in these conditions at least), but it had to be done, right? Nobody wanted to do that anyway, so she may as well do it herself.

It was long, painfully so, to remove everything he was wearing (except his underwear, which was staying where it fucking was), from the suit blazer to the pointless workplace stuff (why did he even have two different watches?) to his shirt. So that was done, but where was the second part? Oh God. That meant… scavenging through his stuff. Frankly, she didn't have to be asked twice about the opportunity.

Her thoughts going from "oh my god, this is terrible" to "I may find something embarrassing to tease Akira about later", she rushed in the corridors, until she found what could be his personal room. As she expected, it was neat and seemingly uninteresting: in fact, she was certain there was no dirty magazine under his mattress or hidden in his closet. Oh well, she wasn't there for that, at first.

That guy had too many closets and chests to her tastes. In fact, he had a surprisingly furnished stack of suits and of button-up shirts, but she was searching for a pyjama and not for business attire he wore all the time anyway. She found it after a few tries at different drawers, but not before coming across some embarrassingly cheesy underwear she couldn't not at least take a picture of (who would have thought he had triangle-patterned boxers?). She ran out of the room and back to where she was supposed to be.

A few, long minutes after, she had done the dirtier deed she could have thought of. Sitting on a nearby chair, she was now stuck trying what to do with him. The doctor was going to be here soon, right? All she had to do was to lay back and…

For some reason, she couldn't brush off the pained grunts she kept hearing next to her. Her job here was done, right? She had helped him out to his bed and Aoi would know what to do once the doctor would be there. She was a big girl, she didn't need an adult's help for this. Truly, Ema had no reason to stay, so why…

Why couldn't she bear the thought of leaving?

The brilliant realisation she didn't know why in the world he was unconscious on the ground made something tick in her head. He didn't seem injured in any shape or form, so it had to be… An adventurous hand made it onto his forehead as she stared intensely at the scene, trying her best not to feel embarrassed beyond her mind. She had never asked to be his nurse, but she'd charge for that too next time.

As soon as her palm touched his skin, she felt a sudden wave of heat under her fingers. Taking off her hand immediately, she could only think this was unnatural and couldn't be normal at all. That sure took her a long time to realize he had a terrible case of fever going on… With this new information acquired, she could do something about it.

As she made her way to the kitchen (this house really was too big for anyone to actually live in it, right?), she stumbled upon the doctor. She barely threw some "hello" at him before indicating him where the impatient patient was, not even bothering to analyse what the guy looked like. It was one of the very rare occasions where she had something too big on her mind not to think about getting some personal information out of someone. Huh, how peculiar.

Still, she brushed off the inconvenient thought and finally found the kitchen. Aoi was nowhere to be seen: perhaps she had gone back to her room, and she would understand the poor girl. She was lost and didn't exactly know how to take care of the situation by herself. She grabbed some ice cubes for an incredibly fancy fridge, put them in a small bag she had found somewhere around the kitchen cabinets and went back to the room.

Right as she was about to knock on it (politeness, she supposed), the old guy in a white lab coat exited the bedroom with a bored expression on his face. His smaller size allowed her to look at him without feeling any dominated and, as such, to predict if he was about to get bitter or not.

"What does he have?" she still asked, if not just to tell Aoi about her brother.

"Nothing big, really," he replied in the most irritating voice she had heard in a while. "Just some overexertion over work, that happens often. A few days of rest and he'll be just fine. I left you the bill and some information on the nightstand."

He left without another word and, frankly, Ema wished she had seen his personal info just so she could make him taste back his bitter medicine. She had always hated such half-assed people.

However, she had no time to waste over such an individual, and made her way to the bed once again. Truly, she had never expected to see him of everyone she knew to be lying in bed with some absurd condition. In hindsight, in the few years they had known each other, she had never seen Akira more than tired, and, even then, it was always less than she was at the moment. Granted, her hacker missions made them get further and further apart with years passing, but she truly never expected to be thrown into that situation.

What was she even waiting for? She had slapped some ice onto his forehead like she had seen on so many animated series and dramas before. It seemed stupid of her to wait for so long for anything to happen, and yet… She just remained there, with for her only company the unusual grunts of a man she had seen panicked only a handful of times in her life.

"You know," she found herself speaking to him even if he couldn't hear her, "you're such a chore, sometimes."

She sighed and took a quick glance at him. He seemed almost peaceful, if she ignored the sweat going down his face and the huge red tint his skin had overlaid over a pale sheet.

"You've hired me on so many missions lately, I thought it was getting a bit personal." She laughed lightly, but the joy wasn't here. Her face grimed down as she looked in front of her.

"But I was wrong. You were just determined to do your job and get your hands over that Playmaker, and over that Ignis, or to save your sister. It was never about me, wasn't it? We stopped working with each other a while back."

Another look at him. He hadn't changed at all since the last glance (obviously).

"You had to know this was coming for you, right? That's what you get when you can't allow yourself to do something else than your job. First it was your sister putting herself in danger to impress you and be noticed by you, and now it's this. Serves you right."

A whisper exited her lips.

"You really are a chore, but I can't push myself to abandon you either. That's annoying, you know?"

Ema looked at him for what she thought would be the last time before she left, until she noticed his eyes were actually half-opened. Cold sweat went down her back.

"You… You were awake the whole time…?" she stuttered, feeling her cheeks heat up dangerously.

He scoffed weakly. It was a "miracle" she had even heard it.

"Perhaps not the entire time you spoke to yourself… But close enough, I suppose…"

His voice was groggy and lacked that firm tone in which he'd usually attempt to boss her around. Huh, how weird. She had no time to focus on that: she had to stand for herself as not to humiliate herself.

"I stand by my words! You're still a chore!"

He pathetically attempted to sit up, but she could tell he had a migraine to hammer him back into the pillow.

"What are you doing here, exactly, Ema…?" he asked her, as if to change the topic.

"I'm only here because your sister was crying in panic over the phone. I came because she was losing it over her brother lying on the floor unconscious."

Her sharp tone lacked confidence, that was for sure. She couldn't let his pathetic sick face make her put her defences down.

"I see… Care explaining to me what happened? I'm afraid I'm confused…"

"I could ask you the same, you know," she said as she shot him a glare. "I didn't really come here knowing what had happened to you."

A thick silence followed through. It was as if they both had nothing to explain to the other what had happened. She shouldn't have been surprised Akira didn't know anything: the opposite would have been astonishing, considering how foggy his eyes were. She had to break the silence before it'd be too awkward to bear.

"Listen," her voice broke through the air. "I'm not your mom, and I don't want to be, but you need to keep yourself in check. I'm sure you're busy with work and all, but you can't always have people fret over you like tonight. You scared your poor sister to death!"

His face strangely mellowed out to an almost saddened expression. It had to be the fever: there was no way Akira would be acting like this in any normal circumstance.

"Maybe… I suppose I haven't given it much thought lately," he whispered in a reply as he rubbed his eyes.

"Well, you should, and soon, because I don't want to receive that kind of calls again."

"Why did you come, then, Ema? This wasn't very necessary, wasn't it…?"

God, he had a point! Why had she even come? It wasn't like she couldn't have just told Aoi to calm down and call a doctor. If Aoi was such a mature and responsible girl, why did she feel like she needed to stay? Why wasn't she leaving anyway?

"Someone had to calm Aoi, down, r-right? You weren't going to do that by yourself!"

"This sounds like a makeshift excuse…"

He really was going for the assault, wasn't he? She'd have to try harder if she wanted him to shut up about his sensible questions.

"Are you expecting something in particular from me? I'll already charge you more for the next time you hire me for that. I had to pay the doctor's bill for you and all, you only owe that to me."

She would have liked to know why her brain lit up with the terrible thought of "I wish he hires me soon". She wasn't in such a dire need of money this month: in fact, Akira paid her exceptionally well when he hired her usually, and her side missions were more than enough these days to buy some cup of noodles and exceptionally hotdogs to this one Nagi Café truck. Yet, no answer to that question came to her mind, so she just shook her head in an attempt to make the uncomfortable thought go away.

"You also didn't have to pay for the bill…" he told her with what she thought was a mocking smirk.

"Just take your headache medicine and we'll talk later."

To her upmost surprise, he actually went with it and didn't ask more embarrassing questions during the moment she told him that and the moment he had downed the glass of water she had provided (…god, she truly was being a nurse, wasn't she?).

Why wasn't she taking the occasion to make fun of him anyway? Or steal from him? He was there, in front of her, at the most vulnerable she had ever seen him be, and yet she was doing nothing to take advantage of the situation. It hadn't even crossed her mind yet. She couldn't let herself be softened by all this, right? She had to stay vigilant and careful, but on the other hand… Did she really want to do something like that?

Another silence followed, until he was the one to tear through it again.

"Anyway… Thank you for this, Ema."

She abruptly turned her head towards him. She didn't really know what he was thanking her, but she'd roll with it.

"I'm glad you recognize my work for its worth! That's the least you could do any…"

Her voice came to a halt. Her sentence fell apart into something too cheesy to have come from her.

"…you're welcome."

Despite how unfocused his eyes were, she could tell he was trying his hardest to look at her firmly. In the skip of a heartbeat, it was as if her previous resolve of making him abide by more charges and fees vanished. Goddammit. She was softening at a dangerously high speed.

"I'm not sure why you did this," he continued as if he ignored how nonsensical her previous words had been, "but I'm grateful…"

"I guess that's just something people do for other people."

Why couldn't she come up with a witty response like she always did?

"Even if it is, I still appreciate the care…"

Care? As if she was caring? Dis… Disgusting.

"I-if you insist…"

Her determination was quivering to the point it was nothing more its own shadow. She hated that feeling of vulnerability the conversation had somehow stuck her in. She had lost the upper hand, and she had to get it back as soon as possible.

"A-anyway…" She switched topics by herself before anything stupid could slip out of her mouth. "Don't do that ever again, okay? You've made everyone worry. I won't charge you now anyway, so just do that as to pay me as soon as possible."

He snickered at her words.

"If it's so Aoi and you won't worry again, I'll do…"

Oh, for fuck's sake. Did he really think she was concerned for him, of everything? What a naïve little soul! She did that just because he was her main source of income, and just for… No.

That was a lie, and she knew it. She had denied it all along, but she had been truly concerned for him the moment she heard what Aoi was desperately and painfully trying to tell her. She knew something was wrong, had an idea of what it was, and that idea made her run to her bike. It wasn't about money, bounties, missions, outcome, income, information or dirt she could sell later on.

It was only about him and the fact he was unconscious on the goddamn floor of his own house.

She tried to counter her inner demons, which made the whole "working for Akira Zaizen" thing too personal to her taste, with a question she had the answer to.

"What makes you think I was worried?"

She could swear he was smiling at her, albeit lightly.

"The fact you're still here… and your expression…"

Had she… forgotten to set up her mask? Oh no. This wasn't good at all.

She crossed her arms and swallowed down her pride. There wasn't a way to convince him of the contrary anymore, wasn't there? At least, it wasn't the worst moment to have her defences down…

"You may be sick and exhausted, but you still noticed that…" She put the pack of ice on his forehead correctly with a hand gesture. "You're impressive."

However, he did seem surprised.

"You're just… admitting to it?" he asked with an obviously surprised expression.

She shrugged.

"There's no use in hiding it anymore. Make fun of me for being honest. It doesn't happen often, so you should take advantage of it."

Akira clearly showed a kind of puzzlement.

"Why would I do that…? This isn't exactly how I should pay you back for today…"

God, he was embarrassing. Endearing, but embarrassing.

"You don't know what you're missing, but I won't force you."

His head was bobbing up and down, eyelids shutting down on their own.

"Whatever," she said with a small smile forming, "this isn't the time to have that kind of conversation. Just rest, you desperately need that, don't you? I may or may not be here by the time you wake up again."

He sighed softly before doing exactly what she had said.

After a quick "goodnight", her expectations were met: he was out in merely seconds. As she laid back into the chair, Ema was certain of one thing: she would still be there by the time he'd wake up. He may had been Aoi's guardian, but that didn't mean he didn't need a guardian of his own to watch over him, especially if he was going to pull off such stupid acts.

Well, it seemed like it was going to be her next, tailor-made mission.