Prologue

Yohji put down the receiver and sighed wearily, before picking up his cigarette to take a whiff. Omi had called again. 'Mamoru' he corrected himself silently, before leaning back on his new, old armchair. Surveying his surroundings, he congratulated himself for having built a ragtag office of his own, ready to pick up from where he left off with the private investigating business.

He found himself gazing at an old photograph of him with his old team. It has been a little less than a year when after their last mission, Omi decided it would be good to take a break. But after a few months, Yohji found that he didn't want to go back anymore.

Omi had been trying talk some sense into him, but he couldn't blame Yohji for wanting some sense of normalcy in his life; Yohji being the oldest couldn't help but think that there had to be more to life than the underground world, and that he didn't think he deserved to die abruptly in the wrong hands.

Neither did any of them, but he always had the sneaking suspicion that Aya and Ken might take up the offer, and Omi, well he grew in the business that it was hard to imagine him doing anything but. Nevertheless, Yohji had gambled pretty much half of his savings to throw his ambition away, and so he declined Omi's invitation once more.

He reached to his right to grab a folder, one of the cases passed over to him by a dependable acquaintance in the business. Seeing as he had more than enough on his plate, he let Yohji in on a few of his assignments, also as a way of thanking him for helping him out when he was starting out.

The case given to him seemed to be a piece of cake, as he examined the contents of the folder. A missing person, it seemed, reported by a young relative, whose description fit that of a young japanese teen. Oddly enough, the person missing was older than him by almost seven years, and a foreigner nonetheless. 'It would be more helpful if they had a photo,' Yohji snorted; he'll have to make do with whatever information there was available.

Once before he remembered a conversation he had with Aya about quitting the assassin business once and for all. Yohji thought he wouldn't be able to escape the underground completely, as in the detective business, one will more or less encounter something from yakuzas once or twice. He never thought one of his cases would in fact come straight from the world he once belonged in.