Chapter 2: "A Time For Honey"
Kayano slipped into the darkness of her apartment with ease, twisting her body from the edge of the balcony into her open window without making a sound. Being small had its advantages, less to see, less noise she made. In the sky of a new moon, she was practically invisible.
Her flat was a skeleton of a home, long shadows lingered where there should have been furniture. The rooms were so bare that if she someone did happen to break in, it would be difficult to convince anyone she had actually lived here. It was a room of the negative space created by her life, but the lack also meant there was no place for anyone to hide. She let seconds lapse into silence, listening for any evidence of infiltration. She had a paranoid fear that maybe someone had found her out and would come to take her away, despite all her precautions.
Nothingness ran supreme, not even the layer of dust was disturbed. She let her breath out and walked to her bedroom, it only had a mattress on the floor and an open suitcase for her clothes. Her footsteps were light but they echoed almost horribly in the emptiness. She didn't bother turning on the lamp, her eyes were well adjusted to the dark.
Tonight was a dead end, she knew, with the dead end being a plane of glass she was thrown through by an extremely angry, extremely well-armed Yakuza member.
She maneuvered to her wall; it was the only space that was well used. Newspapers clippings scattered its length, detailing mixes of obituaries and the near forgotten "terrorist attack" on their mountain side. To the side, scribbling in ballpoint pen noted various observations, photographs she had taken of various people of dubious importance. She had tacked string, connecting different points of interest, it made her wall look like a cat's cradle of obsessiveness.
A list of names ran down the end, her names, in neat order of appearance in her life, with Akari Yukimara as the first but Kaede Kayano being the largest.
She dropped her hands from her face as soon as she realized she was biting her nail. Biting her nail was a habit of Sora Matsumoto, a different name for an entirely different lead altogether. Maybe she was suffering some sort of blood loss induced forgetfulness, it wasn't like her to mix up personas.
She was Kayano now, and Kayano put her hair into pigtails, she gorged on sweets, she was watched carefully and supported earnestly, and she had been lovingly trained by the best assassins.
Kayano tossed Takeyabashi's shirt for a more presentable dress, slipped off her sneakers with glass still embedded in the soles for a pair of boots. She took a brush to her hair as she stared in the lone mirror.
She looked like hell. She massaged lightly under her eyes, tracing light bags that bruised around amber before picking up some makeup. When she artfully hid the evidence of weariness she let her expression soften, hoping that the harsh lines would disappear.
When she glanced again, her dark hair falling in waves and her face once again looking how a teenager should, she was ready.
She walked to the kitchen and glanced at the time blinking on the microwave.
It was late, but if she left soon she would still be able to make it on time for her next appointment. It would still raise a few eyebrows if she actually decided to go out of her way to see him, but that was fine. A little suspicion worked into her plans.
She mentally ran the timetable in her head, it helped soothe her nerves.
Twenty minutes by train, five minutes to the station if I take the shortcuts on the roofs.
When things went well, she was like clockwork. It was a satisfying feeling to have her objectives fall into place in neat sequence, but it was a satisfaction that often evaded her. Very few things ever went according to plan. She had learned that the hard way.
It was the last train for the night, and the car was empty except for one extremely drunk gentleman, dressed in rags and smelling like sewer, dozing off in the seats. The Kayano in her hoped that he found a good place to sleep tonight, it was too cold to be down on his luck.
She found peace in the rhythmic swaying of the train, clicking on its rails. While being careful not to lean on her back where the scars still burned, she let the tempo lull her into thought.
Kayano had hoped chasing down the Yakuza would open up some leads. According to the story Kurosensei had told them, Yanagisawa had essentially bought him for human experimentation. And the Japanese Government didn't usually trade individuals to private companies for scientific curiosity. They might have turned a blind eye, but they didn't engage in the buying of selling of people, regardless of them being high profiled criminals.
The only group she thought could actually engage in that sort of trade was the Yakuza, human trafficking was a lucrative business and the Yakuza have had their hands in the pot for a long time. They didn't have a monopoly but they were her best bet. Chasing after random theories on the most powerful crime syndicate in Japan, however, proven not only dangerous, but completely fruitless.
And painful.
The intercom announced her stop, Kayano closed her eyes to ready herself, she sucked in the polluted air and held her breath, and when she opened them again she was Akari Yukimara.
The world changed in her eyes, the light was dimmed, the color grayed, and she could smell the body odor that clung to the seats of the train. The world was sick when she was Akari.
Five minutes to the station, twenty on train, ten more to her destination.
There was comfort in manta, as she walked towards where she needed to go, it allowed her to focus her mind.
Akari was patient, always patient, and learned to accept her mistakes and effortlessly diverting her energy into a new path. Akari was more cynical than Kayano, but she was also more proactive. So if haunting the Yakuza's steps didn't work, she'd need a more direct approach to find out more about how Kurosensei came to be.
A familiar voice rang out.
"Well if it isn't Akari. I didn't think you would make it at the dead of night."
Speak the devil's name and the devil shall come.
Yanagisawa came in, billowing white research coat under nauseating florescent light. His wormy lips twisted into a smile, his squinting eyes upturned, greasy hair plastered to sickly pale skin.
Yanagisawa was a mother fucker. Above all else.
"I just wanted to see you," she said as her stomach clenched and twisted, and when she took a breath even the air tasted even more vile.
"I do love your visits," he sneered. He took her in his arms and she imagined breaking them, twisting the joints in all the wrong ways and hearing them crack. But here in his domain, he was well protected, and everywhere else he was too vigilant.
"I figured you'd be in your lab. You're dedicated that way." When he brushed her bangs from her eyes she pictured taking her fingers to the soft of his throat and ripping it out, letting the air and blood rush out of neck and past her fingers.
His fingers brushed her cheek and she let a bit of her disgust slip her face. He would like that.
"One day, it'll be yours too," he said.
One day I'll kill him. I'll break every bone in his body and rip the eyes from his face. I'll make him utter the name of every person that died because of him, and it will be the last thing he hears before I crush his heart between my hands.
He loomed in and she could see every pore and every detail she despised up close. She closed her eyes when he kissed her. Lukewarm and disgustingly moist. He tasted like corpses.
"You are my fiancé after all."
Karma wasn't sure he if he was annoyed or amused.
On one hand, he didn't like surprises, the idea that something would catch him unaware, that people were moving in ways he did not know about, made him itch. It wasn't an itch he could reach, it was deep down, below skin and tissue, in dark places, and it made him want to scratch his skin off. Hiroshi had figured that out early on, and ran with it.
He can deal with near death experiences and murderous teachers and sharp objects pointed at his throat. But not knowing was a vulnerability that he didn't shoulder with grace.
On the other hand, how was this not hilarious?
"Yo, Asano," Karma greeted as he walked past his desk during lunch, he drummed his fingers on the plastic in nonchalance. "Your harem seems to be growing these days."
Asano Gakushuu peered up at him through his bangs and the gaggle of girls that surrounded his desk. He looked at Karma with a mixture of surprise and interest.
In the simpler days of midleschool, they had something like a rivalry. It had been engaging in ways that pushed Karma to betterment, but those moments had long been buried, blasted away along with the shack of Class E.
Karma returned to highschool, looked at Asano and it was looking through foggy lens into limbo. Asano was part of that life, like the rest of school, where they didn't have handlers, where they weren't trained in secrets, where surprises could await them and they didn't want to rip their skin off to satisfy mental irritation. School had become unreality, and Karma dropped that rivalry because there was nothing there anymore.
They barely acknowledged their presence, and if on the off chance that they did, there would probably no reason for Karma to remark on Asano's popularity, which had been a steady presence that didn't merit observation.
"Jealous Akabane? If you need friends I'm happy to help." It was a weak bait, but an eager one. Asano liked the challenge Karma presented, and was miffed and even maybe confused when Karma had just dropped it those years ago.
Karma just waved him off. "Just a warning, if you pick up too many strays one day you're going to attract a dog that bites." The girls made a collective horrified gasp as he walked away, whistling to himself.
A second later one of Asano's followers declared that she was getting Asano a drink, "to wash out the bitter taste of talking to a guy like that" and a short, fizzy brown haired girl came bounding behind him. When she was at Karma's heels she slowed down, the bounce left her walk and her overeager smile melted from her freckled face.
"How long did you know it was me?" The perkiness of her voice instantly dropped to one of scathing annoyance.
The girl kept a half a step behind Karma to avoid the appearance that they were talking, and Karma suppressed a chuckle at her expense. The hallways were busy enough that no one would pay attention to them normally, but regardless of Karma's detachment to the student body at large, he still held a sort of infamy- people knew if he was laughing at nothing it usually meant trouble.
"How long have you been playing him, Kayano?" he retorted vaguely. He had no intention of telling her that he had only just recently figured what was going on.
Even with his back to her, he could he could hear the frown in her voice. "You didn't know that long."
"That's confident of you," he said turning a left at the vending machines. From here they looked as if they were just waiting in line.
"Of course I'm confident, I'm good."
"So am I."
Karma pretended to consider the drinks. "But it does beg the question, what possible angle could you be working Gakushuu? It's not like he's involved with anything in particular."
Kayano stirred behind him, then, especially cautiously she whispered, "I'm trying to get Ritsu."
Karma stopped, his finger lingered on coffee milk, before he had the sense to pull out his change and continue on like he didn't hear anything. "What does Asano have to do with her?"
Ritsu had been decommissioned long ago. She was infinitely useful, but willfully insubordinate. Where most of Project E had taken to listening to orders and learning from their handlers, Ritsu did her best to keep with Kurosensei's wishes. She outright refused orders to dig up more information on not only targets, but her classmates, supported her friends with information they shouldn't have, and obstructed missions she felt they weren't mentally ready to take. The psyche of an AI wasn't as fragile as children it seemed, and when tools were that powerful without a tight leash, it was better to put it down.
"I'm banking on the chairman being too smart and too ambitious to let a program like Ritsu slip past his fingers. She ran through the computer systems of the middleschool portion of his school for years, he had to have done something."
"You think he copied her? Can you even copy an AI?"
"Copied her, duplicated her code, saved some data, I don't know the jargon." Kayano moved up when Karma took his drink and stepped to the side, pretending to be occupied with opening it. "But he's smart enough to capitalize on her presence, and Chairman Asano's office is weirdly difficult to break into. I mean I could…"
"But not without arousing suspicion," Karma finished, leaning against a wall and out of sight. Kayano's lips tightened to a line.
"Right. I screwed up somewhere else and made some noise. I need to be quieter or someone's going to take notice. Anonymity is all I got going for me right now."
Karma took a sip, contemplating what she was saying before he quickly swallowed to prevent choking on a laugh. "Wait, so the reason you're going to Gakus- you're seducing him!" He shook his head as quiet puffs of amusement came out.
Gakushuu had always been one to pursue his advantages to the fullest, and that included his new found popularity. It wasn't a secret that he went through flings with his admirers, taking one and then another with the ease of changing clothes. He didn't date, he'd just wait for someone, male or female, to fling themselves at him, take them to a secluded area, spend their break, then he'd get someone new.
The secluded area was more often than not the chairman's office, one of the few places that he had access to but was virtually untouchable to anyone else.
Kayano bristled as her cheeks dusted pink, which made the idea of her seducing anyone even funnier. "I don't see what's so funny."
"You think this person is his type?" he said with corkscrew grin, looking her up and down. Indeed, she had looked so generic in this getup he thought the only reason she bothered with her disguise was because no one would give her a second thought.
"I don't need to be," she said, picking the option for green tea. "Asano is only attracted to himself. I need to play to his ego, his need to dominate, and then he'll eventually get to me." After picking up the drink, she pressed the button for another strawberry milk.
"Hn." She had a better eye that he thought. It was true, Karma often wondered if Asano bothered with this act because he actually couldn't keep it in his pants, or if this was some peculiar method of solidifying his influence on the school population. He long figured the truth was somewhere in the middle and then discarded the train of thought from his mind, Gakushuu's libido wasn't exactly the most enthralling of mysteries.
"So, what was your angle?" she asked, drinking her own milk. She shivered a little at the taste, she still naturally had a sweet tooth. Some things never change.
"What makes you think I have an angle?" He crushed the finished can in his hands and tossed it to the trash.
"Please. I don't believe for a second you just happened to notice who I was one day. You were paying attention to his inner circle."
"Hmm. Maybe I'm trying to seduce Gakushuu too." Karma laughed at Kayano's expression. "You're right. I was asked to look out for someone in his group. You know Sato?"
Kayano took another sip as she scrunched her nose in concentration. "The guy who leeches off of Asano? Yeah. He's completely unappealing so he lingers around him to pick up any leftover girls. Bit of a creep but completely harmless. Why do you need him?"
"Someone needs his schedule. I've been trying to get time to get his phone, but being subtle has never been my forte. They're all scared of me for someone reason." When another student came to the vending machines, Kayano swiftly turned around and walked towards the class to avoid suspicion. Karma trailed after her, giving her a respectable distance without being out of earshot. "How about a mutual exchange? I scratch your back, you scratch mine."
"Oh?" she mumbled into her straw.
"Distract Sato after school and I'll help you with your plan."
She risked an incredulous look back. "You're not actually going to try and seduce Asano for me, are you?"
Karma shook his head. "No, but I can provide the means of making him more interested in you."
"How?"
"By giving you the only thing he can't get." They were at the classroom doors, and though it would have been less conspicuous for Karma to keep walking so it didn't look as if they knew each other, he took an extra stride to be at her side. Most of the class hadn't bothered to notice, but Asano's eyes sharpened at their proximity, his eyes flittered between the two in confusion.
Karma leaned in and whispered, "My attention."
Yada had come to the conclusion that she was one of the lucky ones. She also had come to terms with the fact that "lucky" was relative.
Yada was one of the few that were allowed to continue with civilian school, a privilege that came with more freedom than her classmates. Just like luck, "more freedom" was also relative. There was a silent stipulation that if Yada went to school, she were to rub elbows with some of the richer students, but even with the added responsibility, life was a little less stifling with moments away from this facility. Still, they were constantly watching and listening. She was allowed to see Megu, regarding their relationship, but the prospect of "seeing" her girlfriend was stretched thin under watchful eyes.
Which is why she always liked target practice the best. The booming noise of the artillery made it impossible for bugs to pick up any conversation. This was especially helpful in one of the rare moments where she could meet up with others from Project E.
"Got what you needed." Karma held up a small paper to Yada between two fingers, they were the only two at target practice this afternoon. She finished loading her magazine before gingerly placing it on the surface in front of her.
"Appreciate it," she said as she took the paper. "Though you know you don't have to do this in secret, I'm sure Watanabe-san would be fine with you helping me."
"But where's the fun in that?" he said as he began to reconstruct his gun, a well kept SIG Sauer P220. "We're teenagers afterall, keeping a secret or two from our overlords is instinct for us."
"If you say so." She read the paper and looked satisfied. "So his father is staying back Thursday. For work?" She snorted and pocketed her paper. "Good for me I guess," she mumbled as she loaded the clip in the small .22. She liked small guns the best, inconspicuous enough to hide in her boots or purse. They didn't have much stopping power, but she wasn't the greatest of shots anyway, it was accessibility she enjoyed.
"Got to admire work ethic right?" Karma slammed the clip into his gun. "Those long nights cruising for highschool girls."
Her hands paused, holding her noise blocking earmuffs, before lowering them down around her neck. She gave him her best, I am not happy face. He figured it out, of course he figured out, because Karma was too damn smart.
"Don't look so surprised. Why else would you be peeking into phones that belong to sons of politicians?" he replied. Her frown deepened. He shrugged. "It's my business to know who's who at school. That's the whole reason we are allowed to go."
Yada had nothing to say to that, partly because he was right, and the other part was because he would just figure out everything eventually anyway. She put on her earmuffs and readied her aim. Unlike his gun, hers had little kick, and she shot in as rapid succession as it allowed her. She felt her annoyance dissipate with every satisfying hole in her target. A little to the left. She adjusted her aim and fired off one more round.
"You okay being the honeypot?" he asked as he lowered his gun.
"Not like you to be concerned."
"Not benevolent enough to be concerned," he said with ill humor but Yada didn't believe him for a second. Oh well. "I am curious though. I like being in the know."
"To be honest, I'm not sure. I think I am." Yada considered her small .22 before putting it back and reaching for the much larger, much more impressive practice gun. "At the very least, I'm invested."
"Hn," is all he offered as Yada began to reload.
Yada was under no delusions on what her talents were; she was pretty, she faked a good smile, and when she batted her eyelashes, boys looked. She wasn't being cocky, it took a special kind of talent to understand where one's "talent" lays, and how to effectively exploit it. She had even doubled up on seduction classes before she got her assignment.
She wasn't sure, why then, was she so surprised when it was announced she had to lure in the target.
To her credit, when she first started this project, her handler told her it was only an exercise. "You're going to have to learn to pick out the weak. Out of all the ways to recruit a potential source, blackmail is the most dangerous," her handler had said. "Look for anyone who would have a vulnerability. Pick someone with too much ego, and they'll fight back. Pick someone too low in the food chain, and it's not worth the trouble."
It had been the most fun she had since Project E. On the rare occasions Megu managed to squeeze in time with her, they worked on it together, nights searching the web, chasing rumors, and sprawling the streets.
When direct searches found nothing, she turned to investigating families, and found a representative's son's mixi page filled with pretty classmates in just-shy-of-provocative angles, and Yada saw there was one mysterious account liking all the pictures, but had no name to attribute to it. After a little bit of more searching she found that yes, it was a closet account of the father and yes, a more in depth probing did reveal that there were rumors of a wandering eye for younger girls and a suspicious habit of wandering the JK sections of Akihabara.
Yada realized she liked being proactive, it beat just sitting and learning, which consisted of a lot of listening to the seedy sides of things she never wanted to know. And on her downtime her thoughts drifted to memories of the dead. Being active meant she didn't have time for either. She went to her handler with what she found, excited for what was next, the woman nodded in uptight approval.
"Next," Takaishi-san had said, "we seduce them. An affair with a highschooler is just what is needed to make him bend."
That statement fell hard in her stomach, it was like being blind sided by a truck. A truck blaring its horn the entire way there, she could have, should have seen it coming.
By then though, this had been her case, she had gotten attached to it and no one was going to take it away.
"Is Megu okay with anything?" he said in between rounds.
Yada was in between mortified and annoyed at the way her face contorted to the question. Karma looked away, having found the answers in her reaction.
"It's not like it's a secret," she muttered. "But I haven't had time to see her since I got the assignment." And she didn't want to tell her. Yada made her peace what she had to do, and while the thought of being with old, married men made her skin crawl, she wasn't scared or bitter or anything like that. It was just another dirty job, like cleaning sewers or changing diapers. But with power.
She didn't want to tell Megu though, because she wasn't sure how she would react. They weren't like Chiba and Hayami, where destiny just seemed to fuse two souls together until they were barely recognizable apart; their relationship had been hard and trying, while beautiful it took a lot of work, something especially hard to do when everything was on display for anonymous men looking for conspiracies.
"So, are you making him fall in love with you or is it blackmail?" he asked.
"The latter. Sleep with him, get evidence, have him in our pocket."
"Now why," he mused as he lifted his own gun again, "Would they want a politician in their pocket? I mean, besides the obvious."
"You heard about Kanazaki's dad?" Yada's voice dropped, suddenly fearful of what was around her. Kanazaki went to a prestigious school with Yada, and both were tasked with make connections with the children of bigwigs.
"The lawyer?"
"Kanazaki told me he was becoming a politician."
Yada wasn't one of the big thinkers of Project E, she was better with manipulating people one on one for a single purpose. She had no idea what to do with what Kanazaki told her, but Karma would. She could see the wheels turning in his head.
Yada new gun, a .45, was too obnoxious for standard use and too wieldy for normal practice, the sight made Karma raised a brow. He probably thought she would dislocate shoulder just by trying it.
Yada looked ahead and said, "Kanazaki doesn't come to school anymore."
Yada fired her gun; it roared in the air and nearly tore the target practice in two. Her aim remained steady despite the immense recoil.
"Compensating for something?" he said when Hiroshi was in earshot.
Yada laughed like they had been goofing off the entire time. "When you're playing our game you have to find your kicks somewhere."
Hiroshi smiled, apparently satisfied they were just engaging in simple banter. Her handler looked less impressed. That was not new, she only had two running expressions, unimpressed and annoyed. Her lips were forever pressed in a thin line, well plucked eyebrows were constantly furrowed, and her hair was always up in a tight bun, not a single strand out of place.
"It's time," she said.
"Yes, Takaishi-san," Yada said smiling, putting her gun down.
"Don't be such a slavedriver," Hiroshi replied. "You should let your hair down a bit. Right, Yada-chan?"
Yada repressed a shiver. She hated Karma's handler, much of it because he was also Hinano's handler. They had been in the same seduction class for a long while, and at first Hinano seemed okay with her handler.
"Watanabe-san got me a puppy," Hinano told her a long time ago, eyes wide and a big grin on her face. It had set off alarm bells, but being in the presence of a blond furball with one black paw was disarming.
"I think he wants me to develop my animal skills for use. But look at him, he's so cute I can't discipline him for training." She cooed with such fondness, Yada didn't have the heart to question it. "I call him Kuro-chan."
What happened afterwards was so infamous that even as tight-lipped as Project E was, it had gotten out to the others. Yada didn't know the details, but somehow, someway, Hiroshi put Kuro-chan's life in danger. It was a game, and if Hinano was "good enough" Kuro-chan would live, and if she was too slow, it would die.
She was too slow.
Hinano was devastated, and she shouldered all the blame. "I could have…" she said at a bathroom break, "I could have… If I was just a bit better at it. Watanabe-san said it was my fault."
"He's wrong!" Yada grabbed her shoulders.
"No, Watanabe-san doesn't lie. I failed the game and that's why Kuro-chan is gone."
The next week, Hirano had a ferret around her shoulders. Her smile was stretched painfully and slightly manic.
"Watanabe-san gave him to me. His name is Kuro-chan."
"Yada," Karma said a little louder than necessary, and she broke out of that particularly horrifying memory. She had been staring at Hiroshi, who didn't look like he had taken offense. She still ducked her head.
"Come," Takaishi-san said and ushered Yada away. Far, far away, hopefully.
Last she remembered, Hinano's kurochan was a snake, she thought idly as she dressed in high heels and thigh highs. She hiked her skirt shorter, even with the cold temperatures of the night. In the car drive there she put on lipstick and eyeshadow, a little thick but she was going to put herself on display.
When they parked, Takaishi shifted to inspect her, hmm'd in her examination before unbuttoning the top two of her blouse, all without moving a muscle on her face.
"Show enough that suggests, but not enough that it looks like you're desperate," she said.
"You've done this before," Yada said glancing at her hands. Compared to Yada's governmentally paid manicures, hers were finely cut.
"I played the same role as you once."
Yada bit back a remark, it was hard to see Takaishi playing the role of a seducer. Everything about her screamed government trained, she wondered how she fooled anybody. She lacked the naturally sultriness of Bitch-sensei, in all manners of fun and adventure. If it had been with Bitch-sensei, it would have been better.
She got out of the car into the night, the chill nipped at her exposed skin. She'd like to use a scarf, but the neck was one of the unsung heroes of temptation. She checked her phone.
He would be here around then, if she were lucky. She stuck out a leg in front of the other, showing it to the world despite the goose pimples from the cold. A puff of her breath smoked in front of her. I should be doing her homework, she thought glumly. But at least she had homework.
One of the lucky ones, she reminded herself as a familiar man came waltzing to her, eyes with intent, and a suit more expensive than her entire house. Yada smiled in a way that Yada never would have, a playful quirk of her lips, her eyes half lidded, smoky purple eyeshadow glittering in the neon store lights.
"Hello, I haven't seen you around here," her target said. "Join me for a walk."
"Of course," she said, sliding her arm around his.
She thought of school, she thought of Kuro-chan, she thought of the absent chair of Kurasaki'a desk, she thought of Megu in her bed- wrapped in her blankets and her hair falling to her midback. She thought of Nagisa, dead and gone, not enough of him to be buried. She thought of Kuro-sensei, encouraging her for her dreams.
Kuro-sensei, Kurosensei.
She thought of luck, and she leaned into her target, whispering promises.
A/N: So I'm changing the rating for M as a precautionary measure, so there is expected violence and at least the mentioning of sexual themes in later chapters.
I'm sorry it took two weeks, when I wrote this, the last POV was actually Karma's, not Yada's, but I figured it would be fun to write a guest POV, which will happen occasionally. So I had to rewrite the entire thing, and then for some reason I lost that part of the chapter but kept my Karma draft, so I had to rewrite the entire thing and for the love of all that was good, couldn't remember how I finished it off. Then I got my hands on Overwatch for a short while and I was distracted.
Terminology to note:
mixi is the Japanese equivalent of facebook but I have no idea how it works, so I'm just going to assume it is like facebook.
The guns I mentioned, they are specifically sigwhatitsname, they are actually standard issue in Japan for I think police, I forget.
Akihabara is a district in Tokyo famous for being the anime/nerd hub. The section I mention, JK sections is shortened from- joshi kosei, which is a section that sort of...sells highschool girls to older men, cafes where they can talk to them, have "walks" with them, etc. It's been accused of having a heavy undercurrent of teenage prostitution.
I realized late that I actually use handler incorrectly, handler's apparently are suppose to be men that work with agents- which are people embedded in a foreign organization for the home organization. Or something like that. But too late.
Thank you to all that reviewed/followed/favorited! It's much appreciated.
TheRoseShadow21: Thank you for your reviews, being able to read it indepth really does help me! So yeah, I think one of the most fun things to write in the story is the disconnect, especially in this chapter, everyone goes around pretending that is completely normal for a teen kid to seduce people, but as readers it's meant to horrify.
Karma is fun to write because when it comes to Okuda especially, he has shades of "unreliable narrator," he thinks he's completely unattached to it all because he has to believe it. It doesn't mean it's true.
I would have to say, the most inconsistent thing about this universe is how I keep all the characters separate. There are ways around it, like Megu and Yada, but it can be difficult. Chiba and Hayami would have much more time together though, because a They have similar sniper training and b Like you they are completely and totally my otp and if I did not write them together I would probably cry.
Crazy rabbit2: Oh that was one of my favorite scenes, I'm glad you like it! Watching Karma sweat under pressure is a thing that needs to happen more.
Dis-Appearing Writer: Thank you for reviewing. I'm hoping the plot will develop nicely, so I hope it stays entertaining.
