Chapter 7 ..:: Moonlight sonata ::..
4:12 a.m.
Akihito was sitting on the bed, pecking at some crackers, with the only company of the waxing moon, which was peeping out from behind the windowpane.
That night, sleep would not come to give a little truce, even for a while, to his bad thoughts. After tossing and turning in his bed for an hour, the photographer had decided that it was better to give up and try to distract himself with other things.
"And so here I am, at 4.00 in the morning, trying to resolve this sudoku… and it's all your fault, Asami!" Akihito sighed, throwing the newspaper and the pen onto the floor.
It was useless to deceive himself; the only thing he wanted to do was to know was what Asami was doing, whereas with whom he was, he already knew very well.
He took the cell from the bedside table, swallowed his pride, and dialled Asami's number.
One ring… and then he suddenly cut off the line.
"No, I just cannot give in to him." The idea of his usual smirk and the jeering tone with which he surely would have responded dissuaded the photographer.
He had just laid the phone on the bedside table, when it rang.
"Akihito? Is everything ok?"
"Asami, you?!" the photographer replied, embarrassed, but also slightly surprised. Judging by his voice, Asami seemed tired, or perhaps worried.
"You were looking for me. Did something happen?"
"Huh? Ehm .. no .. I .. well," Akihito said, stuttering.
"You will explain to me in a few minutes. I'm coming there."
Click.
Akihito put the cell aside. And he blushed, understanding how happy he felt now.
Asami was coming to him, and he was happy.
***
Hikaru was sitting on the bed, his knees bent to support his head, his arms carelessly laid on the mattress.
The stitches on his left forearm slightly bothered him, and now that the effect of the painkillers was passing, in addition to the pain in his arm, even the pain in the face began to awaken .
He laid his right hand on the bruising, and then he slipped a finger on the wounded lip.
"This shouldn't be a beautiful sight," he thought."....Sometimes, events precipitate," he thought, feeling the tears sting his eyes like pins.
They precipitate.
"It would be nice to have time to become accustomed to this. But sometimes, it is not granted...."
He turned his gaze at the sky through the windows. The moon was a white nail in the dark of the night. That strange night without stars.
"It happens suddenly - he thought - we create our stories, so intimate, so deep, so real. And we live them for years, persuaded that this is the reality, happy in our own illusions… and then life decides that it has no desire to play with our foolish self-deceptions."
Life decides that it wants you to play another game: a single moment, a single gesture, and in an instant, whole years become just dry sand that slips between your fingers.
It all happens suddenly. And you have to start all over again
"Five years.... and I'll have to start all over again…"
The boy shivered.
"If I do not come back, he will find me, and will bring me back... and when he'll bring me back, he will not give me what I want, but still force me to give him what he wants."
***
Akihito wanted to ask to Asami who Hikaru was. He wanted to ask him what kind of relationship they shared…
But he could not think coherently now that Asami was with him.
"I have had enough of these questions, Akihito!" the older man said, before taking possession, again, of the photographer's lips with violence. Then slowly the kiss became more and more sweet.
Asami eyes burned with lust and Akihito, as always at the sight of those eyes, was simultaneously warmed and terrified.
The older man left the boy's lips and began to kiss his neck, hundreds of small kisses that were not fulfilling but had the only aim to raise his desire. A torture, as usual.
As soon as Asami moved away his lips from Akihito and stared at him with his amused smirk, the boy, with shortness of breath, tried to give a convincing tone to his voice.
"What makes you think that I will allow you to do this? You first have to give me the answers to my questions!"
"My kawaii Akihito… I know that you allow me to do what I'm doing because I know what you want more than you dare confess to yourself," Asami said with a serious tone and the usual trademark smirk on his lips.
Akihito did not reply. He knew that he was right. At this very moment, he almost could not recall even the existence of Hikaru.
Asami raised slowly the photographer's shirt, discovering the warm skin of the boy's chest, following upwards, with the tip of his tongue, the path of his muscles until he reached his pink nipple.
The touch of feverish lips, the boy arched his body toward him, threw his head backward and made their bodies melt together. The shirt tied his arms above his head.
Akihito was imprisoned on the bed, under the weight of Asami's body, which slowly continued to undress him.
The photographer tried in vain not to cooperate, to demonstrate that he was angry with the older man, but his body was betraying him. He felt Asami's hand to caress his calf, then went up slowly, rubbing inside his thigh and then down again, towards the knee, forcing him to open his legs. Then Asami was separating himself from Akihito, to set himself free from his clothes.
Akihito, who until that moment had tried in vain to resist, now could not wait anymore.
The least separation of their bodies was for him like lack of air. He felt the fire under his navel to branch off and single cell. He could hear the reverberation of his desires spreading as waves throughout his body, starting from the lips of Asami on his cock, from Asami's fingers that skilfully caressed his entrance.
"As...ami, pl..please. Fuck me!"
"Oh, no, my Akihito..." the Yakuza's low and husky voice echoed in the boy head. "I'm not going to fuck you; I'm going to make love to you."
***
Feilong walked with elegant movement through the delightful little Japanese garden in front of the Western-style villa that was his new headquarters in Tokyo.
In fact, the city was at about an hour away, but the Chinese preferred to find an accommodation that was close to the sea, in a not so crowded place. Thus, he came to the back side of the villa and entered the winter garden, this time in real Western style.
He sat on a bench under a gazebo covered by purple-blue passionflower.
Tomorrow he would meet Asami, and he would have to give his answer on the Yakuza's offer to become "business" associates. The decision had taken since long time. He would have consented, and not because he had forgotten the past or because, analyzing it, he had found the answers to all his questions.
It was only because it was important for the Baishe.
And the Baishe now was everything he had.
This was only business.
He had no intention to become Asami's friend. He also did not want to have anything to do with any aspect of Asami's private life, and wanted to meet him the bare minimum. He would introduce to the older man Wang, as his Japanese referent. Once Feilong had personally defined the details with the Yakuza, Wang would arrange all the deals with Asami in the future.
To keep out of Asami's private life also meant, unfortunately, to renounce Akihito's friendship, but there was no need to tell the truth to the photographer.
FeiLong didn't want to see again the sadness his bright eyes. He would meet Akihito during these days in Tokyo, and then would be back in Hong Kong.
The flow of time would do the rest.
He was absorbed in his thoughts and then, all of a sudden, the sound of steps on the cobblestone made him to come back to the reality.
"I'm sorry to have disturbed you..."
Hikaru was standing a few meters from FeiLong. The clothes that his men had procured for him were obviously too large. FeiLong smiled, he was really funny in that outfit.
"I was looking for you, Liu-sama," Hikaru said, approaching the older man.
The boy had the shirt's collar lifted, and with the right hand he was rubbing his injured forearm down.
"This boy seems so delicate, but has a strong temperament – the Chinese thought – heis already on his feet, after losing all that blood!"
Hikaru approached - to be true, with precarious steps, but given his conditions, it was already surprising that he could walk - and sat at FeiLong's left side.
The Triad leader frowned at him: he was not accustomed to the fact that people around him could take the liberty to act without his order.
Only Akihito had always behaved this way… and Asami, of course.
The boy turned to stare at the older man, and in that moment FeiLong understood why Hikaru had chosen to sit on his left and why he had the shirt collar lifted. The bruising on his left cheek was now more evident…a mixture of purple and yellow. It was not a nice sight, but it was a sign that it would be healed soon. Evidently the doctor had used some Chinese traditional medicine in order to speed the healing.
The boy noticed what the Chinese was watching and blushed. He lowered his gaze, bringing the hand to his face.
He is beautiful – FeiLong thought, narrowing his eyes.
A lunar, cold beauty, fragile and untruthful, which shone through the golden, yet metallic, glint of his eyes in which the long dark eyelashes were designing a singular blue shadow. It shone through the cold tones of his beautiful skin and through his raven-black hair.
FeiLong made a spontaneous comparison with Akihito, who, instead, owned a solar beauty, tenacious and sincere, which transpired from his hazelnut eyes, his radiant smile, from his soft, peach-coloured skin and even from the warmth of his tears.
"Why am I alive?" the boy asked.
"What?" The question took FeiLong by surprise.
"Why did you let me live? Why did you take care of my wound? I am what you candidly call an eyewitness; I think my death was more useful for you …" Hikaru explained.
FeiLong smiled, amused. "An impertinent kid, eh?"
"But I still can kill you..." he replied with a smirk.
Hikaru shook his head: "No, I am sure you will not do that! If that were your intention, you'd have left me there… You'd have put in my hand the gun and would have let the authorities to puzzle over the way to find out why a Japanese boy and a Chinese man, presumably an underworld's man, had a duel in a deserted alley, killing each other..."
FeiLong burst into laughter. "You're right, I decided not to kill you, but if I had understood that you were a boy so full of haughtiness, I would have taken a different decision…" he smiled.
Hikaru thought that this was the most beautiful man he had ever seen, but when he smiled, he was really luring.
"Why am I still alive?" he asked again.
"Because you saved my life by warning me about the armed man behind me. And also because the death of that man has solved very problematic situations that bothered me. I owe you. You may ask me whatever you want," FeiLong replied, without bothering to make references to the murder.
This boy was not like Akihito, certain things seemed not to upset him at all.
"Then you owe me… and I can ask you whatever I prefer…" the boy said this sentence looking ahead, with a thoughtful expression, and he seemed to talk to himself.
"Sure, Hikaru-kun."
"Do you know my name? Well, certainly you have taken some information about me…" he said, nodding.
"Obviously. Well, you've decided what you want from me?" Feilong asked.
He was curious about what kind of things a boy like this could ask for.
"Really? I can ask everything I want?" Hikaru bit slightly his lower lip.
"It's what I said," FeiLong replied, narrowing his eyes.
"Anything?"
"Anything."
Hikaru put aside his hair in order to look straight in FeiLong's eyes. Then he approached the Chinese man to whisper in his ear. "What if I asked you to kill someone for me?"
7
