Quiet solitude would end. The spirited songs emptied into the sky from nature's early risers told Himiko of her failure to avoid yet another sleepless night. The world was nigh, and all its distractions. Its shining sun would cast that vertical yellow crack of the truck's rear door. Day would arrive as a bright sliver in the floor, then slowly creep toward her, slinking like a golden cat over the relaxed form of her companion. Perhaps to goad her into quiet fits of suppressed want, Kagami Kyoji did not intrude on Himiko's personal space at night despite his advances during the day. Nude in a blanket, his flesh carving a smooth triangle in the half-light from shoulder to hip, he slept a modest distance from her. The folds of cloth got all confused and excited around his long legs. Every morning appointed Himiko the privilege of having to smack the blonde awake, sometimes several times, for the man seemed to have grown up ignorant of the alarm clock. Conspiring with her insomnia, that privilege transformed into a chore lately. Moment by moment, she had to watch night yield to day across the lean muscles of his back, and rinse the darkness from his preened pale hair, which only seemed to grow sexier the more it became sleep-tossed.

Sexier. A few nights ago, Himiko had given in to acknowledging that. It was around the time that the Sandman decided to leave her out of his rounds.

Any moment, Himiko expected Akabane return from his nightly prowls, carrying breakfast along with news of their next contract. She expected their day to begin as usual, rolling along in constant threat of Kagami's seduction techniques, finally snowballing to a night of quaking nerves, while her tormentor slept to carefree dreams. There she lay, terrified of the progress he's made on her. It just wasn't fair. Watching his moonlit flank rise and fall, she wondered... how long. How long until she became just another one of his successful conquests? Should she take to heart all that he's said to her, or will he disappear as soon as he's had his thrills, leaving her incomplete and wanting, like many of those he's frequently mocked? Do his violet eyes study her reactions in careful calibration for his next ruthless move? Does he kiss her lips and taste submission? Are his soothing words a mere diversion while his hips glide near her parted thighs? Each day brings another crack in her walls, chiseled by words that make too much sense, and his face that acts as anchor to her wandering gaze. He had even the audacity of coaxing dirty thoughts into her head.

Himiko experienced the ill misfortune of laying eyes on a cucumber in a busy marketplace, haunted by thoughts of him. Right then, the universe of men and women blurred into the oblivion, and she was left only with herself and that obscene thought, alone beneath the infinite sky and that sea of sounds, where no clamour could distract her from herself. She vowed revenge.

She left that marketplace with the cucumber in her hand.

Under her blanket, Himiko grasped the vegetable she entrusted to the racing beat of her heart, tucked tightly against the rhythm of life, the sound of blood pounding harder and harder with each new chapter of her mental torment. Surely, it would be well prepared for its fate. On shaking limbs, Himiko rose on the floor of the truck's hollow body. Gravity snaked the blanket off her shoulders. Despite the presence of Kagami, she remained true to her habit of sleeping nude for the integrity of her carefully fitted clothes. This necessity only contributed to her mental disturbance. She threw one last wide-eyed glance in the direction of the truck doors, gaze strangely unfocused. Those faithful doors stood silent and true, boxing morning out and her intentions within, secretive, coiling, ready to strike. Cucumber between her teeth, Himiko approached the sleeping Kagami on hands and knees. Cold fingertips took the edge of Kagami's blanket. Through the lashes of her narrowed eyes, Himiko watched as that masculine body stirred in the draft. An earring rattled a song of dissonance against the floor, but it did not wake him. Himiko held the cucumber in her hand as if it were a dagger. The teeth gritted within her tightening lips, her pulse drumming a tribal dance as a war cry gathered in her throat.

"W-wake up... you scum of the earth," she hissed, the tips of her teeth banging together. Kagami blindly retrieved his blanket. It was the same thing she said every morning. Himiko jerked the blanket away. She swung an open palm against his bare ass to wake him up, earning a startled jerk from her unsuspecting victim.

She rammed the cucumber up his opening.

Morning arrived with a scream. Routine, expectations, professionalism... they all fell away in pieces, and hammered into place declared a moment-- a moment that Himiko seized for herself, no longer satisfied with mere cowering in the dark, waiting for that moment to loom upon her like a bad dream, passive and powerless to stop it. She saw that moment reflected in the backs of Kagami's eyes, stretched wide in shock and fear. That moment swelled through his lungs and emptied into the void bowels of the truck. She controlled the storm whose eye lay between her fingers. Cool, like... a cucumber.

That moment ended when Kagami's scream melted into an unbelievably silky moan, when he writhed sensuously out of his rigid composure, and when his eyes caught the hungry look of reality staring at him from above.


The plastic bag swung in Akabane's fastidiously gloved hand, protecting morsels of sushi from the elements. Warm rays poured on his face, and if they had any say among the chemicals in his head, they proclaimed the day to be a cheery one. A dainty smile emerged beneath his generous hat. No amount of sunshine could match the anticipation of amusement, particularly if it involved the misery of others. The grass crushed moist beneath his boots, which alternated steps with asphalt. Butterflies sowed hurricanes between their wings for future harvest. Rounding the bend in the road, Akabane lightened his steps and cocked his head. Morning regularly granted him the pleasure of hearing that satisfying smack, delivered without fail from his seasoned co-worker to the new recruit.

As he walked, the terrain gradually slid the truck to his assessment. The back end of it appeared to be shaking. Akabane's smile fell. As he neared, he noticed Mr. No-Brake in the driver's seat, hunched over. The trucker apparently decided early on that he would rather ignore the rest of the universe that day, his face buried within one of Kagami's fashion magazines. Apparently, models looked sexier upside-down. Akabane's sushi fell.

White digits seized handles of the back door. Sunlight drenched into the mystery boxed within. The sight hit Akabane like a bucket of cold water. Sweat beaded off the pores of Himiko's dusky skin, reflecting like gems in the bright invasive morning he so rudely escorted into her private space. Her eyes wore the look of trance, but one of nothing more but pure pleasure, sealing every so often with raw-throated gasps. She rode Kagami facing away from him, their legs spread and straining against the moist metal of the compartment. Akabane questioned reality when he looked to her hands. He tightened his hand upon the handle of the door, faced with deceptively simple options that were not quite so simple in their execution or consequence. Would he preserve Lady Poison's dignity by quietly shutting the door, trusting her to ignore the blatant slap of sunlight across the back of her retinas? Should he, as a gentleman, discreetly place their breakfasts on the floor before departing, without disturbing their intimate air with his lips? Or are words of apology to be graced upon unreceptive ears, spellbound by the sounds of their own estcasy? Would Himiko resent him, having seen?

Throwing her head back with the strained suppression of a cry, she squinted her eyes open, looked to the light, and locked eyes with him. Akabane watched her body freeze into place, her gaze piercing an unreadable in the glare. Then gradually, ever so gradually, her moist body began to move again, hips pumping against Kagami's slender loins, her hands slowly working that prop in and out of his opening. She swayed like a cat on a branch caught in a hurricane, with no notion of death. Liberated moans shot into the air, as if relieved they escaped the need for secrecy. It was as if business merely... went on for the two of them.

Arriving at a decision, Akabane closed the door, trench coat swishing against the cool flat floor. Like a predator stalking the perimeter of a campfire, he observed that beautiful union at all angles before relocating himself beside the writhing blonde. He swept a glove-tipped finger through a streak of sweat and tasted it. Gently tossing his hat to the corner, Akabane smiled into those fox-like eyes, narrowed to slits of hunger and craft. He peeled off a glove, laying a warm hand against Kagami's cheek where it was clasped and held, before sensually guided down the soft cords and hollows of that throbbing throat. A particularly sharp thrust from Himiko made Kagami arch, releasing a brittle whimper that teased the small hairs along Akabane's spine. The last glove hit the floor, nipped away by a salivating smile. Akabane consumed Kagami's mouth with unbridled aggression, slender hands raking through silky fronds of hair, strong arms taking the blonde's body in a delicate headlock of dominance, tips of nails tracing chest and throat in sensual play of want... the want of what Lady Poison had so unexpectedly taken from him at the other end of Kagami's svelte body.

Oh, those early birds...