Miles Davis' "Autumn Leaves" soothed on the café's jukebox. Romeo sat in the back table of the room, in the company of a wine bottle and a half-empty glass. His eyes glanced up at a vintage clock, hanging on the wall across from him. It was getting late.

Lorelei's car shut out its lights and came to a halt right in front of an obscure building. The sign read "The Salon". Jazz had become the latest gig in Tokyo a while ago, much to Lorelei's discomfort since she was an outspoken despiser of it all her life.

"Kept you waitin', huh?" The woman in the red overcoat asked Romeo as she sat down at his table. Her deft hands readily picked up the menu and flipped through its content, before putting it back down with a subtle sigh of dissapointment.

"Whatsamatter? You that mad?"

"Mad? Oh, far from anything near that." Romeo smiled, before suddenly reaching out and gripping Lorelei's wrist and pulling her towards him. He then leaned forward.

"You know there's a quite reasonable reason why I don't show my face in public places all that often, my dear." His voice rang in an educative fashion. "The reason is that almost every single soul in this fuck-forsaken city has a very plain and most intelligible desire to chop me up and throw me to the vultures!"

He pushed Lorelei back in her seat as she touched her pain-stricken wrist.

"You should listen to people from time to time, Romeo. Maybe then that desire will cool off someday." She grabbed his pack of smokes and tensely lit up a cigarette.

"You mean you've got an explanation for your being late?"

"Fuckin' straight, I got an explanation for my being late"

"Well, my ass is already on fire!"

"What?" Lorelei asked, chuckling. "What the fuck does that mean?"

"I see you don't keep up with the slang-thing that much."

"No, I don't. And there's a pretty good reason too. But I guess that one made a slick 180 around you."

"Get to the point already." Romeo said. His conversations with red-coated Lorelei always tended to lose themselves in purposelessness.

"Fine, fine, here is: I met up with them this afternoon. Yubari agreed to the meeting. They took me to a hotel where we discussed the details…by then it was as dark as fucking pitch outside." Lorelei took a long drag on her cigareta.

"What then?"

Lorelei gave Romeo a suspicious look.

"Who's that blonde chick?"

Romeo lifted his brow. "What blonde chick?"

"A girl named Vivienne. There was Gogo, her stud, a few of Kiruga's men and her. Who is she?"

This was certainly not one of Romeo's better memories, but Lorelei did deserve to know.

"Apparently," Romeo said, taking a sip of his wine, "they picked her up at a joint called La Granda. Vivienne was the one that made my boys shit their britches when she pointed her two water-pistols at them. She's been withGogo's posse ever since. Her name leads to believe she's French."

"What do you know about her relationship with Yubari?"

Romeo shrugged his shoulders. "Not much. Good friends, I suppose."

"I think you underestimate the 'good friends' bit."

"You mean…"

Lorelei nodded, smiling. "I mean I saw they way they looked at each other. They must've done it all day before I arrived. That boyfriend of hersbetter be on some sort of dusk-till-dawn acid trip if he still doesn't know about it." She put out her cigarette. "Unless of course, he likes to watch."

Romeo shook his head with a wide-open grin on his face as he filled his glass once more.

"So the meeting's set for tomorrow, right?"

"That's the latest update."

"I want you to come along with me tomorrow."

"And why's that?"

"I'll feel better that way."

Lorelei smiled. "Wow. A rare sensation - getting compliments from your side."

Romeo felt like saying something, but instead kept silent.

"It almost makes up for the wrist, I'll tell you that." Lorelei said, leaning forward.

"I'm glad."

The jukebox rustled Ella Fitzgerald's "Fever".

"I love that song." Lorelei sighed, leaning back in her chair. "I hate jazz, but that bass…"

"You know, I used to play once." Romeo finally dared to speak up.

"Fuck you."

"Fuck you back, I played bass. Back when I was in the school orchestra."

That did it. Lorelei broke out in tears of uncontrollable laughter.

Slowly but surely, Romeo cracked up as well.

This night they needed it.

Satsuro's blade hit the cold pavement of the former schoolyard. The place had become training ground for Gogo's combatants. Right now, there was only one standing upon it.

He felt so weak. For too long now, he was no longer avenging his murdered parents but clashing swords with Kiruga's grim thugs and watching his girlfriend become less and less interested in him. And Retsuja knew he had himself to blame.

Maybe it was all happening too fast…so many new things going on at once and now this meeting. He still couldn't believe what he was doing. He agreed to a friendly meeting with the man who cold-bloodedly killed the life he had. It made him sick. He made himself sick.

Satsuro needed something. A fight. A drink. A girl. Something to give his mind some peace. Something that would restore his dignity. Just for this one night.

The latehour bus came in like clockwork as young Retsuja boarded it. He looked out the window at his Katana, shimmering in the twilight of the desolate yard. The bus took off.

Gogo looked at herself in the mirror. Vivienne's naked body reflected in it, glowing with that devilish beauty of hers. The sleeping French was bathed in sweat, not unlike young Yubari, standing in the bathroom.

It's just a phase.

Right now you feel fucked-up. You feel your chest could burst at any second. You have too much fucking responsibility. You're mad at the others because they do every single fucking thing you say. You wake up, drenched in sweat because you have nightmares of them being killed and how helpless you would be then.

You wish that blonde that almost killed you could be here to end it all this second.

You wish the blonde in your bed wouldn't look so much like her.

You wish that's not the reason why you fuck her.

Gogo closed the shower curtains.