Ah, closing time!

Kitsune reached beneath the counter, poured out a small measure of sake from an old ceramic container and shot it down. Just for luck. I gotta date.

Steve Seyama had left some time ago, to sight – see around the town. They were to meet later on and go to dinner. She was going to lead him to the most expensive restaurant in town, have him buy dinner and then drink him under the table. After that, who knew?

Walking to the Café entrance, she unlocked the door from the inside and stepped out into the golden close of the afternoon. She paused and took a deep breath of the scents of another Hinata spring. Her cheeks glowed. She paused, tapped out a cigarette, placed it in her mouth and lit it, taking a deep drag as she re- pocketed the lighter. She turned and locked the door.

She felt someone behind her, and her lips curled around the cigarette. She still had it, he was too eager to wait and meet her where they had arranged. She cocked a hip to call attention to her shapely ass, and then began to turn towards him, grin blooming into a coy smile. Her amused eyes widened and the cigarette fell as she gasped.

There was a big man there, but he wasn't Steve. A second guy appeared and she felt a sudden pain in her arm as a hand wrapped around it.

The screaming began.

It was dusk and the whistle of a departing train haunted the mild spring air. The mixed fragrance from lilys, lilacs and hydrangeas, planted beneath a trellis filled with hanging wisteria, carried down the hill to the Café Hinata, to combine in an odd mélange with the final scents from the Café's closed kitchen. The setting sun sent elongated shadows up and down the town, stretching up the small hill to the Café's walls and limning in orange light the airborne man flying backwards down the Café steps, his feet above his head, his teeth bouncing down the steps behind him. His wheezing scream was far softer than the noise from the train.

Shadow- images on the Café wall showed two giants engaged in a titanic battle, their black legs trailing down the vertical plane and elongating across the grass to attach to two very large men in a kinetic embrace. The men, sweaty, bleeding and gasping mightily, broke apart with great effort and circled each other.

Steve Seyama, bleeding from his nose and a cut over his right eye, his oxford shirt nearly ripped from his thick torso, knuckled sweat and blood from his eyes as he watched his opponent. He interrupted his litany of swears just long enough to bark over his shoulder: "And, you're sure you don't know why they're here?"

Kitsune, hunched over on a rock and rubbing her arm, shrieked "Don't you think I would fricking tell you!" You are such an asshole, came the voice in her head.

The shaved- headed, potbellied ogre of a man shuffling around Steve raised his eyebrows over two blackening eyes. "She lies!" He spit out thickly, his split lip pouring blood over his chin and down his neck. "She owes 760,000 yen to my boss! She gambles!"

Steve straightened from his crouch and turned, unmindful and incredulous. "Seven thousand bucks!" He said in English, his eyes growing even hotter.

Kitsune grimaced as the truth came out. She tilted her head and shrugged. "Okay, maybe I owe some…" I really should have told him. I am such a bitch.

Steve roared, the pure violence in the sound startling Kitsune and sending her scrambling even further up the rock. Before he had finished swiveling his head around he was moving at speed towards the other man.

"Rockfall strike!" the man cried, bringing his clasped hands together in a sweeping downward blow. Steve was struck on the neck and shoulders and driven to the ground, his breath exploding from his lungs with the impact. An ominous cracking sound came from his chest. "Oohh, shit." He moaned.

The other man stumbled backwards, shaking his head. He began to smile and then winced as the motion did further damage to his lip. "Bastard!" he yelled and planted a foot into Steve's ribs. "Ahhh!" he screamed as he belatedly realized he was wearing sandals.

"And you..!" He started to say, turning towards Kitsune. His eyes widened just as her fist connected with his nose. "Urk!"

"We were going on a date, you stupid jerk!" She grated from between clenched teeth. Her fist pistoned three more jabs to the same spot, syncopated to her words: "A - Goddamned - Date!" She winced and shook her hand in the air. "How does Naru do that without breaking her hand?"

The man staggered back a step and drew his hand across his face. "Inexcusable." He spat. "We waited weeks, through your promises of payment and when we finally come to collect…" He took a step forward and grimaced a smile as she retreated, "… you defy us, your guard cripples my partner…"

"He twisted my arm! That asshole had it coming!"

"Shut up!"

He took another step forward and Kitsune found her back against the same rock. Her eyes widened. "Oh, boy!" she said and smiled sweetly. Following her gaze, the debt collector shifted his eyes left.

Steve planted his massive shoulder into the man's unprotected side, lifting him up and driving him into the ground, a spume of blood and spittle following the arc of the man's head through the fragrant spring air and into the soft loam.

"Why," Steve gasped conversationally as his red – knuckled fists began to rise and fall, "does everyone around here have to…" He paused a moment as the man beneath him whimpered. He shrugged and went back to work. "…Have to scream a name for every goddamned punch or kick or crap?" He stopped, staggered to his feet and leaned over the body below him. "Can you tell me that, baldy?" He yelled the question to the unconscious man at his feet.

"Ergh!" he groaned, raising his face to the sky. He reached a trembling hand to the torn breast pocket of his ruined shirt, revealing the cracked and shattered lenses and bent frame of his sunglasses, and threw them onto the ground. "Shit! I knew it, I knew it!" He turned to Kitsune and pointed to the ground. "My Mom gave those to me!" He turned away and began ripping off his ruined shirt.

She walked over to him, his back to her, her arm raised tentatively to touch him. "Are you okay?" She asked. He didn't respond. A fake smile plastered itself onto her features, force of habit, and she embraced him from behind. "My hero…!" She felt extremely cheap as her breasts pressed against his back, but she was at a loss at how to react in the situation and her awkward response was to revert to what she knew.

He shrugged her off, snarling an answer to her original question. "Does it look like I'm okay?"

He started looking around the trampled grass and finally found his backpack. He retrieved a scrap of his shirt from the ground and began to blot at his cuts. She trailed behind him, hands clasped in front of her.

Kitsune eyed the unconscious man on the ground and remembered his toothless partner flying down the steps to the train station at the bottom of the hill. "Ah, " she said, "Steve, as much as you think they kicked your ass, I'll bet they feel a lot worse." She circled to the top of the steps and saw indications of where the other man had fallen, but no sign of him. "The other guy is gone." She said over her shoulder. She bent down to examine something, then straightened. "He left his teeth."

"Yeah, yeah. Ow. Damnit!" His face tightened as he attempted to staunch the flow from above his eye.

She moved closer, looking up at his face. "Here, let me help…" She brought her hands up, but he stepped away.

His return gaze was full of contempt. "You lied to me." He rubbed his hands together and grimaced at the blood on his knuckles, dried rivulets running between his fingers. His knuckles cracked. "No, you used me! Did you know these guys were coming?" At her outraged look, he shook his head. "No, I asked you out, I can't say you manipulated me." He pressed the shirt against the cut and winced. "What the hell are you doing gambling?"

She walked up to him and placed a finger on his chest. "That's none of your business…" she said, and then turned away.

"Hey," he said to her back, "I think it's my goddamned business now." He waved the scrap of cloth, covered with blood, at her. "That's my blood!"

The man on the ground made a sound. "What can we do to make sure that they don't come after you again, when I'm not around?" Steve asked, ripping off the remainder of his tattered oxford. He was left wearing a grey t-shirt, streaked with blood, grime and sweat.

"You'll just have to stick around." She replied in a toneless voice.

Despite his feelings and injuries, he snorted a laugh. "Right, okay." Steve walked towards the debt collector. "Kitsune, unlock the Café. We're going back in. With this guy."

"What?" She looked at Steve dubiously. "I like this mofo right where he is. In fact, you should hit him a couple of more times." The man on the ground, obviously conscious now, shook noticeably.

Steve turned back to her, face in shadow. "Kitsune," he enunciated softly, "if you want to end this problem now, then please do as I ask." In a louder tone, he said "This man fought well, and was doing his job for his boss. Let's be honorable." He forced a chuckle. "I don't think either of us want a rematch right now."

The dept collector said to call him Kogata, which earned a laugh from both Kitsune and Steve. Having been defeated, he was quite agreeable. Especially after Kitsune brought out the sake.

"Seyama – san," he said as he used a moist cloth to clean blood from his face, "it would be best if you did not become involved with this woman." His eyes peered from within their puffy sockets, looking perpetually nearsighted. "She's bad news for you."

"Hey!" Kitsune spun around from where she was standing at the counter. "I'm right here!"

Steve leaned back, arms crossed. "Tell me more, Kogata – san." He asked in a serious voice.

"She has been gambling very much lately, and not paying her debts. She in fact did go on several dates with my boss, and seemed like a nice, fun person, which is why he was reticent to attempt to collect for so long, but business is business…"

Steve nodded, "Business is business, indeed." He turned his head to Kitsume. "So, you went out with his boss, huh?"

Her cheeks flushed. "He was a fun guy… I thought!" She made squeezing motions with her hands. "But he would grope all the time! It was embarrassing. And," she said to Kogata, "you've got to back me up on this: he has a belching problem."

Steve tilted his head quizzically and gave a surprised laugh. "A… belching problem."

Kogata was nodding his head. "Okay, this is true. But he's got a stressful job and his stomach is often upset."

"I told him to lay off the rich food, but would he listen to me? No!" Kitsune, shook her head. "Saiga – sama would just keep burping up whatever he had eaten, continuously…" She grimaced, her nose wrinkling. "It destroyed his breath. Ruined any chance at kissing."

"So anyway," Steve interrupted, leaning forward and placing his hands on the table, "let's end this thing."

Kogata looked up warily, his hand hiding the ceramic sake cup. He quickly brought it up to his lips and down. "End this as in, " he frowned, "taking it outside?"

Steve smiled. "Hell, no." He reached between his legs and lifted his backpack up. Unzipping a large section, he took out a sneaker and produced from the sneaker a large stack of yen notes. "I've got about 300,000 yen here." As Kitsune gasped, he placed the stack in front of Kogata. "Take this as a partial payment, at least to get you off her back." Steve winked over the table. "I don't want you coming back, that's for sure."

The other man nodded and bowed his head slightly, then winced at the pain the motion caused.

Kitsune frowned at her conflicted emotions. Part of her was celebrating: allright! This manfool has fallen for me, hook, line and sinker! I've still got it! But another part, the larger part, was disgusted with her actions. She stepped towards the table and put her hand over the bills. "Steve, no! I can't allow you to do this."

Steve and Kogata wore identical looks of surprise, or as identical as their various wounds would allow, as they gazed up at her face. Then they looked at each other and shrugged. Steve placed a huge hand over hers atop the money. "Kitsune, it's done." Effortlessly, despite her exertions, he raised her hand from the yen notes.

He nodded to Kogata, who reached over and lifted the money. The debt collector began to count the bills. After flipping through all of them, he commented "Three hundred seventy seven thousand, seven hundred and seventy seven yen." He bowed his head. "Very fortuitous for a random pick- up. This was fated." He turned to Kitsune. "Nana-korobi Ya-oki. I'll see what I can do with my boss, maybe we can let this slide for the cash." He jerked his chin at Steve. "You need to keep him around." He grinned. "If he'll stay." He frowned and swore. "One of my teeth is loose. Could you pass that sake?"

"Here you go!"