(Yohji)
Aya bangs the register shut, rattles the blinds down and storms from the shop in a huff. I know I won't see him tonight. This time, the chibis have really overdone it. They have scratched Aya's honour badly, not to mention that it's gonna be difficult to get him to sleep with me for a while now 'cos he feels it's demeaning what he does with me in bed. He thinks it makes him weak to enjoy a few moments of warmth and love, and to him, the source of this does matter, too. I'm a bloke. He is straight at heart and a master of ruthless denial...
He may be pretty, but he has nothing feminine about him. Anyone who doubts this should watch him in action, when he is not a nice sight at all, bloodied and stinking of gore, with a nasty snarl on his handsome face... He reminds me of Schuldig when he is fighting, down and dirty. His beauty is brittle, harsh, his features sharp and hawkish, his lips are thin and unsuited for smiling, his eyes hard beneath the purple contacts he favours...
No, Aya is no woman.
Asuka was one, and Manx is one, even though sometimes she seems to have bigger balls than me. Aya's beauty is different because he is lacking something they have, though for the life of me I cannot figure out what that might be. Warmth perhaps, though there is heat enough under his layers of teflon and ice to outburn a furnace. It is wildfire-heat, searing, dangerous, and utterly destructive. Sometimes we get a taste of it on missions, and we soon gathered that he enjoys his work that has a lot in common with that of a butcher...
So I can see why he disliked the card. Omi should have known better than to rub things in like that; Aya is not the best one for pranks. On the other hand, the chibi should not be here at all but play and fool around like any normal kid of his age.
Omi is nineteen, lives a borrowed life, gets paid for murder. He and Ken cling to one another because that is as near as they will get to teenage life as it comes outside the Koneko. Omi does not even know a normal life, and I doubt he would function in it. None of us would. We have lost, or never learned, the skills we would need.
I know all that. But sometimes, like now when I keep turning the flower and the card over in my hands and the air around me is thick and blue with cigarette smoke, when I had enough sake to get foggy in the head and my vision blurs pleasantly, I cannot help but wonder...
What if...
Sometimes, when I'm not quick enough to reel in my runaway dreams, I get carried away. Sometimes, when I lie in Aya's room, on his futon, wrapped in the faint, sharp aroma of pine needles and steel and pretend to read one of his books, while he sits with his back against the wall by the door. Ready to bolt or fight, even here, with his katana on his lap as he keeps himself busy honing the blade. When we are together like that, and if I am careful, I can watch him over the rim of my glasses. It is a bit of a cat-and-mouse game because he will try to size me up when I'm not paying attention. He'll look me over, flitting back to his work as soon as I shift, and he'll do his own bit of thinking.
Sometimes, I do not want to know what he is thinking.
I light another cigarette, start misting the plants in the display window - something that is usually his job - and let my thoughts drift. What if?
What if he had grown up to lead the life that had been so carefully mapped out for him? Completed school at the private place that was so incredibly expensive, gone on to one of the best universities money and connections could buy, then proceed in a nice, straight line into a well-arranged job and a strategic marriage. His path made smooth for him by the connections of his family, every obstacle bought or blasted out of his way so he could concentrate entirely on becoming...
What would he have become?
Honesty and honour do not normally sit well with the kind of success the likes of Takatori crave, and no one can earn with their hands work more than they need to clothe and house themselves and their family. Aya's father whom he still adores had rather close dealings with Takatori. I was curious – call it a professional habit of mine – and now I know that their business relationship was of the long-term kind before the whole load of shit hit the fan.
Aya would have learned the skills to run his father's empire; he sure has the character for it: unyielding, ruthless... cold. He can be cold.
Perhaps he would have gone to lunch with a Takatori and thought nothing of it. Business associates. And perhaps he would have used the services of someone like me. All those high and mighty ones do, at some point in time. Hiring a snoop who earns his keep by prying into other people's lives, often with disastrous consequences. But I was never paid to care about the consequences of my work, and so I tried to block that out. I had enough dealings with people like his father or Takatori, cleaning up their dirty little secrets in exchange for good fees. They dislike paying my kind for our services because they have to share what makes them uneasy, vulnerable, less formidable in their corporate cut-'n-thrust. They prefer to despise my kind instead, but they'll pay up anyway. Photos, a hit... whatever. They pay as long as it's quality work.
At least I do work for my keep, and I was never good at shrouding my job in pleasing little phrases involving 'conviction', 'justice' and such like.
The people who pay us hate to be shown a piece of their dirty souls bare.
And sometimes, they are so businesslike that they won't even notice anymore.
Would he have become like that? I do not know.
Could he? I'd rather not answer that one.
xxx
Next chapter: Black Fantasy