Gingershipping (Bandit Keith/Kawai Shizuka)

. . .

Shizuka never liked bars, even before the divorce. Something about them set her nerves on edge, made her hands curl up into fists and her shoulders start to shake and her mouth to go dry. It was something about how they were always dimly lit, with just the flicker of a television no one was watching playing sports in the corner, the silence of the man wiping glasses behind the counter and the low whispers of men in booths while they cupped mugs of foam to their chests as though it was some dragon treasure that they were loathe to let out of sight. It was something about the smell of cigarettes and alcohol and the thin spirals of the neon signs that said "open."

It only got worse after the fights started getting louder, and the nights that she would sit under the table while her father banged glasses down above her grew longer and longer.

That childhood fear gripped her now as she stood in front of the small, dingy pub. She gripped the letter in her fingers so hard that it was crumpling, her hands shaking.

No good, she thought at herself. Be tough...be like niisan.

She swallowed thickly. Then she sucked in a deep, deep breath, and slapped her cheeks with both hands.

"Okay," she said. "Let's...do this."

She inhaled once more and then pushed the doors to the pub open.

It was exactly like the bars that her father had brought her to when she was a child. Small, dimly lit, a wall of bottles behind the counter—the floor that stuck to her sneakers with a nose curling scrrk scrrk scrrk sound with each step.

He was already at the bar. Probably drunk already, too. She could see his cheeks flushed from here, his sunglasses askew on his face and his bandanna already mussed, hanks of blond hair poked out at weird angles. He hadn't shaved in what appeared to be weeks; and the beard was grown in patches of different length. She pressed her lips together and tightened her fists at the sight of the bottle in his hand, trying to still her nervousness. This had to be done. She could do this.

She made her way across the floor, peeling the soles of her sneakers from the wood paneling with each step. The bartender glanced up at her and half opened his mouth, but there must have been something in the way she was walking that consigned him back to silence. She wasn't here for a drink.

She sat down on the chair one away from him. Keeping space. For a moment, he didn't look at her—or maybe his gaze was flickering towards her under his sunglasses. Then he blew out between his lips, and tipped the bottle back into his mouth.

Shizuka waited while he glugged the rest of the bottle down, slammed it on the counter, and wiped off his lips with the back of his hands.

"So," he said, probably trying to snarl intimidatingly, but only succeeding in slurring. "You're the one that wants to pick a fight with me, huh?"

Shizuka put the letter on the counter and slid it across. She saw his eyes peek over the top of his sunglasses, blearily and red-shot. It took him a few moments to take in the messy address on the front, the ripped up edges that indicated it had been opened in a hurry. His eyes slid over to her.

"You threatened my brother," she said, her voice surprisingly calm.

He stared at her over the tops of his sunglasses. Then he snorted, tipping his head back so that the glasses would slide back over his eyes.

"You weren't supposed to read it, girlie," he said. "Told 'im to keep quiet."

"He never read it," she said, her voice toneless and straight. She didn't look at him, but stared straight ahead. "I got it first."

He let out another snort, a disgusting sound that seemed like it was dislodging some clump of mucus in his throat.

"Well, girlie," he said, fumbling in his jacket for a cigarette. "If you read my letter, you'll know that this's between me and your son of a bitch brother. I'm not looking to go through any mediators."

He shoved the cigarette between his teeth and fiddled with a lighter, trying to spark it but having trouble getting his fingers to do what he wanted.

"Unless, of course, you're looking to get yourself in trouble," he said, his voice taking on a more...sinister edge. "Don't ya think your big brother's gonna be upset if he finds out his cute little sister got herself mixed up with bad old me?"

Now, and only now, did Shizuka turn her gaze towards him.

For a second, she was afraid. She was terrified of this hulking man in front of her with the bad Japanese accent and the cigarette in his mouth and the smirk turning up his lips and the heavy, aggressive, drunken hunch of his back.

And then she wasn't.

She wasn't afraid.

She thought instead to the wild, flat, animal eyes of the man with the blonde hair who had screamed and laughed over her brother as his dead body collapsed to the stadium floor. She thought of the pressure that crushed down on her, the heat and choking sensation that had come with the summoning of the golden god. The terror of the darkness that swirled around her on the field as she realized that this was not a human world she was in anymore—that this game, this tournament, this very world, was deeper and more dangerous than she could possibly know.

In the face of that...

Bandit Keith Howard looked more like a ragdoll than a threat.

Something in Keith's face changed. His smirk fell a tiny bit, the cigarette sagged in his mouth. Shizuka continued to just stare at him—she couldn't honestly believe how unintimidating he was to her in that moment. Her heart was calm, her shoulder steady.

She rose from the seat, making it spin a bit with the abruptness of her change. She placed one hand on the table and leaned in towards Keith.

"I have come too close to losing people I care about in the past few months," she said, whispering so that only he could hear. "If you push me towards that edge again...if I see your miserable face anywhere near my brother...I don't know what I will do."

Even through the sunglasses, at this distance, Shizuka could see that something had changed in Keith's eyes. He wasn't smug, wasn't gloating anymore.

He was...

Nervous.

As nervous as she had been walking into this bar.

Almost in spite of herself, she smiled. She didn't think it was a cruel smile—in fact, she felt rather cheerful about it, as though it were another happy smile flashed at one of her dear friends. Keith's unlit cigarette dropped out of his mouth.

"I hope I made myself clear," she said cheerfully. "Have a good rest of your day."

She flipped her hair back from her shoulders and smiled once more.

Then, with a slight bounce in her step, she turned on her heel, and sauntered out of the bar, and back out into the light of the city.

. . .

A/N: Next is Gentleshipping (Shizuka x Valon), she'll deserve a nice one like that after having to deal with Keith haha XD