"So the guy went down easy and I was ready to throw myself a victory party. I turned around and there was this enormous giant of a man running at me. I saw my life flashing right before my eyes," Yuuto said, waving his arms dramatically. I laughed at his story as I whisked eggs in a large bowl. "He raised this huge fist to smash my brains out and I ducked and started-"
I looked up at him, wondering why he'd fallen silent and followed his eyes to the door that led to the hallway. Soryu was standing there, his expression icy. "I need you to go to Osaka for the next month, Yuuto. Go pack your things."
"Oh. Really? What?" Yuuto looked confused for a minute and then pulled himself together. "Yeah, boss. I'll get right on that."
I watched Yuuto leave while Soryu came over and took a seat at the counter island. "What are you doing?" he asked with a frown.
"Duh. I'm making breakfast," I said, frowning right back at him.
"I told you to rest for today." Anger was creeping into his voice.
"And that was a great idea. Sitting around with nothing to do will give me plenty of time to relive the trauma of yesterday over and over again," I said sarcastically. I froze, holding my bowl of eggs over a hot frying pan. "Are you planning on fucking me into compliance? Because if you are, I should probably hold off on starting these eggs."
He stared back at me, his expression emotionless.
"Suit yourself," I said with a shrug and poured the eggs in the pan. "Don't go changing your mind. Scrambled eggs are gross if they get cold."
"Are you ruminating about yesterday?" he asked.
"No. I already told you, I'm making breakfast." I bit my lip. I knew that I was being a bitch but I couldn't stop myself. He was acting cold and it was throwing me off for all the wrong reasons. It shouldn't bother me if he wanted to fuck and forget it. A one night stand should be fine with me, but for some reason it was really irritating me that he'd walked away and was acting like nothing had ever happened.
"If you need to speak to a therapist, I can have Ran Nitta come over immediately," he offered.
"I already told you before that I won't talk to a therapist," I said, focusing on the eggs as I moved them around in the pan.
"What happened yesterday after they took you out of the restaurant?" he asked.
"Not much. They put me in a van and threw my phone out the window. Damn. That reminds me. I need a new phone."
"I'll buy you one today. It took hours to get out to that farm," he pointed out. "How did you feel in the van?"
"Let's see… Scared?" I replied and rolled me eyes.
"I'm not very good at this, am I?" he asked and turned away with a grimace.
'He wants to smile and he's fighting it,' I thought, my stomach suddenly feeling like lead. He really was rejecting me, not just in a sexual way but rejecting the little friendship that we'd built.
"I… I'm making an American style breakfast," I said, trying to change the subject. "Hashbrowns, sausage, biscuits and cheesy scrambled eggs. Everything is ready except for the eggs and they'll be finished soon. Yuuto already set the table."
"That sounds very unhealthy," he said. He looked uncomfortable and distant. I gripped the spatula and used it to stir the eggs. My instincts were telling me to throw it at him. What was he doing? He didn't need to treat me differently just because we'd fucked.
"I...I think everyone deserves an unhealthy breakfast because they stayed up late last night taking care of things at that farm," I explained, my voice a little defiant.
"I can't argue with that." He nodded, his face cold. "If you're almost finished I'll go get the other guys. I suppose it's only fair that I let Yuuto eat before he leaves for Osaka since he helped you out."
I watched him walk away feeling angry and lost. Did he really have to behave this way? Why was he being so distant - because I'd been kidnapped? Because we'd fucked? I didn't understand it and I didn't like it at all.

"What's going on in here?"
I turned around to see that Soryu and Kyoichiro had come into the kitchen. Kyoichiro looked mildly curious. To no one's surprise, Soryu was frowning.
"We're reorganizing the kitchen," Maki answered before I could open my mouth.
"Whoever decided where to put things didn't use any logic," I explained before Soryu had a chance to question me. I'd found three young men in the game room and put them to work helping me with the task. Dishes and food were being piled up on the counters as we emptied and cleaned the cabinets and drawers. "Don't worry about lunch, I've already got an egg casserole waiting to go in the oven."
"You're supposed to be resting. You shouldn't be taking on an unnecessary project or preparing lunch." Soryu's usual commanding voice held the slightest hint of anger.
"I already told you I'm not going to sit around doing nothing," I said with a smile, trying to keep the conversation from turning into an argument.
"Hey, there are like fifty cans of sardines down here," a voice piped up from behind the kitchen island. Kanada peeked over the edge and held up three cans of sardines to prove his find.
"Those must be mine," Kyoichiro said. "I bought them when we first moved in but could never find them."
"They were down here behind this blender thing," Kanada said, disappearing back behind the island. "We'll be sure to put them somewhere you can find them now, Sir."
"See? I may be leaving soon, but this will help everyone who uses the kitchen in the future," I said.
"About that," Soryu said with some more frowning, "Mei is kicking up a fuss. She wants you to continue to go to the matchmaking meetings for her so that she can keep playing the tourist. She's offering you five hundred dollars a meeting on top of what Eisuke's already paying you."
I shouldn't have been so surprised by Mei's plan. I would have been expecting it if I'd taken any time to think about Mei and what she would want. Five hundred dollars a meeting on top of everything else. I could feel my savings account growing. Money meant security. It meant I'd be prepared for life's disasters. And this was easy money, there was no reason to think that anyone else was interested in kidnapping Mei. Even if they were, the destruction of the Arimura Faction should make them reconsider their plans.
"Do you mind if I stay and keep posing as Mei?" I asked, meeting Soryu's dark gray eyes to judge his true reaction.
"Of course I don't," he replied, his expression tight. His eyes flitted over the mess we'd made of the kitchen. "And thanks for doing this. You didn't have to go out of your way to help us out."
"If you're going to be staying, maybe you can help us with with the weapons room, too," Maki suggested. "It's almost as disorganized as the kitchen."
"And the game room," Satozaki interjected. "It's a huge mess. They have these special organizers for games that we could buy."
"Yeah, guys, that's no problem," I said and looked back over at Soryu and Kyoichiro. "Lunch will be at one o'clock."
I crouched down to clean the inside of a cabinet as soon as the two men left the room. Once my face was hidden from the others, I let the cheerful expression I'd been maintaining drop and felt doubts filling me.
I was worried that staying at the townhouse and continuing to see Soryu every day was a bad decision. He'd moved on from fucking me just as I should have wanted him to...but that wasn't what I wanted. For some reason I didn't feel like my usual self. I didn't want him to move on without looking back, without looking at me and wanting more.
He'd gone from being an obsessive fantasy to something else, something that I didn't even have the words for. I wanted more from him. I wanted him to touch me and I wanted him to smile at me. I wanted him to just be near me. He was dangerous, more of a threat than I ever would have imagined. If I was going to continue to pose as Mei - and there was no way I could turn down that much money for so simple a job - I was going to have to get myself under control. And that felt like an impossible task, even though Soryu wasn't giving me the slightest reason to hope that we could fuck again.
It left me feeling agitated and lonely. Feelings that I would normally have dealt with by finding someone to fuck, but Soryu had done a number on my head. I didn't want anyone but him. It was too ironic. I was living in a house, the lone woman surrounded by men and the only one I wanted wasn't interested.

I gave Soryu a wry smile as he walked into the kitchen.
"You just can't follow directions, can you?" he asked as he took a seat at the counter island.
"I told you that I need to keep busy so that I don't think about yesterday too much," I replied. The day felt as if it had lasted ten years and I had invented task after task to keep myself busy.
"The guys don't need homemade snacks to watch a soccer game. Stuff from the corner store is fine," he said. "I'm worried about you."
'No, I'm worried about you,' I thought. Every time I saw him it got a little harder. It was like an avalanche had been set off. Of course I wanted him, when I looked at him all that I could think about was touching him, tasting him, feeling him against me… But I wanted more than that. I wanted to look at him, I wanted him sitting close. I wanted to hear his voice and to watch his face while I talked to him. I wanted so many stupid things and he was more distant than ever.
"Don't worry about me," I said. I was putting together deviled eggs. I set a couple on a plate and slid them over to him. "I've got this under control."
"You don't really seem to," he countered. I looked up and met his eyes, they were full of concern. "It looks like you're just running away from your thoughts."
"That's just the way that I deal with things," I said, shrugging off his concern. "There's no reason to brood about it anyway. I'm fine. It all worked out in the end. Over and done."
"I know things aren't as simple as that. Not for anyone. I may need to talk to Ran Nitta myself," he admitted.
"Why's that?" I asked. "I'm sure you've been through worse. That stuff you and Baba did in the barn, there wasn't even any blood. The guys have told me stories about some really violent fights that they had with other yakuza and you were usually involved."
"That's true," he said, "but this isn't the same. This time I got frustrated and fucked up. I made bad choices and put you in danger. It wasn't a planned offensive or some move to defend against an attack. An innocent woman could have been killed because I got sloppy."
I watched him while I turned his words over in my head. "I'm okay, though. You saved me. You didn't just give up, you did everything that you could to make things right. You just made one little mistake. Everyone makes mistakes."
"One mistake can undo ten thousand good decisions." For a moment he let his mask drop and I could see the pain that he held inside. "Everything that I've worked for, all of these men that depend on me, it can all be destroyed with one bad decision."
A thought crossed my mind that made me shiver. "Arimura was killed and his faction was demolished. Could that happen to you?"
"The Ice Dragons are really too big for something like that to happen," he explained. "Arimura's group was just a mob, not a mafia."
"But you guys are still a target. There's that battle or whatever that's going on in Osaka," I pointed out.
"You're right, but that's for territory. They're not trying to knock us out of existence," he said. "That would be impossible. We're just too big."
"I see. There's no bringing down the Dragons," I said thoughtfully. "And when it comes to the kidnapping, it was just me. I'm not important. Simon Lee wouldn't have been upset about it, even if they'd killed me. So, no worries."
"What are you talking about, 'no worries'?" he growled, suddenly angry. "To me you're mo- You're just as important as Mei. I've told you again and again that we protect our people."
"Okay, I get it," I said, struck by his anger. "I didn't mean to make you mad."
"This is just very important to me. I actually-" He stopped and wiped a hand across his face. "My grandfather worked very hard to teach me the importance of protecting innocent people, especially women. My father didn't learn that lesson as well as I did. He had a lot of mistresses, including my mother. I was his oldest son, and therefore his heir, and that made the other mistresses bully my mother much more than they bullied each other. My father knew, but he didn't try to do anything about it."
He stopped talking for a moment and looked around the room as if he was caught up in images from the past. I wanted to lean over and touch him, but I kept my hands to myself.
"He took my mom, an innocent young woman, from her family in Japan and brought her to Hong Kong to be his mistress. He destroyed her reputation and her chance at a normal life. He didn't care when she begged him for help, even when she told him that things were so bad that she was feeling suicidal. In the end she had no choice but to leave me behind and return to Japan, to a family that shunned her," he said.
"Oh, that sounds terrible," I said lamely. The need to touch him was just growing stronger but he felt too far away. He wasn't mine to touch just any time I pleased.
"I've had a twisted view of women since that time," he continued as if I hadn't spoken. "I want to protect them. It's what my grandfather taught me and it's the right thing to do, but I also avoid them. I saw too much of just how nasty women can be when I watched my mother being harassed by the other mistresses for years. I decided long ago that I wouldn't become involved in a close relationship with a woman."
This explained it then, why Baba and Ota had said that he never dates women. Thoughts spun through my head about how impressionable children can be and how the trauma that we suffer as children can affect us as adults. But they were thoughts that I couldn't speak aloud. I couldn't open myself up like that. Instead I just watched him as he laughed darkly at himself.
"I really fucked up this time. If it was really my priority to protect women, I should have had Mei on her jet back to Hong Kong as soon as we discovered that she was being targeted. I never should have asked you to take her place. Using an innocent woman as a decoy for kidnappers? Taking you into a restaurant without waiting for the other guards to join us? My grandfather would say that what I've done is unforgivable," he said, his expression bleak.
"Hey, no," I said, trying to stop him from heaping guilt on himself. "There's only one person who needs to forgive you, and that's me. I forgive you. I never once blamed you. I know that everyone just does what they can in the moment. It's easy to look back and see the big picture and blame yourself for mistakes, but I know that you were doing your best at the time."
"You're being too kind," he said, his words making my heart twist. "I appreciate that. But I knew I was making mistakes as I made them, I just let my emotions take over. That's a dangerous thing for someone in my position to do. I have too many people depending on me."
He stood up and looked down at me, his expression closed. "I was supposed to draw you into a conversation to get you to express some of your feelings and instead I spewed a bunch of nonsense at you. Thanks for listening and thanks for taking such good care of the guys. Don't stay up too late. You've done a lot today and you really do need your rest."
I watched as he walked out of the room. He had so much pain locked up inside of him, the way he was holding it all inside and holding himself accountable for everything made me feel like crying. And he hadn't even eaten the deviled eggs that I'd passed to him. I reached out and drew the plate back over to me and slid the eggs onto the tray of snacks that I was preparing for the guys. To have him turn away from the food that I'd prepared, it made me feel as if I'd been set adrift.
I felt as if I were losing him. I remembered what he's said, 'I decided years ago that I wouldn't become involved in a close relationship with a woman.' Was that for me? A message, a warning not to expect more from him? That should be fine, right? It was exactly what I would have wanted. If I'd been opening up, I would have said, 'Yeah, me too. I don't get involved in relationships.' So why did I feel so bad, as if something essential had been taken away from me?
I'd never even imagined having a relationship with Soryu. I'd never really gone beyond wanting to fuck him. Except… Maybe I liked him too much. I liked talking to him, I liked being with him. I liked seeing him smile. A thought struck me and I almost laughed aloud - a sick, painful laugh. I had a crush on him. Just like a stupid middle school girl. I had a crush on my boss like a movie or a manga, but this was reality. In the real world the boss wasn't going to turn around and suddenly fall in love with me. In the real world I was going to do my job and move on and my silly crush would fade with time. Just like all crushes did.