Chapter 1:

...And It Feels So Good

"You're still a freaking waitress?"

"What's wrong with that?" I asked.

Mugen shrugged. "Nothing, I guess. Just figured you would have like…I dunno. What am I trying to say?"

"Learned something?" I offered.

"Yeah, that."

I shrugged. "I like waitressing." That wasn't a lie. "I like it enough, anyway. What about you?"

"Oh, I didn't learn a damn thing," he said, his features narrowing into that wolf-like grin of his. He picked at his food in an odd sort of way for a moment, almost delicately, before shoveling the entire sum of it into his mouth.

"You're gonna choke," I said.

It looked as though he agreed with me for a second, but then managed to force the bulging mass down his throat. Charming as ever.

"So, what have you been up to?" I asked. "Seriously." I often felt it necessary to punctuate most of my sentences with the word "seriously" when dealing with Mugen. Seriously, usually followed by "stop it."

"Odd jobs," he said.

In other words, we both ended the journey the exact same way we started it. I wonder if this qualified as "full circle" or just pathetic. Mugen must have realized by the look on my face that he had just disappointed me somehow, because he suddenly got snippy.

"Well what did you expect?" he snarled. "That I was gonna be married with six kids or somethin'?"

"No!" I shrieked, trying to startle the thought from my mind. The very notion of him rearing children was horrifying. "God, no. I just...I guess I expected things to be different."

In fact, I had felt so different on the inside when I returned from our journey that it never occurred to me that my outsides hadn't changed. Seeing him again put my stagnation in sharp focus.

"You chicks are all whacked," Mugen said, apparently not wishing to develop this conversation beyond idle chit-chat.

"Chicks are not whacked," I corrected him. "I am whacked. Don't chalk me up to a hormonal thing, all right? I hate it when you do that. It's so…."

"Dick?"

I rolled my eyes. Don't ever let Mugen fill in the blanks for you. "Chauvinist."

"Dick."

I drummed my fingers on the table, which seemed a reasonable alternative to slapping him. "Anyway, how long are you in town?"

"Like you're not sick of me already."

"Will you just answer the damn question?"

"As long as I want to be." He leaned back in his seat, balancing on that unseen force he always managed to utilize. We were both distracted by the familiar sound of breaking glass and a flurry of swear words. It was a fight. It wasn't uncommon. I always headed behind the bar until they died down. It just sucked having to clean up afterwards. Usually worked out to be an hour's extra work with no tips.

Mugen looked at me in a way that I did not recognize. And then I realized. He was asking for permission. In some odd way, I was touched. "Go ahead," I said.

He smiled broadly and lept up out of his seat. I retreated to my usual lookout post behind the bar. "Who's that guy?" my boss, Gengi, asked.

"Mugen," I said. Crash, bang.

Gengi cocked his head, taking in the violence with the morbid curiosity of a small child. "Is her your boyfriend?"

"No. He's just my…Mugen." I sighed. There really was no word for what we were. My least favorite moments on our journey were when people asked me to define it. Pow, smash.

Gengi dove out of the way of a far-flung chopstick. It stuck in the back wall, twanging almost playfully. That could have been someone's eye, I thought, then reached up to deflect a sake glass. Traveling with those two really honed my reflexes. Crack, smash. "He's a pretty good fighter," Gengi remarked.

"He's not bad," I lied.

"Does he want a job?"

"What kind of job?" said the disembodied voice of Mugen. I jumped and saw him hanging upside down from the top shelf of the wine rack.

"How would you like to be a bouncer?" Gengi asked, to my absolute horror. "Incoming, by the way."

"Yeah, I see him," Mugen said as he bashed his attacker over the head with a sake bottle without even turning around to look. "I dunno. Bouncer? Two bit drunks ain't much of a challenge."

"So then it'll be easy money," Gengi swerved out of the way of a body Mugen had just flung in his direction. I decided to take refuge in a cupboard under the bar.

"We don't really need a bouncer," I said, tugging on Gengi's kimono. "Things don't get that out of hand." Smash, pow.

Gengi bent down, both to avoid the latest onslaught of refuse and to whisper, "Yeah, but a couple nights like this and his reputation will be enough. After a week, all he'll have to do is stand there."

"He'll get bored," I argued, a hint of desperation creeping into my voice. "And besides he's kind of an idiot."

"I can hear you, you know," Mugen said from somewhere atop the bar.

"I know," I sighed. Like I never called him an idiot before. As if I held that particular opinion of him close to my chest so as not to hurt his feelings. Idiot.

Gengi seemed unmoved. "I'm not hiring him to balance my check book. I'm hiring him to be bad ass long enough to keep some sort of order in here. I have to pay to clean up after these fights, anyway. Might as well have one of the fighters in my pocket."

"You're making a huge mistake," I said, with the air of a closing argument. At least I was on the record. At least I had laid the groundwork for my soon-to-be-no-doubt-delicious, "I told you so." I began practicing how I would deliver the blow. I told you so. I told you so. I told you so.

Boom, whack.

I mustered the courage to stick my head out over the top of the bar and saw what was left of our patronage fleeing for their lives. Mugen was standing on the bar with his one foot resting on a beer keg. A rum bottle come vividly to life.

"I'll take the job," Mugen said.

"Fantastic."