Author's note: Eeeeeeeeps! I'm so sorry I haven't updated in ages… writer's block (thanks to the Neverending Pile of Homework too) has kept me off… I hope this chappie is good enough to make up for the wait; hopefully Chapter 13 won't take too long (hint: more action in that one!)

Song of the Day: Naked As We Came by Iron and Wine

Disclaimer: So if it doesn't belong to me, who does it belong to?

Chapter 12

Yuri sighed. "What do you want to know?"

Sean shrugged. "I don't know – maybe the whole truth and nothing but the truth?" He glanced at her. Guilty as hell. "You can start with how you got started in racin' in the first place."

She rolled her eyes. "And this is going to help my defense against the Lieutenant?"

"It doesn't have to stop at just the Lieutenant," he said. The light turned green and he eased the handbrake. "You said it yourself: the garage of modified cars sitting in Shibuya."

She leaned against the headrest and shut her eyes. Her mother's frightened image flashed through her eyes, and the memory of Imiga's slap made her cheek tingle with heat yet again. But through it all… the hurt that stung the most: Ming.

How would she ever explain to him without involving him, and how could they go back to what they used to be? Damaged, all of it. Damaged beyond repair. What they had, or what she thought they had.

There had been something, right?

"Yuri?"

What the heck. "My mom," she began sullenly, her throat heavy with the effort to control her emotion. "When the Lieutenant left… well, life wasn't a bed of roses. She took jobs here and there as a maid, janitor, then maid again. Every month she had a different job, and every month there was just enough to pay the rent. There were some days when we couldn't even eat a scrap of bread. Then she took a job on the streets." She opened her eyes. "She became a prostitute."

Sean opened his mouth to say something, but shut it back.

"Thanks for shutting up," she muttered.

"No prob."

"Anyway, yeah, she slept around for money. She brought men home and I'd stay awake and listen to what went on in the other room, because I was little and I didn't know what the grown-ups did that could make so much noise. I found out about it when I was 14. I got so mad at her I ran away from home. I mean, my mom is the town whore, how could I ever show my face in school ever again?

"The night I ran away, I had no place to sleep, so I just propped myself up against the wall of a scrapyard and tried my best to sleep. But Koji found me."

"Koji?"

She smiled to herself. "He became my best friend. It was his dad's junkyard by the way. His dad took me in and I stayed at their house, which was part of their shop, for a couple of days till my mom found me and dragged me home. But every day after school I'd run to the Ayama scrapyard and hang out with Koji and his dad. Lots of rotten, old cars get sent there, some of them with engines still fine, and Koji and I would play in them, pretending that we could really drive. That was how I fell in love with cars.

"Koji's dad used to be a street racer too, yeah how cool was he? He liked to sit under the zinc roof with a glass of sake and talk all about his racing days; how he used to drive, how people modified their cars back then, all that crap. I really loved listening to his stories till the point where I had this crazy idea of racing for a living."

"Which you kinda do," remarked Sean. She laughed. "Yeah. Funny how life is, huh?"

"Anyway…?"

"Anyway, my mom had a nervous breakdown soon after. Maybe it was the oversex. I don't know. She went on drugs to cure herself, but of course she got worse, the worse she got, the more drugs she used. I was 16, and I couldn't care less anymore about her. Till she went and borrowed a huge lump of money from the yakuza."

"Yakuza? They have them in Hockey-wherever too?"

"It's Hokkaido, but the town I live in is different. Yakuza's everywhere; just like your American mafia. They don't just stay in Sicily, do they? Anyway, you could say that she'd practically borrowed her whole life from them. And of course, if you don't pay them back, they come and take things from you. Your life, for instance." She swallowed. "They wanted to killed me, and she let them did it too."

Sean was struck by horror. How could – but this wasn't a time for such questions. "You're kiddin'? Then how – "

"Luckily," said Yuri sarcastically, "I'd been racing my butt off illegally long enough to be somewhat good. I just got my Supra, and all the races I ever did eversince: I won them."

"So you made a deal with them," concluded Sean quietly. "You race for them till you pay back every single yen your mom owed."

She nodded. "Glad to see your skull ain't thick as it looks to be."

"What an insult."

"Anyway…"

"Yeah, anyway…"

"Then I met him. His name was Imiga, and he was a relation of the head yakuza honcho, but so green no-one took his word. But he had it, you know. The aura. He drew people to him, regardless of what monstrosity he did. He could kill a person and yet his chums would stick by him till the very end." She looked away. "I was one of them. I was one of the weak people who thought they looked great beside a yakuza wannabe. Koji tried to pull me back to what I used to be, but I refused. I thought he was stupid for not wanting to help him, to join him. Slowly, though, I fell in love with him. Imiga." The name was bitter to her tongue, and she was tempted to spit it out, but not in the car; her gaijin half-brother would kill her.

"This Imiga guy," said Sean, turning into a covered parking lot where he usually parked his car. "He's the head of the new kuza?"

"Yeah. He'd always fancied himself as head of something; he wanted to be important, that's all he ever wanted to be. He wanted to make his Uncle Kamata proud. We got together, Imiga and I. The first few weeks were heaven: I was the apple of his eye, and he treated me like a princess, buying me this, buying me that. Suddenly, one day, I woke up. I saw all the crimes he did; when I met him, he was Imiga, now, he was I don't know, like Godzilla or something."

"Let me guess," Sean cut in. "You walked out on him. He got mad…"

"I tried to run away," she finished for him. "The social security people got hold of my mom and admitted her to an asylum. I had no other guardian than the Lieutenant, so here I am. But recently," her face grew troubled. "Well, let's just say he caught up with me and is holding my mom hostage. And I can't – I just can't let her – you know."

"I understand," said Sean. He pulled the car into a parking box and killed the engine. They sat in their seats, unwilling to leave the car just yet. "Your car."

"I know," she replied.

"You have to keep racing for him, right?"

She hung her head.

"So what are ya gonna race with?"

"I have this R32," she said, remembering suddenly. "Yeah, I won it the other day at Boshi, if you – oh."

"Oh what?"

"I left it… somewhere."

"Do you remember it?"

"Heck, I'm not that thick!" she glared at him. "It's just that – well, it's with someone I'd rather not meet for the time being."

Sean broke into a grin. "I think I know who he is."

"Oh yeah?"

"The guy you raced against today, you know, the Eclipse. I mean, he has an Eclipse, and it isn't your averagely stupid Eclipse. If he could get one all the way from the States and turn it into something that good, he's gotta be somebody."

"I'm not afraid of his power or reputation or whatever," she said crossly. And truly she wasn't. "It's – it's complicated." She paused. "But I need that Skyline."

"Damn right you need it." He licked his lips. "Tell ya what, why don't I go get it for you? It's in his garage, ain't it?"

Yuri nodded. As an afterthought, "but he wouldn't just let you haul any car off. Nobody's that insane… I'll come with you."

"But I thought – "

"I need to iron some things out with him, anyway," she replied curtly. Sean kept 'buts' to himself. Heck, she was sounding a bit like the Lieutenant already. He suddenly laughed, and Yuri stared at him. "What's so funny, Yankee?"

"I never thought I'd be in this kinda situation. I mean, I've never had a single brother or sister all my life and here you are. And now I'm helpin' you to get your car – it's just so weird, you know."

To her own surprise, she laughed along. He caught on her infectious laughter and laughed even more, and soon they were laughing so hard the car actually shook.

Yuri watched the door with abated breath as Sean tried his best to open it as quietly as possible. She'd tried to convince him that she was the better sneaker (he always came home with a bang) but he insisted that since he was the older brother, he should be the one to commit the crime. Well if they were caught, it was his –

Scccreeeeeeeech.

She threw her hands up. "Great!"

"Ssssh! I don't see the Lieutenant anywhere."

"He has his ways, you know."

"Like I don't! I've lived with him - "

"Just come in," said the crisp, steely tone that they were so familiar with. Sean straightened up and exchanged accusatory glances with Yuri. She, unfortunately, couldn't find anything smarter than, "Baka", and with that they stepped hesitantly into the house.

The Lieutenant was sitting at his usual chair by the lamp, a half-finished beer bottle on the table. He looked up at them, not a single expression on his face. "Excuse?"

Sean and Yuri looked at each other with raised eyebrows. This was something new.

"We were just…" Sean's gaze averted back to Dad. "I brought her out to a club."

Yuri faked a big smile. "As a Big Mikan experience, Dad."

"Yeah, as a, you know, what a big brother can do for his little sister kind of thing. She's still kinda new in town, right?"

She resisted the urge to glower with anger at the phrase 'little sister' but kept her wits about her. "Well of course I wanted to hit the malls, but no, Sean here kept insisting that clubbing is the best way to go in good old Tokyo. So…" she shrugged, " shou ga nai."

Dad frowned at Sean. "You brought your underaged sister clubbing?"

Sean glared at Yuri. No way was he going to let her escape that way. The sneaky little Chihuahua. "She asked for it, Dad. Said she had some friends to meet at this particular club and she simply can't not meet them and – "

"That is so not true, Dad."

"Oh yeah? Then how come – "

"Hold your horses," said the Lieutenant suddenly and leaned forward in his chair, peering at Yuri. "What happened to your face, Yuri?"

Her heart skipped a beat. "Wh-what?" she spluttered out.

"Your face," repeated Dad, drumming his fingers impatiently on the arm of his chair. "It looks as if somebody hit it."

Yuri exchanged another bewildered gaze with Sean, who quickly cooked an excuse up. Boy, he was getting good at this game. "I did it."

Dad's eyebrows furrowed so heavily that they seemed to be knitted together. Yuri could only stare incredulously at Sean, who was trying to keep a straight face. "I did it, Sir. I slapped her."

"And why," said Dad in a stone-cold voice, "the hell would you do that?"

"I was drunk," offered Yuri rapidly. "I was drunk and I was, I think, trying to seduce him." She grinned apologetically at her half-brother. "He must have gotten so freaked out that he slapped me to get me back to my senses. You know what alcohol can do to you."

"Yeah yeah," said Sean in befuddled agreement. "She's uh right."

To their greatest surprise (and a bit of joy), Dad put the beer bottle back on the table and smiled in amusement. "At least the two of you're getting along, huh?"

Sean and Yuri could only nod stupidly in return. "Yes, Sir."

"And you're especially lucky that you don't have school tomorrow, Yuri," he tilted his head in Yuri's direction. "Sean, promise me one thing."

"Yeah?"

"Don't ever bring her to a club until she turns 21."

Sean had to grin. "Yes, Sir."

The Lieutenant proceeded to shoo them to bed and promptly turned off the lights soon after they entered the small closet-cum-bedroom. Yuri dropped onto her mattress gratefully. "That went well."

"I'd say," he said wryly, shrugging out of his T-shirt and, later, his jeans.

"Sean! That's gross!"
"What? I'm wearing boxers, okay?"

Yuri covered her eyes. "I am a modest, respectful, Asian girl whose pure, innocent soul is being tempted by the dangerous, reckless, 'gangsta' from the West."

"Oh for God's sakes – it's called boxers!" She suddenly felt herself being pulled up by her shoulders and let out a shriek. "Let me down, you – you – "

There came a furious rap on the door. "Bed!" yelled Dad.

"Yes, Sir!"

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