Misao had a list of things that she wanted to achieve before she was thirty. It went something like this;
1 – Go on my tenth job before I'm twenty-five. (And I just turned twenty!)
2 – Be able to hit a target with a knife from twenty feet.
3 – Make Aoshi-sama smile. (Still working on this one…)
And so, on November the nineteenth, Misao woke up at five o'clock in the morning, brimming with excitement. I'm going on my tenth official job! And I'm not twenty-five yet!
She grinned, clenching her fists happily. I'm! Going on! A! Trip! With Aoshi-sama! On a! Job! Ohmygosh! I'll definitely prove that I can handle everything! She pressed a fist to her mouth. Oh! And we'll be sharing a room! A cabin? Whatever it's called when there's rooms on trains. Oh no! She giggled, her eyes widening at the realization.
That's just too embarrassing! Oh goodness! What if I see him first thing in the morning with his hair all messy…? …Without a shirt on! Ooh, how terrible! She couldn't suppress another giggle. And he'll see me in my nightgown! How positively awful! I'll make sure to wear the white silk one that's a bit too small for me. But how terribly dreadful! Wouldn't it be horrible if he saw me putting my garters on? And it would be absolutely appalling if I thought that his bed was my bed and lay down next to him? Oh! That would be just frightful! What if… Her cheeks flushed, she flopped back onto the bed, hugging her pillow and staring up at the ceiling, her daydreams running away with her. "Uwaa, no, Aoshi-sama, not ye-et!" she muttered ecstatically to herself, then brought herself up short, realizing that she had just said that out loud.
What the hell kind of a thing am I thinking about?!
Misao threw her pillow against the wall and rolled over onto her side, facing the wall, drawing her knees up to her chest and holding her head in her hands. Like that's ever going to happen… He wouldn't give me a second thought as a woman. I'm still a kid to him. A kid he promised he'd protect. I'm probably too short and skinny to be his type anyway. And he'd be too busy to have a woman anyway. Or rather, he'd just probably have women but like… Not commitment. …Wait. Does he though?
What am I doing, thinking about Aoshi-sama in such a way? I'm gonna end up contradicting myself anyway… Since I'm not the kind of person to give up before I've been turned down. And I'll probably do everything I can to get him to see me- "What the hell am I thinking?" she asked herself aloud.
"Really… I have no idea, but could you please refrain from sounding like a strangled chicken first thing in the morning?"
Blushing bright red, Misao shot up out of bed and turned around, to see Omasu standing in the doorway. "Have you packed yet?" she asked, sounding mildly amused.
Misao put a hand to her forehead. "Crap! No! Thank you for reminding me!" She hurriedly got under her bed and pulled out a medium-sized suitcase.
Omasu nodded. "Better do that. I'll help you."
"Thanks!" Misao packed underclothes. Sighing, she packed a pair of trousers and a shirt, then she grinned. "Omasu-san?"
"Yes?"
"What dresses look the best on me?"
Omasu opened Misao's small closet. Three dresses hung on wire hangers. One brown with pink trim, simple and dowdy. One that she could have worn at twelve but would've had issues squeezing into now. One was just full of holes, mostly moth-related but one of which looked suspiciously like a bullet hole. She shook her head. "No. Just… No. That's the answer to your question." She said. "Wait here. I have a few that I bought and were too small for me." Omasu winked. "Don't worry. I have… The ah, type of thing you're looking for."
Misao nodded eagerly. I'll look sexy and alluring, while at the same time be a total badass and Aoshi-sama will fall head-over-heels in love with me like I am with him. Or at least that's the plan.
Omasu came back with two dresses. One was red, opening the shoulders and ending at the knee. The other was black and rather long, but with a slit on one side that went halfway up the thigh. As Misao packed those, along with the nightgown and a pair of black pumps, Omasu began to laugh.
"What's funny?" asked Misao, shutting the suitcase with relative ease.
"Nothing." She said. "Just don't distract the boss too badly, alright, Misao-chan? There is a job to do, you know." she smiled and left, saying something about breakfast.
"Distract?" Misao repeated. "Eh?" What does that mean?
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Misao and Aoshi took a cab from the mansion, both armed with a gun inside their jacket. "Heishin will be travelling first class." Aoshi said. "His bodyguards are always with him. If facing him straight on – one of us will distract the bodyguards while the other goes for Heishin. Normally, I would say that you take Heishin out while I gun down his 'four-star service', but I have not much of an idea as to how things will turn out, so we may have to improvise."
Holy shit, did Aoshi-sama just make a joke? Four-star service? Does that mean he remembered my joke from yesterday? "Right." Misao nodded. "No long-distance shooting? I have a machine gun and a couple of pistols in my luggage but I didn't bring anything like that…."
"I brought a rifle if it were to come to that. It has to be assembled, but it's in my suitcase. If the opportunity arises to shoot him from afar – I would greatly prefer it to a head-on collision. But Heishin is known for his paranoia and tight security. Ever since he allied himself with Kanryuu, more and more people have wanted to kill him. So he acts accordingly."
The taxi pulled to a stop. They got out and walked towards the train station. "Aoshi-sama?"
"Yes?"
Misao walked a little behind Aoshi as he shouldered his way through the crowd. "You said before that there were other groups involved in this particular train ride. It can't all be because of Heishin, right? Is there some sort of a drug deal going on? An assassination?"
"Unfortunately, I don't know." Aoshi said. "But I intend to find out. Our sources recently have become… Less than reliable. One of our main informants was recently taken in my by the police and another has disappeared. Apparently he's working for Shishio Makoto now."
"That New York big-shot? Seriously? I heard he just kills people when they stop being useful to him. A guy who finished a job for Shishio was never heard from again and all those kind of things." Misao shook her head.
"We'll have to adapt."
"Yea-" At that moment, a porter bumped into Misao and she fell backwards, her heavy suitcase unbalancing her further. But before she could land painfully on the floor, she found an arm round her waist Aoshi's face inches away from hers. "Oh…!" she breathed, dumbstruck.
"…Careful." He said, letting go, his face blank as usual.
"Y-yeah!"