Chapter 25

The Hitachiins were always the first ones to hear the gossip. Although, in fairness, it wasn't exactly gossip when it came from a reliable source. A cancelled (or rather, as Nami described, a delayed) exhibition from the great Hibayashi herself. Nami had to be the one to deliver the news by phone, curtly playing the sympathy card in explaining that the gallerist had been hospitalized and that their patience would be appreciated in this difficult time.

The rumour mills began to circle across the small pockets of the rich, all pointing towards the fact that the Hibayashi curse had finally struck the youngest. She must have turned psychotic too, as per the family tradition. Murmurings of what would have triggered the breakdown were unknown – for what it was worth, the woman wined and dined with the richest and the most elite. None of which pegged her to be mentally deranged, only intimidating by the way she could stare into your eyes and send shivers down your spine with a smile of hers.

I know something you don't. She always did know a little too much with a knack of doing good business. She traded in art, food, and real estate. Her earnings were meagre in comparison to the billions of dollars that many of her clients had. But she always earned a spot at the table: with mutual respect from one businessperson to another.

The Twins wondered out loud if the Shadow King himself had heard from the elusive gallerist of their high society.

"No," he answered primly, wiping his mouth off of the bitter taste in his mouth at the mention of her name. He hated that she was somehow still relevant to their group.
"Not at all?" Kaoru pressed further. "Aren't you worried?"

Unlike the Twins, the Ootori had been too busy to care about the gossip of the town. In fact, he wasn't listening until he heard her name. Again. After so many weeks of refusing to think about her, he could never escape.

"Why would I be?" he responded evenly. The entire crowd turned towards the Ootori in slight shock. Was the man not listening the whole time?
"She was hospitalized?" Hikaru repeated as he tilted his head in confusion. "You should have known about this – it's your hospital after all."

The Ootori narrowed his eyes at this practical joke. There were plenty of hospitals across the nation. Was it really worthwhile for her to stay at their private hospital chain? The Twins truly took it rather far this time. How did they even get the rest of their friends to act along? Their expressions of concern were near genuine such that Kyouya was almost impressed.

"I didn't get a notice about it," he answered neutrally. "Perhaps she was not a VIP," Kyouya continued onto explain. "We usually would send a gift basket." Or actually, his assistant would.
"She must have been VIP," Tamaki cut in. "Her family could certainly afford it and she is the only child of that entire clan."

Kyouya only shrugged. "None of my concern." Especially since all of this was a joke. Goodness, his friends truly had nothing better to do than to rile a reaction out of him, didn't they? As if he would fall for it.

Haruhi frowned. "You should care. Have you not heard about this at all?"

That was odd. Haruhi was not usually one to get in on these practical jokes. The Ootori narrowed his eyes at his lawyer friend. "No," Kyouya answered slowly, still suspicious about this entire ruse.

"They say she was in a car accident," Hikaru repeated, clearly realizing that the Ootori had not been paying attention to their first half of the entire conversation.
"And?" the Shadow King pressed on. "Who's they?"
"That's all we know," Kaoru admitted. "Some say she checked herself into their family's psychiatric hospital in the mountains after she recovered physically from the crash."
"In the mountains?" Kyouya echoed. Kiyoko? In the mountains? With her Alaïa dresses and Céline sunglasses? That was not a look for her. The woman belonged in a five Michelin star restaurant on the highest floor of a skyscraper, not the wilderness.

"It's a nice retreat, they say," Hikaru shrugged. "You know, from all our friends who went to rehab there."
"Rehab?" The Ootori blinked. Goodness, his friends really were making him out to look like an idiot.
"Others say she had to check herself in for a bout of her secret addiction to benzos. That's why she's so cool all the time, you know?"

Kyouya made a low growl at that. "That's definitely not true," he rolled his eyes. She was cool because she had nothing to prove to anybody. She navigated their sphere with ease, pouring hours over the research that would please and both strike fear into her circle. Kiyoko was cool because she knew what she was doing – there were no drugs involved. Kyouya had to remind himself that there was no need to get offended on her behalf before he blew smoke out of his nostrils.

"Well, maybe she wasn't hospitalized in one of your hospitals anyway," Tamaki suggested. "You would have known about it."
"Sounds about right," Kyouya agreed, even though his family did own one of the biggest chains of private hospitals in the country.

A heavy feeling in his stomach sat for the rest of the afternoon. It slowly grew into an ache in his chest, and then a hammer at the back of his head. How could this woman affect him in so many ways by just the slightest mention of her?

Fuck.

He hated that he ended up here outside of her home after so many months. He hated even more knowing that he felt more at home here than at the Ootori family mansion. He parked outside the property, half-expecting her to show up like she always would. No lights were on in the home. He wondered if she had changed her passcode after the months they had been apart.

It was wrong to do it. He knew it. But damn he was curious. How pathetic was this? If any one of his friends had caught him like this, Kyouya would never hear the end of it. Her house was still dark, even past the point of time where she would usually be home. It was odd.

Where would she be?

The Ootori refused to believe the rumours. They were rumours, after all. Whisperings of the rich and famous were only entertainment at best. If she really was hospitalized, he would have known about it – near immediately. Most families would have alerted the Ootoris of their VIP status for faster and more specialized treatment.

Why would they not do that for her? It didn't make sense. She had to have been alright.

They say she was in a car accident.

Conveniently, her car was nowhere to be found. The lights still did not light up inside her home. It was getting late. He knew that about her – always home by 7 at the latest. Enough time to cook and eat something by 8. He would be home with her by then. In bed by 10, and later, if he were with her. Kyouya willed himself to think logically.

How much later was he willing to stay? To wait for this woman to just turn a goddamn light on?

His mind wandered over to why she would disappear. Was it just to get the rich talking? It didn't seem like her to pull a PR stunt – she would not stoop so low to rouse a reaction out of their high society, she never needed to. The rock that sat in his stomach had now grown into a boulder that weighed his shoulders down. He stared into the dark house.

She wasn't there.

Aren't you worried? His friends all turned to him in concern.

"Shit," he muttered to himself. Maybe his friends weren't joking after all.

It took him over a month to track her down to an area where he thought she would be. And even then, he couldn't travel two hours away to hang around in a small town when he had work commitments for most of the week. His weekends were spent pouring over the little clues he had of her.

He had no access to patient lists at each of his hospitals, it was a violation of privacy after all. But he could scour the entire country for the Hibayashi hospitals and see where the Ootori Group's hospitals had intersected. From the rumours of her checking into her family's psychiatric care after being treated in one of his hospitals, it only left one particular location in a city that was nestled in between the mountains and forest.

Her phone number was of course, unreachable but it somehow made sense that her area code was Kōfu and not Tokyo. She had to be around in that vicinity, it was just a matter of where. Kyouya found an article of a fatal car crash from a local newspaper, completed with photos of the aftermath and the debris. The license plate was blurred but he could recognize the same make of the Mercedes that she had driven even if the frame was mangled.

It was a hit and run case that was still unsolved. And even more of a mystery was reading that there were two people in the vehicle with one fatality. He had put his family's own police force to work but to no avail. Somehow, she really did disappear without a trace and he had to see it for himself.

Kyouya had refused to believe that she was dead. He had to go confirm it himself from Nami, who was oddly calm about the disappearance of her employer.

"Where is she?" he asked, trying his best to hide the desperate plea in the back of his throat.
"I don't know, Ootori-san," Nami was tight-lipped. "She wouldn't tell me even if I asked. Hibayashi-san sends her regards to all those who have wished her a speedy recovery, of course."

"Are you not worried?"
"She has explicitly told me not to worry," the assistant-turned-curator answered curtly. "I am so sorry to ask you to leave but we are very busy here." Nami pointed towards the paintings being delivered by the contractors. "Hibayashi-san would be upset knowing that there is another delay under my watch. She's still my boss," Nami reminded politely.

Kyouya frowned. "She was hospitalized."
"Yes," the woman's patience was waning thinner by the second.
"Do you know if she's—"

Nami sighed. "I don't know anything, Ootori-san. I don't know how she handled all of this," she pointed towards the space that was becoming more of a gallery by the minute. "All by herself. But she was damn well good at it and I would hope that I could come close to pulling this off. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a meeting to get to with another client."

Kyouya was shoved out the door by a security guard and was annoyed by the whole interaction for the entire week. So now he was mindlessly walking through this small town, stupidly replaying the interaction he had with Nami now well over a month ago. He stopped at the intersection of where the crash would have been, taking note of the metal pole that had paint from the Mercedes that had speared through the middle of it. The pole had clearly won the battle as it was still standing, now months after the crash.

I don't want to see you anymore.

So why was he here? Picking up the pieces of what never was real to begin with? Kyouya was looking for some kind of closure in this mess that he entangled himself in and it looked bleaker by the minute as he was hung up over this for months.

His legs brought him to the rumoured psychiatric ward that she had been staying in. You would have never guessed that it was a facility of that sort – the building itself looked like a resort. The front foyer looked like a lobby of a hotel. This was the sort of care only the rich could afford. He walked over to the front desk and asked if anyone under the name Hibayashi had checked in.

"Are you family or….?"
"No," Kyouya muttered. What were they anyway? Friends? No, probably acquaintances at best.
"Are they expecting you, at all?"
"No," the Ootori admitted.

The receptionist gave a polite smile. "I'm sorry, we cannot disclose any information about our guests unless you have an appointment, sir."

Guests, Kyouya repeated to himself. They weren't treated as patients but guests. Truly, this was how the Hibayashis got rich, after all.

"Upper management? Have they stopped by?" Kyouya tried again. Kiyoko was of course, considered upper management as the heiress to it all.
"Once again, sir, do you have an appointment—"
"Never mind," Kyouya growled. This was a dead end. Even if she were checked in, it only made sense to do it under a pseudonym. And of course, these people would be absolute idiots if they didn't recognize the sole daughter of the Hibayashi family itself.

The Ootori left the building with a scowl. This was a waste of his time.

Time wasted, yes, her voice repeated in his mind.

He hated himself for it.

He was going crazy without the answers he needed. Kyouya was going absolutely mad without her. All he wanted to know was if she was okay, he told himself. Just a simple yes would do.

Her body ached in ways she never knew could hurt even months after being discharged from the hospital. The cottage felt emptier, colder, and at times, even terrifying when it grew dark. But she stayed anyway, hibernating in the last remnants of what her brother had left behind.

All she had were memories of him. And of course, the tears that flooded her eyes when she thought of how empty she felt without him. She hid in the woods, letting the sound of the heavy winds howl through the night as she stayed up unable to sleep. Kiyoko tiredly tended to the fireplace to keep herself warm.

Kiyoko paid no attention to the time. Nami would call every so often, distracting her from the dull throb of her head and the pang in her chest. How much of it was emotional? How much of it was physical? It all blurred together into a blanket of hurt that she could not escape from.

Business dealings became scarcer as she refused calls, diverting them to Nami. That poor woman was probably being stretched thinner than she had ever been. Kiyoko deposited an extra few thousand in that woman's bank account, hoping that the financial gain would ease a bit of the stress she had withstood over the past few months.

Had it been months already? After all, it had been about 7 bi-weekly paycheques, if she counted right.

It didn't feel like it. Autumn was spent pining over the days where her and Haru would kick leaves through the forest, stomping on the golden brown foliage to feel the crunch beneath their feet. Snow had suddenly begun to pile outside and she was reminded of the days they would toss snow into each other's faces, well into their adulthood. He was her other half, her best friend, and the whole reason for living through this high society. Now it all felt pointless.

His urn had been sitting above the fireplace and Kiyoko could not bear to leave what remained of him. When the sunlight broke through the windows, Kiyoko had still been awake watching the fire slowly put itself out. She lived through a daze – sometimes lucky enough to fall asleep for an hour at a time. When the door creaked open, Kiyoko had hardly heard it. Toshio-san gruffly stomped into the kitchen with a frown.

"Oi, you're going to get snowed in like this," he scolded, obviously tired from shoveling out the driveway. "What have you been doing? You look awful. Did you eat breakfast?"

Kiyoko stood up from the couch and immediately fell back down when the dizziness shook her legs into twigs that snapped at the slightest weight. She groaned in response.

"No, she didn't fuckin' eat," the family chauffeur yelled into the foyer. Kiyoko could hear more shuffling from the doorway. It sounded like Maoru-san's voice.

"Why is the fridge still full? Kiyoko! You hardly ate any of the fruits we brought you two weeks ago! And why are there still leftovers? You have to eat!" the woman reprimanded.

Kiyoko had no appetite. She had no will to do much but to live in this bubble of grief. They say such phases would pass but she began wondering if she was just the exception to the rule. She was stuck. She was stuck for what happened to be months, apparently.

"Let's go out for a walk," Toshio ordered the slump of the body on the couch.
"It's cold," Kiyoko grumbled not moving an inch.

"A drive, then," the man tried again.
"I don't want to drive." Kiyoko heard it this time, she truly sounded like a whining child.

"Oi," the old man shook the girl's shoulders. "You have to go outside."
"No, I don't," she scowled. "I'm an adult. I do what I want."

"Says the woman who doesn't have a job."
Kiyoko pursed her lips. "I have a job," she answered in defiance.
"Wallowing is not a paying job, kid. Come on. Get up. Eat something. Let's go for a drive," Toshio-san encouraged with the tough love he always gave her.

Forcing herself to eat a bowl of rice and some soup, the woman begrudgingly put on the coat that the man held up for her so they could go on the said drive. Maoru-san stayed behind, doing the usual housekeeping duties and even cleaning out the fridge of the food that Kiyoko hadn't eaten. On the driveway, Toshio-san slipped into the passenger seat where Kiyoko had expected to go, leaving her on the other side with the steering wheel.

"Come on, it's not like you're sixteen again," the chauffer grumbled. "You know how to drive."
"I know," she muttered.

But she couldn't help but to stare at the dashboard, her mind drawing a blank.

"I know how to drive," Kiyoko slowly said. "I just cannot remember anything of that night except… eating conbini food with Haru. I don't remember anything of the accident."
"No one is asking you to," Toshio-san sighed. "Kid, it wasn't your fault."
"I cannot confirm nor deny that fact – my memory is a fucking blank slate," she grew angrier at the thought of it. "My fucking brain just shut off. How could it just… how could I let it happ—"

"It was a hit and run," Toshio-san repeated himself. "Kiyoko, it was never your fault. Somebody rammed into your vehicle and left you to fucking die."
"And I couldn't have swerved or something?" she wailed. "I couldn't have done anything? I… I was just useless the whole time?"
"Kiyoko, you could have died!" Toshio-san shouted. "You could have very well not been alive to see the light of day."
"It should have been me!" she yelled back. "I should have died. I should have—"
"Stop it," he ordered. "Start the damn car. Get over yourself, Kiyoko. It's been months."

The woman frowned and turned on the ignition. Muscle memory served her easily, her foot slowly pushing off the clutch into putting the car in motion.

"Where are we going?" she gritted out, pulling out into the paved road.
"Straight ahead," Toshio-san guided with the same angry tone, unafraid of the youngest Hibayashi. "Take a left at the stop sign."

Within half an hour, they ended up where she least expected. She pulled the SUV over to the parking lot and stared at the building with their family name plastered over the top.

"What the fuck? You're telling me to—"
"Get a fucking job," Toshio demanded. "You sit in that fucking house all day. Go get a fucking job, kid. Might as well start here," he pointed at their family hospital. It looked like a hotel or maybe even a luxurious resort.

"Fuck no!" Kiyoko refused. "Why would I come here?"
"Get some fuckin' therapy or whatever while you're at it, maybe?"
"This place is a sham. Our whole business preys on the weak and mentally ill! And even worse, the system works because everyone here is filthy rich," Kiyoko snapped. "I refuse to be a part of this hell."

"Then do something with your life. You've been rotting away in that house."
"I've been grieving," Kiyoko snapped. "Let me fucking live."
"You don't sleep, you don't eat, you don't fucking do anything but somehow breathe!" Toshio pointed out. "Get some fucking help."

"I don't get a family discount," she snapped.
"Then get better," he challenged.
"Fuck you," Kiyoko snarled.
"Right back at you, kid."

Kiyoko had always been labelled as crazy but she knew she wasn't. Not like this. When she woke at 4 in the morning and could not go back to sleep, she decided to get out of the house. Something inside of her felt restless, almost aching for some sort of physical need to be worn out.

It was something Haru would have never agreed to. She knew she had reached a new level of insanity and officially had lost her mind when she felt the need to stuff the ashes of Haru in a backpack as she forcibly drove through the mountain terrain to reach a trailhead.

"Look," she breathed when she reached the summit. The sun was just beginning to rise. "We could've seen this if you just said yes."

She was crazy. She was talking to no one. No one alive, anyway. Did it feel right to have him rest here?

Kiyoko let the sun rise over her. It was another day. Another day to try something new. A new beginning.

Let go.

"No," she shook her head to herself. "Not yet. I'm not ready to let go." But she took a photo with her phone, capturing the sun in all of its glory. "We'll try again tomorrow."

It became a weird habit of hers, scouting out locations and watching the sunrise at different places around the area. The views were breathtaking and the trails were empty. Winter was not a big season for tourism. It was the perfect time to appreciate the quietness of nature. Somehow, she felt more connected to her brother in the silence of the howling wind or the serenity of the snow crunching beneath her feet. He loved the quiet, the tender moments of silence.

"You would have painted this," she murmured to herself as she snapped a phot of the frozen lake. "And I would have wanted to skate on this lake like we used to with the pond back home."

The emptiness in her heart never subsided. The ache in her chest dulled into a sad reminder. The echoes of the cottage only reminded her that he was gone. Kiyoko put the urn back where she had initially left it after every trip.

Letting go was hard.

She inadvertently became a night owl, sleeping in small increments over the day as she could not sleep at night. So much so that it made sense to walk into the local bar with a handwritten Help Wanted sign on the door on one of her trips into town for food and toiletries. Toshio-san would have been disappointed at the choice of her job but silently serving drinks behind a bar while listening to the chatter of the town had distracted her from other thoughts that gnawed at the back of her mind. It gave her some kind of routine to follow after so many months of just sitting on the ground and staring at the ceiling or the fire.

It was a quiet little bar, hidden in an alleyway where only locals would have known about it. The interior was beautifully decorated with wooden panels and little booths, the menu not posted anywhere. The place served seasonal local sake and beer that no menu was needed. The bar was so secluded, it reminded her of the one speakeasy that she had met Kyouya in for the first time. Kiyoko never let her mind wander too far about him but it always ended in the hope that he was doing well. Maybe, just maybe, he was happier now.

He deserved that happiness, after all.

"What brings you to this tiny little resort town, pretty lady?" A man over on the other side flashed a smile at her.
"Peace and quiet," Kiyoko answered, paying no mind to flirtatious tone.

Word around town was that there was a bartender that was rather easy on the eyes. People, both men and women, came to look to see what the fuss was all about. Kiyoko did not dress in her usual flare of course – she left behind all of her designer dresses and sunglasses in Tokyo. She came to work with a muted lip and some mascara, hair drawn back in a braid. She carried herself with sophistication, something she could never quite shake off. It was her dead giveaway that she was not from around here.

"When does your shift end?" A man asked, eyeing her from head to toe. He liked what he saw with her jeans that hugged her curves, the sweater that hung off her shoulder to show just enough skin to satiate his thirst for something a little more.
"When the sun rises," she responded coldly.
"You're a vampire, or something?"

Kiyoko tilted her head at him and looked him dead in the eye. "I do like the colour of blood very much."

The man could not pinpoint the lie in her voice and turned his attention elsewhere, too afraid to order another drink from the mysterious woman. She had the eyes and the voice of a serial killer. Kiyoko was never really one to be in a customer-facing role but sometimes, it was fun to watch a man squirm in discomfort. Kiyoko quietly poured a shot of sake for another customer and moved on.

It wasn't much but it was honest work.

He hated to admit it but he paid way too much fucking money to even consider taking off that stupid painting that hung on the wall across from his desk. Instead, Kyouya spent more time with his chair swiveled around to stare at the wall behind him, barren and white that was distinctly not the colour that reminded him of the woman he was in love with.

In love with, he scoffed. He was so pathetic. How could he let himself sink so low over someone who didn't even care? She would never know the amount of hours he poured into trying to find her. And what did it matter anyway?

I don't want to see you anymore.

His assistant called near the end of the workday, fishing him out of his stupor over the stupid white wall.

"Ootori-san, you have a visitor in the lobby at the front desk. He goes by Toshio-san?"
"What?" Kyouya blinked in disbelief.
"Toshio-san," they repeated. "Should we let him up?"

Kyouya looked at the time. It was nearing 4 PM. Fuck it, it wasn't like he had any work to be done. His mind had been distracted for months. Maybe he would finally get the answers he needed. He scrambled to put together the documents that were laid across his desk.

"No," the Ootori refused. "Tell him I'll see him in a few minutes."

He rushed out the glass doors of his office and jumped on the elevator, annoyed by all the stops along the way that carried the rest of the employees down to the lobby at the end of the day. No one made eye contact with the young Ootori out of respect and also out of fear. He spotted the burly man without his usual uniform of a suit hanging behind a pillar with his arms crossed.

"Jeez," the old man huffed when he recognized the spectacled CEO. "You look like shit… do you not sleep, either?"
"What do you mean?" Kyouya frowned, obviously unamused by the lack of respect in the Hibayashi chauffeur's greeting. Kyouya let him off easy, knowing that the old man had answers and he was not about to piss him off.

"Never mind," Toshio-san waved off. Both Kiyoko and Kyouya looked like they had gone through months of sleep deprivation, a scowl on both their faces, and an attitude made for one another. "Let's talk outside, kid."

Kyouya followed him out to a bench at a nearby subway stop. Commoners shuffled by in large crowds, swallowing them whole so they could remain anonymous.

"I'm worried about Kiyoko," Toshio-san admitted outright.
"She's… alive?" Kyouya breathed a sigh of relief. "She's alright?"

The old man shook his head. "She's alive, she's just…" The old man took out his pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. He lit one up and placed it between his lips, itching for relief from being high strung for the entire day. When his shoulders finally relaxed, he looked up at the sky and avoided the piercing gaze of the Ootori that bore into his skull.

"She's having a hard time," the old man explained.
"Why?" Kyouya pressed on. "Who was in the car with her?"

Toshio was taken back, wondering how much the boy knew. It was clear that the Ootori had done his own research and had thought about her more than he had let on. He still cared for her. It was a good sign. The old man answered with a shake of his head. "Can't tell you that, son."

"Is she in the psychiatric…" Kyouya trailed off. Were the rumours true?
"Nah," Toshio-san shook his head. "She hates that stuff, family business and all."

"Where is she?"

The chauffeur stuck the cigarette between his lips and used both his hand to pull out a notepad and ripped out a page from it. "Here," he shoved into the chest of the Ootori. Kyouya looked down at the handwritten address.

"What is this?"
"She works there, apparently," Toshio-san rolled his eyes. "Told me to visit."
"Did you?" he raised an eyebrow, curious to know more.

The elder gave a shit-faced grin. "She's gonna hate me for this but you should go there instead."
"And do what?" Kyouya frowned.

The man stood before taking a puff of the cigarette. "I dunno," he shook his head. "Talk some sense into her, I guess? She's been blamin' herself over nothing. She probably wants me to know that she's doing alright but we all know she's talkin' shit."

"What is she…" he trailed off on confusion. "What's wrong? What is she blaming herself for? She didn't cause the accident."
"Your girl is in a rut, idiot," the old man rolled his eyes. "Just go see her, yeah?"

The Ootori stared at the piece of paper in his hands, the wind threatening to snatch it out of his grip. He held on a little tighter knowing that this was the only option. He called Kiyoko his girl. He scoffed at the thought. As if he ever had her in the first place.

"Hey," Toshio-san snapped his fingers in front of the Ootori. "Stop day dreaming. Promise me you'll talk to her?"
"Yes," Kyouya nodded, agreeing without thinking enough about it. "Of course."

"And the next time I see her, she better not be a fucking shell of a human," Toshio-san warned.
"Yes, sir," the Ootori promised firmly.

What did he just agree to?

She had been working for well over a month now, her body accustomed to the night life. The quiet mornings of the sunrise gave her some peace as she walked to where her car (or rather, the family car generously dropped off by Toshio-san) was parked. She lived in a constant state of exhaustion but there was comfort in the routine she had finally built. Hiking on the weekends during the day and working in the evenings. She lived like a hermit, not needing much else besides a steady paycheque and some food. The occasional frantic call from Nami topped off some of her days but all in all, Kiyoko had become quite proud of how her reluctant protégé had blossomed.

Kiyoko's ears were no longer annoyed by noise and the chatter as the night went on. People came and went in their own little groups, some were solo drinkers that were left alone, some tried their best to make conversation with her. But her cold expression made her rather unapproachable despite looking pretty.

Today she wore her hair down, her hair held back by a scarf that was folded as a headband. If anyone had known better, they would have seen that it was a Dior scarf, printed in the finest mulberry silk. Her hair fell in waves down her shoulders, her collarbones exposed in a square cut bodysuit tucked into a comfortable pair of jeans. Her lips were painted in a nude shade, her eyes tightlined with a layer of mascara. Kiyoko did her best to dress like a commoner and quite frankly, she thought she was doing a good job of it.

Weeknights were quiet with the exception of Fridays. The weekends got rowdier. Locals filled the little pub and Kiyoko had gotten used to the regulars who would order the same seasonal sake or a round of beers. On a slow Thursday night, she heard the bell ring to signal a customer.

"Irasshaimase," she dully greeted with her usual nonchalant tone. She didn't look up from the bar, quietly assuming that the person would tell her the order and she would carry on her usual job of dropping off the drinks without needing much interaction.

The figure sat right across from her while she had her back turned. She was sorting out the clean glassware and ceramics, putting them back on the shelf. She reached onto her tippy toes to try to tip the last cup onto the shelf. Damn her short fucking stature, sometimes it really was inconvenient.

"What can I get you?" her deep voice echoed through the empty bar.
"The most expensive drink you have to offer," they coolly responded.

She laughed lightly at the request. "A sake that is 60,000 yen a bottle?"
"Sure," they agreed.

Kiyoko kept her eyes focused on the task, now climbing onto the step ladder to grab the aged bottle of sake that had been sitting on the shelf for god knows how long. She had hoped that the quality had lived up to its price.

"It is served best while chilled," Kiyoko explained as she set down the bottle while climbing down from the ladder. "Let me put this in an ice bath. I hope you don't mind the wait."
"Not a problem."

Kiyoko had yet to make eye contact with the mysterious high spender but she did not seem to bat an eye at such a customer. After all, a 60 000 yen bottle was comparable to a vintage Dom Perignon, a classic order from the rich. Kiyoko set the ice bath together and began gathering the right ceramic set to serve it with. She decided on her favourite, the dark navy that was glazed in a beautiful matte texture. Kiyoko wondered if she should buy a set for her own home. But then again, she hadn't been home in so long. What did it matter anyway? Kiyoko ventured into the kitchen, disappearing behind the curtains.

"Food?" she asked from the back. Kiyoko had trained her voice to project over what was usually a loud crowd. Their cook was running late but Kiyoko could easily whip something up. She was no stranger to the culinary world, after all.

"Whatever you think would pair well."

She thought about it for a minute and quickly decided on a platter of shiokara, tsukemono, and grilled unagi. She plated it in such a way that her family chef would have approved, hoping that the flavours would meld well with the sake that was chilled in the fridge after twenty minutes of prep. Kiyoko expertly balanced the plates on her forearm and placed them in front of the customer who had been wearing a prim suit. She had been too focused to not drop the food to look up at the man's face. At the very least, it seemed like he could certainly afford their most expensive drink from the well-tailored seams she saw from the corner of her eye.

"I'll be right back with the chilled sake," she politely informed before shuffling into the back. As a server, she carried out the ceramic set with the chilled bottle of alcohol with grace. Her fingers gripped the end of the glass to pour enough into the small cup, her eyes focused on not letting any drop go to waste.

"Are we expecting guests?" she asked quietly. Kiyoko had another matching cup to match the ceramic set right behind her, in case the customer had company on the way.

"No," he answered.

Kiyoko nodded in understanding. "Well then," her eyes finally flitted upwards. "Please enjoy," she lifted up her head to finally look him in the face and nearly dropped the expensive bottle of sake in her hands. Thank goodness for her fast reflexes. Her heart had skipped a beat at the sight of him. His tired eyes hid behind his usual glasses, his hair had been cut slightly shorter than what she remembered months ago. She missed raking her fingers through his soft hair. Did he lose weight or was his bone structure always so defined? No, he must have lost weight, she noticed. What was Kyouya doing here?

"I'd like it if you could join me," he offered gently, afraid to scare her off.

"I don't fraternize with customers," Kiyoko cleared her throat and gently placed the bottle of sake down in front of him. She bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from saying anything further. She was saved by another ring of the bell and her attention was whisked away by a whole group of people.

"Irasshaimase," she greeted again in her usual bored tone, turning away from him and moving towards the new customers.