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“Tsk. My stomach’s been cramping since earlier,” he grouches, the moment that he looks up and smells a familiar scent of astringent medicine and a perfume with lilies as the base notes. “Should have known that it’s a warning sign of an incoming plague.”
Dazai tucks a stray lock of long hair behind an ear, but it’s too little to make an impact to her otherwise messy bird’s nest of a head. She claims it’s called ‘artfully tousled’ and that he’s just too barbaric to appreciate such things. He knows that it’s utter bullshit, and she’s just too lazy to comb her hair after rolling out of her futon. “That’s too much, Chuuya. How can you call someone so beautiful a plague?”
He makes a show of looking past her, before frowning. “Huh. I don’t see anyone who’d match the word ‘beautiful’ around.”
“That’s just because you’re too short to see anything,” she counters primly, before doing something scandalous, like shoving her chest into his face. She’s the pillar of feminine grace to anyone else, demure and polite even when she’s filled with deadly sarcasm. To Chuuya, she acts like a rogue who’s out to swindle everything from him, including his life.
“Shut the hell up, stinky beanpole who wears heels.”
“I’m making you feel better,” she says. “If people see that I’m still taller than you even without heels, won’t they take pity on you?” She taps her chapped lips using her fingernails that are bitten to the edge. “On that note, maybe they’d have me arrested for kidnapping a kid…”
He rolls his eyes and swats her eye using a rolled-up worksheet. “The easiest solution is for you to get the fuck out of my sight permanently.”
“And skip on annoying you?” Her eyes are huge. “Plus, don’t tell me that you didn’t miss me while I was away.”
Whip-quick, “I definitely didn’t. I even treated Sheep to a meal just to celebrate Yokohama air being free of stinky fishiness.”
Dazai pouts, jutting out her lips that have definitely been bitten as part of her habit when bored. Her complexion isn’t good, which means that she definitely didn’t bother with the bare minimum of self-care while she was out of the city. “You treated your little followers, but you’re so stingy when your girlfriend asks you for pocket money?”
“They’re not my little followers, oi.” He shoots her a look. “And I also don’t have a girlfriend!”
Flippant, “Owner, master, whatever.”
“I don’t have that either!”
She puts her hands on her hips, looking down at him with a haughty sneer. “Why, are you introducing me to others as your darling wife instead? You are so embarrassing, chibikko.”
He takes out his phone, scrolls to his contacts, then shows off the one that’s tagged [shitty mackerel pest]. “That’s how I introduce you to anyone unfortunate enough to need to know about you.”
She’s unaffected by his acidity. “I understand. You’re such a naughty delinquent, so you don’t want anyone knowing about your dearest darling angel of a girlfriend, so you don’t let them know about me.” She wipes fake tears, sniffling a bit. “It’s so embarrassing how much you like me, really. I would be very touched if I wasn’t feeling disgusted.”
He looks around the rooftop and regrets his decision to eat lunch here. Especially regrets how his reputation is so powerful that him sauntering here has everyone rushing away. Now, he doesn’t have anyone to commiserate with when it comes to dealing with all of this nonsense. “You’ve only been back here for a few minutes and I already want you out of the country immediately.”
Her lips curve up as she takes something out of her skirt. She likes to wear long skirts because she has an incurable princess disease, as well as the delusion that Chuuya would die of jealousy if she bares her legs to the world. Not that they’d actually be bared, with all of her bandages acting as second skin.
In any case, she rucks her skirts up, right in front of his eyes, no shame and no concept of propriety whatsoever. There’s a box strapped up high on her thigh using bandages, and he averts his eyes so his eyeballs wouldn’t burn.
…Well, that’s part of the plan, but he catches a glimpse of something important.
Eyes twitching, “…Oi, bastard. Lie if you must. Are you wearing my boxers right now?!”
“They’re my boxers now,” the brazen thief declares. “It’s your fault for not locking your room properly. Isn’t it just your way of inviting me to sneak in and steal your clothes?”
He has the urge to shake her neck. “I had it triple-locked!”
She snickers, then covers his face with her long skirt, cocooning him inside this umbrella. She bends down and pets his hair over the cloth, nonchalantly shoving his nose to her thighs. “Just three locks? Are you underestimating my lock-picking skills, shorty?”
The urge to throttle her morphs into a desire to bite her, but she’d just titter in laughter and accuse him of wanting to put hickeys on her. He settles for punching her knees, to which she whines incessantly about “brutish slugs who’d never grow tall”.
His lunch is spent this way, with him trying to fend off a fishy woman’s attacks to his food and his sanity.
When the bell rings to signal the end of the break, Dazai raises her eyebrows at him when he starts to make his way off the rooftop. “The notorious leader of Sheep, the shortest delinquent ever in Yokohama… is going to class on time?”
With a heavy eyeroll, “I’m not like you who likes to skip classes all the time.”
“It can’t be helped. My body is unwell, so I need to rest at the infirmary a lot.” For someone who’s supposedly so unwell, she’s energetically hopping around to buzz around him like a persistent hummingbird. She keeps on trying to rub the top of his head, emphasizing their height difference.
“Why can’t you just make that rest permanent?” A rhetorical question that hasn’t had answers for the past three years that he’s known her. “Or you could have just stayed out of the city.”
She juggles the box that has been strapped to her thigh, then presents it with a flourish to him. It’s not small enough to be suspected of a wedding ring, thankfully. Knowing this fucker, she’d make a show of insisting that he take responsibility for her, then force a poisoned ring to his finger and cause him severe stomachache for weeks.
“It’s not a ring,” Dazai singsongs, “but isn’t it quite telling that you’re expecting something like that?”
“Only because I know how shitty you are.”
“How mean! I even got you some cigarettes!” She opens the box, and takes out a packet of cigarettes in heavy gold-plated wood casing. They’re unlike the ones that he occasionally smokes after a hard-fought defense of Sheep’s territory. These ones look very expensive. “I had to suffer from so much boredom when Mori-san brought me to inspect some businesses abroad, so I had to entertain myself somehow.”
He watches her pick up two cigarettes, her slender fingers swiftly distributing it between their lips. Dazai lights up hers first, eyes bright with something beyond the flame that burns at the end of her stick. She leans close, arms hanging at the back of his neck, and she lets the ends of their cigarettes have a mockery of a kiss. She stays close, extending the moment, before pulling back and blowing smoke at him.
A gray cloud mists over him. The smell would be impossible to remove from his clothes at such fast notice, which means that if he goes down now, everyone would know that he’s spent lunchtime smoking on the rooftop. More than that, everyone would know that he’s spent it with Dazai, if she saunters back to her classroom while smelling exactly like him.
“Since you don’t want to declare me as your girlfriend,” Dazai has the gall the pout at him. “I have to stake my claim some other way.”
He doesn’t bother reminding her about the choker he wears on his neck, something that has Sakaguchi having ulcers over at the violation of the school dress code. He exhales smoke, and blows it back to her.
She looks like she has no plans of attending classes today, and that’s pretty much expected of her. Most days, she only ever goes to school to mooch off lunch from him, then drag him around after classes or the occasional club activities. Her exam scores remain at the top of their batch, and she only ever studies Chuuya’s notebooks in order to poke fun at him.
“If you’re going to nap here, it’s bound to be cold with the breeze blowing.” He shrugs off his outer coat, and throws it towards her face. “I’m lending that to you, so make sure you clean it before returning it to me.”
Despite his words, he has zero hope that Dazai wouldn’t deliberately dirty it.
She makes a face at it, like it’s full of filth. “Chuuya, I’m insulted that you think this would fit me. Do you need a reminder about our height difference?”
“What does height have to with it?! You’re supposed to use it as a jacket, genius.”
“But it’s so small and short and smells so much like you,” are her rapid-fire complaints, even as she’s already wearing it like a cape. She makes a show of sniffing at it, then sticking her tongue out. “Is this equivalent to a dog marking his owner? Didn’t think you had it in you, chibi.”
“I think you’re not thinking at all, if you think I wouldn’t beat you up if you continue yapping nonsense.” He throws the remainder of his cigarette towards her, because he knows that she’d want to do something with it, like maybe cast a voodoo curse on him or something stupid. “I’m going.”
He’d be late for the next class, but it’s not as if the teachers would have the balls to bar him entry to the classroom. He’s a bit absentminded during the succeeding lessons, because he’s trying to sniff out Dazai’s motives for being extra-annoying today. She’d usually let out retching sounds whenever someone is blind enough to ask them if they’re dating or whatever. But she’s very vocal today about being ‘his girlfriend’, even going so far as to steal clothes from him.
Is she undergoing menopause or something? Or did something happen during her trip abroad? As the adopted daughter of the President of Mori Corporation, her future is already ironed out for her. As the adopted daughter of the Boss of Yokohama’s biggest mafia organization, her future is very precarious, because there are still a lot of misogynistic pigs who thinks that women shouldn’t be able to lead the underground.
Having known her for three years now, he doesn’t bother feeling worried about her. She’s too crafty to be pitted by those who want her dead, or those who want her head. She probably has several plans written down in a cutesy notebook, all flowery stickers and glitter pens, about a systematic torture method for assassins that she’d capture before they could attack her.
Time passes swiftly, and he feels more uneasy as nothing explodes.
At the end of class, he checks his phone for messages from Sheep. Everything is fine so far, just some minor scuffle that Akira got into, and Yuan dipping into their funds to buy notebooks for some of their younger members. Shirase’s out trying to renegotiate with GSS, but nobody stops him from what’s a futile endeavor. They’re a juvenile gang, after all, one that’s focused on protecting the youth and their turf and zero plans on expansion whatsoever.
That they haven’t been bulldozed over by more powerful underground organizations around them, he knows that it’s not solely due to his presence being a major deterrent. He’s strong enough to defeat all the idiots who come swaggering into their territory, but that’s because they don’t actually bring high-level weapons. No matter how strong his kicks are, they’re not going to be effective against machine guns.
He bites his lip as he mulls things over. He knows that Dazai is using her influence as Port Mafia’s shitty princess, in order to suppress arms trade towards their rival groups. Is that why she’s been dragged abroad to do a tour of their businesses? To be reminded that she couldn’t just do such things without the approval of the higher-ups?
Having her gone from his hair is a lovely idea, but—
His phone rings, jolting him out of his thoughts. Somehow, he finds himself on the rooftop, no leftover scent from the mackerel anymore. He narrows his eyes at the blank number. He picks up the call, and waits.
He doesn’t have to wait long. There’s a soft chuckle on the other end, greasy like silk dipped in blood being dangled in front of his nose. “We have your beautiful girlfriend,” the man on the phone tells him serenely. “I’m generous enough to give you a chance to say goodbye to her in person.”
“You’ve got the wrong number,” is his stone-cold response, before decisively hanging up.
He’s been expecting some bullshit since earlier, and now that it’s arrived, he feels calm. A kidnapping. Fine. That’s fine. That’s easy to solve. He just has to find that shitty Dazai, then smack her for giving him extra work when there’s a pile of homework to be done.
He has to rebuff invitations for a street basketball game, and he puts the issue with GSS in the backburner. He thinks back to their conversation earlier, replays it in his mind as he thinks as to how to solve this matter.
Dazai getting herself into trouble so she could watch him rescue her—it’s part of her usual bad taste. She must have been really bored during her time away from Yokohama, if she’s already doing this within her first day of return.
Judging from the guy’s voice, he’s not someone who’s been in the country long enough to achieve a local accent. He also doesn’t sound like any other group that he’s dealt with before.
He grits his teeth, now aware that there’s a big possibility that this is a whole-new organization that Dazai has roped into her schemes. “That shitty mackerel, I’m really going to strangle her once I see her…”
He looks around the rooftop, then spots the case where the cigarettes came from earlier. He examines it, then dismantles the whole thing, until he’s looking at a piece of paper that has several numbers in it. Coordinates. So even her location is within her calculations, which means that she has made perfect plans for this.
It also means that he can take his time rescuing her, because her life isn’t in immediate danger.
He makes a point of dropping by the supermarket first, doing some light grocery shopping for tonight’s dinner ingredients. He leisurely drives to the destination, avoiding all traffic cameras. There is no designated parking spot in the vicinity of a closed-down cigarette manufacturer, so he just floors it and drives his bike past the door and directly to where Dazai is being held captive.
He opens his mouth, ready to berate her for being so annoying.
“Wrong number?” Before he can say anything, a man wearing an ushanka tilts his head in askance. “You are quite the heroic private citizen if you’ve come here, for someone who claims to not know this woman.”
He barely glances at the other man. His gaze zeroes in on the way Dazai’s hair has grown messier, and how there’s a bruise on her face. “I’m about to cook crab hotpot,” he says, ice-cold. “I’m just here to pick up my shitty pet fish so she can be the taste-tester.”
At the mention of her favorite ingredient, Dazai perks up from where she’s tied up on the floor. “My tiny hero,” she simpers, fluttering her eyelashes. “Go on and beat Fyodor-kun’s gang so I can eat crab!”
“Shut the hell up and play rock music if you really want to be noisy!”
She sniffs, “You’re such a simple man with such simple tastes, you’re lucky you bought crab so I will tolerate you.”
Fyodor’s smile is stiff. “You’re really quite the poisonous woman, Dazai-kun.”
Suddenly, this man is a lot more pleasing to Chuuya’s eyes. “Right? She’s really so annoying.” The moment of camaraderie doesn’t last long, as Chuuya crosses the distance between them so he can deliver a sharp punch towards the other’s face. “But, she’s my pet fish, so you’re not allowed to hurt her, damn it!”
After that, it’s a full-on brawl. Two dozen or so gang members fall to his feet. They’re physically strong, but there’s no coordination in their numbers, making it easy to fell them in succession. The only advantage brought by the crowd is that Fyodor slips away in the commotion.
He thinks about chasing after the other gang leader, but then he doesn’t want to risk the fresh crabs escaping. He looks at where Dazai has escaped from her binds, and is now bent towards his bike, cooing at the container of the crabs. “You are going to be very delicious in my stomach later,” she croons at them, before turning to him with sparkling eyes. “Chuuya, you look so handsome now, you remind me of crabs!”
He smacks her forearm. “You’re goddamn blind!”
“Mm, that’s true. How could I ever insult delicious crabs by comparing them to you.”
He smacks her again. “You’ve just returned and you’re already planning so much shit!”
“Eh, didn’t you enjoy rescuing me like some tiny prince?”
“The ‘tiny’ is unnecessary!”
She smiles, sitting sideways on the bike and opening her long legs, wrapping his waist in them. “Fyodor-kun’s ambition is high, but he’s smart. He knows he wouldn’t be able to cause trouble in your turf, so he’d focus his sights on the West side of the city.”
His nose is filled with her smell, even without her embracing him tight enough that his face is smothered in her chest full of padding. He doesn’t have any opinion on what’s the best breast size—it’s not him who has them, after all—but Dazai whines so much about wanting to suffocate him in her chest, so…
…wait.
He rearranges his thoughts that have started to gone astray. He narrows his eyes. “You want him to pester GSS instead.”
“And with GSS too busy to even consider Shirase-kun’s approaches, then they definitely wouldn’t work with Sheep.” Dazai blinks at him, her face obviously looking to be showered with praise. “Then, you wouldn’t have to worry about how to dampen your little gang’s hopes about collaborating with a bigger organization.”
He stiffens slightly at those words. He’s been hoping to remind them that Sheep’s rule is to fight back, but only when attacked. There’s no room for territory expansion for them. But, he also doesn’t want to go against the majority’s wishes.
This… is a means of getting what he wants without him having to have an uncomfortable conversation with them.
“Touched?” She snickers, then presses him closer. Slow and purposeful, she whispers against his ear, “I want to eat a lot of crab later.”
He sighs, then pinches her with his claws, and kisses her until she’s breathless, until there are better-colored bruises on her skin. Try as he might, he’s unable to escape from this plague, and he can only assist it in festering between the two of them for the foreseeable future.
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end