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It’s not like Kouyou would complain about not flying private once in a while.
The mission demands it, anyway, and she would never admit it out loud. There is just something exhausting about flying in that tiny space, squeezed between numerous rows of people without the ability to even stretch a little. Indeed, she doesn’t fly out of the country that often, but even so, the comfortable luxury of having a private jet that she could use was enough for her to become a little spoiled.
Of course she would prefer spending those five hours in a comfortable leather seat, getting served anything she wished for and being allowed to do anything she wanted, but this was work-related. If her boss said that it had to be done like that, she simply had to settle for holding his hand on the plane and resting her head on his shoulder when she wanted to take a small nap.
At least they had a driver to pick them up from the airport.
“You’re falling asleep,” Mori points out quietly, when they’re almost at their destination, now able to enjoy the night views of Zhujiang New Town in Guangzhou, China. Kouyou refrains from resting her head on the man’s shoulder throughout the ride, because both the car and the driver are provided by some associates of the mafia, and their relationship is still not exactly public; just to be safe.
She glances at him momentarily from the other side of the car; he just raises an eyebrow. It’s quite late, so it’s obvious that she’s falling asleep — besides, in Yokohama, it would be somewhere around midnight right now.
“Are you mad at me?” he asks, with a slightly, somewhat awkwardly worried expression.
Kouyou freezes in place for a few seconds, leaving him with no immediate answer, but a moment of silence that might be equally as obvious.
It’s not really that, to be fair — she’s not mad mad, at least not completely. At least she knows that she shouldn’t be, because they’re here for a mission, and not because of Mori’s personal fantasy. It’s part of her job, and if anything, she should be proud that he asked her to accompany him this time.
It was simply a pity that it had to be a day before her birthday.
Obviously, it’s not that big of a deal. There are more important things to worry about than the fact that she won’t celebrate her birthday this time; it was never that big of an occasion, after all. It was when he took her for a week-long trip away into the mountains, just the two of them, last year, but that definitely didn’t mean that he was obliged to organize something this time too. Of course not, work was more important, Kouyou knew it. Even though he didn’t provide her any details about their mission this time, which was strange, and also made her feel somewhat irritated.
She was a fool for getting her hopes up in the first place.
“No,” she answers, very simply. Perhaps too simply for her own liking; it sounds weirdly suspicious, and Mori raises an eyebrow to that, but the driver stops the car and says something with such a strong accent that it completely distracts both of them.
They don’t have the opportunity to talk more after that, because a man in an expensive suit with a badge pinned to his chest approaches them and bows down politely. He introduces himself in perfect Japanese, which is very unexpected, but welcome — even if she doesn’t have to speak to him personally, it’s always nice to understand whatever Mori is talking to him about.
The man turns out to be a hotel employee, quick and professional at that; he knows who they are beforehand, calls over a group of people in red uniforms that collect their luggage immediately with no questions asked and leads the two straight into the building, the elevator to be exact.
“The hotel occupies the 70th to 100th floor of the International Finance Center,” their companion politely explains throughout their slightly long journey upwards, and then, much to Kouyou’s surprise, turns to Mori with a smile. “The apartment has been prepared according to your instructions, sir.”
Instructions? The woman eyes her boss carefully, but he seems too immersed in the satisfied nod he gives their guide and doesn’t pay her much attention.
That sounds suspicious, although it could very well be something related to the mission again, so Kouyou dismisses it quickly and focuses on what awaits them behind the elevator door on the very last floor.
“Look at the time,” Mori murmurs behind her after letting her go first; unexpectedly, their companion doesn’t follow them, only giving an encouraging nod while stepping back into the elevator. What is even weirder is that her boss grabs her hand gently, somewhat uncertainly and leads her throughout the corridor. “It’s getting late, isn’t it?”
Slightly fed up by both his mysterious words and inexplicable actions, Kouyou breaks her wrist out of his grasp and backs away with a frown.
It’s not exactly that she doesn’t want his touch at all; she does, obviously. Right now, she wishes for nothing else other than getting to bed, straight into his arms and not letting go of him for at least twelve hours (the flight lasted only five, but everything associated with it made her so tired that she needed twice as much rest). It’s only that she’s perfectly aware that if she lets him have her way right now, she might as well stay confused for the rest of their trip.
(She doesn’t want to admit it, but the secrecy is getting too annoying.)
Kouyou regrets her action as soon as she sees Mori’s expression, strangely comparable to a kicked puppy, but she has to take a deep breath and voice her thoughts out loud.
“If I go with you, will you explain everything to me?” she asks quietly, without any hint of aggressiveness in her voice. It’s definitely not the right time to yell, and she doesn’t want it to be in the slightest — she can’t be mad at him for long, after all.
Mori stares back at her for a second, and something in his face switches from sadness and surprise to an embarrassment marked with flush spilling all over his usually pale cheeks. He looks down at first, visibly trying to come up with a suitable answer, then clears his throat to speak.
“I think everything will clear up as soon as we go through that door,” he mutters and reaches out to her once again.
Resignedly, Kouyou takes his hand.
No matter how she feels right now; it must be said that the view from the hotel is indeed incredible. The corridor they have to walk through to get to their supposed room is entirely glass-walled, which leaves her with the vision of Guangzhou’s magnificent skyline. Maybe she would appreciate more if she wasn’t tired and annoyed, and—
Mori opens the door with a card he pulled out of nowhere, and her mouth drops open.
The first thing she sees are candles; because the room is dimly lit with them, placed on the floor, creating some sort of a path that he encourages her to follow with a shy nudge. In full seriousness, Kouyou starts to wonder if she isn’t dreaming, but she walks in the direction just to discover that the bedroom hides an even bigger surprise.
A giant bouquet of beautiful, unusually colored roses, consisting of white, red and pink petals, is placed in the middle of the bed. Just below them, a heart made out of another batch of red petals is meticulously formed on the white mattress, for a card with her name written in a neat cursive to be placed in the middle.
Kouyou turns back to glare at him in shock and Mori just smiles. Just like that, after everything she’s been through today.
“Midnight, tenth of January,” he says nonchalantly, and a strange sense of deja vu hits her, along with many other emotions that she can’t contain at all. “Happy birthday, Kouyou.”
The words make it even worse, to be honest, and combined with the fact that she was thoroughly annoyed at him just minutes earlier, cause a type of guilt to enfold within her.
“I had to make sure that you wouldn’t suspect anything,” Mori adds in a slightly more distressed tone, as if trying to explain himself some more. “I’m sorry if it caused you any discomfort, I didn’t mean—”
He doesn’t manage to finish, because Kouyou throws her arms around his neck in a tight hug that is supposed to mean all the things she can’t voice out right now. The sob that escapes her mouth would make everything very difficult to decipher.
Nonetheless, she’s sure that Mori will understand it all; that she’s sorry too, for making him think that she was mad at him and for actually being mad at him, for breaking her hand from his grasp earlier, for not believing that he would remember about her birthday this time and for the current outburst, because it takes seconds and she’s crying with her face buried in his chest, and it’s all pathetic.
At first, as her tears touch the front of his shirt, the man tenses up, but quickly realizes that it’s not exactly because of him, at least not in a negative way; he places a hand on her back and gently rubs circles all over it, trying to get her to calm down, in which he obviously succeeds.
After a good couple of minutes, Kouyou finally wipes her eyes with her sleeve, trying not to think how red and puffy they must look right now.
“I should be sorry,” she admits with a slightly hoarse voice, looking him into the eyes apologetically. “For being so mean.”
Mori chuckles quietly and brings a thumb to her face to wipe some tear stains from her cheeks, glancing at her with admiration.
“It’s alright,” he reassures, taking one of her hands into his. Out of sudden, he gently bumps their foreheads together as he leans forward a bit; the gesture is unexpected, but somehow tender, and Kouyou doesn’t have anything against it. In fact, it’s nice. “It was a surprise, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” the woman sighs with a smile, but one small thing that he did not explain to her yet. “But I’d still like to hear the details of the mission...”
Another weird expression on his face makes her wonder if she said something wrong.
“Oh,” he mumbles quietly in realization. “There’s no mission. It’s a trip for the two of us. I wasn’t too sure of the destination, but I found this hotel and everything, and thought—”
Mori doesn’t finish, because Kouyou grabs the collar of his shirt and pulls him to herself to kiss him.
When she thinks about it some more, just a kiss is nowhere near enough for all of this. And perhaps it never was; it’s just a supposed physical manifestation of love that doesn’t even seem adequate right now. Because how could it ever be, when he did all of this for her?
No matter how relevant it is, the kiss goes on and it’s nice, indeed. That’s the one thing Kouyou can register before Mori’s arms wrap themselves around her waist and drag her in an unknown direction that she hasn’t explored yet.
“There’s more, you know?”
More.
There’s always something more; during the birthday she’d like to remember the least, it’s about being hit on the head so hard that she passed out and woke up at least twelve hours later in a cold, dirty cell, somewhere beneath the Port Mafia base.
A couple of years later, it’s more than just the prestigious position of the executive; it’s a katana, made of fine, exquisite steel. It was unlike the one she usually used, but she thanked her new boss anyway; it was nice of him to remember the date of her birthday, even if for her it was completely meaningless.
A year ago, it was a week in the mountains, just the two of them. In a small village where no one knew them, and they could just walk around hand in hand, not minding if somebody noticed. Spending one of the days in bed, getting to forget about work, not picking any calls — that was more.
Of course, it’s also tonight.
Because apparently, he ordered dinner for the two of them, and they eat it in a giant room lit by the dimmed lamps in the back and the few candles that were put on the table. Kouyou senses that Mori can’t or doesn’t want to take his eyes off her, but every time she catches him staring, he turns to their right, the equally as magnificent view of the city of Guangzhou.
Something in her chest feels warm. It doesn’t stop when she opens the gifts awaiting her just right to the bouquet on the bed and when she reads the handwritten note on the back of the card with her name in cursive.
It doesn’t when they clean up the flower petals, although not exactly keenly (they’re very beautiful, after all), and when they lie in the bathtub for half an hour, just resting in the warm water, admiring the view behind the window and each other.
Kouyou doesn’t want it to stop when they lay down in the bed together. It doesn’t; Mori kisses her goodnight and wraps his arms around her waist, and she can’t help but feel tiny tears fall from her eyes.