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This is a story you have heard before. There are only so many ways a man can fall.
In the right light, there is something electric about him. A blazing orange sunset. Stark shadows in candlelight. The glint of the moon against the edge of a sword.
Gu Dong-mae is more dangerous soft than he is with a curled lip, bared teeth. You have never been the introspective type. You do not think about the things he tells you to do, because he tells you to find someone, kill someone, and you do it, and you do not need to think about it because it is his will. You watch him because you are supposed to watch him. You take a gun for him because that is your duty, and you draw a sword for him against those who dare to speak with malice in their voice. You chase down all who attempt to draw blood from his skin, hunt them with the force of a thousand merciless storms, and this is not questioned, because this is your duty, and your loyalty is expected.
“Within reason, of course,” says Kudo Hina in that soft, gentle way of hers, eyelashes a whisper of a butterfly’s wing against her cheeks when she blinks. “It is expected within reason.”
You’re waiting outside, arms folded, sword at your hip, glowering at nothing. She hadn’t bothered to be quiet when coming outside—it is her hotel, after all—and so you don’t flinch when she speaks at your side, a polite distance away. You’re hyper-conscious of distance, and this is a practiced one: bringing no attention to proximity, keeping it an afterthought. Your boss is fond of her, and so you do not turn your stare upon her.
She’s smoking. You hear it in her sigh, made longer and heavier with a casual, unembarrassed pleasure. “Of course,” she says, mildly, “not many right-hands are quite so loyal.”
She speaks Korean with him. You forget, sometimes, that she can speak Japanese. You are careful in the few words you have spoken with her. An ally, perhaps, but never a friend. Never with a woman who wears so many masks, slips on falsity like a silk dress.
There’s a pause, measured. She’s expecting you to say something, you realize. You fumble for your words, keeping your face still.
“What use would a hand be to the body that wields it,” you say stiltedly—too much roughness in your voice—“if it is not unquestioningly, unerringly loyal.”
Kudo Hina takes a drag from her cigarette and breathes smoke out in such a gust that you see it in the corner of the eye floating into the night sky. It’s difficult to see the stars here; the hotel’s lights wash it all out. The smoke clouds over the stars you can see, shrouding them momentarily before smearing itself into nonexistence.
“Ah,” she says quietly, a smile in her voice. Her smiles never reach her eyes. You don’t bother to look if this time is different. “He speaks. How wonderful. I can tell Gu Dong-mae that I’ve cracked his man.”
The smile fades from her voice. “It is sweet,” she murmurs—lowering her voice, as if conscious of others; he cannot see a single soul outside but for the two of them, and yet his shoulders rise with the tense awareness of her caution—“but I say this not for that reason. Be careful with how much loyalty you express. It is expected of you, yes, but—take it slightly further than you do, and people may see something… different.”
You don’t respond.
“You understand what I am saying,” she says. Annoyance flares in your chest, and you look at her, scowling. She blinks in an acted surprise, mild smile steady on her face.
“I wasn’t aware,” you say, “that Koreans were even capable of conceiving of such relationships.”
“You forget that I am a Japanese woman.”
You tilt your head. “It is often easy to forget.”
Her smile doesn’t fall, but her eyes narrow a little. You don’t blink, glowering at her.
“It is standard,” you say. “For us.”
“I suppose,” she murmurs. “Perhaps I simply do not know either of you well enough.”
“He took me from disgrace.” Your voice is raspy, strained. She’s looking at you with nothing in her eyes, lips pressed around the tip of her cigarette. There’s a glimmering charm to her that you are certain men fall over themselves to get a glimpse of, and she wields it like the most delicate of weapons. A fencer, he’d said. “He has seen me at my worst and yet brought me with him to salvation. There is nothing that I do not owe him. I am endlessly in his debt, one he will never hold against me. You may see something abnormal in my actions regarding him, and perhaps that is simply a result of your time away from our nation, but I assure you, Kudo Hina, that they are nothing but, in every sense, the utmost traditional.”
“You would follow him,” she says. “To the end of the world.”
“Yes,” you say, without hesitation.
“You would kill yourself if it meant his safety.”
“Yes.”
“If someone were to harm him—you would not stop until that person lived a hell of your precise creation, annihilated by your hand.”
“Yes.”
She tilts her head. “You call this loyalty,” she says, softly. “How peculiar.”
You do not believe she has gotten the point of what you have said. You scoff a little to yourself, turning away from her and facing the gate once more.
“You say that he took you from disgrace,” she says. “But he has taken you to Korea. Are you not ashamed of being here?”
Before you can respond—before you can decide if you intend to—she lets out a soft, ah. “Your man,” she says, and then you can hear the smile coming back into her voice, “or your boss, I allow—he’s done.”
You turn around. He’s coming down the steps of the hotel, hand on the hilt of his sword for balance. You stride up to meet him, brushing past Kudo Hina without another word.
“It went well?” you say.
“Fine,” says Gu Dong-mae. He looks at Kudo Hina, standing with her cigarette, smoke a breath of frost, the faintest of a welcoming smile dancing at the corner of one lip. “The American is in his room. He said he needs bandages.”
“Oh,” Kudo Hina says. She turns to face him, tilting her head. “You didn’t hurt him, did you?”
Gu Dong-mae’s lips curve into a smile, and it is cruel. You do not believe that he means to smile like this; it is simply how his bones arrange themselves in his face, muscles pulling themselves together following instinct and pattern recognition and everything his memories have taught him. He smiles this way with blood dripping from his teeth and a furious challenge in his glittering eyes, and to gentle, beautiful hotel owners made up of soft silk and cigarette smoke, hair arranged into glossy knots stacked neatly on her head. It is a dangerous smile. It promises a fight. Like he believes that he is being ridiculed and deigns to correct it. Self-conscious and condescending at once.
“Would you believe me if I said I didn’t?” he says. Not looking away from her, he says, “Yuzo. Let’s go.”
He makes for the gates without another look back.
You follow.