Work Text:
“You’re running late,” the broker says, unimpressed around a cigarette and leaning against the filthy wall of a Berlin alleyway without a care for the fabric of his suit. Cheap polyester, but in the dim glow of the red neon light, it looks expensive, velveted. Hiromi doesn’t care about his own suits, only a hundred or so dollars above the price point the broker must pay for his, but he notices these types of things now.
He’d like to blame Mei, and Nanami, who even without an earpiece, Hiromi can hear telling him to take care.
He’s new to the business, but men like Kong Shiu are more than familiar.
“Am I?” Hiromi answers mildly. “Sorry about that. I’m not good with directions.”
Deceit doesn’t come naturally to him, and lies still feel practiced and stiff against his tongue rather than smooth, dripping like butter or caramel the way they do from Gojo, or simple like black coffee from Nanami. He’s been instructed instead to never craft anything wholesale, to stick as close to the truth as possible and shape it like clay in his hands. This too is familiar.
“In your business? That seems like a pretty big problem. Might even be a dangerous one.” The broker finally looks at him, his gaze shuttered beyond the assessment of a practical man. Hiromi wonders what he sees, what threats he might pick out. If it came to a fight, Hiromi might win; he’s taken to it well. If it came to weapons, Hiromi cannot shoot a gun well except at point blank range, and he understands that while the broker prefers not to resort to violence himself, his aim is good.
“I’m working on improving it, but not being able to use Google Maps is a hassle,” Hiromi admits instead. He meets the broker’s eyes, doesn’t bother modulating his expression past vaguely polite. “And I’ve never been here before. You’re a difficult man to track down.”
“Only for my enemies,” the broker says. “I’ve got to be easy to find for my clients. I wonder which one you fall into, with how you’ve been chasing me down.”
“I’ve never met you before,” Hiromi points out. It’s the truth, though not what the broker is getting at.
“Your people, then. Always trying to get me in trouble, and then half the time you want me to get you out of it. Which is it? I can’t stand when people are hot and cold like that. I like decisive men.” He takes a drag and breathes the smoke out at Hiromi in a steady stream, an exhale that lasts several heartbeats. They’re of a height; Hiromi breathes the smoke in and feels its acrid sting against the back of his nose. He smokes a different brand to Ieiri, one Hiromi is not used to.
He remains silent until the smoke clears, considering his answer. No one else could have taken this assignment; Gojo was not allowed, outright, nor Ieiri although she prefers to avoid fieldwork. Tsukumo isn’t even in the country, off on assignments none of them have heard of. Nanami was entirely out of the question, not yet fully healed, and the recent graduates too green to deal with a man like this, except for Hakari, only his temperament would have made it difficult. So: Hiromi. And he’s starting to see why.
“A third option, actually. Helping us avoid some trouble,” Hiromi informs him. “We’ll pay, of course. Whatever you like.”
“Must be important. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to start off a negotiation that way?” Kong Shiu raises an eyebrow, ironic. He’s not Japanese, listed as Korean in his dossier despite his name – though of course it wouldn’t be the one he was born with. Gojo and Hiromi are exceptions to that; Gojo for his family’s legacy in the business, and Hiromi for coming into this late enough that he already had an established identity. A built-in cover, Nanami’d called it. Hiromi still doesn’t know if he sounded envious or disapproving.
“I’m also bad at bargaining,” Hiromi answers. “It was never my strong suit. Besides, you have the information, I want the information, you want money.”
“Who says I want money?” Another drag, though this time he takes a step forward, and small eternity passes, wreathed entirely in smoke.
“Are you saying you don't?” Hiromi doubts that. Money keeps the wheel of the world turning, and a man like this can never have enough. There’s greed to account for, sure, but there's also the practicalities of the business. Documents to forge, weapons to buy, palms to grease and bribes to pay and loyalty to gain, although Kong Shiu hasn't had someone close to him for years now.
“I'm suggesting that it might not be the only thing I want. I've got a wide array of interests, and a sense of humor. You don't know what you're getting into, saying you'll pay whatever I like. You're lucky I'm not in a mood to take you up on that,” the broker says. Not unreasonably, but condescendingly.
“Or unlucky,” Hiromi replies, thoughtless. Kong Shiu smiles like a shark adapted to an oil spill.
“I might be a dirty old man at this point, but business before that much pleasure,” he counters. “Nice to know I've still got it.”
Hiromi considers this for a second – he’s reasonably sure he’d count as the same, has passed through that nebulous age and come out rather firmly on the wrong side of thirty. Kong Shiu is not unattractive, likely more conventionally so than Higuruma himself, despite the plasticked sheen to his suit, the obvious danger and deceit that rolls off him. They’re of a height, his hair shows no traces of grey, even at the temples, his facial hair is sparse but surprisingly neat and his eyes are keen if jaded. He’s not put on much of the weight that comes with overindulgence, once men hit a certain age, though Higuruma’s sure he’s lived the requisite lifestyle.
“Must be nice to have had it to begin with,” he says instead. “Though if this is going to turn into a longer conversation, I’d rather be inside for it.”
“Putting yourself into my hands, Mr. Spy?” the broker sounds pleased. Hiromi merely shrugs.
“I’m already in your territory. Whether there’s a roof over my head or not doesn’t make a difference.”
“Don’t say it like that. You make me sound like a dog.”
“Hardly. Any implication of that, you brought to the table yourself.” Hiromi watches the broker ash his cigarette against the wall, dropping the butt carelessly to the ground to join hundreds of others.
“Is that any way to talk to someone who you want to do you a favor?” his voice is mild, lacking reproach, but Hiromi still has to tamp down on the urge to apologize.
Before he can, the broker continues: “Let’s go inside, then. I’ll even buy you a drink.”
“You don’t need to do that,” Hiromi hurries to say. He doesn’t need any reminders to know that it’s a bad idea, yet Nanami’s voice in his head tells him not to. He could wake up halfway across the city having compromised half a dozen operatives, or he could not wake up at all.
“Some pleasures go along just fine with business, and I can’t figure out what your vices are yet. Still, anyone over the age of what, thirty? Should be able to appreciate a good drink.”
Hiromi gets the point, follows him back inside and then up a narrow, spiraling flight of stairs to the upper half of the club, consisting of its own bar and a series of closed doors that Hiromi presumes must be the VIP area. He’d come in a few days ago to case the place, but he’d seen no one on this floor other than a bartender, looking bored, and a single bouncer who’d gone up to order himself a drink. Normal patrons, it seems, know not to venture this way.
This early, the club is deserted, its landscape alien with harsh fluorescents and the wisps of daylight that come in through the high, thin windows up near the ceiling. Kong Shiu pours the drinks himself from a bottle near the top shelf, doesn’t seem to care much which glass he nudges Hiromi’s way. Nonchalance doesn’t mean anything, though. Hiromi has seen Gojo shrug carelessly before killing someone, seen Nanami sigh after an interrogation as if it were a woe present in a normal nine to five.
“Geonbae,” Kong Shiu says, the syllables both familiar and not, before he knocks back half his drink. Hiromi merely rotates the glass in his hands, staring down at the amber liquid. It’s good whisky, probably, not that he knows much about it.
“Drink,” the broker tells him. It’s not a suggestion, but Hiromi lingers long enough to suggest defiance before he takes a small sip. All it gains him is a raised eyebrow and a, “I’m not going to poison you. It’s not my style.”
That much is true; Kong Shiu is better at getting other people to do his dirty work than he is doing it himself. Hiromi has no doubts that he’s put in the hours, but a preference like that doesn’t go away over someone he’s just met. Perhaps if it were Gojo, things would be different.
“That’s not the issue.” He pauses, amends, “That’s not the whole issue. I’m not much of a whisky man.”
“Hm. Do you like this one?”
He shrugs, takes another sip to savor. “It’s fine. A little earthy, burns going down. I assume that’s just how whisky is.”
“What’s your drink of choice, then?” Kong sounds genuinely curious, strangely enough.
“Normally I’ll just have beer.”
“Not much fun getting drunk off beer.”
“I don’t make a habit of getting drunk,” Hiromi informs him. He doesn’t feel particularly poisoned, but the drink is potent, heavy on his tongue the way all liquor is.
“You’re a lightweight, huh.” The broker pronounces this with a mix of delight and derision, not quite the smugness of someone who has just uncovered a considerable weakness.
“It takes a decent amount of beer to get me drunk. It takes less of this,” he says, tapping the rim of the glass for emphasis. “Sorry, but it’s wasted on me.”
“It’s fine. You drink slow, so I can have another. This is the good shit, you know. Top shelf.”
“I wouldn’t really know the difference if it wasn’t, Kong-san,” Hiromi points out. He’s never played the ingenue before, comes across too jaded and is certainly too old for it, but the steps are familiar.
“You know, you’re breaking every single rule of your little agency. Have you ever been undercover? Had to talk to a client, even? No, you wouldn’t have,” he says, amused.
“And how would you know that?” Hiromi asks. He keeps his voice even; men like Kong Shiu have their ways of getting information, and Hiromi should at least find out some of their sources.
“I’ve done my research,” the broker says. Unhelpful.
“On the agency? You’ve had enough run-ins with us that I doubt much more research is needed. Or on me? I’m not a hard man to find,” he adds. “Obviously.”
“You’re blunt, you know that? I wouldn’t have pegged you for a spy. Too honest. Too righteous. Makes me wonder if anyone’s messed you up a bit,” he drawls out. He sounds like he wouldn’t mind giving it a shot.
“I’m in my late thirties, Kong-san. It’s a little late for that to happen.” Hiromi can count the times he’s been ‘messed up’ on multiple hands at this point – broken fingers, a sprained ankle, cracked ribs and a nose that only seems to have set right because that’s how it looked before – but he can’t quite tell if that’s what the broker is gunning for. He assumes anyway.
He’d not gotten much training on any honeypot missions, had thought of it as a relief at the time, but now he’s starting to wish he had.
“You’d be surprised, kid.” The broker’s mouth curls, a promise hidden behind his teeth.
“You aren’t that much older than me.” Hiromi isn’t sure the last time anyone had called him ‘kid.’ Gojo, sometimes, calls him ‘rookie’, half-affectionate, half-cutting. But even when he was younger, even in childhood, that epithet had never been used.
“Old enough, and I’ve been in this business since you were in high school. God, now I sound like an old man. Here’s some advice for free, since I like the look of you: Don’t stick around past when your knees start clicking. It all goes to shit from there.”
Hiromi’s knees have yet to start clicking, but for the last decade his back has been aching if he sleeps even half a centimeter off from his usual position. He doesn’t disclose this.
“What do you want in exchange, then?” he asks, to rein in the conversation. To get a leash around it before he gets caught up in it. That was rule one, always, with men like Kong Shiu. Don’t let them have the momentum, don’t get caught up in their rhythm, because you’ll never get back out.
“How about a kiss?” The broker’s face is serious, but he cracks a smile at something on Hiromi’s – he’s been too expressive for his own good, always, when caught by surprise. “Kidding. I only do that to the pretty girls.”
Hiromi has few doubts about that.
“I’ve been accused of many things, but being a pretty girl isn’t one of them,” he says dryly instead. “Be serious, Kong-san.”
“How about a truth, then?” His voice is so casual that he can’t be anything but deathly serious. Hiromi feels the jaws of the trap spring closed, a fraction of a second too late to do anything about it. No – longer than that. He knew coming into this that he’d have no choice but to agree to whatever terms were set. ‘Whatever he asks, however much he asks, say yes,’ Nanami had told him tersely. Shoko hadn’t even cracked a joke about it being like dealing with Mei Mei, and Hiromi’d known then that they weren’t just willing to pay, they were willing to owe to deal with this.
Nobody had anticipated truth being on the table.
That’s it, then. One thing Hiromi can’t give him, a matter of duty rather than principle. They’d say the same, he knows. Money, materials, promises and nebulous debts were all fine. Secrets were meant to be kept inside the chest, to be buried with.
“I thought –,”
The broker cuts him off with a sharp smile, his eyes glinting in the light. “I know. You figured, he’ll want money, cold hard cash. That’s the kind of guy he is. And you’re right. Except for how you said you’d do anything, and I got to thinking, well. He’s a bad liar, he’s going to know some secrets that’ll make powerful people unhappy. Information’s my business, kid. Any tidbit. And what you’re gonna want is worth a lot.”
“What I want doesn’t come into it, other than wanting to finish this job,” Hiromi counters. It’s a weak argument, but one meant to obfuscate and distract rather than convince. He’s had more practice with those in the past year than he had in the eight he’d been a lawyer. “And you don’t know that I have information you can trade to others. That’s a big gamble. You say you’ve done your research, and I’ll allow that you have. So you know how new I am to this, how unlikely I am to have anything useful. You’re getting the raw end of the deal.”
“Oh, I’m not a gambler. I don’t take risks like that, I like to win too much.” The broker rubs at his chin, faux-contemplative. “You get too used to it and then you stop being reckless. That’s how it goes. You’ll give me plenty I can use, even if I won’t know it until someone sits down across from me with your picture in hand and says, ‘tell me everything about him.’”
“Is that how it works? Seems a good way to accumulate a lot of useless facts,” Hiromi says.
The broker rasps out a laugh.
“Sure, you could think that. Give it another few years and you’ll come around. I bet all your handlers at HQ will agree with me, though. Tell them hello, would you? Unless they’re listening in.” The broker’s smirk suggests that he knows they aren’t, but that he wouldn’t much care if they were.
“They’re not,” Hiromi says anyway. “Thought it was too risky with you.”
“Because I’m a criminal and might shoot you if you’re wearing a wire?”
“Because you’re particular about who you talk to.”
“Ha. That’s a good one, kid.” The broker takes a long, leisurely sip of his drink, throat working under his collar.
Hiromi gets the sense that he’s using that word to try and get under his skin. Perhaps it’d work on someone younger, perhaps it’s a habit Kong Shiu has yet to break.
“Three truths from me. That’s how much I think what I’m asking is worth. I’m not giving you any information that’ll compromise our other agents, though, or put anyone in danger.” If the broker will agree to it, and Hiromi thinks he will. This is the least that he can do, given that he has no idea what he’s about to give away.
“Righteous of you. Guess they’ve not trained that streak out yet.”
“Do we have a deal?”
“Three’s kind of stingy.”
“Then don’t skimp on the details.”
“I take it back. You bargain like an ahjumma at the fish market.”
“I’m not that insulted, my mother always cut a good deal at the fish market. That might’ve been because the fishmonger was sweet on her, though,” he adds, contemplative. He hasn’t thought about that in a long time.
“Don’t think I’ll take that as one on credit, kid.” The broker looks amused despite himself, though. “But some things really are in the blood.”
Hiromi merely shrugs. He hasn’t spoken to his mother in years, but he likes to think that she’s still going to the market, still charming the fishmonger. He’s never been himself, not out of a lack of skill at bargaining, but instead a diet and lifestyle that doesn’t include sourcing that type of fresh food.
“Four truths, and I’ll be good and not ask for anything that’ll bring your agency crumbling down. How about that, then?” The broker’s smile suggests that he’s still coming out on top of this deal. He probably is, but Hiromi can’t afford to not get what he needs tonight.
“Four, but I get to ask you another thing in return,” Hiromi offers. He’s surprised when the broker sticks a hand out to seal the deal, a gesture more polite and more personal than he’d expected.
Hiromi shakes his hand away, grips firmly as he was taught to make a good impression, and notes the location and number of calluses on the man’s fingers the same way he’s sure Shiu is noting his own lack thereof.
Satisfied, the broker withdraws his hand and fishes a piece of paper from his jacket pocket, neatly folded, and slides it across the table.
“There.”
Hiromi reaches for it, only to be cut off with a, “Patience. This has everything you need, but you don’t get it yet.”
“I haven’t even told you what I need,” he says, frowning. It’s a naive question, but not one Hiromi is afraid of asking.
“C’mon. Have some faith. You’re here because I’m the best in the game. You don’t think I already knew what you were here for?” The broker’s tone is slightly chastising, disappointed. “Trust me. That’s everything you’ll need.”
“Trusting you would be a mistake,” Hiromi says. He doesn’t like this. It’s too easy. A handful of truths that Kong Shiu has promised won’t be dangerous to give – and likely that Hiromi won’t know the danger of until years on when it comes to bite him in the ass, hard. But there’s nothing for it.
Kong laughs again, says, “Well, yes. But you’re going to have to. Now, let’s see. What do I want to ask you?”
He’s going to draw it out, of course, but Hiromi had anticipated taking much longer to get him to agree to any kind of deal. He has the time, he has patience, regardless of what Kong might think.
“Whatever you like, within the constraints of our agreement,” Hiromi reminds him. “I’ll answer honestly. You’d be able to tell if I was lying, probably, but I’m not planning to.”
“No, you’re really not. You’ve chosen a strange career for that.”
He hadn’t chosen, not precisely, so much as he had been plucked up with blood still under his fingernails, and given a second chance he’s still not sure he deserves. Unfortunately, it’s not his decision to make.
Hiromi just shrugs, noncommittal. His dislike of underhanded things had been a hindrance in his last job, too.
“Okay. Let’s start with the obvious. Why you for this? Was everyone else busy?” Something in the broker’s expression, the amusement, tells Hiromi that he already knows the answer. With four truths, though, and any of them with the chance to fetch a premium, perhaps he can afford to waste one as an honesty test.
“No recent recruits would have been suitable,” Hiromi answers. “I was the only available operant who could get here in time.”
“If I’m not supposed to skimp on details, then neither are you,” Kong says lightly. Hiromi takes the warning for what it is.
“I’m not. If you want a specific answer, you should ask a specific question. It’s your own fault for giving me enough space for an answer like that,” he says, pointedly. Vagueness is a habit that’s quickly stripped away, unless it can be of use, like coaching it on a witness stand.
The broker lets out a low whistle. “You’ve got a mouth on you.”
He doesn’t make it sound like a bad thing. Hiromi ignores how much he likes that.
“Fine, fine. Why didn’t they send Gojo? And this still only counts as one, since I’m heeding your warning and amending my question.”
“That’s fine. And I don’t know. I was told he couldn’t take this mission, but nobody said why.” It had bothered him, a little. He won’t complain about unfairness, but he still thinks he’s ill-suited to this kind of work. Kong Shiu may be a flirt, but Hiromi has never been called charming.
The broker stares at him for a moment, eyes lidded and gaze heavy.
“Huh. Do you want to know why?”
“I’m curious, but not curious enough to ask you about it as my extra, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Hiromi answers. He can get it out of Shoko, or Nanami, given enough time. He could even have Ijichi pull the files, if he wanted to pull rank and erase several steps of their tentative friendship.
“Ha. No, not at all, but that’s a good one. I’ll have to remember it for later. He and I have a history, is all.”
“Gojo has history with everyone,” Hiromi says, flat. That’s not giving anything away. “Often for the worse. He tends to make bad first impressions.”
“But memorable ones,” Kong says. The amusement has vanished from his voice. “Next: Hm. You’ve got a way about you, especially with the wordplay. You’re keeping me on my toes, and you’re not even trying to. What’s with that, did you work in contracts before they moved you to the field?”
“You want to ask about me?” Somehow, Hiromi hadn’t anticipated this . He’s not a particularly valuable asset now, only just out of his probationary period, but then again, he knows that he will be in a couple years’ time. He knows that he’ll make it that long, once they get themselves out of this mess.
“I did say one day someone was going to show up with your picture and want to know everything. You thought I wasn’t being literal?” Kong cocks his head to the side, contemplative. His mouth is wet with alcohol, though his eyes aren’t yet glassy with it. He’s well into his second glass, Hiromi still nursing the first with tiny sips as he grows accustomed to the taste.
“I don’t think I’ll have that level of notoriety,” he answers. “Gojo is an exception, the rest of us are meant to be things like subtle, and forgettable.”
“You think you’re forgettable, Mr. Spy?”
“I think I’m mostly average, with a few exceptions. You’ll be using another question if you want to ask about those, by the way,” he adds.
“Not if I have to remind you to answer this one.” Kong’s posture, at least, has loosened somewhat. But Hiromi doubts the sincerity; if he’s comfortable, it’s because they’re wholly on his turn, Hiromi under his thumb and playing along to his game. Gladly playing along, to be fair; he’s completely aware of how much worse this situation could be.
“I have some training with contracts, but they weren’t my main area of focus,” he says, deliberately vague just to watch a flicker of annoyance cross Kong’s face. Hiromi isn’t sure what makes him relent, but he does, adding, “I used to be a lawyer.”
“Huh.” Kong doesn’t go slack-jawed with shock, not exactly, but Hiromi thinks this is the closest he’ll get, with his mouth lax and his eyes slightly widened. “Who’d have guessed it. I didn’t even know your set had a legal department.”
They technically do, in that they technically have an HR department, and finance and accounting, and a receptionist, and all of those things are actually just Ijichi.
“I didn’t get transferred from the legal department to active fieldwork,” Hiromi corrects him. “I mean that I used to be a lawyer. A public defender, actually.”
“How the fuck did you go from that to this ? I thought those guys were meant to be about upholding justice and truth and all that shit. Doing it because it was the right thing to do, not because they wanted that fat lawyer paycheck. Or, you know, because they couldn’t hack it at a firm. Somehow, I doubt you fall into the second category.” There’s not a little bitterness in Kong’s voice; Hiromi wonders if the defense system had failed him too, in the distant past, like it had so many others. Men like him don’t get caught, but the boys they used to be sometimes do.
It still doesn’t fit, though.
He wonders if he can get it out of Kong without actually asking.
“Is that one of your questions?”
“Not going to give me an extra on credit for the good conversation?”
Hiromi only looks at him until he laughs and shakes his head.
“Fine. We’ll save that one for next time, where hopefully you’ll loosen up some, kid. Something like that, I’ve got to earn.” This logic is perilously close to Hiromi’s own line of thinking; it makes his skin feel too tight, makes him feel uncomfortably seen even if that’s not the intention. Kong scratches at his chin as if thinking, as if he can fool Hiromi into believing that he’s coming up with these questions on the fly. “
“Put in some elbow grease, Kong-san,” he advises. “I think you’ll get there eventually.”
Kong barks out a laugh, seems almost surprised to have done it. The sound isn’t unpleasant, only rusty, and Hiromi can’t fault anyone for that. He’s not got much to laugh about these days either.
“Mouthy for a lawyer. But no, no. I guess you used up all that professionalism already, that’s not gonna be my question. Instead, hm. Who’s your handler? Your favorite one. And don’t bother saying you haven’t got a favorite, everyone does. They’re not listening, so be honest.” Kong’s smile is liquid in the dimming light; the sun must be going down, slanting beneath the buildings.
“Nanami,” he answers, easily. It’s not something he has to think about.
“Ah. Mr. Seven himself,” Kong murmurs. “Haven’t had too many run ins with him, but make sure you make that James Bond joke to him. For me.”
“Won’t be anything he hasn’t heard before, and he’s judgemental about unoriginal jokes,” Hiromi warns him. He intends to do no such thing; there’s requests he feels duty-bound to complete, orders he has to follow although they don’t chafe as much as he might’ve expected, and then there’s this.
“An illustrious agent by all means, second only to Gojo, and that doctor of yours. And of course Geto, before all of that unpleasantness.” Kong doesn’t particularly sound rueful; he sounds smug. Hiromi only knows vaguely of Geto’s defection and the fallout it had caused, particularly when he decided to form his own group. Not an agency, more of an insurrectionist cell, and Hiromi has always carefully kept his mouth shut both because he lacks enough context to make a judgement, and he suspects that if Geto had showed up on his doorstep at any point between two and eight years ago and asked him if he’d join, he would have said yes immediately.
“Right,” Hiromi merely agrees.
“A shame about what happened.”
“What –? Oh, you mean Shibuya.” Shame might be the wrong word. There’s plenty of black marks on the agency’s record, but nothing like Shibuya and the fallout of it. Gojo vanished, returned only recently with new scars and a hollowed look to his eyes; Itadori’s new scars and the fact that they’d almost lost Kugisaki before Hiromi’d even met her properly; precisely seven hundred and eighty-two civilian lives lost with injuries something closer to a thousand; and, of course, what happened to Nanami, and the Zen’in with him.
“I wasn’t there. Were you? And yes, that can be my last question, if you’ll elaborate on what you think about it,” Kong adds.
“It seems like a pointless question. I wasn’t there,” Hiromi answers. He’s almost tempted to leave at that, a dangerous urge to want to keep up this conversation with a dangerous man. “I heard it was bad. The fallout is still happening, though you might know more about it than I do. I only know what happened to the side I’m on, but I hear there were plenty of others involved who went all to ground.”
And Gojo won’t breathe a word of what happened to him while he was gone, or where, or even who with. Not to Nanami or Shoko, his oldest friends, and so certainly not to Hiromi or Ijichi or even Gakuganji, now in charge after Yaga was removed – not that Hiromi had met him, but he knows there’s a grudge there, bad blood between everyone and their new head, and especially between him and Gojo.
He can’t blame him.
Hiromi bears Gakuganji’s orders because he thinks that they could do worse, and because it’s his job, and because it would be very, very easy for him to meet an untimely end on a mission even without interference from one of the few people who can authorize it through official channels. He dislikes this as a leash, but he has things to do, blood to scrub off his hands.
“There were. No one who works for me, though I guess you wouldn’t be here if you expected that. But operatives like Mahito, Kenjaku, Miguel, Larue. All vanished into the ether. Makes you wonder if they did that together, or all by themselves.” Kong seems to imply that he’d know. Hiromi decides against using this as his question. Kenjaku isn’t his problem right now; Takaba and Okkotsu, unlikely as the pairing might seem, are on their way to deal with him, the same as Gojo will deal with Sukuna once the Four Arms are dispatched, and Hiromi, Hakari, and Itadori are tasked with backup – and with dealing with Uraume.
“It does. But that’s not what I’m here to find out,” he says, dry. That in itself might be giving too much away, but it’s too late for him to mind his mouth now. “And I think that concludes our deal.”
This time, Kong catches his hand when he reaches for the paper, his palm strangely warm against Hiromi’s fingers.
Hiromi raises an eyebrow, ignores the way his heart picks up. Danger, attraction, both. He errs on the side of caution, because this doesn’t seem to be a distraction and because Kong isn’t reaching for a weapon with a glass in his free hand, and doesn’t try and pull anything.
“You’ve had your questions, asked and answered. I believe this is mine now.”
“And you have one more thing you can ask of me.” He sounds like he’s aiming for something specific, and ah, that comment about kissing may not have been wholly a joke earlier.
Tempting, but he can’t afford a distraction now.
“I know. I was thinking of saving it, actually,” Hiromi informs him. “A good investment, like you say. You never know when you might need something, after all. It pays to save things like this.”
“What happened to useless information?”
“Not information, I only need to remember that you owe me.” A shadow crosses over Kong’s face at that; he dislikes being the one in debt. Hiromi finds he likes that look, likes the power of it a little bit more. It’s not his problem if the broker doesn’t like a taste of his own medicine. It might even be a perk of the job.
“When you put it like that, you make it sound scandalous. D’you like scandal, Hiromi?” Somehow it feels like a breach for Kong to say his name, regardless of if Hiromi’s been using his half the time. It’s the lack of honorific, the intimacy shocking but not rude, presumptuous but not entirely unwelcome.
“Only to read about in the newspapers,” he says firmly. “I’m partial to news of celebrities embarrassing themselves. It’s probably the worst of my vices, since sometimes the Western ones show up too.”
Dangerously, this elicits another laugh. Hiromi wonders if Kong is tipsy or merely putting on an act – neither would give him an advantage in a situation where he holds most of the cards and Hiromi is not fighting particularly hard for them. He’ll keep the one he has, and tuck that into his back pocket for later. However, there are no other reasonable alternatives.
“Boring. But that’s why you’ve got to be messed up a little,” Kong says, falling short enough of wistful to have plausible deniability.
“Most flirting happens before anything gets settled,” Hiromi points out. “So as to get a better deal.”
“Business before pleasure, and the business is concluded. Mostly, anyway, but I take that as a sign that you want to see me again,” Kong says.
“Or that I took your advice about keeping things for the future, in case they become useful,” Hiromi points out.
Kong smiles again, just as sharp as before although only a little looser, a shade more genuine around the edges. The corners of his eyes crinkle with it.
“Better not say shit like that, you’ll make me not want to let you leave.”
Hiromi thinks he wouldn’t mind that, were the circumstances different, were he willing to take that kind of risk. He’s not – not now, anyway. Perhaps in another few years he’ll be due another catastrophically, karmically awful decision. If that decision happens to be named Kong Shiu, he thinks that he could do far worse.
But for now, the easiest way to avoid temptation is to eliminate it.
He stands up, hesitating for just a moment before downing the rest of his drink in a single, searing line. He might regret it later, but he can at least make it back to the rendezvous point before it hits too hard.
“Next time, Kong-san,” Hiromi says with a bow that’s only just shy of insincere, a trick he’d picked up from Nanami that in this case seems to delight rather than infuriate. “I’ll be taking that truth then, and we can see about the rest.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Hiromi,” the broker says, and Hiromi’s name in his mouth feels like teeth at the nape of his neck.
Kong Shiu watches him go, and Hiromi exits into the brisk twilight with a buzz that has little to do with the alcohol, and a slip of paper burning a hole in his pocket.