Chaos in Kadoma Ward – Chapter 21

I wake up in the late morning, way after ten AM, and staring out at the clear morning sky, I make my decision. This life I’m leading is not going to work. The noodle shop was a bad idea. Turning Rin away was foolish. Hiding from Aoi Uma is the coward’s way out.

It’s risky to the extreme because I have a judge on my case and there are people who want me dead. If Bidder Number Five can find me, and thank goodness he wasn’t looking to put me under lock and key like I thought he was, then anyone can find me. But if I’m going to stay here and help out my people, I’ll do it with every fiber of my being.

There. I feel better already.

I swing my feet out of bed, pull on a pair of pants, and head out to the kitchen. I’m going to eat something small, take a bath, and leave the apartment to explore.

I stop short in the living room. Rin is sitting on his couch, his tablet in his lap.

“Oh, hey. I wasn’t expecting you to stay home today.” I come to the opposite end of the couch and make myself sit and be casual. Time to begin the healing process.

His face brightens as I join him. “I figured I could use a day off too,” he says, setting his tablet aside. “I kinda expected you to sleep the day away, anyway.”

I yawn and scratch my head. “Nope, though the extra sleep was good.”

He draws his legs up and folds them to the side, grabbing the blanket behind him and handing it to me. I accept it with a smile, trying to signal that we’re okay. That we can be better than okay, even if I’ve indicated the opposite.

His eyes are soft as I wrap the blanket around me. I’ve noticed, in the past couple of weeks, he’s relaxed when I’m near, and things are less business-like than they were in the beginning. There are more kind or encouraging words, more long moments of contact, more smiles and less joking. And then there was the kiss.

Oh, the kiss.

I blink back my surprise as I realize he’s been trying to signal he’s interested in me for a long time. All my questions from the other night come tumbling back.

What if he doesn’t care for me? I believe he does. At least I’m eighty percent sure, and that’s good enough for me to try again.

What if he’s just doing this because it’s what everyone expects? Rin is a non-conformer. He doesn’t do what everyone expects of him.

What if he’s playing me? He may be playing me, but I won’t know unless I try again with him.

He’s into strong women. What if he wants to control me? It didn’t seem to get him anywhere with Atsumi, so maybe he learned his lesson.

Have I learned my lesson? I laugh at myself. After Takéji chose my brother, I ran from my own desires and tried to start a relationship with a woman. Big fail. Rin is different. He’s the kind of person I should be with, even if I’ve denied it for weeks.

I should’ve seen that kiss coming a million kilometers away.

“I need to talk to you about something.” I keep my eyes on him, and he doesn’t flinch. A good sign.

“What’s up?”

Deep breath. “I’m not going back to K&G.”

He raises his eyebrows, my favorite ‘Are you nuts?’ gesture of his.

“They don’t want me there, and I’m no help to anyone if I’m sitting in their kitchen all day.”

“And, just who do you want to be of help to?”

I steel my shoulders, hard to do when I’m tired and worn out. “You, the people here, the people back home. I want to do my job, the job I’m meant to do. I like food and the restaurant industry, and I’m willing to do that as a cover if things go wrong, but, Rin” — I clutch my fist over my heart — “I was born to be a journalist. It’s in every fiber of my being. I can’t do this ‘normal life’ shit. Seriously. I’ll go crazy if I keep it up.”

Rin is quiet for a moment, staring off to the side, thinking hard about what I’ve said.

Please say something and let it be positive!

I chew on the skin around my thumb while I wait for his response. He could say no. Tamura gave him my contract to keep me out of trouble, and here I am begging to violate that.

He sighs, and it’s accompanied by a smirk. “Why can’t I say no to you?” he asks, his eyes trained on the floor. “What is this spell you’ve cast on me?”

His eyes meet mine, and my lungs lose their grasp on air.

“Didn’t you know I’m a witch? I blame my mom’s side of the family.”

The tension between us melts away. The wall I had erected the last few days dissolves into a pile of dust at our feet.

“They’re the Oda Clan, right?”

I perk up in surprise. “Yeah, they are. My grandfather was a bit of a rebel. Some say he danced with the mononoke at night.” Images of my grandfather, hanging out in the woods and smoking our local herb with a bunch of wood spirits cracks me up. “He would’ve liked you. He took in plenty of orphans in his time. A good, kind-hearted man.”

Rin stands up from the couch to stare out at the window at this sunny and breezy day.

“If we’re going to talk, then I need to tell you something too.” He keeps his eyes on the world outside.

My breath? It’s still missing. “Okay. Go.”

“When your people arrive,” he says, turning from the window, “I want to go to Orihimé.”

Didn’t see that coming.

“I don’t belong here. I never have. I’ve made a life for myself, and I’m good at what I do, but I don’t fit in. Meeting you has felt like” — he shrugs his shoulders — “fate? I don’t know if I believe in fate, but there it is.”

“You want to leave here and go to Orihimé?” I glance around his fancy apartment.

“I want us to go to Orihimé.”

Us. My heart races in my chest. Us. A team. Together.

But does he really mean it?

I need to test him like he tested me.

I rise from the couch and approach him slowly, keeping my eyes on him from head to toe. Now that I’m better at reading him, I can gauge his truthfulness through all the visual cues I’m used to. His shoulders are relaxed, his hands at his side. He doesn’t avoid my eyes when I look into them. I compare how he is now to how he was when I tried to escape from the temple. That’s a hard memory to face. He stood over me, cold and indifferent, with only one objective in mind. Nothing like the man in front of me now.

I ask myself again, is he playing me? Can I trust him?

“What?” he asks, his eyebrows drawing together.

“I’m going to ask you a series of questions, and I’ll need you to be honest with me,” I say, remembering what I can of the test. Rin’s eyes widen in surprise. “Please elaborate on your answers. Yes or no will not do.”

The light at the window is clear and bright, giving me the ability to see Rin like I’ve not seen him in weeks. The pulse of his temple, the irises of his eyes, the muscles in his neck, and the set of his jaw — they will tell me the truth.

“You live a good, decent life here with a fancy apartment, a prestigious job, and money in the bank. Why would you leave all that behind?”

“Yes, my apartment is nice, sure. But my job is dangerous, and even though I’m good at it, I narrowly escape death pretty much every day. My boss is my ex-wife, and my coworkers only care about their status. The money in the bank means nothing if you can never spend it.”

The truth. He didn’t blink, but his pulse raced and his irises widened when he spoke of the dangers of his job.

“You have the chance to start over on a new world. What do you choose to do with yourself?”

He pauses for a moment, and I gather, from the tilt of his head, that this is something he hadn’t thought a lot about.

“I’d like to run a dōjō for kids. Teach them the same martial arts I learned when I joined Kiiroi Yama. It used to be, in Old Japan, kids were taught karate and kendo at school, from elementary age onward. Here, only the wealthy can learn. It’s too expensive for normal kids, for kids from lower castes.”

My chest warms with the memory of our family dōjō and the hours spent there with my brothers.

“I like this idea. Everyone at home learns basic martial arts, but not everyone can teach them. Kazuo taught me, growing up. Too bad I’m a poor fighter.”

“I’ve seen worse,” he says, his jaw twitching.

Liar.

“What if I stood in your way and said no, you can’t go? And in order to board the ship to Orihimé, you have to kill me. Do you do it?”

“No.”

I inch closer to him. “‘No’ will not do. You have to give me more.”

His irises widen, blackening his eyes. “No, I wouldn’t kill you. I’d rather we be alive and separate than dead together. Though the idea makes me sick.”

Dead together. His answer suggests he’d kill himself if he had to kill me. I swallow, my chest tight with dread. Something tells me we’re entering into a more dangerous time together.

“What if I told you you could never come back here?” I remember when I left Orihimé, my mother hugged me and said she’d see me again soon. I always thought I’d return home.

“Sign me up. When I leave, I’ll never come back.”

The truth.

Unless he’s just a really fantastic liar. But I have to trust somebody sometime, and it might as well be him.

“Okay,” I say, taking a step back. “I believe you.”

Even as I say it, there’s still this little bit of me that doubts.

Ugh. I wish I could silence the journalist in me sometimes, the part of me that calls everything into question. This is why I didn’t date for a long time, and I left behind a string of one-night stands that didn’t go any further. I never knew who I could trust. One guy wanted to bed me and then brag to his friends about it. Another guy was hoping for favors from my family so he could open a bar. The last guy took one look at me, had a drink, went to the bathroom, and never came back. I got really wasted that night.

Rin smiles, reaching out for my hand. I let him take it, and I’m comforted by how warm and dry it is, not cold and clammy. I open my fingers and lace mine with his. Pulling myself toward him, I close my eyes and rest my forehead on his shoulder.

Relieved. I’m relieved.

“About K&G Noodles,” Rin whispers. “Let’s try to keep up the charade for as long as possible. Let me see what I can do there, okay? Maybe you just go in a few mornings a week and deal with the storeroom.”

“I could be okay with that.”

“Good.” He kisses the top of my head, and my heart thrills with the display of affection. “I’ll keep up the drone surveillance because that seems to be working well.”

“I always had this feeling like I was being watched, and I couldn’t pinpoint why.”

He shrugs as he wraps his other arm around me. “I trust you, and you can defend yourself. But you have too many enemies. It would be stupid of me to let you walk around wherever without some kind of surveillance.”

Duh, Yumi.

But doubt… I doubt.

“Can’t let your investment go to waste, right?”

“Stop this,” he says, jerking me into his embrace even more. “Look at me.” I huff a breath out of my nose and lift my eyes up to his. “We all know the contract is a sham. You and I? We were set up to fail from the beginning. I know what you read about the contract terms. Fines and jail time, right?”

I don’t answer. I’m too mesmerized by his command of the situation.

“It’s all bullshit. It doesn’t apply to us. Tamura only used the proxy contract on us because he’s a slave to the system, and he knew you should be free but couldn’t stomach going outside his own paradigm.”

He releases me from his arms, and I regret letting my doubts bring back seriousness to the moment.

“Rin, I’m… I’m a possession, a commodity. I’m a way for others to profit off of me.”

“No. No, you’re not.”

I want to believe him.

Somehow, I don’t.

“I’m a rule breaker, Yumi. I don’t do them. I climb the ladder, and I force my way into cracks in the system until I get what I want. That’s why an orphan kid like me is the best kenryōshi on the continent.”

I smile at his brazen confidence. It’s hot.

“If I followed the rules, you wouldn’t be alive today.” He points at me before bending over to pick the blanket off the floor. “And I thank the gods every day they made me this way because of that.”

He quickly folds up the blanket and tosses it on the couch.

I think this is the longest we’ve ever gone without me asking a question.

“How about you go take a bath?” he asks me, getting back to everyday life. “And then we go out for lunch and sightseeing?”

“Sure. I’d love that.”

I want to rush forward and get to the kissing again though. Slow and steady wins the race, Yumi.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. I heard your brother asking to be invited over, so I called up Kazuo and Shintaro and invited them over for dinner tonight.”

“Really? That’s great!” I hop and clap my hands, clasping them to my chest. “What are we going to make?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “We’ll pick stuff up from the market this afternoon. You’ve never been, and I thought you’d enjoy it. Especially on a day like today.”

The sun is shining, and I have time off with Rin.

This day is turning out better than I expected.