When I wake up in the morning, after the best night’s sleep I’ve had in ages, it is to find myself draped over Yohji. I should feel panic-stricken or disgusted with myself for my weakness but I just don’t. What I do feel is comfortable and complete.
Then I remember.
After getting Yohji, and possibly Nagi too, some new clothes we will be going to the Castle to report and decide on both their futures. And I will have to ask Nagi to show everyone that ghastly e-mail. Not the best of days to wake up to and yet…
He’s here, he’s alive, he’s not crazed and why oh why did I ever push him away? But I already know the answer to that. I didn’t want to mourn him. Still convinced in a small corner of my soul, that every word that Schuldig ever whispered to me is true, and that everyone I love will die on me, I wanted to save Yohji because I…
Because I…
I care about him damn it! Just as I care about Ken and the rest of Side B. So why do I feel so incapable of letting a very efficient assassin take care of himself? Why this protective urge whenever he’s around? I don’t feel it for anyone else. I am quite certain that Ken, or Chloe, or Free are quite capable of taking care of themselves, so why not Yohji? He’s just as good at handling himself as they are and yet I feel this fear for him that I simply don’t have for the others.
And I’m fooling myself if I think I don’t know the answer. I could exist quite happily without the others. Oh sure, it would hurt if anything happened to them but it wouldn’t hold a candle to the pain I felt at Koua when the ceiling collapsed on Yohji and I thought he was gone forever. I can’t do that again. I can’t lose him. I was a fool to let him come to England. He was safe as Ito Ryo. As Kudoh Yohji he’s a marked man.
My thoughts are still going round in circles when the cause of all this soul searching wakes up and smiles at me. I sigh. One lazy, sexy smile and I’m lost.
“We need to get moving.” My voice is harsh, unemotional. If in doubt, attack.
His expression changes from the smile, through confusion and ends by being hurt. “Okay,” he says with a little sigh and I feel like a complete bastard.
He moves his arm away and suddenly I realise that I’m doing what I’ve always done to him. I’m pushing him away because I’m too terrified to get closer than I already am. Old habits, it would seem, die hard. It’s time for me to change my behaviour towards him.
I pull his arm back around me and kiss him. Being Yohji it doesn’t take him more than a second to respond and so we are lost in this almost desperate meeting of lips and tongues.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur when we come up for air, “but we do have a busy day ahead of us. Some of it… won’t be very pleasant.”
He snorts in either amusement or irony, I’m not sure which.
“When I told Kenken I wanted out of Japan, I knew exactly what I was walking back into, Aya,” he says. “I know a great deal of my time is going to be spent in dealing with unpleasantness but I’m not complaining. It makes sense to stand together if Saijou, the old bastard, is after our blood.”
I should have known that he would read the situation so accurately. I should also have known that he wouldn’t let it worry him the way it does me. I should learn from him but we are what we are and I’ll always be a worrier.
“I’d rather forget about that till we get to the Castle,” I tell him. “Everybody needs to be made aware of the situation and I’d rather not have to do it more than once.”
He nods, his understanding as quick as ever. “We’d better get moving then.” He sighs slightly whilst gazing mournfully at his rumpled business suit. “I was hoping I’d never have to wear that damned thing again.”
His comment reminds me that he will need clean underwear and I climb out of bed and pad across the room to my dresser. I open a drawer and dig out some clean boxers for him as well as myself.
“I can probably lend you a shirt of some description but anything else is unlikely to be long enough.”
“Believe me, Aya, I’m more than grateful for the clean boxers. Anything else can wait till I’ve been shopping.”
Having showered and dressed we meet Ken, Free and Chloe downstairs. Of Nagi there is no sign and I feel myself frown. When I ask after his whereabouts, I’m told he’s in the shop. My frown deepening I go looking for him, still unable to fully trust him and wondering what he’s up to. I find him watering the potted plants. When he sees me he starts so violently he almost drops the hose.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “but they looked quite dry and I wanted to make sure they were still worth saving when the shop opens again. It was the least I could do after all you did for me.”
My heart softens a little. He seems sincere enough. “That’s fine,” I tell him. “With the trip to Tokyo and what happened there we all forgot about the plants in the shop.”
“I always envied you the Koneko,” he says, surprising me yet again. “Outside of some hacking and missions, I had very little to do when I was with Schwarz. I used to get bored. I actually like growing things.”
Well, what do you know? We have something in common. I lean against the counter while Nagi continues with his self-appointed chore. “What about your time with…”
“Takatori Mamoru? I hated it. Hated him for…” He glances at me, his one visible eye showing both sorrow and pleading. “Can this wait till the debriefing later? I’d rather not have to shock everyone more than once.”
Ironic that the man I’d once regarded in the light of a younger brother had been the one to turn Naoe Nagi into a killer. But then again, he had been raised to use people both before and after his kidnapping.
I nod in answer to Nagi’s question. It’s going to be a very long day with a lot of unpleasant surprises for the people I now work with and… have come to care about. I’m about to say more when the shop is hit by a force somewhat akin to a minor tornado.
“I’m taking Yohji to get some clothes,” Chloe says on his way through. “If he’s left to your tender mercies he’ll be shopping in Marks and Sparks! Don’t worry, we’ll go straight from the shops to the Castle.”
Yohji gives Nagi and I a cheerful grin and a wave on his way through and then they’re both gone and peace descends again.
“Marks and Sparks?” Nagi asks.
“An English chain store. Good quality clothing but not up-to-the-minute fashionable.”
Nagi cracks an odd little smile, the first I’ve ever seen on his face. “Ah,” he says as if I’ve just explained the secret of the universe, “I don’t think he would wish to shop there then. I always remember him dressing…”
“Like a slut?” I suggest.
“I was going to say very fashionably,” Nagi says and the smile grows bigger, “but you’re right.”
I chuckle at the dry comment. “Well, at least Chloe has some taste. Hopefully he’ll steer Yohji away from anything too ridiculous.”
And then it hits me. I am talking to Naoe Nagi as if he’s a team-mate, a friend even. And it doesn’t seem strange or wrong. Even when he was part of Schwarz, I knew exactly where I stood with him. He hasn’t betrayed us, at least not so far.
I help him with the plants and offer to take him to the local clothing stores, suddenly glad that he’s here. It doesn’t matter what he’s going to tell us later, he deserves the chance to live a life of his choosing in peace. He’s never been given that chance before and I find myself wondering exactly what he will do with it.
* * * * * * *
I am more than relieved to find that Takatori Mamoru has touched none of my bank accounts and that I still have a healthy sum of money in them. It makes sense, I suppose, to leave them the fuck alone if I’m supposed to be dead or somebody else. Well, sorry chibi, but Kudoh Yohji has just risen from the grave. And if that happens to cause Saijou to have a heart attack, what can I say? That it couldn’t happen to a more deserving bastard, perhaps?
Chloe, it has to be said, is a mine of information when it come to where to shop for male attire that is not totally boring. He takes me to several fascinating boutiques and emporiums and I get out of the monkey suit and into some soft leather pants and a forest green cashmere sweater at the first changing room I step into. When I emerge he nods approval at my choice but looks a little confused.
“What’s the problem?” I ask once I’ve paid for my purchases and we’re heading for the next store.
“No problem as such,” he says. “It’s just that I had it on what I thought was very good authority that you dressed in low slung jeans and crop tops.”
Thanks a fucking bunch, Aya! No wonder Chloe seems confused. “I used to wear exactly that as part of my mission gear when we were at the Koneko. Around the shop I wore cosy jumpers or tee-shirts in summer, much like Aya did. Now, when I went clubbing, then I pulled out all the stops.”
Chloe chuckles. “Gay male on the pull?” he guesses.
“Actually, at that time, I was in serious denial. I admitted to bisexuality and chased anything in a skirt just to prove to myself that I could. All of that changed when Aya and I became lovers.”
Chloe frowns slightly and concentrates on his driving for a while. He very obviously has something on his mind and, if we’re to become team-mates, I would sooner he got whatever it is about me that is bothering him off his chest.
“Something wrong?” I ask him.
“When Ken told us that you were alive, well and wanted to leave Japan, Aya dropped everything to go and rescue you.” He shoots me a quick, speculative look. “I guess, as he’s come to be a good friend of mine since he’s been here, I’m hoping that you would do the same for him.”
“Without a moment’s hesitation,” I tell him. I should be angry at his concern, perhaps, but instead I’m touched that somebody else cares enough about Aya’s well-being to check me out. “He was the one who pushed me away. I think he has this conviction that anyone he cares about is going to die. His past record has kind of borne that out, his parents, in a sense his sister, his first team.” I sigh. “Plus I think that both he and Ken have issues about betrayal. So do I, but perhaps to a lesser extent. I was never Omi’s lover and I didn’t have my team betray me so I‘m not feeling quite so fucking raw about things.”
Chloe’s brows disappear into his hair before he suddenly smiles. “Thank you, Yohji,” he says. “I honestly didn’t expect you to be that open.”
I return his smile. “I figure if we’re going to work together we’re going to have to learn to trust each other. Call that making a start.”
He chuckles as he parks the car outside another interesting looking store. “I don’t think you’ll have any problems with fitting right in,” he says. “Unless Yuki decides you’ve come to take Aya away from us.”
“Ken told me some of that story. Poor kid seems to have abandonment issues as well as a strong case of hero worship.”
Chloe unbuckles his seatbelt and climbs out of the car. “That’s about it in a nutshell,” he says as I follow his example. Before I can enter the shop he puts a hand on my arm. “We realise that we can never replace what you had as Weiss, but we are a good team.”
“Believe me, Chloe, I can already see that. I just hope I don’t unbalance it in any way.”
Strangely enough I’m also hoping that Nagi decides to stay with Krypton Brand or Side B or whatever it is that we’re called now. If ever a kid needed friends, it’s that one. I get the feeling that he actually liked the other members of Schwarz, strange as that might seem to me, and has missed their company.
I put all such thoughts aside as we enter the shop and I start drooling over designer shirts and pants. Thirty or so fun-packed minutes later we are back in Chloe’s car with the boot full to almost bursting with carrier bags and boxes, and are on our way to this Castle. The business part of the day is underway and I find I have questions. “What do I need to know about Krypton-san?” being the first of them.
“Only that he never puts us at unnecessary risk,” Chloe says. “From what I’ve learned about Kritiker from Ken and Aya, they seem like faceless bureaucrats. I would say that KR is more likely to become personally involved in missions, as is his assistant, Mihirogi. They are neither nameless nor faceless.”
Well that all sounds very promising. “You make it sound like you both respect and like the man,” I say, “and Mihirogi-san too.”
“I do,” Chloe tells me in perfect seriousness. “We all do, even Aya and Ken. If you don’t feel the same after meeting him, he will expect you to walk away from him, Krypton Brand and us.”
“He seems very trusting. I mean both Nagi and I are total strangers to him yet we are being taken to his home. Suppose either of us were to turn him down today and then expose him to interested parties?”
Chloe chuckles softly and it is perhaps the most chilling sound I’ve ever heard outside of Farfarello’s war cry. “You would not last very long,” he says. “Any one of us would hunt you down as we would defend him to the death.”
So, a man who inspires trust, respect and maybe even love. The Takatori family could learn a great deal from such a man.
“Sounds like a good man to have on your side,” I remark, attempting to take even the vaguest hint of threat out of the situation.
“Don’t worry, Yohji, I know your question was rhetorical,” Chloe says with a hint of amusement in his voice. “Am I really that scary to an ex-member of Weiss?”
“Scary almost covers it,” I tell him with a grin that shows just how relieved I am. Up till now Chloe has seemed prepared to be my friend. “I don’t turn on people who offer me so much trust. Somehow I doubt of Naoe Nagi does either.”
Chloe frowns at the road for a moment. “You know something, Yohji, I think you may just have answered a question for me,” he says. “Like you, I wondered why KR opened up his home to us. Now I think I know.”
“You mean even us killers don’t bite the hand that feeds us?”
“I wouldn’t have put it quite so crassly but yes, I think that might be part of the reason why he shows us so much trust.”
I say no more for a while but I am busily wondering why a man like Krypton felt the need to recruit and finance a team of assassins in the first place. The Takatori I can understand. They were quite capable of making a lot of enemies that would need dealing with. And Weiss, as I knew it, was recruited when they were fighting amongst themselves, brother against brother, uncle against nephew. I shudder as I remember just what we found ourselves dragged onto, exactly how we were recruited.
I start to wonder how this team was recruited. Yuki I know about from what Ken has told me but I know nothing about the backgrounds of Free, Michel or Chloe. I’m not entirely sure that I want to know, either. And yet I feel a level of trust towards them already which is weird in and of itself. Maybe I’m just getting lax in my old age or maybe six months of living as a normal human being has destroyed my edge. Not a happy thought that one.