by Amy Tasukada
Nao bit into his toast, not saying a word, but the smug look on Takeo’s face spoke volumes.
“He’s the Double Moon member you brought home, isn’t he? You’ve been lying to me this whole time. Telling me he’s just a host.”
“You didn’t need to know.”
Takeo put down the knife and pulled out his phone.
Nao glared at him. “What are you doing?”
“Calling Father and telling him that you lied to me, then he can move your sorry ass somewhere else, and I can go back to doing my real job. My ward is under attack, and Father thinks it’s better for me to play babysitter.”
Nao laughed, but his mouth became dry. Takeo was going off his plan, and if he spoke to Father it would be the end. He needed to swing the conversation back in his favor.
“You think it’s funny?” Takeo continued. “I spent four years trying to get back into good standing after what you did.”
“I’m laughing because Father knew Saehyun was in the Double Moon. We agreed it was best if you thought he was a host I was dating so you would leave when I needed you to.”
Takeo stopped thumbing his phone, signaling to Nao that he might believe the lie.
“Father didn’t find it necessary to tell you because he worried you’d overreact like you are now. I need to find any information that could help the Matsukawa, and you’re making it impossible. So why don’t you allow me to do my job?”
“Father Murata is the only one I take orders from.”
“Why not call him?” Nao shrugged. “Then we can all discuss how bad of a job you’re doing.”
After years of being followed, Nao could read Takeo like tea leaves in an empty cup. He put his phone on the table as Nao expected. The air lightened in Nao’s lungs, and he knew he had Takeo under his will.
Takeo shook his head. “You’re getting too attached to him.”
“I’m not growing attached.”
“Are you going to try to kill yourself when he dies too?”
How dare Takeo even bring him into the argument? How dare he think Nao was growing attached to a guy he’d met only a few times?
Nao stood, fingers curling into a fist, feeling himself shift back into the violent thoughts that easily slipped past. “Don’t talk about him like that.”
“The Double Moon delivered Yori’s head in a gift-wrapped box. You were there and still think it’s a good idea to fuck this guy? That’s sick, even for you.”
“That’s what Father and I agreed to. He knew what it entailed.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“And if you let me do my job, Saehyun would’ve told me their next move by now.”
Takeo stood, crossing his arms over his chest. “On a first-name basis with this guy, I see.”
“That’s what they do in Korea.” Nao stepped closer to Takeo.
“Everyone knows what Father thinks of your relationships. He should go ahead and move you to Hokkaido so he can forget about how much of a failure you are. You’re hardly worth protecting.”
“Then get out.” Nao’s voice came low.
“You’re lucky your father’s the boss, or else I would’ve knocked some sense into you a long time ago. I lost a finger because of you.”
Nao narrowed his eyes. “That was your choice.”
“You would’ve enjoyed having Father think I’m a horrible bodyguard for the rest of my life? Or would you rather have had the Matsukawa knocked off by the Tokyo syndicate?” Takeo loomed over Nao, pushing his finger into his chest. “The whole thing was your fault.”
“Get out of my house.”
Takeo grinned. “You wouldn’t be getting so mad if it was because you can’t do your job anymore. The truth hurts, and you’ve been smacked with it.”
Nao squeezed his hand into a fist, his fingernails biting into his palm. He held back. He needed to stick to his plan. He could get Takeo on his knees in a minute if he let himself slip.
“Get away from me, Takeo, or I swear…”
“You’re going to hit me? You haven’t hit anyone in years, and I don’t think you have it in you anymore. Those screams at night. ‘Shinya, don’t leave me. Shinya, how could they do that to you?’ It’s pathetic. No wonder no woman wants you.”
Nao swung. A wave of satisfaction washed over him as his fist connected with Takeo’s stomach.
“Why don’t you shoot yourself and end your misery.” Takeo spat then punched Nao’s eye.
Nao’s vision blurred, and he stumbled back. Another hit to the stomach landed him on the ground. Nao’s nails scratched at the wooden floors as he curled his fingers into a fist.
“You’re a stupid bitch.” Takeo caught his breath. “Next time, I’ll fuck you up so bad you’ll be in a hospital. I don’t care who your father is.”
Takeo slammed the door behind him. Nao took a deep breath, but still the events of the past flowed through his mind—the Tokyo Tower, the dazzling lights of the new capital—until his vision blurred blood red just like the trip ended in. He reached for his neck, unable to breathe, and traced the scar with his fingers. He was so weak.
He tried to open his eyes to flee the past, but one eye was swollen shut. He looked back at Kuma, who was still hiding under the table.
“It’s okay,” Nao called out, going to the kitchen to get a kitty treat. He knelt by the bed and cooed for Kuma to come out for the treat. “I’ll take care of Takeo.”
“Welcome!” cheered the Matsukawa underlings as Nao approached the door.
Nao returned the greeting to the underlings, who appeared blurred to him. His eye was still swollen shut, but his affliction would help sway Father’s opinion of Takeo. He hid the wound under his hair. A day had passed since the fight with Takeo, and the guard hadn’t even bothered to do his text check with him. All the more proof Nao could use against Takeo.
“Father’s upstairs?” Nao started to take off his shoes.
“He’s out back in the tearoom.”
A meeting at the tearoom was altogether different than a meeting upstairs. Nao had learned that by the time he was twelve. After stepping back into his clogs, Nao walked to the back of the house and down the winding path. A small shoji-screened room with a deep, arching roof emerged from the garden path. Two bodyguards stood outside but didn’t bat an eye when Nao approached and washed his hands and mouth.
He then took off his shoes and stepped onto the ebony platform.
“I’m sorry for interrupting,” he called out.
“Nao? Come in.”
Nao slid open the short screen door and crawled inside. The tradition was meant to help him recognize that he had left the outside world. There was a whole ceremony for each movement in a formal tea, but the maps laid out beside Father’s tea bowl told Nao there was nothing formal about the tea. All the same, Nao bowed to the wall scroll and allowed his hair to cover his black eye. No need to alert Father to Takeo’s attack until it proved useful.
“Let me tell one of the guards to bring another bowl.”
“I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble.”
“Ah, that’s right.” Father Murata shook his head. “It’s oolong you like, not matcha.”
“I never have been able to make matcha correctly.”
“Your hands don’t shake anymore. Why not give learning the traditional ceremony another try?”
A smile crossed Nao’s face, and he tried to hide his gaze from Father. He didn’t have the heart to say matcha tasted like Father’s lectures—bitter and unpleasant. Nao couldn’t dedicate his life to a tea that would have him feeling like a disobedient child his whole life.
Silence passed between them as Father looked back to the maps. Father always went to the tearoom when he needed to think, and with the marked-up Kyoto map resting in front of him, the Double Moon had to be on his mind. Streets outlined in red
created a jagged square around the ward Yori controlled. A dozen Xs marked various areas and streets around the ward. Nao located his teahouse, and up a few blocks another X marked where the cop had been found. If those were all the Double Moon’s doing, they had far more control than Nao had ever imagined.
Father Murata pushed the papers together and turned them over.
“This is the bowl I broke, isn’t it?” Nao reached down for Father’s tea bowl. A large gold line filled in a crack. He pushed his hair behind his ear, exposing his black eye, and looked up to Father.
“What happened to your eye? Where’s Takeo? He’s supposed to be—”
“Takeo did it.” Nao put his hand to his eye, and the light pressure sent a dull ache through his head.
“Takeo hit you?”
“Yes.”
Father rubbed his temple. “What did you do?”
Nao blinked. He wasn’t fifteen anymore. He didn’t need to get smacked for an indiscretion. “I came here to ask for another guard. Who gives the person he’s protecting a black eye?”
Murata picked up the bowl and took a sip. His gaze never left Nao’s. “You know I don’t like repeating myself.”
“I did nothing. Takeo is still mad about what went down in Tokyo. He blames me for his finger.”
“Takeo lost his finger because you managed to slip through his sights. He was chosen because he above anyone here would make sure that didn’t happen again.”
“He refused to come here with me.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie, so Nao could get away with it. Anytime he left, he was supposed to knock on Takeo’s door so he would follow. Takeo refused to follow, because Nao never knocked. Father stared, the glint in his eyes asking for an explanation.
“Our past makes it hard for him to follow my requests. I want to gather information for the Matsukawa, and with Takeo following so close, I can’t.”
Father pressed his lips together. “Are you making progress?”
“He started to open up about the assaulted cop, but then he noticed Takeo following me and bolted.”
“Could you still use the Korean as a source?”
“With a new bodyguard, yes. Perhaps one that’s a lower rank to look out for me. Takeo could then help protect the city. He could be more useful in other places.”
With all those Xs in Takeo’s ward, it would be an offer Father couldn’t refuse. At least, Nao hoped he couldn’t refuse. Nao searched his father’s face to read his thoughts but received nothing but the blank stare of the yakuza boss. Nao gulped and looked off to the wall scroll. He could only hope the plan he set into motion worked. He missed Saehyun’s touch.
Father Murata leaned forward and took the tea bowl. “You did.”
Nao blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You broke the bowl”—he passed the bowl to Nao—“the first time you got out of the detention center, and I brought you here for tea.”
Nao traced the filled-in crack with his thumb. He remembered that day. Father had handed him the whisked matcha and, while Nao was in mid-sip, he’d told him how his mother left them.
Nao put the bowl down and pushed it to his father.
“I’m sorry for my indiscretion. I was stupid back then, but I promise I’m not that person any more. Now I can help the family by fighting for a purpose.”
“It will take a few days before I can select someone to protect you. Don’t sneak past the new bodyguard.” A grin spread across Father’s face before he laughed.
Nao bowed, hiding his smile. “I’ll do my best.”
“I was happy when you left the underworld and made a life for yourself. You’re not going to fight again. I hoped you’d have settled down and started a family by now. You’re lucky you’re not a Christmas cake, or else no one would want you anymore since you’re twenty-six.”
Nao pressed his palms on his yukata. A weight pulled him deeper into himself. He had disappointed Father so many times, he could never be the kind of son he wished for. Father’s hand grasped Nao’s shoulder.
“I let you rejoin because you can spy in a way no one else in the Matsukawa is able. But once we stop the Double Moon, you will return to your teahouse. We need you to find information. If you can find out where their safe house is, it would be a tremendous help. Is that something you can do?”
“Without fail.”
“Then once this whole nonsense with the Koreans is over, you need to get past this fetish for men and start a family.”
The bitterness of Father’s words stayed in Nao’s mouth like oversteeped tea. How could he think he’d escape a visit to the tearoom without that lecture?
Nao strolled back down the Philosopher’s Path. The stagnated water from the Kumo River mirrored his stifled thoughts. It wasn’t visions of the past that drove him to take the walk, but visions of the present; the irony of how he could help his family by sharing his bed.
He pulled out his phone and looked back through the contacts. He hadn’t called Saehyun since the Aoi Festival.
Saehyun answered in Korean, which made Nao wonder if he’d only answered because he didn’t care. Wasn’t he mad at him? Why was he talking as if he hadn’t stormed away? Nao wanted to see Saehyun again. He couldn’t believe how, in such a short time, he missed having someone in his life. Both men were silent as they waited for the other to speak.
“Saehyun?”
“Oh, it’s you.” Saehyun laughed. “I don’t usually have Japanese calling. You mispronounce my name, you know. You have since the first time you said it, but it was kind of cute, so I never corrected you.”
“Look.” Nao took a deep breath. “I wanted to tell you the truth.”
“That’s all I ever wanted from the beginning.”
“I—I know.” Nao’s voice broke, but it was all part of the act. “I wanted to tell you the truth at the start, but I was worried.”
“Worried about telling the truth?”
“Worried you wouldn’t want to see me when you realized what was going on. Takeo is my ex-boyfriend.”
“An ex? You have a thing for forty-year-olds?”
“He was nice to me. I was lonely…” Nao fought his gag reflex with the lies. “Once I realized how possessive he was, I broke it off. He refused to get out of my life and stalked me from that day on. That’s why he was here when you came with the porridge. I put in a restraining order against him a day after the Aoi Festival.”
“What?”
“He came back. I had to barricade the door and call the police. I wanted—I wanted to wait until everything was all finished before I called you back.”
“You called the police?”
“I was worried—” Nao inhaled sharply. “If I’d told you from the start, you wouldn’t have wanted to be with someone with all this extra baggage.”
“Calm down. It’s all right.”
“I feel disgusted with myself. I’ve been too worried to do anything major about it, and you know going to the cops would bring up how we were in a relationship, and they already detest stuff like that.”
“Hey, I said don’t worry. If he bothers you again, I’ll hack his face off.”
“Can you come by tonight? Maybe we can have dinner or something.” The words slipped out before Nao even realized.
A string of conversations mumbled in Korean came through the phone. “In a few days. Sorry, work.”
“When?” Nao’s tone came out more pleading than he wished.
“I’m glad you finally told me the truth, Nao. I’ll call you back in a bit to get the date worked out.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Nao hung up. A little tugging at his heart told him that maybe his plea wasn’t for the Matsukawa.
Smiling more with each step, Saehyun climbed the stairs to Nao’s apartment. Two weeks had passed since the Aoi Fest
ival, and even though they hadn’t seen each other, they’d talked over the phone often since Nao’s confession. The pull toward Nao grew with each word they spoke.
Yesterday, Saehyun had led the final blow to add another ward under the Double Moon’s control, which was the only reason he could sneak off and spend the day with Nao. Saehyun would come over, and then they’d have another tea tasting. Saehyun fought the urge to ask whether they would be betting on that one too. After what Nao must’ve gone through with Takeo, Saehyun wanted to show him he was more than just a nice fuck.
Saehyun arrived on Nao’s floor and heard someone shouting in the hallway. As he approached, he saw a man in a suit, visibly irate, banging on Nao’s door.
“Open up already. Don’t make me get my key, or else you’ll have another black eye.” The man’s voice echoed in the hallway. “You know you’re not supposed to leave without telling me.”
The man kept knocking, but Saehyun stopped. The man’s wide forehead and small jaw looked like an acorn—an acorn Saehyun would crush with his bare hands.
“Hey, asshole, stop showing your stupid face around here!”
Saehyun threw himself at Takeo and pinned him to the door. It creaked at first, but then a loud crack echoed as their combined weight snapped off the hinges. Weightless only for a moment, Saehyun pulled his elbow close, knocking the wind out of Takeo when they hit the floor.
Saehyun looked around, but Nao was nowhere in sight. Maybe he’d hidden in the bathroom.
Takeo crawled out from underneath Saehyun, bringing his attention back to the fight. Takeo was going to pay for the anguish he’d caused Nao and would be left with such a beating he wouldn’t dare come anywhere near that apartment again.
“Nao left you, and you need to get the fuck away from him.”
Saehyun kicked Takeo in the side, but Takeo grabbed his foot and twisted it. Saehyun tumbled to the ground. Pain shot through his leg and up his spine, and his head collided with the low table. The room shook as hot blood trickled down Saehyun’s neck. The room spun. Saehyun’s disadvantage called for a rise in action.
