“You’ll crease your suit lying like that.”
Mireille’s chiding tugged Kirika’s head to roll toward the bedroom’s door, herald for the towel-wrapped woman’s appearance. Mireille had declared that Kirika shower before her to allow her the opportunity to unearth suitable clothing for the imminent ‘assignment’ from the wardrobes their baggage supplied. The outcome had been the squeaky clean younger girl welcomed back from her morning wash by her slate-grey business suit and a white shirt with a red decorative cord for the collar arranged for her on the bed, and the blonde responsible for the service only now finishing her own lavations.
Remaining inert, Kirika’s eyes; exempt from her body’s indolence; moved with Mireille as the blonde strode to the chest of drawers standing against the wall to the left of the bed; and to the left of Kirika sprawled upon it; arms outstretched and her legs apart as wide as her skirt permitted. The bed wasn’t made, a match for the girl’s untidy lassitude, although the covers had been sloppily pulled to the pillows in a disheveled show of order. Idly Kirika mused whether she had creases in her clothing the same as the messy bed sheets, as per her partner’s warning. She didn’t think it would matter much to her cover if she did, but Mireille acclaimed a neat presentation of one’s self, so for that sake she hoped to have escaped a rumpling. Mireille would usually see to it herself to straighten Kirika up if not. The close, personal attention wasn’t something to really deserve shunning however, and the girl supposed it was for that particular reason that she was in no hurry to observe Mireille’s direction… for now.
Mireille grappled at the towel wrapping around her as it apparently threatened to slip and unravel, and stripped off the hood made from a second towel she wore over her head with a yank from her other hand, wet flaxen hair spilling loose in a tangled affair. Her back was to Kirika, but it was still hard to look away. There was appreciation to discover in all aspects of Mireille’s figure, and from every angle. Perhaps prolonging her comfortable view of her sculptured beloved was one more motivation to linger in lethargy.
Kirika sat up to the blare of the hairdryer going, choosing the edge of the bed furthest from Mireille to swing her legs over before her feet touched the floor. There was a threshold for how long she could shirk an instruction from Mireille. She didn’t want to get a stricter scolding after all. Moreover, there was an instinct, an inherent need, to obey her blonde partner encoded within Kirika. The longer she disregarded supervision given by Mireille, the greater the urgency to fulfill it she felt. As the rebellious seconds ticked, each was synonymous to a step toward navigating deeper into a thickening minefield. Kirika became progressively restless, on edge; her thoughts grew to focus on nothing else but her lapse, and physical irritation manifested though missing a tangible source; her skin itching in, conveniently, awkward to reach spots, and aches that weren’t there before suddenly were. Whatever activity she was doing or repose she was in was cursed, sucked of appeal and comfort.
Yet for all the penalties of defiance, seldom did Kirika suffer them. Kirika was punctual to mind Mireille’s word because she wanted to. Whether there was distinction between the innate impulse to do as she was told and the desire in her heart to, she couldn’t deduce it. It wasn’t relevant. Their goals were the same, and pleasing Mireille was the end result.
Heedless of locating and smoothing away any wrinkles in her outfit she might have, Kirika’s head crept over her shoulder, choosing the ecstasy of drinking in her love’s splendor once more, her eyes addicted to it and her heart to the woman inside who modeled it. Mireille’s stream of blonde locks were the main attraction as their alluring owner methodically ran her wooden hairbrush down their length under the heat of the hairdryer, spun gold coming to luster as the damp was gradually coaxed out. It was always that brush of rosy wood with the faded gold detail around the rim of the back face; wherever in the world Kirika and Mireille went, it traveled in their company.
Kirika had wondered before if the hairbrush carried personal importance for her partner; some keepsake of her home in Corsica, maybe? It looked as if it had a history with its dulled decorative pattern; the colour likely as bright as Mireille’s tresses at that history’s beginning. It might have belonged to her mother. If it had, it was to some extent Kirika’s keepsake too. A memento of the person who had blessed her with the seed that would bear a greater existence than the hateful one originally intended for her, even while Kirika had been at the point of extinguishing hers. Kirika could never forget her or the kindness she had shown in the face of her death, to its harbinger no less. Kirika could see her in Mireille--in heart and spirit, and even in looks. Odette Bouquet lived on in her daughter.
Mireille dedicated a prolific amount of time in the morning and even more so at night to combing her hair with her favoured brush; stroke after stroke, over and over that Kirika gave up keeping a tally of how often it parted and caressed those silken strands. Like magic the hairbrush brought out the best in Mireille’s hair; somehow polishing the mane to a glossy sheen and inspiring a buoyant bounce to the way it fell and moved. Kirika ached to brush her beloved’s hair to that brilliance. To spend the hours peacefully watching up close as her brushstrokes glided down the blonde cascade, being near enough to pick up its scent, near enough to let her fingers flow through the locks whenever she craved the divine sensation of softer than silk. If only Kirika had the daring to ask and the confidence she could brush Mireille’s hair in the proper fashion. If only. In the deficiency, Kirika had to be content at admiring the perfect beauty with a distance forever a buffer. Perhaps radiance as Mireille possessed wasn’t meant to be touched but merely treasured with the eyes… and longed for in the heart.
She could have sat staring all morning--she could have sat for as long as Mireille was there to behold--but eventually Kirika stood up from the bed, running her hands over her skirt to flatten it out this time around, just to be safe. A straightening tug on the bottom of her jacket later and she was wandering toward the bedroom’s sole window, knowing the sights it had on offer behind the shut drapes. It was a school day, after all.
With the forethought of the vigilant, Kirika eased open a break in the curtains, employing a single finger; the gap a nigh on incidental crinkle in the fabric to those on the outside of the glass windowpane, but a peephole for the orchestrating girl on the inside. The sun however, never the fool like those it shined on below, leapt on the opportunity to cast a bright limb into the room, yet Kirika had foreseen and sidestepped even its reach. It was a risk gazing out the window; any antagonist could be gazing back, and the unnecessary security breach would vex Mireille if too gaudy or possibly even out of sheer principle; but Kirika had tweaked the odds of the gamble radically in her favour. The assassin was no more exposed to a sniper scope or camera lens than she was to an onlooker’s eye. A critiquing azure look at her back was the greater peril on her mind, however Kirika trusted her canny approach would prove to mitigate that.
The window was host to the street in front of the Yuumura house below, a slice of suburban living spread out with skyscrapers of the city distant, behind the trees and power lines and neighbours’ houses. It was a threshold to what might have been; to the other world.
A gaggle of giggling high school girls roamed the pavement outside the house, tracing a path Kirika used to follow and still remembered. The uniforms were the same, although the weather saw coats worn over the blue winter version of them. Tsubaki High School went on without her. Kirika wondered what had become of her classmates. She recognised none in the group below. Were the girls and boys of class 2-4 still there? Did they speculate on where she had suddenly gone? Did they remember her sometimes? Or had it been as though Kirika had never been a part of their class, their school, and her disappearance was akin to an eraser removing a mistake--dismissed without a vestige remaining to mark her existence? It was in the realm of Soldats to have lubricated her departure once Japan had seen Kirika and Mireille’s backs; paperwork vanishing and faculty coerced into forgetting about one quiet, unassuming girl. It wasn’t as though Kirika had formed friendships in Tsubaki High School or left an impact on any of her teachers. Even in the world of light she had tread in darkness; she had been of the friendless, a shadow while everyone around her had been bright. The stigma of a killer, a sinner, was not something shed with a simple loss of memory. Kirika had never been one of them.
The girls down there… glass separated them, but they and Kirika were a world apart. Their world was not Kirika’s, just as Kirika’s world was alien to them. Their naivety to it made them safe; kept them smiling. Kept them in the light. It was better for them to not know her. Like Heaven and Hell were separated, a demon was out of place in paradise. Kirika would always see their world through a window; she’d never truly live in it. Still, she hoped that one day she might find a place of sorts in it, but Kirika’s eyes had seen too much death and her hands been wet with too much blood. The light would never wash the shadow from her, not completely.
The hairdryer switched off, and Kirika let the schoolgirls blur as she focused her gaze on Mireille’s reflection on her side of the glass, the blonde’s image overlapping the group. In the choice between light and dark, Kirika would always stand where it was blackest for as long as Mireille chose the dark--beside the woman she loved. That was her purpose this morning and the next, and for every one thereafter while they lingered in their sinister world. The girls walking to school could not allege to have an equal or more important function, and in that sense Kirika had something over them and their peaceful existence. Something beautiful flourished in the deep blackness, like a flower blooming in a land otherwise constantly ravaged by war. It was that lone flower Kirika held in her heart for succour and what caused a euphoric swelling there in her breast. She fought in support of Mireille, to ensure the darkness didn’t claim the breathtaking woman’s life--that nothing would. It was an honour made in love and upheld with love, and even if they did manage simpler, quieter lives together one day, that honour would persist. Mireille and the amazing feelings they shared was Kirika’s pinprick of light in the vast dark, but it was vibrant and clear, and couldn’t be encroached by the void around it.
Kirika watched Mireille in the window as the blonde walked over to their luggage, the girl’s brow creasing slightly as she tried hard to concentrate on her adored partner alone. The voice in her head belonged to Altena, but it didn’t speak like her. Kirika was starting to doubt if her other self had been the prodigy that she had always thought her to be; the perfect student of Altena and her enclave, robotic in following their creed. Altena had relished in submerging herself in sin; she of anybody found grandeur in it. Then again, the voice was not to be trusted. She worked to undermine Kirika, stoking her fears while gnawing at her spirit. To what end, Kirika did not like thinking about.
Mireille bent over to dig around in her bag, and Kirika discovered her eyes alighting on her partner’s upraised bottom. It turned out to be as engrossing as every other occasion her gaze loitered on it, clearing her mind of her perturbing thoughts--all thought, really. Her mind, ordinarily an indiscriminate sea of churning waves and drifting streams went quite silent and still; what always happened during the moments she was particularly mired in gazing deeply and fondly at Mireille. The towel covered most of the blonde’s posterior--it was rare to catch it exposed, and then only flashes--but in the dim outline the window-turned-mirror provided, Kirika thought she could *just* see up inside it. If only the angle were better….
It became an unnatural obsession--Kirika subtly tilting her head this way and that to see whether the new perspectives created would let her view more of the cheeks of her love’s rear. Mireille’s bottom sashaying a little from side to side while she rummaged only heightened Kirika’s level of heady enthrallment. It always moved, swayed, so… so…. Kirika didn’t have a word for how it moved, but it was nice to watch. From far, far away a tiny thought mused on why naked bottoms weren’t shown on television. Or for that matter, naked women like Mireille. That might be a program Kirika would enjoy and make an effort to see. The girl guessed it was due to propriety again; there were some places on the human body that were just hidden as a rule. Kirika would cover herself too while dressing sometimes, when she remembered. But again, it was merely because it was something she believed she was meant to do. At least when she forgot to Mireille didn’t admonish her for it, probably because Kirika was either in the privacy of their bedroom or secluded behind a curtain in a store’s changing room.
Mireille stood up straight, Kirika’s toil to see what she wasn’t meant to for naught, and the girl’s mental faculties returned to her, though how she was feeling disappointed was the first thought shaped. Kirika didn’t budge from her position however, still hopeful for more. There had never been an assignment so dangerous that could match these feelings--the sensation of spicy anxiousness, the flavour of genuine fear nearly, but fear she *wanted* to face and that tamed her breathing to a slow and measured tempo. When her gun was in her grasp Kirika was never afraid or eager for the possible exchange of fire ahead. She felt nothing. This was something else. She tingled with life inside.
From Mireille’s likeness in the window Kirika could pick out a lacy pair of black panties and matching bra in the blonde’s hand, delicate things unlike the underwear the younger girl had. Mireille’s undergarments came in an array of colours and styles, and in fabrics like satin and silk and lace. Kirika’s were so very plain by comparison--cotton mostly cut in straightforward designs, and white and pink and blue the usual shades. She supposed her underwear served its purpose well enough, but Mireille’s was pretty, especially once on the woman’s body. Kirika had even glimpsed panties that left the blonde’s bottom cheeks bare! It was strange to wear garments that looked so nice when no one got to see them under your clothing. There had to be a reason, but it was a mystery to Kirika.
Still, Kirika wouldn’t have minded so much trying on attire like that, but Mireille didn’t possess the same devotion she had choosing Kirika’s undergarments as she did the rest of her partner’s wardrobe. They were always selected in a hurry, with rarely much browsing involved. It continued to the instances when Mireille laid out her clothes for her; the woman let Kirika decide on her own what to don underneath it. This morning had been no exception; Kirika’s suit had been missing a set of underwear. The girl didn’t know why. True, it wasn’t often she thought she needed to wear a bra. She simply put on the clothes she had and it didn’t seem to make a difference lacking one. Mireille always wore one, or something like it, however she was a lot bigger up there. Maybe Kirika’s size was why Mireille didn’t bother spending the time.
Mireille paused suddenly and glanced over her shoulder, and for a second Kirika thought she was going to get in trouble for peeking out the window, or worse, caught peeking at her. Mireille didn’t like it when Kirika watched her change. Kirika was shooed away rather brusquely when she had first sat there staring after moving in with the blonde, teaching her not to look so obviously again. Kirika had undressed and dressed in the company of her classmates for gym without generating an acrid reaction, but perhaps there were different standards in school.
Apparently Kirika’s spying on both counts was overlooked or unnoticed for now, as Mireille was content to look away and put on her panties. She slipped them on underneath her towel however; the veiled approach her normal habit while Kirika was around. But after a wiggle of her hips to get comfortable in her black underwear, the towel fell from Mireille to encircle her feet, and Kirika was treated to her partner’s bare back. The dimple of perfect alabaster skin down the center that followed that sinuous curve, ending at the woman’s albeit panty-clad round bottom, only for two long, slender, beautifully toned legs to carry on the rest of the way downwards…. Kirika’s eyes didn’t want to leave. It was as close to seeing all of Mireille without the blanketing distraction of clothes that Kirika was ever privileged to. Mireille packaged herself attractively in elegant apparel, but regardless of how stylish the clothes were there was no fabric on par with the blonde’s naked flesh--her true, unadorned self.
Mireille threaded her arms through the shoulder straps of her bra, and then after fiddling with it at the front, fastened the clasp at her back. She bent at the waist again to retrieve something out of her bag, but it was for the shortest of moments. However, as consolation, when she rose her stretched underwear was pushed a little bit between the two cheeks of her bottom, creating some delightful contours.
At last Mireille turned around--side-on to at least allow Kirika to properly revere her stature in lace underwear--and she walked over to sit on the edge of her half of the bed. She gathered together what looked like a tan knot of material in her hands and reached down to her feet. When the blonde sat back up, sheer nylon was unrolled along her calves. Mireille got to her feet to pull the remainder of the elastic material past her thighs and over her hips, and then shimmied those hips to and fro as she adjusted the pantyhose to her liking, her thumbs stretching and twisting the waistband about. She grumbled wordlessly under her breath throughout--low mutterings, probably deliberately subdued so that Kirika wouldn’t hear, however they failed to be amply muffled that the girl’s receptive ears weren’t piqued--and pulled a variety of discontent expressions before finally leaving the waistband alone. Tights weren’t a favourite of Mireille’s, but her penchant for very short skirts saw them as part of her garb all too frequently. On one of their numerous fashion-related forays, Mireille had sternly educated Kirika on the topic of pantyhose being a poor and distasteful substitute for thigh-high stockings and garter belt, or even just the stockings. She didn’t remark why exactly, but her abhorrence was unmistakable.
Kirika had her theories she tossed around in her mind, of course. Pantyhose were plain--black, brown or white were the only hues Kirika had observed in her partner’s wardrobe, and with no patterns or designs to speak of--whereas Mireille was fond of pretty things. Contrary, Mireille’s stocking collection, while not having many extra colours, had lots and lots of diverse decoration. Kirika had seen stockings resembling netting; loose like a chain-link fence or tight akin to mesh; stockings with stitched butterflies, stockings with vertical stripes, stockings with horizontal stripes, stockings with checkers--then there was the lace band at the tops, and the garters too! The assortment was as great as their wearer’s taste for them.
Perhaps pantyhose had a comparable selection, but Mireille simply didn’t entertain it. Kirika wasn’t as offended by tights as the blonde; she wore a tan pair like Mireille did now, although granted it was uncommon--hosiery didn’t fall under the category of underwear according to the woman, and was typically set out for Kirika by her--but she had to agree that stockings were nicer. Kirika felt fine wearing pantyhose herself; the texture of nylon was rather pleasant to run her hands down; and they did accentuate Mireille’s legs as superbly as thigh-high stockings did, but stockings; and especially when complemented with a garter belt; had an allure unmatched by their lengthier sister. That stockings didn’t completely cover the whole leg, sparing a tantalising space of thigh above an eye-catching lace design, made them the winner in Kirika’s opinion. She got to look at Mireille’s legs attractively attired and yet still had some of her love’s skin on open display--a sampling of both beauties. And while it was correct that Kirika couldn’t catch sight of Mireille’s panties once the blonde was fully dressed, she didn’t like how pantyhose fit so high on her partner’s hips. She felt it was a shame to obscure pretty underwear of the kind Mireille had during the times it was revealed.
Kirika hadn’t had the experience of slipping on a set of thigh-high stockings of Mireille’s sort, and never a garter belt. Hers were always basic like the blonde’s tights, and cotton, and the lace was absent. Similar to her underwear in fact, which rendered Kirika musing on the secret of why Mireille didn’t handle her hosiery the same as she ministered to her undergarments. She tried, but Kirika wasn’t sure she’d ever understand fashion, or at least Mireille’s interpretation of it.
Mireille made to walk back to her bags, however she stopped when she was faced with Kirika at the window, and as though seeing the girl there for the first time, struck a rigid, officious pose; her hips swung to one side and a hand found purchase on the raised swell. She frowned like that at Kirika’s back for a second or two, her look predictably disapproving, but then resumed her course to the foot of the bed.
Once there, Mireille leaned over her luggage, hovering on one foot while the other lifted for balance behind her, and with her fingertips plucked a white shirt from one of her bags by its collar. “There must be something very interesting out there,” she remarked as she shook out the shirt. The blonde must have felt she had enough clothes on now to tolerate Kirika’s visual attention.
Even so, Kirika was sluggish in turning around and leaving the curtain, the acclimatised convention for when her partner was dressing keeping her chary while also that she had been spying making her unwilling to present herself as too keen to look. “Mmm… not so much,” Kirika said, her finger slipping from the drape. The outside didn’t beguile so much this occasion; for all its temptation it was the inside that sported the greater lure. Peace and wishes were for tomorrow; the gun and a promise were for today.
Mireille seemed grim when Kirika finally faced her head-on, the woman concentrating too fixatedly on finding the sleeves of her shirt for her arms. She tugged sharply on the shirt’s lapels, the fabric answering with a crisp snap, and then began to button it from the top downward. “We’ll be home soon,” Mireille said after she had worked about halfway down the shirt, not looking up from her fastening fingers. She had spoken of the return home seldom, yet the hope was everlasting hanging in the air amidst Kirika and Mireille, and the times she had given them voice were notable enough for the declaration to have neared becoming a mantra, or perhaps a prayer; one shared by them both.
“Mm,” Kirika nodded. She tried to draw comfort from Mireille’s assurance whenever the woman gave it; to believe her; but each time it was uttered some of its promise eroded in the girl’s heart and in her partner’s voice. Today would see if Mireille’s conviction was vindicated, or if the assuring veneer would be abraded to a false hope underneath.
Mireille finished doing up her shirt and procured a lavender skirt and jacket from her bag; a matching set. She tossed the jacket on the bed and then stepped into the skirt before pulling it up to her waist, wriggling her hips again--which Kirika took notice of, hopefully not too obviously--to ease it along. It was rather petite like Kirika had suspected, climbing high on her thighs well above her knees, and with a slit down the side of the left leg to expose more pantyhose. Although it would give more freedom of movement than Kirika’s much longer grey skirt that was cut to just beyond her knees and had its slit in the back, the girl was positive that Mireille hadn’t decided on it for its strategic good sense.
Mireille ensured that her shirt was tucked into her skirt smoothly by way of her hand feeling under the waistband’s circumference, and then walked back to the chest of drawers. It wasn’t just a place to style her hair; Mireille had set up a makeup station there on top of the drawers as well. She leaned close and stared into the little mirror she had propped up against some books, and reminiscent of an artist to a canvas, applied her special paints to her features. Her eyelashes were teased with brushes and her lips carefully coated with lipstick, powder was dabbed and then coloured pencils were used for the final touches. It looked complex and painstaking, but Mireille was packing away her cosmetics bag for another morning in no time.
Kirika hadn’t tried painting her face, at least not for the titivating aim her partner did; camouflage mix for dense foliage and black smears for especially treacherous night assignments were her colours, and the application of both were empty of the delicate diligence the blonde demonstrated with her bevy of attractive shades. Mireille had yet to introduce the practice to her either, the absence of a teacher all but ending any exploration into the ritual before it could begin. Nonetheless, Kirika didn’t feel as though she was less for not wearing makeup. She had stared into a mirror a few times, straining to imagine what her visage might look like with a glaze of cosmetics, but the face staring back at her didn’t alter a notable extent. Kirika took that as her features being fine without makeup, however it would have been nice to try wearing it once. Imagination was no substitute for the real thing, and she could have been wrong about its effect.
Mireille didn’t truly require makeup either actually, and yet following the woman’s efforts Kirika was always happy she had pursued it. Mireille looked ravishing plain-faced, but the cosmetics she put on toiled to highlight that beauty, emphasising her rich blue eyes, long eyelashes, lush lips, and flawless complexion. The blonde’s immaculate features were more… out there, for all to see. Kirika didn’t think her love was more gorgeous with makeup, just that the reality was much more obvious, even to her.
Mireille grabbed a fancy-looking spray bottle partway filled with a golden liquid off the chest of drawers, and then arched her head back, accentuating her throat. She sent out several plumes of fine mist into the air in front of her, before stepping slightly into the rapidly vanishing wafting clouds. She did similar at her left wrist, squirting a puff of not exactly sweet, but a pleasantly heady fragrance above her pulse point. Mireille replaced the perfume after that, and straight away rubbed the insides of her wrists together to spread the aroma.
Kirika had consistently found this behaviour baffling. The girl was of the belief that it would be more effective for Mireille to spray the scent directly on her body. And why the blonde was so sparing as to wipe her wrists together to anoint the odour to her neglected pulse point was awkward to rationalise too. Was perfume expensive? For as long as Kirika had known her Mireille had never been stingy with money--being a freelance assassin was extremely profitable; there forever seemed to be someone who wanted someone else dead, and the skills sought for a precise and reliable execution never came cheap. Furthermore, that guess was in dispute with Mireille not electing the efficiency of spraying her perfume straight on her body. Was it toxic in large doses? That thought was scary, even if it did make Mireille smell very… peppery, pleasingly so. Her presence was rendered all the more imposing just by that bouquet. Be that as it may, its toxicity was in question. Sometimes when Kirika roamed the cosmetics counters in stores in the company of Mireille, the combined fragrances mimicked a hostile gas attack. The girl wondered if in high quantities it would burn her throat and eyes. She hoped Mireille knew what she was doing, and wasn’t making another sacrifice for her beautifying activities.
If Mireille gave perfume up, as good as it smelt, Kirika wouldn’t mourn it too greatly. The woman’s own splendid scent was the best. If that could be bottled and its potency increased, Kirika would definitely adore her beloved’s use of perfume. With that bait, she might have even garnered the nerve to ask Mireille if she could wear some herself.
It appeared as if Mireille still had more to do at her provisional hair and makeup station when Kirika sighted her producing a series of hairpins. Mireille took up her hairbrush again, and looked into the small mirror while she gathered and combed her hair into a ponytail held in her left hand. From there Kirika started to lose track of movement of Mireille’s hair, although her acute eyesight still traced the blonde’s hand motions. The ponytail disappeared into a funnel of flaxen lacks, and Mireille stuck pins seemingly haphazardly in a forming blonde bonnet. When the woman’s hands slowed into patting loose hairs into position, Kirika could take in what she had done.
Mireille had folded her long mane somehow in upon itself, the crease visible at the back of her head. It was like two winding waves meeting and plunging together down a narrow crack, or alternatively blonde silk bubbling up from a crevice. Kirika recognised it as a bun of some style. A mound of hair coiled somewhat on top of Mireille’s head gave her extra height, but it wasn’t total neatness with a large tress allowed to lightly curl down her left cheek. It was elegant, yet the faint disarray alluded at a wilder charm. For all its complex grandeur, the style could not measure up to Mireille’s hair hanging loose and natural about her shoulders and sinuous down her back. Other styles did have their individual virtues, but Kirika liked that simple, free, unembellished style best, which providentially the exquisite woman normally retained. It was how she saw Mireille for the first time waking in the morning, and was her last vision of her when she went to sleep at night--relaxed and as herself. The classy makeup, the piquant perfume--what they afforded was appealing and not the least bit unwelcome, however it was lazing Mireille in her nightwear that Kirika remembered most.
There was no more beauty to be coaxed from Mireille’s body; all that remained was to arm it, the thorns to a rose. Mireille seized her pistol and ammunition holster from where it was looped over one drawer’s handle, and then strapped it onto her torso. Her Walther P99, definitely out of place among the hair and cosmetics items, was grasped next. The suppresser was already fitted to its barrel, and subsequent to checking that there was a bullet in the gun’s chamber via a partial tug on the slide, the blonde secured it firmly in the holster against her ribs.
Observing Mireille caused Kirika to be conscious of her own pistol flush to her body stuck in her skirt behind her back and covered by her jacket, concealed, silenced, and loaded. When it was next revealed at her behest, it would be the death of at least one soul.
Mireille picked her jacket off the bed and put it on over her holster and the weapon within the leather sleeve, and fastened its two front buttons to hold it closed. She flicked her shirt’s broader collar outside over the jacket’s, inspected her cuffs, and finding them satisfactory favoured Kirika with her attention. The woman smiled a little at the younger girl, only just an arc to her mouth, and approached her, her eyes focused below Kirika’s own.
Wordlessly Mireille touched the red cord tied into a loose bow at Kirika’s throat, before deciding to tighten the knot slightly with both her hands. Kirika peered downward along her nose while Mireille did; noting that the woman’s nails neared if not matched the lavender tone of her suit.
Mireille lifted her eyes to Kirika’s when she was content with the bow, although her fingertips lingered on the girl’s collar. The blonde probed with her eyes, searching for doubt or hesitation--searching if the reluctance she had surely sensed throughout their four days of waiting had matured into something deeper. But Kirika knew there was nothing to find; even her early reservations were under control today. Despite the sadness, the wishes for home, and the longing for another day of quiet waiting, when the moment to kill arrived, it was easy to fulfill. It was the aftermath that ate at her soul to admit the darkness. But Kirika fought for Mireille; she fought to protect her. She had to hold onto that and remember why the sins were permissible. She had to hold onto it as a talisman against the creeping darkness inside herself. With that defence Kirika could do what she had to, just like she had in the Metro station, the club in Pigalle Place, and in Albert Laroque’s estate back in Paris. If it was for Mireille, Kirika could and would do anything.
Kirika’s steely reddish-brown gaze proved her resolve before Mireille’s intent eyes. The dark haired assassin gave a small brief nod, and Mireille’s lips creased into a slightly fuller smile. Compunction would trouble Kirika no more.
******
The train sped along its tracks, the latest curve jostling Mireille into a fellow passenger; a bespectacled man in a suit who accepted the shove as an inevitability, leaning with it but displaying no other reaction. Mireille, not so accustomed to these rigours, strengthened her grip on the handle attached to the railing overhead and used it to rock herself back into her tiny cubby amid the jam of commuters, her jaw set tightly as she battled mounting irritation. It was the early hours on a weekday morning--a hectic time to travel wherever you were in the world. However, the carriage seemed to be packed to capacity--and pushed rather beyond it, to the likes Mireille--albeit no veteran with merely a narrow exposure to riding public Parisian trains--hadn’t witnessed before on the Metro back home.
Businesswomen and businessmen on their way to the office and schoolchildren on their way to school made up most of the crush, with those in suits outnumbering those in uniform. Mireille and Kirika mingled fluidly dressed as they were, although the illusion might have been improved if the latter teen girl had been clothed in her school uniform.
With so many bodies crammed together like an ill-fitting jigsaw puzzle, the atmosphere was stifling. The reek of other people’s cheap cologne, the pong of those filthy individuals that hadn’t washed and then attempted to hide their stench beneath a cloying blanket of deodorant, the stinking sweat oozing from dozens of overheating bodies despite the cold weather outside the speeding train, the bad breath puffing over her shoulders from too near passengers; it all combined pungent forces into a single polluting environment bent on offending Mireille’s nose and reinforcing her distaste for public transportation. This had to be it at its worst. Japan had much too many people, or perhaps every one of them had just opted to board this train today, after also stuffing the first train Mireille and Kirika had rode on in Kawasaki.
The railway was the quickest and easiest--although that last was beginning to look disputable from Mireille’s standpoint--mode of travel into Yokohama and to its courthouse, and the assassins, seemingly just like the majority of the morning’s travelers, had chosen to make full use of it. The claustrophobic train was the third in succession the young women had stepped aboard--the first in Kawasaki, and into a similar press of people, to take the pair to the second that had transported them to Yokohama to shortly later catch the present train that would drop them in the vicinity of Yokohama District Court. The second train hadn’t been the ordeal the first was, and that the third was being; a fortunate mercy, since the time aboard had been the longest of the three up to now. The bullet train running between Kawasaki and Yokohama had contained a comfy seat for every passenger and there had been abundant vacant, qualities that had championed a quiet and relaxed transit. Furthermore, whilst it was true it had been the lengthiest leg of Mireille and Kirika’s trip to the courthouse, it had taken fewer than thirty minutes to switch cities. The luxury of the intercity carriage so soon after the cramped conditions of the local Kawasaki train had also seemed to propel the bullet train down the track at even greater velocity. Comfort could condense the longest voyage, while the want of it could stretch out the shortest… in particular if you were one of a multitude of sardines in a tin can, and one without a seat.
Although standing with almost no room to move, Mireille’s legs weren’t throbbing--she would be a miserable contract killer if her fitness was that appalling--but when the option was there, sitting down was always better than standing up in a densely crowded and lasting setting such at this. Yet Mireille had been stanch in rejecting her chance to keep off her feet. Kirika hadn’t uttered it openly, sparing with her soft-spoken voice as she was, but the blonde had sensed the girl’s insistence that she take the lone available seat when they had initially boarded the train. Mireille had had to really beat the proposition back, and even then it had been no small accomplishment given how accommodating Kirika was, and how habitually the older woman took advantage of her obliging demeanor. Mireille was aware she invited that altruistic behaviour; her passive acceptance the same as active encouragement; and thus Kirika did not turn from sacrificing her own well being to promote the blonde’s at every opportunity. Subsequent to much unsure dithering on Kirika’s part, Mireille’s eventual recourse had been to firmly fold her arms in finality and flat out state that Kirika sit down. The idea of threatening that someone would steal the seat if neither of them occupied it before long had crossed Mireille’s mind, but it would have been just like Kirika to opt to stand beside her in that case and share her level of discomfort. Mireille felt it not past her to have given her sometimes vexingly loyal companion a little push into the seat if it had come to that.
Mireille was starting to wonder at her decision now, and the occasional dubious look Kirika gave her wasn’t helping her shaky selfless resolve. Kirika was very much raring to donate her seat at a split second’s notice; she wanted to, the Corsican could tell; all she had to do was ask. However, Mireille thought of the temptation she would never--she hoped not, anyway--yield to and the unpleasant proximity of the other passengers around her as penance for earlier this morning and what's more it served as grooming for her to be the hospitable one from time to time. The woman did like Kirika’s helpful nature; like it a bit too much that she was beginning to take it for granted. That Mireille’s guilt over feeling that way and over Kirika deferring to her constantly was remote and glossed over was a sign of concern. If they were going to be in a… a real relationship, there had to be equal give and take between them… more or less.
Mireille sighed at herself. She was spoiled and bossy and she knew it. It wasn’t going to be simple or painless to break out of her self-centred habits. Being Kirika’s elder automatically put her in the commanding role too and allotted justification to her dictatorship, a position she additionally maintained in their work. But it couldn’t be the same; Mireille was in charge of assignments because she was the more capable in that responsibility. It was life and death there, not life and love. In their private life Mireille’s leadership should be exercised to merely guide and advise--not rule. Kirika wasn’t her servant; she was her partner… her lover. Her equal. It was the ideal, and would hold in spirit; however Mireille would probably always retain some dominance over the younger girl as a consequence to her age and experience. But she would see it diminish as much as it could.
Kirika took respite from pouting at Mireille; unbeknownst to the girl granting her grateful partner a reprieve as well; to turn her head around and favour the window behind her and its streaming views broken by the occasional overpass or tunnel with her doe-eyed stare for a while. Guilt smeared across the blonde’s conscience, and stern tolerance of her circumstances standing in the tight throng rose where a pit of complaint only had root before. This was Mireille’s penance as much as it was her start at a more considerate self. The blonde had immediately felt shamed upon chiding Kirika for her customary window gazing back at the Yuumura house, and the remorse had worn on her from then on. As understated as the comment had been, Mireille was cognisant that she had intended there be sarcasm; sarcasm Kirika likely hadn’t figured out going by her response. That innocence in the face of the Corsican’s callousness could have brought a lump to her throat if she’d been a less disciplined woman. But Mireille could no longer tame her heart when it concerned her beloved partner, and it was shown no such leniency. It hurt. She was trying to make amends in her tacit fashion; amends for a slight Kirika probably wasn’t even aware of; but it still hurt. Perhaps it was because it was penance more to soothe herself, seeing as Kirika was ignorant to her wrongdoing. Moreover, she was causing her partner some added distress too in not sitting down in Kirika’s seat like the girl desired, even though it was secretly for her benefit. Mireille had never been good at apologies--she’d had little practice at it given that her conscience seldom bothered her to make any. But it was something, and Mireille was nothing if not a woman who took responsibility for her actions… when they harmed someone who mattered to her.
Mireille believed the tension of the morning was the culprit for her prickly mood earlier--being in Japan under Breffort’s conditions grated on her relentlessly--though the time to shake Soldats and the conniving man off her and Kirika’s backs was now. But their being here wrested a toll from Kirika too. Every traveller of the black path had their method of coping with its severity and adversity; some smoked compulsively, some drank for numbness; some found peace with family or in the arms of lovers, others in the euphoria of mind-altering substances. Kirika had her windows and whatever vista she saw through them. It was a tiny and simplistic vice for one so tortured. The girl had pursued another pastime before in painting, but leisure that involved people not on the path had a tendency to steer them toward it, and normally not of their own volition. That lesson had been inked in pain inside Kirika.
Mireille shouldn’t get in the way of her partner’s unobtrusive diversion--she couldn’t interpret it herself, nevertheless what her lover saw from her windowsill roost had to be meaningful and worthy of interest--although before this morning she’d seen no reason to meddle. That reason today of course had been baseless and uncalled for--there could be dangerous eyes outside their safehouse, but Kirika was not some amateur hired gun; she was arguably the finest professional killer in the world. She knew perfectly well what to be on guard for when indulging in her usually harmless window-watching fetish, and her precautions were no doubt impeccable. Kirika was not some young girl--she was an assassin just like Mireille.
And as for Mireille’s distractions, she was partial to shopping in boutiques and dining out at fine restaurants, these days with Kirika to join in on her pleasures. The company certainly improved upon the outings, not to mention having someone else to buy clothes for. There were many cute ensembles that Mireille had always fancied, but she knew would not suit her. Kirika’s body and general air was not so fraught, to Mireille’s great delight and continued entertainment.
Mireille smiled faintly to herself, gazing down at Kirika. Even while they were closing in on another meeting with opposing travellers on the black path, the feelings Kirika drew from her could still keep her warm. She’d always have that console, no matter how dire the twists and how barbed the turns on the dark road became. Something beautiful took the journey with Mireille; something pure and good that couldn’t be corrupted in the immorality surrounding her life, something private just for her… and for the girl who made that beauty possible. It made the difference in the Corsican’s days. Mireille hadn’t really lived until falling in love.
Simply looking at Kirika rubbed away the passenger cage, pushing it back; well back; to some place behind Mireille’s senses. The annoyance the train generated became an equivocal sentiment; the reason for even having the feeling a developing mystery the blonde didn’t care to study. As Kirika watched the passing streets and buildings outside the window Mireille watched her, and discovered the view just as enchanting.
Suddenly Kirika’s eyes veered from the glass and in the next fraction of a second her right hand shot out while her body stretched to catch up, seizing something behind Mireille. The something gasped as Mireille jerked into full wakefulness, and the woman turned, her own hand thrust inside her jacket for her firearm and with no time to curse her daydreaming.
Kirika had caught a man’s wrist, his hand, rigid and trembling in the assassin’s white-knuckled grip, kept mere inches from touching Mireille’s rump. There was no weapon in his grasp, but in his other was a briefcase. On inspection he appeared an everyday businessman in suit and tie; albeit with a face drawn and horrified; a commuter in a host of commuters on his way to work.
Mireille blinked a few times, it taking a moment for her would-be assailant’s intention to sink in. He’d wanted to grope her. He’d wanted to grope her… *her*…!
Mireille shuffled her rear as far as she could from the outstretched claw, cold death in her blue eyes for the petrified pervert owner. The audacity! She wasn’t certain if she wanted to let go of her gun, but eventually she removed her hand from within her jacket and signalled to Kirika in the form of a grudging scowl to release her almost molester. Mireille wagered her partner’s crushing fist was sufficient castigation while being appropriately lowkey, unlike what the Corsican *wished* she could inflict. She knew his offence didn’t warrant getting shot--well, except perhaps if the wandering hand…. She shooed that image away--but at the minute nothing seemed too brutal. Mireille let her emotions go swiftly however; her violence was not without temperance, and, for that matter, was not unnecessarily sadistic when employed. Still, she hoped the man was right-handed. He’d find today at the office rather pain-ridden and frustrating.
As the groper disguised as a businessman clutched his injured wrist and melted back into his camouflage of passengers before anyone noticed his vile action, Mireille was reminded it wasn’t just people’s odours and their pooled heat that posed problems in these close quarters. There were dangers in a crowd; it held the potential to be as treacherous as a stormy ocean. A weapon could very circumspectly be drawn and continue to go unnoticed within a swarm of oblivious people, and the target for that weapon in the swarm could be approached with all secrecy under a mimicked air of casualness. When the body fell amongst the maze of feet and people started to stir from apathy, the slayer would by then have blended into the sea of faces, the corpse her or his only sign of being there. Mireille had had her brushes with killers in crowds and had been one herself more than once, but the lecher could have been another rival assassin with her demise in mind; the one that had succeeded if not for Kirika’s steadfast vigilance.
Kirika studied Mireille’s face for a moment before leaning back into her seat, however she seemed to find it a task leaving her partner’s features alone for longer than a couple of seconds.
Mireille’s chin dropped, and her eyes were pushed askance from Kirika’s prying looks. The warped contours of her lips articulated her displeasure, but it was not for the girl before her. Mireille had been concerned about the problems her partner’s sentimentality could bring to their business, yet it looked as if it was her own she needed to begin seriously cracking down on. Affectionate behaviour in front of those who could use it as a tool against them was the bounds of the blonde’s worries for how Kirika might handle the changes between them, but nothing to give validation to that concern had transpired. Granted, it was still very much the beginnings of their romantic relationship, and still in private Kirika had yet to branch out from being the quiet and withdrawn girl Mireille knew her as. Regardless, in the meantime Mireille was an ever-ripening tumult of emotion. Tender emotion she had grown to adore, but there was a time and a place for the feelings, and when working was neither. Kirika had kept her head about her; Mireille must have no less focus, or *she* might become the one to commence the inappropriate intimate touches whilst adversaries looked on, if her carelessness didn’t see her dead first.
The blonde blanched and then cringed at the thought--at the thought of being rendered unable to keep her hands off Kirika, that was to say; it was a nightmare for some reason more demoralising than being killed for negligence--and blew the flaxen tress suspended by her cheek out of her face, just for it to fly back into its former spot. Mireille’s hair was done up in a French twist--part of her small effort to alter her appearance from her norm. Ryosuke and Vincent could recognise her on sight; even a slight variation to her looks would help to ease their eyes over and past her. The clump of hair in her face obscured her features a little too, and if not for that Mireille would have considered donning glasses to give further doubt to her identity. Nothing she could do would hold up to a close inspection however, and her being a foreigner who stuck out did much to counteract her masquerade as an insignificant court attendee.
Kirika, her face known by their prey too, had difficulties as well with her cover despite being Japanese--she was a high school aged girl and might cause attention wandering the courthouse because of that. However, she wore a suit like Mireille to blend in and such tactics had worked in the past. Perhaps onlookers saw Kirika as simply a short woman, or as a youth with familial grounds to be in court. Still, up close she would easily be identified also. It was hard to overlook such a cute face.
But the Corsican assassin didn’t intend for them to get near enough that either of the men or their personnel could distinguish her or Kirika as Noir, not until she decided to at any rate. And then whether they recognised them or not wouldn’t matter.
More distaste kept Mireille’s expression sour and poor Kirika perturbed as the seated girl divided her time staring at her and trying not to. Like it or not, that was what Ryosuke and Vincent and those they had spread the information to regarded Mireille and Kirika as--Noir, the hands of Soldats. Severed hands, if the men had believed the Corsican when she had denied the association with the organisation. In any case, her and her partner’s label was unlikely to change now, and the woman had to put up with it if not celebrate being saddled with the title. It was the truth at the end of the day, for all of Mireille’s dislike and refusals. She and Kirika had earned the name like no other who had adopted it before, and it was not so straightforwardly renounced. At the very least, the reputation that came with the name should put fear into their quarry and any who would join Ishinomori’s side. Fear was a good edge to have. A terrified target made irrational mistakes and hesitated when confronted with the face of their fear, and a fleeing target put up paltry resistance. Mireille had no reservations against shooting someone pleading for their life.
Mireille could tell that it wasn’t in Ryosuke’s nature to beg, however. Vincent, maybe…. Yet each man had faced down Noir with cool composure and blazing gunfire. The Corsican assassin recognised talent when she saw it, and this pair had enough to keep her sharp. They knew the path and had treaded it for a long time. But Ryosuke and Vincent were still going to die.
There were others apart from Ishinomori’s crew to watch for. The courthouse would probably have descended into a hubbub of activity over Kaede’s Ishinomori’s high-profile attendance, with media presence thick. That meant people with cameras, a weapon as prospectively lethal to anonymity as a gun was to a human being. Mireille and Kirika would have to be sure to stay clear of their shots as though they were bullets, at least when the real bullets started to fly. Photographic evidence linking them to the hit being plastered over tonight’s news generated renown Mireille would rather not have.
There were the closed circuit cameras of the courthouse itself to avoid whenever possible as well, although even knowing where each was thanks to Jacques’ blueprints, it would be quite a game of hide and seek to win. The cover of the crowd and the young assassins’ ability to become one with it would be their defence if caught on either type of film; as long as they appeared innocuous in the background, seemingly distant from events, they were virtually inoculated to exposure. That said; nothing more than cooling bodies and harmless empty bullet casings was the preferred calling card.
The Japanese police would be out in force like the media, and manning select chokepoints equipped with metal detectors and x-ray machines. The courtrooms themselves, particularly the one where Kaede’s trial was to be held, would be all but inaccessible to someone carrying a firearm, but the bigger hindrance was the security station screening all visitors that ventured outside the lobby area to access more of the courthouse. Smuggling a Walther P99 and a Beretta M1934 past that would border on impossible. But of course, a professional assassin didn’t voluntarily wander through a metal detector or into a waiting frisk when it wasn’t in her interests, and there was never merely a single way to enter and move around in a building, irrespective of how fortified it was. Jacques’ blueprints had spared no detail.
The train slowed down, and Mireille braced herself for the coming jolt as the bed of air she had been riding began to feel more and more like solid ground. The parroting chirp of the announcer from a speaker somewhere overhead declared the approaching station twice over--sweet relief for some, and a welcome milestone for those remaining. It was Mireille and Kirika’s final stop too, but while their relief might flow sweeter than most for more reasons than just escaping the cramped conditions, bitterness was there to dampen it. They shouldn’t be here, but here they were. Nothing could help that now, though. At least the days of difficult waiting were at an end, and Mireille and Kirika had the chance to shape their own fate at last.
Mireille looked at Kirika, and her partner returned the stare. Their eyes were the same. There was nothing more to say or to think about--except going home. The blonde assassin hadn’t forgotten about Langonel’s Manuscript, but the stolen tome could be buried with Ryosuke and Vincent for all it mattered now. Whatever intentions they had for it would die with them. The book had importance, and Mireille would have scooped it up into her own safekeeping if given the opportunity, but it wasn’t vital in the sense she and her partner must go out of their way to retrieve it. Let it be lost again, an overlooked relic amongst a dead family’s possessions.
The jolt Mireille had been anticipating arrived, staggering her slightly, and the station’s platform rolled to a dead stop in the train’s windows. The carriage’s doors opened with a whoosh, and Kirika got to her feet to stand close beside Mireille.
Noir had a court date to attend.
******
The column of black sedans and one limousine carved through the Yokohama morning traffic with the conviction and resulting ease an outward portrayal of authority sanctioned; the bumper to bumper line of expensive and important-looking vehicles forbidding enough for the average motorist to give the right of way to. Conduct yourself like you are meant to be where you are and doing what you are doing, and only those with mettle questioned your being. Ryosuke believed the motorcade could push through red lights and teeming pedestrian crossings if willing. Strength was uncommon among the mundane and complacent masses. They would rather bend in the wind than throw themselves against it and risk snapping.
There was none of that wretched sort in this car--at least those that mattered were not. Vin sat on Ryosuke’s right, dressed in a yellow suit and red tie that spoke loudly of his probable aspiration of trampling all over the district court’s decorum. He fiddled with his new knife; a butterfly knife to succeed the switchblade left behind in a mansion’s library in Paris; flipping its bite handle open to expose the length of sharpened steel for a second and then snapping his wrist in the opposite direction, letting momentum close the two handles together again over the blade.
“Just like in the movies,” Vin muttered, before thumbing off the handles’ latch and spinning the knife edge into view once more.
Ken was at Ryosuke’s left side, occasionally glancing at Vin while he played with his latest toy. He sat stiffer than his laidback habit, his many ring-adorned fingers--the nine that could--clutching his parted knees. He was probably worried about Kaede and her fate, but he needn’t have. This appearance in Yokohama District Court was a formality, and Ken was aware of it. He was a worrier by nature, though.
Ken had clothed himself smarter than usual for the occasion in spite of its redundancy--a crisp white suit and Hawaiian shirt of giant orange blossoms on cream was prim for him. He would always look the gangster no matter what he wore, but sometimes Ryosuke thought he embraced the yakuza stereotype and fed on that image. The older man likened it to a peacock’s show of fanned feathers; it had its uses as warning to the weak and lure to the curious, although Ryosuke doubted Ken was as lucrative with the ladies as Vin. Only certain kinds of women considered an openly dangerous and brash criminal a thrilling romantic liaison for long.
Taking up the black leather seats across from Ryosuke and his brothers were three women who likely preferred the company of gangsters, although Ken still had no chance with any of them, even before Ryosuke’s objections. Kaede sat in the middle directly opposite Ryosuke, fashionably clad in one of the pantsuits she seemed to like. Ryosuke recognised Dominique’s hand when he saw it. The girl he knew had liked skipping about in colourful floral summer dresses, not the severe and rigid business attire of today. It pained Ryosuke that she had become like him. Kaede was as strong as anyone he knew, but he had never intended for her to live his life.
The mother hen in a skin to pair her to her chick, except a skirt and stockings substituted for the pants, sat alongside Ryosuke’s little sister, their legs pressed against one another despite the spacious seating. Ryosuke was sure Dominique had arranged herself that close to Kaede just to rankle him. Kaede’s decline had started with that woman and it would end with her. No matter what she liked to think, Dominique wasn’t family. She was a foreign invader in Ryosuke’s hate-filled eyes, and a Machiavellian puppeteer, and he would find a way to cleanly extricate her deeply sunken claws from his only remaining kin before she completely destroyed all that his family had accomplished… and destroyed Kaede, too. She was Soldats, and just as accountable for his mother and father’s passing as the other Soldats members they were fighting. Watching Dominique’s influence twist his sister into a sick protégé of hers became more grueling every day. Dominique loved to parade Kaede’s prevailing affection for her in front of him, such that even steel’s patience would start to bend.
Spotting the attention, Kaede grinned at Ryosuke and mouthed ‘Big Brother’ before giving him a little wave, her crumbling mind that of a simpleton’s to her sibling’s troubles. Ryosuke merely stared back while Dominique shot Kaede a sidelong disapproving look and irritated frown. There was still hope.
The last woman in the back of the limo was Fumiko Morita, sitting on the other side of Kaede. She could have been mistaken for a mere friend of Kaede’s, albeit a shy and reclusive one. The young woman was clothed as Kaede would have been in a better time; in a straightforward moss-green dress under a white shawl, and a white sunhat with a garland of black and white ribbon and lace atop her green locks. She looked pretty, but Fumiko always was. That was *all* she was--a pretty thing to look at. Fumiko had amounted to nothing greater since Ryosuke first saw her, but in her defence opportunity for becoming something more had been cut from her destiny. Still, it wasn’t an excuse for being weak and pathetic. Courage and strength was best found during adversity, and Fumiko lived her harsh life in just such a realm.
It was demonstration of the depth of Fumiko’s captivity that she was here in the limo today, outside and unshackled in the free world--outside, yet a caged animal still. The bars of her prison traveled with her now wherever she went. Ryosuke wondered if Fumiko ever toyed with the thought of escape these days, or if she had accepted what her life was now. The woman had tried to flee when initially awarded to Kaede like a wad of banknotes; however her keeper was fond of her, and was unyielding in demanding obedience. It hadn’t taken many recaptures and subsequent punishments for Fumiko to stop running away and submit herself to Kaede’s wants. She had been domesticated, a dog that came and sat at her mistress’s direction.
To Ryosuke, Fumiko was one of the feeble masses in the streets outside the limo, taken into a world too unkind for her. Had fear trapped Fumiko in her cage? If she was that desperate for freedom, Ryosuke believed nothing would keep her from striving for that hope. But there were no more escape attempts from her, no more screaming and bawling; no more defiance for a very long time. She had given up. Was it fear, or did Fumiko like it? Did she like serving? Would she become as disgusting as Claire, a willing whore who moaned in ecstasy in her slavery? Or had Fumiko already become as filthy, deep down inside?
Ryosuke wanted to hate her, despise her and spit at the thought of her as he did Claire--who Kaede had thankfully left behind at Ishinomori Tower, against Dominique’s suggestion that the slothful and pampered redhead should accompany her. Ordinarily Ryosuke abhorred frailty as Fumiko possessed with every fibre of his indomitable being, but he kne
[End notes:
Author’s ramblings:
This has got to be the longest chapter I’ve ever written! I’ve very glad to have finally finished it. T_T
Satsu = Yakuza slang for cop.
]