Chapter Text
Aoyagi had been waiting outside of the building for an hour now, pretending to peruse the different bouquets and soaps for sale at the small shop, while in actuality he was keeping a close eye on the firm across the street through the gaps in the passing traffic.
He watched each well-dressed person exit the firm, looking for the black, curly hair and dark blue eyes he knew to expect, but he hadn’t found the exact match yet. One person had come close, but his hair was too straight, and he was much taller than the 175-centimeter estimate he’d been given.
He was running out of excuses to give the store attendant when she came to ask if she could help him find anything, when finally —long after the lunch hour had passed—the man he’d been waiting for made his appearance.
He looked different than the photograph Aoyagi had been given to recognize him by, in which he must’ve been no older than twenty-two. Back then, his hair had been shorn short and his eyes had been bright and youthful. Now, four years later, he wore his hair long—nearly to his shoulders, and there was a tiredness etched into his face, but he was still recognizable.
Though of course, in this line of work, Aoyagi had to be good with recognizing people who’d aged from their appearances in the old photographs he was given to work with.
His mark stepped outside and raised a hand to shade his eyes, taking a moment to adjust to the light before rolling up the sleeves of his dark grey button down. He was wearing two-thirds of a three-piece suit, as everyone else in the firm had been: suit jackets abandoned in the heat of this time of year. And with a quick adjustment to his well-fitting vest, he began down the street. Aoyagi excused himself from the store clerk and continued down the street in the same direction.
Aoyagi knew where he was headed. The report had stated that he grabbed lunch from the same convenience store every day. That he would have to cross a busy street. That it should look like an accident.
So Aoyagi hung back.
He watched the man cross to Aoyagi’s side of the street and purchase his food, and he timed his arrival at the crosswalk with the man’s departure from the convenience store, stepping onto the white line marking the edge of the sidewalk within the same second as his mark.
The traffic light flickered from green to yellow, and as expected, at least two drivers floored it to try to make the light. As the car in the nearest lane sped towards the intersection, Aoyagi prepared to make a quick movement towards his mark—to trip up his feet so he’d fall into the road before the driver could react.
However, the man’s eyes jumped straight to Aoyagi and Aoyagi startled. His lack of social presence had always translated so well to invisibility on these jobs, that he’d never had a mark even look his way, let alone make direct eye contact with him.
No, he realized with relief, his mark wasn’t looking at him—rather, directly over his shoulder.
His relief didn’t last long, though, as his mark then dropped his shopping bag and threw himself into motion, right in Aoyagi’s direction.
Aoyagi reached for the knife he kept hidden underneath his cardigan, but he didn’t have time to pull it from its holster. His mark already had a hand on Aoyagi’s shoulder and was shoving him away from the road. Aoyagi still managed to get his foot tangled around the ankle of his mark; but rather than falling into the path of the speeding car as intended, his off-kilter balance threw him into Aoyagi, and they fell together onto the walkway.
Aoyagi’s head bounced off of the pavement just as a motorcycle that he hadn’t noticed swerved from behind the car. Faster than Aoyagi would have been able to react, the front tire came well past the line that Aoyagi had been standing on, accelerating recklessly to catch the light as it turned red. He watched the motorcycle for only a moment longer before it was hidden by the arm obstructing his view.
He realized then that his mark was directly above him, only narrowly having managed to keep their foreheads from colliding by catching himself on his forearms, which currently bracketed either side of Aoyagi’s head. Aoyagi looked up at his mark—up into the grimacing face of Teshima Junta before Teshima sat up slightly to shout after the motorcyclist—something that Aoyagi didn’t quite catch, but that definitely contained a few profanities.
His head was still buzzing from the jarring impact, and he couldn’t help but stare up at Teshima, who quickly turned his attention back to Aoyagi. He had one hand holding his long hair back from his face as he stared down at Aoyagi, his mouth moving and his large eyes brimming with concern. Aoyagi blamed the thoughts that flooded his head on the fact that his brain had just been bounced violently around in his skull—thoughts all along the lines of ‘god, he’s attractive up close.’
“…you up, come on,” he heard when the humming in his brain quieted down, and suddenly there were hands on his shoulders, gently guiding him into a sitting position. “There we are,” Teshima said reassuringly from where he knelt in front of Aoyagi, one hand resting on the center of his back to keep him upright. “Are you alright?”
Aoyagi brought his hand to the back of his head. The spot where he’d made impact was tender, but his fingers came away without blood, so he hummed an affirmative.
Teshima didn’t seem entirely convinced. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to knock you down—I just saw the motorcycle, and saw that you didn’t see the motorcycle, and I just moved on instinct. But you ended up getting hurt anyways.”
“Tripped up is better than runover,” Aoyagi answered quietly, and was relieved when his words didn’t slur. He couldn’t be too concussed if he was still able to string a sentence together.
Teshima relaxed too, “Well, I’m just glad you’re alright. Wish I’d caught the license plate, we could have reported him.” He let out a deep breath, then smiled at Aoyagi, who found himself glad he wasn’t a very expressive person, otherwise that smile might’ve been enough to make his jaw drop. He found himself watching Teshima’s mouth as he said, “I’m Teshima, by the way. Teshima Junta. What’s your name?”
And so caught up in the presence of this man, Aoyagi almost answered. The words were already halfway up his throat before he caught himself. What was he thinking, about to give his real name to the man he was supposed to kill?
He hesitated, trying to think of an alias to give, but his thoughts were still jumbled, and his silence stretched on too long. Teshima’s eyebrows furrowed in disappointment, but he shook it off with a shrug and a diffident laugh. “That’s fair, I wouldn’t give my name to someone who’d tackled me to the pavement. At least let me help you up,” he requested, then stood up and lowered his hands to Aoyagi. His forearms were scraped, and blood was beginning to trickle down to his palms, but Aoyagi took his hands anyways and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.
At the quick movement, the blood rushed from Aoyagi’s head; and somehow, Teshima noticed the instant Aoyagi felt faint. Aoyagi’s knees hadn’t even gone weak by the time Teshima’s was hauling one of Aoyagi’s arms over his shoulder to lend him support. But it wasn’t a second later that they did give out beneath him.
“Hey there, okay, let’s just take it slow,” Teshima was saying, and Aoyagi felt… embarrassed . He was a top-class hitman; he rarely got injured, and even when he did, he’d always handled it with more grace than this. Not a month ago, he’d taken a knife to the stomach and still managed to dispatch his target without so much as a hiss of pain. And here he was, rendered incapable by a minor fall—letting himself be helped to his feet by the man he should’ve already managed to kill.
Blissfully unaware of Aoyagi’s desire to finish him off before his embarrassment could make it any further, Teshima helped Aoyagi across the foot traffic and to the small café next to the road. He walked them inside and stopped at a small table by the window, pulling out a chair before letting go of Aoyagi’s arm so he could lower himself into the seat.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, then turned towards the register, leaving Aoyagi alone.
Aoyagi propped his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands, his mind racing.
He still had his knife, he could take Teshima out the moment he returned. But with his current state, he couldn’t see himself making a clean getaway. And besides, it was supposed to look like an accident. Though having traffic do the dirty work for him would be difficult now—he had a feeling that Teshima was going to be on high alert on crosswalks for some time to come.
What other kinds of accidents did businessmen have? A fall down the stairs? That wasn’t very creative, and it was unlikely to actually kill him. If Teshima smoked, Aoyagi could catch him on the roof of his work building on his cigarette break. A ten-story drop would certainly do the trick.
But Teshima hadn’t smelled like smoke.
Teshima had smelled faintly of cologne and laundry detergent, and maybe a little bit like leave-in conditioner, if Aoyagi could trust his senses during the moment that Teshima’s hair had been just inches from brushing Aoyagi’s cheeks when they were plastered together on the sidewalk.
He looked back out the window to the spot where they’d fallen, and he saw that Teshima’s convenience store onigiri had been completely crushed on the pavement.
“It’s fine,” Teshima said from behind him, and Aoyagi whipped around as Teshima set down a teacup in front of him, looking out the window as well. “That was—well, I’ve definitely lost my appetite.” He rested his hand over his chest, feeling the pounding of his heart against his ribs, still clearly shaken from the incident. Then he looked back down at Aoyagi. “I don’t want to force my presence on you any longer than necessary,” he said with a polite but entirely fake smile. “But is there anything I can do for you before I let you be?”
Aoyagi shook his head, and Teshima’s fake smile faltered. But he maintained it valiantly as he reached into his vest pocket and pulled out his business card.
“If you do need anything, or end up getting medical care, just call me. I’ll handle the expenses.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and said: “Take it easy for a few days,” before he stepped away from the table and walked towards the door.
“K—Kaburagi,” Aoyagi managed to say, giving the name of the boy he’d grown up with, who he’d managed to set up in another—city far away from the career path Aoyagi had been made to take. Teshima stopped in his tracks and turned back to face him. “My name. Kaburagi Hajime.”
Teshima smiled at him. “It was nice to meet you, Kaburagi-san. Sorry, again.”
As Teshima continued on his way out, Aoyagi found himself wishing he could’ve heard his real name rolling off of Teshima’s tongue. He quickly shook his head. This man still had a commission for his life that Aoyagi needed to carry out.
He didn’t need to be forming any kind of personal connection with a dead man walking.
And he managed to hold that resolve for all of an hour before he was pouring over the file that had ordered Teshima’s hit.
Reason was always an option for requesters to fill out when a hit was placed. The majority of Reason s Aoyagi saw were ‘affair’ or ‘inheritance competition,’ but on this particular request, it had been left blank. Which wasn’t unusual. Most customers felt entitled to privacy when it came to ordering someone to be murdered, and that hitmen could mind their damn business.
Which customers were, and hitmen could. And normally that was fine. Normally Aoyagi didn’t care; a job was a job.
But as far as Aoyagi could tell, Teshima wasn’t married and (given the obituary Aoyagi had found that revealed that Teshima’s parents were already dead) he didn’t stand to inherit much of anything. So if it wasn’t love and wasn’t money—what the hell else could anyone want someone like Teshima dead for?
It’s none of your business, he told himself. And he managed to hold that resolve for all of five minutes before he was on his way to an anonymous internet café on the other side of town, looking up the name of the requester to try to find how he was connected to Teshima. It didn’t take much sleuthing at all. The first result returned by the search engine answered his question in the first sentence.
Nakagawa Jiro is the co-founder and CFO of NWKO Trust and Banking, established…
Aoyagi furrowed his brow when he read that. NWKO Trust and Banking had been plaqued above the door of the firm he’d stood in front of for the better part of an hour; it was written in bold on the business card in his pocket. That was where Teshima worked, which meant that Teshima’s boss wanted him dead.
He supposed that made sense. Aoyagi was freelance now, but his first boss wouldn’t have hesitated to have him taken out for any variety of reasons.
Wait , he thought, narrowing his eyes as he remembered that death wasn’t the usual punishment for poor workmanship in the average, corporate line of work. Does he not know he can just fire people?