Chapter Text
You stand in the wine aisle longer than necessary, staring at bottles you cannot pronounce, letting the cold fluorescent lights buzz above you like they always do. Your week has been a collection of small humiliations. A meeting that could have been an email. A client who spoke to you like you were no better than a dog. A mistake that was not even yours but somehow ended up clinging to your name anyway.
So you decide, standing there in scuffed flats with your hair pulled back too tight, that you deserve the expensive bottle.
Not the kind you usually buy. That twelve-dollar one you justify with coupons and optimism. This one has a heavy glass base and a label that looks like it was designed by someone who understands what a luxurious life is. You turn it in your hands, reading words that promise depth, structure, something that is going to soothe over your frayed nerves and you smile faintly to yourself.
Yes, this one will do.
At checkout, the cashier does not comment. You half expect judgment, like buying good wine alone on a Thursday night is a confession of something sad. But she just scans it, bags it carefully, and tells you to have a good night.
You walk home with the bottle cradled against your side like it’s fragile. The city smells faintly of car exhaust and fried food from the local Chinese place down the block, the one with the good dumplings. Streetlights reflect in puddles, turning the sidewalks into fragmented mirrors. You press the bottle closer, imagining it will somehow shield you from the world that feels suddenly too noisy and dim.
Your apartment smells faintly of soil and citrus when you step inside. The plants line the windowsill like the quiet little roommates they always have been. You kick off your shoes, drop your bag, and move through your routine on muscle memory. Wash your face, make a little snack and peel off your stuffy work clothes and crawl into the ones best suited for bedrotting.
The wine sits on the counter and you hesitate, then laugh softly at yourself before you grab the good glass. The one that you always save for the guests you never have anymore.
The cork pops loud in the small kitchen. You flinch, then giggle.
“Shit,” you murmur to no one, glancing around like someone else is there to see you be a mess in your own home.
You pour it generously.
You drink the first glass standing up, while you also rummage through the refrigerator for something that will pass as dinner. As you put your food in the microwave you quickly turn to refill your glass. Because having a glass of expensive wine with your leftovers is just a normal and average Thursday night for you. By the third glass you end up sitting on the kitchen floor with your back against the cabinet. Legs lazily stretched out and your phone resting in your palm. The wine is sweet and it goes down too easily as you feel your head spin a little. It makes your whole body feel warm and easily wards off the stress you have been feeling up til now. You are four glasses in when you let your thumb hover over the dial pad. You know your friends number by heart, and you quickly type the numbers on the screen. Even if you are feeling just a tad bit fuzzy and your vision is a little blurred, you sigh as you take a sip and hold the phone next to your ear.
The phone rings.
Once….Twice.
Then someone answers.
“Yeah?”
The voice is low, rough around the edges. Not the light and cheerful voice you were expecting when you dialed your friend's number.
You blink, frowning slightly. “Oh. I’m so sorry, I think I dialed the wrong number.”
A pause stretches, like the voice itself is weighing your words. Then there’s a subtle shift in the tone, something faintly amused, edged with something sharp that makes your stomach tighten.
“Wrong number,” the voice repeats short and controlled. But there’s a hint of curiosity, like it’s measuring you, figuring you out without asking.
There is a pause one just long enough to be intentional
“You did,” he says. His voice is calm, almost amused. “You can hang up.”
You should, you know you should…
But the wine is warm and the apartment is quiet, and it has been a long week so you drunkenly giggle instead. You really need to stop drinking when you get emotional. This obviously wasn't the gossip session that you had planned when you pulled out your phone. And the sound keeps spilling out of you. A soft, breathy giggle that surprises even you. “Yeah. Sorry. I just.”
Another pause stretches across the line, thin enough to make you think he’s gone, but the line is still live. You hear a faint sound on his end. A click of something rustling on his end. Then a inhale.
“No problem,” he says. “You alright?”
You swallow. The question is simple, casual even but the way he asks it, there’s weight behind it, like he’s weighing more than your words. Like he’s weighing you.
“I think so,” you say, staring at the tile floor. “Just… It's been a rough week.”
“Mm.”
It is a sound of acknowledgement, not dismissal. It hums through the line, settling somewhere low in your chest, and you realize, almost with a start, that you like the sound of his voice.
You sink back against the cabinet, letting your head rest there. “I meant to call my friend,” you explain, like it matters. “But I guess I messed up the numbers somehow.”
Somewhere far away, a corner of his mouth lifts. You imagine it like a shadow in the dark, something half-mocking, possibly curious as to where this is going to go. Blood is still drying on his knuckles. A body cools on the concrete in front of him, eyes glassy, mouth frozen mid-plea. A cigarette hangs loose between his fingers, smoke curling lazily toward the ceiling of a warehouse owned on paper by a logistics corporation called Ubuyashiki Group.
Behind him, men move like a quiet current. Efficient and silent like they are paid to do. A woman with sharp eyes and a clipboard. A blond man wiping down a surface with practiced care. Another checking his watch, restless. Their movements are precise, mechanical, unaware of the strange vulnerability of this moment.
Sanemi shifts slightly, boot nudging an old cigarette butt across the floor.
“Well,” he says, voice softer now, threaded with something that shouldn’t exist in a room that is so bloody, “sounds like you got me instead.”
You smile at the phone.
“I guess I did.”
You take another sip of wine, the glass clinking lightly as you set it down. “You don’t have to stay on. I know it’s weird.”
“It is,” he agrees, effortlessly.
That’s when you feel it, that strange, delicate sensation of being held in place by nothing at all. Of being seen without knowing why.
“What are you doing?” you ask, casual. Curious.
Sanemi’s eyes are not for you, yet you can feel them. sharp, calculating, alive. He looks down at his hands, red under the grime, familiar and brutal.
“Working,” he says.
You hum. “Night shift?”
“I do my best work at night..”
“Sounds… exhausting.”
He exhales smoke through his nose, long and deliberate. “Yeah.”
You do not hear the gun being broken down in his hand. With the phone clutched between his shoulder and head. He works in silence to break the gun down piece by piece. You definitely don’t hear the scuffle of people moving around him as they drag the third body from his general area. And thank all things holy that you cannot see the crime scene he just created not even three minutes before your accidental call.
You only hear his breathing, and something about it makes you want to linger for a moment longer.
A soft tension coils in your chest, warm and dangerous, like the wine in your glass. You realize you are imagining him, the sharpness of his jaw and if he has a five-o-clock shadow, the color of his hair, and if maybe he has a girlfriend.
“Do you… always talk to strangers like this?” you ask, voice low and carefree.
“Depends,” he murmurs. “Depends if they’re worth it.”
The line goes quiet again, but it isn’t empty. It is filled with something unspoken, something taut, vibrating between your pulse and the hum of the fridge.
You lift your glass again, hesitant. A small laugh escapes, soft and unguarded. “Guess I’m… lucky then.”
Another pause, longer this time, before he says simply, “Yeah. Lucky.”
You shift on the kitchen floor, tucking one leg under the other, phone warm against your cheek. The wine has softened the edges of the day. It made your thoughts wander instead of spiral. Your body feels heavier, looser, like gravity has eased its grip just enough to let you breathe.
“I’m sitting on my kitchen floor,” you tell him, because it feels important for some reason. “Drinking wine I probably shouldn’t have bought.”
There is a faint sound through the line. Not quite a laugh. Something close to it. Something restrained.
“And the floor seems comfortable?” he asks.
You glance around like he might somehow be able to see you. The cabinet door pressing into your shoulder blades. The handle to the cabinet brushing your arm every time you readjust. The half empty glass sweating onto the tile like it is as tired as you are.
“Not really,” you admit. “But it’s cooler down here. And if I sit on the counter I start thinking about my life choices.”
Something tightens in his chest, sharp and sudden, like pressure where there should not be any. Not because of what you said, but how you said it. Loose…unflitered. No armor in it at all. Like you trusted the dark on the other end of the line not to bite you.
That kind of trust gets people hurt.
Sanemi turns around again, pacing a few steps as the crew around him cleans up the mess he was paid to create. The warehouse hums softly with practiced steps. Rubber gloves, plastic sheets are laid out and the distinct wet plop of bodies are rolled onto them. Someone yells out a time check, just as he nudges a body with the toe of his boot. Checking for any signs of life, even though the bastard had a hole the size of Texan through his skull. His adrenaline is still running and his free hand wipes absentmindedly against his thigh.
“You talk a lot,” he says mildly.
It’s not annoyance that he carries in his tone, it's observational. Like he is cataloging you for some reason.
You grin, rolling your head back against the cabinet, the cool wood pressing into your skull. “Wine does that. Makes me chatty. Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
The words leave his mouth before he bothers to stop them.
There is a fraction of a second where he goes still, cigarette hovering between his fingers. He does not like that. Does not like giving anything freely. Especially to a voice he cannot place, a person he cannot see.
You blink, smile softening, something warm and pleased blooming in your chest. “You’re pretty nice for a guy who answered a wrong number.”
“Mm,” he murmurs. “Don’t tell anyone.”
You giggle again, quieter this time. Not the bright, careless sound from before. This one feels like you're comfortable enough to joke around a little. “Your secret’s safe with me, mysterious stranger.”
That laugh hits him worse than any knife to the gut could.
It is too easy too fucking comfortable. It threads itself into the spaces he keeps locked down, where nothing soft is supposed to live. He tells himself, immediately, that you are drunk. That this is nothing. That he is just killing time while the mess gets cleaned.
Behind him, someone clears their throat. A woman’s voice murmurs that they are ready to move. Sanemi lifts one finger without looking back dismissing her even though he needs to head out soon.
He listens to you breathe. It is unsteady, warm and humane in a way that feels almost intrusive in a place where he is.
“What about you?” you ask suddenly. “You sound… busy.”
There is curiosity. Not pointed enough to be dangerous, but it could still be a threat.
“I am,” he answers. Honest, without detail.
He does not elaborate, he refuses to elaborate. Elaboration leads to questions, and questions lead to problems. Instead, he shifts his weight, turning slightly so the pool of blood on the concrete is no longer in his line of sight.
“What kind of busy?” you press, voice slow and lazy with wine, words sliding together. “Like emails busy or like… running around busy?”
His jaw tightens, just a touch.
“Like I’m on my feet,” he says.
“That’s rough,” you murmur. “You should sit. Hard floors kill your back.”
A corner of his mouth twitches despite himself.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
There is a pause that gives him just enough time to delay the inevitable. In a fucked up way he wants to strech this moment out, for his own sick pleasure. Nobody face to face would even be this fucking casual with him. But you either have no fear in your body…or you're just naive. But he needs to hang up, he knows that. This is how mistakes start. Something small and innocent, wrapped up in a drunken giggle on a Thursday night that feels too normal.
Instead, he asks, carefully, “How much have you had to drink?”
You huff softly. “Enough to tell a stranger about my mid week crisis, apparently.”
“Mm.”
He gives you that small sound to acknowledge what you just said. He doesn’t want to dismiss you, but now the woman with the clipboard is standing in his line of sight again, staring.
“Drink some water,” he adds calmly and flips the woman in front of him off. “Slow down.”
You obey without thinking, reaching for a glass, the clink echoing faintly in the kitchen. “Are you always this bossy Sir?” you ask the last word playful as you raise the glass to your mouth and take a sip.
“Only when people don’t know what’s good for them.”
You smile into the rim of the glass. “Good to know.”
Sanemi exhales slowly, smoke curling up toward the rafters. He keeps his tone even, unremarkable. But his attention is sharp now, focused, the way it always is when something unexpected wanders into his orbit.
You are just a drunk civilian. You are nothing to him, your woes and life don’t mean a thing to him….so why does it make his chest tighten a little when he finally has to hang up?
“You should go to bed,” Sanemi says at last.
The words are firm but not unkind. Like someone uses when it’s late and the kids are up past their bedtime again. Surprisingly soft as they leave his mouth and filter through the phone.
You frown at the phone, lashes fluttering as you stare at the ceiling. “You're kicking me off already?”
“Yeah,” he replies. “Been a long day for you, let the wine do its work”
You huff, amused, but there is a softness there now, something pliable. “You sound like you care.”
A beat, something so fucking vile crawls it’s way from his mind and almost passes through his mouth. But he is rational enough to not say it outloud, because he makes a living off not caring. But for you? He grants your naive little words a courtesy.
“Someone should,” he says instead.
You shift, the cabinet creaking faintly behind you. “Okay,” you murmur. “I’ll… I’ll go to bed.”
“Atta girl.”
There is a pause, the kind that stretches thin, fragile.
“Hey,” you add quietly. “Thanks. For… answering.”
He closes his eyes for half a second and opens them again.
“Yeah,” he says. “Night.”
The phone goes dark in Sanemi’s hand.
The warehouse feels colder without your voice in his ear.
He pockets the device, expression sealing shut as he turns back toward the work. The bodies are already being bagged. The concrete scrubbed, the blood reduced to a memory, efficient and clean. Nothing left behind that can talk.
“Done?” Iguro asks from near the door.
Sanemi nods once. “Yeah.”
They move out together, boots echoing briefly before the warehouse swallows the sound. Outside, the night is thick and damp, city lights smearing across wet asphalt. The black SUV idles at the curb, engine purring low and patient.
Rengoku is in the driver’s seat, elbows braced comfortably, grin easy but eyes sharp. Iguro slides into the back without a word. Sanemi takes the passenger seat, door thudding shut behind him like punctuation.
Rengoku glances over. “Took you a minute.”
“Had a call,” Sanemi says.
That earns him a look in the rearview mirror. Iguro’s eyes narrow slightly, curious and always measuring any situation.
“Everything handled?” Rengoku asks as the SUV pulls away.
“Yeah,” Sanemi replies. “They were pushing into our territory. Thought the docks were unguarded.”
Rengoku hums with a smile. “They always do.”
“Won’t anymore,” Sanemi says flatly.
Silence settles, broken only by the hum of the engine and the city rushing past. Neon signs and closed storefronts. With people unaware of how thin the line is between their lives and the machinery that keeps turning beneath it.
Iguro checks his phone. “Tengen’s shipment landed.”
Sanemi’s jaw tightens. “More women?”
“Yeah. Came in with the guns. Same route as last time.”
Rengoku exhales through his nose. “Bold of him to double dip like that.”
“He likes efficiency,” Iguro says.
Sanemi stares out the window, jaw set. Guns, drugs and. women treated like inventory. All of it moved under the umbrella of one of the most powerful syndicates in the country, the Ubuyashiki Group on paper. Something else entirely in practice.
And Sanemi just so happened to be one of the sharpest knives in the set.
“You’re quiet,” Rengoku notes.
Sanemi shrugs. “Thinking.”
About blood on his hands. About smoke curling toward warehouse rafters. About a woman sitting on her kitchen floor, tipsy and soft, talking about life choices and wine. About how she laughed…how easily she trusted a stranger.
How the fuck does someone like that cross his path?
The universe must have fucked something up. A crossed wire or a wrong turn. A drunk dial that landed her voice right into his ear as he stood over a corpse. Innocent and painfully unaware of the danger she almost landed herself in.
Sanemi clenches his fist, then forces it to relax.
He tells himself it does not matter. That it was nothing. A drunk wrong number on a Thursday night.
Still, as the SUV disappears into the city and the weight of territory, shipments, and bodies presses back in around him, her voice lingers like an echo he cannot quite shake.
Headquarters looms quiet and immaculate, all glass and steel and carefully curated distance from the rot beneath it. The SUV rolls into the underground garage and idles just long enough for doors to open and men to disperse. Orders are exchanged and logistics are confirmed. Tomorrow is already moving into place before tonight is even finished.
Sanemi barely hears it.
He leaves them there, footsteps echoing as he takes the private elevator up. The ride is silent. Jazz music playing softly from the speakers. This is the kind of luxury that exists solely to insulate monsters from the consequences of their work.
His apartment greets him with darkness.
He toes off his boots at the door, peels the jacket from his shoulders, leaves it draped over a chair like a shed skin. The smell hits him immediately. Smoke, gun oil and blood that does not belong to him but never truly leaves either.
The bathroom light snaps on.
He turns the shower as hot as it will go and peels his ruined shirt off and tosses it into the trash. The maid will get it in the morning he thinks absently as he unbuttons his hands and lets them fall along with his boxer briefs. He steps under the scalding water without hesitation. The water pounding against his shoulders, the steam blooming in thick and heavy clouds around him. He plants both hands on the pristine tile and bows his head, letting the water scald him.
He scrubs until his skin burns.
Soap shoved under his short nails, across his knuckles, up his forearms, and over his scarred chest. He drags the soapy rag across his neck like it has the ability to erase the memory of hands failing to stop his assault. Or the final breath of that shitbag nobody as his voice bubbled with blood, choking on his last breath.
Sins do not wash off so easily.
He knows that….but still he tries.
And through it all, uninvited and persistent, you are there. Your laugh is soft and a little breathless. The way you said you were sitting on the kitchen floor like it was a confession. The warmth in your voice when you said goodnight.
You settle into his thoughts like a ghost, quiet and impossible to grab, hovering just out of reach.
It pisses him off.
He shuts off the water and stands there dripping, chest rising and falling, jaw clenched. He wraps a towel around his waist and stares at his reflection. The scars and the familiar hard lines of a man who kills without question and is feared more than he is ever loved. He is a man who does not get to have soft things.
That doesn’t stop the image of you from lingering...
He dresses lazily. Gray sweatpants slung low on his hips. No shirt and he does not bother drying his hair completely. Leaving it damp and curling slightly at the ends. He pours himself a glass of whiskey, neat, the amber catching the low lamplight. Lights a cigarette and exhales slowly as he drops onto the couch. The penthouse is quiet enough to hear his own breathing. The events of his night still clings to him no matter how long he scrubbed. The smell of iron still lives under his nails permanently. He stopped trying to get rid of it years ago.
His phone rests in his hand.
Not the personal one, because he barely uses it…but the work phone. The one you never should have never been able to reach. He scrolls once, pauses and then scrolls again. He tells himself that this is just the standard procedure, due diligence. A habit that was drilled into him until curiosity and caution became the same blurry thing. You called a secure line, that alone is reason enough to look into you deeper. To make sure you aren't a plant, or bait set up by someone trying to hurt the family. Or leverage that could be used against him later.
That is the story he feeds himself anyway. Your name comes up easily, too easily and you are exactly what you appeared to be. Normal day job with a clean record and no arrests. No connections that would red flag you. No outstanding debt, no history worth exploiting. Single occupant of a leased out apartment in the shitty part of the city. Hell, you even pay your bills on time. You complain about work like everyone does, posts photos of houseplants you wish you had the money to buy. A monstera, something about a rare fern. You even caption the posts with a stupid little heart emoji.
Sanemi exhales slowly through his nose.
“Fuck,” he mutters.
Sanemi drags a hand down his face, cigarette burning forgotten between his fingers. There you are, smiling at a café table, sunlight catching in your hair. In another picture your sleeves pushed up, hands dirty with soil, grinning like you are proud of it. No filters heavy enough to hide how soft you look. No thirst traps and nothing but pure unfiltered you waiting for his greedy eyes to take in.
Cute. Your Fucking cute.
He scrolls deeper, eyes sharp, looking for inconsistencies. Anything that could hint that all this has been staged or anything that could elude to you being something more than what you are on the surface.
He finds nothing…Just you. Existing and living a simple life that is so fucking far removed from his that it feels obscene that he is even looking at it.
He zooms in on a photo without realizing it, studying the curve of your smile. He Imagines you sitting on that kitchen floor again, phone pressed up to your cheek trusting a stranger with pieces of yourself that you probably don’t even realize are precious.
The whiskey burns going down.
“This is stupid,” he mutters to the empty room.
He tells himself he is doing this because you could be dangerous. Because mistakes get people killed. Because coincidences are rarely innocent in his world. But the truth presses in anyway.
Something is tugging on him; he doesn't want to give a name. Something that feels like taking in all this new information about a person he has never met before is addicting in the worst way possible. This feeling slips its fingers into his ribs and pulls just enough to remind him it exists. He exhales smoke toward the ceiling, eyes never leaving the screen. Nobody calls that phone by accident.
And yet you did….Or the universe did in some fucked up way. The point is clear though that now he has to keep an eye on you, just in case. But his mind trickles with the sick thought that he wouldn’t exactly mind getting to watch you for a little while longer. See more of that smile, the way you tilt your head to the side just a miniscule amount. The way your eyes were in that cafe picture, soft and so fucking naive. The world hasn’t been cruel to you, and you drunk dialing him of all people, might just be the cruelest joke the universe could play on you.
And for the first time in a very long fucking time, Sanemi cannot tell why that scares him to his core.
~~~
Morning comes for you with zero remorse.
Light spills through the cheap slats of your blinds in harsh, golden stripes, cutting across your bed and straight through your skull. You groan, rolling onto your side, face pressed into the pillow like it might save you, and it doesn’t. Your mouth is dry and tastes like red wine. Your head throbs with a dull, insistent ache that pulses behind your eyes.
“Never again,” you mutter, voice rough, immediately betrayed by the fact that you say this every time.
You blink blearily at the clock on your nightstand.
Shit.
Panic snaps through the fog. You sit up too fast and immediately regret it, swaying slightly as the room tilts. The blankets slide down your legs. Your phone lies face down beside you, dark and innocent, like it did not participate in any crimes last night. And you squint at it.
There is a vague memory there, blurry like the rest of your evening. You remember sitting on the kitchen floor, the cheap wooden cabinet warm against your back. The wine in your cup sloshes and makes your chest feel warm. You can remember laughing…and then a voice, rough but not angry when it should have been.
You groan again, louder this time.
“Oh god,” you whisper.
You fumble to grab your phone, your heart ticking faster as you swipe to unlock it. Your normal notification flood the main screen, Emails that were sent after you went to bed, a reminder on your calendar for a mid morning meeting at work…but nothing else. No messages or missed calls. But as you pull up your recent calls, there is the number you called trying to get ahold of your friend.
Great job idiot you drunk dialed someone.
And from the looks of it decided to have a ten minute and seventeen second conversation with a complete stranger. You can barely remember the tone he used when he first answered. Rough and aggressive before it faded into something just a bit softer. You can still hear yourself apologizing and giggle like a fucking kid too. The way he humored you instead of outright dismissing you completely. You love to talk and that means that you most definitely rambled, overshared and made a complete fool of yourself to this poor stranger that was the victim of your late night shenanigans.
You swing your legs out of bed and stand, the floor cool beneath your feet. Your apartment is painfully normal in the daylight. Plants soaking up the sun. The empty wine bottle is still on the counter like evidence you forgot to hide. The good glass sits in the sink, lipstick faintly smudged on the rim.
“Get a grip” you say to yourself as you stumble towards the bathroom.
You splash cold water on your face, staring at your reflection. Puffy eyes. Slightly flushed cheeks. Hair a mess. You look like someone who made questionable decisions on a Thursday night. You brush your teeth aggressively, as if mint can scrub away memory.
In the shower, the water helps. The ache dulls. The fog lifts enough for routine to take over. Shampoo, conditioner and soap. You move fast and efficient, already running through your day in your head. Emails to answer and a meeting you are already dreading. Coffee, you need coffee.
No less than twenty minutes later you are dressed and and rushing out the door. Your bag haphazardly draped over your shoulder and your hair still slightly damp. The night feels distant now that you have your mind set to work mode. Was it embarrassing? Yeah, but at the end of the day it was harmless. A story you will never tell anyone about, and a voice you will never hear from again.
That man is off living his own life, with a job and somewhere to be. He told you that he was busy, working late at night. Burning the midnight oil on a weekday. You were just a weird little blip in his night, he wouldn’t remember you anyway. And why would he? You were just some drunken stranger on the other side of a line.
You lock the door and head to work. Already typing away at your phone with one hand, while you drop your keys in your bag. But in the back of your mind you are filing away the entire thing into a nice little box labeled as a mistake.
Work swallows you whole the moment you step through the doors.
The lights are too bright and the air smells faintly of burnt coffee and ink from the copy machine. Your inbox is already full by the time you drop your bag at your desk, subject lines stacked like quiet passive aggressive reminders. Follow up, Urgent…Per my last email. You stare at them with the dull resignation of someone who knows none of it will matter by Monday.
Your head still aches. Not enough to justify going home immediately, but enough to make every sound feel louder than it should be. It makes the phones ring louder, and the chairs sound like nails on a chalkboard, that woman’s shrill laugh that works in accounting is probably the worst of them all. You answer all your emails back on autopilot, your fingers moving while your mind tries to drift. You read the same sentence twice, wait three times and you have to take a breath and stare up at the ceiling.
That voice keeps slipping in.
His small and basic answers to everything you asked, like he wanted to be vague. He agreed with you when you told him just as vaguely about your rough week. The way he told you to go to bed like it was the most obvious choice to make.
You shake your head slightly and keep typing.
Calls start midmorning with a client who wants something done yesterday. A coworker asking for clarification on something you already explained twice. You keep your voice pleasant, and professional…You are very good at that. Nobody can hear the faint edge of exhaustion underneath unless they are listening for it.
By the time the meeting rolls around, you are already done with your day.
You sit at the table with your notebook open, pen poised, nodding at the appropriate moments. Someone is talking about metrics, someone else is talking about goals. It could all be happening underwater for all you care. The words slide past without friction from your ears.
Your stomach churns, It is not nerves and it's not stress. It feels like something is out of place and your body notices before your brain decides to catch up. Shifting in your seat, you try to will the unease that is crawling its way from your stomach and out of your mouth but fail miserably.
Halfway through, you clear your throat.
“Sorry,” you say softly. “I’m not feeling great. I think I might need to head out.”
You get a few sympathetic looks and the manager tells you to take care of yourself. Nobody pushed for more than that. You have cultivated a reputation for reliability and sometimes it buys you small mercies like this. You pack up slowly, like you are not already planning how the rest of your weekend is gonna go in your head.
By the time you step back outside, the city feels different like its loose with Friday afternoon energy buzzing low and electric, with the sunlight glinting off the storefronts and people spill onto sidewalks like they have been waiting all day to move..
You text your team once you are a few blocks away. Something about a bug going around. How you will check in Monday. You sell it just well enough to make it believable.
Three day weekend, The thought feels indulgent even though it’s not..
You walk the rest of the way home instead of taking the train, letting the movement shake off the last of the workday. A familiar restaurant sits a few blocks from your apartment. Nothing fancy, just good food and a comforting atmosphere.
The kind of place that knows your order because you come in often enough. You step inside and order to go without looking at the menu because its become a habit now to order the same thing every time now. You wave at the little kid sitting in a booth in the back, with his Ipad on the table watching something with bright colors and a childish tune playing.
While you wait, you lean against the counter and check your phone. You have a few symphony texts from your coworkers, and thankfully the emails have slowed down now. But still there are no missed calls, no messages waiting to see. It feels silly that you think he would want to message you…he has no reason to.
You lie to yourself when you think you are relieved.
The older woman running in front smiles at you as she brings over the bag of food from the kitchen. The savory smell is already hitting your senses in the best way possible. You pay her quickly and thank her for everyone being so fast, and you step back onto the street with the bag clutched at your side, if your stomach has a mouth it would be watering.
As you walk, your thumb drifts over your phone screen without you telling it to. To our recent calls, and still at the top of your list is the number. Sitting gray and coming up as unknown. Your pulse races as you stare at it mid walk. It’s only when you hit the corner of the street do you stop and wait for the signal to turn.
People stream past you, unaware. A car honks somewhere down the block and you stand there with your food cooling at your side as you stare at the digits on your phone. Like if you stare at them long enough they may just auto dial for you instead of making you do it yourself.
It would be ridiculous, you tell yourself.
He doesn’t want to deal with you again. He has a grave shift job, he's probably still sleeping anyway. He was nice enough to not just hang up immediately and call you an idiot beforehand. That should be the end of this whole thing.
But you can imagine it like it’s almost real. The ring that starts and the pause as you wait, cutting through the busy noise of the street as you now rush to the next block with the group of people around you.
Would he answer? The thought plagues you, refusing to leave you alone.
Your thumb hovers.
But as soon as your brain kicks back in you shake your head and lock the screen, letting the stupid piece of technology slide back into your pocket. Leaving you to force your heart to slow its roll because you almost did something so stupid…again.
You keep your head down as you walk the rest of the way home, telling yourself that lunch and pajamas are waiting for you as soon as you get there. No wine this time, because you can’t trust yourself with it right now.
You don’t know it yet, but somewhere across the city that stranger has memorized your name. You also don’t know that if you were brave enough to actually call…he would answer on the first ring. And you sure as hell don’t know that the universe is already pulling you closer to something dangerous because life has been too kind to you until now.
~~~
Sanemi wakes up slowly.
Not the way normal people do, dragged out of sleep by alarms and obligations. He surfaces on his own terms, eyes cracking open to a room washed in late afternoon light, the kind that feels harsh on skin that has not seen daylight in days.
Two in the afternoon.
He exhales through his nose and rolls onto his back, bare chest rising and falling, sheets tangled low around his hips. There is a dull ache behind his eyes. It’s not a hangover, just the residual tension of a night spent deciding who lives and who does not.
For half a second, before the world fully snaps back into focus, he thinks of you.
That annoys him.
He pushes up out of bed, muscles shifting under skin mapped with scars, and pads barefoot into the kitchen. The penthouse is quiet, and always clean. Everything in its place like nothing ugly ever happens here.
He starts the coffee without ceremony, keeping it strong and black. Enough bitterness to cut through the fog. While it brews, he leans back against the counter, arms braced behind him, eyes unfocused.
Your voice slides in uninvited again.
The way you sounded so embarrassed but not afraid of him. Your giggle like it surprised you too, the way you blindly trusted him enough to talk to him like he was an upstanding member of society. It’s enough to make him reach for the work phone. He types in the nine digit code and sees a notification from the tracker he had Iguro bug your phone with last night.
Sunshine moving.
He fucking hates what he labeled you as in the system, but he couldn’t think of anything suited you better. Sure Wrong number, Suspect or even Rosé still wouldn’t accurately describe the embodiment of you and how violently you knocked his night off its axis. You were the fragment of the sun shining in the darkness that is his world. Something he didn’t know he wanted until he heard your soft breathy giggle on the other end of a line meant for destruction.
Sanemi straightens slightly, coffee forgotten for the moment as he taps on the notification and opens the app. Your little dot is moving, he reads the distance and timestamps for when you first left your apartment. How long it took you to get to work, which he now has a label for once he pulls out his personal phone and looks at the address. He sees you leave, which he notes for later to dig into your work schedule so he knows proper times. And as you walk the system fills in the gaps with timestamps and estimated routes you might take.
He shows your little dot on the screen more interest that you deserve from someone like him.
“Fuck me,” he mutters quietly disappointed with himself.
It feels perverse, for some reason. Watching you like this, tracking the mundane rhythm of your life without you ever knowing. Home to work, work to some tiny mom and pop restaurant and then right back to your apartment. A routine that is so painfully normal his eyes want to bleed. But he can’t stop looking at it…part of him doesn’t want to.
He has to be sure that you are nothing, at least that is what he is still telling himself.
He needs to be sure you are exactly the way you presented yourself to be. No hidden connection and no shadow trailing behind you waiting for trouble. Any speck of evidence that a rival family might have their greasy fat fingers on you. The family does not deal in coincidences. People do not drunkenly stumble into his world without a reason.
Except you fucking did.
The hiss of the coffee finally being finished brewing pulls his attention away from you. He grabs the same expensive coffee mug he has used for years and pours the cup nearly full.watching as the steam curls into the afternoon air. He takes a slow sip, not caring if it burns all the way down. His eyes are drawn back to the screen as you stop moving again.
Sunshine arrived at home, 37 minute trip.
Something in his chest eases just a fraction before he can stop it and he scoffs at himself before tossing the phone face down.
You are a nobody, that is the entire point he is trying to prove. No record, no ties that he can find and nothing that he can use for leverage if something were to go down. You are just a woman who drunk dialed him with a wine soaked giggle as you sat on the cheap floor of your kitchen apartment.
And yet…
He picks up the phone again, like you are becoming a bad habit. He scrolls until he finds your profile picture, the one where you are smiling big for a candid shot one of your friends must have taken. Looking so fucking soft and open to anything that life may try and throw at you.
He takes another sip of his coffee, still stinging his tongue as it passes into his mouth. Letting the rich bitter taste try to sully this moment for him. Give him just a tiny fragment of something bad to sully the way looking at you feels. But even that does nothing to deter his brain from orbiting around you like a drain.
If you were dangerous, he would have already smelled it.
If you were bait, the hook would be sharper.
Still, he watches.
Because if you are truly innocent in the grand scheme of things, then this is the most fucked up coincidence he has ever seen.
And if you are not.
Well…The devil always answers his phone.