Chapter Text
There have always been swirling rumors about Coils giving people brain cancer; it was the same with cell phones and, Koujaku assumes, rotary phones way back when. Koujaku uses his Coil constantly these days, always checking if there are any messages (he knows there aren’t). If he puts his fingers to his temple, Aoba will ask him if he’s okay and if he tells him he has a headache, Aoba will give him this look, this pitiful look, as if he knows something Koujaku doesn’t and despite his resolve to be so close to Aoba that he understands him completely and totally and without question, he gets angry when he frowns like that. If he asks him for some medicine, Aoba never has any, not that Koujaku can use at least (whatever that means) and Koujaku goes home to drink and pass out. It never helps the headache.
The crowds that surround him are still endless, even now, especially now, one year later. He’s never really minded them. He plays the humble card in all genuineness, but he’s aware of his behavior. Modest and accommodating of those who want to ooze admiration all over, he lets women fall over his chest, lets men shake his hand; doesn’t let anyone know that he lost a best friend that day, technically.
A few days after Oval Tower fell, Aoba was still a wreck. Koujaku worried but understood; Aoba would need some time. Tae-san was kinder to him for the most part, warmer and even more giving than before, which threw him off a bit, but he assumed it was to be expected of people who had just been through hell.
When Aoba wasn’t better a month later, Koujaku tried to help. He tried to talk, tried to ask him what was wrong, asked him what he needed, and Aoba couldn’t answer. He asked where Ren was and was kicked out, angrily and unceremoniously. Tae-san couldn’t answer his questions and he had to lock himself in his room and knock himself out with alcohol that night because he was afraid his anger would burst.
Two months later and it was still the same. Physically, Aoba was still there. Physically, Aoba still went to work and physically, Koujaku still gripped his shoulder and asked him if he was okay, because he could tell that mentally, he was not. Aoba was gone. Aoba would never answer and the silence would fall around them, constant and unadulterated.
It was three months later that Aoba finally came around. He took three days off work and Koujaku could hardly get a hold of him. When he finally found him back at Heibon, Aoba was in high spirits, higher than he’d seen him in months, but couldn’t look Koujaku in the eye when he asked what brought on the massive turnaround (not that he wasn’t glad). Aoba told him he just had to trust him, that he’d tell him when he was ready and Koujaku felt his scalp grow hot, so he forced a smile and nodded, told Aoba he’d see him later and left in a hurry, not that Aoba would notice anything was wrong.
He asked Tae-san – begged her, pleaded with her to tell him what was going on, and, though she wavered a bit, ultimately refused. She told Koujaku he had to wait for Aoba to be ready to tell him. Koujaku lied and said he understood, but he really didn’t comprehend anything anymore. He thought the complete destruction of Platinum Jail would answer all his questions, not dredge up more. It certainly didn’t solve all his problems. He asked Tae-san when she thought Aoba might be ready to talk to him, and again she couldn’t answer. She gestured to the donuts on the table and Koujaku wanted to cry, so he grinned and thanked her for her generosity, and left.
It was ten months after Platinum Jail that Aoba finally called Koujaku in from his veranda and sat him down in his room. Koujaku remained silent, too frightened that he could be kicked out again were he to say the wrong thing. He only stared as Aoba explained in painstaking detail the events that unfolded that day that Koujaku was not privy to, that while Koujaku was stuck with the metal-gouged asshole, the wanted criminal, and the gas-masked freak, Aoba had been learning a sordid history about himself. Aoba had been finding out his parents weren’t really his parents, that his mother never birthed him like Koujaku’s did him. Aoba had been discovering that he was actually three people, which didn’t sound that crazy to Koujaku because when he gets angry, he sure feels like a different person, too.
It wasn’t even crazy when Aoba pointed to the boy who’d been in his company the past several months and finally admitted it was Ren, because in some fucked up way, Koujaku already knew that. He could never discern for certain before, with Aoba avoiding him so much, but he had put the pieces of that puzzle together long ago. This boy had showed up the same time that Aoba returned to normal; it wasn’t that hard to figure out.
He stared at Ren’s new body, heard Aoba’s words about a brother named Sei and destruction and a twin but he wasn’t really following along anymore as he studied Ren, who studied him back. They watched each other as Aoba spoke, soft and calculating. Koujaku was trying to figure him out, and Ren was letting him. Ren finally opened his mouth and added something like, “It’s true,” and Koujaku definitely recognized the voice, but he was still a little stunned. It was a lot to take in. He understood why Tae-san had never told him anything, though some preparation for this bizarre situation would have helped.
Koujaku had to have it repeated to him several times – Ren was Aoba’s subconscious, planted in his now-dead (by the hands of Aoba?) twin’s body. There was some more explanation of a third Aoba and Koujaku had tried to take it all in but it was going to take him some time.
He realized he had two options: confusion and disbelief or confusion and acceptance, though it was laughable, really, to call it a choice, because Koujaku no longer had any active role in his decisions when it came to Aoba. They were made for him, by something deep inside that screamed, “Do it for Aoba, do it because you love him, whether it kills you or not,” so he nodded. He told him he loved him. Aoba was overjoyed when he said it, he even pulled him in for a languid hug, one that had them teetering on their heels as they both laughed at their imbalance, but Koujaku wondered how long it took for Aoba to disregard his words after he left, dazed and wandering home a different person.
It’s unfair, to this day, Koujaku thinks. Aoba doesn’t understand how much he means to Koujaku, he really, really doesn’t understand, and it should have been him who was by Aoba’s side that day. He doesn’t dislike Ren. It’s just the opposite. Koujaku loves Ren, but it’s odd now, to have a human face to put to the name, and not just a pre-programmed AI in the form of a tiny blue Spitz and he has to admit, it makes it easier for him to be jealous. Koujaku can look at Ren now as a person, as a corporeal, breathing human. As a fucking competitor. It’s still Ren, but Koujaku can’t fathom knowing the dog in this new capacity.
In the end, though it’s a bit of a shock, Koujaku tells Aoba a few days later that he’ll always be there for him, he accepts Ren and wants to get back into a routine that he can feel comfortable in.
He doesn’t tell him that he’s still in love with him.
He’s come to terms with it, mostly. It’s still confusing, trying to navigate the boundary between intense friendship and romantic love, but after Oval Tower, it was difficult to deny it anymore. He is unequivocally in love with Aoba, and probably has been since before he left Midorijima, even if he hadn’t recognized it then. What he feels for Aoba is more passionate than anything he feels for anyone else he knows; anyone in Beni Shigure, even Mizuki - more than anything he’s ever felt for a woman, for sure. He can’t deny that it was Aoba’s face that stilled his blade all those years ago.
It’s an almost sinking feeling, like there’s a rock in his chest, not necessarily in place of his heart, more like trying slowly, but surely, to push it away. It’s a dull pressure, and it assaults him every time he sees Aoba, every time he sees those cerulean strands. He wants to caress them along his fingers, he’d rather take in every individual hair, study them, embrace them, than run his fingers through them all at once. He wants to know all of Aoba, and that’s the most troubling part.
He watches Aoba and Ren and it doesn’t look so bad: he wouldn’t mind holding someone the way Ren holds Aoba, fiercely nestled in his arms. He really is still a dog, protecting Aoba fearlessly, and Koujaku thinks he’d be good at that, too. He’d be good at holding Aoba tight, wrapping him up in his body and never letting anyone get at him, and he supposes he’d be good at doing that with anyone else, too, but in his fantasies, it’s always Aoba. That’s what confuses him.
If he simply felt protective of Aoba then maybe he would see him as the little brother that Aoba obviously feels he is to Koujaku, but he doesn’t. It isn’t mere safety and security that Koujaku wants to offer Aoba – in fact, it’s not what he wants to offer Aoba at all that bothers him, it’s what he wants to take. He wants Aoba, he wants all of him, he wants to feel Aoba underneath him, and he wants to feel inside of Aoba, the way he supposes Ren does now. He can’t pretend that’s new, either. It’s been true for years: he’s had fantasies about Aoba, about being with Aoba, about stroking his naked chest and breathing in his hair and running his fingers down his pelvic bones and squeezing his fleshy hips and thrusting deep inside of him and he always stamps a foot involuntarily, always shakes his head hard enough to jar the thoughts from his mind because it’s inappropriate. It’s horrific. It’s appalling. To violate Aoba in his mind like that is downright sickening, because deep down, he does still wish to just protect him, to keep him safe and blissful and if he ever knew anyone else was doing that to Aoba, even in their imagination, he’d kill them.
But he still wants to be with the women he sleeps with; he still finds them attractive and he still enjoys the time he spends with them. He likes their curvy hips and their plump lips and that’s a little easier to stomach. Being with a woman – that feels right. That feels good. He genuinely enjoys it, which is why it’s confusing when he accidentally gets off to the vision of Aoba’s sleeping face that he’s stored away in his head. He chalks it up to Aoba being his exception, his only one, his only exception, but that doesn’t help him the night he gets drunk and off-handedly imagines what it might be like to sleep with Ren and finds himself jerking off in his bathroom once he gets home to the thought of being pressed against by a harder body, a body more like his own, a body that belongs to a man who’s desperately craving Koujaku as badly as Koujaku craves him. It’s not Ren in his fantasy exactly, but it’s a body like his, firm and muscular and strong, and able to pin him against a wall easily, as Koujaku can do with the women he’s been with, and, he assumes, Aoba.
And that’s not the first time he’s had a thought like that, a fantasy about another man that wasn’t Aoba. There have been several men in his life that he’s found he enjoys imagining kissing. There are even a few guys in Beni Shigure that he isn’t exactly repulsed by and he hates himself for it, not because he particularly believes anything one way or the other about homosexuality, but because he can’t stand violating people in his mind. He tries to create fictional people when he fantasizes. He can’t stand the thought of getting off to real people without their consent so instead he invents these amalgamations of all his deepest desires. Some nights he thinks about women with sultry eyes and wiggling hips, some nights men with hard abs and strong hands, some nights both of them flanking him on either side and overtaking his body, some nights he takes a few pills and knocks himself out before he can even think about sex.
In the end, he supposes it doesn’t really matter what – or who – he wants. He hasn’t met anyone he’d want a relationship with outside of Aoba and now that Aoba is in love, Koujaku doesn’t have to worry about what he’d do or say if he started dating him. He tries not to think too hard about what he wants, consciously or otherwise, because he doesn’t want to admit that he’ll never get it. If he falls in love with a woman then he’ll fall in love with a woman; he’ll get married and have children and raise his family and grow old with her. If he falls in love with a man – a man that actually wants him back, that is – then… well, he’ll figure it out.
Right now, he just wants to find a routine.
Months pass and Koujaku is still trying to find that routine he craves, when finally, he thinks he might have found it.
He picks Mizuki up at the hospital the day he’s discharged, and takes him home. He hasn’t been to Mizuki’s place in over a year now, and something about his kind eyes has always settled Koujaku’s nerves, so he was more than happy to volunteer as his caretaker for the initial weeks after his homecoming. He had readied his apartment, brought his cats home from boarding, and bought the fluffiest pillows he could find for Mizuki’s imminent arrival, though his friend now insists he’ll be up and out of his apartment as soon as possible.
“Not for at least a week,” Koujaku reminds him, thrusting the pillow that Mizuki had rejected back into his hands.
“And in a week,” Mizuki replies, shoving the pillow back again, “I’ll be back at Black Needle.”
“Then in a week,” Koujaku growls, pushing the pillow into Mizuki’s arms a third time, “you can return the pillows. I’ll even give you the receipt. But for now, you have to rest.”
Mizuki laughs lightly, embraces the pillow finally as he lays back on his bed and crosses his ankles.
“The pillows are great,” he relents. “I just want to get back into things.”
Koujaku smiles. He understands how Mizuki must feel, because if he were to be honest, he feels the same way. There’s a part of him, a selfish part that he feels immensely guilty for, that hopes things will start to feel a bit more normal again when Mizuki gets back to Dry Juice. He doesn’t mind if he has to learn a new routine, as long as it develops at all. He’s exhausted, really, from having to navigate this new life, this post-Platinum Jail life, where Mizuki is crippled and Aoba is in love with someone else; where Clear shows up at Heibon every now and then and still calls Aoba “Master,” where Noiz is unfortunately still around and still causing trouble for Beni-Shigure (sometimes he wonders if he’d be happier if Noiz had disappeared instead of Mink – at least Mink wouldn’t pop up in restaurants while he’s in the middle of dinner with his friends and flash him that inane bunny sign from across the room).
“I want you back, too,” he says, and he leaves it at that. He lifts one of Mizuki’s cats – a particularly plump, brownish one – onto his bed with him and settles himself at the foot of it as Mizuki strokes the cat idly while they make conversation. Koujaku considers bringing up Aoba and wonders if he could segue naturally into Ren and Platinum Jail. He’s not sure how much Aoba told Mizuki the few times he went to visit him in the hospital alone, but he finally decides it would probably be too much for his invalid friend to take in, so he keeps quiet. Mizuki rambles a bit about how excited he is to get back to Dry Juice and Black Needle, and Koujaku’s mind wanders to Aoba’s story again. Ren’s new face surfaces and he wonders why Ren’s eyes manage to trouble him even when he’s otherwise occupied.
His eyes dart back to Mizuki and he can’t help but smile. One of his closest friends is back, and that’s what he chooses to occupy himself with the rest of the night. Mizuki assures him with heavy-lidded eyes and an equally heavy voice that he will only stay confined to his room until Koujaku goes home for the night, to which Koujaku responds by setting up a makeshift bed for himself on Mizuki’s couch. He falls asleep there after telling Mizuki that he’ll bring him breakfast in the morning, but is awakened by a noisy Mizuki cooking food himself in the kitchen. Koujaku doesn’t admonish him; instead he helps with the rice and keeping the cats away from the fish.
One week later, Mizuki is behind the counter of his bar again, and Koujaku couldn’t be more relieved. There’s a small gathering, just a few Dry Juice members, Koujaku, Aoba, and Ren, and the air still feels stilted. It’s been months since Aoba first told Koujaku about Ren, so Koujaku wonders if it’s just him or if Aoba feels the same. If his stolen glances and subtle shoulder bumps with Ren imply anything though, it’s that he doesn’t, and Mizuki must catch him frowning because he pulls him aside, folds his arms and jerks his head in their direction.
“Still kind of strange, yeah?”
Koujaku gives the pair another lingering look and wants to grin and bear it, but simply turns back to Mizuki with a sigh.
“A little,” he shrugs. He can’t show his cards yet, not even to Mizuki. He prays that somehow Mizuki will just know, will just say it – “It’s okay, I know you’re in love with him,” – but realizes that even if he did, he’d do nothing but deny it.
“It’s Ren though, right?” Mizuki offers.
Koujaku studies his friend. He’s not sure when Mizuki found out the whole story, but he must know it by now. His face is soft and genuine, his eyes are undemanding and his smile is sincere and Koujaku can only mirror it.
“Yeah,” he says, throwing an arm around Mizuki’s shoulders. “Guess we just have to get used to it.”
“By the way,” Mizuki says with a quick cock of his head, “Aoba mentioned that the gas mask kid – Clear? He showed up at Heibon yesterday. Does that happen often?”
Koujaku shrugs wearily. He’s never really cared for the “friends” he made that day, though Clear was probably the most tolerable of the group.
“I don’t think so,” he answers. “Not sure.”
“What happened to everyone else from that day?”
Koujaku sighs gutturally and takes his arm off Mizuki, drapes himself on the bar and eyes the alcohol on the shelf. If it was anyone but Mizuki, he’d tell him to drop it, but he still feels that Mizuki is owed explanations about that day.
“Clear is still around,” he says. “Mink disappeared. Probably dead. I don’t know. Who cares? The other kid is still around. Wouldn’t mind if it was him who disappeared, though.”
“The other kid? Noiz?”
Just his name grates on him and he lets his head drop forward with exaggeration and groans. Mizuki chuckles.
“Yeah,” Koujaku says. “He comes around, starts fights with Beni Shigure all the time. And I don’t know why, since it’s not like he has the balls to fight anywhere but Rhyme.”
“Ah,” Mizuki scoffs, lifting a hand and waving it through the air as if he’s swatting a fly. “Forget it. I was just wondering what happened to them. We don’t need any Rhymers around here anyway.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Koujaku shouts, grabbing Mizuki by the shoulder again and turning him toward the bar. Mizuki isn’t supposed to be drinking yet, just to be safe, so Koujaku has enough for the both of them.
Koujaku is relieved when things do fall into an easy enough routine: he spends his days cutting hair, full-time now, with his eye on a small space to rent to start a business, but he’s not sure he’s ready for that yet. For now, he still travels from place to place, but takes more appointments into his home and when he’s done for the day, he ends up at Mizuki’s place, where Dry Juice and Beni Shigure have been meeting more and more often. There’s an even stronger sense of camaraderie between the two since the fall of Oval Tower, and Aoba and Ren tend to show up more often than not, which Koujaku chooses to consider helpful. He wants to get used to seeing them together, to seeing Aoba love somebody else. Every now and then something will make Ren grin, his sharp fangs glistening in the blue light of Mizuki’s bar, and Koujaku swears he wiggles his rear end, as if he’s still trying to wag his tail. Koujaku always smiles.
Koujaku’s routine is good. His routine is helpful. His routine is necessary. He needs something routine; he needs something mundane and usual and monotonous; he’s had enough excitement, if he could call it that, and now he needs to calm down for a bit. He makes a comfortable living, sees his friends every day, meets new people – meets new women – and always has a family in Beni Shigure. He never wants for a shoulder to lean on, and if he ignores the crippling despair in his gut when he sees Ren’s face, he can be content with his life again. He doesn’t even mind Clear’s presence every so often, or Aoba postulating about where Mink went now and then, but there are some names that he can’t hear without gnashing his teeth together. He mostly hates hearing them come out of Aoba’s mouth, especially when it’s something sympathetic like, “I wonder what must have happened to Virus and Trip to make them like that,” “Do you think Toue forgives himself?” or, “I just think Noiz looks… lonely.”
It’s about a month after Mizuki has gotten out of the hospital that Noiz shows up in the Dry Juice alleys, just as sullen-eyed and sour-breathed as always, and Koujaku stops dead in his tracks, a resigned sigh escaping his lungs. He rolls his eyes. He’s tired enough just trying to navigate his new day-to-day life; seeing Noiz instantly exhausts him completely. He barely has enough energy left to take Mizuki’s shoulder to stop him and then jerk his head toward Noiz.
“Hm?” Mizuki asks, and then follows his nod. “Oh,” he says when his eyes focus on Noiz, and an entertained grin spreads across his face.
“Probably here to worship the greats,” Koujaku says. Mizuki chuckles and the two of them turn, cross their arms in swift succinctness, and stare down the younger boy. Koujaku is aware that they must look like bullies in a schoolyard, but Noiz deserves it.
Then again, if Koujaku has ever intimidated Noiz he’s never shown it, not physically at least. It’s not lost on Koujaku that it’s Noiz who constantly manages to pop up in his territory. Koujaku isn’t even sure where Ruff Rabbit gathers anymore now that Rhyme has lost traction, but he’s heard that they both still exist.
The stupidest thing is that Koujaku wouldn’t really mind Noiz if he didn’t seem so insistent that Koujaku should. Noiz purposefully baits him and Koujaku can’t resist. At first, he hated him because he caught the kid about to beat Aoba up in his own room but after Koujaku realized he was all bark and no bite, he didn’t see him as much of a threat. He didn’t want to be his best friend, but he was quite certain Aoba’s roundhouse kick could take care of Noiz, scrawny as he was.
But then Noiz never left him alone.
And Noiz is infuriating, the most trying and aggravating person Koujaku has ever met. He’s young and immature and he doesn’t realize it and that’s the worst part. Trying to convince Noiz that he’s embarrassing himself is impossible, which gives Koujaku second-hand embarrassment as well. Noiz has always rubbed him the wrong way, and now Koujaku can’t shake that feeling. He probably wouldn’t give in to his hollow enticements if they didn’t make him so angry, and they wouldn’t make him so angry if they ended at threats of physical violence. But they don’t.
Noiz hurls both invectives and come-ons at Koujaku in the same breath and he’d chalk them up to Noiz trying to assert his dominance, except that something about them seem genuine. Noiz isn’t just baiting Koujaku’s manhood. It’s easy for Koujaku to scoff and ignore him when he invites Koujaku to blow him, but when he reverses the roles, when Noiz offers to suck Koujaku’s dick, Koujaku sort of hesitates. He’s not considering it, of course. Of course not. Of course he’s not considering that, right? He reassures himself, of course he isn’t thinking about saying yes and following through with it.
And maybe Noiz wouldn’t annoy him so much if he would stop popping into Koujaku’s head at night – the nights he feels like thinking about men. But Noiz isn’t the kind of guy Koujaku imagines holding him against a wall; Noiz is the kind of guy Koujaku imagines throwing onto the bed and eviscerating completely. They’re fleeting, vapid thoughts; contemplations that Koujaku immediately denies. He denies them so quickly that he’s still able to tell himself they don’t exist at all, but there’s a part of him that knows they’re there, waiting to break the surface, and that’s why he can’t stand to look at Noiz’s hopeless, irredeemable, incorrigible, incensing, youthful, gorgeous face.
Koujaku can’t stand that face. He despises it.
He juts his chin up at Noiz and squints.
“What are you doing here?”
Noiz shrugs and there it is, that insufferable smirk. Koujaku’s fingers curl inward; he wants to punch it.
“Overseeing Rhyme not too far from here,” he offers. “I thought I’d take a shortcut.”
“Overseeing Rhyme?” Mizuki’s voice suddenly comes from Koujaku’s left side and he turns to look at his friend. “How does Rhyme even exist anymore without Usui?”
When Koujaku turns his attention back to Noiz, he swears he can see him straighten his posture, as if a teacher or an elder is addressing him, and his eyes dart around the alleyway. The tips of his fingers find their way to his pockets and he seems to think for a second before he opens his mouth to speak.
“Still works the same,” he mumbles. “It just needs a different officiator. I do it a lot. They have to be schedu—”
“Very interesting stuff,” Koujaku interrupts. “Why don’t you just move on to your little game, then?”
Suddenly Noiz opens his body up to Koujaku and leers again, posture no longer stiff and practiced. As far as Koujaku is concerned, Noiz is the embodiment of youthful arrogance. Koujaku is already seething.
“It doesn’t start for a while. I thought we could catch up.”
“Great,” Koujaku scoffs. “You’re still a little prick and I couldn’t care less about your life. All caught up.”
“Hm,” Noiz hums lazily, his head slowly drooping to the right. Then he snaps his head back up and stares at Koujaku as if he’s waiting for something. “Oh. Was that the end of the joke? It was hilarious.”
“Wow,” Mizuki says. “This kid doesn’t fuck around.”
“Shut up,” Koujaku snaps, whether to Noiz or Mizuki, he’s not sure. “Why are you here? Why do you keep bothering me? Why don’t you just leave us all the fuck alone?”
“I just care so much about you. Ever since the day we spent together, all that time ago.”
Koujaku rolls his eyes and throws his hands to his sides. He nudges Mizuki’s shoulder and starts to walk away.
“Goodbye, Noiz,” he mutters, but before they can get very far, Noiz takes a few steps forward and shouts:
“How’s Aoba doing? Heard he got a boyfriend. I thought you two were attached at the ass or something. That’s crazy, huh?”
It’s simple: Koujaku knows that he has to keep his temper in check, that he’s given the term “anger issue” a new definition, and that if he doesn’t keep himself calm, then everyone else will end up knowing that, too. He’s mastered the art of stowing away his feelings but sometimes it’s as if he blacks out; he loses just a couple seconds of time and suddenly he’s shouting at his friends, or glaring at a stranger on the street, or in a completely different place altogether.
He’s not sure how much time passes between Noiz’s comment and the first punch, but he’s sure it’s only been a few seconds. He can’t remember how he got here, how he left Mizuki’s side and threw Noiz against the brick wall of the alley, but he knows that there are very few things that make him angrier than Noiz’s bloody, smirking mouth asking him if he struck a nerve – except, maybe, being a little turned on by it.
Koujaku can’t find words vile enough to respond with, and he doesn’t want to open his mouth and risk letting out that inhuman growl he’s heard himself make before, so all he can do is grunt, shove an elbow against Noiz’s throat, and it takes Mizuki a full minute before he can finally separate the two. Noiz falls to the ground gracelessly, landing on his elbow and the crack! is so loud that even Koujaku grimaces.
“Shit,” Mizuki breathes, running a hand through his hair. “What are you, twelve?”
Koujaku wants to say that Noiz started it, but he thinks that might prove Mizuki’s point.
“Are you okay?” Mizuki asks, extending a hand to the younger boy, which surprises Koujaku. Noiz raises his eyebrows for a second and Koujaku thinks he looks shocked, too. He takes Mizuki’s hand and allows himself to be helped up, though he never responds to his question.
“Let’s go,” Koujaku says, shouldering Mizuki and determined to walk out of earshot before Noiz can rile him up again. “I’ve had enough of this.”
Mizuki doesn’t say anything, but follows behind him quickly and Koujaku is desperate to get back to his routine.
Koujaku’s routine involves haircuts, women, bar time, pining, bed; then it resets the next day to haircuts, women, bar time, pining, bed; haircuts, women, bar time, pining, bed; haircuts, women, bar time, pining, bed; and never does he want it include getting goosebumps when he hears Noiz breathily exhale something like, “Oh… I’m bleeding.”