Archive of Our Own

0 days; 6 hours; 32 minutes ago

The devil was late. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, and in a way, it wasn’t, but you wished that he’d have chosen to stand you up at a bar or something, someplace you could sit and sip on cocktails while he wasted your time. But the devil was inconsiderate, and you knew that too. Some far-away bit of your mind worried that something was wrong, speaking in a voice you had been able to ignore for quite some time. It was annoying, but not overwhelming. There was no reason to be on edge, no reason at all. So you waited. Rain smeared the large windows of the second story skyway with watery streaks of reflected city neon, distorting your own hazy reflection.

“Hope you weren’t waiting too long,” Toji Fushiguro said, his reflection joining yours. You hadn’t sensed him, not that you expected to, but it didn’t so much as startle you. Perhaps that was an unexpected boon of your deteriorating state, you were too worn out to be flooded with any sort of tell-tale nerves. Instead, you were able to naturally relax into a smile, sizing him up with a sense of idle appreciation for the damp hair flopped over his brow, the way his dark t-shirt clung to his arms.

“Mr. Fushiguro,” you said, “here I was afraid you might have forgotten.”

“Hard to forget a woman like you,” he said, casually walking closer. Circling around you, his steps self assured and graceful. You wondered if he was even aware of the way he moved or if it was second nature to a man like him to walk like a predator.

“Hard to forget the payout, I’m sure,” you said playfully. “Not that I mind. I heard what happened at Mr. Kurokawa’s auction. No survivors, they’re not even sure who’s responsible.”

“Who?” Toji asked, seemingly confused. You honestly couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not, only deciding that he wasn’t when realization seemed to occur a moment later. There was something chilling about that. Toji had killed a man—a past business partner, no less—that night before and already his name was all but forgotten. “Oh, yeah.”

“I hope you didn’t forget what I asked for,” you said, frowning. Toji scoffed, but there was a smile beneath it. “What kind of professional would I be if I couldn’t please my client?” he asked, pulling something from his pocket and flippantly tossing it to you, uncaring of the value of the contents. You managed to catch it, fumbling with the little ring box. Cursed energy oozed from it despite the talismans sewn into the lining, giving you a distinctly uneasy feeling.

“This is an awfully unceremonial way to give a ring to a lady, don’t you think?” you asked, peeking into the box just a little, just enough to verify that it was what you hired him to take. A gaudy piece of jewelry, but unmistakable. A family heirloom.

“I’ve never been one for ceremony,” Toji said, unconcerned. You couldn’t help but smile at the truth of that as you put the ring in your bag, pulling out your phone to confirm his payment. The amount of money was dizzying, but it was necessary. The best lie, after all, was an honest one.

“I suppose that means our business has concluded,” you said, dropping your phone into your bag as well. That was the sign, the countdown had begun, unheard to anyone but you.

“You think so?” he asked, taking a step closer. Toji loomed over you. Not just with his height, but his size. Rather than letting it intimidate you, you let yourself be vulnerable. You showed him the face of a woman who was little flustered yet excited, interested in something she knew she shouldn’t want, somebody drawn ever nearer to the dark temptation of the forbidden fruit. Was that a lie, too? You weren’t so sure anymore, not with the way your stomach fluttered, the way you couldn’t help your voice from softening, becoming a little more breathy.

“As enjoyable as it’s been,” you said, “I don’t have the money to keep you around.”

“I’m sure we could work something out.”

“Don’t tell me the famous Toji Fushiguro is taking on a job for free.”

“For free?” he asked with a smile you were certain had damned more than a few women. Even with the scar slashed along the corner of his mouth, it was a terribly alluring look. “Not a chance.”  

“I’m not so sure I like the sound of that, Mr. Fushiguro.”

“Then why are you still here?”

“I’m not sure. I really should leave, shouldn’t I?” you asked. “I’d hate to see my reputation ruined.” The way you moved to get around him brought you just close enough and you hoped he knew why, prayed that he would exploit the opening. “Goodbye, Mr-”

Just like you wanted, he cut off your words with a kiss, his arm snaking around your waist to pull you closer. You enthusiastically accepted the embrace, your hands raising to drift across his shoulders, his neck, his messy dark hair. Toji’s body was hot against you and smelled like rain water and cologne and you could feel his power, raw and aggressive even while dormant.

There was no thought, no trigger for your cursed energy to flare, to pierce beneath the skin of his neck into the heavy vein and inject a poison of your own creation. Your disgust alone, your hatred for the man, was all it took. In a way, it surprised you too. So enveloped in the role, sometimes you forgot yourself, got lost in the merge and meld of identity.

Toji stumbled back, a look of confusion on his face as he tried to figure out what had happened. It took less than a second for him to understand, for his eyebrows to furrow in concentration as he tried to fight off the poison. But the feelings that bound the power of your cursed energy into a singular use were too intense, your passion outclassed his strength. Your pain overcame his willpower and he couldn’t move. It would last, to your best estimate, around a minute. Less, maybe. But something about that felt good. It felt really good. In the end, it was love that fell the devil.

There was no time for your movie-style quip, for an acidic, “Goodbye, Mr. Fushiguro.” That would have been satisfying, a line that would shatter your mask, unveil your lies so he knew what happened. But you didn’t have any time at all as glass shattered, shards of it flying in and scattering across the skyway, rain and noise and Zen’in assassins quickly following. And you were sprinting towards it all on the panicked, adrenaline fueled instinct of an animal, bracing yourself for the jump. There was no time for you to meet those detestable green eyes with a hateful glare and spit out the words, “If there truly is a hell, I hope you burn in it.”

But you could imagine. You could see his smile, hear the harsh little laugh leaving his mouth as he told you, “I’ll see you there, babe.”

And then rain slammed into you as surely as a wall and you were falling into it, leaving the devil to his fate.

0 days; 23 hours; 03 minutes ago

“Here’s the address and keys,” Matsuda said, sliding the envelope towards you over the scuffed enamel of his kitchen table. “The building’s under construction so nobody’s gonna bother you. I’ll do a check to make sure everything’s fine around six or so and drop your stuff off. A car will drop by at five-thirty to take you to the airport. Sound good?”

“Where are the tickets?” you asked.

“Tickets and ID are in there, too,” he said, sitting back and lighting a cigarette. You considered asking for one, but worried that your hands were shaking too hard to light it.

“It’s isolated, right?” you asked instead. “No night guards or anything?”

“About as isolated as you can get inside the city,” Matsuda said. He puffed on his cigarette for a moment before continuing. “I still think you should take a guard. He would want-”

“How could you possibly know what he’d want?” you snapped. Matsuda was good at hiding his feelings, but you knew him well enough to interpret the slight hardening of his expression, the tension in his shoulders. The two of you weren’t blood, but something close enough that you knew his worry was authentic. He was the only one who helped you through everything, the only one that you would regret leaving behind. Thinking about it that way, your voice softened in a genuine attempt to push down your violently rebelling emotions. “If I fail, nobody will be able to save me. There’s no point in anybody else dying, too.”

“You could walk away now,” he said. Matsuda wasn’t a gentle man, he didn’t tell you that with a soft, pleading voice that tried to remind you of your humanity. He met your gaze evenly, his expression composed. He was, at his heart, a professional. “You don’t have to do this.”

His words flowed over you like water, cut at you like glass. You averted your eyes to stare at your hands. You swore you could see the blood on them. Yesterday, you could have walked away and abandoned your plan. The day before, the weeks before, during any of that time, you could have given in to your second thoughts. But not anymore. “I can’t,” you said. And you could have elaborated. You wanted to. But you feared that if you did, the words would manifest reality. Right now, it was all dreamy, confined to the other person you pretended to be. So you rejected it, pulling in a big breath of second-hand smoke as met his eyes with a fiercely combative emotion you didn’t quite understand. “I don’t have anything else.”

“You have me,” Matsuda told you. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but your parents would help you if you asked. There are lots of people-”

“Lots of people?” you asked, your posture tensing, the plastic chair creaking as you leaned forward. “Really? Where have they been, then?”

He sighed. “C’mon-”

“No,” you said. “Nobody else cared back then, back when it mattered. I don’t give a damn about their pity now.” You picked up the folder, holding it close to your chest. “This is all I’ve got.”

Matsuda didn’t say anything. What was there to say? That savage, gnarled part of you wanted him to argue further, but that was only because you needed an outlet, some place to express the emotions you had been suppressing. He probably knew that, too, which was why he stayed silent, slowly burning down his cigarette and filling his little kitchen with a haze of smoke. It drifted through the unappealing light of the fluorescents above the sink, just kind of hanging there as if uncertain about where to go. The clock hung above the door ticked softly. In the apartment next door, someone was watching TV. The sound of a laugh track rumbled nearly inaudibly, the faint pulse of the music making its way through the walls. Finally, he put out the stub of the cigarette, downing the rest of his cold coffee to wash it down.

“I’ll miss you,” Matsuda said, no traces of sentimentality in his tone. He spoke in the same gruff, matter-of-fact way that he did when talking about safe houses or fake IDs. “You’re a pain in the ass, but,” he sighed, “I’ll miss you.”

Your breath caught, the urge to cry pricking again at the corners of your eyes. Suddenly, the suitcase propped up beside your leg felt very out of place. While packing it up, you kept thinking that it was funny that you could reduce your entire life, all of your possessions, down to fit in such a small space. But you were wrong about that. There were things you couldn’t take with you, things that couldn’t be packed and carried across the world. Throughout all of this, you had never thought beyond your goal, too focused on success to care much about the fallout. But it was too late now. You were all in.

“Yeah,” you agreed softly, working hard to keep yourself from crying. “I’ll miss you too.”

1 day; 3 hours; 47 minutes ago

Sticky, tacky sweat dripped down your back as you continued your weary trek towards the main road where you had a car waiting. Blisters were grinding into your swelling feet with every single heavy step, popping and bleeding and ruining your nice shoes. Trees lined the dirt trail, thick enough to blot out the night sky. Every time you moved the flashlight you stole off of the security guard, you got this creeping sensation that they were getting closer. Closing in, claustrophobic. Their branches kept swaying with a breeze you couldn’t feel, the air shivering with a sort of tension you knew was all in your head. The forest was endless, it seemed. Three miles, you had mapped and plotted this very walk immaculately. With the well-worn path to guide you, there was little chance of getting lost. And yet, you couldn’t help the prickling paranoia that you’d never find your way out. All around, oppressively loud in their omnipresence, the cicadas were crying. Wailing. A part of you could only think about the bloodbath you were leaving behind, the fate you were abandoning so many people to suffer. Were they screaming too? And the man you had killed, the first person whose life you took with a single, execution-style shot, the man whose flashlight you held, whose jacket was draped across your shoulders, would someone scream for him?

Tears were streaming down your face before you could even really puzzle out why. It had been a while since you cried. Two months. You thought you were beyond that, stronger than that. But strength was just another lie, another game of pretend you convinced yourself of so you could get along with your life. No, you weren’t strong, not really. You didn’t stop, either. Enduring the pain, the fear, the heartbreak, and the childish tears, you continued your way forward. It wasn’t like you could turn back now, you forfeited that luxury the second you pulled the trigger.

1 day; 5 hours; 38 minutes ago

The security guard looked Toji up and down, his expression carefully composed so as to not let anything slip. “He’s-”

“My plus one, yes,” you said without missing a beat. He wasn’t the only one eying Toji up like you had shown up with a wild beast. The other guards and fancily dressed guests waiting behind the two of you watched with equal anticipatory discomfort. In a way, they weren’t entirely wrong. That was fine, though. You had expected this sort of reaction showing up at the auction with Toji Fushiguro. “Is there a problem?” you asked. “This sort of thing could be a dangerous place for a girl like me, hiring some muscle seemed like a good idea.”

“I trust he is willing to consent to a security scan?” the guard asked, obviously speaking towards Toji. The mercenary wasn’t even paying attention, his hands in his pockets as he scanned the place with a dismissive gaze.

“Of course he is,” you replied in his stead. “Right, Mr. Fushiguro?”

“Eh?” he finally looked at you, then at the guard. “Yeah, sure.”

“See?” you said to the guard, your smile wide and sweet. “No problem.”

The guard let out a big breath, weighing his options. You could see the pros and cons spinning like a wheel behind his eyes despite how carefully he had composed his expression. Even disarmed, Toji Fushiguro could kill every single one of them. But if they denied him entrance, you’d likely walk as well and that would be millions of yen lost.

Money won out. It usually did.

“If you please, sir, step his way,” the guard said. Toji scratched his ear, his disinterest explicitly clear as he casually sauntered to the metal detector. You hadn’t been sure what to expect of the man, but Toji barely reacted to the instructions, complying without complaint. He acted like he was bored. He probably was. “And you, miss,” the guard said, gesturing you forward.

No bags, no phones, the scans were thorough and absolute. All of this, of course, to avoid anybody bringing along a weapon of some kind. They even had a sorcerer among the guards to check each guest. Toji had assured you none of this would be a problem for his ability to complete the job. Thinking about it, you weren’t sure you’d ever seen him with a weapon. He had one, obviously, but it wasn’t something he carried on his person. You supposed a man without cursed energy had to have his own magic tricks.

“Arms up,” the female guard said, drawing your attention back to the present. Toji was already being patted down by an intensely uncomfortable looking security guard. While you felt distinctly awkward about the process, he stood and accepted it like a god being worshipped.

“Take it easy with her,” Toji said, smirking as he watched you try to hide any reaction from the search. “Leave some for the rest of us.”

They were professionals, not reacting to the comment in the least. Or maybe they were just too on edge to register it as the sleazy quip it was. You rolled your eyes, but laughed. A part of you was grateful for the levity. For everything else that you had planned and expected, you hadn’t stopped to wonder if you’d feel nervous.

When the two of you got the reluctant all-clear, you were stamped and shown to the elevator. Rather than having the event at the hotel as indicated by the invitations, the hotel was merely a base for security screening before the attendees were ushered to the parking garage. The actual event location was a secret, the guests would be driven there in black windowed cars provided by Mr. Kurokawa. You knew that the auction was to take place in an undocumented underground base an hour or so south of Nara, hidden away in the forest. Even a keen eyed individual would be hard pressed to guess the location, especially considering someone had gone to great lengths to hide its existence. With the number of illegal cursed objects and other priceless artifacts that were to be sold, such precautions were necessary.

The car was nondescript. Nice, but not too nice. It sat six people facing each other with a middle table graced with champagne and a booklet of items featured at the auction. You and Toji shared the cab with a couple. Young and eye-catching, the woman’s throat and ears sparkled with diamonds. Her date, in sharp comparison, was old and flabby in the way of a man who had wealth he hadn’t actually worked to obtain. You felt, in a very vague way, that you knew him, although that wasn’t a surprise. The circles in which you ran were relatively small, an intersection of Jujutsu and crime.

More noticeably, the man clearly knew Toji. Equally obvious was that he hated him. But the wealthy and powerful often thought that the best way to show their disgust for someone was to ignore their presence, so that’s what he did. The woman didn’t have the same reaction, eying you with an unimpressed look before shifting her attention to Toji. Despite anything else you felt about the man, you couldn’t exactly begrudge her that. Even though he hadn’t respected the dress code of the event—well, he did enough, at least enough to wear appropriate footwear—he was standout in appearance. Toji Fushiguro had the intoxicatingly dangerous look of the type of muscled, rugged, confident heartthrob that women dreamed of. The scar across his mouth and disregard for any sort of decorum, traits that would be unseemly on an unattractive man, only made it better. Toji, ever the gentleman, paid in kind, giving her an appraising yet not too slimy once-over that had her preening.

If nothing else, it was entertaining to watch the older man realize what was happening and, following his old school principles of disdain, find himself unable to acknowledge his partner’s indiscretion. Eye twitching whenever Toji caught her gaze with a smirk, he told her to pour him a drink he didn’t touch, to look up specific items in the pamphlet, practically begging for her attention to be focused on him and him only. By the time the car parked and the doors were opened, the tension had grown thick enough to cut with a knife. The man ushered his date out quickly, simply pulling her out his door rather than waiting for her own to be opened. You were helped out by a leather gloved attendant, stepping into a covered garage, not unlike the one you had departed from. The air was thicker here, more humid, dank in the natural sense of a place that hadn’t seen sunlight in many, many years. Another attendant opened the single set of doors individually for the guests drifting from cars similar to the one that had transported you. Your car companions had already entered.

“You should try bringing her a drink,” you told Toji when the two of you caught up, waiting in the short line to the door. “I think his head might explode.”

Toji paused his quick scan of the other guests, head tilting. “Who?”

That gave you pause, acting as a strange reminder that the man at your side wasn’t like you. He wasn’t like anyone. The petty things people placed so much importance on meant nothing to him.

“The woman in the...” you began to explain, trailing off as a very simple and ugly thought struck you. That woman, in all her beauty and life, was going to die tonight. The humor of the exchange turned grim, the joke stomped out of your chest. With all of your planning, the only casualties you had seriously considered were the people like her companion, the people who were just as complicit as a man like Kurokawa. The character within you began to crack. Was that you or the persona you adopted? Which set of morals itched and wilted at the idea of her death?

Toji elbowed you slightly, forcing you back to the present.

“Good evening, sir,” the door attendant said, checking the stamps on your hands as you blinked back to life. “And miss.” He bowed. “The event will begin in about fifteen minutes. Feel free to enjoy the bar and examine the auction items at your leisure.”

That brought you back entirely, shaking the distractions out of your head. Letting yourself lose control over your feelings would spoil everything you had so carefully planned. It would, very likely, mean death. That was what was at stake here, what you had committed to. One life didn’t change that.

“Wonderful, thank you,” you said, smiling as if the lapse hadn’t happened at all.

The doors opened to a sprawling, low-ceilinged room lit softly, warmly—dim and intimate. The atmosphere was meant to draw attention to the brilliantly illuminated glass cases where people congealed in colorful groupings. Even you, a disappointment in a family of sorcerers, could feel the presence of cursed energy here. Cursed items were a valuable commodity. Although, there were other things on offer as well. This event wasn’t exclusive to sorcerers or curse users, only exclusive to the rich. In fact, those from the Jujutsu world who were attending were considered to be outcasts by the elite. Perverts, in definition, as many of them were also criminals. The elites didn’t need to attend vulgar auctions or mingle with those below them to get what they wanted.

“We have time,” you said, turning to Toji. “Would you like to mingle? I’m sure there are at least a few familiar faces here.”

“Nobody memorable,” Toji said dismissively, ignoring the fact that you’d been trying to sound playful. He seemed distracted, like he was thinking about something. The plan? The people? You couldn’t tell and maybe you didn’t want to know.

“To the bar, then?” you asked.

“Why not,” he said with a shrug, allowing you to lead him into the crowd. People parted like water upon noticing him, muttering amongst themselves and watching with hostile eyes. Toji neither enjoyed or faltered under the spotlight of their attention, moving as if he simply didn’t register it. Was that true, or was that an act he put on? You truly couldn’t tell. The attention felt like a spotlight, but you tried to follow your partner’s example and ignore it. They didn’t matter.

The bar wasn’t crowded. There was probably some social stigma attached to that, some unspoken rule of the elite you didn’t know. Most people picked drinks up off of trays rather than ordering anything themselves, expecting to be waited on without effort. Without even the slightest hint of hesitance, Toji leaned against it. The bartender approached the two of you quickly. He was not the usual type you met in the cheap bars you liked, people who were all smiles and charm and flash. This man was strictly professional, everything about him practiced and polite as he asked for your order.

“Whiskey,” Toji said. “Neat.”

“And an Old Fashioned for me,” you said with a smile.

“Of course.”

You cast a sideways glance at your companion after he was gone. “Do you not drink cocktails?” you asked.

“I don’t usually drink, but that’s a bottle of twelve year old Yamazaki,” Toji said, nodding behind the bar. “Good guy. I can’t stand men who throw parties like this and go cheap on the liquor.”

“A mark of bad character?” you asked, unable to suppress a smile at the irony of a famous leach making such a critique.

“Something like that.”

You watched the bartender make your cocktail for a moment before your gaze slid over to a waiter filling a tray of crystal champagne flutes, the replacement for the discarded glasses with their lipstick stained rims and half full contents. Even in its excess, you couldn’t help but admire the opulence.

“I can’t tell the difference,” you admitted suddenly, turning back to your partner with a sudden need for conversation.

Toji blinked before he looked down at you. “What?”

“Alcohol all tastes the same to me,” you said. “Half the time I think it’s some elaborate joke when people talk about flavor profile and smoothness and stuff, I think it’s gross. But the point is that all gets you drunk, right?”

“Not me,” he said.

“What?”

“I can’t get drunk.”

“Oh,” you said, eyebrows furrowing. “Then why drink at all?”

“‘Cause there is a difference between the cheap and expensive stuff,” Toji said, leaning in conspiratorially. “Do you wanna know what it is?”

“Yeah,” you agreed, leaning in as well. This close, you could clearly see the green of his eyes framed with those thick, dark lashes. The scarred corner of his lips was quirked, something dancing in his eyes.

“It’s a hell of a lot more fun to waste somebody else’s forty thousand yen whiskey.”

You laughed, you couldn’t help it. “Forty thousand yen?” you asked. “Do people really spend that much on liquor?”

Toji shrugged. “Some people have so much money they don’t know where to waste it.”

“You should offer them your help, I’ve heard you’re pretty good at that,” you said.

Toji’s head tilted as if the comment surprised him for some reason, then he smiled in a way that almost felt genuine. Tingling excitement sparked up in your core at the look, a sensation you didn’t understand. Before he could say anything, the bartender brought your drinks, wiping away that smile.

You covered for your lapse by busying yourself with the drink. The Old Fashioned was good, you supposed. You ordered it because it was the first cocktail you could think of. Ignoring decency, Toji knocked back his drink like it was a shot, not so much as blinking at the burn.

“So?” you asked with a raised eyebrow, doubting he had actually tasted any of it. “Is it worth forty thousand?”

Toji ran his tongue over his bottom lip, smirking as he met your eye. “I’m not sure. Why don’t you have a taste and let me know?” he asked. Leaning against the bar, he was even closer than before. You could smell the liquor on his breath, feel the heat radiating from his body. It was clearly obvious what he was offering, if not verbally than physically. A fresh thrill settled deep in your gut, a feeling you neither understood or accepted.

“I thought you were professional,” you said, stifling any instinct that would push you away from him.

“I am.”

“Really? This feels awfully,” you let out a little breath, your voice softer still as your gaze flicked from his green, green eyes to his wet, pink, imperfectly scarred lips and back again, “unprofessional.”

“It’s all a part of the service,” Toji said, his low voice practically a purr.

“Are you saying I should try to get my money’s worth?”

“Might as well test your luck. It couldn’t hurt.”

“Somehow, I find that incredibly difficult to believe.”

“You afraid?” Toji asked that with a carnivore's glee, his act cracking a bit to show whatever it was that laid beneath, the piece of him that desired such a reaction.

“Shouldn’t I be?” you murmured. You didn’t have to feign your hesitancy in this, didn’t have to play coy in the hopes of keeping him intrigued. This was honesty in its own, ugly, terrifying way.

Toji laughed, a harsh puff of air and a different sort of smile. “I promise I don’t bite.”

“It’s not your bite that gives me pause,” you said, another bit of genuine truth. That was the thing to pull you out from the odd trance, standing up to get some distance from those green eyes before this went too far. Already, you were forgetting yourself, losing yourself just a little more. “Unfortunately, Mr. Fushiguro, you’re not my type.”

“I’m everyone’s type,” he told you. Your reluctance hadn’t made him back off, you were almost certain of that. There was something here in the tension between you, something worth his while.

You smiled, trying to steady yourself with a raised eyebrow and playful voice. “Is that a fact?”

“Why don’t you come a little closer and find out?”

The muscles in your stomach rippled with warmth, the heat rising up to your skin. “Tempting, but I’ll pass,” you told him, playing it off. “There’s a saying about mixing business and pleasure.”

Toji was going to say something, perhaps push a little more, but was cut off by a sudden cut in the music and a loud voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, the auction will be starting soon. Please make your way into the theater.”

Casting a glance around the room—buzzing and rippling with anticipation of the night’s event as people shuffled towards the doors in the back of the viewing room—you let out a little breath. First you were distracted by the dangerous thoughts in your head, now you allowed yourself to be wrapped up in flirting with your contractor. Not for the first time, your own inexperience shocked you. But berating yourself for that would have to be a later priority, the plan had gone smoothly thus far, you needed to clear your head and stay focused.  

“I’d like to visit the ladies’ room before it starts,” you told Toji, following the script. A part of you was terrified to leave him to his own devices, afraid that he wouldn’t remember what he was supposed to do, or that he’d act in ways you hadn’t accounted for. The two of you had only gone over the plan once, that first day. But he was a professional. Toji had done this many more times than you could even dream of. If someone were to make a mistake, it was you. That’s what you needed to focus on. “Don’t let anything too exciting happen before I get back.”

Toji didn’t say anything, his only reaction a wild smile as he pushed away from the counter and popped his neck, rolled his shoulders. His body was perfect—broad shoulders, slim waist, nice ass—but right then you were only aware of his body’s purpose as a weapon. It was a cold thought that the interaction you just had, the man you were just flirting with, didn’t really exist, no more than this version of you did. Toji Fushiguro, at his very core, was more similar to an animal than a man.

That was unimportant. Focus, you needed to focus. Resisting the sickening nerves gripping your stomach, you left him to his work. As you maneuvered around the crowd to the security post you were going to use as a means of escape from this slaughter, you were able to spare a second, just a second, of pity for the people going into the theater. They were little more than fancy, well dressed, wealthy sheep. Another second’s thought was spared for something far worse. If he was the predator and they were the prey, what were you?

4 days; 13 hours; 29 minutes ago

Oddly, you felt no anger. The ash and embers of rage and disgust that had settled so deeply into your very being were quiet, smothered utterly by the character you had created. She both was and was not yourself. A version of who you could have been in a different life mixed with the isolated and practiced traits of another.

She did not feel anger as she searched the stands of the race track. You did not feel anger when you caught sight of the man you were looking for.

To borrow from the most trite of clichés—a technique that suited the trite, simplistic nature of the man himself—Toji Fushiguro was tall, dark, and handsome. He sat alone in a small field of empty metal seats watching the parade of racehorses trot across the track with his feet hanging over the seat in front of him, lounging like he owned the place. This race was one of the bigger events of the year and the stands were swarming with people, yet Toji Fushiguro had a buffer zone of space. He was just that type of guy. You ignored the instincts that recognized danger and sat next to him, casual, staring forward like you were unaware of his presence.

“It’s a shame about Emperor Epoch,” you said before he could react, watching the fractious chestnut put on a show for the audience. The name caught his attention just like you knew it would. He had bet on that horse; Toji Fushiguro was a horrible gambler. Emperor Epoch was fast, but not at all disciplined enough for a race like this. Toji looked at you out of the corner of his eye and you could tell he was trying to decide whether or not to be annoyed by the interruption. If you were a man, yes, but he was someone of particular vices and a well-known opportunist. You took that as a sign to continue. “He really could have been something. I blame the trainers.”

“Do I know you?” Toji asked, narrowing his eyes a little, possibly trying to figure out if you were one of the many women he’d used and discarded.

“No,” you told him. Then, sweetly, smiling earnestly, “But I thought you looked like you could use the company.”

Toji scoffed, although that did get a smile out of him. “And what makes you think I would want your company?”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t talk to sorcerers,” Toji said dismissively.

You expected that, but it was still somewhat surprising. What tipped him off? You were weak enough that even other sorcerers didn’t notice a lot of the time.

“I don’t mind doing the talking, then,” you said. In the background, voices rumbled, distracting. Even if it weren’t for the commentator and crowd, you would know that the race was close to starting. It was the tension. The imperceptible buzz of noise and excitement that vibrated beneath the sound of voices and movement, anticipation for what was going to happen, a collective breath held out of respect for everything that was at stake. “I’d like to hire you.”

“Talk to a mediator,” Toji said as if unaware of the building atmosphere. “I don’t handle this sort of stuff. Besides, I’m busy.” He paused, giving you another glance, his eyes scanning you with intent, his lips quirking. "Unless you have something else you wanna talk about.”

You—that is, the you that wore her hair short and tried to see the good in people and was not at all affected by the sight of this man—felt decidedly flattered by the offer, even if you knew it was one he’d made to countless women.

“Not right now, I’d hate to distract you from the race," you said, standing up and stretching. The movement was calculated in its unaware innocence, but you knew he was watching you, eyeing the way it drew attention to your body. Then you shot him a smile. Not a seductive grin that spoke of secrets and promise, but one that was open and reckless. "Best of luck. I suppose there’s always a chance Epoch could pull through. But, if not-” You reached down to take his hand. He let it happen, watching you with a half-amused expression as if entertained by what you intended to do, perhaps even hoping that you’d be stupid enough to try something. Toji’s skin was warm, rough. You put your own betting slip in his palm, running your fingers over his before closing them.

“What’s this?” he asked, looking at the paper skeptically.

"Think of it as… a down payment,” you told him. “I'll be at the bar."

Toji scoffed. "Don't hang around too long," he said. “It’d be a shame to leave a pretty girl like you waiting all night.”

You measured those words, but you could see the interest in his eyes. The curiosity. So you shrugged, shot him a parting grin. "I have a feeling I won't."

The bell rang and the horses were released into the course, the announcer speaking at a breakneck pace as their hooves pounded against the track. Despite that, you could feel Toji’s eyes follow you as you got lost in the crowd.

It was a gamble. There was a chance he’d cash out and leave. A decently high chance. But Toji Fushiguro was the type of man who swaggered around the world and only answered to the call of money and cheap entertainment, two things that you were offering. You needed to take the risk, needed to catch his interest in a way other people didn’t.

Knowing the necessity didn’t help your nerves any, didn’t keep you from doubting your performance or the efficacy of everything you had so carefully planned out. At the bar, you ordered a drink and listened to the race finish exactly as you were told it would, as your betting slip predicted. The bet would yield an obscene amount of money, enough to compensate what you had spent to ensure its accuracy, but that was necessary. No expense was too much, not for this.

You waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And-

“Buy me dinner,” Toji Fushiguro said, taking the seat next to you and leaning onto the counter, his cheek cupped in his palm and body portraying a sense of disinterest, “and maybe I’ll think about it.”

12 days; 2 hours; 14 minutes ago

“The Zen’in family agreed,” you told Matsuda, your expression impassive as you stared at the fast-food commercial playing on the TV. He handed you the bottle of whiskey and you took a hearty swig, wincing a little at the foul taste. It burned all the way down your throat, stoking a fire in your gut. The way it buzzed up in your head was nice, though. The way it made colors just a little bit more bright, the world a little bit more smooth. Before, you had never been much of a drinker. Even after the funeral, you had never allowed your misery to take you to substance abuse. But after the day you had, watching crappy television and drinking sounded just about perfect.

“Did they?” Matsuda asked. The fast-food commercial had cut into one trying to sell a cell phone plan, colors from the static screen splashing across the dim, dull landscape of his living room. He seemed no more interested than you feigned to be, taking a drink and passing it back to light up a cigarette. “How did that go?”

Your expression twisted a little at the question, you couldn’t help it. Things had gone, at the very least, as you expected. Boot licking and groveling weren’t above you, exactly—growing up in a family of sorcerers with such little innate talent did very little for the self esteem—but they were worse than any of the family you had dealt with. To them, you were subhuman.  

“It went fine,” you said, wishing your attitude could make you feel less dirty. What you had done, the simpering and the pleading and suffering the degradation, was necessary. You needed them. That didn’t help, but you tipped back another mouthful of alcohol and told yourself it did. “They agreed. It’s not like they’re really risking anything.” Besides, you still had some clout through your family name. Another bitter thought.

“You’ve got it all planned out, huh,” Matsuda said, exhaling smoke to play and twirl in the technicolor brights of a gameshow you’d never heard of before tonight. From his voice,  you could tell that he didn’t believe you, not entirely. You didn’t blame him.

Doubt came from the question you had been asking yourself ever since you started down this road: how did one go about tricking the untrickable, fooling the unfoolable? The simple answer you came to through hours of puzzling and meditation was that you didn’t. Your plots had to be sincere and transparent, your motives easily guessed and dismissed. But, along the way, you made way for opportunity. What the plan asked of you was immense. You would have to play the part so well that it became a sort of truth, an indelible part of who you were, so well that by the time the true nature of the scheme was revealed, even you could marvel at the genius of it. And it was genius. Anything less would mean failure.

But you did wonder. Who would you be on the other side of this?

You took another drink.

“I’ve got it all planned out,” you said. “I’ll use the auction as a real job to make him lower his guard.”

“The auction?” Matsuda asked. “You mean Kurokawa?”

The name made your breath catch just a little, anger flickering before you smothered it down. You needed to work on hiding your reactions. “Yeah. Because of him… Well, I have all of the security documents,” you said. “The building plans, the emergency response—everything. Fushiguro and I are gonna crash the party.”

“Crash the party?” Matsuda asked. “You mean-”

“Kurokawa’s responsible, too,” you said softly, your eyes narrowing at the commercial for a big sale at a store you never went to. “They all deserve what they get. It’s like… two birds with one stone.” Matsuda didn’t say anything to that, smoking and staring at the screen. You sighed, frustrated when you realized that you were waiting for his validation, frustrated with the doubt you felt, the hesitance that came even when you knew your resolve had to be clad in iron. “It’s necessary, too. I’ll say that one of the rings on auction was a family heirloom and ask that Fushiguro get it for me. That’ll give us a reason to meet up again.”

“He could use an intermediary.”

“No,” you said. The commercial break ended with a sweeping shot of the show’s live audience, a mass of people rippling with excitement for the final act of the night’s challenges for the competing pairs. “He’ll want to see me again. Fushiguro isn’t the type to let a pretty, interested woman pass him by.”

“You’re going to seduce him?” Matsuda asked, just like that. There was cold interest in that question, enough to make you feel a tinge of shame. You washed that down with more whiskey. “I wouldn’t say he’s discerning when it comes to women,” he continued, “but do you really want to count on that? You’ve never struck me as the type.”

Was that offensive? You couldn’t tell if you should have been offended by that. “It doesn’t matter what type I am,” you said. Your words were a little slurred, you realized distantly. “All that matters is that I know his.”

Matsuda cast a glance your way, which you didn’t meet. “Do you?”

“Yeah,” you said softly. One of the men in the show was spinning a wheel, his partner was cheering so loud her voice was going hoarse. They were young and newly married. That was the gimmick of this episode, or maybe of the show, you couldn’t tell.

“You think you can do it?” Matsuda asked after a beat. “I know you want to get revenge, but seducing the man who-”

“I can do it,” you said, cutting him off.  

“That’s fucked up,” he told you bluntly, handing the bottle back and taking a heavy drag off his cigarette.

You took another drink, comfortably settling into the blurry numb warm state of decidedly drunk. The couple on TV embraced when they were announced as winners, the camera catching their flushed cheeks and big smiles as they shook their joined hands above their heads, as they collapsed into each other into a kiss. What would that flushed, smiling woman do if something happened to him? Would she give up? Would she forget? You weren’t so sure. Maybe most people would, too beaten down to know how to rebel, but not everyone. When someone was shown that justice and goodness could not be counted on to protect them from the natural chaos of the world, it seemed rather inevitable that decent, reasonable people would be pushed into doing indecent, unreasonable things. And you had been a decent, reasonable, loving person.

“The world’s fucked up,” you said in a slur that didn’t at all express the drama of the statement. Matsuda hummed in agreement anyway. The show ended, cutting to commercial.

29 days; 5 hours; 22 minutes ago

Finding the place wasn’t difficult. It was exactly what you were told—a run-down tachinomi underneath the tracks. Age oozed from the entire complex. It must have been built in the eighties when the economic miracle employed men in excess, all of them needing someplace easy to stop before going home to their families. In its heyday, it might have been nice, but now it was nothing more than a solemn reminder of better times and the steady, painful defeat of the working class. Colorful paper lanterns did their best to hide the decaying traditional wooden exterior, but you suspected the cheap alcohol they advertised was far more enticing to the crowd of exhausted middle aged men who entered with slumped postures and worn briefcases. You shouldered your way through the old, dirty vinyl strips acting as a door. They did very little to hold in the cool air being laboriously pumped in by a large air conditioning unit mounted in the corner, leaving the cramped space uncomfortably warm and thick with the scent of sweat and cheap cologne. Men stood at the bar and nursed their drinks. Some of them dared break the hypnotic hum of old, staticky radio hits coming from the ancient speaker with a bit of chatter, but most of them just stared with glassy eyes. You were looking for the ugly guy in a red striped tie, a man called Kuwata. He was easy to spot. Not because he stood out, but because the crude description was just that accurate.

Slipping through the narrow space, you followed the worn trail pathed by inexpensive Oxfords to get a beer from the vending machine. A train passed overhead as the can dropped into the pick-up box, startling you. For a few seconds, all you could hear was the dull roar as the tracks rattled and the hum of the vending machine, a sound that seemed to grow more intense as if to compete with the noise. The dull roar, the buzz, the raw noise rumbled all the way to the base of your skull, overwhelming. Then it was over and the crackly voice of some old singer on the radio faded back in. You grabbed your can and slotted yourself an appropriate distance from Kuwata. No cursed energy emanated from him, although you knew for a fact he dealt mainly in sorcerer circles. He wore a cheap, creased suit with that terrible striped tie. Heavy bags drooped beneath his bloodshot eyes and his thick features had a sallow cast. Aside from the beer he held, three other empty cans were stacked beside his elbow. You deliberated what you were going to say, suddenly feeling very aware of your inexperience in these things.

“You won’t even offer to buy me a drink?” Kuwata asked before you had anything figured out, his swollen eyes surprisingly lucid as they fixed on you. You blinked in surprise before pointedly looking at the can his thick fingers were currently wrapped around. He picked it up and shook it so the metal tab rattled, showing that it was empty. After a second of deliberation, you slid your own drink towards him, leaving a wet smear of condensation across the scuffed up countertop. It’s not like you had been planning to drink anyway. “You’re late,” he said as he opened the can with a pop.

“You were expecting me?” you asked, trying to decide if that was a bad sign or not. Kuwata laughed, taking a healthy gulp of beer rather than responding. “Does that mean you know why I’m here?”

“‘course I do. You’re the idiot asking around about Toji Zen’in,” Kuwata said. The name made you unintentionally tense up, your jaw locking and fingers twitching. He laughed again, shaking his head. “What’d he do, kill someone you cared about? Or…” He dragged his gaze over your body, not seeming to care about how unflattering the clothes were as they lingered on your chest, your hips, your nylon covered legs. It made you want to shift, to hide, but you resisted the impulse. That would only make you seem weak. “Let me guess, you’re one of the broads he ruined.”

“One of them?” you asked, pretending to look shocked, maybe a little hurt. It was better to give him the wrong impression, you decided. The idea of telling this sleazy informant the truth of what Toji Zen’in had done, the reason you were asking in the first place, was utterly repugnant.

Kuwata bought it, his slimy smile growing. “You thought you were special? He’s a real dog,” he said. “When he’s not killing, he’s using his charm to claim his next meal ticket. There’s a bar uptown where you can’t walk a foot without tripping over one of his discarded women.”

That didn’t surprise you, but you acted as if it did. “I thought…” you said, trailing off and composing your expression as if truly distraught. “It doesn’t matter. I want to know everything you know about him. Please.”

Kuwata sighed. “C’mon, girlie. You’re pretty enough, I’m sure you can find another guy to help you get back on your feet. Just don’t waste your time on this, I promise that it’ll end badly. It’d be a real shame to see such a pretty face dead because she couldn’t mind her own business.” He spoke in a softer voice. He put his heavy, sweaty hand on yours. He did those things because you looked vulnerable. Because you looked like an easy mark. Disgust swelled up in your throat, hatred causing your head to spin, anger fizzing up like sparklers and zipping against your skull. The gnarled, winged fury chained up in your heart called for violence.

The train roared by above, its vibrations traveling through the bar straight into your bones. By the time it passed, you had yourself under control.

“I appreciate your concern, Mr. Kuwata,” you said, looking down at his ugly, unkempt hand. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. There are some things a woman just can’t forgive.” The best lies were the truth, maybe he saw the intensity of honesty in your eyes, maybe he understood even the slightest fraction of how far you were willing to take this, that even attempting to talk you down would be pointless.

“Hah, well, don’t blame me when it turns out bad,” Kuwata said, removing his hand and downing the rest of his beer. “‘s’long as you pay up, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

You didn’t need to be prompted to buy him another drink. When you returned, sliding the fresh can his way, he finally looked serious.

“Hm… where to start,” Kuwata mused. “He doesn’t go by the name Zen’in anymore. It’s Toji Fushiguro now, he took the name of his first wife.”

“His first wife?”

“Yeah, he was married twice,” Kuwata said. “Oh, he’s got a son, too. From the first marriage.”

“A son?” you said, not so much a question as it was astonishment. Inspiration. A son would make everything easier, he could be the “in” you so desperately needed.

“Don’t get your hopes up, that’s a dead end,” Kuwata said, smiling like it was funny. “They’re estranged. Fushiguro sold him to that sorcerer family of his before running off with wife number two.”

You frowned, as much because of your disappointment that things wouldn’t be that easy as in disgust at the idea of selling a child to people like the Zen’in clan. “That’s despicable,” you said. Kuwata laughed, a grating sound that made your shoulders tense. “What’s so funny?”

“Just appreciating the irony,” Kuwata said.  

It took you a second to understand his meaning, but you got it eventually. “He’s not my son,” you said, disliking the logic that anything you did would even begin to approximate the cruelty in the empty void that made up the morals of Toji Fushiguro.

Kuwata made a non-committal sound, still smiling as he drank.

“What about the second wife,” you prodded, forcing the conversation onward.

“She left him,” Kuwata told you, waving a hand. “The death of his first wife hit him hard. Hell, that’s what drove him mad. That doesn’t exactly bode well for a second marriage.”

“What do you mean, her death drove him mad?” you asked, your brow crinkling.

“Yeah,” Kuwata said, amused. “Believe it or not, the monster had a heart at one point. Settled down, gave up the mercenary life.”

The idea of that was ridiculous, a complete mismatch for the mental image you had of Toji Fushiguro. Ridiculous enough that you felt a disbelieving little laugh bubble up and out of your mouth. But at the same time, it gave you an idea. An idea that was funny in the worst of ways, the darkest of them.

“Do you know what she was like?” you asked.

As luck would have it, he did.

By the time you left, you had a plan. Or, the beginning of a plan. Something more, too. An understanding, of sorts. You understood Toji Fushiguro. By his own hand, you were made to understand what made him into the creature he was. When a life was lost, when a love so intense that it created a new form of order and light was taken from someone, the extremes to which someone could fall was unimaginable to the rational mind. When the only point of sanity was stolen, chaos reigned. And you knew, knew it perfectly well, that scars like that never faded. It wasn’t about type or lust or even attraction, it was the soul-deep wish to regain that which was ripped away. In that regard, you were lucky. The late Mrs. Fushiguro wasn’t some kind of bombshell. From her description, she seemed nice. Nice, playful, outgoing enough to draw the monster out of his shell.

You could do that, you could be that.

People on the train stared at you sideways when you laughed, manic little giggles at the utter ridiculousness of it all, but you didn’t care. At this point, you could very well believe that you were afflicted with the madness their nervous glances accused you of. They didn’t understand the half of it. It was a madman’s plan to put on the act of a man’s dead wife to get revenge on him for killing your fiancé, a really terrible joke that wasn’t funny in the least. But laughing felt better than crying, so it was okay.

Everything was going to be okay. You had a plan.

58 days; 0 hours; 7 minutes ago

His scent had faded from his pillow. You had grown used to speaking of him in the past tense. Thoughts of him were getting more and more vague, details becoming hazy and his presence fading from your life bit by bit. Lighting the candles had become a desperate act, your offerings becoming frantic as you clung to the small pieces of him that you could still distinctly hold onto. Right now the image of him in your head was clear, his voice still echoing in your head, but how long would it take for those things to grow dull? Time continued even though you wished it wouldn’t, the cruel, terrible world continued on spinning regardless of your pain. And everybody else had moved on. Continued forward with their lives. Their pity had dried up, the understanding sympathy of those around you becoming annoyance as you continued to dwell on his death, continued to cry and mourn. Everybody else got on with their life, but you couldn’t let it go.

Your fiancé had been murdered. He had been betrayed by people he trusted. He was ripped from you with all the delicacy of a back alley organ thief and you were supposed to just, what, move on? No way. It was impossible. Some things could not be accepted, some crimes could not be pardoned. There was no moving on from this.

Alone in the home the two of you had shared, you found yourself curled in the corner of the dining room. You never used it before, so it was the only place that didn’t remind you of him, the only place that didn’t feel littered with broken glass. You often came here to cry, turning on the glaring overheads so your pain could be put in sharp relief with the mundane table and chairs, the bowl of fake, jewel-like red apples. An ugly, pathetic contrast. It was late and the tears had dried into salty tracks over your cheeks, your hiccups fading into sharp little gasps. You would cry again soon, but the wave had passed for now. In its frothy white wake, you felt calm. More calm than you ever did these days. The taste of vomit was heavy on your tongue as you spun the cylinder of his favored revolver with only three bullets in the chamber. Bile crawled up and burned at your throat, even more intense than the tears had been. But you swallowed it down just like you did the despair. Those emotions were no longer useful to you. It was better, you decided, to be sedate about this. Life was heavy and harsh, you didn’t need to take that here too. In this place that was void of memory or soul, you could accept what was to come. With a satisfying sound, the cylinder clicked back into the gun.

It was strange, you had always been so skittish about using the gun. He insisted you learn to shoot because people were dangerous. Because people were cruel. Because people had bad intentions and he couldn’t always protect you. Because your entire life had been so focused on cursed energy and sorcery that nobody ever taught you about regular, boring crime, or about human crime, the danger you should have feared far more than any cursed technique. Still, the vulgar, illegal weapon made you anxious. It kicked when you pulled the trigger, made such an awful sound that you had to pool up your pitiful cursed energy to physically shield your ear drums. You weren’t scared now, not now that you intended to take a life. Your hands were completely steady.

The soulless metal of the muzzle froze your skin when you placed it carefully beneath your chin, the weapon weighing heavily in your sweaty grip. Everything felt far away. Both synthetic and hyperreal at the same time. Everything except you was shaking, the world itself trembling on the precipice of your actions now. Maybe it was better to feel some level of disconnect, you didn’t have to think if this was good or bad. Either way, it was a decision. Direction. Death would greet you either way, either by your own hand or through the vengeful justice you would create. Either way, you would do right by him. You pulled the trigger.

0ds; 0hrs; 0ms ago

Unknown number: they failed.

You had read and reread that text dozens of times, but it remained the same. The Zen’in clan had failed to uphold their part of the deal. Toji had killed them. You, despite every effort, had failed.

The panic and despair began to cool as minutes stretched and stretched onward. Logic kicked in somewhere between the second panic fit and the sound of a far off bell striking midnight. There was a chance you wouldn’t be his first priority, or any priority at all. You weren’t sure with a man like him. Revenge wasn’t in his nature.

However, pleasure most certainly was. There was a chance he’d find the idea of taking you out after what you had done pleasurable. With tears drying and crusting in your eyes, you began to wonder which was worse: being hunted down and killed by Toji Fushiguro, or living with your failure. Out of the animalistic habit of self preservation, you considered your options of escape. But that was meaningless, if he had a mind to find you, there was no escape. Your only attack, your trump card, wouldn’t work more than once on him, even if you had enough cursed energy to try again. You had chosen this location knowing this might happen. There was no point in leaving now. Whatever happened would happen.

So you stayed, sitting and waiting. Patiently letting time pass, knowing that the other end of the dark, dark night would be dawn or death. In a way, it wasn’t so unlike that night two months back, that awful night.

You waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And-

“Is this supposed to be a secret hideout or something?”

For all that you told yourself you were expecting this, hearing his voice startled you. A sharp gasp left your mouth as you jumped to your feet, whirling around to face him. The sudden action made your head spin, adding to the embarrassing ineptitude with which you drew your gun. Your injured left arm didn’t cooperate properly, the pain zinging down your arm and making your fingers fumble with the weapon. Still, you didn’t hesitate to point it at him, your finger on the trigger. It wavered as frost began to slowly crackle through your veins, acid rising in your throat. The thought came to you with such crisp clarity that it made every other thought seem fuzzy in comparison, an urgent brand against your sluggish mind.

This was where you would die.

“Fushiguro,” you acknowledged, surprised at how steady you sounded.

“Expecting someone else?” he asked, smiling. “Here I thought we had something special.” He took a step forward. It was slow, deliberate. You were such a non-threat he may as well have been crawling for all he was worried about your ability to evade him. The neon signs outside shifted, dyed your concrete purgatory in red.

“It was about revenge, right?” Toji called when you didn’t answer, taking another step, utterly unconcerned about the gun you were pointing at him. “What’d I do, kill your dad? Brother?” He smirked. “Boyfriend?” You must have reacted in some way because his smile grew, canines flashing in the dim light. “Boyfriend, then. Huh… wasn’t there some kind of conflict of interest when you were getting all cozy with me, or are you just that cold hearted?”

“Shut up,” you demanded.

“I’ve gotta say,” he said, “I’m disappointed.”

Another step. You didn’t move, there was no point in running away, no point in backing yourself into the corner. All you could do was watch him approach, let him revel in his victory.

Deciding that, out of your myriad of bad options, you liked the idea of going down guns blazing the most. You pulled the trigger. The muzzle flashed and the sound broke the air and you knew you wouldn’t hit him but you didn’t care. Adrenaline pumped into your system by the bucketful and your posture was imperfect and you thumbed the hammer back and shot again, aiming at where you thought he would be to account for his supernatural abilities. Toji was inhumanly fast, faster than you could possibly keep up with. An iron grip closed around your wrist and twisted until you released the gun into his other hand. With your ears ringing violently, your heart pounding aggressively loud, you couldn’t hear your own cry of pain, only feel the sound travel from your chest to your throat. You’d forgotten to protect your ears with cursed energy on the first shot, a stupid mistake but not one you’d think would matter when you were going to die anyway.

Right then, you expected it to be over. There was no montage of your life flashing behind your eyes, but you wouldn’t want that anyway. Death was like a candle snuffed out, there was nothing more or less than the abrupt end and you were ready to embrace that.

But you didn’t die. Toji released your wrist to let you collapse onto the ground, still holding your gun as he leaned against the edge of the table. He was saying something but you couldn’t hear it, only able to watch his lips move in the slow gradient of red to purple, admire the way the colors seemed to seep into his pale skin. Then he looked down at you and you tensed up, clumsily getting to your feet. The left ear was better than the right, at least, you could already pick up some noises.

“-was annoying,” he said with a grimace, tossing the gun onto the desk. He scratched at his ear irritably, then shrugged. “‘But it’s not the worst greeting I’ve ever gotten from a woman.”

Hands shaking, heart pounding a mile a minute, barely able to hear, you couldn’t figure it out. Everything felt too close, too present, pushing against you with aggressive intensity. Focus, focus- “Why didn’t you…” The words fell to ash in your mouth, stilted from how hard you were trying to keep from shouting over the ringing, to keep emotion out of your voice, to project strength and the hard attitude you so desperately wished was real.

“Kill you?” Toji asked, peeking at you from the corner of his eyes. You nodded. “I might.” The corners of his lips quirked. “It depends.”

You swallowed hard, your throat contracting thickly. A fresh surge of energy gave you courage. “I’d rather die than live at your mercy.”

“Oh? You wanna die?” he asked.

You didn’t realize what was happening at first. One moment he was leaning on the table and the next the cold barrel of the gun was pressed right between your eyes. Beyond the tinny, painful ringing bouncing around in your head, the sound of the hammer pulling back was unmistakable. In the fluctuating neon, Toji’s eyes were endless and dark. You met them with terror pooling slowly in your gut, icing over your heart. He would. He would kill you and not think twice.

You should have said yes, you should have accepted your death with grace and nobility, met those detestable green eyes to the very last. But, right then, a new thought struck you with such strength that it was nearly staggering. You didn’t want to die. Mouth half open to tell him to do it, you froze, your eyes wide and burning with the threat of tears. You said nothing but even that was devastating. An admission of some fundamental failure, a betrayal.

Toji rolled his eyes, dropping the gun without ceremony or respect for weapon safety. You flinched at the sound, feeling hollowed out and cold. For so long, you had thought that death was the end goal of everything. That was why you didn’t plan beyond revenge, that was why you stayed when you could have run. That was the ultimate card you had to play when the misery became unbearable. So why did you deny it now?

“Lots of people think they’re brave,” Toji said, either blind or unsympathetic to your inner turmoil, “but when push comes to shove they realize that they like living too much.”

“I thought you were dead,” you said, something within you devastatingly numb, pushing you to cling onto the thought and reject the ugly truth. “My poison worked, I saw… It worked.”

“You put your trust in the wrong people,” Toji said. “They’re useless. Can’t even kill an immobilized target.” He smiled. “Then again, maybe you were smart to go to the Zen’in family. I had so much fun killing them that, right now, I’m not that mad.”

“Then why… why are you here?”

“You ran off just when things were getting fun,” Toji said, turning his smile to you with his particular brand of charm. You felt your stomach flip, the bottom giving out like a freefall.

“There was nothing fun about that,” you said, your voice coming out weak, quivering with the shuddering rush of adrenaline despite your best efforts.

Toji laughed. “Really? It felt like you were enjoying yourself to me. I’ve kissed a lot of women, it’s easy to tell which ones mean it. And you-”

“I only did it so I could get close to you,” you said harshly, shaking your head. “That’s it.”

He waved his hand flippantly with a dismissive sound. “Whatever makes you feel better.”

“You ruined my life. You-you ruined me,” you told him.

Toji’s eyes scanned you for the first time since the racetrack. The type of look that approximated a violation in its own way, his tongue brushing across his lips. You weren’t sure why. Dressed in an oversized hoodie and leggings, your mostly dry hair a mess, red faced from crying, you knew that you were far from appealing. “Not yet,” he said.  

You shuddered, wrapping your arms around yourself like that would help. “Why are you here?” you asked again, your voice soft. Competing with the static ringing and pounding of your heart, you could barely hear yourself.

“To pick up where we left off,” Toji said. “Whenever I finish a job, I like to celebrate.” He looked around. “This place isn’t ideal, but I think we can make it work.”

It took a beat for his words to register. Then another. You exhaled heavily, the sound shivering with your shaking body. “Whatever you’re thinking…” you said slowly, an attempted warning.

“You said you didn’t want to live at my mercy, right?” he asked, raising an eyebrow and holding out his arms. “I’m giving you a chance to pay your debts,” Toji spoke casually, like he wasn’t concerned, but you could feel there was something more beneath it. This tension that had to do with the violet light spilling into the room, dying his skin purple, making his eyes unreadably dark save for the weight of his gaze. You felt your mouth go dry, something panicked bubbling in your chest. It was one of those not-so-funny jokes. Everything you had done to distinguish yourself in his eyes, everything that you had done to ensure that he remembered and followed you, had worked. You had Toji Fushiguro’s full, undivided attention.

“No,” you said quietly, too taken aback to treat his offer with the disgust it deserved.

“Don’t tell me you’re not interested.”

“I’m… I’m not,” you said, “that was all a lie. I was only ever pretending so I could…” You trailed off as you realized something. He didn’t care. You weren’t even sure if he was listening. “I hate you.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Toji asked, moving forward, closing in on you. The lights were changing, purple draining warmth to a cool, cool blue.

Knowing it was coming wasn’t enough for you to get yourself to avoid it when he grabbed you. Nothing was really, truly real until you felt the heat of his body, until his big hand was gripping your chin so he could press his lips against yours. Until you were drowning in his scent, in the innate destructive power that seemed to emanate from him. Then it clicked, it was real.

You bit his lip as hard as you could, a feral sound ripping out of your throat as you clawed your way out of his arms. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

“Better watch your language,” Toji said with a smile, his dark eyes wild as he dabbed at his lip, “crass women aren’t my type.”  

“Go fuck yourself.”

His smile faded a bit, his eyes narrowing. “I’m not one to care about things like manners,” Toji said, “but you should be more respectful.”

“I’d never respect a monster like you,” you said, blood thrumming hot and loud in your ears, your hands shaking with righteous fury. “You’re a disgusting killer, fucking crazy, and I…” you trailed off, unsure of where you were going with the rant and acutely aware of all your passion drying up, fear creeping back in at the sight of his smile. “What?” you asked, your voice thin.  

“No, keep going,” he said. “This is hilarious.”

“I’m not kidding.”

“I know,” he said, “that’s why it’s so funny.”

“What’s funny?” you asked, your hands balled into fists and angry tears pricking at your eyes, a furious blush burning your cheeks.

“Here I thought you were a lady. Before, you reminded me of something.” There was a hint of uncertainty there, a stark and chilling reminder of how fractured his mind was. He shrugged it off instantly, moving on. “But it was all an act. You’re a stupid brat who’s upset because she tried to play with the adults and lost.”

You took a step back, physically responding to the shock of that accusation. “Excuse me?”

“This is your own fault,” Toji said, his expression darker, less animated, “you can’t pick and choose which parts of the game you wanna play then start whining and throwing a fit when you don’t get your way.”

“You’re… you’re insane,” you muttered, hardly able to comprehend what he was saying.

Toji laughed lightly, his eyes closing. Then, before you could process anything, he had you pinned against the edge of the table, his body pressed flush against your back, the tabletop painfully poking against the ridges of your hipbones. In the same moment, one of his hands wrapped around your throat. His fingers were long enough to keep you in place and press against your windpipe, big enough to make you perfectly aware of how easily he could break you. Too late, you shouted in objection, struggling and pawing at his arms to get free, but it wasn’t like before where he thought his appeal alone would keep you in place. All Toji had to do was grab your injured arm to make you wail sharply, to make you give in to the pain and go still. It was bleeding again, fresh blood leaking through into your sweatshirt sleeve.

“Did you already forget what I told you?” he asked, his voice rumbling against you.

“Let me go,” you demanded, your voice thick and too unsteady to sound even mildly convincing. You couldn’t breathe, not because of his hand but because you couldn’t get air into your lungs, there wasn’t enough of it.  

“That’s not it,” Toji said, amused. His hot breath ghosted along the shell of your ear, making you shudder. Disgust at how close he was, how suggestive this position felt, made something break past the pain and the fear. Anger.

“Fushiguro,” you stumbled around the syllables, stuttered them out in spite of the rage, or maybe because of it. “I swear-”

“Respect,” he said, cutting you off by using the grip around your neck to force you against the tabletop. You thrashed around, trying to pry him away, trying to push off the table, but you didn’t dare use your left arm and all Toji had to do was squeeze a little harder, make you really choke, and you fell still. “Brats use honorifics.”

“I will never respect you,” you told him before thinking better of it, practically spitting them.

“Do you think you’re brave?” Toji asked. “Should I be impressed or something? You’re not even fighting back.”

“Shut up!” you cried—shouted as loud as you could to combat his cool demeanor. Hating him. Hating yourself. Hating this entire rotten, awful situation. Hating your fiancé for dying, hating because you didn’t know what else to do. Escape was impossible, but at that moment you weren’t trying to escape. You struggled and fought against him out of the fear of what it meant if you didn’t, because you needed to take the excess of energy rushing through your blood and put it somewhere. Because, at your core, you were an animal, and it was only natural to struggle when cornered.

Rather than admonish you, Toji’s hand tightened around your neck, entirely cutting off your airflow. At first, you continued to buck and thrash out of primal panic to dislodge his hand, but as your vision fish-eyed and thoughts began to dull in urgency, you fell slack in defeat. But he didn’t let up. Toji used that opportunity to push your leggings down your thighs. His fingers trailed back up to tease the edge of your panties, sliding over them to drag along your slit through the fabric. You choked, desperately trying to close your legs and wiggle away, but it was sluggish. It didn’t matter anyway; he didn’t budge.

“The thing is-” Toji began as his fingers pressed down, seeking your entrance through your underwear. You knew you weren’t at all aroused. No blood flowed hot between your legs, no arousal dripped from your pussy to smooth his way. You absolutely did not want this. But then Toji dragged his fingers back up over your slit and settled against your clit, rubbing little circles aided by the friction of the fabric, and you realized with a shock of horror—another distant, detached emotion to your fast fading oxygen deprived brain—that you would be. “-it’s not as hard as people make it out to be. Women’s bodies aren’t some sort of mystery.”

Just as it was beginning to occur to you that he was going to let you pass out—that he was going to kill you after all—he finally, finally, relaxed the hold he had around your neck. You gasped and choked and coughed, sputtering and crying as you fought to get in a full breath. Toji didn’t care about giving you a moment to adjust, kicking your feet wider apart, wedging the fabric between your folds to make sure he had direct access to your swelling clit. You whined, face down in a puddle of your own tears, choking on the overpowering scent of blood, your body unconsciously jerking with each circle he rubbed against your clit.

“And the more you make them come,” he continued, “the easier they are.”

“No,” you said, the word coming out in a broken whine from your wrecked throat. But he was right. The lack of oxygen and flood of adrenaline and fear left you so sensitized, so receptive to his touch despite how disgusted you were, despite how desperately you didn’t want this. Pleasure was pleasure and pain was pain but the line between the two felt hazier, everything cloying and suffocating too close as he continued to rub against your clit. The friction of the fabric was good, teasing the nerves in just the right way to urge your hips to roll against his hand.

Toji laughed. “You think?” he asked. “Guess you’re gonna find out.”

“Nooo,” you cried, shaking your head, trying to ignore his words, ignore the hand rubbing deliciously terrible circles against your clit. A moan hiccuped in your throat hard when he readjusted his fingers. It was almost too direct, too hard, like he was touching an exposed nerve. But it was good, good enough to make you squirm and shake, enough to wind up the heat coiling in your core.

“There you go, sweetheart,” Toji said, his smile obvious from his voice.

Why? In the distracted spiral of your thoughts, you kept returning to that helpless question. Why not just rape you and be done with it? He was definitely getting hard, you could feel it pressed against your ass. Why bother at all with your body when he could just as easily, and quickly, use you? But if you were able to think about it, if you were at all capable of rational thought, if your mind wasn’t buzzing like a kicked hornet’s nest, you might have decided that it made perfect sense that he’d take satisfaction in making sure he could defile the concept of pleasure itself for you. It wasn’t even that hard for him, your body was too sensitized, misinterpreting the barrage of stimulation for something heady and hot and all that existed was the good, the pleasure, the building release of orgasm.

With a sharp jump, a flush of heat, you came. It was thin and fleeting and shallow, your body jerking and lips pressed tight together to stifle the choked moans. For a few seconds, you felt the roll of warmth, the pulse of your clit against his fingers, your pussy clamping down around nothing, your thoughts drooping with distracted pleasure. Then it was over and you were panting and hot and uncomfortable, squirming with the discomfort of too much stimulation. “Sss-top,” you said, the word thick. Toji did, his fingers coming to a rest.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, your heart battered against your ribs and the table hard enough to hurt. It was pushing fresh blood out of the wound on your arm, the pain flaring as if to make up for the stolen seconds of pleasure. You wanted out. Out of your body, out of the pain, out from Toji Fushiguro. But you weren’t fighting and he wasn’t so gracious.

Toji pulled you upright by your neck, pressing you flat against his hard torso. “Gonna play nice now?” he asked, his lips grazing your ear, his hot breath brushing over your flushed neck.  One of his fingers kept tapping against your sensitive clit, each tap making your body jerk despite yourself.

“Stop,” you said. “If you’re gonna do it, just—” just don’t make me enjoy it, don’t force me to participate. But you couldn’t say those things aloud, even thinking them was enough to make you scream, make you sob, make you fall to bits.

“Oh, you think you’re ready?” Toji asked. He didn’t bother with forcing your panties down like your leggings, simply ripping them off. The fabric cut painfully into your skin before the seams gave way to his brutal strength, and then they were cast aside. The harsh gasp you let out when his fingers touched your bare folds was practically yanked from you. He was quick to push between them to tease your entrance, swirl his fingers in the wet mess of your arousal so you could hear it. You said nothing, trying to keep from reacting, from giving him any sort of response. Despite that, your traitorous body jerked hard when he touched your clit without the barrier of fabric, rolling it lightly beneath two calloused fingertips.

Somehow, your heart found a way to pump even faster, like the wings of a hummingbird, the violent motion of a jackhammer.

“You’re wet enough, that’s for sure,” Toji continued, unconcerned with your silence. You couldn’t help the whimper that left your mouth when he worked a single finger into you, letting you feel the way your walls contracted and worked around the intrusion as he wiggled it around. He drew in a sharp breath through his teeth. “I thought so. You’re tight. That boyfriend of yours must have been disappointing. I’m willing to be patient a little longer so it’s not such a squeeze. All you gotta do is ask.”

More silence, your jaw locked and eyes squeezed shut as you waited for the sound of fabric shuffling, for the agony of violation. But Toji didn’t move, his body clothed and pressed flush against your own.

“Do you think that if it hurts, you can pretend to be a victim?” he asked lowly, his voice a rumbling purr. “That’s not how this works, sweetheart. You’re gonna come either way, the only difference is how much pain you think you can handle before then.” That threat, and the finger still pushed deep into your pussy, made your resolve crumble even more. No matter how much you wanted to think of yourself as the martyr type, as the strong, brave one, you knew you couldn’t take the pain. Never in your life had you been seriously hurt, and especially not in a way as invasive and cruel as this. The wound on your arm was bad enough to make you queasy, what if he tore something inside of you? What if he damaged you in a way that couldn’t be fixed? The urge to vomit grew worse, a bone-deep sickness. The urge to scream and flail and fight while you still had this energy, while you still had the will to do so, intensified.

“I hate you,” you muttered, your voice wobbling. Sour nausea pulsed in your throat, your stomach, beating in time with your racing heart.

“Huh?” he asked, pulling his finger out with another sickeningly wet sound. The sensation of him dragging against your walls made you tighten around nothing, horribly aware of how empty you felt.

“I don’t want it to hurt,” you grit out through your teeth, disgusted with him, with yourself, with the situation.

“That’s not convincing. Try again.”

You exhaled harshly, painfully trying to keep from hyperventilating. “Please.”

“Please…” He was grinning, you could hear it, hear his glee in tormenting you. It took you a second of sorting through your thoughts, working past your anger and disgust and the fluttery lack of focus, before you remembered what he meant. Brats used honorifics.

“Please, Mr. Fushiguro.”

Just like that, before you could even blink, he had you flipped around. You hit the table on your back with enough force to jolt the air out of your lungs, a breathless yelp bouncing off the walls. Toji didn’t give you time to adjust or squirm away, positioning himself between your thighs so you couldn’t close them and hide yourself.

“Fuck! Why did you-” Your indignant, frightened question was answered with a loud slap against your pussy, the sharp noise and zinging pain making you wail instead. Scared of more pain, you tried to push the hem of your sweatshirt down to cover yourself, to close your legs around him. “That... hurt,” you said, your voice wavering. You didn’t want to cry anymore. You desperately didn’t want to cry.

“No shit,” Toji said, watching your expression. “Brats shouldn’t swear.” He moved back, spreading your legs back open to look between your thighs.

You tried with more urgency to hide yourself, skin crawling beneath his gaze. “Don’t,” you said, your voice tight. Toji didn’t even seem to hear you, ignoring all of your attempts to escape as he spread your puffy folds, licking his lips. His mouth puckered before he leaned in, spitting directly on your cunt. You could feel it land, heavy and filthy, slipping inward when he tilted your hips up. “Stop,” you told him, another useless demand that drew out into a sharp keen when he used a calloused thumb to mix his saliva with your arousal, spreading it around. “Stop!” you begged, louder, panicked at the sensation of fresh pleasure when he was watching you like that, when he was admiring the way your body reacted and accepted his touch. “I don’t-”

Another harsh slap landed against your pussy, cutting you off. This time you sobbed, the tears that had been threatening to fall finally overflowing. Toji didn’t bother telling you what you had done wrong, working two fingers past your entrance and curling them deep in your cunt while you were still reeling from the pain. The two sensations warred, but the pleasure won out as he pulled his fingers back, thrusting them forward casually, experimentally.

“Are you crying?” Toji asked, amused, speaking like he wasn’t fingering you in a way that had you jerking and twitching with each zap of pleasure, like he hadn’t just hit you in the place you were most sensitive.

“I’m-” You bit down a sharp whine as he ground against your sensitive clit with his other hand. Sniffing, you turned your face away, desperate for some escape. But there was no air that didn’t smell like him, no place to go where you wouldn’t be tracked by his eyes. Now that you were already sensitized and turned on, there was no place you could go to ignore the pleasure. Although you couldn’t find it within yourself to be surprised, you hated the fact that Toji was good at this. It didn’t take much for him to find your g-spot, the sensation making your body jump, making you cry out for an entirely different reason. Toji exploited it mercilessly, the muscles and tendons in his forearm flexing in the halo of red light behind him.

“You’re what?” he asked, twisting his wrist in just the right way to make your hips chase his hand, tilting up desperately.

“N-no, I’m-” you didn’t know what you were trying to say, you couldn’t talk, you could barely think. You didn’t feel well. You felt so sick, swallowing back bile and unable to breathe, your skin clammy and cold and hot, your hands shaking violently now. Everything was shaking, your bones, the building, the air. Everything was shaking except for him. The energy from earlier was fading fast, draining you of the will to care, to act, to do anything other than get lost in the confusion, trapped in your body.

“You’re going to come for me, right?” Toji asked, smug. This entire thing was just some sort of twisted game to him. You hated him. He ruined your life. And he was enjoying himself.

You shook your head, squeezing your eyes shut. The third finger he bullied into your pussy was a tight fit. It ached, it made your back arch and walls clamp down around him a little tighter, but Toji didn’t slow down. He didn’t need to, your body adjusted to accommodate him all the same, rolling into the quick pace he set like you wanted it. At this point, maybe you did.

The tension building up inside of your core was unmistakable, winding and winding and winding. You reached and stretched and sought out that pleasure because that’s what your body wanted. To feel good, to luxuriate in the bliss of release. That’s what you had taught it to recognize, how your soft life had you conditioned. It was natural even if the circumstances were anything but.

You were going to come on Toji Fushiguro’s fingers.  

Soul deep revulsion filled you at the idea, a self hatred so intense that you could have sworn it was physical, something that transcended your leaking energy. You didn’t want to. You could force yourself not to, right? You could disassociate from this awful room with this awful man and the fingers he was thrusting and curling into you, the calloused touch rubbing circles against your clit. Focus on the hatred, on the repulsion. Anything, anything, except for him.

“Eyes on me, brat,” Toji demanded with a sharp, hard thrust that made you jolt and whine. His fingers curled, targeting your g-spot with each rough thrust, and that made you really cry, your feet kicking and trembling thighs unable to decide whether to open or close. Your eyes, panicked and overwhelmed by the fresh assault, met his. “You’re not gonna come thinking of some other guy.”

That wasn’t it! That wasn’t it and he was too crazy to understand, too fucked up to even pretend to be human. You wanted to scream that, to tell him again how much you hated him, how awful and disgusting and perverted he was. But this was your fault too and by the second it was getting harder to care about it. The pleasure building up in your core was too persuasive and you were doing what he said all by yourself, staring up at Toji Fushiguro with watery squinted eyes. His face was cast in shadow, the light behind him having shifted again to purple, illuminating his silhouette in violet. Somehow, you could still see his smile. The darker slash of the scar and those sharp canines.

At this point, your clit was swollen enough he barely had to press against it to make pleasure shudder all the way through your body. Your cunt greedily accepted his fingers, sucking them deeper, gushing around them to fill the room with the unmistakably lewd squelching sound. The jump in your gut, the twisting in your core, was too much. Mindlessly, you shook your head, trying to grab at his wrist with shaking hands to make it stop, to make him ease up because at this rate you were going to-

“Hands off, brat,” Toji said, annoyed, his palm landing flat against your thigh with a loud slap, his other hand not pausing for even a second. You yelped. The pain registered as hot and sharp and stinging, a bright red spot of pain on your sensitive inner thigh.

“Please, I-I can’t-”

“Already?” Toji looked so amused by the idea.

You just shook your head again, shame working through you, disgust and despair and all of the other awful emotions that were quickly becoming overrun by your base need. His thumb returned to teasing your clit and that was all you could take. Your cunt flared sharply as you came, a fresh wave of your slick arousal dripping onto the table with each heavy thrust of his fingers, drenching his hands and making a filthy wet sound. Your hips tilted upward, your body tightening and mouth falling open, the world getting just a bit more pleasant, a bit sweeter as he worked you through it, wringing out each drop of your orgasm. Toji might have said something but you honestly felt too overwhelmed to hear, your brain filled with that awful tinny ringing and strung out with the overloading sensations. He pulled away after the tension left you, fingers slipping from your pussy with a final brush against your g-spot that made you hiss.

Blinking your eyes open, everything looked… wrong. You felt disconnected from reality, limp and empty. Your orgasm lasted too long, wringing you out of every final drop of energy you had to spare. Heaving air and too hot, you just wanted it to be over. In the pathetic, mindless way a child lamented tragedy they couldn’t understand, you wanted the night to end. You couldn’t handle anymore, you just couldn’t. It was too awful, too cruel.

Toji grabbed you by the hips, pulling you off of the table without any warning. There was nothing you could do, flopping towards him like a ragdoll as you got your feet underneath yourself, panting and gasping and shaking so hard it was nearly comical.

“Easy there, sweetheart,” Toji said in a low voice, holding you steady as you blinked the black orbs from the edges of your vision.

“I-I need a… a moment,” you tried to say, but your words came out thick and sluggish like you were drunk. Was that really your voice? It sounded so far away, so detached. Toji either didn’t hear you or didn’t care, bending you over with a big palm on your back. He pushed you past the table, getting you to brace yourself against the chair. It squealed against the ground when your panicked hold shoved it against the table for stability, an echo to your indignant squeal. From this upside down angle, you could see his legs, see his pants and underwear when he shoved them out of the way. “Toji,” you said, your voice louder now as fear brought back some level of clarity, “what-”

“You wanna call by my first name now?” he asked, forcing you to bend further, keeping you still when you struggled. “I’m not sure you’ve earned that.”

“No, wait—-” you said. You were practically folded in half, only sort of stabilized by holding the chair with your good arm and his hands on your hips. The pose would make your thighs burn terribly and you’d get dizzy with all of the blood rushing to your head. Already, your rapid breathing was making things fuzzy. Your legs were certain to give out, trembling and locked. “I don’t like this,” you said, your voice taking on the sharp edge of a whine. It was pathetic. You felt pathetic, fighting to stand up even as he held you down. “Please, Mr. Fushiguro.”

“I can’t hear you from down there,” Toji told you, holding you still with one hand and lining his cock up with the other. The thick press of him pushing the head into you had you tensing up, your entire body stiffening. You tried to look behind yourself but only got a sharp slap against your ass. A warning to stay still. You obediently braced yourself, skin stinging and eyes pricking with fresh tears. This was real. This was real. This was real.

You couldn’t breathe. This couldn’t possibly be real.

“Relax, sweetheart,” Toji said, practically purred. “I’m not gonna hurt you.” Did he really believe that? He probably didn’t care either way, he definitely didn’t hesitate.

His cock was thick. Far thicker than his fingers could have possibly prepared you for, thick enough that you felt like you were being split apart, the pressure punching the air from your lungs with each little thrust. His hands lifted up on your hips, forcing you onto your toes as he filled you up little by little, the incremental thrusts only serving to make you more aware of his size. At the very least, his way was eased by how wet you were, by the fresh gush of slick your body provided as he slowly worked into you.

Part of you would have thought Toji would be the stoic type who hid his pleasure, but he didn’t bother to stifle his praise or groans. The swears and shouting and pleas for him to stop stayed bottled up in your mouth, the weight and intensity and awful aching stretch were too much for anything to leave, just the tears blinking from your wide, shocked eyes and the drool dripping from your mouth onto the concrete beneath you. All you could do was focus inward on the hot, hot press of him inside of you and the lack of anything else. When he bottomed out, skin meeting skin, you could feel him in your tummy, feel him deep enough that there wasn’t room for anything else.

For that second, no more or less, you felt utterly aware in a way that bordered on the surreal. Aware of the unfinished room, of the rain that had stopped and the water still dripping from the roof, of the slowly shifting lights painting everything in muted shades of blue. Humidity clung to your hairline, running with the sweat, with the slick arousal on your thighs and on the hand holding your hips. The scent of concrete, plastic, old cigarettes, damp wood, and sex. Filthy and musky, so unmistakable. Blood rushed violently through your head, your breathing working up to full-on hyperventilation.

Then Toji moved and the elastic snapped, your understanding reduced solely onto the pinprick focus of each slow drag of his cock as he pulled out. He wasn’t as gentle on the next pass, pulling you back to meet his hips as he thrust forward. The sound was obscene, the wet slap and squelch. The seam where your bodies were joined was burning hot, the sensation of him thrusting into you an awfully invasive pinch. You whimpered, your fingers clawing in the unforgiving plastic of the chair, nails clacking against the metal.

“Sl-slow down,” you said, your voice breathless and pleading.

“Huh?” he asked with a hard thrust. If it weren’t for his grip on your hips, you definitely would have toppled over. As it was, you couldn’t get your balance, couldn’t hold on. Traitorously, your inner muscles worked and fluttered around his length, squeezing his cock like you weren’t breaking apart, like you weren’t on the brink of splitting to pieces every time he filled you.

Panting and drooling and knowing that your awareness was slipping fast, you forced yourself to speak louder. “Mr. Fushiguro, please slo-ow down.”

Toji just groaned, surged as he thrust forward. You rocked with it, unable to do anything other than be tossed back and forth like a doll, unable to find the words to protest, or even the will to do so. The dizziness was getting to you. Or maybe it was the breaking point of your exhaustion and the drop from the adrenaline rush. Losing tension, your body loosened up. He was holding most of your weight anyway, all you had to do was balance your torso. Everything wavered, fuzzy. Your body ached, your muscles unused to this position and sore from how tense you had been, but the pain lost its urgency, lost its bite. You blinked your eyes open, watching the pool of tears and drool gathering on the concrete beneath you with a detached sense of disinterest, looking at how much blood had soaked into your sleeve, the old drying into rust and the new dark like ink.

A particularly hard thrust made your eyes shut tight, sensation flooding your body as you submitted to it.

He was so big. There was so much weight behind each heavy thrust, filling you so thoroughly it was excessive, indulgent. Each ridge and vein of his cock dragged against your inner walls as you squeezed around him, another wave of slick making each thrust sound pornographically wet. Whenever skin met skin, you could feel him in your tummy, feel your heart beating against him, a sensation that had been so invasive now made you whimper, your stupid body attempting to rock back onto his dick despite how little leverage your shaking legs had. That made Toji change the angle, his cock hitting that spongy spot inside of you that made you squeal, your cunt clamping down around him enough to make his hips stutter.

“Fuck, sweetheart,” Toji said, his voice heavy and excited. “Why’d you fight at all if this was what you really wanted?” He laughed wildly, breathlessly, experimentally testing the angle to make you writhe and moan before exploiting it with his earlier relentless, punishing pace. “Guess that’s my fault for trying to understand a woman.”

This onslaught made you choke and sputter and writhe, reactions you had no conscious reaction over. Everything was too close, but distant, splattering you with harsh blots of stimulation and you couldn’t handle it, couldn’t make any sense of what was going on. Words left your mouth, loose and slurred because the pleasure was jarring, too much, you were getting close and-

“What?” Toji asked, pulling out of you until just the head of his cock remained in your pussy. The sensation of emptiness was jarring. A high while of protest left your mouth. You didn’t dare try to push back onto him, but you wanted to and that was just as damning. When you didn’t answer him, Toji pulled your torso upright, letting you slowly sink back onto his cock and holding you there. After having been upside down, the sudden shift made you black out for a second, destroying whatever thin idea of reality you had, the world overcome by the lack of blood and oxygen. There was no transitional phase, just a flash of nothing and then reeling dizziness, confusion spinning in your head with his arm around your middle and fingers working slow circles against your clit.

“What did you say?” he asked, his voice rumbling against you. He couldn’t really fuck you in this position, but even the shallow thrusts had your cunt squeezing around him and mewling, your body drawing taut as pleasure coiled hot in your core. It was worse now that you were even more disoriented, the world spinning around you. Sickness prickled high in your throat, sour and acidic. But it was all fleeting, too difficult to keep track of when he was distracting you with pleasure.  

“I can’t…” you said, breathless and beyond strung out, your body shuddering and weak against his. “Too much, I-”

“Fine, I’ll let you come,” Toji said indulgently. “But first, I wanna know. Did your boyfriend ever fuck you like this?” So far gone, it took you a moment to understand what he was asking. But you did, eventually, and your entire body tensed. “No… stop,” you said. The words were tight, pained, drawn thin as you pried at his wrist, at his arm, some horror and disgust still managing to leak into your woozy thoughts.

“I thought not,” Toji said, either smug or joking, you couldn’t tell.  

“Stop it,” you begged, shaking your head. He hadn’t stopped touching you, hadn’t stopped shallowly fucking into you. You couldn’t shut it out, your attempts at struggling were weak and you knew you couldn’t support your own weight and at this rate, you were going to come anyway because what was one more humiliation? What was one more cruelty?

“How’s it feel to let his killer fuck you?” Toji continued. You made a gurgling sound of objection, your pussy tightening around his cock because the fingers on your clit hadn’t stopped and even with despair threatening to drag you down, the physical sensations were too intense to avoid. He laughed, the air sharp against your ear. “That good?”  

It didn’t matter what you felt or what was happening or what he said. If anything, there was something about his playful, amused voice that added to it, that made the next pass of his calloused fingers over your swollen clit the thing to send you over the edge. Your inner walls fluttered around him, sucking him in with each shallow thrust, your slick spilling out the edges as you jerked and tensed up against him. Toji had to hold you tight as your eyes rolled back, your mouth falling open to get in the air you’d been choking on. For everything that was awful, coming felt good. It drifted through you, warm and smooth and raw pleasure, dragged out as he continued to work against your clit, letting your hips roll against his cock with an indulgent sense of affection. For a few seconds, you didn’t have to think.

But as soon as you were down from that high, Toji pulled out and turned you around, pushing you onto the table. You were barely aware as he hiked your legs up on his hips, you only fell against him as he realigned himself and pushed into you, felt his sound of relief at the feeling.  

“Fuck, brat,” Toji groaned lowly, quickly working up to the punishing pace of before. The sound was filthy. You felt filthy, everything felt sticky and wrong and cold and too hot. At the very least, you were glad to have something to hold onto, glad even if it was him, even if he pushed your hair out of the way to sink his teeth into your neck, moaning when you tugged on his hair to make it stop. Blood dribbled down from the teeth marks when his mouth moved upward, hot and slow as it mixed with your sweat. He was breathing so hard, almost as hard as you. And so hot, radiating pure, musky heat. Toji shoved a hand underneath your sweatshirt so he could palm your breasts, tweak your nipple until your back arched a little more, your pussy tightening around him. You couldn’t keep up with it, not with his hands, not with the teeth littering your neck with bite marks and hickeys, and certainly not with the harsh pace of his hips. You kept twitching, your body at its limit.

“Mr. Fushiguro, please…” you said, the words mostly air, barely coherent. But they got a groan out of him all the same.

Unlike what you expected, Toji pulled out, taking a step back to get you off of the table. He didn’t need to tell you to get on your knees when he released you, you collapsed the minute he wasn’t supporting your weight. A hand was buried in your hair before you could even attempt to reorient yourself, pulling you up.

“Stick out your tongue,” Toji demanded. Even like this, there was no shred of self consciousness to his movements. He stood above you like an idol, an intense look of concentration on his face as he quickly fisted his cock. The velvety crown, bobbing with the movement, was flushed a furious shade of red, shining with your arousal. Justifying the aching soreness between your thighs, he was as big as he had felt, intimidatingly so. “Now, brat,” Toji said. His hand tightened in your hair, making you cry out, your eyes clamping shut and tongue sticking out.

For a moment, all you were were aware of was the saliva accumulating and dripping from your tongue and the hand in your hair and the schilick, schlick of Toji’s hand around his cock. He came soon after that, a strangled groan leaving his mouth as hot, heavy ropes of cum hit your tongue, your face, sliding down your cheeks and chin, dripping onto your sweatshirt. With the hand in your hair, you couldn’t move away from it, just endure as he settled the musky heavy head of cock on your tongue, wiping off the bead of cum lingering there. You could taste yourself too before he pulled it away.

“Swallow,” Toji told you. You did so, eager to close your mouth. You barely reacted to the bitter, salty flavor. He released your hair and you mechanically used your sleeves to wipe your eyes so you could look at him, watch as he pulled up his pants and retied his belt. He looked barely ruffled, the same as he always did. “That’s a good look, sweetheart,” he said, grinning at you.

Disgust brewed deep in your gut but it was too far away for you to tug on it, to glean any sort of meaning from it, only this hollow pang that you needed to be feeling something, doing something.

It occurred to you that this might be shock. The amount of blood staining your sweatshirt was probably—definitely—a bad sign, so was the clammy, shaky, antsy feeling that burrowed deep into your bones. But the idea of doing something, even of getting up, seemed impossible, you could barely comprehend it. So you did nothing, staring blankly at the way the lights from outside continued to shift, the way it draped color across this concrete room.

Toji ruffled your hair, patting your head in a strange mimic of affection, but you didn’t so much as flinch. Everything cascaded around you, but you were still. “Get that arm fixed,” he called behind himself as he left. “I’d like to do this again sometime.”

You heard those words, saw the man who spoke them, knew all of those things in combination meant something, but there was nothing. You were too tired, too exhausted, too weak to do anything with it. 

From somewhere far off, thunder rumbled menacingly. Soon after, the rain began again.