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Byakuya Togami was not a happy man.
No one really thought twice about the nature of his existence, or felt sympathy for the gilded cage he perched in. Most people really didn’t care about the Togami family’s last son, the heir to fortune and fame and glory. This was fine. He didn’t think much of the general masses, either, their backwash skies and upturned noses were nothing in comparison to the majesty of his bloodline.
Nevertheless.
They cared an awful lot about the last heir’s trophy wife.
Touko Fukawa was a mental patient in one of Tokyo’s psych wards, rotting away behind rusting pipes and empty cells. her cushioned confinement was the topic of gossip and utmost controversy, and Byakuya let the presses eat Touko alive. His stuttering and mentally unstable, violet-haired charge demanded to see lawyers, left and right, and most of all, demanded and pleaded to see her bespectacled bastard of a husband.
He doesn’t grace her with his presence.
She didn’t deserve it.
He shuffles past anonymous alcoholics and pushes his way past the uneducated filth, finding refuge behind the velvet ropes and the plush leather chairs of the VIP room. A game of cards was occupying the majority of its tenants, so the scion of the Togami family props his crocodile leather derby shoes on an ottoman, and brushes distasteful specks of dust from the black of his Armani blazer. A waitress trots toward the blond without warning. She offers a charming smile and the drinks menu.
Byakuya orders the most expensive item on the menu, something gaudy and opulent. He wasn’t expecting it to be on fire, though, when the skinny female returns with his order.
He sips nonchalantly, and offers a scornful glance to anybody who walks near him.
The card game escalates to its climax. There is screaming, shouting, his glass vibrates under the pressure of a man’s fist banging against a pool table’s felt and oak surface, spaces away.
His right eye twitches behind white glasses.
He pushes his sleeves up, rolls the sleeves of his blazer up, too. It was getting hot, the music was louder, the people were screaming, the bass was thicker than blood. He felt it shake his bones, and Byakuya decides that, yes, it was time to leave.
“Oh, if it isn’t the little prince!”
Byakuya lets the insult fly past him, and lazily turns around to the source.
With an entourage of well dressed men in pale makeup and black eyeliner, Celestia Ludenberg cackles as one of her servants collect their liege’s winnings. The pot was overflowing with gold and rubies, just another night’s earnings.
“Celestia.” The black-haired girl laughs and waves off Byakuya’s sarcastic greeting. She adjusts her skirts and petticoats, pulls at her stockings and clasps her silver claws underneath her chin.
She smiles. Her lips are painted red, a smoldering color. It suffocates the room.
Byakuya Togami gets out of his chair without another word. Celestia follows him, disregarding the stares from her manservants and the other club goers.
The cameras and their twinkling, flashing lights, lead the way out.
Celestia Ludenberg, real name unknown, was the Queen of Liars. It was a self-proclaimed title that packed quite a punch and left sickly purple and blue bruises on Byakuya’s incredible bitter, obviously superior ego. She had the underworld twitching under her iron thumb, her influence spread across the sea into the seediest red light districts of the west. German voices whisper her name in awestruck horror, her mere presence sends grown men running to the safety of homeland borders and plaintive wives.
And she was back in Japan for the Golden Week. It was infuriating.
Byakuya’s exclusive white walled manor in the better side of town was empty and lonely, aside from the limitless amount of waitstaff and Touko’s medical team. The man skulks the hallways like a dispirited ghoul, leather loafers clicking away, click clack, tip toe, across wood paneled floors.
He isn’t threatened by Celestia’s ceremonious return. He was irritated. Tokyo was already too small, too claustrophobic for three powerhouses, the yakuza, the Novoselic royal family, and of course, the Togami conglomerate.
Having the one rumored to have utterly destroyed the former two in a game of cards was absolutely unnecessary.
That cautionary tale didn’t stop him from ordering a limo, and venturing downtown later that night, though. Hookers whistled from sidewalk corners, their skeletal frames bobbed and danced up and down the edge of the street, they sang songs of pleasure and absolute misery, their red lips glistened, sticky sweet like fresh blood and blooming roses.
The man pushes his blond bangs back and rolled up his polarized window. The limo pushes forward.
Byakuya brushed off his navy blue jacket and didn’t look back, engulfed by the darkness. Pulsing strobe lights illuminated the nightclub corridor, flashing bright white spots all across his body, to the rhythm of a popular song he never heard of until now. His destination was beyond the dancers grinding on technicolor floors, and the safety of roped off vip sections, the dark-lit gentlemen’s club. He was headed for the table amist the chaos, a simple felt affair with a scratchy surface and several occupants. Red and blue poker chips littered the area, with a particular piece of plastic hanging precariously from a girl’s fingers.
Celestia smiles sweetly.
Two games of blackjack later, and a bottle of the most expensive vodka, Byakuya Togami stumbles into his waiting limousine, sleek and ebony, with a chrome finish, holding Celestia’s patent leather heels. The woman was already sprawled across the leather seats, eyes half lidded and lips turned up in a Cheshire Cat grin.
He wakes up in his bed, satin sheets a mess, with a throbbing in his skull and lines of blood intricately crafted on his abdomen.
The bad habit became a ritual. She wakes up in his bed more often than not, and it’s become an issue neither of them are willing to bring up. She leaves him cryptic messages, words perfectly formed and shaped in an elegant script.
He throws them away without a second glance.
Touko Fukawa watches him from the alcove when he picks out ivory petticoats from his bedsheets. her glassy gaze is lit with something ugly, something hateful, her lips twist and twitch, and her hands clutch her braids, and pull in agitation. Her episodes were more and more of a daily occurrence, and with the newest addition of the household, Touko was less of a person than before. She would babble incoherently and hiss at byakuya, and when she wasn’t being an irritant, she wasn’t home.
And when Touko wasn’t home, her medical team wasn’t either, and the Togami manor was once again, left desolate.
But when no one was home in the dead of night, Celestia and Byakuya would play a game of cards. They would play poker, they would play blackjack, but one night they played bullshit. Celestia got bored, and pushed stacks of bills toward the center of the table. The game escalated from that point, neither party readily accusing the other until they were at least one hundred percent sure the card being placed on the table was inaccurate, and even so, there would be a sense of hesitation.
Byakuya Togami does not hesitate, but Celestia’s red stare makes him twitch.
“Would you bet on your life?”
Her voice breaks the static, the atmosphere rips to shreds, bends to the power of her soft soprano. She taps her metallic claws against the marble of Byakuya’s over-glorified coffee table.
He laughs, pushes his white frames against the bridge of his nose, and shoots her a smirk.
“I’d bet more.”
Haughtily, with arrogance, he off handedly pushes a document towards the betting pool. Her lips twitch teasingly at the corners, her crimson orbs flicker.
“I’d bet the conglomerate.”
Her smile transforms into a sneer, as she leans forward and presses her silver claws against his cheek. Her black nightgown snakes around her hips, clings to her rib cage. She doesn’t push down the satin and velveteen, and Byakuya’s gaze flickers to her silk panties.
“What a perverted soul.” She rolls her eyes, and ghosts a kiss at the edge of his mouth. Her lipstick leaves the faintest of imprints. “We have a card game.”
Her teeth nick his lower lip, and she draws blood.
.
Byakuya Togami was not a happy man.
Now, as he sits in silence as his hair stylist snips away at his blonde locks, he has reason to be bitter, and jaded, and angry at the universe.
He refuses to look at the girl’s silver scissors.
They glint menacingly underneath the harsh, too-bright fluorescent lights above them. The salon is empty, as expected, and the only sound is coming from the radio two seats away on a vanity with a broken antenna and warbled remix of one of Sayaka Maizono’s newest pop singles. The girl doing his hair is laughing into her bluetooth, the noise is nasally, and annoying, and it takes all of the heir’s self control to stop himself from making a dramatic exit. He would shoot up, slam his fists against the vanity, and shove expensive hair products off the glassy surface--he would watch ebony hair combs and pricy hairspray cans collide with the mirror, and he would let the shards fall onto his sad, and unsuspecting, pink-haired stylist.
His lips twitch in distaste as the girl announces he’s ready to go. His blond hair is trimmed to the exact centimeter of his desire. Byakuya hands her his credit card and impatiently waits for her return. He distracts himself with his smartphone, makes a few business deals with a flick of his wrist. His stylist trots back into the room, and carefully places his card and a receipt into his hand. He leaves.
He leaves and does not look back once, slips into a waiting limousine and snaps at his driver to step on it, to go anywhere, it didn’t matter as long as it was not here. He looks out the window and props his chin on his open palm, for once forsaking his arched back for something less regal, he hunches over himself and growls.
God fucking damn it.
If he was the devil, then, Celestia Ludenberg was hell incarnate.
What kind of keeper forgets to pay respect to its home.
“Here is fine.”
They stop outside a cathedral and Byakuya doesn’t leave a tip. He steps out, head held high, previous disarray forgotten. He puts his gloved hands on the well-worn oak doors, and pushes forward. They slam shut behind him, and his gaze zeroes in on the altar, where a girl in black lights a candle. When he gets to the front, he raises his hand, maybe to hurt her, maybe to pull the veil back, but she looks at him with a half-lidded sneer, and puts a hand over her painted lips.
“Fighting in the house of the Lord?”
“I wouldn’t care, even if I was a practitioner.”
Celestia sighs, and clicks her tongue. She isn’t wearing her stupid hair drills, or her over the top fake Lolita ensemble. Yet, she still strikes the fear of the god neither of them worship into his stone cold heart.
There are no gods except the ones worshiped on money.
“So. What brings you here.”
Her candle melts faster than any normal candle should, and he wonders if this is an act of penance. She puts her lace gloves back on, and tugs on his wrist, leads him into a pew. Her knees fall perfectly onto the floor, and he knows a bruise would be there tomorrow. She bruises so easily. every sickly purple mark lasts an eternity, and then some, and if he looked longer--
“I want you to leave.”
The more accurate phrase is, I want the conglomerate back, but—Byukaya does not beg. What is done is done.
“And leave you without a penny to your name?” She smiles pleasantly, and puts a hand on his cheek. Her fake nails aren’t there to pierce skin.
“That wouldn’t be fair to your braindead wife.”
Byakuya sets his jaw and takes her wrist. He squeezes, until she makes a noise of discomfort.
At that point, he is satisfied. There’s a ring of red underneath the flimsy fabric.
“You can play me again, try to win it back. I’m always up for a rematch.”
He stays silent. Celestia tilts her head and laughs lightly.
“Just kidding. Rot in hell, Togami.”
If he wasn’t under the watchful stare of Jesus Christ, someone’s lord and savior, hanging on his crucifix, Byakuya would have had no qualms about wrapping his hands around her throat.
When she is done with her prayers, or whatever else she was doing, witchcraft, maybe, she gets up. Fixes her skirts, and he follows her out of the church. They are outside, foreboding figures against the pale sky. The wind picks up. Maybe they’re too much for each other. Maybe she’s too good at the game he thinks he owns. Maybe it’s none of the above, maybe it’s all of it.
“I’ll take good care of the contract.”
A pause.
“Don’t piss me off.” Celestia waves airily, and a servant comes over with an umbrella, shields his mistress from the nonexistent sun.
“Bye, bye, Togami. See you next time.”
.
Byakuya Togami can think of one hundred things, one thousand things, maybe more, better than this existence. A litany of possibilities. He has an individualized account of every way his life could have gone, because he is perfection, the product of select-breeding and survival, yes, out of all the reasons and ways, this, this, wasn’t how it was supposed to end.
Lying in a tub with a half-empty bottle of Bacardi in one hand, and an empty bottle of his wife’s pills.
But here, in the stillness, in the comfort of candles and an ocean vista—
Maybe.
He can be happy.
The waters of oblivion are warm.