Still leaking sweat, Yaki Bata carried his battered body into the lobby of the hotel. No one was present outside to greet him. Nor inside. The space before him was empty save a figure at the front desk with her head bowed.
It looked like a copy and paste of any of the other moderately cheap hotels he had ever been to in his life. Red armchairs no longer plush, carpeting gone saggy, and a stale air unwashed by the ocean breeze. He performed a double take of a statue of what looked like a cartoon devil that he recognised from this new anime popular with young kids, with an inscription he didn't bother to read; it wasn't on his path to reception.
As he approached the front desk he became cognisant of his uniform. Aside from being both drenched in his own sweat and dried out from his own blood, it was shredded to high hell. It somehow managed to hang onto his body, but he still anticipated the receptionist's shocked face and his swift dismissal from the premises.
Right on cue the receptionist looked up and her mouth formed a tight o. Before Yaki could say anything to justify his appearance, she spoke.
'Wow, so you really did survive the taxi ride?'
'Huh? How did you—'
'Welcome to Jigoku Island Hotel,' said the receptionist with a plastic customer service smile.
'Oh my God, I really have died,' Yaki said, feeling once again hot all of a sudden.
The receptionist laughed and affected a more genuine smile.
'That's just a little joke I like to say to those staying here.'
Yaki read the name pin she wore on the lapel of her jacket. It just read 'hotel worker.'
'No this is Gokushima Hotel and you must be Mr. Free Rider,' the hotel worker said, gathering up a form and a pen.
'It's Bata.'
'Oh forgive me,' she said, pushing the pen and paper toward him. 'This was the name the Stationmaster provided me. You do match the description he gave, down to the blood and ripped clothes.'
So the Stationmaster knew that he'd arrive all beaten up. Yaki wondered what he'd whispered to the driver before letting him into the taxi. He tabled the thought quickly as he caught a rose petal scent off the hotel worker and accepted the form and pen.
'I must say it suits you,' she said, impressing upon him another smile that was dangerously hard to read.
'What? Looking beaten half to hell.'
'Looking manly and tough. You're going to have no problem with your room, I'm sure.'
He wasn't even listening as he took her in. The hotel worker's hair was an unnatural, plush armchair type red. She wore a black band that kept it out of her eyes, which was also red, but more of a ruby red. She was both of a dream and down to earth, and for a moment he didn't want to wake up. But as he furthered his study he found something rather unsettling. She wasn't real. If they were passing on the street he might have mistaken her as another pretty girl uninterested in him.
No, he would have seen it then too.
He always studied any attractive female he happened to pass. Something in her look, her manner, her air, spoke to a result of machination. He stopped himself blurting out and asking if she was indeed a robot. Ladies, even robot ones, didn't like it when you called them robots.
'Wait, what do you mean by me not having any problem with my room?' Yaki said, pointedly. He startled himself at how quick his mind could switch gears and focus on something else.
'Well, we have a slight issue, I'm afraid, with one of our guests who has decided to take up residence in the very room we had reserved for you.'
'Can't you just tell him that the room is mine?'
For a robot woman she was able to express the full range of smiles humans pulled off. She flashed a soft, empathetic look mixed with a tinge of sorrow.
'That is uh, impossible for us to do, I'm afraid.'
'You're afraid of a lot, aren't you?'
'Excuse me?'
'Nothing, look, I don't understand what you mean but if it's such an issue I'll take whatever room you have left.' That weariness that had worn off came back in this conversation.
'Unfortunately we can't do that,' said the robot hotel worker.
'Is the hotel full?'
'Well, no, but we can't do that.'
'Why not?'
'Because the Stationmaster says you are to stay in this room he has reserved for you.'
Yaki sighed, triggering a pain in his chest that could have been a cracked lung for all he knew.
'Do you have the time?' Yaki said, spotting a minuscule piece of glass in his hand he had missed. He worked at getting it out. Not too hard, though, as he struggled to gauge anything going on.
'Time?'
'You know, uh—' At a loss to how to explain what time was, and floored by her complete ignorance of a concept so fundamental to people's lives, he gathered himself and took another deep painful breath.
'Is there anyway I can go up to my room to talk with whoever is in there to try and get them out,' said Yaki.
'Talk?'
'Don't tell me you—we're talking right now,' said an exasperated Yaki.
'Oh, I understand the definition of talk, Mr. Free Rider—'
'Please, don't call me that.'
'Yes, you are free to go up to your room,' continued the robot front desk staff. 'I don't believe you can evict this person by talk, though.'
'What? I'm supposed to get him out by force then?'
The robot hotel worker manufactured a wide grin that highlighted her lack of humanity.
'Oh, why won't I just wake up,' said Yaki, clutching at the ripped fabric that barely covered his chest.
The receptionist switched to a look of confusion. 'Are you not awake right now? You are sleep talking?'
'What? No, I'm awake, I'm…I don't know, nothing is making sense.' He inhaled her scent again. 'Do you have a name?'
The receptionist pointed at her lapel that read 'Hotel Worker.'
'I see,' said Yaki. 'If you'd please, Ms. Hotel Worker, take me to my room.'
'Certainly.'
They rode the elevator up to level four. She had told him that his room was number 444.
'You sure room 666 wasn't available?'
She hadn't understood his meaning. He resumed the task of getting the glass out of his hand.
'Do you need some assistance?' the hotel worker said as the elevator pinged for their floor. They got out and she bowed down and grabbed his hand. It was unnaturally warm as if imbued with deep feeling. He couldn't help catch his breath as she went to work with delicate fingers. He'd never had a girl touch him in this way, and robotic or not, he'd do anything to receive it again. The hotel worker succeeded, holding up the tiny fragment of glass between her fingers.
'Thank you—kindly,' said Yaki, rubbing the hand she had just been holding. It felt as if she had transferred a part of her warmth and her scent onto him. How did a robot even have a scent? Another question unanswered. He wouldn't have minded if this was hell, he quickly pivoted in thought.
She pocketed the glass and showed him the way down a corridor.
Lighting set in deep fixtures gave the corridor an ominous atmosphere. The deep red carpeting squelched damp underfoot as if he were wading through a swamp.
'Are you strong, Free Rider?'
'Uhhh.'
He had no trouble lying to forge impressions but this was a question so layered he was stumped. Once when he had suffered a very slight sprain he applied tape over the injury. After imagining the sympathy he would garner at school, he applied more of the bandage all the way up his arm. He received the opposite reaction to what he had hoped. Instead the other students planted rumours all over that he had been cutting himself. Another time, after applying for the baseball club and getting a crew cut, he was watching himself in the mirror brushing his teeth. The more he looked, the more he projected other's opinions of his new look. He went on to feign sickness for a week so his hair could come back in enough where he could tolerate his own image.
'I've never really been tested,' he said as they stopped before the door at the end of the corridor.
'You've made it this far,' the hotel worker said, presenting him with a consoling smile that he couldn't accept. 'Not many have. I think you're capable of more than you even know.'
Instead of querying the implication that these circumstances he was facing had been faced by others before him, he attached on to the compliment. It felt weird being complimented by someone who didn't know him. It felt strange being complimented in general. He might have arrived at concluding she was flirting if she wasn't a robot and probably programmed to tell him what he needed to hear. Or if this wasn't just some crazy dream.
'Are you going to knock?' she said.
'Uh sorry, yeah, course.'
He knocked and heard some male's voice. He couldn't hear what was said, only that it was said with annoyance. The door opened and a bikini clad young girl stood in the doorway.
'Yes?' she said. She too sounded put out by the intrusion.
Yaki expected the hotel worker to say something but when she didn't, he said, 'hey, yes, I believe this is my room.'
'So what?' the girl said. She was no older than university aged and a gyaru at that. Blonde tips reached her lower back and she was tanned all over, no hint of a bikini line.
'Who is it?' the rough sounding male voice said from somewhere nearby in the room.
'Some kid who says it's his room,' said the gyaru.
'Oh yeah,' said the man. 'Well then, let him in.'
'Goodnight, Mr. Free Rider,' said the hotel worker, bowing and walking back down the corridor.
Yaki hesitated then followed the gyaru into the room. He kicked off his shoes and only took a step from the narrow genkan when she directed him toward the bathroom adjacent. He was greeted with a direct view of a man relaxed in the bath, feet over the edge, junk on full display, bottle of sake in hand, the other around the shoulder of another gyaru in a bikini.
'If you were of the opposite sex, I'd ask you to join in on the fun,' said the man, swilling from the bottle.
His hair was also blonde tipped and wet. He wore large shades and had a blue eyes white dragon tattoo that twisted around his neck and across his chest. Other tattoos covered his body but Yaki avoided straying his eyes too far south.
'I can see in your eyes you want in on the fun,' said the man, laughing and spilling drink into the bath. The other gyaru who had opened the door kneeled down and scrubbed the legs of the man with a soapy cloth.
Yaki couldn't deny the envy that swelled from seeing this thug receive the royal treatment from two beauties. It might not have been a first class suite with some jacuzzi, but this was luxury nonetheless.
'You gonna say something?' said the man, surveying him. 'You come in declaring this to be your room and now you're stuck for anything to say to me.'
From Yaki's experience, guys like this guy got their way in the world with little resistance and with the temperament of a bratty kid. The jealousy that boiled now steamed with antagonism.
'This is my room,' said Yaki, his jaw and eyes set in stone. 'Take your…well, you can leave the girls and get out.'
'The balls on you,' the man said, half amused, half impressed. 'Who in the hell are you, kid?'
Yaki wracked his brain for a cool quip to say that was both intimidating and smart. He immediately returned to the time he failed to retort anything Tobio Rokugawa said at him.
'Come on, kid, it ain't hard. Say something, or get the hell out of here.' The man was rubbing the shoulder of the gyaru around his arm.
'They said words don't work on you,' said Yaki. 'Don't care who you are but it's been a long day and I want my room.'
The man looked above the frame of his lenses. 'You must be new around here. Must not be familiar with how things run and who runs them.'
He retracted his arm from around the gyaru and gestured for the other to halt her cleaning. He rose and took a drink. The man was a few feet taller than Yaki and built in all the right places.
'You don't barge in here and come at me with talk about how this is yours and you don't care who I am.' He pointed a finger at him and snarled his teeth. 'You don't want me coming after you, I can tell you that much. If you don't get it, then let me tell you. Here, I am the law. Hell, there are no laws aside from me.
'Don't know how you got here in the first place, but if you don't get that at least, then you ain't going to be staying around long.'
The man took a step out of the bath and emptied the sake bottle on Yaki's head.
'Ladykiller. That's what I am and what you can call me.'
The alcohol stung Yaki's cuts and scrapes. He still cut a stone figure. The man waved the bottle around, splashing the last dregs.
'Call down to get some more,' he said, dropping the bottle into the waiting arms of the girl who'd been cleaning him. She left the room to presumably call down to the front desk.
Perhaps it was his wounds catching fire, or a lifetime of expecting crap to keep being dropped on his head and he having to take it, but Yaki felt all too strong in his mind that he wasn't about to budge. In effect, a power he'd never realised surged across his whole body. It was so powerful it placed in his mind a delusion that he rivalled the strength and power of the naked man before him.
The man took another step and Yaki held out a hand, blocking him. When the man scowled, Yaki planted a palm on the man's torso and pushed him back into the bath. It hadn't been intended as a strong shove but the result was much more than he had anticipated. The gyaru already in the bath shrieked. The other returned, bottle no longer in hand, shock registered on her pretty tanned face.
'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' Yaki said, acting as if this action had occurred out of body. His regret was more a product of upsetting the girls he didn't know than afflicting any sort of damage upon the man. One of the tiles behind the man's head glistened with a smear of red. Bits of tile even crumbled into the bath. Yaki bristled at the show of his own sudden strength.
The man's shades hung askew off his nose. He spat a gob of blood into the bath. He sat up a little and fixed his glasses.
'Want to know why I'm the Ladykiller?' the man said so very casually. 'Ladies, they are drawn naturally to those in power. Those who can fulfil their base desires and manage that little girl in all of them that needs the love of someone that much stronger than them. When I realised that, I had no trouble scoring with any woman I fancied. This in turn made me more powerful. We call women our better halves. In the end they're just scared little girls, ready to latch on to those of us with arms big enough to carry them. You have a girlfriend, kid?'
'Yes,' Yaki said, much too quickly.
'Only one?'
'Yes,' said Yaki, tensing at the sudden shift in the room's atmosphere. It was as if an oppressive air was being filtered in through the musty air conditioner. It could have also been the weight of the lie but Yaki didn't feel it was that heavy. He'd told much heavier ones when it made things much more convenient for him. Like the time he got out of eating his friend's mother's hot pot when he told her he had a seafood allergy.
The Ladykiller rose out of the bath and cricked his neck. He smiled the kind of smile you'd expect from a two bit gangster; all twisted teeth to be used as daggers against anyone standing before him.
'Why do I get the feeling you're full of crap?' he said, less a question than an assessment.
Yaki held firm, trying not to betray his own weakness.
Ladykiller lifted his arms and splayed out his hands. With a fiddly motion of his fingers that resembled twitchy spiders, the two girls set on Yaki. He had little time to react as the girls delivered fast acting punches and kicks that backed him up against the vanity. The force behind the attacks was beyond what he thought the slender frames of the girls could produce. They hit to hurt; Yaki doing all he could to shield his tender spots.
Identifying an opening, Yaki flung himself out of the bathroom and backed up into the room at large. It carried the traditional dimensions of a modest tatami room with a sliding door separator. Toward the back of the room was a half step landing with two zabutons and a low table and a sliding glass window leading to a balcony.
'There is no escape for you,' said the Ladykiller, directing the gangly movements of the gyarus as if they were marionettes on strings. One of the them snapped up and launched herself across the room. In a feat beyond sheer athletic ability, she flew through the air and wrapped her leg around the neck of Yaki, pinning him in a chokehold. Struggling for breath, Yaki watched the man hovering, unadulterated bloodlust in his eyes.
'It was a mistake for you to think that you could challenge me for what's mine,' the man said, manoeuvring his hand in a way that pantomimed the tightening of a faucet.
The hold on Yaki's neck grew tighter. His time to death grew shorter. Even on his pathway to death, he couldn't help being allured by the intoxicating aroma of a freshly bathed puppet gyaru. The man stepped closer and drew his mouth taut in concentration. He made a different motion with his hands—like wringing a sponge.
At once the air, so precious and depleting, found passage into his lungs again; he sucked it in harder and faster than he ever had. The girl's hold on him around the neck had weakened and he noticed that she was now despairing for air.
Huh?
Her legs still wrapped around him but her fixation to kill had gone. Yaki spied the man convey a confused expression.
'What did you do?'
He spat the words at Yaki, not so much out of concern for the girl's wellbeing, but more so in anger at the defiance of his order of death. Yaki, for his part, had no idea. As far as he knew, he'd done nothing to constrict the airway of the gyaru. He even started to panic at seeing the gyaru in a predicament he was in only moments before.
His concern was short lived as Ladykiller set the other gyaru on Yaki. She dashed forward with her hands outstretched, prepared to wring his neck. Yaki batted away her first attempt and tried to get a hold of her arms before they seized him. She moved without expression; the ferocity of her movements speaking for her intent. It was likely she was acting as a mere product for the Ladykiller's will.
'This is just a sample of my power,' the man said, flicking his wrist in quick succession. It was as if he was playing some VR like action game as the character of the gyaru reacted to the movement with her own rapid strike power. Yaki parried and blocked but the gyaru got in some good hits and he could sense himself weakening and lowering his guard. Soon she would have a clear path to his throat.
'I don't want the room anymore,' Yaki said amidst the struggle. The other gyaru no longer sprawled over him and now laid motionless on the mat. He experienced a pang of guilt at somehow—and no way in knowing how—causing her suffocation.
'It's too late,' the Ladykiller said, he too breathing heavy from the exertion of effort. 'You think I'm someone to be messed with, someone for who you can go around disrespecting.'
'What are you talking—'
'You will be another lesson I'll teach this place,' said the Ladykiller, amping up his wrist action.
The gyaru now had pressed him all the way back toward the half landing. He rolled down and manoeuvred so that the table was between them. She smacked the obstacle with a flurry of strikes before picking it up and tossing it right at his head. The show of strength out of her tiny frame warranted admiration even as it came against him.
Yaki covered his head with his arms and took the full force of the table. It pushed him all the way against the sliding glass, but aside from the pain of having a table thrown at his body, he hadn't suffered any crippling injury.
'Please,' Yaki pleaded, scrambling into the corner. 'I'm only here cause the Stationmaster said for me to be.'
The gyaru, closing the gap between them, suddenly halted and dropped to the floor. The Ladykiller also dropped his hands and stopped his control.
'Stationmaster? Is that who you said?'
'Yes,' Yaki said, taking in lungful's of air.
The Ladykiller bit into his lip, the creases on his face increasing. He remained like this for a few moments before looking on Yaki's position with reinvigorated hatred.
'You little—you played me for a fool, didn't you?'
'Huh?' Yaki was still getting his breath back.
'I ain't backing down,' the Ladykiller said. 'You've left me no other alternative. I'll finish you off, inflicting as much pain as I can while you tell me the Stationmaster's plan. And then I'll find way to finish him off too.'
Yaki detected a reservation in the man's voice. His confident, cool demeanour cracking ever so—
The gyaru who had come at him with a plus hundred attack power, leaving him cowering in the corner, sprang to her feet, once again under the influence of the Ladykiller. Yaki only caught a glimpse of the dead look in her eye before being overpowered by the jasmine scent from her hair. Her extensions were like tentacles, smothering him as they entered every orifice on his face. He gagged as it filled his mouth. Unable to resist, he screamed from his eyeballs as the gyaru pressed her weight on him and let her hair grow deeper and deeper into him.
This had to be the worst dream imaginable. Truth was the crazier it got, the less he was buying it even being a dream at all. It couldn't be any place but hell.
Running blind in a forest of hair, he finally found her scalp. He wrenched and pulled but the gyaru didn't yield. She emitted earsplitting screams that sounded both like shrieks of pain and cries of conquer. The hair tickled as it embedded deeper in his ear canal, nose and throat. Soon, he'd surely choke. His own death flashed before him and he spared a second to register the absurdity of it. His schoolmates would find no sadness in his death and would burst into fits of laughter if they found out how he died.
Pained by this thought, he dropped all matter of resistance. He listened to a blood curdling scream, sourced from his own hair filled mouth.
But no.
The scream erupted from the gyaru. He realised her hair no longer stabbed his ears. It retracted out from his nose and was pulled out of his mouth. No longer tangled in the brush of the gyaru's hair, he saw as her hair acted with a mind of its own, plugging the parts of her face that moments ago had been inside Yaki. Her screams became muffled as the hair stuffed its way in deeper.
'How is this possible?' the Ladykiller said, analysing his controls that clearly weren't functioning. 'What is your power?'
'I have no power,' said Yaki, growing more scared as the gyaru writhed in pain. 'You have to help her, she'll die.'
Yaki reached out and tried pulling the hair like a long piece of rope. But his effort was in vain as the hair pulled back as if they were engaged in some type of tug o' war. The Ladykiller watched stunned from the other side of the room. Yaki fell back exhausted from the losing battle with the hair. He wanted nothing more than to close his eyes to the sight before him. The gyaru thrashed around before flopping limp on the mat. A mess of hair smothered her face completely.
Two girls he had just met had died through some ability or fault of his. Two beautiful girls that would never again be under the thumb of…
Despair turned to determination as Yaki turned his gaze on the Ladykiller. The man, still stark naked, his head nearly at the ceiling, stared blankly at the scene before him. His face was near unreadable. It was somewhere on the scale of heartache and heartbreak, though Yaki had no clue what sort of reaction would come in its wake. He didn't wait to find out.
He got to his feet and charged at the Ladykiller. He didn't understand his own power but he was sure if he directed it with added fury at the man who triggered it then—
The Ladykiller was quicker, dropping his melancholic mask and grabbing Yaki by the strips of clothing that had been his shirt.
'What is your name?' the Ladykiller said as he pressed his weight down on Yaki. His bigger build collapsed on his lungs, while he forearm held thick as a bar against his throat. Seething hatred flared from his hot breath and enlarged nostrils.
'Yaki,' Yaki managed to say with some difficulty. How many times was it now that he couldn't breathe today?
'No,' the man said, 'your name. The name the Stationmaster called you?'
'Mr. Free Rider.'
The Ladykiller appeared to be doing some sort of calculation in his head. Yaki sensed his consciousness fading; he could find no grip on the man's arm to free himself. Then having completed his equation, the Ladykiller released him with a start. It was as if he concluded Yaki was some contagious disease he could catch. And then it started. The man gripped his own neck as he struggled to breathe. Yaki didn't allow the scene to play out.
Perhaps it was the all too sudden rush of blood back to his head, or the leftover antagonism he had towards the man, but Yaki struck the man with a direct blow to his nose, cracking the lenses of his glasses. He had reacted to his freedom, not with relief, but with unwavering malice, turning on the man with unrelenting blows of force that powered up from some untapped source of fuel deep inside.
It was the Ladykiller's turn to cower and scramble around the room. He was no longer choking but bleeding profusely from the break in his nose.
Yaki couldn't turn off this undying need to exact further hurt on the man. Then suddenly it burned out and Yaki stood in the centre of the room, loosing heavy breaths and wobbling.
'You don't even know, do you?' the Ladykiller said. He had retreated to the alcove bearing marks of Yaki's rage on his body. 'Who you are determines your power. Just like in a video game where you choose your class and power up with a specific moveset, so do we source our strength from who we are. You are Free Rider, someone who benefits off the work of others. The more I inflicted damage on you, the greater the consequence it was to me. You are a dangerous kid to let live.'
The Ladykiller cut an intimidating presence, even huddled against the wall as he was. Beyond the cracked lenses, his eyes communicated a deadly fire, ready to be unleashed.
'Now how to beat you,' the Ladykiller said, snarling his teeth like before.
Yaki was too exhausted to even get his head around the Ladykiller's explanation. What were they in some sort of game that had taken their personalities to classify their abilities? And if so, was he better off just doing nothing as always to win? Was there an escape button he could press?
There was no extra time to ruminate as the Ladykiller contracted the two dead gyarus to rise like the undead. It seemed he still had possession of their bodies with his puppet like abilities. Or was he using them like objects that he could manipulate?
The answer never arrived as Yaki received a simultaneous blow on his head from both sides. The gyarus' legs rotated like helicopter blades gaining momentum. Yaki met the ground but remained conscious.
'If I don't attack you directly, I can't suffer the repercussions of your attack,' the Ladykiller said, smiling at his own brilliance. His gestures grew wilder as the girls spun, causing havoc and destruction in their wake. Their kicks unhinged the sliding door separator and chased Yaki, crawling around the edge of the tatami room. He was like a rat in a maze with no end. The Ladykiller mocked him with scornful laughter. Yaki's body, untrained, gave out before he reached the genkan. He had always had an athletic bent but inactivity left his stamina low. The girls were on him where he sat upright, leaning on the wall, already scuffed and indented from the girls' whirls of chaos.
'You giving up?' the Ladykiller said, standing in the centre of the room. 'How worthless you really are. It sickens me how a weakling like you could even cause me this much trouble.'
A knock arrived at the door. The gyarus, inches from Yaki, dropped to the floor. The Ladykiller stiffened, eying the door with suspicion. Another knock came. Yaki would have screamed out if he even had the requisite breath to do so. He read a look from the Ladykiller that said if he was to do so it would be his last.
'Get lost,' the Ladykiller yelled.
'Your bottle of sake, sir,' the hotel worker robot woman said.
'Leave it at the door, I'm preoccupied with my girls. I'll get it after.'
'Understood,' the hotel worker said.
What about him, thought Yaki. Wouldn't she want to know if he was still there to reclaim his room?
There was movement outside and then nothing. His heart sank, another bit of pain to add to the cracked ribs and numerous abrasions and—
The Ladykiller walked past him, peered through the peephole and opened the door. He returned back into the room with a large black bottle of sake. He sat in the alcove and swigged from the bottle, smacking his lips.
'Don't worry,' he said, eyes down. 'I'll come to you.'
A tired look passed over the man's face. Maybe even a sad one. To Yaki, he was still unreadable. But there was at least something there to be read beside his playboy, gangster persona.
'Keep your eyes off me,' the Ladykiller said, still facing the floor, and taking another pull from the bottle. 'A man should be able to take a drink without the eyes of others on him.'
Weirdly, Yaki knew what the man meant. All the things Yaki liked to do was also when he liked to do them without anyone watching him. There was nothing worse than doing something without having the peace of doing it.
He recovered some of his energy as the Ladykiller moved about the room and continued drinking. He paid Yaki no mind as he kneeled beside the gyarus and brushed their hair back off their faces. No visible signs of grief appeared behind the mask he wore. Aside from the contents in the bottle swirling around as he lifted it to his mouth, silence filled the room. Even having gotten his breath back, Yaki found himself holding it as the Ladykiller remained close. The man could have been regarding a product in a store with the placid face he bore.
Victim of his lunacy, Yaki suddenly spoke. 'I'm sorry they're dead.'
It wasn't the first time he'd acted against his better judgment. It was as if some demon inside pulled the reins in the other direction that he navigated. He was only grateful it never reared itself when he held a knife washing dishes at the restaurant. In those moments he could see a path for his life that could lead to infamy if he was to cede to inner curiosity.
The Ladykiller didn't hear him. Or acted as if he hadn't heard him. By now he had consumed half the bottle. He wiped away non existent tears with one sweep of his hand then returned to the alcove where he placed the bottle down.
'You can apologise in hell,' the Ladykiller said, striking a fighter's pose. 'I'll end you with my own hands. Damn the rules. Damn the consequences.'