"I thought I told you to come alone." Ito cast a challenging glance at the hulking, fiercely glaring form of Kobayashi.

"Why would I? You tried to rape me," Yoru responded.

"Watch your tone. You're technically still my property."

Yoru held out his arm to stop Kobayashi from wringing Ito's neck. "Where will you contest that?" He asked. "In court? Or will you appeal to Suda-kumichou, who gave me his blessing at my wedding?"

"You little -" Ito lunged forward as if to attack. Yoru didn't bat an eyelid. It was in the moment that Kobayashi planted himself before Yoru that Ito realized where Yoru now stood with respect to him. He stopped short. “My apologies,” he ground out.

“Old habits die hard.” Yoru sat down and motioned for Ito to do the same. “Let’s get straight to the point,” he said once Ito had seated himself, teeth grinding audibly. “Did you order the hit on my husband?”

“Why is that even a question?” Ito leaned back and folded his hands across his chest. “Isn’t it obvious that it was me?”

“The shooter yelled, “This one is for Ito!” as he shot Kei.”

“Doesn’t that answer your question?”

“If you were the one to order the hit, the man wouldn’t have missed.” Yoru smirked at Ito’s astonishment. “I worked for you for six years. Naturally, I learned a thing or two. Besides, no assassin worth his salt screams his employer’s name to half of the planet.”

“Well, uh...” Ito blinked and shook his head in an attempt to reorganize his thoughts. “You happen to be right. I didn’t order the hit.”

“Please, be honest with me.” Yoru dropped all airs and allowed his sincere plea to show on his face. “If you really ordered the hit, it’s better for you to tell me. Things will get much bloodier if Kei finds out on his own.”

"I am being honest. It wasn't me. What good would killing your man do me? It would be sweet revenge, but I don't have the capacity to deal with the war that would follow."

"Then help me find the real perpetrator. You and Kei exchanged cups, didn't you? We're allies now. If we work together-"

Ito held up a hand. "Before you continue, I have a question," he said. "Why did you bother asking me about the hit? You have Tsunoda's money, weapons, contacts and men at your disposal. If you had an iota of sense in you, you'd use the attack on Tsunoda to wipe out the bane of your existence."

Yoru chuckled bitterly. "What do you know about the bane of my existence?" he asked. "What happened between you and me in the past is my personal issue, not the group's. I am here to find out who sanctioned the hit on Kei. If it wasn't you, then you shouldn't pay the price for it, regardless of what you did to me."

Ito found himself thinking he would have worked harder to hold on to Yoru if he'd had any idea of the oddball omega's sagacity. Grudging admiration took the place of the earlier derision in his eyes, and a smile of disbelief spread across his face. "Your idealism will come back to bite you," he said.

"Are you saying I'll regret sparing you?" Yoru demanded.

"No. I want to find the bastard who did this as much as you do."

"Then my work here is done." With considerable difficulty, Yoru stood up. "I will be in touch."

"Yeah, yeah." Ito waved a waiter over while massaging his forehead. "Start tomorrow. Tonight I need the strongest drink this place has to offer."

Yoru whirled around the moment he set foot outside the restaurant. “Take me to the store where Kei was shot,” he ordered.

Kobayashi choked on his own spit. “Why?!” He coughed.

“I want to talk to the manager. There should be a camera there which might have recorded something.”

“One of us will go do it! You look ill, anesan. Please let me take you home.”

"No, no, I went home in the morning. I was there almost all day cleaning up the mess I made in my room when I left day before yesterday, and I couldn’t find my stamp for the life of me-”

“You need to go home to rest.”

“I'm fine and dan - oop!" Yoru fell sideways as everything tilted at the oddest angles. Kobayashi caught him before he gave himself a third concussion.

“Dandy, huh?” The former said dryly.

Yoru didn’t bother to straighten up. "Please," he begged. "I'll rest on the way. Don't leave me with my thoughts, Kobayashi, I'll go insane. Please let me do this. This destitute, weak, uneducated wretch can't do anything else for Kei."

Kobayashi felt his heart clench. It was becoming increasingly obvious that Yoru had grown up in an environment where worth was weighed in terms of material benefits. However, the worth of those actions was not quantifiable. How was one to estimate the value of companionship to a man who used to believe he wasn’t worthy of any? Or the value of maternal love to a man who had watched his child suffer without it? How was one to evaluate the joy of total acceptance felt by a man who had never accepted himself?

"You have no idea how precious you are," Kobayashi muttered, guiding Yoru to the car. For the next half hour, he stubbornly refused to move the car an inch. Even when he did start driving, he drove at a snail's pace, buying more time for Yoru to rest.

The manager of the convenience store was understandably terrified to have yakuza show up right after their boss had been shot outside her store. Kobayashi’s formidable presence didn’t help. Yoru had to sit down and physically force her out of dogeza so he could talk. “I am not here to punish anyone,” he said for the hundredth time. “Please, calm down and listen to me.”

“I-I-I-I paid the protection money l-l-last w-week!”

“I'm not here for that! Ma'am, I just want your help!"

"Help? M-me?"

Yoru nodded. "The man who was shot outside your store...I only want to know who shot him. If you would let us see your CCTV footage-"

The woman straightened up suddenly. “Look, sir, I don't want to get involved in you people's affairs anymore," she said firmly. "It's bad for business. If I don't make money, I can't pay protection and your men will be back to harass me. So please leave."

"I am asking for the footage because I want to keep our conflict off the streets," Yoru pressed. "You pay protection, and we're trying to do the protecting."

"I don't want to risk having those shooters come back for revenge because agreed to help. I have my family to think of."

"So do I." With some difficulty, he lowered himself into an entreating bow. "I'm begging you, not as Yakuza, but as a wife. My husband survived for now, but I'm afraid those men will be back to finish their job. Please. Our child is at home, afraid his father won't come back."

Conflicted, the manager stared at Yoru's prostrate form. She had expected coercion, even violence, but not this. She would've thought of Yoru's behavior as an act if it weren't for the stunned expression of his bodyguard. Still, she hesitated. Before the shooting, she wouldn't have minded such a request for help. After all, the locals were actually on pretty good terms with the resident Yakuza. But now, after witnessing a blood-covered body fall through her storefront glass and having buckshot flying around her head, she was afraid of her every action backfiring fatally.

“Anesan, stand up.” Kobayashi shot the manager a furious glare as he stepped up to Yoru. “You shouldn’t have to prostrate yourself.”

"No, but-"

"We asked nicely, she said no. We did our part. Tomorrow I'll bring some boys and do it our way."

Yoru was too tired and in too much distress to protest. He couldn't even straighten up on his own. "If your places were switched," Kobayashi snarled at the manager as he helped Yoru stand, "how would you be feeling now?"

With that, he led his dejected charge towards the door. The manager watched them leave, the Beta supporting the Omega as the latter staggered unsteadily, his hand pressed to his spinning head. His shoulders shook as if he was crying.

"Oh, fuck it! Wait!" The manager called. "The footage...it's in my office." She took one look at Yoru's condition and frowned. "I'll bring another chair."

It was midnight when Yoru finally shuffled through his front door. Going upstairs was impossible. Groaning in pain, he made his way to the downstairs toilet and sat down by it. He would spend the night here.

He couldn't get the image of Kei's blood-soaked front out of his head. Whoever was after Kei's life didn't seem to be satisfied simply with death: they wanted it to be graphic and painful. The shooter had used a shotgun to shoot thrice, and Kei had escaped with his life only because the first shot had missed him and broken the store’s glass wall, prompting him to dive behind the car. The second shot had hit its mark, sending Kei backwards into the shop. And then the man just kept shooting, trying to hit Kei who was crawling deeper into the store, until ammunition ran out.

Yoru retched, but nothing came out. Of course nothing would - he hadn't eaten in two days. It was shocking, honestly, that he would be so upset. Kei hadn’t died. He was already out of danger. For now, Yoru wouldn’t be ending up alone and unprotected.

Then why couldn’t he eat or sleep?

“Why are you doing this to yourself?”

Yoru frowned as he straightened up. Now his inner voice was starting to sound like Yui, of all people.

“I asked you a question.”

Oh, crud. It was Yui herself, leaning against the doorframe with a scowl on her face. “Not much of an improvement,” Yoru mumbled, turning to her. "Doing what?" He asked.

"Overworking yourself. It's not necessary, and it would be troublesome if you ended up in the hospital too."

Yoru opened his mouth to deliver a snarky reply, but stopped himself. Now was not the time to worsen their mutual dislike. "I don't like being by myself," he replied. "My thoughts take a bad turn."

"Since when do you care so much about Kei?"

"Good question," Yoru said, frankly. "I don't know. But is it really that much of a surprise? He's a sweet guy. Anyone would like him."

"True. There's another thing, though: for some who put on such a tough act before, you're dealing with this really badly. Suspiciously so."

If Yoru had had the strength to do so, he would ha e thrown something at Yui. But she did have a point. His worry should have ended with news of Kei's survival. But his own interests hadn’t even appeared in his mind so far. He simply didn’t want Kei to die.

“Haha.” Yoru rubbed his face tiredly. "Why do I have to realize this while hugging a toilet?"

“Would you please start making sense?”

“I was scared,” Yoru said. “It’s as simple as that. I was absolutely terrified that Kei would die."

*

The beginning of the next day was marked by the appearance of Yoru's stamp in Annaisha’s litter box. With a growing feeling of dread, Yoru hauled himself upstairs, and he was right.

“I’d say the stamp got off easy,” he remarked, eyeing the multicolored confetti that used to be his and Kei’s documents. "Mom!" He called. "Please ask Annaisha to poop out my passport next!"

"Even if she does, it's no use!" Came the reply from downstairs. "She won't let anyone near her litter box!"

"Argh! I am going to mail her to the passport office when they ask me for the damaged one."

It took all morning to get Annaisha to stop clawing at anyone who came too close and to pick a sacrificial lamb to browse through the kitty litter. Yoru hurriedly pushed the SD card with the shop's CCTV footage into Nakamura's hands with instructions to pull any suspicious faces from it before returning to the hospital. The receptionists, accustomed to Yakuza presence, greeted Yoru familiarly.

"Busy day again?" One of them said.

"No question about it, Saeki-san," Yoru replied. "Here, my stamp. I'm sorry if it stinks a little, it's been through the cat's guts."

"You have it rough. Luckily, I have some good news for you.”

“Kei woke up?!”

“Yep! At around eight in the morning. You can’t see him yet, a policeman is with him right now. But he should be done soon. Just wait outside.”

“What room?”

Saeki smiled mischievously. “That information comes with a fee,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows. “You have to teach me your ways.”

Yoru couldn’t help the faint blush that crept up his cheeks. “What ways?” He asked.

“Ways to wrap tall, rich, handsome men around my finger! You know, Nurse Sugihara tried her moves on him today.”

“And?”

“Look at this lucky little shit, not even jealous,” Saeki commented to her fellow receptionist. “She’s as sexy as they come, and your man didn’t even twitch! “I’m married,” he said!”

“Well, he is,” Yoru said, waving the stamp in Saeki’s face. “Just take the stamp, would you? I want to get this over with.”

“Fine, fine, at least tell me how you snagged him!”

Yoru’s smile turned awkward. I came into this chance with a statistically higher chance of giving him offspring than Nurse Sugihara. “I'll tell you when I come to know," he said, pushing the stamp closer to Saeki's nose.  "Now. What room is Kei in?"

"Wah, it reeks! 314, it's 314! Get it away from me, I have a date tonight!”

The level of excitement Yoru felt was embarrassing. “Get a hold of yourself, Koji - er, Tsunoda Yoru. One shade deeper than white and he will tease your ears off-ow!”

It was like colliding into a wall. Yoru fell onto his butt, sending pain shooting up his spine and knocking the breath out of him. “I’m so sorry, miss,” said a male voice. I wasn’t looking -”

“I’m a man!” Yoru wheezed.

“Oh! I’m sorry.” A pair of hands appeared in his field of vision to help him up. He took hold of them. “It’s your hair, I...eh? Kojima?!”

Yoru looked up. A suited, light-haired man of average height was staring at him with his mouth hanging open. He frowned. He couldn’t remember where he’d met this man. God forbid he be a customer from the bar. “I’m sorry,” he said, peering at the man’s face. The stranger tipped his head to one side in confusion, making the fluorescent lights glint over a thin, jagged scar running along his jawline. Yoru’s blood ran cold.

“Yahagi,” he breathed, breaking into a cold sweat. “What are you doing here?”