I was still catching my breath. "This is what I get for just sitting on my ass all day and eating junk food" I thought as I stood up straight. "Well I could have still practiced some of my old dance moves even without the pole" I continued to think and looked at the two men in front of me. I shook my head. "Long time no see, huh?"
"Why are you here?" Kazutora asked as Chifuyu disappeared and came back with a bottle of water.
"We haven't seen (Y/n) in three months and that's how you greet her?" Chifuyu walked over to me and handed me the bottle of water.
"Look Chifuyu, you don't" Kazutora started and I cut him off.
"You know how Kazutora is, he's a very blunt and rude person."
"Um, (Y/n)" Yumi questioned and I looked at her. "Who are these men?"
"Oh yeah." I took a drink from the bottle of water. "The blunt dude over there is Kazutora and this sweet one is Chifuyu." Chifuyu had a blush on his face while Kazutora rolled his eyes.
"Nice to meet you." Yumi bowed. "My name is Yumi Orihara and I would gladly appreciate your help."
"Help? What do you need our help with?" Chifuyu asked.
Kazutora coughed. "Aren't you suppose to be taking a break right now, Chifuyu?"
Chifuyu pulled out his phone and checked the time. "Oh shit, I was suppose to meet up with Takemichi during my break." Chifuyu rushed to the break room to grab his car keys. "I'm sorry for leaving all of the sudden, (Y/n)."
"It's okay."
"Will you still be here when I get back?"
"Um, I don't know, I'm kind of busy today." Meaning no, I need to get my ass back to that bathroom before it's too late.
"Really? Well I would still like to see you again." He walked up to me and pulled out his phone. "Let's exchange phone numbers so we can keep in touch."
"Uhh..." I went into my bag and pulled out my flip phone.
"Umm..." Chifuyu just stared at the small device.
Kazutora let out a chuckle. "I thought strippers made a lot of money."
"Hey! Don't be bad mouthing my phone like that!" I glared at him. "Anyways, here's my number Chifuyu." I gave him my flip phone's number. "I hope you're not that into facetiming, because this thang ain't gonna cut it."
"It's fine." He put his phone away. "As long as I can get in touch with my anime-manga buddy, then I'm good."
"Awe" I thought as I waved him bye once he left the store.
"So are you going to answer my question from before?" Kazutora asked once he knew Chifuyu was gone.
"I came here to see if you would help me."
"Last time I tried to help you, you told me you didn't want to get me involved with you know who." He looked over at Yumi. "I take it this girl is deep in shit like you?"
"Kind of."
Kazutora let out a sigh and walked over to the front of the store. "This seems like it's going to take a while." He brought out his spare key to the shop and locked it so no customers could come in while we were speaking. "Follow me to the break room." Kazutora walked towards the back of the shop and Yumi and I followed after him. "You two can sit there." He pointed at the gray table with matching chairs.
"Yumi, how much time do we have?" I asked her as we sat down.
"Twenty minutes."
"I hope that's enough time to explain to Kazutora what's going on."
"If you just get to the point, then yeah it will be enough time" Kazutora answered.
"Okay, here's the situation. My friend Yumi works for Bonten as their secretary and they keep harassing her."
"Then why doesn't she quit?"
"She's afraid of them hurting her and her loved ones if she just suddenly quit out of the blue."
"Hmm."
"So I was thinking that maybe you could help me get her and her family away from Bonten."
"How do you think I can manage something like that?" Kazutora crossed his arms.
"Good question." I sat there and thought for a second.
"Um, Mr. Kazutora..." Yumi started.
"Don't call me Mr."
"Okay. Kazutora, sir."
Kazutora let out a sigh because of how formal Yumi was being. "Yeah?"
"Do you think it's possible to just help (Y/n) get away from Bonten?"
"Yumi!" I quickly turned to look at her. "I told you I was fine."
"But (Y/n), if he can't help me then I'm sure there's a way he can help you."
"I can easily help (Y/n)" Kazutora commented.
"See, (Y/n)." Yumi had a determined look on her face. "You really should consider the idea."
"Look, I keep telling you I'm fine with how things are right now."
"You're fine you say?" Kazutora was clearly pressing X to doubt. "They killed that friend of yours and one of those girls you used to work with at The Underground." He uncrossed is arms. "There's no way you're fine."
I didn't know if he was trying to care for me or what. "For starters, fuck that bitch Aoi, she's the reason they caught my ass in the first place. And secondly, Satori flipped the switch on me when he found out I was involved with Bonten." Now I was crossing my arms across my chest. "So fuck him too."
Yumi was shocked after hearing this information. "I'm so sorry, (Y/n)."
"Don't know why you're apologizing. It's already been a couple of months since those two were killed."
(You can say that them and the issue was Dead and Gone. Get it? Like the song?...I'll see myself to the door now.)
"But you were still close to them, were you not?" Yumi asked.
I sighed. "Anyways, can you help Yumi or not, Kazutora?"
"I need some time to think about this" he replied.
"Speaking of time, we should probably start heading back (Y/n)" Yumi suggested.
"Fuck!" I stood up. "If we weren't talking about pointless shit, we could have came up with a plan" I complained and left the break room.
"(Y/n)." Yumi was going to go and check on me but Kazutora stopped her.
"Give me (Y/n)'s phone number."
"The one to her flip phone?"
"Yeah, I figured she only has that thing because her other one is tapped."
Yumi pulled out a piece of paper and a pen from her bag. She then pulled out her phone and looked up my number, writing it down on the piece of paper. "Here you go." She handed Kazutora the paper.
"Thanks." He went ahead and added my flip phone number to his contact list. He made sure to have my name saved as 'Pain in the ass'.
"Thank you for your help, Kazutora, sir." Yumi bowed her head again and left the break room.
"That's going to get annoying real quick" he thought as he went ahead and sent me a text. "Guess I'll start thinking of ways to help them." Kazutora sat in one of the chairs. He suddenly let out a chuckle while he shook his head. "I'm glad she's alright...well for the most part."
Back outside the break room, I was making an attempt to kick down the door. "Did he forget he locked us in here?!"
"(Y/n), you can't kicked the door like that" Yumi told me but I kicked it anyways.
"Ouch!" I held my injured thigh. "Forgot I got shot there" I winced.
"I'll go get Kazutora." Yumi quickly went back to the break room.
"I didn't think you would actually try kicking our door down like that" Kazutora said as he made his way to the door to unlock it.
"You're lucky I don't sue you because I got hurt in this shop" I told him.
"You would be suing Chifuyu, not me." He had a smirk on his face.
I snarled at him.
"Also, (Y/n), you wouldn't really be able to sue them because it was your fault for kicking the door" Yumi pointed out.
"Don't start with me, Yumi." I was still a little heated from earlier. "You just need to make sure we can get back before they start getting suspicious." I waited no time to walk out the shop once Kazutora unlocked the door.
"Thank you again, Kazutora, sir" Yumi thanked and followed me to her car. "I want to apologize, (Y/n)" Yumi started as she unlocked her car and we got in.
"It's okay. I'm not upset" I lied.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, now please just focus on driving." I put my seat-belt on and waited for her to start driving.
"Okay."
Yumi managed to get us back two minutes before the extra thirty minutes she was given was over. Of course she still obeyed by the laws even though I was encouraging her to speed just a little.
"Great, now I need to go to the bathroom to get my phone." I did a brief jog towards the bathrooms and retrieved my phone. "I'll just hide the tape and zip-lock baggie off in the bottom of the trashcan." I looked in the trashcan realize that it was bone dry. "Well, it'll look very obvious if I leave them in there like that." I stared at the automatic paper towel thing and started waving my hands in front of it like crazy. "Now to get the the floor wet." I took a few of the paper towels I had and put them in the sink, turning on the water. Once they were nice and soaked, I squeezed the water out of the paper towels and onto the floor. "Put a few of these on the floor to make it look like I tried to clean the mess." I threw some of the paper towels on the floor and let them soak up a little bit of the water.
"(Y/n), what are you doing?" Yumi asked as she entered the bathroom.
"You know, I don't even know at this point." I told her as I put more paper towels on the floor. "I was just trying to make sure no one saw the zip-lock baggie in the trashcan.
"You could have kept it with you and disposed of it somewhere else."
"Oh." I slowly picked up the mess I made and put it in the trash can. "Well it's too late now." I checked my main phone and saw I had a text from Sanzu. "Oh, now you want to text me." I unlocked my phone and read the message. In the message, Sanzu called me a dumb-ass because I manage to trip and fall. He then asked me if a kiss on my knee would make me feel better. "How about you kiss my ass" I said out loud as I texted him that. He quickly sent me a text back saying he would along with several other spots on my body. "You know, I should have saw that coming from him." I left him on read and looked at Yumi. "Let's get back to the lounge."
"Okay." She followed me out of the bathroom and towards the elevator. "Oh, I gave Kazu..."
"Shhhh!" I shushed her. "You have to remember that they can probably hear everything we say" I whispered in her ear.
She gasped and covered her mouth. "I'm sorry."
"It's fine." I watched the elevator open and walked out of it. "She's just been apologizing all day hasn't she?" I thought as I walked down the hallway. As I walked, I heard my stomach make a noise. "Oh yeah, we never actually ate lunch" I mumbled and opened the door to the lounge that Bonten was usually in. "Oh, it's still the same ones in here besides Mikey and Kakucho" I walked over to a chair and sat down. I thought Yumi was going to join me but she never entered the room. "You good, Yumi?"
"I am. I just remembered I didn't finish faxing those papers that Mr. Akashi asked me to fax this morning." She excused herself and went back to the elevators.
"Is it me, or has that secretary of ours been acting weirder than usual?" Mochi asked.
"It's probably because of those two over there" Koko pointed in the direction Ran and Sanzu were in. "Since they wanted to mess around with (Y/n) and that poor girl for the past month." He got up from the chair he was sitting in and sat next to me. "How was your lunch, (Y/n)?"
"It was okay" I lied.
What was I going to say? Oh, I didn't actually eat because I was too busy doing some shady shit behind yall's backs.
"Really? What did you eat?"
"Well I felt bad that Yumi was going to buy me lunch because of what happened to mine, so I ended up eating a bag of chips" I lied again.
"Chips? You could have called me and I would have taken you out somewhere for lunch." He let out a sigh.
"Maybe next time."
"I'll hold you to that."
"Shit" I thought as I didn't mean say that.
Who knows if there will be a next time if everything goes the way I want it to go with the whole Kazutora thing. For all I know, I might have decided to actually get away from them for real this time. Or I could be six feet under.
"When you fell (Y/n), you didn't hurt yourself, did you?" Akashi asked out of nowhere.
"Since when did you give a shit about (Y/n), Takeomi?" Sanzu questioned.
"For a while now." He pulled out a cigarette from the box he had in his pocket. "Is that a problem for you?"
Sanzu glared at him and I could feel some weird ass tension building between the two. "I don't know what the fuck is happening and I'm not sure if I want to know" I thought as I spotted my saving grace, Kakucho, walk into the lounge room.
Kakucho saw me and came over. "Are you okay?"
"If you're worried about my fall, I'm fine" I told him.
"Good."
That weird tension between Sanzu and Akashi had vanished, but now there was something else in the air as they all stared at Kakucho and I. I felt like I was one of the couples at a baseball game where they have a kissing camera. "Um, is it time for us to leave?" I didn't want to look around the room because I knew for a fact they were staring at me.
"Yeah."
"Thank god." I walked over to the doors to the lounge and waited for Kakucho outside the room. "Maybe I'm starting to imagine shit because of the thing with Kazutora" I thought as I cleared my mind. I needed to make sure I didn't seem off or anything.
"So I guess I'll have to buy you some more lunchables, huh?" Kakucho asked as he finally joined me in the hallway.
"Hehe, yeah."
The two of us made our way to the elevators, then to the first floor and finally to Kakucho's car. During the car ride, Kakucho asked me what I ended up eating and I told him the same thing I told Koko. He didn't like that I only ate chips and told me he was going to make me something to eat once we got back to his apartment. I wasn't going to complain because I was hungry and wished I did at least eat some of those imaginary chips I keep telling them about.
~~~
"Ah!~" I just finished the food Kakucho cooked for me. "That was delicious!"
"The way you ate makes me think that you didn't even eat those chips you told me about" he joked.
"Uh...yeah." I stood up and grabbed my plate along with his. "I'll wash the dishes tonight."
"You don't have to."
"Nah, I need to at least do something here and there." I put the dishes in the sink and began to wash them.
After I washed the dishes, I took a few things with me to the bathroom in order to take a shower. "I'll just take my bag with me" I thought as I threw the bag over my shoulder and walked into the bathroom. "Oh yeah, Yumi said something about giving Kazutora something" I said to myself as I pulled my burner phone out of my bag. I flipped it open and saw I had a few text messages. I automatically assumed they were from Chifuyu since I gave him the number to this phone earlier today. "Huh, who is this?" I opened the unknown text and read it. As I read the text, I realized it was from Kazutora and it was telling me he might know of a way to help Yumi and I. "Say what now?!"