Chapter 8: Guts

Suzu had not consumed this much coffee in her life.

Granted, Ninomae’s coffee machines were top-notch, and there were three of them in the too-small kitchen on their floor to cater to everybody’s caffeine needs, but Suzu suspected her overconsumption was a result of stress.

To say that she was overwhelmed was an understatement. She was confused, slightly distraught, and possibly regretting her decision. Coffee was the only acceptable vice in the office that could help her cope. Kei had haphazardly invited her to smoke, knowing she would refuse, and Hanzo discouraged her from picking up the habit. Other apparent coping mechanisms on their floor were frequent snacking and phone slamming. Around fifty of them were on the open space plan, shuffling through narrow aisles and lining up on the vending machines, which served coffee as well. Each row of cubicles was equipped with computers and littered with documents and personal effects.

Most of them looked like tiny apartments, the more she inspected them. Drawers were stuffed with personal hygiene products, extra clothes, and paraphernalia to serve one’s hobbies. If a wanted staff was not in their cubicle, people instinctively searched the sleeping room, where staff could nap in massive reclining chairs to icy temperatures and spa music.

By her third day, she considered it normal to find disgruntled men and women reclined on their swivel chairs, massaging their foreheads and cussing at nothing in particular before falling back into their work.

After two weeks on the job, Suzu knew only two other people by name and the rest only by face. She learned early on that this was not the type of place to make friends, partly because they were too busy, or too suspicious of her to be nice.

Suzu convinced herself it was the new girl syndrome. They darted pointed looks at her because her job required tailing Kei around and catering to his needs. She told herself the hushed conversations behind her back and their forced politeness would go away eventually.

When more time passed and their coldness grew even colder, she decided not to care.

“They all work the field,” Hanzo said. “That’s why they’re all grouchy. The Fifth Level filters supernatural sightings and incidents in Kanagawa, and anything that has a little bit of weight to it is passed on to us here on the Sixth. Our people—” waving his hand over the busybodies on their floor “—investigate, and we get the final say. That is, Kei approaches the possible talents himself and recruits them, either as an active agent of the company or a Waiki Mart owner.”

“And if they choose neither?”

Hanzo slashed his thumb across his neck. “Kei is legally bound to both Ninomae and the government to end their lives. If we let active talents run amok, liminal spaces will open, and people could die.”

Suzu glanced over her shoulder to regard Kei. He was hunched over his desk, his fingers tented against his face as he reviewed the documents submitted to him earlier. She could still remember him in his hiking gear, putting himself between her and the professor inside a Waiki Mart.

“There’s something I don’t understand.” Suzu swung her chair to face Hanzo, who was working beside her on her desk to help familiarize her with her task faster. “So talents open liminal spaces, but the spirits can’t do anything in the physical realm unless there are enough spores. Why can’t you just deal with the spirits before they manifest physically?”

“How can you kill in the physical what’s still in the spirit?” Kei carried his chair over to the other end of her desk and stretched. He reminded her of a tired cat whenever he did that.

“Shouldn’t you be concentrating in your corner?” Suzu asked. Hanzo had permitted her to be as harsh as needed if that would get Kei to finish his workload. So many people demanded his attention that he had to maximize his downtime to deal with paperwork, and his attention span wasn’t exactly impressive.

“I need a breather. And possibly new reading glasses.” Kei tossed his glasses over at his desk. “Going back, you can’t kill a spiritual being in the physical realm. It’s either you enter the liminal space, where it will surely kill you, or you wait for it to take a physical form in our realm. Best case scenario—which is the average form of manifestation—spirits possess vulnerable bodies. That means sick people. Dying people. Anyone close to death. Unless there’s an Amemiya nearby who can perform an exorcism, our only option is to kill the possessed individual. Worst case scenario, we miss the spirit until it manifests here in its original form, and chaos ensues.”

Suzu shivered just thinking about Big Baby stomping through the streets of Kanagawa. “Will people be able to see them then?”

“Unfortunately. It’s a rare occurrence, though. The last time it happened, well.” Kei shrugged, his gaze drifting downwards to the floor. “Do you get it?”

Suzu could tell when someone was avoiding a topic.  She did that too often to miss the signs. Kei, in particular, was not hard to read. He had talked in detail about the ins and outs of the business, often to the point of boring her, but whenever something came up that he could be personally involved in, he looked away and turned the attention back at her.

Do you get it?

That was his tell, and she tucked this away in her mind along with the other things she’d observed about him. If she was going to keep this man alive in the field, she had to know him well.

That meant hounding Hanzo about every little thing that struck her curiosity. Thankfully, Hanzo was more than generous with his stories.

“Ninomae used to have a Reconnaissance department based in Kyoto. These were made up of talents like Kei,” he said as they waited for their takeout in a nearby restaurant. It was lunchtime, and Kei hated office food, so Hanzo always went out to buy his meal. Suzu had suggested ordering the food instead, but he insisted that getting out of the office a few times a day was important for her sanity. “Their job was to explore liminal spaces so Ninomae could have a better understanding of the supernatural sphere. They hoped that these explorations could lead to a better understanding of spirits, spores, and all that, and one day cut the ties that connect our world to it. The details were never publicized in the company, but from what I gathered from my friends in other branches and from Kei himself, they were doing a quick run inside a familiar space when something happened, and a member of the Blood Families had to rescue Kei.”

The waiter arrived with their order, and Suzu took it with a feeble ‘thanks’, unable to take her attention away from Hanzo. “You’ve thrown that around a couple of times, but you haven’t explained it yet.”

“Which one?”

“Blood families.”

“The Blood Families founded Ninomae. It’s made up of five families, namely the Kujo, Tsuji, Hattori, Inukai, and the Amemiya. You’ve met the one who runs Kanagawa’s Aftercare Department,” he said.

Lightning struck just as they stepped out of the restaurant. Overhead, dark clouds drifted past the skyscrapers.  Hanzo shook out an umbrella from his bag and held it up for the both of them. Within seconds, it started to drizzle.

“Ms. Asuka Ito?” she asked.

“Yup.”

“She’s quite the intimidating lady, but I like her clothes.”

“You’ve seen the less intimidating one, but I’m unsure if you’ve been introduced.”

“Oh.” Suzu transferred all their purchases to one hand and motioned to her hair with the other. “The tall, hot girl with the bob, right?”

Hanzo chuckled. Suzu detected fondness for this girl simply from the way he brightened up at the mention of her.

“That’s Akari Amemiya.” Hanzo bent close to her ear to whisper: “Kei’s ex-girlfriend.”

As if on cue, thunder clapped, and something clicked. Suddenly, people’s treatment of her made sense.

In her next session with Ana Nishimiya—sessions that she was required to take twice a week for the next two months—Suzu asked whether being a recruitment care specialist was a coveted position.

“Do you think it is?” Ana asked. She had a habit of throwing questions back at Suzu, which made her want to pull all her hair out in annoyance. This doctor made her feel like everything she said qualified for dissection. It was just a simple question to be answered with a yes or a no. Why did she have to make this hard?

Suzu made none of these thoughts visible on her face. Instead, she put on a thoughtful expression as she pondered how best to word her response. “I have a feeling people here don’t like me, and I was wondering if it’s because I’m a woman. The weekend before I started work here, we ran into a talent from Tokyo—Hideshi? I forgot his last name—and he mentioned something about very few women getting this job because of mistreatment and certain risks.”

Ana jotted something in her black notebook. “It’s a male-dominated field. To be a recruitment care specialist, you must either work your way to the top or be recruited for a specific skill set. There’s also the salary, the benefits, and the privileges. You’ll be rubbing elbows with scary but important people in society. Naturally, people would be envious, but if they bully you or make your job difficult in any way, don’t hesitate to inform me or Hanzo.”

“Not Kei?”

“No, I would not recommend it,” she said. “People here find him agreeable, but they’re scared of him. He can be tough on them when he thinks it’s necessary. As Hanzo’s replacement, you should expect that he’ll be as respectful and protective of you as he is to him. He knows he needs a care specialist to survive in this job.”

“Does the fact that his ex-girlfriend works here exacerbate the issue?”

Ana set her notebook aside and shifted to a more comfortable position on her office chair. “Possibly, but don’t let it get to you. They’ve been separated for years now, and Akari will get married soon. Soon, people will have something new to gossip about. Just focus on learning the job and being as much help to Kei as possible.”

That was easier said than done.

Suzu felt eyes trailing her whenever she arrived in the office with Kei and Hanzo. Some people snapped photos of her getting into the car with Kei to drive him to the chiropractor, a Waiki Mart, or simply to take him home after a long work day. She had overheard whispered conversations in the bathroom about her possibly being the daughter of a high-ranking officer in headquarters, or else Kei’s new lover.

The audacity of him to bring one in when Akari Amemiya worked in the same building! Besides, a talent like him should work with men of Hanzo’s caliber. He would never survive on the field with a tiny, fragile girl for support. What would happen to their branch if they lost Kei? They had never heard of a newbie taking on such a role, and for such an important asset. Besides, weren’t there qualified individuals in this branch to replace Hanzo if he really needed to manage Niri himself?

Suzu knew they judged her every move, outfit, and interaction with them, from how she received reports to how she took notes in meetings Kei had no time to attend. Their gazes were heavy on her from the moment she stepped into the building, but they were heaviest when Kei berated the employee who performed surveillance on Professor Kaede.

He had slammed the dossier containing Professor Kaede’s case to the man’s desk and ordered him to stand. His volume alone was enough to stop everyone mid-task. Heads popped up from above their cubicles to watch. Telephones were left unanswered.

The man in question bawled his eyes out as Kei repeatedly smacked the side of his head.

Suzu believed she was not supposed to witness that. Kei sent her to the second floor to fetch the new uniforms he ordered and told her not to rush. The antagonistic employee she spoke with in that department told her she was lucky they worked over the weekend. Instead of waiting thirty minutes to get things packed up and processed, it took only ten, and Suzu went up to the sixth floor at once.

She walked in with a heavy load of dress shirts and pants in semi-transparent covers bundled in her arms. She heard Kei’s voice the instant she exited the elevator, but nothing prepared her for the smothering tension that enveloped the entire office.

Suzu wasn’t sure whether people knew her connection to Professor Kaede. If they did, then perhaps they would realize it was likely the reason Kei cut his sermon short upon noticing her, and not because he wanted to spare her his fury.

Hanzo, who had been leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, clapped his hands and ordered everybody to get back to work.

Kei, either irked or abashed, walked away with a cigarette between his lips. An hour later, he returned to the office with instructions for her to set all of next week’s appointments according to the calendar Hanzo shared with her.

She answered curtly and busied herself on the telephone.

It was only in the comfort of her apartment that she had the chance to ponder Kei’s actions. In the heat of the moment, his violence seemed unfair, and she felt sorry for his target. Then she considered the factors that pushed Kei to behave that way, and it dawned on her that his outrage might’ve been warranted.

Based on the information she’d gleaned about their work, Kei recruited and monitored talents primarily to ensure that they did not cause trouble. If the employees assigned to Professor Kaede had reported efficiently, perhaps he and his wife would still be alive today.

For many nights while she lay in bed, Suzu wondered how many people Kei had killed, and whether all of those lives weighed him down.

The rain had not stopped for two full days.

By now, it was a torrential downpour, and every time Suzu looked up at the sky, she was always greeted by a flash of lightning encapsulated within massive columns of grey clouds. She wouldn’t be out in this weather if not for Kei’s equally massive appetite. His vegetarian burrito breakfast and protein salad bowl did not suffice to fuel him from morning to mid-afternoon. As soon as Kei started grunting at them in response to everything, Hanzo suggested through text that she should volunteer to go out for coffee and pastries.

Intrigued, Suzu stood and announced she was sick of office coffee and would be dropping by the nearby café for a mocha latte and cheesecake.  Kei perked up at once, and so did Anzu, who had been napping at his lap due to the thunderstorm.

“Can you find me a rotisserie chicken?” He rubbed Anzu’s chest. “She’s hungry. She might just eat me if I don’t feed her.”

Hanzo passed her the company-issued credit card they’d been using for their food. Apparently, Kei had a considerable food allowance because of his talent. Even unused, simply possessing a talent took its toll on his body, and if they wanted him in top shape,  they had to feed him.

Constantly.

Now Suzu was padding through the sidewalks full of men and women half-hidden under their umbrellas. Water splashed around her, and passing umbrellas made it difficult to keep hers upright. The wind, too, blew with such force that her jacket snapped in the air. She made it back to the building just as the rain fell harder.

Surrendering her umbrella up front and wiping her rain boots at the side, she spotted an elevator going to the sixth floor and hurried to it.

The woman inside spotted her and stopped the doors from closing. Suzu was so relieved that she had already bowed twice and expressed her gratitude numerous times before realizing that the woman was Akari Amemiya.

She dressed in a plain, black blazer and the standard dress shirt, pants, and necktie of the Aftercare staff. Apart from her pretty face, the only other notable thing about her that Suzu noticed were her earrings: two crescent moons with what appeared to be a diamond or a leaf in the middle. Suzu would’ve stared to ascertain this detail, but she didn’t want to be weird. After all, the first time they met, she had seemed angry at Kei for recruiting her. That, and her wolf-life dog had eyed Suzu with suspicion then, pretty much the same way it was eyeing her now.

“The weather’s horrible, isn’t it?” Akari said. “Did Kei make you run errands?”

Suzu glanced down at the coffee cup, cake box, and paper bag of rotisserie chicken cradled in her arm. She almost felt sorry for herself. “He’s always hungry.”

“Just a tip: you should always get him two of everything. You don’t know when he’ll be called to the field. Emergencies happen, and the last thing you want is for him to be low on energy in case he has to use his talent,” she said.

“Got it. Thank you.”

The elevator stopped on the third floor, and the two stepped back to make space. The two salarymen bowed their heads at Akari before stepping in. She nodded and smiled in acknowledgement.

A loud whining erupted beside Suzu. Wide-eyed with alarm, she looked down and saw the white dog pawing her pants.

“Shuto, that’s not for you.” Akari touched the dog’s face affectionately and turned it away from Suzu. “Don’t worry, all he’ll do is ask. He’s like this with everyone who has even a strip of chicken with them.”

Suzu moved away from Shuto as discreetly as she could. “He doesn’t bear grudges, does he?”

“Maybe a little.”

Suzu tried to laugh it off. She wasn’t a huge fan of dogs, and having one as an enemy was the last thing she needed.

Everyone in the elevator stepped out on the Sixth floor. That was when Suzu realized Akari must be here to meet Kei.

A part of her was intrigued by the idea of them as a couple. She would never admit it, but Kei was a good-looking man if he could bear to keep his mouth shut. He and Akari made a handsome pair, the kind you know would make the cutest babies. That they broke up was a disappointment, but at least she had something to look forward to at work. Nothing satisfied Suzu more than to play detective, especially in the lives of exes. It was that or more true crime podcasts, and, frankly, the number of real-life cases she dealt with daily made failed romance and quiet pining more appealing.

Akari and Shuto walked a little way ahead of Suzu. Once they reached Kei’s office, Akari pushed the door open and stood aside to let Suzu through.

Like a good little assistant, Suzu delivered the coffee, cake, and rotisserie chicken to Kei’s table with a promise to fetch utensils quickly, but Kei wasn’t paying any attention to her. He was already half out of his seat and focused solely on Akari.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, sounding breathless.

Suzu rubbed her nose to hide her smirk. He was obviously still into her.

Anzu and Shuto leapt at one another and wrestled on the floor. Suzu used them as an excuse to linger and observe Kei and Akari’s interaction. Besides, it could be rude to slip past Akari when she was lingering at the doorway like a madame summoning her hitman.

Suzu cussed herself quietly. She should really stop watching those cheesy dramas.

“I have a matter to discuss with you in private.” Akari opened the door wider. “Conference room?”

“Or!” Hanzo closed the lid of his laptop and stood. “Suzu and I can take a five-minute break.”

Suzu peered at Kei from the corner of her eye and was surprised to see him staring at her. Having made eye contact already, she turned to face him completely. “Was there anything else? Are you really starving?”

Kei handed her back the cake box and the coffee. “Give us ten minutes. Did you finish reordering the files I gave you?”

Suzu brandished a stack of documents with coloured sticky notes poking out at the sides. “Hanzo’s just about to check if I did it right.”

“Okay, good.” Kei dropped to his chair. “Hanzo, make sure this brat gets enough Waiki water.”

Akari closed the door behind her. “Do you see spirits, Suzu?”

“Not really, but they took me to a cold spot, and I haven’t been drinking lots of water lately.”

“I haven’t seen you drink a drop today.” Hanzo motioned for her to follow him out. “Let’s go and get you hydrated.”

As they walked away, Suzu looked back to watch Kei draw the blinds down for privacy, but she wasn’t the only one. Half of the staff were stealing glances at his office, and she was glad that they would have something else to talk about for the rest of the day.

“So?” Akari sat on Hanzo’s chair and crossed her legs. “How’s Suzu? Has she said or done anything we can use?”

Kei opened his mouth to respond, but he didn’t know what to say. He ended up sighing and rubbing his eyebrows with his thumbs as he thought the matter through. “Suzu’s sarcastic but she’s efficient. I think the whole supernatural thing is stressing her out, but she’s adapting well, in my opinion.”

“Oh, good.” Akari scanned the office before turning her gaze back at him. “Any leads, though?”

“I spoke to Ryouma.” Kei paused to gauge her reaction. Judging by the way she stopped playing with Hanzo’s stress ball, she had no idea. “If you want leads, then you might want to talk to your fiancé. He’s the one who seems the most interested in her.”

“Excuse me?”

“Ryouma was watching her balcony from the sidewalk across our building. I thought he came there for me, but we talked, and apparently, he was interested in her.”

“When did this happen?”

“A couple of weeks ago.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” Akari pursed her lips when she realized she had raised her voice. The walls here were thin, and the people prone to eavesdropping.

Kei twisted and twirled his pen to distract himself. He knew he would have to tell Akari eventually, but he intended to delay it for as long as possible. At the end of his grief over their failed relationship was a small flame of anger. He had only realized it after speaking with Ryouma. This anger was neither fair nor justified, but what could he do about it?

“What did you expect? Did you want me to call you in the middle of the night and say the man you’re about to marry might be stalking my care specialist?”

Akari looked horrified. “Is that what he was doing?”

“No, no, of course not.” Kei set his pen aside a little too forcefully. “I’m sorry. Please don’t be upset with Ryouma. That came out the wrong way. I mean he’s interested in her. Maybe he was just passing by, or he actually came to see me.”

Akari trapped the stress ball between her hands, squeezing until her knuckles turned white. “Interested how?”

“He said Suzu is a part of some tradition that was defiled and he considers her a debt owed to him. He thinks, well, that Suzu is his property and wants me to look after her until he can…claim her?” Kei held his hands up. “I’m not sure if I understood correctly or if he wants you to know this, but I trust you, and I honestly don’t know what to make of this anymore.”

“Tradition?”

“Yeah.”

Akari looked up at the ceiling as she pondered this. “He won’t take a mistress outside of the five families.”

“Are you sure? Suzu could be an illegitimate child.”

“Even illegitimate children are kept within the family. All of us are monitored too closely for these things to escape notice,” she said. “Is that all?”

Kei felt exhausted just remembering his interaction with Ryouma. It was like looking at your favorite portrait and seeing the mishappen brush strokes for the first time. He didn’t have all the information he needed to assess the situation and turn it black and white. All he knew was that it made him uneasy, and every time he looked at Suzu, he imagined delivering her somewhere she didn’t want to go.

Kei shook those thoughts away and straightened up on his chair, businesslike. “Do you have other matters to discuss?”

Akari wrinkled her nose and groaned. “Don’t use your professional voice with me. I dropped by to see how Suzu was doing and if you were close to getting an answer.”

“It doesn’t concern you anymore, Akari.”

“It does,” she said firmly. “I’m allowed to worry for you as a friend and to be totally freaked out by my fiancé’s behavior.”

Kei leaned back on his chair and dropped the matter. There was no dissuading now. “Are you going to ask Ryouma?”

“Do you think I should?”

“Just don’t let him know I told you. Say you’re curious, or it’s bothering you.”

“It does bother me.”

Kei raised his eyebrows. Her softened tone suggested a reason different from what they had been discussing. “Seriously?”

“The entire office is talking about you hiring a female care specialist, and one that wasn’t relocated from a different branch or promoted to the position. Some think you used your privileges to get your new girlfriend this job. Others suspect she must be a lowlife from headquarters who slept her way to a promotion,” Akari hissed, clearly ashamed to echo office gossip.

Kei couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “For fuck’s sake.”

“You know the people here. It’s a harsh environment.”

“Suzu doesn’t come off as promiscuous. If anything, that girl gives more of a sociopathic vibe,” he said.

Akari licked her lips, hesitating. “But are you…seeing anyone?”

The question made him stare at her in mild horror. “Ms. Akari Amemiya, are you actually jealous?”

She shrugged, frowning. “You know I don’t want to marry Ryouma.”

Kei chuckled  quietly to himself. He hated that she was bringing this up now when they both knew he couldn’t do anything to change their situation. If he were younger, he’d attempt to run away with her. They’d flee the country and spend the rest of their lives running away from the Blood Families. It would be a shitshow, but at least they were together. Now he was old enough to know these fantasies were not only stupid, but also impossible.

“Akari, I have work. I care about you, but this isn’t appropriate anymore. Ryouma was like a brother to me. The man saved my life more times than I can count,” he said.

Shuto stopped playing with Anzu to look at Akari. He barked at her softly to get her attention.

“I’m sorry.” Akari stood. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess all the talk in Aftercare got to me, and I was just…”

“Are you okay?”

“I just feel a little lonely.” Akari avoided his gaze. “But what can I do, right? I can’t change the family I was born into. Anyway, good luck and I’ll see if I can get answers from Ryouma.”

Kei exhaled quietly and nodded at her. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

He couldn’t bear to look at Suzu when she returned to her desk. He was hungry, but he didn’t appreciate the rotisserie chicken he picked apart with a fork while reading reports. His attention kept fleeting back to the Waiki Mart in the mountains, dropped awkwardly in the intersection of a road that hikers frequentedd. He remembered seeing the wilted trees and the clear divide between life and death in nature—one of the surest  signs that the supernatural was manifesting.

The problem was with protocol and permission. Even if he had been given an insufficient report on Professor Kaede, he had arrived at that Waiki Mart early enough to have prevented the chaos that ensued. If he had acted on intuition, no one would have died. He could’ve taken the professor to Akari for an exorcism, and all would be normal in their lives.

Yet he had operated by the book, and now he didn’t carry the burden only of the dead, but also of Suzu Sakurai. The mere fact that her father was blatantly confronting whoever was tailing Suzu meant he was protecting her from something.

Had Kei endangered her life by failing to save Professor Kaede? Was he ruining a father’s efforts because he couldn’t do his job well?

Kei could still remember his own father, frail from his recent stroke and barely able to speak, shielding him with his body when Ninomae’s recruiter came to take him away.

“Kei.”

He looked up to see Hanzo standing before his desk, tapping his wristwatch. “It’s time to fetch Niri. I have everything she needs in the van. It’s a two-hour drive to the address Yoshi gave us. You can brief her along the way.”

Kei studied his desk. He barely made a dent in his workload. “Go give Ana and Kazuki a heads up. I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”

Hanzo knocked on Suzu’s desk on his way out. “I want that done tonight. No errors.”

“Yes, sir.” Suzu saluted him and resumed highlighting paragraphs on a document.

From the door, Kei could see that half the staff had either gone home or left to perform fieldwork. This was probably the best time to do this.

“Suzu.”

She looked up, alert as a deer caught in headlights. Strands of her hair fell to her face at the sudden movement, but she didn’t tuck them behind her ears like she usually did. Kei wondered if Suzu was secretly scared of him.

“Yes?” Checking the time, she asked, “Are you going to have an early dinner?”

“I’m still full.”

“Hallelujah.”

“I see you’re still trying to be funny.”

“I don’t see you laughing.” She capped her highlighter. “What’s up? I’m so caffeinated I can probably stay up past midnight working.”

Kei glanced at the door. Nobody seemed to be paying attention to them, but still. Kei walked over to her desk and perched himself on the corner, trying to look as casual as possible. “Are some of the staff here bothering you?”

“Uhm, no?”

“They haven’t been…mean?”

“I haven’t been making friends, but that’s not what I’m paid to do.”

Kei rubbed his eyes and sighed. He may as well be plain with her. “Look, Akari brought something to my attention out of concern for you. She said people were…talking and making up theories about how you got your job.”

“They think we’re sleeping together.” She paused to reconsider this. “Or that I’m sleeping with someone important. I’ve already talked to Ana about this.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s office gossip, and nobody’s been blatantly harassing me.”

“So it doesn’t bother you.”

“With all due respect, but what bothers me is their assumption that you’re my type,” she said flatly.

Kei was stunned to silence for a second. He didn’t know whether to be offended or appeased by that.

“For all they know, I could be a lesbian,” she added.

“Are you?”

“No.”

He flicked her forehead. “I was concerned for you, and you give me this shit.”

Suzu touched the tender spot on her forehead. “I’m just trying not to take them too seriously, okay? Reading about possible cannibalism and flesh cravings from your latent talents is hard enough. I don’t want to worry about people thinking I’m a slut while I’m categorizing these reports by degree of urgency.”

“Right, of course.” Kei was no better when he started in Ninomae. He had to be prescribed sleeping pills in his first year of employment because all the gore that came with the job gave him insomnia.

Suzu glimpsed the corridor through the corner of her eye. “Kei?”

“What?”

“Why exactly did you hire me?” She bowed her head and fiddled with the button of her blazer. “It made sense when you offered me the job because you needed to incentivise me to cooperate. But I remember Akari saying you can only recruit talents, and all the reports I’ve been filtering for you mention witnesses being sent to some fancy rehabilitation center or diagnosed with a mental illness. That’s not to say I’m sad that I didn’t go down that route or that those options aren’t messed up, but all this quiet hate I’ve been getting just…why am I here?” She peered up at him and dropped her voice to a whisper. “You even offered me something in return.”

Kei rounded her table and closed the door. The blinds were still up, so he wouldn’t be sparking rumors by being alone with her at this time of night. For good measure, he half-sat on the edge of Hanzo’s desk, arms and ankles crossed as he spoke to her. “Suzu, do you know a man named Ryouma Kujo?”

“No?”

“Are you sure?”

Her face lit up. “Kujo! Hanzo told me about the Blood families, but he didn’t get a chance to go into detail. Kujo and Tsuji are the top dogs who make the suppressants, Hattori is the warrior family, the Inukai breed and train the dogs, and the Amemiya are the shamans. That’s all I know so far.”

Kei nodded slowly, trying and failing to detect any hint of a lie in her face. “So you don’t know any individual from the Kujo?”

“I will if you tell me,” she said.

He should just ask. He should be straightforward with her and get the truth out in the open now, but what if he pushed her away? What if exposing her secret put her in a precarious situation? He did not know Ryouma’s plans with her, but a small voice in his head was convinced neither Suzu nor her father would like it.

Tradition. Messing up tradition. Did it have something to do with her tattoos? Why was Suzu so important that Ryouma would behave that way?

He spotted a half-empty bottle of Waiki Mart water on Hanzo’s desk and grabbed it. “The Kujo and the Tsuji are the ‘top dogs’, as you put it because they perform the most crucial part of Ninomae’s operation.”

“Are they some kind of supernatural scientists?” She asked, a ghost of smile on her lips.

 “No, they don’t produce the suppressants that way. There’s no science behind it all, but we don’t tell everybody that.” He paused, suddenly uncertain. She should know, shouldn’t she? Somewhere down the line, she would stumble upon this fact, especially since she was working so closely with him. And in the off chance that she already knew, then that would tell him a lot about her involvement with the Blood Families.

“Their blood is the suppressant,” he said. “The water Ninomae produces are all laced with their blood, because it’s the one thing that stops all supernatural manifestations in this realm. The Kujo and the Tsuji—that’s their talent.”

Kei was not surprised to see her blanche. Some rookies reacted with disbelief before accepting that they had been consuming blood their entire lives if they lived in an area Ninomae covered. A rare few thought it was cool, and those whom he thought were more stable claimed that it didn’t matter as long as they could not taste the blood.

Suzu’s silent, unblinking state was not in the range of the reactions he’d seen so far. She sat still in her chair, staring but unseeing.

Kei straightened up to approach her in case she fainted, but then she moved. Mute and dazed, she rounded her desk and walked past him.

Kei caught her arm to stop her. She stumbled backwards, and he gripped her shoulders before she could collide with him. Suzu slammed her hand on his chest to put some distance between them. That was when he realized why she was in such a hurry to leave.

Suzu heaved and threw up on his chest. He loosened his grip on her but didn’t let go, worried despite his disgust that she’d faint.

When he noticed the gawking crowd half-hidden in their cubicles and the phones pointed at them, he moved to the side to shield Suzu from view. He would have to deal with them later. All his mind could handle right now was Suzu’s utter oblivion about the man who claimed to own her and the nauseating stench of her vomit.

Kei pressed his lips together and grunted.

Spirits, he could handle. But half-digested pasta punctuated by a sharp, acidic funk?

Just as Suzu straightened up and finished, Kei bent down and puked his guts out.