Two years ago:
He's watching me again.
I give no sign that I notice, as usual, leaning over the table to add more ferns to the side. This arrangement is for innocence, white flowers in the forest. Aya-chan would clap her hands in delight and crouch down to look at the underside of the leaves and ask, where are the fairies, niisan? There should be one here, leaning against that stalk.
"Um-"
Three seconds later, just long enough to indicate she's bothering me, I answer. "Yes?"
"That's a pretty arrangement." The girl swallows, visibly gathering her courage. "It makes me think of fairies."
If we were alone I might be pleased to have my work understood. I might say, "Aa," and hand the bowl to her. Flowers belong with those who appreciate them, and she has kind eyes. But the shop is full today, and he's watching me.
So I wait three more seconds. "Did you want something?"
Crushed, she backs away. "No, sorry." Peripherally I'm aware that she's fled back to her friends, to the knot of girls clustered around him. No doubt he'll return her to sunshine with a few choice words. Most of my attention has never left the cluster of flowers in front of me. And always, I keep track of where he's looking.
At me, again. Every few seconds he glances over. It's infuriating and I don't know what to do about it. I don't know how to regain control.
Youji has never been a threat before. Five minutes after we met his nature was obvious: the man thrives on attention, requires a constant stream of it. I'd never met anyone so openly a slave to his needs. It was pathetic and I said so.
At the same time it was obvious why Manx kept him on the team. He trapped me without effort that first time, in a cat's cradle of wire I could do nothing against; when I saw him kill it was even more impressive. And he's only grown more deft and deadly with the years.
For that I tolerated his behavior the rest of the time. The sulking, the flamboyant indecency, the endless attempts to goad me, his inattention to work - as long as he understood that when a mission was given he became Balinese and under my command, I could let it all pass.
He still does understand that. We kill together as flawlessly as we always have. It's the other life, here in the Koneko, that's out of balance.
Bows or ribbon would only spoil this piece; I carry it as it is, unadorned, to the front of the shop, and place it in a window. Youji will probably sell it to some blushing matron who hasn't seen a fairy in forty years before the day is out.
He smiles at me, across the sea of braided heads. "Looks pretty, Aya. All feathery and light."
I grit my teeth quietly and walk back to my table. It's the confidence in that smile that gets to me. Before last week, he would not have smiled at me like that. My hands find another bowl without consulting my eyes and place it on the table. I look down to see that it's black and knobbly in texture, wide and shallow.
This arrangement's going to be a little darker.
In some ways we're like a pride of lions, I often think. Omi is the cub we all protect, Ken is comfortable in the middle, but Youji wants to be the alpha male. He keeps confronting me, pushing me until I slap him down in another play-fight. Endless little challenges he knows he won't win.
But last week I handed him everything he needs to get at my throat. And ever since then he's been watching me. Waiting for the right moment.
Calmly I weave the vines together, add one plant and another, while my mind remembers it all with angry loathing. A mission, in a nightclub. With Youji. The day after he'd found a _wonderful_ new way to goad me by implying our fights were sexual. The club was painfully loud and the situation was uncomfortable and like a fool, I drank what the target put in front of me. And after that memory gives up only dim impressions of smoke and noise and movement, of music and of being wrenchingly sick. And of Youji always close beside me.
When I woke up I was in a hotel room, lying on the bed with my pants mostly off, the scent and marks of my own rut everywhere. Youji was sleeping on the couch, his long legs hanging off the end. Distancing himself from the evidence of what happened.
Which could have been anything. Not rape - I know enough of sex to tell that much - but he might have kissed me, touched me, anything. And in that drugged state I would have let him.
What is he going to do about it? I comb through the flower buckets for something a little exotic, finding it at last in the back row. If Youji had been so foolish as to let his drink be spiked, become helpless and sick, and sprawl like a wanton slut in the middle of a mission, I'd flay him with words until he cried. It wouldn't be hard; he's handed me most of the keys by now.
Instead, he has the chance to turn the tables. To mock me for my failure, my lack of self-control, my lust, the human weakness I should have been able to kill in myself by now. Will he tell Manx? Will he describe his conquest to the others, boasting as he does the day after a date? Or will he merely hint at doing those things, savoring his power, and demand a price for silence?
The arrangement takes shape under my hands, jagged spikes against a lush backdrop of leaves. My groin aches insistently and I pay it no mind, as usual. Strategy requires a clear head. Possibly I should take the initiative from him, assert control in the language he seems to prefer. Could I do that?
I look down at the work before me. Most of the stems are hidden in a bed of deep green leaves; the dark red fuzzy spikes and berries sprout up at odd angles, forming a strange landscape. Two lilies wander through it, one bright crimson, one pale gold.
"Weird, but I like it." His breath is suddenly in my ear and his hand is on my shoulder. "It's almost closing ti-"
I take his hand off me and twist it, painfully. "Don't touch me." For the first time all week I look straight at him. Youji has leaf-green eyes, the color of forsythia in summer, and they widen in fear as they read mine.
Just try it, Youji. Find out how many teeth the lion has left.
* * *
Part Two
Tell Marith how you liked it