For several days in a row, Asou Akiya had been coming home later and later after work, often unable to return on time. From within the house, Rimbaud could clearly sense that something was off about Akiya; the other man seemed to be trapped in an inexplicable heaviness, an unspoken pressure that clung to him.
After dinner, Rimbaud walked into the kitchen. Asou Akiya was opening the dishwasher, placing the bowls and chopsticks inside one by one. It was oddly fascinating—humans had invented the dishwasher as early as 1850, perfecting the art of laziness to its very end. Rimbaud disliked housework; feeling a little guilty, he averted his gaze, but when he remembered that he had been the one to cook dinner tonight, his confidence immediately returned.
"Akiya," Rimbaud asked softly, "are you unhappy?"
He wrapped his arms around his lover's waist from behind, resting his head in the hollow of Akiya's neck.
"So you noticed…" Asou Akiya replied helplessly. "Being valued too highly by my superiors has ended up putting a lot of pressure on me."
"You could always give it up," Rimbaud suggested lightly, offering an irresponsibly simple solution.
"For our future," Asou Akiya said, turning on the tap and washing his hands, as if trying to rinse away those unpleasant emotions along with the water, "I want to try my best." He wanted to return to the carefree version of himself he used to be, the one who didn't overthink everything.
"But I want you to be happy, Akiya," Rimbaud asked, his gaze tender and lingering. "What should I do?"
Asou Akiya turned around, and a smile naturally blossomed on his face.
"Wife~."
"..."
His French "wife" was, as usual, rendered speechless by the word for several seconds before responding in a subtle mixture of embarrassment and shame.
"…Mm."
Asou Akiya's heart instantly burst into bloom.
Even though he knew full well that Rimbaud was only going along with it to comfort him, he was still overwhelmingly delighted.
"I love you! My darling!"
"I love you too."
Rimbaud removed his fluffy white earmuffs and placed them on Akiya's head. Stray strands of hair at Akiya's temples stuck up slightly, his ears covered by the earmuffs, and in that moment, his entire demeanor softened, becoming youthful and endearingly cute.
"You are my boyfriend," Rimbaud said quietly. "I want you to stop worrying, and to always be my sun."
His fingertips pressed gently against the center of Asou Akiya's brow.
"May God bless you."
Treated this way by Rimbaud, the black-haired young man broke into a foolish grin, the picture-perfect embodiment of first love's happiness.
Seeing this, Rimbaud finally felt at ease.
If Akiya chose not to say anything, then it was probably something insignificant—nothing worth probing into too deeply.
Sure enough, by the next day Asou Akiya had regained his energy. He woke up early in the morning and immediately grew clingy with Rimbaud. Rimbaud hadn't slept enough; he shifted his waist slightly, embraced the warmth of the person holding him, and let Akiya indulge in his body, allowing them to do the things lovers were meant to do.
Rimbaud had a home.
It rested in the softest place within Asou Akiya's heart.
"Remember to clean yourself up," Asou Akiya reminded him, finally climbing out of that bone-deep gentle paradise.
"Mm." Rimbaud tugged the blanket up, revealing only half his head.
A distinctly French kind of "cute."
...
Once his hands were stained and a criminal record left behind, the Port Mafia opened a door of convenience for Asou Akiya.
His salary and benefits rose dramatically.
The doors of the medical department were flung open to him as well; there was no longer any need to make special requests or offer prior greetings—he was granted access as a matter of course.
Every training session now came with guidance and sparring from experts within the organization, and, in addition, carefully arranged opportunities to participate in field operations. These external assignments were meant to help Asou Akiya accumulate firsthand experience across different types of missions, broadening his practical understanding beyond theory and paperwork.
To this day, the Port Mafia boss had yet to decide which department Asou Akiya should ultimately be assigned to. For the time being, Akiya was not suited to work that involved constant killing and bloodshed; placing him in logistics would be a waste of talent, while assigning him to intelligence felt somewhat underwhelming and ill-fitting. With his strong diplomatic skills, Asou Akiya clearly had the potential to develop in a far more comprehensive and versatile direction.
"He doesn't want to kill, his ambition isn't particularly strong, yet when he was forced to act, he did it—so he's not exactly soft-hearted either… The problem is that his hand-to-hand combat and marksmanship are both half-baked, and if he goes on field missions, he'll need someone to protect him…"
The Port Mafia boss, growing older by the year, could not quite say whether he was satisfied or dissatisfied. In recent years, he had truly come to dislike overly sharp, brilliant young men—those who shone too brightly tended to stir an unpleasant sense of crisis within him.
Asou Akiya's "sharpness," however, lay primarily in his mind. His threat level was low; in pure combat terms, he was practically a complete weakling.
The Port Mafia boss spoke indifferently, his tone calm and measured. "Continue cultivating him as usual."
The man standing across from him bent at the waist in a respectful bow. "Yes."
This man was the instructor responsible for physical combat training.
"Oh, right—how has little Kouyou been doing lately?" the Port Mafia boss asked suddenly.
He received a satisfactory answer. "Lady Kouyou has already taken part in an assassination mission. Her ability performed very well, and she has just returned."
Ozaki Kouyou, only eleven years old, had been taken in by the Port Mafia from a young age. Her ability, Golden Demon, was a type that was not easily prone to losing control. She was an assassination weapon personally cultivated by the Port Mafia boss himself—well-versed in the rules of high society, refined in poetry, literature, etiquette, and music alike. All that remained was for the girl to grow into adulthood, at which point she would be sent out to complete all manner of missions.
The Port Mafia boss nodded in satisfaction. "Take it slow. Polish her carefully. Little Kouyou's ability holds tremendous potential."
He was confident that he could keep Ozaki Kouyou firmly in his grasp—whether she wished it or not.
After all, he was the ruler of the organization.
Compared to Nakahara Chuuya, the little girl with hair tinged more toward a soft orange-red lowered her head as she walked, the ornamental hairpin at her temple swaying gently and chiming with a crisp, delicate sound. Her hands were folded neatly at her abdomen, and her steps were small and measured, like those of a young courtesan-in-training gliding across a stage. She stood in stark contrast to the Port Mafia members around her, all of whom wore black suits as if it were a uniform carved into their very bones.
Asou Akiya happened to run into Ozaki Kouyou on her way back to the organization. She walked with her head down, her entire body shrouded in a cold, oppressive aura.
It was the aura of someone who had just killed.
Before this moment, Asou Akiya had never seen Ozaki Kouyou in person. He had not even heard her name, and had assumed that she had yet to be discovered by the Port Mafia. Thinking back now, he realized how unrealistic that assumption had been. More than likely, the organization had sealed off information related to ability users; members without sufficient clearance simply had no way of knowing.
Asou Akiya withdrew his scrutinizing gaze. Ozaki Kouyou was a flower grown in darkness—brilliant, beautiful, and poisonous. Being able to see what she looked like as a child was already enough to satisfy the curiosity of an anime fan like him.
He had no intention of thinking any further about it for now. The boss's possessiveness was well known, and he had no desire to provoke someone like that.
Who could possibly come to save Ozaki Kouyou?
No one.
Viewing these characters from a god's-eye perspective, Asou Akiya suddenly heard a sharp beep and was yanked back into the reality of an overworked corporate drone. He took a deep breath and looked down at the task that had just appeared on his phone. He was instructed to bring paper and pen and immediately proceed to a designated location within headquarters, where he was to follow the interrogation department and assist in handling a spy.
Before sympathizing with Ozaki Kouyou, he decided he should first spare a little sympathy for himself.
[Why is a desk worker being dragged out of the office to deal with spies?!]
Asou Akiya followed the others to the Port Mafia's infamous interrogation room, his thoughts spiraling wildly along the way. He recalled the image from the original work of Dazai Osamu hanging from the wall, yawning lazily. As a traitor, just how little regard had Dazai held for the Port Mafia's interrogation chamber? Thinking of that, Akiya's expression gradually steadied, and he found that even the most frightening things no longer seemed quite so terrifying.
The interrogation target was a foreigner who did not understand Japanese.
After Asou Akiya finished observing the Port Mafia's professional interrogators at work and completed the translation of the proceedings, he walked out with his face drawn tight and rigid.
And then he vomited.
Having only just begun to acclimate—however reluctantly—to the Port Mafia's brand of bloodshed, Asou Akiya found his worldview brutally shattered once again. Even though he had once thought that the Ten Great Tortures of the Qing Dynasty from his homeland were far more "impressive," the problem was simple and undeniable: seeing with one's own eyes was an entirely different matter from hearing about it secondhand. Anyone who had never personally witnessed flesh torn open and white bones laid bare could never claim, with any honesty, that they were not afraid of the mafia.
At that moment, he wanted to shout at the top of his lungs:
The Armed Detective Agency is ten thousand times better than the Port Mafia!!!
Long after he had stepped outside, Asou Akiya still felt as though the thick, rancid stench of blood clung to his body, making him shudder uncontrollably. From time to time, he lifted his arm to sniff the sleeve of his coat, then, in a near-obsessive frenzy, dug out his perfume and sprayed it repeatedly, trying to smother that phantom odor.
He ran off to ask Mukai Izumi—no, Takekawa Izumi—"Senior Takikawa, do I smell strange to you?"
Takekawa Izumi clamped a hand over his nose. "You reek of perfume!"
Unsatisfied, Asou Akiya asked several more colleagues. He was mild-mannered enough that no one felt the need to spare his feelings, and the answers he received were all over the place.
"I can't breathe—I'm afraid I'll have an allergic reaction, stay away from me!"
"It's suffocating."
"Asou-kun, yes, you're handsome, but you've definitely overdone the cologne."
"What strange smell? I don't smell anything."
Asou Akiya flushed in embarrassment. It seemed he had achieved the exact opposite of what he wanted.
Takekawa Izumi pointed at him and burst out laughing. "You'd better go home and gas your girlfriend instead!"
Asou Akiya muttered under his breath, "I wouldn't dare."
Finding a chance later, he took a shower at headquarters. By the time he finally dragged himself to the end of the workday, the astonishingly persistent scent of the expensive perfume still refused to fade, leaving him wearing a miserable expression.
"I really shouldn't have bought something this pricey…"
Parking his car in a narrow alley near his home, Asou Akiya pushed the door open and stepped out, hoping the night air might help clear his head.
After all—
Randou didn't like the smell of his perfume.
What was more, Asou Akiya didn't want to carry the foul mood left over from work back home with him.
He sent Randou a short message—"Don't wait for me to eat. I'll be back later."—and then wandered aimlessly for a while. Finding a low flowerbed, he wiped off a patch of dust, sat down, and stared into nothingness. By the time night had fully settled in, his emotions had finally calmed, no longer so heavy and bleak that they were obvious the instant the glow of a phone screen reflected on his face.
Still, he knew that wasting time like this wasn't a solution. Pulling out his phone, he searched for ways to quickly get rid of the lingering perfume scent. The internet offered him a simple answer: rubbing alcohol.
The moment he saw that topical alcohol would work, Asou Akiya hurried to a pharmacy and bought a bottle. Squatting by the roadside outside the shop, he soaked a cotton ball in alcohol and wiped his wrists. The icy chill stung his skin, making him sneeze. He rubbed his nose, thinking that sometimes he wanted to be a real tough guy and just pour the alcohol straight over himself—but he was afraid of catching a cold. Sneezing nonstop inside the Port Mafia would earn him nothing but disgust from everyone around him.
Once he finished, his gaze drifted to the pedestrians and passing cars around him, as though he were watching the world through a pane of glass, distant and detached. Every month there were always a few days like this, days when he didn't want to work at all, when the sense of revulsion was overwhelming, and he felt like a dog that had collapsed from exhaustion.
If the Port Mafia lost him, nothing would happen.
But if he left the Port Mafia, carrying a criminal record on his back, lacking formal qualifications, where could he even go?
His phone vibrated, announcing a new message.
[Where are you?]
Randou's concern became the thin thread tying him to this lonely world.
Asou Akiya hesitated, then pressed send.
[I'm outside. I smell a bit bad, so I'm airing out before heading back.]
Randou replied almost immediately.
[Have you eaten, Akiya?]
Asou Akiya answered truthfully.
[No.]
His stomach was completely empty, yet his appetite was nowhere to be found.
Randou: [It looks like it's going to rain. Come back early, Akiya.]
After reading Randou's message, Asou Akiya lifted his head and looked up at the night sky, washed pale and murky by the city's light pollution. A sudden sigh rose in his chest—no matter how dark the world might be, it was always pierced and illuminated by the glow of human life.
And yet… he was so tired.
Today was over, but there would be tomorrow, and the day after that, and above his head there would always be some wretched boss looming over him.
How could it be so difficult to simply drift along in peace and live an untroubled life?
Not far away, Randou stood quietly in the dead angle of the shop lights, hidden in shadow, watching the figure who had come out of the pharmacy and was now crouched by the roadside, wiping his skin with alcohol. It wasn't until he contacted him by phone that Randou realized Akiya hadn't lied at all. After work, Akiya looked exhausted, worn thin—not avoiding him out of deception, but because he didn't want Randou to see him in such a miserable state.
The wind carried over the remnants of the perfume scent. It wasn't unpleasant, not foul at all, and yet Akiya thought it smelled bad.
Was it because of him?
A trace of self-reproach crept into Randou's brows, and he hesitated where he stood.
He was usually decisive and straightforward—when he thought of something, he acted; when he trusted someone, he opened his heart fully and accepted them as they were. Even if Akiya used a small excuse to deceive him, Randou believed he wouldn't be angry.
But this time was different… what Akiya needed was a moment of quiet, alone with himself.
So Randou left without a sound.
Before nine o'clock that night, Asou Akiya hurried back home. A bit of rain clung to him, dampening his clothes, but he quickly changed his shoes, kicked into his slippers, and pattered into the living room, where he promptly pounced on Randou.
Asou Akiya said brightly, almost bubbling with excitement, "We didn't see each other all day—did you miss me?"
The suited young man deliberately widened his dark eyes. His features, distinctly East Asian, had not yet fully matured, still retaining a trace of unguarded innocence. Yet the emotions surging in his gaze burned like a raging fire, sweeping over everything in its path, incinerating all the dull and shadowed corners. What he showed Randou was not exhaustion or defeat, but a love like a violent tide—one that had cast off the restraints of social morality and now longed to bear witness to fate itself.
The pressure of this world had forced him to grow.
Good and evil, light and darkness—none of it was enough to completely crush a transmigrator who had once dared to humiliate Verlaine head-on.
Randou glanced at the television drama playing in the background, recalling the familiar customs of Japanese people, then reached out and gently cupped Akiya's face. A soft smile curved his lips.
"Welcome home."
The you who stands before me has never once been pathetic.