"The peace treaty?" Hanae gripped his hand, her grip matching his crushing strength. "Ryuuji, I didn't come here for peace. I came to burn the treaty to ash."
The moment their palms connected, the air in the basement gym changed.
It wasn't a romantic spark. It wasn't the warmth of a reunion. It was a pressure drop, sudden and violent, like the split second before a bomb detonates. The Japanese call it Sakki killing intent.
Usually, Sakki is directed at an enemy. But when two monsters of this caliber touched, the intent radiated outward, filling the room with a suffocating, heavy density.
The fighters standing nearby men who broke bones for a living, men who had killed suddenly found it hard to inhale. The recruit with the broken nose, who was still groaning on the floor, went silent, his survival instinct screaming at him to play dead.
Ryuuji didn't flinch. His obsidian eyes bored into hers, searching for the "fragile housewife" the tabloids had written about. He found nothing. He saw only the Asura.
"Ash is messy," Ryuuji murmured, his thumb pressing against the calluses that were already returning to her palm. "But I've always liked a little mess."
He released her hand. The pressure in the room lifted slightly, allowing his subordinates to gasp for air.
"My office," he commanded, turning his back on her,the ultimate sign of trust, or arrogance. "Unless you plan to retake Tokyo barefoot and covered in mud."
Hanae looked down at her feet. They were stained with the oil and grime of the Kabukicho alley. Her dress was a rag. She looked like a disaster. But when she looked up, her chin was raised so high she might as well have been wearing a crown.
"Lead the way, Demon King," she said. "But don't walk too fast. I might decide to take your head from behind."
Ryuuji laughed,a low, dark sound that echoed off the concrete walls,and began to climb the steel stairs toward the glass-walled office that overlooked his kingdom.
The office was a sanctuary of shadows.
Three walls were soundproof glass, offering a panoramic view of the gym below. The fourth wall was a window facing the street, where the neon lights of Shinjuku bled through the rain, painting the room in strokes of violent purple and arterial red.
It smelled of expensive things: aged leather, Cuban tobacco, and single-malt scotch.
Hanae walked in and stood by the window. She didn't sit. She watched the rain hammering against the glass, washing away the city's sins, or perhaps just drowning them.
Behind her, the clink of crystal against crystal broke the silence.
"Hibiki 30," Ryuuji said, the liquid gurgling as he poured. "I was saving it for a special occasion. I suppose the resurrection of the dead counts."
He walked over and extended a glass.
Hanae took it. Her hand was steady. She didn't sip; she downed half the glass in one swallow. The amber liquid burned her throat, a familiar, grounding fire that chased away the lingering chill of the storm.
"So," Hanae said, turning to face him. She placed the glass on his mahogany desk, next to a stack of cash and a loaded Glock 19. "Tell me. The Kurosawa Clan. My father. My uncle. What have they done to my territory?"
Ryuuji leaned back against his desk, crossing his arms. His suit jacket strained slightly against his shoulders. He looked at her with a mix of amusement and pity.
"You really don't know?"
"I was busy," she spat. "Busy learning how to fold fitted sheets and bake quiche."
"Your father is old, Hanae. He's a figurehead. Your uncle, Jiro, runs the show now." Ryuuji swirled his drink, watching the ice melt. "And Jiro... he doesn't have your code. He doesn't believe in 'honor' or 'protection.' He believes in volume."
Hanae's eyes narrowed. "Volume of what?"
"Everything," Ryuuji said softly. "Roppongi isn't the playground of the elite anymore. It's a drug den. Synthetics. Trafficking. He sold the streets you used to keep clean to foreign cartels. The shopkeepers you used to protect? They pay triple the protection money now, and if they miss a payment, Jiro burns their shops down."
Hanae felt a coldness spread through her chest that had nothing to do with the rain.
Roppongi was her city.
She had spent her youth bleeding on those streets to keep the foreign syndicates out. She had broken fingers to ensure that no drugs were sold near the schools. She had built a kingdom where the Yakuza were feared, yes, but also respected as guardians of order.
"He... sold it?" she whispered. The glass in her hand creaked.
"He gutted it," Ryuuji corrected. "The Kurosawa Clan is a joke, Hanae. They have money, sure. But they have no loyalty. The Old Guard your men were purged. Fired. Exiled. Or worse."
He took a sip of his whiskey, his eyes locking onto hers.
"You left a kingdom of lions, and you came back to a cage of rats."
CRACK.
The crystal glass in Hanae's hand shattered.
She didn't throw it. She just clenched her fist. Shards of crystal bit into her palm, mixing with the whiskey. Blood dripped onto the expensive Persian rug.
She didn't feel the pain. All she felt was a rage so absolute, so freezing, that it felt like her blood had turned to liquid nitrogen.
"He turned my home into a whorehouse for cartels," she said, her voice trembling with suppressed violence.
"Yes," Ryuuji said simply. "He did."
Hanae opened her hand, letting the shards of glass fall to the floor. She ignored the blood welling in her palm.
"I need a phone," she said.
Ryuuji didn't ask who she was calling. He didn't offer her a bandage. He understood. He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a heavy, encrypted satellite phone. He slid it across the mahogany surface.
"Secure line," he said. "Untraceable."
Hanae picked it up. The plastic felt cold against her bloody palm.
She stared at the keypad. For six years, she had forced herself to forget the numbers. She had buried them deep in the recesses of her mind, under recipes and anniversary dates.
But now, the number rose to the surface, clear as day.
She punched the digits. Eleven numbers.
She pressed call.
She held the phone to her ear. The line hissed with static.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Scene Shift: The Kitchen of "Le Blanc," Ginza.
The restaurant was a Michelin-starred establishment, a place of hushed tones, white tablecloths, and food that cost more than a month's rent.
In the back, the kitchen was a stainless steel purgatory.
Takeshi once known as "The Cleaver of Roppongi" stood at the prep station. He was a mountain of a man, six feet four inches of repressed violence, squeezed into a white chef's uniform that looked ridiculous on him.
His hands, which had once wielded a nodachi sword to defend the Kurosawa heir, were now delicately slicing a radish.
Slice. Slice. Slice.
The cuts were microscopic. Perfect. Soul-crushing.
"Takeshi!" the head chef shouted, a spindly Frenchman with a bad temper. "Faster! Table 4 is waiting for the garnish! You move like a cow!"
Takeshi didn't look up. He didn't decapitate the chef, though he thought about it. He imagined the arc of the knife. The spray of arterial red against the white tiles.
"Yes, Chef," Takeshi grunted, his voice a deep rumble that vibrated through the counter.
He hated this life. He hated the silence. He hated the lack of honor.
Six years ago, his Boss,his Ane-san had vanished. She had chosen love. She had chosen peace. And she had ordered him to do the same.
"Live a normal life, Takeshi," she had told him on that final rainy night. "Find something to love other than war."
So he found radishes.
He hated radishes.
BZZZZT.
The vibration came from the pocket of his checkered chef's pants.
Takeshi froze.
Nobody called that phone. That phone was a burner, a brick from the old days that he kept charged only out of a pathetic sense of nostalgia. A ghost frequency.
"Takeshi! The garnish!" the Chef screamed.
Takeshi dropped the knife. It stuck point-first into the cutting board with a dull thud.
He reached into his pocket with trembling fingers. He pulled out the battered black device. The screen was cracked, but the caller ID was blank.
The kitchen faded away. The shouting Chef, the sizzling pans, the smell of truffle oil—it all turned to gray noise.
He flipped the phone open. He held it to his ear, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
He didn't speak. He couldn't.
Silence on the other end. Then, a voice.
It wasn't the soft voice of the woman who had left. It was the gravel-and-smoke voice of the deity he had worshipped.
"Takeshi," the voice said.
Takeshi's knees hit the floor. He didn't mean to kneel, but his legs simply gave out.
"A-Ane-san?" he choked out. The word was rusty, unused for half a decade.
"Are you still sharp, Takeshi?" Hanae asked. "Or has the peace made you dull?"
Takeshi looked at the knife stuck in the cutting board. He looked at his hands. He felt the phantom weight of a sword handle. Tears, hot and unbidden, welled in his eyes and streamed down his scarred cheeks.
He wasn't crying from sadness. He was crying from relief. He was a drowning man who had just broken the surface.
"I am... waiting," Takeshi whispered, his voice cracking. "I have been waiting every day. For six years."
"Good," the voice on the phone said. And then, the words that set his soul on fire.
"The Dragon is hungry."
Takeshi let out a sound that was half-sob, half-laugh. He stood up. The motion was violent, knocking over a tray of expensive glassware. Crash.
The Head Chef stormed over, face purple. "You idiot! You clumsy oaf! You're fired! Get out!"
Takeshi looked at the Chef. He smiled. It was a terrifying smile, exposing teeth that looked too big for his mouth.
He reached up and ripped the chef's hat off his head. He threw it into the deep fryer.
"I quit," Takeshi roared.
He grabbed the knife from the cutting board—his favorite German steel—and stabbed it into the metal counter, leaving it vibrating.
"My Boss is calling," Takeshi announced to the stunned kitchen. "And she wants to eat."
Back in the Office.
Hanae lowered the phone. She didn't hang up. She just held it there, listening to the chaos erupting on the other end—the sound of a man quitting his job with extreme prejudice.
She looked at Ryuuji.
"One," she said.
"One what?" Ryuuji asked, raising an eyebrow.
"One lieutenant," Hanae said. "Takeshi still lives."
She brought the phone back to her mouth. "Takeshi. Stop crying. Initiate Protocol Zero."
"Protocol Zero?" Takeshi's voice came through tinny but ecstatic. "The Awakening?"
"Call them," Hanae ordered. "Call the Ghost Squad. Call the Ronin. Call every man my uncle exiled. Tell them the winter is over."
"Where do we go, Ane-san?"
Hanae looked out the window, down at the neon streets of Kabukicho. She looked at the reflection of her own face in the glass the face of a woman who was done apologizing.
"Come to Tartarus," she said. "Bring weapons. Bring cars. And bring me a change of clothes. I'm tired of wearing this dress."
She hung up.
Within minutes, the atmosphere of Tokyo began to shift.
It wasn't something the civilians noticed yet. But the underworld felt it.
In a pachinko parlor in Ueno, a security guard suddenly walked off his shift, leaving the back door wide open.
In a mechanic shop in Ota, three men rolled out from under a chassis, wiped the grease from their hands, and opened a hidden floor safe to retrieve wrapped bundles of steel pipes and blades.
In a quiet nursing home, an old man with missing fingers looked at his phone, smiled for the first time in years, and began to put on his old suit.
And on the highways leading to Shinjuku, the traffic began to change.
Among the taxis and delivery trucks, a fleet appeared. Black sedans. Matte-black motorcycles. Vehicles that had been kept in storage, waiting for a master who might never return.
They moved in a convoy, weaving through traffic with predatory precision. Their engines roared in unison, a mechanical war cry that shook the rain from the overpasses.
High in the office of Tartarus, Ryuuji stood next to Hanae, watching the street below.
He saw the headlights. Dozens of them. Then hundreds. Turning the corner into Kabukicho.
"It seems," Ryuuji said, a genuine shiver of excitement tracing down his spine, "that you didn't lose your army, Hanae. You just put them in sleeper mode."
Hanae watched the headlights flood the street, illuminating the darkness.
"They aren't an army, Ryuuji," she said, her eyes burning with the reflection of the approaching headlights.
She turned to walk toward the door, her bloodied hand leaving a smear on the glass.
"They are my family. And Daddy is about to find out what happens when you hurt my family."
[End of Chapter 3]