"They are my family. And Daddy is about to find out what happens when you hurt my family."
Ryuuji swirled the remaining amber liquid in his glass, a dark smirk playing on his lips. "Then by all means, Asura. Go say hello."
He gestured toward the glass wall, toward the world below that had stopped spinning just for her.
Hanae didn't look back at him. She stepped closer to the glass, her breath fogging the surface for a fleeting second before fading. Below, the district of Kabukicho—usually a chaotic river of drunk salarymen, aggressive touts, and wandering tourists—had been dammed.
It wasn't a traffic jam. It was a blockade.
A sea of black metal had flooded the arteries of the red-light district. Black sedans, some polished to a mirror shine, others dented and scarred from years of service. heavy touring motorcycles, their engines idling with a low, collective rumble that vibrated through the foundation of the building.
But it was the silence that was terrifying.
There were hundreds of men standing in the rain. They stood by their vehicles, ignoring the torrential downpour soaking their suits. They weren't checking their phones. They weren't smoking. They weren't talking.
They were statues carved from granite and loyalty, waiting for a signal that had been six years late.
The police box on the corner was dark. The two officers inside had wisely pulled the blinds and locked the door. Even the rival gangs—the Nigerian bouncers, the Chinese triads who usually staked out the corners—had evaporated. They knew the scent of an apex predator, and they knew when the jungle belonged to someone else.
"Impressive," Ryuuji murmured, stepping up beside her, though he kept a respectful distance. "I pay my men very well to be loyal. But this? You can't buy this. This is religious."
"It's not religion," Hanae said, her voice hollow. "It's debt. I saved their lives. Now they're here to give them back to me."
She turned from the window. The reflection of the Roaring Black Dragon on her back seemed to detach itself from the glass, following her as she walked toward the door.
"Coming?" she asked.
Ryuuji set his glass down. He buttoned his jacket. "I wouldn't miss this for the world."
The descent from the office to the street was a journey between two worlds.
As Hanae walked down the steel staircase, passing through the gym floor of Tartarus, the atmosphere was suffocating. Ryuuji's men—the current generation of heavy hitters—watched her pass with wide, bewildered eyes.
They saw a woman in a shredded, muddy wedding dress, barefoot, her hair plastered to her skull. She looked like a victim of a terrible crime. But the way she moved—shoulders back, chin level, eyes focused on a horizon only she could see—made them step back.
She didn't acknowledge them. She was done with the present. She was walking back into the past.
She reached the heavy iron door at the street level. She didn't hesitate. She shoved it open.
The roar of the storm was instant. The wind howled down the alleyway, carrying the scent of ozone, exhaust, and waiting violence.
Hanae stepped out onto the landing.
The moment her bare foot touched the wet asphalt, the low rumble of the engines cut out. Hundreds of drivers killed their ignitions simultaneously.
The silence that followed was heavier than the thunder.
Hanae walked out of the alley and onto the main street. The rain hit her bare back like pellets of ice, washing away the last of the dried blood on her arm, stinging the open cuts. She didn't shiver. She stood in the center of the road, the lights of the "Don Quijote" store reflecting off her wet skin.
She looked at them.
There was Old Genji, the mechanic who had lost three fingers defending her father's car. He was wearing a suit that was ten years out of date, tight around the waist, but pressed.
There was Hiro, the sniper who had become a depressed salaryman. He was still wearing his company ID badge, but he had a rifle case slung over his shoulder.
There were faces she had known since she was a child. Faces she had tried to erase from her memory so she could learn how to arrange flowers.
They stared at her. They saw the torn dress. They saw the scars. They saw the dragon.
And then, the movement began.
It started with Takeshi. The giant chef stood at the very front of the phalanx, the rain soaking his white uniform. He looked at Hanae, his face crumpling in a mixture of agony and adoration.
He dropped.
It wasn't a polite bow. It wasn't the nod of a subordinate.
Takeshi fell to his knees in the oily mud of the street. He placed his hands on the ground, palms flat, and touched his forehead to the asphalt. Dogeza. The ultimate form of prostration. The surrender of one's entire self.
Thud.
Behind him, a ripple effect.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Like dominoes made of flesh and bone, three hundred men dropped to their knees.
The sound was visceral—the wet impact of knees on pavement, the rustle of wet fabric. It wasn't the sound of an army; it was the sound of a landslide.
Within ten seconds, the entire street was a field of bowed backs. Not a single man dared to look up at her. They pressed their faces into the grime, exposing the napes of their necks to the rain and to her judgment.
"We are here!" Takeshi screamed into the asphalt, his voice cracking. "We are here, Asura-sama! We are sorry we survived while you were gone! We are sorry!"
"We are sorry!" three hundred voices bellowed in unison. The sound bounced off the skyscrapers, shaking the windows of the host clubs above.
Hanae looked out over the sea of prostrate men. Her heart, which she thought had turned to stone in the hotel, cracked open just a fraction.
She wasn't alone. She had never been alone. She had just been blind.
She walked forward. She stopped in front of Takeshi.
"Stand up, Takeshi," she said softly. The rain carried her voice.
Takeshi sobbed once, a heaving sound, and then forced himself to obey. He rose, mud dripping from his forehead. He held a black lacquer box in his hands. He treated it as if it contained a nuclear warhead.
"I kept it," Takeshi whispered. "I cleaned it every week. I mothballed it. I knew... I knew the cooking life wasn't forever."
Hanae reached out. Her hand hovered over the box.
"Kenji said I looked plain in white," she said to the air. "He said I looked like a servant."
She grabbed the remaining lace of her wedding bodice. The fabric that had cost two million yen. The fabric she had starved herself to fit into.
She ripped it.
She didn't strip seductively. She stripped efficiently, like a soldier removing a bandage that had been on too long. She peeled the wet, ruined silk from her body and let it fall.
The white dress landed in a puddle of oil and mud. It lay there, a dead thing. A ghost of a woman who no longer existed.
Hanae stood there, clad only in her undergarments and her scars, the rain seeking every inch of her skin. She didn't look vulnerable. She looked carved from marble.
She opened the black box.
Inside, folded with geometric precision, was a suit.
It wasn't a woman's power suit. It wasn't a skirt suit. It was a bespoke, Italian-cut men's suit, tailored to her specific, muscular dimensions. Black. Matte. Funeral grade.
Hanae picked up the white dress shirt. The cotton was dry and crisp. She slid her arms into it.
The sensation was electric. After six years of wearing soft pastels, cardigans, and aprons, the structure of the starch felt like armor plating. She buttoned it all the way to the top, covering the hollow of her throat.
She took the black tie. She didn't need a mirror. Her fingers remembered the knot. Over, under, around, through. The Windsor knot pulled tight, sitting perfectly against her collar.
Next, the trousers. She stepped into them, the fabric settling over her powerful quadriceps, the waist sitting high and firm.
Finally, the jacket.
Takeshi held it open for her.
Hanae turned her back to him. She slid her arms into the sleeves. The jacket settled onto her shoulders with a weight that felt like destiny. It hid the dragon, but it didn't silence it. It merely sheathed the blade.
She buttoned the single button at the waist. She smoothed the lapels.
Takeshi reached into the box one last time and pulled out a pair of black leather gloves.
Hanae took them. She pulled the left one on. Snap. Then the right. Snap.
The blood on her hands was gone. The scars were gone. The skin was gone.
Hanae the Housewife was dead. She lay in the mud with the white dress.
The woman standing in the street was the Asura.
She looked up. Ryuuji was leaning against the entrance of the alley, a cigarette dangling from his lips, unlit. He was watching her with an expression that was hard to read—a mixture of hunger and caution. He nodded once, a silent salute.
Hanae turned back to her men.
"Heads up!" she commanded.
Three hundred heads snapped up. Eyes locked onto her.
"My uncle," Hanae said. Her voice wasn't shouting, but it carried a frequency that cut through the rain. "Jiro. He sits in the tower in Roppongi. He sits in my father's chair. He drinks my father's wine. And he sells my streets to strangers."
She adjusted her leather gloves, tightening the fit.
"Do you know why I left?" she asked them.
"No, Boss!" they shouted.
"I left because I thought I could find peace," she lied. "I thought I could be soft. But the world doesn't let us be soft. The world sees softness and tries to crush it."
She walked over to the nearest black sedan—a Mercedes S-Class. The driver, a young man with a scar over his eye, scrambled to open the rear door.
Hanae paused with her hand on the roof of the car. She looked at the reflection of her new self in the dark window. The suit was sharp. Her eyes were dead.
"We are going to Roppongi," she said.
The men held their breath.
"We aren't going to sneak in," she continued. "We aren't going to knock."
She looked at Takeshi.
"Do you still have the battering ram?"
Takeshi grinned, a feral expression returning to his face. "It's in the truck, Boss."
"Good."
Hanae slid into the back seat of the Mercedes. The leather creaked. The smell of "New Car" scent mixed with the smell of wet wool.
"Drive," she said.
The driver slammed the door.
THUD.
The sound was the starting pistol.
Around her, three hundred car doors slammed shut in a cascading wave of sound. THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD. It sounded like heavy artillery fire.
Engines roared to life. The motorcycles revved, their exhausts spitting blue flames into the rainy night.
The convoy began to move.
It was a river of steel and chrome. The lead motorcycle riders kicked their kickstands up and peeled out, blocking the intersection to stop civilian traffic. The Mercedes rolled forward, flanked by two SUVs packed with the Ghost Squad's heaviest enforcers.
Hanae sat in the center of the back seat. She didn't look out the window at the awestruck Ryuuji. She didn't look at the trembling pedestrians.
She looked into the rearview mirror.
Her dark eyes stared back at her. There was no trace of the woman who had cried over burnt toast. There was no trace of the woman who had begged for love.
"Daddy isn't going to like this," she whispered to the empty car.
She reached into the inside pocket of her new suit jacket. Ryuuji, the clever devil, had slipped something in there along with the suit.
She pulled it out. A pack of cigarettes and a gold lighter.
She put a cigarette between her lips. She flicked the lighter.
Click. Whoosh.
The flame illuminated her face for a brief second—sharp, angular, beautiful, and terrifying.
She inhaled. She exhaled a plume of gray smoke that swirled against the ceiling of the car.
"Let's go to war."
[End of Chapter 4]