Push and Pull | Chuuya Nakahara

PROLOGUE

"What's the easiest way to break a man?"

"Torture. Punch him till he breaks." Answered Finn, a man with chocolate brown eyes and dark chestnut hair in a buzz cut, with his legs propped up on a table.

"No, better yet, use a knife. Less messy, doesn't bruise." Corrected Eileen with her beautiful ocean blue eyes and her neat, dyed pink hair, pointing her machete at Finn with a wink.

"You're both fools. To break a man all you need is a pretty woman" Said Eli, with his ruffled blonde hair as his vibrant hazel eyes pulled into a wink of his own, before shoving a greasy chip into his mouth.

"That's your answer for everything" Eileen pointed out.

"That's because beautiful women are the answer for everything" Eli insisted, smirking at Eileen suggestively.

"Just blast his brains out. A broken man is of no use to anyone. Put him out of his misery and be done with it" Suggested Caspian as he twisted his revolver into his hand mindlessly. His black eyes were sealed shut absentmindedly and his unoccupied hand would occasionally tousle his long, matted black hair.

"All of the above" Mavi quipped. Her gray eyes darted at Caspian and then settled back at the mirror she was holding as she tried to apply her make up. Her long, light brown hair was firmly pulled back to better facilitate her. Everyone turned to look at her for a brief moment, making her shrug. "What? They're all viable options"

Sakura rolled her eyes and pushed herself off the comfortable sofa she was sitting on. Walking at a brisk pace, she neared an empty corner of the room where a black curtain stood. With a swift movement of her hand, she pulled at the curtain and swung it open unceremoniously, revealing a tied up, worn down man. He was struggling against his bonds and if not for the cloth covering his mouth, his screams would have woken up the entire neighborhood.

"You're all wrong. The best way to break a man is to tell him you're going to kill him. People only care about two things: profit and power. If a man has been offered a large sum of money to fulfill a job, he's not about to speak or break any time soon. Which brings me to power. To kill is to utterly humiliate someone, to strip him of all his power and all his status. To kill is to show him mercy, and mercy is power's greatest deterrent. No sane man welcomes death as freedom. Only those who have achieved the peak of power see death as a gift. To them, life is only a servant to power and they don't care for it anymore." Sakura spoke with spunk and conviction. Her words, her raspy voice commanded respect and utter attention.

She then turned her strong gaze to the man still tied to a chair in the now uncovered corner of the room. Her eyes were a deep, emerald green and they were entrancing in their own way. She fixed the man with her stare and soon after, she grimaced. She wasn't big on grime and filth, and this man was covered with both.

"Did you hear that?" She asked him pointedly, making no effort to mask her disgust. Her eyes stared at him with repulsion and powerful, raw hatred.

This was unnerving to the man. He stared back, of course. He couldn't avert his eyes from her own, no matter how much he wanted to. His struggling and writhing against his bonds ceased for a moment as he drowned in the unfiltered hatred in this woman's eyes. He had never seen such pure emotion before.

"Oi, answer me!" Sakura commanded, lifting her foot and nudging the man with her pointed heel. Tied to a chair, he was way shorter than her, even though she wasn't much too tall herself.

The man stared back dumbfounded, before shaking his head— very slowly at first, and then faster, almost fervently. He tried to talk but his words were muffled. The cloth over his mouth wasn't doing him any favors.

Sakura clicked her tongue. Her eyes narrowed into slits and the magnificent green lost its glow, consumed by the shadows. She then got on her knees to be at eye level with the man and very slowly, removed the dirty gag from his mouth.

The man instantly sucked in an eager breath. "Thank you" He sighed, relieved. His voice was meek and hoarse, probably because of all the screaming he'd done.

"Don't thank me just yet" Sakura told him, pushing herself off her knees and reaching for her signature handkerchief. She pulled it from her pocket and cleaned her hands thoroughly. "You're filthy, by the way. Did you know?"

"I—" The man attempted. His eyebrows furrowed. This woman and her colleagues had been keeping him tied in some lowly basement for days, and she had the audacity to tell him he was filthy? He would have defended himself, but he thought better of it when he noticed Sakura reaching for something else. A gun. "I guess I am"

"Mhm. Alright, enough with the pleasantries" Sakura decided suddenly, weighing the lithe gun in her hands. "Let's cut to the chase, shall we? Do you want to die?"

What sort of question was that?

"No"

"Excellent! Then we're on the same page" The woman told him with a semblance of a smirk on her face. She then grasped the gun firmly on her right hand and aimed it at the man's forehead.

"Wait! No! What are you doing?" The man screeched in response, wiggling against his bonds with intense ferocity.

"Here's what's going to happen. You're going to tell me everything. You will tell me who sent you, why he sent you and what you were sent to do and in return, I won't shoot" Sakura told him nonchalantly. "If you don't, I'll pull the trigger, and then I'll do the same to your lovely wife and your two adorable children. It's the apartment above the bakery just a square down Takeshita Street, right?"

The man paled. His eyes widened like saucers and his whole body went limp. In his dark blue eyes, Sakura saw a flicker of fear and smiled widely. She tilted her head to the side and watched as the man's body trembled. She cocked the gun and waited patiently.

"I— How? How do you know..." The man mumbled under his breath, looking at Sakura. "I-If I cooperate, you'll spare them, right? And me. You'll spare me? Y-You won't shoot?"

"Of course not. This might come as a surprise to you, but I'm not fond of guns. They seem so impersonal." She told him conversationally. "Now, let's try this once more. Who sent you?"

The man spoke with the urgency of a drowning man and the eagerness of a dying canary. "The Port Mafia"

With a tilt of the head, Sakura put down the gun. A small smile painted her lips. Any other questions she was planning to ask were useless. "See? That wasn't so hard now, was it?"

And with one final smile, Sakura raised two fingers. Before the man could feel anything— be it relief, fear or shock— she flicked her wrist and the moisture from the air that had gathered around her fingers turned into an icy spear and impaled the man straight through the heart.

She then turned around to the rest of her group, "Whose turn is it to get rid of the body this time?"

"You said you weren't going to kill him" Mavi noticed.

"I said I wasn't going to shoot him" Sakura corrected, "Now off you go, Mavi. It's your turn to rid of the body, isn't it?"

Begrudgingly, Mavi stood up, abandoning her eye shadow palette and her mirror. She was the 'coquette' of their little group, meaning that she was the one most concerned about her appearance. You'd never see her without some sort of make up on her face or without the signature ribbon that she used to tie her hair back every day.

With a huff, Mavi passed Sakura and went for the man's now limp body. As she dragged it out of the room, Eli turned to Sakura.

"The Port Mafia. What do we do, boss?" He asked her seriously— a rare facial expression for him, since he was usually the aloof, unbothered pervert of the group.

"Nothing, Eli. We do nothing"