Mastermind | Chuuya Nakahara.

ELEVEN.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN:
Mr and Mrs Sato.
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

              The moment they left the alley, Aki had demanded Chuuya to tell her how he had found her. Apparently, he hadn't. He had simply been passing by when he, in his own words 'heard her annoying-ass voice and thought he should check it out in case she was harassing some poor civilian'. Aki thought the fact that it was a coincidence was highly suspicious. Perhaps the Gravity Manipulator had been stalking her, perhaps he was onto her. But if she was nervous about it, she didn't show a single shred of it.

                  She was sitting in the passenger seat of Chuuya's BMW. He had said he had some business to attend to and that once he was finished, they would head back to the Port Mafia Headquarters together. Aki knew exactly what game he was playing. They were meant to be stuck together like glue, and if Chuuya returned back to the building without Aki, then Mori would surely question him. And then he would be in trouble for defying his Bosses orders—which he would never dream of willingly doing.

                    "So, who was she?" Chuuya dared to ask after five minutes of silence, his gloved hands caressing the steering wheel as he turned the car at a sharp corner.

                   "A colleague." Aki answered coyly, staring straight ahead out the windshield, watching as the city of Yokohama passed her by. She didn't care much for Chuuya's errands, but she also didn't mind being driven around the city either. Despite living there for over a decade and having the entire city memorised, she had never really taken it in before—or at least, how mundane the city was. Before, she had focused on escape routes, corners where she could capture her prey and where the closer police stations were. But she was looking at it differently, simply taking it in as a city; not her hunting ground.

                     "Yeah, no shit," Chuuya said, sending her a sharp look. "I meant who was she to you. You killed the other guy, but you spared her. Why?" He wasn't demanding her to tell him by any means, but he was extremely curious. In fact, the curiosity was eating him alive. He had believed her to be a stone-cold killer, someone who wouldn't blink before pulling the trigger. But he had watched her spare the life of the woman in the alleyway; and he wanted to know why, for his own sanity.

                    "You really wanna know why?" Aki asked him, turning towards him. He was shocked by the look on her face. She wasn't grinning, she wasn't scowling. She was staring into his eyes with a seriousness he had yet to witness until that moment—she was telling him without words, that if she told him what he wanted to know, he would look at her differently. Perhaps, he would hate her even more, or maybe, he'd find he had been hating her without reason.

                    Chuuya nodded.

                    Aki sighed, "She was my friend," Chuuya glanced at her in the rearview mirror, but she wasn't meeting his eyes anymore, instead, she was staring out the passenger side window. "We were sold to the Double A around the same time—she had been there a week before I got there and already, she understood what was being asked of us. At night, she would put her hand over my mouth to muffle my cries, because weakness isn't tolerated in the Double A—they would have executed me if I dared to act like a child. She protected me before I even knew how to protect myself." Chuuya held onto her every word, listening carefully as she spoke, his eyes focused on the roads ahead of him, trying to pretend like he wasn't fully invested in what she had to say.