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At 19, Ozaki Kouyou is promoted to Executive.
The atmosphere is crisp when she walks down the hallways in a minatory gait, her pale, slender hands enveloped together in her rouge-colored kimono. The lower ranking subordinates are tense around her, either glaring at her with no way to fight like a prey, or immediately rushing away when they catch a whiff of her sharp dianthus scent.
In the end, they are all cowards. And she is making her way to the Boss' office as an executive while most of them are only mere pawns in the Mafia, waiting to be sent on a mission to be killed; stomped like futile ants.
Kouyou doesn't make eye contact, as she extends a hand from her enveloped ones, the sleeve sliding off to reveal slender fingers with painted red nails, knocking twice, then once, then thrice on the huge door. The doors are open by the two guards standing by when they all hear "Come in" from the boss.
The sharp taps of her heels tap against the marble floor as she steps inside, the doors closing immediately behind her that it briefly pulls a brief gust of wind towards her. "Ougai-dono." Her smooth voice sails over the silent office, which has been bathed in the soft orange sunlight from the sunset.
"Kouyou-kun." Ougai briefly greets her with a smile that only means pride like a mother with her child achieving high grades. "Congratulations on your promotion. I regret not being there for your ceremony."
"Thank you, boss. No need to flatter me, Hirotsu-kun makes a better replacement at the ceremony." She hums, her lips thinning into a sharp line that accentuates her light pink lipstick. Ougai lets out an amused chuckle, before placing a bleak manila folder on his desk.
"I apologize for immediately putting you in the field right after your promotion, but I hope you do understand."
Kouyou understands it. She always did.
She takes the folder without a word.
***
It leads her to a ruined brothel.
It's not fairly ruined— When she stumbles inside, she sees a handful of girls, all shaking, and starving she presumes, huddled up together in a corner in the farthest private room. (It fills her with hatred.) It's not that ruined yet. She supposes she will take these little girls under her apprenticeship, and she wonders what the others will think of a newly promoted executive already taking apprentices.
However, it's not what catches her attention the most.
There's something off about the place. Like the gravity.
"Ane-san," one of the girls had already warmed up to call her. "There's… there was someone else too."
***
And so, it's how Kouyou meets a frail child, a daughter of none, it seems. The girl is bruised in all different parts of the body; beaten black and blue around her limbs, and purple spots around her neck, shoulder, then downwards where the rest of her body are covered by a fragile fabric. There are handprints left on her neck and her wrists.
"Child-" Kouyou immediately stops, instinctually materializing Golden Demon, who hovers menacingly behind her with its katana out. "I suggest you don't mess with me, girl." She frowns immensely, eyebrows knitting together as she watches the girl get into a defensive position, hands desperately holding the ragged fabric around her frame as her only cover.
The atmosphere tenses, Kouyou realizes, as she senses the area around them, the whole perimeter if she dares, experiences a drop in the force of the atmosphere around them. It gets heavy to the point that Kouyou feels a headache incoming.
Kouyou manages to swipe at the child however, disrupting the precise control she seemed to have over gravity, but the smaller is more experienced than the older expected before getting thrown back against the wall of the alleyway. The gravity seems more heavier, and the headache that attacks Kouyou is almost on the same level that she can't keep her eyes open anymore.
The last thing she sees is the girl running away, with a new, lighter fabric that takes a color of a soft pink instead of the ragged blues earlier.
When she opens her eyes, she counts one, then two girls looking over her with worried eyes. They're still wary of her, of course. Kouyou grunts softly before getting back to her feet, the two girls already assisting her.
For some reason, it's not until she gets back to the brothel, she realizes her haori is gone.
"Already taking apprentices, Kouyou-kun?" Ougai remarks with evident sarcasm. "That's certainly a record. Though, I may ask…" He eyes her up and down observantly as he leans his chin on a hand lazily on the desk. "Not fancying a haori this time?"
Kouyou lets out a small hum, looking down at her kimono. It's pure, white silk with the floral, red spider lilies as the accentuating design, it's surprisingly not too wrinkled despite the brief encounter she had.
"I seemed to have dropped it on my way here." She smiles and bows deeply, as Ougai smiles back at her, different in a way as if he knows something she doesn't.
(They both certainly know something the other doesn't.)
***
A month later, Kouyou meets the same child, now as a member of the Port Mafia that she now has to oversee.
They're a lot different now. The sight makes Kouyou smile.
"I'm too old to be called Ane-san, lad." She says, but she will let it pass this time, and the next times.
***
Two years into the Mafia, does Chuuya only gives back the haori.
"I didn't mean to steal it from you." Chuuya mumbles from his side, and while he's nearly one year before he becomes a legal adult, Kouyou simply sees the same teenager she met when Ougai first introduced him to her.
"I know you didn't." Kouyou accepts it with a small smile, softly humming as she feels the haori with her fingers, and feels the same, smooth fabric she wore the day she gained something for herself. (The same fabric she wore the day she lost yet was spared by the guns of the interrogation squad.)
Kouyou tears her gaze away from the fabric, settling on Chuuya's mismatched ones, and she smiles; "You've grown, Chuuya."
She lets a chuckle escape her lips once Chuuya sputters as he promptly excuses himself and leaves the office, face as red as his hair.