CHAPTER 2
Aiko swung with all her might, striking her assailant in the face this time. His breath left him in a rush, foul with the stench of alcohol and cigarettes. He swayed with the strike, but remained upright, and slurred something obscene at her. She tugged her arm, trying to twist free of his grip, her heart hammering against her chest, but he tightened his grip, squeezing her bones.
She gritted her teeth against the pain.
The only other man in the carriage looked in the opposite direction as she fought with the salaryman. Chikushō. Damn it.
The door beyond the male slid open and she froze as a handsome foreigner stepped through, his tall frame eating up the space. Black hair grazed his cheek, shorn short all around the sides but left long on top, swept forward so it almost obscured one of his eyes.
Those ethereal blue eyes locked on her.
She shivered, cold sweeping through her at the emptiness they contained, no trace of feeling.
The salaryman tried to pull her towards him again.
The newcomer strode towards her, his eyes turning stormy as he shifted them to the person manhandling her and closed the distance between them.
In the blink of an eye, his right hand closed around the man’s throat and he was off her, slammed against the train door by the foreigner who stood at least eight inches taller than him. The man leaned in close to the drunk, looked as if he wanted to say something as the salaryman began babbling in fear, and then eased back.
She thought he might release the man.
He pulled him away from the door, and slammed him back against it with enough force that the man passed out and the entire carriage jolted. The foreigner huffed as he released the man and watched him slump to the floor, and wiped his hand on his coat, as if the man had some sort of disease that he didn’t want to get.
When he turned towards her, those stormy blue eyes lowering to meet hers, she bent forwards and dropped her head.
“Thank you,” she said in English, hopeful that he would understand and would hear the true measure of her gratitude in her voice. It shook as she bowed several times, unable to stop herself as her adrenaline waned and all the fear it had been holding at bay swept over her.
He responded in perfect Japanese. “Don’t ride alone so late at night, or at least use the women-only carriage.”
She wanted to tell him that the women-only carriage wasn’t available on the last trains, but held her tongue, not wanting to appear ungrateful for his help. She nodded, rubbed the tears from her face with the back of her hand and sniffed as she straightened.
The man looked her over, his eyes revealing nothing to her. They settled on her hands as she clutched her backpack, and she tried to stop them from trembling, but no matter what she did, they kept shaking.
“Are you alright?” he said in Japanese again, and she swore there was a flicker of concern in those words even if it didn’t show in his eyes.
She nodded again. “Fine.”
The train eased to a halt and the doors slid open, and relief crashed over her when she saw it was her stop. She stepped off the train, glaring at the sleeping salaryman as she passed, tempted to level a kick at him. When she looked back to thank the stranger again, he was stood on the platform beside her, his eyes dark as he stared at the man, looking as if he wanted to do more than just kick him.
He huffed as he turned away, his motions stiff, as if he had to fight himself to do it, and muttered, “Fuck.”
Aiko followed his gaze to the station sign.
The way he sighed had her eyes roaming back to him. He was at least seven inches taller than her, and probably would have been closer to ten above her five-six height if she hadn’t been wearing her shoes. A black cotton coat that reached the ankles of his worn leather boots hugged his slender frame, tight to his chest but flared from his waist. The split down the front revealed blue jeans tucked into the tops of his army boots.
He shifted back a step, placing more distance between them, and looked away from her, back in the direction the train had come. “Guess I’m walking.”
She had studied English in school, and took classes at her university, so she knew enough to understand him and the implications of his words—he had missed his stop.
“I could call… you… a cab.” She managed, with only a few pauses to think of the right words.
While she studied English, she didn’t get to practice it much. Her parents didn’t know it, and she only got to speak it with her classmates, and a lot of the time they only wanted to speak Japanese and were just learning English so they could put it on their résumé.
He shook his head but didn’t look at her.
She thought about going ahead and calling him a taxi anyway, her eyes drifting back down the height of him as she considered it. Her gaze stopped on his hand.
Blood covered the side of it.
“You’re hurt,” she said in English and pointed to his hand.
He looked at it as if it was nothing and wasn’t bothering him at all.
Had he done it when helping her?
“Chikushō,” she muttered to herself and thoughts of hailing him a cab were replaced by ones about returning the favour by helping him. It was risky, but she owed him, and she couldn’t let him go without tending to the wound. She just hoped he knew enough Japanese to understand her. She pointed to his hand again. “My parents run a small clinic below our house. I can help with that.”
He regarded her with cold assessing eyes, and she had the feeling he was the one who didn’t trust her.
As if she could hurt him.
He was far more powerful than she was, and had proven it on the train. She wasn’t a threat to him.
So why did he look as if she might be?
It was there in his eyes as she looked deeper into them, and she could feel it as she focused on him. Just a glimmer of a feeling, but it was there. Hazy, but clear enough that she could name the emotion.
Part of him feared her.
“I would like to help,” she added softly, and he looked back down at his hand again, the black slashes of his eyebrows meeting hard above his darkening eyes.
When he lifted them back to her, they were colder than before, and she moved back a step as a feeling went through her, one that warned her away from him. He glanced over his shoulder again, and then back at the station sign.
Sugamo.
Which stop had he wanted?
“Why would you trust me?” His deep voice rolled over her, his accent almost perfect.
If she closed her eyes, she could easily fool herself into thinking she was talking to a Japanese man, not a foreigner.
Where had he learned her language? He spoke it as if he had been doing it every day of his life. Had he been born in Japan?
No, she could feel that he hadn’t been born in this land, that he didn’t really belong here. It was a sensation that he didn’t fit or wasn’t welcome, one that most people would put down to instinct, but that ran deeper in her.
In her blood.
She studied his face as she answered him. “Why wouldn’t I?”
He frowned at her. “Because I could be trying to get into your tiny panties too.”
She doubted he wanted to do such a thing, the emotions she had detected in him pointing towards a desire to get away from her as quickly as possible rather than get closer to her, yet his words sent a thrill through her, followed by a heat that had her pulse picking up pace.
“Come with me, or don’t. I won’t force you.” She turned away, slipped her arms into her black satin coffin-shaped backpack and strode towards the exit.
When she didn’t feel him following, she resisted the temptation to look back. She had offered him help, extended a hand to him. It was down to him to take it.
Aiko passed through the barriers and out onto the street. It was quiet, no cars moving along it, but she looked in both directions anyway before hurrying across to the other side.
“How far is the clinic?” His voice arrested her steps and she looked back at him where he stood in the entrance of the station, his left arm wrapped around him and the late-spring breeze stirring the damp lengths of his black hair.
“A mile.” She pointed in the direction.
His face darkened. She presumed it wasn’t the distance irritating him, but the fact she had intended to walk a mile through the maze of streets alone in the early hours of morning. She did it all the time, and she wasn’t the only woman in Tokyo who had the same habit.
He looked as if he wanted to tell her to hail a cab for herself and then said something, but she didn’t catch the words as she watched the emotions flitter across his handsome face, a kaleidoscope of them that moved so swiftly she couldn’t take them all in. Fear was there though. For himself still, or for her? Did he worry about her walking alone at night? Something akin to anguish crossed his face more than once too, and that emotion was there in his eyes as he reluctantly crossed the road to her.
What internal war did he wage?
His question earlier had revealed more about himself than anything he had said or done so far.
He found it difficult to trust, so he couldn’t understand how others could do it so easily.
She could trust him, because if he had wanted to get into her ‘tiny panties’ he probably would have done it when they had been standing on the platform of the station for ten minutes, not a soul in sight.
He had stopped the pervert on the train too, revealing a noble streak in his actions.
“You’ll probably get yourself killed if I let you go home alone,” he muttered in English, and she understood enough to get the meaning of his words.
He wasn’t coming with her so she could look at his wound. He was walking her home because he wanted to protect her.
She led him through the narrow streets, their steps loud on the wet road. It had stopped raining at some point, and she was thankful because she had left her umbrella on the train. She glanced at the man and found him looking at the clouds, his gaze distant and his head tipped back.
His black hair grazed his temple, and she drank her fill of him, still finding it hard to believe she was walking with him to her home. Her grandmother would be proud of her. That feeling beat in her heart. She had taught Aiko to give aid to those who needed it, especially if they were from another place.
This man certainly was.
His blue eyes took on a troubled edge, and he slid them towards her, angling his head slightly in her direction so he could see her. She smiled and looked away, not wanting to upset him. When his gaze left her again, she snuck another glance at him.
He was handsome, with fine black eyebrows and long inky lashes that framed his deep blue eyes, and a straight nose and softly curved lips that were a shade or two darker than his skin in the low light. Sculpted cheekbones were accented by long sideburns that reached the lobes of his ears, and the sharp angle of his jaw. There was a coldness to his face though, the lack of lines around his eyes and mouth telling her that he rarely smiled or laughed. Why?
When he frowned at her again, she looked away and kept her eyes off him this time, not wanting to upset him.
His gaze moved away from her, but then came back to rest on her, and she kept hers fixed ahead of her, pretending not to notice the way he studied her.
Because instinct warned he would react harshly if she made it clear she was aware of him staring.
As they turned a corner onto her street and passed a small park, she swore he wanted to move closer to her, but he tensed and distanced himself instead, and his eyes left her. She looked at him, keeping her head forwards so he wouldn’t notice. His eyes scanned over the low buildings that lined the street, most of the windows dark.
Aiko wanted to know his thoughts as he became absorbed in looking at everything but her, but held her tongue instead, not wanting to appear rude.
She hadn’t met many foreigners, and had certainly never met anyone like him.
When she crossed the road, he followed, and when she stopped in front of one of the square modern buildings, he halted with her. As she pulled her backpack off, he stepped backwards and looked up the height of the two-storey building.
“Smaller than I thought.”
She slid the key into the lock on the glass door and twisted it. “It’s only a clinic. We have a few beds, but mostly father treats local people and prescribes medicine.”
She pushed the door open and walked into the dark room, years of living in the cramped building allowing her to move through the pitch-black space without hitting anything. When she reached the door to the office, she reached inside and flicked on the light. She turned to tell the man to come in.
He stood right behind her, his eyes stormy again as he looked around, his shoulders tensed as he scanned the darkness, as if he was expecting trouble.
“Father normally leaves this light on, but I prefer to turn it off when my parents are away.” She set her backpack down on the chair by the desk, and pointed to the gurney. “Have a seat.”
The man eyed it with suspicion, but moved past her and arranged himself on the padded bench. Aiko didn’t fail to notice the way his lips twisted as he sat, or the way his left arm tightened on his ribs.
“Is it just your hand that’s hurt?” She edged closer to him.
His eyes darkened a full shade, but around his pupils they seemed to grow brighter, turning cerulean. Not the lights.
She changed course, heading towards the white cupboards instead of him, giving him a moment to forget her question. He was hurt, but he didn’t want her seeing it.
Because he didn’t trust her.
Maybe it had been a mistake to insist on helping him.
Aiko paused with her fingers on the metal handle of the top drawer. It didn’t feel like a mistake though. Helping him felt like the right thing to do. She had said she would take care of his hand, and that was what she would do. She owed him that much. She wouldn’t press him to let her see his other injury, or ask him how it happened, because now she felt sure it hadn’t happened on the train.
He had been injured before saving her.
Yet he had still stepped in to help her.
“My parents are away visiting family.” She opened the draw as she rambled, filling the tense silence and giving him a clear sign that she wasn’t going to press him for answers. “I was going to go, but university is too busy right now.”
She found the bandages and opened a fresh roll, and grabbed the scissors and tape too. She placed them on the black seat beside him and found the cotton wool and saline solution, and a tray to place all the dirty items in when she was done with them.
When she pulled a pair of disposable gloves from the box and tugged them on, he frowned at her.
“You seem used to this.” He nodded towards the items next to him when she looked at him.
Aiko shrugged and removed her short black jacket, draping it over the back of the chair, and rolled up the sleeves of her dress. “I grew up in a clinic, and I’m studying medicine at university. Can you take your coat off for me?”
He released his ribs and tugged the right sleeve of his coat up his forearm, making it clear he wasn’t going to be removing the garment. Because he didn’t want her to see the wound he was trying to hide.
She pushed the need to see it and tend to it to the back of her mind and focused on the one he would let her see and treat.
When she took a step towards him, he tensed and she flicked her eyes up to meet his. His were brighter, a sunny summer sky that deep inside she knew was a bad sign and not a good one. She kept still, watching the war rage in his eyes as his irises grew darker around the edges. She had never seen eyes like his, but then she had never met a man like him.
When his eyes settled, and he released the breath he had been holding, she risked moving. He didn’t tense again as she approached him, keeping her eyes off him to give him time to calm himself.
His voice was gravelly when he spoke. “Is university the reason you were out so late?”
He was trying to fill the silence now, to take his mind off what she was doing, and she went along with it, wanting him to be as comfortable as possible. She soaked some of the cotton wool in the saline solution on one side of the tray, and then slowly turned towards him.
As she reached for the makeshift bandage he had wrapped around the wound, she answered him so he would have something to focus on other than what her hands were doing. “I had work tonight, and afterwards I met my friends in Shibuya. I meant to be home earlier than this, but it’s so easy to lose track of time.”
She drew the white handkerchief away from his arm and her eyebrows briefly knit as she looked down and spotted a tattoo peeking out of the blood on his wrist, just above a thin black bracelet that sat flush against his skin.
He noticed where she was looking and tensed, and she swore he was waiting for her to mention it as she turned and placed the soiled cloth on the tray.
It had surprised her, but she wasn’t one to hold with the traditional view of tattoos. She doubted he was yakuza.
Aiko focused on her work, carefully wiping the blood on his arm and hand away with the saline solution until she could see the wound—a three-inch-long gash that ran at a diagonal across his forearm a few inches above his wrist.
And his tattoo.
A beautiful dark blue trident on the inside of his wrist.
“You shouldn’t be out so late at night,” he muttered as she dabbed the gash with the solution, making sure it was completely cleaned.
Clearly, he shouldn’t be out so late at night either. It meant bad things for both of them, but at least she hadn’t ended up with what looked like a knife wound. He must have been in a fight. Under the bright light of the inspection lamp, she had spotted more cuts on his neck, and a few on his face. Plus there was the one he didn’t want her to know about.
How deep was that wound?
She risked a glance at his right side as she turned to toss the used cotton wool on the tray and reached for the bandages. His black coat was wet from the rain, making it impossible for her to judge how much blood he had lost. She frowned as she spotted a single tear in it, barely an inch long.
A stab wound.
He needed treatment, and she wanted to give it to him, but she kept her tongue in check and didn’t mention it.
The wound on his arm must have been from the same fight, and it was already sealed and healing. The one he was hiding might be healing just as rapidly. Which only made the feeling she had grow stronger. He hadn’t come with her for treatment. He had come with her to ensure she reached her home safely.
“This looks good.” She carefully wrapped the bandages around his arm. “It should heal nicely. Hold this.”
He placed his fingers on the end of the bandage where hers had been. She picked up the scissors and cut the ribbon of cream material, and then grabbed the tape and snipped off two long pieces.
She placed one just below his fingers, brushing them.
He snatched his hand away as if she had burned him.
Aiko pretended not to notice that too, or his sharp intake of breath and the way his eyes drilled into her, and that feeling rose again, warning her to move away from him. She refused and placed the second piece of tape, and smoothed them both down carefully.
Her fingers slowed as she looked at his arm.
Silvery scars spiralled around his forearm, from halfway down to his wrist.
She reached out to touch one.
He shoved the sleeve of his coat down, stealing them from view, and she jumped, her entire body tensing as she quickly drew her hand to her chest.
Words warred on her lips and in her heart, an apology battling a desire to question him, to know what sort of life he led to have such deep scars, to end up wounded and act as if it was nothing.
“Thanks,” he muttered, the word hollow and devoid of the emotion that normally accompanied it.
“Would you like some tea?”
He was off the gurney before she could even finish that question, his long black coat swirling around his legs as he strode from the office.
“I should go.” He was in the doorway of the clinic by the time she left the office, his figure nothing more than a silhouette in the light coming in from the street. He looked back at her. “But thank you.”
He was gone.
Aiko stared at the doorway for a heartbeat and then hurried forwards, but there was no sign of him in the street. It was as if he had simply disappeared.
It wouldn’t surprise her if he had.
His words rang in her head, his deep voice a soothing sound as she replayed them, focusing on the last three.
A thank you that had been genuine.
He had reluctantly thanked her for tending to his wound, but then she had offered him tea and he had thanked her from the heart?
Or was that thank you for something else?
She closed her eyes and relived that moment, and the way he had looked at her.
The way his blue eyes had glowed in the slim light.
It struck her that he hadn’t been thanking her for the offer of tea.
He had been thanking her for not breaking his trust.
For not hurting him.
Aiko tipped her head back and watched the patchy clouds racing across the inky sky, revealing hints of stars between them.
Strange man.
If she could call him a man.