ELEVENTH KNOT
This is bullshit. Absolute fucking bullshit.
I don’t want to go. I fucking don’t want to go.
It’s the ass crack of dawn and I’m being sent to the middle of goddamn nowhere for some errand a street-level grunt could handle in his sleep, but apparently it needs to be me because when Kobayashi-san says “go,” you go.
Doesn’t matter if it’s a waste of time. Doesn’t matter if I think it’s bullshit.
Doesn’t matter if my whole body aches like I’ve been dragged through fire.
And, fuck, I’m late. Late, late.
And no, I don’t give a shit who’s gonna complain—not even Kobayashi-san.
I’m late because Naoya-san fucked me through the floor last night. So yeah. I overslept. Sue me. My legs are still fucking trembling. There’s a burn along my spine where the ropes dug in, and I like it. I like all of it.
It’s been a month since that club. One full month of behaving like a fucking saint.
I haven’t broken a single arm unless I had to.
No eyes gouged. No fingers cut just for fun.
Nothing. Naoya-san said I could keep my place, stay inside the family, but I had to tone it down.
No extravagance, no bloodbaths, no “overkill.” And I’m not extravagant, I’m professional.
Efficient. But fine. Whatever. I’ve been good.
I slam the door shut behind me and light a cigarette before I even reach the steps. Half-dressed, half-awake, all pissed. My car’s waiting, and all I gotta do is slide behind the wheel and drive straight into bullshit.
I never make it to the car.
I’m halfway to it when the noise of a motorbike hits me, and before I even turn, a black blur zips toward me.
Tires screech. The asshole almost clips my legs and I’m already pulling my tanto out of instinct because no one comes at me like that and walks away whole.
And fuck it. I’ve been too well-behaved lately.
Time for a body count. Naoya-san will forgive.
“You better not be pulling that for me,” it’s Ryo’s voice that yells, and he flips his visor up like a dumbass, breathing hard, grinning like he’s got a death wish.
I step forward, blade out, eyes locked on his neck. I could do it in one clean slice.
“Try me,” I growl, because I fucking will.
“You should save that shit for the men headed to your boyfriend’s studio.”
I stop cold.
“What the fuck did you just say?”
Ryo raises his hands.
“Calm the fuck down, man. I’m helping you. Just listen.”
“I’m gonna rip your spine out through your goddamn throat if you don’t tell me what the fuck you just said.”
“They know about Takahashi Naoya. They know everything. Rope master, private studio, lives above it. He’s not exactly low-profile.”
I grab him by the collar and slam him back against the seat of his own fucking bike.
“Say his name again and I swear I’ll make you eat your fucking tongue.”
“I’m telling you this because I don’t want them to get him, you stupid fuck,” Ryo says, panting, eyes flicking toward my blade. “They are going there now. Probably already there. I don’t know what they’re planning, but it’s not good. They want him to use against you.”
Naoya-san is not weak. He ties gods into knots and makes them whimper. He’s silent steel. Rope and control and that gaze that sees through bones. But I know how these people work.
And I know what they’ll do to get to me.
“Get on,” Ryo says, shoving his helmet at me. “Leave your car. It’s faster this way. Come on, man.”
I’m already climbing behind him before I realize my body is moving.
“Drive.”
And he fucking does.
* * *
People think the worst part of killing is the blood. Fucking amateurs.
Blood is easy. Blood cleans off with hot water and citrus soap.
Blood smells like metal and it’s annoying after a while, sure, but it doesn’t cling if you know how to scrub.
You get used to it. You even start to crave the sting in your nose when it’s fresh, like the moment before a lightning strike.
No. Anyone who killed before will say the worst part is the sound.
That tiny little gasp when someone realizes they will really die.
That soft flutter in the throat, when the knife sinks too deep or the bullet rips through something vital.
That fucking sound lives in your bones if you’re not careful.
It sets up shop somewhere between your molars and your spine and it waits.
Just fucking waits for the right moment to torment you.
It’s what I usually collect.
Today, I don’t collect shit.
The studio smells wrong before I even kick the door in. It’s not rope and clean wood and the gentle scent of Naoya-san’s skin. It’s sweat. It’s cigarette smoke. It’s dirt and alcohol and men.
Too many fucking men.
I don’t know what I was expecting. But it wasn’t this.
The ropes are on the floor, scattered like garbage. Everything around is broken, including the shit I broke before and have been fixed. And on the center mat, Naoya-san is tied down.
His body is bent wrong, his wrists are tied by his own rope. His legs are being forced open. There’s one bastard between them, fumbling, trying to loop a tie around his thigh while two others yank at his knees. His shirt is torn open, his chest bruised. His fucking nose—
I see red.
Not metaphorical red, like people usually say. I mean red. Literal red. My vision floods with it. My lungs go tight. My hands move before I know it. And when I come back to myself, I’m standing in the middle of the studio and it’s soaked in it.
Red on the floors. Red on the walls. Red on my shoes, my pants, my fucking face.
They screamed, I think. Some of them, at least. But I didn’t hear it. They didn’t sing. They choked and gargled and used their last words to express fucking surprise. It wasn’t music, what left their lips. It was trash noise.
There were eight, maybe nine. One tried to run like a coward the second he saw me. One actually pulled a gun. I don’t know who died first. I don’t know who died last.
I just know they all died wrong.
Because I didn’t feel the pleasure of the kill.
Ryo stood by the door like he’d walked into hell. I think he tried to say something. I think he reached for Naoya-san. I almost fucking gutted him for it.
His hands were on Naoya-san.
My tanto was at his throat before I remembered who the fuck he was.
“I’m untying him,” he said, calm, not moving. Smart for once in his goddamn life. “I’m just untying him, Kaito.”
And I let him.
Naoya-san hasn’t said a word since Ryo backed off and I stopped seeing red. He’s half-sitting, half-slumped against the mirror wall, but even like this—bruised, bloodied, nose probably broken—he still looks like he’s in control.
I, on the other hand, am standing in the middle of a graveyard of meat. My hands are shaking, and it’s not from the adrenaline, but from the shame that burns under my ribs and makes my stomach curl.
It creeps in slow, shame. It sticks to my bones, like the blood on my skin. There’s so much of it. All over the floor, pooled at my boots, sprayed up the mirror. It was so fast, so violent, I didn’t even remember half the kills. I was all muscle and rage and instinct.
And he saw it.
Naoya-san saw all of it.
I can’t look him in the eyes.
He stands on unsteady legs, walks to me like his nose isn’t pulped and his body isn’t covered in bruises that shouldn’t be on him. He cups my face, gently, thumb dragging through the blood there. It’s sticky. I feel it smear.
Then he kisses me.
Just like that. Straight on the mouth like I’m clean. Like I’m human.
When he pulls back, there’s blood on his lips.
He doesn’t wipe it.
“Thank you for saving me,” he says.
“It was my fault.”
Naoya-san’s head tilts, the smallest shake.
“You’re mine. You do what I allow you to do. If someone’s at fault, it’s me.”
That shouldn’t feel like safety, but it fucking does.
“No,” I shake my head, the shame rising again. “You didn’t make me—”
“Kaito.” His tone is firmer now. “Enough.”
I shut up.
“I’ll have to call the police,” he says, glancing at the bodies like they’re nothing more than bags of trash. “You need to go now.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“You have to leave. Don’t make me repeat myself.”
When I don’t move, Naoya-san looks at me for a long second. Then another. He sighs.
“Come to my house later. You’ll let me take care of you.”
I want to stay. I want to curl up under his hands and not move again until he tells me to. But I nod. Because he told me to leave, and I always do what he says.
“I’ll stay close,” I mutter, already walking. “Until they arrive.”
He doesn’t argue.
I’m almost out the door when something catches the corner of my eye. A flash of a face. A busted nose. Split lip. Familiar jawline.
I stop.
No fucking way.
That one by the corner. Split from jaw to ear.
I know him.
And the other. Arm bent backward. Neck crooked.
I know him too.
The third. Still twitching with his gut cut open.
I know exactly who the fuck he is.
Mine.
They were mine.
* * *
Ryo didn’t want to come at first. Said I was walking straight into a death trap. That if I went to the Dokugumo-kai quarters like this, I’d either get killed on the steps or lose what was left of my goddamn mind. I told him I didn’t give a fuck about either. So he came.
We waited in the alley by Naoya-san’s studio while the sirens wailed in the distance. Ryo lit a cigarette.
“That was a shitshow,” he muttered.
“You better fucking explaining what the fuck happened.”
He rolled his neck, unimpressed.
“They were gonna kill you. It was a joint op. Kageboshi and Tetsukaminari got called in ‘cause too many of Dokugumo’s men are more loyal to you than to Kobayashi. It was supposed to be clean.”
My hands curled into fists so hard my knuckles popped.
I should’ve known. I did know, I guess. Something had been off for weeks.
Small things. Looks. Weird jobs. Everything going wrong all the time.
And even though Ryo warned me about Kageboshi and Tetsukaminari following me around, I knew, deep inside, that it wasn’t just that.