Chapter Five
EMILY SHOULD HAVE BEEN a party planner.
Kazeyuki knew this now with the kind of certainty he normally reserved for surgical diagnoses.
The girl would have been far better off organizing galas and weddings than working in his clinic answering calls and scheduling appointments.
She was a natural, and the proof was everywhere he looked, because in a mere half hour, Emily had obtained permission from Konstantin to use the conference hall on the seventh floor, rallied maintenance to deck it out with last year's Valentine's Day props, commandeered an impressive lineup of quick-to-cook trays from the hospital kitchen that now filled the buffet table with the kind of smell that made even the post-op patients on the floor below send envious messages to the group chat, sourced a collection of vintage wine donated by various department heads who apparently kept such things in their offices for exactly this sort of occasion, and gathered everyone who was off duty into a room that was now pulsing with music and laughter and the particular energy of people who had been waiting for this to happen for a very long time.
All of it celebrating an engagement Kazeyuki had never asked for, to a girl he had never had feelings for.
This was fu—
He stopped himself in time, not liking the way the whole situation had him slipping up.
Insane.
That was all this was.
Insane.
And yet...
The panic and dread that this whirlwind affair should have dredged up had yet to make its appearance. He couldn't even say he was numb with shock. If anything, he was...
"Finally, it happens."
The voice came from behind him, and Kazeyuki knew right away, without turning, that this was the person he needed to talk to.
Anastase Mironescu.
As always, where his colleague went, desire-filled gazes followed.
Antastase’s features had a remarkable resemblance to gentlemen most often immortalized in Renaissance paintings.
But what really made Kazeyuki’s friend stand out in person—and in his profession, too—was the darkness of his gaze.
It wasn’t the type that swallowed one whole, but instead it hypnotized, the darkness luring out the truth if not from one's lips then from their own eyes, the windows to their own souls unlocking of their own accord.
“Congratulations, Kazeyuki.”
The words were spoken lightly, but the way Anastase gazed at him was not.
If Kazeyuki was the prince in a lab coat, Anastase was the villain in one.
He was one of the country's foremost experts in both psychiatry and psychology, his success rooted in his occasionally unorthodox way of dismantling lies. The only reason he still hadn’t his license revoked was because of the protection that came from being a part of one of Romania’s wealthiest families, not to mention the most secretive.
And it was also because of that Kazeyuki had asked his friend to serve as his personal safety check at work.
Aside from Konstantin, Anastase was the only other person in Stanhope to know about Inori, and how that death from decades past continued to haunt him.
Anastase's job, unofficially and unpaid, was to watch.
To tell Kazeyuki if something bad was about to happen again.
If someone was getting too close. If the patterns were forming the way they had formed before.
In all the years since, Anastase had never once flagged a concern, and surprisingly—
Finally, it happens?
Congratulations, Kazeyuki?
Did his friend truly say that?
And if he did, did he mean it?
And if he meant it—why?
Kazeyuki's gaze swept over the room, Katherine’s red hair catching his eye even from across the room.
Good.
She was occupied at the moment, standing within a circle of nurses near the makeshift dance floor that maintenance had cleared by pushing the conference table against the wall.
She was laughing at something one of them had said, and it was this sound that he found himself carrying in his heart as he asked Anastase for a moment to speak in private.
Ten minutes later, the two men were standing on one of the side balconies off the conference hall, the doors open behind them, and the sound of the party spilling out into the evening air.
There was music, laughter, and the clink of glasses, all of it effectively serving as cover to keep their conversation private.
As expected, Anastase had yet to say a word, especially since Kazeyuki had held nothing back.
He had outlined everything that happened, even the motives that painted him in the worst light.
But he had done so without emotion, having found it easier to treat all the events that led to where they were now like symptoms of a medical case that required diagnosis.
Anastase studied the city spread out below them. The mountains beyond it were dark shapes against a sky that was just beginning to lose its color. And in a way, that was the kind of future Kazeyuki’s life had been leading to...if not for this.
Anastase turned back to his friend. “Konstantin offered to help. Why didn’t you take him up on it?”
Kazeyuki didn’t speak, and that...was interesting.
“What about when Katherine herself offered you a way out?” Anastase pressed. “Why didn’t you—”
“What’s done is done,” Kazeyuki snapped.
“Is it?”
Kazeyuki had never been the type to avoid difficult conversations. Until now. And he hated the fact that he was doing so because of a woman.
“Isn’t this sort of thing your expertise?” he gritted out. “Aren’t you trained to tell your patients not to focus on the past—”
“I’m also trained to keep them from lying to themselves—”
“Look at her!” Kazeyuki had to exert every effort not to gesture furiously back to the conference room.
The pink and red streamers, the heart-shaped balloons that maintenance had inflated from last year's stock, and the buffet table with its trays and wine bottles—
All of it to celebrate an engagement that was never supposed to be.
Anastase slowly shook his head. “I know—”
“Do you, really?”
Because if Anastase did know, then why was he asking his questions? All he had to do was look at Katherine...
She was still chatting and laughing, still shining because even to this moment, she still believed that all of this...was real.
And that was why—
“I just need you to teach me...to fake it.”
Anastase wasn’t sure he had heard his friend correctly. “You want me to—what?”
“Being in love with her,” Kazeyuki gritted out. “I need you to train me how to fake it.”
“Kazeyuki—”
“I’m not finished.”
Because right now, all he could see was the past repeating itself, and he could not—
“I need your help in making sure that she believes me for the rest of her life.”
He couldn’t let another girl die.
“It’s the only way I can think of keeping her safe.”
And especially not Katherine.
“She doesn't deserve to know that I—"
Anastase noticed how Kazeyuki’s fists had clenched against his sides as he struggled to regain his composure, and that was when it hit him.
“She's a good person—”
All this time, he had missed seeing it.
“I need to make things right,” Kazeyuki said tightly, “and keep it that way.”
“And you will,” Anastase heard himself say. “I’ll teach what you need to know.”
Kazeyuki listened grimly as Anastase outlined his six-point checklist, and once done, he repeated it back word for word like he was back to his med school days, and this was simply another list he needed to memorize.
“Is that it?”
"Yes.”
"And you’re sure she'll believe I'm in love with her?"
"I'm sure."
And that was because the list Anastase had given his friend wasn't about pretending. It was a list to make Kazeyuki realize he had feelings for her all along.