15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

The weight on top of me prevents me from rolling down the hill to my death. It pins me to the ground at the base of the shrub, and I clutch onto it for dear life, burying my nose in the crook of the neck of whoever saved me from a very painful experience.

Fuck, this was too close. I got distracted and spooked and almost died for it.

It takes me a few minutes to regulate my frantic heartbeat. All the while I try to do that, there is a second one, just as wild and hectic, but somehow, I find something soothing in it. I inhale deeply, smelling evergreen woods more so than rain. It's a familiar scent, but my brain is too wired up to place it, so I just keep breathing it in until the shock of my near-possibly-death experience settles in my bones.

"Are you okay?" the person says after a while, shaking me off.

His voice reverberates through me, familiar and irritating .

I gape at Kwanchai, pushing him the rest of the way off me. "You gotta be kidding me."

"It's not what it looks like," he rushes out, sitting on the ground with his legs crossed under him and his arms spread in a placating gesture. "I wasn't following you or stalking you or anything like that."

I lean against the bush's trunk, still panting. His suit is rumpled and there are more than a few rips across it. It's probably ruined. He has soil all over his face, and his eyes are a little wide and panicked.

"Why the hell were you running downhill like an idiot?" he snaps at me, nostrils flaring. "It's a steep hill and the ground is uneven!"

I glare at him. Did he just scold me for trying to run away from him and almost breaking my neck for it? "You were chasing me."

He blinks, scowling in confusion. "I was chasing you?"

I wave my arms around. "There was someone at the shrine? That's why I ran!" When he just looks more confused, I narrow my eyes and rethink my accusation. "Wait… That wasn't you?"

He shakes his head, his features going a little taut. "No. I was headed up this side to… check on you, since only your friend came down." He clears his throat and pulls his lower lip between his teeth. "I was going to take a quick peek, make sure everything was okay. You weren't even supposed to know I was here…"

Wait a minute. The moment I saw it was Chai who prevented me from falling, I assumed he was the one chasing me, too. But now that I think about it, he collided with me from the side, kind of semi-frontal, so he couldn't have been following me down .

Then who the hell came after me?

I wrap my arms around my torso, suppressing a shudder as I remember the icy cold sensation crashing into my neck when whoever was chasing me grabbed me. What just happened? Who was I running away from? This is kind of freaking me out. I've been here just for a couple of weeks, so I'm pretty sure I haven't had time to piss off any vengeful neighbors. My only encounter with trouble sits across from me, his dark brown eyes looking as if they are entirely black in the scarce light. There is a hint of concern in them too, confusion, excitement, a flicker of relief—

I gulp down another wave of fear. Could it have been the goons we beat up that night? Were they the ones after me? But it's been ages, and besides, they shouldn't know who I am. They were too busy getting their asses kicked to even get a good look at me.

Digging my fingers into my damp shirt, I hold Chai's gaze. "Okay. But someone was chasing me. I saw them." Or, well, I saw shadows moving among the trees, which is practically the same thing. "If it wasn't you, then… Do you think it was those guys? The ones we beat up when we first met?"

Chai scratches the side of his jaw, pulling my attention to it. It's angular and on the sharper side, though not extremely so. He smears soil all over it without realizing. Or maybe mud since my ass is starting to feel the dampness of the ground below me. Either way, I barely resist the itching need to reach out and wipe it off his face with my fingers.

Oh boy, here we go again with my impulsive urges to touch him.

"I don't think it's them. We've been, ah , monitoring the situation. "

"We, as in the Akiyama Group?" I shoot at him, letting my arms drop to the sides as my breathing finally evens out. Chai being here is doing wonders for my paranoia. I can't tell if it's just because there's two of us now or because I know he can fight. "Which you work for, and which is a mafia—yakuza organization."

He pouts and gives me a hard look. I think it's meant to intimidate me, but the flicker of mirth I catch when he leans slightly forward and a beam of moonlight catches his profile kind of ruins the whole threatening act he's going for. "Technically, I don't work for the Group. My father owns it and I help run it."

I rub my temples as my brain processes what he just said. So, he doesn't work for the mafia group. Nah, that would be too vanilla. He's Boss Jr. Got it.

"Of course he's gotta be the boss' son, Leo. Why the fuck not? It's not like you've ever been lucky. Why half-ass it when you can go the full mile, right?" I mutter to myself, sighing.

"We can go check," Chai says, grabbing a branch and pulling himself up to his feet.

"Huh?"

He offers me his hand. "The shrine. Whoever was after you can't be that far. Let's go."

I hesitate for a moment before I accept his help. My left hip and shoulder complain as I stand up, but the bearable levels of pain tell me it's nothing serious. Shaking off soil and leaves, I run a hand through my hair to get it out of my face.

"I think you need a shower," Chai throws at me, flashing me a smile he barely stops from turning into a grin .

I can't help but stare at his face and the way it sort of relaxes and opens up with the quirk of his mouth. He loses that hardass don't-piss-me-off demeanor he seems to exude in public, and suddenly feels more approachable. Like someone I could go up to in the street and chat up about movies or video games.

Or someone you could rub against in the middle of a packed club.

My heart skips a beat, but I don't let it get too excited, tearing my gaze away from him before my cheeks have caught fire.

"Let's go," I clip and brush past him.

He catches up and takes the lead. We are quiet on the way up. Alert. Listening for anything out of place, looking out for moving shadows. The shrine is still and eerie at the top, undisturbed. When we finish checking, we return to the stone wall and sit on it. I realize I left the envelope with the contract there as Chai takes out his phone.

"Hey. Did you see anyone come down the hill in the past fifteen minutes? Yeah… No, in the woods. No. No… I didn't! Yes!" He looks up at the sky and rolls his eyes. "Yes. I promise. I am behaving! I won't be long."

He continues in Japanese, making me wonder why he spoke in English in the first place. For my benefit? I've no idea what he's saying now, but his quick and clipped tone makes it sound like he might be getting scolded.

A couple of minutes later, he hangs up and turns to me, looking sheepish as he catches me staring with a smile.

"We didn't see anyone on the way up and Aran confirmed no one came down the stairs."

"Aran? Didn't he leave?" I accuse, drawing my eyebrows together .

Chai clears his throat, his eyes shimmering. "He's with the car at the base of the hill. I told him to wait until you went back to your dorms. When you didn't after your friend left, I decided to check on you."

He's weird. I'd get angry at him and his stalker tendencies, but I'm also glad. If he hadn't been there, I'd be in the hospital for sure. Plus, I'm curious. If both us and Aran didn't see anyone come off the shrine hill, then who or what did I see earlier?

"I'm positive there was someone." I say more so to myself than Chai. But then again, they also didn't answer when I called out. "Did I fucking imagine it?"

"There is a rumor…" Chai starts, swiveling around so he's facing me. He's taken off his suit vest and undone the top buttons of his dress shirt, giving me a rather good idea of his powerful and lean physique. He's definitely as fit as I am, with shoulders a little narrower than mine.

"A rumor?" I prompt him to continue, trying and failing to prevent my eyes from straying to the expanse of skin his open collar offers. There is a smudge of soil or mud on his right clavicle.

"Yeah. That this place is haunted. There were a lot of battles in this area during the Sengoku Period. Lots of death, too. It's why the locals rarely come here at night."

I shiver involuntarily. I don't really believe in ghosts or supernatural stuff, but if no other person was here but me, then maybe I should reconsider that.

"Chai. Let me get this straight. Are you suggesting I saw a ghost ?" Does he believe in them?

He considers my question for a few moments, fumbling with the envelope sitting between us. "I'm not. I'm just relaying what I've heard."

"I think I'll stick to having imagined it. "

He hums and goes silent. His eyes are trained on the letter though, so I know exactly what he's about to ask me before he even voices it. I also remember that I never got to read through the rest of the contract, so I have no clue how much he actually knows about my circumstances before coming here. If there was a mention of my prior job though, it's not nothing.

"I'm still not interested," I say, folding my arms.

Chai blinks in confusion. "Did you read all of it?"

"I didn't need to. You went as far as to dig up stuff I'd rather keep to myself." Huffing, I nudge the envelope toward him. "I've not told anyone about my dealing with the gang. Or the jobs they had me do." If only I hadn't ignored the alarms going off in my head. I will always regret letting Cindy drag me into that shit. "I don't know how you did it, but this is some serious breach of my privacy, not to mention illegal. On top of that, Naomi was with me and almost found out…"

His frown eases, an apologetic expression sliding in place instead of it. "I… It's necessary given the position I'm offering. I'm sure you understand that."

I do now, I suppose. If a yakuza boss' son wants me as his bodyguard, he better be sure I'm not someone who might want to off him.

"Look. I really don't get it. Why does it have to be me? If you already found out about the shit I got involved in, you know that this is the last thing I need on my plate."

Do they even care though? But it could be a pain in the ass for them too if someone came looking for me and found me with the boss' son.

Chai takes out the contract and flips through it until he gets to the last two pages. He hands it to me. "We know that you were used as a mule. We also know that they are currently very unhappy with your failure to complete the last job you were given."

I grit my teeth, suppressing a tremble down my spine. The bad feeling I had was just too strong when they gave me the instructions. All the extra steps, the higher pay. Something was off from the get-go. The job this time was different than the drug runs I'd done for them so far. And, god, I hated those. I can't believe I let Cindy convince me to do it that first time, thinking it won't happen again. But I really wanted to make it work with her back then.

"Honestly, I wanted to quit, but had no choice after the last guy who tried to do it was found dead. They would've killed me."

Chai's sympathetic eyes find mine. "So, you screwed them over and ran away?" he asks with a hint of awe in his voice.

"More or less?" I roll my shoulders. "Which was extremely stupid of me, I realize in hindsight, but I really wanted to be done with that shit. It was a bit too grey, even for my flexible moral compass."

Black is probably more accurate color for the kind of job it was, but then again, we'd really needed the money and the first few runs had been less hardcore. After Cindy left though, things got progressively bad and fast.

He hesitates. "We have some gaps in our intel. If you feel like filling them."

Interesting. I bet I know exactly what he is referring to as well. But do I want to tell him? I don't even know him. "Maybe some other time. Let's just say that there was some new drug, and they were going to test it on unsuspecting addicts without even telling them."

I omit the part about the questionable way in which I got that information. I'd found out by using a combination of stalking and spying on a bunch of people and I'm sure that the gang has figured that out by now and enforced stricter rules.

He frowns, eyes clouding in disapproval. "We don't deal in drugs, known or unknown. Or human trafficking. My father prohibits it, and I will do the same when I succeed him."

I blink at him, slightly impressed and secretly a little glad. I don't think he's lying, which means that the Akiyama Group must be one of those weird organizations with some semblance of morals. "Right, okay. But I'm still not interested in your job offer."

He shakes his head lightly, a sliver of a smile tilting his lips up. "If you agree to work for me, the Akiyama Group will arrange for a permanent residency permit as soon as your trial period of six months ends. If you are in Japan, we can protect you from the people you are running away from. We can also arrange for a new ID."

My stomach flips, twisting and coiling as I try to comprehend what he's just said. I am not na?ve. This is all a huge gray area, but did he just say residence was on the table? "You can grant me permanent residency just like that if I agree to work for you?"

"Not me personally, but my father knows people. You will also be compensated accordingly and granted an extended package of benefits, an apartment and a personal vehicle…"

I lose him as he carries on listing things, my mind still reeling from the permit announcement.

This is too good to be true. It has to be, because what reason does Chai have to just hand me the solution to the one problem I feared might be impossible to solve?