"And Daddy's about to find out what happens when you hurt my family."
Outside, the rain fell harder. Inside, the Dragon stretched and remembered how to breathe fire.
Ryuuji swirled the last of his whiskey, watching amber liquid catch the light. "Then go say hello." He tilted his head toward the glass wall. "Your congregation is waiting."
Hanae stepped to the window and stopped.
Her breath fogged the glass for a heartbeat before the cold erased it.
Below, Kabukicho had stopped being a city. It had become something else—a tableau, a photograph, a moment frozen in the rain.
The streets were choked with black metal. Sedans with rain streaming off their hoods. Motorcycles with engines ticking as they cooled. Vans with tinted windows that probably contained things the Tokyo Metropolitan Police would rather not inventory. Some of the vehicles looked new, fresh off dealer lots. Others were scarred—dented bumpers, scratched paint, the patina of machines that had seen violence and survived.
But it was the men that made her throat tight.
Hundreds of them. Standing in the deluge like it was a sunny afternoon. No umbrellas. No shelter. Just men in dark suits getting soaked to the bone, waiting.
They weren't on their phones. Weren't smoking or talking or fidgeting. They just stood there with the stillness of people who'd learned to wait in worse conditions than rain. Soldiers. Brothers. The family she'd abandoned.
The police box on the corner had gone dark—blinds drawn, door locked, the two officers inside suddenly very interested in their paperwork. The usual crowd of touts and hustlers had evaporated. Even the Nigerian bouncers who normally worked the club entrances had vanished. They knew. Everyone in Kabukicho's ecosystem knew when to make themselves scarce.
"Impressive," Ryuuji said quietly, moving to stand beside her but keeping distance—the space you gave to something dangerous. "I pay my men extremely well to show loyalty. But this?" He gestured at the street. "You can't buy this. This is devotion."
"It's not devotion." Hanae's reflection in the glass looked like a stranger—half-naked in a destroyed wedding dress, dragon writhing across her back. "It's debt. I kept them alive. Now they're here to return the favor."
She turned from the window. Her bare feet left wet prints on Ryuuji's expensive floor.
"Coming?"
Ryuuji straightened his jacket. "Wouldn't miss it."
The walk down from the office felt like descending through layers of her own life.
Through Tartarus's main floor, past Ryuuji's current fighters—young men with sharp eyes and sharper ambitions—who pressed themselves against the walls as she passed. They saw a woman in rags but moved like she was wearing a crown.
Past the heavy bags still swinging slightly. Past the octagon where the recruit she'd broken was being carried out on a stretcher. Past the weights and the mats and all the tools of violence rendered suddenly inadequate.
Hanae reached the iron door and shoved it open without slowing.
The storm hit her like a living thing. Wind howling down the alley, carrying rain that felt like needles against her exposed skin. The temperature had dropped—late spring sliding into something colder, angrier.
She stepped onto the wet asphalt and the world went quiet.
Not silent. The rain still fell. The wind still blew. But three hundred engines cut off in perfect synchronization, their rumble dying to nothing.
The silence that replaced it had weight.
Hanae walked out of the alley and into the main street. The rain hammered her bare back, washing away dried blood, stinging the cuts on her palm, soaking what remained of her dress until it clung like a second skin.
She didn't shiver. Didn't hunch against the cold. Just stood there in the middle of the road, backlit by the garish neon of a Don Quijote discount store, and looked at her people.
Old Genji, the mechanic who'd lost three fingers catching a knife meant for her father. His suit was a decade out of style, tight around a belly that hadn't been there when she'd left, but pressed with military precision.
Hiro, her best sniper, who'd tried to become a salaryman and had failed at the normalcy just like she had. Still wearing his company ID badge on a lanyard, but with a rifle case slung over his shoulder like he'd never put it down.
Faces she'd known since childhood. Men who'd taught her to fight, to shoot, to survive. Men she'd tried so hard to forget so she could learn to arrange flowers and smile at dinner parties and be the woman Kenji wanted.
They stared at her. Took in the torn dress, the scars, the dragon made luminous by rain. Some of their expressions were shocked. Others looked like they were seeing a ghost. A few looked like they were seeing God.
Then Takeshi moved.
He stood at the front—massive in his white chef's uniform that was already transparent with rain, his face doing something complicated between agony and worship.
He dropped.
Not a bow. Not the polite bend of a subordinate to a superior.
Takeshi crashed to his knees in the oily water pooling on the street. Placed his palms flat on the ground. Pressed his forehead to the asphalt hard enough that Hanae heard the impact from ten feet away.
Dogeza. Total submission. The gesture that said I am nothing, you are everything, do with me what you will.
Thud.
Behind him, the ripple began.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Like a wave crashing through a forest, three hundred men fell to their knees. The sound was visceral—wet impacts, fabric rustling, breath escaping in synchronized gasps. It wasn't the sound of an army kneeling. It was the sound of an avalanche.
Within seconds, the entire street was a field of bowed backs. Not one man looking up. All of them pressing their faces into filth, exposing the backs of their necks—the killing spot, the place where samurai accepted the blade—to the rain and to her judgment.
"WE ARE HERE!" Takeshi's voice cracked on the words, raw with six years of waiting. "WE ARE HERE, ASURA-SAMA! FORGIVE US! FORGIVE US FOR LIVING WHILE YOU WERE GONE!"
"FORGIVE US!" Three hundred voices, one sound, bouncing off buildings and shaking windows in the host clubs above.
Hanae stood there, rain streaming down her face, and felt something in her chest that had been frozen for six years begin to crack.
She wasn't alone.
She had never been alone.
She'd just been too busy trying to be someone else to remember.
She walked forward. Her bare feet splashed through puddles. She stopped in front of Takeshi's massive, trembling form.
"Stand up, Takeshi."
Her voice was quiet but it carried. Takeshi's whole body shuddered like she'd struck him. He pushed himself up slowly, mud streaming from his forehead, and Hanae saw tears mixing with the rain on his scarred face.
In his hands he held a black lacquer box, cradling it like it contained something holy.
"I kept it," he whispered, voice thick. "Cleaned it every week. Every single week for six years. I knew..." He swallowed hard. "I knew the cooking couldn't be forever. I knew you'd come back."
Hanae stared at the box. Her hand hovered over it, trembling slightly.
"Kenji said I looked plain in white." The words came out flat, factual. "Said I looked like hired help."
She reached down and grabbed what was left of her wedding dress bodice—two million yen worth of custom silk and lace and lies.
She ripped.
Not slowly. Not seductively. She tore it off like it was on fire, like it was choking her, like it was a bandage that had been left on too long over a wound that needed air.
The dress came away in pieces. She let it fall.
It landed in an oil-slicked puddle with a wet slap. Lay there like a corpse. Like the death certificate of a woman who'd never really existed.
Hanae stood there in the rain wearing only her undergarments and her scars, and she didn't look vulnerable. She looked like a statue. Like something carved from marble by someone who understood violence.
She opened the black box.
Inside, folded with the precision of origami, was a suit.
Not a woman's suit. Not something with a skirt and a soft blazer meant to make her look professional but unthreatening. This was a bespoke Italian-cut men's suit tailored specifically to her dimensions—to shoulders that needed room, to a back that couldn't be contained, to arms that required mobility.
Black. Matte. The color of funerals and finality.
Hanae lifted out the white dress shirt. The fabric was crisp and dry despite the rain, perfectly starched. She slid her arms into the sleeves and the feeling was electric. After six years of soft cardigans and pastel blouses and things designed to make her look smaller, the structure felt like armor snapping into place.
She buttoned it all the way to her throat. Covered the hollow where Kenji used to kiss her before he stopped bothering.
The tie next. Black silk, heavy in her hands. Her fingers remembered—over, under, around, through. The Windsor knot pulled tight against her collar, perfect on the first try. Muscle memory older than her marriage.
The trousers slid over her legs, the fabric settling against muscle that had been hidden under A-line skirts and modest hemlines. The waist sat high and firm, the cut making her look taller, broader, more.
Finally, the jacket.
Takeshi held it open, his hands shaking slightly.
Hanae turned her back to him. Slid her arms into the sleeves. The jacket settled onto her shoulders with a weight that felt like coming home. It hid the dragon but didn't silence it. Just sheathed the blade. Put the weapon away without making it less dangerous.
She fastened the single button at her waist. Smoothed the lapels.
Takeshi reached into the box one last time. Pulled out black leather gloves—the kind with no lining, soft as butter, expensive as sin.
Hanae took them. Pulled on the left. Snap. Then the right. Snap.
The blood on her hands disappeared. The scars vanished. The past six years erased under Italian leather.
Hanae the Housewife was dead. She was lying in that puddle with the white dress.
The woman standing in the street of Kabukicho was the Asura, and she had work to do.
She looked up. Ryuuji was leaning against the alley entrance with a cigarette between his lips—unlit, just there for show. Watching her with an expression that was equal parts hunger and wariness. He nodded once. A salute between equals.
Hanae turned back to her men. Three hundred faces still pressed to the ground.
"Heads up."
The command cracked like a whip. Three hundred heads snapped up in unison. Eyes locked on her. Waiting.
"My uncle Jiro sits in the Roppongi tower." Her voice wasn't loud but it carried, cutting through rain and wind like it was nothing. "Sits in my father's chair. Drinks my father's whiskey. Sells my streets to foreigners like we're a fucking market stall."
She adjusted her gloves, taking her time, letting the silence build.
"You know why I left?"
"NO, BOSS!" The response was immediate, thunderous.
"I left because I thought..." She paused. Chose her words carefully. "I thought I could be soft. Thought the world would let me rest. But the world doesn't work that way, does it? The world sees softness and it crushes it. Tests it. Breaks it."
She walked to the nearest sedan—a Mercedes S-Class, black and gleaming despite the rain. The driver, a young man with a fresh scar bisecting his left eyebrow, scrambled to open the rear door.
Hanae paused with her hand on the roof. Looked at her reflection in the dark window—sharp suit, dead eyes, a woman who'd died and been reborn in the space of an hour.
"We're going to Roppongi."
The words fell into silence.
"We're not sneaking in. We're not asking permission." She looked at Takeshi. "Do you still have the battering ram?"
Takeshi's grin was feral, transforming his face into something almost frightening. "In the truck, Boss. Been keeping it oiled."
"Good."
Hanae slid into the back seat. The leather was cold and perfect. It smelled like new car and wet wool and possibility.
"Drive."
The driver shut her door.
THUD.
And that sound—that single sound—became three hundred sounds as car doors slammed shut all around her in a cascading wave. THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD. Like artillery fire. Like the beginning of something that couldn't be stopped.
Engines roared to life. Motorcycles revved, exhausts spitting blue flame into the night. The air filled with the smell of gasoline and rain and the particular electricity that came before violence.
The convoy began to move.
Not cautiously. Not apologetically. They moved like they owned the streets because for the next however-long-this-took, they did.
Lead motorcycles kicked up their stands and peeled out, blocking intersections, stopping civilian traffic with nothing but their presence. The Mercedes rolled forward, flanked by SUVs packed with the Ghost Squad's heavy hitters—men who specialized in close-quarters violence and didn't ask questions.
Hanae sat centered in the back seat. Didn't look out the window at Ryuuji still watching from the alley. Didn't acknowledge the pedestrians pressing themselves against buildings as the convoy passed.
She looked into the rearview mirror.
Her own eyes stared back. Dark. Empty of everything except purpose. No trace of the woman who'd cried over burnt toast. No shadow of the woman who'd begged for scraps of affection from a man who'd never respected her.
Just the Asura.
"Daddy isn't going to like this," she whispered to the empty car.
She reached into the inside pocket of her jacket. Found something there that made her smile—a small, sharp expression that didn't reach her eyes.
Ryuuji. That clever bastard.
She pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a gold lighter, both expensive, both exactly what she would have chosen herself.
She hadn't smoked in six years. Kenji hated smoking. Said it was unladylike. Said it made her smell like the streets she'd come from.
Fuck Kenji.
She put a cigarette between her lips. Flicked the lighter.
Click. Whoosh.
The flame illuminated her face for a moment—all sharp angles and harder edges, beautiful in the way that weapons were beautiful.
She inhaled. Held it. Exhaled a stream of gray smoke that swirled against the car's ceiling like a ghost looking for a way out.
The taste was bitter and perfect and familiar. Like coming home to a house you'd left burning.
Through the windshield, she could see the convoy stretching ahead—a river of metal and purpose flowing through Tokyo's arteries toward Roppongi. Toward her uncle. Toward the reckoning six years overdue.
She took another drag. Let the smoke fill her lungs.
"Let's go to war," she said to no one, to everyone, to herself.
Behind her, three hundred engines roared agreement.
The Dragon was awake.
And she was starving.
[End of Chapter 4]