Within: Chapter 1

   It had been a wet and humid December in Okinawa when I heard from him again.  It had been a little over a year since I've seen him.  Although I thought about him a lot, I didn't think I missed him until I opened the envelope.  The soft, familiar curves of the way he signed his name in Romanji along with the faint sweet scent that was distinctly his drew me back to the last memory I had of him.  It brought me back to the day I learned he had not died and I was part of his life-long plan to regain his freedom.  The day he told me he didn't know how to love me.  A few months later, I transferred down to Okinawa to head the homicide division there.  The change came at the right time.  I needed it.  I wanted to put Aoshi and everything that had happened past me.

   The card listed a show time and date for a banquet at the Prince Hotel in Shinagawa.  It was for Aoshi's birthday party next week.  In Aoshi's own handwriting, he explained someone would come for me the day before the event and take me to the airport.  He had arranged a privately chartered plane to fly me into Tokyo.  I set the card aside and thought about how much I wanted to see him.  After some contemplation, I decided that it would be nice to see him again. 

   I arrived at the banquet late.  I made the mistake of stopping by the former work place and was cornered by colleagues who took turns berating me for not returning their calls or letters.  By the time I made my escape through the backdoor and returned to my hotel room in Shinagawa Prince, it was two hours past the prescribed time on the card.  I rushed to the party and discovered the birthday boy had not made his appearance yet. 

   The hall was packed with men and women whose fancy attires easily surpassed the worth of my entire wardrobe.  The stench of wealth and power flowed out of the room in tidal waves.  I might have been intimidated if I wasn't too busy looking at the attractive, sculpted bodies in tight revealing dresses.  I didn't recognize half of the attendees but I placed the other half of the people in very expensive clothing to be from Aoshi's business and an assortment of politicians who really should not be seen consorting with the people from Aoshi's business.  I went to the bar and drank martinis while I watched the crowd and waited for Aoshi to find me. 

   Aoshi made his entrance half an hour later.  An applause broke out when the attendees noticed Aoshi's descent down the stairs.  Von Erich walked a few steps behind, his eyes scanning the room as he did so.  Aoshi smiled brilliantly and looked thoughtfully over the crowd as he paused in middle of the stairway.  He wore a plain blue kimono with an antique obi that brought out his elegant Japanese features.  I lifted my martini glass and gave him a silent toast when our eyes met.  Von Erich followed Aoshi's stare and swept his gaze over to me.  I took a drink from the glass and gave him a smile.  Von Erich frowned and looked away.

   Aoshi didn't change much in the past year except his hair was a little longer.  He was just as beautiful as I remembered him from the first time we met.  As always, his green eyes were full of intelligence with a touch of mischievousness.  The kind of thoughtful look I had not found in another lover since I met him.  Looking at him then made me admit that I had missed him.

   Aoshi took some time to socialize with his guests before he slid up to me.  He didn't say anything for a few moments, then he took the olive from my martini by the toothpick and gave it a lingering lick and pressed it against my mouth.  I ate it and gave him an appreciative smile.   

   "Will you sit next to me at dinner?" I said.  "I really like the way you feed me."

   He laughed and gave my knee a small pat. 

   "Have you thought about me in the past year?" He asked in the tone that made me want to drag him off to my room right then.

   "More than you know," I said.  I fished the blue invitation card from my pocket and held it up to him.  "Why?"

   "Why what?"

   "Why did you suddenly want to see me after a year of...nothing?" I asked.

   He studied me for a few moments and leaned over and spoke in a lowered voice.

   "Would you believe me if I said I just want to see you again? Maybe to make love to you again?"

   "I would," I said.  "And as proud as I am of my sexual prowess, I know that's not the only reason why you wanted me here."

   He leaned back and said nothing for a few moments.  His brilliant smile dimmed a little.

   "Maybe so," he said finally.  "But that's the only reason I can think of right now."

   He took out a key card from the sleeve pocket of his kimono and held it out to me.  I took it.

   "Give me a couple of hours?" he asked.

   I nodded.  He gave me a small kiss on my cheek and went off to carry out his duties as the banquet host.  I pocketed the card and asked the bartender for another martini.  From the corner of my eye, I saw Von Erich stare through the crowd at me.  I fought the urge to turn to look at him in the eye and grin.  No point making him angrier than he probably was.  It would be very bad to come all this way from Okinawa, get the key to Promised Land then get killed before I can set foot in it.  

    The bartender placed a fresh glass of martini on the napkin and slid it to me.  He wasn't looking at me, however, but at someone behind me.  I glanced over my shoulder and caught the lovely sight of Kyrie cutting through the crowd to come to me.  

    "The night's getting better by the minute," I said.

    He gave me a kiss and took a seat on my lap.  His hair was a little longer and the lackluster shine from the Tokyo sun seemed to have dimmed his hair color to a darker blonde color.  He wore a tight black leather outfit, complete with knee high boots that made him look like an angel in bondage.  It was a good look for him actually.     

    "I'm glad you came," he said and asked the bartender for a glass of white wine.

    "Where's your whip?" I asked.

    He smiled and leaned close to my ear and said rather loudly,  "I prefer to be spanked."

    The bartender blushed as he set Kyrie's wine down on the napkin and pushed it next to my martini.  He hurried off to the far end of the bar to serve the guests who had clustered there.  Kyrie slid off my lap and grabbed my wrist in one hand, his wine in the other.

    "Let's take a walk.  I'd like to talk to you," he said.  

    "Just talk?" 

    "I promise I won't molest you," he said.

    "Then maybe I won't go with you," I said.  

    "I'll let you molest me then," he replied and pulled me along through the crowd.  He ignored the voices that called out his name from some people we had pressed past.  He led me out of the hall and out into what would have been a spacious balcony, but a tinted glass dome had  encased what would have been open air.  There was a couple busily groping each other on the stone bench and when Kyrie's boot heels left the carpet and stepped onto the tiled floor, they looked up.  It was a  Councilman whom I recognized from the papers having a private moment with someone who was not his wife.  Kyrie asked them to leave politely and the couple straightened their clothing quickly and left without a word.

    "I figured him to be the kind that would throw a fit for the interruption.  Obviously you gained status around here," I said and sat down on the stone benches.

    Kyrie closed the French doors and came to sit next to me.

    "Aoshi..." Kyrie said, his voice had changed into a serious tone that I had never heard before.  "Has been grooming me to take his place for the past year."

    I frowned.  "I don't understand."

    Kyrie looked at the wine glass and placed it under the bench without taking a drink.  "I'm afraid for him, Saitoh."

    "Afraid of what?"

    He looked up at me.  "He's dying, Saitoh," he said softly.  "He's killing himself and I can't help him."

    He looked down at his hands.  I knew he was holding back the tears that nearly came and I let him have the time he needed to regain his bearing.  I wound my arm around his shoulder and gathered him to me.  He didn't say anything for a long time.

    "I ran away because my father had arranged a marriage for me," he said.  "Just as he had arranged everything else in my life since birth.  He decided what school I would go to and what I should study. He decided what kinds of friends I should be allowed to consort with or even what kind of clothes I should be allowed to wear.  And then finally, he decided what kind of family I should be married into.  In some way, Aoshi shared a similar life.  The people around him chose his life for him.  The difference was, I was able to run away.  Do you know why he killed Kanryu's bastard children?"

    "He sees Kanryu in each one of them," he continued, when I didn't answer immediately. 

    "His phantom pain," I said.  "But I suppose he still felt the pain, although he thought he no longer had the wounds."

    "Very much so," he said.  "He doesn't know I've seen him, but often, he sat in his bed in middle of the night and cried.  Sometimes his nightmares would startle him so badly that Ian had to give him tranquilizers to calm him down....and the nightmares are coming more frequently lately."

    "He's been through a lifetime of trauma.  It will take him perhaps the rest of his life to heal."

    "That's not it," he said.  He kept his head low but I saw a single drop of tear fell and it sank into the fabric of my jacket.  "Kanryu has won...Kanryu has his soul... Aoshi's planning to die, because he's realized this."

    "He won't die," I said softly and stroked Kyrie's hair. 

    Kyrie buried his face into my chest and started to cry.  His hot tears soaked through my shirt and burned through my very being.  I held him closer and let him cry as I watched the crescent moon through the skyline.  It had become a bright smudge in midst of the fog that had moved in.

    "I won't let him..." I said.

   Aoshi was at his room already when I arrived at our set meeting time.  Actually, I was ambushed as I walked through the door.  He grabbed me by my lapel when I stepped into the room and slammed me against the wall as he kissed me.  When our mouth finally unlocked, he was panting a little.

   "I don't know what had happened in the past year but I like it," I said and brushed a few locks of his hair from his eyes.  He smiled and pressed his head against my chest.  I wrapped my arms around him and held him.  

   "Why did you leave Tokyo?" He said after awhile.

    I kissed him on his forehead.  "Duty calls."

    "You were in a position where you could have taken any job anywhere," he said and looked up at me.  I didn't expect to see resentment in his eyes but there were glints of it in them.  "Did you go to Okinawa to get away from me?"

    I sighed and cupped his face in my hands.  

    "I had to," I said.  "Being in Tokyo placed me in a difficult position between my job and you."

    He frowned.  "Did you think I would use you?" 

    "No," I said.  "Nothing like that."

    I didn't want to say more than I already had.  I took him by the hand and led him into the room.  Aoshi's room was a gorgeous three-room top-floor suite, fully decked out in polished marble and silver in French motif.  The room would have had a fantastic view of the Shinagawa city below if it weren't for the Winter mist that had blanketed it.  The skylines had become vague outlines in the opalescent shadows in the distance.    

    I sat down on the soft leather seat by the window and pulled Aoshi into my lap.  He nuzzled against me, his head leaned against my shoulder and we watched the mist roll by.  We didn't say anything for awhile. 

    "Are you happy?" I asked him and stroked his hair.

    "I don't know." 

    "You have your freedom," I said.  "And you have many people who loves you."

    He laughed softly and drew small circles on my chest with his forefinger.

    "Those people are here only because they knew me as Kanryu's son," he said.  "The very identity I hate passionately."

    "You can't live your life from the past.  It's not fair to the people who are and has been sincere to you.  You've got to stop pushing people away when they want to--"

    He didn't let me finish the sentence.  He licked along my lower lip and gave me a smoldering kiss that made me forget what I had wanted to say.  

    "Will you come back to Tokyo?" He whispered into my mouth then gave me another kiss.

    "I almost forgot what a great negotiator you were," I said.  "Thank you for reminding me."

    He smiled and hooked his finger into the knot in my tie to loosen it.

    "What do I have to do to make you consider it?" He asked as he pulled the tie off my neck and wound half of it around his right hand. 

    "I'm considering it now," I said.  "I would be willing to hold out for whatever you have to offer though."

    He laughed and undid the first couple of buttons on my shirt.

    "Tell me what you want me to do..." he said and nibbled at my ear.  

    With reluctance, I pulled him away from me and caught his hands as they made their way toward the zipper on my pants.  

    "Slow down, sweetheart."

    He looked at me as if I had spoken in a language he didn't understand.  

    "You're the birthday boy here," I said in a softer voice.  "You tell me what you want me to do."

    His eyes brightened and his smile grew.  He looked like a little boy who had been given a carte blanche at a toy store.

    "Really?"

    "Well, within reason," I said, a little worried about his grin.  "For obvious reasons, I can't do that many illegal things."

    "I want to play a game," he said and held up my tie he still had in his hand.  I frowned. 

    "I do not perform well when I'm tied up."

    "Have you ever wanted to give in to your darker side...? " he said and wrapped the tie around my neck twice. 

    " I do work for the government."

    He tightened the tie, I couldn't breathe well but I didn't show it.

    "I can't guarantee any kind of performance if you kill me."

    He smiled and loosened his grip on the tie after a few moments.

    "Don't you trust me?" He asked silkily.  I was certain he was laughing at me in his head.

    "I don't trust anyone when I'm trussed up like a roast pig."

    "You certainly didn't take that into consideration for me in Paris."

    "That was different," I said and unlaced the tie from my neck.  "That wasn't me who was tied up."

    He stared at me for a few moments, then finally he broke into a smile and laughed.    

    "Then I want you to..." he said and wound my tie around his throat once.

    "I've done too many erotic asphyxiation deaths to look at it as a neat little kink , darling."

    "I trust you," he said and leaned in and gave me a kiss.  

    "It's just terribly ironic for me to strangle someone given what I do for a living," I said and unwound the tie from his neck.  "The answer is no, and you had better not ask anyone to do it to you either.  No more ideas of tying up anyone anywhere with my tie."

    His smile remained.  

    "Why are you suddenly into all of this dangerous stuff?" I asked.

    "Dangerous?" He said with the most convincing innocent smiles that I had ever seen.  "You've never been with someone who likes to experiment?"

    "I'm the old fashion kind that just like to be creative with different positions," I said.  "You are not experimenting, darling.  You're acting out against something inside you."         

    I stood up and slung him over my shoulder as I did so.  He was startled but he didn't resist.  He was surprisingly light and he felt he might break in half if I dropped him.  I carried him into the bedroom and laid him down on the bed.  He laid still, his eyes stared at the ceiling and all of the playfulness that was in him suddenly dissipated.  

    "I'm sorry," he said after a few seconds.  "I'd like to be alone."

    "Are you angry because I won't play your games?"

    "I'm not angry," he said and sat up.  When he started to move to slide off the bed, I pinned him back down and he became livid.

    "Get off, I am not in the mood," he said in a low voice.

    I held down his hands and locked his hips between my knees as he started to fight.  I let him struggle and applied as much pressure as I can muster to keep him pinned beneath me.  It was difficult.  Especially after he managed to bite my arm once.  After he had exhausted himself, he sank back down on the mattress and let out a frightening scream.

    "You done?" I asked. 

    He was panting a little, his face slightly flushed from the exertion.

    "You asshole!" He screamed.  "You're just like all of them!"

    "Them?" I said.  "The people who didn't want to go along with your wish to be hurt or the people who likes to hurt you for fun?"

    "I hate you," he said.  "I hate you...."  

    I grimaced when I saw the first drop of tear roll out from the corner of his eye.  He kept on telling me he hated me as he cried.  He looked like the day when I had come for him nearly two years ago.  The way his tears kept flowed out from his eyes in thin rivulets as he stared at his father's body.  The way he must have wept the day Kanryu robbed him of his childhood and innocence in one night, through their first kiss.

    I laid on top of him and held him.  He shuddered and wound his arms around me.  He was still crying.  There were no words that I could say that could stop it.  For once in my life, I had come to hate what I was.  

    We laid in an embrace, in the dark for a few hours.  Aoshi had changed into someone I no longer recognized and I didn't know what to do with him.  I realized then how little I had known of Aoshi's past, before Kanryu came into his life.  Whatever had happened to him as a child, it all came back to him.  Kanryu had been the imperfect dam that had held Aoshi's childhood fears, and when I killed Kanryu--the dam crumpled.  I wished in vain I had not killed Kanryu, but I also knew Kanryu would eventually kill Aoshi.    

    Aoshi shifted in my arms and nestled closer against my chest.       

    "You okay?" I said and stroked his hair.

    "I'm sorry about the way I behaved..."

    "No harm done," I said and kissed him on the forehead.  I looked past him and at the digital clock by the lamp.  It was four-thirty in the morning.

    He said nothing for awhile.

    "I still see him," he said.  "He's still very real and very alive to me.  I still feel the hate and dread I lived with back when he was alive.  He rapes me in my dreams..."  His voice weakened into a whisper as he spoke.  "This time, I have no where to run to..."

    "I won't try to tell you to forget because I don't think you can.  Kanryu was a fundamental part of you and when he died, he took it with him.  It's a painful amputation but you needed it because he was the cancer that was killing you.  What you are feeling are the residue he had left behind.  If you refuse to deal with it, it will poison you....and Kanryu will get what he had wished for in his will."

    He didn't say anything.

    "Why are you grooming Kyrie to take your position?"

    His fingers tightened their grip on my shirt.  "I've cut ties with the illegitimate business partners and shut down arms and political funding.  I want this organization to be owned by someone who has clean hands."

    "You didn't answer my question."

    "I don't want to be around any of this anymore," he said.  "Everything reminds me of him.  I couldn't even go back to the mansion.  Just the scent of that place sickens me."

    "It would have been easier for you to walk away now than force yourself to immerse in the world you hated."   

    "Kyrie can do a lot of good with what I will leave him.  If I had left early, the yakuza will come and try to take the territories for themselves.  Many people  will die if the turf war broke out."

    "That's your standard reply.  What's your real reason?"  I said and loosened my arms around him.

    "No real reason.  I'm just handling the situation the only way I know how."

    I rolled out of the bed and took off my jacket which was terribly wrinkled.  I wanted a cigarette badly but I had left them in my room.  Aoshi slipped off the bed and walked into the bathroom.  I went into the living room and brought back a half of bottle of whiskey and two glasses.  I clicked on the light and drank the first glass as I looked through the windows, down at the silent city below.  

    I heard the water run in the bathroom for awhile and when Aoshi came out, he had changed out of his kimono and into a white terry cloth bathrobe.  He had freshened up although his eyes were still slightly bloodshot.  I poured him a glass of whiskey and refilled my own glass.  He took it from me and sat down on the chair next to me.

    "I know you don't like whiskey," I said.  "But that's the only thing I can find."

    He nodded and took a tiny sip.  "It's Ian's drink."

    "This is his room?" 

    "Our room," he said.  "Because..."

    He didn't finish the sentence.  He stared down at the glass in his hands and turned it back and forth slowly by its stem.

    "Of your nightmares?"

    He nodded.

    "Where is he staying if I am in his room?"

    He looked up and he smiled sadly.  "He's with his fiancée.  The woman whom he should have been with long time ago.  They're going to be married next month."

    "Did you push him to get married?"

    "I want him to be with someone who truly loved him," he said.  "He gave me so much and I can't give him one damn thing.  I want him to be happy...."

    "I don't think you knew him at all," I said.  "Being pushed away to a woman won't make him happy and you knew it.  You're forcing him to settle."

    "I don't want him to become a thing like me....if I have to force him to settle, so be it."

    He took another small sip from the glass and put it down on the window ledge.

    "Is this why you asked me to come? Why you've asked me to come back to Tokyo? To be his replacement?"

    His eyes dimmed and misted over.  I felt like an asshole for making the accusations that had hurt him.  He shook his head when I opened my mouth to apologize.

    "I asked you to come simply because I missed you," he said and took my hand into his.  Tips of his fingers were cold.  "Will you make love to me?"  

    I put the glass down on the floor and leaned over and gave him a kiss.  I picked him up from the chair and carried him to the bed.  I told him 'happy birthday' and I gave him my present until the sun rose over the skylines.

    We slept until noon and shared a shower while a maid fetched a fresh suit from my room.  It was nice to be with him again, knowing there would be no Kanryu for him to go back to.  However, he was battling a demon that no one but him can see or feel or kill.  It brought me to another level of helplessness that I hated.

    We sat in the living room and ate our late breakfast with coffee in our bathrobes.  A distance below, the Shinagawa station was busy and alive with pedestrian traffic.

    "Were you suppose to be somewhere today?" I asked.  

    He shrugged.  "Kyrie's going to the meetings for me."

    "So tell me what you had planned on doing after you back out of the business and let him take over," I said.

    "I don't know yet."

    "You expect me to believe that after what you pulled off a year ago?"

    He smiled and poured more coffee into his cup.  "I'll play with the cards as they are dealt to me," he said.

    "Okita told me that your last name's taken from your biological father," I said.

    He nodded and sipped the coffee.

    "Is he part of your future?"

    "He passed away ten years ago," he said.  "Even if he was alive, I would not have let him into my life, it would complicate situations for both of us."

    "I don't think it's fair to shut him or his family out just because your mother was the one who did the despicable thing--"

    He shook his head.  "It doesn't matter.  I really don't care what their intentions were."

    "Then why can't you forgive yourself the way you easily forgave your mother?"

    "I never said I forgave her," he said.  "I said I didn't hate her for what she did.  What made you think I need to forgive myself?"

    "Your nightmares are manifestations of your consciousness.  I suspect that you don't even hate Kanryu or any one who had hurt you in the past simply because you felt you deserved it or that was the fate God gave you.  No one is that strong, Aoshi.  You need to levy the toll where it's due instead of letting Kanryu rape you whenever and wherever he wanted to."

    I didn't expect him to look amused but he was.  A corner of his mouth curled up in a slight smile and I thought he was about to burst into a laughter.  Fortunately, he didn't.

    "A psychiatrist, supposedly one of the world's best, Ian had brought in for me told me the same thing.  Except he used a lot of clinical terms when he said it."

    "And...?"

    "And he makes at least thirty million yen more than you a year."

    Aoshi had switched himself into the playful mode when nothing I say or do can upset him because he will not take anything seriously.  I sighed and dropped the topic.      

    "When are you planning to leave?" He asked.  

    "Sometime tonight.  I have to check with the flight schedule," I said.  "I have to be in court tomorrow."

    He nodded.

    "Why don't you come down with me?" 

    He reached across the table and took my hand and gave it an affectionate squeeze.

    "I want to but it's too soon to leave Kyrie alone," he said.  "Maybe in a few months."

    "A few months," I said.  "And you will have to promise me that you will talk to that over-priced shrink Von Erich found for you."

    "He's just going to tell me what I already know."

    "You're not understanding the fine art of psychiatry, honey.  Most of it is revalidation of what you already know."

    He laughed.

    "And someday, I hope you can trust me enough to tell me what you will tell him about your past."

    "Someday..." he said with a radiant smile.  "You will know everything."

    "You can't leave!" Kyrie yelled and posted himself in front of the closet.  I suspended packing and went for a cigarette.  Kyrie became angrier as he watched me light up and smoke by the window.  

    "I'm due in court in the morning," I said. 

    "I don't care! You can't leave!"

    "You are suppose to stomp your feet when you say that."

    I thought he was going let out a scream.  Instead, he threw his cell phone at me.  I caught it short of it striking me in the chest.

    "Do you think what's happening to Aoshi's funny?"

    "Not at all," I said.  "I do find it amusing that you think I'm some kind of placebo for him.  Aoshi's not going to do anything I tell him to do and you know it.  I am not trained to help him in the capacity he needs, even if he accept my help.  Von Erich had the right idea bringing in a psychiatrist for him."

    "He won't see the psychiatrist anymore."

    "He had promised me he would," I said.

    "He will promise you anything," he said.  "Because you will not see him again after you leave."

    "How about if I smuggle him out of Tokyo and into my apartment.  I do have a spare closet where I can keep him.  I'll let him out sometimes for bathroom breaks, but I guess I can lay out newspaper on the floor for him.  As payment of some sort, since I am not going to be paid that few million yen you didn't have to pay the psychiatrist, I'll just fuck him every other day for a couple of hours."

    I think I heard Kyrie growl but he didn't say anything for a few minutes.  His hands clenched and unclenched and I was very glad for the distance between us.  I prepared myself to catch or dodge whatever else he was going to throw at me.  He reminded me of a rather volatile woman I had gone out with once and how she reacted when I told her I didn't want to see her again.  Everything that she could picked up by her own strength, was picked up and hurled at me.  However, Kyrie threw harder and with more accuracy than that woman.

    "I need you to understand that what's happening to him now, wasn't like what had happened to him a couple of years ago.  Kanryu was a living, tangible person I can protect him against--if he had allowed himself to leave him and stay with me then.  I can't protect him when Kanryu's inside his head."

    "He has been finding Kanryu in the the living form--" he said.

    "Come again?"

    He looked uncomfortable, as if he had accidentally said something that should not have been said.

    "The closet might be too small to fit both of you," I said when he didn't answer.  "I can let you two have the run of the apartment if you two wore these little French maid uniforms and carried little feather dusters.  Would it be too much for me to ask for an occasional sex show when there's nothing good on TV?"

    "You are incredible..."  he said.

    "Tell my guests that when they come over to visit.  It will certainly make me popular among my peers."

    "Is this how you feel about this whole thing?" He asked.  "Make sexist remarks when you don't have anything constructive to say?"

    "I make sexist remarks because that's the only thing that seemed to get your attention.  As fond as I am of the idea of being God, I am not Him.  What were you saying about him finding Kanryu?"

    He was spared from answering me when the cell phone started to play a digitalized version of Mozart's Symphony number 40.  I held out the phone to him.  With some reluctance, he came to me and  took the phone and answered it.  I lit up the second cigarette with the barely burning end of my first one.  

    As he listened to the speaker, his frown became pronounced and he looked progressively angrier by the second.  He finally burst out in a long list of curse words in various colorful combinations.  When he hung up, he threw the phone across the room.  It struck the headboard of the bed and clattered to the floor.  His phone had made a small dent in the wooden frame.

    "Bad news?" I asked.

    He shot me a dirty look.  "Aoshi's been going into bars and nightclubs alone and provoking fights."

    "He's dealt with men a hell of a lot more dangerous than drunks."

    "He wasn't getting into physical altercations for sport.  He does it to get raped," he said.

    "I see," I said.  For some reason, I was not surprised by what he had said.  I think I had always known Aoshi's capacity for cruelty to himself since the first time I met him.  He was driven by the innate pain that I could not begin to comprehend.  Being with him was disconcerting because I can feel it, although I still do not understand it.  

    "I take it your security detail that was suppose to keep an eye on him weren't doing a good job," I said and nodded at the direction where the cell phone had landed.

    "Even Ian have a problem keeping a trail on him."

    "What does Von Erich think of this?"

    "He knew, but I don't want him to be involved in this."

    "So you're Aoshi's new keeper?" 

    He looked annoyed when I said it but he held back whatever he had wanted to say.  

    "I guess I've been asking you the wrong question all this time," he finally said.  "Do you even care about Aoshi?"

    "I care for him on the level that you don't understand," I said.  "I care for him to know he can't be saved by illusions or putting the band-aids on the wounds that can be seen."

    He was quiet for a few moments, lost in his own thoughts.  Then he turned and walked briskly toward the door.

    "You're not going to tell me where he's at so I get to drag him back for you?"

    He paused by the door and looked over to me.  He didn't look angry or frustrated anymore.  In fact, he had wiped all expressions off his face.  

    "No," he said.  "Go back to your life in Okinawa.  You're right.  You can't help him."  

END PART 1  260102