There's a knock on the door, and Taku's voice sounds through it. "Oi? You decent?"

"Yeah," she replies, reaching over for the pack of cigarettes on her center table.

He opens the door, then, one hand carrying a bag with a boxed lunch in it and the other lifted up to block the view of Towa's body because this isn't his first rodeo and he knows that her definition of "decent" does not always involve wearing a top.

"You've seen my tits before," she says while she's lighting her cigarette, then she takes a deep puff of it to complete fulfilling her morning needs.

"Doesn't mean I want to repeat the experience," he says, lowering the hand when he notices that she is in fact wearing a shirt. He dodges some unknown debris on the floor so that he can place her lunch on her kitchenette's counter. "God, this place is a mess."

Doctor Murase Takuma, owner of the Murase clinic, has an upstanding reputation that attracts patients not only from the local neighbourhood but also workers from the business district. His clinic opens its doors somewhat late, at 10AM, and then Taku usually takes a long lunch from 1:30PM to 4PM. After that, he usually stays open until 1AM. The unusual hours are appreciated by workers who work unusual schedules and can't find time to go to the doctor otherwise.

Taku himself is a middle-aged man who has taken care of Towa for a good chunk of her life. As an adult, she's been working at his clinic as a receptionist and occasionally medical assistant, in exchange for being allowed to live in this apartment in the floor above the clinic plus a small stipend. Taku feels more responsible for her than just that, though, and will often come over with food and occasionally will even clean her apartment, when it's too messy, and do her laundry. He says that if he doesn't do that her place will become a pigsty and she will be wearing filth every day.

He's not wrong.

"What are you doing here? Don't you only have another hour of lunch?"

"Came to check on you and see if you were alive."

Towa's gaze goes to the boxed lunch and then up to Takuma's face and she raises an eyebrow.

For some reason, she has always been able to see auras around other people. She call them their "Smoke", due to the way they look to her and how they move and sway around them. Each person has their own unique coloured Smoke, and it shifts depending on their mental state. She's not sure why she can see it, and she thinks it's probably just a hallucination of some kind, further proof that she's not all there. She doesn't usually give it a lot of thought, though, and only uses it as a way to guess what other people are feeling.

Taku's is typically orange, and the way it flows gently and peacefully tells her that he's not really worked up.

"Rei's idea," he explains. "I was out running errands and haven't had lunch yet, and he said he was sure you weren't fed and that we could eat together."

"He's coming too, then?"

"You bet I am," says Izumi Rei, choosing this moment to appear and walk into the apartment.

"...God, this place is a mess."

Rei's main job is at a bar called Roost, but it doesn't open until 5PM, so he does the odd job here and there, and one of those odd jobs is picking up shifts at the clinic to fill the time. And like Taku, he's an incorrigible busybody who insists on sticking his nose in Towa's business. His Smoke is pale yellow, and he seems to be worried up about the mess. One would think he has an interest in her, but he's strictly gay, and she has no idea what other reason he'd have to do all of this. She doesn't really care, though.

"I'm gonna go take a shower," she says, taking one last drag of her cigarette then crushing it into her ashtray and getting to her feet.

"Oi! You're just gonna ignore us?"

"Yeah," she replies, walking over to her bathroom so that she can get rid of some of the grime and sweat and smoke sticking to her skin and hair.

When she walks out, wet hair clinging to her back and stifling a huge yawn, the room looks a lot less messy than it did before, courtesy of the Taku/Rei taskforce. "You're not wearing your eyepatch," Taku observes when he spots her.

She subconsciously reaches up to touch her right eyelid. She was shot in the head in a gang fight years ago but all the bullet took was that eye and most memories surrounding the event. "Ran out," she says.

"Coulda told me. Come downstairs after lunch so I can get you some more."

"What's the point of having gorgeous hair like yours if you won't take care of it," sighs Rei long-sufferingly, but given the way he's already holding a brush and a hair dryer it's clear he expected this.

They fuss far too much. Towa does sit on the sofa again with her back to Rei, though, to let him dry and brush her hair, and she accepts the plate with food Taku offers her. What actually bugs her is that they took her bottle while they were tidying up.

At least she still has her cigs.

"No smoking while we eat!" Rei admonishes.

She sighs. Not the cigs, then.

There's a moment of quiet short enough most people would see it as the normal lull of conversation but which to Towa feels excruciating—because her TV is off, too, its soothing static noise gone. 

At that she finally snaps. She pulls away from Rei and stands up to turn her TV on and go grab her booze. She is too sober to deal with this shit.

"—hey?"

"I've told you not to turn the TV off," Towa says, not hiding the annoyance in her tone, and not bothering to clarify which of the two she's addressing. She knows it was Taku, anyway. 

She wonders what her Smoke looks like, right now, not that she's able to see it.

Taku has the gall to sound defensive. "Geeze, I just—"

"I don't care," she interrupts, walking back to the center of the room with a bottle in hand. She doesn't sit next to Rei, either.

...yeah.

He pushes her plate in her direction, though.

Fine, sure, she'll eat.

The silence this time stretches longer than just a moment, with both Taku and Rei aware that they were doing a bit too much.

That's fine, her irritation dissipates nearly as quickly as it showed up and the low-volume meaningless TV noise helps keep the edge off.

She hates silence.

"...has been hospitalised this morning after a heart attack..."

"—wait, turn up the volume."

Rei glances at Towa and, seeing no resistance from her, does so.

"Takasato Ryūjirō, founder and chairman of Takasato Group, age 81, was one of the main driving forces behind the establishment of Shinkōmi. Known in the early 2000s as the Tōkyō Waterfront City Center of Odaiba, it's the only Special Administrative District of Japan to allow gambling largely due to the Group's lobbying, and its status as a world-famous tourist destination has made it the most prosperous..."

She stops paying attention, turning back to her food and drink. Mostly drink.

"...hey, Towa, isn't that... your dad...?"

"Yes." Not that she's ever had a relationship with Takasato, really. The man never married, and his two children were by different women who were part of his gang. "Were" because Towa's mother died when she was a child, but Towa has no idea who Kaga's mother is or was, either, and in any event Kaga himself is dead so it doesn't matter. 

...actually, was Takasato also Towa's little sister's father? For some reason she doesn't think so, but her sister died when their mother did and people are always reluctant to talk about her so Towa doesn't actually know.

Or care, really.

"Are you... okay?"

"Yeah." She barely knows the man.

"Would you like me to—" Taku starts, but the look of utter indifference Towa gives him stops him. He smiles self-consciously and shrugs. "Never mind."

She really doesn't get what the big deal is. Towa interacted with that guy like five times in her life and all of them were before Kaga died. He's a sperm donor at best.

Whatever. She should eat this food quickly so that she can enjoy the rest of her afternoon alone before she has to go to work.

"Oh, hey, Rei, you had a match last night, right? How did that go?"

"It went well! They never had a chance, Honami was a beast..."