"Yeah, I know. But it's, like, super fun to kick their asses. Nothing feels better."

"Alright, if you say so. The Takasato Group’s gonna have a rough time ahead of them, anyway, with what happened, so they’ll have trouble controlling that area. Both of you should keep your heads down for now.”

"That's okay, they can try. I'll just shut them up with my fists if I need to."

"Save it for your Deathmatches," Taku says, rolling his eyes and smiling.

"Yessir! After this parfait you bought me I'll do anything you ask of me."

His smile widens and he shakes his head. "Anyway, we've got work tomorrow. Let's call it a night."

"Right-on!"

"And Towa, you'd best get some actual sleep. No bar-hopping or hookups, hear me?"

"Sure."

So Taku and Rei get up, and Taku walks over to the register to pay.

Rei blinks and turns to look at Towa again. "He's paying for yours, too?"

"Well, I just got a coffee."

He frowns exaggeratedly. "Everyone always waits on you hand and foot, don't they? Are they scared you'll wander away like a stray cat?"

Rei should know the answer better than Towa, being one of the people who "waits on him hand and foot".

"Beats me."

Towa doesn't have to work the next day, so he only gets up in the afternoon. He lazes around in his room until Taku shows up to drag him out to eat at this little hole-in-the-wall café near the clinic that he discovered by accident on one of his walks one day. After that, Taku goes back to work, and Towa decides to spend the rest of the afternoon wandering around town. When the sun sets, he decides to go to a park in the District E residential area.

On such a winter night, the place is deserted, and the white glow of the streetlamps against the shadows of the trees swaying in the breeze give the place an eerie atmosphere. The playground looks like something out of a horror movie, like the killer is about to step out of one of the concrete tunnels to come after their victims.

He's not willing to take any actions that would make him any less of an easy target, if that were the case. He sits down on a chilly metal bench, lights a cigarette, and stares at the sky. He had nothing to do all day, so he did nothing, and he's going to keep doing some more nothing. That's fine by him.

The sound of footsteps can be heard approaching, and three people Towa's familiar with walk up to him at the same time.

"Seee? I told you it was Towa," says the tallest of the bunch, a fuchsia-Smoked man by the name of Mayu with long straight blond hair and a couple of silver ear piercings wearing a black overall with hot pink accents over an otherwise bare torso that shows off many different tattoos: barbed wire circling his right forearm, a bunched up metal chain with a bell hanging from it around his left, black bands around the base of the index, ring, and little fingers and the thumbs of both hands, stars around a waning moon with a drooping face on his right shoulder, a black-and-white star under his right collarbone, some kind of angelic green-haired anime girl on his left upper-arm, a fiery monster on his left pec, and Towa knows from close experience that that's not at all the full breadth of all the tats he has.

"Damn, you were right," says the second one, Kotarō, a man with red Smoke, spiky white hair, and far too many piercings and studs on his face including a piercing on the left of his bottom lift that has a chain connecting it to an earring. His open long-sleeved leather jacket doesn't reach halfway down his torso, but he only has the one black dragon tattoo covering the left of the front of his torso and wrapping around his upper back then back over his right collarbone.

"Towa-san!" greets the third one, Eiji. He isn't topless or showing off any tattoos, opting instead for a thick baggy hoodie over a black skintight top. He's also wearing a beanie and his eyes are hidden by reflective orange single-lens sunglasses. His Smoke is a soft blue-green, and Towa's hardly ever seen it waver.

Which just goes to show that the old adage that sluts don't feel cold is completely true. "Yo."

"Man, how'd you even spot him from that far off?"

"My eyesight is perfect."

"That just doesn't add up with the amount of time you spend watching anime."