Chapter Text
Y/N woke up feeling like she had a cigarette in her mouth and no feeling in her right arm. When she opened her eyes she figured out why. Naoya's forearm was lying across her collarbones, dead weight. They were tangled together on the saggy end of a sectional sofa, surrounded by empty cups and the smell of spilled beer. Someone had drawn a dick on the glass coffee table in shaving cream and there was a pair of men's jeans on the lampshade.
Naoya was breathing against the back of her neck. If she moved even a little, he'd feel it. So she just stayed there, completely still, waiting to see who would move first.
"Is it Saturday?" he mumbled without opening his eyes.
"I think so," she whispered.
Naoya yawned into her hair, then pulled his arm tighter around her, pulling her deeper into his chest. They were both still fully dressed except for his socks, which had ended up on her feet at some point during the night.
The house was quiet. Bodies still scattered across the living room floor, someone's arm thrown over their face, someone else half buried under a throw blanket that belonged to no one. Just the hum of the fridge and the sound of someone shuffling around on the deck outside.
She checked her phone. Eight unread texts from her mother, all some version of:
— DON'T FORGET!
— Dinner today.
— Dad will be so happy!
She typed back:
— i’ll be there
Naoya rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. He looked at the light fixture for a moment, then at her. "We should get breakfast. Or like, drive-thru."
She thought about it. The kitchen was probably out. Someone had most likely puked in the sink again. "Don't you have an audition today?"
"Not till four. My agent's been blowing up my phone but whatever."
She sat up slowly and tried not to look at her outfit, which was completely wrecked. "I can't anyway. My dad's birthday thing is today."
Naoya pushed himself up on his elbows. "His birthday?"
She ran her fingers through her hair, then dragged them under her eyes, feeling the dried mascara flaked there.
"Yeah. Technically it was last week. His schedule got moved around."
She found one shoe under the edge of the couch and started looking for the other. "He's in pre production on something new, so everything got pushed. It's just dinner at my parents' place, nothing fancy."
He watched her with that lazy, curious look he got sometimes. "You going in that?" He nodded at her dress.
"God, no." She finally spotted the other shoe wedged under someone's backpack and grabbed it. "My parents would actually lose their minds."
Naoya smiled at that, just a little. He lay back with his arms folded behind his head, watching her put herself back together.
She sat back down on the edge of the couch to pull her shoes on and stayed there a second longer than she needed to. She wasn't sure how to start it. She'd been not starting it for a while now.
"Can I… Can I ask you something?"
"Mhm."
"What are we doing?"
Naoya looked at her. Not confused exactly, more like he was waiting to hear where she was going with it.
"Like." She pressed her lips together. "What is this. Us."
He was quiet for a second. "We're doing what we've been doing. Why?"
"Because I want to know what that is."
He sat up then, slower, and looked at her properly. "Y/N—"
"I'm not trying to make it weird," she said, even though she could already feel it getting weird. "I just want to know where I stand."
Naoya rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't really do the label thing. You know that."
"I know you've said that."
"Because it's true." He said it lightly, like it was obvious, like she was the one making something simple complicated. "Labels just put this weird pressure on everything. Like suddenly you're performing a relationship instead of just being in one."
She looked at him. "So we're in one."
"You know what I mean."
She did know what he meant. That was the problem. He always said just enough that she couldn't argue with any specific part of it, but never quite enough that she could hold onto anything either.
"Things are good right now," he said. His voice dropped a little, the way it did when it was just them. "Aren't they?"
She didn't answer straight away.
"Aren't they?" he said again, softer.
"Yeah," she said. "They're good."
"So why rush it." He reached over and tucked a piece of hair back from her face, and she let him. "We don't have to put a name on something that's already working."
She nodded slowly. Somewhere in the back of her head a quieter version of herself wanted to point out that "already working" and "good enough not to question" were not the same thing. But she didn't say that. She just found her jacket on the armrest and stood up.
"I have to go," she said.
Naoya followed her in his socks, hands shoved in the pockets of his gray sweats. "You want a ride?"
She thought about it. "No, I'll Uber. It's like ten minutes."
They stood in the little entryway. For a second it was quiet and Y/N could almost pretend they were a normal couple doing normal things like eating brunch and arguing about what to watch.
He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek and stayed there just a second longer than he needed to.
"Text me later," he said.
"Maybe," she said.
She pulled the door open and the cold air hit her all at once. She didn't look back.
Outside she stood on the front step waiting for the Uber and scrolled through her phone to pass the time.
That's when she saw the emails. Three of them, all from different addresses, but she knew straight away it was the same person. The writing was the same. The way the sentences were structured, the specific things they said. She'd gotten messages like this before and each time the email address was different, like whoever it was kept making new ones every few weeks.
She read the first line of one and then stopped. Her jaw tightened.
The texts attached were worse.
Screenshots of things, her name, things that were clearly meant to scare her.
She didn't read all of it. She closed the app, then turned her phone off completely and shoved it in her pocket.
It was probably nothing. Some bored person with too much time. A prank. People did stuff like this sometimes, especially when your dad had a name. It didn't mean anything.
The Uber pulled up and she got in and stared out the window the whole ride back.
Her apartment was quiet when she got home. She turned the shower on as hot as it would go and stood under it until the cold from outside was completely gone and her skin felt like it was starting over.
She did her makeup very differently than she normally would. Very clean and natural looking. Her hair she actually brushed out and styled instead of
just pulling it back, pinned neatly away from her face. She took out her belly button piercing and left it on the bathroom counter.
She was mid mascara when her laptop screen lit up on the desk behind her. She caught the notification in the mirror.
Assignment due: today, 11:59pm.
"Shit," she murmured, mostly to herself.
She put the mascara down, pulled up the course page, and stared at it. She had genuinely forgotten this one existed. Which wasn't entirely surprising. She'd been showing up to lectures maybe every other day lately, sitting in the back when she did go, half listening while her mind went somewhere else entirely. She wasn't even sure when that had started happening.
She grabbed her phone and texted Maki.
- hey can you send me the homework for thursday's class. please please please
The reply took a minute.
— dude i swear to god
— i know i know i'm sorry
Another pause. She held her breath.
— fine. im sending it now. you owe me
— you are literally the best person alive i mean that
— yeah yeah
The file came through and she opened it, read through it quickly, changed enough that it didn't look like a straight copy, and submitted it. She felt a small, guilty wave of relief and then immediately pushed it down and went back to getting ready.
She was almost out the door when her phone buzzed. She looked at the screen without thinking.
Another email. Different address, same feeling. She could tell from the subject line alone.
She clicked the screen off without opening it and dropped her phone into her bag.
The house was set back from the road behind a long driveway lined with trees, in a neighborhood where the houses didn't have numbers you could read from the street because no one who came here needed to look for them. She had grown up here and she still felt the slight shift every time she turned onto this road, like she had to become a different person.
She rang the bell even though she had a key. It felt right to ring when there were guests.
Her mother opened the door and immediately at her. Fitted cream sweater, dark trousers, hair down and smooth. Not what she'd looked like six hours ago. Her mother smiled and pulled her in.
"You look nice," she said with a smile. "Come in, everyone's already eating."
The dining room was full. Slightly too loud, the way it always got when her dad's family was around. Her grandmother was at the far end of the table, her aunts on one side, a couple of her dad's cousins on the other. Her father was at the head, already mid story about something, and he looked up when she walked in and his whole face changed.
"There she is," he said, like she'd completed something just by showing up.
She made her rounds. Hugged her grandmother, kissed her aunts on the cheek, said hello to everyone, answered the same three questions she always answered at these things. She sat down, poured herself some water, and let the noise of the table settle around her.
The food was good. Her mom had done too much as usual. They ate and talked and at some point someone brought out the cake and they sang and her dad looked genuinely happy, which made it easier to be there.
Her grandmother set down her fork and looked at her with that particular look, patient and direct, the one that meant a question was coming.
"So how is university going? You must be almost finished now."
"It's going really well," Y/N said, and smiled. "This year is a lot but it's been good. I'm learning a lot."
Her parents both looked pleased. Her mom nodded in that quiet, relieved way she did when Y/N said the right thing.
Her aunt, the younger one, leaned forward. "And what about boys? Anyone special?"
Her dad answered before she could. "Please. She's too focused for all of that. You know how hard her program is."
Y/N laughed a little and shook her head. "No, no one. I'm not dating anyone right now."
Which was true. Technically. Completely, entirely, frustratingly true.
She picked up her fork and took a bite of cake and let the conversation move on.
The rest of the afternoon went the way these things always did. Her dad talked about the new project for a while, long enough that even her grandmother looked mildly lost, and then her aunt steered it back toward something else and it became a different conversation entirely.
People moved from the table to the living room. Someone made coffee. Her dad's cousins left first, then her aunts, with the usual round of hugs and promises to do this again soon that everyone meant in the moment and then forgot about.
By the time the house was quiet it was already dark outside.
She'd changed out of her dinner clothes into sweatpants and a t-shirt, then realized she was thirsty and went downstairs.
The house was mostly dark. Just the light above the kitchen counter left on, and her mom was sitting underneath it with her reading glasses on and her laptop open, still working. A mug had gone cold beside her and a paperback was left open face down next to that.
Y/N opened the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water, and sat down at the end of the counter. Her mom didn't look up.
"You're staying over tonight, right?"
She hadn't really decided, but going back to her apartment alone felt like too much effort. "Yeah, I think so."
"Good." Her mom sounded genuinely pleased. "We'll get breakfast tomorrow."
Y/N checked her phone. A new email, same person, different address. She swiped it away without opening it and put the phone face down on the counter.
A few minutes passed. Then her mom stopped typing. She leaned forward slightly, read something on the screen, and then sat back and didn't move. Her hands came off the keyboard and stayed in her lap.
"Mom?"
Nothing.
"Mom." She set her water down. "You alright?"
Her mom still didn't answer. Y/N got up and walked over and looked over her shoulder at the screen.
It was an email. The sender was a string of random characters, no name, nothing recognizable. The subject line said: for Y/N.
She read it.
I know she's been deleting these. That's fine. I've been patient. I know her schedule, her address, the names of her friends. I know her mother's work email, which I think makes the point clearly enough. I'm not interested in money. I want her to understand that I've been close enough, for long enough, to have done something already, and I haven't. I stood right behind her at the crosswalk yesterday. I could have pushed her into traffic and been gone before she even hit the asphalt. It would have been very easy. Next time I might not just stand there. She should stop ignoring these :)
The kitchen felt very quiet.
"Y/N," her mom said. Her voice was careful. She was clearly working hard not to panic out loud.
"Mom. It's fine," she said immediately.
"This is not—" Her mom turned in her chair to look at her properly. "This is not okay. How does someone know to send this to my email? How do they know it would get to you?"
She didn't have a great answer for that. She straightened up and crossed her arms. "It's probably just someone who looked up dad's production company or something. It's not hard to find contact info online."
Her mom had already pushed back her chair. "I'm getting your father."
"Mom, please—"
But she was already gone. Y/N stayed where she was, leaning against the counter, looking at the ceiling.
Her dad appeared in the doorway within a few seconds, still in his shirt from dinner, glasses pushed up on his head. "What happened?"
Her mom turned the laptop towards him without saying anything. He read it, and the shift in his expression was small but she caught it. He read it twice.
"How long has this been going on?" He was looking at Y/N now.
She opened her mouth.
"Y/N."
"I don't know," she said. "A few weeks. Maybe a bit longer."
The silence that followed was worse than if either of them had shouted.
"A few weeks," her mom repeated.
"It's not a big deal. I've been getting stuff like this every now and then and it's always nothing. Different email addresses every time, which honestly just makes it more obvious that it's some bored person trying to scare me. It's basically spam."
"Spam does not say it's been watching your routine," her dad said.
"That's just something people write to sound scary. It doesn't actually mean anything."
"And this came to my email," her mom said, gesturing at the screen. "Not yours. Mine. How does someone sending you spam know to send it here? How do they know this would reach you?"
Y/N didn't say anything.
"That's what I thought," her mom said quietly.
Her dad closed the laptop and set his hands flat on the counter. He wasn't looking at the email anymore, he was looking at her, and she recognized that look.
"It's really not that serious," she tried again. "This kind of thing happens when your dad is in the industry. People find out your name and they do weird stuff. I genuinely think—"
"We're not debating this tonight," he said. "We'll talk in the morning."
"Dad—"
"In the morning." He picked up her mom's empty mug and set it in the sink. "Go to sleep, Y/N."
She looked at her mom, who had taken her glasses off and was rubbing the bridge of her nose.
Y/N pushed off the counter and went back upstairs.
She lay on top of the covers and stared at the ceiling and told herself it really wasn't a big deal, the same way she'd been telling herself that for weeks now.
It was getting harder to believe.
…
Y/N woke up in her childhood bedroom with sunlight coming through the blinds. For a second she forgot where she was, then remembered the dinner, the email, the whole mess from the night before. She rolled over and checked her phone.
No new emails.
Which was somehow worse than getting them. At least when they came regularly she could predict it, delete them, move on. The silence felt like waiting for something to drop.
She sat up and looked around the room. It was exactly the same as when she'd left for university. The same pale blue walls, white furniture, the bookshelf full of things she'd read in high school and never touched again.
She gathered her things slowly. Her bag from last night, the clothes she'd worn to dinner, her phone charger.
Downstairs she could hear the coffee maker running and her parents' voices. Probably still talking about the email. She wasn't ready for that conversation yet.
Instead she sat cross legged on her old bed with her laptop open and tried to catch up on the university work she'd been ignoring for weeks. She had three assignments she'd completely forgotten about and two lectures she was supposed to have watched online. None of it felt urgent. It never did. Things had a way of working themselves out if you waited long enough.
Her phone buzzed against the comforter. Naoya.
— you coming over tonight?
She typed back:
— I don’t know yet
— ??
— at my parents house. dealing with some stuff
— what kind of stuff
She stared at the screen. How did you explain that someone had been sending you creepy emails for weeks and you'd just been deleting them?
— just family stuff. nothing major
— ok. text me when you know
— will do
She set the phone aside and went back to her laptop. Answered some discussion board posts she was three weeks late on. Submitted a reflection paper she wrote in fifteen minutes about a book she'd only read half of. Sent an email to her professor apologizing for missing the last two seminars.
It was fine. She wasn't going to fail anything. She never did. She just did enough to get by and somehow it always worked out.
By the time she closed the laptop it was almost noon. Her stomach was making quiet complaints and she could smell something cooking downstairs. Bacon, maybe. Her mom always made too much food when she was stressed.
She changed into jeans and a sweater and gathered her things again. Time to face whatever conversation was waiting for her.
Halfway down she could hear voices more clearly. Her father's, her mother's, and someone else. A man's voice she didn't recognize, deeper than her dad's.
She slowed down. The voices were coming from the front sitting room, the one her parents only used when they had guests. Real guests, not just family.
“She's got classes, she goes out with friends. We don't want her to feel like she's under house arrest, but we need to know she's safe.”
“Of course. I've worked with similar situations before. I can work around her schedule.”
Y/N stopped at the bottom of the stairs. What the hell were they talking about?
She moved closer to the doorway, keeping to the side where she couldn't be seen. Through the gap between the door and the frame she could see part of the room. Her father was sitting in his usual chair, leaning forward with his hands clasped. Her mother was on the couch with a coffee cup balanced on her knee.
And sitting across from them was a man she'd never seen before.
He was maybe in his early thirties, wearing a dark suit. His hair was neat, styled back from his face.
He was also, she realized with a small jolt of surprise, extremely attractive.
Her first thought was that he looked like he should be on a movie set. Was her dad meeting with an actor? Some kind of casting thing?
"The main thing is that she understands this isn't optional," her mother was saying. "She has a tendency to... minimize things. To assume everything will work itself out."
"I understand. That's not uncommon in these situations."
His voice matched his appearance. Like he'd had this conversation a hundred times before.
Y/N shifted slightly to get a better view and the floorboard under her foot made a soft creak.
Her father looked up immediately. "Y/N? Come in here, sweetheart. I want you to meet someone."
Shit.
She had no choice now. She stepped into the doorway, suddenly aware that her hair was still messy from sleep and she wasn't wearing any makeup. Which shouldn't have mattered. She didn't care what some random actor thought of how she looked. But for some reason it did.
"Hi," she said, and immediately felt stupid for how tentative it sounded.
The man stood up when she walked in. He was taller than she'd expected, and up close it was somehow worse. The suit fit well across his shoulders. His eyes were a warm brown and his features were, frankly, unfairly well arranged.
She told herself to stop staring.
Her dad was mid sentence when she tuned in. "...wanted you to meet Mr. Higuruma. Hiromi Higuruma." He gestured between them. "Y/N, my daughter."
Higuruma stepped forward and extended his hand. "Nice to meet you."
His handshake was firm. He didn't seem to notice she'd been staring, which she was choosing to take as a good sign.
"You too," she said, and tried to arrange her face into something normal. "Are you… working on the new project?"
Her parents exchanged a look.
"Not exactly," her dad said. "We called the police this morning. They took the report but without a name or a location there's not much they can do." He paused. "So we did the next best thing. Mr. Higuruma works for a security firm. Personal protection."
The words took a second to land.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"After last night," her mom said, "your father and I decided we needed to do something. Mr. Higuruma is going to be with you for a while. To class, out with friends, wherever you go. He'll also be driving you. The only time he won't be right there is when you're already inside your apartment or here." She paused, almost as an afterthought. "He'll check in with us every now and then, just so we know things are fine."
Y/N looked at her. "So he follows me around and reports back to you."
"He keeps us informed," her dad said. "There's a difference."
"Is there really."
Neither of them answered that.
She took a breath. "I don't need a babysitter. I'm not a kid, I can take care of myself."
"We know you can," her mom said. In the tone that meant the conversation wasn't going anywhere. "This isn't about that."
"Then what is it about, because from where I'm standing it looks exactly like that."
"It's about a photo of you taken outside your building," her dad said, "by someone who has been contacting you for weeks and somehow got hold of your mother's work email. That's what it's about."
She pressed her lips together.
"Is this something you actually want to do?" she asked Higuruma, because she needed to direct it somewhere that wasn't her parents. "Follow a university student around all day?"
"It's the job," he said, without any particular weight to it.
She turned back to her dad. "I'm an adult. I should at least get a say in this."
"Not when your safety is involved," he said. "A few weeks. That's all we're asking. We'll see how things look."
"A few weeks of having someone next to me everywhere I go."
Her father's expression shifted, just slightly. "It's not up for discussion, Y/N."
She looked at him. She knew that tone. She'd known it her whole life. She let it go.
"Fine," she said, after a moment. Then something occurred to her. "Wait, so how does this actually work? He just shows up at my apartment every morning?"
"He'll drive you," her dad said. "To class, back home, wherever you need to be. No more Ubers alone for a while."
Y/N looked at her dad and then at her mom. Then at Higuruma one more time. He looked back at her, calm and completely unhurried, like he had nowhere else to be.
Which, she supposed, he didn't. Not anymore.
Okay. Fine.
Actually, when she thought about it for a second, it wasn't the worst thing in the world. A few weeks. That's what her dad had said. A few weeks and then they'd all calm down and things would go back to normal. She just had to not fight it right now.
And the other thing was, Higuruma was hired help. He wasn't her parents. He didn't have some personal investment in making her life difficult. He had a job to do and at the end of the day, if she made that job easy enough, he'd have no reason to be difficult about anything.
People like this were usually reasonable if you were reasonable back. And if that didn't work, well. She'd tipped her building concierge enough times as a teenager that he'd stopped mentioning when she came home late.
Everyone had a price. She'd find his.