Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Ma?l sprung to attention. Were those gunshots? He moved closer to the wall of the building, scanning his surroundings.

  Bang!

  Another shot.

  Bang!

  And another, right above him. He looked up just in time to see a window explode and a scantily clad woman burst out of it in a shower of glimmering shards.

  Instinctively, he shifted his position to catch the fallen angel and spun, his arms at the ready. The force of the impact threw him backward to the ground, but he had anticipated that and shifted his posture to land on his backpack, cushioning the fall. Judo had given him a lot of practice with falling and his reflexes took over, safely dissipating the force of the impact.

  They rolled on the pavement, his arms cradling her, and they came to a halt in the bushes. He had a few scratches but nothing major. He glanced down at his catch. The woman’s face was covered in shadows, but he could tell she was pretty.

  He opened his mouth. And closed it again. He had meant to say something, but what? Her eyes were awash with conflicting passions, an incomprehensible mix of fire, defiance, sadness, and fear, along with a hefty measure of confusion. She had mascara smudged over her cheeks, her hair tangled up with leaves from the bushes… and she was still breathtaking.

  As he was opening his mouth to try and speak again, he was snapped back to reality by another gunshot. A dark shape filled the frame of the window. He was holding a gun and seemed to be looking for them, unsuccessfully so far: the light was behind him and they were in the shadows of the bushes, all but invisible. He aimed another shot in their general direction.

  Kaori looked at the man who held her against his chest in confusion.

  Where did this guy come from? How am I even alive?

  The gun fired. Questions would have to wait, they had to get out of there. The man’s survival instincts appeared to have taken a backseat to some other emotion, for he wasn’t moving, his mouth halfway open. She was pinned under his weight. That made it the second time of the evening, but he was shielding her, she could hardly complain about that.

  “Ikou!” she murmured.

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  Wait, does he even speak Japanese?

  “Let’s go, we have to move!”

  This brought him out of his stupor; he sprung to his feet, lifting her and his backpack as naturally as if they were part of his own body, and sprinted toward the corner of the building.

  Kaori didn’t even try to get back to her feet and concentrated on directions: “Here, take a left. Faster”

  The man complied without question, running alongside the building and staying in the shadows. He moved swiftly as she guided him to a garage door. She pressed her finger on the scanner and the door slid open, revealing a large sports car, a pink Lexus LC 500 with purple stripes. Her car. She pressed her thumb on the handle, opening the door, and tried to slide into the driver’s seat.

  A wave of pain shot through her leg and she let out a sharp cry. She hadn’t felt it in the heat of the action, but she must have twisted her ankle.

  “You drive,” she said.

  The man rushed to the other side of the car and slipped her in the passenger seat. He flung his backpack at the back of the car and jumped into the driver seat.

  Kaori placed her thumb on the scanner and yelled, “Engine, On!”

  The car purred to life, like a big cat woken up at an undue hour.

  How appropriate, she thought.

  Ma?l crushed the gas pedal, and the car jumped out into the street. He exited the park and found himself next to the river, the very same he had been aiming for. He had forgotten all about that… Kaori was rattling off instructions like a copilot. “Take a right on the main road. Go straight, and one more right over the bridge. Faster! Faster!”

  The car was far more powerful than any Ma?l had ever driven, but it responded perfectly, and he was rapidly taken by speed lust, an irrepressible rush of speed-fueled adrenaline. He surrendered fully to the sensation, navigating on pure instinct and picking his trajectory with no regard for laws other than those of physics. Fortunately, few people were around at that time of the night.

  Kaori was already regretting her use of the word “faster,” clutching the handle with all her might. She had stopped giving instructions—for one thing, she had no idea where they should go. Just that they had to get away. She wanted to disappear far, far away from the hell that had become her life. The whiplash of emotions was too much for her. It was too much for anyone, really. She sat still, watching the world blur outside of her window, neon lights turning into long streaks of colors as the Lexus flew through the streets of Tokyo.

  The man at her side was grinning widely, seemingly oblivious to anything but the roar of the engine and the open roads in front of him.

  After a while, he finally slowed down and backed up the car under a bridge’s shadow. “I think we lost them. No one is a catching us now,” he stated with a confidence he didn’t feel. He was in the middle of Tokyo in a bright pink sports car, a naked woman at his side.

  If they didn’t stand out, nothing ever would.