An event that Hideya is being forced—excuse me, strongly encouraged—to attend, fancy, in a hotel ballroom in downtown Kyoto, with high ceilings dripping in chandeliers. People mill around in expensive formalwear making a dull roar of polite conversation, and Hideya would rather choke.
He takes two flutes of champagne off the tray a waiter holds out to them and offers one to the woman in a red dress next to him with a charming smile.
“Thank you,” she murmurs.
She’s the daughter of a banker, and Hideya is supposed to entertain her. She’s decent enough, if a bit spoiled, but Hideya is ready to stab an eye out with the stem of the champagne glass if this night keeps going on.
“Hayate-san?”
She’d been telling him something dreadfully dull about the summer she spent abroad in the United States, and he’s been zoning out with a polite yet attentive look on his face.
And then he’d gotten distracted.
“Sorry, I see an old friend I haven’t seen in a long time. Excuse me.”
!!!
Hideya doesn’t stick around to wait for a response. He sets his untouched flute of champaign on a table in passing and melts through the crowd to appear at the far end of the ballroom, next to a tall and slender man wearing an elegant and well-cut suit.
Even without the long, gentle fall of silver hair, Hideya would recognize that face anywhere, although the clear and lucent grey eyes peering back at him are new.
“You again,” Hideya says by way of greeting.
The man that Hideya had last seen passed out on the floor of the Club Lumiere basement draws back. “Excuse me. Do I know you?”
The man that had just so boldly walked up to Ruby stares at him for another moment. His features are sharp and reminiscent of a wolf.
Finally, he says, “No, sorry. My mistake.”
He looks like a gangster, even in his clean-pressed suit. He puts the lighter he’s been fiddling with back into the pocket of his expensive trousers and walks away.
Ruby looks after him, considering.
It would have been easy for Ruby to assume that Mr. Cigarette was staring just to stare. That’s normal enough of a reaction to Ruby. He’d smelled the same import tobacco on him, though, and Ruby doesn’t believe in coincidences.
Hideya gives up remarkably easily, mostly because he’s here on business, and it occurs to him that he has no idea who he’s talking to. No one is here at this gala by accident. It’s a coterie of yakuza and their associates, and while Hideya doesn’t have that pretty and delicate-looking man pegged as a fellow yakuza, it also seems particularly unwise to make any kind of fuss here and now. And he did look like the kind of man to make a fuss.
A pretty flower boy.
Hideya looks for the co-ed he had abandoned earlier, hoping he can at least smooth things over and make amends. He sees her over by the dessert bar talking to another man.
Well that’s good, at least. At least she’s entertained.
The rest of the evening grinds slowly and painfully by. Hideya puts on a friendly and charming mask and mingles.
He can’t help looking at that man from time to time, though. Meting out stolen glances like snuck contraband.
He might as well have not tried so hard, though. The drunk from the other night doesn’t seem very perceptive. He doesn’t notice Hideya looking at him, and for the rest of the night, he doesn’t move from his perch at once of the private tables near the floor-to-ceiling windows.
People come by and talk to him now and then, and he does talk to them, but he never stops looking… bored.
As bored as Hideya feels.
Hideya gets somehow into the habit of looking for him whenever there’s a lull in the conversation, or like now when he’s once again itching for a cigarette. It’s a testament that he’s gotten too accustomed to it when he looks up and sees with a jolt that the man by the window is gone.
When Hideya finally gives in to the urge to go outside for a cigarette is when his mind finally clears.
The side door that he’d left through opens onto a balcony that he’s not sure is actually open to the public.
That makes it even better as he finally lights his cigarette and brings it to his mouth, taking a long drag with his eyes closed, the closest he ever comes to mindfulness or nirvana.
He leans over the low marble railing, looking out at the smog-filled city night below.
The footsteps approaching him, as light as they are, don’t catch him off-guard. He’s been in this business too long to not be aware of his surroundings. He doesn’t turn to look, though. He doubts anyone here is going to shank him or push him off the 50th floor of a high-rise with all of those people inside.
The who of it is kind of surprising, though.
“Mr. Cigarette Smoke,” Ruby murmurs. “I suppose I have you to thank for winding up in that closet?”
If the man seems surprised to see Ruby out here while he’s polluting the air with his smoke, he doesn’t show it. He carries on the conversation as if they’re old friends.
“Technically it was a security room.”
“Charming. Next time, can I trouble you to just leave me where I am? I don’t like being picked up by strangers.”
Hideya’s eyebrows go up. This is what he gets for doing a good deed?
Far be it from him to nanny another grown man, but this is just annoying.
“Can I suggest not getting so shitfaced drunk in public, and then maybe there won’t be a next time?”
He says it cordially, but the words are biting.
Ruby laughs.
First of all, it’s shocking that he’s laughing at Hideya, but after that… it’s just a stunningly beautiful laughter. Ruby’s pretty eyes sliver, and the noise that comes out of his mouth is clear as bells. Despite his refined laughter, his eyes are cold when he looks at Hideya again.
So cold that it’s a little bit shocking, because he hadn’t looked that way earlier, and Hideya can’t remember doing anything to earn that kind of animosity.
“God, read a book,” Ruby says. And then he walks away.
Hideya still doesn’t know his name, but now he’s found out that the man’s voice is at least as lovely as his face—low and rich, it reminds Hideya of a certain chocolate mousse that he hasn’t had in a long time.
* * *
Ruby had thought for half a second that the man who was eyeing him up might have been a little bit interesting—that’s why he’d orchestrated to bump into him in the least crowded area of the gala that afforded some modicum of privacy, to see if anything interesting would happen—but in reality he’s just as boring as everyone else.
He picks up the stray glass of champagne that the wolf-eyed man had left behind and drinks it vengefully.
At home in his penthouse much later, he replays the events of the evening, poring them over backwards and forward and cataloguing the relevant important details in his mind.
He slips out of his robe, letting the silken fabric pool on the floor, and gets into a steaming hot bath to soothe his aching muscles and a monstrous headache.