The cool night air hit her the moment she stepped out of the club, but it did nothing to cool the warmth still burning across her cheeks.
Her heart was still racing.
She didn't know how she had held it together walking out—her legs had felt like glass, fragile and trembling under the weight of something she didn't fully understand. She had barely noticed Daiki giving her a two-finger salute from the bar, or the curious eyes of the hostess girls trailing after her like shadows.
She pressed a hand to her chest. It wasn't just nerves. It was Ren. The way he looked at her and touched her. Spoke to her like she wasn't just another face in the crowd.
But the most dangerous part?
The way she had leaned forward—just a little, breath caught in her throat, heart in her mouth—because in that charged silence between them, she thought… maybe. Just maybe.
But he had stepped back.
Not with cruelty, but with restraint. And that was worse somehow. Because it wasn't rejection—it was hesitation. Like he wanted to, but wouldn't let himself.
And it left her frozen there, alone in a space where her courage had reached out and found nothing waiting on the other side.
She sank deeper into the cab seat, blinking rapidly against the sudden sting in her eyes.
"Stupid," she whispered under her breath, trying to clear her thoughts.
He was a Kazama.
She was just… Emi.
*****
Emi stepped into her apartment, the familiar scent of stale cigarette smoke curling around her the moment she shut the door behind her. The air was thick, suffocating, and clung to the walls, to the furniture—to every miserable part of her life that she had tried to escape.
Her father sat at the small, cluttered table, looking worse than usual. His skin was damp with sweat, his fingers twitching against the edge of a half-empty glass. His foot tapped anxiously against the floor, his knee bouncing, his entire body wound tight with nerves. The second she walked in, his bloodshot eyes darted toward her, wide with something between desperation and guilt.
Emi's stomach dropped.
She didn't even need to ask. She could feel something was wrong. Something terribly, irreversibly wrong.
Her grip tightened on the strap of her bag, her heartbeat thrumming unevenly in her chest. She forced her voice to remain steady, even as her instincts screamed at her to run—to turn around and leave before she could hear whatever horrible thing he was about to say.
"What did you do?"
Her father exhaled shakily, running a trembling hand through his graying hair. He shook his head, already defensive, already making excuses before the words even left his mouth. "It's not what you think—"
"How much?" she cut in, her voice sharper than she intended.
A beat of silence. His gaze flickered away, down to the table, to the cigarette ash gathering in the tray beside him.
Emi's hands curled into fists. "How much, Dad?"
His lips parted, but no sound came out at first. Then, finally, his voice broke through the heavy silence, barely above a whisper.
"Ten million yen."
The room spun.
Emi felt the ground tilt beneath her, a wave of nausea rolling through her stomach so suddenly that she had to clutch the back of a chair to keep herself upright.
Ten million yen.
She couldn't breathe.
"You—you gambled ten million?" Her voice cracked, strangled, disbelieving.
Her father rubbed a hand over his face, still refusing to meet her gaze. "I didn't have a choice—"
"There's always a choice!" she snapped, her voice shaking, her vision blurring at the edges.
"Well," he scoffed, setting down his half-empty can of beer. "You must have money now, huh?"
Emi froze mid-step.
"New clothes. Nice bag. That lipstick isn't from the drugstore either." His voice was thick with accusation. "Didn't take you long to find a sugar daddy."
Her stomach lurched.
"No—" she started, but he was already waving her off.
"Or maybe some rich guy's keeping you now? That it?" he muttered, getting to his feet. "You're not working those shit jobs anymore, suddenly you're all dolled up like you belong in Ginza. What else am I supposed to think?"
"And now what? What happens next? Are they coming after you?" Her voice trembling, her vision blurring at the edges.
Her father swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing, his fingers gripping the edge of the table so tightly that his knuckles turned white.
"No. They won't."
The words sent a sharp chill down her spine. Emi's entire body went cold.
If they weren't coming after him, then—
Something worse was coming. She could feel it, pressing down on her chest, clawing at the back of her mind, screaming at her to prepare for something she wasn't ready to hear.
Her father finally looked up, his eyes hollow, his expression crumbling under the weight of whatever secret he was about to confess.
"I—I paid it off."
Emi blinked, her stomach twisting so violently that she thought she might be sick.
"How?"
A long, horrible silence stretched between them.
The kind of silence that came before everything fell apart. Then his next words shattered her.
"I… I made a deal." His voice wavered, thick with something that sounded like shame. "I arranged for you to marry someone."
Emi's lungs stopped working.
For a moment, the world seemed to collapse inward, her body going numb, her mind unable to process the weight of the words he had just spoken. It didn't make sense. It couldn't make sense.
Her father kept talking, the words spilling from his lips in a desperate, frantic attempt to justify the unforgivable.
"He's a businessman, wealthy, and he agreed to clear my debt in exchange for taking care of you—"
A sharp, hollow sound escaped her throat as she staggered back, nearly knocking over the chair behind her. "No."
"Emi, listen—"
"No!" she shouted, her voice cracking as her vision blurred. Her pulse pounded in her ears, her chest tightening with something suffocating, something clawing, something that made her feel like she was drowning in an ocean too deep to escape.
Her father flinched, but he didn't take it back. Because he couldn't and it was already done.
She had no say in it. She was being sold by her father. Her stomach twisted violently and her hands shook.
And there was nothing she could do.
Except—
One name crashed into her mind like lightning splitting through a storm.
Ren.
Emi's breath hitched as the realization hit her all at once. He was the only person she knew with enough power, enough influence, to do something. But would he even care? Would he see this as her problem, or would he brush her off the way he always did when she got too close?
Her hands trembled as she pulled out her phone, fingers hovering over the screen.
She didn't know if he would help her. She didn't know if he would even answer.
But she had no other choice. But as she stood there, her father's desperate words ringing in her ears, the weight of reality crushing down on her, she hesitated.
A lump formed in her throat as she lowered her phone, her fingers gripping it tightly, white-knuckled.
No.
She couldn't call him. She could not trouble him anymore.