On Monday morning, Hana had stormed into his room like a one-woman riot and walked straight into a visual trauma that had clearly ruined her ability to function like a normal person. She hadn't spoken to him since.
Not that he was counting.
She spent that entire night at the brewery, under the transparent excuse of "inventory," despite the fact that the place was ten minutes from the house and definitely did not require twelve straight hours of label audits. He could have gone after her—he nearly had—but Emi intercepted him in the genkan with the polite finality of a guillotine. "Leave her be," she said in perfect Japanese, her French accent smoothing the edges into something deceptively elegant.
He tried to argue. Bad idea. Apparently, even a managing partner with a 98% win rate in court couldn't win against a woman who had raised Hana. She didn't raise her voice. Didn't budge. Just gave him that look—serene, motherly, vaguely imperial—and he found himself backing off before he consciously decided to.
Tuesday, she came home late. He heard the front door open and the sing-song, too-casual "Tadaima" echo through the hallway. He was out of Hana's room before she could kick her shoes off, just in time to see the door to Ren's room click shut.
"Sukehiro," he called.
"Yeah?" came two voices—Ren and Aoi—in perfect, cheerful unison from the kitchen.
Katsuki inhaled, eyes narrowing. "I meant Hana."
There was a beat. Then, muffled through the door: "I'm tired and I need sleep. Talk to you later."
Click.
He stared at the door. Briefly considered taking it off its hinges.
Instead, he turned on his heel, returned to her childhood bedroom—the one that now housed his laptop, his suitcase, and a single pillow that still smelled faintly like her shampoo—and spent the rest of the night in a conference call with a client who didn't deserve his full attention, but got it anyway. Because at least contracts didn't avoid eye contact and slam doors.
By Wednesday, his patience—never particularly generous to begin with—was running thin. Kai had offered, twice, to cover his meetings. "Take the damned vacation," he'd said. "You look like you're about to sue God."
Katsuki said yes. Then logged out at four on the dot, changed into casual clothes that still managed to look deliberate, and walked into the town center with the quiet determination of someone about to reclaim control of an entire situation.
He found her at the Sukehiro family sake booth, surrounded by tourists and locals, laughing like she hadn't spent three days actively dodging him.
She looked infuriatingly good. Hair up in a messy bun, skin sun-warmed, her mouth pink from heat and probably too much sake. The curve of her grin was dangerous—loose and wild in a way he'd never seen at the office.
Because apparently, while he'd been negotiating NDAs and acquisitions, she'd joined a drinking contest.
And won.
And now she was slumped over the booth table, drunk out of her mind, giggling every time someone told her she was a "legend."
Katsuki's jaw ticked. He didn't approach immediately. Instead, he watched from the edge of the crowd, arms crossed, expression unreadable. He counted the empty glasses. Five. Maybe six. Then he spotted Hiro.
The bastard was already crouching beside her, arm slung around her like he had a right. When Hana started to tip sideways, Hiro didn't even hesitate. Just lifted her like she weighed nothing—like he'd done it before—and stood.
"I got her," Hiro said, brushing past him. Like Katsuki was a stray pedestrian. Like he wasn't the reason Hana had nearly incinerated her career and fled the city.
Katsuki didn't move. Didn't step aside. But Hiro was taller than he remembered and just arrogant enough to brush shoulders with him deliberately.
He didn't say anything.
Because then Hana—half-conscious, flushed, entirely unaware of the emotional war crimes she was committing—murmured against Hiro's back, "You're so nice, Hiro-chan…"
Something in Katsuki's chest went still. Then coiled tight.
He followed. Three steps behind. Hands in his pockets, expression carefully neutral. If anyone asked, he was there to ensure she didn't choke on her own tongue. Or fall into a ditch. Or forget she'd quit and start giving legal advice in a drunken stupor.
Not because the sight of her on another man's back made his entire body itch with a low, simmering rage he couldn't articulate.
Certainly not because she'd been avoiding him for seventy-two hours and he was rapidly running out of things to rationalize.
He said nothing the entire walk home.
Didn't offer to carry her.
Didn't look at Hiro again.
But when they reached the house, he was the one who took her from him.
And when he carried her inside, her breath soft against his shoulder, he didn't let himself think about how easily she folded into him. How she sighed. How she muttered something incoherent and pressed her forehead against his collarbone like it meant nothing.
He laid her down on Ren's futon. Pulled the blanket over her. Adjusted the AC.
Then he stared at her for a long, quiet second.
"Three days," he muttered. "Avoiding me."
She didn't answer. Couldn't.
He ran a hand through his hair, jaw tight.
Then he turned off the light. Shut the door.
-----
She woke up sideways.
Or maybe upside-down.
Hard to tell, considering her brain was leaking out of her ears and every organ in her body had filed a formal complaint.
The futon beneath her was too soft, too warm, too everything. Her legs were tangled in the blanket like she'd been in a fight with a ghost. One arm was somehow wedged under the pillow at a 120-degree angle, and her spine had decided that scoliosis was trending now, thanks.
She tried to shift.
Immediately regretted it.
Oh. Oh no.
Her stomach sloshed ominously, like a bottle of over-fermented sake left in a moving truck. The pounding behind her eyes was so aggressive it probably had a percussion section. Her mouth tasted like stale rice crackers and sin.
Worst hangover of her life. Hands down.
Which, for someone raised in a sake brewery and trained in the ancient art of casual drinking since middle school, was saying a lot.
She groaned and rolled, or tried to—her limbs didn't seem to understand gravity anymore. The futon creaked like it was judging her life choices. Which was fair. She didn't even mean to join the drinking contest. It was for tourists. A gimmick. Ren had signed her up as a joke, and she was supposed to bow out after the first round with grace and dignity and maybe one shot glass of Junmai.
Instead?
She won.
Because apparently, avoiding emotional confrontation turned her into a competitive alcoholic.
She squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled through her nose. Mistake. Her stomach lurched. The air was too thick. Too real. Everything smelled like tatami and despair.
Oh god. She was going to throw up.
She scrambled. Fought her way out of the futon like a toddler just learning how to walk. Yanked open the door with the grace of a collapsing bookshelf—
—and slammed straight into a wall.
A tall, broad, suspiciously human-shaped wall.
Katsuki.
She reflexively shoved him, mostly on principle. "Move."
He didn't even budged. "You're avoiding me."
She tried to duck around him. Failed. "I'm not. Move."
"I'm not moving until you tell me why."
God, why was he like this? Why did he smell good even in the morning? Why was he blocking doorways like some emotionally repressed bouncer to her own digestive system?
"Move," she snapped, barely keeping the panic out of her voice. "I'm throwing up."
That did it.
He stepped aside instantly. Like the words throwing up triggered some primal fight-or-flight reflex in his litigation-laced lizard brain.
She didn't wait for a follow-up. Just bolted for the bathroom, feet slapping against the hallway floor, mouth already filling with regret and half-digested rice.
This was fine.
Everything was fine.
She was a grown woman with a law degree and absolutely no control over her own bodily functions or emotional damage.
She would absolutely not think about the fact that she'd been avoiding him for three days straight or that his voice—annoying, sharp, inexplicably sexy—was the first thing she'd heard this morning.
Nope.
She'd just vomit her soul into the toilet and hope it flushed out the feelings too.
-----
The sound was… vile.
A wet, wrenching retch that echoed off the tile like some kind of ancient curse being expelled into the modern world. The bathroom stank of cheap sake, stomach acid, and whatever poor decisions had made their way into Hana's digestive tract last night. Katsuki leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, gaze cool and unimpressed.
She was folded over the toilet like a dying flower, curls stuck to her cheek, skin a shade too pale beneath the freckles. Every time she heaved, her entire frame jerked like someone was trying to yank the sin out of her with a grappling hook.
The worst part?
She still somehow made it look dramatic.
"Don't sleep there," he said flatly. "It's disgusting."
Hana groaned in response—low, pitiful, the sound of someone rethinking every decision she'd made since birth. She slid from kneeling to sitting with the graceless collapse of a sack of wet rice, landing sideways on the bathroom floor. Her head thunked gently against the wall, eyes fluttering shut.
Excellent. A medical emergency was next.
Katsuki exhaled through his nose. Stepped forward. Flushed the toilet without ceremony.
Then, with all the reluctance of a man preparing for some great personal sacrifice, he lowered himself to the floor beside her. Legs bent. Arms on his knees. He sat like a man who had done this before, which was deeply concerning.
"I'm never drinking again," she whispered, voice wobbling on the edge of tears.
He glanced at her. Puffy eyes. Smeared eyeliner. Absolute disaster.
"Yeah, yeah," he muttered, already standing again. He reached for the towel rack, grabbed the softest one—somehow, even the Sukehiro family's rags were high quality—and ran it under cold water. He knelt, wiped her face with quiet precision. Forehead. Cheeks. The corner of her mouth.
She blinked up at him like he was some kind of saint.
Absolutely not.
"Breathe through your nose," he said, voice clipped. "Small sips of air. You'll puke less."
Then—without warning—she leaned against him. Full weight. Hair against his shoulder, cheek pressed into his bicep like he was the world's worst-shaped pillow.
He stiffened. Immediately.
And yet… didn't move.
"I'm not avoiding you," she murmured.
That was debatable.
He could have corrected her. Could have pointed out the sleeping at the brewery, the door-slamming, the Hiro-related crimes of the previous evening.
But she was currently slumped against him like a human furnace, and she looked like she might cry again if he so much as sighed too loud. She was suffering. Pale and quiet and soft around the edges in a way that didn't suit her at all.
It could wait.
He glanced down at her. Took a slow, measured breath.
"Okay," he said.
And left it there.