She’s so pretty![break]

She reminds him of her, the woman that brought him into the world. It’s not some overt connection. It’s not in her facial features or her body. Hitoshi doesn’t even have a clear memory of what the woman looks like anymore. No, it’s deeper than that. It’s the grace with which she carries herself, the tone she uses. The obvious care put into her appearance. The scent of something masked beneath the surface he can’t place.[break]

He just knows it’s there. Now, as he did when he was a little boy. Hitoshi doesn’t even notice he’s gripping his sword tighter. His lips are spread in a wide grin. Some part of him senses danger. Screams danger. Screams that this could escalate into a terrible battle – something worthy of the movies that so defined his aesthetic choices.[break]

“Uhuh. You’re Yumi’s roommate.” He speaks open and honestly. Deception is not a weapon in his arsenal. Yumi’s world and his own were worlds separated by a thousand barriers. The delicate dance of subtlety and subterfuge are on the other side of those barriers. The hounds of the Hasegawa, its army of thugs, toughs, and ruffians, are gatekept by their own inability to play such games. Hitoshi is no exception.[break]

“I’m Hitoshi.” He says this as if it explains anything. It’s just a name. Maybe a name the woman he has sworn his life to has used in passing, maybe not. Either way, he provides his own twisted form of an elaboration.[break]

“It’s my job to keep her safe! You’re helpin’ her get her foot in the door in the underworld here, right? Well, there’s lots of bad characters down there. If you’re leading her astray, I have to kill you.” His tone when he speaks this last part isn’t a threat. He’s not taunting her. He’s not even saying it with malice. He treats the potential ending of her life with all the fanfare of saying that they were out of hamburger meat at the supermarket.[break]

“That’s just what a sword does, you know? It keeps the one who wields it safe.”

How strange that he has never considered that possibility. Not once in ten years. It’s a notion so divorced from reality that his mind takes precious seconds to process what she said. If she meant him harm after saying that…[break]
Well, he’d be dead. His sword falls across his lap. Its magnificent light gone. In its place for light is the heat of Hitoshi’s cheeks. For a man on the wrong side of his twenties, he conveys himself like a boy in some regards.[break]
“Na, nah. Nothin’ like that.” Think fast. Sound cool. “That’s not my style.” He nods with a fake grin, the sort you see on an action movie’s lips when he delivers a cool one-liner.[break]
“Anyway, uh. Ahem. Yeah. So! Lemme ask ya honestly. What’re yer intentions with Yumi? You don’t know anyone we might know back in Johto? Anyone that’d pay money t’know where she is right now?”

It’s like they are creatures of different species. Before this woman introduces the notion that it would be possible for him to find Yumi attractive, the thought has never entered his stratosphere. He feels accused, in the way a schoolboy might be accused of liking his sister. Shaking his head, realizing that’s not quite right, he huffs. His cheeks are rosy. This man spends so much time wading through the blood of his fellow humans that it could be said he bathes in the stuff, but he’s blushing like someone from that dating sim that was popular a few months ago.[break]

“S-Shuddup!!!” He stammers. Like so many men before him, Hitoshi has been disarmed by this woman. His proverbial sword has been flicked away, redirected from her vital organs. Suddenly, he feels the need to defend himself.[break]

“She eats guys alive! Seen it happen a lot! I don’t like being eaten!” He has spent many a night quietly amused at men with the capacity for that sort of thing. Observing them, he’s seen the same patterns. The same tricks. Repetitions of the same conversational points and moves. Men who are the movers in the world all think themselves unique.[break]

When they cross her, or hurt her, it falls upon this sword to teach them how they are all the same. Every man bleeds red. If you rip apart the chambers of the heart, every man dies.[break]

But he has to calm down. Get back on topic. Focus. He looks at her and tries not to focus on how pretty she is. Maybe there’s an insult there, that he notices her in that way.[break]

“She’s, well, ain’t my place to say. You know how it goes.” He scratches the back of his neck. If she truly knows nothing, he’s overstepping by saying anything. “Look! Just…don’t hurt her and we’re square! She’s the only—” He’s about to say the only family, but that doesn’t quite convey their relationship. Calling them friends is like comparing a campfire in a forest to the wildfire that burns all life within that forest.[break]

“---I’m her sword. I gotta protect her, no matter what.”

“Yeah.” The dog nods. “That’s right. If you’re gonna hurt her, I have to kill you. If you don’t, we’re fine. Simple as that.” He lives in a world of blacks, whites, 1s, and 0s. Hitoshi is a very binary person. Complicated human nuance is beyond him. Life and death is just another duality between which there is no middle ground. He talks about murder with a priest’s purity. A tool is not impure if it is used. Such implications lay at the feet of the one wielding the blade.[break]
“Her folks picked me for the job of keeping her safe ‘cause I’m the best at killing people. Well, until Pokemon get in the way.” He pouts like a child whose toys have been taken away from him. It’s hard to have professional pride concerning what you do when a monster can beat you at your own game simply by existing.[break]
“And now she doesn’t have anybody except me.” He sounds somber when he says that. His hand grips his blade. He wishes he could carve for her a path to happiness free of her family. That’s not something swords can do on their own.[break]
“So I gotta be double, triple sure nobody hurts her. Especially since this region’s full of psychos and whackjobs.” Says the psychotic whackjob.

"Well..." His voice is small, soft. No hardened killer. A lost boy. Amber eyes that had the joy beaten out of them young can't seem to find Mei's eyes. He looks away. Not relaxed. Shy. Hating what he admits next.[break]
"She's all I have." The one thing tethering him to the world. He feels like if he loses her, he'll drift. Go back to being another wild, rabid dog on the street. No blade. Just a beast.[break]
"How can I trust you?" Anyone as skilled at reading men as this woman surely is can read the tone. He wants her to give him something, anything. A lifeline he can use to build that trust. He sees wisdom in her words. Yumi has always been so lonely. He's never been able to truly reach her, give her true human companionship. A friendship of equals, not like all the sniveling schoolgirls who followed Yumi around like a pack of yapping little poodles.[break]
He'd be grateful if this woman could give her that.

The dog realizes when she takes his hand in hers how little contact he has had with humans. His hands are calloused. Rough. There's old scars along some of the joints, the beginning of arthritis in his middle finger. It's a warm hand, and he doesn't pull away.[break]
His eyes meet hers. He listens. Animals are far better at sensing intent than humans. Those instincts, honed to a fine edge, are what led him to Yumi in the first place. There is no lie in this woman's words. He senses the pain inside her too, just like he can with Yumi. That clawing, gnawing loneliness.[break]
This creature possesses no capacity to love as a human loves. He wishes he could plunge his blade into the chests of those that dug this pain deep into her flesh. Whoever would inflict so human a hurt on someone who can speak this gently to a dog deserves to be nothing but red paint. She's special in a way all the girls back home weren't.[break]
He hopes she can make Yumi happy. He'd give anything to always see Yumi smile the way she did that day when he killed for her, in that dark Galarian alley.[break]
"I don't know how to love her." It is an admission he would never give to the woman herself. He confesses to this woman as if she is some priestess, taking her one hand in both of his own. His sword cradles his chest, useless with how it's leveraged. She could open his throat. He's baring himself to her.[break]
"She's always been alone...and I've just wanted to reach out. Let her know she's not. But I can't." He feels what he always feels when his eyes turn inward. A sense that something's wrong within him. That some flaw within him drove his mother to cast him out. That somehow, that same flaw will drive Yumi to chase him away one day.[break]
"I'd give anything for you to be her friend." A confession that brings him to tears, tears born of unconditional, absolute love. The sort of love only gods and dogs can give.