This chapter contains descriptions of physical abuse. Viewer discretion is advised.

Yoru could barely think through his headache.

He had woken up to find himself slumped on the table with additional blows delivered to his shoulders and back. His father was nowhere to be seen, but he had left his mother beaten and bruised in a corner of the trashed kitchen. The rumpled state of her hair showed that he had tried to tear it out again. For almost an hour, he had remained seated at the table, very dizzy and rather confused, unable to think of anything except "What do I do now?"

There was nothing else he and his mother could have done except to pick themselves up, put the kitchen back in order and swallow painkillers so they could carry on for the rest of the day. Yoru had gone above and beyond in cleaning himself up, brushing over the giant welt on the back of his head so his lush brown hair wouldn't look messy. He'd even partaken in his mother's make-up procedures, asking her to conceal the bags under his eyes and add a little color to his deathly pale face. Anything to increase his chances of the other party liking him.

And here he was now, seated at a table in a restaurant he'd never be able to afford even if he won the lottery (thank you, debts), arranged by the other party. His father looked outright gleeful, and Yoru wondered whether it was because he'd vented his frustrations out on his family, because he could drink premium alcohol at somebody else's expense or because there was a good chance he would get his high-maintenance omega son out of the house.

Maybe it was a combination of both. He was too tired and in too much pain to bother with those thoughts for too long. Besides, he had other serious concerns, such as his boss's impending rage upon finding the bar drenched. Maybe the account of what he and his colleagues had done to the perpetrators would ease Ito's anger somewhat.

"...Yoru? Yoru. Yoru!"

His mother's voice and her elbow lodged between his ribs finally drew his attention. "Huh? Wha - uh, uh -"

"They're here."

 Yoru turned his attention to the newcomers, and instantly, his blood froze.

It wasn't because of the older couple standing before him - an Alpha woman in a lovely kimono with flowers pinned to her bun and a Beta man, also in a kimono, his honey colored eyes and square jaw set in what looked like a permanently fierce expression. No, it was the third person - Yoru's potential fiance - and the man he had dropped off on the highway last night naked save for bright yellow-and-blue boxers with Snow-White all over.

"Tsunoda-san, welcome. Good evening," said Yoru's father in the most pleasant tone he'd ever heard. "Please meet my son, Yoru."

For twenty-one years Yoru had thirsted for his father to call his name so lovingly, and when he was finally got to hear it, it was all a farce. Pain shot through his heart, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut so he wouldn't cry.

"Yoru." His mother nudged him again, making him jump to his feet.

"Yoru, this is Tsunoda Kaede, first of the Tsunoda group," his father continued. "His wife, Tsunoda Ayako. And his son, the second, Tsunoda Kei."

"The Tsunoda group is a subsidiary of the Inakawa-kai, just like the Ito group whose territory you work on," said the Tsunoda patriarch to Yoru.

"I...I see," Yoru stuttered, tearing his eyes away from Kei with great effort. The young Alpha's face was expressionless, but his eyes were flashing with anger and bitter satisfaction at Yoru's discomfort. It was clear to the omega that he was in a world of trouble, regardless of whether he was to marry Kei or not.

Shit. The marriage. The bump on his head throbbed, reminding him how important it was to make sure this meeting went well. But he'd unknowingly destroyed his prospects before he even had any, and his head was hurting too much for him to think of a solution to his problem.

"I must say, you are a very handsome young man," said Tsunoda Ayako. "I wonder if you might be too good for my idiot son."

"Oh, to the contrary, to the contrary," said Yoru's father, so obviously obsequious it made even the Tsunoda family redden in embarrassment.

"We'll see. The two of them have only just met."

Try again, lady. Yoru shot another glance at Kei, who was still looking at him with those sharp golden-brown eyes, but his expression was hard to see. In fact, everything was hard to see - the lights were too bright, and he was having a hard time trying not to squint.

The conversation proceeded well enough without Yoru's contribution. His mother seemed to have realized that he wasn't feeling well and answered for him when he was having a particularly tough time. It was hard to follow the thread of the conversation, or that of his own thought, or any thread both real and figurative for that matter - the voices in the restaurant kept mixing with his thoughts and echoing incoherently in his head.

"How's the food, Yoru?" Ayako asked, smiling with warmth one would never have expected from so severe a face. "You've barely touched a thing! Is it not to your liking?"

Ordinarily I'd eat such expensive food even if there were worms in it, Yoru thought, but right now all I want to do is throw up. "Nothing like that," he replied, trying his best not to inhale. "It's all quite - uh, I did like it - it's, erm, I'm sorry, the food really is - er -"

"Delicious?" supplied the elder Tsunoda.

"Yes. Delicious." Yoru smiled abashedly and skewered a mushroom.

When he next managed to focus on the goings-on in the room, the parents were all trooping out the door. Straightening up in alarm (and wincing as the sudden movement aggravated his headache), he looked around to find himself alone in the room with Kei, who was watching him like a hawk.

Time to face the music. "Erm. Hello," Yoru greeted unnecessarily, brushing his hair out of his eyes (when had they fallen in?). "Nice to meet you. Again."

"Nice, is it?"

Oh, that voice. If Yoru had met Kei under better circumstances, he might have tried his hand at seducing the guy. "Well," Yoru said, "desperate times, desperate measures, you see."

"No, I don't see." Kei glared at the small man in front of him with all the Yakuza ferocity he could muster, but his target didn't even bat an eyelid. He was about to start admiring the guy when he noticed his unfocused eyes and pained expression. "Hey!" he snapped. "You! Pay attention!"

"I'm sorry, what?" Yoru had to blink a couple of times before he could concentrate enough on Kei to make sense of the latter's words. "Oh. Nice to meet you. Again."

Kei narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Are you high?" he asked.

"What? No!" Yoru exclaimed, swaying a little. "Do I look like I can afford drugs?"

"I've seen worse people buy. What is it, then? Why are you so out of it?"

"I have a headache is all. I haven't slept after last night's episode, and - I'm terribly sorry for my disorientation, the lights here are too bright."

Kei was silent for a few seconds as he examined the Omega from top to toe. "You're not high," he concluded.

"That's what I -"

"You have a concussion."

Yoru's heart leapt into his throat. A concussion was certainly a possibility considering that his father had nearly cracked his skull open like an egg a few hours earlier. But he couldn't let that cast a shadow on the marriage meeting for his mother's sake and his own.

"I didn't hit my head last night, so it can't be," Yoru reasoned, summoning every reserve of energy he had to sit straight and stiff. "I'm very sorry about yesterday. Please understand, we acted only in self-defense -"

"We'll talk about that later. You should go to a doctor."

"I don't have a concussion -"

In a flash, Kei had reached across the table and grabbed a fistful of Yoru's hair. Yoru screamed as his hand closed right over the bump on the back of his head. "You feel that?" the Alpha growled, mercilessly refusing to let go. "Or is that the rat that usually nests on your head?"

"It hurts! It hurts! Stop!"

"I don't like being lied to," Kei growled, Yoru's cries only aggravating him further. "I was going to be nice until you started lying."

"It hurts! Please!"

"Now that you've pissed me off, I demand an explanation for yesterday's behavior."

"You damaged the bar, our boss would have killed someone if we'd just let you go. Please, I'm begging you, stop..."

"You think insulting a Yakuza boss is a small thing? I should have you murdered for stripping me like that! And I'll throw in your friends for good measure, how's that?"

Yoru's head began to swim too much for him to struggle - he couldn't even tell which direction he should twist himself in to free himself. So he went limp, hanging off Kei's hand by his hair, sobbing piteously. "It hurts," he cried. "Stop it. It really hurts. Please, stop..."

"Psh. Pathetic." Kei let go with a scornful huff. Yoru's head slammed into the table with a loud thud. His kimono, loosened because of his struggles, fell off his right shoulder, and Kei felt his stomach turn.

All the skin Kei could see was a patchwork of red and black. He could discern two large bumps, one on Yoru's shoulders and the other on his spine, from which gruesome bruises radiated outwards to cover whatever was visible of his back and more. "Did...did I do this?" he asked, referring to their brief struggle last night.

"No." Yoru didn't lift his head off the table - Kei suspected that he couldn't lift it. "It wasn't you...God, my head hurts."

"Who is it?"

"Why do you care? You're the same, grabbing my hair despite knowing that I'm injured."

"That...my temper...ugh." Feeling extremely contrite, Kei walked around the table and sat down next to Yoru and examined the latter's head wound. Parting Yoru's hair with gentleness as great as his earlier roughness, he noted the blood on Yoru's scalp. A pang of immense guilt hit him. "It bled," he said softly. "Something hard hit you here. Did one of my men do this?"

"No."

"Did you fall and hit the back of your head?"

"Could you stop questioning me? It hurts to think."

Kei frowned. This man needed a hospital, but he couldn't march off with him without letting Yoru's family know that he'd noticed how hurt Yoru was. He couldn't help but suspect that something was wrong with the Kojimas - the mother and son were nowhere near as jovial as the father - but Yoru's abuser could be anyone considering for whom the Omega worked. Still, Yoru seemed very determined to keep his injuries from his family.

Releasing a noisy, troubled breath, Kei pulled out his phone and dialed a number. "Get me the painkillers the doctor gives us for concussions," he said. "I want it within five minutes."

While he waited, Kei helped Yoru sit up and fixed his clothes. The Omega couldn't keep himself erect, so Kei grudgingly offered the support of his own torso. Thus his man entered the room a punctual four minutes and fifty-five seconds later to find his boss sitting stock-still with a gorgeous omega slumped against him. "So that's the one?" he asked, wiggling his eyebrows teasingly.

"Not necessarily," Kei answered. "Medicine?"

"Here you go, boss." The man tossed it into his boss' lap. "What d'you mean, 'not necessarily?' You'd be a fool to let go of such a beauty."

"Sometimes I think I give you too much liberty, Nakamura."

"And for good reason. I've heard of him, you know. He's the only male omega in the prefecture, and rumor has it his scent is so powerful it can knock people out."

"I don't smell it."

"You can't smell shit, boss. Even birds can smell better than you can."

Kei scowled. He was absolutely insensitive to pheromones. While that did work to his advantage when Alphas or Omegas tried to use their scent to influence him, it also meant that he couldn't attract a mate and he couldn't go into rut, lowering his fertility. That was the reason his parents had arranged this omiai with an omega - this guy was his best bet at getting an heir.

"Get out," he snapped grouchily, popping a pill out of the leaf he'd been given.

"Yes, yes." Nakamura smirked as he turned to go and pointed at Kei's crotch. "Do a cost-benefit analysis. A lifetime of blackout-inducing sex for the price of a wedding."

*

When the parents returned, Yoru and Kei were seated silently opposite each other, sipping tea. Thanks to his concussion (or lack thereof, since Yoru didn't want to admit it), Yoru had no memory of what happened between that time and the time he reached home. Much to the relief of the rest of the family, Kojima senior was in a phenomenal mood and went off to watch television with his usual six-pack of beer without hurting anyone. Yoru and his mother took advantage of the situation and scurried off to bed as fast as they could.

"I am completely screwed," Yoru groaned into his pillow, the effects of the painkiller allowing him a movement as aggressive as pounding the bed with his fists. "There is no way he's marrying me. I'm going to die in this hellhole, and I'll be so banged up I'll have to haunt father in a wheelchair."

But when he woke up the next morning, his father didn't smash his head with his breakfast plate as he had expected. The drunkard certainly looked impatient, and Yoru knew he was in for a sound lashing anyway when he came home today with a deducted salary (if he even received any this time). Maybe he was better off just pissing Ito off some more so the man would put a bullet through his head and end his suffering. Or he could just infuriate his father so much he'd get hit on the head again - if he did have a concussion as Kei had said, maybe the blow would finally kill him. The first hit had sent him three-quarters of the way to his grave anyway.

When Yoru arrived for his shift that evening, a chill instantly ran down his spine. The white faces of the staff and the haunted look in their eyes were clear signs that something terrible had happened. He approached the bar to find Masha furiously polishing glasses, her chest heaving and tears sparkling in her eyes. "Masha," he called. "What happened?"

Masha gritted her teeth and slammed the glass down, almost breaking it. "Where were you yesterday?" she demanded.

"I...I was sick." Yoru said. Considering how close he was to collapsing, that might as well have been the truth.

"What is it that ails you so much that you couldn't come do your fucking job? You think we're all free here to pick up your slack?"

Yoru flinched, hurt and rather frightened. "Masha, what did I do?" he asked.

"Ito came today all pissed about the damage. Then he was told that the bouncer had allowed his archenemy to waltz in and his biggest earner caused the pandemonium that followed, he...to Hara, he..."

"What? What happened to Hara?"

Something hard and cold pressed into Yoru's head right above his ear - the barrel of a gun. From behind him issued a cold, hoarse voice dripping with manic rage and the promise of dire punishment.

"Something much less painful," the voice hissed, "than what I am going to do to you."