8. Secrets Within Secrets Within Secrets

As though something had just occurred to him, Tetsuya sat up suddenly, an enigmatic expression falling across his face. “Speaking of which, you want in on a secret?”

Kris raised an eyebrow as she placed her drink back on its coaster. “Only if it involves something scandalous, illicit or dangerous.”

He leaned back in his chair, considering. “Oh, I think you’ll like it, then. C’mon, finish your drink and follow me.”

“Uh, what about the bill…?”

“Don’t worry about it. I have a tab running, and the bartender knows me.” He finished his liquor, and she followed suit. Picking up his coat, he led her deeper into the bar, stepping around a wooden partition she’d thought was a wall at first. It was even darker than the main area had been, and her eyes fought to adjust, but Tetsuya seemed to know where he was going. He paused at a random point and put his hand against the wall, doing something she couldn’t quite catch. The wall swung open, letting wintry air in, and she shivered suddenly.

“Hey!”

“Oh, sorry - forgot to warn you. Don’t worry, we’ll only be outside for a bit.” The cold didn’t seem to bother Tetsuya as much, though perhaps he’d expected it. “It’s not far from here.”

What it was remained a mystery, but she gamely followed him into the cold. He closed the hidden door behind them, and from the outside it looked like a typical service entrance. Taking a quick survey of her surroundings, Kris surmised that they were in a blind alley somewhere behind the bar. It was pretty much as nondescript as the entrance to the bar itself had looked, and she wondered what sort of revelation Tetsuya was planning to spring on her this time.

Then he led her down a small flight of stairs set into the side of a building, knocked on a reinforced steel door, held up some sort of card to the peep-slot, and swept both of them through as soon as it opened. Kris felt deep pounding bass sweep through her like a second heartbeat, and she had to raise her voice to be heard over the synthesised vocals and rowdy cheers coming from below. “What is this place?”

“Only the most exclusive nightclub in Tokyo. Just a moment...” Tetsuya took their coats over to the cloakroom - judging from the clerk’s smile, he was a regular here.

The only illumination came from recessed neon lighting which ran around the lobby’s ceiling, pulsing in time to the beat and cycling through the colors of the rainbow. As she waited for violet to turn to red, the club’s main doors opened, momentarily flooding the lobby with bass and synthetic fog. Two young men stumbled out, one of them basically draped over the other - either infatuated, or drunk, or both. Both were dressed to the nines and probably somewhere in Tetsuya’s league in terms of attractiveness - maybe even higher if they weren’t stone cold drunk. They made for the exit, but Tetsuya raised an eyebrow as they passed him, and reached past the clerk to grab two coats off the rack and throw them in the general direction of the men. The more sober of the pair caught them midair, shooting Tetsuya a dazzling smile and a thumbs up. “Owe you one, Tetsu. See you around!”

Tetsuya waved back as the two exited the bar, then smiled as he noticed Kris’s expression. “What? I know them, though Makoto isn’t usually that drunk. I guess you’re not the only one celebrating Coming of Age here tonight.”

“Wow. Ok, I don’t know what I was expecting, but this… wasn’t it.”

“What you were expecting from me? From this place? From tonight?” Tetsuya seemed somewhere between intrigued and amused by her discomfiture.

“All of the above? There’s way more than meets the eye here, huh,” Kris muttered. The secret bar had been one thing - she knew such things existed, and there was a certain storybook charm to the hoops she’d had to jump through to discover and access it. But this went even deeper than that. How much stuff was there going on behind the scenes of her everyday life? How had she been so oblivious to these people, places, and systems when they were practically under her nose? “I guess I really don’t have everything figured out.”

“Few people do. Few people have the right kind of mind, or any interest in looking past the surface of what they see to what lies beyond and beneath. The world is made of secrets within secrets within secrets, Kris.” He looked as though he was on the verge of saying more, but an odd pensive look came upon him and he changed the subject. “Anyway, shall we?”

“Yeah. Enough introspection for one night. Let’s dance!”

They pushed through the doors to the club proper and found themselves on yet another flight of stairs with an open view of the dance floor below it. Unseen fog machines shrouded the floor with coiling mist, turning each flash of strobelight into a luminescent pillar piercing the dark. As they descended, she noticed a walkway connecting the stairs to another corridor about halfway down to the dance floor. She pulled Tetsuya close, and practically shouted into his ear over the pulsing electronic music. “What’s over there!?”

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He almost-shouted into her ear in turn. “Private rooms! Too exclusive even for the likes of me!”

Kris smirked at that, and he shrugged easily, then leaned close again. “Oh, mind your valuables while we’re down there! Usually nobody tries anything funny in here, but - you know.”

“Oh, yeah! Hold on to this, will you?” She pulled open the left side of his blazer and slipped her purse into the inner pocket. It was slim enough that it didn’t even leave a bulge in the fabric. “That should keep it safe.”

“You’re putting a lot of trust in me here!”

“I am!” She looked him in the eye, and was suddenly reminded of just how close they were - their faces were practically touching. Judging from his reaction, he’d come to a similar realisation. He raised a hand to her face and her breath caught in her chest.

“What about this?” But he only touched her right earlobe lightly. Her earring. A gift from Dad, and one of the last few things she had to remember him by. It was a plain silver stud with some intricate inscription - nothing too flashy.

“It’ll be fine! You’ll stop anyone who tries to rob me, right?”

He groaned, but offered no further resistance, climbing down the stairs ahead of her. She took a surreptitious look around as Tetsuya tried to get an order to the bartender over the crowd of thirsty twenty-somethings already swarming the bar. As far as nightclubs went, it wasn’t like any of the clubs that Kyoko and Miyuki had ever dragged her to - less cigarette smoke, the floor didn’t stick to the soles of your shoes, and the DJ here seemed marginally better at timing a drop. The stage was raised against the far wall, and was large enough for a full band - in fact, there were instruments on stage, though the music was currently being blasted out of the DJ’s Macbook. Private booths circled the dance floor, where those tired of dancing could cool off with a drink. Or make out sloppily, she noted, quickly averting her gaze from a public display of affection. Or snort… something. What was that line from that movie? A wretched hive of scum and villainy? She thought of what she’d said just minutes ago. Sometimes you just have to be bad - well, she was certainly learning from a master here.

Tetsuya returned with a straight whisky in each hand, and they clinked glasses before knocking their drinks back - no point trying to toast over the music, and besides, they were still living out their last toast. She swallowed the whisky in one shot and tasted smoke and fire as she breathed out, an accompaniment to the heat within. The world swam around her a little, and she realised belatedly that she’d had upwards of four drinks in the span of an hour. It wasn’t enough to get her completely drunk, just a little tipsy. And hell, if I’m going to be tipsy, I can think of worse people to be tipsy with, she thought as Tetsuya returned their empty glasses to the bar. There was an undeniable thrill in transgression - the guilty pleasure of breaking the rules, of doing what you’d been told not to. What was the point of being an adult if you didn’t know how to indulge in it once in a while?

As Tetsuya made his way back to her, she met his gaze with an impish smirk, and led him to the dance floor by the hand, feeling a pattern of calluses on his fingers - was he a musician? Idly, she wondered what he might play, but then he was there with her in the middle of a sea of dancers. The press of the crowd pushed the two of them together, and the momentary sensation of his body against hers sent her thoughts in a very different direction.

And they danced. Movement was a language unto itself, and as they moved together on the dance floor, they spoke, communicated, understood. Haltingly at first, but with growing fluency and depth as the song unfolded. Music and motion, body and beat became one unbroken experience for her, for them, deaf to everything but the song, blind to everything but each other. She moved against him and he against her, some touches featherlight, others lingering and longing, moments where the song and dance were little more than a genteel pretense, a veil that covered them but could not conceal the outlines of their desire.

However, like all good things - and all bad things, for that matter - it came to an end. The music wound down, creating a lull in the atmosphere. The relative hush that followed was punctuated by the bustle of the crowd moving off the dance floor, seeking refreshment or rest. Kris leaned against Tetsuya in the midst of the exodus to avoid getting jostled, listening to the rapid rasp of his breathing, breathing in the mingled scents of clean sweat and cologne. She didn’t recognise the fragrance. She barely recognised him, or even the person she’d been just moments ago, the one who’d dared to dance so freely and frankly. “That was… new.”

He drew a deep breath. “...Yeah. We should have done this earlier, huh?”

“We really should.” Much was left unsaid, leaving the space between them charged with implication, inference and suggestion. Mere words were an imperfect, inadequate medium for capturing everything that had passed between them in those fleeting moments of transcendent connection. Still, she tried, searching for the right words and the right time to say them. “Shall we go somewhere quieter?”

He nodded, and they moved off the dance floor, seeking a relatively secluded area. After a short and fruitless search for an unoccupied booth, they moved to a small landing partway up the staircase, close enough to the private rooms that the noise of the crowd below receded into the background. Leaning against the railing, she watched the people below mingle, drink, and move, and felt Tetsuya doing the same thing beside her. The moment they’d shared earlier was fading, but Kris knew that they’d crossed a line somewhere. It was too late to go back, even if she’d wanted to, and she wasn’t entirely surprised to find that she didn’t.

“So… just now.” She skirted around the thick tension that loomed between them, coming as close as she could to addressing it directly before drawing back, as if flirting with a naked flame.

“Yes.” He was as tentative as she was, his usual ready wit replaced with an awkwardness that she recognised. It was the way you felt when you were on the cusp of opening yourself to another person, with fear and hope clamoring endlessly in your ear. Trust him. He wants this, too, and he’s right for you. No. What if he’s not interested in being tied down to a square like me? What if asking him ruins the friendship we already have - something I can’t find anywhere else? But isn’t a relationship with him something I can’t find anywhere else, either? Isn’t this the best time to ask?

“What’s going on between us, Tetsuya? Are we just friends, or is there something more?” She pushed ahead, refusing to be mired in indecision. She wasn't the type to play games, not with something this important on the line.

He shifted slightly to look at her, his features silhouetted in dim light so that she couldn't see his eyes. Nonetheless, she sensed the gentle weight of his careful regard, and fought to keep herself from blushing. This was part of being open, of daring to let yourself be emotionally vulnerable with another person. One runs the risk of weeping a little if one allows oneself to be tamed. Yet he was worth the risk. Wasn't he?

“I… Do you want that? To be more?” He sounded as though he were fighting down embarrassment himself, which encouraged her a little.

Kris turned to him, taking his elbow and moving him so that they faced each other properly. She smiled, giving release to the raw emotion surging within her. “I do.”

Tetsuya came closer, his expression glowing with relief. “Kris - “

The door behind them crashed open, and a large man stumbled out of a private room. Kris and Tetsuya jumped back reflexively. It wasn’t because the man was grizzled, tough, and dressed like a gangster - though he was all of these things - but because of the gout of blood spurting from his neck, staining the walls and ceiling. His eyes were wild and glassy, darting around at random until they settled on Kris. Through trembling lips, he forced out one word.

“Help.”