With their plans set in stone, now they simply wait for time to pass. Atreus's silver, logo-emblazoned ride approaches his apartment building soon after he sends his last text, and inside, he bathes with thorough hastiness. When finished, he puts on a new set of more casual-looking attire, including black denim pants, black and white sneakers, and a grey and dark blue long sleeve baseball shirt. It's rare he's given a chance to wear normal street clothes, not outwardly looking like a gangster, so he can't help but take his time looking at himself in his tall wall-mounted mirror, ensuring that he doesn't look out of character. Though he has no lapel to set his Sanada-gumi pin into, he still places it in his pocket out of dutiful obligation.

The chime of the text notification on his phone rings once again. He picks the device up and notices the time is exactly 2 AM now, so he can guess what the message must be.

[Leaving Crown now. I should be at the park in about twenty minutes,] Max announces her departure from the club.

[I'm about to head to the convenience store. I should reach the park several minutes ahead of you. I'll wait for you there,] Atreus gives as precise a reply as possible.

He switches to the Automa application and orders another ride, then promptly exits his apartment again to stand under the golden cone of light that illuminates a section of the sidewalk in front of the complex. As he waits, he thinks about how hurriedly he's moving – anticipating the meetup with eagerness he hasn't experienced in some time. Until this quiet moment, he didn't even notice that he had skipped dinner.

After his new ride shows up with the usual punctuality expected of the service, he rides eastward, first making a quick stop at the nearby Seven Eleven – one of nineteen in Kyoba – for a six pack of Tsukitei Brand Stout and a tall, dense convenience store sandwich to fill his empty stomach with.

He returns to his ride outside and proceeds further east to the specified meetup place: Hamada Park, which is a small patch of green land measuring sixty feet by sixty feet and surrounded by a chest-high chain-link fence. There's not much in the way of playground activities for children; only the usual park equipment are present: a swing set, a modest jungle gym with a slide, monkey bars, and merry-go-round, all crammed together in this tiny, city-mandated yard.

Lamp posts are placed near each corner of the park, bright enough to keep visibility high even in the current dead of night. A few benches are scattered around the area, but rather than go to any of them, Atreus opts to seat himself on one of the swings, placing his bag of drinks on the ground next to him. Rather than begin drinking immediately, he simply waits for his coworker's arrival.

Not even five minutes pass before another silver sedan pulls up to the front of the park, and Max emerges from the back seat with clear pep in her step, taking quick notice of Atreus's presence and approaching him with enthusiasm.

“I gotta admit, this isn't how I expected our first time out together would be like, but I can appreciate the casualness of it,” she confesses with a smile as she sits on the swing next to him. “And thank you for not drinking without me.”

“I almost started, but I really didn't want to be that guy who drinks in a public park alone,” Atreus admits as he retrieves two brown bottles of stout from the bag, using his fingers to pry the caps off each with pronounced ease and handing one to Max.

“Thank you,” she says as she accepts the bottle. “For a second there, I wondered if you brought a bottle opener.”

“It took a while to get used to the fact that I don't have to treat my hands with as much care as I normally did when they were made of flesh,” Atreus comments before taking a sip of his beer while staring at his free hand. “When I baked brownies and stuff, I still put on oven mitts out of instinct. I also looked at my fingertips every other day, expecting to see overgrown fingernails.”

“I'd probably lop my own hands off just to never worry about my nails again, honestly,” Max remarks with a sigh as she brings her bottle to her lips. After a quick sip, she continues. “I know of some people who begin to question their humanity after receiving multiple cybernetic limbs.”

“I can understand that. I guess my lack of synthetic skin forced me to accept my arms faster, even if getting used to them was a tough task in itself.”

As Max gently sways forward and backward, she looks at Atreus, who is in turn looking down at his arms still. Part of her is curious as to how he lost his limbs to begin with, but she quietly realizes that they have been the subject of too many conversations between them as of late, and she worries she's beginning to approach the boundaries of what's tactful.

“I want to know more about you,” Max casually confesses, “about how you grew up, and your personal life. You strike me as an interesting person. But I don't really know what I want to ask first.”

“I've been accused of being too closed off before, so I'm willing to answer whatever you want. Just ask whatever comes to mind first. But I can't guarantee I'll give specifics on Sanada-gumi stuff.”

“I'd rather just know about you, personally, instead of whatever you're doing in the clan,” Max offers sincere reassurance. “So, did you grow up in LA?”

“Yeah. I was born and raised here. I've actually never gone past state the line yet; I never really had any reason to. But I'd like to go to Japan someday,” Atreus answers honestly as he reaches down into the convenience store bag to take out the sandwich, still cool and tightly sealed in its plastic housing.

“You've never been to Japan? I figured you must've been given an excuse to go there by now from whoever's in charge of the Sanada-gumi.”

“I'm not important enough to go on overseas visits to the Japanese branch of the clan,” he responds with humble bluntness about his relatively low rank before taking a bite of the thick sandwich.

“Are your parents from Japan, then?”

“My dad is,” Atreus forces out an answer past his mouthful of bread, cheese, meat, lettuce, tomato, and mustard. “My mom's American.”

“How's your relationship with them?”

He pauses for a moment to consider a truthful answer that also doesn't suggest any sort of miserable upbringing. His eyes narrow and gaze down toward the dirt beneath his swing, where the grass had been destroyed from the skidding and kicking of countless feet. The creaking of both his and Max's swings fill the air for the contemplative moment.

“Well, my mom was never really in the picture. She sort of just took off a couple years after I was born and my dad basically raised me on his own.”

“What's your dad like?” Max quickly follows up with another question to avoid an awkward silence.

“Uh, well, he's always been a really busy guy,” Atreus strains his mind somewhat to not paint a drearier picture than necessary. “He worked eighty-hour work weeks and always came home exhausted. I spent more time in the care of babysitters and pre-school teachers, really. I'm not trying to suggest he was neglectful or anything, but he wasn't really an active part of my life, through no fault of his own. At the very least, he made enough of an effort to make sure I wasn't taken by CPS or something. I always had clothes on my back and food in my stomach, and he was pretty liberal with buying toys for me. At the end of the day, I don't have much to complain about, I guess,” when he finishes his reminiscing, he realizes how much he spoke – almost with a stream of consciousness delivery – without really meaning to.

“Do you talk to him much today?”

“I give him a call every few months to tell him I'm okay. He knows that I'm in the Sanada-gumi,” Atreus admits with a subtle shift in tone; his voice becoming slightly more morose.

“How did he react when he found out? Angrily?”

“He reacted a bit strangely, I guess. I think most parents would probably yell and curse at the revelation of their child joining one of the largest gangs in the city, but he didn't really say much. He looked disappointed, but I couldn't tell you if it was disappointment in me or not,” the gangster furrows his brow as he recalls the deep, but not-so-obvious hurt that washed over his father's face all those years ago – the glossy-eyed expression of a man who feels as though he had made a grave mistake. “How about you? What are your parents like?” he returns the question before he loses himself to sudden dejection.

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“Both my parents are around, and they're pretty normal as far as parents go,” Max responds with modesty, but tries to pick her own brain in way to not make her family seem boring. “My dad was in the Marine Corps and saw combat in Afghanistan, but he wasn't some sort of stern, hard-ass father you'd expect him to be. He's a pretty no-nonsense person, but he has a good sense of humor. He laughs a lot.”

“And your mom?”

“She's actually kind of the stern one of the two,” Max admits with a small, bitter smile. “She wants the best for me, but man, she can get annoying about it sometimes. Household rules were pretty fuckin' strict when I was younger and didn't loosen up until junior year of high school, and that was due to my dad's insistence.”

“Is she still like that even after you've moved out?”

“Thankfully, no,” she answers with a sigh of relief. “She feels like I'm capable of taking care of myself now, so she's backed off. Admittedly, I think she's giving me more credit than I deserve, but I guess I'm healthy and not homeless, so I must be doing okay. College helped me learn how to be truly independent, especially when it came to remembering to buy my own food.”

“I moved out of my dad's place as soon as I began doing regular errands for the clan and earning enough to pay rent – when I was about nineteen. Devin and I were roommates for those first few years; we were in a really cramped studio apartment that was barely suitable for just one person, let alone two.”

“Did you ever consider going to college? What kind of student were you?”

Atreus heaves a sigh, “Yeah, I considered it. For a while, it seemed like the obvious choice. I was actually a very good student; I graduated in the top five percent of my high school class. But I didn't enjoy studying, especially not when the only thing I had to look forward to was just a desk job that demands eighty-hour work weeks. I also didn't save up any money to pay for university, so unless I worked for a year or two first, I'd have to take out a loan, and I've heard too many horror stories to do that.”

“Boy, I don't fucking blame you one bit,” Max readily agrees with his apprehension about students loans, considering her own. “I got loans to pay for school because I thought I'd be a shoe-in for a decent spot in a place like Fritz Robotics with my fancy new master's degree. If I could tell the future, I would've just said 'fuck that' and went straight to hostessing when I turned eighteen. In fact, if I had done that, I would've made as much as I currently owe the bank by now. I have a friend who didn't go to college who makes less than I do, but since I'm in so much debt, they technically have a significantly higher net worth than me.”

“I guess I made the right decision, then,” Atreus remarks with a small smirk.

“Well, I think ideally you should be getting your income from more legal sources, but until you get arrested for something, then yeah, I'd say you probably did,” the off-duty hostess admits with a shrug and smile. “What did you think you would major in, back when you still considered college?”

Atreus narrows his eyes and looks up the light-polluted, blank sky, “Probably astronomy. I really like space. When I was a kid, I always thought about what it would be like to be one of the first people to colonize Mars. Too bad it's too late to fulfill that dream; there's a few hundred people up there already. Some of them are even children who were born there – the first human Martians.”

“Weren't you against the idea of living up there in the conversation we had the other night?” Max asks with a glare of suspicion.

“Hey, a person can change their mind when they're older. I'd still like to go up there someday when Martian tourism happens; I just wouldn't want to live there yet. I still have many things down here on Earth to do and worry about. Though I always find it unfortunate that I was born in a time where space exploration isn't the hot new conquest everyone's out to claim. If it ever becomes possible to visit other star systems, it sure as hell isn't gonna happen in our lifetime.”

“Yeah, we probably won't be inviting any extra-terrestrial lifeforms out to coffee anytime soon. But we have plenty of time and opportunities to see how things evolve on our own planet, which is also important, assuming we're still around in a hundred years.”

“I guess so,” Atreus halfheartedly agrees with the sensible statement. “I guess I should explore the world a bit before I worry about exploring space. I did mention having never left California earlier.”

“Other than Japan, what other countries would you like to visit?”

“That's hard to say. There's a lot of countries, but I don't know which ones are truly worth a visit. Other than Japan, probably South Korea, Singapore, Italy, France, and New Zealand.”

“New Zealand?” Max repeats, surprised at the mention of the small, oceanic country. “Why there?”

“It's just a really beautiful place. And I'd like to do some Lord of the Rings tourism,” Atreus confesses as he casts his gaze downward again in slight embarrassment.

“Oh, God. You just keep surprising me,” Max remarks as she tries to stifle her giggles by hiding her mouth behind the top of her beer bottle.

As their meet up continues, Atreus and Max cover several more topics of casual discussion as they quickly run through the remaining bottles of stout; the alcohol giving them a slightly disoriented, but more outgoing, inebriated demeanor.

“Shit, we've been out here for an hour already,” Max comments as she looks at her phone. “You buzzed yet?”

“Alcohol gets to me faster now since I lost my arms,” Atreus responds with a muffled yawn. “Takes only a handful of bottles to get me shit-faced. What's worse is that I'm a pretty sleepy drunk,” Atreus arches his back and extends his arms in a stretch. “I could really use the comfort of my bed right now.”

“Yeah, I won't force you to stay awake much longer,” she says as she lifts herself off the seat of the swing. She turns and takes a step to stand in front of Atreus and face him. “This was a very fun first date, though.”

“You'd consider this a date?” he asks with a slightly puzzled but amused expression. “All we did was drink in a public park like shady people.”

“Yeah, but it was fun. I'd consider it a date just because it was a nice experience.”

Atreus gives a small chuckle, “That's good to hear.”

“So, you're off work later today, right?”

Atreus nods dazedly, “Yeah, I'm off on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays.”

“Three days off a week, huh? I'm jealous. But I have Saturdays off too, so, do you wanna meet up again later? Maybe go to that donut shop you mentioned?” Max casually proposes another date, but becomes noticeably more meek as she anticipates a response.

The gangster is enveloped by quiet surprise, not expecting her to be so eager to meet up again so soon. Her proactiveness about their relationship consistently catches him off guard, but he can't say he doesn't appreciate it. He feels at ease around her, something that isn't as swiftly accomplished with most others.

“I'd like that,” he answers honestly with a small, content nod. “But like before, I can't guarantee I'll be free later, which – trust me – is something I don't like saying, because I'm not usually this tied up with Sanada-gumi work.”

“Don't worry, I don't think you're trying to make up excuses to avoid me or anything,” Max gently waves her hands and tries to ease his thoughts. “I won't pretend to know what your job is, or assume that because you're in a gang, it must be easy. I just... enjoy hanging out with you. Even though you seemed a bit stiff at first, you're nice to be around,” she admits with a hint of bashfulness that she rarely displays.

Atreus, touched by her sincerity, gives an embarrassed but grateful smile of his own, “Thanks. You're nice to be around too.”

A fleeting moment passes between the two as they spend only a few seconds stuck in an awkward, but endearing gaze. Max is the first to be overwhelmed with embarrassment and break the stare by looking down at her phone again.

“Well, uh, I'm gonna order a ride and get out of your hair so you can head home and go to bed. You look seconds away from passing out.”

“Yeah, I wasn't kidding when I said I'm a sleepy drunk,” Atreus doubles down as he groggily rubs his eyes. “Send me a text later today when you're awake, and maybe we can take advantage of our day off.”

“I'll do that,” Max answers with a firm nod.

It takes less than a minute for a vacant Automa ride to approach the small park and pick up Max to take her home for the night, and Atreus wastes no time summoning his own after she departs. He throws away the convenience store bag containing the now empty beer case and plastic sandwich wrap into a recycling bin on his way towards the sidewalk. His taxi appears with the usual punctuality, and he finally rides back his apartment.

He sleepily shuffles up the building's exterior staircase and down the veranda to his home. He inputs the code to unlock his deadbolt and goes inside, slipping out of his sneakers without even bending over to untie the laces. Atreus takes his phone out of his pocket before shedding his denim pants on the way to his bed, which he tosses himself on to and fidgets in until he finally discovers a comfortable position. He shuts his lights off using the tablet on his nightstand, and as he motions to rest his phone there to, he remembers something.

The sleepy gangster opens up the Velonum application on his phone and stares at the five hundred dollars that the boisterous, obnoxious VIP at Crown gave to him as a so-called 'tip'. For a moment, he ponders if he truly wishes to keep the money for himself, but the idea doesn't last long, as he opens up the web browser and begins to search for worthwhile things to spend the money on as quickly as possible. Ultimately, he discovers a charity that helps fund the research and curing of prion diseases. With little hesitance in his fingers, he sends all five hundred dollars to the organization, checking a box about keeping anonymity, and places his phone on the nightstand to finally get his much-needed shut eye.