Emi?" Hanae's voice came out strangled. "What does Emi have to—"
"Come out, Emi."
The side door opened.
And Hanae felt something in her chest crack.
Emi stepped into the ballroom, and she wasn't wearing a guest's dress. She was wearing a wedding gown—strapless silk that probably cost more than the GDP of a small country, fitted to perfection, making her look like every fairy tale princess come to life.
Her stepsister. The daughter of the woman her father had married after her mother died. Emi, who'd always been the delicate one, the pretty one, the one who cried at the right moments and smiled at the right times and knew exactly how to make people want to protect her.
Emi, who'd hated Hanae since the day they met.
She walked up the aisle with small, careful steps, like each one hurt. When she reached Kenji, she collapsed against him with a delicate sob, burying her face in his shoulder. And then—perfect timing, really—she coughed. That soft, pathetic little cough that made everyone in the audience make sympathetic noises.
"Emi is dying," Kenji announced, wrapping his arms around her like she might shatter. "The doctors say she has months. Maybe less. And her dying wish..." He looked at the audience, playing to them, and God, he was good at this. "Her dying wish is to be my bride. She's loved me in secret for years. Suffered in silence because she didn't want to hurt her sister."
He looked down at Emi with such tenderness that Hanae felt something hot and acidic rise in her throat.
Then he looked at Hanae, and the tenderness vanished, replaced by something that looked almost like pity.
"You understand, don't you, Hanae? You've always been the strong one. The sturdy one. You can survive a little heartbreak. But Emi?" He stroked her hair. "Emi is fragile. She needs this. I can't let her die with a broken heart. You wouldn't want that, would you? You're not that cruel."
Emi lifted her face from Kenji's shoulder. Her eyes met Hanae's across the altar.
There were no tears. No sadness. Just triumph, pure and vicious and sparkling.
She mouthed a single word: Mine.
The ballroom erupted in whispers.
"How romantic..."
"Tragic love..."
"Hanae should step aside. It's the noble thing to do..."
"She's healthy. She can find someone else. The sister is dying..."
"Besides, Kenji and Emi look so much better together. Hanae looks like she belongs in the kitchen anyway."
Laughter.
It started as nervous titters but grew, fed by champagne and cruelty and the particular joy people took in watching someone fall. These people—Tokyo's elite, the powerful, the untouchable—were laughing at her.
At Hanae Kurosawa.
At the woman who'd once held the fate of the Kurosawa Clan in her bloodstained hands.
At the Asura.
Something broke.
It wasn't loud. It was the quiet snap of a rope that had been fraying for six years, finally giving way under weight it was never meant to carry.
The trembling in Hanae's hands stopped.
The tears that had been gathering in her eyes evaporated, burned away by something hotter.
Her heartbeat, which had been hammering at panic speed, suddenly dropped. Slowed. Settled into the steady, terrifying rhythm of a predator sighting prey.
Forty-five beats per minute. Combat resting rate.
The Dragon opened its eyes.
Hanae looked down at the bouquet in her hands. White roses. Symbol of innocence, of new beginnings, of brides who believed in fairy tales.
She dropped it.
The flowers hit the marble with a sound like a gunshot in the sudden silence.
"Sturdy," Hanae repeated. Her voice was different now. The breathy, uncertain tone was gone, burned away like morning fog. What remained was low, textured, carrying the weight of authority that came from being obeyed or watching people die. "You called me sturdy."
Kenji frowned, confusion flickering across his face. "What?"
Hanae lifted her head. Opened her eyes fully for the first time in six years. The dull, soft look she'd practiced—the look of someone harmless, someone simple—evaporated.
What remained was sharp. Predatory. The eyes of something that had been caged and was very, very tired of it.
"You called me bland. Boring. A workhorse." She took a step forward. Kenji took a step back. "You said I had no ambition. No spark."
"I was being honest," Kenji said, recovering some of his arrogance. "Don't make a scene, Hanae. Just leave quietly. My security will escort you out so you don't embarrass yourself further."
Four men in black suits materialized from the shadows near the altar. Big men. Ex-military, probably. The kind hired to handle problems without making headlines. They moved toward Hanae with the casual confidence of people who'd never met a real threat in their lives.
"Please, miss," the lead guard said, reaching for her arm. "Let's make this easy."
Hanae looked at his hand. Looked at Kenji. Looked at Emi, still smirking against Kenji's shoulder.
"You wanted a fragile wife?" Hanae asked softly.
She reached up and grabbed the high lace collar of her wedding dress with both hands.
"You hated my shoulders. Said they were too broad. Too masculine. You hated my back. Said it was too hard, too muscular, too much."
Her fingers dug into the fabric. Three thousand dollars worth of custom alterations.
"Let me show you," she said, and smiled. It was not a nice smile. It was the smile of something with too many teeth. "Let me show you exactly what you threw away."
She pulled.
RIIIIIIIIIIIIP.
The sound was violence made audible. Fabric tearing, seams exploding, buttons popping like gunfire and pinging off marble. The delicate lace sleeves shredded. The carefully constructed bodice disintegrated.
The dress fell to her waist in ruins.
Someone screamed.
Half the ballroom screamed, actually, a rising wave of shock and horror and—underneath it—fear.
Because Hanae Kurosawa stood at the altar, exposed, and there was nothing fragile about her.
Her back was a weapon. Every muscle group defined with the kind of clarity that came from decades of dedicated training—trapezius muscles rising like mountains, latissimus dorsi flaring like wings, rear deltoids like carved stone. This wasn't gym fitness. This was the physique of someone who'd built their body for war.
But it was the ink that made the screaming stop.
A Black Dragon covered her entire back. From the base of her neck to her tailbone, rendered in traditional Yakuza style with painstaking detail—every scale individually shaded, eyes burning crimson, claws tearing through stylized clouds. The mark of the Kurosawa Clan Head.
The mark of the Asura.
Scars intersected the tattoo like lightning strikes. Bullet wounds, puckered and ugly. Knife slashes, thick and raised. Burns. The topographical map of someone who'd walked through violence and survived it.
The ballroom went silent. That particular silence that came from three hundred people simultaneously realizing they'd made a terrible mistake.
Kenji stumbled backward, his face white as his tuxedo. "H-Hanae? What... what are you?"
She turned to face him, and the movement was poetry. Every muscle firing in perfect synchronization, raw power moving under skin like something barely contained.
"My name," she said, voice resonating through the floor, through the air, through the bones of everyone present, "is not Hanae the Housewife."
The lead guard recovered first. Or maybe he was just stupid. He lunged forward, reaching for her shoulder. "Cover yourself! You're making a—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
Hanae moved.
It wasn't a wild swing or a panic response. It was precise, economical, the movement of someone who'd done this so many times it was more natural than breathing.
She caught his wrist. Her grip locked down like a steel trap. The guard's eyes went wide—he was a big man, strong, trained—but he couldn't move. Couldn't even twitch.
She twisted.
CRACK.
The radius snapped like a twig. The sound echoed in the silence.
Before he could even scream, she pivoted, using his momentum and her leverage to swing all hundred kilograms of him like he weighed nothing. She slammed him into the second guard. They went down together in an explosion of flowers and water, hitting the floor hard enough to crack marble.
The third guard pulled a baton, swung it at her head with all his strength.
Hanae didn't dodge.
She stepped into the swing and caught the steel baton with her bare hand. The impact would have shattered bones. She didn't even flinch. She ripped it from his grip—he tried to hold on, she pulled anyway—and drove her elbow into his solar plexus.
All the air left his lungs in a rush. He folded, hit the floor, and vomited on the white runner.
The fourth guard froze. He looked at his three companions—one cradling a broken arm, two unconscious, one still retching. He looked at Hanae, standing there in the ruins of her wedding dress with the Black Dragon seeming to writhe across her back with every breath.
"I quit," he whispered, and dropped his hands.
Smart man.
Hanae kicked off her white heels. The sound of them hitting the floor was loud in the shocked silence. She dug her bare toes into the carpet, grounding herself, and cracked her neck. Left, then right.
Then she turned to Kenji.
He was shaking. Actually, physically shaking, his knees knocking together like a child's. Emi had released his arm and was backing away, her "dying" cough forgotten, all the color drained from her face.
"You..." Kenji stammered, voice breaking. "What... what are you?"
Hanae walked toward him. Slowly. Each step deliberate. She stopped close enough that he could feel the heat radiating off her skin, close enough that when she spoke, he felt the words.
She was smaller than him in height. But she towered over him in every way that mattered.
She reached out and adjusted his bow tie with gentle fingers. He flinched so hard he nearly fell.
"I'm the woman who kept your enemies away for six years, Kenji," she said softly. "Did you really think your competitors just... disappeared? That the Yakuza clans left your territory alone because they liked you?"
She patted his cheek. It was gentle. Almost affectionate. He looked like she'd hit him with a hammer.
"They stayed away because they knew I was in your kitchen," she whispered. "Because word got around that the Asura was playing housewife, and nobody—nobody—was stupid enough to test whether I'd stopped being what I am."
She leaned in close, lips brushing his ear.
"You want a divorce? Consider it granted. But understand something: The protection ends today. Tomorrow morning, the wolves come for you. And Kenji?" She pulled back enough to look him in the eyes. "When they do, remember that you chose this. You chose a dying woman who manipulated you over the monster who would have died for you."
She stepped back. Turned to face the ballroom full of frozen elites.
"Show's over," she announced, voice flat and bored. "Go home. Tell your friends you saw the Asura. Tell them she's done pretending."
She walked down the aisle. Not running, not stumbling, not crying. She walked with the long, rolling stride of an apex predator, and the tattered remains of her wedding dress trailed behind her like a battle standard. The Black Dragon on her back stared down every single person she passed, and not one of them could meet its eyes.
When she reached the doors, she paused. Didn't look back—that would have given them too much importance—but spoke loud enough for everyone to hear.
"Oh, and Emi?" Her voice was almost kind. "The doctors were lying. You're not dying. But when Kenji's creditors come for him, when the clans realize he's unprotected, when everything falls apart?" She smiled at the door. "You'll wish you were."
She kicked the doors open. They slammed against the walls hard enough to splinter the wood.
Rain was falling. Heavy Tokyo rain, the kind that felt like the sky was trying to wash the city clean.
Hanae stepped out into it and tilted her face up, letting the cold water wash away six years of carefully applied makeup, six years of pretending, six years of being small.
She pulled a burner phone from the hidden pocket in her ruined skirt. Dialed a number she hadn't called in six years but still knew by heart.
It rang once.
"Hello?" A deep voice, rough with surprise and something that might have been hope. "Who is this?"
Hanae smiled. A real smile, wide and sharp and hungry.
"Ryuuji," she said, and her voice was practically purring. "Clear the gym. I need to hit something."
[End Of Dragon Awekining]