I’d been looking into some of my father’s business overseas when I’d encountered a man who I remembered as having posed a brief threat to one of my father’s tacky coffee shops back when I’d been in high school.

I’d promptly offered to finance the reopening of the establishment back in Japan, provided he returned to operate it.

I used my own money and neglected to notify the president of my most recent acquisition.

I’m sure undermining the efforts of senior members of the Kakinouchi Company was traditional. Doubly so if the senior member in question happened to be the president, and your own father.

All reports, paperwork, and bank statements had told me that the little shop was making me a tidy sum of money. The closing of a shop across the street, which just happened to belong to the Kakinouchi Company, confirmed this fact.

Which was why I found the sight before me so confusing.

“Narugami, where are all the customers?”

My former classmate, sort-of-friend, and now the chief assistant and general minion of the Evening Coffee House gave me a Look as he polished a cup. “School will have only just gotten out. The students will be flocking in soon for Master’s coffee. Just give them time,” he said, the tone of his voice suggesting that he questioned my very sanity in doubting the power of ‘master’s’ coffee.

“Of course,” I sighed and rested my chin in the palm of one hand.

The shop, which was supposed to be doing spectacularly well, was deserted. Well, nearly deserted. It was my first time checking up on it since the opening and there were only three people there. A woman, sitting by herself at a table, very slowly sipping at a cup of coffee and reading, and a pair of teenage boys whose uniforms suggested they were from my old school.

Those two hadn’t even ordered anything. I looked at Narugami. He was still industriously shining coffee cups and didn’t seem to care about the two boys.

I looked back at them.

One was leaning back in his chair and seemed to have lost his blazer at some point. He wore gloves and a smug expression, despite the fact that he had a rather impressive black eye. Hair, dyed a bright purple, fell over the other side of his face. He looked taller than I and rather rumpled, as though he’d come into the shop after a fight. Not exactly the sort of person I would have expected to see in the Evening Coffee House.

Sitting across from the boy I mentally dubbed ‘Punk’ was a significantly smaller boy who had retained his blazer, although he looked just as rumpled as Punk. He had red hair, unsettling green eyes, and a very bored expression.

There was something irritatingly familiar about him.

I turned on my stool to look at Narugami. “Hey, is that – ”

I was interrupted when the door burst open and I was temporarily deafened by the force of the ringing bells.

A bizarrely dressed man had entered and gone straight to the table where the two boys were sitting. He shot a dirty look at the redhead, said something I couldn’t hear, which the redhead took in stride, the expression of terminal boredom still on his face. Then the man turned to Punk with a far more cheerful gleam in his eyes and began babbling something that was too fast to fully make out.

I heard something about ‘shopping’, ‘sale’, ‘toilet paper’, and ‘birdseed’, but it went straight to my ears without bothering to pass through my brain and find some kind of meaning.

The man grabbed Punk’s arm, dragging the boy out of his chair and out of the shop. As they went, I could see the look of acute horror and embarrassment on Punk’s face.

I nodded sympathetically after him. You could always recognize a parent humiliating their teenaged child, after all. Even if the parent happened to be more insane than usual.

The redhead waved cheerfully after them and stood up, wandering over to the counter, his hands tucked comfortably in his pockets.

“Yo, Narukami,” he said, sliding onto the stool next to me.

“Loki,” Narugami gave the boy a nod, picked up a cup, and vanished back into the kitchen, presumably to get some fresh coffee from the master.

The boy turned to me and smiled. “Hello, Kou-chan.”

I bit back a groan. “Hello, detective.”

He continued grinning at me. “Haven’t seen you in quite a while, Kou-chan.”

“I’ve been travelling abroad,” I answered absently, staring into the depths of my untouched coffee. I knew travelling had nothing to do with it, and so did he. I hadn’t seen the detective in ten years, not since the night he and Daidouji Mayura had somehow blown up the top storey of my father’s mansion, resulting my father grounding me until I was out of University.

The event hadn’t exactly filled me with a great desire to seek out the company of the culprits again, although I recognized that, whatever had happened, it was probably more Daidouji’s fault than the detective’s. He had always seemed sensible, for an eight-year-old kid. Which was hardly normal, when you thought about it, and weird things always seemed to happen around him . . .

“I’m sure it was fascinating,” he said sweetly. “Do you come here often?”

“Mm. No. I’m the owner. Just stopped by to see how things were going.”

He made a great point of turning about on his stool, looking at every corner of the shop. “I don’t see the Kakinouchi logo anywhere, Kou-chan,” he said, looking at me with overdone innocence and stupidity.

“It’s an independent enterprise,” I answered smoothly, not rising to the bait.

“Of course,” he nodded thoughtfully. “I remember a shop with the same name being here,” he frowned abruptly and twisted his lips a bit as he said the next bit, “back when I was a little boy.”

“There was. People said the man who operated it made the best coffee in the world.”

“But it was rumoured to be cursed.”

“That’s what they said.”

“The owner went to America, I believe.”

“He did.”

Narugami wandered out of the kitchen, put the detective’s coffee on the table, and continued past us without a word. There was a mop over his shoulder and a bucket in one hand.

He disappeared into the bathroom, muttering something along the lines of: “Even in Asgard, I always had to clean the bathrooms . . .”

I heard the detective snigger under his breath as he lifted the cup to his lips, blowing over the coffee gently. “You are quite a nice, kindhearted person, Kou-chan.”

I winced. The last thing an up-and-coming young businessman ever wants is to acquire a reputation of niceness. You might as well throw yourself off a skyscraper if something like that happened.

People were beginning to filter in, making themselves comfortable at the tables and booths.

It was time to change the subject.

“Who was the guy in here with you earlier?”

The detective blinked at me, raising one questioning eyebrow as he drank his coffee.

“Your boyfriend?”

The detective choked.

I carefully wiped coffee off my face and swore to myself that I would never attempt to shock someone with a mouthful of coffee ever again as long as I lived.

By the time my face was dry and coffee-free, the detective seemed to have composed himself.

“No,” he said, quite clearly and emphatically. The words could have been written in stone.

I grinned. “If you ever need to consult anyone older, wiser, and far more experienced, detective, I would be glad to volunteer my services.”

“Thank you, Kou-chan. I’m sure you’re a fount of knowledge when it comes to seducing teenage boys.”

I shuddered. The detective always had an unfortunate habit of bringing up things I would much rather have forgotten.

Something from the long-suppressed part of my mind rear it’s ugly head.

I ignored it.

The place was really filling up. Waitresses darted back and forth from the kitchen to the customers, beaming enticingly at everyone, making their stay all the more pleasant.

One stopped to smile rather nicely at us.

She was cute, dark-haired, perky, and, my mind pointed out rather sharply, too young and too much an employee. Rather disappointed, I greeted her with nothing more than a friendly smile. The detective did the same, although his smile seemed more than friendly.

They probably knew each other from school, I decided.

She continued to beam at us, hugging an empty tray to her chest. “Can I get you anything else, Kakinouchi-san?”

“No, I’m fine, thank you.”

“What about your brother?” she asked, looking at Loki. “I never knew you were related to Kakinouchi-san, Loki-kun.”

I gaped. “We’re not – ”

“ – needing anything else, eh, Kou-niichan?” Loki interjected sweetly. “Thank you all the same, Sakamoto-san.”

The girl looked disappointed but smiled at the detective anyway, slipping back into the kitchen.

“What,” I asked, “was that?”

“A girl from my class at school.”

“We’re not brothers,” I hissed.

“Well, no, but she thought . . .” he waved a hand vaguely, apparently attempting to illustrate brotherhood with it.

“We don’t look a thing alike.”

“Would you like to call her back and find a different explanation for why you’re having coffee with a teenage boy, Kou-chan?”

I froze.

The thought of trying to concoct a plausible explanation for the shop owner to be sitting and having coffee with a boy eight years his junior did not appeal to me at all. The truth was unlikely to be convincing.

Rumours of sexual deviancy were common among the wealthy, of course, but I was far too young to have things like that plaguing me.

But, if the rumour that Kakinouchi Koutarou had a younger brother began to circulate, well, it had nothing to do with me. I couldn’t be held responsible for my father’s affairs, after all. And I would have been just a little boy at the time the hypothetical younger half-brother was conceived, and certainly wouldn’t be able to remember a thing about my father’s . . . business at the time.

I relaxed and smiled. “Thank you, detective.”

“Any time, Kou-chan,” he answered serenely as he finished the remains of his coffee.

We sat and talked for a while, quite comfortable, as I ignored the little voice jumping up and down at the back of my head. I told him about my trips to America, Canada, Brazil, Italy, England, Russia, and Norway. He was particularly interested in the last, and I was glad to share the experience with someone outside of the company. In turn, he told me about some of the cases he’d been investigating.

I asked him if he knew anything about the rain of fish, toilet paper, and squash that had happened at the university in my third year.

He was just as baffled as anyone else had been, and said it was quite mysterious.

He told me about the lunatics that were being allowed to teach at the school now, and lamented over the fact that he was unable to escape Daidouji for more than a day at a time, as she had apparently somehow managed to become a high school teacher.

Terrifying thought, that.

As misery is well-known to love company, I told him about my arguments with my father, and the string of failed arranged marriages that had never gotten past the engagement point. This seemed to cheer him up a bit too much.

He was busy telling me about a nude production of Shakespeare his drama teacher was trying to organize, when the door chimed and someone stepped in.

We both automatically turned at the sound in order to see who was coming into the already full shop.

We both froze.

“Loki-kun?” Daidouji called, her hands cupped around her mouth. “Loki-kun, where are you? Kazumi-kun said you were here!”

A few of the shop patrons turned to look at Daidouji curiously before losing interest and going back to their coffee.

I shared a look with the detective.

“Come on, there’s another way out, through the kitchen.”

He nodded, jumped to his feet, and grabbed my hand.

We ran for it, colliding with a waitress in the kitchen.

The detective caught her easily.

I, on the other hand, ended up on the floor, lying surrounded by broken china, with coffee on my suit, and water soaking my hair. I rubbed the back of my head slowly and tried to stand up.

The detective let go of the waitress, pushing her gently into a corner. “Terribly sorry, the coffee was wonderful, please give my compliments to the master, this is the owner, no harm done, we’ll just be going now, thanks, bye.” He grabbed my arm, hauled me to my feet, and dragged me out the backdoor.

In the safety of the alley, I sighed with relief at having escaped a fate worse than death. I rested my throbbing head against the side of the building. “All that, just to avoid Daidouji.”

“Easier than trying to get away once she’s found you and started talking about her latest mystery.”

“And she’s one of your teachers now?” I asked. The detective seemed to be multiplying, and I was getting a strange feeling of deja-vu.

“Yes,” they said, slowly merging back into one.

“This suit is ruined,” I said as I carefully took the jacket off and lay it ceremoniously on top of a trash can. I had liked that suit.

“I’m sure you have plenty to replace it with, Kou-chan,” the detective said, eyeing me critically.

“Of course,” I said, and stepped unsteadily away from the wall. The alley swam in front of my eyes. “Ugh . . .”

The detective was at my side just as my knees began to buckle. He put one arm around my waist and lifted one of my arms to rest across his shoulders.

Automatically, I tried to pull away. This deja-vu thing was really starting to piss me off.

“You don’t look so great, Kou-chan. My place isn’t far from here, I’d be more than happy to let you rest that bump on your head off there,” he said quite calmly from somewhere around chest height. The top of his head just reached my shoulder.

All that coffee he drank when I was in high school, I decided, rather muzzily, had stunted his growth.

“I could just get a cab,” I mumbled.

“At this hour of the day?”

We began walking out of the alley rather unsteadily. “Good point. And this is your fault, anyway.”

“Eh?”

“Daidouji wouldn’t have come in the shop if you hadn’t been there.”

“Ah.”

I squinted in an attempt to bring the world into better focus. “People might recognize me, though.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“Right.”

“They’ll probably just think you’re drunk,” he continued cheerfully.

I groaned and let the detective lead me down the street.

The detective helped me into one of the many rooms that housed his detective agency before he wandered off.

There was a fire in the fireplace, and the detective’s ugly little dog – Fenrir, my wobbly memory helpfully supplied – was sleeping in front of it, snoring.

I dozed off, occasionally awoken by a particularly loud noise from the dog, and, much later by what I could see out the window, by the detective’s butler. He was carrying a steaming up of tea.

“How are you feeling, Koutarou-san?” he asked with easy cheerfulness as I sat up.

“Better,” I mumbled, touching the back of my head carefully before lowering my hand to thankfully grasp the offered cup.

“That’s wonderful,” he beamed. “I brought the tea for you,” he nodded to the cup, still smiling. “It should help you feel better quite quickly. It’s a very special recipe, very rare, very hard to make. I had to order the leaves from a Norwegian catalogue.” He was disgustingly cheerful. “Can I get you anything to eat, Koutarou-san?”

My stomach turned at the very suggestion. “No, thank you,” I managed to say through clenched teeth.

He gave me a look which suggested that he seriously doubted the health and sanity of anyone who wasn’t feeling hungry. “As you wish, Koutarou-san. Loki-sama will no doubt come and see how you are faring after dinner.”

The dog, which I had been certain was fast asleep, lifted its head at the mention of dinner, yipped, and trotted out of the room at full speed.

The butler gave me another overly bright smile and followed the dog out.

I lay back on the couch and drank my tea.

It was remarkably good tea, quite unusual and oddly spicy, but not in an unpleasant way. It was a very large cup, too.

My stomach was comfortably hot and my mind was becoming much sharper as I sat, drank, and watched the fire.

Finally, I decided that it would be okay to listen to the persistent little voice at the back of my head.

When the detective came in, the world had finally stopped wavering in front of my eyes, and I was leaning against the fireplace. I poked the log with an iron poker and watched sparks fly up.

“You’re looking better, Kou-chan,” the detective observed from behind me.

“I’m feeling better, detective. Thanks for letting me rest here. And thank your butler for the tea. It was very good. Quite invigorating.”

“The tea?” he sounded puzzled. “Well, I suppose he thought you needed something to drink. Yamino-kun is very adept in such matters.”

“He’s had a long time to get good, I suppose. Would he be interested in working somewhere else, do you think?”

“No.”

“Shame.” I stabbed the log again. “Detective, what’s your relationship with Luke Laufeyiarson?”

I heard him breath in sharply and spun around just as he was lifting his odd, beribboned wooden scythe over his head.

I smacked the top of his head lightly with the poker.

“Ow!”

“Nice try, detective.” I smiled and knocked the scythe from his hands and sniffed the smell of burning wood. I shivered pleasantly at the scent, feeling intensely warm and alive at the moment.

He watched his weapon fall out of reach and glared up at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Pull the other one, detective. Even you aren’t that good a liar.” I touch the tip of the poker to the centre of his forehead, but he didn’t flinch away from the hot metal. I grinned anyway.

“Kou-chan, you don’t’ want Fenrir and Yamino-kun to find you like this.”

I sighed and lowered the poker, wondering what harm a dog that looked more like a very fat sheep and a butler could do. I swung it gently in my hand, feeling restless. “I just want answers, detective. Who’s Luke? A relative of yours? Your father?”

“More like a brother,” he said, the corner of one eye twitching. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and undid his tie.

“Thought so,” I said, rather smugly, and thrilled inwardly.

“How could you tell? Mayura’s never commented.”

I snorted. “Mayura wouldn’t know a real mystery if it danced naked outside her bedroom window, painted itself fuchsia, and paid an elephant to have ‘Daidouji Mayura, this is a mysterious mystery’ painted on its sides in neon green.”

“True.”

“There are some things that are really hard to forget, and Luke’s one of them. You two look a lot alike.” I shifted forward slightly, resting my weight on the poker, to look at him more closely.

“Really.”

“But you’re a lot shorter than I remember him being.”

Up to that point, he had been wearing an expression that was a mixture of annoyance and smug amusement. It vanished when I mentioned his height. “. . . Really.”

I nodded. “It was probably all that caffeine that did it.”

“. . . Really.”

“Other than that, though, you look just like him.” He did, too, although he apparently had better taste in clothing than his older brother.

Green eyes looked up at me, abruptly very curious. “And the reason he left such an impact on you, Kou-chan?”

I began to blush. “You already know, don’t you. You’ve always known. You made that quite clear after I met him.”

“Mm. It’s a very bad habit of his,” the detective ran a finger under the collar of his shirt and opened it. “Our parents have never been able to cure him of it. Although . . .” he smiled up at me, “he’s much better behaved these days. Doesn’t have much choice in the matter.”

I swallowed and unbuttoned the collar of my shirt. Those damn eyes were doing unthinkable things to my libido. I tried to ignore it. “Must be frustrating for him.”

“Very,” the detective agreed. “Things just don’t work for him like they used to.” He reached out and brushed my knuckles with his fingertips.

The poker clattered loudly to the floor.

He was really . . . quite . . . attractive.

I shook my head fiercely to get rid of something that was less a thought and more some deep, hormonal response. “No one should have that kind of power over people.”

“I agree,” he said roughly as he removed his jacket, letting it fall to the floor behind him.

It was hot, I realized. I told myself it was the fire. We were right in front of it, after all.

“But sometimes it’s better for all involved if things are made more . . . difficult. Don’t you agree, Kou-chan?” The irritating little nickname came out as a purr.

I wondered if the fall had affected my hearing.

“Everyone loves a challenge,” I mumbled, watching his eyes.

Unbidden, my hands moved forward and began to unbutton the detective’s shirt, very slowly.

I glared muzzily at my traitorous hands and tried to make them stop, which only made them go slower, brushing against the detective’s skin slightly as they went.

He moved closer, leaning into the light touches.

I shivered as my fingers lingering teasingly on the last button, the detective’s eyes locked with mine.

He shifted slightly and shrugged his shoulders, letting the shirt fall to the floor and pool around his feet. He lay his head against my chest, and it felt like his skin was burning through my shirt. I could hear something like laughter through the warm fuzz that seemed to be enclosing my brain as he lowered his hands and undid my belt.

He gave me the best blow job I had ever had, kneeling in front of the fireplace, my fingers tangled in his hair.

At some point, after he was done and had his face pressed against my thigh, laughing wildly, I fell over and pulled him with me.

We lay in front of the fire, laughing like two drunken teenagers. Eventually, we found each other’s mouths and lay on the ground, laughing and kissing.

He began teasing my shirt open with his teeth, making me start, and he kissed my chest. His kisses made my skin burn as he reinforced them with nibbling and licking, driving me insane.

I managed to get the rest of his clothes off as he tortured me, and began to give him a hand job.

After a moment’s confusion, in which he laughed like an idiot and rubbed his nose against my still damp hair, he returned the favour, and we lay on the carpet, jacking each other off, me laughing, kissing, and biting while he dug the nails of his free hand into my shoulder and moaned appreciative things in another language.

I think they were appreciative, anyway.

At some point, amidst the madness, our hands sore, he gave me another blow job and when he was done we somehow fell into a strange parody of a wrestling match that ended in him sitting on my back.

I pushed him off, blinking muzzily as something sensible surfaced in my brain. “I don’t have a condom.”

He rolled one blurry eye at me, muttered something in another language, then grinned like a demon. His head darted forward and he bit my earlobe hard enough to draw blood.

I jerked my head away from him in surprise, and the back of my head connected solidly with the base of the poker.

When I came too, someone had thoughtfully tucked a pillow under my head and put a blanket over me. I hugged the pillow gratefully for a minute, hiding my face in it, before turning over to stare at the ceiling.

I admired the ceiling for a minute, then looked to my left and admired the elegant fireplace and the cool ashes within.

Then I turned to my right to see whom it was pressed against my shoulder.

The detective was sleeping peacefully on my right, pressed up against me, and just as naked as I was. We were both uncomfortably sticky and rather smelly.

He yawned in his sleep and curled over a bit, stealing the blankets.

I twitched.

I’d have to kill him.

I turned and looked at the window. It was dark outside.

I sighed and lay my aching head back on the pillow, tugging part of the blanket back to cover myself with.

I’d kill the detective in the morning.