The mirror in the bridal suite of the Imperial Hotel was an antique, framed in gilded gold, designed to make every woman look like a princess. But as Hanae Kurosawa stared into the glass, she didn't see a princess. She saw a liar.
The woman in the reflection was petite. Her posture was slumped, her shoulders rolled forward to minimize her breadth. The wedding dress, a suffocating contraption of white lace and corsetry, had been custom-altered three times. Not to take it in, but to hide what lay beneath.
Don't flex, she told herself, the mantra repeating in her mind like a heartbeat. Don't breathe too deeply. Don't let the seams burst.
Hanae lifted a hand to her face. Her skin was pale, powdered to a porcelain finish that masked the faint, jagged white line running along her jaw—a souvenir from a knife fight in a shipping container in Yokohama seven years ago. The makeup artist had spent two hours concealing it, tutting about "dry skin" and "blemishes." Hanae had simply smiled that vacant, dim-witted smile she had perfected over the last six years. The smile of a woman whose biggest concern was whether the soufflé would rise.
Six years.
She looked down at her hands. They were gloved in white satin, hiding the calluses that no amount of lotion could soften. For six years, she had traded the grip of a katana for the handle of a vacuum cleaner. She had traded the adrenaline of a midnight raid for the anxiety of burning Kenji's toast.
She remembered the day she met Kenji. He had been a junior executive then, terrified of a street thug who had bumped into him. Hanae had been in the shadows, watching. She could have ended the thug with a flick of her wrist. Instead, she had let Kenji "protect" her. She had let him believe he was the strong one.
"I like women who are… manageable," Kenji had told her on their second date, swirling his wine. "Delicate. Like flowers. My mother is a brute of a woman, always shouting. I want a home that is quiet."
So Hanae became quiet. She became the ghost in her own life. She stopped lifting weights. She stopped training. She ate salads she hated and drank kale smoothies that tasted like dirt, watching her muscle mass atrophy, watching the terrifying, god-tier physique she had built over a lifetime of blood and sweat slowly shrink away.
She did it for love. Or what she thought was love. She wanted to escape the blood. She wanted the fairy tale.
"Hanae-sama?"
The wedding planner poked her head into the room, her headset blinking. "It's time. The groom is waiting. You look… lovely. Very traditional. Very… safe."
Safe. The word tasted like ash.
"Thank you," Hanae whispered, her voice pitched high and soft. "I'm coming."
She stood up. The corset dug into her ribs. She felt the massive muscles of her latissimus dorsi spasm in protest against the boning of the dress. Her body wanted to expand, to breathe, to fight. She forced it down. She forced the Dragon to sleep.
The Imperial Hotel's Grand Ballroom was a cavern of crystal chandeliers and velvet curtains. It smelled of expensive lilies—a scent that Hanae always associated with funerals, not weddings.
As the heavy oak doors swung open, the organ blasted the opening notes of the Wedding March. The guests rose. There were three hundred of them. Tokyo's elite. Tech CEOs, politicians, old-money matriarchs in kimonos that cost more than a house.
Hanae stepped onto the aisle.
The walk was long. Agonizingly long. And as she walked, her heightened senses—honed by years of surviving assassination attempts—picked up every whisper, every hushed insult floating through the perfumed air.
"That's her?" a woman in the third row whispered behind a fan. "The Kurosawa girl? I heard she's basically a maid."
"Kenji could have done so much better," a man muttered. "Look at her. She walks like she's afraid of the floor. No presence. No charisma."
"I heard she has no dowry. Her family disowned her years ago. Kenji is a saint for taking in a stray dog like that."
A stray dog.
Hanae kept her eyes on the floor. Endure, she thought. This is the price of peace. This is the price of being normal.
At the end of the aisle stood Kenji.
He looked handsome in his white tuxedo, his hair gelled back perfectly. But his expression wasn't one of love. He looked impatient. He checked his Rolex as she approached, a flicker of annoyance crossing his face when she stumbled slightly on the hem of her dress.
He didn't reach out a hand to steady her.
Hanae reached the altar. She bowed to the priest. She bowed to Kenji's parents, who looked at her with undisguised disdain. Finally, she turned to Kenji.
His eyes were cold. Empty.
"We are gathered here today," the priest began, his voice droning, "to join Kenji Sato and Hanae Kurosawa in holy matrimony…"
"Stop," Kenji said.
The word was not shouted, but it cut through the room like a gunshot.
The organist stopped playing abruptly, a discordant chord hanging in the air. The priest blinked. "Mr. Sato?"
Kenji didn't look at the priest. He looked at the audience. He adjusted his cufflinks, a gesture of casual arrogance that made Hanae's stomach turn.
"I can't do this," Kenji announced, his voice amplified by the lapel microphone. "I can't marry her."
A gasp rippled through the ballroom. Three hundred heads turned toward Hanae. She stood frozen, her bouquet of white roses trembling in her hands.
"Kenji?" she whispered, playing her role. "What… what are you saying?"
Kenji finally looked at her. His sneer was visceral. "Look at you, Hanae. Look at yourself. You're… bland. You're boring. For six years, you've just existed in my house like a piece of furniture. You have no ambition. No spark. You're just… there."
"I did everything for you," Hanae said, and this time, the tremor in her voice wasn't fake. "I cooked. I cleaned. I supported you when your company was failing."
"You did what a servant does!" Kenji laughed. "I don't need a servant. I need a partner. A soulmate."
He turned toward the side entrance of the ballroom. "Come out, Emi."
The doors opened, and Hanae felt the blood freeze in her veins.
Emi. Her stepsister. The daughter of the woman Hanae's father had married after her mother died. Emi, with her weeping willow eyes and her perpetual, tragic cough. Emi, who had always hated Hanae for being the legitimate heir.
Emi walked up the aisle. She wasn't wearing a guest's dress. She was wearing a wedding gown. It was silk, strapless, and magnificent—far more expensive than the one Hanae wore.
Emi reached the altar and clung to Kenji's arm, burying her face in his shoulder. She coughed—a delicate, bird-like sound that made the guests coo with sympathy.
"Emi is sick," Kenji announced, wrapping a protective arm around her. "The doctors say she only has a few months left. Her dying wish… was to be my bride. She has loved me in secret for years."
He looked at Hanae with mock pity. "You understand, don't you, Hanae? You've always been the sturdy one. The plain one. You can survive a little heartbreak. But Emi? Emi is a fragile flower. She needs me. I can't let her die with a broken heart."
Emi looked up from Kenji's shoulder. Her eyes met Hanae's. There were no tears in them. There was only triumph. A malicious, sparkling victory. She mouthed a single word: Mine.
The guests began to whisper again. But the tone had shifted.
"How romantic," a woman sobbed. "Tragic love!"
"Hanae should step down," a man agreed. "It's the noble thing to do. She's healthy. She can find someone else. The sister is dying!"
"Besides," someone laughed in the back row, "Kenji looks much better with Emi. Hanae looks like she belongs in the kitchen."
Laughter.
It started as a titter, then grew. The elite of Tokyo were laughing at her. They were laughing at the woman who had once held the fate of the Kurosawa Clan in her palm. They were laughing at the "Asura."
Something inside Hanae snapped.
It wasn't a loud snap. It was the sound of a heavy chain breaking deep in the dark waters of her psyche.
The trembling in her hands stopped. The tears that had welled up in her eyes evaporated, replaced by a dryness that burned. Her heartbeat, which had been racing at 120 beats per minute, suddenly plummeted to a resting combat rate of 45.
Calm. Absolute, terrifying calm.
Hanae looked at the bouquet in her hands. White roses. Innocence. Submission.
She dropped them.
The thud of the flowers hitting the marble floor echoed in the silence.
"Sturdy," Hanae repeated. Her voice was different now. The high-pitched, breathy tone of the housewife was gone. In its place was a baritone rumble, a voice textured with gravel and command.
Kenji frowned. "What did you say?"
Hanae lifted her head. She opened her eyes fully for the first time in six years. The dull, bovine look was gone. Her irises seemed to darken, sharp and predatory, scanning the room for threats, exits, and weapons.
"You called me sturdy," Hanae said, stepping forward. "You called me plain. You said I was a workhorse."
"I was being kind," Kenji scoffed. "Don't make a scene, Hanae. Just leave. My security will escort you out the back so you don't embarrass yourself further."
Four men in black suits stepped out from the shadows of the altar. They were big men—ex-military types, hired muscle. They moved toward Hanae with the casual confidence of men used to handling hysterical women.
"Please, Miss," the lead guard grunted, reaching for her arm. "Let's go."
Hanae looked at the guard's hand. Then she looked at Kenji. Then she looked at Emi, who was still smirking.
"You wanted a fragile wife, Kenji?" Hanae asked softly.
She reached up with both hands and grabbed the high lace collar of her wedding dress.
"You hated my shoulders. You said they were too broad. You hated my back. You said it was too hard."
Her fingers dug into the expensive fabric.
"Well," Hanae smiled. It was a smile that didn't reach her eyes. It was a smile that promised a massacre. "Let me show you what you threw away."
RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP.
The sound was violent, like a sail tearing in a hurricane.
Hanae wrenched her hands apart. The bodice of the dress disintegrated. Buttons popped and flew like shrapnel, pinging against the marble floor. The delicate lace sleeves were shredded.
The dress fell to her waist, hanging in tatters.
A collective scream filled the ballroom.
Hanae Kurosawa stood at the altar, half-naked. But there was nothing vulnerable about her.
Her back was a landscape of violence. The muscles were sculpted marble—trapezius mountains flowing into a canyon of a spine, lats that flared like cobra hoods, rear deltoids that looked like cannonballs under her skin. She wasn't just fit; she was a biological weapon.
But it was the ink that made the room go silent.
Covering her entire back, from her neck to her waist, was a masterpiece of Yakuza tattooing. A Roaring Black Dragon, its scales detailed in painstaking shading, its eyes burning with red ink, its claws tearing through clouds of smoke.
The mark of the Kurosawa Clan Head. The mark of the Asura.
Scars—thick, ugly, jagged lines—intersected the tattoo like lightning strikes. Bullet wounds. Knife slashes. The history of a woman who had walked through hell and conquered it.
Kenji stumbled back, his face draining of color. "H-Hanae?"
She turned slowly. The movement rippled through her musculature, every fiber firing in perfect synchronization. She looked at Kenji, and for the first time, he saw the predator.
"My name," she said, her voice vibrating through the floorboards, "is not Hanae the Housewife."
The lead bodyguard, recovering from his shock, lunged. "Cover her up! Get her out of here!"
He reached for her shoulder. A mistake.
Hanae didn't even look at him. As his hand touched her skin, she moved.
It wasn't the frantic flailing of a civilian. It was the blur of a master.
She caught his wrist. Her grip was like a hydraulic press. The guard's eyes bulged. Before he could scream, she twisted.
CRACK.
The sound of his radius snapping echoed through the silent ballroom.
She pivoted on her heel, using the momentum to swing the 100-kilogram man like a ragdoll. She slammed him into the second guard, sending them both crashing into the flower arrangements. Water and petals exploded into the air.
The third guard pulled a baton. He swung for her head.
Hanae didn't dodge. She stepped in.
She caught the baton mid-swing with her bare left hand. The impact would have shattered a normal woman's bones. Hanae didn't even blink. She ripped the steel weapon from his grasp and drove her elbow into his solar plexus.
The guard folded, vomiting on the pristine white runner.
The fourth guard froze. He looked at his fallen comrades. He looked at the woman standing amidst the wreckage of the altar, her torn dress billowing around her legs like a war banner, the dragon on her back seeming to writhe with every breath she took.
"I quit," the guard whispered, dropping his hands.
Hanae kicked off her white heels. She dug her bare toes into the red carpet, grounding herself. She cracked her neck—left, then right.
She turned to Kenji.
He was shaking. Actually shaking. His knees knocked together. Emi had released his arm and was backing away, her "frail" cough forgotten, her eyes wide with terror.
"You..." Kenji stammered. "You're... what are you?"
Hanae walked toward him. She stopped inches from his face. She towered over him, not in height, but in presence. The aura of death she emitted was suffocating.
She reached out and adjusted his bow tie. Kenji flinched so hard he nearly fell over.
"I'm the woman who kept your enemies away for six years, Kenji," she whispered. "Did you think your business rivals just... disappeared? Did you think the Yakuza clans left your territory alone out of the kindness of their hearts?"
She patted his cheek. It was a gentle tap, but it felt like a hammer blow.
"They stayed away because they knew I was in the kitchen."
She leaned in closer, her lips brushing his ear.
"You wanted a divorce? Consider it granted. But know this: The protection ends today. Tomorrow, the wolves come for you."
She stepped back. She looked at the guests—the terrified elites clutching their pearls and champagne glasses.
"Show's over," she announced, her voice bored. "Go home."
She turned and walked down the aisle. She didn't run. She didn't cry. She walked with the long, predatory stride of a tiger patrolling its territory. The tatters of her wedding dress trailed behind her, and the Black Dragon on her back stared down everyone she passed.
As she reached the heavy oak doors, she paused. She didn't look back at the weeping Emi or the paralyzed Kenji.
She kicked the doors open with a force that splintered the wood.
Rain was falling outside. Heavy, cold, Tokyo rain.
Hanae stepped out into the storm. She pulled a burner phone from the hidden pocket of her tattered skirt. She dialed a number she hadn't called in six years.
It rang once.
"Hello?" a deep, dangerous voice answered.
Hanae smiled. A real smile. A bloodthirsty smile.
"Ryuuji," she said. "Clear the gym. I need to hit something."
[End of Chapter 1]