Just Leverage

Ryoji had been driving for hours. Not fast, not slow—steady. The AE92 purred through winding mountain roads, as if it knew we had to be somewhere, just not when.

We hadn’t seen another car in miles. When one did appear, headlights cresting a bend, my stomach clenched. Dark-tinted windows, men watching—probably just locals, slow and harmless. Probably.

We’d stopped once—fuel, bathroom, a quick bite from a sleepy shop. Now the light was gold, stretching shadows across the ridges. Silence pressed heavier than the engine’s hum.

“So…” I started, my voice more timid than I meant it. “What does it mean that this ex-Soviet group is after me?”

He didn’t answer. I placed a hand on his arm, then the other on his shoulder. “Please. Not another ‘we need more intel’ line. Speculation’s fine.”

He glanced at me, recalibrating, reading the worry I couldn’t hide. Then he nodded once, exhaled, eyes back on the road.

“Yours, mine, and your father’s lives are in danger.”

I sucked in a breath. Hearing it out loud—so calmly—did something cold to my stomach.

“I heard Reznikova’s voice. Krysha,” he continued. “Confirmed. Hiro patched into their lines. They’re planning further shifts. Scarlet Wind. No mistake.”

“Yeah, yeah—the ex-Soviet bogeymen, I get it. But why me? Because of my dad’s work?”

“That’s the most plausible link,” he said. “Your father’s a top-tier bioengineer. Mosan has him on something big. They probably want him back. Using you to flush him out.”

“If he’s working for the Japanese government, wouldn’t that make it an international diplomatic thing? I mean, they can’t just abduct us in broad daylight.”

“If he’s under protection, yeah. But it depends on who is sheltering him,” Ryoji said, hands tightening briefly on the wheel. “If it’s a legitimate Japanese agency, you might still get out of this with your life mostly intact. High-profile, yes. But safe.”

“You mean like a government protection program?” I asked, cautiously hopeful.

He nodded. “More or less. Daughter of a national scientist, blackmailed by foreign agents. Hard life. But survivable. You’d still perform—just with a detail. Pop star overnight.”

I blinked at that. It didn’t sound that bad. Maybe even… maybe Ryoji would—

“But,” he cut in, flatly, “if your father isn’t with Japan. If he’s being hidden by a Western black-ops group doing unauthorized human experimentation, then we’re in a different category.”

”…What category?” I asked.

His voice didn’t change. “One where you go from a protected asset to a security threat.”

Ryoji continued without flinching. “In that case, we’re liabilities. And the outcomes ranges from witness protection… to plausible disposal.”

I stared at him.

“Plausible disposal?”

“Suicide. Sudden illness. Tragic accident,” he said flatly.

My stomach turned. “You’re saying the government would kill me?”

He didn’t answer. And that silence was worse than anything he could have said.

“You’re leverage,” he said after a long pause. “How valuable you are depends on how valuable your father is—and how much he still cares.”

I felt the words hit somewhere low and deep.

I didn’t speak. Couldn’t.

The idea that someone in some windowless office—a stranger, a man with a badge, maybe not even that—could decide I was expendable…

That I might disappear, not because I was dangerous, but because I wasn’t worth the risk?

It made my skin crawl. My stomach tightened around the leftover sandwich I’d barely touched hours ago.

Not even a trial. Not a warning. Just… plausible disposal.

A headline. A sad phone call. Gone.

I stared at the road as the silence thickened between us, the low hum of the engine the only sound.

The forest crept by on either side—dark, endless, indifferent.

Time passed like fog through the trees.

And Ryoji didn’t say another word.

Neither did I.

The dashboard light blinked on with a dull red glow.

Ryoji glanced at it but didn’t say anything. The AE95 kept humming along the mountainside road, flanked by steep woods and jagged rock. Mount Yake loomed in the distance, its blue silhouette softened by mist and early evening haze.

I noticed the light too. “Um… that’s not the battery again, is it?”

Still no answer. He just pressed his lips together and kept driving.

”…Oil pressure?”

His brow barely twitched.

“Are we gonna blow up?”

That got him.

He exhaled—through the nose, as always—and finally eased the car toward a narrow path just barely wide enough for one vehicle. The road curved slightly uphill into a patch of trees, where what looked like an old picnic clearing waited, all gravel and weeds and one broken wooden bench tipped on its side.

Ryoji killed the engine and stepped out without a word.

“Okay, rude,” I muttered, hopping out after him. “Seriously, what was that light?”

“Pressure fluctuation. Might just be thermal. But I want to check the cooler valves.”

”…In human language?”

“I need to make sure the car doesn’t die before we hit Matsumoto.”

He popped the front trunk. The AE95’s modified engine was a snug little beast, clean but scarred from years of work. Ryoji rolled his sleeves, fished a small cloth out of the door pocket, and leaned in like he’d done this a hundred times before.

I looked around. No traffic. No reception either, probably. Just cicadas, pine needles, and Mount Yake watching like a sleepy giant in the backdrop.

Well, if we were stuck here for a minute…

I rummaged in the glove box and pulled out our last two snacks—some weird brand of mini tarts with chocolate filling, bought hours earlier from that elderly woman in the middle of nowhere.

Walking over, I peeled one open and took a bite. Then I leaned against the fender, holding the other out toward him.

“Want one?”

“Hands are dirty.”

“So?”

“I’m working.”

“You’re alive, too.”

He didn’t look up, so I made a show of rolling my eyes. Then—before he could object—I gently held the tart between my fingers and popped it toward his mouth.

Ryoji blinked at it like it was a live grenade. Then, finally, he leaned forward and let me feed it to him.

Just like that.

I caught the smallest flicker of something across his face. Not quite a smile, but not not one, either.

“You’re impossible,” he murmured, voice half-muffled.

“And you’re welcome.”

We stayed there for a second, weirdly still. The engine clicked as it cooled. Wind rustled somewhere in the trees. If this had been a date, it might have been… almost sweet.

But then the questions came back. I couldn’t stop them this time.

“But if we find my father,” I said quietly, “how do we even know if it’s the safe-gov-thingy or the, y’know… kill-me-liability one?”

The tart didn’t taste like much anymore.

Ryoji didn’t pause in his work. He adjusted a clamp, wiped grease onto the cloth, then said calmly, “I’ll show you. Once we’re close. We’ll get the intel first—without exposing you.”

His voice was solid, anchored. But something in me had already started to splinter.

I watched him work, crouched over the front trunk like some kind of mechanic-monk. Calm. Methodical. Unbothered by the storm I was clearly sinking into.

“I haven’t really lived with my father since I was twelve,” I said, quietly at first. “He moved up north for his research, and I stayed behind with my aunt. We’d talk every few months. Holiday calls, a birthday package here and there. He’d ask how school was. How ballet was going. Never missed a beat. But it was always just… status updates.”

Ryoji didn’t interrupt. He just kept checking the lines and gaskets, occasionally adjusting something with a quiet click of metal.

“We were never close-close, you know? He was the type of dad who scheduled his hugs like check-ups. Not cold, just… clinical. And yet, somewhere in me, I want to believe that he cares. That this whole ‘stay far away’ thing was his way of letting me live. Keeping me out of whatever he got himself into.”

My voice felt smaller after that. Like the words didn’t know where to go once they were spoken.

Then Ryoji looked at me.

Just a glance, but something in his eyes cut through the silence. Not pity. Not sympathy. Just… understanding. That kind of look people give when they don’t have a speech prepared, but you know they heard everything.

It twisted something in my stomach, sharp and deep.

Then, out of nowhere, he said, “Can I have another tart?”

I blinked. ”…What?”

He tilted his head up slightly from the trunk, the edge of his mouth twitching—not quite a smirk, not quite serious.

“These things taste really bad… yet I want another one”

I stared for a beat, then let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. My fingers reached into the wrapper, unthinking, practiced.

“Okay, but if you get addicted to these, I’m not buying more,” I said, trying for casual, but my voice came out a little too fast, a little too light.

But this time, as I stepped closer and held it up—this time I was aware.

As my fingers neared his lips again, he met my eyes.

I placed the little tart gently between them, and he took it without flinching.

I blushed. Hard. Looked away too late.

And for just a second, just that one fleeting breath of a moment, the road, the danger, the secrets—all of it melted away.