Page 76 of Brutal Unionn
“At least I don’t grunt like a weightlifter in bed.”
We’re both breathing hard now, sweat beading down our temples. He breaks the lock first and steps back, but I follow, throwing an aggressive combination—two slashes, high and low. He blocks both, the second glancing off his blade with a crack.
We circle again, faster now. My bare feet shift across the dirt, his landing with quiet precision. He lunges again, and I answer with an upward swing meant to knock him off balance?—
“Enough!” a voice cuts through the air, sharp and fed up.
We both freeze. My sword in the air. Bhon’s sword laid sharply on my shoulder.
Aoi stands at the edge of the training ground, arms crossed over a silk pink robe tied tightly around her waist, hair pinned back tightly, her face the perfect image of restrained irritation.
“Stop being children,” she says, eyes flicking between us. “Two grown men swinging swords to measure dicks in the moonlight. Very noble.”
Bhon lowers his blade first. “We were training.”
“Don’t lie to me baby. You were taunting,” Aoi corrects, turning to me. “And you, Sho, were showing off. Shirtless. In the cold. Again.”
I shrug, breathing heavy. “It’s effective.”
She sighs, already walking away. “So is silence, and conserving your energy for the true battle that is supposed to occur in the next five minutes.”
Bhon sheathes his sword, glancing at me, and I follow suit shrugging in Aoi direction. “You let her talk to you like that?”
“She scares me more than you do.”
“Good instincts,” I mutter, resting the sword over my shoulder.
We jog after her, stepping off the packed dirt and onto the stone walkway that leads back inside. The air shifts as we move through the corridor—no longer cold, no longer clean. It gets heavier. Warmer. The deeper we descend, the more the adrenaline replaces the night chill in my bones. The narrow hall leads to a heavy steel door, where two men in dark uniforms nod once and push it open.
The heat hits immediately—dry and thick, pressing against my skin like a second layer. It doesn’t come from ventilation or steam. It’s the kind of heat that builds from bodies, from exertion, from blood spilled faster than it can dry. The basement smells of sweat, leather, old steel, and something darker—coppery and stale. Blood. The scent is thick in the back of my throat.
The arena is dug into the center of the room, a sunken rectangle surrounded by a low concrete barrier. The floor is bare concrete, scuffed and stained, with thin, dark streaks where blood has dried and been wiped away—half-hearted at best. The corners hold the worst of it, where it pools when fighters stop moving.
Around the walls, old weapons hang from iron hooks—Katana, Wakizashi, —traditional Japanese swords,even a few chipped sabers. Most have been used more than cleaned. A few men sit beneath the racks, heads down, slowly dragging whetstones along their blades. The scraping sound is rhythmic, steady, like breathing. Others wrap their wrists and fingers in tape, some flexing old bruises and testing shoulder rotations before their names are called.
In the pit, a fight is already in progress.
The two fighters are barefoot, stripped to the waist, moving in tight circles. One’s taller, quicker on his feet. The other is heavier, more grounded. They don’t speak. They don’t posture. They attack—hard and fast. The taller man’s blade slices across the other’s shoulder, drawing blood. No reaction. Just another forward step. The heavy one counters with a full-body swing and drives the point of his sword into the other’s stomach.
A wet thud. The sound of a body hitting the floor. The crowd roars in praise, anger and urges for more.
Aoi walks ahead of us. Her hips sway just enough to draw attention. She smiles at the fighters without slowing, eyes scanning the room with open approval, as some whistle and call her baby. Some even smile, leaving lust sprawled across their face until they see a scowling Bhon.
The scent of blood, the tension in the air, the hum of violence waiting to break loose—she’s in her element. She winks at one of the men sharpening a blade, lets her fingers trail along the railing of the pit, and keeps moving toward the far hallway like the whole arena is hers to command, and for the most part it is.
Kyaraban Kurabu—or more commonly, the Mercury Club—is Aoi’s sadistic death baby. A club built for killers by a killer. The most vicious, bloodthirsty assassins in Japan come here to fight to the death. Win the night, and you walk out with a billion yen. Lose… and that’s your fucking life. A gift-wrapped sacrifice to the blood goddess herself.
I avoided this place like the plague. No real assassin with a survival instinct comes here unless they’ve got something to prove—or nothing left to lose.
But when Bhon told me this was the final test before I could claim the Yakuza for myself, I didn’t argue. If this is the last test then I will fucking succeed. I will come out victorious. I will be the man who brought the Yakuza to its knees, if it means I have kill fifty or so assassins in the process, well all’s fair in revenge and love ain’t it?
Bhon juts his hand out, stopping me right in front of a wall lined with blades—some pristine, most not.
“This is where real fights happen,” he says, motioning to the pit. “No one’s here to save that pretty face.”
“Aww, you think I’m pretty?” I smirk, stepping down slowly, scanning the room again. The floor still smells like blood and burnt adrenaline.
The smell is thick. Blood. Sweat. Metal. Adrenaline. It clings to the air like oil. My mouth waters. My muscles tighten. The fight, the weight of it, calls to something in me.
