Water everywhere, unavoidable, inescapable, in an instant drenching everyone and everything, swathing them in a sticky embrace, not for a moment allowing anyone to forget its moist presence. The water can barely be kept out of buildings and vehicles, it soaks through any clothing not water proof in a matter of seconds and slowly but mercilessly penetrates the seams of those that are.

Not even indoors can you escape the rain as moisture evaporating from wet clothing and hair brought in to dry creates a constant, sticky humidity everywhere. It feels like living half under water for one month each year; the August rain.

The doctor smiles knowingly before bowing and preparing to leave the room. To vent my extreme annoyance at having to fulfill his witless demands, I hurl a stack of papers after him as he slips out of the office. The papers miss and flap ineffectually to the floor.

“Happy birthday,” Scarlett says behind me.

“You know I don’t care about that,” I tell her in a voice I hope sounds less agitated than I feel. Scarlett just smiles and holds out a small envelope to me. I look at her.

“What is this? A practical joke?” I ask, not bothering to hide my suspicion.

“Go on, open it,” she says in an insistent but patient tone. I take the blank paper object from her and tear it open. The envelope contains an unmarked steel key and a note with an address and a number code on it.

“Take the rest of the day off, go there and tell me all about it afterwards,” Scarlett says with a smirk.

I catch a personnel coach on its way to pick up soldiers at the train station into the city center, then walk four blocks through the warm rain to a gentrified up-market area. The address in the envelope turns out to be a stylish looking six story off white stucco building with a toned down art deco front, balconies with black steel railing and windows framed in black, quietly signaling good taste and sophisticated urban affluence.

The front door allows me entry after being fed the number code from the note. The hallway beyond is tiled in light grey with a single stripe of black tracing its length. Two six person elevators shine their smooth chromium doors at me in an anteroom to the right. I enter the small room and call one of the elevators, the doors slide open with a low whirring noise. Step inside. Press the “15” button and stand back to be carried upwards into the unfamiliar building.

The back wall of the elevator is covered with a mirror extending from waist height to ceiling. In the sharp glare of the overhead xenon spots I am an angular form in starkly contrasting black and white, light playing across the wet surface of the coat and armor. A tall body accentuated by loosely flowing long hair. A face with pale skin and narrow glowing eyes. Shinra’s top ranking soldier, looking slightly inhuman, a caged animal good to have around when there is fighting to be done but suspected to be dangerous in peace time, perhaps even a potential threat for the very thing he was made to fight for. Now after the end of the territorial wars, only protected from an untimely death by assassination by Dr. Hojo’s extreme possessiveness and his inexplicable power in the web of intrigue and subterfuge that is Shinra, Inc. Having nowhere to go but to stay in his own perfected role as dedicated and loyal soldier but being highly unsure where it leads to.

Uneasy by the self judgment mirrors always provoke, I turn away from the back wall towards the undemanding, blank surface of the elevator doors and do not continue the train of thoughts set in motion by the smooth mirror surfaces.

The elevator stops, opens and allows me to step outside.

I’m met by a long hallway carpeted in green, walls painted a subtle shade of greenish grey. A row of grey wooden doors sit in the walls, green shaded lamps mounted between them light the corridor. The building is an apartment hotel, most probably owned by Shinra, Inc. and used by their business associates when staying in the city for longer visits while contracts are negotiated and deals are being made. I wonder how many of them have found themselves feeling imprisoned here, overwhelmed by Shinra’s aggressive hospitality.

I continue down the corridor to room number 1521. Try the doorbell with no other result than a questioning, expectant silence. I use the key from the envelope. Beyond the door is a small corridor, a dark wooden floor leading inside to a living room bounded on the far wall by glass doors and windows overlooking white sand, a beach on the western continent, the sun sitting low above the ocean. The sound of surf breaking lazily against the sand reaches my ears. It’s beautiful but a lie all the same. The panoramic view of the western ocean is a clever illusion for the rich replete with light and sound to keep the ugliness of Midgard out.

I step inside the corridor, close and lock the door. There is no sound from the room. I sense, however, that despite the apartment being uninhabited, it is not empty.

Passing a doorway to a small and empty bathroom held in grey tiles, containing a shower with glass doors, a toilet and a sink in the same color as the tiles and a small cupboard above the sink. On the opposite wall I pass the opening to a room carpeted in maroon and dominated by a king size double bed in dark wood.

Then I hear the sound of someone breathing around the corner and quickly enter the living room proper.

A young man, about 25 years old, with long limbs and a lithe looking body, a handsome face with a long narrow nose and slanting red Mako eyes, long black hair and dark clothes. His wrists are fastened with black leather string tied in bows to a slim brass contraption arching over him.

“Complimentary greetings from Scarlett,” he says, looking directly at me. I stop. Scarlett. Brazen, dangerous, liberated Scarlett. Head of Shinra’s Science department, manipulator and organizer extraordinaire. Not even president Shinra is able to refuse her anything even though the two are not lovers. Scarlett, always playing one kind of game or another, its rules usually only known to her. I wonder what particular game this is.

I stand silently before the black haired man, judging the presence of his body and face. He regards me without fear.

Masamune leaves the sheath with lightning speed to pierce the man’s left thigh. He screams and contracts his body around the pain, his dark hair falling into his eyes before he slumps over the wound. I wish to see his face and lean down to push the hair aside, brushing my fingers along the curve of his jaw in the process. The man’s glowing eyes fall upon mine, provoking a shy, short lived smile from him, the memory of pain having seemingly vanished from his mind. Surprised, I realize that he is enjoying his bound and wounded state.

Masamune retracts from his flesh. A dark lump of blood seeps out of the wound and falls to the floor, the tissues in his leg already having begun healing themselves. I sample the blood on the blade. The man watches me with a calm, intriguing anticipation. I smile at him and he mirrors it with a smile of his own.

I put a finger to the blood and hold my hand out to him. He stretches his neck and sucks the blood from the smooth black fabric of my gloves, eyes closed. The lashes of his eyes are dark against his pale cheeks. More red from the blade, this time to my lips and making him a new offering by leaning forward. He takes the blood eagerly while breathing warmly on my skin, joins me in a long slow dance of lips and tongue and breath, forward and backward across an open space.

He wants to taste me in return. I caress his face and tell him “Soon”. He breathes my name. I grab his hair and let him tell me he knows me from Dr. Hojo’s lab, through the doctor’s clippings, his framed pictures and obsession with me. This man is another of the doctor’s experiment. He has one obligation to Scarlett for her releasing him from Hojo; this room and this moment, leading to whatever I wish it shall lead to. Then he has only freedom to look forward to. He asks me to trust Scarlett and by proxy, him. “Look into my eyes,” he whispers. “I would never hurt you, they hurt me enough for that to happen. We’re both from the same place. I know what’s inside you because I have seen it too” and I believe him. The smell of Shinra violation is on him, begging to be removed and forgotten, reflected in my own need for an escape that never happened.

I dive into his half formed promise, his pain, his lingering gaze, his smell of arousal, his warm touch, his dark hair, his silent breaths, his willingness.

Leather strings are undone, then metal clasps and wet clothing in a slow and lingering, longing sequence.

The warm touch of velour and brocade cushions and hair sliding whispering across skin and leather, still retaining the moist memory of warm August rain.

Outside, the surf breaks gently on the beach, its slow rhythm providing pace for the giving and taking of breath and will. Two bodies revealing their inner secrets and needs in a slow trajectory towards artificial dawn, pain not being excluded from pleasure, pleasure not being apart from pain.

His wetness falls across my hands. He breathes and takes me in, nakedly, for an instant all of him exposed and quiet. Then I bleed inside of him while his lips rest warmly on my throat, feeling like I have never known anything else.

We lay side by side, sated. The surf is calling for a soft rhythm of breath and pulse while the growing light of dawn moves across the ceiling. Then the world falls away.

I wake, alone as expected. There is one leather string left on the floor, its companion now having been turned into a keepsake, a symbol of the present relegated to memory, a reminder of freedom granted and taken. As I leave I pick up the other string to have as a keepsake of my own, before slowly returning to the August rain.