Fair Trade

Sei agonized over and over again until the moment the taxi stopped.

If I get off the taxi like this, everything will go back to square one.

Sei turned her head toward the car that followed her. Four large SUVs stopped around the taxi. Yuri got out of one of them. The taxi driver asked with a worried look on his face, “Miss, please let me know if you need any help. I’ll call the police right away.”

“It’s okay. He’s my friend. You can keep the change.”

Smiling, she grabbed her backpack and got out of her car. Yuri stood there with his hand inside his dark cashmere coat. His eyes gleamed with interest as he looked at Sei. But instead of going toward her, he walked straight to the taxi driver.

He knocked on the tightly shut window and waited for it to go down. However, the driver awkwardly looked askance at him as if he had intuited the true identity of the person before him.

“Yuri.”

Eventually, she called out to him first. Only then did the man turn his head. Sei stood still and stared at him. Yuri had a strange look when he looked back at her.

“I was going to tip him in your stead. But why do you look scared?”

Yuri slid a hundred-dollar bill in the taxi window, strode forward, and stood in front of Sei.

“It’s been a long time since I saw you. This look… I didn’t know you could turn into a black person.”

Only then did Sei recall that she tried to go to the detention center dressed like this. The woman reflected in the glass of the nearby building was obviously a black person. She was in a real fix. As he drew closer, the dreams she had last night entered her mind one by one. Like someone taking a scene and replaying it in her mind like a film.

“Where were you rushing away so fast? You told me to come right away, so I took a private plane.”

“That…”

“It’s more disappointing than I thought, Sei. And I feel worse than I imagined. To think that you would try to run away.”

Yuri casually put his hand on Sei’s waist and picked up the backpack she was wearing.

“You and I are criminals. Now, even if you wear the mask of justice, nothing will change. Did the FBI say… they’d give you immunity if you surrender?”

Her eyes widened at his words that hit the nail on the head.

Could it be that he knew that she had the item? Then up until now…

“Yuri. It’s not like that…”

“Or, did you just suddenly feel like becoming righteous?”

“I told you it’s not like that!”

Sei forcefully snatched the backpack he had taken from her. Then the man, who raised his lowered eyes a little, said, “I think we’ll have a long conversation today… Let’s go.”

He neither smiled nor got angry at her. However, he did not hide the anger that was in his voice; a sense of disappointment in an extremely ordinary tone. Her heart began to beat wildly at his honest tone. She felt like she had been forced to show her bare face to the world.

Just as Yuri said, she herself was a criminal, and her opponents were the mafia members and the FBI. So she admitted that out of the two, she tried to choose the one that was closer to justice. She also admitted that her conscience had come into play at this time.

Sei obediently got into the car and asked Yuri, “How long have you known?”

“Well, should I say that your actions were visible or too easy to understand? But I still waited for you. I even asked you politely and kept you alive.”

Leaning against the corner of the car to keep his head cool, he glanced at Sei’s face in the car and smiled wryly.

“First, remove your makeup. Because I need to see your face. I want to hear you plead with that pretty face.  I think that will alleviate this feeling a little bit.  Should we take a chance? A chance to continue our relationship?”