I Won't Agree

Oswald stood outside the door for several minutes without knocking.

He didn't know in what capacity he should approach her.

As her boss? A boss wouldn't stoop to visiting an employee in her dorm room...

As her creditor? That was safer.

He was her creditor, and she was his debtor. She owed him a debt she couldn't repay in thirty years. He had every right to come collect, with absolutely no personal feelings involved.

He repeated that role to himself three times, then raised his hand only to lower it again.

He thought he should just forget it.

Even if he saw Ririko, he wouldn't know what to say, and he might only end up making things worse.

He turned to leave, but before he could take a step, the wooden door in front of him suddenly opened a crack.

Oswald's lame foot hung in midair.

Had she known he was here from inside her room?

Then hadn't she seen him standing outside her door all this time?

But he had weathered plenty of storms and quickly composed himself.

If he left now, wouldn't that mean he lacked the courage to face her?

He was the owner of the Iceberg Lounge, the Cobblepot whose name struck terror throughout the Gotham Underworld.

He couldn't be afraid to walk through a door.

With that thought, he puffed out his chest, lifted his chin, and assumed the arrogant bearing he knew so well.

Oswald pushed the door open and walked inside.

The moment he entered, his brow furrowed.

The little room was piled with clothes, jewelry, shoes, cosmetics...

He recognized some as old things from the lounge, while others were new purchases. Everything lay scattered in different corners, with no sign that she intended to tidy up.

Oswald looked around, trying to discover what Ririko had been secretly up to behind his back lately.

Suddenly, the door slammed shut behind him with a bang.

Oswald turned around.

Ririko held one hand against the door, watching him coldly.

"What exactly are you doing here?"

Only the two of them remained in the room.

Oswald looked at the closed door. The room had no windows either, and a wave of unease washed over him.

His Adam's apple bobbed. He cleared his throat and forced his naturally high voice as low as it would go to project his authority as her "boss."

"You left your post without permission today."

He lifted his chin even higher, letting the shadow cast by his hooked nose lend his face a threatening air.

"Unless you have a good reason, I'll-"

He paused, frantically searching his mind for the threats that usually rolled off his tongue but now refused to come to him.

Ririko walked up to him, entering his birdlike "alert zone."

He instinctively tucked his chin in, and the imposing air he had worked so hard to muster vanished in an instant.

"You'll do what? Let's hear it."

Ririko raised her chin slightly, taking in his panic.

Oswald stared at her lips, sweat beginning to bead at his temple.

"I, I, I'll dock your pay."

Oswald squeezed the words out of his throat, much more quietly than he had expected.

Ririko took another step closer, close enough for him to smell the lingering fragrance of her shower gel.

Her voice was soft, and the sweet breath between her lips brushed his upper lip.

"Can't you do anything besides bully people with money?"

The bead of sweat at Oswald's temple finally slid down the side of his face.

"Don't get carried away." An almost imperceptible tremor ran through Oswald's voice. "I'm your boss."

Ririko reached out and gave him a gentle push at his collar.

She barely used any force, but Oswald's body seemed pulled by some mysterious power, following her push backward until he hit the door.

His hand instinctively grabbed the doorknob, trying to escape his predicament.

But Ririko had already followed him, pinning down the bird man's claw as he tried to open the door and flee.

She leaned forward slightly, like a cat holding a bird beneath its paw, neither eating it nor releasing it, merely enjoying the way it trembled in her grasp.

"Would a boss track an employee's location? Would he stand outside her dorm room for five minutes without daring to knock? Would he forbid her from buying a phone?"

She moved a little closer. Oswald immediately turned his face aside, not daring to look at her again. He had flushed red from the base of his neck to the tip of his hooked nose.

"You treat me like your property, then pretend you're just my boss. What you really want... is to be my master, isn't it?"

Master.

The word was like a bullet, striking every one of Oswald's defenses with perfect precision.

Both his role as her "boss" and the excuse of her "debt" were shields he hid behind. In some unknown, shadowy corner of his heart, what he wanted most was to possess her.

He admitted that, compared with his admiration for Edward, Ririko stirred his lust more readily, though he had buried that desire in the deepest recesses of his heart.

"I never thought anything of the sort," Oswald retorted, though his crimson face and ears made him utterly unconvincing.

Ririko's eyes curved with sly amusement.

"Really? If you haven't, then I can buy a phone, right?"

Oswald snapped his head up. He realized he had been tricked.

She had slipped her goal of "buying a phone" into the conversation to get him to relent and let her buy a Banana phone.

He reached out and shoved her away.

He breathed hard, his face burning with the humiliation of a bird that had been teased by a cat's paw for far too long and finally couldn't resist pushing the cat away.

"You work here, with room and board included. What do you need a phone for?"

Ririko folded her arms across her chest and said as though it were obvious:

"I want to shop online. You won't let me leave the lounge, so I can only have things delivered. I won't be an eyesore, or take up your space."

Oswald's head buzzed-

She had money to buy a phone, and money to shop online, yet she'd put on that pitiful "I've never eaten caviar" act in front of him, softening his heart with those reddened eyes and that expression of holding back tears...

This woman was far too cunning.

He clenched his back teeth and forced the words out between them. "You should be grateful you can earn money working here. What, do you expect me to wait on you like a queen?"

A gleam flashed in Ririko's eyes.

She raised her arms and gently hooked them around his neck.

Oswald didn't dodge. He merely turned his face aside again, falling into her grasp as though resigned to his fate.

"So you want me to be your queen." Her lips brushed his ear as she spoke. "Do you want me to punish you, or reward you?"

Oswald was both mortified and furious.

In all his years in the underworld, he had heard from other lecherous gangsters just what "punishment" and "rewards" meant.

Those two words bounced around his mind, his heart pounding so hard it nearly leaped out of his throat.

Yet, setting those shameless thoughts aside, he needed her.

No one had ever been able to pull him along like this.

Since childhood, he and his mother had depended on each other.

After his mother died, he had been like a ship stripped of its anchor, drifting through Gotham's harbor, where the sun never shone.

He had thought he could survive without depending on anyone... and he had survived, living better than most people, in fact.

But after meeting Ririko, she had teased him time and again, and he could never bring himself to reject her.

He needed that feeling of being drawn along.

But that need frightened him more than any gun pointed at him ever could.

He pushed her away again.

"Stop talking. I won't agree."

Oswald firmly rejected her willful demand.

Ririko watched the bird man pull a long face and put on an expression that said, "I won't yield," and inwardly rolled her eyes.

Still, she hadn't expected him to agree.

There were plenty of men in this lounge.

After all, those men who sat on the sofas every night, wineglasses in hand, their eyes following her from the moment she walked in until she walked out-

Any one of them would gladly offer her the latest Banana phone with both hands, along with a pink phone case and a slip of paper bearing his number...