Izuna really took care of me.

He took my drenched coat like a true gentleman. Then, he sat me down on his couch, and went to fetch some clean clothes and a towel.

"Ehmm, these are probably too small for you", he said. "But they belong to my friend Callum, so at least they're slightly bigger than my clothes."

Izuna turned around shyly as I undressed in his living room. I deliberately took everything off down to my underwear, and just stood behind his back for a while; I felt daring. Then, I dressed. The trousers were soft checked pyjama trousers, and suited me fine. The T-shirt clung pleasantly against my chest. Izuna went on to dry my hair with a towel, and I closed my eyes, enjoying the pleasant feeling.

Then, I suddenly remembered something, and went to fetch something in my coat pocket.

"I almost forgot!" I said and fished out a jar. "I hope you'll like it."

He looked at me questioningly. There was something colder about Izuna, something more hesitant than the last time I had seen him. It was as if he couldn't quite believe I was nice to him, or that he didn't want me to be.

"What's that?" he asked warily.

"Take it!" I said, and he did. "A gift, because it's the first time I visit you in your home."

I smiled at him. He looked down at the gift. It was a ruby-red, big jar of body butter. I had immediately thought of Izuna when I saw it, and when I had smelled it, I had thought it would suit him perfectly; cinnamon cookies, the label had said.

He looked at me sweetly.

"Thank you", he said, and he sounded genuine. He opened the jar and smelled it. "Oh, my God!" he burst out, which made me smile.

"I know, right?" I sighed. "Actually, Izuna..." I took a deep breath, suddenly afraid of rejection. "I wanted to ask you to come with me for the weekend. I have a cabin in the mountains." Izuna bit his lip, hesitating. "I don't want you to feel forced", I said calmly. "It's beautiful up there now, so I thought I'd go anyway, with or without you. But I'd like to take you. Show you the autumn landscape. It doesn't need to mean anything. But..." I scratched my neck. "I suspect something has happened. And I want us to have a chance to talk about it. Whether last time was a date or not, I don't want you to hold anything against me."

"Are you sure there is not... Someone else you'd rather take there?" he asked.

I frowned. Did Izuna doubt I liked him? Was he insecure? He hadn't really struck me as the insecure type, but what did I know.

I shook my head.

He looked at me intensely then, as if trying to see right through me, straight into my soul, searching for my true intensions. Whatever he had found, he must have found it acceptable because finally, he nodded.

"Okay", he said. "Okay, I'll come." He even smiled a little, raising the body butter at me like a toast. "Seeing you bribed me."

Seeing him smile caused fireworks to go off in my rib cage. 

Izuna drove my manual car back to my garage, where we changed into an automatic one so that I could drive and he could look at the view. There was another perk to me driving as well. Seeing Izuna manoeuvre the manual did all sorts of things to me and my body, and I was uncertain whether or not I would be able to keep my hands off him if he drove all the way to my cabin.

In the car ride up the serpentine road to the cabin I owned in the mountains, Izuna warmed up a bit. He was adorable, pressing his little hands against the window, words of wonder escaping his mouth at the changing landscape, the leaves becoming more and more autumn-coloured the higher up we came and the weather became colder.

But after a while, he became quiet again, and I could see he was deep in thought.

"Izuna..." He turned to me. "Tell me."

He sighed, but he hesitated for only a while before he began.

"Before I got to know you, I... I wasn't all that impressed with you." It didn't surprised me, to be honest. I honestly didn't think he was all that impressed with me now, either. He turned to look at me. I couldn't look back as I had to be focussed on the serpentine road ahead, but he had my undivided attention. "I didn't like your work ethics. Still don't like them. How you buy up companies, and move the production to less fortunate countries because it's cheaper. Also, I've read you're completely unavailable to your employees."

I sighed. I wasn't at all surprised Izuna possessed such great empathy.

"Have you ever..." I began. "Considered there's another reason except cost why I would move production abroad?" Izuna shook his head. "Have you ever been to a third-world country?" Izuna shook his head again. "Well, I have. Many times. And the first time I went, I decided I'd do anything help them." I turned slightly to Izuna, trying to convey how earnest I was even if I couldn't look directly at him. "It's a lot of prostitution, Izuna. A lot. I moved production there to give the inhabitants a different source of income."

Izuna was quiet for a while, taking in what I'd said.

"Are you serious?" Izuna finally said.

Whatever Izuna had expected, it clearly wasn't this. The threes outside the window were becoming more and more sparse; we were approaching the top of the mountain and the cabin now.

"Very", I said, ignoring it wasn't strictly speaking a question demanding an answer. "And the factories are completely driven by women. The employees have all come from prostitution. I have several employees from home that I trust hired just to see over them. They are also women. Yes, the cost of the workers there are much cheaper than workers in, let's say, Germany, but it increases their living standards vastly. It pays them three times as much as prostitution does. And, well... It's not prostitution."

"Why don't you pay them as much as here?" Izuna asked daringly.

"It's complicated. Unfortunately, there are serious issues that could bloom if I just pumped money into those societies." Izuna opened his mouth to protest. "Trust me on this, Izuna!" I was suddenly desperate for him to do so. "The money for it exists. It's not that I, or anyone else for that matter, earn more if they earn less. The money just sits in a bank account. But I have tried, which was stupid of me since I'm educated in these things and should have known better, and it did not go well."

"What happened?" Izuna asked.

"The men took over. Used the money for drugs. By keeping the money high enough for a good living standard, but low enough that the men don't want to waste the money on anything else but to keep those living standards, I keep the women safe. To make a change, political changes are required. That's outside my area of expertise. As for my unapproachableness..." I smiled. "I don't believe it's above me to see to my employees, if that is what you're afraid of. But I have a great need to be alone. It makes me anxious. Meeting people."

"Is there a reason for that?" Izuna asked carefully.

"Yes", was all I said.

Izuna was quiet for so long, I became very, very worried. But finally, he spoke.

"You're a good man, Tobirama", he said.

I stopped the car; we were there.

"I'm not", I said. Izuna opened his mouth to protest, but I interrupted him. You don't know what I have done. "We're here."

Izuna looked ahead, and his face lit up.

"Oh, wow!"

I smiled. I felt the same calm I always did when I saw my two-story timber cabin with the panoramic windows and the balcony that encompassed the entire building; a calm.

"What do you want to do first?" I asked. "Food? A walk?"

Izuna looked down shyly.

"I'd like to put on some of that body butter", he said.

I looked at him then, and he looked at me. An electrical charge seemed to pass between us then; a mutual understanding. I could feel my mouth water.

I took out my keys out of my pocket.

"You go", I said. "I'll bring our bags."

Izuna, giddy like a child, took the keys and ran off. I smiled after him as he ran to the wooden front door. But something was gnawing at my insides.

This isn't it... There's something else Izuna is upset about. And he's not telling you.

A thought suddenly struck me.

What if he knows? What if he knows that she is dead?

What if he knows that it was me who... 

I swallowed, looking straight ahead.