"Yeah, I fought them. They had a knife, too." Hajime probably shouldn't have seemed quite so proud of himself, really, especially not since the guys he'd just tussled with only had the one knife between the three of them. But the Blood Keys had guns when he and Shou ran into them, and that was close enough. "They need to learn they can't just go around taking things from people. I'm not backing down from that..."

Man, his luck with muggers was terrible lately. "Besides, you think I look bad, you should see the other guys. I can take care of myself." Which was probably not the sort of thing he needed to be saying to his older cousin, who could very well tell his mother about this, but something within him was just horribly rubbed the wrong way by the thought of backing down from a fight.