Chapter Text
“Here you are, Asami.”
Asami smiled warmly at Leo, the owner of the local sandwich shop.
“Thanks as always,” said Asami as she took the brown bag and placed a few coins in the tip jar.
“See you next week?”
Asami nodded. “Of course.”
She exited the store, causing the little bell above the door to chime. She walked down the cracked sidewalk, making her way to a specific block, one that she visited weekly.
She was now used to the stares, used to the wolf whistles that were thrown her way during this walk. Being a light skinned woman in this area definitely attracted a lot of unwanted attention. It didn’t matter that she was Japanese, she was still pretty much considered as white in this area.
After a couple of minutes, she finally reached the corner and spotted the young man she’d been searching for.
“Asami!” he shouted as he waved her over.
“Hey, Bo,” she greeted as she quickly closed the space between them. She handed him the bottle of lemonade and bag holding the freshly made reuben.
“Thanks,” he said opening the bag and not hesitating to take a huge bite out of the sandwich. “Mmmm, Leo’s the best!”
“What does that make me?” Asami asked in mock offense.
“Also the best since ya buy this for me every single week.”
“Well I can’t have my only connection to Blue going hungry.”
Bolin had already inhaled half of the large sandwich, but stopped when he heard Asami mention that name. “She won’t meet with ya,” he admitted quietly.
“That’s fine, just keep trying to convince her that I’m not a cop. Which you know I’m not.”
“I know. I know,” Bolin huffed. “It’s just going to take a lot more then me speakin’ to her to convince her. Ya got some type of thing I can give her to prove this is some research thing?”
“If she’d just meet me I’d be able to convince her,” Asami pressed.
“Yeah, ya keep saying that. She’s not going to meet ya if her gut’s telling her not to.” Bolin popped open the lemonade taking a long swig. “Ya got a research grant or something I can give her?”
“That’s private information, Bo.”
“Private smivate. Ya want to meet her or not?”
Asami groaned. “Of course I do. But I can’t legally give her that. Do you think she’d believe me if I gave you my ID as a Harvard professor, a copy of my diploma?”
Bolin scoffed. “Probs not. Ya could still be an undercover cop.”
“If none of that is going to work, what is it going to take for me to meet her?”
“I don’t know…” Bolin muttered.
“It’s already been two months,” Asami complained and sat down on the curb. She ran a hand through her hair, frustrated.
Bolin sat beside her throwing the empty bottle into the now empty bag.
“Did I ever tell ya the story about the boy she thought she could trust. He ended up pullin’ a damn dagger out of nowhere. He almost got her too if she weren’t so fast on her feet. Kid yelped about Blue causing the death of his bro or something like that.”
“I bet she’s had a lot of experiences like that. I assume she wasn’t completely innocent.”
“Ya may be right. But that don’t matter. She’s not had the best experiences with trusting people.”
“I understand that. Bo, I’m going to give you a copy of my ID as well as a copy of my diploma next week. You need to get those to Blue and try to convince her once more that I’m trustworthy,” Asami explained as simply as she could.
“I’ll give it a try. No promises though.”
“Thank you, Bo.” Asami patted Bolin’s large shoulder, then stood and left the young man.
She’d been trying to meet with Blue for just over two months now. She thought it would be easiest to befriend one of her closest confidants, Bolin. He took care of the streets, making sure that deals went down without a hitch. If they didn’t go smoothly, he’d call up his half-brother or Blue if it were really bad. They were the ones to handle the dirty work in a sense.
Trying to do covert research was definitely not what Asami had signed up for when she became a research assistant to a sociology professor, but she wasn’t against it either. Something about all of this work made her excited and adrenaline pumped through her veins knowing that she could be dealing with some of the most important gang members in the projects of Chicago.
She and professor Suyin Beifong wanted to learn about the effects of gang violence and drug use within the area. To do this, they both agreed that getting close to at least one gang leader would be advantageous.
They’d settled on Blue after hearing about how she was often seen as a blessing to the community more than a hindrance. She was known for actually helping the kids. While many gangs took children in and allowed them to help, Blue actually deterred the children from joining, telling them to get to school instead. There were stories of her often buying kids food or clothing when she had the time. The community also saw her as some kind of protector in a sense. If some kind of violence happened in her area, she was always ready to retaliate. There were even rumors that she’d been shot six times in the torso and still was able to walk away from the fight.
Obviously Blue was dangerous, but something about her was different. She seemed to have a sense of compassion, at least from the stories they’d heard. So Suyin and Asami thought there might be a slight chance she’d allow them to do some research about her gang. Be able to conduct anonymous interviews, take in some numbers and get hard statistics about the area and the use of drugs. They wanted an inside look, not the misleading numbers and information the cops and city often gave.
No matter what, she’d find a way to get in.