To be perfectly frank, my relationship with this woman is... percarious, to say the very least. I met her about six years ago, she was just a young Japanese kid who hung with us men in the ring. To look at her as any ordinary girl would be a mistake, she hits harder than the Incredible Hulk and is about as mean, too. When I first met her in the ring, she kicked me in the face so hard that I couldn't eat solid food for a week, then she opened up a cut in my head that needed eight stiches. Our subsequent meetings in the ring yielded very similar results... I'm always the one who gets brutalized by that crazy woman. Between the pain she inflicts in the ring and her near-sociopathic attitude towards fellow wrestlers, and I was left with the impression that she wasn't the type of person who wanted to make friends.

Funny how things work out.

It's six years later, and at this point, I have likely spent as much time in Japan as I have in the United States. The wrestling culture of Japan had always been fascinating to me, and I'm usually happy to take part in it. For a while, I stayed at a friend's house in Tokyo, but due to economical reasons, I could no longer do this. Therefore, as of last year, I began to act as a guest in the Doi home.

Awkward, that.

I guess she's warmed up to me a bit, though. After all, my last match with her ended with me only needing four stitches. I'd like to consider that an improvement.

Inoue's home was located in the Mihama ward of Chiba, although she's billed as being from Tokyo. Her home was large enough to support herself, her older brother, and her mother. Her father had passed away when she was pretty young, from what I understood. I was invited to the home alongside my fiancee, Annie, who was a close friend of Inoue's. Actually, Inoue treats her like an equal, even though Annie doesn't kick people in the face quite like Inoue does.

We arrived at the house after a long flight and drive, and we were both somewhat unprepared for the hot conditions in Chiba. Annie and I were both experiencing the effects of the jetlag, but we managed to get to Chiba in one piece. Sliding open the front door, we saw Inoue standing there in her summer clothes, which includes shorts that might have been too short and a white tanktop that didn't quite cover her stomach. I'm usually the first to admit that Inoue Doi was a rather attractive person, and I'm also usually surprised to find that she still remains single. That surprise was usually washed away when I'm reminded just what kind of person Inoue actually was... a blunt, rude, and no-nonsense girl with a slight superiority complex because she happened to be an athletic genius.

My Japanese is fairly intermediate, but what she said was something to the effect of 'If you come in here without taking off your shoes, I'll frickin' kill you.'

And, of course, she didn't really say 'frickin''.

She also only said that to me, of course. She was polite to Annie, and rude to me. I suppose that's the best I'm gonna get out of this relationship with this woman. Inoue led us into the dining room, and told us... okay, actually, she just talked to Annie and ignored me, that she was taking care of the house alone. Her mother was taking a ski trip in Hokkaido, and her brother, Ryu, was also a professional wrestler and he retired not too long ago.

It was rather warm in Inoue's house, probably because it was the middle of summer and the house's air conditioning was having a difficult time keeping up with the heat outside. It might be the reason why Inoue was wearing so little at the moment, and also probably the reason why she was even more agitated than normal. She politely asked Annie to sit down and then rudely ordered me to do the same. That's pretty much the dynamic between the three of us. Eventually, she brought us some tea, and Annie brought Inoue up to speed about what was going on with the two of us, including an offer about coming to our wedding as a maid of honor.

The thought of Inoue Doi, a woman who had brutalized nearly every professional wrestler she ever came in contact with using an array of stiff strikes and high flying techniques, in a bridesmaid's gown got me into a hysterical laugh that only ended when Inoue came over and hit me in the head with the back of her hand hard enough to knock the jetlag right out of me. Leave it to Inoue to hit every bit as hard in real life as she does in the ring. Either way, Inoue agreed to Annie's request, and afterwards, Annie went to take a nap to sleep off her jetlag.

This left me with a particularly irritated Inoue Doi.

'So, what's wrong with you?' I asked her, knowing full well that Inoue understood English. She was awful at actually speaking it, though, her attempts to do so have caused much ruder people around her to snicker and laugh. So, she stopped trying and that left me to use whatever Japanese that Annie taught me to figure out Inoue's answers. It wasn't complicated to learn the vocabulary, but I still have trouble understanding sentence structure and meaning. Inoue's response was rude, but I could understand what she said.

'None of your business.'

I offered a smile, 'I'll hear you out.'

'Bakayarou.'

Roughly translated: 'dumbass'.

Inoue wasn't exactly being very friendly to me, much to my complete lack of surprise. Left with no alternative, I simply went to the tea and let the awkward silence sink in. The only sounds I could really pick out in the room were the ticking of the clock that hung from the wall, and Inoue's irritated, uncomfortable shuffling. Inoue reached for a paper fan to relieve herself from some of the heat. After another minute of this, she finally spoke up.

'Say something, dammit.' she said to me in Japanese.

I turned and looked at her for a brief moment. Her stare seemed to be like that of somebody who was annoyed more with the heat than with me.

'Okay. What do you want me to say?' I asked in a good-natured voice. Despite the way Inoue treated me most of the time, I mostly think it's just posturing on her part. I think that she's a good person who just gets irritated easily and finds it theraputic to beat up on other people. Especially me. Inoue looked at me with narrowed eyes for a moment, though I could tell that she's thinking pretty hard about what to say back at me. Maybe it's because she thought that I was stupid and can't understand her.

Her silence literally invited me to say something, so I obliged her.

'Alright, fine. Why'd you get into wrestling to begin with? You don't even wrestle in the joshi scene.' I asked. The women's wrestling (joshi) scene in Japan was a lot more respected than that in America, where women were often treated as sex objects first and wrestlers second. Yet, Inoue wrestles against men most of the time and seems to enjoy it far more than facing off against women. Other than a certain bunny-loving happy girl from the promotion where we first met, anyway. For some reason, Inoue just loved to beat the crap out of her, but I never really asked why.

'You ask stupid questions.'

A typical response.

'It's fun to hit men. They don't break as easily as women.' Inoue said to me a few seconds afterwards, with a creepy little smile. Great, I'm dealing with a woman misogynist... how the hell is this girl best friends with my fiancee, again? Anyway, Inoue just stared at me, her chin resting on her hands and her elbows resting on her table. As usual, she spoke to me simply and plainly, 'I don't understand you.'

'What, me?' I asked her.

'Yes. I heard about the mask, and the idiot idea that came with it.' Inoue said. The look she was giving me was something I couldn't really read. Was it pity? Or was she just trying to hold back from laughing at the mere thought of the most straight-laced guy she knew suddenly becoming a blithering idiot? Either way, she added to her comment, 'Honestly, would it have killed you to just say 'no'?'

'If I were still by myself, I'd have said no. Really, I would have. But... I gotta support Annie, too. She's more important to me than my pride, and wrestling's really the only thing I know. So, this will do for now, and so long as the secret doesn't get out that it's me under this ridiculous mask, I'm alright with it.' I told Inoue.

Inoue just stared at me, as if she still didn't understand. I doubt it was a matter of the language barrier, either. For someone like Inoue Doi, who'd never really had someone she absolutely had to support besides herself, I don't think she'd really get it. Come to think of it, outside of that one fling with Christopher Sheffield a couple of years ago, has she even had a boyfriend that could tolerate her?

After I ran through that thought process, I decided to change the subject, 'How's Ryu doing?'

Ryu was, as I mentioned before, Inoue's older brother. The poor guy was always being outdone by his little sister in pretty much every single way you could think of. He'd swim, she'd swim faster. He'd get into martial arts, she'd get two black belts. He'd get into wrestling, she'd turn out to be better than him at that as well. I guess he finally gave up, considering that he's teaching high school English, something I don't think Inoue would (or could) do.

Inoue turned away from me, disinterested, 'He ran off to teach. That's all you need to know, right?'

Apparently, she's a little annoyed about it.

When Inoue broke out as a wrestler, Ryu served as her manager. Then Sonny Silver beat the living hell out of him, which gave him a severe concussion. He attempted to come back, but the symptoms of post concussion syndrome proved to be so severe that it forced his retirement. Thanks, Sonny. You ass.

Inoue stood up and walked away from the table. I turned my attention to the tea she gave me, content with the silence. It's always awkward to talk to Inoue, mostly because I can never really tell if she's hostile just for the show, or if she really is hostile. She came back a few moments later with a picturebook, opening it and gesturing at a picture in it. It was the photoshoot we did a few years ago with an old promoter we both used to work with. The picture had him and his wife prominently featured in the center, and then the initial roster he signed up were surrounding him. Inoue and I were there, members of the very first roster of a Texan promotion that has somehow long outlived its original owner.

'Ah, I remember.' I said with a smile, 'That guy was always so idealistic. I kinda miss him.'

'He was the first man to really respect what I do.' Inoue said to me, 'He encouraged it. The harder I hit, the most pleased he was to watch it. I couldn't tell whether he enjoyed seeing other people's misery or if he just liked to watch the competition.'

She paused, and added, 'It took years to get you to respect me in the same way as him.'

'To be fair, you didn't exactly give me very many occasions to warm up to you.' I told her, after I processed what she was saying to me. Inoue, ignoring my response, pointed at another picture. This one was taken as recently as last year. It was Annie and Inoue, hugging each other and smiling. The Inoue in this picture was a far cry from the woman I knew.

'She's everything to you, right?' Inoue asked, which I responded with a simple nod. She continued, 'She's the only person I'm really friendly with. When I met her, she was crying about something that some idiot said to her. I comforted her, and yet was surprised that she spoke Japanese. And now, she's happier than I've ever seen her because of you. I don't understand it.'

'Maybe it's my dashing good looks.' I sarcastically said.

Inoue laughed at my comment. Whether it was because she thought I was serious or not was left up to debate, but regardless, I took another glance at the photoshoot with that old promoter and saw a familiar face hidden amongst the other thirty to forty people who were there, 'Hey, Inoue.'

'What is it?' she responded.

I pointed at the man's face, 'Have you spoken to Sheffield lately?'

Inoue's expression went from pleasant reminiscence to annoyed anger to deep sadness so fast that I literally felt the emotional whiplash from here. Inoue Doi once had a relationship with the man known as Christopher Sheffield, known to wrestling fans as simply 'Alias'. I never knew the details of the relationship, but whatever happened, it definitely had some sort of impact on Inoue.

'Bakayarou.' she said, though whether it was to me or stemming from whatever she still felt about Sheffield was information unknown to me. She snapped up her photobook fast enough to create an unpleasant explosion of sound, and stormed off to another part of the house. I waited for her to come back, but she apparently wanted no more part of a conversation with me at this time.

I sighed, and finished my tea.

I guess to summarize all of this... if I traveled back in time and told my past self that I was going to become a good friend of Inoue Doi's, my past self would beat me senseless.

Well, more senseless than a guy who wears a blackberry mask as part of his job, anyway.