omg i wanna know more about vince's arasaka ex-boyfriend! he looks cute! hope he's not a dick. but then again you gotta be a certain level of dick to survive in arasaka so maybe im setting myself up. do the other co-workers know or was it a hush-hush thing?

AAHHH!!! öashdfafd thanks so much for asking!!! BETTER BUCKLE UP, this is gonna be long and angsty xDD

(putting his not-100%-polished or canon appearance here again cause I like having pics with my long posts XD)

Okay so... his name is Shou, like Vince he is half-Japanese, but he actually grew up and spent the majority of his life in Japan. He comes from a similar background as Vince, too, corpo-family with ties to Arasaka, excellent education, good grades, a little bit of an outsider even, but he never intermittently left the corpo world like Vince did. He got his entry-level position job at Arasaka fresh out of university and has been (outwardly) loyal and obedient ever since, rising in ranks in no time.

He's roughly 10 years older than Vince, and in 2074 gets transferred to Night City from Tokyo, to help with the expansion of the Counterintel department there. Technically he's on Jenkins' level, experience- and skill-wise, but since everything works a bit differently in Night City, for the time being he ends up a part of Jenkins' team on a level with Vince. It would've been Jenkins' duty to show Shou the ropes actually, but he delegates the task to good old Agent V instead, and that's how they first properly get to know and work with each other.

Let's just say, there is definitely an instant curiosity/interest and base-level of attraction from both sides XD Vince and Shou work well together, share a lot of common interests, have similar ambitious personalities, (both of them are a little bit of a dick, really), and inevitably they also spend a lot of time together. The one thing that Vince is most interested in though, that Shou always seems to avoid answering directly, is why he volunteered to come to Night City from Tokyo. Most people V knows that are striving to rise to the top would wish for it to be the other way around. Shou is always like "I wanted a change of scenery", "I wanted to broaden my horizon", "It looks good on my resume to be in the teamlead of this project" and so on, but none of that feels 100% genuine and so Vince keeps his walls up and tries to maintain a professional distance, despite really liking him otherwise. Emphasis on "tries", cause Shou is not making it easy for him either xD

Some time passes, Vince is still adamant about not wanting a relationship with a coworker (also because he is low-key worried if he lets someone into his life too closely, they might discover he's in contact with Jackie and leaking very classified company secrets to him now and then). But still, one evening Shou and him end up alone at a bar together and one thing leads to another...

Initially their relationship was definitely more on the hush-hush side, not because they were ashamed of it or anything, but because Vince didn't want to be blamed with treating Shou favorably over the others in his team because he was sleeping with him. As time went on though the others definitely caught on, and there was a little bit of drama and bad blood, but nothing they didn't know how to deal with. They had to make it official towards Jenkins and the head of the department at the time soon-ish after becoming a thing anyway though, to not run into problems on that side either, but it went surprisingly smooth. Vince actually was very very happy at the time and wouldn't have figured to ever find someone he'd click so well with that he started to imagine a long-lasting future together.

Long story short though... It never came to that. I mentioned in the lore post that their relationship ended abruptly and bitter, and yeah. Let's just say, Shou hadn't come to Night City for a change of scenery, but as part of an elaborate plan he'd been setting up for years to get out of Arasaka for good, make a bunch of money in the process, and disappear from the face of the earth. Fuck off to somewhere where they'd never be able to track him down, the Soviet Union or something like that. He hadn't planned on genuinely falling in love with Vince though.

Aware that Vince was (apparently) very loyal to Arasaka, he also knew it would need some effort to convince him to come along with him, leave everything behind for good and start over somewhere new. So, what's his idea here? Make it seem like Vince is leaking info to a competing corp by messing with his computer and files. He abused Vince's trust to basically force him to come with him, cause at the press of a button he'd be able to notify Jenkins of Vince’s “betrayal” and he would have no other choice but to run away. Vince figures this out accidentally, and just briefly before Shou can set him up in a way so that there would’ve been no turning back. Since Vince is *actually* leaking company info, just not to a corp but his best friend whose safety he’s now also extremely scared for, he kind of has to make a choice between “run away with the love of my life” and “run to Jenkins and tell him about the setup before Shou can go through with his plan”. And he ends up choosing Jenkins out of loyalty to Jackie.

Let’s just say… the ensuing chaos did not end well for neither Shou nor Vince, but at least Vince walks out of it somewhat alive. Shou never felt in the wrong btw (and really, he was not wrong to want to get himself and Vince out of Arasaka asap). He did what he did out of love, genuinely convinced it was the only thing and the right thing he could've done. Best, most loving intentions, worst possible execution.

(one day, when I have Vince in NPV format, be ready for gut-wrenching VP of all of this. I'M NOT OKAY ABOUT THEM. Also, imagine the very awkward convo with Kerry later on that starts with "So, I told you everything about Louise... now how did your last relationship end?")