Chapter Text
Kiryu would never claim to be the smartest man on earth. In fact, if he’s being entirely honest, his life is essentially a patchwork of poor decisions strung together by their inevitable fallout and embellished with the occasional Good Thing.
He makes his most recent mistake hastily, in a dingy infirmary somewhere in Hiroshima, as he agrees to a spontaneous set of vaguely defined terms: a life free of crisis for a young mother and her son in exchange for one aging yakuza? And a suitcase full of cash? It’s a no-brainer — his favorite kind of decision. The goal is noble, and Kiryu’s never been the type of man who lets common sense dissuade him from anything.
Okay, so maybe it isn’t one of his best choices — something he realizes almost immediately when Date informs him of all the ways in which it is actually very, very stupid. In Kiryu’s defense, Sugai had hit him in the skull with that lead pipe an impressive number of times and then shot him an awful lot. He’s several pints of blood lighter and riding high on some very excellent painkillers by the time the offer is presented to him, so maybe his poor judgement isn’t exclusively his fault this time. Maybe Date should’ve thought a little harder before letting the sinister suit into the room with the morphine-addled man who’s elevated emotional masochism into an art form. But it’s not Date’s criticism that bothers Kiryu. It’s his timing. Because he keeps his mouth shut until after Kiryu says he’ll do it. What the hell is Kiryu supposed to do? Renege? Not an option. What does a man have if not his word? (His family, probably.)
When Kiryu agrees to the arrangement, he really, genuinely has every intention of following it to the letter, and he does his best… initially. Despite Date’s downer dramatics, Kiryu’s optimistic. He has money, he has time, and he has zero attachments. So the first thing he does is travel straight to the orphanage where all of his detached-attachments live and lurk out front like a creep. He was planning to say hi, but they all look pretty occupied, and he has no idea what he would even begin to say for himself. He checks his watch, wavers for a moment, and then spins on his heel, strutting right back the way he came. Only nine hours until his plane leaves, he rationalizes; better not chance it.
He takes a well earned three week vacation to Hawaii. It’s nice. It’s no Okinawa, but it’s nice. Upon his return to Japan, he’s greeted at customs by a moist-looking man in an ill-fitting suit who ushers him through a side door and then confiscates his passport. It’s fine. At least they let him keep all the Hawaiian shirts he’d invested in. They might not allow him to retire abroad, but at least he’ll be rocking some very floral threads while he keeps it domestic from here on out.
Kiryu spends the next five months on a whirlwind tour of all the revered natural beauty and historic sites Japan offers. Turns out there are a lot more Very Important Temples than he realized. He gets his fill of them pretty quickly and shifts his focus to something a little more his speed for the next jaunt. He travels from Hokkaido to Hakata and then back, and then back again, visiting all the country’s mahjong parlors and karaoke booths and old men sitting on milk crates playing shogi at every stop along the way. It’s not bad by any means, but when one year rolls into two, Kiryu starts to suspect that nothing actually matters and that his life is nothing more than an endless series of mild passions he rouses in the hopes of distracting himself from the increasing sense of despondent isolation that makes it harder to get out of his hotel bed every morning.
But then he decides to get good at darts. Like, really good.
He wastes about a week on that, and by the end of it he’s also dismantled an entire underground ring of dart players who don’t adhere to the noble standards darts were intended to be played by. They’re led by a strange man cloaked in an ugly hat, weird sunglasses, and an uncanny aura. Kiryu puts him in his place accordingly. It’s kind of a crazy way to end March.
Once the whole dart thing wraps up, though, he picks right back up where he was with his existential ennui conundrum.
Kiryu expected to be lonely, that’s no shock, but what he hadn’t foreseen was the immense apathy that’s snuck in beside it. Which he really should have, since this is far from the first time he’s grappled with an enforced absence from all his loved ones. He’d gone through the same thing back when his life was a nine by nine cell, and it had similarly kicked in sometime around ‘two down, eight to go.’ He recalls the feeling as having been easier to soldier past in those days, and briefly considers that maybe the big difference was the definitive finish line. ‘Two down, all the rest of your life to go’ doesn’t really have the same ring to it.
Christ, he’s so bored. Maybe it’s time to take up woodcarving.
One day, as Kiryu sits on a hotel balcony somewhere near Sendai, his hands busy whittling a tree branch into less tree branch, it occurs to him: he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of anyone enforcing the deal since he’d had his passport confiscated. He pauses, squints, and counts the months.
Twenty-nine and some change.
That’s nearly two and a half years, he realizes. Two and a half years spent drifting from town to town, living out of a single suitcase (he’d kept it after responsibly depositing all the loose cash into his bank account like a goddamn adult), trundling away from every location before he puts down roots or grows too attached to the local crew of scamps and crime adjacent misfits.
Two and a half years… and he hasn’t been contacted once. No harassment, no haranguing, no vaguely administered threats.
Nothing.
So, without necessarily intending to, he finds himself toeing the line.
Kiryu languishes in Sendai for a little over two weeks, wildly bored but mildly content, until one day one of the locals starts calling him aniki. He interprets the moniker for what it is: a sure sign that it’s time to float on to his next destination. So he packs his bag, makes his way to the nearest train platform, and purchases a ticket westward to Hakata (again), opting for a line with an unnecessary number of stops. He’s not in any sort of hurry to be anywhere other than ‘not here anymore.’
When the train rolls into a station along the way with a series of gentle pings and chimes, he feels like he’s in a trance, hypnotized by the hours and hours of countryside he’s vacantly watched skitter past the outside of the window. A pleasantly disembodied voice informs him they have arrived in Osaka, and in later retellings he will absolutely blame his next move on the aforementioned countryside bamboozling. But the truth is simply that when he hears Osaka, he thinks: Sotenbori — and then he thinks: Majima — and before his consciousness has any additional say on the matter, his legs have already carried him off the train and to the station exit, several hundred kilometers short of his original intended destination.
“Sir? Your name?”
Kiryu blinks and instead of the standard ‘Suzuki Taichi,’ he blurts out the first thing he can conjure, “Kazama—Uh…” Shit. “Kazuma.”
The young woman working at the hotel counter looks at him like he’s spoken in tongues and then after a moment asks, “Your name is Kazama Kazuma?”
Fuck.
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
Her eyes widen but she withholds further comment, simply types his worst fake name yet into her computer and awkwardly finishes the exchange. She hands him a keycard and a few brochures, rattles off a rehearsed spiel about hotel-sponsored local tours, and with a slight giggle she can’t stifle, says, “Enjoy your stay, Kazama-san.”
So, he’s off to an auspicious start here in Sotenbori, not really doing anything in particular — certainly nothing worthwhile. The next morning he sleeps late, enjoys the complimentary continental breakfast buffet, gets awkwardly asked to leave once they realize how much he can eat, and then works off the complimentary continental morning appetizer via a walk around the block that involves seventeen different thugs volunteering to be his morning workout. He swings through Komian for an early lunch, takes a stroll along the riverside, gives an old man the wrong answers to a crossword puzzle with a level of confidence that belies his meager mental gifts, and then stands outside of a bookstore sipping a can of coffee while he stares at a window display for the latest Okinawan travel guide. Once he’s had his fill of beach time, he slinks off to a bar and drinks whisky on rocks and holds his head in his hands while he curses Date for letting him make his own decisions.
What was even the point of having a friend who knew exactly how impulsive you were if they never bothered putting that knowledge to use before you made impulsive decisions? God, he misses Haruka so much. Stupid Date.
Kiryu downs the rest of his drink and signals for another with a scowl. The bartender passes him a fresh highball with an assaying glance, but says nothing. He assumes he’s got about two more — maybe three, tops — before he’s cut off. It’s something he’d never really had to consider before being forced to live under the radar: no one ever told The Dragon of Dojima he’d had enough to drink, and if they did, then The Mad Dog of Shimano was always right there with a manic knife-brandish that politely insisted they reconsider.
The fond memory of how his boyfriend used to threaten bartenders on his behalf makes him puff out a silent laugh. Okay — granted, he’d hated it then… But in hindsight it had felt nice to be taken care of, fretted over. Majima may have been erratic and embarrassing at the best of times, but he never failed to make Kiryu feel like the most important person in town. Even after Kiryu moved away from Kamurocho, the two of them were determined to somehow make it work and, surprisingly, they did. Kiryu managed the occasional weekend visits any time he could, and Majima always dropped everything, no questions asked, no matter how short the notice. A quiet, little pained groan escapes Kiryu as he recalls those wild Saturday nights spent drinking, fighting, and fucking like idiots, always followed by calm Sundays mornings spent nursing their hangovers, letting their walls down, and fucking like idiots some more.
Stupid, stupid, useless Date.
“You doin’ alright there, buddy?” a voice pipes from his left.
Although he’s been simmering in a Kansai-accent stew all day long, his breath still jags to hear the ridiculous drawl. He knows it’s not him, but Kiryu lifts his skull out of his palms and turns to look at the source, anyway.
“Kiryu-han! I knew it!” Watase shouts, slapping his shoulder and guffawing. “What the hell’re ya doing in Sotenbori, all alive and such?”
“Watase-san, please. Can you keep it down?” Kiryu says, voice low and deadpan.
Watase’s eyes widen behind his dim lenses as understanding appears to dawn, and he tilts his head with a slow, exaggerated bob. “Ah, my mistake. What’re you goin’ by, then?”
“It’s… Uh…” Kiryu pauses and stares at the smudged ink on the back of his hand. Stares for a moment while he attempts to decipher the blurry kanji before it clicks. Goddammit. “Kazama… Kazuma.”
Watase stares in utter bafflement. He must not have heard him.
“Yep. Kazama Kazuma.” Kiryu repeats himself and takes a drink of his liquor.
“Isn’t one of those still… Y’know — your name?”
“They’re both my name,” Kiryu commits.
Watase rubs his hand across his face and looks very, very weary. “Sure. Okay, Ki—Kazama-han.” Thankfully, he lowers his voice. “Lemme buy the next round.”
Kiryu is suspicious, but he’s also cheap. The two factions war within him for a moment, and his curiosity seizes the opportunity while his mental defenses are defenseless to escape through his mouth. “Why? What’s in it for you?” No points awarded for tact, but extra credit for efficiency.
“Well, it’d be nice to know the story behind that funeral I distinctly remember attendin’, but for starters we can just catch up on gossip.”
Kiryu snorts and throws back the last of the drink already in his paw. He knows the correct thing to do in this situation: give an angry glower, insist Watase has him mixed up with someone else, furrow those signature eyebrows into the angriest V he can muster, and then stomp out of town before this situation escalates… But he’s so bored and so lonely. He may be a man of the people, but he misses being a man of his people. He misses being able to talk with a common knowledge base and shared life experiences. He misses having friends who thought he was smart and a legacy that demanded respect. He misses Haruka and Majima and Date — wait, he’s still mad at Date — how about Akiyama? Hm. Saejima? Yeah, he’ll cop to missing Saejima.
Watase clears his throat awkwardly, and Kiryu blinks himself out of his head.
“Fine,” Kiryu says, sticking to his guns with all the strength of a recycled strip of scotch tape. He frowns and adds, “You have to keep it to yourself, though. It can’t come out that I’m still alive. Can I trust you with that?” It doesn’t occur to him it’s a bit late to be asking.
“Maybe,” Watase replies with a flippant shrug. Good enough for Kiryu! They relocate to a booth in a shady back corner with fresh drinks, and puff at their cigarettes until they’ve conjured a thick veil of smoke; objectively, it protects them from nothing, but it makes Kiryu feel a little more hidden, and that’s literally all the impetus he needs.
“I didn’t die,” Kiryu says.
“Clearly.”
“But I made an agreement to disappear.”
“Look, I’m not here to drag you outta hidin’ or anything.” Watase wags a flat hand in a dismissive, limp-wristed gesture. “It really is a damn coincidence I ran into ya. But I went to your funeral and almost lost a hand tryin’ to keep your Mad Dog friend from flippin’ open the casket right in front of your daughter. I think I deserve a few answers.”
Kiryu doesn’t know if the mental image makes him want to laugh or cry, so he drinks more whisky, stares at the tabletop, and then spills all the beans. Watase goes through a series of appropriately emotive expressions throughout the story, but maintains his silence until Kiryu gets to the part about his passport.
“Wait—Took your passport? That doesn’t make sense. Seems like they’d want ya far away as you could go.”
“Oh… I never thought about it that way.” Kiryu furrows his brow and looks absolutely befuddled. “Hm. That… You’re right.”
Watase’s giving Kiryu that look that he’s far too often on the receiving end of. It’s the one where people squint their eyes at him, knit their eyebrows, hunch up their shoulders, and lean slightly further forward with an unavoidable frown. (Haruka used to call it the ‘Oh, Sweetheart…’ look, but Kiryu never understood why. Majima was the only person who never looked at him like that. When he said this to her, she too squinted her eyes and leaned forward and looked unsure if she should speak or not.)
“What?” Kiryu says once Watase’s grimace morphs into a full-blown scowl.
“Kiryu-han… I don’t wanna be rude, but—” Watase coughs. “I’m just thinkin’… Sounds like that was probably your parole officer.”
Kiryu looks vacant for a moment before his eyes slowly grow wide and his jaw locks shut into a furious frown. He takes several long seconds to process the thought because it’s a doozy.
“Well… It coulda happened to anyone.” Watase is a poor actor. “I’m sure if ya go report yourself, they’ll take it easy on ya.”
Kiryu isn’t listening; the wheels in his head are trying to turn, monopolizing all available power. “Then… It hasn’t been two and half years since they’ve enforced anything. They’ve just literally never enforced anything.”
“Hey now, I believe ya and all… but don’t ya think dodging the parole board is the bigger issue here?”
“Watase-san, where’s the last place you saw Majima?”
Watase sighs, the heaviest one yet.
Kiryu stays in Sotenbori for another week, mostly because Watase mentions a gang of kids who’ve been targeting some businesses under his family’s protection with card skimmers, and Kiryu can’t deny a friend who needs help. Watase didn’t ask for any, but that’s irrelevant. They trace the situation back to a son desperate to help pay the drastically increasing rent on his parents’ small restaurant in the heart of downtown. It winds up being a good thing that Kiryu stuck around, because he indignantly marches down to the leasing office in charge of the property, rattles off a shockingly coherent explanation about the legal limits of adjusted rent increases upon grandfathered tenants with regards to accumulated fiscal returns and property tax inflation. It ends in a fistfight, but eventually he convinces the landlord to stop being a fucking scab. Kiryu experiences a brief pang of regret that he’d turned the suitcase of cash into a well-balanced portfolio of investments. They’re just a lot harder to throw at people after you beat the snot out of them.
It’s a fun enough diversion, and he has to admit he has a decent time palling around with Watase, but he spends the entire week waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sooner or later someone has to show up and tell him off for slipping up. There must be some consequence to being discovered still alive, right?
But strangely, despite his suspicions, he’s met with a whole lot of nothing.
It doesn’t take long after that for Kiryu to experiment with the boundaries of his possibly self-imposed exile, and he dives into the investigation with his trademark level of subtlety: none.
Next stop, Kamurocho!
Kiryu arrives in Tokyo on a Sunday evening and books a room overlooking Theater Square. Dinner is room service, because he’s worth it. Eventually he wanders up to the hotel’s prominently advertised rooftop pool, where he floats on his back and stares at the sunset until he feels pruney. Afterward, he returns to his room and showers, then lies on the bed flipping channels until he settles on some old samurai movie. At 9:30 PM, he responsibly turns off the television, tucks himself under the covers, and tries to sleep.
Then at 10:02 PM he sighs, gets out of bed, puts his suit back on, and goes to wander the town like he’s been dying to this whole time. Upon exiting the hotel, it takes a grand total of six steps before Kiryu’s remarkable timing once again proves itself a worthy contender.
A taxi rolls to a stop and deposits its passenger immediately in front of him: a tall, broad man. Kiryu freezes. The burly fare hasn’t noticed him yet, too preoccupied slotting his credit card back into his wallet while muttering about how expensive everything is these days. He keeps his head bowed and is about to walk right past Kiryu without even noticing him. A stroke of unbelievable luck—
Kiryu coughs conspicuously.
What an unfortunate and completely unavoidable coincidence that it draws the hulking man’s attention to him. He should really stop by the drugstore for some cough drops later so this sort of thing doesn’t happen again.
“K-Kiryu?” Saejima says. “…You’re alive?”
“Oh, uh—Yeah.” Kiryu scratches under his shirt collar. “So… How’ve you been?”
“That’s a pretty shit hand to get dealt,” Saejima sighs over his glass. They sit in a dim bar tucked in a back alley near Kamuro Hills, both far too many shots of whisky deep.
“Mm… It hasn’t been easy, but at least I know Haruka is safe.” Kiryu nods, grateful that Saejima seems appropriately sympathetic to his plight, unlike Watase. “That’s all I ever wanted.”
“Yeah, but isn’t that kid she shacked up with as much of a liability as you? He knows all about the big boat too, right?”
“...What?”
“They gave ya all that hush money and asked ya to disappear because ya knew about that Fixer guy.”
“Right…”
“Well, don’t all the rest of those Hiroshima boys know about him too? Said ya found his boat with their help.”
Kiryu stares. Saejima continues, undeterred.
“Just don’t make a whole lotta sense. Seems like they’d either wanna erase all of ya or none of ya. Not only you…” Saejima scrunches his face up into a thoughtful frown. “Who was it ya made this deal with again?”
“Someone from the government, I think? Well… Maybe they were from Iwami Shipbuilding—Or I guess they might’ve been a Yomei representative…” Kiryu’s brain hurts. “You know what? It was really unclear. I kind of assumed Date knew who they were.”
“Guess that’s fair. Must’ve been pretty out of it. How many times did Sugai whack ya in the skull again?”
“Nine. And then he shot me three times.”
Saejima lets out a low whistle. “Why the hell would your cop friend even let someone into the room?”
“You know, I’ve asked myself the same thing.” Kiryu has to stop himself from wringing his hands around his glass — can’t get too expressive. “Nothing to be done about it now, though. I already gave them my word.”
“Well, ya don’t gotta worry. Secret’s safe with me. Won’t even tell my kyoudai, not with your little girl at stake.”
“Hm.” It takes Kiryu a moment to parse why he suddenly feels so crestfallen but once he figures it out, he nearly pouts. He covers it up with a cough. Saejima hands him a lozenge from one of his parka pockets, which Kiryu awkwardly accepts. It’s unwrapped and sliding around in his mouth before he remembers he doesn’t actually need it, and he wonders if he’s perhaps slightly more drunk than he’d realized; he gets his answer immediately when he asks without intending to, “So, how is he?”
“Who?”
Kiryu withholds a frustrated scoff. “Majima.”
“Oh! Him,” Saejima says with a brief chuckle. He takes a swig of his drink. “Y’know he’s… He’s still him, so whatever his version of fine looks like. Puts on a good show for his boys, but he’s still pretty torn up about ya.”
“Really?”
Saejima gives a curt nod. “Yeah, he tries to act all tough an’ crazy an’ shit, but he ain’t foolin’ me.”
“Hm, my kyoudai always used to say he could read me better than I could read myself,” Kiryu says with a wistful smile. “I’m glad you two have been able to pick back up where you left off.”
“Naw, nothin’ like that. I read his diary, is all.”
“What did it say?” Kiryu’s mouth asks without his permission. Damn his curious nature and the liquor percolating throughout his blood. “Did he mention me?”
“Heh, yeah. He…” Saejima’s expression suddenly grows hard, all traces of mirth extinguished, and he gazes through Kiryu with a textbook thousand-yard stare. Perhaps even two thousand. “I… The shit I read. You two oughta be ashamed of yourselves.”
Kiryu suddenly feels the need to intensely inspect the wood grain of the tabletop.
“The entire neighborhood uses that bath house, y’know?”
Ah, they went with an alternating laminate. Is that pine and walnut? Interesting choice.
“And now I can’t even hail a taxi without cringin’!”
Tabletop thoroughly examined, Kiryu needs to change the subject, fast. His mind scrambles for anything to interrupt Saejima before he makes another completely valid accusation, but then something else entirely finally catches up to Kiryu. “What did you mean when you said Haruka was ‘shacked up’ with Yuta?”
“The two of ya were livin’ in the world capital for love hotels an—What?”
“You said ‘that kid she shacked up with.’ What are you trying to imply about her?”
“Kiryu… They have a baby. C’mon, don’t make me say it.”
“I know that. I’m not an idiot.” Debatable. “How would you feel if I talked about Yasuko like that?”
Saejima narrows his eyes and sets his jaw; it gives the impression that he smells something vile. He knocks back the rest of his drink, slams his glass on the table with a crack, and his voice comes out a growl when he continues. “Ya got somethin’ to say about my kid sister, Kiryu?”
“No, I don’t. Because I don’t talk about women that way.” Kiryu tries to kill his drink with similar drama but just hits himself in the nose with his empty glass. Saejima’s laughter bursts from him, booming and infectious, and Kiryu is laughing right along with him before he realizes it, blood oozing out from his nose with each snort.
“Hey! You two are cut off!” The bartender shouts from across the bar.
Saejima insists he crash at his place, and Kiryu agrees because the last he heard, Saejima and Majima were roommates. When they walk into the dingy, six-tatami apartment a few blocks north in neighboring Okubo, Kiryu realizes Saejima had struck out on his own at some point in the last six years. Nuts. He kicks off his shoes, shrugs off his jacket, and drunkenly plants himself face down in the middle of the floor, spread-eagle.
He falls asleep as he waits for the walls to stop spinning.
Kiryu wakes up the next morning to a rhythmic pounding inside his skull and an off-beat hammering outside the door.
His blood runs cold as he realizes this must be it: whoever is responsible for enforcing the deal has finally had enough of his nonsense, and they are definitely here to tell him which one of his loved ones will be paying the price for his selfish lack of discipline. Saejima must suspect the same, because he shoves Kiryu into the bathroom.
“Stay here, stay quiet. I’ll take care of it,” Saejima whispers in a rush and then slams the flimsy door shut. Kiryu’s heart pounds in his throat and he stands as still as possible, not daring to even breathe. He strains his ears, listening as Saejima pads to the entry with a performative growl. “I’m comin’, sheesh. Hold your horses.”
From his hiding place in the bathroom, Kiryu hears the creaking of the old hinges on the front door and blots his dry tongue against the roof of his mouth in anticipation of the inevitable. After a tense moment, he hears a sound that makes his heart slam against the walls of its cage.
“The hell ya been all mornin’? Figured you were dead in a ditch somewhere when ya didn’t show up to the officers meetin’. Daigo-chan’s worried sick, y’know?” The noise of the door slamming shut follows the tirade, and Kiryu has to slap a hand over his mouth to stop the yearning whine his throat wants to make. Keep it together, Kazuma.
“Dammit, I got wasted last night and completely forgot,” Saejima says.
A familiar laugh crackles through the cheap apartment in response. “I knew it! Told ‘em so, but he insisted I track ya down. Make sure his secret little plan was still a secret; that ya hadn’t defected or nothin’.”
Saejima laughs. “He thinks that low of me? Little shit.” His words are harsh, but his tone is fond, and Kiryu aches a little more.
The room goes momentarily silent, and Kiryu wishes he could see out into the main space. There’s a sudden loud crack against the door and then the shining tip of a tanto materializes centimeters in front of his nose. He blinks and realizes Majima must’ve stabbed it through the other side of the bathroom door and left it.
“The fuck is this, kyoudai?”
Saejima audibly stammers and Kiryu sweats.
“I saw the shoes too.”
“Look it’s—”
“I miss him too, but ya can’t just go pickin’ up any twink wearin’ his same ugly suit. Ain’t right.”
Kiryu hears Majima huff out a theatrical sigh, and he tries to not feel offended. His suit isn’t ugly.
Saejima clears his throat, “Y-yeah, you’re right.”
Well Kiryu doesn’t have to stand here and take this. He figures to hell with the stealth act, and turns on the shower. If they’re going to insult him like he’s not there, then he might as well simply carry out his regular morning routine like they’re not here either. Maybe Majima will take it upon himself to investigate the noise; maybe he’ll put the clues together and, through no fault of Kiryu’s own, discover him alive and well, loitering in the rapidly fogging bathroom; maybe he’ll join him!
He strips and cleans himself up under the downpour, uses more hot water than is probably polite, and once he’s finished, puts his dirty clothes back on with a frown. One last deep breath, and then he stalks out into the main room, chest puffed up and ready for a confrontation.
The apartment is empty, and he ignores the rush of relief that sweeps through him.
Majima’s knife remains embedded in the bathroom door, and from this side it almost makes sense. He’d used his blade to pin Kiryu’s gray suit jacket into the door in exactly the sort of unnecessarily theatrical display one would expect from a one-eyed, snake-skinned maniac. Kiryu yanks the knife out of the wood with a fond sigh, finds its scabbard precisely where he expects in the middle of the floor where Majima had obviously chucked it, and slides the blade back into its home. After a moment of consideration, he stuffs the sheathed tanto into the back of his waistband. A voice in his head tells him this is stealing!; Kiryu tells the voice to shut up — he needs this. He inspects his blazer and frowns at the gouge that’s been pierced through the seam that runs along the spine a few centimeters below the fold of the lapel. Once he shrugs it back on, the issue resolves itself elegantly. Out of sight, out of mind.
He takes a step over to the kitchenette, opens the fridge, and figures if he’s already stealing the tanto, his karma won’t suffer too much more if he steals a bottle of Pocari Sweat. When he shuts the door he spots a note flapping beneath a souvenir magnet from Sapporo, surprised to see ‘Kazama Kazuma’ written on the front in katakana. It drags a slow groan out of him as he investigates, but his stomach tightens in annoyance at the hastily scribbled words.
Takin’ the big baby out for the day.
Scram whenever.
You owe me ¥7000 for your half of the bar tab.
Kiryu huffs, crumples up the note, and throws the bills on the counter. He pauses before he leaves, opens the fridge again, and also steals two Calpis Sodas for the road. Cheap asshole and his stupid, oblivious, very attractive kyoudai. He doesn’t need Majima’s inevitable judgement and subsequent guilt trip, anyway; to hell with both of them! Kiryu’s got better friends in Hiroshima, and Nagumo would be thrilled to have him!
Nagumo is thrilled, but he’s also angry and weepy and louder than Kiryu remembered him being, somehow.
Kiryu sits on a stool inside Snack Kiyomi, while the namesake herself stands behind the bar looking stunned. To his side sits Nagumo with his face buried against Kiryu’s shoulder, rapidly saturating the sleeve of his gray jacket with hot tears. He keens, apparently winding up again, and Kiyomi takes the opportunity to swipe his glass of whisky off the bar and replace it with a glass of water. Nagumo blubbers on about his aniki, to his aniki, none the wiser.
Things continue thusly late into the night, until Kiryu’s head bobs downward with exhaustion every few minutes. Eventually, Kiyomi must have her fill of The Nagumo Show, because she makes a hushed phone call, and the next thing he knows, Ino is inside the bar prying a sloppy Nagumo off of him. He smiles, tells Kiryu to make himself at home in the Navy block apartments once again, and departs with their wobbly friend. Kiryu stands up from his seat, finishes the last drops of his drink, and stretches. He peels his soaked jacket off with a grimace that stirs a gentle laugh from Kiyomi.
“I can’t say how glad I am to see you’re alright, Kiryu-san, and I know she’ll be happy too.” Kiyomi’s tired eyes glitter with genuine emotion as she speaks, and a sincere smile tinges the corners of her mouth.
“Who will?” Kiryu asks absently.
“Haruka-chan, of course. That’s why you’re here, right? She and Yuta are visiting this week…?”
Kiryu freezes.
“Oh… You didn’t know?” Kiyomi’s voice contains a hint of mirth. Kiryu wonders how someone so pleasant can harbor such a sadistic streak. “Well, they’re staying at the Hirose Family Office. It’s probably too late to visit now, but—”
“Kiyomi-san, please don’t say anything to her. All of this… Everything I've done has always been to protect her.” His voice sags under the weight of his request. “Keeping her and Haruto safe is the only thing I care about.”
Kiyomi straightens at his earnest plea, and Kiryu imagines a more expressive woman might outright whine in her situation. She exhales lightly instead and busies her hands refolding the bar towel she’s been wringing all night. “Fine, I won’t mention anything… But, if you don’t mind me saying so, I think she deserves to know.”
“I—You’re right. She does… but it’s too dangerous.”
Kiyomi looks skeptical, or perhaps bored, but after a moment she nods. “Alright. I’ll keep it to myself.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry to put you in this position,” Kiryu says as he pulls his wallet from his pocket and leaves a thin stack of bills on the counter. Kiyomi looks unimpressed. He adds another. She gestures for him to keep going. They perform the loop three more times before she looks satisfied.
Kiyomi taps the cash into a neat stack and deposits it in the register. Once it’s locked up tight, she says, “Oh, Kiryu-san?”
“Hm?”
“I may be willing to respect your wishes, even if I don’t agree with them… But Nagumo might be harder to convince.” She pauses and looks at her watch with the hint of a smile. “Well, I hate to be a poor hostess, but my daughter is waiting and I still need to close up. Don't be a stranger, alright?”
Kiryu gives her a wave and stifles a yawn. He makes his way to the exit and ponders how best to keep Nagumo from letting the cat out of the bag. The air outside is crisp and bracing; it draws another yawn from him, and he rubs both palms across his face blearily. He takes a step without looking and bumps into someone.
“Oh, excuse—”
His apology is cut off by a stinging slap to the face, followed by two petite fists seizing the front of his shirt, and then a sobbing Haruka burying her face against his chest. Kiryu wraps his arms around her without thinking.
“Haruka…”
“You… absolute asshole!” she heaves. “I thought you were dead!”
Kiryu doesn’t have a comeback for that, and even if he did, he wouldn’t be able to speak around the lump that has suddenly calcified in his throat. So he simply holds her tightly and rubs a shaking hand through her hair while she cries. Several long minutes pass, but eventually she straightens up, pulls away with a sniff, and looks up at him through puffy, red eyes. He slides his hands to rest on her shoulders, unable to draw them away, and when he blinks he realizes he’s shed a few scant tears right alongside her.
“It’s really you…? You’re okay?” she says.
Kiryu nods, unsure if he should risk speaking quite yet.
“Then… why?” Haruka’s voice dips with the pleading question. She hiccups, nearly breaks with another hitching exhalation, but manages to suck it back up and continue. “Why did you leave? Where have you been all this time?”
“Haruka… I—” Kiryu coughs and shakes his head.
It was simple enough to explain his choices to Watase or Kiyomi or Saejima, because at the end of the day he really doesn't care what they think of him. There are only two people left in the world whose opinions matter to him in any meaningful manner, and in his haste to escape Tokyo when he’d nearly encountered one of them, he's thrown himself directly into the path of the other. He thought he knew exactly why he'd spent the last two and a half years on the run, but now, as he stands in front of Haruka witnessing firsthand the pain his absence wrought, all of his excuses and convoluted justifications shred to nothing, and he’s finally forced to acknowledge the inevitable truth he’s been ignoring since the day he fled Morning Glory without saying a word.
He isn’t a martyr or a protector or a noble hero.
He’s an idiot.
“Haruka… I’m so sorry.”
She nods and wipes her face. “I forgive you,” she says, like it’s just that simple.
Kiryu thinks he might stagger under the weight of his relief. Instead, he pulls her into another fierce embrace and this time she returns it.
“I'm sorry I called you an absolute asshole,” she murmurs into his shirt with a soggy laugh.
“I deserved it.”
“Yeah… you did.”