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Most days, it’s rare for Saito to drop his air of detached nihilism he’s carefully curated since his early teenage years. It’s a perfect repellent for boring assholes and the blushy-faced heart-eyed girls from his grad school classes, as everyone can quickly categorize him as a dick before moving on. Even the profs are giving him the side-eye. Saito calls this a win and awards himself with a boba. Suffice to say, he’s chilling.
And then Hitomi drags home her new boyfriend, and everything falls apart.
“That’s Falco,” Hitomi says, all smiles and kindness. Were she not his legal guardian of twelve years, Saito would have shot her the best contemptuous glare. “We met at the Ikune Shrine a few weeks ago. Falco, that’s Saito, I’ve been taking care of him since he was a kid.”
Saito and Falco (aka Hayato goddamn Yagyu) stare at each other. “Nice to meet you,” Hayato says as if he wasn’t an assassin, in Saito’s home, after having met each other at the Kumakuras (where Saito learned his real name, for fuck’s sake). He looks like he’s seen a ghost.
“Hitomi,” Saito says. “What the hell. That is the guy that ruined your car upholstery with his blood last week.” That explains almost too much. He turns to her, on the verge of a frustration-induced aneurysm. “Do you know who he is?”
“A criminal,” Hitomi says merrily, reaching to grab Falco’s hand, the man paler than chalk. “Hehe, it’s a bit like a romance novel trope, don't you think? Well, as long as he doesn't hurt the wrong people…"
What.
Saito gets up and goes to lock himself in his room. He’s not dealing with this right now. He texts Iris before faceplanting onto his bed. This is going to suck, he can feel it in his bones. And he thought the boyfriend Hitomi had five years ago — a goddamn cop with a stupid goatee and a weird-ass daughter — was bad. This? This is how he dies. Or Hayato dies. He’s still undecided.
There’s a boy in his class that Saito actually finds tolerable. They share their notes before exams, talk about Hegel sometimes, and once they went for coffee at a cafe nearby the campus, where Saito didn’t think about ditching him even a single time. Needless to say, this is the closest he is with anyone except Iris and Hitomi. Not Okiura the elder, who sucks , and not Manaka, as he’s still wary of her, acutely aware of how close he came to killing her instead of his father. Meanwhile, she is clearly searching for So in Saito’s face, lips pursed thin and eyebrows drawing together. It’s weird. It makes him want to go and set a cop car on fire, to prove some point that he doesn’t even know.
In any case, his classmate asks him out. Saito says yes, mostly because he wants to find out just how tumultuous this could end up.
After he comes home, Iris launches herself onto him like a flying squirrel. “Big brother!” she cries out while Saito’s trying not to drop her wriggling self. “You went on a date? That’s so cute! How did it go, tell me, tell me please!”
“Uh,” Saito says. “Hi, kid. It was… fine. I guess.” He meets Hitomi’s eyes over Iris’s head and nods, quirking the corner of his mouth. “It could’ve been worse.” In the sense, they may have ended up arguing about Kropotkin and classism before cutting the outing short, but no one died. That’s a win, right? Right?
“Brother,” Iris chides him in all of her twelve-year-old’s solemnity, “you would be more popular if you stopped being a meanie.”
“She’s correct, you know,” Hitomi says, beatific, as she closes her book. “But we’re both glad you tried.”
“Yeah.” Saito shrugs. He tried, now he doesn’t have to do this again. While there was something in how the boy ran his fingers through his golden-brown hair that made Saito look, it wouldn’t work for a few too many reasons. He’s perfectly fine with what he’s got going now, thank you very much. No need to upgrade. Lowering Iris to the floor, he hangs his coat before pulling his laptop out of his backpack and setting it on the dinner table, which earns him a look from Hitomi.
“Yes, I know,” he mutters, taking a quick glance at his email inbox. There’s nothing of concern, so he turns the computer off and gets up to help Hitomi with the dinner. “Why’s Iris here, though?”
“Manaka needs to stay late at work,” she explains, cutting the vegetables as he starts washing the rice, “so Iris and you are having a sleepover.”
“Alright, if that’s how it is.” Eh, as long as the kid’s happy enough to play Dim Souls with him for three hours straight, Saito has no trouble pretending to babysit. “Hey, Iris, do you want to have popcorn after dinner?”
“Yup!” Basically bouncing in place, unaware of Hitomi’s mildly disappointed gaze directed at Saito, Iris sing-songs, “Thank you so so much!”
“Whatever.”
“Dinner first, sweetie.”
“Sure, Auntie! Ooh, can we play the game with dragons too?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Brother.” Climbing to sit cross-legged in the dining chair, Iris proclaims, “You would be so cute if you stopped looking like you don’t wanna be there.”
“Well, I don’t want to be there,” Saito counters, throwing the rice into the pot and filling it with water. “People should understand that.”
“Oh, speaking of that,” Hitomi says. “Saito, would you mind if Falco stopped by for a moment? He’s returning my sweater from the dry cleaners.”
“You didn’t get him to buy you a new one? Come on, Hitomi, that’s the least he could do.”
“Don’t worry, he’s taking me to a restaurant on Saturday.”
“Okay, there you go. That’s much better.” He doesn’t add, “Bleed him dry,” but only barely.
“Don’t worry about this, Saito,” Hitomi says as she chops the radishes with a frightening speed, her eyes flicking from the knife for just one moment. “I think I’ll be able to manage this.”
Well. She will, and he knows that. After all, Hitomi Sagan, at age eighteen, did not hesitate and took in a kid who murdered his father. Even when Saito, tween and still searching for the right combo of meds, tried his best to annoy her, she wouldn’t falter — nor let him get away with his bullshit. She’s the one that helped set everything up after Manaka called her from his phone while they stared at So’s bloodied corpse. Despite those messy beginnings, now they’re all, to put it plainly, taking it easy. The medication that Saito’s on right now makes violence seem undesirable enough he’s able to consider trying out vegetarianism. Going to a boxing class every other Wednesday lets him expel most of the pent-up energy. There’s a punching bag and a stack of violent video games stashed away in his closet. He’s got this shit under control. Granted, he doesn’t really get along with the majority of people, but they’re mostly idiots, so they can hang out with each other. The frosty politeness, this he can manage. Anything more takes too much of his focus on more interesting things.
One of such preoccupations, besides criminology and video games, is — himself. Duh. He's not blind. Therefore, after they’re done with dinner, Saito starts browsing the website of a clothing brand, Iris craning her neck to see the screen as she comments on the pieces. Most of her opinions consist of the word “fugly”, which he probably shouldn’t find so endearing. She’s correct, in fact, so he allows her to look at photos on social media of people being fashion disasters. Iris’s rapt as she listens to him, her mouth agape. After a while, she demands the popcorn, so they go make it in the microwave, but then they start bickering about sticking an egg in there to see what happens, and Hitomi tells them to calm it down.
“If you do this,” she adds, hunched over the assignments she's grading, “you’ll be the ones cleaning it. Besides, they’d explode.”
“Wow,” Iris says, full of awe. “Auntie, can we please do it? Please?”
“Another time,” Saito says quickly. “Go eat your popcorn.”
In the middle of an intense boss battle, the doorbell rings. Saito glares at the entrance as Hitomi lets Hayato in and chats him up, light and cheerful despite his awkwardness. God, the bastard looks like a mess in his oversized jacket and crumpled dress shirt the color of an overripe tomato. Disgusting. Saito wrinkles his nose and picks the controller back up, ready to murder more fictional enemies, quite set on ignoring the world around him. Iris throws one question after another, barely allowing Hayato to reply, and Hitomi looks like a cat that just ate a piece of fatty tuna.
“As I said,” she announces, leaning against the kitchen counter as Iris tries to climb Hayato like a tree, “it’s obvious my family will not be against you.”
“Even him?” Hayato murmurs, clearly thinking Saito can’t hear him. Asshole.
“Give him time, dear,” Hitomi says airily, “it takes a while to earn his respect.”
“You’re giving him false hope,” Saito says under his breath. Hayato frowns at him and gets a scowl as a response.
“We’ll see,” Hitomi says. She hasn’t stopped smiling, but there’s a mischievous glint to her expression that Saito does not like in the slightest.
As a way to cope, when the next day Okiura the elder visits Hitomi, Saito steals his phone and installs adware before returning it without anyone noticing. Okiura complains about his phone going rogue while dropping off Mizuki for Hitomi to babysit, and Saito watches this with well-hidden glee. Suck it, capitalistic scum.
Every once in a while, there’s an evening when Manaka and Hitomi meet up to talk, usually over copious amounts of wine, with the implicit request for Saito and Iris to look after each other for a moment. Often, if he strains his ears, he can hear one of them crying. It's — he can imagine what society thinks of them. One a single mother, the other — a woman living with a man barely seven years younger than her. In his quest to explore the field of criminology, Saito has stumbled on a few books containing basic feminist theory, so he can spot the patriarchal system at work here, too. Suffice to say, those are the days he sneaks out and, keeping himself low and forgettable, finds a yakuza dude to fuck with.
And then the worst happens. He finds Hayato.
The rooftop on which they're both lurking is, like the rest of this crappy two-story bar, made of very shitty concrete. It digs into the soles of Saito's shoes, and damn it he thought about putting on the docs but reconsidered. Hayato looks frustrated, his gaze flicking from Saito to the man on the sidewalk below. Truth is, for fuck's sake, Saito has no bloody idea who his prey is — just a random mook he could beat up and get away with. It's a pretty sweet deal, even if he ended up with broken bones before. Hitomi politely pretends to buy his stories of unlucky accidents, then feeds him soup. If he's particularly pathetic, she even pulls out the best spices. As soon as he's healed, they go back to the usual affable bitching. There's some satisfying equilibrium in this routine. But — god dammit, Hayato just had to barge in and break this balance. Saito wants to give him mild poisoning.
"What are you doing here?" Hayato hisses, glaring, and Saito gifts him his most shit-eating smile.
"Oh, I just happened to stumble here," he says, then tilts his head, wide-eyed. "You're here because of the Kumakuras, right? Did Uncle Rohan tell you to get rid of this guy? I wonder if Hitomi would approve. Interesting, interesting…"
"Why are you — never mind." Hayato grimaces like he just bit into a piece of bad pizza, then shakes himself off. Voice low, he says, "Stay away, kid."
"Excuse me," Saito says, offended, "I am twenty-four." Before he can share more of his grievances, Hayato sneaks off the roof and towards the target. God fucking dammit. Saito follows, royally ticked off but not one to pass up a free fight.
Okiura the younger does not resemble her father that much. Saito doesn't know if he finds that reassuring or not. The girl sits on the couch, wordlessly coloring in her book, shoulders hunching up whenever Iris speaks too loudly. It's like the kid, Mizuki, doesn't even pay attention to the cartoon playing on the TV, one that Iris loves, with bright colors and peppy music, so Saito can't help but wonder.
"How's the divorce going?" he murmurs, and Hitomi shakes her head. They're leaning against the kitchen counters, waiting for their tea to steep. Iris squeals as she copies the dance from her show, vibrant, full of life; endearing in her weird way.
"Renju says Shoko is dragging things out," Hitomi says, quiet enough the girls can't hear. "It has to do with the financial side of their affairs, asset division, that kind of a mess. She's — really mad about the co-parenting agreement."
"Dear God." Taking the strainer out of his cup, Saito scoffs. "Of course, they're being foolish about this."
"That's a strong term, but I can't exactly disagree. And their daughter is in the middle of this, the poor thing. Apparently, it can take up to two years before this is settled."
"I can't help but find fault with the judicial system."
"You always do."
His efforts to radicalize her are going to work one day.
At least Hitomi doesn't mind him crowding the coffee table with thick tomes of various theories, ones he couldn't help but loan when in the uni library. They're all fascinating. Saito can't help but anticipate the writing of his thesis and all the juicy claims he can tear asunder. It's going to be a bloodbath. Taking a sip of his tea, he sits in his armchair with the laptop on, ready to browse his favorite ebook piracy site in the search of beautiful pdf files full of wonderful words. After that, he can check out his To-witter feed, skim through the catalog of a new skincare brand he recently found, then he—
"Brother!" Iris squeezes his arm, beaming. "Can you show Mizuki and me the dragon game?"
Then he can go screw himself, apparently. Rolling his eyes, Saito goes to turn on the console. There go his plans. Whatever, he's just going to stay up late and drink more coffee in the morning, which doesn't even sound unusual, but he's not going to upset this kid. She clearly doesn't need him for that.
To his surprise, Mizuki seems to be just as fascinated as Iris with the world of monsters and improbably large swords, once reaching to point at a character with a large iron club as her weapon. Soon enough, though, it gets late, and he retires to his room and does his actual work. The essay isn't going to write itself, after all.
Mizuki stays for two more days. Saito gets her a baseball bat and gapes as she uses it to break a tree in half.
“Are you kidding me,” Saito says, sotto voce. Hayato’s glaring at him, hand no longer hovering by his gun as he crouches in a dimly lit alleyway, stalking their next target. This one’s middle-aged and drunk off his ass, so Saito foresees no issues with feeding him concrete.
October’s looming closer and closer with each day. Iris’s birthday, the anniversary of So’s death the very next day — after all, one lead to another — then the aftermath. Okiura talking to Saito, to Kumakuras, piecing together a story the authorities could buy. Manaka, her fearful voice not quieted enough as she talked about how she hoped Saito was getting good enough help or otherwise he possibly could take another life. Hitomi, returning from her university courses to a teenage boy who’d treat her with still simmering hostility. Saito, in the middle of this. Iris, unaware. And all of them got out. They could settle, form routines, let down their guards — well, except Saito, who will always irk outsiders badly enough that violence is in the cards. Getting beaten up by Hitomi’s boyfriend is not something he has anticipated before, though. It ought to be entertaining.
He summons his best smile. “Why, Hayato,” Saito murmurs, “is Uncle Rohan overworking you? If only this was not hired murder, I would tell you about the labor laws.”
To his credit, Hayato does not punch him right away. Instead, he makes this amusing expression, like a raggedy street cat that stumbled into a long-dead rat. It’s so beautifully pathetic.
“‘Uncle Rohan’?” he says mostly to himself.
“Yes,” Saito says patiently. “I need to have a talk with him about how some of his paid guns should be retired as the quality of their work decreases with age.”
“Wait, what?” Hayato’s scowl deepens. “Who the hell are you, kid?”
“Just someone passing by.” Feeling particularly malicious, Saito throws in a saucy wink. “Someone quite… territorial.”
Uncle Rohan is great.
Or, at least, his general outlook on life is great. If someone threatens you or your possessions, you use whatever you can get to defend them. Violence is acceptable, but still can be overused, so you hafta think first. Things you desire, you can get them if you stay true to your and your community’s values. The best getaway is on a bike, cops don’t question those freaks, so steal a bike when needed. Why use guns when knives are much less conspicuous. Saito has learned a lot from him — and, in exchange, has supplied him money from his disgustingly vast estate.
The Kumakura office always smells of cigarette smoke, despite Uncle Rohan not partaking in cigarettes too often. Today, though, there’s one hanging from his burly fingers. “That’s true,” he grunts out, taking a long drag. “Our little birdie has done a lot of work for us, so we owe him this much. However…”
“Mm?” Saito prompts, leaning closer over the desk. “You surely are able to find someone much better, Uncle!”
“Eh, that takes a shitload of time.” Uncle Rohan waves him off. “Don’t be hasty, Saito. Firm and decisive, but not hasty. This isn’t that urgent, but we’ll see to it sooner or later. Now, tell me, about that bastard you sent to the hospital with twelve broken bones and a concussion last month… You knew he was from the Kaneshiro group?”
“I may have suspected so,” Saito says slowly, “but our encounter was a true accident.” The guy had a tattoo he’s seen on Kaneshiro’s people, but that's not the main reason Saito repeatedly hit him with a Gucci umbrella. The thing didn’t even break. Outing: successful. After getting home he rewarded himself with a few hours of Dim Souls II if only to witness the hilarious bugs. Nothing out of the ordinary, officer, just a boy living his life…
Bless his heart, Uncle Rohan doesn’t buy this shit. “Whatever, kid.” Sighing, he puts out his cigarette and says, “I may have something for you soon. A certain plan. It may work out, but first I need to find some resources.”
That does sound… intriguing, but also troublesome. In the recent two to three years, it seems like Uncle Rohan’s kind of starting to slip a little, in the mental sense. Excessive violence, despite his earlier warnings, and dishing out needlessly ruthless orders. His younger brother has been rumored to try and get Rohan into either a neurological or psychiatric hospital ward. As one could assume, it hasn’t been going too fast. Worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, Saito tilts his head and carefully does not watch his uncle. This tension in the gang’s dynamic has been rising, and he wonders if he wants to participate in this.
Hitomi’s already home when he’s back. “Iris is going to be back soon,” she informs him. “She and Falco went out for a walk to the Ikume shrine, as she wanted someone to film her dancing.”
“I bet one of them ends up dead,” Saito says, still a tad off-kilter after the talk with Uncle. “It’s gonna be him, definitely. Iris is made out of tougher stuff than this wet rag.”
Not even bothering with berating him, Hitomi has him go to the store and buy more bok choy for dinner. On his way there, Saito stops to take a photo of the clouds over residence buildings, starkly white in the evening, peach-colored sky. Later, before washing his hands to chop the vegetables, he posts the pic on his In-Stargram. A good chunk of his thirty-four hundred followers leave comments full of wonder. When he checks his inbox, there are two new messages — one clearly spam and the other a death threat. Saito takes a screenshot and shares it on his To-witter, without blacking out the username of this dumb asshole. In the replies, he threatens to ‘remove his bones from the smallest to largest and use them to build a boat.’ The ensuing To-witter debacle lasts for a few more days. He scrolls through the threads on his way to uni, his mood much better. The reward this time? A large mocha, oat milk, extra espresso. Everyone has guilty pleasures, after all.
“Mizuki. What is this.”
“A pipe.”
“It’s longer than you are tall.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“How did you get it? Did Iris tell you to destroy something?”
“Nuh. Mr. Falco gave it to me.”
“Is that so? Say, Mizuki, isn’t a baseball bat more fun?”
“Um… It’s good, but I broke it. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry, kid. I’ll get you another. In the meantime, how about Falco and I talk about child safety, hm?”
Saito discovers Tik-Tak. On the very first day, he watches the front page feed into the wee hours of the morning. After he feels sufficiently familiar with the format, he posts a few of his own. They are primarily of Iris and him dancing (piss off, it's a good workout that doesn’t bore him), with a clip of him destroying monsters in Dim Souls shoved into the middle of every video. Sometimes he feels particularly antisocial and pastes philosophy textbook quotes over the footage of video game bloodshed. Half the comments congratulate him on being the biggest piece of shit in the world. Iris, on the other hand, is universally beloved. According to Hitomi, Okiura is interested in recruiting her to his agency when she’s a bit older, her talent that apparent.
“That’s because I smile, smile, smile!” she sing-songs at Saito, poking him in the cheek. “They see I’m happy, so they’re happy too! And they see you, Big Brother, and feel your… your not-happiness.”
“Hey, I am perfectly happy,” Saito protests. “Besides, why should I care what some strangers think?”
“Hm,” Iris says wisely. “You don’t look happy, Brother. You look like your tummy hurts.”
Brutal, but fair. And also not incorrect, in the sense he has to take a painkiller along with his usual evening meds (artificial oxytocin, endorphin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and vitamin D). Before they kick in, he has enough time to follow a haircare trick he saw on Tik-Tak. Call him vain, but he takes great pride in how he tends to that particular aspect of his curated appearance. Hitomi bought him his first hair mask and since then he’s been hooked. Hell, he splurged out on satin pillows. It's, as the kids say, camp.
The next time he sees Hayato, the strange vibe continues. Saito hopes this to be the lone highlight of the entire encounter.
“Iris got to you, huh?” Hayato says, not so subtly staring at Saito’s right hand (and the one wrapped around the hilt of the baseball bat Mizuki refused in favor of the iron pipe). The two girls are wreaking havoc (not yet literal as of now) on the playground, with him and Hayato supervising from a nearby park bench. Adding to the surrealism, there’s a cheerfully hideous tote, full of snacks and water bottles bestowed upon Saito by Hitomi, sitting between them. The print on the cheap polyester shows a pterodactyl in a Hawaiian shirt, drawn in a cartoonish style. He secretly kind of loves it.
“No, why?” Saito says loftily, too composed to even look at the fresh black polish on his fingernails. Iris chose to go for muted pink and insisted on returning the favor, which required a bit of clean-up but, overall, is a dope-ass look. As the kids call it, of course.
“Uh.” Hayato scratches his head. Unlike Saito’s, his appearance could be most generously described as ‘rumpled.’ He probably doesn’t even own a well-fitting shirt or a moisturizer. “Well, cool. Good for you, I guess.”
That gives Saito a pause. “Why are you being like this?”
“Like what?”
“You tell me! Nice? Brown-nosing because you know I have connections with the Kumakuras which could assist you in your goals, perhaps?”
“Wait, no, it’s not… It’s not what you think, despite how it may seem.” Hayato flaps his hand, visibly frustrated. “It’s because of Hitomi, kind of.”
“How so?”
“While I have no goddamn clue why your living situation is,” he shrugs, “like this, Hitomi clearly cares a lot about you. Would be nice to know why."
“So that’s the reason you joined the girls and me for this walk,” Saito drawls out. “To spend time with me, while my defenses are weakened by having to watch out for them.”
Hayato shakes his head, laughing to himself. “And now I know you care about the girls. That is something we share.”
“Oh, what about that?” Saito gazes at him for a while and smiles. “Are you conducting an investigation? Someone's a bit bored, hm.”
“Well. If we’re sharing, then I must admit something.” The look Hayato gives him is sheepish, and Saito hates whatever’s coming next.
Turns out, this one’s also a cop. Hitomi’s taste in men needs a reevaluation, and it’s Saito saying this, out of all people.
He keeps the bits of information to himself, allowing Hayato to deal with telling Hitomi on his own, and leaves profane graffiti in a nearby tunnel. Then, he downloads a dating app and sets up a date with a cop, only to ghost him the day of. One evening, he pulls out the box of illegal fireworks and sets them off in the nearby park. Self-care. It’s the little things, really.
Manaka joins them for dinner on Thursday, somehow off work earlier than usual. It’s mostly her and Hitomi talking during the afternoon, with Iris busy shoveling food into her mouth and Saito busy Pondering, capital P. Afterwards, all of them sans Hitomi, who could use a nap, come to the garden of Manaka’s apartment just one floor below. The proximity makes the building kind of a communal space, Iris going wherever she pleased as the person designated her caretaker of the day followed her, fretting, for the past twelve years. Still, Saito and Manaka… don’t really know each other. They don’t hang out. They talk about final grades and jobs and the like. Granted, Saito barely brings up anything more personal than the aforementioned capitalistic achievements to anyone.
So it is a surprise when Manaka tells him, “Hitomi’s told me a lot about your books. Would you mind loaning a few to me?”
“Alright,” he says, tight-lipped. Apprehensive. “What kind?”
“Mm.” Manaka smiles, tapping a finger against her mouth. “Something you think would change my worldview.”
“Excuse me?”
“Iris has been very vocal about her idea that she’s, quote-unquote, going to be a genius because her brother is one.” Manaka shakes her head, fond, as she watches her climb a tree. “It’s been an issue getting her to do her homework.”
“She’s smart in her own way,” Saito says uneasily. “But… yeah. I can figure out a book recommendation for you if that’s what you want. Whatever.”
“Thank you,” she says with a nod. “Anyway, I may have some tea somewhere. Would you like a cup?”
“Sure. Alright.”
This is weird. This is so weird. Damn it, he could have killed her. At first, he wanted to, even, but then… No. He doesn’t want to really reminisce about that moment. It’s better tucked away in the very back of the freezer representing his mind. Shit metaphor, but whatever. At least he gets an unopened but slightly dusty bag of coffee beans — Manaka bought them despite not owning the proper equipment — out of this ordeal. That’s enough to pull him out of the escapist funk.
Saito would like everyone to know that he called this. If someone listened, nothing bad would have happened. But no, just because he is a guy in his twenties with a pretty face, his reasoning must be shit. The yakuza hanging around the office tend to give him a cold shoulder, dismiss him, or outright ridicule him. Moma, ever the ambitious brother, tries to discuss things with Saito, but it takes a while for things to change with such a cautious approach. And, when that change happens, it can blow up in your face spectacularly. After a Kumakura gang’s higher-ups meeting where Moma announces that he has enough backing to remove Rohan from his position so he can get the needed help, later that evening his favorite bird-shaped cat toy of a man tenders his resignation.
It takes two days for cops to locate them. Rohan does not go down without a fight but is apprehended with minimal damages. Inside the abandoned factory building where he’s been hiding, they find Hayato, drugged up to his gills on truth serum and narcotics, suffering from blood loss, a traumatic brain injury, and a bunch of other lovely things such as left eye evisceration. Saito hears all the details from Hitomi, who’s taken a leave at work to care for Hayato. His coma lasts over a week.
“The doctors say he woke up with amnesia,” she says in that tight, throaty voice she uses when holding back tears. Her head is, as always, held high. Saito sighs and simply makes more tea, packs two bento boxes, adds a foldable microfiber blanket to his Womazon shopping cart.
Mizuki and Iris understand something bad has happened, more or less. They still ask for their funny little iron pipe man to return and take them somewhere they can dance and/or hit things with other things. Instead, Saito takes them to an aquarium, an amusement park, and, when the former two don’t lighten their moods, to a capoeira tournament. That works like a charm, and the girls perk up instantly, chattering about how cool this was and how much they want to learn the proper method to put someone in a chokehold… Alright. Maybe that wasn’t such a bright idea, in the end. At least, when Hitomi hears, she only laughs at the sight of Iris trying to perfect a backflip. Saito submits a uni assignment that gets called ‘sloppy’, beats up a mook but doesn’t find any joy in it, and considers adopting a chihuahua.
And then — a strange woman barges into their house. “I’m Hayato’s friend,” she says. Her lipstick is the color of oxblood, and Saito is filled with the sudden need to ask where she bought it. “My name is Shizue Kuranushi, and you two seem to know more about why Rohan did this than anyone else. Let’s figure out how to pull him out of this mess.”
On his way to the movie theater, Saito stops by a chain cafe. The possibility of a matcha frappuccino in the nearest future entices him. He even splurges on almond milk. The result ends up so sweet his teeth hurt, and the employee scribbled her phone number on the paper cup. Nevertheless, he persists and later on even decides to visit Moma, to appraise the gang’s situation, but all they end up doing is watching videos of various idols. None of them are as good at dancing as Iris, but Moma still drools at them, hypnotically heterosexual.
Saito doesn’t even waste time on being irritated.
Okay, so he might have wanted Hayato gone. Saito wasn’t exactly subtle about that, now was he, with all the threats and bitchiness. The results, however, are not ones he’s that keen on.
“I don’t know how Shizue did it either,” the man of the hour says, hunched on the sofa with Hitomi rubbing his shoulder. “Not only do we not have to worry about both Rohan or the investigation into the assassinations, but this could also be a way to turn over a new leaf, I suppose.”
“How corny,” Saito mutters, taking a pointed sip of his magma-hot tea. Hayato eyes him — pun intended — and scowls.
“Kid, can you simmer down?”
“What the hell did you just call me.”
“Boys,” Hitomi says exasperatedly. “Not here, not now, please. You can talk it out later, right now let’s cool down.”
“Sorry, Hitomi,” Saito says, at the same time as Hayato says,
“Sorry, Hitomi.”
They glare at each other.
Snickering, Hitomi shakes her head. “You two are ridiculous. In any case, sweetheart,” she squeezes Hayato’s hand, “have you and Shizue decided on a name already?”
“She did. I had no say in it,” he grumbles. “Kaname Date, which is a reference to a one-eyed warlord, because she thinks she's so funny and knows me better than myself, all that crap.”
“Well,” she manages, lips pressed tight as she visibly holds in more laughter. Saito groans. “To me, that name fits you.”
“Really?” Hayato grins, dopey, and the expression is so sincere Saito feels vaguely nauseated. “Heh, it’s not like I remember much, but I already trust your opinion.” And he winks. Or blinks. Hard to say with the eyepatch. Kuranushi mentioned recruiting him to, as Saito has taken to calling it, her super-secret cop girl clique, so he could try out a super-secret cop AI eyeball. The resources manufacturing that… Saito wishes he could expose that on To-witter, but Kuranushi would retaliate by reporting his multiple heavy assault slash attempted murder shenanigans that she, somehow, knew about. And now everything is getting sorted out, they can return to a normal life, but Hayato and Hitomi are hitting on each other right in front of him, and Saito has to schedule an extra boxing training session to release his upset.
Weeks pass, but Hitomi has yet to realize what an asshole this is. Saito glowers, and growls, and gets ghost peppers to put in Hayato’s soup, but he doesn’t leave. Is he trying to outstubborn Saito? What a dick. At this rate, even messing with him starts becoming tedious. Anyhow, when Saito goes out for a hunt, there’s no one else trying to steal his prey from him, and Hitomi’s out on a date when he comes back with a black eye.
“Hey, Big Brother,” Iris says the next evening, sprawled on the couch as she and Saito play Wario Kart, “do you think Uncle Date is going to marry Aunt Hitomi?”
It takes a lot of restraint not to chuck his controller out of the window. “Why would you say that?” Saito gapes at his sister, aghast and disgusted. “They’ve known each other for barely half a year!”
“But they’re in love,” Iris states as if it was the most obvious thing. And — hell, it really is, isn’t it? Hitomi’s happy. Hayato — Date, whatever — is hanging out at her place every other day, despite Kuranushi pulling so many strings she even got him an apartment despite the IDs and his family registry not being finalized yet. This isn’t going to be another boyfriend she dumps after a month because he turned out to be a dickhead. This is serious, worryingly so. If he moves in, Saito is going to kill either one or both of them. There’s no way he’s going to let another man live in his territory.
“I want to put him in a jar like a cockroach and shake him.”
“Huh? What do you mean, Brother?”
“Nothing, Iris, it’s nothing.”
To make matters worse, Okiura stops by, supposedly to meet Hitomi’s new boytoy, but mostly to bitch about his ex-wife. Saito, listening in, decides that if there was any shred of doubt about himself refusing to get married, it’s been doused in bleach and set on fire as of now. Why do people even bother? Disgusting. He hangs in the back and glares daggers. Hitomi lets him be, for the most part, except for the rare raised brow here and there. Before Okiura leaves, Saito replaces his left shoe with a slightly smaller one. Soon enough, he’s back to drop Mizuki off and whine about unexplained ankle pain. Date gives the girl another iron pipe, because of course he does not remember doing that before, and she’s too elated to point it out.
Mizuki breaks a street lamp in half, and they flee the scene with promptness. Hitomi only asks if someone actually got hurt before abandoning the topic of their early return, and Saito spends the night reading about child safety laws. He wakes up with a migraine.
“Fuck off,” he says out loud, setting down his coffee to glare at his phone. It shows one missed call from Date.
“Language,” Hitomi scolds him over her breakfast. Saito nods absently, scrolling through his texts. He reads the ones from Iris and Manaka as the new message slides in with a cheerful ding.
I need to take a photo for the new police officer's ID, Date informs him, and it would be smart to change my appearance for that. Do you have any tips on how the hell you bleach your hair?
i hate you.
Seeing that his reply has been read, Saito nods before standing up to chuck his phone into the coffee pot. It goes down with a loud plunk, and he grabs a paper towel to wipe the spilled coffee.
“Saito?” Hitomi asks, alarmed. “Is everything alright?”
“Just peachy,” Saito says cheerfully. His phone lets out a forlorn ting and switches off. “Simply astounding.”
“You worry me sometimes.”
The finals kick his ass. Saito writes about forty pages worth of essays followed by three exams, then has to submit his thesis despite barely having the time to work on it, considering all the bullshit he had to endure. Somehow he passes, getting out with a master’s degree in sociology with a specialization in criminology. If his father knew, he’d be appalled. It’s a lovely thought to have, Saito finds out. After a conversation with Hitomi, he applies to a postgrad school, interested to keep up his studies whilst financially supported by So Sejima’s estate. The mansion, he sold it two years ago to an American property developer, famous for endorsing zero-waste and water-conserving solutions. There were better offers, yes, but Saito didn’t want to bother with those assholes for too long. Whatever. Hitomi would give him a proud little smile for weeks afterward, and he felt surly. The money’s nice, though. He can buy a new phone right away. Yes, he is aware of the moral dissonance between his lifestyle and the values outlined in some of his favorite texts, thank you very much.
At home, he has to be careful lest Hitomi ropes him into having dinner with her and Date (who did bleach his hair, the bastard, and this warrants revenge). Three times out of four, they look at each other over her head and glare before Saito scuttles away either to his room or outside, to eat at the soba place nearby his uni library. One time out of four, he’s in the mood to piss off Hitomi’s babygirl of a middle-aged cunt. At this rate, hell, Saito’s getting used to him.
“Hey, Date,” Saito says over coffee. This time, his phone stays dry as he’s in the middle of a Scheme. “Remember that one time we talked in the park?”
“Uh.” Looking away from Iris, who wanted him to watch her play Shovelforge, Date frowns. “Not really?” He drinks from his cup and promptly starts spluttering.
“You decided to share something with me,” Saito says as the other man, gasping for air, rushes to get a glass of water. Iris doesn’t even notice. Mizuki, curled up on the armchair, stays asleep. “To return the favor, I shared my salt with your coffee.”
The glare Date throws him, over from where he’s glued to the sink, is murderous. “You sick bastard," he wheezes out.
“That’s right,” Saito says, angelic, and stands to collect his laptop. The girls are going to be fine, he can go buy himself an entirely new summer attire. And another baseball bat. “Be seeing you.”