Archive of Our Own

Standing with her back to Kiryu, Haruka asked quietly, “How much should I pack?” 

Kiryu dwarfed Haruka’s small bed where he sat, looking on as she slowly picked through what she was going to bring back to Sunflower. She idly ran her fingers across the garments hanging in front of her. Most of them had been gifts from Kiryu, just like nearly everything in her bedroom was. Gifts she never would have received had he not found her, his diamond in the rough, his sunshine. His daughter. He hadn’t said it aloud yet, but it hung in the air between them the same way son had gone unsaid between him and Kazama for so many years.

Sometimes, looking at Haruka was like looking in a mirror. The orphan child within him, the one he never quite outgrew, knew what her question meant. How long until you come back for me? He would ask Kazama the same thing when he was Haruka’s age. The father within him, the one he hadn’t quite grown into yet, knew there was no painless answer. 

“Well,” Kiryu said tentatively, “I’m sure if you need something here, I can find a way to get it to you.”

Haruka looked at him over her shoulder, “Will you visit me?”

“It won’t be that long, Haruka. And I don’t know how safe it would be.”

Haruka cast her eyes down to the floor. She turned back to her closet. 

Kiryu closed his eyes and rubbed at them. Behind his eyelids, faces of slaughtered friends and family swirled and disintegrated. Reina’s holey, bloody blouse. The familiar clack of Kazama’s cane on the floor, never to be heard again. Yumi, far from the first or last person to die in his arms. Kiryu had closed his eyes before Nishiki fired the gun, but the resolute expression on his brother’s face from the last time they looked at one another would be burned into his mind forever. And now, of course, Terada was gone too. Because why wouldn’t that happen to Kiryu? Death was nipping at his heels, or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, it certainly didn’t make having a little girl any easier.

“Uncle Kaz?” 

Kiryu opened his eyes. “Yes?”

Haruka pursed her lips. “Um, nevermind.”
“What is it?”

After a moment, she finally asked, “Will you call?”
Kiryu’s face softened. He nodded, “Of course I’m going to call you.”

“Everyday?”
“I’ll try. But that means you can’t worry if I miss a day or two, okay? These things can be messy, but you don’t need to stress.”

“I know. I just… I just think I’ll miss you.”

She stared at him, all big brown eyes. Sometimes she looked so much like her mother that it devastated him. Whoever said grief eased with time was lying. It just eventually runs out of ways to remind you of its presence, of how quickly the things you love can be ripped from you. The blade grows dull, predictable, but never any less capable. 

“Haruka,” Kiryu sighed, “C’mere.”

She stepped off her stool and around the empty suitcase on the floor beside it. Kiryu’s arms opened the moment hers did, and he gathered her up in them, tucking her head under his chin. Her breathing was stuttered and her shoulders shook as she buried her face against his shirt. Kiryu’s heart hurt. This was why yakuza were not often family men. 

“I’m going to miss you, too. I’ll miss you a million times more than you’re going to miss me. Do you want to know why?” He asked. “Because you’re going to be having so much fun with all your friends and you won’t think of me hardly at all. But I’m going to be thinking about coming home to you the whole time I’m gone. You remember what we talked about? You remember why I’m leaving?”

Haruka sniffled, “To m-make things safer for me and you.”

“That’s right,” Kiryu murmured. “It’s going to be okay.”

“I’m, I’m--” Haruka sobbed, tightening her tiny fists in Kiryu’s shirt, “I’m scared you won’t come and get me again. I don’t w-wanna be alone, or-- or get hurt, or--”

“Haruka. Haruka, listen to me,” Kiryu said gently, “Haruka, hey.”

Her stubborn grip on him was a surprising challenge, but Kiryu finally pried Haruka off of him. Strands of her hair were plastered against her wet cheeks. Kiryu brushed them away and tucked them back behind her ears like he used to do with Nishiki when they were little. The movement was startlingly familiar. It seemed that pieces of those he lost would always be found in those he loved. 

He cupped her small face in his massive palms. She wrapped her hands around his wrists and stared at him, bottom lip still trembling. 

Kiryu said, “I am never going to let anything happen to you. Never again. And that means keeping myself alive so I can take care of you, right?”

Haruka nodded. 

“You can be scared. I’ll be brave enough for the both of us.”

He drove Haruka to Sunflower that evening. It wasn’t her first time being back, as she still had plenty of friends there that she loved and missed while she was in Kamurocho. But it would be the first time danger had been so present again since the adoption, and her nerves were palpable. Kiryu echoed them. Still, he acted positively unbothered on the car ride to the orphanage, just to reinforce to her that everything was going to be alright. If she saw through his facade, she was polite enough not to mention it. 

The apartment was colder now without her. The lights were somehow harsher. Haruka had taken the home part of this house with her, it seemed. He closed her bedroom door as he passed by it, then opened it again. No, he was not going to be that pathetic. He got halfway down the hallway before he turned back and closed it again.

He settled onto his couch and flipped the TV onto a B-list action movie he didn’t give a shit about. He set his last six pack on the table in front of him. It took about twenty minutes to turn it into a two-pack. The colors on the television screen all ran together, the words jumbled and nonsensical. Faces and names went out with the tide. He couldn’t focus on anything, not from the drink but from… well, everything else. Outside, sirens raced up and down the highway. He looked out the window at the sparkling city lights. They shone like predator eyes in the dark. Who was dying here tonight? Tokyo was a dangerous city. Tokyo was eating him alive and spitting him back out mangled, and here he was, still dragging his broken bones along thirty-eight years later. 

Not tonight , he thought, Don’t do this tonight. Go to bed. 

A woman’s shrill scream on the television brought his eyes back. The camera cut away from her horrified face and revealed the interior of a warehouse. For a brief second, there was perfect silence. If he’d been paying attention then he might have seen this coming, might have known to switch channels. But he didn’t. A catastrophic explosion engulfed his screen in a flash of orange and white and his ears were assaulted by a resounding BOOM! 

Kiryu reflexively squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fists over his ears. All at once, he was overtaken in a surge of terror, zero-to-sixty. The memory of his brother’s beaten and bloody face roared in his mind, demanding his attention. He was scrambling to get out of the room before he even realized he was moving, sucking in air through clenched teeth. His wobbly legs collapsed beneath him as he tried to flee. He fell and nearly face-planted onto the floor behind the couch. His lungs rejected his breath and shot it back out of his mouth faster than he could take it in. He felt small, with so many screams lodged in his throat that nothing could get out. 

He felt a hairsbreadth older than a baby again, weeping quietly on the top bunk. The bedframe would shake as someone climbed up the ladder. He would hug him, and they would stay like that until dawn when the headmistress would say for the last time, Nishikiyama, you must stay in your own bed after the lights go out. 

No one was coming to hold him. 

Kiryu’s forehead dug into the carpet. His mouth gaped in a silent shout. He folded up on himself, wrapping his arms around his shoulders the way Nishiki would never do for him again. He rocked himself back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. His heart was beating so loud in his ears that the rest of the world was a mere whisper. He shushed himself like his brother would do when they were little before they became too old for it, and even then they’d still do it. All he knew how to do was mimic Nishiki. But the memories were more than a decade old, faded around the edges with time, and the imitations were inadequate. He knew he was at the mercy of something he did not have a fighting chance against. 

By the time the swell of his blood began to weaken in his ears, he was exhausted. He felt like he’d gone up against a freight train and lost. It could have been minutes or hours. The horror died out, and the rest of the world slowly reintroduced itself to his mind as reality. Stiffly, like he was frozen solid and just now beginning to thaw, he rolled over onto his side and stared at the plain white wall. The tears would not cease, but he was thankfully no longer sobbing. He did not remember when he even began to cry. 

He hadn’t cried in years.

Humiliation was ushered quickly in as panic faded away. Here he was, a grown man, curled up and weeping on the floor like a baby. He’d heard stories of things like this. Yakuza who were pushed too far, saw too much shit, been knocked on the head too many times. Yakuza who lost it. Yakuza who massacred their families, or themselves, or both. Kashiwagi had shook his head when he told him about a Shibusawa family man back in the day who had done just that. In this life, he had told Kiryu, you’ll soak it all up. All the death and violence you see, or you do, will live inside you forever. You have to learn to live with it. And not everyone can do that. 

Was that happening to him? Was it all pouring out? He didn’t want to hurt anyone. Right? His past contradicted him; his hands, soaked in blood. His eyes were wide and blank. He wondered, sincerely, if he was going to kill himself. He looked at it like it was out of his control, like it was something that could just happen to him. It terrified him.

He bit down on his bottom lip until his whole mouth tasted metallic. He wasn’t prone to self pity, but he knew that he had done this to himself. No one had ever made him cause harm, he had chosen it all for himself. People were dead, because of him and no one else, and he had the nerve to cry like a bitch about it. 

He dug the heels of his palms into his closed eyes. He wasn’t safe, he decided. He did not know what was going on, but something was deeply and loudly wrong inside of him. He had been sad before, just like anyone else, but this felt massive. Uncontrollable and unstoppable. 

He felt around in his pockets before he even realized what he was doing. His fingers faltered as he flipped his cellphone open. The display lit up in front of his face, beckoning. What now? 

His contact list was a graveyard. He scrolled by the numbers for Serena, Terada, Kazama, and shit, even the Nishikiyama family office’s head receptionist before finally landing on a viable name. He hesitated. There had to be better people to call. 

Kiryu’s heart sank. Not anymore, there wasn’t.

The line rang two and a half times before he picked up.

“I thought I told you,” Majima said, “I don’t do booty calls on school nights.”

Kiryu swallowed. He hadn’t even thought of what he should say. Brilliantly, he landed on, “Um.”

“ Um. ” Majima mocked him in a dopey voice, “I’m serious. The boys and I had Mexican for dinner, you ain’t gonna want a piece of this.”

Kiryu sighed, “That’s not why I called.”

Majima was quiet for a moment. “‘Sup?”

“I don’t, uh-- I don’t really know.”

“Is it Haruka?”

“No, no, she’s fine, it’s not her. She’s back at the orphanage for now while I deal with... the Terada thing.”

“Shit, yeah. I heard about that. Why’s it in your fuckin’ lap, exactly?”

Kiryu closed his eyes, “Long story. Can I tell you it in person?”

“It’s almost one in the morning.”

“You’re not doing anything else.”

“You don’t know that. I have plenty of shit I could be doing. I’m a busy fella, y’know. Fuck you think I do all day? Sit on my thumb waiting for you to call?”
“Majima,” Kiryu said quietly. He was so tired. “Can you just come over? I’ll owe you one, just--”

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Majima asked. On the other end of the line, Kiryu heard some shuffling around.

“I really, really don’t know.”

“Did you take something?”

“Huh?”

“Like-- fuckin’ drugs, man.”

“What? No . I’ve had a few beers,” Kiryu admitted, “I just-- I don’t know, I was fine and then… I don’t know. I lost it.”

“Ya lost it.” Majima repeated.

“Can you just get here? I don’t have anyone else I can call,” Kiryu’s voice was brittle and he knew it. Majima would never look at him the same after tonight. “Please.”

There was a beat of silence. Kiryu’s shame lodged itself in his throat, unmoving. Majima sighed, “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

The line went dead. Kiryu closed his cellphone and pressed it against his forehead. 

What was left of his pride would not allow Majima to see him on the floor like this. It took a herculean effort, but Kiryu rose to his feet. Talking on the phone had surprisingly centered him, and he found his legs to be much steadier beneath him now. He braced himself against the couch. Thankfully, the movie had cut to a commercial break. He shut it off and sank into the couch cushions, defeated. He didn’t like to feel defeated . It didn’t happen often enough for him to grow accustomed to it, and it weighed him down like nothing else. 

He considered himself from the outside for a moment. Red-rimmed eyes, crumpled shirt, disheveled strands of hair falling over his forehead. The empty bottles on the table were a sad sight and he knew he should trash them before Majima arrived and was even more disappointed in him, but the thought alone of standing winded him. He felt strange and sad and weak, which he hated more than feeling defeated. While defeat promised a rematch, weakness solidified a fault. His ego was going to be the death of him long before some yakuza chump was, he thought. 

Minutes passed swiftly as Kiryu idled, hunched over, elbows resting on knees and heart slowly but surely calling a ceasefire on his ribcage. His eyes still burned but that too was clearing up. He felt bad for wasting Majima’s time. I should call him, let him know I don’t need him anymore . But that thought was abandoned when a surprising, sweet rush of relief overtook him upon hearing a knock from the door behind him. 

Nerves rattled inside him, the leftovers of his terror. He stood in the entryway with sad, sagging shoulders. He felt wildly self-conscious, and while he knew neither Majima nor himself would ever let him live this down, he had to suck it up. 

He undid the lock on the handle and then the two above it that he had personally installed when he moved in. The door swung open, and there Majima was.

“How’s it hangin’, big guy?” 

Kiryu did not answer. He stepped out of the way so Majima could enter. And enter he did, with hands on his hips as he surveyed the room. Once Kiryu shut the door, Majima turned and gestured at him expectantly. 

“What?”

“Well? It’s just us girls, so out with it. What’d ya take?”

Kiryu sighed, “Majima, I didn’t take anything.”

“No shit? Thought you were just trying to save face.”

“I don’t even know where I would get drugs.”

“You dunno where to get drugs in Kamurocho?” Majima snorted, “Do you walk around blindfolded, stickin’ your fingers in your ears? Shit, Haruka could get you blow if you asked.” 

“I was under the impression we were out of the eighties.”

Majima shrugged and flopped into an armchair. He kicked his feet up on Kiryu’s coffee table only because he always told him not to. Kiryu, resigned, lowered himself down onto the couch. He folded his hands in his lap in hopes Majima would not notice the residual trembling. He was so fucking exhausted. 

Briefly, they stared across the coffee table at each other, unsure of how to proceed. This was uncharted territory for them both. Majima twirled a loose thread around his finger that had freed itself of the upholstery. “You gonna talk?”

Kiryu shrugged. “I’m not sure I know what to say.”
“You’d better have shit to say. Making me run my ass down here in the middle of night to deal with you and I don’t even get dicked for my troubles… kids these days have no manners.”

“If you came here hoping for sex then you can leave.”

Majima held his hands up in self defense. “Alright, so we’re gonna be prickly tonight, I get it. You wanna work it out like men?”

“I’m not fighting you either.”
Majima clicked his tongue. “Bummer. Beer me.”

Kiryu pulled one out of the pack and slid it his way. He was grateful that Majima didn’t make a snide comment on the evidence of him drinking alone. 

“You got until I finish this drink to explain what’s going on or I’m walkin’, understand?” Majima punctuated his sentence with a sip.

“I…” Kiryu chewed his lip, “I was watching a movie. And I just-- I freaked out.”

“Keep it real with me, Kiryu-chan, did you get spooked by a scary movie?”

“ No. ” Kiryu glared, “It was an action flick.”

“Uh… huh. ” Majima quirked an eyebrow but waved Kiryu on to continue. 

Kiryu rubbed at the back of his neck. This was torture. “I’ve never had anything like this happen to me. It was out of nowhere.”

Majima took another sip of his beer. He did not speak. Kiryu looked away and closed his eyes.

“I was thinking about Nishiki. And then-- and then this explosion happened in the movie and it felt like I--” Kiryu’s voice got stuck in his throat. He put his head in his hands, and after a moment of silence, he spoke again. “I’ve seen… awful fucking things. I’ve-- I’ve killed people, and I’ve watched people get killed, and I’ve been fine. And now all of a sudden, I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s one goddamn person after the next, and... you know what? Fine. This is just how it goes in my life, I can deal with that. I don’t wanna become like those yakuza who can’t.”

Kiryu lifted his head and looked at Majima. His face was unreadable, hard as stone, listening intently. His single eye burned like the sun to look at, so Kiryu glanced down at the thread he was toying with. 

“Can you stop tearing my furniture apart?”

“You ain’t like them.” Majima said definitively. His voice was so matter-of-fact, inflexible. He ignored Kiryu’s comment as well, continuing to twirl the thread. 

Kiryu looked back up at his face. Majima’s eye squinted slightly, like he was trying to puzzle him out. Kiryu thought that was ridiculous. There was nothing left in him that Majima hadn’t put the pieces together about already. 

“What do you mean?”

“You’re talkin’ about like, uh-- what’s-his-fuck? That pipsqueak back in ‘03. You hear about that shit?”

Kiryu shook his head. “Prison, remember?”

“Aw, man. It was all over. Jinsei Family kid who killed his side piece and then went home and offed his wife and their son in their sleep. Talk about a busy day,” Majima shook his head, “Week beforehand, the poor fuck put a bullet in some passerby during a collection. The chick drops, her man comes raging after him, he panics and puts the rest of his clip square into this guy’s chest. Him and his buddies flee the scene, blah blah blah, he’s damn near in the clear because the pigs don’t have a lead. Then, boom . Flipped out and more than doubled his body count. Well, tripled it, if you count himself. I heard his suicide note had some real sick shit in it, too.”

Kiryu furrowed his brow. He loathed these stories, he hated that the kids were always taken out too. In his mind, he saw himself standing over Haruka’s bed in the middle of the night with a gun aimed at her tiny skull while she slept. Was that lurking within him? An animal waiting to be drawn out from inside? He felt sick. 

A beat passed. “At least that’s how I remember hearing about it. But y’know how people love to embellish. Anyway,” Majima cleared his throat, “Nah, that’s not Kiryu.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Majima shrugged, “Nothin’. Just a feeling. I mean, shit, if you’re so off your rocker then maybe you’ll kill me tonight.”

Kiryu shook his head and straightened up. “No. No, that’s why I called. Because I don’t want to do anything like that.”

Majima pointed at him. “Bingo. That is why I know it ain’t you. You’d never lay a finger on your beautiful wife.” The corner of his mouth curled up, catlike.

“I just need--” Kiryu swallowed. There were so many conclusions to that sentence that it dizzied him. “I just need to understand what is happening to me. Ever since he… died, I feel like I’m gonna break. And then tonight happened, and I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t move and it felt like I was right back there in Ares.”

Majima chewed on the inside of his mouth for a second, then asked, “Mind if I smoke in here?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

Majima pulled his cigarette pack out of his back pocket. Kiryu didn’t have the energy to argue with him. He lit it up and took a long drag, staring up at the ceiling, deep in thought. Kiryu had never seen him so… careful. Deliberate. Sensitive, even. Majima then said, “Sounds like you got the same problem I got.”
The first thought that leapt to mind was I really don’t want to have anything that Majima, of all people, has. But Kiryu swallowed that back down. He wouldn’t be unnecessarily mean. It was Majima, after all, who had come here without hesitation when Kiryu called. 

“What problem is that?”

“The flashbacks n’shit.”

“This happened to you?”

Majima chuckled. His cigarette bobbed on his lip. “Kid, this bullshit’s been happening to me since I was a tyke. You’re late to the party. I prescribe you, uh, 100mg of staying the fuck away from movies with explosions, eh?”

“But it wasn’t just that,” Kiryu leaned back on the couch and fixed his gaze on the black television screen. The shame was clear in the quietness of his voice, “I thought I was gonna hurt myself. It felt like I had no control.” 

“C’mon, you don’t get to be known as the biggest, baddest motherfucker the Tojo Clan’s ever seen just to turn around and lose a fight against yourself, man.”

“Poetic.”

“Yeah, you missed my spoken word phase when you were in the clink.” Majima took another drag. “I’m serious, though.”

“Are you going to tell anyone about this?”

“What makes you think I would?”
Kiryu shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never had to do anything like this before.” It was half a lie. On one hand, Nishiki had been around to help with the gruesome parts of Kiryu’s rare emotional events, but on the other hand, he’d never had to call him. Back in the day, he could read Kiryu like a book. Nishiki always found clumsy ways to take up his time when he noticed the calm before the storm. Annoying and endearing, yet Kiryu had been appreciative all the same. In the rowdy, rough yakuza world, there was no time for feelings . There wasn’t room for sensitivity. And Kiryu was not a sensitive man by any means, but he was still a man. 

“You think too highly of the guys.”

“Is that so?”

“Sure.” Majima took a hefty swig of his beer. “Acting like you’re the first one to have a slip up? Self-centered, if you ask me.”

“Thanks.” Kiryu said flatly.

“Call it like I see it. Look around every once in a while. Why the fuck do you think we’re all drinking all the time? We’re trying to stay on top of all this nasty shit so we don’t end up like Mr. Hit-and-Run from a few years back. Even the big guys. You think Kashiwagi doesn’t go home and cry himself to sleep like a two-year-old sometimes? C’mon.” Majima rolled his eye. “And I’ll give it to ya, you’ve seen an above average amount of fucked up shit, you little overachiever. But you’re foolin’ yourself if you think you’re the only one out of all the thousands of yakuza on this island that’s capable of having a human response to something.”

Kiryu had never thought of it like that. Majima was right, his shame had been narcissistic in nature. But after spending half his life wrapped up in this underworld, the knee-jerk embarrassment would likely never leave him. Not tonight, anyway, despite Majima’s reassurances, harsh as they were.

“Oh, and this is the first and last piece of parenting advice I’m ever gonna give ya, but if you’re feeling like this, you oughta keep a real close eye on the kid.”

“She sees someone,” Kiryu confirmed, “Sunflower’s headmistress recommended a therapist to me. Someone who won’t interfere with the adoption just because I’m still in the game. He’s on the inside, knew Kazama back in the day.”

Majima said, “Nice. And it’s good that you kicked her back out to the sticks while all this Omi shit’s going on.” 

Kiryu thought that while it was odd to hear Majima have a sincere compliment for his parenting, it was still a little comforting to know he hadn’t completely dropped the ball, all things considered. “Yeah. If something happened to her, I…”

“I’ll bet,” Majima said drearily, then perked back up. “That mean I ain’t allowed to kidnap her anymore?”

Kiryu shot him a glare. 

“Hey, we hashed that shit out. You forgave me, and I forgave you, yadda yadda.”

“ You forgave me? ”

“Sure, I did.”

“For what, exactly?”
Majima brought his cigarette up to his lips and smiled behind his hand. “For not giving me enough attention. Making me desperate. It’s bad for the heart, Kiryu-chan.”

Kiryu gave him the flattest of flat stares. “Sorry. I was busy. ”

“And like I said, I forgave you.” Majima triumphantly thumped his palm against the arm of the chair. “‘Sides, water under the bridge. She’s this close to calling me Uncle Goro, y’know.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.”

“Whatever. We talk.”

“You talk?” A smile tugged at the corner of Kiryu’s mouth but he didn’t give in.

“Yup. Drinks on the weekend and shit. We’ve got a lot in common, you’d be surprised.” Majima shrugged.

“I bet I would be.” Kiryu said. Majima never came over unless Haruka was back at the orphanage for the night. The two had scarcely seen one another since the incident at the batting cages, apart from a fumbled, horrible apology from Majima that Haruka bravely accepted when she certainly didn’t have to. She had told Kiryu later that if he trusted Majima, then she did too, and that is why she forgave him. Kiryu, sparing the bloody details, assured her that Majima knew he could never lay a finger on her ever again. That seemed good enough for them both.

Kiryu checked his watch as Majima drained the rest of his beer. It was nearly two o’clock now, and despite his exhaustion, he still felt too wired to rest. And he knew Majima hardly slept anyway.

“Y’know, judgment free zone. If you wanna get into the nitty-gritty of it.”

Kiryu looked at him, puzzled. 

“The I’ll show you mine, you show me yours shit.”

“I’m not following.” 

“Nishikiyama.” The word left Majima’s mouth like a blade. Kiryu nearly flinched upon hearing it spoken bluntly, but not sneered as he so often heard it. “You wanna talk about him?”

Kiryu’s first instinct was to bite out no. He hoarded his grief for Nishiki deep inside, fearful that letting anyone else hear about it meant that they might take it from him. If he didn’t have Nishiki, he at least had the wounds he left him with. Kiryu did not know what was on the other side of healing. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t .

“I’m not sure. I haven’t tried to.”

Majima tossed his cigarette into his empty beer bottle and placed it down on the table. In silence, Kiryu watched the last bits of smoke curl up into the air until it died out. He could feel Majima’s stare boring into the side of his skull. In the morning, he would blame his next words on being too tipsy, too tired, too put on the spot. The wall cracked. 

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to live the rest of my life alone.” Kiryu resented how fragile his voice sounded. 

Majima was quiet for a moment, then said, “Thought that’s why you nabbed the girl.”

“I adopted her because--” Kiryu stopped. He didn’t actually know how to finish that sentence. He sighed, succumbing to the truth of Majima’s assumption. “Is that such a bad thing?”

“Nah, I don’t think so. Not that my moral compass points due north or nothin’, but you get someone to come home to and she gets a roof over her head, love and affection-- or whatever alternative your emotionally constipated ass is capable of. Sounds like a sweet deal to me. No harm, no foul there.”

“Hm.”

“Though, I’ll say that if you were lonely you coulda just got a dog or some shit like a normal person.”

Kiryu shook his head. “Yumi wanted me to take care of her.”

“Ah, makes sense.”

“And it is nice. To have someone, I mean,” Kiryu admitted, “But I still feel alone. You grow up with someone, you-- you do everything with them. We followed each other around for almost three decades. I don’t know who I am without him. If it weren’t for Haruka, I don’t know how I’d hold it together. But it’s just…” 

“It’s not the same as having him .”

Kiryu closed his eyes and rubbed at his eyelids with his knuckles. There it was, out in the room for anyone to see. No one could replace Nishiki. Kiryu was plenty capable of loving, but no one was capable of loving him how his brother could, and that was the problem. 

“No. It’s not the same.”

“They never are.”

Kiryu opened his admittedly slightly wetter eyes and looked at Majima. In lieu of explaining further, he reopened his pack of cigarettes and took one out for himself and one out for Kiryu. Kiryu accepted it, and leaned towards him so Majima could light it for him. He took a deep, shaky inhale. Majima flicked his lighter closed with a metallic snap and tossed it onto the table with a sigh. 

“You can’t fuckin’ replace people, man. And I’d tell ya to stop looking, but you’re still gonna. It’s shitty advice.” Majima dropped his gaze down to the table. The look in his eye seemed so far away. He chewed at a hangnail on his thumb and continued, “Don’t beat yourself up about it. Human first, Dragon second, eh?”

Kiryu snorted humorlessly. “Not often.”

“Don’t I know it.”
“Yeah, you know, you sound like you’re speaking from experience with all this,” Kiryu said tentatively.

Majima went still, which did not happen often enough for it to not put Kiryu off a little. After a beat, he asked, “Do I?”

“Mhm.”

“I’m guessing you’re trying to get at the showing you mine part?” Majima said, uncharacteristically quieter then. 

Kiryu considered him. “No. I won’t make you say anything you don’t want to.” The room had enough shame in it already, Kiryu decided. 

“Nah, s’all good. I’ve already invited you into my closet, might as well introduce you to the skeletons, am I right?” Majima’s stony face broke into a grin, and Kiryu was comforted by the familiarity.

“You? Closeted? Ha.”

“Too true,” Majima conceded, “You jealous?”

Kiryu rolled his eyes. He was perfectly comfortable with Majima being the only person who definitively knew about his tastes. Kazama and Nishiki (though primarily the latter) had been clear about their suspicions, but they had never pressed him. Kiryu made the decision as a teenager to never publicly state the truth and sully Kazama’s reputation in the process, and even now, he worried about damaging his father’s legacy. He was certainly into women and he could skate by on that. The only person he intended on telling at some point was Haruka, but that could wait. 

“No. I’m happy now.”

“Ah, well. To each their own.” Majima waved him off. “Anyway, sure, yeah. I’ve lost a couple of folks. Left behind some, too. Shit happens.” 

“Like--”

“Don’t.” Majima spit out, abruptly serious once more. “Don’t. I don’t like hearin’ it out loud if I can help it.”

Kiryu nodded. Nishiki’s name was inescapable, especially because his family was still bearing it. The sting would never fade, he guessed, but he would spare Majima at the very least. 

“But, yeah. And some girls I knew back in Sotenbori. One in particular. But mostly… yeah, him,” Majima clicked his tongue and said, “The past is the past, but. Y’know.”

“Can’t move on?”

“Is the sky blue?” Majima shot back. “Fuckin’-- no. I can’t, but I’m not hacking off people’s heads about it, am I?”

Kiryu gave him a skeptical look. 

“Piss off. I got issues, but they ain’t just ‘cause of that. What I’m trying to get through to you, meathead, is that you can grieve. You’re gonna fucking grieve and that’s that. And the last thing you can do is add fear of yourself to the mix. Shit, when he got put in the joint…” Majima closed his eye for a moment, and when it reopened, it was an old kind of tired. The one that you don’t sleep off. “You think you’ve been low. You don’t know low.”

Kiryu wasn’t offended by his comment, knowing the place he was lashing out from was deeper than he could pacify. He instead asked, “I don’t know much about all that.”

“‘Course not. Shit’s been buried. Once they were through with making an example of me, there wasn’t much reason to talk about it anymore. Old news. He’s still in the can, no one fuckin’ remembers him but me.”

“When does he get out?”

Majima took a long drag on his cigarette and Kiryu had his answer. 

“I’m sorry--”

“Do not fucking say that to me.” Majima spoke from his chest with a finger jabbed in Kiryu’s direction. “You don’t get to be sorry. No one gets to be sorry but me. I don’t wanna hear that you’re all remorseful because you got out. Boohoo. You got a second chance and I know a fuckton of people who didn’t so don’t you dare waste my time with that.”

Majima dug the heel of his hand into his eyepatch and squeezed the other one tightly shut. Kiryu watched, unmoving, like a deer caught in the headlights.

“And for the fucking record, I think it’s horseshit that your eye can still get itchy after it’s been dug out of your face. Christ.” Majima pulled his hand back and blinked a few times. He took another drag of his smoke and said, “Ugh. Fuck me. Where was I? Teaching you how to hold your shit together while you grieve losing a brother, right?”

After determining that Majima would not rip his head off, Kiryu snorted. Majima sighed, the anger dissipating from his body as he relaxed into the chair. “This life sucks you fucking dry. And not in the way I like it.”

“Tell me about it,” Kiryu agreed.

“Tell you about how I like to be sucked? You already know.” Majima winked, but Kiryu was unimpressed. Majima made a displeased face at his refusal to indulge his joke. He looked down at the thread he had been toying with, and with a jerk of his wrist, he yanked it out. A row of fabric unwound as a result. 

Kiryu groaned, “ Majima. ”

“What!” Majima flicked his fingers to toss the thread onto the floor. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I told you to stop fucking with it.”

“And I decided not to listen. Why’re you living in a dumpster like this anyway? I know you ain’t hurting for cash, what’s with all the secondhand shit?”

“I’m a simple man and I like simple things. And this isn’t a dumpster. You’re just used to your penthouse.” 

Majima waved him off. “Hey, I’ve lived in shitholes, don’t go callin’ me all high and mighty.”

“That so? I can’t imagine it,” Kiryu said with genuine intrigue.

“Oh, sure. When I got outta the hole and they dumped me in Sotenbori, my, uh, superior went looking for the smallest shack he could stuff me in. It was right on the river, which woulda been nice if it didn’t stink like a motherfucker in the heat. Ah, but it was all psychological warfare, y’know? It sucked, but,” Majima shrugged, “Fuck was I gonna do?”

“You don’t talk much about it.”

“Hm?”

“Your time in Sotenbori. After you got out.” 

Majima appeared to be looking for new threads to pull out of the upholstery as he spoke. His voice, while not exactly soft, was mild. “Damn right, I don’t.”

“Well, it’s just me here.”

The words left Kiryu’s mouth and the regret came on immediately. He had broken the sacred, unspoken golden rule. Neither he nor Majima ever implied that they were an exception for one another, despite the fact that they were both consistently making that as clear as a brick to the face. There was a silence. Majima’s eye squinted just slightly and he chewed at the inside of his mouth the way he did when he was thinking real hard about something. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He asked, measured and slow.

Kiryu didn’t know if that was better or worse than if he’d just thrown a punch. He said, “Nothing.”

“You ain’t the type to mean nothing when you say somethin’.”

Majima found another thread and he twisted it around his finger like he had with the last. Kiryu’s eyes flicked down to the top of his hand. He watched his delicate knuckles shift under his gloves as he wound the stray thread between his fingers in a deliberate and dextrous manner. He knew the palm of that hand had a peculiar, jagged scar, from when Majima had fallen backwards during a street fight and been stabbed by broken glass on the ground. It was one of the first fights Kiryu had won against him after getting out of prison. Kiryu knew where many of Majima’s scars came from, even the ones he hadn’t given him. It’s not like he was particularly shy about his body. He’d tell Kiryu with fierce vigor all about the drunken brawls that left him with deep gashes on his arms, proudly describe the caliber of gunfire he’d been able to withstand as though his puckered bullethole scars were trophies. But his storytelling would often turn sour when Kiryu asked about the wrong ones, like the cigarette burns in the eyes of his hannya tattoo. The first time Majima stuck his ungloved fingers in Kiryu’s mouth and he felt on his tongue the long, raised up line that ran from his fingertip to his palm, he had gotten the idea. Torture tactics. He was glad that Shimano was dead. 

They could do this song and dance all night. They had already done it for a year. But Kiryu was tired, so tired, and he didn’t have the energy to defuse the leather-clad ticking time bomb across from him. The worst he could do was leave. Or punch his lights out. Or both. All things that Kiryu could live through. 

Kiryu said, “You came here in the middle of night and you’re not even getting anything out of it.”

“And?”

“After tonight, I don’t think we can say we’re nothing to each other.”

Majima froze, but he did not speak. He locked Kiryu in a look so severe that he did not think he could glance away if he wanted to. In truth, he wasn’t scared of Majima, only endlessly interested. He put on a good show, but a show was all it was. 

Like clockwork, Majima was grabbing Kiryu by the scruff of his neck and yanking him right back into familiar territory. A sharp grin slowly spread across Majima’s face. “Kiryu-chan, you’re getting me all tingly sayin’ shit like that. Don’t tell me you wanna go steady, ‘cause my daddy’s a real hardass and doesn’t like me hanging around with bad boys, you know.”

Kiryu rolled his eyes, “I--”

“Y’know why I don’t talk about Sotenbori?” Majima flipped open his jacket and retrieved his dagger from a sleeve Majima had handsewn in himself. As always, it was polished to precision and clean as a whistle. He used the tip of the blade to dig in at the hangnail he wasn’t able to pick off earlier. “Because there’s nothing to talk about. I was workin’ a middle management position for a real sleazeball boss, day in and day out. If I was lucky, I got dick maybe once a month. Ain’t like Kamurocho where you got queens hangin’ out one every street corner, oh no, I had to go hunting . And you know how I don’t like to fuckin’ work. It was three years of goddamn misery. Shit, it was worse than being tortured. It was boring .”

“Oh.”

“Sorry, baby.” Majima finally cut out whatever was bothering him on his finger. He held up the blade, inspected it, then blew the dead skin off before sticking it back in his pocket. Kiryu was unaffected. He’d seen Majima do much grosser things. “Not all of us are sad sacks like you.”

Kiryu had nothing to say to that. 

“And for the record, I’ve never once called you nothin’ to me,” Majima clarified, “Pretty sure I wouldn’t take a knife for nothing. ” 

Kiryu couldn’t help giving him a small smile. “I don’t know about that. I’ve seen you do stupider things for less.”

Majima sucked his teeth indignantly, but did not defend himself. He looked out the window across the room where the city lights sparkled temptingly. “When’re you gonna retire?” He asked suddenly, darting his eye back over to Kiryu.

“I am retired.” 

“No, you ain’t,” Majima retorted.
“I’m technically a civilian.”

Majima waved his hand, “ Technically . That’s why whenever shit hits the fan everyone comes crawlin’ back to you, right?”

Kiryu rubbed at his eye. He thought he might actually be getting tired, finally. “Not by my choice.”

“Why don’t you ever tell ‘em to shove it?”

“Why does it matter to you?”

“It doesn’t,” Majima conceded with a shrug, “Just sayin’, you’d probably have a lot less of… whatever tonight was if you really cut them off for good.”

Kiryu rolled that around in his mind. “I wish it was that easy. But as long as I’m around, they’ll always see me as a backup plan. Well, at least until I get too old to do their dirty work.”

“You want a piece of advice? Take the kid and run. In the middle of the night, just… jet.  Don’t leave a trace. Get the fuck out of Tokyo. Get outta Japan. Go to Europe or something. Hey, I hear Germany’s got those crazy sex clubs. Maybe we’ll see you come out of your shell yet, Kiryu-chan.”

Kiryu unbuttoned the cuffs on his sleeves. He rolled his wrists once, twice, stretching them out. “I wish.”

“What’s stopping ya?”

Too many things . He was looking at one of them, but keeping Haruka in a place where she could plant roots was very important. Or at least, the parenting books he’d been reading insisted upon it. And there was also the fact that too many people wanted him dead for one reason or another and he could hardly keep up with what he’d done to who. He doubted that he could escape that, no matter where he went. 

“I’d have to get a ticket to Mars if I wanted to outrun my life here.”

“Ain’t that the truth. Shoulda thought twice before joining up, y’know. This is on you,” Majima said, as though Kiryu was not perfectly aware of that fact. 

“Wow, I had no idea.”

“Yep. Tell you what, that one’s on the house.”

Kiryu challenged him, “I don’t think you want me to leave. You’d be bored here if I was gone. No one else would put up with you.”

“Oh, you got it all wrong, pal.”
“Do I?”
“Sure. You’re assuming that I wouldn’t zip myself up in one of your suitcases and hitch a ride along with ya.”

Kiryu chuckled tiredly, “Is that so?”
“Absolutely,” Majima smiled, “Frankly, I’m hurt that you think I wouldn’t.”

And it was so close then, right under their noses, a truth so big it took up the whole room. Kiryu wanted to press him further. If they were anyone else, in any other life, Kiryu might have. Do you mean it? The worst part, the part that drove the terror in right between Kiryu’s ribs, was that Majima would say yes. If Kiryu left Tokyo and he let Majima tag along, he would never leave. He would be miserable. But he would stay, pacing around like a caged animal, never acclimating to the kind of normality that Kiryu craved. 

He was rapidly outgrowing Kamurocho and tonight was proof of that. If he asked Majima to leave with him then they’d be gone the next day, and knowing that Majima would let himself be agonized, suffocated by suburbia, all for him … No, Kiryu would never do that to him. And he hated that he even had the power to. He was tired of being a harbinger of death, and he would not condemn the last person still close to him to a long and slow one. 

Kiryu looked down at his watch and Majima seemed to get the hint. “Should I be getting outta your hair?” He asked.

Sighing, Kiryu said, “I shouldn’t keep you.”

“Nobody can keep me anywhere.” Majima made no move to rise from his seat. 

“Thanks for coming,” Kiryu said, genuine and maybe a little softer than he meant it to be. He half expected Majima to throw something at him for speaking from the heart. 

Surprisingly, Majima just replied, “Yeah, well. I’ve never been good at sayin’ no to you, if you haven’t noticed.” 

The corner of Kiryu’s mouth twitched up. It would’ve been imperceptible had anyone else seen it aside from Majima, who mirrored it. The exchange made Kiryu feel old and tired. He imagined Majima felt the same. Too old to play games.

“Do you want to stay?”

“Do you want me to?”

“I think so,” Kiryu admitted.

Majima shrugged, “Then I’m stayin’.”
They waded through the treacherous waters of vague and fumbling domesticity while preparing to sleep. Kiryu was slightly annoyed to find his toothbrush wet after letting Majima use the bathroom first, but decided it was only fair because he didn’t have one of his own. Besides, it wasn’t like Majima habitually had the freshest breath, drinking like a fish and smoking like a chimney. It was a greater win than loss. And was good at picking his battles with him.

He showered quickly to get the gel out of his hair, which would be reapplied generously in just a few hours. The hot water thankfully loosened muscles that he hadn’t realized were still tense from his episode earlier in the night. Under the spray, he picked at a scab on his finger that had come from a knife mishap in the kitchen. He was a shitty cook, and both he and Haruka knew it, but at least she was nice enough to lie to him. He was really going to miss her. However, he shut the water off before he could get wrapped up in his own melancholy. 

Upon opening the shower door, he realized he had forgotten to fetch clean clothes from the bedroom. Shit. This meant weathering the onslaught of cat-calling that would inevitably pour from Majima’s mouth like a tsunami. Resigned, he exited the steam-soaked bathroom with a towel around his waist, brushing a few still-dripping strands of hair away from his forehead.

When Kiryu reached the bedroom door, he opened it and immediately groaned. “Are you serious ? ”

“Hey, these are cute, y’know.” Majima held up a few pictures of Kiryu and Haruka together from a trip out of town they had taken a few weeks prior. He had dug them out of Kiryu’s nightstand, likely right after Kiryu had told him not to touch anything while he was in the shower. But Kiryu had expected that rule to be ignored. What he was more concerned about was Majima’s stark, shameless nudity as he lounged on the bed.

“I told you I didn’t want to have sex.”

Majima tossed the pictures at the nightstand. One of them made it on but the other fluttered down to the floor, adding to Kiryu’s aggravation. “What makes you think I’m trying to have sex with you?”

“Hm. Let me think.”

“Hey, you know I sleep naked.”
“I thought you slept naked because the only time we sleep together is-- is after sleeping together.”

“What, you want me to fuckin’ wear what I came over here in? Have a heart.”
Kiryu ran his hand over his face. 

“Now, why don’tcha ever wear your hair down like that?” Majima mused, “Looks good on you. Makes ya look like a sexy, rugged type.”

Kiryu ignored him. “If you’re sleeping naked then I won’t bother dressing.”

Majima grinned. “All the better.”
Kiryu wouldn’t reward him with a chance to ogle, so he flipped the lightswitch off and draped his damp towel over his nearby desk chair. Majima, thwarted, sighed in annoyance. Kiryu heard him mumble something perverted and irritated under his breath but chose not to entertain him with a response. 

In the dark, Kiryu settled onto the edge of the mattress. “Can you move over?”
“Make me.”

“I can make you leave, Majima.”

Once they were finally situated, there was a heavy silence. They faced each other, which they never did. Kiryu wanted to turn away but didn’t, and he was not sure why. He wasn’t sure why Majima didn’t turn either. The night had been full of uncomfortable firsts. 

Majima, of course, breached the quiet first. “Well, this is fuckin’ weird.”

The absurdity of it all drew a sudden laugh out of Kiryu. For a brief moment, he was so careless and amused and exhausted, snickering halfway against the pillow. He admitted, “I, um-- I’ve never done this.”

“Done what?” Majima asked and Kiryu could hear the smile in his voice.
“Slept in bed with someone without having sex first.”

“Oh, well, I can get you right back in your comfort zone if you’d like.”

Kiryu sighed, though it verged on fond. “You just don’t quit, do you?”
“Ya love it.” Majima rolled over onto his back. 

A car sped down the street outside, disturbing the relative quiet. Softly, Majima cleared his throat then exhaled deeply. Kiryu widened his eyes in the darkness to better see the crooked angle of his nose, the slimness of his jaw, the stiff line of his lips. The silhouette was barely there but Kiryu had no shortage of memories to fill in the gaps of how Majima looked from the other side of the bed. His eyes drifted downward to where a spot on his chain necklace reflected a razor-thin slash of light cutting between the drapes. Without thinking better of it in his fatigued state, Kiryu laid his palm on top of it. The metal wasn’t as cold as he expected; Majima ran hot. Neither of them moved, and neither of them spoke. 

He wanted to say it. He wanted to tell Majima how much tonight meant to him. He wanted to tell him how thankful he was to have one safe harbor left. But he couldn’t, wouldn’t, put that weight onto him. Kiryu knew that after tonight, he could never call Majima for something like this again. Once was already nearly too much. 

He closed his eyes and felt the steady thrum of Majima’s heart under his hand. Just once, he would revel in this, selfish as he was. What could have been, what could now never be, what they could have in secret, just briefly. 

Majima’s fingers touched the top of Kiryu’s hand. His eyes snapped open, expecting Majima to push him away. Instead, he brushed his fingertips down from Kiryu’s knuckles to his wrist, and found a comfortable place to rest his hand. It was a delicate moment then, so prone to shattering. One wrong move and it’s over. Kiryu, emboldened by Majima’s acceptance, ached for more now that he had gotten his foot in the door. But he would not press further out of fear that he might scare him away. Or rather that he might scare himself. 

His heavy eyelids slid shut again. Moments later, he succumbed to sleep.