Chapter Text
When the plane touches down, Miyuki makes a beeline out through the concourse, bypassing baggage claim altogether. The only bag he has for this journey is the briefcase already dangling from his hand and despite its appearance, its contents consist of little else besides a single change of clothes. There's no reason to bring more, when Miyuki is on business.
It felt a little strange, back home, packing his sweats into the case like they were contraband. And it isn't as if Miyuki is ashamed of his wardrobe. But he has to put on a good face when acting in an official capacity, and the weight of the suit jacket across his shoulders is beginning to feel like too much of a burden after the flight alone.
The sooner he gets this done, the sooner Miyuki can change into his sweats and catch his flight home.
It's the sort of job where either he does it or he doesn't, no mistakes, and the people Miyuki works for won't put him up in another city if they want him to work fast. That's fine. If there's one thing Miyuki Kazuya can be counted on for, it's efficiency in his operations.
The car is waiting for Miyuki outside the airport, waiting to take him to the baseball diamond.
It's not an official meeting, not exactly. Miyuki has never spoken to Furuya Satoru before in his life, and to his knowledge, no one from Seidou has told Furuya about him, either. But the way this stuff works, someone will have dropped Furuya a line, a mention, some form of little comment just to ensure he stays where he's meant. Miyuki has never spoken to Furuya before, but he's done his homework, and the idea of needing to keep Furuya on a diamond with a mound seems laughable.
Maybe Miyuki will even get to catch today. He hasn't done that in a while. Not that leather shoes and a new suit are ideal for playing baseball, but it isn't as if Miyuki feels any great personal attachment to this uniform.
The car slows to a stop outside the stadium, which is uncannily quiet for any sort of structure with that many seats. It seems that besides Furuya, not many people come out this way any more. Miyuki asks the driver to wait, then swings around to the stadium's front gate. His footsteps echo as he walks beneath the stands, out to where he can catch a glimpse of the diamond.
Furuya is easy to identify. He's the only man on the field, scuffing his shoes on the dirt where he stands on the mound alone. Even from where Miyuki waits, he can see Furuya's fingers curled tight around the baseball pressed against his palm, but he makes no move to do anything with it. Just wraps his fingers around it, turning it over and over inside the grasp of his hand.
Miyuki steps out from beneath the shadow of the stand and makes his way across the field. He has to pass the plate to do it, can feel the exact moment concrete gives way to grass, to dirt, to a reality that Miyuki hasn't known so well of late. There are other things Seidou wants him to catch, these days.
"It must not be a lot of fun, playing baseball by yourself," he says, as soon as he's within a few steps of Furuya.
For his part, Furuya stands his ground, not quite looking at Miyuki. He's staring back at the plate, as if imagining the crouch of the catcher who ought to be there, imagining the presence of other players all around him as he performs his role in the thick of a game. Miyuki knows there hasn't been so much of that for Furuya in a while, either. His research has been thorough. It's strange, that Seidou has bothered to send him of all people — for someone as hungry as Furuya, as eager to throw himself into the game as Furuya is rumored to be, it seems Seidou could have gotten by with far less persuasion.
"Hey," Miyuki says, when Furuya makes no move to acknowledge him. "Are you ignoring me?"
"What?" Furuya says after a moment, his gaze focusing slowly in on Miyuki's face. "I wasn't listening."
"No kidding," Miyuki says. "So is that ball for show, or do you maybe want to play catch with me?"
Furuya looks Miyuki up and down, his gaze sliding from Miyuki's face all the way down to the polished tips of his shoes, then back up to treat Miyuki with a blank-faced stare, like maybe he's trying to figure out if he misunderstood the question.
"You don't look dressed to catch my pitch," Furuya says, after a minute.
"Toss it underhand," Miyuki says, with an easy, joking smile. "Or lend me some gear, and I'll do it properly."
Furuya stares at Miyuki for another long minute. Miyuki flashes Furuya another lazy, winning smile. They both head back into the stadium, venturing through its underbelly in pursuit of the old gear Miyuki was sure would be around somewhere. If it hadn't been there before, his organization would have made sure it found its way there today.
When they head back out, it's to the bullpen.
"I'm only offering because I think you're going to talk to me," Miyuki says, as he walks past Furuya to assume the too-familiar crouch. "So talk to me."
Furuya doesn't say anything, which is about what Miyuki expects. He's proving a tough nut to crack, difficult to get a good read on, and it's sinking in for Miyuki just why the Seidou organization chose to send him. No one else dealt with bullheaded types better than Miyuki Kazuya.
So he holds up his glove, and lets Furuya throw him his pitch. The sound of baseball hitting glove is one of the sweetest sounds in the world to Miyuki, and few impacts have sounded nicer to him than that of Furuya's ball striking his leather-covered palm. His arm stings a little from the force of receiving it, and he realizes, he may be rustier than he thinks.
He transfers the ball to his other hand, and tosses it back.
Furuya makes a few more throws, and they get into a steady rhythm of it for a minute or ten. Miyuki is casual about tossing the ball back, always taking his time, always making certain Furuya has to wait even just that littlest bit before he can throw again. The distance between them isn't so great as to hide the frustration on Furuya's face, his brows drawing down in confusion every time Miyuki is so needlessly slow.
Miyuki calls it off after ten tosses. He stands up, the baseball still cupped in his palm, and flashes Furuya a grin which Furuya appears far less than thrilled to catch sight of.
"Feeling a little better?" Miyuki asks, pretending he hasn't noticed Furuya's irritation at having their little two-man practice cut short.
"Catch more for me," Furuya says, blunt, to the point. "I wasn't done."
"Oh, I can't," Miyuki says. "Like I told you, I'm offering because I think you're going to talk to me — and you are. I have places to go, but hey—"
He tosses Furuya the ball, from just a few feet away. Furuya seems so startled by this that it slips right through his fingers, dropping into the dirt. Miyuki can't help but laugh, a loud bray of mirth he punctuates by clapping Furuya on the shoulder.
"Hey," he says again. "If you consider coming with me, maybe I'll catch for you again."
"Are you a recruiter?" Furuya asks, slowly, suspiciously. "Someone spoke to me, before you came. But he didn't sound like a recruiter. You don't sound like a recruiter, either."
"Oh, I could be," Miyuki says with a shrug. "Depends who you think I'm recruiting for."
Furuya is silent a moment, waiting. When he realizes Miyuki isn't going to speak up on his own, he prompts, "Then who are you recruiting for?"
"Seidou," Miyuki declares, with his cheekiest grin yet.
"The yakuza?" Furuya breathes out. "That Seidou?"
"Hey!" Miyuki says. "I guess you're brighter than you look! So, what do you say? Wanna play another game of catch, on Seidou's pitch? I hear there are a lot of things you could offer us."
This time, the silence draws out much longer than before, long enough that even Miyuki is struggling not to go ahead and break it. Then Furuya shakes his head, and scoops the ball up from the dirt.
"If you have a good field, and you'll catch my pitch, I'll do it," Furuya says.
"Excellent!" Miyuki replies, throwing an arm across Furuya's shoulders and using it to steer him back out of the bullpen. "So lemme grab you a few things from my briefcase, and get me out of these clothes, because let me tell you, things are about to get much more exciting."
Miyuki stands outside the Tokyo Dome, indulgently rocking back on his heels as Furuya stares up at it with a look of purest wonderment. He's only known the guy just outside twenty-four hours, but Miyuki is already getting the sense that this is something Furuya does often, this slow, sensing sort of processing. He can work with it. He just can't tolerate it forever.
"C'mon, big guy," he says, patting Furuya twice on the shoulder. "The inside's twice as interesting."
That gets Furuya's attention, and he allows himself to be led inside. They make slow progress, Furuya looking around so much that his footsteps drag and so Miyuki is forced to constantly glance over his shoulder, darting little looks back at Furuya to make sure he hasn't been left behind. The dome itself is a grand building, four levels tall and cupped around the baseball field itself like a magnificent protective shell. But Miyuki isn't interested in the stands, or the upper levels. They're going lower.
"Come on," he says again, jerking his head toward a flight of stairs leading down. "The Baseball Hall of Fame is down here, bet you wanna see that."
Furuya nods enthusiastically, and suddenly he's a bit too close on Miyuki's heels. Miyuki speeds up, taking the stairs two at a time with a cheerful skip in his step, all too happy to be back on his home turf. He's played in the Dome before, during that distant part of his life when he'd gone pro. It feels very far away, now. But the Tokyo Dome remains familiar, because Miyuki knows who the Tokyo Dome Corporation really belongs to.
"Go ahead," Miyuki says, as they continue into the museum housed in the stadium's basement.
Usually there's a ticket-taker guarding the way, but today there's no such barrier. Miyuki and Furuya walk into the museum unimpeded, staring around them at the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, Miyuki with a proprietary sort of smugness, Furuya with a sense of building awe.
"You can read the plaques," Miyuki suggests, magnanimously, "if you want to."
He ends up reading them with Furuya, following him around the room as he peers at all the memorabilia and relics of games long past. To his credit, Furuya isn't nearly as slow in this — he seems to hardly read the text mounted with each object, choosing instead to stare intently at the items themselves, soaking in the history, steeping in them. They tour the room for maybe fifteen minutes all told but by the end of it Miyuki gets such a sense of contentment from Furuya, like he's returned to the motherland of baseball and the experience is healing him.
"Hey," Miyuki says, snapping his fingers under Furuya's chin to get his attention. "This isn't all we're here to see. If you've gotten enough of a look at everything, there's somebody else you need to meet."
"Your boss," Furuya surmises, pulling himself together slowly and drifting back into Miyuki's orbit.
"Yeah," Miyuki says, rolling his shoulders in his suit jacket and nodding down the hall. "Let's go."
The ground floor of the Tokyo Dome is home, most notably, to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, the Fan's Fun Plaza, and the little museum to the Yomiuri Giants housed within it. But it has guts and arteries beyond those areas made accessible to the public and that's where Miyuki leads Furuya next: to a door he has to unlock with a key, and into the nondescript hallway beyond.
Miyuki pulls open another door, and gestures Furuya inside.
The room is an office, done up subtly in neutral colors and filled with sturdy wooden furniture. The largest items among that number are the few bookshelves staged against the walls and the desk waiting towards the back of the room. The chair behind it is pushed in, and nobody sits at it. Instead Kataoka stands before the desk, arms tucked behind his back and expression closed-off and unreadable.
Inscrutable as he is, Kataoka is as much of a familiar touchstone to Miyuki as is the Tokyo Dome itself. He isn't quite so foolhardy as to say that having Kataoka around is relaxing, but he does experience a sense of rightness, just to stand in the same room as the man currently heading the Seidou Organization, someone who has served as a mentor to him: someone Miyuki answers to as "boss."
"Introduce yourself," Miyuki says softly, more seriously than when he'd been talking and joking with Furuya outside.
Furuya takes the hint, proving that perhaps he has better manners than Miyuki feared. He bows, deeply enough that he's nearly bent parallel to the floor, and announces himself as, "Furuya Satoru, sir."
He straightens up, almost — but not quite — until he's again standing steady at his full height. His eyes track Kataoka as if for acceptance, approval, and Miyuki is hit with an unexpected wash of pride that Furuya is performing his role as well as this.
"Thank you," Kataoka says in response. "For coming. I'm sure the invitation was unexpected."
Miyuki has to restrain his urge to laugh at the word invitation, as if the reality wasn't that he'd been sent halfway across the country to recruit this person by whatever means necessary. But Kataoka is doing a rare thing, initiating someone into the organization purely by his own choice, rather than because that someone had come before him to prove themselves. There were different protocols involved.
"I understand you've been out of work lately?" Kataoka asks.
Furuya is quiet a moment, as if puzzled, before he nods his head. "Yes."
Kataoka nods as well, a respectful acknowledgment of that misfortune. He moves on. "I happened to know your grandfather, a number of years back. Did you know that?"
There's another pause as Furuya considers the question, as he deliberates over whether he's meant to respond. Kataoka doesn't wait for him to figure it out.
"It would be most unfortunate," he explains, "for me to allow that man's grandson to remain out of work. Your grandfather provided some innumerable services to our organization. I'd like to repay the favor."
"That's why you're recruiting me into the yakuza," Furuya summarizes.
For a moment, both Miyuki and Kataoka stare at him in surprise. Neither of them is expecting that level of bluntness. In hindsight, Miyuki wonders whether he might not have given Furuya enough pointers on manners after all. They had been given the entire duration of a flight back to Tokyo to talk to each other, and sometime more in the hotel afterward, while Miyuki kept Furuya company before leaving him in the room Seidou had provided. Miyuki thought he'd told Furuya plenty in that time — evidently he hadn't chosen his topics well enough.
Kataoka is the one who recovers enough to speak. "I am," he agrees. "The Seidou Organization can offer you work. It can also offer you a place to belong."
At that, Furuya's eyes light up, Kataoka's words kindling a naked, raw sort of hope inside of him. He comes close to taking a step forward, drawn in by the promise of camaraderie, of family. Miyuki remembers that Furuya had been dropped from his old pro team in Hokkaido, realizes that maybe, besides pitching, there was something else Furuya missed.
"The Seidou Organization will take care of you," Kataoka promises, clearly catching onto Furuya's fledgling hope as easily as Miyuki had done. "And in exchange, we ask only that you take care of the Organization in return."
"What is it that you want me to do?" Furuya asks.
"Nothing complicated," Kataoka assures him, brusquely, returning to business. "Miyuki will get you settled with everything you need to know. For any questions you may have, I entrust you to Miyuki's guidance."
Furuya only nods slowly to himself, as if this makes sense, working from everything he's experienced already.
Miyuki isn't so easily taken in. He can read between the lines, can hear the way Kataoka says trust and can from there deduce that this is a test of him as much as it is a test of Furuya. This won't be the first time Miyuki is given authority over someone in the Organization — he has quite a bit of that already, and makes a point of using it well — but it is the first time he's been given responsibility for someone so new.
Kataoka is trusting Miyuki to bind Furuya to them, to show him not only how to do the work of the Organization, but why he should want to, why he should be loyal to them. In that way, Miyuki is only a tool himself — but if Kataoka wants the use of him, he'll absolutely ensure he performs up to the man's highest expectations.
"Don't worry," Miyuki says, his usual easy drawl rolling off his tongue far more lightly than his thoughts have been dragging through his brain. "I'll take good care of him."
"I'm counting on nothing less," Kataoka agrees.
And there, there it is, the confirmation that things are exactly as Miyuki sees them to be.
"Come on, big guy," Miyuki says, gesturing with one hand for Furuya to come along with him. "So long as the boss is satisfied with you, I'll show you the ropes."
"Furuya," Kataoka says, halting them both before they can move any farther toward the door. "Will you be loyal to Seidou?"
Furuya is silent, and this time it feels less like uncertainty, less like processing, and more like he's allowing the weight of the question to sink into his bones. He stares back at Kataoka, with a single-minded intensity that's enough to render Miyuki impressed. Then he nods his head, steeply enough that it becomes an understated bow.
"I will be loyal to Seidou," he says, very seriously.
"See that I have no cause to doubt that," Kataoka tells him. "You may leave."
"Guess that's actually the end of that," Miyuki says, a little too cheerfully for the tone Kataoka has set. "Come on, come on, out of the room with you. We have things to do."
He shoos Furuya through the door, giving him a little push on the shoulder to urge him along. Furuya walks through the doorway amiably enough; it's Miyuki who pauses on the threshold, hesitating just enough to toss a look over his shoulder in Kataoka's direction.
"I still want to talk to you," he says, very softly.
Kataoka stares back at him, sternly enough that he's utterly unreadable. Then he nods his head, with the barest of inclinations, as if he doubts the wisdom of giving Miyuki this concession. All he says with it is, "Later."
Miyuki nods in return, satisfied with even that much. "I'll talk to you later."
And with that, he follows Furuya out of the room.
Back on the stadium level, Furuya begins to look a little lost.
The determination he'd put on for Kataoka washes away, leaving him unmoored as he stands in the hallway leading out to the field itself. Miyuki comes to stand beside him, positioned so he can just glimpse the bleachers down the way and catch sight of a snatch of turf that's all he can see of the field. Furuya notices where Miyuki is looking and comes back to alertness, craning his neck to try and see the diamond that's just out of view.
"There's not much you care about more than baseball, is there?" Miyuki asks.
Furuya's head swivels back toward him, a look of such puzzlement on his face that Miyuki can't help but laugh. It's as if the idea of caring about anything else has never even occurred to him. Not surprising — it isn't as if Miyuki cannot relate.
"You're gonna have to at least fake caring about stuff other than the game," Miyuki continues, bending his elbow out to nudge Furuya teasingly in the arm. "We didn't bring you here to play baseball."
"But you said," Furuya protests. "You said if I came to Seidou, you would catch my pitch."
"I said maybe I'd catch your pitch," Miyuki clarifies. "First you have to earn your keep."
Furuya frowns, and Miyuki can just see him digging in his heels, can see him glancing back over his shoulder to the field like he doesn't think this is a very good deal, not when the mound is right there, just out of sight but not so far Furuya couldn't be standing on it. The intensity of his desire tugs at Miyuki, weighs on him with a pressure he can feel.
Miyuki shrugs it off, and flashes Furuya an apologetic, too-toothy smile. "Don't worry," he says. "We'll find something you can do."
"Like what?" Furuya asks. He shifts his body closer to Miyuki, physically pulling himself away from the lure of the field.
"Don't know," Miyuki admits. "You like baseball so much, maybe we could put you to work selling the tickets!"
Furuya's eyes start to light up, and Miyuki immediately regrets making the joke.
"Not today," he's quick to clarify. "There isn't a game today. Stadium's closed, we're just here because, well, we work here. Or Kataoka does, anyway."
"What do you usually do?" Furuya asks. "Do you work at the stadium?"
"Nah, I don't," Miyuki admits. Then, with a sly smile starting to pull up the corners of his lips: "Do you want to see what I usually do?"
Furuya nods, two quick, eager bobs of his head. His eyes are bright when he stops, focused on Miyuki with an intensity that's flattering, if a little overwhelming. He hasn't commanded anyone's attention that thoroughly in... Well, a long goddamn time, to say the least. It makes him grin, when he thinks about it.
"Come on, big guy," he says, much like when he led Furuya into the Dome in the first place. He gestures back toward the entrance, leading the way outside. "Maybe you'll learn a thing or two."
It's early afternoon when Miyuki and Furuya step out onto the street — several hours earlier than when Miyuki would usually get to work. They walk back the way they'd come earlier that morning, Miyuki leading the way, Furuya following complacently enough just behind him. The Tokyo Dome Hotel rears up before them, majestic in the heights it ascends to and impossible to miss from anywhere in the area.
"Hold on," Miyuki says, before they've fully drawn up alongside the entrance. A thought has occurred to him.
"Did we forget something?" Furuya asks, as Miyuki leads him inside.
Miyuki pauses, then shakes his head. Furuya has been given a room in the hotel, seeing as he's only just arrived in Tokyo and couldn't be expected to have somewhere else to stay. It isn't where Miyuki had been intending to take them, but...
He looks Furuya up and down, eyeing the dark jeans, the nondescript, navy-colored shirt. Miyuki had told him to dress smart for their meeting today, and it could have been worse. But standing in the lobby in the black suit Miyuki only wears for business occasions, the nice one with the expensive tailoring, he cannot say he's impressed.
"You don't have anything better to wear, do you?" Miyuki asks.
Furuya glances down at himself, skeptically eyeing his own arms in their shirtsleeves before looking back up at Miyuki with a perfectly neutral expression on his face. Yeah, Miyuki hadn't thought so.
"Nah," he says. "You didn't forget anything. We're just picking something up."
Miyuki leads Furuya into an elevator when its door opens, and presses the button to go down.
The Dome isn't the only thing not owned by who the public might expect. The hotel is Seidou's, too, and Kataoka has a room on the basement level there as well. This one is more cluttered than the Tokyo Dome office, and Miyuki has to let them in with a key before rummaging around inside. He goes through three drawers before he finds what he's looking for.
"Here," he says, shoving the baton at a confused, waiting Furuya with a sharp-edged smile. "Just in case you need to protect yourself."
Furuya takes it, gingerly, like he isn't quite certain what he's holding. "Am I going to need to protect myself?"
He looks up to meet Miyuki's eyes, gaze a little too heavy, a little too serious. Miyuki no longer feels as if the words are really a question, but he only shrugs in response with a careless roll of his shoulders. "Don't worry about it. If you do, it's nothing hard. You're a pitcher, you should be used to swinging your arm."
At that, Furuya hefts the weight of the blackjack in his hand. His fingers are curled around the handle, his arm starting to draw back like he's winding up for a pitch. Miyuki reaches out quickly, grabbing ahold of Furuya's wrist before he can follow through with his swing.
"Not in the office," he says.
He waits, hand around Furuya's wrist, until Furuya starts to lower his arm. Judging from his disappointment, Miyuiki wonders if he shouldn't have worried about how Furuya might hold his own in a fight. It's still better safe than sorry.
"If someone tries to hit you," Miyuki continues, "you hit them first, and you knock them down. Nobody who attacks you in this business plans on giving you a second crack at them, so you had better make sure your first crack counts. Hit them, and hit them hard."
Furuya nods in solemn acceptance. Miyuki tells himself it's not unsettling that there are no further questions, no expression of doubt. He tells himself it isn't strange that a former baseball player, one with no reputation for brawling or disciplinary problems, would accept advice on doing violence with such an utter sense of calm.
Or maybe Furuya hasn't realized the magnitude of what Miyuki is telling him; perhaps he doesn't recognize that what Miyuki is saying is, hit to concuss, because even if there's internal bleeding or brain damage, what matters is that they'll go down, and they won't be hitting you back.
"And put that somewhere where no one is going to see it," Miyuki adds, as an afterthought.
Furuya carefully tucks the end of the blackjack into the waist of his pants, and for a moment Miyuki can only think of foreigners with guns in their waistbands. Maybe Furuya watches those sorts of movies. It isn't what Miyuki would have expected, and the thought almost makes him laugh. He's amused enough that he doesn't argue with Furuya's holstering technique.
"Come on," he says. "Let's get to work."
The elevator ride back to the ground floor of the hotel is quick and silent, and in short order Miyuki and Furuya are back on the street outside. The streets directly around the Dome and the hotel are all tourist attraction, the tops of the rides in the amusement park clearly visible from where Miyuki stands. He's taking them farther afield than that. Furuya doesn't argue, merely follows a step and a half behind Miyuki as he leads them through the city.
Their first stop is at a convenience store. There's nothing remarkable about its exterior, and it doesn't belong to one of the larger, country-wide chains. Miyuki strolls inside first, Furuya following on his heels and looking around inside the store with a vague sort of interest.
They walk up to the register, the man behind it glancing at them once before his eyes slide away. Then comes a protracted moment of realization, before his eyes pan back towards Miyuki, looking him up and down. They scan from the square shapes of his glasses frames down toward his polished leather shoes, then back up the length of his neatly tailored suit. This time, when the man meets Miyuki's eyes, he doesn't look away.
"One moment," he says, before Miyuki has to ask him anything.
Out of the corner of his eye, Miyuki can see Furuya's brows starting to draw in, can see the confused expression beginning to materialize on his face. He's puzzling out what he's watching transpire, but hasn't been able to place the nature of Miyuki and the shopkeeper's relationship.
The shopkeeper ducks out of the way, after Miyuki gives him a little nod of approval. He opens up the cash register, lifting up the drawer and pulling something out from underneath. It's a small paper envelope, like the sort given out stuffed with new years money, or offered up in condolence at the wake before a funeral. The color is wrong for either of those purposes, though — this one is a pale blue.
The shopkeeper bows over the envelope, and offers it to Miyuki rested across the span of both hands.
Miyuki nods in return, that inclination of his head as much of a bow as he gives before taking the envelope out of the shopkeeper's hand. He slips it inside his suit jacket, tucking it into the interior breast pocket. In the span of perhaps a minute, maybe two, the entire exchange is complete.
"Thank you," Miyuki says when it's through, as if the man had just helped him with a purchase.
The man nods again, more perfunctory and less respectful than before. "Thank you."
With that, Miyuki turns on his heel to head back out of the store. He's forced to do it slowly; Furuya's steps are slow and ponderous, trailing in Miyuki's wake as if his feet, not just his thoughts, are lingering over matters. Miyuki is patient, taking his time until they're again outside on the street.
"He paid you," Furuya surmises, in what should not be a breathtaking leap of deduction. "Because you're—"
But he cuts off, seeing the look Miyuki is leveling him with. For a moment they are both silent, then Furuya nods, as if that response and the quiet are answer enough. He's getting the hang of it — and without Miyuki having to spell out what they're doing, either.
"Is there anything I can do?" Furuya asks.
Miyuki stares back at him, aware that he's meant to be teaching Furuya, aware that this is something Seidou might decide on having Furuya do on his own. Collecting protection money isn't Miyuki's usual line of work, though he does do it on occasion. Doing it usually falls to the most junior members of the organization, young punks eager to prove that they are deserving of the name they've sworn fealty to. But he's been by enough of the establishments that have an "arrangement" with Seidou that he isn't surprised, when the proprietors recognize him.
"Sometimes the store owner gives you trouble," Miyuki says. "That's why anyone doing this, we send them in pairs. If someone gives me trouble, you make sure they stop."
With that, he flashes Furuya a crooked, toothy grin. A bit more slowly, Furuya starts to smile back. He's a little too withdrawn, a little too deliberate. But one of those things, they can draw him out of, and the other one need not become a flaw. He has potential, and Miyuki is seeing even more why he was worth proactively recruiting.
The next business they stop by is an izakaya, doing slow business at an hour so early in the afternoon. The woman who greets them takes one look at Miyuki before bowing her head and excusing herself, heading to the back and returning a few minutes later with the proprietor. Miyuki watches Furuya during the moments in which they're left alone, noting the turning point when he goes from being intent on Miyuki to instead allowing his attention to wander.
It's a bit concerning, as is the slow speed at which Furuya's focus returns, when the proprietor clears his throat and apologizes to them for the delay.
Miyuki brushes it off, making idle small talk about the last Giants game held in the stadium (Furuya's attention laser-focuses at that) and the recent rate of business, before accepting the envelope he's offered and tucking it away with the first. He thanks the proprietor, who offers his own thanks in return, before again leading Furuya outside.
"You can't do that," Miyuki says, quiet but intent as he stops in the street. "You need to be focused on your surroundings."
"I was," Furuya insists, eyebrows drawing down in a frown.
"Is that what you call that?" Miyuki asks. "Alert? That vacant look you made, staring off into space?"
He reaches out to rap Furuya on the side of his head with his knuckles, like his seniors used to do when he was new to the organization. Then he slaps the back of Furuya's head — not hard — because if he's taking one leaf out of those guys' book, he might as well take them all.
But Furuya looks contrite, or at least confused that Miyuki is scolding him and not too interested in disappointing him again, so Miyuki drops his arm, and they keep walking.
"You wanna do this one?" Miyuki asks, stopping outside the next shop on their route.
It's a jewelry store, not an especially high-end one, but one that does do a brisk business in selling trinkets and other shiny things. They've been undergoing a change of staff recently, and though the business owner is still liable to recognize him, Miyuki figures it's as good a place as any to let Furuya try his hand.
"Don't be obvious," Miyuki says, when Furuya gives him a nod of his head. "A lot of places are expecting us, so they'll know who you are and we'll be done with that stop quick. But if they don't, just tell 'em you have a message from Kataoka-san. Everyone who knows Seidou knows about Kataoka."
"Alright," Furuya says. "I can do that."
They head inside. This time, there's no recognition from the couple of sales girls working the floor and ready to help customers, and Miyuki hangs back, staring idly at the displays and letting Furuya fend for himself. Furuya squares his shoulders and steps up to the register without further encouragement.
"I'd like to speak to the owner of the store," Furuya says. "If he's in."
He looks so polite, so clean-cut, from Miyuki's position of enforced removal. One of the sales girls moves over to him, and asks if there's anything he's looking to find? Miyuki turns toward her, obligingly playing the role of the customer, though he can still see Furuya beyond his shoulder, his head visible from out of the corner of Miyuki's eye.
"I have a message from Kataoka-san."
Furuya says it just as Miyuki had instructed him, his voice coming out low and very serious. The store owner murmurs and hums his agreement, saying that yes, he thinks he knows what it was Kataoka-san means to ask him about. If Furuya could just give him a moment, he'll find just the thing.
There's a bit of shuffling, and the sound of the cash drawer being ejected. A pause draws out between them, and at the edge of his vision Miyuki can see Furuya staring at the envelope, momentarily at a loss for what to do with it. He lets his hand fall to his side while Miyuki makes his excuses to the sales girl, moving over to stand by Furuya's side.
"Thank you," Furuya says to the store owner.
Miyuki delicately plucks the envelope out of Furuya's hand, tucks it into the usual pocket inside his jacket. Furuya bows to the owner and they turn to leave the store.
Furuya is smiling, his lips only just turning up at the corners. Miyuki claps him on the back, and tells him that he didn't do too bad.
They follow the rest of the route, making good time and meeting no trouble. There's one point when Furuya gets overzealous, staring hard at a man who'd given Miyuki a dirty look, his hand starting to move toward his waist. Miyuki stops him, not feeling nearly as threatened by something as inconsequential as that kind of glare. He can't help but think, Furuya's reflexes may be better than he feared.
By the end of the day, Furuya is glowing, smiling contentedly over a job well done. Miyuki laughs and teases him for it, but if he's honest with himself, he can't say that he has any complaints.