Chapter Text
Nishida bowed reflexively the moment he saw the imposing silhouette appearing down the hall.
He didn’t want to meet the patriarch’s eyes.
Especially not after that last phone call he had overheard between him and Majima.
Shimano Futoshi wasn’t a man who took “no” for an answer. Ever. Not without consequences.
He strolled down the corridor at a steady pace, footsteps heavy yet controlled. Large hands relaxed but shoulders squared.
Hits would fall. Or worse.
Nishida didn’t need to see it to picture the small smirk twisting the man’s huge lips. He had seen it all too many times. Beads of sweat started rolling down Nishida’s scalp. He tightened his knees in his hands, bowing still as the man stopped at his level.
“Otsukaresama desu!” Nishida nearly shouted.
Shimano turned.
Nishida felt the man looking at him. Displeased.
“Move aside boy.” Shimano commanded. “You’re standing in the way.”
Nishida braced himself.
He WAS in the way. Standing right in front of the door. He had deliberately chosen to stand here.
So nobody would cross.
Not even Shimano.
Not as long as he could stand.
“Didn’t you hear?!” Shimano grunted. “Are you deaf boy?! Or just stupid! Move. I won’t repeat it.”
Nishida found the strength to shake his head, gritting his teeth.
“I am profoundly sorry sir.” He managed to say without a stutter, voice quivering. “Oyaji is unwell. The doctor said he needed rest.”
There was an awful silence.
Nishida felt his arms trembling, sweat trickled down his neck.
“Unwell.” Shimano repeated slowly.
“He was stabbed, sir.” Nishida supplied in a rush.
He saw the huge hands tightening into fists. Slowly.
He closed his eyes.
“I’m sorry, sir. I cannot let you pass.”
There was another silence. Nishida could feel Shimano’s eyes weighing him down. He wanted to collapse there and then. But hardened his stance despite his guts almost turning liquid.
“Cannot, huh?!”
A hand caught the top of Nishida’s shoulder, falling onto it like a heavy slap. Nishida flinched, not with pain though. With both fear and surprise.
Because it wasn’t Shimano’s hand on his shoulder.
Nishida felt movements beside him half a second before the hand left his shoulder and came on top of his head, forcing him to bow even lower.
A strong reek of disinfectant wrapped him.
“Bow, ya dumbass! Can’t be any easier, yeah?! Needa get yer knees popped out?! Told ya ta shut the fuck up ‘bout the stab an’ say I was gone!” The hand turned into a fist that smacked Nishida on the top of the head with enough strength to get his teeth rattling.
Nishida nodded reflexively, confused, scared.
His boss had never told him anything at all.
So why was he-?
“Was all your doin’ then, Majima?”
“Haw? ‘Course it was. Told ya, Boss.” Majima said in a high mock voice. “A Mad Dog sometimes slips his collar!”
There was a loud thud as Majima’s body was slammed against the wall. Nishida nearly yelped and froze, hands on his knees, seeing his boss’ body, wrapped in nothing but gauze and jeans, tattoo exposed, writhing reflexively as Shimano’s hand closed like iron claws onto his neck and squeezed.
“Did ya really forget, huh, Majima?! Do I need to remind you?!”
Majima made a wet strangled noise. Blood left Nishida’s face and hands as he heard it.
It was a strangled laugh.
His boss was contorting, and LAUGHING in Shimano’s face. Nishida lost balance. He fell down to his knees and whirled onto his ass, scraping back on the ground in disbelief.
Majima was standing on his toes, arms falling on each side of his body, his eye hardly focusing on Shimano’s face, his head held up, extending his neck to try to make some space for air.
Yet he smiled, teeth flashing white and red with blood.
He smiled and stared at Shimano, his eye gone wild.
My boss really is mad. Nishida thought.
“Tsk.”
Nishida almost screamed when Shimano’s hold tightened, choking Majima until his eye rolled back and his body stilled. Shimano kept him up, eyes unwavering, mouth turned into a disgusted frown.
Then opened his hand.
Majima slipped down like a rag doll.
“Such a waste.” Shimano said, frowning still, rolling Majima’s body over with his foot. “Too thick a skull to learn it seems. How many times will I have to hammer it into you.”
He planted his heel onto Majima’s temple. And started applying pressure, crushing his skull into the ground.
“That way you won’t ever slip again.”
Nishida could only stare.
His boss wasn’t moving. At all.
He stared and stared at the ribs, at the back, and couldn’t see a hint of a move. He saw Shimano putting more of his weight and thought his boss’ skull would crack and burst right there.
He didn’t want to see it. Yet couldn’t look away.
Shimano shoved Majima’s head away, rolling him on his back again and looked down at him.
“Breathin’ still? Good.” He looked at Nishida, eyes widening, lips cracking his face into a terrible smile. “Patch him up. Make sure he wakes. I’ll need him conscious when I return.”
With that he left.
Nishida only noticed his rattling teeth and cold sweat when Shimano was well away and gone.
He was sure he had witnessed a murder by then. But his boss MOVED.
Nishida opened his mouth but found himself lacking words.
Majima twitched, rasped a breath, tried to gather himself on the ground, trembling. He pushed on his arms. Nearly sat.
He leant his head and his shoulder on the wall beside him, dragging his legs under him.
Nishida hardly believed it.
His boss propped himself up onto his feet, shoulder scraping against the wall for support.
His breath itched. He wheezed. A tiny broken sound, like a crack rippling through Majima’s chest. That sound sent Nishida scrambling up.
“O-oyaji!”
He caught Majima just as he tipped down, consciousness flickering, eye rolling out again.
---
Nishida had to drag him back to bed.
His boss wasn’t big, but he was tall. And constantly flickering between half awake and half dead, one moment trying to pull away, stiff and grunting, the other going limp like a silent stringless puppet.
Nishida had to grab him under his arms and drag him like a corpse all the way to the futon they had set in the back room in a hurry, unsure where else to put him when their own doctor had been done dealing with the wound.
They hadn’t taken their boss to a hospital. It would have been too dangerous. They would have needed to answer questions. There would have been investigations.
And their own boss would have managed to wake and give them all the slip, stitched up or not.
Illegal surgeon it had been then.
And the back room of the Majima family as the post-op room.
Nishida knew his boss would have killed him if they had dared step inside his apartment. Half dead or not.
He hauled him onto the futon, swearing and sighing profusely. He felt a pang of guilt when Majima fell from his grip and slumped sideways onto the mattress, head missing the pillow.
Nishida winced. His boss didn’t.
I’ll need him conscious when I return.
The voice said again in his head and Nishida shuddered.
It would be best if his boss didn’t wake. This one time, he thought he could pray for him to stay out cold for as long as it took for-
For what, exactly?
Shimano was a patient man. He would wait. He wasn’t going anywhere. He wasn’t going to forget this either.
“Oyaji why did you have to do this…” Nishida lamented in awe, carefully placing back his boss’ head on the pillow. “Disobeying that command about the girl, talking back to boss Shimano on the phone and now laughing in his face…”
It was madness.
It had to be.
Nishida knelt by the futon, covering the battered body with a blanket.
Bruises were forming. Not only Shimano’s though.
Kiryu’s too. From that fight at the batting center.
Nishida still couldn’t understand why his boss did the things he did, or why he had turned obsessed with the dragon of Dojima so much.
“Ya can’t understand shit, Nishida!” the boss would say.
It was true he didn’t understand any of the boss’s behavior.
But one thing was sure.
The man was truly mad.
And somehow, they would all follow him until the day they died.
“Nishida…” Majima rasped in the dark. “Ya moron. Know yer there… Ya peed yerself…Ya fuckin’ reek.”