Chapter Text
If Dazai was asked to name something that he knows perfectly, he would say it’s the sizzling energy that comes along with the thrill of a challenge.
He wouldn’t consider himself a man addicted to adrenaline, per se, but there is something quite amusing about the possibility of loss, about being cornered in a dead-end street without an easy way out. His brain always relishes while working its way through options and different routes to be taken, his senses tiring themselves to death until Dazai feels that his mind is about to collapse with the effort of being hyper-alert the entire time. It’s funny, he thinks, the fact that he can’t seem to stop himself from running head-first into danger, laughing as the holy rage keeps calling his name, pushing and pulling something deep inside him.
So perhaps he is addicted to adrenaline, and the thought is endlessly funny to him. Dazai feels his lips tugging upwards in an involuntary smile, amused by the perspective of something other than suicide being appealing to his bored, hard-to-please mind. He taps his fingers mindlessly against the wooden chair, focusing back on the current challenge presented in front of him and waiting somewhat patiently as Jouno tries to make up his mind. The usual annoyance that flares up under his skin every time he plays against Jouno takes a hold of his thoughts when he hears the man’s sickenly smug voice as he says, “Bishop to G5.”,
Dazai studies the board attentively, watching the way the pieces are aligned in front of him. Chess has been a very easy way of narrowing the entire world to sixty-four slots; something he picked up with Mori when he was much, much younger in a room way too small to present any possibilities of entertainment. Between a patient and another, Mori would come to the board above the medical bed Dazai was currently occupying and study the game with a clinical eye, tapping his fingers against his lips. Then, he would move one of his pieces across the tiles and smile knowingly at Dazai, motioning him to make a move before leaving to answer the door.
Dazai could spend hours and hours in just one game, covered in bandages and sitting cross-legged in a bed that wasn’t his, trying to find ways to outmaneuver Mori’s perfectly crafted skills. He can still hear Mori’s calm voice saying, polished and sharp as the bisturis he used, “The secret to chess, Dazai-kun, is being patient enough to let the way out of an attack present itself to you.”
He never won a game against Mori.
Dazai considers this when he moves Jouno's white bishop, not missing the way that the man's mouth has a little edge in the corner of his lips, his way of displaying the hints of— happiness? pride? satisfaction? that Dazai can’t make sense of. He sighs, running a hand through his hair, and checks his pieces again for a way out, considering possibilities only to discard them when they prove themselves useless. They could put the game on hold, for all he knows; sometimes, their games stretch for weeks, and coming up with plays is as good of a distraction as any when the executive's meetings become way too boring for his tastes. However, Dazai absolutely knows when he has lost a game, and this one — and many other ones he played against Jouno — ended up being more of a lost cause than the men who are currently playing.
Dazai mutters a quiet "checkmate" and briefly wonders if Jouno and Mori have already played a game against each other. He would give some money to watch that happen, in fact. Ah, wouldn’t that be interesting? Mori losing to his protegé on something that matters as much to him as chess. Dazai definitely thinks that his mind would get a hard-on with the mere idea of Mori’s game crumbling apart in Jouno’s hands.
Jouno grins, unabashed and open, and something hid deep down inside Dazai’s mind mutters that perhaps this doesn't count as a loss at all. He pushes the thought away, files it somewhere to study and tear it apart later, knowing that he will, undoubtedly, kill it relentlessly in the privacy of his room, bury it six feet under before it grows into something unavoidable and dangerous in all the ways he is familiar with.
“That’s the third one in a row, Dazai,” Jouno says, the crease between his eyebrows long gone, replaced by the fakest smile Dazai has ever seen. Typical. “Losing your magical touch?”
Dazai smiles back, even though he knows that Jouno won’t be able to make out his expression. It’s more out of habit than anything else, something that Dazai can’t rub out of his system, no matter how much he wishes it to; the smiles that bloom on his features involuntarily every time he feels cornered, which — hilariously — is pretty much all the time. He raises an eyebrow, “Are you doubting my skills, Jouno? I’m wounded.”
Jouno scoffs, hints of laughter tinting his voice. “I would never.”
“Good,” Dazai replies cheerily, “We wouldn’t be able to get anything done if you did.” And they both know how their trust in each other hangs precariously between the thread that ties them together, wrapped around their wrists like a handcuff that has been keeping them close ever since the first time they both stepped into Mori’s office. Dazai remembers the sharp smile Mori has given both of them as if he was truly happy in assessing his mentees finally getting to know each other, as if he hasn’t just thrown them to the lions with only one knife for both of them. As if they wouldn’t stab each other to death in a run for the throne that none of them really wanted, mindlessly and desperately trying to achieve the only thing they both excel at without a second thought: winning.
Dazai knew, from the very beginning, that one day Jouno would end up being the death of him. He just doesn’t know how exactly that is going to play out.
Sometimes, Dazai thinks that Jouno knows too much. He knows Dazai from inside and out, all the intricately built facades and mannerisms, all of the lies that roll easily from his tongue, and all of the truths that will never see the light of day. It's dangerous. It's borderline intoxicating.
One of these days, Dazai will end up shooting a bullet between Jouno's eyes for knowing too much. Or between his own. He's not particularly picky.
Jouno stands from his chair, leaving the board as it is: Dazai’s black king fallen down on the tiles, Jouno’s bishop standing still and triumphant amid the few pieces left. Dazai stays in place a bit longer, biting down on the skin close to his nails. He will probably replay the match in his mind later, practicing alone in the spare time he manages to find in the following week. Dazai never loses without comprehending perfectly what caused his loss. Maybe he can thank Mori for that if he is feeling kind enough for it.
But he never feels kind enough, though. Dazai just doesn’t see a point in thank you anymore. It is, as many things have made themselves to be, useless when considering the grand scheme of things that happens inside the Port Mafia. There is no place to be grateful or to worry — there is only a job to be done that he needs to execute perfectly; there is only the sink placed in the corner of his dormitory, to wash his hands of the blood that never really seems to leave his palms, to throw up everything that he can’t make out with his words, to watch as the water runs down the drain, light and free and crystal clear and all the things that Dazai isn’t.
Jouno stands by the small kitchen placed in his dorm, quietly boiling water for his afternoon tea. Dazai knows it’s a habit — in the same way that Teruko twirls a strand of her hair between her fingers when she’s curious, or the way Chuuya’s hands reach for his knives when he’s nervous.
Jouno drinks tea when he’s thinking.
Dazai doesn’t ask, even when he sees that Jouno’s eyelids are firmly pressed shut, even when he startles due to the sound of the kettle screaming, too loud for Jouno’s hypersensitive ears. He doesn’t ask, because they simply never had to. They learn by studying each other, like an animal would watch its prey before attacking, silently filing down strengths and weaknesses, mannerisms and behaviors, trying to find the right moment to go for the throat. He stays in place and watches how Jouno moves in a world covered by a blanket of darkness, still managing to find his way through everything, and Dazai thinks how fitting it is — that he can’t read the eyes of the only person who manages to get under his skin like no one else ever did.
It’s the kind of twisted humor that seems to run Dazai’s entire existence. He can almost see the Universe raising a glass to him, an ironic smirk in place, ready to watch from the sideline as his life goes to shit.
The sunlight streams through the windows, throwing its shades over the board in the living room. Jouno sips from his mug tentatively, his back against the kitchen counter, and Dazai watches him without being watched in return. The red at the end of Jouno's white strands, maculating what was once pristine, untouched snow, is lightened up by the sun that invades the room until it looks like it’s the same red that licks the fingertips of people stupid enough to be drawn to a fire that will, undoubtedly, leave their skin burned and raw to the touch.
Jouno’s eyes are closed, and Dazai can see them just above the rim of the mug. “You’re thinking,” Jouno accuses, but keeps his voice steady. “It’s too loud. Stop it.”
“Can you hear thoughts now?” Dazai asks, raising an eyebrow. “I didn’t know your ability had that range.”
“It doesn’t have to,” Jouno answers, his fingers curling around the warm teacup. “I had the displeasure of knowing you for long enough to know that you only shut up when you’re thinking.”
(Perhaps there is something to be said about the weight of knowing and being known in return that sits heavy on Dazai’s bones, because it feels like it’s pressing down on him until he’s suffocating, drowning in it without coming up to gasp for air, to plead for mercy that he knows that won’t come.)
There is a knock at the door that breaks the silence, pulling his attention out of his thoughts, and Jouno sets the cup on the counter behind him without a word, moving to answer it. Jouno huffs when the knocks become more insistent and he opens the door forcefully, the earring on his right ear chiming like a small bell. “What?” he asks, and the man in the hallway seems nervous at the mere presence of Jouno in front of him. Dazai giggles, because really, the poor guy.
“Jouno-san, Dazai-san,” the man mutters, fidgeting with his hands. Dazai waves happily at him from his place on the chair, which seems to leave the messenger even more confused. “Boss requested me to let you know that he wants both of you at his office right away,” he says with a shaky voice, turning his gaze towards the floor.
Jouno stays still, seemingly thinking the information over, before he says, “Right. We will be there, thank you.”
The man bows and walks away, and Jouno closes the door behind him, turning to motion at Dazai. “Move, Dazai. We can’t let the boss waiting.” And Dazai knows, to absolute certainty, that Jouno is trying to discover what the meeting is about, how Mori’s mood is today, how he can make himself not to be a target. He knows this because he does the same thing every time, the same thought process permanently fixed on his head like it was burned into his mind.
“Look at you,” Dazai says, mock surprise underlining his voice when he sees the tension accumulating on Jouno’s shoulders, and he wonders if he would see the same thing if he looked at his reflection. “A perfectly trained dog. He calls, and you trail behind.”
“Fuck you,” Jouno answers heatedly, and that’s— ah, that’s familiar. Dazai could probably make a collection of all the ways and tones that Jouno already used to tell Dazai to go fuck himself. Sometimes, he wakes up wondering about what he is going to say during the day that will make Jouno lose his patience enough to curse him to hell and back.
“Ah, would you look at the time!” Dazai exclaims, getting up from his seat and turning for the door, curling his hand against the cold metal of the handle. “We have a very important meeting, Jouno-san. Come on, move along, can’t let the boss waiting,” he sing-songs, noticing the exact moment that Jouno considers throwing his tea in Dazai’s face and the moment he decides against it. Dazai smiles and opens the door when Jouno’s eyebrows pinch together. “After you, of course!”
“You’re a menace,” Jouno states, and heads to the hallway without another comment.
The Port Mafia building is a very intricate labyrinth of hallways and rooms that Dazai knows like the palm of his hands, etched into his memory from all the free afternoons he spent wandering around the complex that makes up the organization. The architecture is modern, with floor-to-ceiling windows that allow him to appreciate a fantastic view of Yokohama and everything beneath them: the Ferris wheel on one of the most famous parts of the city, the cars racing down on the street, the buildings that adorn the town’s skyline. He remembers, then, how much time he would spend with his forehead pressed against the glass, his eyes trained to the ground, a part buried deep inside him hoping for something like fear, like desperation, and receiving nothing but all-consuming emptiness seeping under his skin in return.
Mori’s office is located in one of the most intricately decorated parts of the organization, with paintings adorning the walls and some vases lined up perfectly over the red carpet that leads to the double doors at the end of the hallway. Sunlight streams through the crystal-clear glass, spilling through the floor without a second of hesitation. Outside, the sky is bright blue, and everything about the scenery has peace written all over it: the heat covering the city like a blanket, the clouds making their way lazily across the sky as if they have all the time in the world. It’s the middle of a workday, and there are people in suits walking down the streets, sipping cold drinks and rushing from one place to another, completely and blissfully unaware of the fact that their city is being controlled from afar by a person who is seated just at the end of the corridor.
It’s familiar — it’s the time he woke up gasping for air in a doctor’s office, the smell of antiseptics making his head dizzy and light, a small smile over a shoulder. It’s the weight of the first gun he ever held, heavy on his hands; how he tilted his head, aiming carefully, a voice in his ear telling him to breathe and shoot at the same time. It’s a coat that covers him like a second layer of skin, suffocating and keeping him with both feet pressed firmly on the ground, forbidding him to run away and run away fast. So Dazai stays, his breathing even, and he almost convinces himself that he doesn’t mind knocking on the door, taking a step back to wait for an answer, as he has already done so many times before.
(It terrifies him every single time, because— because some things could not be gotten over, forgotten, forgiven, made peace with, released. Some things stick around, despite everything; no, they stick around because everything has happened, and everything that has ever happened is carved into his mind like a record that repeats and repeats and repeats because the universe is not kind enough to let Dazai forget.
No one has ever been kind enough. He, certainly, isn’t kind enough. He kept hold of everything, just in case.)
There is a voice telling him to come in, Jouno’s earring chiming from someplace on his right, voices he recognizes mumbling inside the room, and the smile comes back as it always, always does. It keeps coming back, as he stares at the brown doors inches away from his face and wishes that they remain closed forever, knowing perfectly that with the cards he has to deal with, he isn’t at all that lucky.
Dazai opens the door with a megawatt grin plastered into his features, peeking his head into the room. He hears Jouno huff in annoyance, and his smile grows wider. “Boss, have you asked for us?”
“Dazai-kun,” Mori says, voice low and steady as it always has been, with a small smile directed towards his mentees. “We have been waiting for your arrival. Please, have a seat.”
Dazai enters the space, assessing the table made of solid wood, the absence of paper over the desk — which, he learned, is Mori’s way of indicating that his beloved executives have his full attention — and the shelves that line up the walls, stacked with books on every space available. Mori has his hands folded over the table, watching attentively as Jouno closes the door behind him, his expression tightly concealed into something that seems almost gentle. Not that Mori is capable of it.
“Boss, I did not realize we would be talking in the presence of children today,” Dazai declares loudly, stopping behind the chairs placed in front of Mori’s desk and waving his arms with apparent surprise. “Nobody told me that it was Bring Your Kid To Work Day! How rude.”
“Fuck you, mackerel,” Chuuya retorts, his usual black hat placed in his tiny, tiny head. It has been a few days since they last saw each other — a mission he faintly remembers, a punch that Chuuya landed in his ribs before he promptly passed out in exhaustion. Maybe Chuuya is still mad at the fact that he left him for the pick-up team to deal with, but whatever. It’s not like Dazai hasn’t done that before, and it’s not like he is stopping it any time soon. Chuuya moves in his chair to glare at Dazai, who innocently waves back at him and relishes in the way that his partner’s scowl grows deeper. “Boss, let’s get this thing over with.”
Jouno sits down on one of the empty chairs with a sigh. “Really, it’s impossible to have a peaceful meeting around here.”
“Fucking tell me about it,” Teruko mutters, folding her arms in front of her chest, looking bored out of her mind. Oops, Dazai thinks, someone has angered the princess. “Maybe if we didn’t have this manchild spatting bullshit every five seconds they would be faster,” she says, then stares at Dazai with her best “I will hunt you down” look. It has never worked on him, though Dazai doesn’t think he will share that particular piece of information with her anytime soon. “Done with your jokes?”
“Not really, no! Do you want to hear another one?” he asks her, laughing when she rolls her eyes and turns her head to stare at Mori again. “You’re no fun, Princess. Keep it that way and no Prince Charming will want to marry you, you know.”
Her neck twists towards his direction again so fast that Dazai worries that maybe she broke something. “Do you have a fucking death wish, Dazai?”
“Yes,” he deadpans, schooling his expression back to something serious. He hears Jouno chuckling and then trying to hide it with a cough, and Chuuya snorts in front of him. “What time works for you?”
“Dazai-kun,” Mori calls, his voice still smooth like velvet and not even an octave different, but Dazai hears the warning that comes with it — that he has to sit down and be quiet, be a good kid. Isn’t he a perfectly good kid? They all are. Such good kids, these four. “Please have a seat,” he repeats with a smile, and Dazai smiles back and plops down on his chair.
So here they are — Mori’s stray dogs, dressed from head to toe in black as if they are darkness embodied, which, Dazai muses, isn’t all that far off. They all sit very quietly on their chairs, not daring to move an inch, waiting for instructions and the promises of treats, like the dogs that very clearly are. The very collection of freaks and aberrations nobody wanted and Mori decided to bring home, lining them up and asking them to give their lives to an organization that grew its way onto their lives until they were too caught up in the mess to get out. It's so fucked up when put in that way that makes Dazai wants to laugh until his lungs give out.
He wonders if the others have thought this through — that in the end, three of them will probably end up with a bullet between their eyes, happily freed from the weight of a position they have been spending their lives preparing for.
“Thank you, Dazai-kun,” Mori starts, moving in his chair to adjust his position, hands still folded over the table. “As Chuuya-kun put so eloquently earlier,” he says, then smiles at them in that way of his — that way that turns every single one of them into his most prized possessions, his polished trophies on the wall, his executives. Dazai stays unmoving and silent. Playing his part. “Let’s get this over with.”
People move out of the way as Teruko walks.
It’s something she has already become familiar with — how everyone around her flinches away every time she’s around, opening up a path wide enough for her to walk without touching anyone. She strides forward, chin tilted high and a smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth as the subordinates very suddenly find something to do somewhere else, running away from the trail of destruction she leaves behind without looking back. The heels of her boots meet the floor repeatedly, the sound ringing loud and clear in her ears like a mantra that reminds her of who she is.
As people file out of Teruko’s way, her hair is perfectly done, her suit adjusted to her body, the fabric soft where it meets her skin. Her nails and lips are colored red, blood-red; the same shade of the liquid that stains the skin and stays there, no matter how many times she washes her hands. Teruko could ruin the very blinding-white walls in the hallway if she ran her palms against it, tainting Mori’s flawless castle the same way that it had tainted her.
Teruko made the Port Mafia’s headquarters her palace, and it was just a matter of time before everyone started to call her Princess. The nickname stuck, and yet — every time she hears it, energy sizzles under her skin, sparks coming to life as rage builds inside her and claws its way up to her throat, threatening to choke her before she finds a way to keep it under control. But she smiles, sickenly sweet as honey, and lets everyone shower her with presents and fulfill every wish she has ever dreamed of having without a complaint. Teruko demands and demands, watches as people bend over themselves to give her what she wants, but that’s it. The amusement doesn’t last — it never does — and she finds the way towards the training room more often than she would like to admit, tearing dolls apart and ruining perfectly built blades until her arms give out, torn apart with exhaustion.
(There is a pair of scissors hidden under her pillow, ready to be used at any given moment to open a man’s throat open or to tear apart her room, cut her pillowcases and her sheets into shreds, to ruin her image in the mirror, to cut her own hair in the middle of the night. Whatever comes first. She’s not picky.)
Because really, that’s the whole point of it — she’s the Princess, not their Queen. Teruko finds it very uncomfortable to stand directly beneath someone (ha, that’s a good one) since obedience does not come naturally to her; it was carved into her skin, seared into her memory until she found herself calling someone boss. Her mouth still sours every time Teruko hears her own voice saying the word, the back of her teeth hurting from the tightness of her jaw. Obedience, Teruko learns, has to claw itself from her throat, burning everything on its way out because she wouldn’t have it any other way. She has crawled herself away from hell many, many times before, and she will keep doing it until her body gives out on her for good.
There are days when she feels that her body is an ever-bleeding wound, like it will never stop tearing itself into small pieces from a puzzle she has yet to finish. Sometimes, when she looks at herself in the mirror, Teruko sees a girl staring back at her and she wonders, wonders and wonders, how many times exactly she had failed this girl, and the thought alone has enough power to grow and consume her if she lets it linger for long enough. So she doesn’t. She finds a mission and goes to slither some throats open instead, because what they don’t tell you about blood is that if you stay quiet enough, it’s almost warm. It’s almost like the pressure of a hand cupping her jaw when it drapes over her smoothly, and in a way — though she will never say this aloud, will never speak into existence — it’s something that she could learn how to love, if given enough time. The presence of touch without someone to touch.
What they don’t say about grief is that no one wants to find a way to live with it. They want to find a way to kill their grief instead, cut it out from their bodies like someone would cut a limb. Teruko has blades sharp enough to cut the air, but to cut the grief out of her, well — someone would have to carve her heart out of her chest and wash it clean. But she knows, to absolute certainty, that hell will freeze over before she lets someone take a hold of her heart.
Teruko turns on a corridor to her left, diving into another section of the building — offices that make up the somewhat legal part of their business, and this part is full to the brim with people holding stacks of papers and coffee cups, moving from one room to another in a very chaotic mess that she has memorized. That’s where her words matter more than anything else; where she has absolute powers and no one to report to. They are her musicians and she conducts the opera as she wants, waving her hands as if she’s controlling puppet strings and changing directions with the smallest flick of her wrists. Chuuya said once that she was power-hungry, and while he meant it as a joke, Teruko thinks he’s not entirely wrong — not power-hungry, just straight up starving. She will take everything that comes into her way, teeth bared, and devour it without a second thought.
Kouyou had told her once, over tea, how the world would try to break her because she was a woman in a high position of power. Teruko said, biting a biscuit, that it did try to break her way before she had any power to cup between her hands, a flame as fragile and uncertain as it always is. They left her to starve and perish, she remembers telling Kouyou with a smile dancing on her face, so she decided to eat explosives. Teruko is only here because she doesn’t know where else to go, because it seems that the world is not yet done with reopening her wounds and the Port Mafia just happened to be the next available place in which she could find something resembling a shelter.
Which, Teruko muses, is ironic, considering that the only thing Mori did when he took her in was trying to break her until she felt her skin coming apart at the seams, threatening to expose the tender flesh underneath. Teruko doesn’t think he expected to find something rotten growing under such a promising young woman, as he would put it, but he did not flinch away as everyone did when they found out. Mori stared at her as if he was waiting for her to put a knife on his throat, and she stared back, quiet and unblinking, and they both sat in silence for a long, long time in a room that felt way too big and way too small at the same time, carrying the weight of a secret that settled on both of them like a permanent mark.
He handed her over to Kouyou, after that. Back then, Teruko imagined that perhaps he was trying to see how long it would take before she came running after him, but she never did, because Teruko does not like begging — she just demands. She demands because no one ever handed her things without a price, and she started to take and take and take, and in some days, Teruko feels like her needs are going to rot the entire world and bring everything crashing down over her.
On her way to her office, Teruko catches a glimpse of the crowded space on her left — more people running around with stacks of paper, bagels, and cups of coffee, talking excitedly before their shift begins. Some employees are already typing their time away on their cubicles, walls covered with post-its, calendars, and pictures, and Teruko feels the movement more than she sees it. There is something oddly amusing about watching work being done, even though she knows that about half of those people have a very vague idea about what kind of job they are doing here. But the paycheck is good enough to not warrant many questions, and there is always the option of just straight-up firing them. Which, when it happens, becomes the fucking highlight of her day. The scared faces some people make when they are about to be thrown out will never stop being incredibly funny to Teruko.
Chuuya says she’s a terrorist. Teruko says he’s a fucking pussy. Kouyou just sighs and waves her hand around to dissipate the energy, hiding her smile behind her tea.
Which reminds her. “Hoshino-chan,” Teruko says and snaps her fingers at the woman, who stops in the middle of the hallway and quickly makes a bowing motion. “I want my coffee in my office in two minutes. No milk and just a little bit of sugar.”
“Right away, boss,” Hoshino answers, nodding and promptly disappearing from Teruko’s sight, following the movement of the other employees. When she leaves, Teruko sees her assistant catching up with her, holding a tablet and looking like she’s two seconds away from passing out, if the eye bags under her eyes are any clue.
“Good morning, boss,” Kiyoko says, then stops to take a breath. “There is a lot of things for today,” she starts, and Teruko tries not to roll her eyes at the complete clusterfuck that her day is about to become with that sentence alone. “Most importantly, there are the monthly financial reports to take a look at. We need your signature on everything.”
“These monthly reports happen every week, what the fuck,” Teruko mutters, and Kiyoko offers her a solemn nod. Teruko waves her hand dismissively. “Remind me of that when you’re done with everything else. And tell someone to go out and get me some takoyaki after lunch. I will be locked in here for hours to get a look on those documents, might as well not starve to death before I’m done with it.”
“Of course, Teruko-san,” she replies and types something on her tablet, following Teruko’s heels. “There is a meeting with that American supplier company at four. I will let you know which conference room it will take place in when we receive the details.”
Teruko has been trying to close a deal with those Americans for months, and they are still dead set on keeping their prices the same from when the negotiations started. She has kept up the sweet talk thing, overselling the Japanese market for them until it screamed a great deal in capital letters, for them to shake her hand and say they would think about it. Maybe if she was a little more mafia executive and less young woman in business, they would bend to her way quicker. “Run their numbers again until I find something wrong with it to use against them. They absolutely fucked up something, and they won’t fuck up my deal like that,” Teruko answers, and Kiyoko types some more. It has become a routine, of sorts, to hear the sound of the click-clack of Kiyoko’s fingertips against the screen, running her orders over to everybody else. She could probably get high on the feeling — of being heard and taken seriously, of being obeyed without a second thought. “Right, what else?”
Kiyoko stays quiet, watching as a couple of employees walk right past them. Teruko sees the way she seems to tense up, and Teruko absolutely knows that she’s about to hear that she needs to solve a huge thing with a deadline of something like thirty minutes, and she braces herself for impact. “The port situation.”
Fucking hell.
Teruko feels a headache on her mind just at the mention of the current situation, and she massages her temples. Maybe she could just deflect for a little longer like she has been doing — she does have the financial reports to deal with, and solving this would take more time than anything else. There is the political side to it that is more Jouno’s job than hers, to be fair, but without her giving him the right information and the right names, he wouldn’t be able to move a single piece towards the direction she needs.
“Kiyoko-chan,” Teruko starts, then opens her office’s doors and makes a signal for her assistant to follow. “Close the door behind you and sit down. I need to hear every detail about this.”
Teruko’s office is in the same state she left it last night — there are different files opened over her desk, her notebook still opened and probably long out of battery. A few pens are scattered above the papers, all in different colors and shapes, and maybe some of them are already without any ink, but she never bothers to check them. The remains of the tea she made are still on the mug she forgot to take to the kitchen, and Teruko stares at it half-heartedly before plopping down on her chair. Kiyoko sits in front of her looking like she’s about to throw up, but she clears her throat and picks up her tablet again.
“Yesterday, the chief of the Waters Management Division ordered to inspect the last ships that arrived with some of our resources,” Kiyoko says, her voice strained. “There was no heavy equipment, just smaller guns, but it did warrant some issues with the third part company responsible for the ships. The Harbour might open a lawsuit soon, but the chief seems to be onto something else.”
One of these days, Teruko is going to grab Nakamoto Satoshi by the neck and choke him for all of the fuss he has been making in this Harbour. It’s the fourth ship connected to the Port Mafia shippings that he orders to inspect, and the companies who own the ships are getting progressively pissed off over the lawsuits. If any of them open their mouths for the wrong person at the wrong time, Teruko is going to have an insanely bigger issue to deal with. She’s almost sure that Nakamoto seems to be following the trail of his suspicions, and she needs him out of the picture as soon as possible.
Teruko taps her fingers against the table, looking for a way out. They could always get rid of him, but that would get many questions that could eventually backfire, and that’s the last thing they need.
She might bring Jouno into play sooner than she previously thought. Which, really, is just a fun bonus in the middle of the chaos since he’s going to be mad out of his mind when he sees the deadline for it, but whatever. He can yell at her later. “Who’s in charge of the Management Department right now? The top of the chain. Who he was appointed by and when. I want the whole thing.”
Kiyoko nods, tapping away on the screen. “By now, it’s Takahashi Ryosuke, boss. He was nominated two years ago by the current Ministry of the Economy. Then he nominated Nakamoto three months ago, which is compatible with when he started to intervene with the ships.”
Teruko is almost unwilling to believe the sheer luck of the fact that the elections are being held in two months, but she doesn’t have the room to second-guess herself, at least not now. “Look, the first idea is the easy one. We need the chief of the Management Department to be aligned with us, so the easy way is to hand money over for Takahashi, which we haven’t tried yet. If it works, he nominates a new chief for the Waters Division and we’re good. So we send someone from a third party in, say, a week, and see how it goes,” she says, but Teruko doesn’t really think it’s going to be that easy. After the last elections, the inspections at the port became significantly harsher, and the best thing to do is to bring down the whole chain.
Which brings her to the hard plan.
“If that blows up in our face,” she continues, and Kiyoko nods, already typing away on her tablet. “I need Jouno’s team on this. There are at least three names on the House of Representatives up for reelection that can do some favors to us if we put enough pressure on them, and I need someone to give me new names for the Management chief so we can get rid of Nakamoto. Tell someone to run information on Nakamura, Suzuki, and Yakamoto’s campaigns and find something that Jouno’s team can use. And let him know that I need this in two months, tops, or I will skin him alive and hang him in front of the company,” Teruko finishes, just when Hoshino-chan barges in with her coffee.
“Sorry about that, boss,” she mutters, bowing more profusely now. Teruko takes the mug without a word, raising an eyebrow at the woman.
“I know you have a very well-rehearsed explanation for this, Hoshino-chan, but I’m very busy right now and I will throw this mug at you if you don’t leave in the next five seconds,” Teruko smiles, then takes a tentative sip. It’s just how she likes it, but she doesn’t particularly mention this. She never does. “So consider this your free card for today and get out of my sight.”
When she leaves — after apologizing again and taking the long-forgotten tea mug with her, Teruko notices —, Kiyoko turns to her, raising an eyebrow. “Do I add the last comment to Jouno-san, boss?”
“You’re fired if you don’t,” Teruko says, curling her hands around the warm mug. “Also, if there is any ship coming with guns and whatnot, suspend it. Tell someone to check on the striker teams’ pieces of equipment to see what they need for the next missions and give me a report so we can work on it.” While she would much rather tell Dazai’s teams to go fend for themselves with only kitchen knives, not having enough guns will make everyone in the Mafia want to come for her neck, and she can’t have that.
“Right away, boss,” Kiyoko says, furiously scribbling down on the post-its she always carries. “Also—”
“Don’t tell me anything else right now,” Teruko states, raising her hands. “Give me the financial reports so I can get started on them, and let everyone outside aware of the fact that if anyone even thinks about knocking on my door, I will murder them,” she declares cheerfully, already trying to organize the papers over the desk to make up space for the new ones to come. “You can go.”
“Sure thing, Teruko-san. I will send the reports over email when they’re done and send the messages to the teams right now,” Kiyoko answers, quickly collecting her things and getting out of the room without another word.
As soon as she hears the door closing, Teruko presses the palms of her hands against her eyes until she sees stars. She has been dreading dealing with the port situation for a few weeks now, because she is pretty much certain that Jouno will bitch about it for a while until she decides to do joint work with him to solve the matter quickly, and sometimes dealing with politics — and Jouno — require more energy than it’s worth.
It is, however, her job to solve the mess before it starts to cause problems for the actual transactions of the Port Mafia, and there is something about being able to see the pieces of a game from afar, setting them in motion as she wishes. It’s the only thing that works for Teruko in the same way that fighting works, leaving the sparks under her skin buzzing happily with energy and her mind pleasantly silent. There is no past trying to catch up with her when she is so high above the ground, and there is no way it can drag her down with it, either. She won’t let it.
Teruko runs her fingers over the rim of the mug, letting the warmth against her fingertips lull her to the quiet state of mind that she needs to be every time she deals with numbers. She could just sign her name and be done with it, but no way in hell she’s trusting people to check the numbers and then double-check them, just like she does. There is a reason for her to be as high in the command chain as she is.
(There is also a voice in her ear, from a few years before, telling her that work well done is work done alone. It reminds her, vaguely, of fingers running over her skin, a voice quiet and sharp, laced with everything else she has learned to hate and everything she can’t leave behind.)
Teruko shakes her head to get rid of the thought, readjusting her position on the chair and grabbing a pen, twirling it mindlessly between her fingers. With a sigh, she opens a folder and dwells on it, her pieces already moving and out of her control. And so, the Port Mafia princess gets to work.
The sound of metal against wood is almost too loud in the empty room, sending vibrations through Chuuya’s arm. It doesn’t bother him as much as it did once; he got used to the feeling of the shock waves seeping under his skin and threatening to burst him open like a fruit that has gone bad, black spots scarring what was once pale, untouched skin. The exhaustion that comes from training is something that he started to desperately crave every time he finds himself seated in leather chairs and covered in the soft layers that make up his suit, aching for something to release the pent-up energy contained inside his body.
Chuuya wonders, sometimes, if this need is as much as Arahabaki's as it is his. On some days, it’s hard to tell which desires belong to whom. In others, he thinks that perhaps everything that he craves comes from a place where they are way past the privilege of individuality, and wanting is more of a communal experience than he would personally like.
Not that it matters, conjoined as they are.
The wooden dummy stays still, unrelenting and unmoving, and Chuuya takes his knife back. He kicks the doll again for good measure and sits on the floor, exhaustion climbing up his body faster than he predicted. The weight of the blade on his hands is familiar, and he curls and uncurls his fingers around the leather handle, tracing the scars on it. Chuuya has them all memorized; small valleys against his fingertips, the very proof that something was there once, taking up what is now just empty space. The very proof that Chuuya is still able to throw himself headfirst into danger and come out unscathed and victorious, but not unmarked. Never unmarked. He might have grown up with two feet firmly placed in Yokohama’s underworld, hands drenched in blood and desensitized to everything that most people can’t even bear to look in the eye, but his skin is still a crisscrossed map of scars that lead to nowhere, a piece of him that feels detached from his mind on most days.
(The problem, in all fairness, is not the weight of the body, but the fact that the body itself exists. The body that Chuuya still carries over the world, draped over on him like a second-skin, a not-yet-there but a state of almost-becoming, just like every butterfly obliterates herself before being born again. For a while, there is only a glittering fluid. Then there is something. Then it has a name. To arrive at life, then, it’s to arrive through obliteration.
There is the body within a body and something entirely other occupying it. Obliterating it in all the ways that it keeps him alive, despite, despite. It’s hard to tell where it ends and where Chuuya starts. It’s hard to tell which scar belonged to whom in the first place, and, sometimes, he feels small as a child. As if anger took a part of his body and hid it somewhere he can’t find. He screams, and his throat feels dry, and Chuuya never knows if it’s because he feels too much or if he ran out of emotions other than feeling raw, begging for someone to take his anger and cradle it gently against their chest, because it’s all he has.)
He has yet to sit with this boiling, uncontrollable energy inside him for long enough until it becomes something else. A different name, because he knows that all things — even him, always him — are something until they aren’t. A body is always a body until it isn’t one anymore. Anger is always anger until it becomes grief.
But the knife on his hands is very much real, and he runs his fingers along the blade again, lays down on the ground with the weight of it pressed against his chest. Chuuya was never one to actively seek danger — if anything, it’s usually thrown in his direction without much care — but he doesn’t mind the jarring edges. He doesn’t mind having to hide in the alleys, breath coming hurried and unsteady, waiting for Hirotsu’s pick-up team to drive him back to base. He doesn’t as much flinch anymore when he orders a subordinate to bite the curb and breathes in and out: one, two, three, keeping his business safe as it can be. He doesn’t double-guess himself when he knocks on Mori’s door, sitting down without giving much thought to his posture or the position of his hands; Chuuya is good at what he does. He doesn’t think he would be a better fit for anything else.
The thought of leaving never crossed his mind, not even once; not when he was locked in a warehouse, his fists meeting the door repeatedly and his throat raw, pleads unheard by everyone who was standing on the other side of the door, afraid that he would lose control. Not when Mori told him about Verlaine becoming an executive, his smile sickly sweet like he was expecting a particularly violent outburst, a wound that wasn’t particularly healed reopened again, again, again. Not when he would come back to his dormitory bloody and bruised and quiet, forcing himself to swallow down the urge to smash something against the walls just to hear a sound. Not even once.
Chuuya would rather bite a curb himself.
Rimbaud told him once, voice quiet and unsteady in an empty factory, that he and Verlaine had come to Japan to take him away and learn how to control his potential, trying to contain the power within his veins. He wonders, sometimes, if Mori just was lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time, ready to catch him unguarded to tempt him with everything Chuuya has ever wanted: his past, a home, something concrete and real to build his life around. Perhaps, however, Mori just planned everything ahead. Chuuya doesn’t know what option makes him feel better about the whole ordeal.
He has to control the urge to ruin his hat, sometimes. Late at night, after a few glasses of wine and way too mad at everything to really care about sentimentality and the implications of doing it so, tracing Rimbaud’s name with his index finger.
(You’re strong, Rimbaud said, beaten and bruised on the floor of an empty factory. Sun setting behind him, almost blinding enough to leave Chuuya uneasy. Not as the God of fire, but as a human being. It doesn’t matter what lives inside you, his voice wavering and cracking around the edges, and Chuuya turned around and closed his eyes. You are already you. Isn't that enough?
It wasn’t enough, then. It still isn’t.)
The hat now stares at him from a few feet away, placed neatly over his folded jacket. Chuuya stares at it and the thing stares back, unrelenting. “Fuck you,” Chuuya says, his voice ringing clear in the empty room. Said hat doesn’t bother enough to dignify him with an answer. Chuuya sighs and sits down, putting his knife in its usual hiding spot.
The training rooms are not usually empty; there is always someone conducting a sparring session with the strike teams, or Verlaine’s assassins monopolizing the space for hours on end. Lately, Chuuya doesn’t have much time to train for himself — his free time, scarce as it is, is always stolen away by one of Kouyou’s tea parties or Teruko showing up to spar with him, which, more often than not, quickly becomes Teruko’s aggressive take on therapy, but he’s used to it by now. He’s used to the voices, to the constant movement around him, to the missions and the people and the feeling of it, of not being alone. Chuuya buries loneliness in the same way people bury their loved ones. Fucking five feet under. No chance to come and haunt him again.
The door behind him opens quietly, and Chuuya feels the movement before he rationalizes it. He knows, technically, that there isn’t a threat; if there was one, alarms would be ringing loudly in his ears, footsteps rushing alongside the hallways, but he still shifts in place, the knife back on his hands within a second.
There is a girl at the door with her face hidden by a mask, and she freezes in place, eyes going wide. Chuuya raises an eyebrow at her.
“I’m sorry, Nakahara-san,” she mutters, pressing her hands against the wall like she might fall if she doesn’t. “I didn’t know the room was reserved. I’m sorry for interrupting your training.” Her voice trails off by the end, like she was trying to finish as soon as possible and disappear from Chuuya’s sight. She bows her head, black hair falling all over her face, and ah, he remembers her.
Chuuya shakes his head. “No worries. Gin, is that right? Akutagawa’s sister?” She nods, still looking like she’s a second away from running. Nothing like her brother, that is. Akutagawa has this air to him that could convince many people that he is actually not afraid of anything, his jaw tight with a mix of disdain and superiority. Chuuya clicked his tongue when he was told that Dazai would be the kid’s mentor. For all that’s worth, it made sense. Akutagawa would be a good fit for Dazai’s mini-me project, and that would be the end of it. No need for Chuuya to meddle around.
That is, if he didn’t come accompanied with an overwhelming fear of Dazai and a pathetic need for approval. Chuuya still doesn’t know to which extent Akutagawa’s loyalty to Dazai goes, and he is more than willing to go against that disgusting emo ability of his to take him down if necessary.
His sister, however, was taken under Verlaine’s wing to become his new prized assassin and was later thrown into the mix that makes up the Black Lizard strike team, being directly overseen by Hirotsu. He remembers Kouyou mentioning that the girl had an overwhelming amount of potential despite not being an ability user and how she had an interest in mentoring her. Chuuya wonders how a young girl, now a murderer in training, can still be so scared of something as simple as an executive who poses no direct threat to her. He smirks at her and thinks that maybe she and her brother share the same scared puppy trait. Akutagawa just happens to be better at hiding it.
“That’s right, Nakahara-san. Verlaine-san sent me here to train,” she says, sounding more confident now. She fixes her mask absentmindedly. “I can find another training room for me. I apologize.”
Chuuya shrugs. “Not a problem. I was just about to leave, anyway. You can have this one,” he says, and Gin nods once, opening her mouth to thank him, probably. He raises his hand and beats her to it. “And don’t call me Nakahara-san. Chuuya is fine.”
Gin scrunches her face in confusion but nods again. “Right. Thank you, Chuuya-san.” The statement looks more like a question than anything else, and Chuuya controls his urge to laugh. Maybe it would be good if she was mentored by Kouyou, after all; she really needs to toughen up. Verlaine is actually good at what he does, Chuuya will give him that, but he isn’t in the Mafia for long enough. Rather, he wasn’t directly exposed to the field for long enough to know that training assassins who are emotionally unprepared for the reality of the Mafia is the same thing as shooting his own feet.
Whatever. It’s not his business. The strike teams are mostly Dazai’s problem to deal with.
Chuuya motions her inside and turns around to gather his things. He needs a shower and a coffee before the meeting with the Chinese business partners at five, and there are a pretty interesting pile of reports he needs to look at before the day ends; Teruko will order his head on a plate before midnight if he doesn’t give her an answer on the deal she settled with the American investors, and there is a sixty percent chance that Dazai will waltz into his office to bother him at some point. Just the general idea of the night leaves his hands itching for a cigarette, and he starts to undo training bandages in his hands, flexing his fingers as the discarded bandages fall to the floor.
In silence, he turns his attention away from his hands and notices Gin standing next to the wooden dummy, staring at it as if it might speak to her. She has a knife on her hand; a black handle, the blade a little longer than Chuuya usually prefers, but it’s not like he is questioning Verlaine in this department. Turning it over between her fingers, it almost looks like she’s deep in thought instead of just waiting for him to leave her alone to train in peace. There is a crease between her eyebrows, and the blade is pressed against one of her palms; if she pressed the tip of it against her skin with enough force, she could draw blood. Just enough to stain the handle red. Tiptoeing around the line that divides bravery and recklessness without much thought.
Chuuya isn’t one for sentimentality. Never was. He guesses that waking up seven years after being born without memories and sharing a body with a God does that to a person. There are people of all kinds distributed among the Mafia ranks: people who desperately need money, kids found on the streets without families or a place to stay, war veterans who can’t fight violence out of their systems. A boy with a brilliant mind drowning in boredom, a charming girl with way too many secrets about her body, the sadistic son of a wealthy traditional family, and a God. As Mori would put it, a truly fantastic group of remarkable people. But perhaps the thing that is most remarkable about them is the fact that they have nowhere else to go.
Chuuya knows that there are recruits that start in the organization without truly knowing what they are getting themselves into. Give it a month, and they are going to be knee-deep in more violence than the normal person will ever witness in a lifetime. Sentimentality dies a swift, clean death in a place like that. It’s gone before you know it.
Maybe, Chuuya thinks, the only difference between all of those people is just the time they take to fully embrace the shadows lurking in the corners of their bodies.
“Gin-chan,” Chuuya calls, and the girl seems to break out from her mind, turning to stare at him. She blinks a few times, shakes her head. He gestures vaguely in the direction of the dummy. “You can tear it apart if you want. We can afford others.”
There is a fierceness to her, Chuuya notices. It’s in how her eyes narrow at him and the apologizing girl who showed up at the door vanishes, and from now on there is only the assassin she was trained to be. It’s on the set of her shoulders, as if she was ready to be thrown in the middle of the chaos to fend for herself with nothing but her bare hands, and oh, this is something.
But Chuuya looks at her and sees a kid with a knife. He wonders, briefly, if Kouyou ever had the same thought when she took him and Teruko under her wing, both barely over fifteen; kids prepared to kill, more than willing to do so, making a living out of someone else’s life. Building for themselves something that is made up only by every single life they took, a badly assembled patchwork put together by hands drenched in things way too heavy to say it out loud, to speak it into existence.
(It doesn’t even keep them warm. It’s fragile; like a stealing shadow, like a footprint of death into the rooms.)
Gin holds his gaze for a minute or two, perfectly still in the middle of the room. She blinks again once, twice. “Thank you, Chuuya-san,” she settles on saying, her voice muffled against the white mask she wears. Chuuya shrugs in response and turns for the door to leave.
“If you don’t set the room on fire, we’re good,” Chuuya states, throwing the jacket of his suit over his shoulder. “This one is my favorite.” To be honest, it isn’t — Chuuya could train in the middle of a road if he needed to, but there is a certain art in the act of interacting with the subordinates that he founds particularly interesting. He doesn’t rule the lowest ranks with an iron grip as Teruko does, or tries to inspire overwhelming fear that rules Dazai’s teams. Chuuya is the approachable one. Not because he’s the nicest of them, but because he is the one who’s good at playing pretend; he’s a soldier, not a general. It’s been a while since he learned the difference between a person doing something because he ordered and a person who thinks they are answering one of his requests.
They happen to like him. Chuuya happens to like that they’re loyal to him. He will keep this dance for as long as it benefits him, as long as he can lead his men to war, knowing that they will follow close behind.
Gin snorts from someplace behind him, the sound small and easily mistaken with a sigh, but he hears it anyway. “Sure thing, Chuuya-san.” He shakes his hand dismissively, without bothering to look back.
Chuuya closes the door behind him and stays in silence, listening to the sounds of the blade against wood, of kicks and punches thrown with full force, and he picks up his phone to dial a familiar number, one that was etched into his memory many, many years ago. The person on the other side of the line picks up after three beats.
“This better be important, Chuuya-kun,” the voice says, and Chuuya knows that if he doesn’t give a good reason for his call in the next five seconds, the call will disconnect before he takes a breath. He laughs at the speaker.
“Ane-san, when have I ever called without a good reason to bother you?”
“I’m sure you have no interest in a detailed list of every occurrence,” Kouyou answers and takes a pause, probably to sip from her teacup. “I have a lot of work to do, so explain it quickly.”
“Nothing to explain,” Chuuya says, starting to walk down the hallway and towards his office. “Just wondering if you’re willing to pick up a fight with Verlaine.”
Kouyou giggles on the other side of the line. “I always am. But why the sudden interest in my participation in your fight?”
“I’m always interested in your input, Ane-san,” Chuuya voices, and it’s true. He wouldn’t have gotten this far without Kouyou — he is more than aware of it. She was the one who taught him how to win the political side of fights, after all. “And no special reason, really. Just wondering how exactly we can try to steal one of his assassins.”
“I am sure you are aware you can just redirect their work when he’s done with his training,” Kouyou sighs, and Chuuya suppress a snort. “Why do you want to steal one of them?”
Because she’s an Akutagawa, despite having no known ability yet, and that alone is enough to warrant a few points on a competition that he keeps trying to win against the most competitive person he knows. Because she’s Verlaine’s to train, and he won’t ignore the opportunity to piss him off. Because, executive or not, that are some internal battles that he needs to win. Because he wants to.
He doesn’t voice out any of that to Kouyou. Instead, he says: “I just felt like pissing some fuckers off.”
There is silence on the other side of the line, and Chuuya pulls the phone away from his ear to check if Kouyou has hung up on him. She hasn’t, he figures out when she mutters, “For fuck’s sake, lad, that’s a terrible reason,” and then there is silence again, Kouyou’s breathing steadily on Chuuya’s ear. Which means she’s thinking. Which means he’s probably going to win this one, and Chuuya smiles despite himself. “I will think about it when I have the time for it. Now, stop tearing dolls apart and go to your job. Do not call me again. I’m busy,” she says, then promptly hangs up without another word.
Which means it’s there is a ninety percent chance it’s a yes. He can work with that.
Chuuya pockets his phone and whistles all the way towards his office, his fingers curled against the soft fabric of his jacket and leaving all the sounds of fighting far, far behind him.
Jouno stands in the middle of the room, arms crossed in front of his chest while he waits for an attack that will, undoubtedly, happen in an attempt to take him down.
He is not particularly happy with the task; so far, Jouno just ducked and moved swiftly to one side of the room or another, and he hasn’t felt the pressure of a punch or a kick in a few hours now. Staying silent, he can easily predict the movements of his opponent for the day, who still hasn’t managed to complete the training he was ordered to complete by no one other than Jouno himself. There are no distinguishing sounds at the moment — the boy has probably merged in his own illusion, contemplating how he should conduct his next attempt against his mentor. Jouno tries to avoid shaking his head in disapproval. His earring would chime happily, and he can’t afford to lose track of the sounds that will come towards him in waves, warning him about Tanizaki’s next moves.
When Jouno recruited Tanizaki and made him his mentee, gifting him the combat boots that Tanizaki always wears, Mori called him for a meeting. He was just curious, he said, about what Jouno saw in the boy that was so interesting. Jouno argued that Light Snow was a flawless ability, perfectly suited for quick, clean assassinations that could be completed without witnesses involved, demanding less trouble with the law. It was just Jouno’s style — elegant, but bold. If he made an illusion out of murder, one could even think that there was no murder at all. Mori hummed contently at his response and made no other questions, dismissing him for the day.
And, of course, there was a way to keep the ability on the line. Jouno never thought of himself as a man who would ever consider using a schoolgirl as a guarantee like that, but, well. Perhaps it ran in the family. And Naomi was a good kid; borderline possessive and over-protective, but as long as it kept her brother under the organization, Jouno would keep using her without a sparing a second to feel bad about it.
It has been a while since Jouno last felt bad about doing something. Lately, he doesn’t have it in him to feel remorse anymore.
He moves an inch to the right when he feels a shift in the air next to him, dodging a punch from one of Tanizaki’s uncountable clones. Another one tries to kick his legs from behind, and he moves swiftly around the room, feeling as the attacks come quicker and deadlier. Jouno hears something that sounds incredibly alike to a knife cutting through the air, and he snorts. “Don’t tell me you’re going to shoot me next.”
Tanizaki doesn’t answer. He keeps pushing, trying to corner his mentor against one of the walls, and suddenly there are way too many different patterns of breaths coming in puffs. A room full of Tanizakis. What a disgrace, Jouno thinks. He doesn’t have the patience necessary to deal with just one, let alone a dozen of them. The boy is quick, Jouno will give him that — a perfect instinct to kill, a somewhat terrifying need inside him that urges him to do so. Jouno is not yet sure if it’s all due to a compulsive need to protect his sister or something else, but he doesn’t really need to figure it out. As long as Tanizaki did his job flawlessly, he could do it for whatever reasons he wanted.
The pattern of breathing is the first thing Jouno always learns about a person. It’s how he learned to tell people apart when he started to discover the world through other senses. He listened attentively, cataloging pieces of information he heard by pressing his ears against closed doors, by taking longer than necessary to walk down the street, by staying silent while others felt the overwhelming need to talk and to be heard. It’s easy to listen when you’re a kid; no one really pays attention when a child is in the room, especially if she’s quiet enough not to warrant any concern.
Not that his parents would ever be concerned; they had more important matters to attend to. Which, as Jouno figured out much, much later in life, when he started to make a name for himself in Tokyo’s underworld, was actually a good decision on their part. Slowly, he tested if his so-called freedom was as limitless as he thought: he dyed his hair blinding white, pierced his years, got tattoos. In a few months, Jouno discovered he could do whatever he wanted without hearing complaints, and after spending the entirety of the day running a shady business that would leave his mother terrified down to her core, he could come back to the mansion and sit on the dining table with his parents with a smile in place, the sweetest one he could muster, and talk about this irrelevant thing or another.
They never found out. When he moved to Yokohama and joined the Port Mafia, Jouno told them he was leaving the country for a while. Sometimes, when his mother remembers that she has a son and decides to give him a call, she still asks him how are things in London. Jouno once picked up the phone when he was locked in a secondary room at some party, keeping watch of the door as Teruko tortured a man for hours on end. He remembers that told his mom that things were always fun in England, phone pressed against his shoulder and holding a gun with his other hand. He added, absentmindedly, that maybe she could visit him one day.
Dodging the attacks from the illusions, he tries to hear the breathing pattern of the real Tanizaki. He kicks one guy, elbows another one on his way forward. Jouno has noticed, a long time ago, that the clones always have something a little off about them — they move differently than regular people, walking more robotically, and their breathing is always, always off. It’s not hard for Jouno to find the real one, as Tanizaki tries to put the tip of the knife against Jouno’s throat and ends up pinned to the floor. Jouno puts his weight on his leg, knee pressed against the base of Tanizaki’s skull. “Your control over the clones is still terrible. I recall telling you to practice.”
“I did,” Tanizaki mutters, voice strained. He sounds exhausted — they have been training for, at least, the last three hours. Jouno doesn’t let him drink water until he manages to land a punch.
“Clearly, you haven’t been practicing enough,” Jouno says, then promptly lets go of him. He cleans the dust on his clothes with his hands, moving to stand on his feet again. Tanizaki coughs a few times on the floor, not bothering to say anything back. Jouno raises an eyebrow at him. “If you can’t land a punch on a blind man, how exactly do you plan on taking down dozens of men with perfect eyesight?”
Tanizaki scoffs. “I’m pretty sure they won’t have fucking superhero hearing like you do.” Jouno shrugs and goes to find a chair for him, promptly ignoring the statement. It’s not about the hypersensitivity of his senses, to be honest; he could just activate his ability and vanish in thin air without leaving a trace. In Yokohama, there are more powerful ability users than it’s humanly possible to count, and not all of them are just going to dodge an attack and leave it be. If he doesn’t make it work in the training room, then it’s not going to work in the middle of a mission. Jouno is more than willing to drag Tanizaki back from hell if he even thinks about dying on him.
It’s a two-way street: by training Tanizaki, he gets to make a name for himself in the Port Mafia and protect his sister, and Jouno gets to win.
(Jouno doesn’t know exactly what is it that he wants to win, only that he needs to prove that he can do it. Perhaps because he has this ever-lasting, all-consuming need to be seen, to be desired — even if it’s the desire to kill him, to bury his body six feet under in some unremarkable field. There is intimacy in the moment where the eyes of two enemies meet, because it is a blessing to know someone wants a funeral for you. It’s intimate in its violence, the only language that transcends the barrier of unknown words and sounds, universal to everyone who wants to write their life with it. Jouno has long mastered the art of writing poetry with his fingers dipped in the same shade of red that colors the ends of his hair.
And always, there is hunger. Not that Jouno will ever admit that he doesn’t know if he wants someone to hold him or to gut him open like a fish to eat him raw. He guesses it would feel the same, either way.)
“I need a break,” Tanizaki says. His voice is no longer muffled against the floor, which means that he probably has given up on stalling and decided to sit down. “And since the Black Lizard settled on leaving for the raid at four, I need to meet up with Hirotsu-san soon.”
Jouno hums in response. “I’m well aware of your schedule, and I’m sure that Hirotsu-san won’t mind if you’re a few minutes late for your mission.” Jouno has always liked the Black Lizard’s leader: his calm stance and good manners reminded him of the old men that usually paid his parents some visits when he was younger, and he got along fairly well with him. As well as it can possibly be on the organization, which basically meant that Jouno didn’t see a reason to get rid of him, at least not for now.
Relationships were something interesting for Jouno. When he met Mori, at some overly fancy cocktail hosted by one air-headed heiress who had no idea of the Mafiosi discussing deals in her living room, he was pleasantly surprised by Mori’s way of leading people to the path he wanted them to follow. He didn’t try to sweet talk Jouno into the organization; rather, he seemed to know exactly what Jouno wanted and offered a deal that, in all fairness, wasn’t all that horrible. Jouno was good at dealing with powerful people, and Mori wanted someone to maneuver the political ties of the Port Mafia; someone smart enough to see through all the bullshitting, but capable of arranging smooth accords that could benefit the tradings and the shipping in the harbor. Luckily for him, Jouno grew up in that world. He knew that if you were good enough at distracting people with shiny objects and large wads of money, they will be virtually unable to see anything else. And the thing is: it’s just so easy.
A few years later, just two weeks before he was made executive, he had a meeting with Mori and realized, halfway through the conversation, that Mori wasn’t exactly lucky. He just knew where to look. For him, it was just as easy as smooth-talking a politician into turning a blind eye to dozens of guns being loaded in the docks. Child’s play, really. After all, he had managed to secure four powerful ability users and turned every single one of them into his executives. They weren't outright loyal, but confident enough in Mori’s ability to run the organization and keep their lives afloat. Confident enough not to get rid of him, that is.
Though Jouno doesn’t know how long this peace will last, he knows that, if he needs to, he will start organizing his pieces and setting them in motion way before he hears the final gunshot.
“Ten-minute break,” Jouno settles on saying. He needs a cup of tea, after all. Tanizaki falls to the floor again with a thud, and Jouno leaves him to it, standing up and leaving the room without bothering to stay around and find out if his mentee will say anything in response.
In mid-afternoon, the hallways are still somewhat empty. There are always more people loitering around in the organization when the sun sets. There are always the strike teams checking their equipment, repassing their attack plan for the raids; Kouyou’s spies running around in suits and dresses, fixing ties and earrings for the parties they will attend and ready to collect information; ability users, mercenaries, assistants, all fumbling through the corridors with a destination in mind, a well-rehearsed dance that Jouno has memorized under his eyelids. There is a musicality to it, to the sound of hurried steps and the whispers between the people who are going out onto the night like nocturnal animals prepared to take their prey down.
He contemplates the imagery of it as some nameless woman catches up with him in the hallway, and the way her heels click against the floor is more than enough to find out that she’s in a hurry. He raises a hand before she can open her mouth. “I’m busy.”
“Jouno-san, excuse me,” she says, and Jouno feels a crease forming between his eyebrows. Some people just don’t have the delicacy of shutting up when he needs them to. “Teruko-san asked me to deliver these papers to you,” the woman finishes and Jouno hears the sound of papers rustling against each other, so she’s probably holding a binder. He takes it from her without a word and opens it, running his fingers along the pages to skim the information displayed on the documents.
“Also, um,” the woman continues, and it seems like she’s a second away from dying of embarrassment, if the tremor in her voice is any indication. “I’m so sorry about this, Jouno-san, but Teruko-san asked me to send along a message to you.”
“Did she now,” he deadpans. Knowing Teruko, she probably sent the woman to say something that will make her cringe as soon as she hears the words coming out of her mouth, and Jouno almost feels bad for her. He doesn’t, as he never truly feels bad, but if he was capable of it, it would be a near thing. “What was it?”
The woman stays silent, and he can picture her fidgeting with her hands, deciding if it’s worth saying whatever Teruko sent her to say. Jouno scoffs under his breath. “Teruko-san said that she needs this in two months and that she will skin Jouno-san alive and hang him in front of the building if the work wasn’t concluded by then,” she mutters, apparently more to the tiles under her feet than to Jouno. “I’m so sorry, Jouno-san.”
Jouno feels a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “I’m long familiar with this type of comment coming from Teruko, so I don’t mind,” he says, closing the binder. “Let her know I told her to go fuck herself, would you?”
Apparently, the woman wasn’t expecting to be turned into a mailman, but she recovers quickly from her silence. If there is something that Jouno and Teruko have in common, is the almost childish need to put their subordinates in uncomfortable situations. When Jouno has the time and the creativity for it, he comes up with the most elaborate, ill-mannered insults he can think of and sends one of his assistants to say it to Teruko’s face. He receives his share of the insults every five days or so, when Teruko bothers to send someone to respond.
“Sure, Jouno-san. I will let her know,” the woman says, voice incredibly strained. Jouno has to muster all his self-control not to burst out laughing, but he keeps his smile in place, even as she turns around and starts to head back to Teruko’s dungeon.
He starts for his office again, fingertips pressed against the papers. As he keeps reading it, Jouno takes some pauses to consider the information and feels annoyance flaring up under his skin. The deadline for it isn’t generous considering what Teruko is asking, but even if meddling around political campaigns is not downright impossible, it isn’t particularly easy, either. He almost turns around to follow that woman back to Teruko’s office to yell at her instead.
But it’s a challenge. A good one, by all means. Jouno will probably have to bend over to find somewhere to take the money needed to fund the reelections of the men Teruko needs, but he could use a favor from her in the near future. If there is something that Jouno figured out as soon as he stepped into the Port Mafia is that no one can owe you one too many favors, and he has proved time and time again that he makes good on his word when he needs to ask for repayment. He has never been ashamed of it.
Jouno recalls that there is a certain someone who owes him a favor or two, and perhaps he could collect one of them soon. He’s not yet sure how that is going to play out, but Jouno thinks that, if anything, he could use his mentee as a last resort in the harbor situation. Might as well make sure that his ability is prepared for it, and there is nothing that works better than a person who doesn’t hold back in a fight to push Tanizaki forward. He recalls two men dressed in similar black coats and wonders why he hasn’t thought of that before.
He decides to ignore the ten-minute break and lowers it down to five.
When Jouno reaches his office, he leaves the binder above his desk and orders someone to bring him tea as soon as possible, since he doesn’t have the time to do it himself. Not right now, because now he has a fight to settle and he needs to make sure that he’s going to win. He’s going to kick Tanizaki to the ground as many times as he needs to to make sure of it; to make sure that he will get to smile in the way that he has perfected over the years, the way that says I’ve got my teeth on you because that is how things happen to them: they are, always, each other’s executioner.
Every time Jouno puts a gun against someone’s temple, it’s the same thing as pressing it against his own head. He has yet to stop getting high on the feeling of it. He has yet to stop letting his body pile itself upon itself, secret by secret, and he has to stop liking it.
“All right,” Jouno says when he comes back to the training room within five minutes, closing the door behind him and clasping his hands together. The earring on his right ear chimes pleasantly, and he smiles wide at the boy in the room. “Time for you to try to kill me again. Put some actual effort into it this time, would you?”