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Blue eyes crystallized a horizon only he could see. Every line and pigment of his irises had an inherent air of anguish, reflected in his slightly furrowed brow, the shape of his lips pressed into a thin line, parting for air as if it were running out.
Sanzu's eyes changed, oscillating across the table until colliding with his on the other side. They drowned. His pupils jumped, contained in their precious flagon. The man was looking away as if they had never collided in the first place.
Rindou continued to look at him as Manjiro spoke, leading the long table they sat at.
Sanzu scratched his nose with his knuckles, fidgeting in his chair, like a small child who couldn't contain hyperactivity. Rindou could almost see the sweat on his neck, the tremor in his fingers as he searched for papers to grab hold of and stop. Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed and he breathed through his mouth, reading what he had in front of him over and over again, his expression turning frustrated, as if he wasn't understanding anything it was put there.
The leader asked a question. All attention turned to Bonten's second-in-command, hoping for something that wouldn't ruin the deal they were about to make. The head of a Chinese Triad sat at the opposite end of the table, surrounded by his executives, guys tattooed under their white shirts, scarred, business-like looks playing their pieces on the board.
Bonten wanted to gain a foothold in China, in the international export of drugs and weapons. The Hong Kong sea rocked slowly in front of the towering building, looking for a beach to spill out onto and die.
Sanzu cleared his throat. His voice was hoarse.
“…the creation of a front company facilitated the clandestine production of methamphetamine in laboratories, which…”
Rindou felt the tension in his veins. His muscles engorged, everyone in the Japanese area of the table held their breath, while the Hong Kongers looked at each other skeptically.
"Is that what I asked?" Manjiro cut off the nonsense string of his subordinate.
Sanzu looked up from his papers, confused. His lost eyes focused on his leader nervously. He had sickly pale skin.
"Yes," he answered, but then he hastened to deny it, almost desperately. “No, no, I don't know…”
"Useless shit, stop babbling," Manjiro spat sharply. “Shut up before I have your tongue cut out” he wrinkled his nose in disgust. He cocked his chin at the man sitting next to him, giving him room to speak. “Kakucho?”
Sanzu cringed in his seat, as if he had been hit. He lowered his head and became small, he did not speak again for the entire duration of the trade agreement meeting.
Rindou noticed the fragility that Sanzu emanated from his place. The way he touched his forehead every few minutes, brushing back his bangs, looking for something to scratch, to pinch. Those blue eyes would speed through the pages of any random report, over and over again, then he would take it intently, narrowing his eyes, apparently unable to concentrate or understand it. He didn't know if it was withdrawal or just anxiety, but he had never seen Sanzu so screwed up in a meeting.
He only knew that, after he finished, Sanzu ran to the bathroom to force himself to vomit even if he had nothing in his stomach. He was able to hear the coughing, retching, and cursing.
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"Drugs are eating his brain, isn't it obvious?"
Rindou clenched his jaw thoughtfully. Actually, he didn't have to think about anything. Like most times, Ran was right.
"He is very young," he muttered, drumming his fingers on the glass.
He looked up. On the other side of the premises, Sanzu was talking, or pretending to listen and attend to the conversation he was having with an unknown man. Hong Kong's nightlife could get weird if random guys came up to offer drugs to good-looking people.
He wouldn't say that Sanzu had good looks, but he definitely drew the attention of the local people. Those blue eyes, the scars that framed his lips, and the lilac suit whose color created a soft contrast to his skin. And that pink hair that already showed some blonde roots. He hadn't even had the decency to dye himself again before leaving Japan.
The man showed something to Sanzu. He was also wearing a suit and a tattoo peeked out of his neck. He probably belonged to the Triad with whom they had agreed a trade pact a few hours ago.
"But he's been busting his head on them all his life." Ran clucked, twirling his whiskey glass. “At some point it would have to happen.”
A pang of anguish shot through his chest.
Sanzu was already doing drugs when he had met him, more than a decade ago. He had seen him smoking tobacco and weed, he had seen him taking pills in late-night bars. Little by little, increasing the amount each week, leaving behind things that were already boring when he found something better, always with that stoic and lost look until he hit the amphetamines and his pupils began to overflow a little further each time.
Perhaps there had never been a normal Sanzu. One who would have been left behind. Maybe he didn't even get a chance to be himself before he made screwed up decisions, and life screwed him up too. Somehow, Rindou imagined it had all started with the painkillers. The scars on his mouth had been there so long they could have been the start of it all. It was tentative that something as small and insignificant as a fingernail-sized pill could crush pain and feelings.
But, he had never asked, the same way he let it happen. And suddenly he felt as if he had allowed it.
"When I asked you to stay away from him when we joined the Kantō Manji, it was not on a whim," his brother continued. “It was because those people drag everyone around them into their whirlwind…”
"You don't have to mention it.”
Sanzu looked at what had been offered to him curiously. From his position, Rindou could only see a tiny plastic bag kept in his vest pocket. Then, Sanzu lowered his hands and surreptitiously took out a couple of pills. He brought them to his mouth before taking a swallow, his gaze darting around the room before meeting his.
Rindou held his gaze. Sanzu pushed it away and swallowed.
"Oh, sure I'll do it. You almost died because of him.” Ran wrinkled his nose in annoyance. “You almost died because some crazy head dragged you the shit out of him.”
"It was an accident," he spat out tensely. He hated Ran throwing things in his face.
It had been a few months since he had been hospitalized for respiratory arrest. Since then, the meetings with Sanzu had been reduced by a season, but they had returned to seeing each other regularly.
Sanzu avoided appearing high or drunk, or taking drugs when he was around. That was what had changed. And Rindou never turned him away, he never closed the door and ignored him. He didn't seem capable of doing it, not when he knew he was trying hard not to be a piece of shit.
Not when he himself had sold him most of the drugs he used, of the best quality. He said he cared about him, he said he loved him, but then he gave him his dose and contributed a shovel to help him bury himself.
If he cut off the flow of drugs, Sanzu would look for someone else. Another person who would surely cheat, rip him off, and dose him up with other shit that could kill him or make him more addicted.
Rindou was a fucking hypocrite who didn't know how to fix what he himself had helped to cause. Or if Sanzu would even want a solution. He seemed so comfortable with this happening, he didn't know if he'd ever had a choice.
“I would have blown his fucking head off if you'd died, you know?” Ran reached out a hand to touch his shoulder and get his attention. He squeezed. “You are important to me. I don't care about the rest.”
"I know," he sighed. He touched Ran's hand to pull it away. He did not do it with contempt. He loved his brother.
He finished his glass of wine. The glass hit the bar counter softly. The waiter was coming and going, and a strong smell of spices was escaping from the kitchen. He took out a pack of cigarettes, listening to his brother talk on the phone with someone.
The city fell silent to his ears. He stared at the image on the cover of the little package, where a pair of withered black lungs accompanied black letters. 'Smoking kills.'
"Have you ever thought about it? Maybe you're too are one more dose. And when Haruchiyo gets tired of the usual effect, he'll look for something worse. Something that gives him a reason to kill himself.”
A reason for the pieces of the mirror that no one bothered to pick up could finally be crushed, cracked, and thrown in the garbage can.
He put the cigarette pack away and touched his forehead, overwhelmed by this intrusive thought. He wouldn't drink any more that night.
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Anyone could be unraveled with a kiss. Guess, by the tremor of his hands and the way he smacks his lips and looks for another one back, what he needed. All thoughts became erratic in the form of a soft electric current that sparkled at the fingertips.
On the other side of the door was Sanzu. And, on the other side of Sanzu, Hong Kong. When Rindou drew him in for a kiss, he knew he wasn't high. It was returned hungrily, fingers trailing over his jaw, encircling it and drawing another to him. Blue eyes stared back at him, his rough breath brushing his lips. Rounded pupils.
He would have let him in anyway if he'd been high.
"Next time don't stop," Sanzu sighed, wiping the saliva from his mouth with his sleeve.
Rindou raised his eyebrows, watching him walk around the room until he collapsed on the bed.
The lights off let the moonbeams spill over Sanzu's body. The room had a view of the sea, the sky and the dark horizon in which only the headlights of the fishing boats shone in the distance. He went over to close the curtains and turned on the lamp on one of the nightstands.
He and Ran would stay a couple more days in the city. For security reasons, everyone chose different flight times and days, even companies. Only the leader and second in command were traveling by private plane. His brother would be in the room across the hall, probably enjoying a bottle of whiskey and a book. Over the years, Ran had become more lazy and homey than usual, and he rarely went out at night.
Sanzu undid the buttons on his vest, sighing again.
"...fuck." He made a sound as he sat up to remove the garment and toss it to the ground, out of breath. It ended up at Rindou's feet, who picked it up to double it. “Hey, do you think we could clone this?”
Rindou stood still. He caught in the air the plastic bag that was thrown in his direction. He swallowed, squeezing the fine white powder inside. It had been processed with excellence, leaving no lumps or blemishes.
“What is this?”
"It's similar to heroin." Sanzu rolled on the mattress, cringing. His shirt was wrinkling, but he didn't seem to care at all. He corrected himself, sitting up on his elbows. His bangs fell softly over his forehead, messy. “No, more powerful.”
His heart rose painfully in his throat. Rindou squeezed the sachet.
"No," he spat sharply. “No, we can't. And you don't need it either.”
“It's not for me. It's just a sample some guy gave me. We could sell it and make gold, you know?”
"I don't care," he turned his back on him and threw that shit against the table in the room, containing a cluster of rage in his chest. The last thing he needed was for him to get hooked on fucking heroin. “Get rid of it, or I will.”
"I'll discuss it with the leader."
He wrinkled his nose. He couldn't deny that, but his desire to let go of "then, why the fuck did you ask?" spilled over when he saw him on the bed, looking at him curiously, propped up on his elbows with one knee raised. He wanted to grab his neck and press him against the mattress, but he took one, two, three deep breaths to calm himself.
They were just work issues. Precisely he and Mochizuki were in charge of much of the administration of the production of designer drugs in laboratories on the outskirts of the large cities of Japan. He just couldn't stop thinking about the conversation with Ran, the meeting with the Chinese organization, the tension, the pack of cigarettes. He was tired and that's why he was sensitive, frustrated, fed up.
And it was Friday. He loved Fridays. That's why Sanzu was there, looking away and probably feeling guilty. He wondered how long it would take for him to show withdrawal symptoms if he wasn't already having them.
“I'm bothering?” asked Sanzu, with a small voice.
Rindou touched his forehead, mumbling no. He moved closer to the bed and touched Sanzu's chest instead of his throat. It was going up and down with agitation. Anxiety. He would be slow to fall asleep or not at all if he didn't take something to help him.
He felt him relax under his touch and lean back, those blue eyes looking away. Sanzu cleared his throat, shuddering.
"Air pressure," he sighed, smiling. “I hate eighth floors, you know?”
"Don't you dare do heroin." Rindou leaned into him, sensing his nervousness. “Promise it.”
Pink locks swirled around his head. The faint blond color peeked through them timidly, giving it an unkempt look. Rindou noticed he had a small mark on his cheekbone, near one of his eyes, as if he had been slapped.
“I wouldn't do it. I have needle phobia.”
He realized he was pressing hard, that those blue eyes were looking at him wanting someone to take the leash from him and walk him again like the dog that he was, as they had always treated him; heavy breathing again.
He released the pressure and undid the button on the shirt. His fingers brushed against Sanzu's warm skin, he slid his hand up his torso and moved up again, placing it on his forehead. He was hot.
"I've seen what it does," Sanzu said, continuing the conversation.
“Me too.”
Max Maniacs. That organization whose name is now lost to history had recruited Ran when he was eleven or twelve years old. It had been long before they had made a name for themselves as Haitani brothers, and indeed the first time they had introduced themselves as such.
He didn't remember the leader very clearly, but he did remember the kind of people around him. The strange, cruel and lost looks, the sharp, thin features; the charming smiles, the inappropriate offers.
He remembered that he and Ran used to work as drug dealers, because minors went undetected wherever they went and would hardly receive legal consequences if they were discovered. It had been an ordinary day, a day like any other —everyone died on "days like any other"— Ran had a small bag of heroin in his pocket and he had gone ahead, enjoying the winter breeze on his cheeks. Rindou had turned the corner, heading for the alley where they knew the back door of a greengrocer was, and he had been completely frozen.
Heels to the ground, unable to move, Rindou had seen someone die on the street for the first time.
He would never forget it, could never get the image of the greengrocer's owner slumped against the dumpster in a completely unnatural way, the needle still hooked into the vein in his forearm, the purplish bruise staining his pale skin. His jaw dropped in a wince, as if this had been a desperate act, and rigor mortis tensing the muscles of his body.
Ran had grabbed his jacket and pulled him close.
It was not the reality check that two children who had grown up in a wealthy neighborhood needed, since their home was never one. It was the warning of what could happen if they were not careful enough with their decisions.
Over time, he had seen more people get lost along the way.
"Rin, move away," Haruchiyo asked, taking his hand with which he caressed his face. “I can't breathe…”
He stepped to the side, shaken. Sanzu sat up suddenly, touching his chest. He would take steady breaths, swallow, cough, choke and tear up, then sniff and breathe again through his mouth.
Next to the closet was a small fridge. Rindou took out a bottle of cold water and handed it over. Sanzu gripped it tightly and tried to open it. The stopper was hard and the roughness hurt his fingers. He resented it until Rindou nervously snatched it from him and opened it for him.
He was used to seeing him miserable. Anxiety devoured people in a unique and devastating way, much more so when there was an underlying thought. Something that at first was an annoying buzz that became an agonized scream, a constant pain in the center of the chest, where Sanzu touched himself when he recognized the characteristic pressure on the sternum, the emptiness contained there on the verge of exploding and that never exploded.
Sometimes he wondered what it was like to see things from Sanzu's perspective.
He was quite a clingy person when no one was looking. Sanzu loved and hated physical contact. On one hand he longed for it, Rindou knew he did by the way he touched him and hugged his body tightly, as if he feared he would regret it and let go and leave him abandoned; on the other hand, he hated it. Or maybe hate wasn't the right word.
It was 'fear.'
He had hugged Sanzu enough times to notice how he hesitated and twisted and turned away from him, how he turned back and his lips curved in anguish, the shape of his cheek. on his shoulder; His breath warmed from him, his sides rising and falling rhythmically as he slept. The curve of his waist against his palm, the smell of rain in his hair, the peculiar slant of his confused eyes blinking his way, asking with a single glance if he really deserved something like that. Affection. Because hugging Sanzu was like hugging something that was going to break at any moment.
The television was showing some boring Friday morning movie and Sanzu would stick to his side, resting his cheek on his chest. The boy stared at the screen inattentively and moved his legs nervously every few seconds, then scratched his nose and his muscles tensed.
Rindou caressed the arm that Sanzu placed on his chest. He leaned back against the cushions, enjoying the moment as if whatever existed beyond the room did not exist. That was his favorite game. He knew that he couldn't have a normal life and therefore he found some comfort in doing normal things.
He slightly turned Haruchiyo's forearm and stroked the black ink of his tattoo.
"Do you have plans for the future?" Haruchiyo asked, suddenly drawling the words.
“Future? We are already in the future," he smiled weakly, sighing. “I'm thirty, I really don't have much left to do anymore. I think when I was young I thought about getting married and having children, but things have changed.”
When Rindou was a teenager, he had believed he would marry in his mid-twenties, that he would have two children, a boy and a girl, and that he would work at something boring. However, he had had those thoughts while finishing beating up a guy much older than him, so he had never done anything to get that life. The standard. The life that everyone was supposed to want, that perhaps they had put it into his head he wanted when the truth was he had never thought of the names of his supposed children, and he had never imagined himself in an office job.
Life went round and round and round. He had recently bought a penthouse because he liked to have his independence from Ran. As much as he loved him and liked being around, he also needed to be alone a lot.
And of course he would never drag anyone into that life. He was not like Mochizuki, who had been married to a woman for three years, who knew nothing of his other life. He wouldn't be able to lie to someone about something that was fine one day and could kill them the next or take them on an extensive escape trip across several countries around the world.
He had met women over the years. Maybe women who met in drug- and alcohol-filled nightspots weren't the best choice, to tell the truth. Whoever he went with, he knew he couldn't have a relationship with a normal person when his head was eaten by a black stain that accompanied him wherever he went. He knew what was at the bottom of life, at the bottom of the dark alley that everyone had locked in the back of his mind behind a large door locked with padlocks. He had seen and done and lived enough. No child deserved to be brought with bloody hands into the world, into this world.
He had always ended up running, getting away before someone got hurt. Thinking about that kind of life had been out of the question ever since he'd first ended up in juvenile detention. He didn't even consider himself a good fit, despite the fact that he was capable of taking care of someone. Or so he believed. “That's what everyone believes until they have their first spurt of unresolved teenage problems.” Once Ran had mentioned the same thing to him, that he was dangerous. He had done it in a calm voice, without resentment.
And maybe he was right. As usual.
“Right now I just want to make money and be as happy as I can with it,” he continued. “You know, finish paying off my house, buy absurd things and be with the people I love.”
"Do you think you would have been a good father?"
“I don't know. I have never really dealt with children.”
“Oh.”
The sigh was consumed at the same time the screen faded to black and the film changed to another scene, or ended, or someone shot by surprise and the main character died without solving the problems that tormented him in life.
“And you?” he asked, tracing the edge of the tattoo. The ink ran out and from below a greenish vein came out
“What?”
"Do you have plans for the future?"
Sanzu made a guttural noise, mulling over the answer in his head. Rindou grabbed the remote for the television and turned it off, deciding that no one was paying particular attention. The room was silent for a moment.
"... no, I don't know... I have to catch a plane tomorrow," Sanzu reflected, yawning.
So, there he was. Life was a whirlwind of things no one could ever have imagined, and if there was a time line built with every decision he could have made, the outcome would probably have been the same. Lying in bed with his superior, the second in command of a fucking criminal organization meant to exist from the start.
Sometimes his tattoo burned, as if he still had the needle in his throat and his eyes closed, enduring the pain.
Sanzu sat up suddenly, undoing the rest of the buttons on his shirt, complaining about how hot he was. Sweat trickled down his neck like a summer slap to the skin.
Rindou resisted the urge to reach out and touch the vertebrae running down his back, turn to his side, grab his waist and drag him back.
"The air is on," he commented.
"I'm dying here, Rin." Sanzu turned to him, dropping the garment to the ground. “I won't take much more…”
“I know.”
Sanzu sat on the edge of the bed, sighing. He pushed his hair back, a few pink strands tangled between his slender fingers.
“I'm sorry.”
"I know, don't worry," he soothed, patting the mattress gently to get his attention. “Take what you need to take, but spend the night here, will you?”
Blue eyes connected with his, crystalline or full of helpless tears.
There was something captivating about Haruchiyo. About Sanzu Haruchiyo and that damn smile, first hidden behind a mask, then sly and intense, later weak. Something that had the strength to catch him and make him a slave to that look. Captivating and dangerous, something devastatingly chaotic, a billboard with big red letters. Danger. Danger.
Shy and elusive behind his captain, arrogant and strong behind his leader; miserable in his bed.
The first time they'd kissed, Sanzu had been holding tightly to the collar of his uniform, so tense he was trembling. And then he had muttered something under his breath that Rindou had to ask him to repeat. "Why?" and he did not see himself able to answer clearly.
But now, Sanzu rested his head in the crook of his neck as he hugged him and enjoyed the scent of his favorite perfume. Rindou ran his hands up and down his back, stroking his body firmly. If there was one thing Rindou loved, it was feeling someone fall asleep in his arms.
As if Sanzu had never put a gun to his head years ago, or as if they hadn't made an effort to ignore each other during the early years of Bonten's existence. The thread that floated between the two tensed until it broke and exploded against the floor, as if it had never been a thread, but glass, and suddenly, the drunken breath in their mouths, messy kisses, encounters in the bathrooms, in the car, in any available surface, clean (or not).
Sanzu was intense, as much as the fires that ignited in his chest, like the sting of inhaling cocaine. He was, or had been.
One way or another, the hands of the clock had bent and curved to become nooses around his neck. There was nothing at the bottom of the human being, there was nothing else with which they could clean the blood stains on his shirt. Instead of washing them over and over again until the fabric was worn out, the best thing to do was to throw them away and buy new ones. They, all of them, threw themselves in some way, accepting the conditions of an immaterial and eternal contract.
His hands stained with murder, soft. Because there was nothing better than simply accepting a poison instead of getting killed by it. Stop fighting and drown in pride, because there would be no one else to do it for them.
Rindou had already seen enough darkness to know who was glowing. Glowing, not brightly, but emptyly. A black hole in the middle of space, an eclipse.
There was no other person he would have let spend the whole night in his bed, no other person to whom he would have opened the door so many times, tended to the wounds and splashed with alcohol, comforted the tears of pain from the sting of the drugs. There was no other person named after him, his scars and his story.
Sanzu hugged him, letting himself be swallowed by the effects of sleeping pills. Rindou swore he would kill anyone who disturbed his sleep. He knew Sanzu would not have eaten, because he was hardly ever hungry and most of what he ate did make him sick to his stomach; he knew he had nightmares and fear of needles, wasps and loneliness.
Little by little, he had taken over his life like a drug, hooking him, pulling him into one more kiss, one more night, one more drink and vice versa. He couldn't even tell when he stopped doing it for fun and started doing it because he liked him.
He dug his fingers into the pink hair, scratching at his scalp, trailing the touch down the nape of his neck. His legs tangled under the covers, the room completely silent. No one was heard in the hotel corridors and the thick curtains did not let in the moonlight. The sheets were already pleasantly warm and Sanzu had stopped complaining about the heat to be pampered.
"Say it," Sanzu asked, quietly.
Rindou whispered an I love you.
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“I'm fine.”
If Rindou only knew Sanzu thought about drugs all day. He thought about having them, taking them, crushing the air bubbles that were left in the plastic baggies, catching the dust of what was left of the meth between his fingers and taking that stupid amount to his nose to inhale as much as he could. He touched them when they were in his pocket, traced the edge of the round, colored pills from luxury brands with his fingernail to romanticize its harmless appearance.
If Rindou knew Sanzu only wanted the end of the day to come to lock himself in any place and fill his body with ecstasy and alcohol until he believed his heart was going to come out of his fucking mouth; if he only knew that, to calm himself down in the hours before taking drugs, Sanzu imagined himself doing it, losing control. If he knew that the only thing Sanzu knew about himself was when he needed what, because he had forgotten the rest. He took lorazepam to quench the anxiety of withdrawal before he felt it coming, to sleep better, to see how the air escaped from his mouth and all his thoughts fell silent; mdma when he felt his chest and head go numb, when he felt that everything was wrong in his stupid head.
And, after all, when there was no longer an inch of his body left without mistreating, the blow of depression would arrive, of simply wanting to disappear with the ease that had come into the world. To look in the mirror and be disgusted, repelled, to understand why it had always been the second fucking option, the leftovers on the plate. Everything was wrong with him and his fucking head, in which there was nothing but noise to exterminate.
Sanzu was a beast of habit. He would grab whatever was within his reach and make it his reason to keep going, because he had nothing of himself to be proud of. He longed for human warmth and affection, but he knew he wasn't deserving of it, that he was just a fucking parasite playing person, that he had forgotten what it felt like to be himself.
He had found some comfort in self-destruction. In the reassuring routine of not knowing if he would make it alive the next day —if Rindou knew that Sanzu had cried and hyperventilate every time he had thought he was going to die, if he knew that he vad begged for his life and asked for forgiveness for everything he had become—. He had found comfort in many things throughout his twenty-eight years of life, in meals he repeated, in gestures, in clothes, in people. On drugs. In Rindou. He was terrified of doing other things, he was annoyed by changes in plans, interrupted schedules, dirty surfaces. At some point in his life he had tried to have sex with other people, but he had found himself looking for features he already knew, for gestures and colors, touches he wanted to happen.
He could swallow a fire and let the ashes dust his lungs, just because the painful sting of feeling a little heat soothed him.
And if Rindou knew, he would choose never to find out in the first place.
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Sanzu snorted silently, making a face. There was something pushing down there, on the other side of the scar that cut lines of sutures into the lower part of his abdomen. He touched the ridge of the scar and squeezed, feeling something squeeze back from the other side.
A surprised whimper escaped his throat. He withdrew his fingers, hyperventilating. He held his shirt trembling, seeing how that thing pushed from inside his own body again, as if it wanted to break the skin and get out.
He fearfully reached for the gunshot wound scar and touched it with his index finger. Nothing responded to the other side, locked in his bowels. Sanzu let out a breath in relief. For a moment he had thought that some kind of claw would pierce his ancient wound until it bled, shooting out of his body like a torpedo accompanying his intestines.
He hit his temple several times with the palm of his hand, trying to get that image out of his head.
"Fuck..." he spat out, shaking his head. His mind wandered so easily to other places.
He took a tour of the plane's bathroom. The heights, it had to be the fucking heights that played with him in such a cruel way. He put on his shirt in front of the mirror, fastening the buttons of his lilac vest with fine stripes. He rolled up his shirt sleeves, hot.
He touched his abdomen for the last time, the area where the scar was. Nothing twisted came out of his mind to make him believe he had an alien in there using him as an incubator, so he left the bathroom hoping he didn't look like he'd seen a ghost. The step that separated that room from the rest of the plane felt like a sudden drop in his body. Definitely that damn alien would have bounced off his intestines.
The space of the private jet was large, with several leather seats and windows through which daylight entered. Sanzu sat down in front of one of the tables, where he had been before.
Next to him, a man leaned his head against the wall, looking out the window as if he didn't care that the reflection of the sun in the clouds was going to burn his eyes, already torn a faint reddish color. Whitish locks framed a certainly tired look, sunk in gray circles. Thin lips cut with cold parted to utter a few words in a low voice.
“At last.”
He had the blackest eyes he had ever seen, like two bottomless pits, a black hole that swallowed everything that came into it, a cold-blooded look. They resembled those of a shark, scanning their surroundings without any expression.
Manjiro reached across the table, taking the plastic bag from there. The black sleeve dangled from his slender arm, giving him a frail and worn appearance.
"See that this gets spread all over Tokyo," he ordered, smashing the white powder through the plastic. “Mix it subtly with other things.”
Sanzu nodded obediently.
"What about the deal with the Chinese?" Kakucho asked from across the table.
Manjiro looked out the window, waiting for his second-in-command to speak for him after giving him a look. He just needed that to cause a reaction, a chemical exploding at the bottom of a test tube.
"We agreed to send them arms and merchandise in exchange for opening up for us in their country," Sanzu explained. “We'll buy a lot of this raw shit from them and make the other half ourselves by copying the formula. We will save money.”
"What is it supposed to do?" Kakucho raised his eyebrows. The scar that cut across his features stretched with the gesture.
The corners of his mouth twitched in a smirk. Sanzu felt a pressure in his chest which he decided to name as 'the urge to jump across the table and rip his head off.' That damned parasite that had intruded on Manjiro's life and the constant reminder that he could be replaced at any moment.
His fists clenched helplessly, a lump in his throat as he sucked in a breath and fought for control.
It had deteriorated. All. Like a cluster of dead birds falling from the sky, like raindrops crashing to the ground. The only thing that differentiated them was that the birds broke their wings before dying in agony. The drops just disappeared in puddles.
Younger, Sanzu had felt he could have the world under his boots, and that was what he had inspired. Haruchiyo had been the kind of sharp smile that accompanied his Leader devotedly, guarding his back and barking at anyone who got too close; the boy who stopped being young and became the man whose laughter they feared, his finger always brushing the trigger. All guilty until proven otherwise. Haruchiyo had been a good second-in-command until it became noticeable that Bonten's internal purges began to arise out of paranoia, until he was unable to to keep up with the time of day and he began to lose himself too much in the emptiness in front of him when he woke up with no memory of anything, a bottle of pills lying on the floor.
His career, if you could call it that, had plummeted along with his spirits and sanity like a bird swooping down to crack on asphalt.
There were years when his name inspired fear and not pity. Years in which he thought he had it all. Manjiro had lost his patience with him, his own co-workers looking at him as if expecting nonsense to come out of his mouth, when before they would have lowered their heads at his footsteps. And, although the scars continued to walk the alleys of Tokyo terrifying whoever saw them, the rumors had already begun to spread.
Everything that goes up has to go down.
There was something special between Manjiro and Kakucho. That something had a name, surnames and tombstone. Izana Kurokawa. That was the only thing they shared, and that had apparently been enough to fuel a silent bond. Kakucho kept stories, gestures, hobbies, memories about Izana that he would not allow to be lost, and Manjiro had heard about each and every one of them.
No matter the story, in the end, Sanzu would always end up being the second option. But this time that possibility terrified him.
Manjiro clicked his tongue, as if he had remembered something.
"Yeah, Sanzu, what does it do?"
"It's an opiate similar to heroin, much more powerful," he swallowed, lowering his head.
Sometimes he believed that he was crazy, and possibly it was true. Amongst all of his blackouts, among the memories he had lost and the hallucinations he had, the dreams and the irrational fears, buried among it all was the feeling that he had always been by Manjiro's side.
In his whole bloody life engulfed by drugs and alcohol, he had stopped knowing what had happened from what hadn't. All the lives he sometimes thought he had lived and spent, all that constant paranoia about his scars, the way they appeared and the day he forgot what happened.
The memories he had left, or those he believed to be true, were about Manjiro. About Tokyo Manji, about Mutō Yasuhiro and the weight of the katana in his hands, about crying in front of the mirror and wondering what the hell was wrong with his head. About Manjiro, again.
And if he had been someone important, why had he never received anything in return? Not a single smile, not a single pat on the back from him. Sanzu was squirming with envy at how easily replaceable he was. Suddenly, he felt like a nine-year-old boy who had lost all his friends and was left all alone.
“Have you tried it?” the leader asked.
"... no," he confessed, because he had felt that question as something recriminating.
Manjiro was cruel. On the other side of those black eyes was an innate satisfaction with the suffering of others. They still remembered what had happened to the wretch who had collaborated in the death of his little sister. Hanma Shūji, the boy who was invited to the Kantō Manji to help him hide from the police under a false facade of kindness, and who ended up going mad under Manjiro. They hadn't even bothered to pick up the pieces of his body. Sanzu had learned that pigs were capable of eating anything if they were hungry.
The leader liked his dogs obedient and docile. He wondered how obedient and docile Kakucho was, or if he even knew where he was being dragged.
“Let me know when you do it. I won't call you that day,” Manjiro snapped, glancing absently out the window.
Sanzu nodded and lowered his head, inadvertently gritting his teeth. Just a few minutes later, they were separated, each one in his place, without looking at each other, without speaking, without exchanging glances or impressions. The plane was completely silent, although his head had been filled with thoughts he ruminated over and over again.
His existence had always been insignificant. He couldn't even focus on the velvety sensation caressing his head, the drugs he'd taken in the bathroom scrambling the nerves in his legs, making him move, even though he needed to be still, the heaviness of blood running down one of his nostrils, giving him a reddish kiss as it moved slowly. He had blood under his fingernails and an alien encased in a scar.
He looked at the clouds and thought it would be fine if he burned his corneas from the reflection of the Sun on that sparkling white.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Evil gets fussy when it wants to. Fingers cracking, knuckles plunging through the air until they reached soft flesh, the brittle hardness of bone. Over and over again, with clenched teeth and a lock falling across his forehead, raising his upper lip in disgust at hearing the moans and pleas, the empty promises, the lost forms.
Ran's knuckles slammed into the traitor again, snorting in disgust, grabbing at the collar of his torn shirt to slam his torso back into the asphalt. Glass shards slammed into the guy's head, whose nose had been crushed to a mess of bone and blood.
Money wasn't a good reason to die, let alone police fucking money. Ran shook his hand, clenching his fist again to cross his face with a curved blow, muttering one insult after another until he spit venom and spittle all over him.
"...son of a bitch… Fuck! Fuck you!!”
The sound of the chains suspended above them screeched in the breeze blowing in through the broken windows. They hung from the ceiling, rusted and stained with a dark red that dripped onto the floor beside them.
Ran landed one more punch, completely out of his mind. He reached behind his back, pulling out the Beretta he had clipped to his pants. The weapon shone sublimely, as the man's moans intensified. He could have had his eyes crushed and still begged, the very ungrateful.
"You ain't worth shit, scum," he snapped, pulling the safety on the gun.
He stuck the barrel into his skull and pulled the trigger. The bone splintered and dragged through the air; pieces of soft organ spilled out of the hole. Warm blood splattered on Ran's cheeks, and he wiped it away with the back of his gloved hand. The guy's eyes were glassy, one eyeball sticking out unpleasantly in a crooked direction.
He sat up, letting out a long breath. He cleared his throat and removed his gloves, tossing them into the bucket of fire where documents were slowly burning. The leaves turned on themselves, becoming brittle and blackish, the smell of ash impregnated his clothes. The white cloth of the gloves was lazily consumed.
Sanzu appeared next to him, coming out of one of the warehouse rooms. Disheveled and shaky looking. It looked like he'd been fucked against the wall, or he'd just taken a line of cocaine. Perhaps more of the latter than the former, from the way he sniffed and scratched angrily. The second-in-command stood still, arms on hips, gaze flickering from executive to corpse.
Ran wasn't one to give orders, but he didn't want to deal with the fucking dismemberment. He picked up a small notebook from the ground and tossed it to Sanzu, who caught it midair.
"One of our people found this in the false bottom of his desk drawer," he reported, looking down at his hands. His knuckles ached. “He wasn't only willing to give information about the merchandise to the police.”
Sanzu glanced at the notebook, not asking when he had arrived. The pages were filled with quick, determined handwriting. His balls shuddered when he saw Ran's name written there, his address and the places he frequented. Somehow, probably by collaborating with others, that son of a bitch had gotten too close.
But, Ran wasn't there for that. If it had only been his name that was written there, he would have let Sanzu take care of it, as always happened. He didn't like leaving the house —a lot of effort, especially from bed— getting in the car and driving an hour to that stupid warehouse just to blow someone's head off. Rindou's name was also there, along with a photograph that seemed to have been taken from a moving car because of the blur of the image. No one could mess with his little brother and expect to get out of it unscathed.
Sanzu's face twisted into a grimace, the scars on him quivering.
"Fuck," he sighed.
Ran sat down on some wooden pallets. His hand trembled with the pressure, the strain of the tendons. He opened and closed his fingers, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and lit one between his lips. A puff of smoke escaped from his throat, a flick and ash fell at his feet.
"They've already taken care of his family," he said, as if it were no big deal. “His daughter was studying medicine. A pity.”
"Ohh, yes, too bad," Sanzu smirked, drawling the words with the glint of sharp fangs, "... some more food for the fish."
He looked at him with a raised eyebrow. Sanzu was covering his mouth, chuckling as if he found it extremely funny. The nonsense of fate, karma and all that, he supposed, but Ran didn't believe in such crap.
He inhaled the nicotine, enjoying the calming sensation he ironically hated. He did not depend on tobacco, nor on alcohol, but anything that reduced his life expectancy was welcome in his body. It might have been a while since he had tired of living. He closed his eyes at the sight of the blood splattering on the floor as Sanzu sliced through the arms at shoulder height, the sound of the chainsaw and the disgusting snap of bones in disgust.
He wasn't self destructive. Ran wouldn't think of himself as such, but Rindou was right every time he told him that he had become lazier and more of a homebody. All he did was sleep, complain that something had woken him up, and frown when he had to put up with Sanzu doing those kinds of things that kept giving him goosebumps. With terrible naturalness, he was scared to think that he and Sanzu were two sides of the same coin.
"Don't you have someone to do it for you?" he asked, crushing the cigar against the wood of the pallet.
The blood was thick and sticky in texture and took a long time to wash off because it clung to the skin like a desperate lover when it dried. It even hurt trying to rip it off.
"I could call someone," Haruchiyo mused, spitting to the side. He had dark red muddy gloves and shirt sleeves rolled up. “It's late, isn't it?”
He took the phone out of his pocket, never taking his eyes off it. Sanzu was an enigma of those easy to unravel, but hard to understand. Like dismembering a corpse, each part was uniquely and inevitably rotten, perhaps nothing could be saved from him anymore. From them.
Sanzu hated blood as much as Ran. And Ran hated Sanzu like he hated tobacco and alcohol. Sanzu became talkative when he was high, and he looked at him with those huge pupils characteristic of a maniac about to commit something crazy.
"Half past four," he replied. There was a message from his little brother in the notification bar “Rin already went to sleep” he muttered.
“I know.”
"Oh." His mouth formed an 'o' that nearly turned into a yawn. He was tired. “Does he text you good night?”
Sanzu didn't reply. His cheeks turning velvety pink answered for him.
Ran exhaled through his nose forcefully, as if he was trying to exterminate all the smoke that had stuck in his lungs. It was funny, he thought, Sanzu was only willing to engage with him when, first, he was high and, second, if the conversation wasn't about Rindou. Third, only if necessary.
He still hadn't forgiven him. He still hated him as much as the first time he saw him. Someone hiding his smile couldn't be a good person at all.
But Ran was not a good person either. The difference between the two was that at least Ran hadn't reached that degree of misery and he could live in peace without worrying about sex, drugs and everything else. Things he had never been interested in. Maybe he was broken, sometimes he thought so. That he had broken at some point. He had never cared about those aspects of life, and at some point he even questioned why other people seemed to enjoy them so much to the point of losing their minds over them.
The dreams he'd had as a teenager had faded. Whereas one day he had stopped eating so much because he wanted to maintain his weight in order to become a model, a few years ago he had stopped eating just out of laziness, so he could continue sleeping a little more; and he had started turning off the alarm clock, not because he didn't want to go to school or see his friends like years ago, but because what was outside had started to stress him out.
And even sleeping so much, dark circles had managed to make their way onto his face. He was afraid that after that, wrinkles, gray hair and anything that indicated his age would follow. Having cut his hair years ago had made him look much older than he had been when he had done it. His expression also added years to him.
Rindou had also changed. He had stopped denying being the little brother, getting angry when others saw him only as 'Ran's brother', he had stopped being moody and capricious and had become very emotionally attached to him. He had matured and at that moment he did not stop hovering around him, insisting that he needed to leave the house, do things, don't sleep past noon. Rindou was a love and Ran had stuck in a place he was not interested in leaving. A place where he had made routine.
"How fucking disgusting," Sanzu complained, snapping him out of his thoughts. “Look at this”
Normally Sanzu had a lot of respect when he addressed him even though he was higher up the chain of command, he knew better than to bother him when he'd almost fucking killed Rindou with a fucking overdose.
“What?” he asked, lazily entering that game.
Sanzu showed him the tattoo torn from the traitor's skin. Bonten's tattoo. The skin hung from his fingers, slashed from the belly, along with threads of blood. It looked like a thick, wrinkled parchment poorly crafted.
"Fucking gross." He wrinkled his nose, leaning back slightly. “Get that out of my sight, come on.”
Sanzu tossed it to the ground and wiped the sweat from his forehead, brushing back his hair.
It was four thirty-two in the morning, and he was avoiding watching his co-worker chop up the legs of a guy whose head had just been blown off. He forced himself to see it. He was screwed, everyone was screwed. There was no one in Bonten who wasn't sick in the fucking head, and Ran sometimes just wanted to sleep and get away for a while. He thought he wasn't a normal person, that he had mentally taken an abrupt turn in his life and had crashed into something, but so had everyone. He chewed on these thoughts over and over again, with the melancholy expression that had begun to characterize him so much since one day.
Since the day Kurokawa was murdered. Maybe it was that one.
He had no intention of actually dying. He sometimes joked about it, because he was deeply depressed, but he didn't mean it. And Rindou tried so hard to make him smile. He made him happy when he would stand at his doorstep, as stubborn as a child, and say 'let's go somewhere.'
Two sides of the same coin. Sanzu leaning to vomit to the side and he looking at the time and wishing he would go to bed. Sanzu didn't want to die either, but he thought about death a lot. He wanted to die only when he realized certain shitty things, when he felt used, when he felt the alien in his scar; he wanted to die, not because he actually wanted to, but because sometimes he thought others would be better off without him. He was useless, a nuisance, an easily disposable dog.
But, that was fine because everyone in Bonten was screwed. Ran had already thought about it. Thousands of times. He was repeating it again. It was the heavy sleep caressing his eyelashes.
"I'm going to call someone," Sanzu said, clearing his throat. He sure had vomit on his breath, but he had gum in his pocket.
"Are you tired yet?"
"Yes." The safety glasses were dripping with blood. Plick, plick, plick. He had thrown up the meager dinner he'd had. “And I'm dying of thirst.”
Sanzu never ate well, or he ate senselessly for hours because the drugs took away his hunger. Ran ate little because he was too lazy to cook and he preferred to stay in bed and sleep a little longer. How stupid.
"Do you want me to take you back home?"
And crash the car so that glass pierced his throat and he drowned while his lungs pooled with blood, blood like the one he spilled. Ran narrowed his eyes. Would he be able to crash the car just to kill Haruchiyo? Because of what he had done to Rindou, for that stupid smile.
No, he wouldn't crash the car. It wouldn't be worth it. And Rindou loved Sanzu —in a way. He would be sad if Sanzu died —wouldn't he?
“Ok.”
There was no other car in the abandoned parking lot, so he sensed that someone had driven Sanzu there and then dropped him off. Ran sighed, starting the Audi R8, his most prized material possession, capable of over three hundred kilometers per hour, accelerating to a hundred in just a few seconds.
Sanzu slumped into the passenger seat, his leg twitching. Ran glanced at him as he backed out of there. The pink locks framed that blue look torn from the ocean, where the pupils drowned; he was breathing hard and biting his nails, shifting until he rested his temple against the window glass. Sanzu was probably regretting getting into the car of someone who wanted to kill him.
At least he'd had the decency to change his shirt and burn the one he'd stained. He had his sleeves rolled up, probably because he was hot. The blond hair was a caress of light color on the skin of his arms. Sometimes he wondered if one of his parents was a foreigner, because of that curious mixture of features and colors.
"Stay still," he complained, seeing that Sanzu wanted to open the window. It was too late at night to be in a good mood.
“Sorry.”
Sanzu cringed, touching his belly uneasily. It was like having a hyperactive child next to him, containing a lot of questions, words and conversation topics. Ran hated children.
"Are you having a bad trip?" Ran asked, looking at the road. A street light flickered in the middle of the night.
“... No. You drive well…”
He wrinkled his nose at the retching attack. Ran pushed a button and Sanzu's window rolled down, allowing him to lean out and cough. The scratchy cough came out accompanied by phlegm and strings of saliva that hung from Sanzu's mouth.
"I swear to God, if I see a stain anywhere, I'll kill you," he threatened, yanking open the passenger compartment and pulling out a packet of tissues, his eyes never leaving the highway.
Sanzu wiped his mouth disastrously. He had dropped the gum on the road and there was only one left in his pack. His poor empty stomach hadn't had anything else to take out and there was a horrible taste in his throat.
Ran slapped him as he reached out to touch one of the buttons.
"Can't we put on the radio?" Sanzu made a strange face, shifting in his seat.
He turned on the damn radio hoping to get him to shut up, but Sanzu started humming the songs. By then, Ran was wondering why he hadn't just left him lying in the warehouse, with the corpse and the chainsaw. He didn't have a clear reason why he was taking him back, but, if it had been to feel less alone, he was already regretting it.
Sanzu nodded his head rhythmically, making low sounds, loud enough to be heard. He didn't even know if he was aware of what he was doing. He would reach up and rest his knuckles against the window glass, crack them against the material, and lower his hand to tap his knees, rub his thighs.
Ran wanted to press on the brakes to see him slam into the dashboard.
"I hate light pollution," Sanzu commented, sniffing. “It's annoying.”
“You know? I hate something even more annoying than pollution.”
“Oh.”
Sanzu would not shut up for what remained of the way to Tokyo. Sometimes talking nonsense, other times just muttering to himself, irritated that his dose wasn't getting high. Ran squeezed the steering wheel and resigned himself to listening to one nonsense after another, in silence, because he didn't want to give him feedback.
Ran kept his distance from the rest of the Bonten members. He never had conversations with them about things other than work, and Rindou was the exception because he was his brother. If he went to drink with any of them, he made sure not to share details of his personal life, as there was a very clear line between work and his solitary life. It's not like he's interested in other people's lives either, he already had enough with his own.
For an hour and a half, Sanzu was also an exception. An annoying exception.
“This is one of his favorite songs” Sanzu smiled with a strange hint of melancholy on his face.
“I know.”
Rindou always chose the music. As a result, the radio network had been the same for years, and the frequency had never changed. In the passenger compartment was an extensive collection of CDs by various bands they had bought as teens and that he had never bothered to change or throw away.
Ran had never been into American hip hop, but at least they shared an almost nostalgic taste for eighties and seventies rock. When he had bought the car, Rindou had come to his house one day with a stack of records he had kept over the years and a smile like a child's when they gave him a present on his birthday.
"I like old shit," Sanzu said with a shrug. “It's pretty relaxing.”
“Me too.”
"...somehow," he added, touching the ends of his hair. “It feels like a one way ticket.”
“Like a one way ticket?”
"To the blues," he hummed.
"Don't start humming again, for God's sake," Ran complained.
Sanzu leaned in and turned up the volume of the music, seemingly happy. He still had large pupils and sweaty skin. He tapped his temple in annoyance.
The lines of his face were marked by the light of the streetlamps, the reflection of the night in the thin features. His pale, sickly skin had a strange sheen to it, and Ran had thought he could see cavities in one of his molars. Sanzu swayed slightly, from side to side, taking off his shoes and raising his heels to the seat.
"Stop moving, shit," Ran clucked, taking a way out. “You're…”
“A parasite?” he muttered.
"I was going to say 'fucking unbearable' but that works too."
Sanzu swallowed, his breath escaping.
"It's just it's not rising in me," he lamented. “It's just a nuisance in the head. It's annoying, dammit. I'm sorry.”
"You've mentioned it before.”
“I'm sorry.”
How fucking far did someone have to go before cocaine wouldn't take effect. Ran rolled his eyes, thinking that Rindou must have a lot of patience to deal with Sanzu, he was so multifaceted it hurt to watch. He sitting there, at first stirring and talking to nothing, now leaning against the window, crying.
A tear slid like a pearl, falling from the corner of one eye, running down his cheekbone with liquid legs, trailing miserably to the edge of his jaw and staying there, falling and not at the same time, threatening to throw itself to death on the black leather of the seat. But completely silent, without making a single noise.
Ran sighed. This is what someone who had spent their entire lives destroying their heads with drugs looked like. Was that being capable of even loving? Did he distinguish his feelings from the need to consume?
There, between the tree-lined path on the side of the road and the blinding lights of the capital city, the sea of the Bay rocked back and forth. If only the music hadn't been on and it wasn't cold, he would have been able to roll down the window to hear the vastness of the dark water rushing back and forth, an endless ocean.
"Do you have someone waiting for you at home?" Sanzu asked then.
“No.”
No, but Ran had cried like that too. Silently, only blinking a few times for the tears to finish coming out of his eyes; with a pang of pain that he didn't fully understand in his chest, a thorn that bled and bled when something poked at the wound and that seemed like it was never going to finish rotting. Pursing his lips to force himself to swallow the sobs, convincing himself that everything was fine.
Sanzu nodded, for the first time still since they had left the warehouse, and went completely silent.
Rindou kept a spare key in the flowerpot in the hallway of the building where he lived. In addition, the doorman at the entrance kept another copy he could give to only two people. Ran Haitani, Sanzu Haruchiyo. They both knew it.
Ran knew because Rindou had always been like that, hospitable and kind to him, and even if Rindou had never mentioned it, he would know anyway; everywhere they lived they had kept a copy somewhere hidden in the building.
Sanzu knew this because, at a certain point, Rindou feared he needed it. If he was too sleepy to hear the doorbell one night, Sanzu could come in and get comfortable without waking him up.
Ran had used the key a couple of times, but he was gone before Rindou could have noticed. He would open the door, sit on the sofa and watch television for a while while he felt the emptiness eating him from inside his chest. Then he would make sure his brother was still asleep, peek into the room and listen to his steady, heavy breathing. Afterwards, he would leave the place and leave the key where it was.
Sanzu had used it so many times he had once forgotten it in his pocket. When he needed to kill the loneliness at night and convince himself there was still something to sober up, he would take a shower and sneak into Rindou's bed.
"Doesn't that make you feel lonely?"
Ran stopped at a traffic light. He turned to Sanzu. A deep red color dyed the interior of the car, reflected in those blue eyes. He turned a deaf ear to the question.
"Where do I leave you?"
"Anywhere is fine," Sanzu shrugged.
Ran didn't need a partner. And, if he had it, he would still feel the same. He didn't need anyone. Love was not for him, he did not have many friends and he preferred to stay at home, with his Sunday movies and his books. Over the years he had taken a great liking to reading. He didn't have to leave home when those pages held much better worlds.
"Are you going to finish what you started?" he asked, swallowing hard.
Leaning on Sanzu like that to keep from crying hadn't been in his bingo card that night. Sanzu rubbed his hand over his face and sniffed. He had run out of cocaine, but he had other things in his apartment.
“Maybe.”
"I suppose some of you have it easier than others to disappear," he swallowed again. The green light illuminated the car and he carefully pressed down on the accelerator. “The rest of us are still here, dealing with all this shit.”
It hadn't been a malicious comment, or at least he hadn't planned it to be. The whole fucking world knew that Sanzu was a polydrug addict who took every opportunity to get into the first thing he could get his hands on; that no one wanted to be near him when he was high, that no one wanted to get swept up in his whirlwind. Shit, it was even pretty clear that even Manjiro couldn't stand him.
And yet, Sanzu grimaced, as if he had heard something horrifying. His voice changed greatly and he clenched his fists, spitting out word for word.
“You say that like it has always been my first choice,” he hissed. “Like I have never done another fucking thing.”
Ran rolled his eyes. He was about to retort, but suddenly he felt the metallic caress of the gun barrel.
"Don't forget your place, Haitani," Sanzu added, pressing the gun against the executive's head. “Watch that mouth”
He began to notice the soft tremor that ran through his limbs and infected the weapon. Ran looked at Sanzu, noticing the way his wrist went weak and tears welled up in his irises, his jaw clenched, his upper lip lifted.
He had touched where he shouldn't, where it still hurt. So everyone had a place to poke around and pull out thorns. Sanzu was no different, lowering the pistol and putting it away with a hint of pain and bewilderment in his expression. He was touching his arm that had trembled so much, looking away uncomfortably. That shit was eating away at his brain and one day it would be too late.
"Leave me here," he ordered.
He turned on the blinker and pulled up to the first sidewalk he saw, next to the parked cars. The park next door was empty and the swings moved with their chains squeaking in the breeze.
Sanzu opened the door and a draft of cold air made his hair stand on end.
"I'm sorry I screwed up with your brother," he said, before getting out of the car.
"I don't care how many times you apologize, I'll never forgive you."
The door slammed shut before he finished saying it. Sanzu shoved his hands into his pockets and started walking, the wind stirring the pink cloud of his hair. A spot of color in a nocturnal world.
That guy was sick in the head. Ran touched his head as he watched him disappear down the street, still feeling the kiss of the gun on the temple. Then he leaned over the wheel and finally allowed himself to cry.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Next time he didn't stop. His skin turning reddish, his teeth slipping down furrows of warm saliva in irregular lines, feeling him tremble under the desperate touch of his lips; colliding, entangling, his mouths meeting fiercely, brushing against the heat of violent desire from whom he had not seen in a long time.
He knew all the gestures that made him him, everything that characterized the sweet taste of alcohol from hours before, the touch of his lips, each corner and part of his body rubbing. Rindou turned Sanzu over, taking him down from his lap and onto the mattress. Those blue eyes flickered in his direction as he held his neck to prevent him from moving and thus retrieve a kiss.
Sanzu was docile if ordered to. He staying still, with his dim and obedient presence, shyly moving his tongue against his, as if he was afraid of disturbing him. Once his mind caught on that he had a master, he did his best to shut up and please him. And Rindou hated that it was so.
He eased his pressure from his neck—never harsh, just gripped firmly enough for him to feel it there—and trailed his fingers gently over his jaw. Sanzu's legs wrapped around his waist, the pink flower of his lips parted, wet, at the touch of his thumb on them.
It was so much better when he turned like this, bubbly happy to have a kiss, but Rindou knew that, the next morning, Sanzu would go back to being the same miserable man everyone knew, the one he had become.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Rindou arrived early. Which meant three things.
The first was that Ran had been up late, for whatever reason; the second was that he hadn't passed anyone in the elevator, and therefore he hadn't had to have any silly conversations about the weather. The third was that there was a huge chance that he would get sleepy waiting.
Sanzu had also arrived early. He was the only person there, sitting near the head of the table. He looked up from the papers, tired blue eyes deep in circles and ringed with pink locks falling across his forehead, and murmured a muffled greeting to which Rindou returned a sleepy smile.
He sat in his seat, assuming they would have another boring meeting about drug trafficking, or some problem threatening them from the outside.
A strange déjà vu attacked his head with a tingle as he saw Sanzu reading and rereading the same paper, over and over again. The boy rested his elbow on the table, touching his hair, subtly grabbing and pulling at the strands already caressed by blonde tones.
"You look like shit too," Sanzu muttered, knowing he was being watched.
Rindou pursed his lips, pretending he had not been startled. He cleared his throat, his mind somewhat numb from the early hour.
“You should touch up those roots."
"I don't care," Sanzu shrugged, not even looking at him.
He wanted to ask if he would like him to do it for him, but he didn't. They didn't talk about that kind of thing in places like this. He made a mental note to buy dye, and with that, he pictured Sanzu sitting between his legs, letting him cover up those hideous blonde roots and replace them with the soft bubblegum pink he was wearing.
A nervous sigh escaped from Sanzu's mouth, who was looking at the clock, looking for some space between the hands. He would turn the page over, read it, and rub his cheek against his knuckles. His lips were dry, pale.
"You also don't care if you can concentrate or not?" Rindou muttered.
It was like undressing him at once. Sanzu hated being read so easily.
"I'm just tired," he said, perhaps more abrupt than he intended.
Rindou nodded. He didn't ask anything again, he just kept watching how it was difficult for him to remember things after a few minutes; how, during the meeting, he constantly went back to review his notes, afraid of screwing up.
As always, he remained silent and wondered how many more things had to happen for Sanzu to quit drugs.