Changeling

by Zycros

Summary:

Kiryu and Majima is in a young, tentative relationship, until the day a strange baby lands on Majima's doorstep.

Low fantasy.

Chapter 1: (good oden)

 

In general, Kiryu thought of himself as a man that wasn't easily fazed.

He had after all, at the tender age of twenty two, survived one expulsion from the gokudo, escaped a murder charge by the skin of his teeth, and lived through about sixty attempts on his life on a daily basis, all of them perpetrated by his rival/lover/rabid pet.

There were few things however, that were more surprising than finding your lover handling a baby in your apartment at 4 a.m or thereabouts, yourself half-pumped with adrenaline (pocket circuit, very exciting) and Triple Spicy Ramen (less so).

"Majima-san," He announced, speaking to his hallucination.

And what a vision: sweaty Majima in his bedroom - not that there were any other rooms - but not because they were about to throw down, or exert themselves in strange and fascinating positions, but because there was a wailing infant in his arms. Majima's snake-skin jacket had been crushed and transformed into a swaddling cloth, and the apartment, never freshly scented, smelled of stale piss and shit.

Judging from the sheen on Majima's forehead, perhaps the smell wasn't coming from the baby.

"Where the fuck were you, Kiryu-chan? I've been calling you all day!"

"No, you haven't." Kiryu insisted. There were too many bizarre things to call out, but he felt it was important that they began at the beginning - which was that he, Kiryu, had not received any phone calls all day long from him, Majima, despite checking his phone every 20 minutes or thereabouts for those calls. Majima could be dead, or in a coma with pollen allergies. What the hell would Kiryu know?

Without asking he strode across the room and picked up Majima's phone, scrolled down the list of calls, and found that Majima had made sixteen calls to 'Kiryuna Onsen Gunma (good oden)'.

"Never mind that, look at this!" Majima thrust the babe under his nose. It smelt absolutely offensive, and Kiryu wrinkled his nose. It looked like a boy - or maybe an ugly girl? - a face like pumpkin squash that only its mother could love. It, or he, was smiling at Kiryu with the most gleeful expression he'd ever seen on a baby, laughing whenever Majima shook the bundle in his face.

"Yeah, I'm looking at it,"

Kiryu calmly took off his jacket, and folded it into a corner. His room was sparse: one futon (stained), one small table (now covered with various baby-food products, obviously from Poppo), and seven beer cans and a gas-operated cooker for BBQs. Those beer cans used to be on the table too, but Majima had swept them off without so much as an excuse-me. "Why don't you put that down, Majima-no-niisan, so it won't get hurt?"

"Ehh? Won't get hurt?"

He cracked his knuckles. "Yeah, when I break your neck for cheating on me."

"Woah, hey now wait a second--"

No seconds were waited. In one swift action he pried the baby from Majima's surprised hands, placed it on the futon, and landed a kick that sent Majima damned near flying across the room - across the wall, in fact, as Majima tore a Yakuza-sized hole through his neighbour's paper-thin wall and landed in the empty, astounded room.

"No." Striding across the room, he seized Majima's head and slammed it head-first into the neighbour's kitchen top. And why the hell not? In for a hole, in for a pound. The neighbour will be receiving a sizable damned reimbursement from Nii-san anyway and the more God-blessed if it burned a hole right through the damned man's pockets.

"No. One. Else," He enunciated, punctuating his words with counter-face action. "That's what you said." Somewhere the baby was squealing in glee. Majima's nose split like a watermelon.

"Ain't m--"

"No one else, you promised." Down went the damned head, and a bright red streak on the countertop.

"Ain't--" Red froth from Majima's nose - but that was okay. He's young. He'll heal, from that and also this, and this, and a double helping of this, plus the skull Kiryu was about to crack six ways into Sunday. A bottle scrambled against the kitchen counter, chased by leather gloved hands, and came down with a crash on Kiryu's head.

"Ain't mine what-the-fuck Kiryu-chan!"

Kiryu just growled, charged, and slammed Majima into the next wall - and the next apartment. They ended up on the ground, wrestling for dear life and breath and space to swing an arm.

"For fuck's fake, I shaid it ain't mine!" Majima landed a punch that sent Kiryu sprawling, then charged off back into Kiryu's apartment with Kiryu hot on his heels. He raided something on the ground, a bamboo basket from the looks, a picnic affair and seizing something, shook it at Kiryu's face.

Look, he said. Pointing right at the smeary hiragana.

THIS IS NOT YOURS BUT KEEP IT SAFE.

Kiryu had to blink hard to shift his focus from maiming and murdering.

Majima pushed the note against him, one hand still holding his bleeding nose. He'd just had it broken not two weeks ago, dammit, and it did not need breaking again.

"Kid ain't mine - ow fuck, what the fuck Kiryu, why, just why you gotta go for the nose again - and much as I like to fight ya over shit, this ain't one of them fool tricks."

"So you're expecting me to believe that this kid..."

"Showed up like damned Momotaro on my office doorstep addressed to me, but not really mine? Damned fucking straight - and I'll be breaking your neck if ya wisecrack me about it."

"You'd better," Kiryu growled, holding onto the increasingly incredulous and bloody note. "Start at the beginning."

—
—
—

So the beginning was this, short and simple, all Goro-like.

It's Sunday and the boys are off and it was just him and a weekend of zombie-flicks alone in Majima-central.

The plan was when he's done at 6 p.m he'd be going out for a prowl to harass Kiryu-chan for a bit, but until then it was gonna be a damned good movie marathon. He'd had on his favorite zombie flick of late (Zetsubou Z-day Kiwami Deluxe) a CD worn down by repeated viewings the way Kiryu wore down his Passionate Manly Bathhouse CDs.

"Cut the shit," Kiryu said. "I don't see why you gotta drag my movies into your narrative."

Well, okay, but just for flavor of what was really going on in Majima Central. So it was getting to the good part. Murder scene #5 where Zetsubou Z would cut down the demonic swathe with a chainsaw rigged to a flamethrower rigged to a gasoline tank, and when the victims were screaming the loudest he heard suddenly another scream, much more visceral and much less screen, coming strictly from outside the deadbeat office they rented for tax purposes.

"What the hell?" He said, and paused the video. The scream went on, squalling loud then low like a bitch what's got its tits torn off --

Why, Kiryu asked, did he know what a bitch sounded like with its tits torn off. Please, please don't tell me--

Ya, but hush, who cares? These are the D E T A I L S, not so important just to flavor it, like furikake on your rice balls, ya see? So there was screaming, yelling etc., and Majima grabbed his baseball bat first and foremost, because ya never know when you need to beat up someone, pronto express. You can bat on it (get it, bat? No? Stop frowning, Kiryu-chan. Ya gon' git saggy), well you can bat on it that most visitors to Majima-Corp were not, so to speak, friendly garden Yakuza.

He tore apart the door damned near off its hinge, and what does he see? No damn nothing air. He looked left and right like a good boy at a traffic intersection and still nothing. Then a wail from his feet freaked him out something fresh, thinking his doormat was being tortured to death - and there was Momotaro, all red and fresh, like a tomato, yelling at the top of his lungs.

"In the basket?"

Ya, basket.

So what does Majima do? Well, never fear, he was an expert at this. He did Goro-like and prodded the baby with the bat a bit, just to see if it would explode, if it was just a baby-shaped bomb someone decided to plant on his doorstep. But no, the only thing the baby exploded with were farts, and toxic farts are these yessir, and in time Majima became convinced that it was not a baby-shaped terrorist object, but a baby live-and-healthy, and brought him inside.

"Took me a while to calm him down, I can tell ya that," He said. "Kid took his own sweet time, and I had to clean damned ass before he'd even let me lift him up without shaking his fist at me. He yanked my hair clean off - two strands!"

"Okay, Nii-san - clearly a tragedy. That's when you found the note?"

"Ya, sure, when I was about done hyperventilating to death while I did more math than I never did in my life. I was thinkin' hard on all the ladies I ever tapped - wondering, what the hell? - but they were all more than two years ago, y'know? And I know they said babies ain't made in a day but surely they don't take two years? That's when I found the note, and some kinda accounting paper under the kid's ass--"

"Wait, what accounting papers?"

These here, sure. Goro held up the crumpled, shat-ridden piece of paper.

"That's.… Nii-san, that's a birth certificate."

"Well, I'll be damned, it is!? I didn't check - there were too many damned words."

Kiryu with a sigh took the document from Majima, and wiped off as best he could brown thumbprints both big and small. Whoever this child belonged to, it had the same kind of hygiene as the grown child who'd unwillingly adopted him. He scanned the document quickish-like, and tapped a column.

He cleared his throat. "I think this is about to blow your mind, Majima-nii-san."

"Ehhh?"

"Says here this child's name is GOMO MAZIMA." He let that sank in. "Uhh, did you hear me?"

Majima look stunned, earth-shattered and mind-juiced. He snatched the paper right back from Kiryu, damned near ripping it in half and — what the hell? The name was handwritten, squeezed into a tiny space between the edge of the column and a black bar. The kid's real name had been redacted by a careless marker.

"What the fuck? This some kinda sick joke?"

"Maybe. It certainly isn't official. Though that birthday..." The very top of the paper listed the child's birthday as 14, May, 1964, which was pretty long ago for someone who's still a baby in 1990. "Isn't that your birthday?"

"Aw Kiryu-chan, it's sweet you remembered--"

"Hard to forget a birthday bash that involved actual bashing, is all I'm saying."

"Details, Kiryu-chan! They'll be the death of you! You'll be eighty and wondering, where the hell did my life go? You know what you won't think of? Turnip stew with six strands of Shimeji in Autumn '86. Unlike this kid here, which I sure as hell will be thinking about when I'm fuckin' eighty. What the fuck? And who the fuck?"

"There's only one way to find out," Kiryu patted the child, who upon cessation of violence in its vicinity, had let out a sulky gurgle. Yes, the child had a glee in his eye that looked very, very familiar indeed. "Why don't you look up your birth certificate? It's got an ID, doesn't it? The ID on this one hasn't been tampered with, so if it turns out it matches, then either someone stole a copy of your birth certificate or… This child is you."

Majima looked extremely uncomfortable at the suggestion that he produced anything, almost half as uncomfortable as he looked at the suggestion that the child might be himself.

"That'd be nice and all but thing is Kiryu-chan..."

"No. Is this when you tell me you're secretly a Chinese immigrant too?"

"Nah, nothin' like that. It's worse. All my shit is back home with my old man."

 

--

 

Chapter 2: touch-me-not

This is what Majima Goro would like to be doing on a fine summer day, circa 1990, one of the last good ones before he hit the big ol' thirties in a couple of years and had to worry about things like mortgages.

He would, for one, like to be somewhere cold. Oh boy, did he love the cold.

Maybe Hokkaido, where it ain't as hot as Kamurocho even in Summer, and they can have meaty BBQs and drown in beer, living off that good real estate dime that Kiryu-chan had. Hell, he could even pop on by Abashiri Prison. Maybe try this cuddling shit with Kiryu-chan, and spend long lazy summer nights all tangled up in someone else's sheets.

What he absolutely did not want to do:

Driving down the freeway off to some boonies in Aridagawa to hit up his old man for his birth certificate. This was not how he'd envisioned the prodigal son returning - indeed he did not envision the prodigal son returning at all - and if he did not love his driver he woulda shank him and leave him to bleed into gasoline before their 6th intersection.

"Stop groaning," Kiryu ordered, terse and stoic under the melting heat of a car with no AC.

"I'm meltinggggg Kiryu-chan… I'm just a sad, sad ice-cream, and my life's at an end..."

"You'll live."

"I see it… Visions dancing before my eyes. Mama-cow and papa-snowman, this is as far as I go..."

Kiryu cracked an involuntary smile, and jacked up the bad 80's pop louder to drown out Majima. "It wouldn't be so hot if you took off your jacket. We've got hours yet to go. You'll cook in that leather."

"Ehhhhhh, Kiryu-chan, if you wanted me naked you shoulda said so. How 'bout you pull up at one of these here rest stops? There's restrooms enough for a blowjob or ten."

Kiryu darted a glance at their package, snoozing comfortably in the back seat, where all the ACs - weak as they were - were aimed at. Satisfied that the kid was asleep and wasn't about to grow up lewd and indecent from what he overheard, he turned them over into the fast lane.

"I'll take that as a no. I'll go back to melting then… So hooooooot. This weather is almost as hot as I am."

"Don't complain. Anyway, what's your beef with going home? You haven't stopped whining since I said we should go."

"I don't like the old man, what's there to explain?"

"Uhh, all of it?"

"Ehh. You know how it is."

"I don't, I really don't.

"You know. Sad kid in sad house all alone with a dad that likes booze more than he likes the kid. Very touching. The kinda shit they tell you at Shangri-la so you'd tip them triple because your heart goes out to them."

"Yeah, and is it true?"

"Naw." He flashed a grin, all lewd teeth in a snarl. "Gonna have to yank it out of me with pliers, Kiryu-chan. And ya gotta tie me up good and smack me 'round before I'd talk."

That was all he'd say and Kiryu knew better than to push him. Soon enough he'd find out, maybe, maybe, what made Majima ticked and tocked.

—
—
—

The entrance to Aridagawa was a forgettable sign that someone had planted there maybe in the post-war era, and had been ignored since by everything except the weather. It meant that there was no clear indication of where exactly the town began - at the sign perhaps, or further on where the old shops peddling watches and calculators from the nearby manufacturing plant began? So you went from street to street asking, is this really the town? What about now, am I here, or there?

The town led to the country, which were all farmsteads run down into gardens run down into overgrown yards, and sometimes you saw maybe old people or scarecrows. You're never sure unless you watch, and see if the birds peck at them, and if they don't you know that that there's a real life person-thing you can ask directions from.

You'd get it all mangled with an accent, kind of Kansai and kind of Kanto, neither here nor there, so that Kiryu now knew where Majima got his accent. It didn't come from some kid who wanted to be Kansai real bad. He was just a kid who grew up in the middle of fucking nowhere and got Kansai on the TV.

"The damned roads are all changed up." Majima growled, slamming the door. They were parked in front of an old inn, one of those ryokan that once upon a time were luxurious and promised great things like six-course meals and theater. "Sorry Kiryu-chan. I don't know where the fuck we are. Sun's setting. We gotta stay for sure. Maybe the staff might know."

"No problem." He got Gomo-chan out of the backseat, and cooed at him when the baby rubbed his eyes, disgruntled. Majima got them rooms: nothing fancy, a twin room with a three-course meal and a hand-drawn map. The room smelled slightly moldy with Summer, but was otherwise immaculate. There was no AC though, and it was as hot inside as the car. They changed hurriedly into the inn's yukata.

"Fuckin' oven. Holy shit, I thought my balls were gonna boil. No more babies except this one, ever."

"Language, Majima-no-nii-san."

"Ehhhhh, fucking fuck fuck fuck. Kid can grow up real worse than hearing that. Right, kid?"

Gomo gurgled agreeably.

Majima dandled the boy on his knee, balancing him precariously around the middle like a seesaw. The babe, always one for the thrills, let out an excited squeal. Majima patted the child with the hands of an absent dad. "Ya ain't so bad when you're not shitting yourself."

Kiryu watched him interact with the kid, less heartwarming than he expected. Majima juggled the baby up and down until he got bored, then unsheathed his tanto and offered the sheathe to the boy. Without hesitation, the kid put it in his mouth, drooling something fierce. That preoccupied Gomo until it got late enough that shy fireflies began to peek out of the foliage, and he clambered after them on shaky knees.

"You'd make an awful father, Majima." He teased.

"Ya don't say." Shuddered, exaggerated. "Day'd start in the west before someone said, woah Goro, ya an awesome dad. 56 marks."

"56 marks is kind of a failing grade..."

"Exactly. Watch the damned kid. I'm gonna go take a dip."

He went off with a cool wave of his hand to the inn's hot spring, without invitation or waiting for Kiryu - which in itself KIryu figured to be a sign that Majima was in one of his foul moods again. Did he put his foot in it, said something wrong? There'd been a brief shadow when Kiryu had teased him...

Sometimes he thought maybe Majima was manic - his mood swings were black and red with no shades in between. Over the course of their one-and-a-half year relationship Kiryu had seen him go from a hundred to zero: one moment he was starting fires on Pink Street, the next he would disappear six weeks into a funk so deep that when Kiryu found him again, he was in a safehouse watching reruns from a filthy futon even lice wouldn't lie in. Too late, everything hurts, he would groan. And Kiryu would drag him to a clinic to find infested wounds on him he'd been too depressed to fixed up. Really, such a child, so heroic and helpless all at the same time. Lucid but insane, the sort of heroes to populate Greek myths, who could move heavens and nurse petty grudges in the same accursed breath.

Kiryu snapped up the kid just as he was about to tumble off into the small garden that bordered their room, and looked into those lively brown eyes.

"If I'd ever had to imagine Nii-san as a baby, it must be someone very like you, Gomo-chan."

The baby, having no reply, seized his nose.

His mind made up, he placed the child back into his basket and covered him up with a towel.

Be good, he admonished. Then as an afterthought: don't kill anyone while we're out.

—
—
—

He found Majima no problem: he appeared as a corpse, floating face-downwards in the hot spring with his white ass sticking up in the air. Kiryu's first instinct was to panic softcore and yell the house down, but just in time he remembered - this is Majima, he was probably having a breath-holding contest with some monkeys.

"Majima," He impressed himself by how calm he sounded. Contrast this to the Kiryu a year ago, who could be shocked by all of Majima antics. Take your pick, they all blew his mind, one-size-fits-all. If he had a thousand yen every time he had a heart attack, he'd have enough by now to buy a Smile Burger. The whole restaurant, not the value meal.

Majima surfaced, face like a red lobster. He had removed his eyepatch and the dead flesh judged Kiryu's impassivity.

"Aww, Kiryu-chan. Ya didn't scream like a lil girl. That ain't fun."

"I'm not even going to ask."

He relaxed into a corner of the hot spring - there was no danger of them being interrupted by other guests, there not being any other guests at all. Only two pairs of visitor's slippers and both of them theirs.

Kind of a dying town, Majima said. Or maybe it's dead, but no one's bothered to pass down the obituary to the townspeople yet. Kiryu kept out of the way while Majima did his small laps, kicking off from one side of the onsen to the other, a giant steaming carp stewing angrily in broth.

"You foul?" Kiryu asked.

"Guess,"

"Short and snippy. I'll give it a ten. Why?"

"How about head, Kiryu-chan? Let's see how long I can hold my breath underwater, eh? We can see who lasts longer - you or me. Loser gets either mort or la petite mort. Heh."

He glared at Majima's slick back, glistening and ignoring Kiryu as he swam gracefully around the empty pool. Majima was all lean muscle, not an ounce of extra fat on him. He was beautiful and he knew it, reveled in it, paraded it. Always tempting, tempting, tempting you off the rails of the conversation into his little games.

"Don't distract me with all that sex-talk. You always do that when you're upset."

"Then maybe ya could upset me less by not asking me questions that upset me? How 'bout that? Genius right?" He dunked his head, surfaced, spew out water. "If you get more head, Kiryu-chan, you might find you have more head to use. Be less dumb. How 'bout that?"

Kiryu narrowed his eyes. "Fighting words."

"If only," Majima yawned theatrically. "I got no use for ya unless you're fucking me or fighting me. So why don't you get your nads outta the spring before I kick your ass? Le'me alone."

"Majima," He implored, gliding closer to the other man. If he could grab onto Majima, he could shake him until he saw reason. Could wrangle him into order with kisses or kicks. Kisses and kicks.

"Naw," Majima dodged, dancing in four feet of water as elegant as a whore. "Leave me alone. Ya had ya chance."

"And while ya at it, stay the fuck outta my dad's business. You're my ride here, Kiryu-chan. Not a damned dime more. Ya got no business looking so damned eager. My story is mine, get it? You don't get to pry and eavesdrop. Now git."

Kiryu took his sweet time obeying - but he obeyed anyway, because he knew better than to fight Majima when he was in this mood. He'd take pleasure in wrecking half the ryokan just so they'd end up in jail and therefore no longer compelled to visit his old man.

Oh yes, Kiryu knew him well by now. Majima was a touch-me-not, at the first sign of trouble he would double down into himself, folding tighter and tighter until he was out of reach. Would rather die than be uprooted. He blazed out of emotional entanglements faster than hell and twice as hot, and if you asked him - hey Goro, what were you like, where did you grow up, are we or aren't we a thing? - then he was gone. Off-grid a month just to punish you for daring to ask.

Majima, as emotionally retarded as KIryu himself was. What a pair. What a joke, if Majima thought he would butt out for good. There would be no better chance than this one to find out more about the man.

Kiryu took himself off to the front desk for a smoke and instructions, not trusting Majima with the map. He wouldn't put it pass the nutjob to draw squiggles onto the map and say here, here's my home, and when they get there there'd be a big fucking nothing in the middle of nowhere and Majima going: Ooops, I don't know, maybe he moved.

Naw, he had to Majima-proof everything, even something as simple as getting beer from Poppo. Kiryu'd be crazy if he trusted Majima with something like navigation.

He folded the new map away, thanked the staff, and headed back to their room, where there was no sign of Majima. Was he still in the hot spring?

Kiryu backed out of the room, and checked the number - that's right, room number 5 - and went back in. A strange, tingling feeling began at the nape of his neck and spread its numbness down his arms, the kind of adrenaline he got before an important fight. This was the correct room. That was his jacket and wallet near the table, right there.The keys to the car too, untouched.

So where were the other stuff - like the kid, and Majima's things, and perhaps more importantly... Where were Kiryu's pants?

—

 

 

Chapter 3: something fierce

On one of the many small paths that crisscrosed Aridagawa's paddy fields, a maniac was doing twenty five miles per hour on a stolen bicycle.

Folks were enjoying their evening teas, set out on their terrace and weedy yards, when this person — shirtless and screeching, came bearing down on them like a demon himself.

Rattling too, rattling rattling rattling a small squashed creature tied to the front of the bicycle, precariously perched on the bicycle's basket.

One man caught some pants to his face. He was only walking home when out of nowhere came a pair of grey pants, quite clean but obviously worn, cut in the exact kind of fashion that the man (49 years old Takigawa) enjoyed.

"Enjoy it oji-san! Ya see a man in a red shirt, ya run!" This was yelled at him by someone rattling by, gone before he could even pull the pants off his head.

Somewhere down the lane a woman was muttering, "Ain't never been so noisy around here since those kids move away..."

Somewhere on the bike, Majima was muttering too. "Gomo-chan we're gonna go find your grand-dad, how's bout that? Ya keen?" He tickled the kid with one hand, and steered the bike with the other. No fear, none sir. He was an expert on the bike, could do you wheelies and willies, had torn up this countryside more than once on a rusty unhinged bike that foreshadowed the development of his Personality.

The kid smiled at him, all gummy and gooey with small teeth poking outta his mouth, clearly enjoying the wild ride and utterly unfazed at the extraordinary speed in which all four of his limbs were being transported on the deathtrap. He was holding onto a grey square of cloth as a blankie.

"We ditched that deadbeat, didn't we, kid?" They turned corners smooth. Majima knew this area like the palm of his hand, like holy hell would he ever be lost in this one-act town. Only cabbage-stupid Kiryu-chan would believe him.

"No worries," He told the kid. "Whatever we do, Kiryu-chan will alwaaaaays take us back in. Don't matter none how pissed we make him."

To the untarnished silence of the night he yelled, "That's his one good point!"

Gomo-chan had no reply, but he grabbed onto the basket railing and rattled it, and Majima interpreted this as a challenge - to see how fast he could cycle on a pitch-black road and maybe break a couple of records.

—
—
—

Somewhere, somehow Kiryu was NOT doing twenty-five miles per hour in the car.

He blamed it on the late start, which must have been what Majima had counted on when he not only disappeared Kiryu's pants, but had also - in an act that must be all demon and spite - cut out a giant hole in the back of his jacket, so that before he could do anything at all he had to wander out embarassingly into the closed town to look for clothes.

There were more shuttered stores than subway lines in Tokyo this late in the night, and Kiryu had to spend a good part of two hours wandering around before he found a slow Konbini that stocked a couple of generic menswear. Even then he was missing most of decent apparel, and looked a frightful sight. A black jacket two sizes too small for him. Shorts for the great indoors and indecent elsewhere. For protection against the night wind - a plastic Parka and three pairs of socks.

He almost preferred stealing the inn's yukata.

Knowing how this always goes down though, before the night was over, he was going to be torn and bloody, and it would be more convenient not to be torn and bloody in other people's clothes.

So then, that late start.

Now he was cruising around the dark streets, no one around to ask for directions, or if there were - they were glued to baseball commentary and the blue light of post-work TV. Houses were few and far in between the moment he left the center of the town, and what houses there were were asleep.

Turning on the car's light, he looked helplessly at his map.

He couldn't make head or tails of it - not now, maybe not even in daylight either. Should he turn back? But no, that would be what Majima wanted, and Kiryu right now explicitly would not give Majima the satisfaction of having executed the perfect plan.

He cruised, meandering some more, driving around aimlessly in the criss-crossing country roads. A few times he nearly drove into someone's paddy, cursed, backed up, started again only wet now, and became lost again. What was he even looking for? Did he even know? Would he recognize Majima's old house if he was staring at it? Must be a plaque somewhere, but damned if he would know.

What was he even looking for?

Majima, obviously. Then more of Majima - some kind of key or wedge to open up that clam-like heart, to boil the man alive until he yield up his secrets, peeled back one by one like a dead man's fingers.

Someone rapped on his window and flashed a light into Kiryu's eyes, bright enough to burn off his sight for a whole minute.

"Good evening, sir," Came the voice, and then a minute later, the dimnutive figure of a policeman. "You're not from around here, are'cha."

"No, I'm from Tokyo," Kiryu explained, reflexively handing him his driver's license. Policemen always want that: driver's license, then the rude and disparaging scowl from one upstanding man to a man less so. Not this one though. He held onto Kiryu's license like spare change, carelessly.

"What are ya doing around here then? Likesay, kind of a late time to be sightseeing."

"I'm looking for a friend - and his family home. The Majima family."

"Majima? Ahh, hmm, I think you're, yes, you're not on the right way at all. Fact as I see you're driving off the town completely. They're in the opposite direction, on Arigawa Hill."

Kiryu looked blankly at all the forests surrounding the town, the paddies, the fields. They were so tall that you couldn't see night sky unless you craned your head upwards. As far as city-boy Kiryu was concerned, every direction was a hill.

"Uhhh… And which way is the hill?"

The policeman peered closer at him, squinting. He had a kindly face, burned and tanned by the sun he was bronze. Sun-wrinkled and weather-beaten. Kind, dry leather.

"I think I'd better come with you, son. I'm not saying you're a bad driver, but there's not much chance a non-local like you will find it this time of the night. You sure this is important? Can't wait for morning?"

"Sure," And no, he couldn't wait - Majima might have offed his dad by then. "You sure I'm not imposing?"

"Naw, my place is near the hills anyway, so I would have been walking all night if ya hadn't come along when'cha did. Three birds with one stone. If ya hadn't needed a guide I would have asked for a ride anyway."

Kiryu felt used. Must be a local trait - brazen requests and unapologetic demands.

They rode in silence for a full fifteen minutes, while they navigated back to the town center, pass the ryokan again, and crossed over to the other side of the town river. The country unfolded its secrets more willingly with a guide, secreting Kiryu into paths that were closed off to his stranger eyes, opening forest clearings that looked like thickets to a passerby.

Ahead were the hills, Kiryu was told, and he could see a vague hump-shaped darkness in the distance, and spots of lights perforating the hills, a constellation of scattered population.

"That's the Majima family home," Officer Sato pointed at a random dot, halfway up the hill. "Mind if I smoke?"

The car filled slowly with the smell of Hi-Lites. Come to think of it, one of two brands stocked in the konbini. Maybe this too, was where Majima had picked up his habit, those lousy cigarettes of his.

"Mind if I ask why ya looking for the Majima family?"

"Ehh, well. He's my friend."

"The young Majima boy, I'm thinking? Ya don't look old enough to need to know the father - unless you're in insurance."

"Nah, nothing like that. Real estate."

"Hmm. You trying to get them to sell? Because I'll tell ya, it won't work. The old man won't give an inch. Last spring there was a landslide down the hills, and we said to him - oi Majima, lend us a hand won't ya? Your place got the best access to the road we gotta clear. Well, he gave us nothing. We ended up having to dig around the hill to clear it out. Won't give an inch. Not an i---nch. Ya got no luck if you want him to sell."

"Just visiting. I'm friends with Majima junior."

"How'd you know he was back in town? He ain't been here for fifteen, twenty years." Kiryu explained off the documents, though he didn't do a good job of explaining why someone he came into town with would abruptly ditched him and ran off.

Sato gave him a blank look, confused but too polite to point out the inconsistencies of his narrative. "Huh, well. Whadya know."

Lost in thought, they drove around to the soundtrack of insect chirps. Sato's voice was too low to be heard easily over the radio, and playing music felt like a crime, a rude loud knife, so quiet was the countryside.

At length, Sato started, hesitatingly, "The kid, Goro-chan. He still the same as he was?"

"Only know him for a couple of years, can't really say," Non-commital, vague. Don't indicate that for most of those years he'd either been filching Majima out of rubble or fucking him stupid in bathroom stalls, that damned perv.

"Yeah, hard for me to say too, and I've known the kid since I was born."

"Yeah? What was he like?" Easy now, not too eager. Don't let on you're so damned curious about him you're fit to burst.

"Kind of an extreme kid, y'know? Enterprising too. One time I told him, Goro-chan, ya can't take fruit off other people's trees. Only stuff you take outta the hills. Well, that got his attention. He got real wide-eyed and bushy-tailed and asked, all of it? Well yes, I said. Next thing I know he rounded up all the boys from his school and stripped the hills bare, sold every persimmon he found off. The townspeople were barking mad they won't be seeing bamboo shoots for weeks yet."

"Sounds like Majima-san," Kiryu chuckled.

"Well that ain't the last we heard of it. When we told him, naw Goro-chan, that ain't right - ya gotta be part of the community. Well, he became part of the community alright - started rounding up old folks what got too lonely and took them up the hills for picnics. Tours, he called them, and charged them something fierce. Kids of them folks real spitting mad when they found out."

He pointed out a tiny branching road. "Right at that junction there, careful of the pit,"

"But it ain't just that, Kid also — " At this he broke off, seemed to see Kiryu for the first time and judged him. Should he perhaps, bare so much? He said he was a friend, but he looked damned shady too.

"Majima-san's quite the businessman these days too," Kiryu added helpfully. "A big shot manager in the cities, all the way at Osaka."

"Boy, Osaka? Really?"

"Yeah, number one club in Sotenbori."

"Club, huh. He always was a smart one." Censorious.

Kiryu was starting to see why Majima wouldn't be too fond of coming back home - he couldn't think of anything they'd done since they were eighteen that would be approved of here, wouldn't be taken apart and raked over hot coals.

"Well, at least he's doing well. He was always a wild child, ain'tchaknow. Always off after other people's things. A pot here, a towel there. Ya didn't have the heart to tell him off but he had to be, wild animal that he was. If it ain't for Saejima's kid..."

Before Kiryu could pressed him for more, juicy tidbits of Majima's far-off past, the officer indicated a small neat home. "Pull up here, son."

"This here as far as I go. Up the hill there's only one path so ya won't be lost. They're the lessee… Sixth, no, Fifth house from the start. Ya need anything, I'll be down here at my place."

Kiryu thanked him, and drove off. The Majima family house was lit up like a small star, twenty minutes above him.

—

 

Chapter 4: a brick-and-zinc affair

Thing is.

Thing is, thing is, thing is.

When Majima got told by Shimano, ya about t' get yerself a family, this ain't what he had in mind at all. For one, he never asked, never wanted, never dreamnt that he might be saddled with family.

That was a serious word right there, family. A family ain't what the clan make it out to be - just a unit that waxed strong and waned weak, faceless and anonymous as a chess piece. What it was, was a whole lot of people with their own quirks, personalities, desperate wants and ugly pasts, all crushed into a tiny ass ball and slipped into Majima's hands - then a pat from Shimano. Go on, ya in charge now. Well, what the fuck. He didn't want to be.

He was a lone wolf, mad dog kinda gig, and he liked it that way. But Majima got his Majima-gumi anyway, an offshoot of an offshoot but a family nonetheless, and here he was again - even more burdened by family, this time real blood-and-milk family, and some weird kid to boot, and on his heels was Kiryu-chan, which might be family someday anyway.

Some weeks ago he'd offered:

"Yo, Kiryu-chan, why don't you quit that gig of yours and join up with me? How many years you gotta run errands for Kazama before they let you in on the action?"

"It's fine. I'm learning," came the stoic answer. Kiryu didn't even bother looking up from his magazine. POCKET CIRCUIT MX MONTHLY was Somehow, more important than Majima and his own future.

"Ya learning to be an errand boy, is what you are. Ehh, errand boy. Erran-kun?" He marked each word with a slap, He'd peeled off his gloves, and slapped them absentmindedly on Kiryu's lil buzz-cut head. Kiryu wrinkled in annoyance, and concentrated fiercer on Pocket Circuits.

Ignored, languishing, alone, he extended and stretched on the floor beside Kiryu like a cat. The TV was playing something mindless again, zombies split ing apart and fusing together and becoming centipedes, all red all-time like a new year ad.

"Come on, Kiryu-channn, wouldn't it be fun if we got to fight together? You, me, and lots of heads to crack. Coulda be your future everyday with ya on my side."

"I am on your side, Majima-san," Kiryu raised a pointed eyebrow that spoke volumes, all mute. "Seventeen times last week, in fact. Do you ever go to a fight before calling me first?"

"Sure, when I'm about to go fight you." He chuckled. "But really, come on - Kiryu-chan. I'm bored, bored, bored. All these politics!"

He pulled a stern face, imitating Shimano's constipated grin. "Can't have Kazama's boy with you all the time, or they'll say we can't do shit without one of his puffed up faggots."

"Ya know what won't be a problem? If you were part of the famillly," He doled the words out slowly it, stretched himself out - indicating, look, look, there's me on the side too. How could you resist, Kiryu-chan?

"No, thanks. I owe Kazama-san one."

"Ya sure?"

"Yes. I am still with you on most of your jobs though - isn't that enough?"

"Ya, but--"

"Well, isn't it?"

"That's not the point."

"What is the point, then?"

But too late, Majima was already in a fit, a sulk, a mood - and would be in this storm until further notice.

Why did he do this? Stomping around, demanding things he know won't be given away, starting fights, pushing Kiryu away? He didn't know. Sometimes he tried to care, but thinking it through hurt his brain, and anyway he was no genius, no-genius, and didn't much care why every time something is halfway good he'd have to ride a wrecking ball through it.

"Come on, Nii-san, don't sulk again." Kiryu wrestled him down just as he was about to get up and make for the door - this time for months, he vowed - won't be needing no fucking Kiryu-chan if he smashed heads all the way from here to Asakusa. With one wide hand Kiryu had both Majima's hands pinned above him. He straddled Majima, the best way to make sure the older man didn't break free from the hold.

"I'll give you everything else, alright? Whatever you asked, whatever you want. It's yours."

Such an unconditional declaration from a boy-man of twenty two, so fucking ridiculous, but yet believable because it was serious-old-fuck-Kiryu-chan, who never said things he couldn't back up with convictions or fists.

So fucking ridiculous, so embarassing, disgusting, really.

"Well, Majima? You pull all this tantrums when I don't give you what you want, but you never really tell me what it is you're after. What is it?"

"Get the fuck off me."

"Not until you 'fess up."

"I want you to get the fuck off me?"

"Wrong answer," And Kiryu kissed him, the way they did with teeth and tongue. Two monsters mauling the other for supremacy, nothing affectionate but so damned good.

"Road trip," He blurted out, just for something to say. He was panting hard. Fuck, was that him?

"What?"

Well fuck it, in for a pound — "I want a road trip. And a vacation somewhere nice. Good stuff only."

"Sure," Kiryu frowned, perplexed. "That's all you want?"

"That not enough, you rich fuck? Make that a road trip all the way North. Onsens, alpaca farms, all-you-can-drink beer. First class trains and ryokans only. Three whores on each arm."

"Sure," Kiryu assented - watching Majima, expecting more.

And indeed Majima wanted more: - he wanted Kiryu to be there 24/7, to not have a life, to have his named attached to Majima's - as in that-Majima-and-Kiryu. The same way Kiryu's name was attached to Nishikiyama's. To be a pair, invincible, more than a couple - something unbreakable like a kyoudai - and he wanted all of this precisely because he knew Kiryu would not give it to him and anyway Majima wouldn't put down his pride long enough to ask.

"But maybe not the whores," Kiryu clarified.

"Why the fuck not? When you gonna say yes to a good ol' gangbang?"

"Never,"

"Pussy," He spat.

Kiryu shrugged. "Don't like folks touching what's mine." With a gentle hand he brushed hair off Majima's face.

"Is that really all you want, Majima?"

"Boy, Kiryu - you got no fucking idea what I want. You'd have to sell your kidneys to afford all the bling I coulda need."

"For serious,"

"For serious-nothing. Ya know what I wanted, ya ain't giving it to me. So here's the next best thing - so back off before I kick your ass, aight? Le'me up."

"Nah," Kiryu held him down tighter, a small, relieved smile. "I think I like you'd better down there."

Enter dirty, hot sex scene here that involved Majima's baseball bat. The penultimate curtain to all their conversations, fights, etc. because after all they were men in their twenties, and the more things they leave unsaid, the crazier the sex was. Not that Majima complained.

Of course, it meant that nothing was ever resolved, and here Majima was again, ditching Kiryu for the umpteenth time, but who's counting? He was gonna run like the wind, since Kiryu was always gonna be there to catch him anyhoo. This wasn't the kind of road trip he was imagining though.

In the bundle, Gomo-chan fiddled and whined, bitten by a bug. Majima wiped it off and shush the baby. The bicycle he left in a heap by the path.

"There, there - we're almost there. Look, your gramps' place - if you're related to me at all. You poor fuck."

To say the Majima family house was rundown was to confuse a Hibiki with a Shochu. It was beyond rundown, a small weed-ridden garden containing a small, weed-ridden house. The yard was all rusted parts and old furniture - some time ago his old man had started throwing the old furniture out but never got them beyond the gates. Majima tried to remember a time where it was different - better, cheerier, perhaps - but found only pages of pale, wispy memories.

The memories were local, isolated, tied to the objects that inspired them.

Here was a giant wheel for example, peeled off an American truck back when pops was working the bulldozer factory. The bottom was sealed up with nailed boards to make a small pool, and back when Majima was just a tyke he could paddle up and down, up and down, feet scraping against the rusted nails at the bottom, sometimes turning the water brown with rust and blood and well-spent afternoons. Older and taller, he would still soak himself in it, legs and head dangling out, looking at the sky until he got dizzy from the light.

He did like water, didn't he?

There was a whole bunch of shit in it now, dead leaves and soil, and boxes and boxes of stuff - no doubt most of them Goro Majima's relics, thrown out when he ran out.

Even the cracked white-brick walls patchy with cement had memories. They were built high up for a Japanese home, 6 feet tall almost (Old man, ya so paranoid, no one ever cared about us, don't you know?) with cheap thin bricks, and Majima had spent a whole summer here, patrolling the perimeter over and over again, over and over and over again, falling down often at the beginning, scraping knees thighs ankles, tearing half the skin from his skinny legs, and finally mastering it.

A veritable acrobat, marching up and down it to wile away the afternoons. When a neighbour came up to ask, Goro-chan what are you doing - he would lie and say his old man made him do it, so that if he seemed villainous enough someone might take Majima away and rear him in the police station, like a stray dog.

Always boggled his mind how they would take in lost dogs but not a lost child.

Well the errand wasn't going to run itself. He placed Gomo-chan on the walls, filed apart the lock on the gate with practiced ease, and strode right in with the kid.

"Yo old man!" He yelled. "I'm baaaaaack!"

—

Still smells sour, obviously.

Lights too white, swaying in overturned bowls, casting odd shadows in the corners of the house. A constant loud buzzing - the TV? - and lesser so the lights and the backup generator that cooks diesel and spews smoky death.

The trappings of poor Japanese homes: the shuddering fridge, last year's calendar with this year's corrections, a large table laden with odds and bobs too useless to use but too precious to throw away. Ya never know what could happen - a fire, a famine, a war - this crazy world these days, so ya better stock up sixty orange boxes if ya wise.

The moment Majima stepped into the house again he felt like dancing, his steel-tipped feet wanting to click together, then apart. His fingers itched for a knife, and he felt a part of his personality rise up to embrace him like an old friend, a bad friend, saying - look whereya been you never coulda run.

From the gaping maw of the bedroom, his old man emerged - bent further, shrunk smaller, but still Majima Senior.

"You." He snarled.

"Ya, me." Majima smiled, easy-easy like he was in a Sotenbori host club, and was about to chat up a troublesome girl. He placed Gomo-chan on the table, sweeping aside a box of safety pins and beer cans, and stepped easily away when the inevitable bottle sailed towards him.

It smashed against the TV shelf, sounding similar in spirit to the gong of the fighting cages.

"That's how ya greet ya sweet son, old man?"

The old man said nothing, narrowed eyes scanning, searching, for a weakness. That was his dad alright - like lightning - which struck without warning and without reason, who didn't waste breath yelling at you or heckling you. Why talk, when you can fight? Hey, Majima could get behind that.

He took a critical eye to the man he hadn't seen for more than ten years, and realized he was (did he dare admit this), deep down, still afraid. Time had not worn down the man, who must be what, fifty now? Instead his father had folded into himself over and over again, iron tempered to be compact, protected by a hard crust of solitude. If he stooped now he only stooped with the terrible angers he had to bear.

"Ya don't really wanna pick a fight with me, pops. I ain't the same now,"

A pointed sneer at the eye — "Ya less. Gone a cock and came back half-cocked. Worthless then and worth less now, ain't ya?"

"If ya like it, I'm more than happy to give you the same."

"Yeah? You think you're big shot now. Why'd you come back if ya such hot shit? Money troubles? Girl troubles?" A nod at Gomo-chan.

Ahh, if only he knew that Majima only had boy-troubles these days.

"I'm here for my shit. My papers, and the like. From school days all the way back."

"Shoulda thought harder when ya ran off then,"

"Woulda thought you were happy when I did."

"Ya gave me trouble. Neighbors, police, questions."

"Sad."

"And now ya come back here - got nothing for me, only askin', askin', 'sall you ever did."

"Sure. Ya sore?"

"Naw, naw. Ya free to do what you want. Can't stop you, can I, if you wanted to take this place apart."

"Glad ya see sense, old man," He relaxed, unwound himself a little. Maybe he didn't have to crack his old man's skull too hard after all.

"Ya yakuza now." A statement, not a question.

"Sure. Down in Tokyo."

Silence then, his pops having done all the talking he wanted to, wasn't about to offer more.

"So… Where are my things?"

To answer, Majima Senior drifted to a wood pile, and picked up an axe, giving it a practice swing. He didn't need many. A practiced leer. If Majima wanted answers, he would have to extract them tooth by tooth from his old man, if he could. Which was fine by him. He spoke Violence best of all.

—
—
—

"-- J I M A"

The plaque said. The kanji of an 'island', drifting alone on the copper plaque. It peered out at him inquisitively from under a crown of creeper ivy. Why, it asked him, are you here? No one is ever here.

He parked the car far enough to be respectful but dashed right in without invitation, pass the unlocked gate and the crumbling yard, the open front door, and into the grey-brown living room.

"Majima!"

Two pairs of eyes turned to look at him - one squinting through blood to get a better look at him - all three eyes wet with glee.

Kiryu didn't know what he expected, but he'd had many expectations on the long drive up. They were like movies playing in his head. He, a willing conspirator with his paranoia, could go front and back these horrorshows with ease.

He would arrive too late in one scene, and Majima would have killed his father over Something, trivial and stupid, and they would be wandering around the house like lost ghouls. Where's the spade, the spade? The stony ground uncooperative, the wind howling murder, Kiryu's own voice asking -- Majima shouldn't we turn ourselves in...

He would arrive too early in another, Majima never having reached home (His Majima, that is) and in the darkling dark Kiryu would wander with handheld light until he stumbled over the idiot, three hours dead from a broken neck because he rode off a cliff, Goma-chan wailing under crushed ribs.

Yet a third vision would present itself, Majima gunning the house down perhaps, or bitten by a guard dog young enough to be a stranger. Omi coming all the way out here to ambush them, and Majima swaying in their trap.

What his wild but limited imaginations would never have pictured: Majima collapsed in front of his aged dad. Bleeding from a cut lip, his good eye nearly swollen shut, a head wound bleeding promiscuously down his neck. Majima looked like he'd gone ten rounds with a hundred men and lost, which simply never happens.

"Who the fuck are you?"

Instincts took over.

He seized the old man's axe as it came down handle-first onto Majima's unprotected head, and shoved him backwards. Kiryu didn't wait for him to get up, going for the soft underbelly of the old man, stomping, stomping stomping - because how the fuck dare he -- who the fuck was he? - and seized the man's dirty locks to--

"Kiryu-chan, stop it!"

Strong hands yanked him backwards and Majima -- his Majima -- with a hard uppercut, got in between him and the punishment that still had to be meted.

"Get out of the way, Nii-san."

"Ya don't know shit about what's going on here. Why the hell are you here anyway?"

Kiryu grunted. Wasn't interested. There were questions - like how did Nii-san got beaten by a man twice his age armed with a slow axe - but they can be answered when Kiryu put his foot through the man's face.

"Yer fucking pet gorilla, Goro-chan?"

"Ride," Majima said tersely. "Ya had your fun?"

The old man sneered, spat. "Outside. Left box down rightmost pile. Near the incinerator. Get all you need 'cuz you ain't coming back."

Majima senior shuffled off into the next room, back bent. Kiryu lunged at it as he passed, but Majima held him back, slamming the axe into Kiryu's knees when he wouldn't obey. That hurt enough that Kiryu reared back, lurching drunkenly to the other side of the room.

"What the hell, Nii-san."

"Ya don't listen, Kiryu-chan," Majima raised the axe. "That's yer problem."

"Well, if I had listened, you might be dead by now."

Majima tossed the axe to the side, lit a cigarette, and slammed the sliding door shut completely. "That's what ya think of me Kiryu-chan? That I'm so weak an old fart like him could off me if he wanted?"

"That's what it looked like."

"Gotta learn to see with more than eyes then. Ya got two good eyes but yer blind for all the good they do."

"I don't understand."

"Ya don't. Come on, we're getting outta here. Hup, kid." Majima hoisted the baby onto his hip, and walked off into the yard. Kiryu stepped out of the house reluctantly, and no sooner was he out the door slid shut behind him with a final click,

Majima guided them in the semi-darkness to the arse end of the yard, hidden by the house. The incinerator was a brick-and-zinc affair, a homemade oven really with a giant space in the middle, big enough to roast a whole pig if you were keen for it. The area was cordoned off by boxes, a yard within a yard. The piles of soggy misshapen box were sorted by some mad logic which only Majima could understand.

Majima began pulling out boxes one by one from the rightmost pile.

"Ya here now, make yerself useful. Go through the boxes over there, or we're gonna be here til dawn."

Kiryu obeyed, mechanically. Gomo-chan slept uneasily on an inspected box. He went through all sorts of junk: a few wooden toys, old pots, crumpled newspapers, even a block of eternal tofu that hadn't spoiled yet. Systematically he sifted, filtered, sorted, adrenaline still so much inside him that his hands shook so.

Gradually the night lengthened, slowed, squeezed itself into a deeper slumber until they could work quietly for hours without disturbing her.

Kiryu was the first to cut it with, "Was that your old man?"

"What, we don't look alike?"

He didn't think so - the man was short where Majima was tall, stout where Majima was lean as a pick. There was nothing in their faces alike, except for that inciting set to his jaw that said, come on, come on, I'm giving you a reason to hit me so I can hit back.

"Kind of."

"So we are."

"Oh."

"What," He swallowed. "What happened there, Majima?"

Majima turned away, illuminated only poorly by the lights from the house. There was nothing of him that could be seen except a vague rim light, smudged by the shadows.

"What, you didn't see enough? I got beat up. You want an essay?"

"Yes. No. But why?"

"Why'd I lost?"

"There's no way you would have lost," Conviction, steely and true. "Not to him. Not to anyone. It's like you didn't even put up a fight."

"There yer go, Kiryu-chan. I knew you'd figure it out."

He was incredulous. "You let him do that to you?"

"Don't piss me off. What's there about leting or not letting? What else am I supposed to do, beat him half to death? He's my old man, Kiryu-chan. My old man. You know what that means? It means he's stubborn. Even if I break all his toes with a sledgehammer, he'd spit in my face and tell me to go fuck myself."

Shadowy shoulders shrugged. "He knows this, I know this. I'll still be here in Autumn sifting through garbage if he doesn't tell. What's a couple of whacks for old time's sake?"

In a mutter, "Ain't like it's never happened before."

Words eluded Kiryu, who had a one-track mind unsuited to vigorous use. What should he say, ask, prod with? How should he say he was sorry - sorry he intruded, but not sorry he's here - without putting his foot in it? How to ask for more answers, always more answers?

How to ask Majima to show him where it hurt? Not on him. Not physically. Where in this goddamned place did he hurt?

"I found it." Majima sealed back the box he'd been searching. "All my papers, even my books and doodles. This and that box. You get that one, Kiryu-chan."

He listened, followed, box-in-arm, depositing it in the trunk of the car. Majima slammed it shut with finality and looked at Kiryu, looked into Kiryu almost.

"Well, ya want the tour?"

"What?"

"The tour. Big ol' Majima Past Special. That's what you came for, right? That's why you followed me even though I explicitly told you to fuck off."

"I mean, if you're sure." Kiryu didn't like how final Majima sounded, had a bad feeling, a premonition that this was going to take a lot of hard work again to patch up, in some not-distant future.

"I don't care. Either ya want it or ya don't. But Kiryu-chan?" A blaze, another cigarette, flashing briefly into existence.

"You and me? We're through after this. I don't need an asshole who doesn't know his place like you."

 

 

Chapter 5: 1/4th of it

Majima Goro had a theory:

There is no such thing as happy yakuza. Happy but violent people end up as something else, police officers maybe, or boxers, or coaches, but anyone with a wholesome childhood simply won't walk up to the gates of a clan and say, I'm in.

In each one of us who end up in the gokudo, there exists a kernel of shit. This kernel of shit is hidden, protected, squirreled away in various depths depending on the complexity of its container, but you can bet your sweet ass on it that it exists in there.

Three types, Majima thinks, maybe.

Some folks sweet talk it 'til it's deep in them. Tell themselves, aye, I ain't never been sad, I ain't mad 'bout it. I ain't never had a bad childhood… Just a special one, y'see. Daddy really loved me somewhere deep down, was just confused is all. They go to big big depths to maintain the delusion - you see them sometimes, throwing money at their family, buying them all sorta shit, like if they just paste enough paper money on this it'll cover up all the burn marks in the ground.

Those are the nutters, okay- stay clear.

Then there's the pissed off type.

The kind that wears it like a badge, wears it on their fist like gauntlets with an imprint, so that every time they punched someone in the face it gets gouged into white flesh and red bone: Daddy loved me! Daddy loved me! Look at me, dad, ain't I strong now?

This is okay - predictable. You just gotta wiggle under their skin a bit and say yo, ya ever think maybe these daddy issues are deeply unsexy? Daddy ain't never loved you, etc. Gets them every time.

At first, maybe, Majima thought Kiryu was this. That's why he's such an angry bad boy all the time (well, what else would he have been attracted to… Majima was a moth) loosing teeth and setting bones free of charge all street, any street.

Turns out, not so.

There's the third type then, of course.

The ones who don't have anything besides their past, who is forged of their past. You can beat them up, cut them up to pieces, shift their organs around, but you won't find anything else besides what's on the package. That's because they are defined by their old pains, the little aches on their knees, the scars that still bleed when the weather gets dry enough.Cracking, oozing pus. When that happens you gotta appreciate the irony: this guy is all a big wound.

These giant sutures, these giant gaping holes, these stitched-up pasts.

So what might Majima Goro be? He likes to think he's special, the third type - because they're the strongest, meanest characters. All pain, no gain. To themselves and everyone around them. These were not gloves that he had on, these were his hands, and he wouldn't stop fighting until he blazed out, collapsed inwards, adios en fuego like a fucking star.

This place therefore, was part of all that. Part of him. About 1/4th of it anyway. The rest, if you wanted to find, would be all the way in Osaka.

—
__
__

First, let's observe the incinerator.

We should, Goro thinks, start at the deep deep end.

This here incinerator is a homemade affair, d'y'know, one of these bonding projects kids be having with their dads. They made it in Summer '68, when Majima was four and skinny and weighed less than ten bricks totaled. It is his first clear memory (he is a late starter, yes, everyone has all their shit sorted out by two) of consciousness.

Prior to this he was offline, a shuffling factory that took in food and shat in his pants. Dug his nose and imitated the adults when they pointed at things and said ka, ki, ku'. He came online hauling bricks, holding a rough red brick in the palm of his hands. The brick was warm, warmer than him. He was convinced he'd held a piece of the exploded sun.

The bricks tumbled from his inexpert grasp, and scraped his skin raw, but he got it back up anyway, and moved it stubbornly and single-mindedly to the wrong pile of bricks.

Goro Majima, 4, was very determined to be of help.

This is how you learn not to make mistakes: ya get beaten up.

Obviously ya get beaten up. Ya think this is a fairy tale? Don't make that kinda face, Kiryu-chan - you got no stomach for this ya got no stomach for anything.

What's the price? For being wrong, for making mistakes - one punch. A low hard swing right across your face.

Two punches if it's an errand, and if you got beaten down, then you get kicked too, because why else ya been on the ground if ya duwanna get kicked? Who lies down to cry unless they asking for it?

That was the beginning of a circle, there being no beginnings on a circle, just one point in an endless cycle.

Later Majima might find out that this is not how kids are normally punished, that they had privileges withheld, errands to do as punishment. The truly wicked ones were shamed. By then it hardly matters - Majima thought being punched in the face was a faster way to get out of trouble. You did some shit? Just man up and get a knock about. In five minutes you'll be out and about again.

They burned lots of shit here. The daily garbage, animal carcasses, plant matter, Majima's grades. Just another piece of furniture, yeah? By the seventies they got proper garbage collection around here, and they stopped using it so much. Anyway, that was about when the old man lost the plant job and got stuck doing odd-jobs, so there wasn't a whole load of food to be burned.

So it became Majima's bedroom.

It musta been one of those days where he'd done something stupid and got caught being stupid. Maybe Majima got a bad grade (not that the old man cared, all his grades were bad, but it was a good reason), maybe he stole shit from the town and got caught, but either way he remembered being shoved into the incinerator by rough hands and locked in there.

In the pit itself it wasn't so bad, and this ain't one of them nutter talk, trying to convince themselves it's all good. It really ain't so bad - it's spacious in there, long enough and wide enough to roast a grown pig. Cavernous enough for a skinny kid to lie flat and daydream, while it got hotter and hotter from the sun. In that black, hot friend he would grow delirious, and images in his head would dance all the louder for it: sweet plum trees with juicy fruit, orchards full of food all of 'em saying eat us, eat us, Goro. Consume us whole and suck out our marrows.

Eventually he came to prefer the incinerator to his den in the living room, where he couldn't read a book without being harassed, kicked off his hands, etc. all the generic deprivations of an unhappy family. He would come from school and crawled first thing no hesitation into the welcoming womb, and listened to the bricks throb and beat like a hundred little hearts from the afternoon heat.

Majima would do his homework in there, a small rigged lamp adding light (and heat, yes wholesome heat) play in there, made mud knives in there. Didn't matter what he did, long as it could be done indoors it was being done in that enclosed tomb.

Why not? Why there?

Kiryu-chan you don't understand. You ain't never gonna understand, with your fucking Sunshine Sunflower Sun-kissed asshole orphanage. Did you have cheery murals on your walls, bunk beds twelve to a room, stupid kid politics? Then you got it good. You-got-it-good don't say otherwise.

Well.

In this space, see, no one can touch me.

The old man can't touch me, can't grab me, can't drag me out kicking and screaming so long as I hold on tight to the roof of the incinerator, where there's these metal wires bent in UUUU-shapes. He can't risk dragging me out with force, because he knows what I'm holding onto, can hear the metal protest and tear in my hands - and he knows this shit is precious. He knows the incinerator never gonna be right again if I tear it apart, because he can't put it back anymore, not now, not with all those lost brain cells, dumbfuck that he is.

So I'm safe. 'Long as I was in there no one ever could touch me.

Phew, that got personal!

Anyway, Majima Goro got it good those years, but ya know how good things end, right?

--
__
__

It was Summer, the best kinda days.

No school, more heat, and weeks of time half-out half-in. Out-time was spent making mud pies and chasing wild monkeys around and around the mountains. His favorite game was running up the mountain, then down it, tearing up the dirt path to see how fast he could run.

To see if he could outrun the shadow of the sun.

Goro-chan what are you doing, a kindly neighbour might ask. Wouldn't you like to play more with the other kids?

Kiryu-chan where were the other kids, do you think?

You know don't you? This one I won't say you don't - you must know what it's like to be the weird kid. It's worse than being the fat kid, it is. Your stinking, filthy clothes follow you everywhere, and their eyes too. Pitying you because their parents told them to pity you. Scornful because they haven't learned to hide it yet. Where's your mom, Majima? Does your dad really run a junkyard? Can we take our garbage there?

Where was my mom, Kiryu-chan? Where was just about fucking anyone?

In-time was spent answering this question with the great auguries held in concert with the bricks. In the rhythm of their throbbing he heard answers, or thought he did, to the great questions of his 10-year-old life.

Why does his old man hate him?

Don't worry, don't worry, they chanted. He loves you deep down. Deeeeep down. Hell-deep.

How should he run away from home, take which path, go how far, before all this would change?

It won't change, they drummed. It won't ever change because it ain't about where you are, it's about who you are now. You're no stray dog. Stray dogs get picked up and become domesticated. You're a rabid dog, a mad dog, to be put down 'less you froth all over the pristine greatness of Community.

Reveling in these revelations, he would sleep through most of summer. Unlike the bear, he would hibernate in the hottest seasons of the year. Swaddled and safe and warm, he could go further and further in his dream-delusions. The time he was awake came to rival the time he spent asleep, so that he was never sure which was the real and which was not.

Abruptly, it came to an end on a single day.

He laid in his womb-incinerator as he always had, wrapped up in winter blankets to make it even warmer. The lightbulb he turned on, aimed at the bricks. From afar he could hear the old man yelling for him - IDIOT IDIOT WHERE ARE YOU, a child's game gone sour. Majima ignored it, didn't feel like moving. He could hear the old man trampling the lawn, checking the gate (locked, from the inside) and the coops out back.

Majima laid stubbornly swaddled, unmoving. Footsteps closer and closer, the shouting stopped. He'd been found.

Any time now, he figured. There would be a hand, reaching out from the light of Outside, clawing at him. Work-roughened hands, the first of many sunspots. A little hair on the knuckles, demon hands here to kidnap the unwary child.

Majima laid heavy and wary in the pit, reverie broken, but no hand came. No one pinched his ear or clawed at his face.

But no retribution? That was impossible.

Ya see where this is going, don'cha Kiryu-chan. You're a smart one.

Well, it grew hot.

By now Majima knew what every celcius felt like in the incinerator, and he noticed the hike even before he heard the steady crackle of burning wood. Smoke too, seeping in tentatively from the cracks in the bricks, His whole back felt like it was on fire.

Should he try to leave? That was the big question. This was the one the auguries had prepared him for: how much would he like to escape, to be away from here? What cost would he pay? Would he try to outlast his present, or escape his present? The answers were drastically different depending on what he wanted.

Majima didn't have an answer then, of course. Why would he? He was just a dumb kid. Fear seized and raked him nigh before he could think and he reached for the shutters, ready to push his way out and -- nothing. They'd been sealed shut. He rattled them hard and loud, and saw in the small opening they afforded that there was steel pipe across the handles.

He screamed the house down then, mostly because he must, now that he had to die he wanted very much to live, was and is wetting himself quite literally over the heat. Could he piss right through the brick and put out the fire? Stupid thoughts -- there wasn't enough space in his kidney to put out a bonfire.

The heat climbed, spreading from his pallet and his feet and up the brickwork, and from inside for the first time Majima could see that the cracks on the bricks were not friends at all, not beautiful messages left by (Americans, mom, ghosts, demons) but were just what they were, things falling apart. Him falling apart, flesh to bone to ash, melting off like a popsicle --

DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD

He yelled. His throat was burning, glowing red.

DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD

DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD

DAD DAD ---- DAD DAD

a vigorous chanting

HELP HELP HELP HELP HELP

when he realized it wouldn't be from his old man and then

ANYBODY PLEASE

Light!

(Curtains, music!)

He thought something had flared up in there, something gon' on fire for serious, maybe his blankets, maybe himself - but no, it was sunlight, sweet sunlight - someone had torn apart the incinerator's shutters, and the glare of sunlight and fire and smoldering heat was too much to bear. Could be that Majima would never see light as harmless ever again.

He imagined that he had been delivered into that light, had left the confines of the incinerator, but something was burning still close to him, and with his last strands of consciousness, thin like paper, he realized he was crumpled in the incinerator still, too weak to even crawl out.

"Saejima," Someone was saying. "Don't put your hand in there, you'll get burned!"

"Someone's in there."

"We should get an Adult--"

From nothing came hands, strong and big but a kid's. It groped around in the wet darkness of the heat (it must have been too dark in there, everything being so bright bright bright outside) flinched from the small flames licking along the edges, and seized Majima's blanket. With a great heave he was yanked forwards by inches--

"Help me, you idiots!"

"But there's an adult right there in the house, I saw him!"

"Come on!"

Two four six eight hands lurched into sight, groping seizing brandishing him across the heat and delivered Majima at last out into sweet daylight. He landed on the ground in an unceremonious heap, the wet earth impassive. Gasping, choking, coughing, he threw up everything he'd ever eaten since the Beginning of Life onto his savior's feet.

---
---
---

"And that is why I'm not a heat-person these days," Majima said, pulling long and low from his cigarette.

"Ya want more, Kiryu-chan? Ya looking kinda green around the gills there."

They bumped across the mountain road, driving slow now that it was so late. The moon was bright enough to illuminate their path. It wasn't the bumpy ride that was making Kiryu ill, but Majima's callous handling of his own history. It felt not unlike watching an archivist setting fire to an invaluable scroll, feeding it into a hungry bonfire.

"I think I get the picture."

"Ya think? That was only a tiny part. More where that came from, but I duwanna reduce you to tears, Kiryu-chan. No seriously, ya need a hanky?"

"I'm good."

He waved the cigarette in an expansive arc. "Ya gotta ask questions though, right? Big shit number one is: Why? Why all this pointless violence to a kid?"

"In the movies ya always get 'em good and tidy explanations. Guy's a drunkard, maybe. Got cancer up to his tits and just takin' the pain out on you. But the old man don't drink more than anyone and less than some, so it ain't that."

"Got other tidies too - maybe my old lady ain't so good to him. Ran out, hooked up, got the fuck out, and now he's mad pissed that I'm still around. Could be I ain't even his, ya know? Some lil shit his wife left behind, not his but his, so now he gotta put up with my ugly mug and thinking all day, that's the fucking dead goat they made me swallow."

"The answer, da-da-dum, is that I don't know! How'd ya feel about that, Kiryu-chan?"

Kiryu grunted.

"No? Not good enough. Only one I got." He stubbed the cigarette out, lit another Hi-Lite. "It woulda been easier if I knew why. I'm keen to admit that. If there was a reason, a rationale, a schedule even, it woulda been easier. If someone came up and said - Goro, ya been a bad boy and ya gotta be hurt bad at 1pm on Saturday because six days ago, you kicked the kid who sits next to you in class - that woulda been easy. Real easy. It don't hurt you when you expect it. It hurts ya because ya don't expect it."

"Yeah, I understand."

"Ya really don't, Kiryu-chan, but thanks for trying. Someone like you? Ya got nothing. Charmed life. So far anyway. One of these days Nishiki is going to stab you in the back and then we can be equal. I'll even hold ya hair back while you cry."

"Anyway," He picked up the thread of the conversation. "Far as I figure he's just real mad at everything. I don't blame him. I know how it feels like. I just don't like him, is all."

"This Saejima that saved you..."

"Yup, that Saejima. His house is right up the hill, two houses past mine. Picture-fucking-perfect family. He got even less excuse to talk sap to me than you, but ya gotta make allowances."

They'd made it as far as the bottom of the hill. Officer Sato's home receded in the rear view mirror. Majima directed him onto another path, a shortcut, not bothering to act like an idiot who didn't know the way home anymore.

"About what you said, Majima-nii-san..." Kiryu began.

"Ya?"

"About us."

"Oh right. Figured you'd wanna appeal. What you gotta say, Kiryu-chan? Let's get it over with. Ya wanna fight it out I know the perfect spot too."

"I don't want to fight it out," Kiryu sighed. "I don't want to break up at all. Can't you be reasonable about it?"

"Ya don't get it, Kiryu-chan. I am being reasonable about it. If you understood me, there wouldn't be any point, get it?"

"What does that even mean?"

"It means, Kiryu-chan, that you're digging too deep. I don't need that. I don't want that. I don't want some asshole around me what's know all my dark sad past, and give me dark sad eyes every time I look at a stove twice. It's disrespectful."

"I'm not going to pity you all the damned time. You're perfectly fine as you are. I just wanted to understand how you tick."

"That ain't how it goes, and I'm telling ya, I know better than ya how this plays out. No, sorry - the more you know about me, the less available I am. And you, dear customer, just crossed the line. Thanks for playing." He shook his head, theatrically mournful.

"I did warn you, didn't I, Kiryu-chan?"

"Majima--"

"Thanks for playing." He repeated, unmoved.

"Majima..."

The crickets were enjoying the spectacle, chirping and cackling as the car - the only unliving breathing thing in acres - cut through the paddy.

The soft Night hushed them. Be respectful, it said. Here today a thing has died.

Gently, Night held them and sped them along, lifted them into their rooms, unraveled their clothes and tucked them into bed. Each in their own futon, a ceremonial gap between them. Gomo-chan slept on, uncomprehending. The two men looked into Night, separately but insistingly, but she had no easy riddle for them, these two complicated creatures who would take no advice.

Time, Night said, and administered sleep.

 

Chapter 6: goddamned bamboo

Summary:

Rough, mildly horrifying sex in this chapter. If it ain't your thing the whole of the last part (after bamboo) should be skipped.

KIryu had no one to admit it to, but he liked it best when Majima was still asleep.

The Suns rose early in the land of the rising sun, and as early as five there would be intrusive rays in their room. Like sunset, only brighter. Shining dust steeped in nostalgia. Majima, breathing heavy and drooling on Kiryu's shoulder.

He woke up in a tangle, all feet and calves in a frightful twist in Majima's. In the middle of the night they had been rearranged according to the whims of Night, and they laid now elbows to ribs to chest to thighs, a four-legged monster all wrapped up in each other. Gomo-chan's basket empty and reproachful somewhere near, his little feet scrabbling against the tatami. The boy was having adventures; would be having adventures for hours yet, if Kiryu laid still here like the dead, which he was inclined to.

Majima's breath on his chest, warming him like a furnace. It feels impossible that a man running so hot could ever want more heat. Majima felt sun-kissed even on the coldest days of the year, burning so hot that more than once Kiryu had thought he was feverish. Maybe it's why he always was feverish.

On winter days you clap both hands on his ears, and in an act of mutualism you would warm his ears and your hands at the same time.

Is this the last day of this for him? He wondered. Once they get back to Kamurocho, he knew for sure Majima would give him the slip. Into one of his rabbit holes he would go, seizing Gomo-chan like a hostage (but it was his, wasn't it? That little star-shaped birthmark on the boy's arse...) never to be seen again, certainly not by impure eyes like Kiryu's.

He could chase. He would chase, he knew.

Chasing again down alleys that disappeared into other alleys, that fused together and changed their names to confuse him. People who become other people with clues, saying -- there he was, guy in a snakeskin jacket, guy with an eye-patch. KIryu would seize him. Having being seized, he would morph again, become a stranger on the streets. Offshore Majima would cackle - what a fucking idiot kiryu-chan.

Bad Memories, once old enough, take on the qualities of a their twin, Nightmare.

He'd be okay though. He'd always found Majima again, by a combination of tenacity and persistence, luck and courage.

Not the courage to find Majima; it doesn't take much courage to be stabbed a couple of hundred times.

What takes courage is to hold on to Majima the eel, the slippery snake. Knowing that he would promise this time to be good and in love, and a month down the line he'll seize onto some excuse (a bad hair cut, a project gone wrong, the wrong brand of takoyaki) and be off again, trampling over new distances and Kiryu's heart.

This must be love, Nishiki told him. No other force could make a man this stupid.

Majima stirred in his arms, sleep-stupid.

"Kiryu----channnn," He mumbled.

"Sleep, Majima-no-nii-san." Kiryu murmured. Like a charm the man curled back into sleep. 6 a.m now. He could have hours of this yet, if Kiryu played his cards right.

Gomo, the small demon, came into his sight, upside down with a lecherous grin. The boy squeezed himself in between them, climbing over hairy adult limbs and settled his smooth self in one of the many nooks of the Majima-Kiryu animal. For a blanket, he seized Kiryu's yukata.

"You're the key this time, aren't you..." Kiryu conversed, one-sided. The boy said nothing, sharpened his teeth by biting on Kiryu's hands.

"Help me hold on to him, please." He pleaded.

The boy promised him nothing. Sleep took the chance to ambush him (a surprise, he was usually an early riser) and against his wishes carried him back into dreams.

No, he complained. I want to lie there and bask in him.

But sleep was not deterred.

--
__

 

Kiryu next woke at ten, the texture of the tatami pressed into his skin. He laid a few feet away from his futon. Someone had kicked him halfway across the room, and stubbed out cigarettes on him to wake him up.

"Ow," He winced. Black burn marks all on his chest. "Plenty of ways to wake a person up."

He shuffled over the bathroom on his sleep-roughened voice and day-old stubble, putting on backwards the checkered blue slippers. The bathroom was an astounding mess - piss that had fallen off mark, a shower that'd used up half the water in the town. Kiryu's toothpaste was half in the sink, half in his overnight bag.

"Majima," He complained, and performed his ablutions without joy on his steam-blurred reflection.

"Ya," Majima acknowledged his complaints from the other room, and flicked it away when he pulled out the document that'd ended their relationship. He placed it side by side on the table, scrutinized it with furrowed brows.

"Far as I can see they're the same damned thing,"

From the bathroom mirror Kiryu could see him pull on his leather gloves like a surgeon - or murderer - and traced the wispy writing across both documents. Where one line ended its mirror sprung up on the other document, column for column for word. The papers were twins, except that Majima's looked weather-beaten, an appropriate look for a document from the sixties. Gomo-chan's was born yesterday.

Majima cursed. "They're the same fucking thing."

"So we got two truths," Kiryu suggested, legs lazily crossed opposite Majima. "Either someone broke into your old man's place without getting an axe to the face, made a pristine copy of it for a random baby..."

"Or someone went back in time and kidnapped baby me."

He was surprised. "I was about to suggest someone took it off the government bureaus." He pointed at the document. "They must have a copy of it somewhere, an official one?"

"Ya got eyes, Kiryu-chan, but ya don't use them. Mine's handwritten. Gomo-chan's is also handwritten. Ya wanna bet your left nut the one they got all typed up in the bureau is also handwritten?"

"I wouldn't bet that the kid is a time traveler either."

"Ya, but could be done don't it? I mean I just can't get my head ta wrap around the fact that someone would fake all this shit to get at me..." He shrugged. "Time traveling makes much more sense to me."

"You've been watching too many films again," Kiryu suggested.

"Makes me have an imagination, unlike old-fuck-Kiryu-chan, right?"

"Right. Maybe too much imagination. So what does this mean?"

"Don't mean nothing. Means this kid is me, and I gotta make sure he don't get whacked, or poof I go, right? I watched enough time-travel movies to know how this goes. Hey, maybe this is it? Someone in the Tojo clan got his nut on me, and he said -- that Majima's too damned strong, and he goes and voodoos kid-me into existence, only it ended up on my door--"

"Nii-san... No."

"Why the fuck not?"

"Because I know for a fact it's easier to buy hitmen then cast a-- a time traveling spell."

"Point," Majima deflated. "Ya got a point. Come here Gomo-chan. Let big bro harass you for a bit won't ya?"

The kid came quietly into the tangle of Majima's long limbs, somersaulting slowly as Majima rotated him around. The kid was examined from all angles, and thought it all a wonderful game.

"There's something odd..." Kiryu pointed out. He took Gomo, and opened the kid's mouth as wide as it could go, an inexpert dentist. "Look at his teeth, Majima-san."

The teeth were looked at. There were two full rows of them up and down, tombstone-like and loose, falling back and front without considerations for aesthetics. Tooth hated tooth and kept each other at arm's length, so that the boy looked like he had a handful of teeth in a too-big mouth.

"What 'bout it?"

"You have one eye and you don't use it, Nii-san," Kiryu teased.

"Shut the fuck up. So they're a bit ugly. I don't get-- Wait. He didn't have teeth when he first showed up, did he?"

"He didn't. I remembered him biting on me, and it was all gums. Also, isn't he a lot bigger than he was yesterday? Look, he can't fit in the basket anymore."

Indeed Gomo couldn't, not even if he worked hard to crush his limbs into position. Where the child had looked six-month-old (or so, the two really had no fucking clue what babies look like) he'd grown overnight so large that he could reach their knees if he straightened up.

Intrigued, Majima threw his keys across the room. Gomo - who only yesterday clambered and crawled like small writhing garbage - bounded up, walking unsteadily but walking still towards the jangling keys.

"What the fuck..."

"Did he have teeth last night? When you took him away."

"I don't rem-- I think he musta have. I remember he was biting on the basket. Ain't got that much though. Not even half-fuck as much."

They both inspected Gomo, who seized the keys and rattled it in rhythm to the kind of invisible music audible only to a very young child.

"Maybe he'll learn how to speak next," Kiryu joked.

"Holy fucking shit," Majima added.

--
__

They stocked up for the long trip home, which they'd planned to be long, winding and aimless. The agreement wasn't spoken but given to understanding, in looks and odd hesitations and sentences that stop-started like a misfiring car. They both recognized that as long as the car was still moving, so were they, so was their relationship, and by-and-by when they reached Kamurocho, least' one of them would have to cut it neatly in half.

Lawson loot: convenience store sushi and riceballs (five-in-a-row), milk formula for baby Gomo and cold packaged milk. Umbrellas for if it rained (but why did they need this, they weren't leaving the car...), bandages, plasters, yakitori, croquette, a spare shirt, a new bottle of toothpaste, a six-pack of melon soda, and Black Suntory.

At that point they ran out of excuses and returned half the things. The cashier gave them an insolent look beneath his immaculate training.

They started the car and headed out then. Kiryu drove so that Majima could avoid responsibilities. The half-blind man sat at the back with Gomo-chan on his lap, flaunting traffic laws about child safety. Gomo sat on one of Majima's knees, playing peek-a-boo with the man, and after thirty tries succeeded in winking exactly like Majima. The boy's left face was motionless when he scrunched up the right side of his face.

He looked like a stroke victim.

"Shit, now I kinda understand my old man," He told Kiryu. "I've half a mind to slug this kid myself, it's so ugly. Right? Aren't you a fucking monkey?" He chucked the boy under the chin.

"Please don't."

"Ya can't stop me, Kiryu-chan. I'm mine to deal with as I please."

"That's what I'm worried about."

They wound up taking the long, long way around - the scenic road - all the way up to Nara and Kyoto, skirting Osaka only because Majima threatened to have him ran over if Kiryu went in that direction. What Kiryu wanted to run over, was Majima's old man - in the cold light of day he found it hard to resist the fantasy of driving up Arigawa Hill, through Majima's home, and across the old man's spine.

The satisfying crunch-crunch-crunch of bones being broken, only louder, would satisfy maybe half his bloodlust. The other half only if the man apologized with his dying breath, said sorry for hurting Majima Jr. , supplicate for forgiveness the boy he burned alive (and a dozen other crimes, all unnamed), and so on.

I don't want apologies, Majima had said. And I'm not about ta get it, so why don't ya fuck off, Kiryu-chan. This here exactly what I meant, all this fucking pity.

It ain't pity though, it really ain't. It was vengeance and anger. Most of the time Kiryu had nothing to do with these, was only interested in the act of protecting and getting the hell out of trouble with minimum damage to the ones he loved. But what do you do when the ones you love have been damaged, is by their existence a continuous progress of pain, their hurt lying so far in the past that you would have to squeeze yourself back into a sordid womb to fix this problem? What then?

Vengeance and anger, Kiryu decided.

But ya don't really get it, Majima insisted. Ya seeing me by a bad light, the wrong light.

Alright, alright, he didn't really get it. If you can't punch a problem, what are you supposed to do about it, dammit?

They wound up in Kyoto for the night after a whole day of aimless driving. They wounded next, the ryokan's pillar, a tiny incision on the side to mark Gomo-chan's height.

"That should do it," Majima proudly. "We'll see tomorrow if the kid is really growing like goddamned bamboo."

--
__

They went to bed with Gomo-chan between them a wall and barrier, for the safety of the combatants involved. Both futons were stretched now to be far apart, to allow more distance to pour in between. All three feet. They could go further, the room being so big - but they couldn't bear so much distance.

By midnight Gomo was gone again, off to his secret machinations in the corners of the room, rubbing wooden walls he'd never felt and poking holes into paper walls that had to be reimbursed. Crawling under the table, he found a spot where the mini-fridge gave off heat, and curled himself into a small ball to preserve all the warmth he could. In a few hours he would go look for Majima-the-hot-water-bag, but for now he enjoyed the tremble of cold-warm steel against him.

He didn't know why he couldn't go for Majima right now, but the Night hushed him, and put him to sleep.

In painful inches Kiryu and Majima grew closer and closer without their own permissions. Nominally they should be growing apart. Physically they shrank into mutual space. Flesh contacted flesh in the inky black (this room in the middle of the inn, would not see light until high noon) and exhaled in relief. Asleep still, Majima climbed onto Kiryu and straddled him.

Majima had already been undressed, had never worn anything beneath flimsy ryokan-provided yukata, and he slid now onto Kiryu, Kiryu into him, like tanto into sheathe and just as right. Majima's leashed claws, searched for flesh to tear on Kiryu's chest, then shoulders. He won't be happy until he rips something out; skin okay but flesh preferred.

Later it would hurt, would bleed, and Kiryu would walk as much with a wince as Majima himself, everything rubbed raw and red - but that was later.

Now was something else, now was music.

"Move ya fucking idiot," Majima murmured, dream-dazed, nuzzling that familiar neck. He'd gouged enough from the other side that it was bleeding, and he switched over now to lap at those tiny pools of blood, his ambrosia. A cat that'd found its milk.

Coming awake, Kiryu's bigger hands went searching. He exhaled and grunted and shuddered, confused -- where was he, what was happening, why did it feel so damned good -- and found where they were joined pleasantly. A gift.

"Goro--nii..."

"Move ya fucking idiot," He repeated, and moved those big hands where he liked it on his ass, squeezed them to say claw-me-please, and demonstrated just what well-filed nails could do. His little claws went crisscrossing to Kiryu's back, tearing up territory as it go.

Let's see those motherfuckers want him when I'm done with him. No one ever gonna look at his back and think they deserve him. (Only I do.)

Kiryu on the other had. Had no thoughts really, just a passive, groaning recipient of wet heat. If he seized onto Majima's round, pliant ass, it was just because he had to hold onto something or he would be spiraling off. The pain kept him around. Vaguely he knew he needed more pain to stay rooted.

Kiryu knew how to receive that pain. He lifted Majima off him - off him completely - Majima poised and trembling and supported only by him. Too near. Too fucking far.

"What the hell..."

Into a rage then, his wildcat went, denied his favorite treat. The clawed hands came up to the back of Kiryu's neck then, two in a line, and they sank deep into the middle of his muscles, determined to rip it clean apart.

"Put it back in," He chanted. "Give it back ta me, it's mine."

Kiryu needed him to have more space to work, more flesh to work on, so that this could go on forever, half the night, for-ever. He flipped the other man around, Majima landing with a thud under him, and fulfilled that request, returned to Majima--

Majima keened, arched, trembling, the perfect wildcat. Glad to have its canvas, he went to work, gouging as deep as he could, bleeding Kiryu's back like a damned leech. Oh, he was gonna lick all these wounds later. Salt and saliva until Kiryu hissed... Gonna burn it with hot coals see if he don't, they gon' last forever...

For now it was just a distraction over what was going on in his in-sides, all of his insides, his insides, he's inside, he's in-side, he's insideeeeeeee

Burning, obviously - his whole ass is a wound, this fucking bull wrecking him - a maelstrom coming together and flowing apart, heat inside his belly boiling him alive.

"More, more, more," He chanted. Kiryu replies in Morse grunts, only without stops. Kiryu was hurting him as much as he was hurting him now (which him, does it matter, they're both right now the same person), strong hands grabbing his arms so hard they were breaking bone.

More was given, inside, inside, inside---

--and then Majima was lost, clean spiraled off somewhere where he couldn't think of anything except the sensation of flesh on him, in him. Kiryu above him, his arms like steel around Majima, the yukata billowing around him, a cotton barrier. Kiryu a monster protecting and violating him -- and Majima thought, ah, I know what I replaced the pit with -- yes, yes, yes

--
__

Later they unraveled slowly. Kiryu first, extracting himself from the tangle of limbs. Still half-asleep but not as dead to it as Majima, who you could be forgiven if you thought was a corpse. Majima lying beautiful and sexy but spittle around his lips, eyes half-open-half-closed, every now and then moaning like the fatally wounded.

Kiryu stumbled around the dark room, found yesterday's shirt to wipe Majima down. Even now he knew there'd be hell to pay if Majima woke up dirty. For such a slob he had really fancy ideas about liquids in his ass...

Majima didn't stir, except to jerk a half kick at him when he stuffed the shirt deep enough.

"Don't touch the product, asshole. Pay up or get lost," Majima snapped.

Kiryu ignored him, tore off the half the shirt still clean to wipe down his own back. He looked-felt like damned grilled meat, cut halfway to hell. Was nii-san using his hands or his knife, dear God. Majima grunted and fidgeted, fidgeted and grunted. Kiryu without ceremony punched him, knocked him out, dragged him back to the futon. By habit he knew Majima would be crying until dawn if he wasn't shown mercy.

 

 

Chapter 7: smeared mackerel

For breakfast they had plasters and bandages with a cat cartoon print.

First thing he did when he woke up Majima checked on his sore ass, and realizing what happened he did what he did best and blamed Kiryu. Shuffling on sleep-heavy feet Majima went over and dragged the ox to the fridge, and slammed his head onto the white metal until the staff pulled him away.

They paid for damages, for the holes in the wall, and for being Yakuza. Hannya and the Dragon was ten thousand yen each, ostensibly for damaging the premises. It didn't help things that Gomo-chan, drifting down to an apologetic Kiryu at the front desk, told them:

"More, more, more." He shouted. "--ryu-chan!"

Majima woulda melt into a puddle if he could, holy fucking shit. He was mortified, embarassed, dying, and this damned kid...

He'd checked the kid against the incision in the pillar before they checked out - the kid had grown an inch in the middle of the night - but that was okay, surely normal children must grow as much? But what he was missing in height he made up in Education. In the middle of the night he'd mutated into a Personality. (like an alien? this time next week he might be Majima's age, the thought scared him) Instead of a little pliant unperson, he'd taken on the beginnings of personhood.

Majima waited now in the car, hands in his pockets. The kid took his sweet time coming over. He wouldn't leave Kiryu alone, grabbing the tails of his jacket - the highest thing he could reach - and tried to swing on it.

"Did you hear what he just said, nii-san?"

"I heard," Majima lit his morning cigarette. "At least now ya don't gotta worry he'll learn swear words from me. Seems ta be much worse off already."

To the kid, he said — "Ya really shouldn't say shit like that, kiddo."

The boy held defiantly onto Kiryu's leg. "Ryu-chan!"

Majima raised a brow. "Looks like he decided on his favorite too."

He clipped the protesting child under one arm, and threw him roughly into the back seat. Kiryu winced, but said nothing. Wise man, that man. Majima was itching for a fight this morn and he woulda do with any excuse.

Kiryu slammed his side of the door shut, turned on the dyfunct AC. "Where we going then,"

"Home." Majima said. "I'll be needing the Kiryu-express."

In the middle night something else had happened too. Far, far away, insomniac Kamurocho had called Majima, and not reaching him, had left a voice message. Majima looped it.

"Hey boss?" came Nishida's shrimpy voice. "There's been these weird folks sniffing around the office, asking about a kid? We told them you're not in. But just in case, they might be from a rival gang. They don't wear any insignia that we could see, but they're all dressed in purple..."

"Got a couple of purple numbnuts I gotta crack back at Kamurocho, so step on it, will ya?"

—
--
--

Between them and Kamurocho was a lot of ground to cover, most of it verdant and welcoming at least this early in Summer. Later probably it'll rain non-stop until autumn, disappointing the busloads of tourists coming from the direction of Tokyo to buy culture in Sotenbori's souvenir stores. Mt. Fuji was on the right their whole time, traveling imperceptibly from the front window to the back but always in sight. Stray clouds rolled over it every now and then, casting giant shadows on anonymous towns.

Gomo-chan, who'd discovered pointing, stabbed his stubby finger at each cloud and plane and bird that passed. Kiryu-chan, Kiryu-chan, he christened them. He'd been corrected by Majima some miles back, and now he was proud of his real-good vocabulary and wanted his idol's attention.

"How come," Majima demanded. "If this kid is supposed to be me, he likes you more than me?"

"Well," Kiryu hedged.

"Huh? Ya got an answer?"

"I do, but you won't like it."

"Ehh? Out with it!"

Kiryu shrugged. "Just means that you like me more than yourself."

They careened wildly on the road where Majima elbowed him hard enough to bruise a rib, then got back onto the fast lane. The traffic was all in the other direction, headed out of Tokyo (Is it Sunday? It must be. It's hard to remember the days of the week when you're yakuza...) and Kiryu was disappointed by the successful attack he was making on the distance.

They backed up into a grocer mart for lunch. Maruetsu and its ilk were available again this close to civilization - and bought wrapped up gunk to be eaten in the car. A cold burrito for Majima and a microwaved bento for Kiryu, washed down with freezing beer. The total fiber content was zero.

Gomo smeared mackerel on his own shirt. Newly grown now he was too big to be carried in only diapers The two of them received odd looks from the other shoppers when the boy fidgeted and grumbled on their hip, angry at his new sweater-prison.

Fleeing the attention and the law (the inevitable phone call: excuse me sir-- there's these two strange men with a child...) they slunk back onto the freeway. Majima now driving because he was bored, Kiryu stretched out and lying down beside him for a quick nap. His legs too long for the rented car, cramped fierce when he had to drive so much. Gomo celebrated this, climbed onto him and tucked himself into Kiryu's new jacket. He raged fierce when the AC was pointed at him, and by-and-by in the end they turned it all off so the kid could bake well.

"He has a star-shaped birthmark on his ass, did you notice?" Kiryu pointed out.

"Ehh, so what."

"You've got the same."

"No, I don't."

"You do. Hold up the mirror to it sometimes, it's right beneath your--"

"Attaboy Kiryu-chan. We all know yer got my ass on ya mind. I ain't about to root around my own ass like a faggot. The kid's me. I think we 'bout established that. How 'bout we move on to something fresh, like what am I gonna do 'bout it?"

"Not us?"

"Fuck, ya such a nag Kiryu-chan."

Majima drove like the devil on wheels, taunting and chasing the speed limit. The springs of the car protested - too much, too much - but they made good time and roared into Kamurocho before dusk had caught up to them.

This place they knew like the palms of their hands. Without quizzes or the exchange of instruction or address, Majima pulled them up to Kiryu's suburbs, still the same squat-ugly houses of poor-time-small-time Kamurocho losers.

When ya gonna move, Majima wanted to ask, looking at the dreary old place. It got nothing, not even neighbours. The hole in Kiryu's wall will be anonymous for months yet. It'll take at least that long for the place to be rented out, so good was the economy. No one knows why Kiryu insisted on squatting like a beggar here, and Majima never asked. Didn't like to find out about things. Makes it personal, ya know?

"When ya gonna move," He asked, when Kiryu sat unmoving in the passenger's seat, absentmindedly stroking Gomo's head.

"What's your next move?" Kiryu returned.

"Ain't see how's that any of yer business."

"I deserve to know," Righteous set to his jaw. "You dragged me into this, I've got at least the right to know that much."

Alright so he had a point. "I'm gonna park him with the boys, then dig around for these purple numbnuts."

"You can leave him with me."

"Naw,"

"Why not? You don't think it's going to shock your men when the kid learns algebra in a week?"

"Not gonna happen." He grinned, unlocked the doors pointedly. "'Cuz I never learned algebra. Off yer go Kiryu-chan. Got nothing to do with you anymore. Thanks for playing, have a nice day."

"Shit, Majima you can be such a… Pain in the ass sometimes." Reluctantly Kiryu put Gomo upright onto the backseat, and left slamming the door hard. The car vibrated.

That hurt, kind of below the belt wasn't it? But Majima sorta deserved that and more. He was born a pain in the ass, always was always gonna be. Lifestyle choice, it was. Maybe Kiryu was just sick of his shit - he wouldn't be the first or last.

Gomo raged something fierce, banging hard on the window when he saw that his favorite Kiryu-chan was leaving. When the world showed no sign of fixin' itself to his liking, he kicked Majima's seat furiously. It made Majima a lil' ill watching the boy - was he ever so desperate for affection? What a loser. L O S E R. Well at least he ain't so now, could watch Kiryu's slow heavy steps up those creaky stairs without even wincing.

Majima wound down his window, righted the sideview mirror. Kiryucha, Kiryucha, Gomo's mantra leaked onto the pavement.

The mirror twisted as far as it could go reflecting… What Majima had noticed some miles back, a dark red truck tailing them closely. Dark red. That meant nothing to him. Half of Tojo clan's affiliates like the color red, a prosperous and menacing color that everyone liked on their side. But could anyone confuse it with purple? Or had Nishida meant purple suits only...

"Can it for a sec, Gomo," He ordered. Craned his head for a better sight.

"Kiryu-chan," The kid pleaded. "Ryu-channnnnn."

Fuck's sake was this kid on 'bout. Maybe he shoulda take on Kiryu's offer, not be such a stubborn mule about it. It was mostly spite. Not gonna let Kiryu-chan have the kid, not gonna let anyone be happy because why the fuck should he. It ain't just cash that can be petty.

Without instructions he left the car running and stepped out. Kid was too young to leave, that's a good point. Majima had his tanto on him, so this will be over splish-splash like, and if it ain't he knew Kiryu-chan would come to him like a knight in shining armor. He could feel those two frowny old-man eyes on him from the window. Dirty blue curtains were lifted and peered out of.

He took ten steps towards the truck.

"Yo boys," He yelled, when he got close enough. "Ya wanna take it out here?" In the dark cavern of the truck's driver seat he could see two gargoyles, stooped and bent over the wheel. They were tall-dark-big like demons. Hard to believe they were yakuza, he woulda hear through the grapevine long ago if they had wine of this vintage in Tojo. Big yakuza hurt more folks and garner more attention, by virtue of being big. Unlike Majima, who had to work for it.

"I say, yo! Ya deaf? Or just pussy?"

He got close enough to rap on their window. The two gorillas peered at him creepy-creepy like automatons, turning their heads in sync. Twins? Not likely. They reached an invisible decision and shoved the doors open, gliding out in matching svelte suits. Purple, both of them, with no insignia.

"Who ya boys?" Majima asked, not expecting an answer. "Ya wanna answer now or after I beat it outta ya?"

They chose, as usual, the beating.

—
--
__

Launching himself at them Majima knew immediately they were good.

Not excellent like Kiryu or Saejima but good enough to be a challenge, certainly a far cut above the generic Tojo bottom-feeder thugs. They moved in sync like they've got each other's rap all figured out. Sometimes you see this in the fighter rings with twins or old friends, but Majima thought - these two don't look like they got enough Personality to fill a thimble, never mind friendship.

He dodged and slithered around them, using modest cuts to wear them down. Nothing fancy, only fancy footwork. Even then they were a nice challenge, every time he quickstepped from one another appeared behind him in agreement, fists drawn and rough. Getting out of the way was the tricky part, and where he was careless he got punched one-two-ow.

Majima nicked them - elbows, underarms, inner thighs when he could get them — bleeding them slow and steady so that in ten minutes he'd worn them down to a stub. The two were breathing heavy now, back against their truck, none of this fancy footwork. He'd caught a few fists to the jaw himself, but what did it matter? He shook it off.

In a flurry they went at him with furious kicks - left-right-left-right like they were marching in mid-air. But they were mirrored images, which made it easy to get outta the way. Only needed to see it once. He moved aside, cut at the back of their knees with the precision of a surgeon, and dropped them.

"Ya feel like talking now?" He demanded.

No answer, not even acknowledgment. Maybe they didn't speak Japanese at all? They had that kind of characterless face, neither young nor old. Vaguely Asian, but without characteristics that told you what you were facing. A Chinese Korean Japanese motherfucker. Just for a reaction he nicked one of them in the face, and the man winced. Okay, so he had nerve cells. Wouldn't know if Majima hadta guess.

In the background, Gomo was yelling now - rucha rucha rucha - and he figured he oughta end this before the kid burst a lung. Could take his own sweet time beating info outta them when he dragged these two boys off to Majima-central. Hope they liked the rented trunk.

Majima moved decisively, sweeping his knife in a large arc, slashing one across the jaw where he would bleed hard but not die, and brought it down in the other's shoulder. They yelled and went down (the first time, God, what a tank) on their knees, brought down lower when Majima kneed them hard in the chin.

Kneeling down, he grabbed one by the hair. "Ya wanna talk here? Or ya wanna talk at home? 'Cos I gotta warn ya, I'm a real hospitable kinda guy. Most of my guests don't leave too soon, ya catching my drift." Flicked the knife at him, watched the guy winced at the pain but not the threat. "Who the hell are ya? Who do you work for?"

The gargoyle ignored him. Stared past his shoulder.

"Ehh? Ya ignoring me now? That ain't cool man..."

Majima grabbed at the other man to see if he'd have better results. The man impassive as a stone, stared off at the same spot as his colleague. They vibrated lightly, the both of them, like little boys awaiting an anticipated treat.

Just 'cuz he was so damned curious Majima looked too, to see what the man was craning his head for.

It was just the road as he'd left it, rented car parked by Kiryu's place. Kiryu was out now - okay that was different but nothing special — reaching into the car to take Gomo-chan out. Majima was gonna catch a beating later, he figured. Kiryu would pound his ass for leaving the boy in the car to scream the house down (but what was he supposed to do? Fight with a kid in one hand?). Apology not accepted, the future Kiryu yelled.

Present Kiryu looked up then - off into a junction of the street perpendicular and invisible to Majima — and from a distance Majima could hear something now, the rumbling purr of a vehicle that'd gone recently from zero to hero. A very heavy vehicle, rattling like - like one of these trucks beside Majima, in fact.

"Kiryu, get the fuck outta there!" He screeched.

It came jaw-jutting arrogantly out the street, headlights fully powered to better see what it was crushing. Kiryu saw and swore and turned, but at that angle there was really nowhere to run - he couldn't outrun Death come again blaring smoke and tortured rubber —

— That smashed clean into the rented car, Gomo-chan, Kiryu-chan, the whole zoo. It crushed the car like a tin car and kept going, going, going, until it sat fat across the lot. It'd taken down half of Kiryu's apartment block, bulldozing the whole unit. Stone and metal and mangled car exploded every which way. Something or everything was on fire. Two men jumped down from the truck.

"Kiryu-chan?" Majima had time to gasp, before he was knocked out by one of the men he'd subdued.

Purple. He thought, as he slipped off somewhere dank and musty with fears.

—

 

Notes:

Sorry about the hiatus (:
I took a couple of days off to finish writing my fantasy Majima-is-a-snake-god story.
The next few chapters are done too, but Majima is acting pretty incoherently in 'em (though I don't blame him), so progress shall be slow.

Chapter 8: a slaughterhouse.

"Now for the special," The television was saying.

Saejima closed his eyes while his fellow inmates crowded around the 9p.m, the daily news special that they got all their religion from. Between nine to nine twenty the lady with the nice teeth and the great tits would hand them their deliverance: which Gang and what Fire and how much Violence was committed. Whether it was Yard Time or Lunch Time - the only indicator of hours in their sterile world - when the crime was done.

After, when the prisoners drift back to their cells, they'll be gossiping like housewives. It must be Shimano, someone might say. I don't know no one else who'd light a fire that big in Kamurocho… But no, another insisted. Majima-gumi was on the rise, and he seems the eagerest lapdog for these grisly trophies.

Be patient, Saejima told himself. Nothing matters until the time is right.

He moved like water into his cell, and stored himself in his bed until it was time to move again. At six tomorrow morning the state penitentiary bell will compel him to move, to be poured into the yard into work and into meals. Moss gathered on him would be shaken loose, him left with no time to think, to be moved swiftly into a smaller and smaller container. In time there will be less and less Taiga Saejima, and more ennui. He was looking forward to that day.

Saejima laid heavy while he counted the seconds. Three thousand six hundred until the first bell. Another three thousand six hundred and it was lights out.

He woke then, and listened in on the Night. These times were the best times. If you were keen to hear a whispered secret, you only needed to tune your ears towards the quiet corridors. Sometimes you hear prayer, wishes, fervent rustles of scratchy bedding. That is, if you're a rumormonger. Saejima was not, and he wanted only for them to quiet down soon so that before he fell asleep he could hear the chirp of insects out there in a free world...

A light interrupted him. A single flashlight bobbing up and down across the hallway, leading a careless officer with newly issued shoes. Saejima watched - as everyone in his block watched - to see where the dice would land. It landed, like most trouble, on Saejima's doorsteps.

"No. 88561?" A voice called. Saejima grunted, put on his boots. They would not come so late at night to become his guests. They were going somewhere to grope at the dark.

"Come along. You've got a visitor..."

He was directed and misdirected into an isolated block used for interrogations, the small intestines that every prisoner had to pass through before they were shat into the system. Saejima was left with a solitary yellow bulb. His heart pounded in his chest, knew with instincts and logic only one person had the motive and affluence to meet him this time of the night. Would he break Majima's fingers one by one for his betrayal, he wondered, or perform something more elaborate, a ritual he hadn't yet figured out?

We are young, the Night said. In time we will learn. We will all learn.

"You look like shit," He said.

Majima came in and sat heavy across him. The metal legs of the folding chair yowled so loud it woke the mice.

"Yo, kyoudai."

A cigarette was lit, passed on. Another cigarette came alive.

Saejima took it gratefully. "I thought you won't be showing your face for years yet. Not until I get out of here, at least."

"The pigs have their way, ya ain't ever getting nowhere."

"Is that why you've come? To bare all before the time's right?"

"Naw," Black ash flicked expertly on the metal table. "I don't. I came here tonight to chat, shoot the shit, ya know. I won't say no if ya want answers. I owe you that much."

"What, you lonely?"

"Fuck if I know. They won't let me into the ward… Said I punched one too many docs."

Saejima looked harder, and saw. Majima looked like a savaged moth - the shakes, the shivers, the feverish look in his eye. His cigarette bobbed up and down like a rescue flare.

"Fine," He told Majima. "We'll settle what we've got to settle - later. Tonight we'll put that aside."

"Thanks," Majima reached down, held up a six pack. The hiss of the first can opening. An officer twitched in the hallway, but the moneyed glimmer in Majima's eye settled him down. A wad of bills, later, later. A whole ward of it…

"I ain't got no-one except ya," Majima said.

A recent development?

He drew words, chip by chip off Majima's shoulders. They were disjointed and fragmented: a boy who was his but not a son, a man who was as unchanging as the sun - though not in these words, it was implied. A fire, an accident? The account was incoherent, Saejima felt there was much that had been left out, but the foundation of Majima's misery showed clean in the ground.

Saejima had no clue about the rest, and it'd been only five years. What was the world going to be like when he gets out? Well, at least it was just his Kyoudai. Some things never change in half a decade; it was the way the cards were laid.

"You're running away again," He told Majima.

"Fuck, not that again,"

"Yes, that again."

"I don't know why I come ta talk to ya, Kyoudai. Ya like a broken tape. Ya the same with Kiryu-chan." He threw a can back angrily, drank every drop without tasting any. There was enough alcohol in Majima to poison a large mammal. "Every time it's 'running away!', 'escaping responsibilities!', 'terrified of sincerity!'. Woulda thought you picked up new tunes by now with so many hard knocks around ya."

"Why'd you come then?"

"That's 'cuz I want— I needed-— " He hiccuped, scrambled for words, slid miserably in his chair. Rubbed hard hands into his tired eyes. Majima always looked pathetic when he was drunk enough. It was family trait, Saejima thought but wouldn't say. Next he would start scratching in the dirt like a chicken, looking ridiculous. But like a mean one-eyed cockerel, so you wouldn't fight him for the right to say-so.

Saejima sighed. He took his own cigarette to the barred window, to smell air fresher than the toxic combination of tobacco-and-beer.

"More precisely, I bet you're just pissed because you don't get to run this time," Saejima told him.

"Fuck yer off,"

"You come to me, you're expecting truths. Tough medicine."

"Don't want no medicine."

"Tough, you're getting it. I've known you most your life, kyoudai. You run from everything half-good you've got."

"No, I don't. I move on - something y'all real bad at."

Saejima ignored his jibe. "You know how they used to say you were a smart kid in school? First thing you did was to flunk colorful out of school. Then someone tells you you've got it in you to be a good businessman, and you're off the damned rails, stealing and conning until no one would hire you to run a fruit stall."

He took a long, slow drag, letting the warmth travel down his trachea. "Well, surprise - you're a damned good thief. Off you go again, ditching us all for Kamurocho. A stripper, really? Turns out you're good at that too, or I wouldn't have to beat customers off you for half a year. Now you're yakuza, but how long? When you get big enough, you'll just blow yourself up just because you can."

"The only reason you're here at all is because you were all geared up to run, and he goes and get himself bent out of shape, so now you can't run. Aw, don't look so surprise, Kyoudai," He chided. "No cause to go and lie about that. As if you'd be so torn up if you were keeping him."

Saejima took a drag, done with a decade's worth of advice.

Majima drooped into his alcohol, said nothing. Saejima helped himself to another cigarette from the pack, and enjoyed the silence. The sounds of the night were interrupted by the buzzing lightbulb, but besides that all was well in his world. It brought him no small joy to see his Kyoudai suffering; at twenty five he had enough rage still to want to smother the world.

"Ya wrong," Majima said, to his alcoholic reflection.

"Huh."

"That part 'bout ditching Kiryu-chan. Ya wrong about that. I want to keep him,"

"Don't look like that to me."

'--Cept'"

Another beer opened, a single tap from the officers to indicate time. However much time Majima had bought, it was winding down.

"'Cept he pries. Sticks his nose where I don't want him ta. Looks at me with big gooey sad eyes, goes Majima- sorry ya had to live like that."

"Find it hard to believe yakuza would say that,"

"Oh he don't. He thinks that."

"And other things," Majima added. "He's always around like a fucking puppy. Nosing, snooping, digging. Not for juice either but just to be around. Makes me sick."

"You mad he stays? Kyoudai, that's low even for you,"

No, Majima thought. It's not about Kiryu staying. It's about him not-staying someday. Someday near-or-far, no matter, point is it would come.

One day Majima would outrun the sun, go far off the crazy rails, look behind him - and find that there's no Kiryu there to catch him and put him back into shape. You can't be disappointed if ya don't get to that point, don't let it come so far that the other person can say: Majima, ya cunt, and make off. Naw, that'd mean you've lost. What you gotta do, what you really gotta do, is get the cut in first. First person to cut loose, loses...

… Loses nothing.

Saejima stared him down, waiting for the inevitable repartee. But Majima's words were for himself.

"Fuck if I know," He muttered.

The second tap came from the officer. Their time wound down to nothing. Saejima drank the rest of his beer, and gave his kyoudai another squeeze on the shoulder. Reassuring, he hoped he came off as. As much as he hated Majima sometimes in the privacy of his suspicious cell, they were brothers. He took no pleasure in seeing him in true-pain. It was just as well Majima was out and he was in. Majima needed all his years to grow, delicate hothouse flower that he was. A thousand years in the sun and he might learn to be happy.

"One last thing about him pitying you," Saejima added before it was time to go. "Could be you're just putting your own self-pity in his mouth. I don't know the man, I can't judge him. But if it's true," He tapped the eye-patch. "Make him see that there's nothing ugly about madness in a mad dog."

—
__
__

Majima came back to the hospital in a suit-and-tie, extorted from one of his boys. The kid will now be going to his own birthday in a gaudy orange shirt that looks like it'd last seen the sun in the 80s, but at least he can go knowing he'd been useful to oyaji. Dressed in a formal black suit and sunglasses, Majima was convinced he no longer resembled the raving lunatic that'd been dragged kickin' outta central hospital last week.

Well was is it his fault?

He'd come staggering awake from his appointment with the brick; the world it seemed, was on fire and wailing, an agonizing mess that culminated in a splitting migraine in Majima. There was no red truck, no strange anonymous men. Somewhere in the distance - his depth perception thrown all off so that it looked like the ambulance was parked behind a tree that grew from the middle of the asphalt - they were loading Kiryu onto an ambulance.

He went. Pushed aside a belligerent medic who kept asking him in an insistent voice: family? friend? stranger? If he needed help he should wait for the next ambulance - this one is for their most critical case only. Majima's world was spinning, and the blue-white-bright lights of the ambulance was not helping. He was seeing triple, double, quintuple of everything. The gory mess of Kiryu's face was a slaughterhouse. Majima's eye, like an artistic child, had taken the mangled flesh of Kiryu's upper body and printed it all over the clinical whites, so that he saw red everywhere.

Hey stop touching that, the man said to him, and Majima stuck fingers in his (eyes? nose?) and kicked him out of the ambulance so forcefully he skidded to a halt some ten feet away.

Get bent, he said. Grabbed onto Kiryu's sleeve - is there even a hand, he couldn't see, everything was so slimy like jelly - and became immovable as a rock. Anyone moving me from here gets a knife in their tits.

He slept fitfully, coming awake when they wheeled Kiryu away from him too fast for him to hold on. Majima stood stunned and swaying in the hospital's hallway (how did he get here?) before he came to his senses, and hunted the stretcher down like a drunk ball, bowling over nurses and doctors like pins. Another nurse show up with the same damned questions: family? friend? stranger? This time he wised up.

Family, he said. Family.

"Alright," she said, knitting suspicious brows. "You can wait outside his doors."

Okay, he said. He can wait forever.

Did he need help?

No. Oh wait. Have they seen a kid at the site? About this tall and that wide. Keeps saying Kiryu-chan, Kiryu-chan (just like Majima) over and over.

No they haven't.

He settled down for a long wait in the unyielding plastic chairs of that corridor to hell ya gotta sit in, six to a side (three if you were in the small time places). Wrapped his jacket around him and sat shivering until he realized this was no spiteful AC. The cold was coming from inside him.

Well what if Kiryu-chan is dead, dies, goes, gone, kaput?

Sure okay alright. These things happen. Ya put on a game face and a funeral, and you cry a bit. Ya round up your boys so they can line up like ducks and pay their respects. Them looking hard at their shoes 'cuz they don't want to catch oyaji's gaze and get a sock in it. Ya punch them anyway, then drink like a fish until you go - Kiryu who?

Not the end of the world. Kiryu-chan was great, but there's plenty of sharks in the… Oh, fuck, who was he kidding? Majima wasn't gonna find nobody stronger than Kiryu...

He comes staggering awake again. Someone's told him a fib: the sign above the operating theater had gone dark. Where the hell is Kiryu, he shook the question into a stray nurse. Ya best take me to him at once.

"You can only see him from afar," She said.

She takes him to yet another white corridor extending into the light, Majima the only thing with color everywhere he turned. They parked him outside a plain glass window the sort you coo over your baby nieces in, only it had Kiryu-on-a-bed in there. Was it Kiryu? The man was so bandaged, Majima couldn't tell. 's far as he could see it was just a white mummy with two black cavities for eyes. It could be a fake, a mannequin for all he knew, and they'd done him a disservice, did him a lie, hooking up a doll so Majima'd get off their ass about it.

Next thing he did know, he was smashing the glass with his fists going ow ow ow. The nurse screamed and ran for salvation; the emergency phones ringing once-twice, and then hello? There's a madman here on the fourth floor! Yes, please, he's headbutting the glass now!

Off he hopped, leaping easy across the shattered jagged teeth of the glass and the waist-height wall. He checked the vitals (watched Operation Theater X baby, Goro Majima the expert!) to see if Kiryu had the right levels of O2, and went to work cutting the bandages on his face apart.

"What are you doing?" The nurse shouted, a brave woman who'd dared to come into the ring. "His wounds will get infected - stop that!"

"I just gotta find out if it's my Kiryu-chan," He told her, and ripped the bandage apart. It was Kiryu, only with his face scraped raw, the color of those shit-ugly shirts he wore. The Dragon of Dojima: 50% burns, 50% broken bones, 100% alive.

"Aight," Majima said, calmer now. "That's my Kiryu-chan right there."

He let them take him away, listened docile to them when they put him in a reinforced wheelchair attended by a muscular male nurse. Severe trauma, the doctor says. (But which kind? Old or new?) Emotional strain from witnessing a traumatic event. Paranoia, neuroticism, possibly hallucinatory. They gave him a tranquilizer. When it turned out he was perfectly fine - outside anyway - they threw him out and made him persona non grata for room 446.

Well, ya can keep out the wind, but ya can't keep out the mad dog...

Majima was back and prowling a week later in a borrowed suit and flowers on credit. He knocked smartly on the reception. "Room 447? I'm here for Kazuma Kiryu."

She pressed a button, checked her notes "He's not awake."

"Ain't a problem. I'll just drop these off and git," He said, shaking the bouquet of yellow roses. He got waved in, dropping off a couple of the yellow stinkers off for the reception. Keeps 'em buttered. Kiryu's room gestated quiet and tomb-like at the end of a corridor, pass a taped broken window that said: MAINTENANCE. PLEASE BE CAREFUL. His steel-tipped shoes tickling the ground like ivories, Majima drew up a chair beside Kiryu - whose bandages have receded to a nominal amount - and tossed the flowers onto it. From his suit he withdrew a crowbar slim enough to escape detection.

"Yo, Kiryu-chan. Been a while." He said, getting a couple of practice swings in. "I'm here to wake yer ass up."

 

 

 

 

Chapter 9: vitality of a tardigrade

Kiryu was an inch away from blindness when he woke up. Or failing that, an excruciating headache.

He looked at the crowbar hovering over his face, followed its direction to gloved hands and Majima in a black suit. A minute ago Kiryu thought he was being attacked by a censor bar, so close was it to him. The world redacted in black on a NEED TO KNOW BASIS only.

"… Going to a funeral?" He croaked.

"A-hah," Majima crowed, "I knew violence was the answer!"

Unable to open his eyes for even a second longer, Kiryu passed out.

—
--
--

When Kiryu woke up again, he was no longer in imminent danger of bodily harm. The room unfolded itself quiet and serene before him, a motherly machine behind him counting out heartbeats one by one to him so he wouldn't use them all up in a hurry. There were yellow roses scattered all over his blanket, petals pecked out, lying in helpless carnage. Majima's breath drew them in and pushed them away like a tease; it wasn't done in spite - Majima was asleep.

It wasn't the first time Kiryu's woken up since. Like a cursed princess (Majima's words, not his) he came awake for five minutes every day, between midnight and two in the morning, always with a splitting headache. And no wonder - according to Majima he didn't have a single organ that wasn't split apart and held together with spit and strong staplers. The only reason he was recovering at all was because he was twenty two, and had the vitality of a tardigrade.

A what, he asked Majima.

Tardigrade, he said, pointing to a fleshy bacterial lump that looks like a recycled alien on his science magazine, one of the many reading materials and video games and zombie movies Majima brought in for his week-long vigil. If Majima left, he left only to go to the corridor to yell at Nishida for getting his orders wrong.

Hey, Kiryu tried to say now, nudging Majima's head. The man slept like a rock on Kiryu's hand, which had gone numb and cold.

Hey, he tried again, his tongue like a stone. Hey, hey, hey, hey. He was going to punch Majima awake as soon as he could make a fist.

Majima must have heard the silent threat, because he woke in a rub of blurry eyes.

"Is Gomo-chan," Kiryu managed.

"That the first thing ya can say to me, Kiryu-chan?" Majima yawned so wide he cracked his jaw. "Ya breakin' my heart here."

"I'm worried about you," He retorted.

"Aw, semantics,"

Majima went and returned with a tray, measured out black coffee from a BOSS can and handed a cup of it to Kiryu's trembling right hand. The other would not come awake no matter how hard Kiryu tried.

"It'll probably kill ya, but I figured you'll need it. Shot of whisky too." Majima said, sipping the rest of it from a bottle of Hibiki.

"Is Gomo-chan alright?" He asked again. Majima took a long medicinal swallow before answering.

"Fuck if I know," Majima admitted. "No one's seen him. No one wheeled him in. No one's reported finding a dead kid blown to shit either. I went back with the boys and knocked the rubble around, even lifted the wrecked car clean up. No Gomo, no homo."

He shook his head. "Probably he didn't survived. The way ya looked when ya got dragged off the place, if he's alive he'll not be a looker. 's too bad, strawberry jam's a great look for the kid. Though that begs a question, dunnit? If he's dead, how come he ain't there? How come someone dragged a kid, or a dead kid off ya? Ya remember anything after the explosion?"

Kiryu frowned hard, knuckling his hurting head until he remembered: "I felt something. There was something heavy on me, like metal, and they were moving it to get at something."

"Then it's probably those two baboons and their mates. Dead or alive, kid's with 'em." He told Kiryu all about the two gargoyles, the red truck that'd tailed them. They sat in silence, fixating slowly on a solution.

"You shouldn't be here." Kiryu said. He should be out there, pounding the pavement a hundred times a minute, snooping high and low in Kamurocho for answers. The kid had been their responsibility, and they had somehow conspired to be run over by a truck and lose him after ten minutes in the city. Majima just shrugged, rolled his tired shoulders; it was hard work watching so many zombie movies in a row.

"I got Nishida and the boys on it. I figured the best use of my time is here, playin' nurse to ya. How 'bout it? Tell ol' Dorctor Goro what ya need - ten cans of Toughness ZZ or six pork bentos - he'll grant all yer wishes. All ya gotta do is recover real quick and we can go out snooping together."

No, Kiryu insisted. Majima should go. Nothing will happen unless he goes; does he not know? Nothing progresses unless they're there, Stories held themselves back in arrears unless the debtors are there...

"No. I ain't going." said Majima. A stubborn look that said he ain't going and that's final. Unless Kiryu punched him hard enough with a chair, which he could not do now. Didn't offer an explanation either, say sweet things like - I want to be here with ya, I ain't leaving ya, I'm worried about ya - just Majima stubborn but present, watching Zetsubou Z learning kung-fu from an ex-Air Force One pilot.

Gradually the room begin to take on the properties of Majima's bedroom, which is to say that it starts looking like a ghetto shack shared by four pizza addicts. Yuya's Pizza Palace built castles with Pizzakaya and Mickey'sNYPizza, topped by Pizzoff! Doctors had to wade through a sea of extra tissues and chilli powder in order to get to Kiryu, stethoscopes in danger of touching stray sauce. They would have said something, but Majima had an eyepatch and no shirt.

"Please, clean up after yourself," He told Majima.

No, he yawned. Ya want me to be clean, ya gotta get back up and beat the filth out of me.

Nights Majima spent on the one chair at first, then outside on the corridor chairs when his back couldn't take the strain. A few days later he had eyebags you could put coins in. Like a vending machine, he'd been woken up every five minutes by stray staff, asking him that age-old question: family? friend? stranger? Like lost souls in hell, asking every stray hero: who are you?

If it wasn't that, it was the eternal white light of the corridors. And people who can't keep their stiff upper lip, airing their intestines in public, screaming down hallways in fast-rolling stretchers. Some people just don't have moral fibre...

"Move ya ass," He told Kiryu, shoved him rudely to the edge of the bed. The machine beeped loudly and insisted to an indignant Kiryu that he was in fact, dead.

"Majima-no-nii-san, can't you get a futon?" Kiryu could even spot him if he was too broke for a Rakuten bargain mattress. The hospital bed was not made for two large men.

"Now why'd I go and do that when I got my favorite futon here?" Majima asked. He arranged himself into the figure of a six, and went to sleep.

Here's the thing, Kiryu thought. Being held on to like dear life doesn't matter. Having him breathe on your neck, gentle and at peace - that doesn't matter either. What really matters, what really prolongs their relationship - is silence. You can't ask: So are we? Are we still? Does this mean? Do you still? Can I? The moment you do, the spell breaks, and you get turned back into the bear in the woods with the eaten porridge and the slept-in bed. No new friend, just a lot of shit on your carpets.

Not gonna ask, Kiryu goes to bed thinking. Not gonna like the answer, probably.

He's woken up by Majima, curling his gloved hands around Kiryu's, squeezing it hard enough to break bone. "I'm real glad you survived," Majima told the darkened room, the eavesdropping rightful recipient of his confession. "I wouldn't know what I'd do without you."

Kiryu betrayed by a hitch in his breath. A soft fluttery sigh. Ah. Ah, but to have a care. The relief of so much pent-up anxiety, so much would-he-won't-he. All those yellow petals, sacrificed for this answer.

They both pretended they didn't know that the other knows that they know. It was better that way.

--

Two weeks later, Kiryu was well enough that he could shuffle around the room on granddad legs, holding onto elbow crutches. To celebrate he kicked pizza boxes all the way to the trash can. He wondered aloud: how old do you think Gomo-chan looks now? Do you think he's learned to talk? Fuck if he knew, was the stock Majima answer, but Kiryu had a suspicion, coalescing at the back of his head. He wondered if maybe the boy might look exactly the same (if he was alive at all), that somehow the boy might not grow at all if they weren't around.

He remembered more now from that day: "Where's the thing," they'd said, rooting around for Gomo-chan, who'd laid suspiciously silent in there with Kiryu in a heap. When they found the boy, they'd been surprised.

"These guys are good, it's grown very large."

As if on cue to hurry the Story along, a nurse came in with a note for Majima. Majima took the note like it was a wet eel, examined it, turned it around, frowned hard.

"What is it?" Kiryu asked.

"Uhhh, looks like a birth certificate."

Kiryu took the note from him.

"Nii-san," He sighed. "This… Is a receipt."

A receipt? Majima asked, peering over his shoulder. It was, even if it was an odd one, like those receipts you buy from do-it-yourself accounting books available 100 yen for one at the store, with no company logo or address.

Thing is, this looks like someone's idea of what a cheap receipt looks like. Someone who's never seen one in their life. It was printed on thick creamy paper, textured and matte, and all the words were embossed in gold. The receipt had the pale lilac color of a custom job.

On it, buried under all the jargon of NON-REFUNDABLE PURCHASED OBJECTS LIMITED WARRANTY OF 1YR SUBJECT TO DISCRETION IN THE EVENT etc. was,

CHANGELING [gomo mazima] -----------— x 1
REFUNDED TO THE BUREAU OF DESIRABLE OBJECTS.

"Did you see that?" Majima pointed at the last word. "Gomo-chan's a desirable object. Me! They sure know how to flatter, these guys."

Kiryu's eyes itched from the effort of not rolling.

"I think we should go," He told Majima.

"Ya not going anywhere, daddy-four-legs. Ya don't got enough hands to punch with, in case ya haven't been counting," A meaningful look was given to Kiryu's hands, wrapped around the crutches. "Also, we have no damned clue where this bureau-thingy is."

What if it was a real Bureau, like Government? Maybe they've cloned him, Majima Goro, in order to build a race of super soldiers, having discovered that he's the most amazing knife-fighter in all of Japan. Except he's one-eyed, so they've gone and made a new him, many new hims, in order to take over—

"We'll start by asking The Florist." Kiryu said.

—
--
--

Never seen it in my life, said The Florist.

It was a conference of old men: old man Florist and old fart Date and old-fuck Kiryu-chan, with their heads together over a control panel diddling facts.

It was like watching three old farts contemplating a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. Occasionally someone might go, ah, but what if - and pulls out a piece that possibly, maybe, probably be part of the right eye. Alas, not so. It's only a badly-drawn sunny side up.

'Is it an actual bureau, do you think? Part of a secret government operation of some kind?" Kiryu suggested. Date shook his head. That was not how the Japanese government named their bureaus, and if it was secret, they would have used numbers and code words, maybe even English. They would not call it the bureau of… He couldn't even say it. Who thought up this shit?

Who thought up this shit? Majima agreed, sitting cross-legged at another control panel, off to the side. He was diddling the keyboard too, bored of all the maybes. Some time soon they'll figure it out and tell him, all these smart boys being smart. In the mean time he was only interested in the screens. It sees everything, did they say? At any time? And the records go back far enough...

Someone smarter might go, well, obviously all he has to do is —

That's not the way Majima works. Majima is busy trying to rewind the footage far enough and precise enough, so he can draw up a video of Kiryu moaning to a blowjob on the central screen. This is what he lives for: causing monumental and irredeemable embarrassment to Kiryu-chan. An embarrassment of riches was the first thing he found.

On the screen: Kiryu handing over 18, 000 yen for a charm; the ugly red stones they sell near Pink Street to desperate high school girls who need love charms. Kiryu looked like a hopeful virgin.

"Majima-san!" Kiryu hissed. "Cut it out." The screen looped on to something else. "If you're not going to help, just go buy some beers or something."

Naw, he said, tilting back and forth on the chair, long legs crossed. This was too great a treasure not to play with.

On the screen: Kiryu outside the SEGA arcade on Nakamichi Street, trading his money for a cash flow problem and a set of lemon-colored Pocket Circuit wheels.

"Majima-no-nii-san!"

Ya know he's pissed when there's so many syllables in a name. Majima played around on the keyboard, drew up the footage around Majima-central next, looping it back and forth trying to find that time he'd blown Kiryu in the hallways. If he remembered correctly, it was around one month ago, right next to the trash chute, and Kiryu had grabbed onto the —

"Oh," He said. "Kiryu-chan, ya better come and see this."

Majima had found, to his everlasting sadness, the footage of Gomo-chan being placed on his doorsteps, before he found the important stuff.

On screen, one of the goons in the purple suit - who all looked the same and had the facial flexibility of a mud mask, was placing the basket on Majima's doorstep. The man stuck Gomo-chan on the mat, and asshole that he was, pinched the kid until he screamed. They pulled up footages of the hospital next, and sure enough - approximately 15 minutes before they received the receipt, another man dressed in purple had pulled up at the west entrance. Rewound far enough, they found that all the brinjal thugs had the same thing in common: a safehouse on Pink Street. A brightly neon place called Club Erastes, to be precise.

"Why the fuck does it hafta be that place?" Majima moaned.

"Why, what's there?" Asked virgin Kiryu.

"It's a drag bar," The Florist said. "Very popular with some of the locals. Strippers on Wednesdays and Fridays, special guests on Sundays. Group performances once a month. Like Shangri-la, you'll have to find someone with a VIP pass, or you're not getting in."

No one wanted to be the slightest bit curious why he knew so much.

"Or a staff pass or somethin'," Majima joked.

—

 

 

 

Chapter 10: What is a lame dress?

Majima drove Kiryu around town ten times in a newly rented car before he was willing to talk to Kiryu. For a man who cares so much about the environment, he was burning gas like a truck from the fifties.

What's eating you, Kiryu had asked him some five hours ago. Why are we, two large men, going into stores outside Kamurocho buying female clothing? Why do you know what a mascara is, or an eyelash curler? How come you can tell the difference between an eyelash curler and a torture device? What is a lame dress? What's all that tape for? Is there something we need to talk about - like a secret girlfriend Majima's neglected to inform him of? Speak soon or they'll have to find out if he can beat Majima hobbling on crutches.

The miles pulled them along until they got to Majima-central, where Majima kicked all his boys out and told them not to come back for a week; their puny asses were officially (temporarily) fired for their ineffectuality. No Gomo-chan, no pay!

Kiryu sat on the bed - that old familiar altar he'd always been welcomed to - and watched Majima placed the stuff they bought one by one on the vanity, like a row of bullets. Majima had a large vanity (in both senses) for a man that doesn't even shave his beard evenly.

"You gonna tell me what this is about?"

"Nah."

Wordlessly, he watched Majima deconstruct himself: shaved off the hairs on the nape of his neck so that it was all smooth, trimmed his sideburns so there wasn't a single one out of place. Watched as Majima stepped into the bathroom, humming catchy pop tunes, and came back out smooth and slick. At first Kiryu couldn't tell the difference, then he sees: not a single hair on Majima's arms, or legs. Frictionless, unlike Majima's challenging glare which said - first thing you say we'll see how hard I can hit the disabled.

He was, without saying as much, challenging Kiryu. Watching him like a hawk for the first sign of disgust.

On goes the mascara, the blush, the lip-ink, the adjusted eyebrows. Legs crossed over his stool in a prim manner that Kiryu had never seen, he painted his toenails one by one until they were glistening wet with pink. Then the dress - which Kiryu hadn't seen, too embarrassed to enter a shop whose mannequins look like cabaret girls - pink and glittering, and the blonde wig. They came on like old friends. Kiryu couldn't tell a dress zip from a zip code, and here was Majima, making it look easy.

At some point, in the fishnets and the heels, Majima had become someone else - who Kiryu had not met and so had no name yet. Majima's Personality visibly softened around the edges as he checked himself out in the mirror.

"Hmm, whadya know?" He chuckled, checking out his own butt. "I still got it."

Then he turned back to Kiryu, and there was nothing soft around those edges.

"Alright, Kiryu-chan. Story time," He said.

—
__
__

He's got a staff pass.

It's old old from before '85, so obviously they won't be getting in on it. That's not the point, the point is not the details. He can bore you about special passes, favors, old friends and shows, but who gives a shit? Point is that it'll happen, and it'll happen easy.

"Uh," Kiryu said. "Uhhhhh."

This, Majima said, pointing an accusing finger, is the problem.

If Kiryu was going to come along, even though he was about as useful as warm ice right now, he would have to know. Not just about Majima in heels and a wig - that fright will wear off soon - but about more than that, about how this came to be. It ain't much; there are no incinerators in this tale.

Because otherwise you know what will happen, don't you, Kiryu-chan? Instead of asking about Gomo-chan and snooping where you ought to, you'll be stooping where you ought not. Stooping to be a sneak, an eavesdropper, a thief, asking every old friend of Majima's — hey do you know— ?

Do you know, Kiryu-chan? Ya can't help yerself; that's who you are. The moment opportunity arrives, you'll be hobbling after it fast.

"That's not true," Kiryu protested, and promptly forgot what he was protesting. All he could think of was: Majima in heels. Majima in heels. Majima in heels. His body was very confused: it was either sweating, being poisoned, or aroused. Possibly it was a combination of all three.

"Or maybe I just want to tell ya," Majima said. "So I'm going to pretend ya forcing my hand here, Kiryu-chan."

—
__
__

Don't worry, this isn't a sad story.

A long, long ago, in a land lost now in time, exists Kamurocho.

Not Kamurocho as they know it now, or even five years ago, but Kamurocho as seen by a boy of seventeen who'd just spent the last of his money on the bus here and has two riceballs to his name. Who didn't even mean to be at Kamurocho - any place in Tokyo would have done. Kamurocho was just the furthest the kid could pay for.

Kamurocho to a kid of seventeen is mostly music.

Ya gotta understand that the countryside is all silence. All silence, plus the soft strain of your neighbour's TV set, which you can hear across all the hills, playing ads in the five hours between sunset and an early bedtime. The music of the country is different: it's baseball commentary, yesterday's news, irrelevant politics. Old music for dead people, dead music for old people, and for the living: a few bad pop songs that manage to filter through the airwaves into buttfuck nowhere. Always there's interference, so that every song goes — — kinda like -— — and maybe -—. You have to listen to a song five times to know what it is even about. Is it love, breakup, loss, grief? Well, what is it?

Imagine Kamurocho then: imagine the noise, the sound, the great roaring crowd going up, forwards, ahead, towards. Always towards. You can't get lost in the city, because the city has only one way: forwards. And along the way? A million neon signs, music pouring out of clubs, people yelling in payphones, yelling at each other, screaming discounts and sales and forty percent off — or else the sound of your shirt rustling, someone thrusting pocket tissues into your hands.

HEY WHERE IS — you shout, trying to ask for directions. You're lost, but you don't even know it, because you can't find anyone to confess it to. Talk isn't cheap in the city - ya wanna talk, ya gotta pay the barkeep a thousand yen a minute to pretend to care.

HERE — someone says, and you get deposited where you need to be, at a HELP WANTED sign. Even the sign is loud: it's red and blue and yellow in primary tones. It underscores in black, highlights in white. Names are golden and laminated, prices marked up in halogen. Don't worry about the job. Never worry about money. The city has a place for everyone, and it's got everyone in their places.

Where your place is is at the bottom of the ladder: in odd jobs that guarantee a Great Future. You deliver boxed lunches to offices with Advancement Opportunities, office supplies to hospitals with International Postings. Everyone going always higher, always forwards, bringing you with them in their 16-bit disco tracks and baby electronica.

"Sounds like a dream," Kiryu said.

It is a dream!

HERE — someone says, and you get put in your place. Better jobs now, because you're part of the city, aren't you? You can yell discounts with the best of them, pass pocket tissues like a pro, offer samples like a saleslady. You're good now, real good, and if you get lost sometimes, turned around by the lull in the music — well, you can just pretend you're dancing! Dancing with fists drawn, feet apart, to the rhythm of your throbbing cut lips. Ya shoulda seen the other guy, you sing. Ya shoulda seen the pair of lungs on that guy!

Good vibes only, Kiryu-chan.

THERE - someone suggests, and following the last strands of the advice, you come upon a club. Club Erastes, they call it. A gayer name could not exist. A gayer boy could not exist. This is perfect, is it not? For you? HELP WANTED, says a sign. It is bright neon pink, and you figure, why not? Why not dance for money, what is there to lose, what do you even want in life? All you wanted was to get out - well you're out now. The city has led you here, ever forwards, and the money's good. You're young, and you look damn fucking good- why not?

So you dance. Wednesday and Fridays you dance to electronica, smooth and low like a baritone, black coffee poured into music, that's what electronica is. The crowd is mostly old men here for a novelty, bored of the many teats of the city and here for something special, something flat like a runway. Across the runway you skip, to their cheers, their jeers, their money gripped by the fistful.

Saturdays and Sundays, the older sisters are in: all the new lady friends you meet with fists the size of dinner plates. In musical verse they tell you what to wax, what to tape, what to shave. How not to break your dick in half while you're dancing in a thong. To the disco music of the 80s, you hold hands with them and one-two-step all night.

You should see the crowd tonight! A sister says. Might be the first time I ever saw more smiles than jeers!

Is this really something to be happy about? Why not just —

Good vibes only, your sisters tell you. Don't go breakin' faces more than ya break hearts, Goromi-chan. That's not the way the city works.

It isn't? Well, it fucking should be then.

You're good at dancing, but you can be better. You learn to dance so furiously you can break your heels twice a night, to flutter like a butterfly, to sting like a bee. Mondays and Thursdays you bounce to the bippity-bop of synthwave trash, ripped straight out of a bad porn tape. You learn pole-dancing, twisting higher and ever higher on muscles you never knew you had - and stare at the roof. You hold your pose not to impress, but because the roof doesn't have faces. The more you see that your customers hate you - or do they hate themselves? - the better you dance, the more furious your moves.

Good vibes only, your sisters tell you. Sad now. They see somehow that you won't be around for long. They are saying goodbye in their own way.

The city is quieter now too. Not because there is no music, but because you've become selectively deaf. You can dodge the hooks of muggers, the tempos of discounts. Pocket tissues you take by the dozen, one around every corner. You pass them around Erastes before the job starts like brochures, one to every sister. Every sister has got a low note: a man they love that don't love them, a woman they love that don't like their man in skirts. Ya get all types. What ya don't get is why they let this be done to them. You would never stand for it, you would never suffer such disrespect...

You strain your ears to listen to the music, because you're afraid of what it means when it does stop. You've got no plan figured out. You still don't know what you want. What is the Great Future? Is there a future? Is synthwave pop trash porn electronica your future?

One day, you finally find the music that's right for you.

HELP WANTED — says a sister, cowering in Erastes' back alley. Standing over her is her dance partner: a man who likes breaking more than dancing. Oh, you say. Well, should you interfere? Erastes has a very serious no-violence policy. They don't like trouble, the sort of place they are. They like good vibes only. HELP WANTED, she says insistently, in her body language and the arch of her pained back. Go away, she sings instead. Go away, Goromi-chan, I don't want you to see me like this...

That's when you discover that the genre you like best is rock, and metal.

That's the kind of music appropriate for a person like you.

Rock and metal, applied vigorously to the human bone. Beats you like, but you like a beating the best - smashing a man's face in until it caves to the rhythm of your insides. You like dancing with your fists drawn, your legs apart, and you like it best when they sing - in falsettos, sopranos, baritones - don't matter none as long as they sing loud and clear. Say sorry, you tell him. Express-your-fucking-self. He doesn't say sorry, mostly because you broke his jaw.

Goodbye, Goro-chan, your sisters tell you, returning your shit to you in a duffle bag. We're sorry it has to be like this.

Why? You ask them, furiously. Why do you all take this lying down? What's so shameful about what we do? Not just the dress - but everything else. Is it so bad to want to suck a little cock?

They look at you sadly, like you're just a kid who doesn't know jackshit, and walk back in one by one until it's just you and the sister you saved.

"I'm sorry, Goro-chan," She says. "Maybe in your eyes, we're not as strong as you are. In ours, you're not strong enough to live as Goromi. You're not Goromi. She's just a person you are sometimes, and you get to choose. Well, do you think we all get to choose?"

She thrusts an address into your hands.

"Go find yourself elsewhere," She says. "You're not going to find it here. But come back sometimes when you miss Goromi-chan."

See ya around.

"See ya, Goro-chan. And here, take this. We were saving these for your birthday. The finest leather shoes, real steel on the tips. You can dance in them, wherever you go."

Thanks, you say. You are afraid to say more; what if you cry? That would be disgusting, a real show-stopper. For a while there they'd been family, though.

It is always raining when this kinda shit happen, but at least it means no music in the city. The city is quiet only when it rains. You get to the address before the ink smears itself away, going drippity-tap into the water.

You look around and ask, is this — ?

HERE — someone says, and you look at the place long and hard.

Yakuza. Well, why not?

The city has decided to put you in your place.

—
__
__

"And that, is why I know what an eyelash curler is." Majima said, a well-heeled foot between Kiryu's thighs.

He cocked a head, leered. "So. Wanna fuck me like this?"

"Uhh, no thanks," Kiryu said. His head was still spinning - from the smell of Majima's perfume, the story, the poisonous feelings in his stomach. He blinked hard to dispel it, floating in the jetsam of Majima's narrative. The enclosed tomb with its pizza boxes and leftover cigarette smoke was getting to him. He felt as if he was elsewhere, listening still to a music of a younger Kamurocho.

"Is that how you tell a lady no? Not very chivalrous," Majima teased, but let him go. He sat before the stool of his vanity, and lit a cigarette. He watched Kiryu watched him, eyes skittering around like a spider, never settling on him. It was not desire, that much he knew.

"Ya don't gotta feel bad about it," Majima said, waving the cigarette, indicating the getup. "Ya didn't sign up for this, it don't gotta be yer thing. Relax."

"I don't mean you aren't—"

"If you explain one more time, I'll punch you so hard, you'll get 'em special government benefits. I told you. It don't gotta be yer thing."

So here's the action plan, Majima told him, all business. They'll be splitting up at Erastes; he'll wiggle a backstage pass for Kiryu and a staff pass for himself. He'd be quizzing as many sisters as he could lay hands on. Erastes wasn't a big place, but it was connected to the city's sewer system. The sisters must know about the thugs in purple; the club is way too small for a secret that big. Kiryu can scoot around, have a look-see.

"Just don't ya go barging into places and pick fights, four-legs."

Kiryu agreed. He laid stewing in the messy bed with another cigarette for company. The room was dark, with blinds across all the windows. Sunbeams fell like zebra-crossings across grey carpets.

"Can I say it just once?" He asked Majima.

"Shoot."

"I'm sorry it happened to you."

"Ya too cute, Kiryu-chan. Deaf like a tone too. I said it ain't a sad story, and it ain't. It just, ya know, happened? I met family, took a few punches, grew up. Ya had the same. Don't go wanting the rest of us to have a charmed past."

"But thank you for sayin' so, Kiryu-chan." He added. He blew out the Majima-O special, rings of cigarette smoke. "I'm doing this for Gomo-chan, but I'm glad to shake the dust off my heels too. Though, gotta say - I'm real worried about the kid."

"Ya suppose he's okay?" Majima asked.

Kiryu didn't know.

What he did know, was that their Story was odd. Why Erastes of all places? There were a thousand clubs in the city, half of them better hideouts than Erastes, many of them connected to the sewer system - if indeed the strange men were hiding there. Gomo Mazima? That's a joke, surely. But the more he thought about it, the more he had to wonder — were the coincidences not mounting? Was it not odd that—

He stopped.

On the ceiling, between the smoke and the dim light, conjured like the hallucinations of a sun-baked eye, Kiryu saw part of a great face, so large that he could only see an eye and half a nose. The great eye looked into him like a peeping moon, and he was seized with a fear that made him tremble into the roots of his being. It examined him, dismissed him, renounced him, and instilled terror — terror without reason. Shibusawa and a burning boat melted away into nothing...

"Yo, Kiryu-chan, ya okay?" Majima peering down at him. A concerned squint. "Ya want me to open a window or something?"

KIryu crawled by his elbows to the edge of the bed, dry-heaving, feeling wretched. Majima with gentle hands took him back to bed, tucked the covers around him for something to do.

I'm okay, he insisted.

"Probably just a slow recovery, eh?" Majima said, but he didn't look like he believed himself.

"Probably." Kiryu said.

They exchanged a glance, traded suspicions and secrets, but there was nothing to do but to soldier on. Possibly they could decide tomorrow to abandon the whole thing, spend six months batting baseballs instead, but they both know they couldn't. They'd been drawn too deep, and anyway - that ain't the kind of person they were.

Sleep, Kiryu-chan, Majima commanded. Tucked pillows under Kiryu until it became comfortable, watched Kiryu doze off with a frown.

I'm real glad for this though, Majima thought.

 

—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 11: unsexy kitten you,

Consider physics.

Consider Schrodinger.

Schrodinger says, how do you know there isn't a dead cat and a living cat, existing simultaneously?

Cosmopolitan July says: how do you know there isn't a sex kitten inside you? Sexy kitten you, and unsexy kitten you, existing simultaneously?

Clearly, both of them should take notes from Majima Goro.

Kiryu knows now what Majima meant when he said the city felt like one giant liquid track. Majima had been seventeen then; had spent most of his life in places where the buildings were more wood than brick. Well, Kiryu was twenty-two now and had torn up his share of disco clubs, and still Erastes was a shock. For one, pink. So much pink that it was offensive, a rude shock. The kind of pink that makes a statement, and that statement was: hey there sexy.

Other colors too. Deep blue greasy handles on the toilet doors, honey-yellow glasses with striped straws, sunny tangerine parasols in your drinks. The tables were bright red and the chairs were campy orange, the floor held in a seizure of checkered patterns. The music was a mix of eurodance remixed to the cheery vibes of Japanese club hits, so that the net effect was a gibberish string of joy in your ears. You can't even see anyone dancing; the music was too thick.

Kiryu watched only Majima, trying to keep track of him in the throng was a task in itself. The man could walk - on killer heels with a killer smile - and he could turn heads. He (She? They) wasn't the best looking lady in the club, but she had tattoos, and she had an attitude, and that was enough for most heads to swivel like a spun chair. Majima leaned into a crowd of his old sisters on their break, kissing this one on the cheek, asking after another, nodding coolly at the strangers. They crowded around him like loving chicks to a hen, glad for the fresh air and the world he was bringing from that secluded outside world. Does he know what happened to...? Absolutely shocking...

They swiveled those heads in chorus and examined Kiryu. Pulled him into their midst and checked him out like a show horse: teeth, eyes, cheekbones, a surreptitious grab on the ass. Hellooooo there, someone says to the front of his pants, laughing. Big boy you got here, Goromi-chan. Did you break his legs 'cuz he was running from you, Goromi? Don't blame him, you've got no meat on yer tits! Ya ever get bored of that scrawny ass, you come back here, Kiryu-chan.

Get your hands off the treasure, bitch, Majima laughs.

"Ya turned one out just fine, Goromi-chan," A petite lady in blue said to Majima, and he smiled indulgently at her. "Have you been dancing since?"

"Oh, been 'round the block. Must have dance 'round every corner of the city by now, under all the lights."

"I knew you'd land on your feet," She said. They pulled him away for practice. You don't mind do you, Kiryu-chan? Their show was opening in an hour and they had to be ready. Dances cannot be rehearsed enough, even if Majima could pirouette with the best of them, twist around the pole like it was his backbone. The last ten years just made him slower, but he'd always dance like a hellion. Kiryu tried not to look too much; he was too confused. He couldn't even tell if he wanted to see, or if he wanted to be blind. If he thought it was sexy as hell, or just plain hell. On a Kinsey Scale of 1 to 7, right now he was somewhere at Amoeba. Confused but excited. Shocked but titillated. It's… Complicated.

Have a look-see, Majima told him. He did just that. Anywhere would be fine where it wasn't so loud, and there weren't quite this many boas. Kiryu snuck out to the washroom, then begin to wander into the labyrinthine backrooms of this strange and glittering world.

—
—
—

Oh, she could still dance, and while the music has changed since - become faster paced, fused tones together to make bridges to nowhere - music is music, and once you know how to dance, you can do it blind your whole life. Goromi slithered onto the dance floor, let her old muscle memories deliver her whole onto it. She danced with her eyes close, lashes long and protective, and saw another time where the dance floor was smaller and the crowds bigger, knitted together strongly by 10 p.m on a weekend and 16 shots of gin in their blood. Heels tapping on the floor, one-two-three, easy as that - and when she opened her eyes the crowd had morphed into a new younger people, cheering all five of them on the stage on, screaming for more — without disgust.

Her sisters held her, lifted her into the air, twirled her round and round. She is a special guest, a special appearance. The beautiful, grotesque, beautifully grotesque monster that's been billed tonight, tattoos all over her back, knitting up her neck and her breasts. Do they want more? They put her down, spun her around, sat her down on a chair with her legs opened wide, crossed, under and over, a tease. All five ladies in the picture with sashes, scarves, all of them semi-transparent to hide and tantalize, reveal and scandalize. Before it is over, Goromi is missing, melted into a puddle of quivering music.

"So how's business?" She asked, lying on the dressing room table, feet idly playing with a bottle of someone's nail polish. Delilah-san sat fixing her makeup on the opposite tables for her next show, which wouldn't start until midnight for the real VVIPs.

It had been a long, long night. Goromi could feel her muscles trembling, from sartorius to soleus. She'd forgotten what hard work it was, to dance. She remembers only the lights, the smell of whisky and sandalwood, the effortless velveteen ease of being seventeen: you dance all night, practice all morning, and by evening you can still outdrink all your sisters, chugging rum and cokes twelve-a-minute. Tomorrow she won't walk. Tomorrow she'll lay a quivering mess on her bed, thighs hardly able to move. She'll keep a shotgun by her bed just in case some asshole rings her doorbell.

Today though, she had a job to do, and she had done it, going from sister to sister to sister - those old guard who were still around, that is. Most of her sisters were gone now, scattered to the winds, and the new girls were not so friendly to a relic from the past. They looked, smelled different. Clean shaven, no beards, not a single eyebrow that isn't drawn on. Their transformation was even more complete, their secrets more secretive. They're a new breed of girls, a coming of new pestilence...

But each old sister had told him the same thing: sorry Goro-chan, we don't know. The ones who seem like they might, won't say anything. Go to Delilah-chan, they say. So Delilah it is. Perhaps if Goromi was lucky, Delilah would give her another address, this time waterproofed.

"How do you think it is?" Delilah-san was saying.

"Seems less… Angry," Goromi said. "Younger too."

"Maybe they just seem younger because we've gotten older," Delilah said, a mocking smile. "Used to be we'd call anyone in their thirties oji-san. Now we're the ones being called oji-san when we go out."

"Could be, but ya know - they're less angry. I know angry."

"Maybe. Can't really tell when you do this day in and day out. Is that so? Let me think. I suppose so. It's been a while since we've got a really bad crowd, at least. Maybe it's the times. Progression. Or do I mean progressive?"

Time's movin' on, ever forward.

Goromi melted away into the skins of her brother as he shook out photos from his make-up kit. Majima sat on the table, wearing Goromi's furs, sliding blurry snapshots of Gomo-chan across the polished white wood. They were screenshots from the Florist' archive. Frozen seconds before the truck hit. Frozen seconds while Majima hurried the boy across the city to Kiryu's apartment, a month ago.

"Your kid?" Delilah asked.

"Ya,"

"Cute."

"Stop lyin', lady. He looks like a sprouted potato."

She shrugged. "He's cute. Why are you showing me this?"

"He's missing."

"Oh, Goromi-chan… I'm sorry to hear that. Is that why you came back here?" She squeezed his hand. "Ya shoulda say."

"Thanks. Ain't that though." He asked her point blank then: had they seen the kid around here? Nestled underfoot in the club, growing in the hidden groves between tiles. He might look about two years old by now, could say a couple of words. Goes Kiryu-chan, Kiryu-chan, like a one-track doll. But no - she'd not seen a kid in the club; they couldn't possibly miss that. Then what about a bunch of thugs in purple? Looks like Yakuza, but without insignia or much in the way of words.

At that she went quiet.

"Not that I know of."

"Ya lyin'" He said. "Why?"

"Oh Goromi-chan. Why are you looking for them?"

"Last I saw, they had their eyes on the kid." He waved the photo. "They're the only real clue we got."

"Well, if they have him, then there's no point trying to get him back. They wouldn't give him away."

"I ain't plannin' ta ask politely."

Delilah-san took the photos, pushed them back to him. "Don't go looking for trouble, Goro-chan. If they have him, they have him - and it must not belong to you, if they took it in the first place. Don't go meddling, Goro-chan." Then realizing something. "Is your friend looking for the kid too? Where is he?"

"Here and thereabouts'." He dodged.

She gave him a long hard look, and he knew she was disappointed. Goro-chan after all this years, and he was just here for information after all. Not for hellos, howdya doing, or a dance or two and a long night of clinking drinks in the backrooms, trading gossip and boiled edamame. In the end he was no different than everyone else. Here for a favor, a request, a passing distraction, and then gone again. Waltzed on to greater things.

"Hey," Majima said. "Don't be like that, Delilah-chan. It ain't like that. It's been a good time, hasn't it?" He forced a smile. "Ya don't gotta see those you miss to know ya miss them."

She sighed. "Take your friend and go, Goro-chan. Don't go looking for them here."

"Suppose I was as rock-headed as I ever was. Where would I find them if I wanted to?"

She sighed. Traced the petals on his tattoo, each bright red petal trapped in a swirl of clouds, floating in the still winds of his skin. Some of the flowers above the clouds, some of them below. Are these us, she wonders. They look like us. All of us, dancing to the tune of a greater music we have no control over. All those flowers, scattered all over, pressed into his skin. We are bound only by our helplessness; those of us who stay behind, that is. Whatever happened to the rest? Whatever happened to...? They must soar, like Goro-chan. Well, she thought. He'd always been a demon, on the dance floor or off it. Maybe he could, if anyone could.

"The third room in the basement, second level. A red door fringed in black wood. Rap three times only, not a single knock more. If they want you there, it will open."

"Thanks, Delilah-chan,"

"Thank me with a proper visit sometime." She told him.

—
—
—

Kiryu was hitting a door with his crutches.

It had not been easy coming down to this point. He was not in optimal condition, for one. If Nishiki could see him now, he'd laugh himself sore seeing Kiryu hobbling around with his grimace. A constipated, toothless old man, he'd say. Dragon of Dojima? Nah, the dogshit of Dojima, laughing - don't be so sensitive about it - before Kiryu even heard him right.

The low ceiling was hanging down on him, each door in the hallway smaller than the last leading to more doors and closed stairs. There were rooms that open itself, showing grandeur/garbage. A decade's worth of last year's scarves and swollen perfumes from six years ago. Boxes on boxes of heels, old glittering clothing, new worn dresses, special-events only. Transparent plastic containers bearing costume jewelry took up half the hallway, narrowing it viciously with naked mannequins standing ten in a row with metal supports piercing their fleshy calves.

Boards insisted insistently: Halloween Specials, Christmas, Valentine. Roses co-existed on diamonds growing out of thorns wrapped around thrones. King for a day, it promised. Special girls/boys tonight.

There was sort of arthritic joy in them. Do any of these belong to Majima? Scarves that'd skinned the gentle curves of his neck, touched the soft small hairs on her nape? She/he/they. Did it matter? Majima in heels, Majima in heels, Majima in heels.

Keep your mind in the gutter, Kiryu, and you'll never find shit.

The basement was deserted except for the stray janitor and backstage worker, shy as gremlins or busy as bees. He went through another door and came out in a deserted corridor, this one with stairs leading up to all that pulsating pink. A young man was changing a lightbulb, but when Kiryu called out - hey, do you know - the man looked as if he'd been shot, said no, picked up his tools and disappeared off somewhere.

No what? Nowhere? The music is the only direction he knows, shuffling on all fours down the hallway. It is the only reassurance, that anytime he could go up, compass righted, reappearing where he'd been.

Kiryu leans into another door (were they getting smaller? Or was he merely projecting, feeling squeezed, therefore feeling squeezed) finds the same man changing a lightbulb. He'd - as far as Kiryu could tell - taken the lightbulb from the previous hallway and reinstalled it here, all of them perfectly functional. A job very much in the spirit of bureaucracy: moving shit around that was perfectly fine without intervention.

"Hey, uhh could you tell me---" said Kiryu, and the man shook his head again. Kiryu sees that it's not the same person, only very similar, wearing the skin of an anonymous maintenance man (perhaps in the other hemisphere would be the same pasty hands changing lightbulbs pointlessly) and the man says, hey, hey man — listen you shouldn't be here. Have you got a pass?

Kiryu shows him the backstage pass. Okay, he says, pocketing Kiryu's pass, waving him through. You can leave that with me, I'll keep it safe for you. Then he pointed down the hallway and said - the black door with the red sides, why don't you try that one? Try rapping more than three times, not a single time less. Off he goes, humming the club's music.

Kiryu looked at the door he suggested. It was a black door with a red frame, but at some point it had been a red door with a black frame. There were groves in the wood that revealed its insides. Perhaps - Kiryu thought but did not know why - the door changes colors every now and then, growing a hardened layer of skin around itself. If you cut it through with a saw you can see rings marking its years, like a tree. Exactly so.

He knocked hard four times, leaning on his crutches. When it wouldn't open no matter how many times he knocked, and stayed sealed, he cracked his knuckles. This was good. This was familiar territory. He had been itching for this since chapter one.

The door burst apart where his steel crutches smashed clean through, and he hobbled through the Kiryu-sized hole he'd made, wincing when the wood swiped at his scalp in revenge. The thousands of tightly-packed rings in the door, red-black stripes startlingly revealed, let him pass but disapproved of him. Steps led him down into the sewers, where the water came clean to confess at his ankles.

Was this where he'd fought off Kuze...?

No, it was like but unlike. Kuze's tunnel (he thinks now of that stretch of darkened watery hell always as Kuze's tunnel) was smelly, the walls pushed hard by the municipal council to be clean but grimy still. The walls here were trying hard to be grimy. Being sewers did not seem to be in their nature, and their little go-getting molecules were straining hard to be dirty walls.

They felt like the receipt: things masquerading as things they'd never seen. The tunnel had all the right looks of a sewer, but when he went closer he saw that there was Georgian paneling hidden in the walls - the fancy sort you might see in western-inspired hotels - square frames cut lightly into the concrete of the tunnels.

I wish I was less observant, Kiryu thought. This will be a lot better if he had Majima's eyesight and went bish-bish-bish screaming into things with a baseball bat.

At least the weird walls meant he was on the right track.

"Gomo-chan?" He called down the sewers. He chose a direction by random and walked down it, keeping close to the lights. "Anyone around here?"

He kept walking, each minute following swiftly on the heels of another, all of them tumbling into uneventful time. He must have walked - oh he didn't know, ten, twenty minutes? Any time now he might emerged from the other side and be ten years in the future, the way this was going. Then he came across three men dressed provocatively in purple suits.

"You guys." He said to them. They did not say anything to him; did not seem capable of it. Asian, unremarkable, without features. "Are you going to let me pass?"

In answer, they drew fists.

Well, fine by him.

When he was done with them, they could tell all their friends how they were beaten to hell and back by the Disabled Dragon of Dojima.

—
—
—

Bam! The first guy went down with a strong dentist bill: 16,000 yen and above, cheaper if he skips the crowns. The second guy not so much - only a broken cheekbone and maybe an ER visit. The third got it worst of all. He dodged with fancy footwork when Kiryu swept at him with his crutches, but couldn't get out of the way fast enough for the body slam. At least 32, 000 yen, Kiryu judged, two broken ribs possibly more.

He leapt nimbly over them, propelled himself on his levers. The time-wasters were scurrying out of the woodwork in earnest now, at least a good fifty lining up in the ankle-deep water to fight him two by two. Each of them could be brothers from the same mother.

"You serious about this?" He asked them. They'd ran him over with a truck, and then send fifty guys after him? Disrespectful.

Kiryu body slammed the first guy into the wall, then let himself be pull back by the man's partner, whose jaw he smashed in with the back of his head. Pivoting painfully on a half-healed foot, he rammed the steel into the third man's throat, flipped the crutch around, and slammed the rubber foot into the fourth man's crotch.

This is going to take a long of counting, so let's have a bad rhyme:

Five six seven, like picking up sticks.
Eight nine ten, a baseball bat in hand.
Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, tiger-dropped in the spleen.
Fifteen took a while; he had a merry sharp file.
Sixteen to twenty two, all of 'em tools,
— a punch or ten, to show they were fools.
Twenty three til eight, jolly good mates:
— gave Kiryu a hard time, broken teeth their fates.
Twenty nine to thirty-four, pretty good sorts,
— but not good enough, so Kiryu got bored.

This is going nowhere.

Let's summarized: he beat the shit out of them all. In style. If there'd been a panel judges he'd have gotten full tens across.

"Okay," He said, huffing down the line of fresh roadkill. "You guys want to maybe tell me where Gomo-chan is?"

They laid eerily silent in the waters, not even groaning with pain. This is the kind of shit Kiryu doesn't need in his life. Enemies who don't groan when you smash their kneecaps in? Takes the fun out of everything, doesn't it? There were no bubbles in the water - were they even breathing?

"Over here." Someone prompted, deep in the tunnels too dark to be seen. "Say something, object."

"Kiryu-chan!"

"Come and get it," Kiryu was told.

Angry now, he shuffled as fast as he could on demi-broken legs, nearly tripping over the last guy he'd punched twenty feet deeper into the tunnel. Ahead of him he could make out the silhouette of another man in purple, holding Gomo-chan up by the collar and shaking the child so he could whine obediently. Periodically he retreated when Kiryu got close; disappeared into the darkness and reappeared like a magician, cut in half each time so that the child reappeared first and he entering last.

The lights twisted faster and faster into Kiryu's sight - until he came to a halt before the man, who'd parked himself near a door with another one of those silent goons. The door, red but framed in black, looked similar to the kind of door Kiryu had entered the pathway in.

As expected, Gomo-chan hadn't grown another inch since Kiryu had last seen him. He stared up at Kiryu with wet fearful eyes, dangling on the hood of his sweater. The man - this one who had a tongue and could speak - passed the boy to his associate. He was another one of those vague faces, but this one looked local, looked Japanese. If he tried hard the man could look like he had a hometown.

"Hey," The man said, smiling with an easy confidence. "Hi, hi there, how's it going. Give— "

Kiryu waited for him to say more, but when he didn't, he said: "Give the boy back to me."

"Listen up, listen to me, listen here. I'm afraid I'm not going to, I won't be doing that, not-gonna-happen mister. What--"

"What the hell are you on about?" Kiryu demanded.

"Oh, just you know, getting my colloquialisms in. Fascinating stuff, isn't it?" The man cracked his neck. "Who—"

"Who are you guys? Why the hell are you talking like that?" Kiryu realized then, the man ended his every sentence with the first word Kiryu would say next.

"I'm afraid that's the one quirk I can't drop. Comes with the job, you see. Job—"

"Quirk?"

The man's eyes lightened up. "Unpredictable! What a wonderful specimen. Okay, I'm sorry we have to do this. In about ten minutes, the other character will be coming in from the other end of the tunnel." He pointed down the infinity of the sewers. "And then the roof will cave in, and you two will be trapped, developing what we call in the business 'enhanced rapport' for a few days. Do you want enhanced rapport? Well, you don't have a choice - enhanced rapport will be developed. But that's in ten minutes, hmm? What can we do until then? If—"

"If you want a beating, you only have to ask once." Kiryu glowered. "No need for all the speeches."

Then he lunged.

The man laughed, dodged his body slam easily. Light music could be heard coming from the doorway, and the man moved as if dancing to its next chorus. He could not be touched: every time Kiryu shot an arm out to grab him, he would already be five paces away, spinning out of reach. He moved like Majima - when Majima wanted to be fast he could be as the shadow itself — and Kiryu was no match for someone like that hobbling on wobbly arms.

Still he tried, feinting left or right, sneaking out a guarded crutch to knock the man off his feet. It was like playing jankenpon with himself — scissors or paper, the man was way ahead of him, leaning in the other direction, stepping back-to-front but never where a hit might collide.

"Dammit—"

"Dammit," Kiryu swore.

Then Kiryu feinted in the man's direction, but lunged instead for the goon with the boy. The man cut him across, giving him a pleasant bland smile.

"Please play by the rules, sir," The man said. "You and your friend have given us enough trouble already. Are you—"

Kiryu could not defeat the man like this, that much he did know. Did he say that in ten minutes Majima would be here? He had to buy time...

"Are you from the bureau?" He asked.

"Which bureau is that? The—"

(Which, not what?)

"The bureau of desirable objects."

"Incorrect, negative, not-in-this-life. We are the Bureau of Desirable Objects. Please remember that capitalization is important, even in speech. Yes, I am. Why—"

"Why are you taking the boy?"

"Because the boy is ours," He said simply. "I must say, I enjoy talking a lot more than fighting, as a way to kill some time. Hey—"

Kiryu pushed himself back on his crutches, trying to see if the man had any weakness he could exploit. A bad knee perhaps, or a tendency to lean on his sides. Kiryu had fought enough thugs off to know that everyone had their quirk. Could be some like to lock their elbows right after punching, or step away too soon after one. Either way there must be something he could use… And then he sees, that the man standing with the light on his left, had a shadow cast forwards.

Forwards. Why forwards?

He moved over to the middle of the tunnel, and the man mirrored him for easier access, smiling that bland bureaucratic smile all the while. Please wait three working days, the smile said. Please sign here and here. Please submit photocopies within 5 working days to a department inconveniently located elsewhere.

His shadow remain cast forward always, no matter how far he moved from the light.

"Hey," Kiryu said, and struck as fast as he could with his left crutch. The man dodged - but in the split second before he did, Kiryu saw that the man's shadow moved before him, dodging before his body had caught up with its story.

So that was how it was? He would unpack this and think about it later (if he could think, if it wouldn't bring that — again), but first he had a beating owed.

Kiryu fought by looking at the man's shadow, not the man at all, watching always the ground so that he could see where the shadow was gliding to next. It was hard guessing; it is always hard guessing what the shadow's movement might translate to in physical space, especially when the tunnel was dark-dim and the fight was progressing fast. But in the breaking down of the minute-mark he could do it well enough, so that he hit behind the man before the man backed away, striking his spine before his spine moved into place.

When the man duck low to dodge a high swipe of Kiryu's crutch, Kiryu could guess if he would duck back or forth, right or left, and lash out quickly at the spot before the man got there.

"What are you doing?" The man asked him in wonder, twisting away to stand by goon-and-boy.

Kiryu didn't bother answering him: shot his fist out in one-two quick successions and managed to catch the man with a full fist in the face.

"You're not supposed to do that!" He hissed, whipping his head back in a fury. "Stick to the plot!"

That was when the door caved in.

—
—
—

At first, Kiryu thought the roof was caving in, exactly as the man predicted, but no, it was only the door, broken in by a pair of hot-pink heels.

"Hey!" Majima said, landing in between Kiryu and the man. "Hey, what's this? A fight and no one called me? Are ya okay, Kiryu-chan?"

"You!" The man snarled. "Why are you here? This is not the door you should appear at!" Then he added, "You knocked more than thrice? Can't you count, asshole? Hey—"

"Hey," Majima shrugged. "Sure I can. Here, let me show you." Quicker than light he'd kicked the man one-two-three times in the face with his knee.

"Good speed," Kiryu praised. "A real lady-killer. Watch his shadow, nii-san. It moves faster than he does."

"Thanks, Kiryu-chan! Combat tips? Ya sure know how to sweet-talk a lady!" To the two men, he growled. "Now which one of you wanna die first for stealing me and beating up Kiryu-chan?"

Kiryu went for the kid while Majima went for the dodgy man - who found out the hard way that you can dodge a lot of things by seeing the future, but Goro Majima was strictly future-proof. Kiryu elbowed the silent goon out of the way, hard enough in the stomach to knock him over, and clipped the boy under an arm.

"You alright, Gomo-chan?"

"Kiryu-chan-chan!" The boy squealed, hugging him tightly with sewer-grubby hands.

"Glad to see you still have the personality of a plot device, Gomo-chan," Kiryu told him, ruffling his thin hair. He watched as Majima put the fear of God into the man with the foresight, knifing him one-two-three fast and furious as if asking him - can I count now, asshole? How about now? How many fingers am I holding up? There was very quickly a lot of blade marks on the man's suit, all of them in triplicate. The fight ended with Majima's heels puncturing the man's chest with enough force to crack his sternum. He skidded across sweet-smelling sewer water into some distance away.

"Yo," Majima greeted the kid, tearing off part of his stockings. They'd gotten mangled in the fight. "Good ta see ya. Ya okay?"

"Hey!" The kid returned, proud of his expanded vocabulary. "Count! Asshole!"

Majima chucked him under the chin. "Attaboy. Learn the important stuff first! Math will get you far in life." To Kiryu, he said, let's get the hell out of here.

Kiryu shook his head, already hearing rumbles across the roof that didn't sound the slightest bit like music. He tucked the boy into his jacket and wrapped it around the kid's head tightly. Before he could tell Majima why, something had gone bang up there, and the roof exploded in a shower of debris, pouring down a veritable avalanche of concrete, dust and bricks.

Sometime later, Majima croaked in the darkness:

Ya alive, Kiryu-chan?

Yes. He was alive.

What the hell was that?

A bomb, probably.

Oh. Who the heck was that?

I think, Kiryu said -- and started to laugh hysterically (or about as hysterical as he could get, which was not very) just as the dim green glow of the emergency lights were coming to life in the sewers.

I think, he tried again, wheezing for dirty air, that the man was Foreshadow.

—
—
—

"I don't get it," Majima Goro said, Goro-style, squatting ugly in heels over a box of matches. Ain't it great that they were both smokers? Sure, they might get cancer in 50 years, but think of all the dark places in this world they could light up because they were smokers. Does your average citizen carry around a lighter, a spare lighter, and a box of old-school matches just in case they're stuck somewhere with no cigarette and the shakes? Didn't think so, asshole.

We don't have to get it, Kiryu said, lifting his match around the enclosed sewer space around them. When he'd seen all he had to see, he blew it out to save air. They were trapped in a section of the tunnel approximately forty feet long, If the man was right, they'd be here for some time yet. Foreshadowed, whadya know?

"He said the roof will cave in and we'll be here developing uhh, I think he called it 'enhanced rapport'? Then it happened."

"He wasn't a bad fighter," Majima admitted. "What's rapport? Sounds like a brand of cigarettes." He thought hard. "Hey, maybe it's that new kind of music? Rap… Port. Portable rap!"

Brows were crinkled.

"Gomo-chan," Kiryu sighed. "Whatever you do, don't grow up into this, please. One is too much."

"Please," Gomo agreed.

They made themselves comfortable, which was a difficult task in a closed-off area with ankle-deep water on the floors. The only place they could sit on was the three short steps between the door and the sewage. Not a comfortable amount of space for two grown men and a wiggling child. They'd tried the door first thing, but whadya know? When they opened the door, it'd led to nowhere. Literally nowhere: five minutes ago there was a corridor on the other end. Now there's a bricked up wall where the passage should be.

"How long do ya think we'll be waiting?" Majima asked, conversationally, kicking his heels off, landing them plop-plop to soak like dead fish in the water. He'd given up figuring things out, delegating the task to Kiryu. Thinking hurt his lazy brain.

"Don't know. Could be it'd go faster if you tell me more stories. Any deep dark secrets you wanna share?"

"Ha-ha, ya killin' it here, Kiryu-chan."

"Thought it was worth a try. By the way, I've been wanting to do this,"

Kiryu reached out - his heart stirred fast by adrenaline - and grabbed Majima roughly by the ears to kiss him within an inch of his life. Perhaps even a centimeter of his life. A very small sum was indicated. Majima could feel tongue in him for minutes.

"What's that 'bout?" He gasped, pulling away.

"I've decided," Kiryu said. "That you're really damned hot in heels."

"Oh, so ya were just shy when ya made barf-faces at me?"

"Nah, that was because I haven't seen you break a guy's face in heels. That's what did it for me."

"Ya sicko, Kiryu-chan," And because there was literally nothing to do in the tunnel, they necked for fifteen minutes until Gomo wiggled jealously between them.

"I was gonna tell ya a story about the time I invented the tax, but this is better." Majima told him. Then they settled down for the long wait.

They lied down: on their backs, on their sides, squeezed together and faraway on the three-feet of space afforded by the stairs. Eventually, tired of lying dick to ass to elbow with a thrashing child between them, they pulled rocks off the avalanche, and made a small platform over the water to lie on. It was made of broken rocks - never the most comfortable of pallets - but they were the biggest rocks they could find and were slightly more comfortable than sleeping on wet stairs.

The ceiling above them offered no answers; there were no faces, no lights, no hint if club Erastes existed at all above them, or if they'd slipped away to a secret hidden world unconnected in any way to the Kamurocho they know. Certainly there was no music, though as Majima pointed out - if there was music after a bomb blast and their basement caved in, he was going to have to have strong words with his sisters. Maybe even breakdancing.

Fair enough. So no sound, not much light, a door that went nowhere. Was there oxygen? Somehow Kiryu didn't think they needed to worry about that. They hadn't come this far to die of suffocation under a gay bar. That just didn't seem like the kind of thing that would happen to them. Watch their friends be blown up, yes. Face terrible decisions fueled by betrayals, sure. Be accused of terrible crimes they never committed, certainly. But choking on dust under a pile of bodycon dresses in sealed boxes? Impossible.

It'd be okay: The Florist, Date, Majima's sisters - someone will come to save them.

"Ya a fuckin' optimist?" Majima asked him. "That's disgustin', Kiryu-chan. That ain't the sort of guy I thought ya were at all. 56 marks."

"Kind of a failing grade," He teased.

"Then ya know what's up. Now go away and stop wigglin' at me. Wait, is that you, Gomo-chan?"

Six, eight, maybe ten hours passed. Time nodded coolly at them and marched strictly ahead without dispensing information. No sun, no dusk, no dawn, no sounds. A sealed tomb through and through. Gomo became finicky and grumpy, crying for a drink, then food, then attention. Kinda a troublesome kid, Majima scowled, shaking him like he could dispense salt. Hey, why ya cryin'? What's the problem now? Why'd they leave a kid like you in here with us, those assholes. At least give him back after we get outta here.

"Maybe Gomo-chan isn't supposed to be here. The man said you entered through the wrong door, didn't he?" Kiryu asked.

"Huh? Sure. Delilah-chan said I was supposed to knock three times. But ya know me - how come I gotta knock any way I don't like? I smashed that door like a buzzer. Greatest hits right there before I was done. And while we're on that topic - how come doors don't behave the way they used to anymore?"

He eyed the kid. "Ya think we stay here long enough the kid might grow again?"

"Fail,' Gomo predicted for him. "Wrong. Graghh."

"That's right," Majima told him. "Ya hold on tight-tight to that negative disposition, Gomo-chan. Don't ya go and grow happy on me, I won't tolerate that sorta thing around here. Not on my watch."

Tired, hungry, stoic, Kiryu held on to the kid because Majima wouldn't, until at length he slept in the dark and woke up in the dark, feverish, his leg burning up from toe to knee like someone had scraped it raw and pissed on it. He didn't tell Majima: the man was grumpy and bored, crazy up-the-walls with all the nothing to be done in their cavern, and there was no need to water it with the gasoline of complaints.

"Is that what ya think of me?" Majima asked him angrily, soaking Kiryu's shirt in the cooling waters of the sewer, later, later still when Kiryu had lapsed into those fevered realms where tongues cannot be held, and words slip easy and careless tumbling out without tact.

I don't know, Kiryu said. I can never guess what you might do.

"I'm not going ta get fuckin' pissed off that ya get sick. Fact is ya wouldn't be here if you'd stayed put like I told ya to." He threw the wet shirt on Kiryu's forehead, stripped his pants off unsexily and examined his bandaged leg in a squint.

"How bad is it?"

"Can't tell. Light's too green. Yer either dying, infected, or perfectly alright. Ya take yer pick."

When the shirt had cooled in its affections, Majima rinsed it out again and replaced it. "Ya gotta be the only asshole in Kamurocho who can fight off fifty guys on crutches and infected legs."

"Only until you break my record, I'm sure."

"Fuckin' A. Couple high scores." Realizing what he'd say, they lapsed into an awkward silence.

Don't ask, Kiryu told himself. The answer won't get better.

He asked anyway, the question rolling off his tongue later, later, when his self-restrain was low and feverish with curiosity, and he was burning up with courage. Are we, he pressed Majima. Are we or aren't we? Could we be? Shall we try? Could you forgive? Would it be, is it too much to ask?

"— take it back?"

What? Kiryu couldn't hear well over the sounds of his anticipations.

"I take it back, asshole. How many time ya gonna make me say it? I take it back. No break up." Then he added. "But we gon' fight it out when ya better, and if I beat you - then all bets are off."

Okay, Kiryu said, smiling so wide his face was in danger of splitting apart. Okay. He won't ever lose anyway, so it means they'll be together forever. Kiryu had the kind of confidence that you could sell seminars with. How to Win Fights and Influence Faces. you could call it. Knuckle Sandwiches for the Soul. He reached out blindly in the dark, found Majima's hand, and squeezed it.

Majima tolerated it for a minute.

"I like ya," He told Kiryu. "I'll keep ya 'round for a bit more. But don't snoop no more. I say here's a boundary, ya respect it, alright? Else next time ya legs broken, it'll be me breakin' em."

"Alright," Kiryu said.

I adore you, was what Kiryu thought but didn't say. You're the most wonderful person I know - top three certainly - and the only one who can smile so handsomely when you threaten to break my legs. Everyone else always scowls.

He wasn't stupid enough to say that, so he squeezed the hand Majima allowed, took the piecemeal affections the man handed out, piece by piece grudgingly, until one day Kiryu will have enough shards collected to display, to show the evidence to Majima and say: look, you adore me too. You love me, even. We can't make it without each other. Who else would we fight beside? Who else so crazy, so wild, so fiercely loyal? Who else but you and I?

That's sappy stuff. Some other time, some other time. Maybe before he can say it, time and age can beat it outta him. Maybe tomorrow Majima will change his mind again; it won't be the first time it happens. Tomorrow, another mercurial fight, tomorrow again, another change of mind.

For now he was content to bask in the glow of dying emergency lights.

—
—
—

Sometime later, after Gomo-chan had been taught life skills by two very bored adults to impress his kindergarten friends, including but not limited to: picking his nose with his thumb, touching the tip of his nose with his tongue, crossing his eyes, holding his breath for more than a minute, and rolling his tongue rapidly to make vroom-vroom sounds —

The ceiling opened up, and someone yelled. "Goro-chan? Are you in there?"

"Finally!" Majima yelled back. "Any later and the kid's about to get his university education!"

—

 

 

 

Chapter 12: be placated with platitudes

Pop quiz: on a scale of one to ten, how likely is it that an unmarried Yakuza of twenty six would like to have his own kid?

For the sake of science, assume that the man is in a volatile (approximately 2-day old) relationship with a younger man, lives in his office, and smokes two packs a day. Hobbies include starting fights and picking fights, which you might think is the same thing, but are actually two completely different art forms.

Allow Majima Goro to demonstrate.

He starts fights like this: upon the doorstep of Erastes he asks Kiryu - your place or my place? He did this with a seductive smile that said, great things are about to happen in those places. All Kiryu had to do was choose. My place, Kiryu says, because he does not want to do anything on bed sheets that were last washed when its cotton was first picked off trees. Sure, sure, Majima says, and drives all three of them home.

At Kiryu's lodgings, a cheap by-the-day rental apartment that somehow contrived to be even more rundown than his old place, Majima let them off, then drove away in a panic. He doesn't return until way past midnight, sheepish but bearing gifts - milk powder, cold sushi rolls, and warm beer. He placed them one by one on Kiryu's foldable table like offerings, but it didn't lessen the glower he faced.

He picks fights like this:

"I don't want the kid." He told Kiryu.

"What do you mean you don't want the kid? He's yours!" Kiryu growled.

"I ain't said I was keepin' him. I only said I was keepin' ya."

"Then why the hell did you go to so much trouble to get him back?"

Because, Majima pointed out - he was given the kid. And he wouldn't give it to Kiryu the last time Kiryu asked, precisely because he asked. Then the kid was taken, and he couldn't just let a kid be taken, could he? They also ran over Kiryu-chan, which means there's the revenge angle to consider too. Also (and this is the fight-picking masterclass move, so observe well) he missed the kid when the kid was missing, but now that the kid was around, he didn't want the kid around anymore.

Even if at some point he could live with the whole ball-and-chain deal, he certainly wasn't going to do it overnight. Even new dads had nine months to go through the trauma of acclimatizing to fatherhood, and unlike them, Majima has more issues than a magazine.

Kiryu didn't even know where to begin, so he didn't.

"Fine," He said through gritted teeth. "I'll take care of him then."

"Huh? Why?"

"What do you mean, why? The kid has to be taken care of. Someone has to do it. Are you volunteering? Besides," Kiryu added, who had his own fight-picking ultimate move too: "If you were the one taking care of him, he might grow up into a bigger asshole than you are."

Below the belt, ouch, but compared to the alternative, Majima got off practically scot-free. It was settled then. Gomo would stay with Kiryu, and Majima would pay in Chinese takeaway and beer and handpicked VCRs for the right to visit.

At 7 p.m everyday he'd show up like clockwork, armed to the teeth with supplies guaranteed to sooth Kiryu's feathers and cheer up the lad. Toys began to pile up in the corner of Kiryu's apartment: wooden ducks, train sets, pop-up books. Not too many books; like Majima, he had no great interest in reading. He liked to crawl into odd places, walk off without saying anything, break out of the balcony to dangle himself on the railings.

Most of Kiryu and Majima's bonding activities involved hunting for the boy. Majima running around like a furious chicken; Kiryu hobbling on crutches he was almost done with. Gomo could go missing in the house, in the parks, on the streets.

Were you always like this? Kiryu asked. Majima-as-a-child, going incognito 60 hours a day. Don't know, Majima said, but not escaping the question - he just didn't know. Probably? He'd always been kind of a free spirit. Never saw someone's fence he didn't want to climb, if only to lift some shit that didn't belong to him.

They cut marks into Kiryu's rented pillars guiltily, to mark the boy's explosive growth, which resumed almost the moment they took him home. As far as they could tell, the boy was growing inconsistently. He could grow half a year in a matter of days, and then stay that way for a few weeks. His vocabulary they couldn't record, which grew so that he could at least string together childish sentences - all of them demands like 'watch tv', 'no wash dish', 'bad channel', 'no veggie' and (Majima's favorite) 'big asshole!'.

Gomo's face grew out of its babyish shell into a childish husk, so that he looked more and more like a crumpled-up version of Majima, down to the mouth that - accordingly to Kiryu at least - defaulted always to a mischievous smile. Eyes like dead olives; a nose for trouble. Who says ya gotta love yerself?

What the kid never grew out of was his favorite: Kiryu-chan or bust, that was his philosophy. He insisted on watching TV on Kiryu's lap, hang around his neck like a monkey, and screamed like a wet cat if he was bathed by Majima. He wouldn't appear unless it was Kiryu calling him. Majima needed pliers and eyelash curlers to scare the kid into obeying his most mundane orders, like eating his vegetables.

After the frigidity of the first few days, Kiryu allowed Majima to stay the nights, which turned out to be so frustrating that he'd rather not. That was the problem with Kiryu's one-bedroom-pony. They couldn't even sit anywhere without the boy watching them with his dark inscrutable eyes - where were they supposed to fuck? Majima was convinced his dick would break into pieces the way things were going; he'd be riddled with kidney problems and severe erectile dysfunction for the rest of his life. Is this what Kiryu wants?

I'm not going to leave the kid at home to go to a love hotel with you, Kiryu said. What if he gets into an accident?

What the hell kind of accident can a kid get into in 45 square meters?

"I'm going to go to the nearest bar and tap the first twenty ladies I find, if ya won't," He threatened.

Go ahead and try, Kiryu said with narrowed eyes.

Majima wasn't feeling the appetite for drama: the cycle of going out, getting dragged back home by Kiryu, the inevitable big fight, making up etc. so he laid off. Okay, he said. Okay. He compromised - broke into Kiryu's apartment one afternoon and threw out everything in his closet including the planks of the shelf, hollowing it out until there was a 2 feet by 6 feet of space separated by the sliding closet door. It was going to be a tight squeeze but it'll be a-okay.

Kiryu came home with Gomo and takeout, managed: "What the hell—" before he was dragged into his closet by his mugger.

"Fuck me," Majima hissed.

Kiryu obliged.

How can he say no, when he wants this just as desperately?

In the small tight space there was no room for anything; they took up every inch with flesh, so that they filled it completely and got tangled up and became confused as to where one of them ended and the other began. Put it in, Majima might hiss - but there was no possibility of such a thing happening. Nil, zilch, zippo. They settled instead on ripping the clothes off each other as violently as they could, pulling and tugging until zippers broke and buttons went rolling into the secret corners of lost things.

Oh my god, we're fucking pathetic - Majima huffed, laughing so hard he has trouble finding his own flesh, but finding it, pressed his cock onto Kiryu's. Was it a cock? It could be a fucking elbow, how would he know?

It was a cock. In the darkness of the closet it feels anonymous, dirty, kinky - like he was cheating on Kiryu with some loser he'd found off a bar floor. But it was Kiryu; only Kiryu smelled like that, like Majima's favorite catnip, and breathed heavy cursing under his breath: Goro, Goro, Goro - a name that has significance because this is the only time it ever appears. Please, Kiryu said, and Majima pressed them together, tugging both their cocks at a go, pushing them urgently together.

"Your hands," He demanded. Kiryu had the more calloused ones, the bigger hands - and when Kiryu fondled the both of them with those same callouses and roughened thumbs, Majima couldn't help himself, arched in and mewled — ohhhhh. But that felt so good, could even rub them raw until it hurts. More, he demanded. One of these days he's going to burn the skin off Kiryu's hands just for more friction, he swore. He'd personally douse those hands with acid if it meant feeling even better than that.

"Dig your nails in," He ordered, and when Kiryu wouldn't obey he did it himself, seized Kiryu's cock and scraped his nails all down the length of it, then dug his nails into the base until Kiryu cried out. For fuck's sake, Kiryu swore. For fuck's sake. For fuck's sake.

No?

Do it again, came the shamefaced plead.

That's his Kiryu-chan. Just as big a slut for pain as he was. He did just that, knowing that he has to end this soon; already Kiryu was coming apart, moaning wetly into Majima's ear - please, nii-san, just a little more, come on - leaning into him and trembling for release.

He took both their cocks in hand, forced them together as if he meant to meld them together, pushing Kiryu's cock backwards so hard that it must have hurt - and he knew that Kiryu was hurting, could hear the hitch in his breath, plus Majima's own whine of pain. With his other hand he clawed them both in rhythm, lightly but almost tearing skin, until he felt that they were close enough, enough, and that was when he reached out, found Kiryu's soft inner thighs, and sank his nails so deep that Kiryu yelled out, bringing him along on that wonderful, searing tide…

They came out of the closet (only literally, the metaphorical closet out of their hands) embarrassed, shamefaced, satisfied, pouring out laughing and gasping in a tangle of weird limb positions.

Kiryu went first red as a tomato, with Majima's jacket wrapped around his hips; they'd manage to tear an enormous hole in his pants. His old shirts were fetched for Majima to slip self-satisfactorily into, smiling like a fed cat, curling his toes from the pleasure of being in Kiryu's clothes, smelling of Kiryu, baggy and oversized to remind him how large his man was.

"Ah, that got me real fired up," Majima declared, cracking open a beer. At least he didn't fall asleep again; hated it when he dozed off after sex and dream of weird shit pasts he had no business remembering. A bit of a nutter he was, after a good hard round of proper fuckin'. Today he's coherent.

Kiryu went off elsewhere, puttering about the kitchen, arranging and re-arranging dinner in a microwave. Majima pushed the beer across the table where Gomo was sitting. The kid stared blankly at him.

"I won't tell if ya won't," He winked, in such a good mood.

"Kiryu-chan," Gomo said to him.

"Ya on about that again, kid? Thought you could say more than that by now. How 'bout a new one? Try this: uncle Goro's my favorite. Go on."

"No!" The kid yelled, and surprising Majima, punched him in the face.

Kiryu came back to this sight: Gomo-chan, kicking Majima over and over, lashing out with fists and teeth whenever Majima pushed him away. He thrashed like an eel when Kiryu pulled him off, asking: what's wrong, Gomo? What happened? Did he tease you?

Oh, Majima thought, looking at those dark, dark eyes exactly like his, saw in them the mirror of his obsessive, goblin-like ways. Oh, he thought. I guess it's gonna be a pain in the ass from now on, huh.

He could guess exactly how the kid's mind worked: Kiryu-chan was his, only his, and he won't tolerate it. Kiryu-chan spending time with anyone else, smiling at anyone else, was unacceptable, abhorrent, repugnant to all his senses, and he loathed Majima for every second he'd taken Kiryu away from him. Only Gomo - and in extension, Majima - was allowed to run away, return, go missing on Kiryu. The other way around was no-go-highway.

If Gomo could have figured out which end of a knife to hold, he would have stabbed Majima and slept the better for it.

Nah, he's projecting.

The kid is too young to stab anyone; the reason Majima thinks that is because it's exactly what he'd do if he finds Kiryu has a better friend than him some day. After all, does he not look askance at Nishikiyama? And that's when Nishikiyama was here before him too. It's why he never joined them at SERENA again. One drink too many, and he'd break the man's face for daring to put a friendly arm around Kiryu. Somewhere in him is a little jealous Gomo-like gremlin, screaming Kiryu-chan, Kiryu-chan, like so.

"Come on, stop fussing," Kiryu was saying to the boy in his infinite patience.

No point, Majima thought. Can't be placated with platitudes. If he decides to hate me, he'll hate me. Nothin' ya can do about it. Just ya know, didn't expect that. And after all that trouble too. Kinda hurts, to be honest.

He finished his beer. Just to pissed the kid off even more, he ruffled the kid's hair like a dog.

—
__
__

One day, in the many luxurious, uneventful weeks spent cruising into Kiryu's apartment after a long day crushing faces and breaking necks, he found a man in the hallway. An expensive Italian shirt, the sort you get from Le Marche. Looks bad and can't be fought in, and purple. Purple was the point.

"What's this? First hundred ass-kicking ain't enough for ya? Take a fuckin' number." Majima said.

This man spoke slow, as if he had to calculate the movements of the world - or recall his bank account number - before he could speak.

"You shouldn't speak," He told Majima. "Until you're spoken to. There are rules and manners, you know."

"Ohh?"

"First I speak, and then if your part requires you to, you may speak."

"My part," Majima said, hollowly.

"Yes. I set the tone. You follow it. See how simple it is?" He smiled the choleric smile of a middle manager. "Return the boy. Your Story is almost over, and it's gone exactly the way you wanted it to go. Your wish has been indirectly granted. Now you must return our props to us."

"I have a better idea: how 'bout ya tell me why, and then I don't give a shit?"

Majima shoved the man aside, unlocked Kiryu's apartment, and slammed the door shut. He handed over toiletries and sundries to Gomo, who put them one by one away in neat mathematical stacks exactly as he'd been taught. Kiryu laid with his legs in a hypotenuse, shirt unbuttoned from the heat, dozing away in front of a fan. Majima said nothing to the kid; at some point he'd said enough to put himself out there, and he wasn't putting another inch more.

He opened windows and shut drawers, rooting around for spare clothing and a towel for a bath. Spent so much time here that he can't even know if his shit was here or at Majima-corp. Hot water erratic from old pipes scalded his back; he was trying to wash out the bad taste in his mouth. Trouble about to be chewed, it tasted like. Trouble stuck behind your teeth, plaque and gummy with that bad flavor: the knowledge that before this is over it'll probably get worse.

He turned on the TV.

"— This is not the right kind of theater being pursued here in Tokyo," Said a lady analyst in a purple blazer, submerged in facts and figures of a down-turned economy. The next channel came on without prompting; the remote sat prim and unused elsewhere.

"First of all, everyone has to obey their cues," Says a golf tournament winner with a purple medal and a many-teethed mouth that looked like it was saying something else. "That's just the way things should be."

"The way things should be," A purple cabbage said.

On channel four, a science popularizer: "— This cue is jealousy. This one is insecurity. This one is obedience. Obedience is important."

Soon, a flurry of channels, sweeping by one after another, until all he could see was the noise of channels half-loaded, but the audio coming through cleanly always:

"The US-Japan debt. Just think about the debt." said one channel.

"The debt?"

"Debts, debts."

"At least one million owed in bonds," said another.

"Owing to factors."

"Owed nonetheless."

"A dishonest... And criminal influence along the coast," Said a third.

"— Which we're thinking they'll regret," Said the lady analyst in purple, coming on again. "They'd better get their act together before the company takes back the rights to the show."

Majima smashed the remote with his heels, kicked through the TV screen until it was all jagged glass teeth and a gaping black mouth. The debt, it croaked still. Think of the owing to. Just so the damn thing won't chirp again, he took the TV and its wiry entrails and pushed it off the balcony. It landed, bleat an electronic sigh.

Gomo only looked at him. What the hell ya lookin' at, Majima asked. On the screen, over here, in this theater larger than life. What are you seeing? You don't look horrified, are you seeing this right? Are ya taking notes? Are ya taking the right kind of notes? Kiryu tuckered out, slept like the living.

He needs to wake soon and come between them.

"I'm watching cartoon," Gomo admonished.

"Shut the fuck up."

Then,

"Sorry."

Then,

"I'll get ya another one."

Then,

"I said sorry, didn't I? That's more than I ever got, so why don't ya fuck off, kid? Ya pissin' me off here."

And again, quieter:

"I said I'm sorry."

Missing his cue, Kiryu woke late and blurry, looking at the spot with the TV's ghost like it'd all been an electronic dream, this TV that he might have once had. I'll get ya another one, Majima repeated, pushing food at the both of them as if he could crust over questions with a thick layer of rice.

Alright, alright. Kiryu unwound from his triangular slumber to do the chores; feeding, bathing, washing in between the kid's toes and behind his ears. He deposited the kid around the kotatsu and turned it on along the radio, and they listened to interference-free pop while Gomo did his First Hiragana Exercise: Sunshine Kids Edition and they did their homework: smoking lazily one by one a whole pack of cigarettes.

It is okay, it is peaceful, Majima tells himself. And when it is not so later on, he'll just punch his way through it easy-peasy the way he always did. The important thing was that he was at peace now. He, legs curled around Kiryu's in the privacy of the kotatsu. Toes scratching lazily up and down each other's calves. It is Summer still but it is rainy, and cold.

The boy in a rare truce, tucked himself under the warmth and baked most of himself with skinny arms sticking out to write, over and over again — あ, い, う, え, お.

The syllables of life, he tells a philosophically disinclined Kiryu. How's that, ehh? Just think 'bout that for a sec. Ah, for the surprises that occur to you and hits you between the balls. Eee, for the things that disgust you but must be done; U-h, all the times you're lost, and don't know where you are; Ehhhhh, for when you're not lost, but don't want to go where you should be. O, when everything catches up to you and—

"Your meat's burning," Kiryu told him, picking the grilled slice up and throwing it into his bowl. "Your garbage philosophy is hurting me. Read some Confucius or something. All I want is for everyone to eat, to not drip sauce on the table, and put their bowls in the sink."

This is why — (silently now, you never know who's listening to your thoughts) — Majima loves him.

Later, later, on another night, he clambered over Kiryu, folded his hands over that strong chest, rested his chin on it and asked:

"Ya wanna join my family when things calm down 'round here?"

"This again?"

"Ya."

"Are you going to hit me and run out if I say no?"

"Will that stop ya from sayin' so?"

"No."

"Then why'd ya ask, asshole?"

"Just wanted to know if I should grit my teeth," Kiryu chuckled.

"No," He told Majima. "If I join your family, it won't be the Majima-gumi." He tightened his grip, preemptive. "Don't run."

"I — wasn't going ta. Just surprised."

"Well, here's more surprise: I'm enrolling the kid too."

Here's safe ground, less touchy, less sappy. He hated sap. "Naw, Kiryu-chan. Ya outta it. The kid hates me."

"He doesn't hate you. He's confused by you."

"Anyone's confusing 'round here it ain't me. I'm a one-trick-pony, easy to read as a Mahjong tile."

"Goro-nii," Kiryu scoffed. "You read like Yukio Mishima." Then he added, "Thanks for not running out."

"I'm trying not to be such a fucking mess."

"Well, it's working." Then he patted Majima's head and added: "You're not a bean sprout, you're not going to grow in a day."

"Oh my fucking god. That is the worst, the absolute worst damned line anyone has ever said to me in bed, Kiryu-chan." Majima laughed and laughed, until Gomo woke up and kicked him.

—
__
__

Sometimes Majima succeeds: he can be the cool uncle when he tries to be.

He'd take Gomo and his boys to his dirt patch outside of Kamurocho, and they'd pitch balls and hit balls until they're tan and crispy. Gomo shrieking with glee, Nishida and the boys in various states of enthusiasm and terror. Oyaji and oyaji junior? This is the kind of stuff their nightmares are made of.

Dinners were spent at Smile Burger, Wild Jackson, or half a dozen other fast food franchises that promised colorful sterile toys and no nutritional value. Cheery tinkling welcome-tunes and a kid's playground, crammed between the second-floor condiment bar and the window, like a suicide.

Yay, says the boy, and Majima would watch him balance on the beams of the slide, the roof of the play-hut, looping his stringy arms into the jungle bars and swinging himself around like a monkey. Majima doesn't hear him when he falls. He's usually on the phone, dealing with gokudo business. He knows the kid won't make a fuss. He'll cry when he breaks a bone (which should happen soon, chronologically speaking) but that's about it.

They play dangerous games because that's what they like best. He brings the boy to the trainyards and they play a game: to see how close they can get to being hit by the trains, jumping across the tracks to dodge slow-starting trains whistling angrily by. They get close, closer, closer still, and then they're arrested - chased by a police all the way back to Kamurocho with Gomo on his shoulders laughing as hard as he was wheezing.

"Had fun?" He asked the kid.

"Have fun," Gomo confirmed.

One day when Majima is suicidal he'll tell Kiryu all about this.

In the meantime: water parks where Gomo gets to slide face down against the rules. Aquarium trips where he gets seawater flavored ice-cream sixteen-at-a-go. Clinic trips for the both of them, to treat a bad stomachache caused by sixteen undigested snowcones. Pranks too, which Gomo cooked up and Majima didn't approve of; it was he who had to run away from a cop, chasing him because the boy was shouting help, help, a strange man!

"Ya gettin' the childhood I never had," He told Gomo.

"Hi, Kiryu-chan," said Gomo, as he was handed back to Kiryu to be inspected for the thousand nicks and cuts that a growing boy accrues with interest on the street.

It's a lie. Kiryu is the one giving Gomo the childhood he never had: badly burnt but timely meals, attention-on-demand as available as porn. Okay, Kiryu will say, in the middle of trying to cut a radish. What do you want, Gomo-chan? Is something wrong? What do you need?

In the middle of the night, both of them ball-ass tired from busting heads, he'll get up for the slightest request. Even when Majima told him pointedly that the boy was doing it precisely because he can. Because it is allowed. He can ask for unreasonable requests at midnight - a drink of water, a trip to the bathroom too dark and scary for him, a hug and a story - and Kiryu would grant all these fucking unreasonable requests just because it was asked of him.

"It's not unreasonable," He told Majima with a frown. "And I'm not spoiling him."

Sometimes Majima's not doing so well.

One night Kiryu comes home from a Kazama-gumi errand, and asks him: Where's Gomo-chan?

"Don't know," He said, taking a long drag of his cigarette. "Ya can look for him if ya want to. Been doing it all day, ain't doing it again."

Kiryu goes, goes, goes, and comes back a day later, shaking with so much fury, he was flying apart at the joints. The Florist sure worked slow.

Where is he, Kiryu asked. A low and dangerous voice.

Majima slipped the closet door apart, where the boy laid taped and tied in it. He'd pissed himself. Wasn't like Majima was gonna wipe his ass for him, was he? Good. He hoped he shat himself too, and had sat for a day stewing in his own shit-piss-sweat-tears-stew, and remember that smell forever.

Kiryu took the boy without another word and went away, maybe forever; but no it wasn't forever, just three hours. Majima hadn't move from his spot, except to filch more cigarettes from his stash.

Kiryu hit him so hard his ears rang.

Seized him by the same ears almost lovingly, a cold, cold tone when he says:

"You ever pull this shit again, I will hit you. I will hit you, and I won't stop. Do you understand me?"

Sure okay yes daddy. So kill him already, if he can.

Kiryu threw him against the wall, rolled up his sleeves and said: explain yourself.

He was pissing me off, Majima said, not bothering to try. How to put in words? The sick ugly feeling stewing in his bowels gently now for days, like a parasite. Every time the kid said: I want this, I don't want that, I'm scared of shit, and Majima would get a cramp all over. The kind of cramp that asked: why ya actin' so full of yerself? Like ya got some kinda choice...

It's complicated; he doesn't want to explain, he wants to explain. He resents looking at the kid. He is the exact opposite of a funhouse mirror. Shows you beautiful things and say, look, this could have been you.

Was he jealous? What a crazy thing, to be vindictive to a miniature edition of yourself, Majima MK II. No, it's not that: it's that he has to make sure the kid suffers exactly as much as he had. He can't be happy unless the kid is bleeding, burnt, torn in-out. There was no justice if he didn't suffer. Majima couldn't bear the thought of the kid turning out better than he did, simply because the boy had fucking-good-guy-Kiryu-chan and he hadn't.

"He's a wrinkle," Majima settled on. "And wrinkles gotta be iron out with a hot iron, ya know how it is."

"Should I be glad I don't have a fucking oven?"

In a flash the knife was out, sticking tight-tight against Kiryu's jugular.

"You know what I hate more than pity, Kiryu-chan?" He asked conversationally. "It's assholes who use my shit against me."

So they hit each other, and Kiryu kept his promise - he didn't stop hitting Majima until long after he'd lost consciousness.

Character growth, Majima cackled later, putting a beer on to cool his wound. It doesn't help; his whole face is a wound. This is my character growth, Majima told him. I'm a piece of shit, and now I know - for sure yessir - that I'm a piece of shit, so I take my punches and say sorry instead of running off. Howdya like that, Kiryu-chan?

"You haven't said sorry yet."

"I know, I know. I'll do it. Get some toys together, a couple of tickets, a signed baseball. I'll go easy on it. I'll be apologizing for a long time, huh?" He rubbed his face raw, so frustrated he could have torn it off.

"I dunno why I'm fuckin' like this. I never wanted to end up like my fucking old man."

Kiryu said nothing, cutting off sections of plasters to hold Majima's cuts together, slapping them on with enough force to say: I'm still pissed. Turn around, he said, and dabbed iodine where he'd punch Majima hard enough to break skin.

"I ain't meant to do it, but--"

"Just apologize," Kiryu cut him off. "And apologize, and apologize. You get pissed off enough saying sorry, you'll stop doing it."

" 'kay."

Added, later, quietly, with his head on Kiryu's shoulder, "Sorry, Kiryu-chan. Dunno how ya put up with my shit."

"It's alright." Kiryu said with a tired smile. "Didn't I say you're not a bean sprout?" He closed down the first-aid kit, making a snick. "I'm going to get Gomo-chan. Maybe take a nap. You wanna come with me or...?"

He'll go with, after they made a couple of stops around Kamurocho. Majima appeared at the hotel completely invisible behind the hamper of toy-trash he'd bought. Half of Don Quijote's stock. Couldn't decide, so he might as well get 'em all - something in there could communicate exactly how goddamned sorry he was. There was everything, really everything, absolutely fuck-all, even a karaoke kit for kids.

Gomo-chan eyed the pile of toys, judged the size of the bruises on his face - and displaying the magnanimous and malleable nature of children - shifted aside to make space for Majima on the bed.

"Big asshole," He told Majima.

"Ya won't get a complaint outta me. Sorry, kid."

And oddly enough (or perhaps not that odd if he just thought about it) the kid liked him more after that.

Chapter 13: Oyaji cares

Obviously, they were going to take Kiryu from him. What else were they going to do?

Three things you can do to royally piss off Majima: you can mess with Kiryu-chan, mess with his boys, or steal his zombie flick collection. The bureau had opted to kick him straight in the dick.

Comes to be he ain't even surprised, when he unlocked Kiryu's apartment one night and found it sitting in the dark, its innards all in the wrong places. He opened cabinets and shut doors until he found Gomo wedged in the fire escape like a slice of cheese, holes all over him made of misery. Kiryu-chan, he says, forlorn and abandoned, had gone somewhere and never came back; what came back were other people, many of them, all silent with violent searching hands. He'd only escaped because he was on one of his follies again.

Majima went to the kitchen, root around the fridge until he found an eggplant, and showed it to the boy. This? Yes.

Okey-dokey.

He cooked eggplant curry for dinner, taking extra pleasure in dicing the pieces real small - call it practice swings ya-know-what-I-mean? - and served it steaming hot to the kid. He got Kiryu's phone out, the old wired thing, and started punching in numbers randomly. Oops, sorry, wrong number, he repeated like an answering machine.

Like an answering machine, he was looking for answers. It took him six numbers until they picked up:

"The Bureau of Desirable Objects," A voice said. "A sub-division of the Bureau of Indirect Wishes, and a second-sub-division of the Bureau of Unfathomable Wants. How may I help you today?"

I would like to return an object, he said.

"How big is it?"

Three feet long, one and a half feet wide. Nails shut, but fragile. Courier only. They gave him an address and he wrote it down. "Thanks, doll," he said, and hung up.

He dressed the kid on the warm side: baseball cap, his favorite Anpanman shirt, a snakeskin-patterned hoodie he'd gotten as a lark, shoes he can run in. Then he drove to Majima-central for supplies, one of which he handed to the kid. Ya put the pointy end in any big assholes you meet, except me, got that? The kid got it. He was a fucking genius at this kinda shit, if Majima said so himself. Then they were off.

—
—
—

The address brought him to a half-constructed office that someone had built as a vanity project but ran out of building halfway; money had been poured only into its first twenty or so floors, so grand it could double as a piano. The rest was bare-bones empty like a parking lot. The bureau, according to the address, was located on the twenty-fifth floor.

THE BUREAU OF DESIRABLE OBJECTS announced itself exactly on the twenty-fifth, though to get to it you have to go through doors each subtly smaller or larger than the last, so that the net effect is that you move as though through a tremor, a Geiger counter with its pulse permanently pressed on two. Plush carpets served Majima underfoot, rolling gently along with them to ease their steps. It felt like someone had made two feet of rug and artificially stretched it to cover the whole hallway. Exactly so.

Majima hummed as he walked, swinging his baseball bat to and fro. Eggplant, he was thinking. Eggplant squash.

No one opened doors; there was no reception. Just an elevator, a long hallway, and then the bureau began in earnest, a large rolling warehouse of a room with walls of glass windows on all sides. It's got a so-so view, and only if you like long stretches of construction site ghetto. The room was made by someone with no attention to detail - there were no fucking pillars holding up the ceiling.

"Special delivery," He called out. More than two hundred heads swiveled to look at him, and only one had a tongue. The man - the same one with the fancy schmancy shirt - came forward to shake his hand.

"Majima-san," The man greeted, speaking slow, drawing out every word. "We see eye-to-eye today." He reached out to take the child, which Majima yanked backwards.

"Uh-uh. Rewards first, payment later. Where's Kiryu-chan?"

"You will find him on the 30th floor. The department of Indirect Wishes is persuading him to be a client. You should recommend him to us, Majima-san. We've done well by you."

"Don't know what ya on 'bout. Never bought shit off ya. Also ya'll got strange ideas of what doing well means."

"Is that feedback?" His manner was cold. "I'm afraid our bureau is no longer accepting improvements."

Majima drew his bat up, thrust it at the man's face. "Naw, this here is my bad review. Ya want stars? Ya gon' GET stars. Git, kid!"

The man watched impassive as the boy scuttle over to hide near the hallway door, where he could get the hell out if things went south. Majima wasn't planning for things to go south though. Things were going to go so far north, he'd blow this whole joint outta Alaska's ass before he was done doing here.

Italian Shirt gave him a right nasty smile. "So predictable."

"Yeah?" He lit a cigarette, watched the crane outside the window rotating slowly, payload swinging lightly in the winds.

"We've charted your whole story, we know all your twists and turns. Do you want to know how many of us you can beat before you run out of fists?"

"I ain't so good at math. More or less than a thousand yen note?"

"Two hundred and five. We've got a thousand men in the building."

"Woah, I'm in for a real can of ass whoppin' then, ain't I? Seven-hundred-ninety-five in the negative, that's some fucked up shit right there. Hey," He dropped the cigarette on the floor, crushed it with a heel, watched the increasingly yellow sun rising in the middle of the night.

"Ya know what your problem is? It's y'all assuming I'm predictable."

Then the windows exploded.

—
—

—

Aight, boys and boys of the Majima-gumi, listen up and listen up good!

Oyaji cares, oyaji really does. It ain't easy is it, being stuck balls to the walls in a container, swinging 'bout at wind speed a hundred. Ya got ya helmets snug-snug on unless you've not been listenin' to your boss, but still: being used as a sledgehammer to smash windows, then fight off ten times your number? That's gotta hurt. That's real slave labor right there.

Good news: ya get a bonus if ya do good. Oyaji will be gentle the next time he kicks your ass.

"Alright, boys! This here's the tutorial level!" Majima was screaming at them. "Watch and level up!"

The crane had rotated towards the building and kept going, swept and tore the half of the floor that it could reach. Reversed now, depositing the payload willy nilly in the middle. A container, the sort you camp out in when construction's going on. It opened, and out came his boys, packed tight like sardines - sardines with weapons.

They came tumbling out of the container, all fifty of them gasping like fish on land, Nishida most of all. Why did he think joining the gokudo was a good idea again? How are they gonna watch with those rheumy eyes? At least let them gasp first...

Ya boys take yer time, Majima said. I got about two hundred and five of these punks to smash. He was already at work, crushing one man's windpipe with the business end of his bat and the ribs of another with the other end; he'd cleared a comfortable circle around his boys before they were done tellin' which way was up.

Now look, watch, learn! An education!

First oyaji says, demonstratin', ya pick up a guy and crush his neck like this - with the heel of your foot ground-grounded-grounding into that soft bit. Then you combo: you kick him across the room and he hits a friend. Friend looks down. Friend is surprised. Whassat? You take this chance, ya jump up, and land on his face with your knee. Squish goes the soft bit, the nose, and his whole face caves in, mouth opened wide and stupid, going - whassat?

I hope y'all paid attention at yoga? Ya thought oyaji was foolin' making y'all touch yer toes?

Nah, it's for this moment. Now that you've got a combo under your belt, things are starting to feel good, innit? Oyaji knows, he's written books about this!

Next: take your weapon - and it really doesn't matter if you got a blunt or a sharp one - and you hit someone with it. Hit them about 6 times if ya can count that high, then keep keeping on! TENDERIZE them, and when ya done ya put a boot in his chest. Off they go, flying away.

Then you hit backwards, because there is always someone behind you, think-thinking hard: hee-hee, here's my chance! No chance! Ya hit him with the other end of your pointy stick and ya done surprised him. Then you grab him on the ears, and introduce him to your knee. Combo!

Oyaji please, a question. Nishida raises a hand. Can the instruction be less kansai and more words? It's really hard to understand what he's saying when every other word is a long drawn out 'neee'...

Majima scowls.

Part three of the tutorial is what oyaji calls the fireworks. What are fireworks? Fireworks are pops, and ya want ya enemy popping like a festival. Go first for the neck: you grab them like a good deal from the back, twist their head left-right like a doll. Down they go, handing ya your chiropractor certificate on the way. Then ya get more fans - two goons trying to hit you up at the same time for them free services. Free service! Do you offer it? Like hell you do! You gotta punch them hard, one-two-three in one and an elbow in the other, and then they'll get it - along with the bill.

More, oyaji demonstrates: hitting a guy in the middle with a bat when he's down, a box of nails in the face when ya got 'em, knives stuck in three guys like a love connection. Creativity, that's the keyword. Ya gotta be creative in the business. Otherwise you burnout quick, fighting a hundred guys with your fists, and you don't want that, do ya?

That's all for the tutorial level, now get out there and whop ass!

"Alright Nishida, I'm outta here! Gonna go get Kiryu-chan! Ya clean up here!" Oyaji yells.

"What? B-But oyaji, they've reinforcements coming!"

"How come ya tellin' me that like I care? If ya know there's reinforcement, shape up!" He swung the bat at Nishida, who suddenly thought facing five hundred more goons did not seem as bad as this. "I come back here and find any thug alive, y'all get a bonus round - with me! Got that!? Come on, Gomo-chan!"

And then oyaji is off. The kid stabs someone who's already down in the soft fleshy part below their chin, shouted - eat fists! Then he's off, rattling after oyaji in glee.

Nishida turned back to the hundred plus or so purple goons left, and sighed. Okay, he told the rest of the boys and boys of Majima's family. Ya heard the boss. Let's clean up right, or we're gonna be getin' that bonus.

"How come we don't want bonuses? Aren't bonuses good?" Asked a real junior member on his first fight.

Nishida patted him on the shoulder. Poor, young fool. Oh, we were all young once...

"If we get it, you can have mine."

—
—
—

The elevator don't go up no more, so they had to take the stairs. Gomo's little feet were too small for all that climbing, so he did it on Majima's back, piggybacked like a piggybank, dropping coins of wisdom everywhere he went.

"Asshole behind," He tells Majima, and someone gets a kick in the face. Asshole front, asshole right, asshole left. Everyone gets a kick in the face, it's that kind of giveaway. Ya make a good antenna, kid. Keep it up, Majima tells him.

They burst into the 26th floor, fought their way to the other end, and climbed the stairs again for the 27th. Majima wasn't even winded yet, but by his reckoning he'd maybe a hundred, a hundred fifty down. The goon said he's gotta kick about two hundred asses? They ain't accurate but they're a good yardstick. Probably he'll find the two hundred and fifth head to crack very near to Kiryu.

The 27th floor was significantly plusher than the last two. Someone had worked harder here with their Imagination: there were pillars, fluorescent lights, corridors and the works. A stuffed red herring on the wall. The last two floors had lights that shone out of nothing, that didn't even pretend to have bulbs. There weren't many goons, just one. A face with a personality, so Majima presumed he could talk - and he could.

"I see you've dealt with Omi," He told Majima. Here was a man who looked like he had a hometown. The way these guys were built without Personality, it probably meant he was high-ish on the ladder. A face long and narrow, like it'd been squish by overtime. Probably eats his dinners at the desk. Eyebags under his eyes like he works til midnight everyday and goes home after Cinderella's ride is a pumpkin again.

"What, from the Omi alliance?"

"No, Ominous. He deals a lot with horror tones, and some say that it's given him a grizzled character in his own right. On evenings, he dabbles in revealing monologues too, for villains to go out in a bang with, accompanied as he writes by the sound of soft pub jazz. He is inspired by the tinkling of door bells. They remind him of meetings, and farewells. He does a lot of business with your type."

"And what the hell type am I?"

"Unhappy customers, of which there are many, though not as many as recently walk our halls, so freely have they come and go that they've been mistaken for the staff. Once, the bureau was a different kind of place—"

"Okay, I'll bite. Who the fuck are you?"

"They call me Exposition. Long narratives happen in many Stories, so you can imagine that I am quite a busy man, though not so busy that I can't be a family man. Two children, and a mortgaged house in a good neighbourhood, a recently estranged wife ..."

"Too literary for me," Majima said. "I only want answers and ass-kickin'. How ya wanna do this?"

"I enjoy long answers. You may have one."

"Okay. Alright, lemme think. What's a question? I've got as many as I've got toes. Hell, okay, let's go with this - what the hell does this bureau ya got here do?"

"An excellent question. We are the creators of custom Stories, nestled as we are under the Bureau of Indirect Wishes, which grants wishes to all those who can find it, one each permitted to a grateful mortal."

"A mortal may say: I wish that tomorrow I will win a bodybuilding contest, despite never having done a single push up in his life. What happens then? We happen. We put things into place so that desirable objectives can be attained. We enroll him for example, if he hasn't sign up for the contest. Against his wishes it will be done, if it must."

"Then perhaps all his competitors end up in an accident, because a long trailer barrels into them above speed limit. Perhaps his foes urinate in a cup, and find to their horror that they've eaten enough steroids to kill a grown buffalo… And to disqualify them. There are many ways a Story can turn out. Our job, here at the bureau, is to make sure it turns out exactly right, using whatever Object is necessary."

"So y'all… Grant wishes? How come y'all stick Gomo in my place then? I know I sure as fuck never wished for a kid."

"The changeling? He is not your wish, merely a prop to facilitate that wish. Your Story has already been completed. I would like to ask that you make trouble no longer, return our property, and be on your way. We will return Kazuma-san once he's decided if he wants to be a client."

Majima drew his knife. Too many words; he preferred ass-kickin'

While his ass was being kicked, the man narrated: Majima kicks at me in the face, which I dodge by the skin of my teeth. Unaccustomed as I am to fighting, even I can tell he is a good fighter - perhaps one of the very best, ever known. He slices at me with his knife, and it is so close I can smell the blood of men that have come before me. This terrifies me. Can I really win this battle? Should I call security? I try to punch him. I say 'I try' and not 'I did so' because really, my punches are connecting with thin air. He is a tough customer. Too late, I look down and see — I am bleeding —

"Fuck off, word-face," Said Majima. To Gomo-chan, he said. "Ya ever see wordy people like that, what do ya do?"

Gomo-chan strode confidently ahead and kicked the man in the face. Then he cried out because it hurt his foot, and demanded to be carried.

"Good boy!"

Majima stuck the boy on his back, and ponied up to the next floor.

—
—
—

Kiryu was sitting in a waiting room, kicking the carpet. There was nothing wrong with the waiting room per se, it was just that he'd been here for over eight hours, and there was nothing at all to do. There was a TV hung up in a corner, sort of like a karaoke place. Movies would have been nice, could have helped him kill some time - except it plays a garbage pop track endlessly. 24 HOURS I LOVE YOU, the idol says. STEP AND GO!

Stepping and going would be nice. Especially if it was a face he was stepping on.

The waiting room was full of drunks. Everyone here was absolutely trashed and complete trash - dribbling and wubbling, holding onto empty bottles of hard alcohol and homebrew moonshine. Wha— someone says, shaking his bottle like a maraca. How come no drink no more? This is the kind of alcoholic Bob Marley speech he has to listen to. The general level of intelligence is pretty low.

He wrinkled his brow, tried hard to concentrate on his Pocket Circuit mag. It doesn't work; he's seen it fifteen times. There's only so many times he can read the specs of the latest wheels.

The receptionist is annoyed; she's seen him once every fifteen minutes.

"Hey, how long do I have to — "

"Please remain seated, sir!" She said, voice pitched high like a yell. "You'll be called when you're called!"

He goes back to his seat. At least they were comfortable. He'd chosen a plush Victorian lounge chair. Beside him was a row of plastic chairs like you see at the subway, and beside that was a vending machine, intruding rudely between two rows of theater seats. There was also a buffet in the corner opposite the TV - if you had the guts to eat food ladled out of a grand piano. Strong immunity preferred but not necessary.

The vending machine dispenses advice. He punched in the button for 'Hopeful', just for something new to read.

HOPE IS A BIG NOPE

'Regrets' produced: THINKING IS FOR IDIOTS, STOP DOING IT.

'Positivity' produced: POSITIVE CHARGES MOVE IN A POSITIVE DIRECTION. I > 0

When this is over, he thought, holding on to the three scraps of paper, he is going to bring Majima on a very long road trip. They will go to somewhere really normal, like an alpaca farm, and they are going to do normal things people do in their twenties. They are going to take stupid pictures of themselves chewing hay beside a llama. Kiryu is going to wear a straw hat. He will bring eye patches for the goats, so they can all be a matching set. They will drive very quickly and break every speed limit between here and Hokkaido, and then beat up the cops when they're caught. They will go to Kiryuna Onsen Gunma and eat oden until they split. Perfectly normal things.

"Number 882, Kazuma Kiryu!"

Finally. He got up and hurried down the hall to the great double doors that capped it, ornate with wrought iron and golden leaves and flanked by two Grecian pillars that extended all the way to the ceiling - a ceiling so far up that you have no doubt at all that you're not in Japan. Japanese roofs are never that high; not even in castles. It's the kind of door you don't want to see after a big fight, because it'll mean you're dead and in heaven.

"Hi," He said, walking into a quiet office. Very shrink-meets-principal. His principles felt shrunk in here.

"Hi," said the man, a balding clerk with round-rimmed glasses that hasn't seen a pay raise in the last decade. "Kazuma Kiryu-san? Please, please take a seat. Let me just find your folder and we can get right to it. Oh, you're not drunk? How wonderful! We don't get many sober people in here, since they moved the entrance to the Hotel District."

Kiryu sat, and waited while the man went through his files. There were a lot of files: shelves extended all the way to the ceiling, and if you look far up enough, you see not just folders, but scrolls and what looked like fresh papyrus. At the foot of the shelf, he spotted something shiny and familiar.

Mumbling an excuse, he went over to take a look at it and sure enough - it was Majima's baseball bat. The golden one with his name written on it that Kiryu - yes, Kiryu - had gotten for him his last birthday. He should know, he'd been bashed with the bat enough times by now he could recognize it in the dark. Is this why he hasn't seen it for months?

"Hey, why do you have this?" He asked the clerk. He was thinking paranoid thoughts: Majima cursed and transformed into a bat, for example, soul sealed into it or some crazy shit like that. Kiryu watches a lot of anime.

"Oh, that?" The man scowled. "Left there by a previous customer. A very rude one, as I recall."

And what do they do here again?

The man gave him a summary: they grant wishes, any wishes. One complementary for every mortal. Why? It's always been this way. Call it a package deal. One life, one wish. But only one wish; any more, and you had to buy it. They offer very good rates, very good rates indeed. All their wishes are executed in stories, guaranteed effective by their sub-bureau.

"What's the payment?"

"Employment, at reduced rates. The bureau always needs more help. We're severely understaffed, you know."

An image of those purple goons floated across his mind. Was that what he'd been fighting? People who'd make wishes they couldn't pay for? Or rather, that they were still paying it off? They didn't even look like they had souls… Fucking creepy shit. Everything here was fucking creepy, but this was extra creepy. How the hell did they get pulled into this? Majima's been here before, did the guy say?

"Oh," Kiryu said. Unsure of what to add.

There was a sound like major construction in the floor below them, and he had to frown hard to hear the man: "It seems all your papers are in order, Kazuma-san. Let me explain all about our packages, I'm thinking you'd make an excellent employee, if you have more than one wish."

He most definitely did not.

In fact he did not even have one wish, except to get the hell out of here, go back home, and see if Majima and Gomo had managed to tear his place down (again) while he was kidnapped.

"Everyone has a wish, Kazuma-san," The man said, ignoring what sounded like someone being stabbed to death in the hallway. "We like to get everyone processed as quickly as possible."

But Kiryu really didn't. He didn't have a single wish he could think of; he was perfectly happy the way things were in his life. He had a rabid dog/lover/rival in his life. Their relationship wasn't the greatest, but it'll get there, and in fact they've been making great progress. He was the current Pocket Circuit champ, leading the leaderboards at bowling, and held all the high scores at every arcade in Kamurocho. Life was good, and if life was sometimes not so good, he had the confidence he could put it back into shape with a fist-shaped massage.

Think harder, the man said. I'm sure you'll figure something out. More hair, perhaps? That's a very popular request. Bigger ahems too. That's the most popular model, in fact. Perhaps you'd like to be taller, or have a kinky girlfriend with lower body alopecia?

No thanks, Kiryu said. I have the kinkiest boyfriend in town. If he ever loses his hair, he'll shave me bald just to be fair.

Well that won't do at all. He has to think harder. Kiryu was looked up and down. Can I recommend a fashion sense?

The door trembled.

Perhaps a fashion sense, and a bigger ahem? Technically two wishes, but they could make it work. Perhaps he grows a magical ahem that increases his fashion sense. The story department is very creative with this sort of thing.

No thanks, Kiryu said, blushing red now. He really didn't need a bigger anything, unless it's an appetite, because sometimes he does run out of space eating in town… But if he had a bigger stomach, he'd have to pay more for food. The thought of paying more for food offended his tightwad heart.

The door was trembling so hard its hinges were rattling now. Someone was pounding it to a rhythm that sounded familiar, and music was pouring in that was --

SUNAO NI I LOVE YOUUUUU

— and the doors burst apart in a shower of gold flakes.

Majima - because, who else? — stepped through and yell: "Nobody better hurt my Kiryu-chan! The only one who gets to kick that ass is me! Gomo-chan, attack stance!"

—
—
—

The clerk looks up, looks at the door and said: "YOU!"

"What, I know ya or somethin'?"

"I sure do! You're the worst customer I've ever had! Why are you here? No refunds! There'll be no refunds - and if there were, certainly not for you!"

"Y'all ever hear of customer service? All I've been hearin' in this place is no: no feedback, no refunds, and no keepin' the products. And I ain't even a customer yet! The customer is king, haven't ya ever heard?"

He looked around the grand old place, noted the golden bat in Kiryu's hands.

"Hey, Kiryu-chan! How come you found the ol' bat I lost?"

—
—
—

Approximately five months ago, before this story began, there was an alley.

Remember, this is back before the story began, so there can't be any records of it, no mysterious eyes to watch our hero; No fate guides his hands, no happenstance can happen to him. He merely was, at the moment, walking down the Hotel District from an evening at the batting cages. He was swinging a golden baseball bat, feeling extremely pleased with himself (he has almost broken his boyfriend's record), and he is very, very drunk.

On a scale of one to ten, with ten being rolling in an alley in your own piss, incoherent and mugged, this man is at fifteen. The only reason he has not been mugged, is because like cockroaches, muggers have instincts. Their instincts say: let's not mug the guy with bloodstains on his golden baseball bat. In fact, let's not ever mug anyone who can afford a golden baseball bat.

He sees a black glass door with a red frame, and a neon sign that advertises: MAKE YOUR WISHES COME TRUE.

That's it. No other information. This isn't the kind of sign you see on Pink Street, where they draw martinis and heels and shapely thighs encased in fishnets all over it, so that you know exactly what they're offering (financial bankruptcy).

This sign has no interest in explaining itself. Is it a hotel? The man wonders. Is it a love hotel? Maybe, he thinks, he can camp out in it, and call his boyfriend over and pretend he's being kidnapped by yakuza. They haven't had a kinky game for a while now… A couple of weeks, to be precise, ever since he'd walk out on said boyfriend over Space Harrier. No one beats his high scores without a beating.

Perfect, he thinks. We can make up over this, have wild sex in a classy hotel. He pushes the door and enters...

A very classy room. A very classy room indeed, but populated by people who were just as drunk as himself. Someone was shaking a bottle, going wha-wha-wha like a broken alarm. Take a seat, the reception tells him. He goes and take a seat, near the television set. It's broken, but after staring at it for half an hour, half snoozing from the wait, it starts to play something. His favorite song, in fact, over and over and over again. Is it him? Did he do it? Well, if he did, so much the better for it. It's a good song, everyone should listen to it everywhere, all the time.

He dozes off until the reception yells his name like a revelation: MAjimA GoRO!

Jeez, don't gotta wear it out or nothin'. He goes into the wrong door - the exit - and has to be guided to the right one, a big schamncy door with big titty pillars on the side.

"Hi," He burps. "I wanna room."

No, says the clerk. This is not a hotel. He tries to explain what is it they do, the wishes, the stories, the costs. He has to do this for eight times, because the man is not listening, is barely awake, is drooling slightly, eye patch saggy, etc. All the hallmarks of deep incoherence. Finally, the clerk gives up and calls in security. His client beats up the security and is instantly wide awake.

"Whazzat? Wishes? Any wish I want?"

Yes.

"Even if I want a bigger dick?"

It's a very popular request, yes.

"Even if I want tits?"

That's… Not as popular, but doable. Would he like those tits to be on him, or his wife?

"Nah," He says. "I dun' need it. My guy has a dick and pecs like you won't believe it..."

Alright, alright, the clerk said coldly. I will not have filth be poured into my ears here. Please, tell me exactly what you would like, and quickly. He pushes a paper across the desk, and puts a pen in the man's loosely curled fist. The man writes like he's gripping a can of soda. The paper comes back to the clerk like this:

I want to grow closer to Kiryu-chan! ❤❤❤

This is… Fine. It's a more normal wish than he expects, even if the client has drawn hearts all over it. The clerk is expecting, just judging from the demeanor and the eye patch, that the man might want global domination, his own space fleet, or a harem, all very complicated wishes that involve creating whole worlds and numerous changelings.

Is there a definition for this? He presses the drunk man. How do you want to grow closer to this person?

"Oh ya know — " Hic. "I duwanna be a piece of shit to him all the time, how's that."

Alright, not… a… piece... of shit. Can be done. What else?

The drunk blabs: "Tell him a coupla secrets, let him in a lil? 'saw it on those girly mags Nishida's always reading. How ta be a better boyfriend. Suck my dick, I always tell him. Suck my dick too, 'm always telling Kiryu-chan. Then he gives me sad eyes like I done kicked a pup. Like ya know? Like that? Then's the questions. Where'd ya grows up? Where'd ya been doing before yakuza? Do ya loves me? Are ya just after my pants? So boring. Ain't like I duwanna let him in, I juz' dunno how. It's a kick in the dick."

Please don't touch the porcelain, the clerk says. It's antique.

The clerk takes all the information, feeds it into the computer, which after regurgitating the information, throws up three suggestions, in descending likelihood of success:

One - a zombie apocalypse scenario (engineering class 8). Both characters attain objective (closeness achieved) after the demise of 94% of the human population in 3 years.

Two - a marooned island scenario (engineering class 4). Both characters attain objective (closeness achieved) after 8 years on a deserted island with limited amount of resources.

The clerk looks at the list - and the six other sub-ideas that were less likely but viable solutions - and looks at the man.

"You're not a very… Open individual, are you, Majima-san?"

He smiles the kind of smile that'd run Smile Burger out of business. "Sure I am, I open individuals all the time. I'm an opening individual."

The clerk circles the third scenario. Engineering a zombie apocalypse and a deserted island just so someone can have an honest conversation seems like too great a price to pay. He feeds it into the computer again, takes out the printed form. Pushes it and another pen into the man's hand (the first, had somehow mysteriously disappeared).

He tells the client: We'll be issuing a changeling child for you in order to grant your wish, sir. It'll be with you to facilitate the story. Please name it as you would your own child. It will be cloned from you for maximum compatibility.

"Sure, sure," The man says, and wrote down a name.

GOBO MAHIMA, the clerk reads. That um, doesn't seem like a name, sir… Please, perhaps a more normal name? So as not to break immersion?

"Sure, sure," The man says, and tried again.

GOJO MAHOMA. It's becoming Hawaiian. Please, try again, the clerk insists. He gets the form back with an effort just as bad. Very well, he says. Gomo Mazima he shall be. Thank goodness the changeling will only be around for a few months. You wouldn't wish that kind of name for anyone, even an object.

The clerk processes the wish, then tells the man he can go now. His wish will be granted in a month, maximum.

"Good luck," He says, and dismisses the man.

Except the man was not dismissed, he had a lot more to do: fighting the security again, for one, and breaking all the bones in the clerk's left hand (by accident) with his baseball bat. The clerk's priceless porcelain collection, smashed to smithereens, and his tower of paperwork, neatly stacked and vertically inclined, was scattered all over the room, never to be organized again.

To top it off, the man threw up all over his carpet, drank from his mug, said - god, my mouth feels like shit - and left his baseball bat behind too.

—
—
—

A shaking finger pointed at Majima. "This is the kind of company you keep," He told Kiryu. "This atrocious, uncouth, foulmouthed individual, who barges into good, honest offices, and behave like an absolute gorilla! A monster! A demon! As a matter of fact, I've seen demons more polite than him!"

"Oi now, no need ta get touchy,"

"Get thee behind me, satan!"

Majima shrugged, checked Kiryu up and down for bruises and patted his ass. He picked up the wiggling kiddo before he could break any other priceless antiques, and stuck a thumb at the door. Said, "Thanks for the cool story. Can't say I care. Let's roll."

Kiryu was already out of the chair, before the clerk stopped them.

"Excuse me, are you planning to bring the changeling with you?" He asked.

"Ya ain't tryin' ta stop me, are ya? Because I can tell ya, I just smashed somethin' like two hundred heads that said that ta me, and my boys are still smashin' some."

"Well… I won't stop you, but he'll make quite a mess."

Kiryu looked at the kid. No wet diapers. "We've toilet trained him," He told the clerk.

"Very nice, sir. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about when he implodes. There'll be dust everywhere, it'll be an absolute fright. You'll have it in your curtains and carpet for months, if you're not careful. I don't recommend it at all."

"What are ya on about?"

The clerk explained: Gomo (he winced when he said it) was a temporary changeling, a class D model, to be precise. They have a maximum lifespan of a few months, before they turn - quite literally - into dust. They're only issued for short stories (which this was) and to free wishes, to keep costs down (which this was too). Even if they bring him out of here, all he'll be is a stain on the wall in oh.… A few weeks, tops. It's why the bureau keeps trying to retrieve him. That and the PR risk of an exploding child on the 8 o'clock news.

"Changeling dust is very valuable," He told them. "They can be recycled into fertilizer. Half our food is grown in them. A speck does wonders for the nitrogen in the ground."

Realizing what he had said, he added, "That sounded quite grotesque, didn't it?"

"Plants growing out of dead babies? Sounds just like normal agriculture to me." Kiryu said.

Majima was already turning red. "Hey, wait a sec - lemme get this straight, numbnut. Ya sayin' no matter what we do, Gomo here's gonna explode into fucking dust bunnies when we get home? Am I hearin' ya right?" He kicked the chair over. "What the fuck? Hurry up and tell us what we gotta do then! That's your big kick, innit? Another quest, off somewhere to bust heads? Who do we needa kill next?"

"That's… Not how this works. Violence is not the answer to everything, quote unquote Dalai Lama. Changelings don't —"

"I don't believe ya," Majima snarled. "Shut the fuck up. Let's get outta here, Kiryu-chan."

"But—"

Kiryu dragged along with him, hopped over drunks and cryptic furniture until they got to the hallway outside of the waiting room. In the thick silence there he felt he could at least try to talk to Majima, who was checking the boy up-down like Gomo had threatened to explode right there, right now. He put a hand on Majima's shoulder for his attention.

"He's fine," Majima declared. "Kid's perfectly okay."

"He said in a few weeks."

"Ya, but they also said we could only come through doors they said we could. And that I was gonna get my ass kicked. Surprise! Nothin' happened. All the kid needs is vitamins, and he'll come out peachy. Right, Gomo-chan? Attack stance!" The kid struck a pose like he was swinging a baseball bat, and Majima high-fived him.

Kiryu frowned at him. Perhaps…

Well, Majima did not seem too keen to have the kid around in the first place anyway. How would he take the kid's disappearance? He'd probably mop around if the kid does disappear, and pick fights with half of Kamurocho, but it probably wouldn't matter that much to him. Would it?

Though. Was that the kinda risk they want to take? Maybe they could go back, fight a few more of these guys until someone spits out the magical recipe to glue the kid together. Someone above the clerk's pay grade could know. And if they didn't, and it had to happen? Kiryu will miss the kid and Majima will be royally pissed, but in a year all this will blow over… The question then, is if he knows what Majima wants, and what he himself should do.

Majima grinned at him. "'Sides, ya enrolled him in the Majima-gumi, didn't ya? My boys ain't weak assholes that turn to dust. Therefore, he ain't gonna turn into dust. Problem solved. Now come on, my boys are still punchin' folks on the 25th. We time this right, I'll be just in time to hand out my annual bonuses."

Oh, Kiryu thought. I can be such an idiot sometimes. Why do I ever think Majima means anything he says? I know better by now. What's all this been for, if not to know him better?

"Sure. I'll be right back. Left something in there. Just give me a second."

"kay. Hurry up, gramps."

He went back into the office, where the clerk was looking miserably at his client-side chair. A broken leg on the side, where Majima had kicked it.

"Hey," He told the clerk. "I figured out what I want. About that wish?" He added, when the clerk remained blank. "I figured out what I want to wish for."

"What?" The clerk said, irritably.

Kiryu smiled. If the clerk didn't like Majima, he most definitely will not like Kiryu's wish.

For happiness, Kiryu's thinking. All the happiness in this piece of shit world, for him.

—

 

Chapter 14: Epilogue

Notes:

(one line of spoiler regarding Haruka in this chapter, about the status of her parents after Yakuza-1)

Approximately fifteen years after the story is over, there is an amusement park. Not the whole amusement park, mind you, just the entrance.

Here a tender young girl of nine is waiting, and she is an incredibly rare specimen: a person who has been kept waiting for 45 minutes and does not mind. Well, not too much. She minds a little bit.

"Could you go first and wait for me?" Kiryu had said. "I just have some stuff to pick up, and I'll be right there."

Well, that was almost two hours ago, and the appointed time had come and went and still nothing: no adults, no messages, just a whole lotta nothing.

She doesn't blame him, she is a magnanimous kid. Also, she has eyes: she knows firsthand that this is a man who attracts trouble like a lightning rod. He can't go down streets without being beaten up in its corners, troubled by troubled people, scammed into buying love charms, or suckered into joining a game of mahjong. Between hate mails from his parole officer, he gets recruitment offers from all the big gokudo clans: Tojo, Omi, Yomei, even a small time group from Asakusa. Join us Kazuma Kiryu-san, they say. We offer Great Benefits. Join us or else. Sometimes the recruitment offers come with legs, and those legs chase him, often with upper bodies that hold on to knives, bats, and the occasional gun.

She doesn't know the other people they are supposed to meet, so she sits at the entrance to people-watch.

She isn't too bored, there are all sorts here. Babies in baby blue prams pulling their mothers along, high school marksmen here to shoot at bears to win cans. There's even two strange men kicking a gachapon machine (Zetsubou-z katana keychains! Collect them all!) over and over again for having the audacity to give them ten tanto in a row.

Eventually she sees Kiryu, huffing up from a brisk sprint.

"Sorry Haruka," He gasped. "I got stopped by a cop."

"Only a cop?" This isn't passive-aggression. This man is forty-five minutes late. The only cop that can stop him for that long is the terminator, or else an extraterrestrial avenger.

"Huh? Well, I guess now that you mention it… There were a couple of kids in a gang? Also a big beggar who really needed money for vitamins. And a guy in a golden suit. And before that there was a bunch of kids beating up a lady. And then there was the cop. Hmm, I can't remember if he was before or after the group of delinquents."

"Oji-san..." She shakes her head in pity. He has the worst luck of everyone she knows, and this is coming from an orphan whose parent got blown up by her estranged dad. "Never mind, it's fine. Your family should be here by now, unless they're all as um, eventful as you are. We should look for them."

"We should? No we don't — they're right there."

He points. She looks at where he's pointing. He is pointing at-— oh.

The two guys who were kicking the gachapon turned around, sees them, and screams: "Kiryu-chan!"

In that brief moment Haruka's life flashes before her eyes, and this is what she's shown: a life being surrounded by three weirdos, two of whom feels that shirts are optional, and all three armed to the teeth at what is supposed to be a casual meeting in front of an amusement park. Haruka, awkwardly explaining to her high school friends that yes, her family member looks like a pirate, carries a golden baseball bat, screams in public, and wears leather pants in the middle of summer. At least his son seems —

No, his son is also weird.

His son is hugging Kiryu-san and won't let go.

He is a teenager.

They are in public.

If there's a hall of fame for strange people, he's all the way up there.

"Kiryu-chan!" He cries, wiping at his eye. "My old man's been locking me up in the closet again! I'm being starved! He feeds me nothing and doesn't give me allowance. He's trying to kill me!"

"Don't ya listen to him, Kiryu-chan. This piece of shit here broke into my safe and stole all our earnings for a week. Ya know what he bought with it? Two hundred fuckin' pizzas. Ya ever saw a kid as stupid? Well, I ain't!"

"It ain't my fault ya don't got enough teeth to chew it, old man. Don't take it out on me."

"Ya wanna lose some teeth why don't ya just say so?"

"Please be quiet," Kiryu says. "Or we will all lose teeth."

This quietens them down long enough that introductions can be made. Majima Goro, says the older one. Majima Gomo, says the younger one, and clarifies: we ain't related, he found me in a trash can. This is completely impossible, given that he looks like a scrunched-up, acne-ridden version of oji-san's lover. Maybe it's one of those things - a rebellious phase?

We'll be living with them, Kiryu tells her. For a while at least. Until we get back on our feet.

"One of us anyway," Majima senior says. "Asshole kid can't park his ass long enough to warm a bento."

"If Kiryu-chan is stayin' with us, I'll warm anything, even his bed."

"Ya fuckin' incestuous piece of — "

Haruka roots around her bag, finds some emergency painkillers, and presses them into Kiryu's hands. Take this for the headache you're about to develop, she communicates with her eyes.

Thanks, but I'm used to this, he communicates.

They talk; they go.

Into the amusement parks and on all the rides. Kiryu, unable to help it, drifts away, closer and closer to his lover, obviously anchored by his presence in a way that nothing else does. She watches from afar: she's not yet part of this, will not be part of this for years yet.

She watches, as they brush against each other - like moths, flames, two moths in flames - always near, then far, then near again. They don't seem to see anyone else, not really. If they speak to others, they say with their eyes and smiles: I'm just waiting to be away, I'm just waiting to go back to him. Even the other kid, even Gomo, he's just periphery to this. They don't need anyone else; a nucleus, just the two of them. They are a family - or so says KIryu - which at its core is just two; if others are permitted to exist, they must exist as satellites. Orbiting forever, never closer. A part, apart. Everyone else is superfluous to their love.

Well, she thinks. Maybe I'm wrong.

He's not the world's unluckiest man after all.

—
—
—

Later:

"Ya got some shit to say sorry for, Kiryu-chan, and ya can start at the top. Start with 'sorry I went to prison for ten years'. Then ya cry hard when I break yer face for not askin' me if ya could go to prison."

Then:

"No, ya don't get to say sappy shit like that to get off scot free. Ya think I'm cheap? Ya think I'm gonna go, oooh he loves me he does, and say - fine! One-hundred-percent-discount! Ya think ya—"

Later still,

"Ow! Ya tryin' to patch me up or kill me?"

And finally,

"Dammit, how many times ya gon' make me say it?"

Then he whispered something, and we don't know what it is: Majima's whispered words are for KIryu's ears only; you never know who might be reading it.

 

 

—

 

Notes:

And... That's all! (':

Phew this story really got out of control, it was originally supposed to be like 1/2 of its length (and had a time travellin' Majima) but these two lugs won't let go. Also, they were supposed to be really nice to each other, and then they started punching each other in chapter one. I don't get it. I really don't. It's like they came from a 18R game or something.

I'm going back to write weird majima-is-a-snake-pirate fics and trashporn now. Thank you so much for reading, everyone! And I hope you enjoyed it! :D