Chapter Text
April 1998
Tap, tap, tap.
Her water breaks at nine o'clock PM on a Saturday night. It has to be a home birth, because her phone is dead and it's flooded outside.
She screams and shouts for someone, anyone to help her, but her neighbors only care about her when they want to fuck her or compare their looks.
And it’s hard to hear her in the rain.
BANG, CRASH, KRAKA-THOOM.
Watery sheets smash against the walls and roofs and gables. The rain seeps in through the seams, through the window frames.
She gives birth by candlelight, in her bathroom–the one place the rain won’t rush into.
It takes some time, a long time, but it happens.
A boy.
She names him Ren.
Lotus— a flower that survives even in a murky pool of mud.
She’d give her life for his. She’ll sell her insides if it means getting him through college. She tells herself she’d do anything and everything for him, but the reality is she'll only do almost anything and everything for him. But she doesn't know that, and God help her boy when he finds out.
But right now Kikyo Amamiya still thinks she’s a good person, and her baby boy is too young to think much of anything at all. So all she does is coo at him, and cry tears of pain and joy, as she grabs a pair of scissors and snips at the cord stuck to his belly.
Ren cries the whole night.
Sweat furrows at his brow, treading down the scar on his left cheek, and his hands grip the wheel as though God Himself will strike him down the second he lets go. In the backseat his wife is in great and constant and terrible pain.
They rush into the hospital and Hirono is brought to a room in the left wing.
He can’t enter for the life of him, so he just paces back and forth. Tsukioka’s sending him messages, but they can get someone else to pick up their fucking heroin for them.
All he can do is sit right outside and hear his wife scream, as he feels joy and fear and everything a father should.
Far too soon, there are complications and he is brought in. The baby is being strangled by their own umbilical cord and how is he supposed to take that with anything short of extreme dread?
They brought him in because his wife needed him and he needs her, even though just being in the room at all is making him nauseous.
Hours pass in minutes, in a process that takes hours in itself. One of the doctors is clearly a rookie, given how their hands tremble and how they have to be shouted at to do a third of the things that need to happen right here and right now.
There is cutting and there is stitching and there is lots of screaming to be had. For parts of it the doctors tell Hirono she simply cannot breathe, because if she does then the cord’ll hang their baby girl. Masao damn near faints twice, and the whole time Hirono grips his hand so tightly he thinks his fingers’re broken by the end of it all.
But by the end of it all, Hirono holds their baby girl in her arms and forgets whatever pain she felt just moments ago.
“Look at her,” Hirono tells her husband, before facing her daughter with more love than most could ever have for their children. “Makoto, it’s your Papa.”
Makoto is her name–meaning integrity, honesty.
He’d give his life for hers. He’ll sell his insides if it means getting her through college. He tells himself he’ll do anything and everything for Makoto, but the reality is he’ll only do almost anything and everything for her. But he doesn't know that, and God help his little girl when she finds out.
He stares at his wife and their little girl with a kind of love that will compel him to do terrible things just to see them smile.
But right now Masao Niijima still thinks he’s a good person, or at least close enough to one, and his wife doesn’t know the man she married at all. So when it’s his turn to hold Makoto in his arms, he lets himself shed great and terrible tears of joy.
He felt this only once before-–
Sae is still at school. He should have picked her up an hour and thirty minutes ago.
But Hirono’s water broke.
June 2003
Virtually all of Hirono’s friends and family arrived. The chapel is packed. Masao has only his children with him.
At the funeral, nobody cries harder than Sae does. Of course, Makoto cries too–but to have lived only five years with your mother is one thing. To have only lived twelve years with your mother is another.
Upon arriving home Sae immediately rushes to her room, slamming the door shut and locking it tight.
Makoto tugs at his pant leg, and Masao knows what she’s begging him to do. “I’ll speak with her. Don’t worry. Are you okay?”
Makoto nods.
“When I’m done I’ll tell you a bedtime story,” he tells her. “I’ll get you to your room now, Makoto. Okay?”
Makoto nods again.
Once he gets her to her room, he stops by Sae’s.
Knock, knock.
“Sae. Can you please open the door?”
No response.
“Do you want to talk?”
Nothing.
Masao leans against the door. “I miss her too, Sae.”
Even still, not a word from his eldest daughter.
“Your mother was like this, too,” Masao can’t help but say. “She told me that when she was a child, she’d… lock herself in her room for days whenever something awful happened to her. So if you want to talk to me about her… my door’s always open.”
Suddenly the doors unlock immediately. Sae rushes into her father’s arms, and hugs him tighter than she’s ever hugged him in her life. They don’t really talk or say anything–the both of them just cry together, for an hour and a half.
Sae loved her mother. She loved her more than words could ever say. Makoto grieved, Masao mourned–-but Sae fell to pieces.
Eleven PM that night, Masao marches over to a payphone about three blocks out, and calls his boss.
“Tsukioka-san. Yes. Yes, I appreciate it. I. Um,” he pinches the bridge of his nose. “About what you said three weeks back. I’ll do it. I’ll do a lot more of it. I’d like to know when I can start. That soon? Okay. Yes. Yes, I’m sure. I understand.”
He all but slams the phone back in place once Tsukioka hangs up.
Hirono is dead.
The last words she ever said to him were, “I know what you’ve done. And I forgive you. But you have to stop.”
Masao Niijima can’t.
He thinks of Sae, her eyes full of tears–he thinks of Makoto, so small and frail and sad.
Masao has two beautiful little girls growing bigger and stronger every day and without more money in his fucking bank account nothing he can possibly do will give them the life they need to live in this kind of shit world.
This time next week, he’ll cart seventy pounds of methamphetamine and a drum of methylamine out to a port on the far side of Tokyo. It’s twice what he was sent to distribute before.
Easy 90,000 yen for his troubles.
March 2004
Kikyo Amamiya finds a job in the country.
The first thing Ren remembers is being in a car, peering over the countryside as his mother drives them both along a mountain ridge road.
He doesn’t cry when he’s sent out to school, not like how other kids do on their first days, and when he heads back home he does so alone. This is how it is for the entirety of his kindergarten and grade school days.
In school he does not fight, does not argue, does not speak unless spoken to. Even for his age he is scrawny–small and lithe, with uncombed hair and pale skin. Some of his classmates joke that he gathers mushrooms in the little corner he takes up during school hours and that is often the kindest thing he hears. He studies often, not because he wants to nor really even because he has to, but simply because there is nothing else to do.
His grades are fair, never anything in the 90s, never falling down into the 70s–average, because average works well enough to get the job done, and getting the job done is better than getting it perfectly, because you stand out once you get anything done perfectly.
The rural town in which he and his mother now live is one no one knows–the route back to his place requires him to cut through the riverbank. The salty scent of the waters wafts into his nose and once upon a time it could have been something nostalgic to him, something he could have once looked back on with fondness.
He is six years old when he enters the house today. He comes home late because his mom wants him to stay out and hang out with friends he lied to her about having, and the smell smashes right into him the instant he walks in.
“Mom?”
Someone bumps into him on the way out, another man Ren does not know–-someone who does not speak nor even look at him. The man smells of a hundred different brands of beer, more or less waddling out the door while mumbling things that make no sense. Ren can’t see his face, nor does he want to–-the boy just marches further into the house.
“Mom.”
She makes better money than her previous job, but not by much. She is not a prostitute, far from it–just lonely, and empty, and wanting to fill her cup with any man who would take a gander at her. She is a single mother with a single child– a single child who felt the need to lie about having friends to her so she wouldn’t feel like a failure about everything.
She is lying peacefully right under the kotatsu, surrounded by several tin cans that stand like miniature towers. Ren spends ten minutes gathering everything up and tossing them in a recyclables’ bin outside.
When Ren makes his way over to her, he pulls the sheet from the kotatsu over her shoulder, her snores letting loose a stench that makes Ren silently declare he’ll never drink beer for as long as he lives. Part of Ren wants to curl into his mother’s arms and lie with her right then and there, but she smells like booze and he has homework and it is far too late for the both of them.
So he turns on the TV and starts writing for math homework he doesn’t entirely understand, while watching wrestlers hurl each other into barbed wire tables.
It is one week later that Kikyo and Ren find out she’s pregnant.
April 2004
Much of Makoto’s youth she spends studying.
She is naturally intelligent for her age of course, but her father teaches her that her mind is like a sword–needs to be constantly sharpened, or else it will turn dull and rust with time.
She studies three to five days in advance for every quiz. But even on days where she doesn’t have to deal with homework or requirements, she spends far too much time alone in a library–mulling over textbooks and trivia. As such her grades are consistently almost perfect–the teachers adore her but the students don’t really like her much cuz she likes to rub it in their faces sometimes and she’ll realize only several years later how she must have looked doing this.
When she’s at home she doesn’t watch TV much–but when she does she’s enraptured by a cute cartoon about a Panda. Buchi-kun is practically all she would speak about when asked–much to Sae’s aggravation and her father’s adoration. Sometimes, on days he’s free, Makoto would watch it with him, and those days are the days Makoto feels and acts most like her age.
A child with no worries in all the world.
But most days Makoto worries over and misses her father–he is gone for much of her youth, because the city never sleeps and neither do its officers. There are nights she stays well and wide awake, sitting at the window and hoping he comes home.
Sae often has to drag her away from the window. Often there are arguments, sometimes there aren’t. Some nights end with Makoto and Sae arguing loudly, before Makoto rushes to her room and cries herself to sleep.
It is not wrong to want Dad to be home more, is something she tells herself every day.
Hirono Niijima died when Makoto was four years old, of something she can’t pronounce–an illness of some sort. So Makoto, Sae, and her father have only each other. But when her father doesn’t come home for most days of the week, and when her sister is too busy studying on her own time–Makoto has little recourse.
One night when she is six years old, there is thunder and there is lightning and the power goes out.
BANG, CRASH, BOOM
Everything, dark and dreary and cold. Makoto’s in her room when it happens and she doesn’t even know what’s happened.
CRASH, KRACK
She’s read about thunder, about lightning, about heavy rain and the sounds they make–about how they can affect electrical lines and cause power outages, but this is her first time experiencing it in full.
BOOM
She yells, covering her ears, hiding under her table. Wrapping herself in a blanket as some form of measly protection–against every single loud thing coming down upon her.
She’d call for her sister, she’d call for her father, but she fought with Sis and was angry at her last night, and she was angry at her last night because Dad wasn’t coming home for the fourth time that week and she was sad, they both were.
They both were sad then, but Sae can only let herself show it in anger–because anger is the place people who can’t handle sadness go. Dad had once told her as much. And Dad won’t be coming home tonight either because–
–because catching criminals matters to him more than Sae and Makoto do.
BANG
And Makoto knows this, she knows and she hates that she knows. But something in her still compels her to call for him–if he won’t come now, she doesn’t know who possibly could.
And suddenly she hears her door burst open, and is so shocked she curls further into herself – but a flashing light hovers over her, and she hears, “Makoto?”
The blankets come off immediately. “Dad!”
Sae is with their father and the two are huddled close in this dark room, keeping themselves together. He’s wet, and cold, and dripping–did he rush in here without an umbrella?
Makoto couldn’t care less.
“Stop crying,” Sae blurts out, “it doesn’t help.”
“Getting angry doesn’t help either, Sae,” says Masao. “Don’t say that to your sister. I’m sorry I couldn’t come home when I said I would. I rushed here immediately when I heard the news that this area was flooded. We’re lucky our house is on higher–”
KRAKA-THOOM
Both Sae and Makoto push themselves further into their father’s embrace, and he holds them both close and tight.
“Do you know how to fix it, Dad?” Makoto asks. “Do you know how to turn the lights back on…?”
“Not now. It’s too dangerous. When the rain stops.”
“Will it stop?”
“Of course it will, it always does,” he tells her.
“What if it doesn’t?”
She can’t see his face, but she can tell he’s smiling when he tells her, “Then I’ll go up to the sky and turn off the rain myself. But I think all we have to do right now…is stay close together. Okay?”
Makoto mumbles out an “Okay.”
Before the lights even come back on, the three sleep together in Makoto’s room, sitting up against the wall.
May 2005
“Takuya-san, please. I need this.” Ren hears his mother say, over the phone. “You said, you said –this isn’t what you promised. You said exactly one week from now. He is – Takuya-san. Did you know this was going to–?”
He sees her face flit through fifteen different expressions at once. She doesn’t see him, because he’s peering at her through a crack in the door.
This is the third time in a year.
“You knew this was going to happen and you didn’t tell me. You fuck. I knew–I fucking told you–”
Whatever the other person’s saying to her, she doesn’t bother to hear. She shuts her phone and raises it up, damn near throwing it to the ground. Instead she just slams it down on her table and throws herself onto her bed.
Part of Ren thinks that the way his mother speaks to people doesn’t help with finding jobs. But another part of Ren wants to find every single one of his mother’s bosses and ex bosses and tell them to treat her right. Or else.
Or else what? a niggling voice in his head asks.
He doesn’t answer that question and just makes it over to the living room.
His little sister is lying on the floor, belly down.
“Come on…”
Satsuki can say the simplest of words. Mama and Renren , she says most of all.
She’s a beautiful little girl. Small, round head; large, wide dark eyes. Sometimes they look black, sometimes they look brown. Black hair, like her mother and her brother. When she smiles Ren sees what world peace looks like, and when she cries he knows he’d tear down entire cities if it’d make her stop. Ren could hold her in his arms forever and never feel like he was holding her for long enough.
But now he’s not holding her at all; he’s crouching on the far end of the room, arms outstretched.
“Come on, Satsuki. Come here…,” he coos. “You can do this.”
Satsuki looks at him curiously. She laughs a little; Ren figures she thinks they’re playing a game. But he’s looked it up–around eleven to thirteen months she should be able to walk.
So Ren can’t imagine what she’ll be like when she finally stands up on her own two feet.
Suddenly Satsuki stops smiling.
Ren half thinks she’s going to cry.
Her arms tremble, her belly lifting right up off the ground. When she rises up it’s as if Godzilla’s emerging right out of the ocean – that song from the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey plays in Ren’s head as Satsuki finds her center of balance. One step, two steps, three.
Ren’s so unbelievably, overwhelmingly happy that he almost doesn’t register when she does lose her center, and plops down on her butt.
“Don’t cry, don’t cry!” he laughs, grabbing her immediately as she wails, “You did good! We’ll try again tomorrow!”
Satsuki spoke her first words were Tree Trunk , but even though it sounded more like Chee Chunk Ren and he was never happier than the moment she said them. But his mother just furrowed her brows and tried to smile.
He deliberates on whether he should tell his mother.
A couple of hours later, Ren finds his mother sitting on the porch of their dingy house, staring upon the rest of the world. He’d put Satsuki to sleep mere hours ago. Everything that happened had tuckered her out.
It's sunset now.
"Thank you, Ren," she says. "I'm sorry I couldn't help today."
"S'okay," Ren lies. "Getting a job is hard, huh?"
"Pretty hard," she exhales. "But you shouldn't have to worry about it. Not yet."
"But you're worrying about it a lot."
"I have to."
"Do you really have to?"
Kikyo faces her son. She isn't angry, but she's firm when she says, "Yes."
"Did you have a job before?"
She raises her brow. "Before...?"
"Before...," he scratches his head. "You know. Me?"
Kikyo takes in a deep breath.
“Many, many years ago… before you were born, I was in a life insurance company.”
“A money type job?”
“Very much so. I’d determine if someone was… worth getting money that they would use in case they got into an accident–or died and wanted to give to their families.”
“...oh,” Ren mutters. “Wait. What do you mean by that?"
Their house is upon a hill, one high up enough such that they can see the whole townscape. At first she thinks to be kind and pull back whatever horrible thing she wants to say. But she remembers she's his mother--and he has to learn something from her. Else, why is she even here?
“Look over there, Ren,” she points towards a woman and her child, walking carefreely along the road. “How much money do you think they’re worth?”
Ren stammers, “What?"
"If you were going to sell them," she says, "how much do you think they'd be worth?"
"Uh." He winces, rubbing his arm. "Eight--eighty thousand yen?"
Kikyo can't help but laugh a little. “Ninety million yen for the both of them."
"Whoa, ninety million!?" Ren exclaims, eyes wide, practically sparkling.
"The mother, fifty million; the daughter, thirty-eight million.”
Ren blinks. "How did you know that!?"
"If you worked my job, you'd get good at it. Just from a glance." She points to a man in a suit then, languishing on a bench, “That man is worth eighty million on his own.”
“What?”
“His clothes. His suit and tie. His briefcase. All that means he’s high value."
Ren's amazed. He never knew people had prices on their heads. "Whoa..."
"Now look at that one.”
A man with shredded clothes, shaggy hair, filthy and near naked. Ren sees his mother’s eyes and finds them utterly empty.
"How much do you think he's worth?"
"Seventy million!" Ren exclaims.
"Seventy million? You think so?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"Well that other guy had a suit, and that must have cost ten million, so yeah."
Kikyo smiles sadly. "I'm sorry, but you're wrong."
"Oh. Sixty million?"
"He has no children, so that’s minus several million. No employment, which means he’s even worth less. No family members, so count that against him. No money, no prospects, no living space nor even food. Everything he doesn't have is subtracted against him. Minus, minus, minus. Do you know what he's worth?"
"What?"
"Nothing," she says. "Nothing but the clothes on his back."
"N-nothing?"
"Nothing."
"But that's not fair," Ren says. "He's... he's still alive, isn't he?"
"That doesn't matter."
"Why not?"
One day, Kikyo affirms, she will not be able to protect him and Satsuki from the worst this world has to offer. A part of her wants Ren to be the complete opposite of her, in every single way–just to spare him the rage and bitterness she feels all the time.
But she wants him to survive.
“The world is full of monsters, Ren. All great and small. And they’ll hurt you because they want things, they’ll hurt you because they can, they’ll hurt you because it’s all they know how to do. And they’ll tell you you’re wrong for fighting back, they’ll tell you there’s rules and laws and regulations and it’s good to follow them. The truth is that the people who tell you these laws don’t give a damn about you or anyone else. The truth is that the law doesn’t matter to people who have enough money or those who make the right friends or those who just don’t care enough about it to remember it. The truth is that to make it in this world you have to make your own law. And you can’t be afraid when people hate you for it, you can’t cry when they fight back, because anyone too afraid to make their own law will be terrified of someone who isn’t. You can’t trust cops. You can’t trust your friends. You can’t trust family. That means you can’t even trust me. You can only ever really trust yourself. In this world, what you want, you have to take–or it will be taken from you.”
Ren’s eyes shed terrible and unstoppable tears, and he doesn't really know why.
His mother shares not another word with him for the rest of the day.
October 2006
The one day Masao takes a sick leave, Makoto comes back home from school with red scratches on her legs, and a blotch on her right cheek.
Immediately he rushes to her, once he sees her from the kitchen. “What happened?”
He sees the worry in her eyes fade immediately–she thought he’d have gotten angry with her? “It’s nothing.”
She’s so small. She reaches up to his waist, wearing a red headband. She looks more and more like her mother with each passing day. She shouldn’t be so scared of him.
“Did you trip somewhere?”
“Nothing happened.”
“Makoto,” he says then, cupping her face. “You can tell me whatever you need.”
He gets up then, immediately grabs cotton and some disinfectant from a cupboard. He then carries her over to the nearby couch, and dabs her knees with a substance that makes her wince.
“You wouldn’t be coming home with scraped knees if nothing happened,” he tells her.
“There was a girl at school,” she says immediately. “Boys were hurting her.”
“How were they hurting her?”
“Pulling her hair. Calling her names. Laughing at her.” Masao sees her face twist with anger, “I wanted to hurt them back.”
“You shouldn’t be getting into fights at school,” he sighs. “It’s good you wanted to help, but you shouldn’t have gone in by yourself. You should have called a teacher.”
“There weren’t any around.”
“I see. They hurt you, then…?”
Masao sees his daughter's wounded knees and blotched face, suddenly notices her knuckles are red and sore. For just an instant, he imagines grabbing the brat that hurt her by the leg, and swinging him around like a giant bag of rice.
“I hurt them! They ran away,” Makoto affirms. “B-but yeah…they hit me back.”
“And the girl you tried to protect?”
“...she ran away, too.”
“Why did you do it, Makoto? You were hurt.”
“They were hurting her.
“They could have hurt you too, far worse than a punch to your face or scraped knees.”
She’s frustrated now, obviously. She wanted to be praised by her father for doing what was right but instead he’s scolding her.
The look in her eye, Masao knows it well. It’s born of a gnawing aggravation–the knowledge that despite all her efforts she will not be thanked nor even recognized for them.
But Makoto isn’t like her father, Masao notes. She didn’t do this thing for recognition, nor for money, nor for status–she did it because it was right.
It will probably get her hurt or worse somewhere down the line. But she’s more precious than gold and Masao can’t have her hurting for another second. “For what it’s worth… I think you did the right thing.”
Her eyes widen, “You do?”
“But next time you ever encounter anything like that again,” he tells her sternly, without a trace of a smile. “You find someone who can help you. Someone older, like a teacher. If you can’t find anyone near you, report it to them. Do you understand?”
She nods slowly, staring at her red knees. “I understand.”
Masao bandages her cheek and musses up her hair, causing her to chuckle then. “Good. I’ll come up with something in a bit.”
Makoto nods.
One day, Masao affirms, he will not be able to protect her and Sae from the worst this world has to offer. A part of him wants her to be just like him, if only to help her survive.
But if there’s anything he wants his daughters to be, he wants them to be the complete opposite of him in every single way.
Sae’ll be back any moment now from studying for her college entrance exams. He’ll cook something nice for her too once she gets back.
November 2011
Junya Kaneshiro is a heavyset man and a bit of a forerunner in the business. Not a yakuza; that institution's old and dying and pissing on its leg, much like Director Tsukioka even on his best of days. Kaneshiro runs his own gang, free of hierarchy and legacy. Hires on kids to help him sell drugs across the street, blackmails them into keeping silent, makes them work off the debt by any and every means necessary. He's the type of man who would fuck his parents to death for one extra yen.
Fatter than an exercise ball, with small beady eyes. He's so short he'd damn near drown in the shallowest end in any swimming pool. But he's well dressed, too well-dressed to be just your ordinary mafia boss, and any time he calls someone to his bar, he has to be reclining in his couch, with a woman on each arm. Today's no different. What is different is the look he has on.
Masao Niijima narrows his eyes. “You want Amamiya.”
For a time Kaneshiro pauses. Then he bellows loudly, laughing and heaving himself forward as he does so. “Of course I do. I fucking found her, finally, after all these years. She thinks she can steal from me and just walk away?”
“What would you have me do?”
“She has a boy, doesn’t she?”
“You’re saying you–”
“No, he doesn’t have to die.”
“But…?”
“But well, she doesn’t need to know what’s gonna happen to him.”
“What is going to happen to him?”
“I know a guy in Osaka who likes them younger. We’ll see if he takes him in.”
“I won’t do this.”
“You’ll do it because this guy from Osaka doesn’t like to be kept waiting and I need to give him someone, anyone. How old are your daughters, Niijima?”
Niijima eyes Kaneshiro then, taking a deep breath. “What if we use her to teach a lesson?”
“How you think?”
“She dies bad.”
“Everyone who crosses me dies bad. What do you mean?”
“They call you Sakahagi for a reason, no?”
“That’s not enough. For how much she fucking owes me–”
“Please,” Niijima tells him. “I can’t do this to someone else’s child.”
Kaneshiro narrows his eyes. “You’re a good worker. Threw yourself into this shit and you’re a better enforcer than I could have ever hoped for.”
Niijima hides everything horrid he wants to say–-Kaneshiro smiles. “Very well. I’ll go by your recommendation.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Therefore, since I’ll spare them,” Kaneshiro says then, facing Niijima. “You’ll have them watch.”
Masao’s heart falls apart. “No.”
“Yes.”
“You can’t.”
“That is my final condition.”
“Sir. They’re children.”
“We’re all children, Niijima-san,” he throws a hand over the man’s shoulder, “all of us. We wear big boy shorts and big boy clothes and have big boy jobs which rake in lotsa dough but we’re still kids. We’ve always been. And kids are cruel. Kids like Amamiya’s… they need to learn the hard way.”
“Learn what?”
“Who to not fuck with." Kaneshiro smiles. "Get it done, today."
Masao's eyes widen. "Today?"
"Did I fucking stutter?"
"I'll need to get a car without plates--"
"No. Your cop car's enough. Arrest her on grounds of theft, or whatever. Make something up. Take her and her little fucking cretin boy with you to a dead drop, and let me take things from there."
"Kaneshiro-san--"
"Are you gonna keep talking back to me? You denied me once, you're gonna keep doing it? Do you know your fucking place!? Do your kids have to learn the hard way when you step out of line? Does your youngest brat need to learn what happens when Daddy stops following MY fucking orders!?"
Masao curls his hand into a fist.
He sees a corkpopper on the table and wonders how far he could drive it into Kaneshiro's throat; how grey and sloppy and bloated his guts would be if Masao spilled them out on the floor; how his eyes would burst out his head if Masao strangled him. Kaneshiro is fat and wide enough to be skinned alive and made into at least five flesh-purses he could preserve with wax and sell on the black market.
But if Masao does any of that, he'll be out of a job, and everyone involved in this fucking shit will make him watch as they torture Makoto and Sae to death.
"No, sir."
“This is boring,” is the sentence Satsuki says most often.
“I know,” Ren chuckles. “You got the order wrong, by the way. Multiply before you add, add before you subtract.”
She throws her pencil away, closing the book. “I wanna go to the mall.”
“What do you wanna do at the mall?”
“I wanna watch a movie," Satsuki grunts.
Ren smirks, “We watched a movie two days ago.”
“I wanna watch another one!”
“Which movie do you wanna watch?”
“Another one!”
“Mom didn’t give us allowance yet.”
“Fuck.”
“You shouldn’t say that.”
“Mom says it all the time.”
“Mom has issues.”
“You say it all the time.”
“ I have issues.”
“You’re a hippo crate.”
“Hypocrite.”
“Yeah, that.”
Satsuki crawls over to him, shaking him by his shoulder, “I wanna eat a burger at the mall.”
“We have tons of food in the fridge. It’ll be a waste if we don’t reheat them.”
“But mom’s cooking sucks!”
“Then we’ll reheat my food.”
“Your cooking sucks too!”
“You don’t mean that.”
She puffs her cheeks. “I do.”
“Then I won’t cook curry for you guys anymore.”
“NO I TAKE IT BACK I’M SORRY!!!” she hugs Ren, holding him tight. “I didn’t mean it!”
Ren smiles, “I know you didn’t mean it.”
Satsuki smiles. Then just as quickly, she stops smiling. “Do we have to study so much?”
“Yes.”
“I’m bad at this school stuff.”
“You’re smarter than I was at your age.”
“You lie,” Satsuki harrumphs, “you always get good grades.”
“Good enough grades.”
“I bet you could get perfect grades if you really wanted.”
“I bet I could, too. But that’s a hassle.”
“Why?”
“The tallest nail gets hammered down.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you shouldn’t stand out so hard people wanna push you back down.”
“Who said so?”
Ren shrugs. “Society, I guess. But whatever.”
“Then why do I have to get good grades?”
“Because you need to be smart to survive. Girls have it worse than boys do in this country.”
“Maybe we should push the country down,” Satsuki throws her arms over his shoulders, “so it can gimme a burger!”
Ren chuckles, “I’ll make you a burger, if you really want me to.”
She hugs him tighter. “I really want you to.”
Ren’s about to say something but he stops himself. His and Satsuki’s heads flick over to the door. They hear their mother, but they also hear someone else–someone they do not recognize.
Ren sees the man from a tear in the sliding door–he’s tall, broad-shouldered. Wearing a dark cop outfit that looks so slick Ren figures he has to have come from the city. He’s got cheekbones strong enough to smash blocks of wood, and a scar running down his left cheek.
He glowers at Ren and Satsuki’s mother, even as she continues yelling, and though he moves his mouth neither Ren nor Satsuki can hear what he’s even saying. Then suddenly he grabs their mother’s wrist, and both siblings can no longer stand by.
“GET AWAY FROM MY MOM!”
Ren only realizes what he’s done after the words escape his mouth. He’s holding a large plank of wood he’d procured from the back end of the house; Satsuki is standing in front of their mother with her arms outstretched. The man standing before them all is bleeding from the side of his head, but still standing tall.
Kikyo grabs Ren by his arm, “What are you doing here!?”
He was going to hurt you, Ren wants to say. Instead he says, “I-I-I–he was, I didn’t, you–”
She grabs the plank right out of his hands, pushing him and Satsuki behind her. “Run, Ren!”
“Mom!”
“Don’t argue back! Just–just go! Run, now!”
Ren pays her no mind because the cop approaches them then–Ren grabs the plank right back from his mother and raises it over his head–
“REN, NO!”
This is a mistake.
Plip plop, plip plop.
Ren flounders.
In his arms he carries Satsuki, blood soaking their clothes. Her dress was yellow. There are no stars in the sky, no cars on the road. Ren's house is too far from the rest of the world; he has been yelling for help for hours but no one has come. His leg is opened. He can’t walk right. He may never run again. On the riverbank the two siblings trudge onward.
Can’t stop moving. Can’t stop.
Mother.
Mother.
Can’t stop it. Have to keep going.
Plip plop, plip plop.
Red rubies drip down onto the curb and he damn near slips and falls on his own blood. The sound is all he can cling to, to stay present. The red and blue of that cop car's lights swallow his vision even now. He can't stop breathing. Satsuki's heavy in his grip and he can barely keep up as is, but he can't stop. He mustn't stop. He feels sick, he wants to yell, he wants to cry.
Have to keep going. Man with a scar. Scar on his face. A cop.
Mom.
Keep moving. Must keep moving.
“Ren…,” Satsuki cries, “it hurts…”
Shoulder. Satsuki’s shoulder is pouring. Her dress was yellow, now it's all red.
“You’re going to be okay, Satsuki,” Ren tells her, not knowing this is a lie. “Your big brother’s here with you. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
.
.
.
.
.
April 2014
The funeral lasts for about a morning, but to Makoto it may as well go on for the rest of her life.
It’s the second funeral she’s been to. She sees the portrait of her father up on that shrine and the sight makes her want to tear the whole world apart in her grief. There is a numbness she didn’t know she had.
When people give her their condolences Makoto hears them, but nothing really sticks. His fellow cops approach her and her sister and talk about what a good man he was. About how sorry they were. About how they didn’t deserve this whatsoever and they’d catch the bastard who left Masao Niijima’s daughters without a father.
When it’s over, when it’s all really over–after Sae drives the both of them home without even so much as a word shared between them–Makoto lets herself remember.
She remembers being a child. The world gone totally black, as thunder screams outside her windows. Her father, holding her and her sister close–the rain rapping against the glass.
He told her to laugh, whenever she was afraid–that way her fears would flee from her. But she can’t find it in herself to laugh, or smile, or seek comfort in anyone’s arms.
Makoto isn’t a child anymore. She can’t be, not now–not when Sae needs her to be strong. Not when her father would want her to be strong.
But memories of her father bandaging up her knees just won’t stop rushing at her as if it just happened yesterday. And so, neither do her tears.
October 2015
It’s never as bad as it seems on the surface.
Those ten words are what’s helped Makoto cope with just, everything. They at least get her up and going out of bed, and a lot of the time that’s enough.
The wind blows through her, soothes her bones. It’s only been a year since what happened to her father, but the memory’s fresh in her mind.
It’s not something that sprouts up spontaneously–rather a dull droning feeling always in the back of her head. Whenever she does anything or feels anything or wants to feel something , she remembers , and it always hurts.
Sis’s eyes are much colder now. She doesn’t come home very much these days, either.
Some days Makoto sees girls at school who get awful grades and she wants to sneer at them, tell them to study, tell them they shouldn’t waste their futures because Sis tells her that all the damn time nowadays, and she wants to feel powerful for once. But then she sees those same girls hanging out at lunch or after school and they’re laughing and they’re happy and she feels so inadequate.
Sometimes she thinks she’d give everything to switch positions with those girls.
Sometimes she thinks she’d give her right arm to not have to study all the goddamn time.
But then, she thinks, Sis probably wouldn’t even bat an eye at her losing an arm.
She would. Don’t be stupid.
But would she?
Useless questions. Of course her sister loves her. She loves her too. But they’re both dealing with so much. On top of a full time job, Sis has to take care of her all by herself. Makoto can’t move out of the house. She’s learned to live well enough on her own, given Sae isn’t at the apartment most of the time, but she still relies on Sae to pay for her tuition and the bills and what not.
Makoto offered to get jobs on the side for herself but Sae told her, No .
“You just need to study,” she said a while back. “I’ll take care of everything else. You can’t afford to let any side activities get in the way of your grades. People won’t look at you the same way they look at a man, so you have to show that they can’t compare to you. Do you understand?”
Makoto thinks she understands even now.
The boys in her school look at her like they want her to shut up and never speak again. Unless they’re looking at her like they want to do things to her.
But the girls don’t give her slack, either. They look at her like they’re looking at some alien creature from another planet, or a child who doesn’t understand anything.
And the teachers see her as someone useful.
And she…
Makoto doesn’t know how she sees herself anymore.
But if there’s one thing she does know, is that it’s never as bad as it seems on the surface.
So she enters the room and is greeted by her peers. She’s been elected Student Council President and at least among these few class representatives, she has attained respect. Her grades soar far and above anyone else’s in her class. Nineties when not hundreds.
But it isn’t enough for Sae.
“Everything should be a hundred,” she told her yesterday. “You’ve done well. But you can always do better.”
Come April next year she’ll turn 18. She’ll learn how to drive.
Hopefully that will be better enough for her.
March 2016
FSSSHHH
The booze can is something Ren was able to buy with surprisingly little issue. When you have enough bags under your eyes to make yourself look twice your age, and when the cashier doesn't give a shit because they're running a convenience store at three AM, you can get away with buying beer while you're still legally too young to drink.
Just one more law broken.
Ren doesn't know how far he is from his place. Took him an hour to get here. Otsu-san is gonna be pissed when she finds out he wandered off again.
Makes things harder. But when's it ever been easy?
He downs the beer can quickly, far too quickly—tries chucking it into a trash can as if shooting a basketball but it just skids off the rim. He says fuck it and gets back on his bike. Half of him thinks to cycle back to the apartment already, but the other half reins him in. It's just three fifteen AM, it tells him. Live a little. You've only so much fucking time before the gavel comes down on you and you're whisked away to your last-chance school.
So he rides on. It's Sunday morning, who gives a shit if some kid rides out into the city?
On long night rides like this he often ends up staring up at the sky but since he heads out directly into Tokyo, there isn't much to see. City lights blare so brightly the sky forgets it has stars. He's ridden so far he's sure his legs'll be too weak to make the full ride back home, but there isn't much of a home to go back to anyway. By the time he stops his palms are sore, wrists strained, fingers weak. He's in a familiar place, a park he frequents across from a high-rise building.
He goes to a water dispenser, drinks a bit, washes the sweat off the space between his fingers. He heard from someplace it's bad to wash your hands when they've exerted themselves, but he's never been good at listening and why would he stop now?
"Amamiya?"
Enoki. Only Enoki, because Ren doesn't know his first name and has never particularly cared to ask. The man is five years Ren's senior—a college boy who got caught cheating on his exams and was thrown out of his house as a result of the shame. Now spends all his time with the homeless of the park. They met two years ago, the first day Ren dared to spend a whole day biking. Wound up at this exact park then, met him near the water dispenser exactly like this.
"What the hell're you doin' here? It's four AM," Enoki asks.
Then he's a faster biker than he thought; Ren assumed it must have been five already. "Nothing in particular."
Enoki's lips purse. He knows when not to pry. "Come on."
Park has a name, one Ren forgets as soon as he leaves, every time he leaves. Makes Skid Row look like fucking SoHo—Enoki and Ren make their way to a flaming barrel, surrounded by old homeless men five times their age with so many wrinkles you could never tell what their faces would have looked like in their youth.
"You," a gravelly voice mutters.
Ichikawa-san is a bald, unshaven man in his eighties, shorter than most men in their eighties have any right to be. His face is less a face, and more a valley of crags and crevices that take the form of wrinkles and crow's feet and folds. He has almost no teeth, so his smile looks tremendously large.
"Finally got kicked outta that orphanage?"
"Yes, actually."
"You did?" Enoki scoffs, rubbing his hands against the heat of the flame. "Damn. What'd you do?"
"Attacked someone I shouldn't have. Now I'm under probation."
"God, kid," Ichikawa chuckles. "Toldja that delinquent life o' yours wouldn't have done ya any good."
"Worst part is I was doing something right for once," Ren scowls. "Some asshole 'round the corner feeling up some lady who didn't want it. Made me sick."
"Yeesh. The one time you didn't deserve it, and you got shitcanned for it?" Enoki shakes his head. "Sucks, man."
"Gotta leave the apartment in a month. Head over to some fucking prosecutor's apartment in the big city."
Akihara faces Ren then, "Who's this prosecutor? I used to be a lawyer, might know her."
Last month, Akihara used to be a dentist. The month before that, he used to be an engineer. And the month before that, he used to be a surgeon. Ren tells him, "Her name's Sae Niijima. Apparently she's a bit of a rising star… they're having her watch me cuz she's reliable.”
And because she was the person who prosecuted him.
"Lady's name," Enoki says. "She might be nice?"
"Get ear muffs," another old man, Masaki, mutters from the other side of the barrel. "Country boy heading to the city'll have a hard time sleeping. A lot less quiet here than there. I think Akihara has a few he can spare…?"
Akihara shakes his nubbed, two-fingered hand, "Nah. Gave mine away to Nakoshi. Lying fuck. Said he'd come back with 'em."
"Told you he was an asshole and you didn't listen."
"Don't rub it in, jackass."
And the two bicker as they always do, but as Ren shuffles his hands together in the cold early morning winds, his eyes stare far too deeply into the fire.
That night echoes in his mind.
Ren remembers walking down the street that day. Home just ten minutes away. Didn't need his bike—that man. Bald fuck with orange-tinted glasses, he felt her up and she pled and she begged and she obviously didn't want what was happening but the man didn't care. He sneered and laughed and giggled and jeered, Ren's feet carried him forward and half of him wanted to just leave. But the other half wondered what he would do if this had been happening to his mother, and he was compelled to move forward.
Biggest mistake of his goddamn life.
"Hey," Enoki mutters, "you alright?"
Ren didn't notice his hands have been shaking. "It's nothing. It's just…" he groans. "That guy was one o' those wealthy corpo bastards, I knew it. Nobody has a fucking limo like that without trying to tell everyone how much money he makes."
"The guy you assaulted?"
"I didn't even assault him, I just grabbed his shoulder hard. He fell and hit his head on the goddamn railing and blamed it on me. Drunk bastard."
"Christ."
"He had his car next to him? And he was drunk?" Seethes Akihara. "Must've been rich. You got arrested and he wasn't, for driving drunk?"
"Cops immediately took his word over mine."
"Ah, fuck 'em," Masaki says. "Whole justice system's fulla self-concerned jackasses. Prolly got paid under the table. Lost my brother to those cop pricks."
"Does this mean we'll be seein' more of you round these parts?" asks Enoki.
"Guess so. Going to some school called Shujin. Nobody there'd wanna even look at a delinquent."
"Fucking corpo prick. Hope one day they all burn. Whole city's a goddamn cesspool," says Akihara then. "Fulla bigwig yuppie jerkoffs who all deserve a bullet to the head."
"Lots of people deserve a bullet to the head," Ren seethes. "That fucking bitch. The guy threatened her to keep her mouth shut and she did. Even after I fucking stepped in to save her ass."
"You didn't deserve that, man," says Enoki.
"Lots o' people don't get what they deserve," shrugs Masaki. "Part o' life. Sorry to say."
Ren turns around, leaves them and treads upon the cobblestone path out. "Gotta get back to the apartment."
"See you, kid," Akihara mutters.
"Get earmuffs!" Masaki repeats. "Worth the investment!"
As he rides down the street on his bike he lets the sights and sounds and smoke fill his nerves. He wants it all to soothe his bones so fucking bad but in the end he'll just have to live with this dissatisfaction for the rest of the night.
April 2016
Ren has to take the goddamn train because his bike got stolen three fucking weeks ago.
If ever he finds out who did it he’ll jam his thumbs into their eyes like that scene in Game of Thrones with Oberyn and The Mountain.
But he can’t, so he has to walk, like a normal fucking person.
The trains in Tokyo are packed and Ren feels crushed despite having found a seat. It feels like years before it makes its final stop, and when Ren leaves the car he takes in a gigantic breath. Nose stings–he got into a fight couple days ago so when he breathes in he feels the bridge of his nose swell with pain.
The feeling of being surrounded never leaves him even as he exits the subway. Tokyo’s full of people and crowds walking every which way. Noises of cars and street singers and students chatting idly.
Ren is anxious, though he doesn’t know why.
It’s his first time going to school in the big city. He’ll be shacking up with some prosecutor lady and it’ll be the worst thing in the world, because the last thing he’s ever wanted is someone breathing down his neck and watching his every move.
He walks there and wanders around, fucking about in the arcades for a time and just going to convenience stores to get soda cans, but once he finally arrives at the apartment, someone else opens the door.
She has short brown hair, and reddish-brown eyes. She’s dressed in the Shujin school uniform, as is he, and the two of them just stare at each other for a time, each like a deer in headlights.
She’s beautiful, Ren can't help but think.
The way she looks at him, though, he figures the feeling isn’t mutual.
She asks, “Are you…?”
She didn’t tell me she had a daughter, Ren tells himself not to say. “Is… Niijima-san home?”
She opens her mouth a bit, as if silently saying Ah , “You’re late. My sister had to leave an hour ago.”
Sister? “My apologies.”
The girl raises her brow, opening the door wider and gesturing inside, “Please come in.”
Ren walks inside then, mutters a halfhearted “Please excuse me,” and undoes his shoes.
There’s a couch, a flatscreen TV, a dinner table, and several shelves for books and vases and other things he could never afford when he was younger. The place is nice. Too nice. Ren isn’t used to a place so clean. But he’s sure the prosecutor and her sister aren’t so used to someone so filthy.
“My name is Makoto Niijima,” she says, bowing once. “My sister Sae Niijima is your probationary officer, but she’s tasked me with keeping an eye on you in her absence.”
“I see. I’m–”
“Ren Amamiya, yes, my sister’s informed me of your record.”
“I see.”
He’s tall, dark, and (hesitantly she admits) rather easy on the eye. But his hair’s a mess, and his eyes are half-dead. He doesn’t really look like he’s listening to her at all, but Makoto figured he'd react as much when she first heard of him.
“Listen,” he starts up, “I don’t intend to start any trouble.”
You’d best not, she stops herself from saying. “I understand. But before anything, I’d like to lay down some ground rules.”
He blinks. “Shouldn’t your sister be telling me this?”
“My sister’s not here. She told me to tell you in case you arrived before she could meet you.”
“I see.”
“You have a ten PM curfew. You’re not allowed to go out after then, and if you’re late my sister will mark it on your record. You’ll study, and if you find yourself struggling, feel free to approach me for help. If ever you have an issue with other students in school, tell me. I’m Student Council President, so I’ll help you in that regard as much as I’m able. You’re not to engage in any violent activity, on school grounds, at home, or anywhere, while under our supervision. Do I make myself clear?”
He just looks at her dumbly, and exhales without opening his mouth.
“Clear enough,” he says, obviously irritated.
She stops herself from sighing in relief. “That’s good.”
"If that's all, Niijima-san, may I go to my room?"
She narrows her eyes at him, not knowing if he even realizes his whole future's at stake. "Down the hall, to the left."
"Appreciate it."
And as he approaches his room and closes the door behind him, Makoto shakes her head. Already a little annoyed with him and it's just their first meeting.
She heard many things about him. Sis says he’s rumored to have been involved with drug running, biker gangs, previous assaults, theft, and more. His eyes are weary, and she hates the look he’s put on. As if he’s put the whole world on his shoulders like some long suffering servant.
It irritates her. But, perhaps she shouldn’t be so on-edge. Her father would want someone so young to be given a chance to make amends. For all Makoto knows, he may very well have the potential to reintegrate himself properly into society.
Sis didn’t want this boy here but the courts ordered that she take him in. His reputation as a delinquent precedes him, but his latest felony was enough such that it was determined a prosecutor had to preside over him as his probationary officer.
Ren Amamiya, eighteen years old. No parents, no siblings. He has a history of violence in his prior schools. One incident involved him smashing through multiple windows on school grounds. He’s known for picking fights after classes, sometimes before, sometimes during. Even teachers were afraid to really confront him.
Due to his juvenile status none of the assault charges stuck. Until now.
What made Ren Amamiya the way he is?
It doesn't matter.
There are no excuses for what people make of themselves.
Damn brat, I'll sue!
Some nights he still thinks back to that evening, though the bitterness has largely faded into dull resignation. The night sky then was awash in a deep and dark blue, starless and cold and distant. Just thinking back to that sky makes him want to rip the blue out with his bare hands and watch reality itself come asunder.
Ren spent some nights in juvie. In his room–which is bare of anything but a tatami mat on the floor, a closet, and a table–some part of him feels like he’d prefer a cell.
Would be more honest of them.
He thinks about that girl. Niijima.
She's got a stick up her ass. But hell, so would anyone else if they knew the shit he'd been up to.
If she wasn't so cold he might be keen to actually talk to her.
Who was he kidding?
He'd drive her up the wall with a single word.
The world is full of monsters, Ren, he remembers his mother say. The one piece of advice she ever gave him.
To make it in this world you have to make your own law. You can’t trust cops. You can’t trust your friends. You can’t trust family.
You can only ever really trust yourself. But even then-–you must first be someone who will never fail yourself.
I'm trying, Mom.
There is much that Ren has forgotten about his mother. But he'll try and do right by her, inasmuch as he can.
Though Ren is exhausted from the trip, he doesn’t go to sleep. If he lets himself rest he’ll think about everything he can’t afford to dwell on.