sing it to the world

by driedupwishes

Summary:

Most people meet their parents in standard, almost traditional ways. They’re born to them and meet them before their memory even develops, they’re adopted or fostered by them through an agency, or they meet one half of them as a process of them becoming a parent, like when Hiro-kun’s dad started dating the woman he’d later call mom in fourth grade.

Haruka isn’t like any of the other kids she knows, though. She meets her parents in terrifying, messed up situations, when they’re just strangers struggling to stay alive, before they have any idea that they’ll one day be a family. Sometimes Haruka still sees those moments as set dressing for her nightmares like backdrops in a theater. Her mom she especially sees in her nightmares and dreams, since she can’t see her anywhere else except when they visit her grave.

Still, though, she wouldn’t change anything about it. She meets her dad, Kiryu Kazuma, in that blood soaked bar and he’s quiet but kind from the get go.

Her father, however… Well, meeting him might be the most unconventional meeting of any parent-figure on the planet.

Notes:

i love this family. i hope you do too <3

Chapter 1: December 2005 ; the monster’s gone, he’s on the run and your daddy’s here

Haruka catches her first glimpse of the monster-man Kamurocho calls the Mad Dog of Shimano on that first dreary Tuesday after meeting Kiryu Kazuma. It’s almost drizzling, a mist that might have turned into proper rain if it had come down any harder, and one moment she’s walking hand in hand with her large, silent savior and the next-

The next moment something lanky and shrieking explodes out from under a traffic cone larger than she is, scrambling upright and cackling as it croons Kiryu-chaaaan~

Instantly, almost as if Kiryu had been expecting something like this to happen, Haruka finds herself scooped up and deposited (gently of course) under the awning of the nearby Poppo. Kiryu gives her head one pat, grunts something that might be just a minute, and then throws himself at the snakeskin wearing mad-man with a knife. 

By Friday that same week, a day where the sun shines watery and their quest to find her mom and Aunt Yumi is still fruitless and yawning before them, Haruka has witnessed more ambushes than she can count. The knife-wielding, eyepatch-wearing, snakeskin-clan man who croons her temporary guardian’s name has spawned from corners, and drainpipes, and the back of passing taxis, and underneath boxes, and from inside trash cans, and-

Well. The trash cans are still the weirdest to her. Kamurocho is kind of a dirty place, with alleys that smell like toilets and crumbled up flyers with images of barely dressed women piled up in the gutters alongside the roads. So she isn't sure why he'd hide there when he obviously has other options, but from what she’s gathered he was kind of weird. So. 

But anyway, Haruka gets used to it, insomuch as someone can get used to someone leaping out and yelling at their temporary guardian to fight them. (And insomuch as someone can get used to their temporary guardian throwing himself into the fight without question or hesitation. Honestly sometimes Haruka thinks Kiryu kind of enjoys their fights.

He’s kind of weird too, honestly.)

The third or fourth time this happens a man trots up to Haruka’s side, Poppo bag swinging from one hand and the sleeves of his blue button up rolled up to his elbows, even in the sharp bite of the December air. He gives Haruka a hesitant smile as he comes to a stop at her side before he crouches down to her level, the way Kiryu does when he checks in on Haruka after a fight. 

“Sorry about oyaji,” the man murmurs, opening the plastic bag and beginning to rifle through it. In the alley next to them where the fight has sloshed up against dirty walls like spilled milk, the sound of the weird man cackling echoes off the bricks. The man in the blue button up winces and shakes his head, before reaching in and plucking out a meat bun, warm enough to steam up the waxy paper it’s wrapped in. “He’s been excited ever since Kiryu-san was released from prison. You two were on your way to get some lunch, right? Would you like a pork bun?”

Haruka likes to think she’s a good judge of character - the soft and steady way Kiryu takes care of her is proof of that and she’d known he was okay to trust from the very first moment they’d met. She looks at this man, with his kind eyes and hesitant smile, and grins back at him as brightly as she can. 

“Yes, please!”

(This is how Haruka meets Nishida, though it takes many, many, many of these meetings before she learns his name.)

 

-

 

Haruka meets the Mad Dog of Shimano nearly a week after the first time she’d seen him, tucked into the back of a smelly storage closet of a batting cage place. She’s scared, more scared than she’s been since meeting Kiryu, and so she’s trembling and shaking and teary eyed when the door opens and in steps the man who’s spent the last two weeks jumping out from ridiculous places in often ridiculous outfits to get Kiryu to fight him. 

She puffs herself up, trying to make herself seem less scared, the way the cats at the orphanage always did when the neighborhood boys came by to throw rocks at them. The man with the eyepatch strolls forward, slow and casual, only to stop and drop to a crouch just out of arm’s reach of her. 

“Easy there, lil’ lady,” the man drawls. His voice is low and raspy when he’s not cackling and cooing at the top of his lungs. He sounds a little like a yokai, like the kind of creature she’s glimpsed inked on his back during his fights with Kiryu. He holds his hands up in front of himself, leather gloves gleaming under the dirty fluorescent lights buzzing above their heads, and Haruka feels her hands ball up into fists at her sides.

The corner of his mouth quirks, like he’s trying not to smile, but his eye peers at her in a way that almost seems sad. 

“Gotcha somethin’, kiddo,” the man rasps, slowly moving one hand up into his jacket. His moves are all obvious and easy to follow, in a way that feels almost too obvious. She bites her tongue on a retort that she’s not a kid or a little lady and instead just shakes silently with her back against a shelf. 

“Here,” he says, producing a little red something from some hidden pocket inside his jacket. “Next time someone tries to grab ya, show ‘em the business end of this and they’ll hafta rethink their plans.”

She clears her throat, rough and quick the way she’s heard Kiryu clear his, and manages to bite out, “what is it?”

“It’s a knife,” the weirdo explains with a lazy kind of tone, waggling it up and down at her, but- gently. Like the way Kiryu puts her down after he scoops her up - gently. Haruka didn’t know a knife could be waggled gently and yet, somehow, it still comes off that way. Weird. “Somethin’ ta help keep ya safe, y’know?”

Haruka feels her face scrunch up, more with confusion than anything else. “You're giving me a knife,” she says in disbelief, crossing her arms over her chest. It doesn’t feel like a trick, but as far as Haruka knows kidnappers don't usually arm their kidnappees. 

The corner of the man’s mouth quirks up, just a little, like he’s trying not to smile at her. Haruka feels herself try to puff up like a cat again, but before she can he drops the knife onto the ground and then flicks it, so that it skitters across the ground to knock against her shoes. 

“I’m givin’ ya a knife,” he agrees, not quite mocking, but not entirely without a little twist around his words, one Haruka can’t quite figure out. He nods his head at it after a second, leaning back on his heels more, so that he’s just a bit further back from her. It’s a tiny and overly casual move, but one Haruka notices all the same. Like this weirdo’s trying to give her even more space. “Go on, pick ‘er up. Anyone tries anythin’ ya don’t like, just stab ‘em and run. Got it?”

Cautiously Haruka crouches down, keeping her eyes on the man in front of her the whole time. The red bit around the knife is cold and solid to the touch, not the brittle plastic she’s expecting, and it weighs more than she thought it would too. She straightens up, fingers tracing the widest part of the red metal handle-casing-thing. She doesn’t know how to open it, but she tries not to let that show. 

“Anything I don’t like,” she repeats, doing her best to keep her voice from breaking. “What, like kidnap me?”

Despite everything so far Haruka still half expects the man in front of her to lunge at her for talking back, or for him to toss his head back with a cackle the way he does when he picks fights with Kiryu. But instead the man just huffs, his chuckle so low and breathy that Haruka only knows he's laughing because she's looking at him. He peers at her, the corner of his mouth pulling up in another weird kind of smile, and then says, low and serious, “exactly like that, kiddo. Anyone tries to lay a hand on ya or, hell, even says somethin’ ya don’t like, ya give ‘em the business end of that thing and haul ass outta there, capiche?”

There’s a commotion outside the door, a lot of voices all talking at once before someone gets close enough to the thin wood to shout through oyaji, we’ve spotted him, he’s heading this way! Something flickers over the man’s face at that, something kind of conflicted, and he sighs before twisting his head to yell back, “I hear ya, fucker, m’comin’!”

The man rises to his feet, slow and steady with his hands where Haruka can see them. He tries to make it look casual and accidental, but Haruka notices. It makes her gut tighten, confusion and fear and frustration all boiling and bubbling up within her, until she blurts out, “why are you doing this,” just as the man turns his back on her. 

The man turns to glance over his shoulder at her, eye dark and searching as it seems to pierce through her chest. Her question hangs in the air between them, looming and loaded, and then suddenly the man deflates, shoulders bouncing as he sighs.

“Believe it or not, kiddo, but I'm doin’ this to keep Kiryu-chan and ya’self safe.” He pauses, head turning back to the door, and then tosses over his shoulder, “the release is the lil’ button on the side. Anyone who ain't your new guardian comes in, let ‘em have it. Just be careful ya don't cut ya’self.”

The door shuts behind the man without another word. Haruka sinks back down to the floor and then, carefully, hits the button on the side of the knife. 

The blade pops open, shiny and solid and sharp. She pushes it carefully back into place the way she's seen grown ups do back at the orphanage and then sits there with baited breath. A man tries to come in who isn’t Kiryu, but once he sees her flick open her knife he stays pressed up against the door, wary and alert, like she’s an actual threat. He’s only in there for a minute, barely long enough to wait for her to answer his question, and then he’s slipping back out like he was never there. 

Minutes drag by and the sounds outside the door are a messy jumble that looms just outside her understanding, until finally the door opens and a blood splattered Kiryu rushes in and drops to his knees before her, big warm hands reaching for her face as his eyes scan her for injuries.

She tries not to wonder what happened outside the door, tries not to worry that he’s got blood staining the cuffs of his jacket and smeared along his chin, even though it doesn’t seem to be his. He scoops her up without a word after he checks her over, tucks her head against his throat, and carries her out of there like the building’s on fire. 

The Mad Dog of Shimano is nowhere to be seen as they leave. Haruka tries not to worry about that too.

 

-

 

A few days after Christmas (but not quite New Years yet) Haruka finally meets the man hiding underneath the cackling chaos and not the myth or monster he pretends to be. 

She wakes up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, gasping as she tries and fails to keep the tears from falling and choking on the lump in her throat. The dream is already slipping away as she lurches out of the tiny cot in the back room of the Serena, but she remembers blood, and shouting, and her mom- 

She scrambles to her feet and then tumbles into the main room still shaking and half asleep, too upset to notice the slight chill in the air, too focused on trying to find her guardian that she only registers that he’s not in his usual booth when she’s already clawed her way up onto the sticky vinyl seating. 

“Kiryu-san,” she calls out, softly so that she doesn’t wake him by accident if he’s actually asleep somewhere nearby. In the lights left on in the main part of Serena the terror leftover from her nightmare is starting to feel silly and childish, especially since she knows that Kiryu’s suffered just as much if not more loss than she has. 

“Over ‘ere, kiddo,” a low, gravely voice calls. She jumps, just a little, and then cautiously slides out of the booth to approach the corner where the chairs are usually stacked. Instead of the chairs being in the usual place, though, there’s a smattering of beer cans and hard liquor bottles spread in an arc around two bodies - Kiryu, who’s curled up with a yellow snakeskin jacket tossed over him like a blanket, and-

“Hey there, squirt,” the man, Majima Goro, mutters as she shuffles closer. His one eye is bloodshot, his shoulders slumped. There are stark white bandages wrapped around his middle and he’s curled up against a wall on the other side of Kiryu’s body, one arm wrapped around his stomach. “Don't worry, I didn't do anythin’ to this oaf here, he's just sleepin’.”

Haruka swallows and shuffles closer, until she can hover just beside Kiryu’s sprawled legs. His suit jacket is stuffed under his head like a pillow and his shoes are kicked off to one side along with a pair Haruka assumes are Majima’s. They’re both wearing worn thin, mismatched socks. She doesn’t know why the sight makes something start to unwind in her chest, but it does.

“I know,” Haruka says, hoping her voice isn't scratchy or squeaky in a way that tells Majima exactly why she’s awake right now. She rubs at her eyes as casually as she can, wiping away remnants of tears, hopefully before the man notices. “Kiryu-san told me that you’ve helped him a lot the last couple of weeks.” She pauses, weighing what she wants to say, and then just goes for it anyway and adds, “even if your way of helping was really, really weird at times.”

Majima’s face twitches for a second and then suddenly he snorts, face screwing up as he curls up further like a disrupted pill bug. “Damn, kid,” he says, laughing under his breath before he straightens up just a little and shakes his hair out of his eyes. “Ya dont pull any punches, do ya? Shit, with that kinda fire m’surprised ya didn't just stick me with that knife I gotcha, just ‘cause.”

Haruka looks away, feeling her face twist against her will. She huffs out a breath, like that will cover up how everything feels sticky and tangled inside her chest, and then carefully picks her way over Kiryu’s legs so she can settle on the ground, her back against his shins. Like this she could reach out and touch the other man, though it would take a little bit of leaning. 

“Even if I wanted to, I couldn't,” she tells him, picking at a piece of lint at the edge of the nightgown Kiryu’d gotten her a few weeks ago. It’s really just an overly large t-shirt from a thrift store around the corner, but Haruka’s been calling it her nightgown, at least in her own head. “I lost it when those other guys grabbed me last week and there wasn’t time to try and find it when Kiryu-san came to get me.”

Something like regret flickers across Majima’s face and he blows out a breath, which tries to bounce a greasy lock hanging down across his eyepatch strap up out of his face, but only for a second. “Fuckers took it from ya, huh?”

Haruka bites her lip, twisting the fabric of her nightgown round and round her finger. She hesitates, only for a second, because Kiryu hadn't been happy about it when he heard, but-

“I guess,” she mutters quietly. “Or, I mean, yeah, if you count pulling it out of one guy’s leg and tossing it aside as taking it from me.”

Her words hang in the air between them, almost like the holiday lights outside store awnings out on the street, and then all at once Majima laughs. 

It’s a loud sound, closer to his cackle than the soft, rough chuckle she's heard him let out before. The sound is airy and bright, sharp and almost dancing, kind of like how the man moves when he fights, flowing and wild. It startles her, but only for a moment, because then she finds that she's giggling back at him, her hands flying up to cover her mouth in a useless attempt to not wake up Kiryu. 

The man behind her shifts, snorts a little in his sleep, and then murmurs something like Majima-no-nissan, be nice to Haruka. 

That only makes them laugh even more, Haruka rocking forward just enough that when Majima leans forward to curl around his wounded stomach, their arms kind of touch. 

“Shit, kid,” Majima laughes, the bright airy sound trembling out and sinking down into the low chuckle, “that’sa fuckin’ girl! Balls like that, yer gonna keep Kiryu-chan on his toes, ain’t ya? Shit, don’t worry ‘bout losin’ it, I’ll get ya another one tomorrow! Late Christmas present or somethin’, we’ll figure it out.”

Haruka surprises herself with the way her chest tightens (in a good way) at the thought of replacing the knife, even though she’d only had it a few days before it got lost. “I- really?”

Majima eases himself back mostly upright, tips his head against the wall, and grins, crooked and a little sharp. “‘Course, Haru-chan,'' the man answers. “S’what I’m here for, ain’t it? Gotta keep yerself and Kiryu-chan safe and happy somehow, even if it means bein’ really weird.”

Warmth blooms in Haruka’s chest, rising up inside her until she can feel the edges of it touch her cheeks. She feels bad, almost, for saying that, even if it’s true, but when she glances up at Majima his grin has slid into a smile, one that’s gently sloped and odd and- and soft.

Haruka likes to think she’s a good judge of character and she’s gotten this far by trusting her gut. And right now, despite everything, her gut’s telling her that the man in front of her, weird and wild as he’s been before, isn’t so bad. 

“Okay, Majima-san” she murmurs, trying not to squirm when Majima’s smile grows, just a little. “I’d- I’d like that, then.”

(In the morning she wakes up back in the cot in the backroom, wrapped up in the yellow snakeskin jacket and tucked under the ratty old blanket. 

Out in the main room she can hear Kiryu and Majima talking, their voices mixing into a soothing kind of rumble that almost lulls her back to sleep. She shuffles out from under the blanket only to find that it's freezing, and so she slips her arms through the sleeves of the jacket, which smells like cigarettes and something sharp and spicy, and then pulls on the socks she’d kicked out of sometime in the night. 

Majima’s slumped against the bar on the customer side, while Kiryu leans against the other side, where Reina used to stand. They’re sharing one cigarette together, heads bent over the single ashtray down on the countertop between them, and Majima’s got Kiryu’s rumpled suit jacket tossed over his shoulders like a cape. 

Majima notices her first, even though she's on his blind side, and he pulls the cigarette out of his mouth to call, “mornin’ princess. Wanna c’mere and help me talk your mule headed guard dragon into goin’ out for breakfast?”

Kiryu rolls his eyes at the other man and snags the cigarette, leaning back to breathe in and then blow smoke to the side, so it doesn’t puff up in Majima’s face before he says, stern and just a little bit exasperated, “we have stuff from Poppo here, nii-san, I just have to find it.” He tucks the cigarette back in his mouth, gives her something approaching a reassuring smile, and then ducks below the counter, supposedly to find the food from the Poppo down the street that they supposedly still have.

Majima acts out a silent wail as if Kiryu’s words have struck him, one Haruka is not so startled to realize is entirely for her benefit. He slumps, dramatically defeated on the bar counter, which is starting to collect dust in some places since Reina died. 

His head lolls toward Haruka and he looks at her with an exaggerated pleading look, his eye bugged out in a way that’s both frightening and pitiful. 

Haruka surprises herself, not just by the way she has to stifle a giggle before she shuffles over, but by the urge she has to play along with Majima’s dramatics. She shouldn’t, she knows that, and yet…

As she approaches the counter’s edge she holds her eyes as wide as she can before blinking rapidly until they start to water. She goes up on her tiptoes once her eyes feel wet enough, her fingers curling around the edge of the counter, and peers up at her guard dragon, as Majima had called him. 

“Kiryu-san,” she mutters, as softly and sadly as she can. “I think we had the last of the things from Poppo yesterday. And it's kind of cold in here…”

Kiryu halts almost comically before he twists to stand upright and then looms over the counter to look at her. It would be a scary set of moves, probably, if she didn’t know him, or maybe even then it would be unnerving, if his hair wasn’t still smudged up on one side as his cigarette dangles like it’s going to topple out of his mouth. As quick as she can she widens her eyes further and tries to stick her lower lip out a little in a way that isn't obviously overdone, doing her best to look tiny and pitiful and cold. 

“Ah, I- Haruka, did we? I thought we still had more- the cold, though, I'm sorry, I think the heating’s gone out, but I-”

Majima nudges Haruka in the leg with a tap of his fingertips, gently and almost nervously, and Haruka does her best not to jump. Instead she pulls out her smallest voice and looks down, muttering a quiet, “oh, that’s okay,” to herself as she does. 

She feels a little bad pulling this kind of trick on Kiryu, especially since he’s taken such good care of her and double especially since he’s been working with Date so that he can adopt her so she doesn’t have to go back to the orphanage. But then she peeks at Majima out of the corner of her eyes and remembers gotta keep yerself and Kiryu-chan safe and happy somehow, even if it means bein’ really weird, and thinks that it’ll be okay.

There’s a pause, just long enough to feel a little smothery and for the guilty squirm in her chest to get worse, and then she sees Majima flash her a thumbs up from below the counter. A split second later Kiryu sighs, a sad, defeated and gusty noise, and mutters, “nii-san, if we go out for breakfast you need to find a shirt.”

Majima squeaks and squawks, somewhere between dramatic offense and genuine upset, which makes Haruka duck her head under the counter to hide the way she laughs. 

Kiryu wins the argument about the shirt, but Majima only concedes at the promise that he can pay for everyone. Haruka ends up lending her nightgown t-shirt to Majima since Kiryu’s down to his last button up, which looks silly when paired with his usual leather pants and, once Haruka returns it to him, his snakeskin jacket. 

“C’mon, kiddo,” Majima says, when they’re finally all ready to shuffle into the elevator together to go find breakfast. “First stop, breakfast! Then we’ll getcha another knife and see if we can’t hit the arcade or somethin’, whatever you’d like.”

“Majima-no-niisan,” Kiryu groans, “don’t give her another knife!”

Haruka gets three new knives and by the end of the day they’ve somehow wrangled Kiryu into agreeing to temporarily stay at Majima’s apartment instead of the Serena, where they can all sleep in beds and the heating doesn’t go out.

It’s one of the best days of Haruka’s life. Which is probably sad, at least by other people's standards, but she’s too happy at that moment to care.)

Chapter 2: February 2006 ; you’ll be in my heart

Summary:

The week leading up to Valentine's Day Majima starts acting weird.

Notes:

shout out to my baestie, who only knows things about yakuza against their will but still wanted to read this first to help me make sure it passes muster <3

The week leading up to Valentine’s Day Majima starts acting weird. 

Haruka notices, because the agreement to stay for a few days at his apartment while Uncle Kaz gets the power back on in the Serena had been extended to for as long as it takes to get an apartment not in the middle of Kamurocho. It had taken a few weeks of back and forth and two fist fights, one that Majima loses and one that Uncle Kaz (shockingly) loses, but Majima had finally won the ya can’t raise a kid in a closed down bar argument. The only reason they aren’t already in an apartment somewhere on the slightly cleaner edge of Kamurocho is because Uncle Kaz has held firm on the fact that he’s not going to let Majima pay their bills for this new apartment, no matter how easily he could. 

Which means they’re living with Majima in his high up, fancy apartment in the middle of Kamurocho, while Uncle Kaz looks for work that isn’t yakuza-related, and Haruka gets driven to and from the school she was going to in the Before, when she was at the orphanage, even though it’s like an hour in non-stop traffic each way. 

All of this is to say that when Majima starts acting weird and shifty the week before Valentine’s Day, Haruka notices, even though Uncle Kaz doesn’t seem to. 

“Do you know if Majima is okay,” Haruka asks Nishida on the way to school two days after he starts being weird. They’ve been in traffic like twenty minutes, which means they have roughly forty more before they arrive. Haruka had asked once if Nishida minded being in traffic for so much each day and the man had only smiled at her and patted her head before promising it’s the part of the day I look forward to most, Haruka-chan, but please don’t tell oyaji that! “He’s been acting kinda weird at home for the past couple of days.”

Nishida, driving with both hands on the wheel and the volume of the radio turned real low like no other adult Haruka has ever met, tries not to laugh. He fails but he tries. “Weirder than usual, I assume,” he clarifies, smiling slightly to himself. He doesn’t glance back at her in the backseat, but that doesn’t bother her. She nods anyway, despite the fact he’s not looking. 

“Yeah! He keeps trying to ask Uncle Kaz if there’s anything he wants or needs or wants to do, but in a weird way, like he doesn’t want Uncle Kaz to know he’s asking. And he’s been trying real hard to make sure he doesn’t kick off his shoes in the middle of the living room or leave his knives lying around everywhere. It’s definitely weirder than usual, Nishida-san!”

This time Nishida doesn’t even try not to laugh, chuckling to himself in a way that grows in volume the longer it goes on. Haruka isn’t entirely sure why Nishida is laughing, but seeing the usually calm and quiet man laugh so much makes her giggle a little bit too. At the next stoplight, just as their joint laughter is sputtering out, he glances back over his shoulder at her and purses his lips together, like he’s trying not to break into laughter again.

“Don’t mind oyaji, Haruka-chan,” Nishida says, smiling a little with the corner of his mouth. The light turns green and he turns back to face the road, humming a little in his throat before he adds, “he’s probably just still adjusting to having you and Kiryu-san live with him while Kiryu-san saves up for an apartment. I’m sure he’ll go back to his normal levels of weirdness soon.”

Appeased for the moment, Haruka leans back in her booster seat and goes back to watching traffic. After all it was an explanation that makes sense, at least to Haruka, who had been present as Uncle Kaz made Majima collect all his knives and bats and costume bits from the places where they were scattered all over the apartment when they first moved in. It had seemed to be an adjustment for them all, like when a new kid would move into the orphanage back before Uncle Kaz adopted her, but as the day wears on and Haruka thinks on it some more, it still doesn’t feel quite right. 

Especially when she gets home from school that afternoon and finds Majima face down on the rug in the living room with the whole place smelling like something like chalk caught on fire but with a weird kind of sweet smell too.

Haruka toes her shoes off in the genkan and puts her bookbag on the couch before creeping into the kitchen, where there’s something that might once have been chocolate charred onto a pan in the sink. She hums to herself, nods a little at the mess, and then wanders back over to the shirtless, sweatpants clad lump of a yakuza on the rug. She knows better by now than to poke him with her foot, since both Uncle Kaz and Majima tend to tense up and get quiet if she touches them when they’re not expecting it, but she crouches down close to his head and knocks gently on the rug near his shoulder. 

“Hey kiddo,” Majima says, straight into the rug without turning or lifting his head. It muffles his voice, but not so much that she can’t understand him. “Welcome home and all that shit.”

Biting her lip on a laugh, Haruka nods to herself again and dutifully answers, “I’m home, Majima!”

The corner of Majima’s mouth twitches in a brief grin at her greeting. She’s on his eyepatch side so she can’t see a whole lot else of his expression, but just that is enough for her to know she can scoot closer. To be super sure though she says, “can I lay with you?”

Majima grunts, a noise that doesn’t quite mean anything in particular, at least until he flops out an arm in offering, fingers wiggling against the rug. “‘Course ya can, Haru-chan,” he trills, though it still falls lackluster compared to his usual enthusiasm in a way that has nothing to do with how he’s still speaking directly into the floor. She grins and crawls closer, curling herself up against his back so that she can rest her head on his shoulder and trace the whorls of ink that decorates his skin and the patchwork maze of scars they hide. He moves his arm once she’s settled, awkwardly curling it back over her legs, and she breathes out with contentment at the sure but gentle weight of his arm grounding her against him. 

They lay like that for a little while, not so long that the sun sets, but long enough that the sky outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the apartment starts to go orange with the promise of a sunset. Uncle Kaz won’t be back until really late tonight, Haruka remembers suddenly - he’s working a double shift and won’t be around to tuck her in, so he made Majima promise to be around so she wasn’t home alone. 

And here Majima was, facedown on the rug with a mess in the kitchen, but most importantly - here so she doesn’t have to be home alone.

The thought makes her smile. It also gives her the push she needs to mutter, “Majima, were you trying to make Uncle Kaz chocolates for Valentine’s Day?”

Majima had been a near boneless lump underneath her, warm and sturdy, his scarred, tattooed back rising and falling with each of his breaths. But once Haruka dares to ask the question she’s sure he’s been dreading, the man goes rigid like a statue. He doesn’t even breathe for a moment, until she shifts slightly against his shoulder blade and whispers, “you don’t have to answer me, it’s okay.”

All at once the statue stillness vanishes, leaving behind the warm, breathing man under her cheek. “Oh hush, Haru-chan, don’t say that kinda shit. Here, lemme - ”

Majima heaves up from the floor and flips himself over, a neat, too-quick move that Haruka’s probably seen him use on Uncle Kaz, and before she knows it she’s draped on his chest and tucked under his chin. The move makes her giggle, startled by the sudden shift and yet still too wrapped up in the feeling of safety that it doesn’t scare her at all. Majima laughs too, an airy, breathless kind of chuckle, and combs a hand through her hair before tussling it gently. 

She lifts her head up with a grin and catches a glimpse of the smile on Majima’s face, small but soft around the edges, before the man manages to bite it back and turn it into what Date calls his no good grin. Both suit him, at least in Haruka’s opinion, but she loves when she can catch him off guard and see his softer smile, because it oozes happiness in the same way as Uncle Kaz’s little smile.

“Ya caught me, squirt,” he admits with his no good grin out in full force, like that will hide the way his eye is a little dull or the bag like a bruise under it. “Though yer only half right - I fucked up the kitchen real good tryin’ ta make ya both chocolates fer Valentine’s. Silly, ain’t it?”

It takes her a second to register what’s been said, so for a minute she just stares at him. But when his words hit, when the ya both clicks in her brain, she feels herself jolt and go statue-mode. 

“B-both of us,” she repeats. Her voice wobbles like an uneven table. She blinks, trying to figure out what the sudden warmth in her throat means, and the whole time she watches as Majima grins even more sharply, though his eye look flat and far away, like he’s bracing himself for something bad. 

The warmth travels down her throat, settling into her chest. She blinks one more time before she feels her face crack into the biggest smile she thinks she’s ever managed, even as the corners of her eyes prickle like she might cry. She squirms, realizing in a rush she’s happy, happy that she was right about Majima and Uncle Kaz and even happier that he wanted to make her chocolate too. Ducking her head down she wriggles her arms back behind his neck, squeezing as much as she can and giggling a little as she does. 

“I knew you liked Uncle Kaz,” she murmurs triumphantly, pressing her face down against his collarbone and wiggling a little, unable to sit still with how suddenly happy she feels. It feels like lightning under her skin, but in the best way possible. 

She hadn’t realized that Majima had gone rigid underneath her again until he suddenly goes lax once more, puffing out a breath that stirs the hair at the top of her head. “Shit, kid,” he mutters, looping an arm loosely around her, likely to help keep her from tumbling off of his chest as she rocks with excitement. “The fuck you mean, you knew. No way you could’a known, fuck off - ”

Haruka tries to lift her head, because she has a hunch Majima is blushing and she absolutely wants to see that, but before she can a hand cups the back of her head and gently guides her back down, until she’s tucked against one of the snakes coiling across his chest. She follows the movement easily, giggling out a little laugh as he continues to grumble that there’s no way she figured out anything and first of all, I ain’t even like the bastard, the fuck ya talkin’ ‘bout, ya lil’ pipsqueak.

They lay like that for a moment, Haruka grinning into Majima’s chest while the hand resting on top of her head shifts to comb through her hair, the movement so gentle she forgets for a time that those hands have ever caused anyone harm. After a while Majima’s chest rumbles with the precursor to speech and so Haruka shifts in return and hums to show she’s listening. 

“Haru-chan, be honest with me,” Majima says, a sharp little twist to his usual low, rough smoker’s voice. “I - I can take it, okay, so be real honest with me. I - shit, would it bother ya, if ya Uncle Kaz and I - I mean, if we - ”

The words don’t seem to come. The implication lingers above them, obvious and clear enough that she understands, even though she’s only nine. (Though Date says she’s not a normal nine year old, too sharp and too understanding. Haruka doesn’t see how this is a bad thing, but she’s heard him say it several times to Uncle Kaz, usually after she says something that makes Majima laugh.)

She shifts back, trying to lift her head again, and though the hand in her hair lingers for a second Majima doesn’t do anything to keep her from looking at him this time. She sits halfway up, so that she can make eye contact with the man, who in turn does his best to not look nervous. He fails - she can tell by the way he’s holding his shoulders so that they seem relaxed, how his face is probably supposed to be blank and calm, but just looks like he’s biting the inside of his cheek and trying not to let it show. 

Hands placed in the middle of his chest for balance, Haruka peers down at one of the most feared yakuza in Kamurocho and does her best not to laugh at how scared he seems of her answer. 

“It doesn’t bother me,” she tells him, as seriously as she can, “I promise.”

She expects Majima to look relieved at her announcement, but all it does is make a small frown crack through the blank look he’s trying to hold up as a front. He sighs and shifts, holding her and scooting her back so that he can sit up. At first he tries to deposit her on the floor in front of him, but after she leans in against him he lets her settle in his lap on top of his crossed legs. 

“Kid, I appreciate it, I do, but - but I need ya to understand, okay? ‘Cause ya can say it doesn’t bother ya now, but there’s people out there that’ll be real bothered and they ain’t gonna be nice about it. And that’s not even considerin’ that ya shouldn’t even want me here, with everythin’ I’ve done to ya and Kiryu-chan - ”

Almost before she realizes what’s happening the happiness-warmth in Haruka’s chest blazes into indignation and she leans forward, smacking her palm against Majima’s shoulder. The man rocks back in surprise at the action, which makes her yelp a little in surprise as well when his legs move from under her, which makes Majima lurch back up and wrap an arm around her to stabilize her and keep her from falling back. 

“I don’t care what you did,” Haruka tells him as forcefully as she can, smacking her palm against his shoulder again, but this time a little gentler. She only wants to make sure he’s listening, not hurt him, and it makes him blink down at her in shock with his mouth slightly open. “I don’t! It was scary at the time, yeah, and I didn’t really know why you kept jumping out of trash cans and everything at Uncle Kaz, but I don’t care about that anymore! You’re Majima - you try and keep Uncle Kaz and I safe, and you make sure we eat breakfast even though you’ve been awake all night, and I know you’re the one who tells Nishida to take me to cafés after school if I say I’m hungry, and you’re letting us live here, and - and - and -”

Majima’s face softens bit by bit as she rambles, until his eyebrows go from arching high up on his forehead to sinking down so that there’s only a little furrow left. The corner of his mouth curls, just a little, into a lopsided and almost sad kind of smile and the arm around her tightens just a bit as well. 

“And,” she insists, “you tried to make us chocolate! I’ve - ” Her voice catches in her throat, falling from an echoing yell to almost a whisper as she adds, “I’ve never had anyone try to make me something like that before.”

Her words sit in between them, a confession that makes something like embarrassment squirm under her skin, before Majima deflates almost like a balloon and hisses out, “shit, Haru-chan, c’mere - ” and hauls her into one of the biggest hugs she’s ever had. She falls into it willingly, curling her arms and legs around him like an octopus, and he envelopes her in his arms and curls down around her until all she can feel is warm and safe. Like this she’s close enough to catch the echo of cigarette smoke on his skin. 

“Alright, kiddo, I get it,” Majima murmurs, the edge of his jaw brushing against the top of her head so that his beard scratches a little against her. “Message received, loud and clear. But for the record, m’sorry I scared ya back then. If I could go back and do better, I would in a heartbeat.”

Haruka feels her eyes sting with tears, even as her face splits in a smile once more. She snuggles more firmly into the hug, squeezing back as hard as she can, and mutters, “it’s okay, I forgive you, Majima-no-niisan.”

Majima sputters out a laugh, one that tips into a cackle in the same way their bodies tip sideways and spill out across the floor. It’s infectious, his laughter, and after a moment Haruka finds herself giggling too, feet kicking as it bounces her up and down and fills the darkening apartment with joy. 

When they’re all wrung out and the apartment has fallen still and silent, Haruka lifts her head and peers through the little bit of light coming in through the windows. “You know,” she tells Majima, “my classmate said that instead of chocolate, his dad takes his mom out for dinner for Valentine’s Day.”

Majima lifts his head up and peers at her, blinking for a few seconds before he drops it back down with a huff. “Haru-chan, where was this suggestion before I fucked up the kitchen?”

Haruka sticks out her tongue at him, snickering when he rolls his eyes and sticks his tongue right back at her. “Smartass,” he grumbles, but his hands are gentle as they settle at her waist and lift her in the air, making her yelp in surprise and then burst into giggles as he heaves them both up, ending with him standing and her dangling in the air, legs kicking. “Fuck, it’s dark. Where’d the time go? Better get this shit cleaned up so we can get ya fed and ready for bed, huh?”

Haruka swings her legs in the air, not really bothered by the way she slid in his grip and is now being held up under the armpits like a wet cat. She hums in her throat for a minute, considering, and then asks, “do you want help?”

Majima blinks at her, eye wide and mouth pursing, before he snorts out a kind of off-beat laugh and shakes his head. Plopping her down on her feet he ruffles her hair, making it as messy as he can, and says, “nah, squirt, go take a bath. I should have most of this tidied up when you get out, then we can eat, take a look at your homework, and call it a day. Sound good?”

Haruka shakes her hair out of her face and gives Majima the biggest grin she can, before doing her best to imitate him as she answers, “ya don’t gotta tell me twice ta take it easy!”

The man’s squawk of surprise follows her into the bathroom, where she sets about poking at the fancy buttons on the side to fill it up with hot water. She thinks she hears him mutter something like christ, I’m already fuckin’ her up, but soon the sound of running water drowns everything else out. 

On Tuesday the school is abuzz with whispers and giggles, chocolate smears proudly marking the corners of mouths of those who’d received a gift while tears dotted the corners of eyes of those who’d longed for them but never received one. Haruka skips out of the building and waves some of the other kids from Sunflower goodbye, before turning to look for Nishida’s car.

Instead of the sleek black car she’s used to, she finds Uncle Kaz and Majima standing on the sidewalk across the way, both dressed in clothes she didn’t even know they owned. She shrieks a little in excitement, because they hadn’t mentioned picking her up that morning, and immediately dashes across the street. Uncle Kaz yelps out about looking both ways before crossing the street, but Majima just cackles and squats down to catch her in a hug before he swings her up into the air. 

“You look weird when you dress like a person,” Haruka tells him, snickering when he whines into her hair and squeezes her around the middle, like that’s a punishment and not something that makes her feel settled and safe. And it’s true, he does - in jeans, a clean long sleeved shirt, warm gray peacoat, and white medical eye patch, Majima looks like he could be someone’s uncle or dad, someone unassuming and harmless who got hurt in a normal kind of accident. 

“Yeah, well, I feel weird dressed up like a goddamn loser, but yer Uncle Kaz put his foot down about tonight’s dress code.”

Haruka snickers at that mental image, because she’s nearly sure he means that literally, and Majima snorts into her hair before smacking an overly large kiss against the crown of it and tossing her up and into the air towards Uncle Kaz.

Uncle Kaz catches her with the same ease he breathes, hiking her up against his chest with an arm under her like she’s a baby. It’d be embarrassing, maybe, if she was the kind of kid who’d had parents her whole life, but she doesn’t care if any of her classmates are staring - she slings her arms around his neck and squeezes him in the tightest hug she can, basking in the safety of his hold. 

“Happy Valentine’s, Haruka,” Uncle Kaz rumbles, pressing a much less obvious and slightly more awkward kiss against her hair. He’s also dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, with a thick canvas jacket barely stretching over his shoulders and a baseball cap crammed onto his head. It’s not his, because he stands by the fact that the only baseball team worth supporting is the Tokyo Yakult Swallows and she’s almost certain that’s a Chiba Lotte Marines hat, which means Majima shoved it on his head, likely as revenge for the dress code.

“Happy Valentine’s, Uncle Kaz,” Haruka shouts. She twists around in his arms to reach out to Majima, shoving her hand in his hair and ruffling it about as she yells, “and Happy Valentine’s, Majima! I didn’t know you were going to be picking me up today.”

Majima ducks out from under her hand and reaches up to hold it instead, squeezing it gently before bringing it up to his lips so he can kiss the back of it like a cheesy love interest in shōjo manga. “‘Course, princess. Couldn’t have a special, fancy dinner without our special little girl, could we?”

The special fancy dinner turns into a hole-in-the-wall beef bowl place, where Haruka crosses her legs on the barstool to keep from swinging them and kicking the counter, because neither Uncle Kaz nor Majima could agree on what counted as a suitable holiday date night establishment. Haruka doesn’t care - the place is humid and her stomach growls the second they step in from how good the whole place smells, and when Uncle Kaz plops her down on the stool Majima hops up on to the one on her other side, scooting it close so that their sides bump. 

It’s perfect, even as Majima riles Uncle Kaz up into an argument and she burns her tongue on how hot the food is when the bowl’s first placed in front of her. And it gets even more perfect when they tumble out from the beef bowl place and head straight toward a karaoke place, Haruka riding on Majima’s shoulders as Uncle Kaz quietly pays for a room for two hours. 

Haruka sings. She sings for Uncle Kaz and Majima, she sings with Uncle Kaz and Majima, and she claps and can’t help but sing along even when she’s on the couch, watching as Uncle Kaz and Majima sing, separately and together. The queue they build stretches on, long past the time they’ve reserved the room for, and it’s so, so much fun. She sings all her favorite songs, and learns new favorite songs, and when their time is up she’d be heartbroken if it wasn’t for Majima dropping down in front of the couch to present her his back, tossing a grin over his shoulder and crowing, “nothing says we can’t keep singing on the way home, Haru-chan!”

Majima carries her home piggy-back style, even as they board a train, even as her singing fades into sleepy murmurs against the collar of his peacoat. She’s barely awake when they get home, swaying as Majima puts her down so she can brush her teeth and crawl into her pajamas, and the last thing she remembers is Majima’s voice, warm and rough and affectionate, teasing Uncle Kaz ya wanna call it a night, big boy, or do ya wanna keep the party rollin’?

(When Nishida picks her up for school the next morning he gives her a grin as he opens the car door for her and asks, “did you have a good Valentine’s, Haruka-chan?”

“Yes,” she announces, as loudly as she can. Her voice is a little scratchy from all the karaoke last night, but she doesn’t care. “I had the best Valentine’s, Nishida!” 

Before she climbs in the car she motions for him to lean in, like she has a secret to tell him. When he does she cups her hand around her mouth and whispers, “do you think Uncle Kaz and Majima had a good Valentine’s too?”

Nishida, crouched down so low the knees of his slacks are almost pressed against the ground, only smiles at her. “Yes, Haruka-chan,” he answers, quietly but sincerely. “In fact, I’m sure it was better than good - I’m sure they’d agree that it was the best Valentine’s Day for them as well.”)

Notes:

soft majimaaaaaa!! i love writing him and haruka and i hope i did both of them justice this chapter <3 and to everyone who's commented so far, thank you!!! i was very nervous as this is my first foray into yakuza fic writing but you have all been so sweet ;o;

also because they made me laugh here's my favorite note from the baestie:

"does majima actually have a peacoat?" no "OOC BEHAVIOR! what about kiryu's outfit, is that real?" nope "god, that's tragic... i hate their outfits in game, i wish majima had a peacoat, maybe then he wouldn't look so silly"

Chapter 3: April 2006 ; how long do you want to be loved? is forever enough?

Summary:

Haruka's new school teacher wants to talk to her mom. Haruka doesn't know how to tell her she can't, because, well. Her mom is dead.

Notes:

once again shout out to my baestie, who read through this and only deadpan stared at me a little when they realized it was a goromi chapter. ilusm ryssa, you are the most patient and kind baestie <3

A few weeks after sort-of settling in the apartment on the edges of Kamurocho that Uncle Kaz ends up finding, Haruka's new teacher starts asking about her mom. It starts as little questions at first, more offhand comments than anything else, until it builds and builds into a demand couched as a request to speak to her mother after school. 

“You can’t,” Haruka tells her, voice threatening to break. It would probably clear things up to just say she’s dead, but the words stick in her throat and a voice eerily like Majima’s tells her ya don’t owe her shit, kid, least of all yer secrets. Her teacher, a woman probably around Kashiwagi’s age whose graying hair is always in a tight ponytail and who frowns more than she smiles, just crosses her arms over her chest and sighs. 

“That man cannot be raising you all by himself,” her teacher mutters, face twitching with poorly concealed judgment. Haruka feels her hands burn with the urge to ball them into fists, with the sudden desire to hit something, a flash of anger in her chest so sharp and fierce she nearly chokes as she tries to swallow it back down. “You must have a mother. Is he not allowing you to see her? Little girls need their mothers, Sawamura-chan, it’s just not right otherwise.”

My mother’s dead, Haruka wants to spit, but the words don’t come. Her eyes burn, but she refuses to cry in front of this woman, and instead she just ducks her head and bites her tongue, shuffling her feet until she can swallow past the lump lodged in her throat long enough to ask, “can I be excused, Sensei?”

Uncle Kaz is working late today, so Nishida is out in front of the school, making awkward but amicable small talk with a few mothers of her classmates. Haruka runs toward him, her whole body feeling like a wildfire as she hears the scoff her teacher lets out at the sight of another man coming to pick her up, and she’s so focused on not crying that she forgets to stop, to slow down, and just crashes into him full speed. 

“Hey, hey, Haruka-chan, hey, what - ”

Nishida isn’t tall and broad, like Uncle Kaz or Majima, but he scoops her up all the same, one arm under her as he cradles her against him. The burning feeling explodes and she ducks her head, burying her face in his throat as tears start to fall. She sniffles, the only noise she’ll let herself make as she cries, and immediately Nishida’s hand is buried in her hair, soothing and gentle, just like Uncle Kaz and Majima do when she cries at night. 

“Hang in there, sweetheart,” Nishida murmurs. “I’ll get us out of here.”

Several hours and three ice cream treats bought from the Poppo nearest to the apartment later, Haruka’s face stings with the after-cry itchy feeling and her head throbs with a dull pain, but she’s otherwise okay. Nishida sits on the other side of the kotatsu in the middle of their living room, typing on his flip phone with a concentrated furrow in his brow while she works on her math homework with sweet-sticky fingers. 

“All taken care of, Haruka-chan,” Nishida announces when he finally shuts his phone and tucks it away. His face is warm and open, even if his eyes are still tight and bright with anger. Somewhere between the first and second ice cream Haruka had caved and told him why she was crying, never managing to completely sob out the full I couldn’t tell her my mom’s dead, she can’t meet her, but getting enough out that Nishida had figured out which yes or no questions to ask to get the whole picture. The third ice cream, after everything had been spilled and she was all cried out, had been strawberry flavored and made her stomach gurgle, but Nishida had split it with her, taking bites from the opposite side as he promised her that he’d take care of it, that everything would be fine soon.

Haruka doesn’t have any strong feelings about the yakuza - she’s seen enough to know there’s good people there, just as much as there are bad people, the same as anywhere else. Yakuza, in her experience, just tend to be weirder than most. But just because she’s nine doesn’t mean she doesn’t know how the yakuza (and more specifically Majima, who she assumes Nishida has been emailing on his phone) deal with things. 

Her train of thought must show on her face, because before she can even open her mouth Nishida laughs, a surprised and choked up kind of sound, and rushes to reassure her, “we’re not going to kill her!”

“O-kay,” Haruka says slowly, skeptical despite the fact that she trusts Nishida and knows he wouldn’t lie to her. He never has before, after all, even when it gets him in trouble with Majima, who likes to try and surprise them with, as Uncle Kaz calls it, entirely too much nonsense.

“It’s all taken care of in a normal way, I swear,” Nishida promises, slumping against the edge of the kotatsu. And then, quietly like he doesn’t mean to say it, “or at least as normal as oyaji can be, I guess.”

Haruka doesn’t ask any more clarifying questions. She’s had a long day, a miserable and comfort-sugar filled afternoon, and truthfully, she doesn’t want to think about her teacher and her demands anymore. So instead of asking what do you mean, as normal as Majima can be, she leans over and pats Nishida’s arm and whispers, “thank you, Nishida-nii-san.”

Nishida makes a lot more noise when he cries than she does, even though he’s grown. When she tells Uncle Kaz that at bedtime, which he barely manages to come home in time for, he makes a perplexed noise and then combs a hand through her hair before tousling it. She swats sleepily at him, because they just brushed it all out, and then falls asleep almost immediately. 

The next day Haruka wakes up on time and gets ready for school, even though she doesn’t want to. The day is normal at first, though her teacher sends her searching looks in between lessons and tends to shake her head to herself afterward. A few of the girls Haruka has been eating lunch with ask what happened yesterday, but Haruka just bites the inside of her cheek and tells them it was nothing, that she’s okay. 

All day it feels like there are ants crawling under her skin and the feeling gets worse every time her teacher walks past her or looks at her. By the time they’re packing up to go home Haruka feels more itchy and jittery than she has in months and her eyes start to make another  promise of tears as soon as she looks up and sees her teacher walking toward her, face set and determined. 

“Haruka,” her teacher starts to say, but then the door to the classroom swings open and in walks - 

Well. In walks someone with a medical mask covering their face and long blonde hair, their body wrapped up in a soft looking sweater and a long flowing skirt that nearly touches the ground. Her brain says strange woman, at least until the person turns to glance over the top of their sunglasses and a familiar lilting voice sings out, “Haru-chan, guess who came to get you today!”

There are a lot of reactions someone could have in Haruka’s shoes, she’s sure. She’s almost positive most of her classmates would pull to a dead stop and stare in confusion upon seeing their kinda-uncle’s kinda-boyfriend dressed like a woman. She’s sure some of them might even shuffle backwards or run the other way, because what is happening?

Haruka is not like other kids, though. She hasn’t been for months, not since she snuck out of the orphanage on a mission and she met Uncle Kaz. As weird as this situation is, Haruka can use what Nishida said last night to kind of follow the logic of how this happened, and so she doesn’t hesitate, even for a second. 

“Aunt Ma-chan,” Haruka shrieks, throwing out the first name she can think of before she bolts across the room towards the now grinning figure that is definitely an eyepatch-less Majima Goro and not anyone’s Aunt Ma-chan. Majima lets out a laugh that’s just shy of his usual cackle and scoops her up, spinning her around in a tight circle as all her classmates burst into whispers around the room. 

“Good girl,” Majima whispers in his normal smoky-rough voice as he ducks to press the medical mask over his mouth against her head, like a kiss to her hair. “Now keep yer head down and play along, a’ight?”

Wrapped up in Majima’s arms, her face smushed against the soft but scratchy collar of the baby pink sweater he’s wearing, Haruka suddenly finds that the feeling like ants under her skin is gone. She feels safe and settled, and so she hums in the back of her throat while she wraps her arms around Majima’s neck. 

“That’s our angel,” Majima whispers, voice soft and warm against the top of her head, before he kicks his voice back up into an airy, almost feminine tone to address her teacher. Haruka can’t help but notice that like this, voice pitched up and sharp as any of his blades, Majima’s accent is basically non-existent. “You must be our little Haru-chan’s Sensei, yes? Shizumi-sensei, if I’m not mistaken?”

“Oh, I -yes, that’s me! Are you Sawamura-chan’s mother?”

Haruka’s arms tighten around Majima’s neck, entirely without her meaning to let it happen, and in response he holds her tighter and settles his cheek atop her head. She can feel the scratch of the medical mask hiding his goatee catch on her hair. 

“Haruka’s mother unfortunately passed away recently,” Majima says, somehow managing to make it sound soft and sad and yet incredibly cutting and sharp. Haruka kind of wants to learn how to talk like that when she’s older, because Majima’s tone pulls a sputtering noise from her teacher and when Haruka peeks out of the corner of her eye she can see the woman’s face is somehow both paling and turning red at the same time.

“Our poor darling Haru-chan, she’s been such a trooper since her uncle and I took her in, but I know it’s been hard.” Majima pauses, humming just long enough to make it seem like he’s thinking, and then with a slight tightening of his arms around her he muses aloud in a tone Haruka knows is a trap being laid, “you don’t know if anyone’s been giving her trouble, do you? I’ve been away on a business trip, so we’ve had to ask a few of our friends for help watching her after school while my husband’s at work. No one’s been giving our Haru-chan a hard time, right?”

If Haruka’s teacher manages to sputter out a sentence in regards to that question, Haruka never hears it. She’s too busy trying not to let everything boil over, overwhelmed for a moment with too many emotions to name as the warm and safe feeling of being in Majima’s arms turns into a cocoon of too much, too messy. Her eyes burn and her chest feels both empty and overflowing, her arms tremble and her throat feels tight - she’s so happy Majima’s here, all but glaring at Haruka’s teacher over the rim of his sunglasses, and yet so incredibly sad, and guilty, and confused, because if her mom was alive and well this would never have happened and-

She’s crying before she knows it, crying without a sound into the collar of Majima’s sweater. She feels bad, because it’s probably expensive, as soft and somehow also scratchy as it is, but she can’t help it, the tears keep bubbling up and creeping down her face as she fights to breathe around all the feelings in her chest. 

Haruka doesn’t hear what Majima says just before he swans out of the classroom, her backpack dangling off his elbow and her body cradled so carefully against his chest. She knows he says something, the words biting but airy, but it’s like there’s cotton in her ears, stuffing them closed until all she can hear is her own racing heart. 

An eternity seems to pass, even though she knows it’s probably only a few minutes, and then suddenly they’re at the car and Majima is wrenching open the door to tuck them both inside before dragging it closed. The car smells like cigarette smoke and the cologne Majima wears for business meetings, the kind she’s been taught to recognize as expensive because it smells like a musty but spicy old closet. It’s a familiar smell to her by now, an almost relaxing one, and as the car starts up and slides out into the road she can feel herself sinking back out of the too-sensitive cotton-y feeling that’s taken over her body, until she can hear the muttered curse Majima lets out as he rips the medical mask off his face, until she can feel the rhythmic way his thumb of his other hand drags up and down her spine where he cradles her against his chest. 

“S’okay, kiddo, let it out,” Majima mutters, ducking down to press his face against the top of her head. Without the mask in between them his goatee scratches against her temple and catches against her hair, his lips finding her forehead as he leans back and combs her hair out of the way to drop a kiss there. “I’ve gotcha, girlie, s’okay. Cry all ya need, I ain’t goin’ nowhere, I’ll be right here, s’long as ya need. Let it out, Haru-chan, just let it out.”

The car drives on and on as she cries, her chest heaving until she can’t help but make noise, her face scrunched up even as it flushes with heat and her eyes go from stinging to burning. She cries and cries, shaking her head back and forth until she’s sure she’s ruined Majima’s sweater with snot, and the whole time Majima holds onto her tight enough to ache a little, his face pressed against her hair, his thumb dragging up and down along the top of her spine. 

(Later they pick up Uncle Kaz from the warehouse that he’s working at this week and she gets to sit squished between Majima and Uncle Kaz in the backseat as the two bicker about whether they should go fancy and get sushi takeout for dinner as a treat or if they should go to the Smile Burger by the apartment. Majima’s still in his wig and heels while Uncle Kaz is covered in wood shavings from moving and opening crates all day. She sits stuffed in between them in a way that means she can’t wear a seatbelt even if she wanted to, her face still too-warm and achy from crying, but Nishida makes sure to turn up the radio so she can hear it when one of her favorite songs comes on and somehow that makes everything better. 

That night Majima tells her about working at a hostess club back in the eighties as he paints her nails, Uncle Kaz snorting the occasional laugh that bounces her whole body from where she’s curled up in his lap. He tells her how he’d had to learn about fashion, about how he’d learned to do certain hairstyles and makeup looks, and how the girls had bullied him again and again into painting their nails, because they said no one did it as well as he did for free. Haruka falls asleep with red nails, the same color as her favorite sneakers and Uncle Kaz’s favorite shirt. In the morning Majima puts her hair into two braided pigtails, humming one of the songs she’s heard him sing during karaoke while Uncle Kaz burns their breakfast again. She gets to pick out the ribbons for the bows that go on the bottom and she asks for baby pink, even though it clashes with her red sneakers, nails, and backpack.

It’s not perfect, probably. It’s definitely not the family her teacher would want for her or probably even thinks she has, thanks to Majima’s intervention yesterday, but - 

But she doesn’t care. To her, it’s more than enough. 

To her, it’s everything.)

Notes:

this is one of the first chapters for this that i had written in full, because i just- i just got struck by the mental image of goromi-to-the-rescue and haruka just rolling with it.

anyway thank you to everyone who have been reading this so far! happy holidays to all and i love you <3

(also fun poll: am i writing haruka as too small? like physically? thoughts welcome, because i was a very small child and my baestie is baffled at how small i am describing haruka lol)

Chapter 4: January 2007 ; you can be you, you don’t have to be strong

Summary:

In the aftermath of - well, everything that happens in December following the Fifth Chairman’s death, Haruka finds herself bouncing between Four Shine in Sotenbori and Majima Construction Headquarters for the entirety of her winter break.

Notes:

we are found our way to ch4! once again a most heartfelt shoutout to my baestie, who read this and immediately went "why does haruka have a majima bias? that's so rude to her parent?? smh"

love you baestie. sorry i keep confusing you with information about yakuza. no one's life is harder than yours and also you're the realest one out there <3

In the aftermath of - well, everything that happens in December following the Fifth Chairman’s death, Haruka finds herself bouncing between Four Shine in Sotenbori and Majima Construction Headquarters for the entirety of her winter break. 

For the first few days that they travel back and forth, Majima seems to be giving Uncle Kaz the cold shoulder - only speaking to him when he has to, glaring at his back a lot, and taking deep, rattling breaths through his nose in the moment directly after Uncle Kaz says something. When fighting starts, either when they’re defending Majima Construction or when they’re wandering the streets of either location, they’re almost normal, if a little quiet - fighting like one fluid creature stretched between two mortal bodies, or so Nishida had put it once. But the second the fighting is over it’s like they’re strangers or worse again. It’s unsettling to watch and it makes the train rides to and from Sotenbori awkward and uncomfortable in a way Haruka isn’t used to feeling with Uncle Kaz and Majima. 

On the third day of their back-and-forth, Haruka and Majima end up wandering the sunlit streets of Sotenbori while Uncle Kaz helps one of the girls from Four Shine practice being a hostess. They’re wandering hand-in-hand, kind of like she used to with Uncle Kaz when they first met in Kamurocho, as the winter wind blows extra cold off the river nearby, and it’s nice. 

Or it’s mostly nice, except for the way she can tell Majima’s kind of miserable. 

She waits until they’ve grabbed a snack - takoyaki from a little stall that almost didn’t sell to Majima for some weird reason. Both settle on a bench near the river’s edge before she opens her mouth and goes, “are you mad at Uncle Kaz because he almost exploded again or because you feel bad I got kidnapped again?”

“Shit, kid,” Majima swears, spitting the words like he’s choking on them. His whole body jolts like he’s been stuck and she watches him eye the takoyaki ball in his hand like he’s contemplating shoving it in his mouth to keep from having to answer. Haruka narrows her eyes at him, trying to communicate don’t you dare, and he seems to receive the message, because in the end he only sighs and plops the treat back in the tray before sinking back against the back of the bench they’ve found. 

“You sure don’t pull your punches,” he mutters, shaking his head. She shifts, awkward and starting to feel guilty for asking, and as if he can tell he slings an arm out and pulls her against his side, tucking her against his body where, despite the fact that he’s as shirtless as always and it was snowing in Kamurocho when they left, he’s warm. “S’not surprisin’ though, considerin’ who’s raising ya, huh?”

Haruka sighs, the way Majima’s been sighing the past few days, and the action drags a chuckle out of him. “I wasn’t trying to punch,” she tells him pointedly. She pops a takoyaki ball in her mouth, even though it’s kind of chewy and really hot, and then reaches over to hold one up to Majima since she can’t talk with her mouth full. 

Majima plucks the takoyaki stick from her fingers, catches the ball between his teeth, and yanks it off the stick in one brutal motion. He makes a noise in the back of his throat, one almost like oof, hot, and it makes Haruka snort a little with laughter, which means she might’ve choked on her food if it wasn’t for Majima’s hand patting her back as she fought to swallow. 

Once both of their mouths are free of takoyaki and no one’s choking, Majima ruffles his gloved hand atop her pompom hat and mutters, “I know ya ain’t tryin’ to punch, Haru-chan, don’t worry. I just - s’not a kid’s job to worry ‘bout that kinda shit.”

Haruka feels her face scrunch up, nearly the same reaction she’d had the first time they’d tried takoyaki together days ago, and she sneaks her hand under Majima’s jacket to poke at his side as she says, “I care about you, Majima! Of course I’m going to worry! And I’m ten now, remember? I’m not a kid!”

Poking Majima’s side is kind of like poking a bony brick wall, but he still squirms away from her finger all the same. She keeps poking him for a minute, until he reaches around and grabs at her hand, tangling her knitted-glove fingers with his leather-glove fingers to keep her from continuing her attack. 

“Christ, don’t remind me, I’m not ready for ya to hit double digits. ‘Fore we know it, you’ll be a teenager, sneakin’ out and causin’ hell!”

Haruka rolls her eyes at Majima’s dramatics and carefully doesn’t point out that she’s already been sneaking out - it’s how she met Uncle Kaz, after all, and how she ended up getting kidnapped earlier in the month too. Instead she focuses back on the question that got them here, tipping her head back to peer at Majima’s face, which is flushed from the wind chill and yet somehow pale with exhaustion. She studies him for a moment, her chest aching as she does, and then ducks her head against his chest. 

“It’s a bit of both, isn’t it?”

Majima doesn’t ask her what she’s talking about, just sighs (again) and sets aside the takoyaki tray so that he can haul her up into his lap. She twists with the motion easily, familiar with this by now, and wraps her arms around his neck while he coils his around her back. He buries his face agains the pompoms of her hat for a second, and then mutters, “pretty much, Haru-chan, pretty much.”

She bites her lip, rolling the words she wants to say around in her mouth, before asking in a whisper, “Uncle Kaz hasn’t apologized either, huh?”’

Majima chuckles, but there’s no joy in the sound. Pressing a kiss to the top of her hat, he tips his head to the side so that his cheek rests against the crown of her head and whispers back, “no, but I haven’t exactly apologized either for keepin’ him outta the loop with my construction company, so I can’t really blame ‘im. We’ve just been doin’ our best to keep the show goin’ and not let you worry ‘bout us, which, apparently, we’ve failed at completely.”

Haruka sits in Majima’s lap while their takoyaki goes cold and finds herself thinking my uncles are kind of stupid, huh?

And then, with a slow shifting realization that crawls up her spine, she thinks oh.

Oh, I have two uncles now, don’t I?

Later that night she stands on a chair to help Uncle Kaz with his bowtie in the back rooms of the Four Shine. Uncle Kaz shifts a lot as she tries to straighten his bowtie, because he doesn’t like being all buttoned up and choked by proper attire (not her words, but she thinks they’re right), which makes it a little hard to help him figure out if the bowtie is straight or not. Haruka doesn’t mind, though, because Uncle Kaz has been so busy she’s barely gotten to see him the last few weeks, so any time with him is good in her books.

And like this, he’s kind of trapped, so Haruka takes her chance and says, “you should apologize to Majima, Uncle Kaz.”

Uncle Kaz jolts, like Majima did earlier in the day by the river, and then he heaves a big sigh, the kind that deflates him like a balloon. He doesn’t say anything for a long minute, standing still enough that Haruka can finally tell that the bowtie is finally straight, but eventually he mutters, “I want to, Haruka, I do. I just - don’t know how.”

Haruka gives Uncle Kaz her best attempt at a look, trying to make her eyebrows arch up like Date’s do when Uncle Kaz says something silly. It must work to some degree, because Uncle Kaz tries to shrink in place like her classmates do when they get in trouble during class. 

“Apologies typically start with the words I’m sorry, Uncle Kaz.”

The man winces, face scrunching up in a way that makes his slicked back hair look kind of funny, and then sighs again. “You’re right,” he mutters, eyes looking at the ground between his shoes like Nana-chan does when sensei tells her not to tease Aoi-chan for her lisp. After a moment he seems to steel himself, picking his gaze up to look at her, eyebrows furrowing in determination. “You’re right, Haruka. I’m sorry I made you worry about this, you’ve been through enough already.”

Haruka feels a grin steal across her lips and she laughs a little with happiness as she claps her hands. “See! Just like that, Uncle Kaz,” she teases. Reaching out her arms for a hug, she can’t help but giggle in delight when Uncle Kaz carefully leans down to hug her and then all of a sudden lifts her in the air and squeezes her tight. “And apology accepted! We’re family, aren’t we? And family worry about each other, Uncle Kaz!”

Uncle Kaz rumbles a low, warm laugh, the kind she can feel tickling through her body where it’s pressed against his chest, and kisses the top of her head before he puts her down on the ground. Once he straightens up she can tell he’s knocked his bowtie crooked, but she can’t be bothered to tell him, not when he’s smiling at her with that little Uncle Kaz smile he gets for just his family. 

“Are you going to be okay back here while we’re working the floor,” Uncle Kaz asks, gesturing to Yuki’s office around them. Haruka nods, gesturing in turn to the stack of manga and coloring books and origami kits surrounding the pile of pillows and blankets tucked in the corner by the desk. 

“I’m good, Uncle Kaz,” she promises, smiling up at him. “Go knock ‘em dead!”

Uncle Kaz laughs outright, a feat that still makes her bones sing with victory even a year after being adopted, and ruffles her hair again before he leaves. Haruka settles in for the night on what Yuki has taken to referring to as her comfy throne, picking up the first manga in the series that Nishida had recommended and packed for her that morning. 

She wakes up on the train home to Kamurocho, cradled in Uncle Kaz’s lap as the first rays of the sun peek out over the cloud coverage on the horizon. She thinks fuzzily about asking how far from home they are, but she doesn’t, because besides the hum of the train racing along the tracks she can hear the low murmur of two voices speaking just above her head. Smiling to herself she lets the familiar lullabye ease her back into sleep, content in the knowledge that when they get to Kamurocho Nishida will be waiting with a car, a stack of construction hats, and the promise of breakfast waiting back at Majima Construction Headquarters.

(For a while, life is normal for Haruka and her family. Four Shine wins the tournament, Majima Construction chases off their competition, and Haruka comes back from school to an apartment where her uncles make an effort to both be present for dinner, even if one of them is missing for bedtime. Weeks pass, they go out for dinner and karaoke for Valentine’s, and then -

And then Uncle Kaz tells her they’re moving, all the way out to Okinawa.

“I don’t want to go,” Haruka blurts out. For the first time in a while the feeling of ants under her skin takes over, her senses crawlings with bad-bad-bad. “I - I don’t want to leave, what about Nishida-niisan? What about Majima Construction? How’s Majima going to run it from Okinawa, Uncle Kaz?”

Majima looks away from his spot across the kotatsu, jaw clenching. He’s sitting so that when he turns his head, all Haruka can see is his eyepatch. He never sits like that for important things like family talks, never, always making sure she can see his eye, always making sure he can see her. 

A feeling like being drenched in ice water runs through Haruka’s body. Her throat starts to close up as the feeling like ants gets so, so much stronger. 

“Haruka,” Uncle Kaz says quietly. He’s shifting from his spot at the kotatsu beside her, eyebrows furrowed in a frown, fingers clenched atop the wood. “Majima-no-niisan isn’t coming with us. He’s going to stay here, to watch over Daigo and help guide him as he leads the Tojo Clan.”

Tears start to burn in Haruka’s eyes, but she fights not to let them fall. She’s ten now, ten, and she can make her case, she can make Uncle Kaz see that this is a bad idea, she can -

“Haruka,” Majima - no, her Uncle Goro says, voice low and rough, like he’s been smoking more than usual. It’s her full name, no affectionately trilled -chan. Dread fills her limbs with lead and her eyes with heat. “Kamurocho’s no place for a little girl tryin’ to grow up. You and Kaz are better off in Okinawa, helpin’ other kiddos out.”

“No,” she whispers. Her vision is going blurry, so much so that she can barely tell which shape is which uncle. “No, you - you have to come with us, Uncle Goro, you have to.”

The tears start to fall and she blinks, which clears her vision enough to see that the man in question flinches for a second, eyelashes fluttering and mouth pursing, before he sighs out a soft kind of sound and deflates like a balloon. He looks at her for a long moment, shoulders slumped, before leaning across the wooden surface between them to drop a hand atop her head. 

“Sorry, kiddo,” he mutters gruffly, fingers carding through her hair instead of ruffling it like he usually does, “but Okinawa’s no place for an old mad dog like me.”

Haruka cries. She cries and screams and lashes out when Uncle Kaz tries to pick her up, chanting no, no, no, no like her life depends on it. She sobs and scrambles around the table into Uncle Goro’s lap, begging him to come with them, shaking as she gasps I need you, Uncle Goro, we need you!

She cries herself sick, cries until she heaves bile into the toilet while Uncle Goro holds her hair back and Uncle Kaz gets her a glass of water. She cries, and cries, and cries, until her face is itchy and hot, until her chest hurts from gasping for breath and her head pounds with the force of her heartbeat, and then, finally, until the tears won’t come anymore. 

It doesn’t change anything. A week later she stands in the airport, eyes red and heart broken, as Uncle Goro crouches down and hands her a little pink flip phone. 

“S’already got my number in it, along with Nishida’s,” he says. He won’t meet her eyes, gaze pinned to the ground. He’s pale and a little unshaven, his goatee not as neat as usual while his hair flops in greasy waves across his forehead. He looks as miserable as she feels and in the end that’s why she can’t blame him for anything, even though she knows he’d made the decision with Uncle Kaz as a unit. “Ya ever wanna talk, ya ever need somethin’ or just need ta hear my voice, call, okay? Just - just call, Haru-chan. I’ll always pick up.”

Haruka shoves the back of her sleeve against her face, rubbing away the tears she won’t let fall, and then tosses herself into Uncle Goro’s chest in the biggest hug she can manage.

“I love you, Uncle Goro,” she says, voice wobbly but stubbornly strong all the same. 

Above her head Uncle Goro makes a noise like he’s been hit, but he wraps his arms around her and squeezes her tight before she can lean back and look up at him. 

“I love you too, Haru-chan,” he answers, voice pitched low like a secret, like a promise. “I love you so much, squirt. So be good for yer Uncle Kaz, okay? And make sure one of you calls me when ya land.”

“I promise,” she murmurs. 

When she can’t make herself pull away Uncle Goro scoops her up and hands her over to Uncle Kaz, who cradles her against his chest. She hears them kiss above her head and all she can do is hide her teary face in Uncle Kaz’s chest as they part and Uncle Kaz turns to go through security.

It’s not the worst thing to ever happen to her - she’s been kidnapped, and threatened, had her mother die just when she’d found her, and watched a building explode around her guardian twice now - but having to say goodbye to Uncle Goro for the foreseeable future is definitely on the list.

Being able to call him whenever she wants though makes it a little better. It’s like he’s still with them, even if he’s still back in Kamurocho instead.)

Notes:

we've made it to post kiwami2!! sorry haruka. if i had it my way you and uncle kaz would NOT leave ur uncle goro in kamurocho, but alas. maybe i'll write that fic one day. for now i'm still sticking too close to canon for anyone's peace of mind LOL

i hope everyone in enjoying this!! and that if you celebrate any of the holidays around this time that you had/are having a good one <3

Chapter 5: September 2009 ; he held me in his arms and he taught me to be strong, he told me when he’s gone, here’s what you do when trouble comes in town and men like me come around

Summary:

Haruka wakes to the gentle murmur of familiar deep voices and for the first time in two years, it feels like she's truly home.

Notes:

baestie who's playing beta for this started back up with school (phd!!! that's my baestie!!!!) so it took a minute to get them to look over this. but here we are!!! enjoy <3

Haruka wakes to the gentle murmur of familiar deep voices and almost immediately wants to cry. 

It’s a comfort she hasn’t had in - in what feels like a lifetime, a comfort that she used to have at her fingertips almost every day, one she’d taken for granted that it would never, ever be out of her reach. And now suddenly it’s back, the murmur of two rough, low, smoke-worn voices harmonizing just out of sight, and it’s so comforting she almost forgets the feeling of blood drying tacky along her arms. 

She stirs, pushing herself upright as best she can, and the murmuring stumbles and stutters to a stop. It makes her heart lurch for a second, panic kicking in where the voices once were, until a voice snaps, “Kazuma, if you try to roll off this bed to pick her up I’m going to put a knife in you!”

Even though there’s real rage buried in that voice it still has the power to settle her, to turn her scramble upright into a slump. There’s a grunt that Haruka would know anywhere, a grunt so distinct she thinks she could pick it out of a crowd of a hundred men trying to make the same noise, and then there’s the scuff of shoes, leather and metal and rubber, and -

And it’s like for the first time in two years, she’s truly home. 

By the time Uncle Goro scoops her up into his arms like she’s nine again she’s crying, not as hard as she was when he first got to the hospital, but enough to make her head throb and her sore and puffy face ache even more. He soothes a hand down her back as he shifts to carry her princess-style before walking across the short distance between the couch where she’d been sleeping and the hospital bed Uncle Kaz is stuck in. There’s some shuffling, a few grunts of effort and pain both, and then she lifts her head and finds herself settled in between both men, though her full weight still rests against Uncle Goro. 

“Haruka,” Uncle Kaz rasps. He’s pale, with purple shadows making his tired eyes look sunken and even more exhausted. He reaches for her, only for Uncle Goro to lean over and shove his hand down with a muttered that’s yer fuckin’ IV hand, idiot. There’s a slow, fluttering blink and then the barest hint of a pout graces Uncle Kaz’s mouth. It would be enough to make her laugh, at any other time. 

But not right now.

“Uncle Kaz,” she rasps back. She scrubs at her face, wincing as it makes everything ache and burn worse, and then reaches over to wrap her arm around his neck for a hug. “Uncle Kaz, you - you - you -”

The words don’t come. They sit, heavy and tangled in her throat, choking her, just like her tears had earlier in the waiting room. But just like in the waiting room, a big, calloused hand moves up and down over her other arm, anchoring her as the tide of almost-grief washes over her again. 

“Don’t worry, Haru-chan,” Uncle Goro murmurs. He leans over to join the squished, careful hug, and when he leans back he draws her back with him, which she hates, even though she understands why. It’s not the time to crowd Uncle Kaz, even though she wants to. “I tore into ‘im already and you can bet yer ass m’gonna tear into ‘im again once his ass is healed.”

Uncle Kaz breathes out a laugh, one that makes him wince immediately after, because he’s in the hospital after being stabbed in the stomach. 

Haruka tries not to cry again. Uncle Goro guides her to lean back against him, and then sighs into her hair. 

They sit in silence for a while, nothing but the beep of the heart monitor filling the room. Without the light on Haruka can’t see much, but it’s enough for her to be able to watch Uncle Kaz’s face, tracking the way it tenses as pain flares and then going lax as everything is swept back under the rug thanks to the drugs running through his IV. As she watches the pain seems to crop up more and more through the weight of whatever he's been given, which probably means he’s due for more soon. Haruka almost asks about it, but holds back because she’s scared that if she tries to speak, her voice will break.

“Did you get a hold of the Ryudo family and let them know what happened,” Uncle Kaz asks eventually, the words slow and drowsy like he’s fighting off sleep. Uncle Goro shifts underneath her, hums in the back of his throat, and then reaches back behind them to retrieve a glass of water from a tiny tray table nearby. 

“Yeah, I got a hold of ‘em,” Uncle Goro answers. He holds the cup up to Uncle Kaz’s lips, tipping it gently so that he can drink a little at a time without choking, and then instead of putting it back on the table he holds it in front of her face as well, nudging it against her cheek. She makes a face, but reaches up to take it and can’t help but drink the rest of it in three large gulps. “Gave ‘em the sitrep, told ‘em to expect the boys down there to inspect the house and see if we ought’a just tear the rest down and start over.”

Fiddling with the glass in hand, Haruka cranes her head to peer at Uncle Goro and asks, “is everyone okay? Is - is Mikio doing okay?”

Uncle Goro gives her a reassuring look, though it’s obvious he’s almost as exhausted as Uncle Kaz probably is. “Yeah, kid, he’s doin’ okay. Talked to both him and Nakahara and got the lowdown on all the lil’ rascals currently crowdin’ the old man’s house. Everyone’s still shook up, but they’re hangin’ in there.” He pauses, something flickering across his face, and then he adds, kind of wryly, “though Mikio must’a been on the good shit, ‘cause he was ramblin’ somethin’ about keepin’ an eye on you, Haru-chan, so you didn’t try and run off to stab whoever got yer old man here like, and I quote, that uppity freak she chased off earlier. Don’t got a clue what he was ramblin’ ‘bout, but - ”

It’s a testament to how tired she is and how strong the relief that tears through her body is that instead of keeping her mouth shut, she shifts against Uncle Goro’s chest, holds up the empty glass to silently ask for a refill, and drozily interrupts him to go, “oh, he was probably talking about the guy I tried to stab.”

Hospitals at night should, in Haruka’s mind, be silent and peaceful places of rest and healing. But the silence that unfolds in the room around her tells her, through the fog of exhaustion and the headache, that she has royally fucked up. 

“Uh,” she manages, just before everything erupts around her. 

“You stabbed someone,” Uncle Kaz cries, strangled and hoarse. He’s wrenching his arm up toward her again, heedless of the IV sticking out of him, and he moves so sharply he almost knocks over his IV pole. “Haruka, you - ”

Uncle Goro bites out something that might be a groan or a laugh, lifting her up only to deposit her on the bed against Uncle Kaz’s shoulder so that he can shuffle over to the pitcher on the table behind them to refill the glass. He smacks at Uncle Kaz’s head as he goes, but doesn’t say anything for the moment, likely trying not to draw too much attention to himself as the person who, so far in Haruka’s life, has bought her about fifteen different types of knives.

“He was trying to destroy our home,” Haruka tells them both, twisting so that she can do her best to press Uncle Kaz back against the bed so that he doesn’t hurt himself. It’s like an ant trying to hold back a landslide, a lost little goldfish fighting to stop a tsunami - pointless except that in this case, the landside-tsunami lets himself get pushed back down, either because he doesn’t want to hurt her or because of the drugs in his system. Haruka doesn’t really care which right now, she’s just glad it works. 

“He threatened Mame,” Haruka continues, once her guardian is slouched back against the hospital bed. “I wasn’t just going to stand by and let it happen, Uncle Kaz!”

She doesn’t mention that the man in the striped suit and gold tie had slapped her. The man is dead - Haruka watched him fall off the top of the hospital herself from her spot in the helicopter next to Date. Mentioning that he slapped her would only kick Uncle Goro into a rage and twist Uncle Kaz up inside that he wasn’t there to help.

But still, the reason sits on her tongue, along with all the others.

(He threatened their home. He scared Mame. He had his men hurt Mikio. And later he fought Uncle Kaz on top of the hospital and it had seemed like he was threatening Daigo too. For all that and more, she doesn't regret not hesitating to pull out one of her switchblades and lunge at him. 

But mostly, at the deepest, darkest parts of her, she can admit - she’d lunged at him because he’d slapped her and she’d wanted to hurt him back. 

The only thing she truly regrets is that he’d stepped aside, only getting a gash along his forearm instead of the gut wound Haruka was aiming for.)

“Haruka, you can’t put yourself in danger like that - ”

Uncle Kaz may be leaning back against the bed, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t trying to gesture or reach for her, which she knows instinctively is bad for him right now. His voice is a little raised too on the tail end of a raspy shout that Haruka isn’t listening to and she balls up her hands into fists, prepared to argue back, when a soft knock echoes on the door and a nurse sticks her head in. 

“Is everything alright in here,” she asks, somewhere between respectful and hollow with exhaustion. Haruka shifts, not sure if she’s supposed to be in the room, let alone in the bed with Uncle Kaz, but the nurse only briefly glances at her before turning her attention back to her patient next to her. “Kiryu-san, do you need more pain medicine?”

“That’d be great,” Uncle Goro answers, even as Uncle Kaz opens his mouth, likely to decline. “Sorry ‘bout the noise, nurse-chan. Didn’t mean to cause a ruckus this late.”

The nurse casts a look over toward Uncle Goro, her face momentarily shadowing with something like fear, and Haruka feels her stomach turn. Haruka hates that response, the split second of fear and uncertainty people experience around her family sometimes, but she bites her tongue on her knee-jerk response to defend him, partially because she’s so tired and wrung out and partially because the nurse shows no other signs of unease for the yakuza in her midst.

“It’s no problem, Majima-san,” the woman says, stiff but professionally polite. She shuffles toward Uncle Kaz’s bedside and over Haruka’s head both men share a look as the woman bends to examine and fiddle with the IV bag next to the railing. “There you go, Kiryu-san, that should ease your pain soon. Is there anything else you need?”

Uncle Kaz breaks eye contact with Uncle Goro and sighs, shaking his head and murmuring his thanks to the nurse. She strides out of the room in three quick steps, the door clicking shut behind her, leaving the three of them sitting in silence once more. 

“I hate these fucking meds,” Uncle Kaz grumbles, his words slurring a little bit toward the end as they supposedly hit his system. Uncle Goro snorts, shuffling back over to Haruka’s side and handing her the water glass, now once again full.

“And I hate seein’ ya hooked up to all these fuckin’ machines, but ya don’t see me whining about it,” Uncle Goro mock-grumbles back. Even though he’s teasing, Haruka can tell he means every word he says, but the tense way he’s holding his shoulders tells her that underneath the teasing, he’s still very upset and angry that Uncle Kaz put himself in danger like he did. “Go to sleep, ya fuckin’ dumbass. We’ll still be here when you wake up, right, Haru-chan?”

“Right!”

It takes less than a minute for Uncle Kaz to fall asleep, which upsets Haruka just a little bit, because that means he’s probably really hurt, but it also means that he can’t keep berating her for the attempted stabbing. She breathes a kind of sigh of relief when his eyes close and don’t open, shifting toward the edge of the bed, even though she’s reluctant to climb off. She watches Uncle Kaz’s chest rise and fall for a little while and then whispers, “Uncle Goro, how close did he come to dying?”

Behind her Uncle Goro sighs, a big gusty kind of thing that suits Uncle Kaz more, and the sound of his shoes against the floor heralds him walking back over. She looks up at him, but only after he nudges her in the arm with the refilled water glass.

“Closer than either of us like, but not close enough to keep ‘im out of the game for long,” Uncle Goro answers. Most people probably would’ve told her don’t ask something like that Haruka or just answered not close at all, honey, don’t worry, but not Uncle Goro - he’s always made it a point to answer her without lies or sugar coating things as best he can. It’s one of the things Haruka loves about him and one of the reasons why she asks - because she needs to know and she knows her Uncle Goro understands that about her.

Biting her lip she glances between her uncles before bringing the glass of water to her mouth. She drains it again in several large gulps before rotating around to put it down on the little table where it’d originally come from. Uncle Goro plucks it from her fingers before she can twist too far, refilling it before he puts it back down. 

He looks tired - shoulders slightly hunched, shirt rumpled with spots of dried mucus all over his chest from where she’d buried her face against him while she sobbed in the waiting room. Standing like he is in the dimly lit hospital room, Haruka thinks for one of the first times in her life my uncles are getting old, huh?

The thought sends a spark of panic down her spine that she tries to squash, making her chest tight and her eyes sting. She blinks to keep the tears from building enough to fall, letting her body ease back into a slump against Uncle Kaz’s shoulder. 

“You get the guy you tried to stab at all? And was it one’a Mine’s guys or the bastard himself?”

Haruka startles a little at Uncle Goro’s questions, blinking this time with confusion. She tips her head to the side to watch him rearrange a chair at Uncle Kaz’s beside, waiting until he’s seated to murmur, “he stepped out of the way of most of it, but I cut up his arm some since he didn’t get far enough away.” She thinks for a moment, tries to remember if anyone had said the man’s name, and then gives it up as a lost effort. “I don’t know his name, I don’t think that anyone said it. But it was the man on the roof - the one in the striped suit and golden tie.”

Unlike Uncle Kaz, Uncle Goro can lock down his face so that she can’t always tell what he’s thinking. Something flickers across his face, something he wrestles down before she can pick it apart, and then he tips his head back against the edge of the chair behind him and blows out a breath like he’s smoking a cigarette.

“Kazu-chan’s gonna be stuck in that bed for a week,” Uncle Goro tells her, head still tipped toward the ceiling. “Earliest they’ll agree to release ‘im is next Tuesday and even then it’s only if he’s healin’ alright. I sent Nishida down with the boys to start rebuilding Mornin’ Glory and Daigo-chan’s still bedridden as well, which means I gotta keep fillin’ ‘is shoes for a li’l while.” 

Haruka accepts this information with a slightly unsure nod. She braces herself for the part where he says it ain’t safe for you here, sweetheart, so you’re boardin’ the first flight outta here back home. She tries to store up enough fight in her to argue back that she’d rather stay here, but before she can Uncle Goro adds, “s’gonna be a packed fuckin’ week, but if you’re up for it I can probably teach you a few defensive knife moves in between meetin’s and shit. Should’a done so years ago, really, but Kazu-chan always gets so fussy ‘bout yer fuckin’ knives that I always let it go.”

This time she’s not quick enough to blink away the tears before they build up and one slips down her cheek as she stares, startled and overwhelmed, at the man sprawled back in the chair. She takes so long to respond that he tips his head back down and she watches as his face twists in concern at the sight of the lone tear. 

“You’re - you’re not sending me back to Okinawa?”

Uncle Goro sits up, strips off his leather gloves, and reaches forward to take her face in his hands. He wipes away the tear with a swipe of his thumb and the sensation of his calluses on her itchy-hot face would probably sting if it wasn’t a comfort she’d always crave. 

“Haru-chan, baby, I ain’t sendin’ ya anywhere ‘less ya ask me to. Got it?”

She nods, even though the motion knocks out a few more tears. Uncle Goro wipes them away, soft and steady like, and then opens up his arms for her to crawl into if she wants. She does, immediately, climbing carefully off Uncle Kaz’s hospital bed to settle in the safe circle of his arms. 

(Uncle Goro was right - it does turn out to be a packed fuckin’ week. Haruka trails after him from room to room in the Tojo clan headquarters, tucking herself out of sight behind a desk or large armchair since there’s no one left in Kamurocho that she and Uncle Goro trust with her safety. She carries a bag of snacks that she repacks each morning and makes good use of the tea sets and coffee maker Yayoi shows her, keeping both herself and Uncle Goro caffeinated and fed. 

In between meetings and snacks Uncle Goro teaches her how to hold a knife so that it’s hard to knock from her grip and how to knock a knife out of someone else’s grip in return. They spend most of the first two days on those drills, using a new switchblade Uncle Goro gives her and his tanto, so that she can get the feel of two different blade weights. At the end of the second day she begs to learn something new, antsy from a brief visit to see Uncle Kaz in the hospital, and he relents with a sigh.

“Slashin’s better than stabbin’, most of the time,” he tells her, suit jacket tossed aside and sleeves rolled up. They’re in his apartment, the same one he’s had since they first met, with only a lamp on in the living room and the kitchen light dim in the corner to illuminate the space. “You can change motion easier with it and it keeps ya from committin’ too far into someone’s bubble. Don’t stab unless ya gotta, okay? And remember to keep your grip solid, but not overly tight, lest someone try’n break your wrist or somethin’. Ya followin’?”

Haruka nods. She keeps her weight balanced at the fronts of her feet, like Uncle Goro had taught her yesterday, and rolls her wrist as she watches him mimic the same motion across from her.

“It’s a distance game,” she answers, not sure where or when she’d heard him say that before, but knowing for sure that it’s something he’d said at some point in her life. Maybe when she was younger and asked why he always fought with a knife instead of something else, she isn’t sure. “I have to stay mobile, stay low, and make it more dangerous for them to be close to me than for me to be close to them. Right, Uncle Goro?”

She’s met with a silence so potent it drags her gaze up her grip on the knife and the positioning of her feet to look across the room. Uncle Goro’s standing just inside the ring of light from the lamp, arms suddenly limp at his sides as he just - stares at her. 

Something in her gut squirms at the expression on his face, because it reminds her suddenly of the way he’d looked at her in the waiting room at the hospital when he burst in and found her huddled in a plastic chair covered in blood. Like he’s staring at a ghost or waking from a nightmare - like he’s somewhere between fear and grief, trapped in the moment where everything slips from his fingers. 

“Uncle Goro,” Haruka asks. Her voice comes out small and childish in a way she hates and she falters, her weight falling back on her heels, her hands suddenly sweaty around her knife. “Did I - did I say something wrong?”

Uncle Goro blinks, shakes himself a little bit like Mame does after playing around in the shallow waves at the beach, and sheaths his knife with a rough, shaky sounding sigh. In a split second he’s crossing the space between them, reaching out for her and drawing her into a hug against his chest. 

“No, sweetheart,” Uncle Goro mutters, voice thick in his throat as he folds his body around her, like he can shield her from something only he can see. “No, you - that was perfect, Haru-chan. I’m just - just tired, I think. How about we call it a night?”

Haruka swallows around the lump in her throat and nods into her uncle’s shoulder, wrapping her free arm around his back. She doesn’t mention how his accent slips away, just lets him hold her as long as he needs to. It feels important, for some reason Haruka only kind of understands, like how she hugs Uncle Kaz goodbye every time they visit him at the hospital, and so she just leans into him and hugs him back as best she can.

When he finally pulls back his eyes are red, his lashes wet. He drops a kiss on her forehead, smooths a hand through her hair, and ushers her off to her room for bed. In the morning he surprises her with a trip to her favorite cafe for breakfast, as well as a stop by the karaoke bar later that day, promising they can stay as long as she wants, well past whatever bedtime restrictions she usually has on the island.

It feels like he’s saying something without words, but whatever it is, Haruka doesn’t quite understand. But either way, she basks in the attention, happy just to be able to spend time with Uncle Goro like she’s ten again, Kamurocho a familiar whirlwind all around them.)

Notes:

i am so sorry for the wait!!! but it's been beta'd up through ch7 so the next two should be out pretty soon <3

anyway my agenda to ignore the fact that the whole point of haruka's character is to break the cycle of violence and instead give her knives continues!! (my train of thought was just killed by dolphin man mv sorry.... recalibrating now smh) ANYWAY i really loved getting to write majima and kiryu interacting in this one, ngl. i don't know why i torture myself by keeping to canon and therefore keeping them apart, but i sure do. one day i'll cave and just write a straight up kazumaji fic not from haruka's pov, but i have to pull myself out of arcane hell first lol.

anyway-anyway-anyway - i hope you all enjoyed!! happy new year!!! <3

Chapter 6: April 2011 ; slipping through my fingers all the time, i try to capture every minute

Summary:

Haruka looks forward to the school break in spring every year, because that means she gets to board a plane (with Nishida) and spend the week with Uncle Majima in Kamurocho. This year is no different, even if there's a new addition (old addition?) to the Tojo Clan wandering Kamurocho as well.

Notes:

as always shoutout to my baestie, i'm so sorry you came into this expecting primary parent kiryu and all i've shown you is the father that stepped up. i love you!!!!

Every year for spring vacation, in the slight lull between one school year ending and the next beginning, Nishida flies out from Tokyo to Okinawa just to turn around and fly right back to the city with Haruka in tow. And every year Haruka stands, jittery and anxious, as she and Uncle Kaz wait in the airport for Nishida’s plane to land.

“Easy, Haruka,” Uncle Kaz rumbles, the same way he did last year, just before he pulled her into a side hug and squeezed her tight. The year before that he’d patted the top of her head, awkward but gentle. This year he elbows her in the shoulder, gently, oh so gently, and gives her a lopsided smile. “Nishida’ll be here soon, don’t worry.”

Haruka huffs at the electronic screen displaying all the arrivals and departures in the tiny little airport, doing her best not to fidget with the strap of the bag over her shoulder. “I’m not worried ,” Haruka insists. That, too, is the same thing she’s said every year since the beginning, as is, “I’m excited , Uncle Kaz!”

She pauses, shifting from foot to foot in her sandals, which she’ll have to trade in for boots once they get to their destination in Kamurocho. Quietly, almost reluctantly, she admits, “I wish you could come with us, though.”

Last year Uncle Kaz had squeezed her tighter and held her for so long she imagined he was trying not to cry. This year he just sighs and reaches over to ruffle her hair before combing it back behind her ear, bending down to drop a kiss to the crown of her head before leaning back to give her a sad little smile. 

“I know, Haruka,” he says, his voice pitched low, either with wistfulness or regret, she can’t tell which. “Me too, but it’s better this way. I need to stay with everyone at Morning Glory. It’d be too much for the Ryudo family to handle and it’s not their responsibility anyway.”

Haruka bites back a whine before turning it into a theatrical sigh, or at least she tries to. She thinks her voice might still come out a little whiny when she tries to tease, “and you need to stay out of trouble too! I’m pretty sure Date-san’s going to hold onto his No Kiryu Kazuma in Kamurocho ban for a little while longer after what happened last year.”

It’s a terrible attempt at lightening the mood with a joke, but Uncle Kaz huffs out a laugh for her instead of wincing at the reminder of the shitshow that was last April and shakes his head. “Better not piss off Date,” he agrees quietly, leaning over to bump his hip into her side gently. They stand like that for a bit, pressed together as the little airport moves around them, and then finally, at last -

“Here he comes,” Uncle Kaz warns. He can see more clearly than she can, because even though the crowd departing isn’t really big, it’s big enough and she’s still yet to hit the growth spurt the doctor keeps promising her. “Three o’ clock, wearing the same blue shirt as always.”

Haruka swats at him, because he has no room to talk after having three pairs of the same red shirt still hanging up in his closet. Uncle Kaz rocks back, as if her little swat could hurt the Dragon of Dojima, but before she can roll her eyes at him she spots Nishida in the crowd, a briefcase slung over one shoulder, eyes already on her. 

Elation crashes through her like a wave, the same way it did last year and the year before that and the year before that , and without a second thought she’s taking off through the airport and darting around the people in her path, shouting, “ Nishida-niisan, Nishida-niisan! ”

She’s not quite as small as she used to be, even without her promised growth spurt, but Nishida meets her with open arms and scoops her up from the ground like she’s still the same pint sized kid she’d been when they’d met. He lifts her just far enough for her feet to leave the ground, their bags knocking together, and spins her around and around until she can’t help but cling to him and laugh, even as her sandals drag across the ground.

“That’s our princess,” he whispers against her hair, squeezing her tight as he slows their spins down enough to stop. It leaves her dizzy and breathless, both the nickname and the spinning, and when she pulls back her whole head feels hot with the force of her joy. She blinks a few times, to make sure there aren’t any tears building, and Nishida smiles down at her with a few hanging to his own lashes.

After a moment Nishida pulls himself together, reaching up to wipe up his eyes and then nodding his head to someone behind her. “Kiryu-san,” he says, respect anchoring his tone with weight, even as fondness pulls at the corners of his mouth. “I hope I didn’t have you two waiting too long for me?”

“Hey Nishida,” Uncle Kaz says, voice equally weighed down with respect and curling with the fondness he won’t show in the corners of his mouth. “No, we haven’t been waiting long. Got here only a bit ago and people watched some.” 

Nishida nods, as if that’s an answer he expected, and then they all stand there for a moment, the unsaid hanging over their heads. Nishida shifts, a small display of anxiety he only shows when wrapped up in the aftermath of the ridiculous schemes he’s asked to pull off, and then instead of saying anything else he deflates with a sigh.

Uncle Kaz gives a wry kind of look with his eyes if not his mouth and shakes his head. “Go on, you two,” he says, gesturing back at the security line with one hand while he tucks the other in his pants pocket. “You might as well get moving and get through security, since your plane takes off in a little bit.”

Neither Nishida nor herself move for one long, agonizing second. She knows deep down they all wish Uncle Kaz was coming with them, just as she knows they all know he can’t. Same as every year, it takes Uncle Kaz sighing and reaching out to push Haruka’s shoulder gently to get her moving before she and Nishida start to shuffle away. 

“I’ll take good care of Haruka, Kiryu-san,” Nishida promises, bowing a quick but deep bow. Haruka blinks rapidly again, biting the inside of her cheek to keep herself together. “And we’ll be back next week, I’ll resend the flight details before we board on Sunday.”

With a rough swallow Haruka puts on the brightest voice she can and chimes out one last, “bye Uncle Kaz! I love you!”

Uncle Kaz dips his head, smiles a little at his shoes, and quietly parrots back, “I love you too, Haruka,” and then he’s gone.

Nishida puts a hand on her shoulder and eases her toward the security line, which they go through with relative ease. Haruka doesn’t need a big bulky bag where she’s going, so she only has her mp3 player, a notebook with two lists written down, a pair of boots to change into when they land, and a jacket stuffed inside her bag. Nishida tells her as they wait in line that he has a few manga he thinks she’ll like, a puzzle magazine, and a new handheld video game for her to try if she wants. 

She doesn’t end up using anything either of them brought, though, because instead of reading, or playing a video game, or listening to music, she spends the hour-long flight pressed against Nishida’s shoulder, catching up on everything that’s been happening in Kamurocho.

“ Minami-san did what ,” she hisses, trying not to giggle as Nishida sighs fondly and shakes his head. “I thought he wasn’t allowed near any more coffee makers after last time!”

“I know, but it was late and oyaji wasn’t thinking, so he asked Minami for a cup of coffee and then, well… At least I’d gotten a replacement fire extinguisher since the last time, so it all worked out in the end.” Nishida shrugs, smiling crookedly at the memory of what must of been a very chaotic night, and Haruka finally loses control of her giggles, laughing at the mental image it all paints - an on-fire coffee maker, a put upon Nishida smothering the flames in chemicals, and one caffeine-deprived cranky family patriarch facedown on the floor pretending like it all wasn’t happening. 

The flight passes in this fashion, stories of the other kids at the orphanage and Uncle Kaz exchanged for the wacky tales of Uncle Goro and all the silly things the Majima Family men have gotten up to in the last year. It’s a short flight, barely an hour in total, hardly enough time for the plane to get up to cruising speed from what Haruka understands, and yet it always feels like it takes forever to get to Tokyo and the car waiting for them outside the airport.

It’s not Minami waiting for them this time, which is kind of a bummer, but the family man who is waiting for them bows low and murmurs Haruka-hime as he pops the trunk for Haruka’s luggage and then scurries around to open the car door for her. Haruka gives him a little wave, always feeling a bit silly when one of Uncle Goro’s men calls her that, before shuffling into the back seat with her backpack on her lap. 

The car ride takes a little over half an hour, not too much traffic, but enough that it’s gone from afternoon to evening and the familiar streets of Kamurocho are filled with the nightlife hustle and bustle Haruka still sometimes misses when she’s falling asleep to the sound of the nearby waves at the orphanage. By the time they pull up on Park Boulevard, Haruka’s got her boots on and her sandals in her bag, the light jacket she’d brought with her thrown on over her t-shirt. Nishida helps steady her as she leaves the car, bowing in such a way that she can’t help but laugh, before he hesitates, obviously caught between walking her down to Purgatory and Uncle Goro’s office or going ahead and taking the car with her luggage over to the apartment. 

“The bathrooms are right there, Nishida-niisan,” Haruka teases, gesturing to the (in her opinion) pointless entrance through the men’s bathrooms that leads into the Kamurocho Hills construction space. “And you know I can take care of myself. Even if you walk with me Uncle Goro’s just going to send you right back to take my suitcase to the apartment, so just go ahead, okay?”

Nishida purses his lips in obvious discomfort at the idea of leaving her alone, even though there’s twelve Majima Family men that she can spot without even turning her head and he’s already slipped her a knife for her boot, since she couldn’t bring one on the plane. She rolls her eyes at him, bites back a smile even though part of her is a tiny bit genuinely annoyed at how helpless everyone views her, and nudges his side gently. 

“I’ll be fine, I promise. Just go drop stuff at the apartment and I’ll text you where to meet us for dinner!”

When Nishida still doesn’t look convinced at the soundness of this plan Haruka huffs out a found sigh and rolls her eyes, glancing around and then calling out, “Toma-san! Would you mind walking with me to your oyaji’s office?”

Toma, who’s been with Uncle Goro in the Majima Family long enough to have been present for the infamous zombie mob stunt back when Haruka first met her uncles, perks up from where he’s been slouched on a wall nearby and bounds over with the energy of a much younger man. He grins at her, wrinkles creasing beside his eyes and his mouth, and Haruka can see that in the time since she’s last seen him he’s acquired two more gold teeth, likely to replace ones knocked out in street fights or from the Colosseum. 

“‘Course, Haru-hime,” Toma says, throwing her a little salute as he comes to a bouncy stop at their side. “Don’t worry, captain, I’ll make sure she’s safely delivered to oyaji’s office!”

Nishida sighs out a sound Haruka’s choosing to believe is fondness and not relief, because she can handle herself , thank you very much, and shakes his head. “Text me if instead of meeting you all I need to bring food back with me,” he tells Haruka as he makes his way around the car to the front driver’s side. Haruka flashes him a thumbs up, Toma waves, and Nishida reluctantly climbs in the car and drives off.

“So,” Toma says, once Nishida has joined the traffic along the street and is well on his way to being out of sight. “Are we taking a detour to the gambling halls, little lady, or are we heading straight for your old man?”

Haruka lets that idea tempt her for just a moment before shaking her head with the weariest, most dramatic sigh she can muster. “I think I’m still banned,” she muses, shooting Toma a conspiratorial look out of the corner of her eye, “but if you think you can get me past the front door, I might take you up on that offer later. For now, let’s just head straight to Uncle Goro.”

“You got it, ma’am! Right this way.”

It’s not far to Uncle Goro’s office, but Toma doesn’t seem put out to be escorting her, nor does he treat it as a chore - he walks next to her with a bounce in his step, asking about how school’s going for her and if there’s anything that needs fixing already in their rebuilt house. Haruka enjoys talking to Toma, always has, and so she fills him in on school, how she can’t quite decide what club she’ll join in the upcoming year, and how the house doesn’t need repairs so much as a good deep cleaning to get all the dog hair and sand out. 

Around them Purgatory is the same as Haruka remembers, noisy and a little smoky and crowded with men in suits and women in barely anything at all. Some of the women Haruka even recognizes, familiar faces from back when she was walking around here during her first journey into Kamurocho. Some of them seem to recognize her too, brightening up and waving as she passes by. Haruka waves back every time, delighting in the little acknowledgements that even though she doesn’t live in Kamurocho anymore, she still belongs here all the same. 

Toma murmurs last chance as they pass the gambling dens, to which Haruka rolls her eyes and elbows him with a laugh. 

“Well, Haru-hime, it appears we have arrived. I’d walk with you inside, but word on the street is your old man’s in a mood and I’m not lookin’ to get roped into that.”

Haruka frowns as she reaches for the doorknob to Uncle Goro’s office, pausing in place. “He’s in a mood? Is something wrong?”

Toma visibly chews over what he wants to say, the wrinkles around his eyes dancing as he shifts from foot to foot. Eventually the man sighs, shaking his head a little in a way that makes his black side-swept bangs bounce against his temples. There’s gray there, Haruka realizes suddenly, and she feels both very young and very old, unable to think of anything except for the fact that when they’d met his hair had been dyed cherry red, brittle from bleach and stiff from wax.

“Nothing specifically is wrong,” Toma says, his words coming out slow and low, like a promise. “It’s just - y’know how oyaji can be, don’t you? Sometimes he gets in his own head and he’s still been working to smooth out all that shit from last year, hasn’t been able to get out to the batting cages for a while and that’s never a good sign - ”

For a second Haruka’s chest hurts, so much so that she thinks she might cry. She feels like a little girl again, barely ten years old, begging Uncle Kaz not to move them away, kicking and screaming that Uncle Goro can’t be left alone here in Kamurocho. She’s always known that she was right, to an extent, but as the years pass and her yearly visits come and go, she sees more and more clearly just how right she was. But she knows how stubborn Uncle Kaz and Uncle Goro are - neither one of them is budging from this ridiculous the Tojo Clan needs the Mad Dog of Shimano business anytime soon, so all she can do is -

“But that doesn’t matter,” Toma says, dropping a hand on her head to gently tousle her hair, leaning down to her with a well worn smile as he inadvertently pulls her from her thoughts. “Now that you’re here oyaji’s going to be just fine!”

(All she can do is just be here for the week and hope it’s enough.)

Haruka blinks so that she doesn’t risk tearing up, straightens her back a little to her full height, and gives Toma the biggest smile she has in her arsenal. “He better be,” she says, as brightly as she can. Worry still tugs at her chest and guilt still swirls in the corners of her mind, but she pushes both away as carefully as she can - Uncle Goro’s a bloodhound when it comes to her feelings and if he catches one whiff of distress on her he’s going to hunt it down and do his best to fight it to the death. 

Toma smiles, that same well worn smile, the one that suddenly reminds her of the kind of older, kindly B-plot relatives you see on tv shows, and then tucks himself into a deep, respectful bow. 

“That’s our girl,” he murmurs as he rises back up, eyes just as bright with mischief as they’d been when she was a scared little kid and he was smeared in zombie makeup. Pride rolls through her like a wave breaking against the shore, a more powerful feeling than she can brace herself for, and she feels herself flush and bite back a grin. Toma straightens up fully and gives her one last wave before he turns around, ambling away with that same bounce in his step as before. 

Haruka watches him go for a moment before she turns back around and twists the doorknob to let herself into Uncle Goro’s office. It opens without a creak, well maintained and expensive, revealing the big looming aquarium wall across the dim, mostly empty space of the room. The patriarch of the Majima family sits, lit mostly by a single lamp with an aged, yellowing lightbulb, hunched miserably next to a stack of papers and a teeny, tiny little laptop.

Uncle Goro’s hair looks greasy, even from a distance, and there’s just enough light from the lamp on his desk to see a smudge of ink on his jaw. Haruka steps inside, letting the door swing shut behind her, and does her best to squash the swell of concern that rises in her chest before it can truly crash over her head. 

Without looking up Uncle Goro snarls, “if you ain’t my fuckin’ kid, asswipe, get the fuck out ‘fore I make ya.”

Electric joy slingshots through her veins, like a wildfire in her lungs, like a jolt of lightning down her spine. She sucks in a breath and blinks rapidly, proactively trying to keep wetness from building in her eyes. To say she’s missed her Uncle Goro would be the understatement of the century and the sheer feeling of having him in front of her again, tired and slightly older, snapping out my fuckin’ kid - it steals the strength from her voice, making it wobble as she does her best to infuse her voice with something cocky and proud as she spits, “and if I am your fuckin’ kid?”

It feels egotistical to say that life literally rushes back into the man hunched over the desk, but it’s undeniable - the way Majima Goro jerks his head up to look at her and then beams, whole body radiating delight, transforms him into a completely different man than the one from just a moment ago. So different, in fact, that it makes Haruka starkly aware of how lifeless he’d looked before, pen in one hand, face partially lit by the harsh light of the laptop’s screen. 

Uncle Goro gives a shout, a wordless, shapeless roar of bright noise, and leaps up to vault the desk between them like he’s not almost fifty. His papers go flying and his laptop gets knocked aside, almost sliding off the edge, but he doesn’t seem to notice, let alone care. He just rushes across the space between them and sweeps her up into his arms, spinning her around as he gives one of his trademark shrieks.

Though this one’s a little different, a little more special to her. Because instead of yelling Kiryu-chan , her uncle screams, “ Haru-chan!”

Suspended in the air, being spun around like a child, cradled against one of her favorite people in the world - the heavy weight of not-quite-grief slips from Haruka like a slightly too loose bracelet without her even noticing. She laughs, kicking her feet as Uncle Goro laughs as well, his real one instead of the high pitched cackle, the one that’s deeper and rumbly and only a little pitched around the edges of the sound. 

“Fuck, sweetheart, I missed ya,” Uncle Goro breathes, voice thick, arms like steel bars around her, even as he slows them both and eases her feet back down on the ground. He holds her like she’s going to disappear the second he lets go, which is fine, because Haruka’s arms are wrapped around his shoulders with the same trembling belief. They stand like that for a moment, Uncle Goro hunched over to accommodate their height difference, and then with another breathy laugh and a kiss to her head he straightens up a little. 

Haruka makes a childishly unhappy noise, but allows him to stand to his full height, arms sliding from around his shoulders only to loop them around his middle. His arms stay curled loosely around her shoulders, one hand coming up to comb leather-clad fingers through her hair, tucking it away from her face as he just looks at her. 

“Shit, kid, you’re - you’re growing up fast, y’know that?”

Part of Haruka wants to cry at the hitch in Uncle Goro’s voice, but she pushes that part away. She makes a show of rolling her eyes at him, dramatic and teenagery enough that it pulls a snort from her guardian. “I’m growing up at a normal rate , Uncle Goro,” she tells him, picking her chin up in the haughtiest manner she can. “ God , you sound like Date-san the last time he called Uncle Kaz!”

Uncle Goro laughs, likely despite himself if his expression is anything to go by. He shakes his head, ruffles her hair, and then finally seems to take in that she’s alone. 

“Nishida waiting outside the door or somethin’,” he asks. He pulls back enough for her to realize for the first time that he’s wearing a suit - black with a red shirt she’s almost positive might have started it’s life as one of Uncle Kaz’s, with a tie and everything. She makes a face as she tugs at the end of it, scrunching her nose when he swats gently at her hand, and so the question takes a second to register in her brain. 

“ What - oh, Nishida? No, I told him to go ahead and drop my suitcase at the apartment so that we could go ahead and get dinner, ‘cause I’m starving .” Haruka realizes instantly that she needs to continue speaking, as Uncle Goro goes stiff as a board, arms tensing around her like a protective barrier. “Toma-san walked me here though,” she rushes to add, tugging at her guardian’s tie again, this time a little more forcefully as she watches a stormcloud roll over Uncle Goro’s face. “Nishida-nii wouldn’t let me walk alone, so Toma-san walked me from the car to the door! I was supervised the whole time, promise!”

For a second Haruka thinks Uncle Goro isn’t going to listen - not because he doesn’t believe her, but because, understandably, she’s got a history of being grabbed from places that are supposed to be safe for her and Purgatory is one of those supposed to be safe places. But whatever internal fight he’s having passes after a moment, his shoulders dropping and his arms going slack, though the way they’re held curled around her is still protective, like some sort of shield.

“Shit. Fine, Nishida’s off the hook this time, but next time if neither of ya text me the plan I’m feedin’ ‘im to whatever weird wild creature wanders into Kamurocho next.”

Haruka thumps the side of her fist into Uncle Goro’s chest, narrowing her eyes up at him playfully, since she knows he’s not serious. To go with the look she says, “don’t you dare feed my favorite Majima family member to a creature! You haven’t fed Minami to a creature and he’s cost you, like, millions in fire damage!”

Uncle Goro snorts, which quickly turns into a laugh, the kind that works like a landslide or the crest of a wave, growing traction until it’s loud, and wild, and free. “I should feed that idiot to a fuckin’ tiger or somethin’,” he mutters, shaking his head, though here, with just the two of them, his expression is all fond and nearly soft. Haruka grins at the peek behind the curtain only she gets beneath her guardian’s crafted mask, the one he wields like a weapon so that no one ever outside his immediate family knows just how much he cares. 

“Nishida-nii said to text him if you wanted him to bring food here,” Haruka informs her guardian in the sligh lull that follows. “And if you don’t want that, then to text him either where to meet us for dinner or a location for him to pick us up. I vote for the meet-up option, because, again, as I said, I’m very hungry.”

Her guardian rolls his eye, a dramatic re-enactment of her own teenagery display earlier, and uses his arms around her to shake her slightly side to side. “So demandin’,” he teases, shaking his head as if her demands are a hardship. Haruka knows otherwise, but she plays along, puffing out her cheeks and poking a finger into his chest for the teasing. 

“You haven’t even begun to see demanding, Uncle Goro! Just wait until we go shopping later this week, then you’ll see demanding!”

Uncle Goro grunts and makes a face, like he hasn’t delighted in taking her shopping since she was nine years old and experiencing not hand-me-down clothes for the first time. She laughs and leans in against his chest again, winding her arms around his middle in a hug that he reciprocates without hesitation. 

“I’m home, Uncle Goro,” she whispers against his chest. 

“Oh, Haru-chan,” he answers, voice thick and rough in his throat. Haruka keeps her face tucked into his chest, because this way they can both pretend the catch in his throat is from all the smoking he’s done and not the almost grief-like feeling that comes with reuniting like this every year. “Welcome home, sweetheart.”

They stay like that for a minute or two, Haruka basking in the feeling of being wrapped in the arms of one of the few people who makes her feel really, truly safe and grounded, and Uncle Goro basking in - well, whatever he’s feeling. But eventually there’s a rumbly sound from her stomach, loud enough that it feels like it echoes in the overly spacious office around them, and Uncle Goro pulls back with a little laugh.

“Alright, princess, let’s get ya fed. Anythin’ in particular yer hankerin’ for?”

Haruka hums a little bit as she thinks, rocking back and forth on her heels as her guardian wanders over to slam the laptop shut and shuffle some of the papers on his desk into a drawer. “What about - ”

The door opens, soundless but spilling light from the hallway into the room. Haruka pauses her train of thought, twisting to see who it is, wondering if they took so long Nishida had caught up with them.

And then she freezes, feeling herself stiffen against her will, at the sight of the large, hulking man with long hair in the doorway. 

“Hey, Majima, I heard - oh.”

The man in the doorway freezes as well. They stare at each other, equally weary, equally obvious. Haruka feels her guardian clock their weirdness immediately, but before she can push it aside and play it off like it’s nothing, the man shuffles forward enough that the door can swing shut behind him and mutters, “should’ve known it was her, huh?”

Uncle Goro appears, near silent, behind Haruka and just off to one side. He hovers, his pretense managing to fill the whole office, at least to Haruka, and in a measured, almost sing-song voice, he says, “what’cha mean by that, Saejima? Hm? You two met or something?”

Haruka looks at Saejima Taigo, meeting his eyes with an expression that she tries to school into you are going to want to lie . But the big broad blunt man across the room just sighs, his huge shoulders going up and down, and says, “yeah. Met her back up in Okinawa. Kiryu ain’t tell you ‘bout what happened?”

The urge to groan audibly is almost impossible to ignore. Unease aside, Haruka doesn’t want this man to die, so she fights back the noise, spins on her heel to face her guardian, and says, “before you get weird, it was an accident and I forgive him.”

Nearly simultaneously Uncle Goro and Saejima both speak. Uncle Goro says, “ the fuck happened ?!” while Saejima mutters, “ forgive me? I ain’t even apologized, the fuck? ”

Men , Haruka thinks disparagingly, are so stupid . 

In less time than it takes her to blink Uncle Goro has moved, throwing himself clear across the room, tanto in hand. He’s shouting, a jumbled mess of words that might be the fuck did you do to her , while all Saejima does is-

Is square up for a fight. 

“ Ugh ,” Haruka spits, rolling her eyes up at the ceiling as the two men crash together. “Stupid fucking men! ”

Saejima’s head pops out of the writhing tangle of Uncle Goro’s limbs as her guardian tries, to the best of Haruka’s guessing ability, to throttle him. His eyebrows furrow in an expression of near concern, the kind that would be funny if he wasn’t already bleeding from a cut on his cheek when he asks, “she allowed to swear like that? Ain’t she a kid? The fuck kind of parent are you, bro?”

Haruka looks the man dead in the eye, the same way she had in Okinawa when her favorite knife was pressed against his adams apple, and bears her teeth in her meanest smile. “He’s the best kind,” she spits, beginning to march across the room. Under her breath she adds, “even if he’s kind of stupid and overprotective and, like, really weird.”

Uncle Goro jabs his tanto at Saejima’s throat, making the larger man grab him by the waist with both hands and bodily throw him off. Her guardian rolls with the toss, skidded across the expensive flooring on his besuited knees, and Haruka takes this opening to plant herself between them, arms crossed over her chest. 

“Haruka - ”

“Don’t Haruka me,” she snaps back, tipping her chin up in the most arrogant manner she can. It’s a move she’s stolen from Uncle Kaz, though she gives it the dramatics Uncle Goro usually puts into his shenanigans, and with the confidence she only half feels she says, “now are you going to listen to me, Uncle Goro? Or just throw yourself at Saejima-san over something you don’t even understand?”

(It’s the kind of condescending tone bar mamas have used at her guardians all her life, the kind of tone her teacher for her last year of school in Kamurocho took with her class when they didn’t meet her expectations - the kind of tone that says I know you can do better in a way that rankles every time Haruka has it directed at her. 

She’s never really had to use it before - the other kids at the orphanage listen to her mostly because she came with Uncle Kaz and everyone else they know listen to her because she’s the Dragon of Dojima and Mad Dog of Shimano’s kid. But like all the tools to keep herself safe that she’s been given by both her guardian’s, she wields it all to the best of her ability and, when that fails, like a blunt force weapon to the head. 

Whatever works, y’know?)

For a second it looks like Uncle Goro is going to ignore what she’s said and leap over her head for another shot at Saejima, but after a moment he deflates, almost cartoonishly so, and with a groan he falls backward until he’s flat on the ground, tanto still loosely clasped in one hand. 

“Hit me, darlin’,” he mutters, voice rough and thick in the back of his throat, all mullish and sullen. Haruka pretends he doesn’t sound like a teenager her age, though she can’t help but notice Saejima’s raised eyebrow in response. 

“Saejima-san washed up on our beach, you know that. Uncle Kaz brought him into the orphanage, but he hadn’t really woken up yet. He’d been in and out of consciousness a little due to his wounds and a small fever, you know how it goes.” Haruka gestures with one hand, knowing her guardian’s watching her, even if it looks like he isn’t. Saejima starts to step forward and open his mouth, but a sharp look from her shuts him up, thank god. “Uncle Kaz stepped out of the room for a second and before you ask, yes, he told me not to go in the room with our guest. But I was trying to help and I had cold wet rags for his fever, so I slipped in the room and, well, startled him a little.”

Saejima snorts in a way that has Uncle Goro rocketing into a crouch, teeth barred like he truly is the wild monster-man he tries to make people believe he is. Haruka huffs, stomping forward until she can push on his shoulder until he falls back onto his butt, before she cranes her head back to look directly at Saejima when she says, “he reacted badly, as a yakuza in jail for twenty-five years would , and pinned me down. But - ”

“ Ex-fucking- cuse me - ”

Haruka pushes at Uncle Goro’s shoulder again, feeling ridiculously annoyed despite the fact that she is genuinely touched at how protective her guardian is of her. He flops back down, but keeps his eyes trained on Saejima’s bulk as best he can. Haruka considers kicking his shin, just a little, but doesn’t in the end. 

“ But ,” she continues, just as sullen and mullish as he’d been a minute ago, “I had my favorite knife on me. I got him pretty deep, I think Uncle Kaz had to stitch his chest closed after they kicked me out - ”

“He did,” Saejima interrupts, his voice deep, but not as closed off or cold as it had been back in Okinawa. If she didn’t know better she might even call it warm or amused, but she doesn’t know better - she doesn’t know this man at all, really. “Couldn’t do anything for the gash you left on my throat ‘cept wrap it in gauze, but the one on the chest took four stitches in total. You did get me good, little lady. Makes sense, now that I know Majima probably taught ya.”

Haruka tries not to let that half-assed praise go to her head, but considering Uncle Kaz had all but chucked her out of the door and grounded her afterward she can’t help the little thrill that does go down her spine at the acknowledgement. She glances back over her shoulder at the hulking man, eying the way he’s holding his hands out at his sides and the way he isn’t even trying to stem the bleeding on the few shallow cuts Uncle Goro left on him, and sighs. 

“ Well, for the record, I’m sorry for startling you,” she says. It grates her, a little, that she’s apologizing first, but she also understands that even without the fever and pain weighing on the man he probably wouldn’t have been able to control that kind of reaction. Trauma response , she reminds herself, with a little tickle of guilt. “I’m not really sorry for the gashes though.”

From the floor Uncle Goro makes a strangled noise, something almost angry, almost hurt. From behind her, though, Saejima cracks a smile, the first Haruka’s seen from him, and gives a low, rumbling kind of laugh before he shakes his head. His hair dances around his collarbone, much less greasy and tangled than the last time she saw him. 

“S’all good, little yakuza princess,” Saejima says, somehow managing to make the title sound both mocking and respectful. Haruka doesn’t know how he manages it, but even as it thrills her she makes a point to narrow her eyes like she’s taking offense. It only makes his smile grow as he adds, “and for what it’s worth, I’m sorry for pinning ya down and scaring ya so bad. Wasn’t in the right headspace, but you were only trying to help. Been meaning to reach out and apologize, but hadn’t really gotten around to it yet.”

As far as apologies go, Haruka's heard better. But she’s also heard worse and at the end of the day it had been an accident. Whether or not that accident starred in a few nightmares for the weeks after, well that’s no one’s business but her own. And while Haruka could hold a grudge against her Uncle Goro’s sworn brother, returned from prison just in time for them both to lose their younger sister, she doesn’t want to. 

(Though one look at Uncle Goro still on the ground tells her that if she wanted to, she could hold this grudge all her life and he’d side with her every single day. He’s glaring, teeth still bared, fingers still wrapped so, so solidly around his tanto. His whole body is poised to lunge at the drop of a hat, at the slightest hint that Saejima means Haruka harm.

He looks, for the first time in her life, like a dog on a leash, snarling and growling at the nearest threat. It startles her, a little, to realize that she might be holding the other end of that leash.

Startles her, and sickens her, and, ever so slightly, thrills her. 

What an odd and terrible thing it is, to be loved and treasured so much. What an odd and terrible weight, knowing that some might take this power and twist it, wielding it like a blade or a bat against those that displease or anger them.

Haruka doesn’t want to do that to anyone, least of all one of her guardians. Even if they’d let her without a shred of hesitation or regret.)

“Apology accepted,” Haruka announces. She puts a little bit of cheerful bubble into it, or as much as she can muster, before turning to peer down at Uncle Goro. “Now that we’ve settled that, can we eat already? I really want ramen and Nishida’s going to start to worry if we don’t text him soon.”

For a long awful moment it doesn’t seem like it’ll work - her words hang in the air around them like a knife trap, one that she’s left waiting to see if she’s dismantled correctly or if it’ll all come crashing down on her head. And then Uncle Goro mutters something under his breath, something that sounds an awful lot like fuck , and groans his theatrical way to his feet. 

“This isn’t over,” he says, pointing at Saejima with his tanto before he tucks it back in the sheath, strapped to the small of his back and under his suit jacket. “We’re talkin’ ‘bout this later, ya’hear?”

“Loud and clear,” Saejima says, still smiling. He glances over at Haruka, giving her a shallow little nod, and adds, “suppose I’ll clear out then. Enjoy dinner, you two.”

Haruka considers her options, but only for a second. Before Saejima can do more than turn a little she bounds forward, letting her boots squeak on the flooring as she does so, and chirps in her brightest just a little girl voice, “why don’t you join us, Saejima-san?”

Both men still again, like they're poised to turn this into a brawl once more, and they share a glance over her head. Haruka tries not to roll her eyes at them, but she doesn’t think she succeeds, considering Uncle Goro’s sigh and Saejima’s little huff of a laugh that echoes around the room around them. 

“Ya sure, sweetheart,” Uncle Goro asks, ambling up to Haruka and tucking her under his arm. He rubs her arm with his gloved hand before reaching up to smooth her hair to one side - all the fussy little things he’s done for her since she was a kid, like all her classmates’ and friends’ parents do for them.

Saejima’s face does something funny, when Uncle Goro smooths her hair from her face. Like an old camera shuttering closed to take a photo, it jerks, just a little, and his eyes jump from her to Uncle Goro and then back again in a loop. It gets even more obvious when Haruka glances up at Uncle Goro, putting herself in the perfect position for her guardian to drop an absent-minded kiss to her forehead. 

The only thing weird, to her, is that Uncle Goro trusts Saejima enough to act so casually affectionate in front of him. Most of his men get shooed out of the room if he wants to drop a kiss on Haruka’s head, leaving only the ones who’ve been around since she was a kid or the weirdos Uncle Goro is particularly fond of, like Minami. But Saejima, even after years apart, gets to witness it all without a second thought, even after Uncle Goro found out about what happened back in Okinawa and that tells her, more than anything else, how important Saejima Taigo is to her guardian.

But that doesn’t seem to be the only weird thing to Saejima. If Haruka had to guess, she’d guess that the whole thing is probably weird to Saejima, because Uncle Goro was in his early twenties when they knew each other and now he’s in his forties, one-half of a guardian pair to a teenage girl, and on top of all that dating a man who’s working at an orphanage out in Okinawa. Everything is probably weird to Saejima in ways he can’t predict and that, more than anything, softens up some of the leftover unease Haruka feels towards him in that moment. 

“C’mon, Saejima-san,” Haruka says instead of answering her guardian. “I think I’ve run through all of Uncle Kaz’s funny stories about Uncle Goro and I really want to hear new ones!”

Saejima blinks, visibly taken aback by the sincerity in her request, before breathing out of his nose in a not-quite-sigh. 

“If you’re sure, Sawamura-san,” the big man mutters, smiling crookedly with the corner of his mouth. “I’ve probably got a few you haven’t heard, if you really wanna hear them.”

Uncle Goro groans, dropping some of his weight on her shoulder for a second in protest to them ‘teaming up against him’, but Haruka knows what the little squeeze to her shoulder means. It means thank you and love you and best kid ever, as well as a dozen things she probably doesn’t understand. 

And that, more than anything, makes the twinge of remembered fear she felt when she first saw Saejima in the doorway worth it, dozens of times over.

(Uncle Goro spends every moment of the next week with her, the way he always does. They go shopping, both for the stuff on her list for her siblings at the orphanage and for stuff that just catches their eye as they wander the town. They hit every karaoke bar in town, some of them twice, singing until they’re both hoarse and they’ve sung every song in all the electronic selections available to them. They eat at all her favorite places, expensive ramen for dinner, dessert style waffles for breakfast, Smile Burger for lunch - she eats like she’s never going to get to again, because food always tastes different here, in Kamurocho, with her Uncle Goro and either way she isn’t sure he eats enough on his own as it is. 

It’s the best week of the year, the same way it always is, but it always ends too soon. 

Uncle Goro’s already awake the morning of her departure, even though she creeps out of her bed near five am, unable to sleep with the tangle of emotions coloring her dreams. She doesn’t remember them, but she woke unsettled and teary-eyed, and when she sees the silhouette of her guardian sitting on the couch in the dark she just -

Breaks.

She’s sniffling before she means to, startling the man sitting on the couch nearly to his feet, but she beats him to it, rushing over to throw herself into his chest as she chokes back her tears. 

“ I don’t want to go,” she whines, feeling childish and stupid and hating that she knows that Uncle Goro doesn’t want her to go either. All she’s doing is hurting him with her outburst, but she can’t help it, everything inside her bubbling over like a pot full of noodles left forgotten on the stove. “I - I don’t want to go without you , it isn’t home without you, Uncle Goro, it’s not the same , I - ”

Uncle Goro curls down around her, cradling her in his lap in the dark of the living room. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t promise her it’ll be okay or I’m still here, princess, I’m not going anywhere, because he’s said it again and again over the years. The words wouldn’t do anything, wouldn’t help or fix or heal, and so he just holds her, stroking her hair and letting her cry as dawn creeps over the city scape outside the window. 

By the time the sun is up she’s cried herself out, leaving them both curled together on the couch, quiet and drained. 

“Sorry, Uncle Goro,” she mutters, wiping her wrist against her nose and grimacing as she just ends up smearing snot everywhere. “I - sorry.”

“Don’t fuckin’ apologize, Haru-chan,” he mutters against her head. He reaches without letting her go or sitting up, plucking a tissue box off the coffee table and dropping it against their legs. “Don’t you ever fucking apologize to me for crying, sweetheart, okay? I love you and I never want you to apologize for feeling some type of way, not to me or anyone else. I - I love you. If I could come back with you, I would, but - ”

“I know,” she says, interrupting before his voice can break. It hurts, whenever his voice breaks, and she’s already hurt enough for one day. “I - I know, Uncle Goro. It’s okay.”

He sighs against her head, breath causing her hair to dance around her throat. “It’s not,” he admits, voice wavering but not breaking. “But we’ll get through it anyway, won’t we?”

She laughs, because if she doesn’t she thinks she’ll cry again, and nods against his shoulder. “Yeah, we will,” she answers, voice thick and throat clogged from trying to swallow back all her tears. “We always do.”

He taps her chin to get her to lean back and look up, leaning back slightly until their faces are level. In the light of the morning sun Haruka can see he isn’t wearing his eyepatch, which makes her chest twinge, not because she thinks it’s gross or anything, but because he looks so vulnerable without it. So small and almost delicate. 

He peers at her, face drawn but oddly at peace, and after a moment smiles, lopsided and small. “That’s my girl,” he murmurs, nudging his knuckle under her chin, making her snort and roll her eyes. He snickers at her and ducks to kiss her forehead, smacking an extra loud mwah at the end of it to make her giggle. 

“C’mon, princess,” he murmurs, heaving them both to their feet, steadying her when he drops her to the ground. “Let's get your face washed up and grab whatever you’re flying home with, ‘fore Nishida gets here and starts fuckin’ fussin’ at us.”

Haruka huffs out a breath before scrubbing her hands over her face. Her face burns and there’s still a gaping void in her chest that’s threatening to surge up and swallow her whole. 

But she pushes that aside, as gently as she can. The show must go on , she thinks, and does her best to put on her brightest smile as she answers, “sure, Uncle Goro. Sounds like a plan to me!”)

Notes:

speedrunning this before my therapy appointment because i thought it would be FUNNY and now i'm STRESSED. anyway saejima intro!! sorry to kinda acknowledge your intro to haruka that we all pretend doesn't happen, but for SOME REASON i like to challenge myself by staying as close to canon as possible. why? i don't know. there's something wrong with me, but THAT i'm not letting my therapist at with a ten foot pole. anyway!

enjoy!!

also note from my baestie: majima THIS is why kiryu doesn't want her to have knives *gestures at the sadness at the very end*

Chapter 7: June, 2012 ; there’s a long line of hands carryin’ your name, liftin’ you up, so you will be raised

Summary:

Haruka calls Uncle Goro as a last resort, after talking, arguing, and screaming have gotten her nowhere. He picks up almost immediately, probably because she doesn’t often call him at two in the afternoon these days, and before he can even finish saying her name she’s blurting out, “Uncle Kaz is being a fucking idiot, Uncle Goro! You’ve got to make him listen!”

Uncle Goro sucks in a breath, coughs out a curse, and loses his accent when he barks out, “sit rep, Haruka- are you hurt and are you somewhere safe? And if you’re not alone and need help, say something that doesn’t make sense, okay, if there’s someone threatening you - ”

Haruka rolls her eyes, too frustrated at the moment to feel affection for how immediate the concern for her comes forward. “Uncle Goro,” she whines. She sounds childish, she knows, but she’s so- so- so mad, she doesn’t even care. “Not that kind of an idiot! I’m safe, I’m alone, and I’m at the stupid fucking beach because I couldn’t stand there and listen to him anymore, because he’s saying he’s ruining our lives and talking about leaving the orphanage and letting some idol manager hustle me off to Osaka!”

Notes:

as always and as it should be: thank you to my baestie, who got over the fact that i made up toma last chapter and has therefore attached themselves to nishida. you are the light of my life and i appreciate every moment wherein you read this, even though you spend the whole time squinting at me in both confusion and lowlevel judgement. ily thank you for being in my life <3

Haruka calls Uncle Goro as a last resort, after talking, arguing, and screaming have gotten her nowhere. He picks up almost immediately, probably because she doesn’t often call him at two in the afternoon these days, and before he can even finish saying her name she’s blurting out, “Uncle Kaz is being a fucking idiot , Uncle Goro! You’ve got to make him listen! ”

Uncle Goro sucks in a breath, coughs out a curse, and loses his accent when he barks out, “sit rep, Haruka- are you hurt and are you somewhere safe? And if you’re not alone and need help, say something that doesn’t make sense, okay, if there’s someone threatening you - ”

Haruka rolls her eyes, too frustrated at the moment to feel affection for how immediate the concern for her comes forward. “Uncle Goro,” she whines. She sounds childish, she knows, but she’s so- so- so mad, she doesn’t even care. “Not that kind of an idiot! I’m safe, I’m alone, and I’m at the stupid fucking beach because I couldn’t stand there and listen to him anymore, because he’s saying he’s ruining our lives and talking about leaving the orphanage and letting some idol manager hustle me off to Osaka!”

The distant sounds of what’s likely an active construction site becomes muffled, likely by her uncle’s hand over the phone. There’s a distant voice she almost recognizes, a grunt from Uncle Goro, the shuffling sound of someone walking, and then the click of a door shutting close by. 

And then, using a mixture of his patriarch and parent voice, Uncle Goro tells her, “start from the top, sweetheart, I’m all yours.”

Relief sweeps through Haruka so sharply that she falls back against the blisteringly hot sand. She throws an arm over her face, consigns herself to at least a mild sunburn, and does just as she’s asked. 

When it’s all laid out for her second guardian - the visit from the idol manager she’d met at the combini late last year, the fact that Uncle Kaz met with her while Haruka was in Kamurocho, the way Uncle Kaz has decided all of a sudden that he’s ruining all of their lives and needs to be removed like a cancerous tumor - they sit in silence, nothing but the heat of the sun and the distant sound of the waves filling the space in Haruka’s head. 

“ Fuck,” Uncle Goro says, after what feels like an eternity. “Fuckin’- fuck . That stupid bastard. Okay, Haru-chan, options, let’s run through our fuckin’ options.”

Options is what Uncle Goro always offers her before he rambles straight nonsense for two minutes as he tries to figure out a plan of attack. Haruka moves her arm from her face and switches hands to hold her sweaty phone against the other side of her face, humming to let him know she’s listening. 

“Option one, I fly out there and beat the shit out of Kaz until he’s on permanent forever bedrest.”

Haruka snorts out a laugh despite herself. “Pass. Option two?”

Uncle Goro snorts out a laugh as well, before continuing. “Option two, I call Kaz and curse him out until some force of the universe hears our pleas and temporarily paralyzes him until we can beat some sense into him. I think it’ll only take, what, two years? Maybe three? Know a deity that could help us out with that?”

She shakes her head, eyes closed against the sun overhead, and just answers, “no.”

Some of the humor leaves Uncle Goro’s voice when he sighs out and offers, very quietly, “if I can’t talk some sense into him, you could always move back to Kamurocho.”

Now her eyes are scrunched as tightly closed as they can get not due to the sun, but due to the tears she knows will build if she lets them. She breathes in, breathes out, and bites her lip. Uncle Goro breathes just as deeply and audibly on the other side of the phone until she manages to croak out a quiet, “you don’t think we can change his mind, do you?”

Haruka reminds herself that one of the reasons she loves her Uncle Goro is because he doesn’t sugarcoat anything for her, but it’s hard in moments like this, when all she wants is to be told a lie and have it be the truth instead. 

“Haru-chan,” he says, voice so low and rough through the phone that for a moment it’s like she can smell his cologne and the smell of cigarettes on the breeze. “Sweetheart. I’m gonna call ‘im and I’m gonna do everythin’ I can, but ya know how Kaz gets. Only other person I ever met as stubborn as ‘im is you, kid. So I know ya don’t wanna, I know ya’d probably rather stay in Okinawa or maybe even go with whoever this idol recruiter is, but I want ya to know Kamurocho’s always an option, okay?”

Haruka bites her lip hard enough that she thinks it’ll bleed, trying to keep her chin from wobbling. She wants to cry. She wants to scream. She wants to go back in time and not meet Mirei Park at the fucking Poppo downtown. 

Instead she whispers, “okay, Uncle Goro,” and listens as he breathes in a carefully measured pace on the other end of the phone. 

Minutes go by, with only the heat of the sun and the faint rustling of the man existing on the other end of the phone. Eventually Uncle Goro grunts, a static noise crawling down the phone as he likely shifts it around, and then he asks, “if Kaz wasn’t being a fuckin’ idiot, would ya wanna do the idol thing?”

She thinks about it, really thinks about it. She likes singing and putting on a performance, whether it’s at a karaoke place or in their kitchen or living room. She likes the idea of a crowd cheering and the thought of a cute little outfit, maybe one in pink. It’d be hard work, really hard work, and even in a world where Uncle Kaz wasn’t preparing to remove himself from Morning Glory she’d probably have to leave home to do it anyway. 

“I don’t know,” she answers, voice still barely more than a whisper. “I - maybe? I like singing and even though I know it’s hard work, the idols always look like they’re having fun. Park-san said - ”

Haruka stutters to a stop at the sound of Uncle Goro’s sudden swear, sharply followed by what sounds like a crash. “I - Uncle Goro, are you okay,” she asks, shifting to sit upright as her heart starts to hammer. “Is someone there, are you being attacked - ”

Uncle Goro’s voice is even rougher and lower than it’d been before when he butts in, interrupting her to promise, “m’good, sweetheart, m’okay. I just - dropped the phone, s’all. But this idol manager, recruiter, whatever-she-is, what’dya say her fuckin’ name was?”

Haruka blinks out at the ocean ahead of her, feeling her face scrunch up in confusion. “It’s Park Mirei,” she answers, absently rubbing some sand off her arm. “Why?”

Her only answer for a moment is an uncomfortable stretch of silence and then an uneven, half muffled groan. “Fuck’s sake,” her guardian mutters, quiet enough he probably doesn’t want the phone to pick it up. “Of fuckin’ course it is. Shit.”

Unease settles in her gut, makes her shift uncomfortably in the sand. “Uncle Goro,” she asks, tugging at the hem of her shirt and ducking her head down against her knees. “Do you - do you know her?”

He sighs, mutters a few more things she truly can’t hear over the phone, and then sighs again. “Haruka,” he says, which sends a jolt of panic through her, “I- shit, this shouldn’t be done over the phone. But yeah, I know her, met her back in the nineties just before Kaz got sent to the slammer. A friend introduced us, we - shit.”

Haruka blinks. She waits for a second for more of an explanation to come and when it doesn’t she does her best to read in between the lines. “Did she work at one of the Tojo’s cabaret clubs or something?”

Uncle Goro chokes on a noise, one that might have been a laugh at any other time, before rushing to spit out, “ no , Christ, though that might’ve been easier to explain. Fuck, kid. I didn’t want to ever have to tell you about this, because I ain’t proud of it. If anything I’m about to tell you changes your opinion of me, that’s okay, alright? If you never wanna speak to me again, I get it, I really do - ”

Heart rate kicking up again Haruka clenches her hand in the sand and whispers, “Uncle Goro, please , you’re scaring me. Just- how do you know her then?”

The man on the other end of the phone, who’s helped care for and raise her since she was a lost little nine year old, hesitates for only a second before he answers, voice flat and with no hint of his usual accent, “I was married to her, for a year. A friend introduced us, knowing she needed citizenship and I needed something to live for and thought it’d kill two birds with one stone.

“She was barely eighteen and I was pushing twenty-six. I knew better, Haruka, and I won’t make excuses for any of it. In the end it ended badly, ‘cause I was a two-bit thug and I hit her. We got divorced, with the whole thing lasting barely a year. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t fair to her, and I’m not proud of any of it.”

Haruka sits, curled up on the beach, and tries to process what she’s being told. She feels very small, and very young, and utterly lost. On the other end of the phone Uncle Goro sits in silence, like he’s waiting for her to condemn him, because- because she probably should, if what he’s saying is true. 

But she can’t. Maybe it’s because she’s young, maybe it’s because she’s scared she’s losing Uncle Kaz and doesn’t want to lose Uncle Goro too, but either way, she can’t . 

Softly, so softly she’s worried he won’t be able to hear, she whispers, “why did you hit her?”

Uncle Goro scoffs, a rough, dismissive noise he’s always made at Uncle Kaz and never at her. Gruffly he all but snaps, “doesn’t matter, I shouldn’t have done it and that’s that, Haruka. Someone hits you in a relationship, you walk away, because that’s not something anyone should put up with, ever .”

Maybe his tone should scare her, especially now that she has the information she’s been told. But instead it makes her mad, jolts her upright until she’s snapping back into the phone, “it matters to me , because I know you only lash out like that as a trauma response, when you’re scared or feeling cornered! And besides, you and Uncle Kaz fight all the time , it’s how you guys, like, flirt or something. It’s weird, yeah, but - ”

“Fucking - trauma response,” he interrupts, sounding incredulous. “Who the fuck taught you that?!”

Haruka blinks out at the ocean for a second, considers lying, and then just mutters, “um, Nishida?”

The silence that follows her answer makes her cringe. She considers hanging up the phone and calling Nishida to tell him to run for his life, but before she can talk herself into it there’s a muted, repetitive thump sound from the other end of the call and a long, dramatic sounding groan. 

“When the fuck did he put that nonsense in your goddamn head?”

Haruka bites her lip, shifting in the sand before slumping forward so her chin is propped on her knees. She moves her phone to her other hand, absently wiping the sweat on her palm against her shorts, and mutters, “you remember when we first started to live together, at your place? When I was, like, nine?”

“ Yeah ,” Uncle Goro bites out. He doesn’t sound happy. Haruka hopes Nishida’s Majima Everywhere danger sense is as good as Uncle Kaz’s, because if it’s not she might be visiting him in the hospital soon. 

“ Well ,” Haruka bites back, just because she can, “you and Uncle Kaz sat me down and told me if I had a nightmare to come and get one of you, but I had to make sure I didn't get too close when I woke you guys up. There was, like, a whole sit down talk we had on the couch about it, y’know? And you told me if either of you looked like you were having a bad dream to stay by the door, because getting too close was dangerous. Remember?”

She gets the impression that Uncle Goro is rolling his eyes, but she waits until he grunts out a confirmation before continuing. “Well I asked Nishida afterward why I couldn’t go near you guys, because you’d never hesitated to scoop me up if I had a bad dream, and he told me that a lot of guys in the business have had a lot of bad things happen to them and it can mess with their heads if someone sneaks up on them or startles them.” 

She’s paraphrasing here - Nishida’s explanation had been much more measured and detailed, because even though she had been nine at the time she’d had a lot of follow-up questions and he’d taken the time to answer every single one of them as carefully and clearly as possible. But Uncle Goro doesn’t need to know that Nishida had taught her not to sneak up on his bad side or how to make noise on purpose when she walked so that her guardians could hear her coming, because she figures that might be too much of a betrayal of his pride than he needs to suffer right now. 

“ He told me you guys would never hurt me on purpose, which I knew , obviously, but that you might, like, have a flashback or something and hurt me by accident.” She remembers, vaguely, the distress she’d felt in that moment, not so much because of the thought that she could get hurt, but at the thought that her new guardians were hurting and she couldn’t comfort them the same way they comforted her. 

When Uncle Goro doesn’t say anything to this bit of news, she adds, “Nishida didn't know what Uncle Kaz’s trauma responses might look like, but he taught me a couple of your tells, so that I could recognize when you looked scared or felt like you were being backed into a corner. He said you were pretty used to controlling your reactions, but if I caught you at a really bad moment you might lash out without meaning to.”

Haruka hadn’t believed Nishida at the time and honestly has a hard time believing him even now, years later. Uncle Goro’s off his rocker sometimes, for sure - but no matter how bad the day, he’s never been anything but gentle and patient with her, even when she can tell he’s well past the end of his rope. It’s never been like it was with Saejima, where she’d caught him unawares and gotten jumped because of it, even in the moments where she knows she’d startled both of her uncles. She opens her mouth to tell him that, but before she can he sighs out a sound that’s somewhere between a wheeze and a sob, which has her breath catching hard in her throat. 

“Fuckin’ hell,” he mutters, voice tangled up in something rough and furious while at the same time dragging on with something almost sad around the edges. “That goddamn little shit. I told Kaz it was fuckin’ weird that you never pushed those boundaries, but he always said you were just good at listenin’ to rules.”

Against her will Haruka barks out a laugh, a noise loud and sharp enough to have come from the man on the other end of the phone. “I met him by running away from the orphanage to find my mom,” she points out, incredulous and yet not at all surprised that Uncle Kaz had always written her off like that. 

“ I know ,” Uncle Goro agrees, sounding just as flabbergasted as she is. “Trust me, angel, you were and still are a fuckin’ delight to raise, but, Haru-chan, darlin’, light of my fuckin’ life - ”

“I’ve never met a rule I didn’t want to bend to my own whim?”

It’s something Date’s always pointed out, something that Uncle Kaz has never agreed on and has time and time again nearly fought the other man over - Haruka’s a stubborn girl and, much like her guardian, when she gets it in her head that she’s going to do something, she’s going to do it, regardless of what anyone thinks. It’s how she got banned from three gambling places before she hit double digits, how she’s survived living through as much grief as she has, and how all of the boys at school know not to mess with her or her siblings, because she’s ruthless when she wants to be and isn’t scared of getting in trouble. 

If Haruka wanted to be cruel, she’d point out that she learned that behavior from her guardians, but she doesn’t want to be cruel. She chooses to see it as a good thing she’s learned, because she’s seen what it’s like to be on her own on the streets of Kamurocho and she decided early on she never wanted to feel that helpless again. 

“Haru-chan, you’ve never met a game you couldn’t win, a rule you couldn’t bend around your little finger, or a yokai you couldn’t charm over to your side,” her uncle agrees, his voice tired and rough, but warm where previously it was strained and sad. “If you wanted to you could rule the whole damn country, under and above board, and I’d be the first to kneel even if it meant pushing Kaz over before he could. You’re perfect, babygirl, down to your not-rule-followin’ toes.”

Haruka laughs, even though her eyes sting with tears. She’s overwhelmed, for a moment, by how much love is in Uncle Goro’s voice, even though she has always been able to tell that he loved her almost more than anything else in the world (Uncle Kaz excluded). She grins out at the horizon, closing her eyes for a moment as she lets herself ride the wave of affection and reassurance that sweeps through her, and then she takes a chance and says, “I love you, Uncle Goro. It doesn’t change anything for me, at least not right now.”

There’s a noise on the other end of the phone, some kind of emotional reaction Haruka can’t quite pick apart through the distance and faint electronic twinge phone calls give to conversations. And then, very quietly, her other guardian laughs, low and a little helpless sounding, before muttering, “kid, you’re too fuckin’ good for us, y’know that?”

Something a little like grief drags its claws through Haruka’s chest. She sucks in a breath and lets it out slowly, wishing more than ever Uncle Goro was in front of her, so she could wrap her arms around him and hold him, so that he could do the same back to her. 

“I don’t think I’m too good for you guys,” she whispers, voice catching on the confession. “I - I think we’re just - just good for each other. Y’know? ‘Cause we’re a family. Aren’t we?”

On the other end of the phone, all the way in Tokyo, Uncle Goro makes a noise that sounds an awful lot like the sound he used to make when Uncle Kaz would kick him in the solar plex, except so, so much more painful. 

“Oh sweetheart,” Uncle Goro murmurs, “of course we are! Haruka, darling, I promise, you’ll always have me in your corner, no matter what. I’ll be in your corner until they put me in my grave, Haru-chan, I swear- we’re a family, just the same as we’ve always been.”

(Nearly six months later the news runs the story TOP TOJO CLAN OFFICER MAJIMA GORO FOUND DEAD.

Haruka cries so hard she throws up. She calls Uncle Goro’s phone number in a hazy panic, but it goes straight to voicemail, something that has never, ever happened before. She lays curled around her phone, holding her breath for the call that she knows is coming, the one where Uncle Kaz goes I’m coming to get you, stay put, it’s okay Haruka, it’s okay .

It never comes. Neither does a call from Nishida, who Haruka knows would call her if something had happened, if - if Uncle Goro really was dead. 

So Haruka mourns for a day, glued to her phone, skipping practice for the first time in six months, before she dusts herself off and shoves all those feelings aside. She has a tournament to win and Park has already made it clear that if she doesn’t win, then the orphanage will suffer. 

The only comment her bloodshot eyes and overly pale complexion get the next day is a sharp reminder that idols must look flawless and that makeup lessons will need to be added to the long list of things for her to master. She does her best to let everything roll off of her, to keep her chin up and her hands clenched tight around the knowledge (the hope ) that if her phone doesn’t ring, then somewhere out there one of the men who raised her is still alive. 

And then, after an incredible, chest-aching day of shopping with Park Mirei and getting a glimpse into what her life could have been like if her mother was alive, the final puzzle piece gets dropped into her lap. 

“He was older than me, much older,” the woman says, a crooked, wry kind of smile pulling at her lips. “Odd, too, though I always did chalk that up to his past. Kind one moment, all smiles and energy, and then utterly closed off the next. Maybe I should have told him about the pregnancy, but I didn’t even consider it, not when I knew it would cost me my career. I mean, I was just getting started! The agency didn’t even know I was married, the scandal of a child would’ve killed it before I could get off the ground and how could a family measure up to the career I’d always wanted?” Park hums for a moment, as if considering her next words, and then murmurs, almost as if she doesn’t mean to, “silly as it sounds, though, I’m still not sure he meant to hit me. But he did and in the moments after it was like we both knew it was over. Two days later he had left, gone down a path I couldn’t follow, and I convinced myself I didn’t miss him. But even then, I couldn’t make myself get rid of that pen. Funny, isn’t it? How it all worked out in the end?”

Haruka holds the old fountain pen in her hands, tightly enough her knuckles go white. She stares down at it, at the way one bit shines more than everything else, like it’s been worn extra smooth by the repetitive motion of someone’s thumb moving back and forth over the years, and can’t help but wonder if any career is worth losing your family over. 

She finds her answer on the stage of the Japan Dome, heart hammering in her chest. Maybe for someone else being an idol is worth it all, but for Haruka -

For Haruka it’s not. And it’s as simple as that.)

Notes:

ALRIGHT FRIENDS!!! we have tackled the Park Mirei situation. my personal feelings are complicated and i tried to handle this as fairly to park and haruka, while also acknowledging majima likely loathes how everything went down and feels SO guilty but also was in one of the WORST spots of his life when it happened and that fucks with you. it's a sticky situation and i tried to handle it fairly and not let my personal distaste for park (ma'am don't manipulate that idiot he's delicate and DON'T hinge an ORPHANAGE on the success of a TEENAGER to manipulate her!!) against how haruka genuinely does feel a connection to her and how she did get done dirty by the narrative.

anyway i hope this chapter was still enjoyable! please let me know if you have any feedback on how the whole thing went, i would love to hear it, as i am vaguely anxious about this chapter's reception lol

also it's early but MAJIMA PIRATE GAME!!!!!!!!! <3 i'm so excited i could CRY T.T

Chapter 8: December 28th, 2012 ; one day i’ll leave you, a phantom to lead you in the summer, to join the black parade

Summary:

It’s snowing when the door slides open behind her. The flakes are fat and have only just started to fall, so she can still see the garden underneath, though it’s piling up fast. She’s freezing with only a futon comforter loosely weighing down her shoulders, but she doesn’t care.

“Beer not up to your taste?”

Fuck, she thinks, straightening up like that will hide the can of beer she’d stolen from the Tojo headquarter’s kitchens before realizing it was too late for that. She hunches her shoulders, drawing the comforter closer in around her, and shakes her head.

“It took me years to get over the taste,” Daigo says, his voice low and warm, like he’s telling a secret. “Honestly, I still think it’s kinda gross, but I’ll finish it off for you if you want.”

“You - you won’t tell?” Haruka asks, voice closer to a croak than she would like. She peeks up at him from the corner of her eyes, slowly and carefully, only to find him smiling at her with the corner of his mouth, the same way Uncle Kaz does.

Notes:

my beloved baestie's comment on this chapter: MINORS SHOULDN'T DRINK, I'M CALLING CPS, SHE'S GOING TO GET BRAIN DAMAGE

sorry baestie, throwing away a whole ass career and outing yourself as a very specific yakuza's daughter seemed like a Drink Your Sorrows type of situation. love u, light of my life, my first and favorite audience. sorry i'm letting the fictional children drink <3

It’s snowing when the door slides open behind her. The flakes are fat and have only just started to fall, so she can still see the garden underneath, though it’s piling up fast. She’s freezing with only a futon comforter loosely weighing down her shoulders, but she doesn’t care. 

She expects it to be Uncle Goro, or Saejima-san, or Nishida, or maybe even Akiyama - she wants it to be Uncle Kaz, but he’d accepted his arrest in the hospital two days ago and so far they haven’t let her in to see him at all. 

“This seat taken?” Daigo asks from behind her, voice loud even at a whisper against the silence of the falling snow. 

Haruka tips her head back up to look at him, surprised despite herself. The sixth chairman of the Tojo clan is still in a suit, though he’s ditched the jacket somewhere, and his hair is falling out of its usual gel to flop in his face. He’s in his socks, no dress shoes, and there’s a fuzzy black throw blanket under one arm while the other hangs at his far side, holding something partially out of her sight. She blinks, sluggish from the cold and the late hour before nodding. 

Daigo’s expression flickers, something disappointed pulling at the corners of his tired eyes almost too quickly for her to see, and she jolts, blurting out, “no, I meant - sit down ,” in a voice much too loud for the hushed atmosphere around them. 

She looks away as the man steps closer and settles himself at her side, trying to shift subtly to keep him from seeing the object on her right. He tosses the throw blanket he’s brought over both their legs, which makes her eyes tear up against her will, because it’s so - it’s so -

“Beer not up to your taste?”

Fuck, she thinks, straightening up like that will hide the can of beer she’d stolen from the Tojo headquarter’s kitchens before realizing it was too late for that. She hunches her shoulders, drawing the comforter closer in around her, and shakes her head. 

“It took me years to get over the taste,” Daigo says, his voice low and warm, like he’s telling a secret. “Honestly, I still think it’s kinda gross, but I’ll finish it off for you if you want.”

“You - you won’t tell?” Haruka asks, voice closer to a croak than she would like. She peeks up at him from the corner of her eyes, slowly and carefully, only to find him smiling at her with the corner of his mouth, the same way Uncle Kaz does. It hurts, a little, to look at him, this man who Uncle Kaz also kind of raised for a time, who she knows he thinks of as a mix between a son and a little brother. It hurts to see how similar they are, when she knows no one looks at her and sees Uncle Kaz the way they can look at Daigo and see him reflected in his expression and decisions. 

Daigo huffs a breath that might’ve been a laugh, which comes out as a little cloud of warmth that dissipates in the cold air around them. “I won’t tell a soul, not even Majima-san or Kiryu-san. In fact - ” He lifts his arm, the one that had been holding something at his side, and a bottle catches the dim light of a nearby lantern, the color of it a rich, deep purple. 

“This is Mom’s favorite kind of sake, she swears by it. It’s old enough to go down smooth and sweet enough it shouldn’t burn. Want to try it instead?”

Haruka blinks for a second, caught off guard, before she feels her nose wrinkle in confusion. “You know I’m sixteen, right?” And then, as it occurs to her, “wait, weren’t you shot the other day?!”

This time Daigo’s laugh is more than just a cloud of his breath, warm and rumbling the same way Uncle Kaz’s is, though there’s something boyish about it when his barely there smile pulls up into a full blown grin. “I’m aware, Haruka, don’t worry. But it’s been a shit month, so I figured if you wanted some, who am I to tell you no? It’s not like I wasn’t drinking at fifteen and I think your guardians would agree that company and sake are both better than sipping a shit beer by yourself.” He pauses, as if to consider her second point like he could have possibly forgotten he was supposedly on life support within the last few days, and then flippantly adds, “I’ve found that the thing about being stupid powerful, stupid rich, and as my mom calls it, Just Plain Stupid is that when you tell the hospital staff you’ll be discharging to your at home doctor, they can't really say no.”

Haruka studies Daigo for a minute, trying to pick apart why he’s out here with her, why he didn’t turn around and pick a different end of the huge traditional manor to not only ignore doctor’s orders, but also freeze and drink in silence. She doesn’t think he’s lying about not knowing she was out here (or about drinking at fifteen himself), but it’s not like they’ve interacted much over the years outside of a few visits in Kamurocho and Okinawa, and those were mostly for business, where Daigo needed to consult with Uncle Kaz. 

“You don’t have to,” Daigo says after a moment, his grin dimming back down into just the corner of his mouth pulled crookedly to one side. “I can also go, if I’m bothering you. I won’t tell either way, don’t worry.”

She’s shaking her head before she can think about it, swiping up the beer can to hand over to him. “Stay,” she says, her voice firm and oddly rough. She blinks, trying to figure out if it’s the cold drying out her eyes that keeps making them water, and then adds, “you’re not bothering me, so stay.”

Daigo takes the beer can from her with a nod, tossing it back and attempting to chug it down. Haruka grimaces at the memory of the taste, which is still lingering in her mouth even though she gave up drinking it a while ago, and then can’t help but giggle a little when he pulls the can away from his mouth and makes a face, all scrunched up with disgust like a child’s.

“God, who bought this shit? It tastes worse than I remember, fucking hell.”

Haruka laughs, shaking her head and pushing her hair behind her ear. “I think Minami-san brought them,” she says. “Or at least that’s my best guess, since Uncle Goro's always complaining that Minami-san likes the nastiest, cheapest shit known to man.”

Daigo huffs out a laugh before tipping the can back against his mouth, likely to down the last few mouthfuls. He grimaces again as he pulls it away, then leans out to the side to plant it forcefully against the porch. He winces a little as he leans, the only indication that he’s injured that he’s shown, and then he leans back, his shoulder brushing the edge of the comforter thrown over hers. He twists open the sake bottle in one expert turn of his wrist, matter of fact and simple. 

“Didn’t know you were out here, so I was just going to drink from the bottle,” Daigo explains. He ducks his head, a little sheepishly, and then offers it to her first. “I can go get a couple glasses though, if you wanna hold onto this.”

Haruka shakes her head, shuffling so that she can fling half the futon comforter over Daigo’s shoulders before freeing a hand to take the bottle from him. “I grew up in an orphanage,” she reminds him, snorting a little at the startled, almost confused look he’s giving the comforter she’s thrown over his shoulders. She scoots closer, so that her shoulder is knocking into the top of his bicep, letting herself lean against him even as he goes stiff in surprise. “I don’t mind. Uncle Goro always stole some of our drinks when we’d go out to cafes and sometimes at Morning Glory we wouldn’t have enough yen on us to all get drinks or ice creams in town, so we’d pass them around and share.” 

Daigo makes a face, one that seems to say I guess that makes sense, and carefully reaches up to tug at the comforter draped over his shoulders, to settle it a bit more. Haruka can’t help but smile, even as her chest aches at how similar he is to her Uncle Kaz without even trying, and shifts to tuck her legs up against her chest, cautiously resting more of her weight against his arm. 

“Besides,” Haruka says, lifting the bottle to her lips, “we’re family, right? So it doesn’t really count.”

She tips the bottle back, less cautious than she should probably be, and takes a large drink of the sake. She’s not sure if it’s smooth, because she’s not sure what that means for alcohol, but it is sweet, which makes it easier to swallow than the beer by far. Pulling the bottle away from her mouth she presses her tongue against the roof of her mouth, swallows again, and then chokes a little as a foreign, warm sensation crawls along her throat. 

Haruka must make a face, because Daigo starts laughing, loud and sputtering and wincing like it hurts him to laugh in such a way. She huffs and shoves the bottle at him, her face warming, either from embarrassment or from the way her throat still tingles. He takes the bottle back with a grin and takes a swig from it, swallowing it without making a face afterward in a way that makes her huff and elbow him gently. 

They sit there for a little while, passing the sake bottle back and forth, as the snow falls. It’s still freezing out, but with the comforter tossed over both their shoulders, the throw blanket draped over their legs, and her body leaning against Daigo’s, she finds it’s more bearable than before. Though that might also have something to do with the sake, since the warm sensation in her throat has sunk down into her chest and stomach, an odd feeling not unlike laying out in the sun during the summer.

Daigo’s the first one to break the silence again, ducking his head as he hands her the bottle and murmuring, “I’m sorry you always get pulled into Tojo business, Haruka. I - I wish there was something I could’ve done to keep it from happening, so that you wouldn’t have had to give up your dream.”

Maybe it’s the cold, or the late hour, or the beer-and-sake, but it takes Haruka a long, blurry edged moment to figure out what Daigo means by your dream. 

Because being a star, being an idol - it wasn’t really her dream. It’d be half hers, at most, fueled by all those evenings spent putting on shows for Uncle Kaz and Uncle Goro in karaoke parlors and sun-lit mornings singing songs under her breath as she made breakfast for Morning Glory. It had been something offered to her, something she would’ve happily walked away from, but then Uncle Kaz had insisted she take the chance Park Mirei was giving her and it’d all spun out of control. 

The words to explain this don’t come. They probably wouldn’t even come if she wasn’t tired or a little drunk - even if she hadn’t lived through the new worst month of her life, something she didn’t think was possible after the December when she turned nine.

“Don’t - don’t be sorry,” she manages after a pause that’s definitely too long. Daigo leans away a little bit, to look down at her, and watches as she takes a drink from the emptying sake bottle with a furrow between his brows. “I - I don’t regret giving it up. It wasn’t really - well, in the end it didn’t really feel like mine.”

The words hang between them, in the frozen air as the snow falls on the courtyard in front of them, and while she’s not sure Daigo completely understands, the way he shifts to curl his arm around her and pull her close says he has some kind of idea what she means. 

Because in the end she'd spent so long chasing a dream that was only ever partially hers while everyone else schemed above her head. Because in the end the death toll had totalled higher than the number of performances she’d held in actual venues. 

Because in the end it had cost her everything - her family, her home, Uncle Kaz’s freedom and Uncle Goro’s safety - and all she’d gained from it was the inability to go anywhere without being recognized, both as an idol and as the girl with yakuza ties. 

And truthfully she hates it, more than a little bit. Hates that Uncle Kaz had stupidly decided to listen to Mirei Park and bow out of the peaceful life they’d built like it meant nothing . Hates that the woman had died in an act of brutal violence, only for it to be twisted and framed like it was a choice she made . Hates too that no one had told her anything of what was going on beneath the surface, letting her run around like a chicken without its head until she teamed up with Akiyama. 

But most of all she hates that Uncle Goro was willing to die to keep her safe and that Uncle Kaz was willing to return to prison to keep her name out of the mud.

Tears well up in her eyes. She blinks them back as best she can, everything in her body feeling like a firecracker about to explode. She sucks in a breath, one that trembles and shakes and catches in the back of her throat, and Daigo pulls her closer, tucks her under his arm the way all her favorite people have throughout her life, and holds her despite his gunshot wound as she tries not to fall apart. 

The tears don’t fall, in the end. She fights them back, swallows down another mouthful of sake, and from her spot tucked against Daigo’s chest she asks, “do you ever wish we could have had normal lives? Do you ever wish our family weren’t yakuza?”

Daigo huffs out a breath, one that dances warm across the crown of her head, and gently pries the sake bottle from her hand. Once he sets it aside he reaches out, fussing with the way the throw blanket drapes over Haruka’s curled up legs, tugging the comforter up higher around her body like he’s stalling for time. 

After a while he speaks, his voice even rougher and lower than usual, the same way Uncle Goro’s gets after a cigarette. He says, “of course I have, Haruka, of course . I used to wonder what it would be like to be a normal kid all the time growing up, used to curse my father’s name and the whole Tojo clan when I got out of prison in my twenties. I’ve hated the yakuza for more years than I can count, but - ” 

Daigo falters, his voice seeming to catch in his throat. He clears it and then, when that apparently doesn’t help, plucks up the sake bottle and drowns the last few mouthfuls in one go. Then, very quietly, he confesses, “I’ve never been able to imagine what life would be like, if our family wasn’t yakuza. It’s all I’ve ever known, all I’ve ever had.”

Tears burn at Haruka’s eyes again, making her blink rapidly so they don’t fall. She isn’t sure if they’re for her, for Daigo, for them both, or for everyone she’s ever known. 

“Me too,” she confesses, turning her face in against Daigo’s chest as he pulls her closer. “I - me too.”

Daigo wraps both arms around her, cocooning her in warmth, and safety, and the faint smell of expensive cologne and cigarettes, with the faintest bandage-and-blood rust twinge underneath. It’s such a familiar combination, one that’s clung to Uncle Goro for years and years, and it makes it easy for her to close her eyes and relax.

The world gets murky and kind of floaty after that, like she’s falling asleep or drifting with the waves far from shore. She breathes in deep and lets it go as a sigh, murmuring, “thank you, Daigo-nii,” under her breath as she sinks into the comfort surrounding her. 

(In the morning she wakes up curled up on the futon she’d been shown to the night before, throw blanket tucked in around her under the comforter, still dressed in her jeans and long sleeved shirt from the day before. Her head pounds and her stomach rolls and any movement she tries only makes things worse. 

When she can finally manage to stick her head out from under the comforter she finds that a screen has been placed in the room, shielding her from the sliding doors leading out to the courtyard. It blocks out a good portion of the light, which she’s grateful for as even the little bit that reaches her makes her want to curl up and die. Just beside the futon sits a couple of water bottles, a pair of sleep pants and a hoodie, a box of antacids, her phone, and a box from a bakery they’d visited a lot when she lived in Kamurocho. 

She reaches for the water and antacids first, draining as much of the first bottle as her roiling stomach can handle before dumping a packet of powder in her mouth, the way she’s seen both Uncle Kaz and Uncle Goro do after nights spent singing and drinking when they still lived together in Kamurocho. It takes more moving than she wants, to peel out of her jeans and crawl into the pajama pants left behind, but she manages it all the same. It’s only after tugging the hoodie closer, so that she can fight it over her head, that she notices the note on top of the box from the bakery. 

For my favorite little sister, the note reads. Text me if you need me to keep the rest of the family away until dinner, otherwise I’ll see you at lunch.

Warmth crawls through her veins and pulls the corner of her mouth up into a smile. She checks the time on her phone, debates if she’s going to throw up if she eats whatever’s in the bakery box, and then decides a nap is in order for the antacids to hopefully do their job in full.

Three hours later, when she’s mostly back to normal and freshly showered, she texts the new contact in her LINE app what’s for lunch, nii-chan?

The response comes much sooner than she’s expecting, within a minute or two of it being sent, which seems ridiculous considering all the responsibilities the sixth chairman of the Tojo clan must have. 

Whatever you can stomach, it reads. And then, if you’re up for it, I think I can muscle you into the hospital to see Kiryu before he’s released to the authorities. 

Tears burn at the corners of her eyes again, but this time she lets them fall, grinning down at her phone hard enough that she forgets that the last remnants of her headache are still clinging to the inside of her skull. She sends a bombardment of stickers, all cute and silly and cheering things like thank you! and you’re the best! before typing out best drinking buddy ever award goes to you, daigo-nii!!!

This response takes longer to come in, nearly fifteen minutes, but when she reads it she grins so hard it actually brings back her headache just a little bit. 

Anything for my little sister, it reads. And while this month still wins the title for New Worst Month Ever, Haruka finds she doesn’t feel as bad as she did last night, sitting alone with a can of cheap, terrible beer.)

Notes:

*gently picks up haruka and drops her next to daigo* look girlie, a new family member!

i love the concept of haruka and daigo being Sibling Coded, even with their limited interactions and the age difference between them. i think this is definitely helped by the fact that haruka has No Idea what daigo got up to this game, which is the one i like to refer to as "that game with like three of daigo's exes running around" closely followed by "the ta-chan game". anyway!

haruka and daigo bonding! hopefully the idol stuff doesn't come off as too heavy handed, but i tried to imagine what it must have felt like for haruka and this was what i could come up with. i love little idol haruka, i put literally everyone i can in her outfit in the later games, but- at a certain point, with how she walked away and never looked back, you have to wonder if being an idol was even really a thing SHE wanted long-term.

also fun fact at one point at the end i had haruka refer to daigo as "best big brother" and then i took that away, because that will always be nishida's title hands down. sorry i ever accidentally contemplated giving your title to daigo, nishida. know that you are the mvp of every yakuza fic majima has ever been in, even if somehow you're never mentioned <3

anyway posting this as a kinda birthday present to myself. over a decade ago i posted an angst fic where bilbo died and thorin lived as a birthday present to myself and now here i am, knee deep in yakuza family fluff. i think that's called Healing, kids. i hope everyone's enjoying majima pirate game!!! i'm almost done running baestie through 0 and then i'll be able to start myself <3

Chapter 9: August 20th, 2016 ; you’ll be better and smarter and more grown up (better son or daughter)

Summary:

By hour eighteen she feels barely conscious. Someone in scrubs - a doctor or a nurse or a tech or whoever, she can't tell - asks if she knows if difficult labors run in her family.

She laughs, a loud, deranged, unhinged kind of cackle. It bursts out of her, tearing apart her throat that’s already sore from grunting and groaning and trying not to scream. She laughs, tries and fails to choke it back, and then, for possibly the third time, starts to cry.

“I don't know,” she answers, feeling hysterical and untethered and yet so trapped in that moment, in the pain of trying to push a little person out of her body without killing either of them. “My - my mom died when I was nine and my dads - ”

She’s never called them her dads out loud. The realization rocks through her, devastating in a way she's not prepared for - how viciously it hurts to finally acknowledge out loud my dads when they're not here.

Notes:

my baestie: i can't believe you made me read about childbirth. please do not do this to me again

me: in my defense i can't believe i wrote about childbirth. but canonically she has a child, so-

shorter chapter, but the next one should be up soon!! <3

One of the nurses or techs or whatever-the-hell that helps during the hours where Haruka’s in labor asks her is there anyone you need us to call, honey?

She shakes her head, biting her lip hard enough to bleed. She’s alone in a hospital she barely knows the name of, more than twelve hours into giving birth - it’s late in the game to be asking her that and would likely be sweet at any other time for anyone else. 

But all it does is add to the pain she’s in right now, the pain that screams you will split in two, you will never be the same, you are failing already, and you have no one but yourself to blame . 

By hour eighteen she feels barely conscious. Someone in scrubs - a doctor or a nurse or a tech or whoever, she can't tell - asks if she knows if difficult labors run in her family. 

She laughs, a loud, deranged, unhinged kind of cackle. It bursts out of her, tearing apart her throat that’s already sore from grunting and groaning and trying not to scream. She laughs, tries and fails to choke it back, and then, for possibly the third time, starts to cry. 

“ I don't know, ” she answers, feeling hysterical and untethered and yet so trapped in that moment, in the pain of trying to push a little person out of her body without killing either of them. “My - my mom died when I was nine and my dads - ”

She’s never called them her dads out loud. The realization rocks through her as another contraction, one stronger than the last by far, jolts her whole frame. It’s devastating in a way she's not prepared for - how viciously it hurts to finally acknowledge out loud my dads when they’re not here to hold her hand or brush her hair out of her face or coach her through her breathing as the hospital staff all start going that’s it, honey, that’s it, give it another push, you can do this!

Her dads aren’t there, because - because she can’t stand to cause them any more trouble.

(And because Uncle Kaz is in jail and Uncle Goro’s still trying to help hold the Tojo clan together with Daigo. They’re busy and she’s almost an adult, she should be able to handle herself by now. She loves them and they've given up so much for her and if she turned up, pregnant at nineteen, and they looked at her like - like she was a fuck-up, or a burden, their eyes dim with disappointment, it would crush her more than anything else in the world.)

Haruka gives birth to a baby boy while choking on a scream, more than twenty-four hours after her water first broke. There is no one from her family in the waiting room pacing anxiously for news as there always was in the movies and shows she watched on TV growing up. There’s no one at her side to squeeze her hand or tell her he's gorgeous, you did so good or that's our girl, that's our Haru-chan, it's all over, it's gonna be okay.

She’s alone, nineteen, and now - she’s a mother. 

When they ask her for an address to send the birth certificate to, she gives them the address she's had memorized since she was ten. The woman typing it in must look it up online to verify it or something, because after a second she gives her a skeptical glance through her glasses and asks, “are you sure that's the address, Sawamaru-san? It says that it belongs to a construction company.”

Haruto is four days old and Haruka can barely stand, let alone hold him, but there's an uncomfortable feeling burning against her neck that says you need to get out of here . 

“Yes, that's correct,” she says. Her voice, impossibly, still seems hoarse to her own ears from the hours upon hours of crying-screaming-shouting during labor. “Can you address it to the care of Nishida Kousuke, please? And - can you, uh... Can you add a note to it as well? Please?”

(Haruka doesn’t let Nishida know to expect it, despite knowing nearly half a dozen phone numbers off the top of her head that would get her in contact with the man in minutes, if not seconds. She can't bring herself to do so, not even knowing how hurt and confused Nishida will be upon receiving an official government document saying she gave birth to a baby boy, along with a sticky note that reads don’t tell dad. She can’t stand to disappoint her dads and somehow, even more than that she can’t stand to disappoint Nishida either. 

Almost a full year later it will seem silly and childish, her fear of rejection and disappointment, especially considering the way the man in question gets misty eyed and emotional at the sight of her and her son. 

“Haruka-chan,” Nishida breathes, voice cracking in the middle of her name. He’s still a noisy crier, just like she was younger. It would make him hard to understand, but Haruka grew up with half a dozen younger siblings at any given time and finds it weirdly endearing more than confusing. “And - and this must be Haruto-kun. Oh - oh god, look at you, oh Haruka - ”

Tears pool at Haruka’s lash line and despite the exhaustion in her whole body she gently places Haruto’s baby carrier on the floor, unbuckles and lifts him into her arms, and puts on her bravest, brightest smile. 

“I’m home, Nishida-niisan,” she whispers, and then, more quietly, she adds, “Haruto, this is Nishida Kousuke, one of your - one of your uncles.” 

Nishida only manages to half swallow the sob that rises up in his throat. Haruka can’t help but match him in that, choking on a sob and a laugh and a scream all at once as she falls into Nishida’s arms as he reaches for them both.

Later Haruto gets to meet his second grandfather, though he’s sleeping at the time when the door to Daigo’s office swings open and Majima Goro tumbles through it, eye wide and mouth already open in a gasp.

“Dad,” Haruka breathes, trying to lever herself up off the edge of the desk. It’s difficult with Haruto in her arms, but luckily both Yuta and Nishida rush to help steady her. Yuta reaches for Haruto for a second, eyebrows raised in a silent offer to take him, but Haruka just hikes him up closer to her shoulder and shakes her head in silent refusal. 

“Haruka, sweetheart, you - is that - I - ”

Majima Goro isn't a noisy crier, not when he's not hamming it up to drag a smile out of his family. He just breathes in quietly, sucking in air in a way that makes his whole body tremble a little, and then breathes out in a steady, too-controlled fashion. 

“Haru-chan,” he murmurs, reaching out to her only to yank his hand back, rip his gloves off, and toss them to the side. “Haruka, baby,” he repeats, voice hoarse and hands trembling. He says her name reverently, the way he used to when they had to say goodbye at airports or train stops or at the side of idling cars. Like it holds an important weight in his mouth. “I - ”

Whatever he's going to say gets bitten back. He’s older and more tired than he was the last time she saw him, with more crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes and wrinkles around his mouth. When he breathes out again his shoulders sag and it makes it hard not to notice that the past two years is the longest time they’ve ever gone without seeing each other, the longest time they’ve ever gone without talking too. It aches like a bruise in the middle of her chest.

“Hey Dad,” she answers, smiling as tears start to pool in her eyes. “I - welcome home.”

Her father stumbles forward, shaking his head a little as he reaches up with his now bare hands. One cups the side of her face, while the other flutters, tentative and careful, over Haruto’s shoulder. 

“That’s my line, sweetheart,” he murmurs, voice cracking. He clears his throat, leaning his head forward until they’re temple to temple. Haruka leans up into him, doing her best to keep from crying, because this is a happy moment, finally a happy moment. 

“Welcome home, to both my Haru-chans,” he says as she fights back tears. It’s in the voice she knows best from sleepy-slow mornings and airport arrivals - rough, but sweet and low, cigarette-stained and wrapped so, so carefully around the syllables as he says them.

“I - we’re home, Dad.”

For a second Majima Goro goes still against her, like he’s fighting a flinch. And then, all at once, he sags forward with a shudder and she catches a glimpse of his single eye shiny with tears as he gives into the urge to drag her and her son in close, so that Haruto is cradled, safe and sound, in between them. 

Haruka cries despite her best efforts, the tidal wave of emotion slamming over her all of a sudden, everything that’s happened to her in the last year jolting through her frame like a storm. Somewhere behind them she can hear Nishida start to cry even harder than she is, until it sounds like his chest is heaving with the force of it. She’s sure that his face will be blotchy and red soon, if it isn’t already turning so, and the thought pulls a watery, near hysterical giggle out of her among the sobs. Against the top of her father sniffles a little as he holds her close and then reaches out with a swear and a grumble, likely to try and smack Nishida, though instead he ends up tugging Nishida in against their shoulders with a muttered for fuck’s sake, Nishida, you’re making us look bad .

Haruto, like the gift he has always been, manages to sleep through it all, tucked in the center of the huddle of affection and support Haruka’s been missing for so, so long.)

Notes:

like i said this is a shorter chapter, but this is also a chapter i reworked the most. haruto needed to be added to the ensemble, but he kept fighting me on HOW, so in the end i did my best. also did you guys know nishida doesn't have a canon first name??? my man nishida!!!! rgg how could you just not give the mvp nishida a first name!!!!

anyway i feel very strongly about looking up and suddenly realizing Oh Fuck Those Are My Dads, because they ARE haruka's dads!! anyway i love this family. i finally got to start pirate yakuza game, but i'm still only in the beginning of chapter 2.

i hope you guys enjoyed this chapter!! i'm going to be posting the next one within the next couple of days, since this one is shorter than they usually are <3

Chapter 10: December, 2017 ; take it high, take it far, take it home

Summary:

Haruka spends the first two weeks after the emergency personnel bundle her dad into an ambulance letting Yuta and Nishida ply her with reassurances that there’s no way her dad is dead. She does her best to believe them, even when the newspapers and news stations say otherwise because, well, they were wrong about her father, weren't they?

So Haruka frets, but she does her best not to dwell on it. And then, three days after her father is released prison and nearly a month after the news broke across the nation about the Dragon of Dojima’s passing, Date walks in through the door to Daigo’s office at ten thirty-four pm, alone.

Notes:

as always a shoutout to my baestie, who reads through these before they get posted. my favorite comment of theirs on this was "GIRL HIS CHEEKS HAVE BEEN SUNKEN THIS WHOLE TIME"

baestie, sometimes you don't think about your father's sunken cheeks until he's sad.

ANWAY WARNING THIS ONE'S SAD I'M SO SORRY <3

Haruka spends the first two weeks after the emergency personnel bundle her dad into an ambulance letting Yuta and Nishida ply her with reassurances that there’s no way her dad is dead. She does her best to believe them, even when the newspapers and news stations say otherwise because, well, they were wrong about her father, weren't they?

The two men move in what has to be a coordinated kind of attack against her growing unease and anxiety - making sure she’s never alone with her thoughts for too long as they wait for Saejima, Daigo, and her father to be released from prison. Nishida’s always popping in to give her an update on the surprisingly speedy process of the three men’s release, while Yuta coaxes her out of the safety of Tojo Headquarters for short trips around Kamurocho, Minami at their heels for safety, so that he can see where she grew up. 

“Date-san’s going to bring him back when everything dies down,” Yuta promises her one night, as they lie curled up in the same room she’d once woken up with her very first hangover in. This time the futon’s big enough for two, but the air is still so crisp with the cold that Haruka can’t help but worry whether or not Haruto’s warm enough in his crib, despite the heaters Minami hauled in for them the first night. “Kiryu-san’s likely just laying low as he heals up and letting things settle so Saejima-san and the others can get released without problem. He’d never leave us waiting on purpose, Haruka, I’m sure of it.”

In the moments where Yuta isn’t glued to her side with Haruto, Haruka finds herself tucked into Daigo’s office, where Nishida’s set up camp as he coordinates all of the clan that will listen to him (a good sixty percent thankfully) and the releases of their three biggest members. Minami’s supposedly in control of Majima Construction at this point in time, which she knows for her father’s sake he’s trying to take very, very seriously, but he looks so miserable reading through the contract paperwork that Haruka offers to help out. 

Nishida rolls his eyes when Minami cries out thank you, hime-chan! and dumps a pile of papers in her lap, promising to go rustle up some food for everyone before he bolts out the door. They work in companionable silence for a while, before Haruka works up the courage to ask, “you really think he’s okay?”

“Of course, Haruka-chan,” Nishida answers, immediately and so sincerely it brings tears to her eyes. He gives her a crooked but kind smile, reaching over their shared workspace to squeeze her hand as he adds, “there isn’t a grave deep enough to keep Kiryu-san from you and oyaji.”

So Haruka frets, but she does her best not to dwell on it, because two years ago the news announced the death of one Majima Goro and it’d turned out that he was just tucked out of sight for a bit. She lets herself rest as best she can between helping with Majima Construction, short stints of wandering Kamurocho, and parenting Haruto with Yuta, but she finds herself worn out all too easily and left alone with her thoughts even in moments wherein others are present. 

Days crawl past and the new year comes and goes. They eat soba with Nishida and Minami, let Haruto smack at a little bundle of mochi Yuya has delivered to them, and stay up to see the sunrise as the rest of Kamurocho parties as usual. Haruka asks Yuta if he doesn’t mind waiting for their first shrine visit of the year, so that they can go as a family once her parents are with them again. Yuta, sweet boy that he is, agrees easily and readily, mentioning that he hadn’t expected them to visit without Majima-san and Kiryu-san anyway before dropping a kiss to her cheek. 

And then, three days after Saejima, Daigo, and her father are released from prison and nearly a month after the news broke across the nation about the Dragon of Dojima’s passing, Date walks in through the door to Daigo’s office at ten thirty-four pm, alone.

The world grinds to a slow and disastrous halt around Haruka. She stands up from the couch, where she’d been sitting as they all caught up in what Daigo has jokingly been calling The Shitshow Council Meeting , and takes a single step forward.

“Where is he?” she asks, though it comes out too sharp, a brutal kind of demand. 

Date’s face, already worn so deeply by time, clouds over with pain. He looks to the ground, unable to meet her eyes. “Haruka,” he starts to say, shifting to lift something from a bag hanging off one arm.

Fear strikes like lightning down her spine, leaving a forest fire of panic in its wake. She takes another step forward, her whole body trembling with the force of everything inside of her, and demands, “Date-san, where is my dad ?”

Date’s shoulders rise and fall as he takes a deep breath. He glances up at her, face lined with wrinkles and eyes dark with emotion, and then, very carefully, pulls out an urn from the bag at his side. 

“They had me identify the body, Haruka-chan,” he murmurs, voice pitched to soothe, even as the words feel like a physical blow to her chest. “I - I pulled every string I could, but there was nothing I could do, I - I’m so sorry , Haruka-chan.”

Black holes are born when a star collapses in on itself. Grief, Haruka muses from a weightless point outside her own body, must be its own type of black hole.

Stars die and supernovas erupt from their corpses, leaving behind a pit of agony that disrupts everything around it. It ruins the careful plod of routine, the way everything is dragged into a vicious, smothering kind of darkness that occupies the same wherein there was once bright, burning light.

Once this happens, nothing can ever be the same again. 

Haruka has known grief her whole life. She's experienced it first-hand as a child, lost and scared, first for one of the stray cats around the orphanage, then for an elderly neighbor, and then, more sharply, when she’d lost the mother she’d been desperately searching for. Grief is an old companion, a well worn shawl, and yet - it’s not the same. Never has it hurt this much, never has it left her feeling like she’s collapsing at a molecular level and splitting apart at her seams. 

Her dad can’t be dead. He can’t . And yet the urn -

Her vision goes dark around the edges. It feels like she blinks and suddenly she’s on the floor, her hands clasped with her father’s, half in his lap and half sprawled across the floor. She’s heaving for breath and her throat aches, while her face feels damp and tacky with tears where it’s jammed against her father’s shoulder. 

None of it feels real. Haruka floats around in the darkness of her own body, hands held in Goro’s for - for ages. He only lets her go to scoop her up, at which point he carries her over to a nearby couch and places her down, as gently as if he was placing a flower on a grave. Tears bead in her eyes, but before she can start sobbing again Yuta drops down against her side and tucks her against his chest.

Voices wash over her, crashing against each other at the edge of her understanding. She lets Yuta hold her, lets her father grip her hands - at some point she knows someone tries to coax her to drink something, but she just shakes her head and leans her head against the back of the couch. She does her best not to think, to let the darkness swallow her whole, and let time flow on around her. 

The funeral is organized in three days, set up Tojo-style and held at the tail end of the third week of January. It’s cold and gray, with the weather reports promising snow any day now, which means that once the procession starts it'll be hard to tell if everyone is trembling with cold or with grief.

Haruka stands at the very front during the ceremony at Daigo’s insistence, next to her only remaining parent. For all the deaths she’s experienced, she’s never had to attend a yakuza funeral before and the pomp and circumstance is jarring, especially when she knows how much her dad would’ve hated it. 

(Daigo asks her the day before if she wants to speak. He's in a rumpled old hoodie, his hair greasy as it flops against his forehead, bags worn under his eyes speaking of sleepless nights and stress. Seeing him, just as grief worn as she is and yet somehow keeping it together enough to plan the funeral, fills her with guilt in a numb, just-out-of-reach kind of way.

The request catches Haruka off guard, partially because she’s felt like a husk being puppeted around for the last two days and partially because she doesn’t think civilians could speak during these kinds of funerals.

“I - I don’t think I can,” Haruka admits quietly, glancing down at her feet so that she doesn’t have to look into Daigo’s sad, bloodshot eyes. She keeps thinking she’s cried herself dry, that she doesn’t have any more tears left in her, and she keeps being proved wrong. Her eyes burn and her lips tremble when she attempts to continue, murmuring, “I - I'm sorry, Daigo-nii, but I - I - ”

Daigo drags her into a hug without a single second of hesitation, tucking her head under his chin and wrapping his arms around her like he's trying to shield her from the pain. She melts into his embrace, sniffling as she tries not to burst into sobs again, and lets the cigarette-cologne smell clinging to his shirt soothe her. His cologne is sharper smelling than her father’s, but the cigarette smoke is always the same. 

“S’okay, Haruka, don't worry ‘bout it. You don't have to speak. Fuck, you don't even have to come if you don't want - Saejima’s gonna be shadowing Majima, so if you and Yuta wanna just lay low or go home or whatever, you can. Fuck , I just wanted to offer, I should’ve known better, I - shit, Haruka, I'm sorry - ”)

Daigo does all of the speaking at the funeral of the Fourth Chairman of the Tojo Clan, the legendary Dragon of Dojima. His voice is scratchy and strained as he raises it to its limits, though for once she doesn’t think it’s from years of smoking. Encased in a black suit and no winter jacket, he stands tall and proud behind the podium, hair gelled back and concealer Haruka had helped put apply that morning mostly hiding the bruised bags under his eyes. He talks about how no one will ever be able to replace the man known as Kiryu Kazuma - how he was kind, and brave, and filled with a sense of duty like no other. How he always did what he thought was right, even if it baffled and stressed everyone else out to watch him do it. 

That comment gets a few chuckles from the crowd, which spills out onto the goddamn yard out the front of the Tojo Headquarters’ building, crowds the hall in between, and fills every scrap of space in the ceremonial hall Daigo’s stood in front of. It’s probably the biggest crowd a Tojo funeral has ever drawn and everyone is bundled in tight together, shoulder to shoulder to both stay warm and make enough space for all the attendees. The only area that has any elbow room is the small bubble around where Haruka and her father stand.

Shoulder to shoulder, the fourth chairman’s daughter and the Mad Dog of Shimano stand out in front of everyone, closest to the memorial photo on display in front of the podium. 

Part of the way through Daigo’s speech her father reaches over and takes her hand. Haruka doesn’t know at which part or if something Daigo says triggers it, because she’s still floating in the darkness of the black hole that’s taken over her body. 

But even through the darkness - even through the distance and the floating feeling of watching this all from somewhere else, she finds herself struck by the feeling of rough calluses brushing against her palm as a warm hand curls around hers.

The skin to skin contact startles her in a way she can’t explain. People have touched her in the last few days - her father, Yuta, Haruto, Daigo, even Saejima, but it’s now, Daigo’s voice droning on above her head, that she’s suddenly slammed back into her body once more. She jerks, her fingers flexing in a way that tells registers cold, stiff, hurt, warm , and she blinks in surprise as she realizes, all at once, that she’s cold.  

Her father squeezes her hand and the warmth of it is nearly burning. She glances down, registering the glove sticking out of his slack’s pocket, and then looks sharply up at him as she becomes aware that she’s trembling all over from the cold, leaking in from of one the side doors, open to the outside where yet more people are gathered to mourn. She’s on his good side, something she hadn’t really registered before, so it’s easy for him to glance down at her from the corner of his eye in turn.

Majima Goro looks worn thin and ragged in a way Haruka has never thought possible, a sad and tired man with sunken cheeks and a hollow look in his eye. He’s dressed in a black suit with no winter jacket, just like Daigo, and he currently only has one of his usual leather gloves on. While he stands tall with his shoulders back, towering over her and a good portion of the rest of the crowd behind them, Haruka can’t help but think he still looks oddly small. The only contrast of color on him are the bruise-purple bags under his eye, the bloody tint to his bitten raw lips, and the bloodshot shine in his dark eyes.

Haruka looks at her father and sees him, really sees him, for the first time in days. And what she sees breaks her heart all over again, because she knows that while she’s saying goodbye to one of her parents, her father’s saying goodbye to the love of his life. 

A rush of warmth drags through her chest, love and affection washing over the grooves grief has left behind, soothing their edges. It’s still raw and overwhelming, her dad’s body reduced to an unassuming black urn and a funeral photo, but she knows suddenly, all the way down to a molecular level, that she’s not alone. She squeezes his hand back and then shifts to lean her shoulder against his arm, tipping her head to the side so that she can rest her temple against his shoulder. Her father stiffens for a second before sagging into her, a warm reassuring weight all along her side. 

They stand like that for the rest of Daigo’s speech, only shifting once so that Haruka can tuck their joined hands inside her jacket pocket as the snow falls begins outside, a flurry of flakes blown in every once in a while as Daigo’s voice echoes out from speakers hastily set up outside. And despite the pain and the numbness that lingers at the edges of her senses, Haruka stays anchored in a rough approximation of her old orbit the whole time. 

(Nearly a year after her dad’s funeral, a few weeks shy of her birthday, she’ll press Yuta to find out what had happened in the black hole space inside her memory. Yuta won’t want to tell her, will protest and hem and haw about it, but eventually will cave and tell her in fits and starts about the moments after Date held out her dad’s urn and apologized.

She’d screamed, apparently. Surging forward at Date and shrieking things like you're lying and no, no, take it back, tell me it isn’t true, tell me before she’d crumpled to the ground and started slamming her hands against the floor with wordless shouts of pain. She’d done that once, twice, thrice, and Yuta could do nothing but watch in frozen shock as the room had echoed with the sounds of her pain. 

He will tell her that she might have broken her hands, if it hadn’t been for her father falling to his knees and snatching them up, cradling them in his as he hauled her in against his chest to hold her steady. She’d screamed, a roaring kind of noise, one Yuta told her he hoped he never had to hear her make again, and her father had just - held her, refusing to let go of her hands, sheltering her as much as he could as he murmured things against her hair that Yuta couldn’t hear.

Yuta almost won’t tell her the last part - she will see his face twist, like he’s chewing on his words, and then he will sigh. It will take her prodding him in the side, once and then twice, before he reluctantly finishes the story.

“Don’t tell your dad,” he will say, reaching up to run his hands through his hair before he changes course and reaches out to tangle their fingers together instead. “I - he made me promise not to mention it, after we realized you didn't seem to remember. But - god, Haruka. You begged him to bring Kiryu-san back. And then you - you told him it shouldn’t have been Kiryu. You told him it should’ve been you instead.”

Haruka will cry that night, huge heaving sobs like she hasn’t cried in months, and Yuta will hold her, steady and warm and so, so endlessly patient. She won’t have the heart to bring up what she will then know next time she sees her father, but he’ll be able to see it in her face all the same. 

And all he will do is lean down and kiss the top of her head, holding her closer as he murmurs, “s’okay, Haru-chan. Sweetheart, s’okay. You’re still here and I’m still here and that’s what matters, alright? Kaz wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.”

And she will know, down to her bones, down to her very atoms, that he is telling the truth.)

Notes:

my favorite fun fact is that i wrote this during a family lunch once, just tap-tap-tapping away on my phone, and no one questioned me at all. when we got in the car after i was like "i finished the funeral scene :)" and baestie's younger sibling was like "did you write that during lunch?? the fuck??"

anyway, i hope this manages to stay consistent to everyone's character. grief is a sometimes hard thing to nail down, especially how people react to it, because it's always so different and varied and, in the grand scheme of things we know as the readers that kiryu didn't die. if u have any feedback on this chapter, please feel free to fling it my way! i had to play fast and loose with the details of the funeral itself because i pictured it outside and then yakuza 8 was like "actually it was in this room :)" and i had to fix it because for SOME REASON i find a lot of enrichment in playing canon-correct chicken with my writing.

thank you guys for reading this! next chapter isn't baestie read yet, but hopefully i'll have it up soon!!!! <3

Notes:

around this time last year i started to become aware of yakuza as a series. by march i was smitten and by may i started to write this monster of a fic about haruka and her family, partially because i felt adrift in my own family and needed the anchor of imagining how haruka's life would have changed if kiryu had let even one (1) person in and especially how it would change if that person was majima.

it's all written, i'm editing through it now, so hopefully the wait between chapters isn't bad! i hope you all like this and please let me know your thoughts!!! <3