Chapter Text
He was only eight when the feeling first reared its ugly head.
Only eight – and not known for his smarts – but he was smart enough to know that he had to shove this feeling down as deep down as he could.
It was Valentine's day, 1976. Of course, at this age, children didn’t really care for the romantic aspect of valentine’s day – their only goal being to give chocolate to the people they loved.
Even with that in mind, Kazuma didn’t expect any chocolates from anyone, but he had one person in particular he wanted to give a chocolate to. Though Akira had completely different expectations, and Kazuma was currently hearing all about it as they ate breakfast together at the dining table of the orphanage.
“I’m gonna get so many chocolates from all the girls in our class, Kazuma. I already know it. I bet you will get none!” Akira teased, blowing a raspberry. Kazuma only sighed and shoveled the last of his rice into his mouth. He fidgeted with a small bag of chocolates in his palm under the table.
Akira was confused by Kazuma’s silence and fidgetiness. Kazuma was always quiet, yes, but he would at least respond with a ‘ shut up’ . “Hey, Kazuma. Hey. What’s that in your hand?” He didn’t wait for a response and was already reaching to pry his hand open.
Kazuma jumped and snatched his hand away, already moving to sit up and walk to school with a frown. “None of your business.”
Akira giggled and stood up with the other boy, grabbing his own bag and getting ready to walk with his brother to school. “Were those chocolates I saw?” He teased. “You know only the girls are supposed to give out chocolates today, right? Boys have to wait until next month. Are you a girl now, Kazumi? ” Akira snickered, lightly punching Kazuma in the arm. Apparently his ego was very inflated on this holiday – much more than any eight year old’s ego should be.
For some reason, those words struck a nerve within Kazuma. Yes, he knew that only the girls were meant to give out chocolates today… but he didn’t think it mattered that much. Why should it? It was just a holiday. He could give out chocolates whenever he pleased. It was all just a stupid tradition. Why did he get so… mad? Upset? Over getting called a girl. Getting called Kazumi. Was he mad at the prospect or mad that he didn’t mind the prospect that much? It was too confusing for his brain to think about.
The walk to school was a little tense, but only from one party. Akira continued talking about anything and everything to a grumbling Kazuma. He was clutching the little bag of chocolates so hard it had begun melting.
Kazuma really, truly, had no idea why this was bothering him so much. It was just a stupid teasing comment from Akira. But the comment led to him thinking about if he were a girl and if he were allowed to give out chocolates today. And it disgusted him – it disgusted him that he didn’t actually mind the whole idea, he even liked it.
He had to protect Akira, Yuko, and Yumi at the orphanage and was constantly being told by everyone around him how big and strong he was. Kazama was always telling him how he would grow up to be stronger than all of his men combined one day, how he would make a great man, how he must be a great man.
And he didn’t dislike that, he held no disdain to growing up to be a strong man that would protect his loved ones, but when he let himself think for the first time of what it would be like if he could be the opposite: a girl that could just peacefully give out chocolates to her loved ones, not needing to furrowed her brows and throw punches to protect them, he realised he enjoyed that idea more than the idea of growing up to be a violent and stoic and feared man.
Only eight years old, but old enough to know that this feeling had to be repressed. He would have to double down on his efforts to live up to everyones expectations when he grows up. Everyone expected him to stay what he was born to be: a feared weapon. Kazama never said it explicitly, but Kazuma knew what he did for a living, and Kazuma wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but he knew that he was trying to raise him and Akira to be weapons of Yakuza justice.
If Kazama needed him to be strong and feared, needed him to be a real man , then he would force himself to be exactly that. That was what he was born to be, what he was raised to be, and what he would be, and he would be that for the first of his life. There was no room for argument. He had already shoved that feeling and the whole idea of a Kazumi far, far down in his brain, and had triple locked it up in a big vault with a sign that read ‘Do not open under any circumstances’.
When White day came, Akira, of course, came to tease him, saying “Now you can finally give those chocolates out! It’s the boys' turn!” Kazuma just flushed and told him to shut up. He had given his chocolates to Yumi on Valentine's Day at school, opting to disregard tradition. Yumi, of course, loved them and gave him a big hug. Apparently, Akira had told Yumi about his plans (which he got yelled at for when they got home) and about his teasing. So when Yumi gave him a hug, she said “Thank you, Kazumi” with a taunting, yet light-hearted giggle. He wriggled himself out of her grasp and ran away before he could let the locked feelings even begin to ask to resurface.
This system worked for a very long time, but then prison ruined everything.
He made it through the first year successfully, choosing to keep himself busy with as much work as the prison would let him do so he would not have to think. He knew that if was alone with his thoughts for too long, the vault would unlock itself and the feelings and the thoughts and Kazumi would slither its way back into his mind and would latch onto his brain like a parasite.
But it got to the second year of his sentence and he had run out of things to do and things to think about.
The silence of prison was deafening. Turns out, when you spend all of your time with two people who are able to speak for four people each, you kind of get used to that.
Kiryu – contrary to popular belief – hated silence. When it got silent, all of his deepest, ugliest thoughts emerged from the hellish depths of his mind and tried to worm their way back into the forefronts of his brain. Kiryu always believed that it was better to just ignore problems and feelings by keeping occupied, so that eventually you get so busy that you don’t have time to think about difficult things.
But in prison, you have nothing but time. Eight years more, to be precise.
He tried to keep on his best behaviour in prison. Not because he wanted to suck up to the guards in hopes of them letting him out early, but because he was just a decent person and didn’t want to cause trouble. Because of this, he naturally got on the prison staff's good side.
Though he now wishes he caused as much of a ruckus as possible upon arrival. Because now, they were caring for him. The staff wouldn’t let him work himself to death with jobs and duties anymore. It had worked fine and dandy the first year, but apparently when you pass out four times in a day while sewing and consequently accidentally sew your finger, they have to put up a boundary.
This was the first time in Kiryu’s life he had to stop doing the work of others by force. And he found that he despised it. As he now sat on the cot of his cell, alone, in silence, he could almost feel the hippocampus in his brain activating in an attempt to resurface that one particular blacklisted thought.
Everybody else was doing their daily chores that he had been exempt from, so the cell block was completely silent, save for the occasional shuffling of a guard.
In a desperate attempt to keep control of his thoughts, he decided to remember fond childhood memories. Playing in the yard with Nishiki and Yumi (he hasn’t heard from them since he got to prison. He wonders how they’re doing. He misses them.), trying his first cigarette with Nishiki when they were fifteen, Nishiki having a coughing fit but trying desperately to hide it.
This worked for about two hours until Kiryu ran out of memories to look back on. He truly believes he reminisced on every single memory he has.
Kiryu begrudgingly realised he couldn’t hold back those thoughts any longer. Since the first day he got to prison, he could feel it knocking at the door of the vault they were kept in, crying out to be let out. Over time, the knocking turned into pounding, its cries turning into hysterical begging.
He also realised that being in prison unlocked another similar thought he had locked away in a matching vault right next to the vault. A smaller vault, more like a safe, but still to be kept in solitary for the rest of his life. He found this safe covered with cobwebs and dust, and had discovered it when he realised he had to shower every day surrounded by other men.
This safe he had locked and threw the key away for when he was thirteen and realised that maybe he didn’t just like girls. And this one was particularly awkward and awful, especially when the thought had surfaced in the school change room after PE. Clearly, Kiryu cannot think straight when changing and showering with other men.
Well. Maybe he should confront both of these locked boxes. He had eight years left, after all. And Kiryu knew he was strong enough – that was what he was meant to be, right? He knew that these thoughts and feelings were powerful, but so was he. He could face them head on and say I’m not scared of you and beat them until they either shrunk so much that they practically vanished, or until his mentality caught up with his biology and he realised, logically, that these thoughts were silly and he was silly for thinking them and that it was all so silly, so silly that he would be cured of these thoughts and feelings and would never experience them again and he would live the life he was meant to live.
Yeah. He could do that. Maybe this wasn’t something that you just thought of while sitting on your shitty prison bed, assuming a The Thinker position until you had a eureka moment and came to conclusions. Or maybe it was, who knows. Kiryu was always best at confronting things head on and not giving up until his opponent was down. Unfortunately, his biggest enemy, his own psyche, he couldn’t punch until it relented.
First, he dusted off the smaller safe and cracked the hinges until its contents escaped. All the feelings and thoughts that were tightly sealed away in that safe flew out like a flood and seized control of his entire brain. Okay. He could do this.
Every day during free time and if he had chore time off, he would be in the prison library reading or thinking. He would start with thinking and he would see if his thinking led to reading.
It was tedious, boring, awkward, and absolutely mortifying, but this was good. It was getting done. This was the least of his worries, really.
Truthfully, this bag of worms wasn’t the one he was most concerned about. Yes, he was involved in a community that didn’t take well to men with his… interests very well, but Kiryu vaguely remembers being a young boy taking a field trip to the Kazama family office and seeing Kazama have very personal meetings with Kashiwagi when the two men thought they were shielded from prying eyes. So, at least he could be sure in the knowledge that his father figure most likely wouldn’t disapprove of his preferences. And he was well aware of Majima’s sexuality. (Majima was a very, very common topic in his thoughts during prison, but particularly during his current sexuality crisis.)
And within two weeks, he had begun his sexuality crisis, had his sexual awakening, and then defeated his sexuality crisis. All within two whole weeks. Kiryu truly thinks this is record time.
He came to his conclusion when he had the groundbreaking epiphany that he could like women and men at the same time. He didn’t think such a world existed, really. He knew Majima was like that, but he also thought that was just Majima being a special case. A scientific mystery. But, no. It was very real! And it was called bisexuality!
Of course, he found a book on sexuality in the prison library in the deepest depths of the shelves. And, of course, the book was in english. Kiryu realised that the west was far more ahead than Japan in terms of this stuff. But again, all he had was time. So he dutifully spent hours translating every word in the table of contents with a dictionary, then going to the Bisexuality chapter. Once again, painfully translated everything with a dictionary, and then with a gasp he realised, this was exactly him.
Truthfully, he didn’t know whether he was excited and overjoyed by this discovery, or terrified. When he gets out of prison in eight years, maybe it’ll be a whole new world, and society will have progressed so far that men and women like him would be accepted with open arms by all members of society. And if that is the case, then that’ll be amazing. He probably won’t wear it like a badge of honor like Majima does, but he’ll be overjoyed that Majima and others like him would be able to wear their sexuality with pride safely. When Kiryu was out of prison, the world still treated them unkindly. He hopes that will change.
But what if it doesn’t? What if he gets out of prison and the world is just like he left it? He’s heard conversations from other men in prison about the topic. They call them queers. Fag. Okama. Things like that. It didn’t really hurt his feelings, it more just pissed him off. Why would anyone care about who he liked? Why should they?
He was conflicted over what to think of all this, but he was glad that it was over and now that he could throw out that safe, he had freed up some space in the shelves of his mind.
Though. Now this meant that there was only one thing left to deal with, and while it was in the same realm as the previous one, it was a thousand times more terrifying. Just the thought of the thought made him feel sick. Thinking of thinking of thinking of the thought made him break out in a cold sweat and start pacing his cell and bite his fingernails like he was a child again.
He tried, though. He really tried. He was allowed to do his chores again (a regular amount this time), so he had to do it in his free time instead. When he had free time, he would sit on the edge of his cot and drop his head in his hands, and he would think.
Seriously. He really, honestly, did try to think about it. But when he would try to turn the lock to the safe and the contents would scratch the metal door with its claws, he would run away wanting to cry. When he would try to break the hinges off the vault door with a hammer, the metal against metal would clang so loud he would just throw the hammer frustratedly at the vault and once again, run away trembling in terror.
Only eight years old he was, when he made the promise to himself to shove the thoughts and consequent emotions as deep down as he could, and by god did he regret that. Maybe if his younger self had just let it fester, let himself imagine Kazumi and a life free from violence and scowling, then maybe he could neatly tuck it away in a big pretty box in his mind, still vacuum sealed shut, but instead the sign on it would read ‘ Please do not open, I’m not ready.’ Maybe then Kazumi and all the thoughts and feelings she would bring to him would be nicer, and they wouldn’t be feral creatures trying to claw their way out of the cage they’d been locked in. Maybe they wouldn’t howl out whenever he was left in silence, pounding on the doors of their vault. Instead, if young Kiryu had treated Kazumi kindly, she and her companions would stay seated in their pretty enclosure, waiting patiently for when their host was ready for her.
Eventually, Kiryu gave up. He went back to the oath that he made with himself as a boy to lock the idea of Kazumi up, in an even bigger vault. This vault was made of titanium and was shoved in an even deeper, darker area of his mind. Double enclosed, it was sure to never emerge ever again. Kiryu was sure of this.
He even made it all the way to the day of his prison release without thinking of her. He had made peace with his identity of bisexuality long ago, this he would hide and only reveal to a few select people (Nishiki, Yumi – they hadn’t visited him still – and Majima) but he was okay with that, really. Nobody needed to know who he was interested in except for him and those he loved.
He was just proud of himself for surviving and not managing to think of her. Who? Who’s she? Exactly!
On the day of his release, he was told nobody was there to pick him up. He just grunted his acknowledgement and thanks to the guard and hoped he didn’t look as heartbroken and gutted as he felt. Besides, he had the rest of his life ahead of him. A life with himself, his brother, his best friends, and he was ready to return to the clan. Kazama would be waiting for him. Kiryu finally thought he was ready to live up to the man Kazama wanted him to be.