Chapter Text
Some small part of Majima was relieved to have something to do. Something to think about other than the look on Saejima’s face when he’d copped so cavalierly to signing those expulsion papers and called him weak, said he was soft as a broke-open clam. He watched Kurosawa double over and laugh and hack a gout of dark blood out onto the cold concrete of the Millennium Tower’s rooftop. The man had conceded defeat in this particular turn but was still smugly confident that the last part of his game was playing out according to his plans. Saejima stood nearby, his brow knitted in consternation, questions and accusations poised on his tongue; Kiryu was somewhere across town, having taken it upon himself to clean up the last part of the mess to which Kurosawa had alluded. The cold winter breeze whipped at Majima’s hair and stung his cheeks and made his eye water as he stood there and wavered briefly before deciding with no small measure of guilt that Saejima could wait. He uttered a completely insincere apology to Daigo, left the Sixth Chairman in Katsuya’s capable and probably not murderous hands, and bolted for the staircase. He shrugged his jacket back on as he went, ignoring the burning chafe-marks on his limbs from the chains and the dull throbbing everywhere else from his sworn brother’s relentless onslaught, roiling inwardly with rage at what Daigo had done: just like his father Sohei used to do in the 90s, he’d tossed the Dragon of Dojima in the direction of faces that needed punching with a reckless disregard for the well-being of a man who was too loyal and caring to refuse.
Minami was out and about somewhere with his car — he hoped — but Kurosawa’s goons had jumped Majima immediately upon his belated return to Kamurocho and they’d taken his phone before chaining him up. Damned if he could remember Minami’s number on his own, and he doubted that most of his boys had seen the news, which meant they probably still thought he was dead; there was no time to explain what a ratty old ghost was doing haunting the streets around the Millennium Tower. That left one wary-looking taxi driver who sat in his cab a block or so away from the tower, rattled by the earlier brawl in the streets but not so put off that he’d refuse an expensive fare. Without asking whether he wanted the company, Saejima followed Majima around the block and made to cram himself into the cab, too.
“This ain’t your problem,” Majima said to him, waving him off. He’d made sure of that, or thought he had. Stupid of him to think that Saejima knew better than to stick his nose into things. “Go back and look after Daigo,” he added, hoping that dangling a meaningful-sounding task in front of his face would satisfy him.
“He don’t need me back there,” Saejima said. He pushed Majima aside and slid into the back seat. “Better off helpin’ down at HQ if there’s some kinda ruckus, family or no, kyoudai.” There was an edge to his voice as he uttered that last part.
With some reluctance, Majima climbed in after him. Stupid of him, too, to think that Saejima knew to take the obvious out when it was presented to him. When had he ever done that?
Saejima crossed his thick arms over his chest and turned to stare out the window, giving Majima a good view of the back of his head. His prison-shaved hair was fuzzing back in after a few weeks spent on the lam, but it still looked far tidier than his usual stringy locks. Saejima had never seemed to care much about appearances; he’d always preferred to let his hair grow out to save the money and spare himself the time and inconvenience of having it cut. He looked a little younger and a lot less greasy, but the shape of his head was unfamiliar with its cover all buzzed off. Majima stopped gawking at the bristles and turned to watch his own side of the road slide by as they traveled in a grim, awkward silence all the way to the Tojo Clan’s headquarters.
The driver dumped them out in front of the gates and peeled off straight away, barely pausing to take their cash. Majima couldn’t blame him: the wreckage was immediately apparent from the road, and they found the trail of blood long before they found Kiryu himself. If they had bothered to start at the point of origin, they would have found the first drops in the big boardroom near the Chairman’s seat, where Kiryu had ripped off his jacket and committed to a beatdown despite the old wound that continued to seep through the bandages around his waist. Instead, Majima and Saejima arrived at the courtyard that stretched out in front of the clan’s sprawling complex and didn’t venture any further in. The lanterns lining the walkway up to the front doors cast a sickly yellow glow over the bodies of dozens of Tojo patriarchs and all the blood soaking into their jackets and sprayed out across the fresh snow. It occurred to Majima that if he hadn’t agreed to go get himself shot up in Sapporo, one of the bodies in the courtyard might have been his. A trail of frigid pin-pricks ran down his spine at the thought of a hulking frame sprawled out on the stones, snow clinging to a dark green parka and blood dribbling over a scarred brow.
There was no point in considering it any further, so he didn’t. The important thing was that somehow neither he nor Saejima had bitten it, and that none of the dead sported that distinctly unfashionable grey suit, either, and that one of the still-living lay wheezing in the middle of the walkway: shirtless, a black koi swimming up his back, blood on his knuckles and bubbling out from his mouth between loose teeth, broken and shamed. Majima guessed immediately what had happened and whipped around to follow the trail of blood-specked footsteps in the opposite direction: back out through the gates and down the eerily quiet streets with Saejima at his heels. There would be bones to pick with Daigo later, just as Saejima would undoubtedly want to finish sorting out their own set of grievances, but for the moment, as he stormed out the gates and scrambled down the street with his eye locked to the trail of unsteady footprints, there was only one singular, all-consuming thought: He ain’t allowed to die.
The snow began to fall in thick, heavy flakes that threatened to bury the trail. Fortunately, before the weather could thwart their search, Kiryu’s staggering footprints gave way to a depression in the snow where he’d fallen. He’d summoned some last reserve of determination to drag himself along the road for another metre or two, leaving an ugly red track behind him as he pulled himself along centimetre-by-centimetre with bloodstained, frostbitten fingers. They found him in a narrow side street lined with cramped grey-tiled buildings whose empty windows looked down impassively on his struggle; the track stopped beneath the harsh white light of a flickering streetlamp, as if the universe itself were shining a spotlight on the bloody end-point to his forty-four-year ordeal. He lay prone there, his cheek resting gently in the snow, his eyes closed as if in repose, his bare skin covered in bruises and coated with streaks and spatters of blood — much of it his own. The dragon on his back roared silently in outrage at the red flecks that marred its scales. An impossibly large scarlet pool had dribbled out through the bandages around his waist to stain the surrounding snow, but pristine white flakes were drifting down from the cloudy night sky to settle among the strands of his disheveled hair.
Majima collapsed to his knees next to him. He couldn’t see any telltale puffs of breath emerging from Kiryu’s lips. Something that felt alarmingly like fear clutched at his windpipe and made a little wave of bile rise up in his throat. He swallowed it back down and let anger course through his limbs and run hot behind his eye instead: anger at Kiryu for letting his guts spill out all over some dirty sidewalk, at Saejima and Daigo for letting him do it, at himself for arriving just in time to find him lying face-down in the last dregs of his—
“No,” Majima rasped. He laid a hand on Kiryu’s bare back, not yet daring to take his glove off to see whether the skin beneath his fingers was still warm to the touch. “No-no-no-no-no, you idiot! Kazuma! You asshole!” His heart pounded against his ribcage as he shook Kiryu’s shoulder and ignored the note of protest from Saejima, who loomed overhead and bore awkward witness to the spectacle. “I told ya, no one kills you but—” He cut himself off as he felt the body beneath him stir a little and a wave of relief washed through his limbs.
“Goro?” Kiryu said. He tilted his head and opened his eyes a crack, squinting against the bright light. “Am I dreaming…?” He attempted to prop himself up on his elbows but made it only a few centimetres off the ground before collapsing back into the bloody snow with a shudder.
“Easy, now,” Majima said. He grabbed Kiryu’s shoulder and helped him to roll over. “I’m here.”
Kiryu stared up at him, eyes bleary, cheeks ashen. “Where’s Haruka?” he mumbled. “Is Haruka okay?”
Majima shucked off his glove and pushed a few strands of hair off Kiryu’s forehead. “She’s fine,” he replied. “Mi— Park-san’s got her someplace safe. Daigo’s fine, too. Everything’s okay.” He let his hand linger, feeling the clammy skin against his palm.
Kiryu raised his own shaking hand to let his fingers rest against Majima’s. After a moment, even that little gesture seemed to require too great an exertion; he let his hand drop back into the snow. “Everyone’s waiting for us,” he said. He let his gaze drift up beyond Majima’s face and fixed his eyes briefly on the streetlight before closing them again.
“He’s freezin’,” Saejima commented from somewhere above them.
“No shit,” Majima agreed. “We gotta get him to Doc Emoto’s. Gimme a—”
“This ain’t a job for Doc Emoto,” Saejima cut him off. He crouched down on Kiryu’s other side. “Ain’t just the snow. He’s lost a shit-ton of blood and that gut wound looks bad. We gotta get him to a real hospital, kyoudai.”
“No,” Majima snapped. “We drag him someplace legit, they get a load of the hole in his gut, they start askin’ questions. Start thinkin’ ’bout how the guy looks an awful lot like the one who was punchin’ it up on TV a few hours ago. Maybe they start lookin’ at the photos of the ornery ol’ bastard who busted himself outta Abashiri, too.” He wrenched his gaze from Kiryu’s bruised cheeks to regard Saejima, his eye wide and glaring. Figure they better call the cops to haul both of you in, ran the unspoken thought.
Kiryu opened his eyes again and reached out to rest a hand reassuringly against Majima’s leg. “I’m not going anywhere,” he murmured.
“You’re goin’ to the hospital,” Saejima said, already pulling his phone out. “I’m callin’ a cab. Majima, you’re goin’ with him. Someone’s gotta do the talkin’, and ya know I ain’t good for that. I’ll hog-tie Aizawa before he gets a chance to run off, and Daigo can figure out what to do with him from there.”
Majima watched Saejima call for a ride, momentarily dumbfounded at being told what to do by anyone, let alone by his brother. “Go to my apartment when you’re done, then,” he said when Saejima was finished.
Saejima snorted. “What, your little shithole in Hyakunincho?”
“Hey! It’s a bachelor pad! It’s supposed to look like shit!” Majima protested. He heard Kiryu wheeze out a little laugh and felt his fingers twitch slightly against his leg. It was hard to fault him for it: he’d seen the state of the place before the last clean-up effort, too, and it was a relief to know he was still lucid enough to have a laugh at Majima’s expense. “Anyhow, I cleaned it up some since the last time ya crashed there,” he added.
“I was stayin’ at New Serena before and I’m goin’ back now,” Saejima declared. “Easier to get in ’n out and get around from there. And if Kiryu’s cop buddy didn’t arrest me when I showed up the other day, he ain’t gonna rush to do it now. Safer right under his nose.” He squinted down at Kiryu for a moment; Kiryu gazed up at him with dilated pupils. “Guy’s lost a lotta blood. Gotta keep him warm. Pull him up, will ya?” Saejima unzipped his parka and shrugged it off his massive shoulders. With some effort, Majima hauled Kiryu up into a sitting position and helped Saejima to drape the coat over his shoulders and push his arms through the sleeves. “He ain’t burnin’ up, but it looks infected,” Saejima observed. “Saw this kinda thing when people got themselves into trouble out huntin’.”
“Huntin’?” Majima echoed him dubiously.
“Bears,” Saejima replied, nodding slightly, as if that explained anything.
As soon as he was fully folded-up and zipped into the down-filled expanse, Kiryu sank back down to lie on his side. He was a big man, but not nearly as big as Saejima; the coat made him look suddenly small and vulnerable. He continued to shiver, his pulse fluttering and his lips slowly turning an alarming shade of blue. When they shoved him into the back seat of another cab, he slumped over against the door, breathing shallowly, his hands limp at his sides, the hidden wound weeping into the fabric of Saejima’s parka. Majima climbed in next to Kiryu and drew him over to let him slump against his shoulder instead.
Saejima dug a wad of cash out of his back pocket and tossed it at the driver. “Touto Hospital, and floor it,” he said to the cabbie, then added, “Ya didn’t see nothin’, alright?” When the driver blanched and nodded and mumbled something that was sufficiently satisfying, Saejima turned to brace himself with his hands on the roof of the cab and thrust his face through the rolled-down window into the back seat. He scrutinized the pair with a furrowed brow. “You’re right about the cops bein’ on him,” he conceded. “Don’t let him do nothin’ stupid.”
“He does what he wants,” Majima retorted, not entirely sourly. He inhaled slowly and added, “And you… Don’t do nothin’ stupid till I get back, either.”
Saejima sucked his teeth. “I do what I want,” he said after a moment. He flashed Majima a little smile. “Got shit to take care of. Look after Kiryu. I’ll be at the bar. See ya when I see ya, kyoudai.”
As the cab pulled off, Saejima was already on his way to address the mess at HQ, leaving a trail of heavy footprints in the bloodied snow behind him. Majima watched his form recede until they rounded a corner and left him behind, then put his head back and allowed himself to let out a quiet sigh. He felt Kiryu starting to slump toward the window again and slid an arm behind his back to hold him a little closer.
At the touch, Kiryu stirred against his shoulder. “Gotta stop doing this,” he said quietly. There was a weary smile in his voice and Majima let out a little laugh in response. They had said variations on that phrase to one another countless times over the years, knowing each time that it wasn’t in their nature to stop. Kiryu reached up to brush a cool, clammy palm over one of the snakes that coiled on Majima’s chest, then let his hand drop into Majima’s lap. Majima laid his free hand over Kiryu’s; he traced his fingers absentmindedly over the tendons before moving on to run them slowly and gently over the bump of each raw knuckle, one at a time. Eventually, he stopped fidgeting and let their hands rest together and focused his attention on Kiryu’s breath, which tickled the skin of his neck in still-regular and reassuring puffs.
It had seemed so easy at first, which was probably why it had all blown up in his face so spectacularly. The Seventh Chairman of the Omi Alliance was about to kick the bucket or was rumoured to be about to kick it — same difference as far as the rest of his clan was concerned — and something about seeing the vultures circling above someone on the other side of the fence made the sharp-eyed scavengers in Tokyo turn to their own chairman with naked hunger. By the time that Daigo came to understand that even the vicious intra-familial squabble he’d attempted to head off was part of Kurosawa’s grand plan, it was too late: Daigo and his few trustworthy lieutenants scattered themselves across the country to address a series of distractions while their real enemies ripped out the clan’s throat and stomped on its backbone. Majima had spent too much time recovering from his own attempted murder in Tsukimino to be fully in the loop, and Kiryu was being distinctly unhelpful in his efforts to get caught up: by the time they made it to the hospital, he’d stopped slurring out vague responses to Majima’s questions about what had happened and how he’d ended up back in Kamurocho despite the arrangements they’d made to meet up again in Nagasugai.
Majima hauled him out of the cab, cursing the eighty-something kilograms of not-dead weight that lay draped over his shoulders as he stumbled toward the emergency department and through the sliding doors. The fluorescent lights in the triage area stung his eye and the air felt hardly warmer than it had been out in the frigid streets; he squinted against the glare and shivered under the thin snakeskin of his jacket. He plunked Kiryu down in a vinyl-padded chair that released a soft squeak of stale air on impact, then unzipped the parka and stripped it away. He swore under his breath at Kiryu as he laid bare the hole in his lover’s side and saw the trail of blood that had seeped slowly into his light-grey slacks during their ride. The harsh lights that clung to the ceiling above them made everything look even more lurid: smears and blooms of red shaded into purple against a backdrop of sun-kissed skin gone suddenly pale. Majima cupped a hand around Kiryu’s chin to raise his head and rub a thumb futilely over a crusty trail beneath his split lip. He turned and hollered something just intelligible enough to get a nurse’s attention; she eyed Kiryu’s ashen, gore-streaked cheeks, checked his pulse, and immediately ushered him away in a wheelchair, leaving Majima standing next to the empty seat and clinging uselessly to the bloody coat. He tried to recall whether he’d said anything meaningful to Kiryu before the nurse had whisked him off. Probably not.
After a few minutes, Majima stopped gawking at the health and safety posters in the lobby, pulled Saejima’s cigarettes out of one of the jacket’s pockets, and went out to chain-smoke the stolen bounty in the parking lot and kick discarded coffee cans across the asphalt with a scuffed steel-toed shoe. The snow continued to fall and settle on his shoulders and cling to the parka’s furred hood. He fixed his eye on the smoldering cherry at the end of his latest cigarette and wondered whether Saejima was cold out there without his coat. He flicked a butt into a trash can and lit up another smoke. He pulled his tanto out from behind his belt and pushed it partway out of its sheath with his thumb and slid it back in again, then pulled the blade completely out and speared an empty coffee can and whipped it off the tip and watched it fly away into the darkness. He walked across the lot, picked the can up, and put it in a recycling bin. He felt his feet twitch with the gravitational pull of Tojo HQ. He returned to the emergency room’s front desk every ten or fifteen minutes to lean in and press his nose against the plexiglass window that separated an exhausted-looking receptionist from his jittery onslaught.
There was a convex mirror perched above the doors that led to whatever was going on with Kiryu somewhere off in the hospital’s bowels, and its distorted surface suggested that he looked bruised and haggard and possibly strung-out. His eye was wide and bloodshot and a darkening bag hung below it; a bit of blood sat congealed beneath his battered nose; a bit more clung to his teeth. His cigarette-laced breath fogged against the pane as he solicited updates from the increasingly exasperated receptionist. Finally, she gave in and informed him that his friend was asleep up in a room on the fourteenth floor and that visiting hours were over—
Majima didn’t have a watch or a phone on him and couldn’t be assed to figure out what time it was and crouched down to rest his cheek against the counter and snarl as much through the document slot.
—but he could go up and sit there if he absolutely needed to. She looked him up-and-down and seemed to run a mental calculus before declining to inform him outright that she had the cops on speed-dial and wasn’t afraid to ring them up, but her stern frown said as much.
Majima slipped through the door to Kiryu’s cramped little fourteenth-floor room and was relieved to find that it was a private one. He turned around and stood in the open doorway and poked his head out into the hall to run his eye warily up and down the corridor. When he was satisfied that no one was watching — or possibly waiting in ambush — and the silence began to buzz in his ears and the guard-dog act started to feel a little absurd, he withdrew into the room and pulled the door closed behind him.
There was a chair in one corner of the room, shoved against the bone-white wall near a narrow window that peeped out over the cityscape. Majima scooted it across the floor and parked it next to the bed with a squeal of metal legs on tiles that grated on his ears but failed to rouse the room’s occupant, then sat down to scrutinize the man lying there. Someone had cleaned Kiryu up and wrapped him in a pastel-blue hospital gown before laying him out on his back and tucking him safely beneath the white sheets. Whatever cocktail of blood and antibiotics and painkillers they’d given him had returned some of the colour to his cheeks and conked him completely out. His mouth hung slightly open and the habitual furrow in his brow had softened as he slept. His caregivers had also taken the time to wash the blood out of his hair and comb it back, but they hadn’t known what to do with his bangs and had left them mostly flopped down around his temples in soft grey strands. Kiryu’s pants and shoes sat in a plastic bag by the window; Majima supposed that the rest of his suit was still on the floor somewhere over at Tojo HQ.
Someone had emptied Kiryu’s pockets and placed his phone on the bedside table next to his wallet and keys and a jug of water with several plastic cups in a tidy stack. Majima gave it some thought, then scooped the phone up. He apologized silently to Kiryu for snooping on his contacts before firing off a quick message to Daigo (fourth chairman’s at touto hospital, 1405) and a longer one to Haruka (uncle kaz is fine, haru-chan. touto hospital, rm 1405. come smack yr dumbass old man across the face tmrw, tell him majima sent ya; Kiryu’s phone buzzed almost immediately with a thank you and then, a moment later, buzzed again with an admonition to please look after him). He considered sending something to Saejima, who’d somehow managed to acquire a new phone and make his way into Kiryu’s contacts in the handful of days he’d spent back in Kamurocho, but decided against giving the man license to venture out any more or further than he needed to.
With that duty discharged, he returned his attention to Kiryu. The hole in his gut was newly packed and bandaged; Majima avoided putting any pressure on or near it as he leaned in to lay his head on Kiryu’s chest. He pressed his cheek against the paper-thin gown and closed his eye, felt the soft drumming of Kiryu’s heart, rose and fell with the gentle rhythm of his breath, and thought about the waves that lapped at the beach near Kiryu’s home back on Okinawa and the river that murmured along the stone banks beneath Ose Bridge in Nagasugai. He tried to imagine the scent of sunscreen on the seashore or the rich mingled aromas that wafted out of the food stalls and to ignore the antiseptic stink that hung in a cloud around them. Majima willed Kiryu to reach up and fuss with his undercut like he always did when Majima dozed with his nose smashed self-indulgently up against his tits, but Kiryu didn’t stir — just continued to breathe quietly, serene and completely oblivious. A dull ache began to build in his back from holding the awkward position; he straightened up, cracked his shoulders, and slouched back in the chair. He spread his legs, draped Saejima’s parka over himself like a dirty old blanket, folded his arms across his chest, and closed his eye again.
When Majima woke up, the window had thrown a bar of white winter sunlight over the bed and across his legs. He blinked and rubbed some crusty bits from his eye and stared down at Kiryu, who gazed up at him in turn, still a little pale and bleary-looking but finally awake.
“Mornin’, sweet-cheeks,” Majima drawled. He leaned forward, hands on knees, and grinned at the scowl Kiryu gave him in response to his least favourite and therefore most used pet name. “They put ya in one of those gowns with the ass all open?”
Kiryu let his scowl crack into a smile. “You didn’t check?” he countered. His voice was gravelly and when he attempted to laugh it came out as something closer to a wheeze. Majima snickered as he scooped one of the cups off the bedside table and poured a little sip’s worth of water. Kiryu accepted it gratefully and threw it back with a sigh of satisfaction as if it were the best drink he’d had in his life, then asked him again, “Is Haruka okay?”
Majima nodded and gestured toward the phone on the table. “Told her where to find ya.”
Kiryu grimaced, set his cup aside, and raised a hand to massage his forehead, rubbing the tips of his fingers in small circles above his eyebrows and against one of his temples. If he’d had his way, he probably would’ve put their reunion off a little and chosen a venue for it where he might seem slightly more put-together. Eventually, he added, “And Daigo?”
“He’ll live,” Majima replied, still simmering with an anger that hadn’t diminished noticeably just because Daigo had failed to get Kiryu killed this time.
“And you?” Kiryu lowered his hand and reached over to let it rest on Majima’s knee.
Majima pressed the fingers of one hand to the bruise that he could feel blooming purple just beneath the seam of his eyepatch and put his other hand over Kiryu’s where it sat on his knee. “Same ol’ same old.”
They shared a faint smile, then Kiryu seized his wrist and pulled him down into an embrace. His lips were still dry and his breath tasted stale and vaguely medicinal, but Majima kissed him eagerly, sucked on Kiryu’s tongue, ran his fingers up along the stubble sprouting up on his cheeks and dragged the pad of his thumb over the stiff bristles of his sideburns, ground his chin against that little strip of almost-beard that Kiryu insisted on keeping beneath his lips. Majima shivered with relief, needy and aching to be needed as he leaned in over the bed and felt Kiryu’s hand rove beneath his jacket and around to his back to trace the curve of his spine.
Common sense won out over Majima’s desire to egg a hospital patient on toward something more exciting; he pulled back. “Horndog,” he whispered, snickering quietly as he ran his tongue exaggeratedly over his lips.
“You like it,” Kiryu retorted sleepily, visibly drained by the little bit of nothing they’d just shared. He closed his eyes and breathed quietly for several beats, then opened them again and added, “Thanks.”
“What, for that half-assed li’l show just now?” Majima grabbed the empty cup, sloshed another sip of water into it, and handed it over again.
“Sure.” Kiryu downed his water. “But also for last night.”
Majima shrugged nonchalantly. “You ain’t allowed to die.” The usual refrain.
“Tell Saejima I said thanks, too,” Kiryu added, gesturing toward the coat that had fallen to the floor. “Did he go back to the bar?” He paused and peered into the bottom of the cup. “…He’s still out, right?”
Majima stared out the window. The rooftops that squatted below the hospital’s fourteenth floor were lightly dusted with snow; taller office blocks and the occasional skyscraper jutted up among the smaller edifices to obscure the horizon with glass-paneled façades that gleamed coolly in the winter light; motorists flowed along the city’s arteries; pedestrians paced alongside them in tight-packed crowds, their forms obscured by thick winter garments, the sounds of their travail muffled by the sealed window. It was a weekday; life ground on. “For now, I guess,” he said. He stood up abruptly. The legs of his chair squealed against the floor again as he pushed it back. “Gonna get somethin’ to eat downstairs. Stomach’s growlin’ like a goddamn dog. Want somethin’?”
Kiryu looked up at Majima with a newly-furrowed brow and stared into his eye until Majima felt something like shame start to gnaw at his guts. The silence stretched out between them for a few more beats before Kiryu gave up and let his features relax again. “I think I get a complimentary breakfast at this hotel,” he said dryly.
“Suit yourself.” Majima scooped the parka off the floor, draped it over his chair, and sauntered out of the room, feeling Kiryu’s eyes on his back as he went.
In his haste to get to the elevator, Majima nearly plowed Haruka over as she made her way down the hall toward Kiryu’s room. This much Majima knew: Haruka had held her first and last big concert the night before. In attendance had been thousands of spectators, among them a manager whose decades-old dream was finally on the cusp of fulfillment. Haruka had belted out her entire set but refused all the calls for encores; she'd thanked her adoring fans for everything and informed them that she was stepping down, then walked quietly off the stage. She’d ignored the cries of confusion and remained blissfully unaware of the sights trained on her from somewhere out in the stands as she slipped away beyond the edge of the video feed. There had undoubtedly been some tense backstage conversations, but most of what Haruka needed to say was for someone else’s ears — so she’d packed her cute little idol outfit into a closet, brought out her usual utilitarian skirt and sweater, let her hair down but clipped some of it back with a pair of worn-looking red barrettes, and made her way down to Touto Hospital the second she could slip away.
Majima let out a grunt of embarrassment as Haruka’s thin little arms curled around his waist. She buried her face in his chest, weeping quietly and wetting his skin with her tears even before she’d had a chance to see the most recent mess that Kiryu had made of himself.
“Hey, now, cut it out, kid,” Majima said. “Your old man’s doin’ just fine.” He laid a hand on her head and gave her a pat the way he’d seen Kiryu do in the past, which seemed only to heighten her distress: she sobbed louder and squeezed him until he felt like an old tube of toothpaste.
“I can’t keep doing this, ojisan,” Haruka croaked, pressing her forehead against one of his snakes.
“Told ya not to call me that, Haru-chan,” Majima said halfheartedly, still mashing his palm awkwardly around on her head as she balled her fists behind his back and clutched at his jacket.
“I keep telling him!” Haruka added.
“Yeah, well. Guy’s got a thick skull. Sometimes ya gotta hit him with somethin’ half a dozen times before it even sticks, and good luck gettin’ it to sink in.”
Haruka choked out another quiet sob even as she let out something that sounded almost like a muffled laugh against his chest.
Majima had been ready to die for any reason or no reason at all for most of his youth, but with age had come a bit of temperance; at some point he’d started to think of kicking it as an occupational hazard that he’d prefer to avoid. But when Kurosawa had so graciously allowed him to choose to die at Saejima’s hands or watch Haruka die instead, it was a no-brainer: not just because it was about Haruka, but also because Kiryu really did love the kid more than life itself and would forgive him eventually if it was for her sake. There were a few tenuous little threads that kept Kiryu attached to the world of the living, and although Majima counted himself among them, he was fairly certain that everything would snap the second something happened to Haruka if it ever came to that, and he didn’t want to test the hypothesis. So it was a good trade, or would’ve been if he’d had to follow through on it: one old asshole for one sweet little kid, a slice of borrowed time passed over to a man who stood some chance of using it meaningfully. Still, as Haruka clung to him, he reflected that this was the same kid who’d once stomped on his foot and hollered that Kiryu was going to kill him as he’d stood towering over her in the batting center’s storage room, trying to gauge the magnitude of his fuck-up. It was possible that he might be missed a little whenever he actually got around to dying, and not just by Kiryu or Saejima, but also by a small handful of other people. The thought gave him pause.
“I’m goin’ to get somethin’ to eat,” Majima said.
“Okay.” Haruka slowly released her death-grip around his waist and pulled herself away.
“Remember, ya gotta hit him real hard, alright?” He hefted an imaginary bat in his hands and gave it a demonstrative swing.
Haruka laughed shakily as she pinned some fine strands of hair that had fallen in her face back beneath the old barrettes. “I’m not going to do that,” she protested. She sniffled quietly and wiped a few tears from her eyes before rubbing the back of her hand across her nose; it was a childlike gesture, a reminder that although she was old enough to make a name and a career for herself, she was also young enough to give all of it up because, more than anything else, she needed her dad.
Majima let her go and wandered down to the public cafeteria on the hospital’s first floor, where he crammed what was probably a mirror image of Kiryu’s own breakfast into his face: poached fish and rice, a small bowl of soup and a dish of wakame salad on the side, tea to wash it all down. He waited the length of his meal plus several news segments on one of the cafeteria’s televisions and the last two cigarettes from Saejima’s pack in the parking lot outside before deciding it was nearly time to get up in Kiryu’s business again. When he stubbed his cigarette out and slipped back into the lobby, he noted a cluster of cops standing near one of the elevator banks, speaking in hushed tones about Tojo this and riot that, letting out snatches of names and titles and insinuating that Touto Hospital was packed with persons of interest in the wake of the latest family conflict. He parked himself behind a pillar and strained his ears for hints that a certain tired old Tojo-adjacent dragon was on their list or that they had a lead on a big bear who’d come out of hibernation to smash things up in town, but he couldn’t make anything definitive out. Regardless, it didn’t take a genius to figure that they were with the organized crime division and that they were gunning to find a few chumps on whom to pin some charges for appearances’ sake.
He set that bundle of concerns aside for the time being and returned to Kiryu’s room. Haruka was gone — called away, perhaps, to settle whatever affairs remained after she’d broken her contract — but Kiryu was still there, lying in bed, propped up slightly with a pillow behind his back. Against Majima’s advice, Haruka seemed not to have smacked him around at all, but there were other kinds of pain; the signs were written in his red-rimmed eyes.
Kiryu laid an arm across his eyes as if trying to hide the evidence of their conversation, then seemed to realize that it was futile: he let it fall and turned his head to face Majima. “She quit,” he said.
“She say anythin’ about not likin’ the work in her letters?” Majima asked as he sat back down in the chair. He slouched back and laid a leg across Kiryu’s legs.
“No, not at all. Haruka always seemed happy to be there. Maybe I asked her the wrong questions.” Kiryu ran a hand through his hair and fixed his gaze on the ceiling as if searching there for the right ones. “She said she just wanted to be with her family. What am I supposed to say to that? I’m not—” He let out a little choked sound and took a second to compose himself before looking back over at Majima. “—I’m not anyone’s dad, Goro.”
Majima didn’t dignify the self-deprecation with a response.
“I can’t just ignore that, though, can I?” Kiryu continued. “I have to try. I said I’d let Haruka choose her own path, and that’s what she did. When I get out of here, I need to talk to some people. Figure out what happens with her and me and Morning Glory now that all of those contracts are broken. I think Haruka needs a lawyer.” He shook his head ruefully. “I think I need a lawyer. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Majima debated whether to pile something else onto Kiryu’s nigh-overwhelming heap of concerns before deciding that the situation warranted it. “Definitely gonna want a lawyer,” he agreed. “Saw a buncha cops crawlin’ ’round the lobby downstairs. Your mug was all over the news from that ruckus out in front of the tower last night. Figure it’s only a matter of time before they come knockin’ on your door.”
“Oh, they’ve already been up here,” Kiryu said. He waved his hand dismissively as Majima let out a haw? of alarm. “Wanted to ask me some questions about what happened. I don’t remember much, but I think one of the nurses kicked them out before they could get into it. I was barely awake. They’ll be back.”
Majima felt something curl its fingers around his heart. “You ain’t plannin’ on talkin’ to ’em when they show up again, are ya? Let ’em haul ya in for a chat?”
Kiryu sighed and folded his hands over his chest as he shot Majima a withering look. “Is that why you’ve been hanging around here?” he demanded. “What good would it do anyone if I let them lock me up on some trumped-up charge?”
“I—” Majima started.
“I keep telling you: I’m not going anywhere. I’ll fight the charges if it comes to that. I have people who need me.” Kiryu let a smile steal across his features. “How hard do I need to hit you with it before it sinks in?”
Majima barked out a surprised little laugh. “Heard that, did ya?” He put both feet on the floor again and bent down to pinch Kiryu’s bruised cheek and give his stupid smirking face a gentle pull. “I’m hangin’ ’round here ’cause I love a stubborn old asshole. Can’t blame a guy for thinkin’ he’d stay the course.”
Kiryu pulled Majima’s hand from his cheek and held it in his own. “I mean it. Go home and get some real sleep. That’s what I’m planning to do.” He let his grin slide down into his default stern frown. “And go talk to Saejima. He’s waiting for you at New Serena, right?”
“Don’t got much to say to him that I ain’t already said,” Majima replied.
“He thought you died in Tsukimino.”
Majima wriggled his hand out of Kiryu’s grip. “Couldn’t exactly waltz into Abashiri and tell the guy, hey kyoudai, gonna get myself offed, now, could I? They listen in on everythin’ and read all the mail. Woulda spilled all the beans.” He spread his arms and gave Kiryu a stubborn glare. “Anyhow, I ain’t dead and he got over it. Socked me in the face till we got good again.”
“He said he’d been expelled. Did you do that, too?”
“You saw what went down!” Majima exclaimed, waving a hand over Kiryu’s battered body for emphasis. “It was for his own good! How was I supposed to know that wouldn’t stop ’em from comin’ for him?”
Kiryu regarded him coolly. He didn’t ask for that hung heavy in the air between them but remained unuttered, possibly because it was no longer clear to Kiryu that Haruka had asked to be thrust into any of the events of the last year, either. He took a long, slow breath through his nose, then picked a different angle of attack. “Majima, I was half convinced you’d really died, and I knew how things were supposed to go down. He told me he figured you’d gone out on your own terms, and even after I told him…” He paused, hesitating. “Well, I know that look. He was lonely. If the police are on me, you know they’ll be looking for him, too. Don’t let him turn himself in again — at least not while he’s still feeling that way.”
Majima snorted at the realization that each of the two most important men in his life had somehow managed to come independently to the conclusion that the other was going to be a stubborn old idiot with the cops. The snort extended into a low snicker as he reflected on the fact that they’d both asked him to do something about it.
“I’m being serious here, Goro,” Kiryu protested. There was a haunted look in his eyes as he added, “You need something to hold onto in there.”
Majima had never pressed Kiryu to elaborate on how he’d whiled away his decade behind bars, though bits and pieces of it had come out in passing over the years: a life strung out like a thin wire between poles of dull activity, eating and sleeping and labouring away in a workshop or pacing in tight circles around a barren yard. He hadn’t asked Saejima to fill him in on his own lost years, either; it wasn’t an experience that he could fathom, let alone say anything meaningful about. As a rule, Kiryu was endearingly terrible at reading most people, but some of his softer bits were mirrored in Saejima’s burly form and Majima didn’t doubt that Kiryu had perceived them. He wondered whether the two of them had swapped stories.
Regardless, it would have been cruel to let Kiryu reveal another little piece of his heart and not acknowledge that there might be some truth there. Saejima’s face up there on the tower loomed in his mind again, and though he’d read anger and resentment in all the weathered creases, he wondered if there hadn’t been something else lurking there, too. As Kiryu stared up at him and let just the barest hint of that unspeakable thing glimmer in his eyes, Majima found himself going back over Saejima’s lines when he’d expressed his joy at being given another crack at his brother’s face. Kiryu was more or less an open book, and there was a time when Saejima had been just as legible — but at some point the man had become a loose stack of postcards fished out of some dusty old closet, all out of order and sent in a language he’d neglected to practice from places he’d stopped visiting. It was easy to fix his attention on the things in his life that were already more or less tidy; it was pointless and cowardly to put off sorting the other things out.
“Alright, alright: I’m goin’,” Majima said. “Better be here when I get back.”
Kiryu relaxed visibly and let his head sink back into his pillow. “I don’t think I could go anywhere if I wanted to.” He gestured vaguely with a sleep-heavy hand at the hole in his side.
Majima accepted a quick peck for the road before scooping up Saejima’s parka and heading back down to the lobby and out the hospital’s front doors. The sun was out but the breeze was still cold as it ruffled his hair. The coat’s interior stank of Saejima’s unwashed pits and Kiryu’s dried blood, but it was warm; without giving it too much thought, Majima pulled it over his shoulders and made his way down the street, back toward Kamurocho and the brother who was waiting for him there.