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Saigiku Jouno is born with the prettiest eyes his mother has ever seen.
That’s what he’s been told, at least, though he thinks they’re little more than a centerpiece in the middle of the table; something to gawk at once and allow it to fade to the back of your mind, to realize later that they wash-out the room like yellowed lighting and cigarette smoke.
They’re pretty, but nothing extraordinary. A glossy silver with blue streaks like lightning through his iris like a warzone of its own, his irises damn near jumping around and a red tint around his waterline. It’s an effect of albinism, his mother tells him once; the reason we have feather-white hair. But your eyes, Saigiku, they’re so wonderful.
He doesn’t think so.
Saigiku’s dealt with the pushing and prodding over the years, quietly sits at the dinner table with his hands in his lap and his eyes shut.
His parents have guests over, and for once, the giant house he lives in feels like someone might live here, laughter echoing off the walls. It is not his parent’s laughter, but it’s his older brother’s.
His older brother is an odd man, someone who cut their parents off in every sense of the word the moment he could and left Saigiku behind; Saigiku does not blame him, but the abandonment stings, sitting twelve years old and wondering if this so-called fiancee is truly that much better than him.
“Saigiku,” his mother, Ichika, hisses, her voice bubbling like acid across the skin. Her voice is steady, strong, but little about the words is soothing. She speaks like she is enticing the masses: she speaks like she herself is the commodity being sold and defects are a sin that brings death as its kindest consequence. “Open your eyes.”
Saigiku complies without argument. He’s learned that it is useless to argue with someone who wishes for him to be seen and not heard in the first place.
The light is blinding; it aches, the only reprieve the black, fuzzy splotches in his vision that have been appearing and leaving since he was four years old. The dining hall is well-lit, the wall sconces providing light that the chandelier does not.
His brother laughs like it’s easy; he laughs like going off to college on trust-fund money has done him well, but Saigiku can take one glance at him and know that he is not going to medical school. His brother has always been a good liar, but Saigiku has a habit of spilling the truth before the lie can fully take root.
Now, he keeps his mouth shut. He won’t ruin whatever paradise his brother has found, while his mother’s fingernails dig into his lower back to ensure his posture stays straight.
“Saigiku,” his brother laughs. His hair is dyed brown, now, or perhaps dirty blond - Saigku can’t tell the colors apart enough for it to matter. “How’ve you been? What grade are you in now, anyway?”
Saigiku ignores the sting; ignores that his brother does not know what grade he’s in, but when he opens his mouth to respond, his father beats him to it.
Masa Jouno is not known for his patience, as evidenced by the corporate mergers he’s performed and supervised quickly, quietly, and swiftly. Something like a scummy businessman, or so Saigiku’s heard at his private school. Not that he interacts with the other kids often.
“Oh, he’s doing quite well!” Masa laughs, his voice fake and booming and when Saigiku flinches back, his mother’s nails dig into the exposed skin of his forearms and he cannot help but hiss. He gets a flick for that. “Acing all of his classes, such a well-behaved kid.”
Saigiku Jouno is thirteen years old when the vision in his left eye is gone.
It’s something he’d come to terms with years ago, the way his vision goes foggy and blurry at times, the dark splotches. He thinks that’s why Ichika doesn’t take him to the doctor: because they would say the same thing.
Saigiku is losing his vision.
An impossibility for a woman who relies on her looks. Saigiku would like to say he considers her his mother, but he’d been raised by nannies and the title of mother is held by none to a boy who grew up between troubled family dynamics and the best care money could buy.
A result of his loss of vision is the milky white sheen that falls over his iris, obscuring the vibrant silver and blue.
He doesn’t want his eyes open.
It hurts, and he’s tried to tell her as much.
The day he wakes up and his vision in that eye is entirely gone, replaced with a black film, he doesn’t mourn. It is an inevitability and a promise.
Ichika does not worry for him.
Ichika, when she passes him by in the middle of eating breakfast, grabs his arm with enough force to break the skin with razor-sharp nails and drags him to the bathroom.
“I’m sorry,” Saigiku mumbles, quiet and bland and reserved just as he’s been taught, though he doesn’t know why he’s apologizing.
Ichika, Ichika is about youth, and the beauty she says she lost by giving birth to both Saigiku and his brother. There are lines under her eyes that she hides with makeup and the lines of her cheeks are too prominent, too harsh, the result of products forcefully injected under the skin.
Saigiku mutely observes this, the washed-out nature of her skin and the thinning of her hair, and part of him - part of him wonders if this is the future that will befall him.
After all, he’s expected to be a model like his mother.
Seen but not heard. Doesn’t have the backbone of a businessman like his father.
“Look at this damn kid!” Masa shouts, his voice echoing off every wall; enough to make Saigiku stumble with a shiver down his spine in the kitchen, wondering what the kitchen knife would feel like leaving his grasp. “Ichika, he’s fucking spineless! You’ve raised a bitchboy of a kid!”
“Better than a monster like you,” Ichika says evenly, acid, acid, acid on her tongue. “Now, set the damn table. Don’t even think of touching me, I have a photo shoot tomorrow.”
“No wonder you make a shitty housewife.
Saigiku learns to tune them out. He knows what is expected of him.
“Saigiku,” Ichika hisses, her long nails digging into his eyelid as she forces his left eye open. “What the hell did you do?”
Saigiku doesn’t say a word, allows the sting without complaint. If he complains, she is more likely to hit. If he acts out of line, she is more likely to look at him with that disappointed gaze that he can’t stand.
“Can you still see?” Ichika asks, annoyance dripping off every word.
Saigiku nods. It loosens her grasp on his eyelid and for that, he is grateful, though he doesn’t breathe a word of that thankfulness, lest it is taken away from him as every other thing could possibly be. “Out of my right eye, yes.”
“At least that one isn’t broken,” she mumbles, more to herself than anything.
Staring at his mother’s blouse with black splotches in the working half of his vision, the bathroom mirror showing the picture of a washed-out boy, Saigiku hates nothing more than his eye.
Silver as a sin, he supposes; perhaps the reason he was born at all. To witness the rise and fall of a human soul, evidenced in the way his mother smells like cigarette smoke and his father loses his words over bourbon on the nights he bothers to come home.
The Jouno family is a walking scandal, he supposes, and to see it is to believe it. As such, his sight to do so is taken away, an Act of God in one way, but a manmade disaster in another. He should’ve been taken to the doctor.
He knows that.
He knows he should’ve been to the doctor years ago, knows that this was likely preventable, knows that his vision will not come back. He does not mourn it.
He takes in the pallid hue of his mother’s face and the sunken eyes and the botox, and he memorizes her scent instead: perfume over nicotine.
It feels more honest, that way.
Ichika buys him a contact.
Saigiku fumbles to put the damn thing in, given that half of his vision is a blind spot; the contact is custom-made to look exactly as his left eye used to and as his right eye does. It’s uncanny, the similarity, but it’s off just enough.
It doesn’t sit on his eye well. There are pins and needles where there shouldn’t be, exhaustion, and headaches running through him like water on a good day. He doesn’t like it, but when he tries to go a day without it, Ichika drags him to the bathroom and her touch is not gentle when she forces the contact back in.
He does not tell her when the splotches in his right eye get worse. He worries for another contact; he worries she will care little for his plight, knows that she won’t. Knows that he could beg and plead on his knees and lie his dignity in its grave at the door, and she won’t care for a doctor’s visit.
The shame of the Jouno family, Masa hisses in the kitchen, and Saigiku hates hates hates hates hates him so much, he wonders what would happen if he took those acid words and threw them back, if he took the oil from the stove and poured it down Masa’s throat, you will speak less of the lies you are born with -
Saigiku does none of that. Saigiku puts the contact in and finds solace in the night that welcomes him, and the sleep that evades him.
Saigiku hates it.
His vision. It’s caused him nothing other than trouble - he can’t see, why is that such a big deal to people? He’s learned to memorize people by their scents rather than their appearance, can hear everything a hallway away without having to strain his ears.
Sure, he won’t be able to use the phone without auditory assistance if he fully loses his vision, but he’s never cared much for his appearance.
It’s his eyes, he knows that. It’s his eyes that have always been his shining centerpiece: have always been the closest to pride that Ichika Jouno has ever seen, has ever created. His eyes are his saving grace and the only reason his father has never come close enough to Saigiku to hurt.
It’s revolting - it’s revolting - there is no way to live life like this -
Saigiku Jouno is thirteen when he reaches a conclusion.
He stands in the bathroom off the living room, his parents and his nannies and waiters and business guests and extended family all mingling with their false smiles and their lies and their liquor.
The mirror image he sees is hollow.
He looks washed out. He looks like Ichika. He looks like a ghost, someone here to haunt this place for the end of eternity despite his wish to have never been born here: he looks like someone took his insides and laid them out bare, stripped them of their vibrancy and their blood, and hung them back on his skeleton without regard for the joints.
His eye sockets are hollow, and his cheeks jut out. He doesn’t look thirteen - he looks starved.
What is the difference, really, between having scrapes to live on and having everything in the world, but a monitor attached to every action?
Saigiku is not impulsive, but it’s vile - he can’t stand it -
“Oh, Saigiku! Pretty as ever, I see.”
“Saigiku, you’ve grown so much. Your eyes look as nice as usual.”
“Ichika! Did you get my email about that offer? Saigiku would look quite nice as the cover of that magazine - no, yes, yes, the pay is good! We should talk more after dinner -”
It’s vile, all of it.
He could vomit, but the contents of his stomach are already gone. Ichika tells him when and how much he is allowed to eat, as he is growing and they best curb any unwanted weight gain now if he’s fit to be a model later.
Vile, vile, vile.
It’s not his fault.
None of it is his fault.
The only fault of Saigiku’s is that he allows it to go on, that he allows himself to stay here, that he has so little of a spine that he smiles and nods like a puppet on strings when he is told.
There’s a razor in the bathroom, in the third cupboard down.
It’s hidden away, like every other hint of life in this glorified haunted house with its occupants as ghosts. Still, it’s second nature for Saigiku to grab it, dazed as he is. Out of it, he thinks, and he never lets his gaze leave the mirror. He grabs the razor by touch and feel alone.
He’s taken it apart nearly hundreds of times in the dead of night, waiting for the tell-tale sound of Ichika leaving her bedroom to hide in the shower and pretend his hands don’t shake.
He doesn’t have to look down to disassemble it. Saigiku doesn’t know what his own intentions are, but the razorblade is a familiar weight in his palm and his chest hurts at the idea of going out into that living room.
He isn’t a commodity to sell, right? He’s a human, right? He isn’t some - some - replica?
He’s human, right?
If he’s human, and he is natural, then that means his gaze is not natural, because that is what caused all of this; it is his eyes that enamor everyone so. It is his eyes that cause him the most pain, and why doesn’t - why doesn’t -
Saigiku barely hesitates when he brings the razorblade up to his eye, to the creasing fold beneath it, an imperfection Ichika always tried to hide with make-up and surgery. the metal is cold against his skin.
He keeps his eye open the entire time.
First, the razor is a gentle kiss on his skin.
Then, his anger rages, and his temper tips, and he doesn’t cry out when the razor digs into his eye socket and the already-blurred vision turns painful, doesn’t cry out when the razor leaves a trail of skin hanging onto his cheek, doesn’t take note of the blood that drips onto white marble counters.
Someone screams.
Saigiku sees little more than black and blood drips into his eye, into his eye socket, and his nail reaches up to grab the protruding eye, but his wrist is jerked away.
He can’t see any of what’s happening, but he can hear it just fine; it’s like he’s numb, in a sense. His eye socket burns but in the same way a paper cut does, and the razor cuts along his palm before it's taken away.
“Saigiku!”
He doesn’t respond to the call of his name, doesn’t know how to respond, Ichika will be so disappointed -
“You goddamn -”
Is that Masa talking? Typically, Saigiku would be able to tell, but the stench of blood in the bathroom is so overwhelming it overpowers even the stench of alcohol - this is where you fall from grace - it should’ve been -
For one fleeting moment, there is nothing other than Saigiku, his blood, and his father’s hand on his wrist.
Saigiku wishes it was Masa whose eye lay mutilated.
Saigiku wishes he could scream.
Saigiku wakes with the sound of a heart monitor loud in his ears, the sterile smell of a hospital, and the aggravating crinkle of a hospital cot’s sheets beneath his body.
The fact that one of his eyes is wrapped and he cannot see his surroundings surprises him little; this is the outcome his parents had been prolonging for years, after all, even if they’d never willingly admit it.
There are no nurses to greet him, nor doctors, but he can hear the bustle of the hospital outside of this room; a private room, the kind money can buy.
His parents bothered with this? Interesting, he supposes. Perhaps there’s more Saigiku should be worried about, but all of his concerns seem null when he assumes he’s never leaving this hospital bed.
He’s blind, now. Fully and completely blind - his precious eyes are covered in a milky film now, and a disabled child in a wealthy family is something to be sold off and hidden, something to be abandoned and stripped of their name.
Saigiku knows this. Has known this. Has known far too many kids that grew up just to the left of right that he never saw again, kids he was told to play with and then told to stay away from. Now, he serves as the blight of a family.
A gurgle of a laugh escapes him, hysterical, shrill, loud; it hurts his ears and his chest but he can’t stop, because it’s so fucking funny, isn’t it, he’s meant to take after his mother but here he is - are they going to take the extra mile, as the Jouno family is known to do? Are they going to put him in the morgue, too?
Or is he going to be released from this hospital by a nurse with extra bills in her pockets, is he going to fend for himself on the street rather than the vacant life of luxury he’s been born into?
Either way, Saigiku is fine with it.
There’s little to this life, anyway, perhaps he can find some meaning before it’s gone -
I’m sorry, he thinks between his laughter, lungs burning. His eyes do not ache. He almost wishes they did, because if they did, then he could say that he is sorry for what he did, he could pretend that it isn’t the best fucking decision he ever made -
The heart monitor gets louder the longer he laughs, a quicker heartbeat, and perhaps that is what summons the nurse.
The nurse prefers their right leg over their left; that much is apparent from the difference in footsteps from side to side, and the scrubs they wear are slightly too big. It grates on Saigiku’s nerves.
“Saigiku Jouno?” they say, and their voice is nice, kind even - a tone that says they know little of the case they’re dealing with.
He almost envies them, but the appearance of the personnel makes him stop laughing, at the least. Takes some of the burnings in his lungs and redirects it, makes him wonder what it’d be like to take this IV out of his arm and stab it into something, something, someone else.
(He’s always been told he’s a docile child, but his thoughts are a place he dare not wander: there are things that escape his notice, there are things he cannot say aloud - I want to take someone’s throat out and watch what they gurgle up, I want to see if Masa can throw up all that liquor -)
“Yes?” he answers, though his voice doesn’t crack nearly as much as it should for a boy who just went blind and woke up alone. Perhaps his demeanor is what throws them off because he can practically feel their shiver from the way the nurse’s breathing changes.
“Your guardians haven’t arrived,” they say slowly, as though approaching a spooked animal. Perhaps this isn’t what they’ve been expecting - perhaps they don’t know how to handle him. That’s alright. Most people don’t.
“They won’t,” Saigiku says, though he doesn’t say it with a sigh as much as he’d like to. It’s too cold in here. It makes his fingers cold, and he isn’t dumb enough to ignore that will be how he interacts with his physical surroundings from now on. “Thank you for your concern.”
The nurse doesn’t visit him after that, and Saigiku considers their momentary kindness as a moment of solace within the hurricane he’s created for himself.
There’s a body buried. Saigiku knows because he went to his own funeral.
He was released from the hospital by being given a duffel bag of clothes with a stack of cash and told to get out, no antibiotics for his eye, and perhaps he was not supposed to know, released from the hospital in the basement outside of the public eye -
There was a body there, a sheet pulled over it, a tag over the toe, and he knew simply because of the planes of the face, a cold feel against his fingertips and not something he regretted.
He knew because of the bandages wrapped around the head and underneath them, the precisely cut skin marred like his own in an imitation - and an expensive one at that, from the stark similarities.
He almost feels bad about some poor boy being buried in his place. He almost feels bad about someone else being buried with his name and no identity of their own, but he will continue his life without his name behind it because of this and as such, the trade-off is even.
A ghoul, he supposes.
Saigiku can live with that. Better to be a ghoul than a ghost in his own house, better blind physically than blind mentally; better on the street with the stench of trash than his bedroom with the ever-lingering smell of Ichika’s perfume.
Saigiku does not miss his sight. His eyes no longer hurt, odd as it is; while there’s a dull ache in his right eye from where they’d had surgery - likely trying and failing to preserve it - but it doesn’t hurt like it used to hurt.
His irises and pupils no longer have reason to shake and his white eyelashes are a centerpiece he can no longer see, and that isn’t something he minds. It’s - it’s nice, he thinks, not having to worry about his appearance or Ichika digging her nails into his shoulder blades when he closes his eyes in the middle of those stupid galas that he never liked going to.
It’ll be an adjustment, that he knows; but it will be better.
Yokohama’s streets are not kind.
Saigiku is not a native of Yokohama, but the homeless in Tokyo are given a fast pass and a free train ride to Yokohama, so that is where he ends up. The streets are dark and there’s a stench to Yokohama that never truly leaves his nose. It’s some mixture of trash and blood and the strain of a city holding itself upon broken foundations, a government recovering from war.
(As a port city, Yokohama was most involved in the war, or so that’s what Saigiku has been taught in his classes. Yokohama still feels the aftereffects, mostly felt in the urban legends that have risen up with little credit even now.)
Saigiku has also not lived in the same poverty as he’s heard about; it’s one thing to hear about it and one thing to experience it, especially as a blind boy in a city that is not known for its kindness.
The first time he does something that, perhaps, he cannot come back from, he is not hungry, and he is not hurt. There is nothing he can use to justify his actions beyond being angry, beyond his curiosity getting the better of him and the whisper of you lack the consequences you need hanging over his head.
He is fourteen and there is a broken piece of glass in his hand, picked up somewhere near the port, sharpened and strong despite the brittle nature of glass.
He is fourteen, and the stench of Yokohama is overwhelming, his hands calloused from digging into concrete so often.
He is fourteen, and there is a bakery owner that takes pity on him; who feeds him after close, and there is an older lady in the apartment down the block that tells him, you know, this city isn’t kind to good people, here, boy, and that is why there are clothes on his back.
Objectively, he is lucky.
Still, there is something that makes him want to hurt.
There is something that makes him want to maim, and there is something that allows him to use the glass in his hands and hold the body of a mouse next to a dumpster, that allows him to cut open the skin to reveal the small, bloody insides of a dead thing.
Saigiku sits, cross-legged, with the now-bloody glass shard on the ground and the corpse of a mouse in his lap, picking and pulling at the bones and organs with his finger. It isn’t safe, he knows that, and he could probably get sick from this, but it’s better than slitting open the throat of the nearest person and some part of him, buried under the grit of the street and the ash in the air, wants him to stop.
Saigiku does not.
Saigiku picks, and picks, and picks, and there is blood on his hands and he does not care and he picks, picks, picks -
The mouse sits in pieces, skin pulled off and limbs severed with organs spilling out and bones broken across the pavement. Saigiku abandons it there, and realizes he needs to wash the filth off his hands.
It isn’t something he regrets.
In fact, it doesn’t cross his mind to regret it at all.
He doesn’t answer honestly when the kind old lady asks what trouble he was in for the blood, he lies and tells her he picked a fight. People don’t like dead things; they like corpses about as much as they like the living dead, the people abandoned by their peers.
Saigiku thinks he has more in common with the dead mouse he left in that alley than anyone in the city of Yokohama, so determined to pick, pick, pick away at himself until tendon is severed from bone.
A mouse, a rat, a raccoon, three birds.
That is all Saigiku dissembles before he snaps; that is all he is able to get his hands on before he gives up on trying to understand. There’s no use understanding, he supposes; there’s no use in this life he’s lived up until now and the ache inside his chest that makes him want to burn everything to the ground only dulls when there is a corpse to be examined.
It happens quickly, and it happens when he has his hands on the lifeless heart of the bird he’d found a block away. He shouldn’t walk in the street with it, but the alley is another domain. Criminals tend not to pull guns on kids with roadkill.
This, however, must be a special case, because Saigiku can hear the man before he feels any movement. The man is older, perhaps in his thirties - old only to a kid - and burly, shifts too much to one side and clearly isn’t trained enough in the weapon he’s wielding based on the jingle of a chain in his pocket. Not a knife, not a gun - perhaps - perhaps a ball and chain? It would make the most sense, but why Saigiku -
“You must be stupid,” Saigiku says with a tilt of his head, his hair scruffy and falling over the useless mass that is his eyes.
(They left the actual eyeball in; he doesn’t know why. They’re useless. He doesn’t need them. They’re a nuisance if anything, but at least he can keep them closed now. The bandages haven’t come off his eye, it’s a wonder he hasn’t gotten an infection -)
“What the fuck are you doing, kid?” the man asks, and his tone is sweet, sickly so. Like he’s trying to show kindness, but there is something infinitely wrong about cruelty trying to masquerade: Saigiku can smell the tobacco on his breath and a disgusting mixture of bodily fluids on his pants.
Oh. Oh, Saigiku knows what this man wants from a blind boy wandering the streets.
“I’m running errands,” Saigiku says evenly, tossing the bird’s heart from hand to hand; the blood gets under his nails and he knows, he knows birds carry far more diseases and there is nothing sterile about the way he holds it.
Knows he should be sick.
Knows, knows, knows.
But Saigiku has been exempt from many things in his life, and physical sickness seems to be one of them, his hands coated in the blood of a dead thing in the way he should be a dead thing.
The man wavers, hesitates, but not enough.
Not enough.
He lunges for Saigiku, likely intending to incapacitate him as soon as possible - Saigiku’s light on his feet, and it’s easy to duck around -
He drops the heart, the organ falling on the grimy, filthy ground, but he has little time to mourn the loss when the ever-present clacking of that ball-and-chain will do him in soon if he doesn’t -
Saigiku’s always been small for his age, there’s no way he can win this fight physically -
His nails are sharp, though, sharp enough to cut in the way he’s cut open the skin of other things; sharp enough to run his nails across the back of the man’s hand, enough to make the man hiss - a sharp intake of breath -
If Masa Jouno taught his so-called son anything, it was how to avoid a hit.
Saigiku does not draw blood, knows he doesn’t, but he draws frustration and that’s enough for him, enough for him to disorient his would-be assailant and he’d like to say he has the skill to win this, but he doesn’t -
He’s just a kid, after all.
It isn’t a fair fight, not at all, and so Saigiku feels little remorse as he takes a handful of gravel and grease from the ground, the dirt sticking to the blood on his hands, waits until the man turns around;
Saigiku’s thumb digs into the man’s eye, the height difference laughable as Saigiku has to strain his arms to reach, but the hiss he gets in return is worth the effort.
A blind man can’t pull a weapon when he relies on his sight; something Saigiku doesn’t wear as his weakness, and Saigiku digs, digs, digs -
His thumbnail cuts through the eye, he knows it does, a film bursting wet against the pad of his thumb -
There is a scream, but it isn’t his own. Saigiku barely recognizes it beyond the thrum of his heartbeat rushing through his ears, and there is something so odd, so intrinsically odd about this, he knows; the man’s knees buckle underneath him, they fall to the ground, and Saigiku’s knee lies on his ribs, and he should be disturbed -
He isn’t.
The man doesn’t fight, doesn’t thrash like a dying thing should; it fascinates him more than he’s willing to admit and Saigiku doesn’t know how to take that, doesn’t know, doesn’t know, why, why, why, he wants to pick, pick, pick, pick -
When he takes his thumb out of the man’s eye, it releases with a pop.
And his impulsivity is a habit he’s longed to curb, but there’s little reason to do so now, with no consequences to his actions to speak of, and Saigiku pushes off the man, stands up without any buckle to his knee, or shakes to his hands.
It takes some feeling around, and a bit of kicking from his beat-up sneakers, but he ends up grabbing the heart off the ground. It doesn’t beat and it’s slimy in his hands, in somewhat the same way as the man’s eye was.
Saigiku should not indulge his impulses, but here he is.
It’s easy to sit on the ground, gravel digging into his knees, and pat the man down for a pocket knife; Saigiku’s hunch that he had one is proven right when he pulls the small blade out.
He wants to cut into the throat.
He doesn’t.
Instead, Saigiku takes the knife and cuts a slit into the man’s chest, through the fabric of his grease-stained shirt, above where his heart should be.
It’s harder to cut through bone, and perhaps Saigiku spends more time than he should cutting through it with the dull blade, hacking, hacking, hacking, and perhaps he feels like the monster his mother thought him to be, but -
Spineless boy. You’re never going to do anything beyond look fucking pretty, huh? God, just like your mother.
Saigiku doesn’t make a sound as he takes the small animal heart, careful not to pierce that with his nails, and there’s no grace in the way he shoves the animal heart in the slit he made. It rests against the man’s actual heart, and Saigiku wishes he could truly stare, but he cannot.
Instead, he puts his heart against the two items, the heart flush against the skin and as such, against his hand.
Saigiku sits there longer than he possibly should.
“Saigiku Jouno,” someone says, standing above where Saigiku sits cross-legged on the patio of the bakery he’s come to favor, munching on a somewhat stale croissant from yesterday’s helpings. It’s a nice place, and perhaps somewhere he doesn’t belong due to his ragged appearance, but there’s little place to care in his heart when he can’t even see himself in the mirror.
“What do you want?” Saigiku asks with a snap to his voice that hasn’t been there previously. It comes out harsh and aggressive, in a way that would’ve made Ichika slap him and teach him how to use concealer to cover up the marks, but it’s a constant that he now cannot change. Not when he tries, and not something he wants to change regardless.
It’s a wonder anyone knows his name here. He wonders if his parents have come looking for him.
That’s as unlikely as him winning the lottery, and so Saigiku lets the notion go as quick as it came; settles for the reality that is his guilty admission to murder, caught on camera no doubt. It’s easy to find a white-haired blind boy who never leaves the same five city blocks, not for anyone worth their salt.
“I have an offer for you,” the stranger says, even and cold in their presentation; a hand is held out in front of him, though Saigiku only knows due to the smell of sulfur suddenly a foot away from his nose.
It causes him to wrinkle said nose in distaste, waving away the hand offered and standing on his own, thank you very much. He figures he’s shorter than his conversational partner, but that’s never been something he’s minded, standing with his shoulders tense and back straight. “I’ll be needing a name before an offer.”
“That is on a need-to-know basis.”
“And as someone you are propositioning,” Saigiku starts, putting as much acidic emphasis on the word as he can. He knows what this city expects of him; he knows what this city was built on and what it will continue to feed off, leaching, leaching, leaching - it is the nature of life to leach and drain life from others. “I need to know who I am speaking to.”
“You speak like a diplomat,” the stranger says, a huff of amusement and no doubt a quirk of their lips adorning their face.
As such, Saigiku feels no remorse spitting at them, the saliva landing on their cheek. It drips down, apparent by the drop of saliva that lands with a hiss on the ground. Something acidic in everything he does, built into his blood.
“I speak like a street rat,” Saigiku says with a snarl, but he knows goddamn well that his accent will give him away regardless of what he does, and how he tries to shift it. Perhaps it’s because of his upbringing, because of his inexperience. Perhaps he needs more time to pull apart what makes him tick and burn everything that reeks of perfume and tobacco.
“Kaito Mizoguchi, at your service,” the stranger says, not taking offense to Saigiku’s actions; he doesn’t bother to brush the saliva off his clothes, and that’s part of the reason that Saigiku doesn’t do it again.
There’s no use if there’s nothing to be gained.
“Mizoguchi,” Saigiku repeats, if only because he doesn’t know what else to say at that moment. The name tastes sweet on his tongue, but there’s still the apprehension that lingers. He’s heard the name somewhere - but Saigiku’s been far too busy lately to truly remember.
(There’s far more going on than the reports he used to read on his father’s desk; there are far more important things than the animals he dismembers, their hearts already still by the time he finds them -)
“What am I being offered?” Saigiku continues, running his hands along his pants to get rid of as much excess grime as he can. His stale croissant is entirely gone, though there are crumbs clinging to his chin - he must make a sorry sight.
In not in appearance, then in situation; a street rat made of a wealthy boy; a blind child from a model. It’s sickening in its irony.
It makes Saigiku want to crack something, makes him want to force the world to repay him -
It’s best not to indulge those impulses. It leads to pulverized animal bones and blood under his nails that he cannot wash off.
“I work for an organization called Seventh Sun,” Mizoguchi explains, a cockiness to his voice that certainly emphasizes his trust and pride in his profession. “We’ve seen your work - and you’d fit in well. Pays well, too. What do you think?”
Saigiku tilts his head - considers the offer.
It’s vague, there’s no doubt about that, but growing up with only leeches and sharks around him has taught him to sniff the air and find bloodlust. Off Mizoguchi, Saigiku can certainly smell plenty. A good thing, given the implied job description.
Saigiku spits on Mizoguchi once more, his snarl deepening.
It’s the closest to verbal acceptance that Mizoguchi will get, and he doesn’t try to warn Saigiku about what he’s getting into as he leads them through back alleys, to the worst side of town from the slums of the worse-off side of the city.
The strangest thing about Seventh Sun, an organization with a goal that Saigiku cares little for, is how they regard him.
He is used to stares of distaste; he’s used to Ichika’s constant critique of his appearance and how he holds himself; he’s used to pity and disgust, but Seventh Sun greets him with none of that.
It starts off well enough.
If Saigiku’s being honest, Seventh Sun itself is not a big organization: it’s in a little league of its own, but that is only because it’s been sanctioned by the Port Mafia. Saigiku isn’t supposed to know the leader is taking cuts, but it’s a fact he knows simply from the smell of cologne.
They enable him.
All of his cruelty, his curiosity - they indulge him, and for the first two months, there’s little that Saigiku has to do beyond ask for whatever his heart desires.
He asks to see the morgue and to be given a scalpel - his requests are granted with no one batting an eye as to why a blind boy wants to observe a corpse. He asks for a new wardrobe and he is given one, though the clothes aren’t the quality he’s used to and they itch against his skin. He asks for the corpses of roadkill found nearby and he is obliged in the way that he has a corner of the morgue all to himself.
Then, they do not ask - they demand.
“Saigiku,” Mizoguchi says, leaning against the doorframe of the sterile ten-by-ten Saigiku lives in. He dropped the family name after Saigiku told him he’d rather not have the association anymore, but it still lingers like a ghost on his lips. “I have a job for you.”
“Finally,” Saigiku says simply, arms crossed. He’s been growing his nails out, lately; they’re sharp, sharper than they used to be.
Sharp enough to kill, one might say, but there’s a dagger that lies at his side, now; easier to grab than the morbid fascination that compels him one, two steps behind.
“Midnight, the docks,” Mizoguchi continues. There’s little amusement to his voice and this is not the Mizoguchi that Saigiku tends to see around here: this is a Mizoguchi who knows this job is not suited to a fourteen-year-old boy but doesn’t have the reserve officers to assign anyone else. That’s fine.
Saigiku doesn’t mind doing the dirty work. He gets paid well even when he isn’t on a job, though it’s all in cash and it’s difficult to tell the fucking bills apart when he can’t see their color. He doesn’t mind the dirty work and the secrets that come with making him an enemy of himself.
“Who’s the target?”
“You’ll see her.”
Saigiku waits with more patience than he’s had in fourteen years thus far.
“Er -” Mizoguchi corrects himself awkwardly, shifting from foot to foot like Saigiku will curse him out for the mistake. “She runs a local gang, and she’s been skimming off our rounds. I need you to take her out.”
Saigiku does not point out the simple fact that they are a local gang, too, and assassinating a rival’s leader only serves to strengthen their reputation as petty gangsters playing house compared to the Port Mafia.
Instead, he notes, and he takes the folder out of Mizoguchi’s hands when it’s offered to him. Mizoguchi’s hands are always dry, leaving dead skin cells against the paper.
Saigiku’s grimace at the notion must be interpreted as disgust for his pre-meditated crime because Mizoguchi speaks with a pitying smile painted in his words like candy. “Hey - everyone gets nervous the first time. It’s okay if you struggle.”
“Makes it sound like we’re talking about virginity.”
Saigiku promptly slams the door in Mizoguchi’s face.
The first time he murders - the first time he truly intends to take a life - it isn’t eventful in the way it should be.
Saigiku does as he’s told to do, and perhaps he jams the knife into the woman’s knife but doesn’t cut, doesn’t let the life leak out of her as the blood does.
Instead, he holds her there, his foot on the back of her kneecap with the back of her head to his sternum.
“You’ve made a grave mistake,” he says cheerfully, the first smile in months across his cheeks like he got a good grade in history rather than the brutal reality.
She doesn’t struggle. She doesn’t thrash.
“Good girl,” Saigiku murmurs, leaning down, far too close to her ear, the serrated edge of his knife digging further and further into her throat. She’ll die soon, and it won’t be quick. It’ll be slow - it’ll be worse, even, than having your heart joined with that of a bird.
(Saigiku doesn’t think about that often because, whenever he does, he gets the urge to do it again.)
When he takes the knife away, he makes sure to take a piece of her skin with it. An imperfect triangle, saturated with blood, lying in his hand like a trophy, like a prop for the horror movie he stars in.
The woman stares. Saigiku knows because he has to know, because he needs to know if her eyes are open or not, so he reaches out and his bare nail digs into the malleable, slimy skin of her eye.
And he digs.
She doesn’t scream - can’t, with him holding the inside of her throat as he is.
She’s still alive. He knows this.
He can’t help it - it’s fascinating - she’s staring and she still doesn’t stop when he digs his fingers in and she doesn’t stop staring until her body slumps to the side and Saigiku is left holding flesh and blood; the liquid is uncomfortable in his hands.
He drops everything in his hands, something like regret in his mind.
Nothing echoes in the night other than his footsteps, and numbly, dimly, on the way back to headquarters, Saigiku thinks he should invest in a pair of gloves.
Blood is disgusting, after all, but it’s something he’ll be further acquainted with soon, won’t it?
Saigiku rises the ranks sooner than he should.
By the time his fifteenth birthday rolls around, he wears clothes with a high-enough thread count to rival what he used to wear, a glorified crown sitting atop his head that he never truly admires.
It’s nice, he thinks, to be appreciated for something; even if it is for slaughter, recognition is recognition. He is a cruel person by nature, and these are the first people he’s ever met that have celebrated it rather than shun him for it.
His every curiosity is indulged, and when he asks for something interesting, they laugh - they say, you’re ambitious, aren’t you?
It’s like they think Saigiku considers Seventh Sun as the end-all-be-all of his life; it’s like they think he’s willing to give his life for his acquaintances despite knowing damn well that this organization will soon be swallowed by the Port Mafia soon enough.
Because of his indulgences, though, they give him the title of Executive.
It’s one step above Mizoguchi, who serves as Saigiku’s reader when they don’t have anything in braille; they tend not to, but Saigiku doesn’t take it personally. His reports are someone else’s problem, though he’s told they can’t put as many expletives as he gives in his renditions of the stories.
“Saigiku,” Mizoguchi asks, knocking on the door.
A mission gone wrong.
Saigiku knows it from the moment he hears the footsteps - Mizoguchi is favoring his right leg, but he typically favors his left; there’s a soft squeak that mimics the sound of blood filling a shoe, and there’s a tremor to his voice that wasn’t there before.
Mizoguchi is no impressive man, but he’s still hard to take down and he’s ten years older than Saigiku himself; it’s not improbable to say that Saigiku sees some of his older brother in the disappointing way Mizoguchi turned out.
“Come in,” Saigiku says evenly; he shuffles papers on his desk that he can’t read regardless, taps on the desk the number of plans he has to make for this.
When Mizoguchi opens the door, Saigiku finds he was right, as per usual; Mizoguchi is worse for the wear in the way that corpses are worse for wear.
Blood - the stench of it is something Saigiku is well-acquainted with but disregards anyway, but it rolls off Mizoguchi in ways, concentrations from his leg and from his - from his chest.
(Saigiku really does hate when he’s right, why is he always right, a human heart is different than that of a bird - he doesn’t want to remove the human heart from its place -)
“They got away,” Mizoguchi says quietly, simply; defeated, one might say, but he’s always had the fighting spirit of a soldier.
How he ended up in a doomed gang, Saigiku doesn’t know, doesn’t know if he wants to know; it’s better to leave some things unsaid. That way, if there is something truly monstrous hiding under the surface, there’s no one the wiser.
“You didn’t finish them off?” If Saigiku acknowledges the fact that Mizoguchi will die the moment he steps foot in an infirmary and he chooses his limited time left to come to Saigiku’s office, then perhaps, some emotion will leak from his ruined eyes and as such, Saigiku keeps that fact quiet behind us.
“No. We weren’t able to.” It’s flat, not from disappointment but from resignation.
Mizoguchi shifts his weight from foot to foot, hiding a hiss and wince.
Saigiku waits.
If there are final rites for the dead, Saigiku does not know them; all of the people he’s seen dead have sinned more than can be repaired by prayer, will end up in Hell no doubt. He doesn’t know what Mizoguchi wants, but he knows he won’t like it.
But the walking dead deserve their final requests granted, at least. Right?
“I have a question,” Mizoguchi asks slowly, quietly, as though Saigiku will bite him for the very insolence of asking.
Saigiku tilts his head but offers no verbal acknowledgment of what was said.
“When… when you…” Mizoguchi starts. “When you could… I’ve been wondering this for a while, Saigiku.”
Wondering what? Saigiku wants to hiss, wants to get this over with, doesn’t want to get his time wasted by a dead man, and that, that is the fallacy that is his soul because he knows he should respect the dead but -
“What do your eyes look like?” Mizoguchi blurts out.
Saigiku stops - everything stops, from his thoughts to his heartbeat, for a second, a mere second. “Why do you ask?”
Mizoguchi struggles with his words, oh, of course, he struggles with his words. “Well - I know you have those scars from when you - when - whatever happened, but you’re so - pretty, otherwise, and -”
Mizoguchi has been his best friend - only friend - for the year that he’s been with Seventh Sun. Mizoguchi is one of the few people with power in this organization. Mizoguchi is -
Mizoguchi is dead, Saigiku thinks, no hesitation to his movements when he grabs a throwing star - one of Mizoguchi’s own, left here from the last time they bantered - and throws it with the accuracy of an archer.
It pierces the throat; the sound is one Saigiku has heard dozens - maybe hundreds - of times.
He doesn’t mourn.
At sixteen, Saigiku knows well what he is good for; he is good for desolation. He is good for making sure Seventh Sun is able to hold its ground and able to stay separate from the mafia; he is good for the technicalities that no one thinks of.
They call him cruel, ever since Mizoguchi.
Saigiku thinks nothing of it.
Cruelty is in his nature, and while it wasn’t in Mizoguchi, isn’t there something so intimately cruel about asking for the one thing he loathes?
Right now, Saigiku stands as the Executive of the Seventh Sun Initiative, a man - boy - dedicated to his organization and to what it enables him for. It isn’t far off from the truth, but Saigiku still wonders how much of his life is rumor and how much is truth.
Seventh Sun is - it isn’t home, but it’s something close to it.
And, because of that, he cannot leave it.
Which is precisely why he finds himself here: in one of his nicer suits, soft, tapered gray - or so he’s told - in front of five skyscrapers labeled Mori Corporations. ‘
Seventh Sun is his home, and just because everyone close to it is stupid doesn’t mean they deserve the death penalty of the mafia. Though Saigiku’s made sure everyone on the hit squad who had the great idea of infringing on mafia territory is dead, the consequences of their actions still remain; something that no one else seems to grasp quite as well as him.
He’s arriving unannounced. A dangerous thing in his line of work, but it’s more than worth the work.
(Is it? What has Seventh Sun truly done for him? What’s the difference between living lavishly and living on the streets when his impulses were indulged either way? If it isn’t his home, why does he consider them so, why does he keep telling himself they are? Is there anyone he can name that he would truly give his life for - or is he wasting his time?
Is this all he can truly amount to?)
The receptionist doesn’t give him a second glance, but the bodyguards stationed by the elevators do.
Saigiku offers them sweet smiles, as he offers all the victims under his belt thus far. “Would one of you mind pressing the buttons for me? I’m afraid I can’t see them.”
Mizoguchi always considered it a low blow when Saigiku used his blindness as an excuse for things. Saigiku considered it a low blow when Mizoguchi was far too fascinated by his eyes than he had any right to be.
When the bodyguard, confused, follows Saigiku’s request, Saigiku calmly steps into the elevator with him.
“I’m speaking with the CEO today,” Saigku says evenly, calmly. I’m speaking to the don of the Port Mafia today, is the intended double meaning; something noted by the bodyguard from the slight hesitation to his movements when he reaches for the button.
The top floor; the don of the Port Mafia would deserve no less. It’s easier than some of the dirtier missions Saigiku’s done.
Part of him wonders if it’s this easy all of the time; the rest of him knows that if the Port Mafia didn’t want him here, he’d have been assassinated in the street the moment he stepped foot onto the Mafia’s territory.
He’s expected. The boss knows his agenda as well as Saigiku himself does.
Saigiku allows the bodyguard to press the button - the wrong button, he might add, the sound echoing from too far up the control panel to be the top floor when the buttons descend. After the bodyguard presses the button, Saigiku decides to take care of this before the probing questioning can start.
It’s laughable easy to disarm the man, a side effect of his blindness being used to underestimate; all Saigiku has to do is wield the knife he’s grown fond of, and blood stains his gloved hands.
The elevator dings.
Saigiku steps over the body to press the correct button, smiling at the people who no doubt watch him when the doors open and close with no one stepping in or out of the elevator. He doesn’t know if there are people there to see, but he has to assume from the frozen air and the fear that fills his nose like a mold.
The building is orderly and well-designed; it makes sense, given the Port Mafia has access to more money than even Saigiku’s ever seen, money that his parents would kill for. While the Mafia moonlights as a legitimate business, everyone knows precisely what they are.
After all, a company like this changing its name the same month as the death of the old Mafia don? It’s too much of a coincidence.
In Yokohama, the only coincidence is whether you live to tell the tale or not: it’s a city of sin and blood, something that Saigiku’s gotten accustomed to in his time here. He might not be like others - he might not have an ability like some of the people he’s had to fight - but he knows enough about them to know what his odds in battle are.
Right now, in this building, with his knife on him and little more than his pride, he knows that he, as an Executive of Seventh Sun, would be slaughtered in a heartbeat if he made any movement that was not sanctioned or allowed.
(The guard in the elevator - he didn’t try to fight back. Did he know that he was being used as a pawn? Or is he too far-ranked to even bother training properly? Either way, it was a measured casualty; Saigiku wonders how often the Mafia don does things like that.)
Right now, right now, right now. What an odd thing, the present; it lasts an eternity and yet it has never been experienced long enough for a coherent thought.
Regardless of his thoughts on the ease with which he’s gotten this far, Saigiku patiently waits for the elevator to continue its ascent; he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t need to think of what he’ll say.
It’s clear the kind of deal he needs to make, and without Mizoguchi or anyone else to act as a public liaison, the title was gifted to Saigiku. Not in the guise of negotiations, but the idea that he can intimidate whoever they have to speak on civil terms with.
What fools. Saigiku loathes them as much as he’s incapable of leaving.
When the elevator opens, he knows it’ll open to one office and one office alone; a hallway separates the office from the elevator, the lights emitting a hissing, flickering electrical hum that means they must be dim.
The hallway stretches on in the way Saigiku’s footsteps echo, but he doesn’t let the artificially created atmosphere startle him. If he was able to see, he wouldn’t be surprised to see deep red walls or sleek, dark floors.
It’s all part of an image, all part of the aura the Port Mafia has to uphold to be continued at the top of the line and worthy of the permission they’ve received.
(That’s the thing, about the Mafia - they are far too embroiled in everything Yokohama has to offer to be separated; Saigiku knows it well. The police can do nothing about them and as such, there’s little doubt in his mind that the police have made a deal with the Mafia.)
He doesn’t bother knocking on the door. There’s no reason to when he’s the only visitor and one that was expected nonetheless.
The door doesn’t creak when it opens, but it’s heavy and wooden under Saigiku’s gloved touch, the draft informing him that the door doesn’t truly touch the ground from the cold air that rushes past his ankles.
“Come in,” says a smooth, deeper voice; the Port Mafia don.
He sounds younger than Saigiku expected, but perhaps he’s too used to seeing old, decrepit men fight for the power they used to hold. He’s only sixteen, after all, so the fact that it is the next generation assassinating the old shouldn’t surprise him.
An oversight, he would consider it.
Saigiku smiles, stepping into the office and wondering why his footsteps don’t echo in here as they echoed out there; it probably has something to do with the padded walls, all for sound-deadening no doubt.
The man’s voice carries, though, and that’s likely because of floor-to-ceiling windows. Everything said will amplify through the office, but nothing that is done will echo, and neither of the two options will ever escape the confines they’ve been allowed.
Brazenly and confidently, Saigiku closes the door behind him.
He takes careful, small steps until his toe stubs against a chair and he makes no wince of pain when he sits down.
“You aren’t what I was expecting,” Mori Ougai says, his smarmy smile carved into his being based on the way it travels through more than expression alone.
“What were you expecting?” Saigiku says evenly, his legs crossed and his hands sitting neatly in his lap. He’d like to sit how he does when he’s at work: with his posture slumped and his legs spread, but that’s far too disrespectful in this environment.
It’s been three years since Saigiku has had to play the role of a respectful young boy. It’s been three years since he burned that title and trying to play it again only feels like warping himself back into the mirror version of his younger self, bones and limbs too large to properly break down to the size he is supposed to be.
Mori hums, a soft sound not befitting someone of the mafia. “Someone older, perhaps.”
“I could say the same to you,” Saigiku says, keeping the snarl off his face; something he fails at but tries regardless. “You know why I’m here, so how about we get down to business, yes?”
“You violated our arrangement,” Mori says simply, getting to the heart of the matter as Saigiku requested.
“A rogue cell,” Saigiku counters easily. It’s hard to be respectful in the face of someone he’d like to spit at, but there’s something about the authority that has always wanted Saigiku to force their hand.
He knows, now, that it’s because he likes seeing just how far someone will go - how far he will go to sin, how far his father did -
Every authority has its failings. It’s Saigiku’s job to punish the institution, isn’t it? He does it by simply existing in spite of the family that wishes him dead.
“A rogue cell typically intends on killing themselves to cause consequences they can’t see,” Mori states, as though it’s as simple as that. It might be, but Saigiku’s always been inclined to question the truth set in front of him.
He’s had everything in life handed to him on a silver platter, and after being dumped from his high horse, he’s worked hard to get back up to that point. The issue is that he has.
“I’m aware. I’m rather certain this group was solely working for the decay of relations between our organizations. You have my sincere apologies for any inconvenience we’ve brought the Port Mafia.” There was a slaughter on the docks but with the casualties at fifty rather than five hundred, you’ll forgive this.
Saigiku can throw around honeyed words, though he typically doesn’t bother coating his syllables in anything other than the sharp, harsh lilt to them that he prefers. He’s out of his comfort zone here, and he thinks that Mori can smell the irritation rolling off him in waves.
And if you don’t, I’ll have your head on a stake and I’ll carve away each feature to put on a different chapel tower.
“I see,” Mori says, his hands interlaced and chin nearly resting on them. Like Saigiku, he wears gloves; he has a sneaking suspicion that the Port Mafia don and he wears the gloves for the exact same reason.
There is filth, and then there is the filth that comes with their line of work.
“You see?”
“If this rogue cell continued on as they were,” - without your interference, is what Mori means, the reasoning hard to ignore - “What do you think they would have done?”
“They wouldn’t have possibly continued on as they were,” Saigiku says flatly because it’s true. They were a suicide group: fighting for something they would never see, if only because they were cowards who could barely scratch the surface of what they were getting into. “It was never their intent. If they had, they would’ve fizzled out without a doubt. If by some miracle, they were still active, they’d try something stupider. A bombing, perhaps.”
“You’re awfully perceptive, aren’t you?”
“That has nothing to do with the matter at hand.”
Mori smiles - it’s like Saigiku can hear the stretch of skin, but his senses have always been a little sharper in comparison to his eyes. Saigiku mimics it and he wonders, perhaps, if this is what it feels like to experience a funhouse mirror.
Warped and jaded: perception is a fickle thing and it depends on which road you’re looking down, doesn’t it?
“This rogue cell has been swiftly taken care of, and as Seventh Sun’s ambassador, I’m here to inform you that we hope this has no bearing on our relations.”
“Does your organization know you’re here, Saigiku?”
At that, Saigiku doesn’t answer.
No, he is not here on official business; he’s here as an Executive without the permission of his superior, but Saigiku has never been one to follow orders when they’re given without reason; if the Port Mafia wants to devour Seventh Sun, that is their right.
But Saigiku will be damned if it happens while he is still affiliated with them.
At his silence, Mori continues, his smile still marring his words, and the laughter of a little girl echoes around the room, but Saigiku does not flinch.
Eight to twelve-year-old girl; a construction of Mori Ougai’s ability. Elise, she’s been named.
“If you’re perceptive enough to realize what will come of this break of agreement, why not run while you have the chance?”
Saigiku’s pride has never allowed him to back down from a challenge. As such, he defiantly juts his chin, his arms crossed. “The only ones who run from their sins are the ones who deserve to be killed for them.”
“Oh? I didn’t know you were a worshipper.”
“I’m not.” Then, Saigiku leans forward and allows his voice to drop to the sharp, icy tone that he’s used on traitors and snitches alike. “As far as I’m concerned, I am judge, jury, and executioner.”
It’s a subtle thing, but Saigiku can tell when Mori leans back. He’d like to take pride in it, but if he takes his victories now, they’ll taste like salt on his tongue when there’s a stab in his back. “Your loyalty is bought, then?”
“My loyalty is to whoever interests me long enough.” Big words for someone who’s never had a chance to test that theory out; Seventh Sun was the organization that saved him and the organization that nurtured him, allowed him to indulge in his impulses, and the massacre that has intrigued him so.
Mori doesn’t say I see again, but it’s obvious in the way he contemplates, the silence sitting between them with not a word from the constructed ability as Saigiku waits.
He’s pleaded his case; the rogue cell had nothing to do with Seventh Sun’s primary motivations, though there’s a pull in his gut that tells him this conversation has little to do with Seventh Sun itself and more around Saigiku.
He’s always been an object to be discussed and spoken of but never to, after all. Here, however, he is the only one who has anything to say about himself. Everything spoken otherwise is from rumor and opinion alone.
“Well, then,” Mori says slowly, the words harsh and bitter on his tongue. As expected of a man who can run the Port Mafia as ruthlessly efficient as it's been operating in recent years. “As a show of good faith, I’ll allow this slight to go unpunished.”
“In return for?” Saigiku isn’t stupid. Shows of good faith have the same agenda as mobsters at a dinner meeting: blackmail. It isn’t a game he’s interested in playing if only because Mori has an entire organization on his side and Saigiku is, currently, acting independently.
“Nothing,” Mori says, as though it’s as simple as that. “If you ever choose to use that intellect to do something useful, you know where to find me. Don’t ask another favor of me until then.”
So you’d like me to work for you, Saigiku’s internal monologue supplies, though he doesn’t dare say that aloud.
Instead, he nods, giving a curt, “thank you,” that doesn’t feel right along the roof of his mouth.
I’m made for slaughter, but I’d like to pretend there is reason behind it, Saigiku responds to himself, mulling the offer over. What would be different in the Port Mafia? It’d be better pay, certainly, and while Saigiku is arrogant, he knows damn well that he would be one of their best operatives as well.
That, and the Port Mafia is well-aware that most of their best operatives are young; there’s little use in an adult trying to find a way to pay the bills, but a child - a child who knows nothing of family and only loyalty - that is useful.
The difference, really, would be his position title.
Saigiku thinks Executive suits him just fine.
The beginning of the end is something that Saigiku sees coming.
As an organization, Seventh Sun never grows, but never declines. There is no rise and fall, there are no festering rogue cells that are not dealt with swiftly.
The end comes in the form of an undercover operative that thinks he’s far better at hiding his identity than he truly is. Saigiku can smell the sterile stench of rot that comes off him; the same stench that paints each and every government operative he’s ever met.
The boy’s name is Tecchou Suehiro, and he’s a few months older than Saigiku at best.
Why he’s here, Saigiku doesn’t know, but Saigiku doesn’t pry for information if only because he doesn’t need to know anything Tecchou has to say. His agenda is written clearly across his face with every move he makes.
“Spar me,” Saigiku says, walking into the room and barely giving a curt nod before acknowledging the boy. He’s been elected as Saigiku’s right hand. Saigiku does, like many, choose to keep his enemies close.
“What?” Tecchou says, tilting his head in a mock innocent fashion. His eyes are dark, but his soul is not - it’s obvious in the way he hesitates whenever they’re on a mission, obvious in the way he hesitates whenever Saigiku asks for anything beyond the black-and-white of a moral compass.
“Spar me,” Saigiku repeats simply, “You’re meant to be strong, aren’t you? There’s little use in me having your protection if even I, a blind man, can beat you in a fight.”
“You play that card too much,” Tecchou says, a scoff on the tip of his tongue but not something he allows to reach the air. Saigiku can hear him gently setting his sword and his coat on the ground, always so protective of the instrument of destruction. “What brought it on this time?”
“Nothing, really,” Saigiku shrugs. It’s something they can both taste, when he lies - such an odd giveaway, given that Tecchou Suehiro is a liar with a reason.
The government is many things, and functional is not one of them. While Saigiku doesn’t despise it as an institution, as there is reason to order and authority that needs to govern order, absolute power corrupts absolutely and everyone with a crumb of power eats it greedily, starving the many.
The government is many things, and given that the war ended years ago, he can no longer justify their use of child soldiers. The mafia and a criminal organization - those make sense, those are pre-determined to cause despair in the name of their functions, but the government should shed its skin of the post-war pretense.
That’s neither here nor there, though, and he supposes Tecchou is allowed to choose his own path regardless of what has been asked of him, as Saigiku did.
“I doubt that.”
Tecchou Suehiro may lack the acting skills required to give him a convincing cover story, but he is on par, if not better than Saigiku when it comes to physical strength and skill. That being said, it’s always laughable to Saigiku that he typically wins in fights despite his lack of senses his opponent has in abundance.
“Perhaps I’m lying, perhaps I’m not. Either way, the end result is you doing as I say,” Saigiku shrugs, relishing in what he knows is absolute power determined only by the power available to him. Becoming one’s authority means sacrificing their potential, he supposes.
The Port Mafia would pay better and give him more freedom to grow, but Saigiku is content with what he does.
“Any rules?” Tecchou asks, always asks, and there is something in his demeanor that truly doesn’t fit him; he is a man made of muscle and bone and government programming, and the only gentleness to him is fake.
Saigiku shakes his head with a roll of his eyes, though Tecchou certainly can’t see it. He’s getting to the point where he can hear - or sense, really, with how inconsistent it is - heartbeats. It’s odd, he thinks, but Tecchou’s heartbeat is steady, even when he’s being questioned about things he’s certainly lying about.
Saigiku wonders what kind of program Tecchou might be in, to get dispatched here. If being undercover is a punishment for him.
If he finds some unholy joy in the way Saigiku goes out of his way to make sure that Tecchou’s stimulated enough; to make sure he’s always busy and assure that, if anything, he is never away from Tecchou for too long. He is the informant’s superior, after all, and he’d rather not let all of his information get leaked to the very units he’s dispatched so many times before.
“As always,” Tecchou murmurs, though there’s no hint of the emotion that he keeps running through his voice. It’s something that Saigiku cannot discern - another mystery about him. “You should go easier on yourself, Saigiku. It won’t do you any good when you keel over from how far you push yourself.”
“You clearly don’t listen when I talk.”
And Tecchou - Tecchou may not be good at the intellectual side of deception, but he is a trained soldier nonetheless and his footsteps make little sound on the floor; none, to anyone else, but those thick-soled boots do nothing to help disguise his location.
When Tecchou drops to a fighting stance, Saigiku mirrors a smile on his lips despite the situation, the one he called for.
Tecchou, at first, when Saigiku had first demanded a show of Tecchou’s skills, had held back and stated that he would not fight someone who did not have the same capability to fight back.
Yeah, he lost that spar, and the one after that, if only because Saigiku threw a book at his head about how not to say stupid things to your disabled friends - an annotated biography, too, something one of his subordinates had picked up as a gag gift and Mizoguchi had read aloud - and he hasn’t said anything stupid since.
Well, everything he says is stupid, but that’s neither here nor there in Saigiku’s opinion.
“Tecchou,” Saigiku says slowly, intentionally drawling his words because Tecchou has a nasty habit of favoring his right leg when he gets distracted. He does tend to get distracted by the sound of Saigiku’s voice, though Saigiku doesn’t know if that’s limited only to him or otherwise. “Why are you here?”
It’s the closest to asking for the truth that Saigiku will get, but it’s been months and he needs to know. Simply put, Tecchou is not cut out for this.
Still, the question has its verbal intent and its physical; Saigiku doesn’t waste time hesitating when he notes that Tecchou shifts his weight.
Saigiku has always worn heeled boots: only an inch heel or so, but they make him taller and they hurt like a bitch when they slam into Tecchou’s thigh.
Because the soldier is built like a fucking tank with no regard for any room for emotional intelligence, Tecchou merely grunts, taking the blow and barely stumbling back - taking the opportunity to grab Saigiku by the sleeve -
Saigiku evades with a pivot, though it feels somewhat more like a dance than it does a fight.
(Tecchou does try to put something beautiful into the violence of what he does, but Saigiku tries to combat this every time by adding more blood to the canvas, something that Tecchou intentionally makes more difficult when they’re on a field mission.)
They aren’t here to dance ballet.
“You didn’t answer me,” Saigiku practically laughs, ducking under a clumsy punch - that isn’t Tecchou’s style, why did -
Oh, Saigiku thinks, when Tecchou’s other fist slams directly into his stomach, knocking the wind and thought out of him in a heartbeat, I forgot he was ambidextrous.
Not that it particularly mattered.
Saigiku instinctively reaches to cover his stomach, allowing Tecchou to wrap his fingers around Saigiku’s wrist and bend his arm back.
There’s use in struggling, Saigiku knows, but something about the position, when Tecchou grabs him by the waist and brings them flush together in order to stop Saigiku from hitting back - it makes him pause.
He doesn’t know why.
There’s no, why did -
Tecchou’s hands don’t feel like maggots on his skin, dirty and unkempt, as most do; and Tecchou’s heartbeat isn’t steady, although it only took him two minutes to get Saigiku like this -
What kind of Executive is he if he can so easily be usurped by his subordinate?
(A soldier is trained for war; Saigiku has been trained only on how to use his cruelty at times when he already has the upper hand. That title - above and beyond - is something that Tecchou deprives him of by being in his presence; Tecchou unintentionally forces him back to earth.)
“That was quick, even for you,” Tecchou hums, though he doesn’t sound like he’s panting. Part of Saigiku resents the fact that Tecchou doesn’t sound out of breath.
The other part of him is wondering why Tecchou’s fingers can nearly wrap around the length of his wrist, and why it fascinates him. Whatever he’s thinking with, it isn’t his head, but Saigiku doesn’t want to think about anything when it’s been a long day.
He really doesn’t know what to do with Tecchou. The man is a traitor, that much is certain. There’s nothing redeeming about him beyond his fighting capability and at times, he’s dumber than a rock given instructions to stay put.
He should say, let go of me, and snatch his wrist away, shove Tecchou’s hand off his waist.
For one reason or another, though, Saigiku huffs, irritated at himself and the weak resolve that’s only gotten softer in recent months, a flaw if anything, and practically goes boneless against Tecchou’s chest.
Tecchou Suehiro is a traitor, yes. That much is true, and evidence is in his clothes alone: they’re too soft and warm to be quality that he should be able to afford, but his shirt feels nice under Saigiku’s cheek and he knows Tecchou’s heartbeat speeds up.
Why? Is he scared?
“You still haven’t answered me,” Saigiku says quietly, snaking his hand out of Tecchou’s grasp only to curl it against his own chest, and thus, between them both.
Standing in his office like this, when he’s supposed to be sparring with a traitor of a subordinate, makes Saigiku feel guilty in a way he hasn’t felt in a long time; dirty, in a way that he knows he can wash off later.
That, that is a dangerous game. There are stains and blights on your consciousness, and then there are things you can wash off.
“I don’t know what your question means,” Tecchou says, his voice in a low murmur; it makes his chest vibrate, and Saigiku can’t say it irritates him, a rare thing in and of itself.
“Why are you here?” Saigiku repeats, wondering what would happen if he truly ran his nails along Tecchou’s throat, if he could so easily slit that open as he’s done many times before. Wonders what it would be like to dissect a military man, if his skin would tear as a bird does.
“I -”
“I don’t want to hear a lie,” Saigiku snaps, more hostility but not enough, not enough, never enough -
“I can’t give you that,” Tecchou says gently, softly, softly like he is speaking to someone who deserves it, someone who does not dissect because it is the only thing he is capable of, someone who -
Saigiku needs to stop fucking thinking about this.
Because he does not deserve soft and he does not deserve spoonfed answers regardless of their truth or not, Saigiku pushes him away. Tecchou doesn’t try to keep him there at all, and really, it was never a spar in the first place.
If it was, then it was a sorry excuse for one.
“Talk to me when you can stomach it, coward,” is also Saigiku hisses, cold enough to leave frostbite over Tecchou’s ribs should his words choose to settle there, and storms away.
The end calls to Saigiku in the way sirens call to future shipwrecks.
It says innocuously, as many things do, and he won’t say he falls into bed with his subordinate because that would be far too unprofessional, even for him, an eighteen-year-old Executive with far more on his shoulders than Atlas hopes to deal with.
It starts with nightmares, as it typically does. Saigiku’s nightmares are more abstract than not. He doesn’t know what’s going on in his nightmares beyond the fact that he can’t tell reality from dream and dream digs its claws into his skin and tears, tears, tears.
His mother is always there. Ichika is always smiling and she always smells like perfume and her nails are worse than a drillbit through his fingertips; there’s poison in every quirk of her lips, something she tries to get under his skin -
He dreams that he is back home, and he is being told that he’s not needed anymore. He dreams that he is back home and instead of abandoning him at a hospital, instead they chose the more direct route; he imagines Masa Jouno pulling and tugging his eye open with tweezers because he always closes them when he shouldn’t, imagines nails against the slimy membrane of his eye.
Imagines crystal blue blood in the place of tears, imagines, imagines, imagines - there’s a pain in his right eye, along the scars where he tried to pry it out, wonders, wonders, wonders -
What is he good for if he ended up here anyway?
Shouldn’t he have died like he was supposed to, all those years ago, his fingers across the cold skin of the corpse meant to take his place?
Shouldn’t he have died like the useless child that he is?
“Saigiku,” someone hisses, cold and harsh and poison, poison, poison on their tongue -
Saigiku flinches away from it, of course, flinches because he’s a coward -
“Saigiku?” It’s more of a question, really, but a question is always a demand, thinly veiled, Saigiku closing his eyes shut against the nails that dig and dig and dig and dig -
“Saigiku!”
It’s a shout this time, and Saigiku -
Saigiku wakes up in a cold sweat, panting, one hand bunched in the sheets and the other being held in the tight grasp of Tecchou’s hand, eyes wide but unseeing; not comfortably closed like they typically are, and he expects to see his bedroom -
He sees nothing at all.
Tecchou’s touch is familiar; Tecchou himself is familiar, and the fact that he is in Saigiku’s room when he has no reason to be in this facility at all should confuse him, should make him ask more about the man’s intentions, but for now, Saigiku loosely shakes off Tecchou’s hand, not maggots on his skin but something close -
“You were having a nightmare,” Tecchou says softly, stupidly, because Saigiku knows, of fucking course he knows he was having a nightmare. “You were clawing at your eye.”
Right eye. Not phantom pains - scratches, that’s why Tecchou grabbed his wrist.
“Why are you here?” Saigiku croaks again, if only because his throat is sore and he can’t - he can’t get into this right now. Once his breathing is under control and he feels safe - why does he feel safe with Tecchou around? - he allows his eyes to flutter closed.
It’s better like this, but he blindly reaches out for Tecchou’s hand again.
Tecchou freely gives it without a word; Saigiku can feel Tecchou’s intense gaze on him when he overturns the man’s palm, freeing both his index and middle finger to his wrist, to feel Tecchou’s pulse. Tecchou’s pulse is steady, even like it always is.
Tecchou is always so certain of himself. Traitor or not, he knows what he’s doing whether he’ll tell Saigiku about it or not. It’s something he loves and loathes, but Saigiku’s hate has always won out in the end.
“Would you like to tell me about it?” Tecchou says quietly, evenly. His voice doesn’t grate on Saigiku’s ears like most do, soft like velvet but gruff like metal. There’s something to be said of wearing down a military man until he is all skin and bones, but there’s something, still, to be remembered in the softness of Tecchou’s skin when it isn’t covered in corded muscle and calluses, soft like his wrist under Saigiku’s touch.
“I can’t,” Saigiku says honestly, doesn’t know the last time he’s spoken honestly to the air around him but knows, knows, knows that Tecchou won’t tell a soul, and a traitor is a traitor to the end, but Tecchou -
“That’s okay,” Tecchou whispers, and Saigiku can’t help it -
He surges forward, the blankets falling around his waist, and his face ends up in the crook of Tecchou’s neck, smelling so strongly of that shitty cologne he uses that Saigiku despises, hands curled into Tecchou’s chest because if they aren’t, he might try to claw his eye out again and he should not be in control of his body -
Tecchou doesn’t seem to mind. All he does is wrap his arms around Saigiku, as though he deserves the comfort, as though he is more than the monster he’s shaped himself to be, and perhaps his nightmares should be about his experiments and the missions he’s done but it’s still just the same things he’s been afraid of since he was a child -
Saigiku has not cried since he was young. Saigiku has not been able to cry because it hurts, it hurts, and it fucking hurts, but the pain is null in the soft touch of Tecchou’s sweater and it hurts, it hurts, but his chest heaves with sobs, and the most Saigiku can do for his dignity is bury the sound.
He wants to say I’m sorry, he wants to be disgusted at the fact that he’s sobbing into the arms of a traitor, but there’s a dull ache behind his eyes and he - he can’t. Not right now.
It should be Mizoguchi here to comfort him. It should be Mizoguchi here, but Mizoguchi is dead because Saigiku has a quick trigger finger - well, it wasn’t even a gun, doesn’t that make it worse? That it was personal?
“You know,” Tecchou continues, still in that quiet, quiet comforting voice that Saigiku hates, “You could… leave with me.”
“You still haven’t answered my - my question.” Saigiku’s voice shakes and shakes, a product of weakness and something he should burn away -
In the darkness of his room, he doesn’t think Tecchou can see the way his shoulders shake. If he can, he doesn’t comment on it.
It’s something like a safety net, Saigiku thinks, but never once has he been caught by anything other than the ground.
“Why I’m here? In here, or here in general?” The honest truth is stripped from Tecchou in the same way a lie is stripped from Saigiku: in the dark with no one the wiser.
“Both.” There’s no reason to ask for one when the other will hurt, and he knows, he knows, but that doesn’t change the fact that it makes him a worse person than he already is.
Tecchou takes a deep breath, the vibrations a nice hum against Saigiku’s overly sensitive face. “Many reasons to both, I suppose. I’m here because I was told to be. You don’t want to get into that.”
No, Saigiku doesn’t; Saigiku doesn’t want to know of the dirty, ugly side of Tecchou, wants to allow him to be the same shape as the image Saigiku has of him in his mind. Saigiku doesn’t want to know any of the things that Tecchou has done because he might be just as bad as Saigiku and he needs some sense of salvation, needs some sense of humanity buried under the ugly scarring of his eye.
And there is part of Saigiku that wants his humanity to stop beating against his heart like a prisoner, wants to ignore the fact that he takes joy in his actions more often than he doesn’t when he knows a party is guilty, and it is that and that alone that leads him to his next sentence, something uttered only in the total trust of darkness.
“Take me with you,” Saigiku says quietly, his voice strained and his syllables cracking in ways they shouldn’t. He’s eighteen, an Executive in a criminal organization, but he’s crying like a child into Tecchou’s chest like there isn’t anything better for him to be doing.
It’s pathetic.
It’s an indulgence that Saigiku can’t afford when he knows who he’s speaking to, but he realizes he’s shaking. When he does, he burrows further into the escape Tecchou’s provided, and Tecchou simply holds him tighter, like he’s deserving of the comfort on such a night.
“I…” For the first time, Tecchou stumbles over his words, lost in the same way Saigiku is lost but his intentions feel less dirty. It’s like a glossy finish over his intentions and one that Saigiku has never been able to dip his fingers in. “I don’t know if you want that.”
“I don’t care if I want it or not.” Perhaps Saigiku is willing to share more when he’s half out of his mind, or perhaps he’s allowing that pesky thing he calls his heart to speak for a second. Both are bad options, and both leave him vulnerable, but Saigiku can’t find it in himself to care. “Take me with you,” he repeats, quieter, more like a plea, a prayer.
Tecchou is not someone to pray to.
But he is the only person Saigiku will pray to.
Quieter, even, than Saigiku’s words, with a sigh that shakes his chest, Tecchou murmurs. “Okay.”
And that’s that.
With okay, Saigiku shapes his future into the same path of tear stains on Tecchou’s shirt, and he doesn’t regret it until morning, when he wakes up with an ache in his eyes and his face pressed against Tecchou’s chest, asleep in the world’s most awkward angle.
It’s almost endearing; Tecchou must’ve fallen asleep like that because he didn’t want to wake Saigiku. An odd thing in and of itself, as Saigiku tends to sleep lightly and even the slightest noise will rouse him.
Tecchou, as incompetent as he is as an undercover agent, is apparently a high-ranking soldier. Such a high-ranking soldier, in fact, that he can bend the rules to allow Saigiku into this government building without Saigiku being arrested on the spot.
Due to that, he makes sure to save his particularly nasty smile to the guard that glares at him when Tecchou signs them both in with a keycard far beyond any technology that Seventh Sun has.
“You know,” Tecchou starts conversationally, which typically means he is about to say something incredibly insensitive to the current atmosphere. “If you see this place and then you don’t make the cut, we’ll have to kill you.”
“You couldn’t kill me if you tried,” Saigiku scoffs. It’s true that he isn’t worried, though he does feel his hands are too bloodied to be here - stained red in a way that this building and Tecchou are not allowed to be.
Ironically, Saigiku could fix that with bleach. That’s what the government is meant for, after all; sanitizing atrocities down to something palpable for the masses. It’s what they’ve done so far, what they did in the war, and what they will continue to do after it.
Saigiku can’t say he wants to work for the government.
But if evil is all that exists and the gold of innocence is the hardest color to hold, how is Saigiku meant to choose a lesser evil? If it is all that exists, and he uses it for his own agenda, does it matter how the ends are achieved? Do the ends justify the means?
Does it matter, in the end? Will anyone care who Saigiku Jouno is and what he’s done? Saigiku doesn’t think so, which is, perhaps, why the idea of bleaching the stains on his hands doesn’t bother him.
Ahead of him, walking with a confident stride that Tecchou had never managed to hide undercover, Saigiku can hear Tecchou shrug. “I probably could. You’re rather easy to catch when you’re off-guard.”
“You’re the only one who’s ever seen me like that.”
“Only two can keep a secret if one is dead,” Tecchou hums, and while the metaphor would be out of place for anyone else, Saigiku can understand it just fine. Two can keep a secret - Saigiku when he’s off-guard - if only one of them is dead.
Saigiku should want to kill him for that alone.
But there is something passive settled over the juncture of his heart and his ribs when he takes note of the way Tecchou makes his footsteps that much louder just so Saigiku can hear precisely where they’re going and at what pace.
Saigiku is used to straining his ears to hear the slightest thing, but that isn’t something Tecchou has ever made him do. It’s a nice reprieve.
“Careful, you almost sound like you’re quoting Pretty Little Liars.”
“I didn’t know you watched TV.”
“I don’t. Mizoguchi used to watch that damn show all the time,” Saigiku shrugs, though his hackles raise at his own mention of Mizoguchi. The man is dead, and while Saigiku has mourned more than he’s willing to admit, he doesn’t like the mention of him.
“You’ll have to prove yourself. It’s a wonder I can even get you this far,” Tecchou continues on from his point earlier, as though Saigiku isn’t more capable than half of the fucking population.
He can hear the swish of Tecchou’s cape; apparently, he doesn’t have a standard soldier’s uniform due to his unit. The Hunting Dogs, Saigiku recalls Tecchou calling it, though the name only rings a bell in the back of his head.
(The Hunting Dogs. An elite military-police unit deployed only when necessary. Capable of taking down armies without so much as a single loss. Rumored to be composed entirely of ability users. Saigiku isn’t an ability user - but Tecchou is. He has to be. There’s something off about his smell and Saigiku knows.)
“The fact that you believe in me enough to let me get this far is appalling,” Saigiku practically sneers.
Tecchou simply shrugs.
So, as it turns out, Saigiku has precisely what it takes to be a Hunting Dog.
They do not demand moral righteousness of him, something he almost despises: they provide him with the exact same thing he had before, except the pay is better and he can hide his cruelty beyond honeyed words and governmental righteousness that every soldier hides behind.
He does not like being a soldier.
He does not like that his so-called entrance exam was a glorified slaughter; a simulation set-up to see how many opponents he could take out before he was taken down, and the answer was that the training simulation ran out of targets before it piqued his interest. It’s easy to fight a hologram and easier still to slaughter when it is something Saigiku knows intimately.
They give him a uniform, but it’s scratchy and lower quality than Saigiku would have expected. They tell him he is free to do as he pleases.
There is power behind his words, and Saigiku knows that, should he choose to exercise it, he could kill an entire town and justify it with necessary casualties.
He and Tecchou do not discuss this.
Tecchou’s room is next to his; now that Seventh Sun has two deserters, they stay at the Hunting Dogs’ headquarters. Saigiku doesn’t miss the organization, though he does miss the way criminals don’t honey their intentions as soldiers do.
Tecchou doesn’t talk to him often, and Saigiku knows there are other Hunting Dogs to meet, but he chooses not to leave his room most of the time, listening to audiobooks and trying to get the tense fear out of his veins before someone senses it.
Saigiku does not belong here.
Therefore, it startles him enough to put him in a grouchy mood already when there’s a knock at his door, pulling out his one earbud with a grimace.
“Come in,” Saigiku says, but what oozes out of his throat is anything but welcoming.
That doesn’t stop the person who eases his door open; younger and scrawny, from what he can tell, light on their feet and nervous from the way they pitter-patter around like a damn dog. (Well, he supposes he’s the dog now, isn’t he?)
“Jouno-san?” says the new visitor, quiet and hesitant. Fifteen or sixteen, maybe. High-ranking from the jingle of pins across their uniform. A cape, like Saigiku’s. A Hunting Dog no doubt. “I haven’t met you yet, so I figured I would introduce myself.”
“Unannounced,” Saigiku adds, as it’s all he can think to add. He wasn’t doing anything particularly important, but if Saigiku wanted to have company, he would’ve left his room, no? It’s rude to come by unannounced with the intention of a conversation that Saigiku didn’t want to have.
“Uh - sorry about that.” He doesn’t sound sorry about that. “Tecchou-san brought you, right? My - my name is, uh, Michizou Tachihara,” he says, an awkward laugh between every other word, grating as it is. “I’m the newest recruit, next to you.”
“I see.” Metaphorically, that is — Saigiku snickers at his own pun.
Tachihara doesn’t seem to understand the joke, oblivious in the way that Saigiku can feel the confused blink. “I - I was just wondering when you were going to get your surgery. You know, because - then I think we’ll be partnered up? Since Tecchou-san has more experience…”
“I could kill you,” Saigiku says simply. “I think I’ll be partnered with Tecchou, idiot as he is. What surgery are you talking about?”
Tecchou had quietly discussed the possibility of surgery being able to bring back Saigiku’s vision due to advanced technology, but it was a notion that Saigiku had been vehemently against. Surgery didn’t help him then and it won’t now, ugly scars marring the right side of his face.
His vision doesn’t affect his skill when he’s honestly gotten this far without it; it’s useless now, and he’d have to go back and relearn everything he’s come to rely on. Someone who sees shades of light - like him, as he can typically tell where things are if he opens his eyes, as few people are genuinely, inherently blind - perceives differently than a seeing man at dawn, sees love and loss and tragedy differently.
Saigiku doesn’t wish to go back to the stage of a child learning how to process his emotions, and he’s learned to fight and experiment and get what he wants without opening an eyelid, a premise Ichika Jouno would have him beheaded for if he’d gone by his family name while he was still in Seventh Sun.
“The surgery,” Tachihara starts hesitantly, as though someone is going to pop up behind him and silence him; not an unbidden concern, given that they exist under the thumb of the government. “You - you know, the -”
“You have a stuttering problem,” Saigiku points out bluntly, though Tecchou would likely smack him on the back of the head for his blatant declaration.
Tecchou isn’t here to reprimand him, though, and Saigiku impatiently snaps when Tachihara continues stammering. Eventually, however, Tachihara gets his head out of the pit it fell into. “There’s a surgery we Hunting Dogs get - it’s meant to increase all sorts of senses and physical ability and stuff, they could probably -”
This time, it isn’t Tachihara’s stutter that cuts him off, but rather Saigiku’s own insistence, reaching out with violence dangling on his fingertips in a threat - but Tachihara understands, laughing awkwardly. He’s an odd kid, though he must have some redeeming qualities if he’s a Hunting Dog. There must be something underneath that anxiety.
(Then again, Saigiku thinks that it is human flaws that hide monsters; that stutter and hesitancy may be hiding the worst criminal he’s ever seen; something he won’t see unless that’s stripped away, something he doesn’t want to see.)
“No, I haven’t had it yet,” Saigiku says, brushing around the question in the same way one brushes past dinner invites and hang-outs to the mall, or whatever it is that irritated teenagers do when they don’t want to talk. He smiles, bitter and twisted as all his smiles tend to be. “They don’t trust me yet.”
Tachihara’s interest is piqued, and Saigiku tries his best to indulge - but he isn’t the type of person that can weave a good story. “Tachihara, do you know where I’m from?”
“I heard you’re from Yokohama?” The boy is lacking confidence, that much is clear; Saigiku can’t even see him and he’s imagining the hunched shoulders, the picture of a child who doesn’t know what he’s doing. The timidness isn’t new, but it does get old.
“I am,” Saigiku says, the lie smooth on his tongue in the same way whiskey is, and he doesn’t drink. “I’m a former criminal executive, but that only happened about a week ago. Why would they want to give a former criminal all the power they have to offer?”
Before Tachihara can answer, stewing on his thoughts and spitting them out in the same way as a paper shredder, another set of footsteps wanders into the room and Tecchou makes his presence known by clearing his throat. Like Saigiku can’t already hear the loud buffoon. “It isn’t power we’re after, Saigiku.”
“Jouno-san works,” Saigiku corrects, half-joking and half-smarmy because he wants to know if Tecchou will go with it.
If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it; if he’s startled that he’s being demoted to last names and honorifics, he doesn’t mention it. That’s the thing about Tecchou - he never does read into the little things, not like Saigiku does, not in the way he was forced to. It seems blissful.
( Saigiku is the executive of Seventh Sun; Saigiku Jouno is the heir to a family business he could never truly get; Jouno is all that is left in the aftermath and there’s a bitter irony in finally using his family name again. The useless black sheep of the family became a higher-ranking official than anyone in his family.
The corporations, like Masa Jouno’s, all think they run the world, but the business they function under is the thumb of the government. It’s a terrible power to hold and Saigiku can already feel his nails rotting from the corruption but he needs something to believe in and Tecchou provided it -)
“Jouno-san,” Tecchou continues, “It’s justice we’re after. I promise you’ll receive the same enhancements, but it’s important to test your skills as they are and your likelihood to survive the procedure.”
“I don’t like hospitals.” It’s more of a fact than a dealbreaker; the smells and the atmosphere remind him too much of going back to when he was thirteen, but Saigiku’s put stitches in his own body blind more times than he can count - it doesn’t phase him in the way it should.
“That’s unfortunate,” Tecchou says, ever-empathetic in the way he knows how. “However, it’s still required. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Saigiku says, his smile returning. “I don’t mind a few needles here and there. I did live in Yokohama, you know? I’ve done a lot of things.”
“I don’t get it.”
“D -” Tachihara starts, obviously frustrated with himself; for once, Saigiku chooses not to interrupt. “Drugs, Tecchou-san, he’s talking about drugs.”
The kid is right on the money, so Saigiku doesn’t bother to correct him and his grin only becomes more genuine when he hears Tecchou’s soft sigh of disappointment. Not real disappointment, but the kind given after bantering with friends.
Something soft after all, Saigiku supposes. He almost wants to put his palm on Tecchou’s throat, just to feel the vibrations of his words and the curve of his adam’s apple; he wants to know what Tecchou’s like when the military man is stripped away and all that is left is the shell of a soldier.
Then again, he supposes that’s what he himself is: a shell of a soldier. First, a soldier for familial tradition; then, a soldier for a crime syndicate and the webs they weave across the nation; now, a soldier for the Hunting Dogs and a military brat.
“I am talking about drugs,” Saigiku shrugs, given that the subject matter is no big deal and he rather likes listening to the sound of Tecchou’s voice. He should do it more often, but then again, perhaps Tecchou needs better things to say first.
“Please do not be afraid of the procedure,” Tecchou continues, something sympathetic and yet still confused at Saigiku’s mention of Yokohama and their imports. “It’s in a hospital, yes, and it is - well, it is monthly, but you get used to it after a while.”
“I see.” He certainly doesn’t, but he’s used the phrase before and he can use it again.
He thinks Tecchou frowns at that but doesn’t comment further.
And this, this is what the fact of the matter is: Saigiku is a foot soldier of his own accord, and he cannot complain when he is asked to do something that doesn’t align with his wants or his needs. He has no illusions about his mortality; he knows for a fact that he’ll die before he’s twenty-five.
He’ll probably die in the Hunting Dogs; he’ll probably end up killed for spilling his mouth because his loyalties are bought when he does not care about the actions behind them.
(Some things - some are different. He cares little for Yokohama’s imports and their shipments, but the - the act of a parent hitting a child - that is one that he thinks someone deserves to die over. That isn’t something he can justify when his heart is cut open and the insides are torn open; even then will they find hate, and hate, and hate.)
“I’ll think about a good time to get it done.” And Saigiku leaves it at that.
Tecchou is still no better here than he was at Seventh Sun; he wears his heart on his sleeve, but now he isn’t trying to hide it. He’s a military man, yes, but he’s still the same age as Saigiku.
He cares more for justice than he ever has a person; that much is apparent in even the way he walks. Saigiku can’t say he minds it, the way Tecchou is so honest. He’s confused by Saigiku’s behaviors and he’s even more confused by his actions, the confusion etched into every word and every movement.
It makes Saigiku want to break him down, to see what lies beneath scarred skin and three inches of morality, boxed up in a neat bow branded with a government tag.
“Spar me,” Saigiku says, not for the first time.
He assumes that the only reason they were close in their original matches - when he worked for Seventh Sun - because Tecchou was holding back, as there’s no possible way a blind man is going to win against a highly trained, medically-modified government super-soldier, but he finds the notion doesn’t offend him as it should’ve.
He still hasn’t gotten that modification surgery, so he has little chances of winning. Not something he minds, either. Tecchou could win every fight by a landslide and Saigiku would still walk away victorious: he is a brute man of strength, but not a man of mind.
It still doesn’t explain why Tecchou takes so much time to think of what Saigiku wants - he must be using up his precious thoughts on inane things.
(That is what Saigiku always thinks to himself at two in the morning when Tecchou prepares tea for them both, skirting around the simple question - “why are you up?” He’s afraid the answer is “ because you are.”)
Tecchou hums, his way of expressing his confusion to someone that can’t see it. “And why is that? This isn’t another test of strength, is it?”
No, it isn’t, but Saigiku can’t say that. It’s not a test of strength at all, but rather one of will, and perhaps part of Saigiku wants to hear Tecchou’s heartbeat and see if it speeds up like it had last time, to see why, why, why that is - Saigiku could never beat him in a fight, never stood a chance, why -
Saigiku simply shrugs, every sentence on the tip of his tongue like a death sentence laced with poison. Tecchou can detect lies, he’s sure, but he can’t discern the truth from them: a lie detector in name and useless in practice.
Saigiku wishes he thought that with malice.
“Here?” Tecchou asks, tilting his head, gesturing around to the room they’re in; it’s not much, just a hallway at headquarters.
Headquarters is an odd thing: due to their status in the government, the Hunting Dogs are allowed a building of their own. Saigiku is under no impression of privacy, as he can hear the high-pitched buzz of the cameras at every corner. Still, it’s a nice place.
Brutalist architecture, something many have an issue with, but Saigiku can’t say he’s too concerned with how bleak it looks. The hallways are all sky bridges, overlooking foliage that smells of spring and the rot of the last season, the gym being the biggest room in the entire facility with a section for sparring, weight-lifting, a track for running, and anything else they might possibly need for training.
Right now, all Saigiku can smell is Tecchou’s cologne. Something he’s toned down since he was undercover, but it’s still distinctly Tecchou; clean linen and citrus, orange to be precise. It invades Saigiku’s senses in the same way the foliage around them does, but that doesn’t capture his attention nearly as well.
They’re standing on one of the sky bridges, the railings around them preventing a fall. The facility is filled with stairs, something that Saigiku despised but is slowly becoming used to, though he’s gotten lost more times than he’s willing to admit.
“Not here,” Saigiku hums. “Training room, like civilized people. Don’t be stupid.”
“You’re the one who suggested it,” Tecchou says, though he doesn’t try to rebuke Saigiku’s attached insult. “Right now? I don’t have anything for right now.”
Perhaps it’s late for something like this, but there’s a burning curiosity in Saigiku’s veins that need, need, need him to see what Tecchou will do, if he’ll use his full strength, if he’ll hold Saigiku again. He needs to know - needs to know if the cologne is sweat off, if Tecchou finds joy in violence in the same way Saigiku does, needs to know if there’s more to him than the marionette strings he wears.
“Neither do I, or else I wouldn't have suggested it.” It’s second nature to have his walls up - Saigiku wonders if Tecchou knows that. Does Tecchou know that? What does he know? What does he want to know?
Does he want to know about Saigiku? Or is he - what is he, to Tecchou? An ally, a begrudging foe, a friend? Does Saigiku want anyone to consider him a friend?
“Lead the way, then,” Tecchou says, something soft to his voice again. Saigiku wants to cut his tongue out of his mouth and see if Tecchou retains his soft edges, if he’ll survive the cruelty the world has to offer.
(He is a military man, though. They both are, now. It requires a cold heart and a colder soul, non-existent to onlookers, but Tecchou is the exception - It’s just a fascination, Saigiku swears.)
“That’s rude,” Saigiku scoffs, but he intentionally pushes past Tecchou and starts them off; the facility is hard to navigate when unfamiliar with it, but Saigiku’s always been forced to memorize his surroundings quickly.
He prefers having Tecchou at his back, anyway. He’s a constant presence, and one that Saigiku knows will be there until the end. As rigid as his morals are, Saigiku doesn’t think Tecchou would allow a co-worker of his to die.
Not that he needs the protection, but it’s a nice thought, that someone would want to protect him. He’s never been protected like that before. Part of him wants to put himself in danger just to see what Tecchou would do; not that he couldn’t handle it himself, but…
“Jouno-san,” Tecchou says, following Saigiku’s request prior. He’s always been good about things like that. “I have a question.”
“What’s your question?”
The air is sharp against Saigiku’s face, the wind picking up and the smell of rain on the way; it’s dark and cloudy, certainly has been for hours, with a storm brewing on the horizon. An omen, always an omen. Saigiku doesn’t know whether storms are his friend or foe, though the lightning makes him jump.
It better not storm hard tonight. He cares little for the thunder, though the lightning was pretty when it was something he could see. (Storms used to mean Masa coming home early from work, but now, now, now -)
“Why do you insist on fighting when there’s something on your mind?” Tecchou asks, no sort of malice in his voice beyond what is always there, a harsh edge under those soft edges, something that Saigiku has tuned out because it does not apply to him.
“There’s nothing on my mind.”
Saigiku can practically feel Tecchou’s frown digging into his back, between the sharp lines of his shoulder blades. “There’s always something on your mind, Jouno-san.”
“That observant, are you?” Saigiku asks sarcastically, rather than trying to ignore the question in and of itself.
“Not particularly.” At least Tecchou is self-aware. “What’s on your mind? Will you tell me this time?”
Last time I told you what was on my mind, I ended up crying in your lap. I’m not keen to repeat the experience, Saigiku thinks and does not say. Tecchou has a way of getting under his skin, but never in the way Saigiku expects; rather than a blade piercing the skin, it’s like a lily being pressed under his skin, poisoning leaching slowly into his veins from pollen and a sharp edge of pain to something that is meant to be softened.
Tecchou’s frown is still prominent. “I’ll take that as a no?”
“Good.”
“Are you going to try and stab me again?”
“I’ve never tried to stab you,” Saigiku snaps, though it’s probably a lie.
“I… okay. That isn’t a thing.”
Saigiku doesn’t justify that with a response, instead walking swiftly to the training room.
When they get there, he doesn’t hesitate to shrug off his jacket, folding it neatly before setting it on the floor; there are lockers, but he doesn’t bother with them half the damn time. It’s always difficult to remember which one it is. After that, he takes out his earring - the thing, a gift from Mizoguchi - and sets it on top, all neatly next to his shoes. Getting kicked with steel-toed boots hurts like a bitch.
And Tecchou will win. He knows that, but that isn't the intent. The question is how far Tecchou will go, and the reward he seeks isn’t a victory.
Is it bad that he wants to push Tecchou to his limits? Is it bad that he wants to see how far he can get before Tecchou stops pulling his punches?
Tecchou follows suit, setting all of his things down and taking his shoes off before walking to the center of the room, the mats underfoot creaking slightly as he moves.
Saigiku follows, circling around Tecchou like a vulture; a living thing meant to feast on the dead in an act of survival isn’t so off, though Tecchou doesn’t like when Saigiku phrases it that way.
“You’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met,” Tecchou says conversationally, as though Saigiku is insane for wanting to do this. Though he doesn’t share what’s on his mind often, he often thinks of the outcomes of such things.
It’s no secret that you must embrace cruelty in order to come out of it alive, albeit with broken nails. It’d be hypocritical for him to say he did so simply to survive: he had to do no experiments to survive, didn’t have to construct and deconstruct the human body by hand to survive, but telling himself he did helps alleviate some of the guilt that comes with his past curiosity.
He wonders what Tecchou thinks of that. Tecchou certainly knows; he was briefed on Seventh Sun and Saigiku’s file beforehand.
Does Tecchou know what Saigiku’s done? Does he care? Did he forgive him already or is it still something that he must earn? Is there something to Saigiku that makes Tecchou want to seek a reason to forgive? Does Saigiku want to be relieved of the weight of his sins?
It’s thoughts like that which make him want to fight so much: there is little more to life when frustration is evident than mutilation. Perhaps Saigiku should seek a new medium, but this is the one he’s chosen. From his eye to animals and later, corpses in the morgue when Mizoguchi was morbidly interested enough to join him.
“Why are you calling me stubborn this time?” Saigiku asks, tilting up his nose defiantly; Tecchou’s taller than him and thus, he cannot look down on the man, but he can try his damnedest. “Are you going to hit me?”
“Would you like me to?” Tecchou asks earnestly; they’re simply circling each other, Tecchou’s steps in time with his own, intentional without a doubt. He is a military man in both body and soul, after all.
“Obviously not,” Saigiku scoffs, as that is the most logical thing to do - not that he knows it’s true. The thing about sparring is that it’s a fight without the threat of serious injuries: it’s meant to make them both better, to point out their flaws quickly and efficiently before someone else takes advantage of it on the field, but sometimes Saigiku wonders if other people fight just to fight.
Sometimes, prey that fights back is the best kind. Saigiku isn’t always going to be picking up roadkill off the side of the road.
“I think you’re lying,” Tecchou says simply, but the hitch in his breath and the way his hip stills clues Saigiku in: just in time for Saigiku to duck out of the way, Tecchou’s foot comes within an inch of his face.
“A roundhouse kick?” Saigiku scoffs, blocking the punch headed immediately toward his face out of the way. His arm aches from the force, but Tecchou’s going easy on him - “You’re obnoxious. This isn’t the slums.”
“I’m not fighting dirty.”
“You might as well be.” Saigiku’s words echo if only because they’re the last thing said for a while, exchanging blows in an equal capacity that makes it apparent how Tecchou really, truly is going easy on him -
“Will you finally tell me what’s on your mind?” Tecchou asks, panting, his voice tight at the edges like he’s about to drop dead. Saigiku feels the same, sweat soaking into his shirt from the dip in his collarbones and his arms aching, legs barely keeping him up.
Four hours. They’ve been at this for four hours, when a typical spar is meant to last five minutes at the most. Four hours, and Saigiku is barely standing, but so is Tecchou.
Four hours, and Saigiku doesn’t feel any better than when he started.
“I hate you, Tecchou Suehiro,” Saigiku declares loudly, though the malice is stripped from his voice and lying somewhere on the mats below them, precisely before his legs give out.
He’s always been on the weaker side, he knows; he’s able to hold his weight and it’s cleverness that gets him out of fights, not his strength. His legs collapse and Saigiku doesn’t fight it, the cold mats are below far more inviting than they seemed earlier.
Tecchou rolls his eyes with a huff, though it isn’t annoyance behind it, walking - no, staggering - toward Saigiku. “You’re quite ridiculous, you know. Do you want me to carry you to bed?”
Except, as Tecchou says it, he sits on the ground too, far more gracefully than Saigiku. He sits with his legs out in front of him like a child playing with blocks, though Saigiku notes the way his clothing sticks to his skin from sweat. It’s an obnoxious sound.
Tecchou couldn’t carry him back if he tried.
“You were going easy on me,” Saigiku accuses, sticking his nose up like a petulant child.
Tecchou is many things, and rough around the edges is the essence of the adjectives Saigiku would use, and he -
“Huh?” Saigiku asks, flinching back from - from the finger that touched his nose, Tecchou’s hands warm and clammy. “What was that for? Don’t touch me, you know I don’t like that.”
“Sorry, Jouno-san.” Tecchou doesn’t sound very sorry. “Are you tired? You seem tired. And your hair seems fun to play with.”
“It’s all sweaty now.” Saigiku doesn’t know what else to say. If he’s being honest, his head is swimming: he’s exhausted and Tecchou is being touchy, something that Saigiku doesn’t understand, how can he understand, it doesn’t make sense, he’s not soft, he doesn’t deserve -
“It still looks nice.” God, he can hear the smile on Tecchou’s face.
Unbidden, Saigiku reaches out to touch it.
He’s in much the same boat as Tecchou, his skin hot and clammy, but Tecchou voices no complaints as Saigiku trails his fingers across the man’s face, feeling every pore and every slope, the tilt of his nose and the way his cheeks pull when he smiles.
“I didn’t know sleepiness made you clingy,” Tecchou jokes when Saigiku’s fingers drift over his throat, feeling the vibrations and, and for a second - a second - Saigiku has the urge to wrap his fingers around Tecchou’s throat and squeeze -
He doesn’t do that, because doing so would rid the room of the sound of Tecchou’s voice, low and yet airy, keeping Saigiku aloft in a way that he often needs.
Is that it? He often needs Tecchou? Or does he often want to need Tecchou?
Does he care?
He’s in desperate need of a shower and typically, he’d be grouchy and snapping by now, but his legs are weak and Tecchou isn’t blaming him for it, and it’s justified to want to feel his own salvation, right?
Saigiku cannot remember a single time in his life when he’s been treated with kindness for kindness’ sake. He has been used and he has used in turn, but here, now, Tecchou demands nothing of him than to him into his own whims -
“Tecchou,” Saigiku murmurs, his nail ghosting over odd indentations in the man’s face - three sunflower seed-like shapes near his eye, almost like a brand. As a resolve of will, as a test of his own trust, Saigiku does what he’s killed others for requesting.
He opens his eyes.
Flutters them open, really, and the humid air hurts already; his white lashes certainly aren’t used to being separated, and it’s an odd feeling, having to blink. He is unseeing, and yet he can hear Tecchou’s sharp intake of breath.
“I still can’t see, you know,” Saigiku says because while it's obvious, the few people who have seen his eyes since they’ve become obsolete treated him like little more than a lying dog like he was faking.
(Lying dog - well, now he’s the one hunting them, so he can’t say he’s irritated at this turn of events.)
Tecchou, as he typically does, chooses to do the unexpected.
He laughs, lurches forward just enough to keep himself upright but far too into Saigiku’s personal space, reaches up -
And gently, ever-so-gently it makes Saigiku ache, he pushes Saigiku’s eyes closed. “You flinched,” he explains quietly. “So it was hurting you. Keep them closed.”
“But don’t you -”
“Beauty is not a moral thing,” Tecchou murmurs, still far too close, still in Saigiku’s personal space, and Tecchou’s heart is elevated, but that’s probably from their fight. “I don’t care for anything that hurts you. I do not care if it is pretty or astounding, but if that is what you want me to do, I will do so.”
“No, that’s not -”
“You are worth more than what you used to have.” Tecchou says it with such a fervor, like he knows - like he knows what goes through Saigiku’s head on the best of days. “You are worth more than what you’ve done.”
This time, Saigiku does not cry.
He does, however, lean forward himself, until both he and Tecchou topple over onto the training room floor. He doesn’t hold his arms out and he makes no move to initiate, but Tecchou seems to understand what Saigiku requests as he wraps his arms around him.
It’s a quiet, silent thing, Saigiku huddling into the warmth that Tecchou provides. His heart beats faster than it had, and - and Saigiku can’t simply blame that on the training, not when they’ve been sitting here doing nothing.
“Sleep,” Tecchou says, reaching up with one arm to run it gently through Saigiku’s, toying with the loose ends in a way that makes Saigiku want to lean into it more, pride be damned.
His pride has gotten him nowhere with Tecchou. In every other walk of life, he can take his pride and his sadistic tendencies and his praise will be guaranteed: with Tecchou, Tecchou requires vulnerability or nothing at all.
Saigiku makes a non-committal hum, and if it were anyone else, he would do no such thing.
But this is Tecchou, and Tecchou knows him well. Tecchou knows him well enough to tell that he’s on the verge of passing out, to know that the most affectionate Saigiku has ever been able to stand is his hair being played with when he’s exhausted, held tight in Tecchou’s arms.
It’s second nature to allow his mind to rest, to even out his breathing.
When Tachihara swings by the training room to see why Tecchou missed dinner - Jouno never does join them - he finds them both passed out, sitting in rather awkward positions on the training room well.
He calls Teruko over, because she’s the better of the two at taking pictures.
“They’ll be alright,” Teruko says with a smile, holding up a camera.
“They’ll be alright?” Tachihara echoes, confused if only because he didn’t know there was anything to heal from in the first place.
Teruko nods, but she doesn’t elaborate on why they’ll be alright. “Yeah, I think it’ll end up okay. Do you?”
Tachihara takes another look, at the way Jouno is curled up in Tecchou’s very bruised arms, why there’s a furrow to Tecchou’s brow like he’s having a nightmare that is soothed out whenever Jouno shifts slightly, and - yes, Tachihara thinks, they’ll be alright.
“Till death do us part, with those two,” Teruko scoffs. “Like an old married couple. Let’s leave them be - they need the sleep.”