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There’s blood on his boots.
It seems like a very small, stupid thing to be thinking about, what with there being a dead body not even a full two feet from where he’s standing, but it’s the only thing Satoru’s brain seems capable of focusing on at the moment. There’s blood on his boots and on the floor and on his pants and oh God-
Satoru vomits.
Bile mixes with the blood and chunks of flesh on the floorboards. The acrid smell joins the stench of blood and gunsmoke already lingering in the air. There are three bodies in the house, he remembers suddenly. There’s Ms. Amanai in the hallway and Ms. Kuroi by the door and the sorry son-of-a-bitch who Satoru just shot dead. He should… do something about that. He thinks.
The man looks too heavy to be moved and Satoru doesn’t think he deserves a funeral anyways. The man can lay there and rot in his blood and Satoru’s vomit for all he cares. Ms. Amanai and Ms. Kuroi deserve funerals. Their bodies deserve to return to the Earth instead of laying there, leaking all over the floors.
They aren’t too heavy to be moved. Of course they aren’t. Ms. Amanai’s a little girl and Ms. Kuroi’s a pretty thin woman. Satoru carries them outside and sets them on the porch. He sits with them for a moment, wondering where the hell he’s going to find a shovel to bury them when he wonders if it would be more respectful to cover them with something before throwing them in a hole.
Probably. Ms. Kuroi is particular. She wouldn’t want to get dirt on her dress. She definitely wouldn’t want Ms. Amanai to get dirt in her hair.
Satoru doesn’t look at the man in the parlor as he walks upstairs to pull the sheets off the bed. Maybe Ms. Kuroi would prefer clean linens for this, but Satoru doesn’t know where she keeps them and it’s not like he can ask her now. He walks back downstairs, fabric bundled in his arms, and back out onto the porch.
They’re still there, lying next to each other. Satoru unrolls the sheets and wraps both of them up. He can’t tell if it’s better or worse that he can’t see their faces anymore. What’s left of Ms. Amanai’s, anyways.
He takes a deep breath, holds it in his chest, and lets it ease out from between his teeth. He should find a shovel and get digging. Sunrise is soon and they’ll start-
He swallows. The sooner they’re in the ground, the better.
Satoru is about to circle the house in search of a tool shed when something catches his eye. There’s a dim glow coming from just beyond the treeline at the edge of the property. It looks like firelight, or maybe a lamp. Either way, it’s the kind of light that comes from people.
Satoru draws his gun and cocks it as quietly as he can manage. He takes slow, measured steps towards the light, acutely aware of the shift of dirt beneath his boots. The light becomes stronger as he approaches, pretty clearly the steady light of a lamp now that he’s this close. It’s coming from a covered wagon. There’s the outline of what looks like a sleeping horse some yards away.
He steels himself for a fight as he approaches the wagon’s opening. Ms. Amanai lives in the middle of nowhere. There’s only one reason anyone else would be this far out.
“Move an inch and I’ll put a bullet in ya,” Satoru spits, turning the corner with his gun drawn and coming face to face with… a kid.
Satoru isn’t sure who exactly he was expecting, but a little boy kneeling by the back end of the wagon, clutching a shotgun, wasn’t it. A little boy with dark, messy hair and deep blue eyes that look almost black in the lamplight.
Shit.
“I’ll shoot ya right back,” the boy snaps and, to his credit, he holds Satoru’s gaze pretty steadily. But Satoru can see the way the boy’s hands are shaking and the way the shotgun is looking more like it’ll blow a hole through the canvas covering the wagon rather than any part of Satoru.
“Put it down, kid,” Satoru sighs. “That thing ain’t even pointin’ at me.”
The boy glances down at his weapon and, once again to his credit, is quick to adjust his aim and pull the trigger. The gun clicks uselessly as the boy tries to fire again and again.
“Ain’t loaded either,” Satoru points out helpfully. “Drop it now, or I really am gonna shoot you.”
The boy lets the shotgun fall out of his hands and onto the wagon floor with a dull thud. He holds his hands up in front of him. They haven’t stopped shaking. Even so, the kid keeps staring down Satoru like he’s a fellow gunman rather than a defenseless child.
“Who’re you?” The boy asks. Demands, really.
“Pretty sure that’s my line,” Satoru scoffs. “The name’s Gojo. Ms. Amanai’s security.”
“Security,” the boy echoes. “Shouldn’t you be watchin’ the house?”
Right. The house. Satoru had fallen into his usual role of security guard so easily that he had almost forgotten about the house. There are still two bodies to bury.
There were three bodies in the house.
“Big man. Scar on the lip,” Satoru chokes out, throat suddenly dry. “You his boy?”
Satoru can see the exact moment the boy reaches the same conclusion as he nods his head. Great. Just great. The man brought his fucking kid along with him to assassinate another kid. What the hell is wrong with him?
“Can I see him?” The boy asks quietly, snapping Satoru out of his spiral.
Satoru thinks about the blood and the chunks of flesh and the puddle of vomit on the parlor floor.
“No,” he says plainly, because it’s easier than explaining that if the boy sees his father now he’ll be seeing him every time he closes his eyes for the rest of his life. Satoru will already be doing that enough for the both of them.
The boy doesn’t ask again.
“Where’s your mother?” Satoru finally manages to ask. They’re a ways out of the nearest town, but if that’s where the kid’s mother is then Satoru is pretty confident he can just wake the horse and send the kid back to her.
“Dead,” the boy says simply, dashing Satoru’s hopes.
“Any other family?” Satoru asks. He has a feeling he already knows the answer, but he has to try.
“Dunno,” the boy replies. “Dead too, probably.”
Satoru grimaces. He’s made an orphan out of this kid, then. That probably warrants taking some kind of responsibility, but Satoru is at a loss for what that may look like. Should he bring the kid into town and drop him at the Sheriff’s door? Give him some money and tell him to make good choices? Or would it be more merciful to just put the kid down now, rather than let him try to make his own way and possibly end up starving to death on a street corner?
“Are you going to kill me?” The boy asks, once again interrupting Satoru’s train of thought. His hands aren’t shaking this time, but his voice sure is.
“You want me to?” Satoru asks in response. He’d meant it to be a joke, but his voice doesn’t quite lift the way he wanted it to. Maybe because a part of him isn’t joking. If the kid would rather join his parents now, well. Satoru isn’t cruel. He’d be quick about it.
“No,” the boy answers instead and Satoru is grateful. He’s never killed anyone before. He thinks killing a man and then his child on the same day might be more than he can take.
That still leaves the problem of what Satoru should do about the kid, but sunrise is fast approaching and the bodies have to be dealt with first.
“You got a shovel in here?” Satoru asks, his tone once again missing the mark.
“Why?” The boy asks apprehensively.
“I got some holes I gotta dig,” Satoru explains cryptically. “Don’t worry, none of ‘em are for you.”
The boy doesn’t seem comforted by his assurance, but Satoru can’t find it in himself to care much at the moment. He just wants to lay his friends to rest, find somewhere to dump the kid, and then drink himself into oblivion.
“There’s one on the outside of the wagon, on the left side,” the boy says, nodding in the direction of the shovel.
Satoru gestures silently with his gun for the kid to come out and show him. The boy awkwardly shuffles to his feet and cautiously climbs out of the wagon. He walks backward toward the aforementioned side of the wagon, never once taking his eyes off of Satoru’s gun. He nods towards a wrapped bundle of long objects. “ ’s in there.”
“Go ‘head and take it out,” Satoru instructs. The boy hesitantly does as he’s told. The bundle is too heavy for him, so he slides it out enough to let it fall on the ground. After unwrapping it, he grabs the promised shovel from a stack of other tools. He lifts it up and holds it out for Satoru.
Satoru doesn’t take it, nodding back in the direction of the house instead. “Bring that with you, c’mon.”
They walk back to the house in silence. The boy half-carrying, half-dragging the shovel with him. Satoru wordlessly holsters his gun and takes the shovel from the boy once they’re a good distance from the wagon. He tries not to think about how the kid flinched when he did.
They come to a stop at the foot of the porch stairs.
The bodies are right where he left them. Linen-wrapped bundles, like the one that held the shovel, lay side by side on the painted wood. Thankfully, the kid doesn’t ask about them. He doesn’t ask about his father again either.
“I’m gonna bury ‘em right here,” Satoru announces. He nods towards the wooden bench by the door. “Wait there. Don’t go in the house.”
Once again, the boy does as he’s told without argument.
Satoru lets his mind go blank as he digs. He doesn’t allow himself to think about any of the events of the night. Not the two shots he wasn’t fast enough to stop. Not the five shots he’d unloaded onto the man who’d fired them. Not the life he’d taken or the life he’d ruined in one fell swoop. He just focuses on the action of scooping dirt and dumping it to the right.
Eventually, there’s a roughly person-sized hole in the ground. It’s probably too shallow, but it’s the best Satoru can offer right now. He still has another one to go.
Once again, he lets his thoughts fade away as he begins the next hole. Grave. He’s digging graves. But thinking about that means thinking about bullets and blood and the boy watching him silently from the porch. It’s better to just think of them as holes for now.
They stop being holes when he’s finished with them and it’s time to put Ms. Amanai and Ms. Kuroi to rest. He starts with the older, lifting her shrouded body and carrying her to the grave on the right. He settles her into the earth, careful to keep her entirely covered. He brings Ms. Amanai next. She’s placed just as delicately into her grave.
He should probably say something. Maybe a prayer or a eulogy or something. There’s a rosary on Amanai’s night table. She would probably want him to pray.
“Dear God,” Satoru begins hesitantly. “Please look after these two in Heaven. They’re- they were good people. I’m sure they’d fit right in. Please… take better care of them than I did.”
He swallows thickly. His hands feel numb as he digs the shovel into the pile of loose dirt beside Ms. Amanai’s grave.
“Amen,” he adds belatedly. That’s how prayers are supposed to end, isn’t it?
He tries not to dwell on it as he shovels the dirt back into the ground. He tries not to contemplate things like Heaven or Hell or whether or not Ms. Amanai and Ms. Kuroi saw that man again on their way into the kingdom of God. He tries not to think about whether any of that fairy tale bullshit even exists.
“It ain’t right,” the boy says suddenly, voice strained. “Just leaving him in there.”
“I ain’t burying him,” Satoru mutters, continuing to pile dirt onto Ms. Amanai. “And you sure as hell ain’t either.”
“I wanna burn him,” the boy continues. “We’ve got oil and matches in the wagon. And the house is far enough from the trees that the fire won’t spread.”
Satoru keeps silently shoveling the dirt, ignoring the stinging in his eyes.
“Go grab ‘em, then,” Satoru finally answers. He doesn’t look at the boy as he leaves the porch and walks back into the woods. He stays focused on filling the graves in front of him even as he hears the boy coming back. Part of him hopes the boy figured out how to load that shotgun and decided to bring it back to avenge his father.
“I’m going inside,” the boy says to announce his return. He’s holding a metal can and a box of matches. No shotgun.
“No, you’re not,” Satoru says flatly. He steps back from Ms. Kuroi’s grave, finally filled. “I’ll bring him outside. Wait here.”
With that, he sticks the shovel into the ground and walks back up the porch steps. Taking a second to brace himself, he opens the door and steps inside. He once again ascends the stairs without looking into the parlor and grabs a cloth to cover the body. He still doesn’t know where the linens are kept, so he grabs two towels from Ms. Amanai’s bathroom.
He returns downstairs and briskly enters the parlor, not giving himself time to consider everything on the floor. He tosses the towels over the man's body and begins to drag it outside by the legs. He’s making an even bigger mess of Ms. Kuroi’s floors.
The boy is waiting by the door when Satoru brings the man outside. It’s decidedly not where Satoru told him to wait, but he doesn’t comment on it. He drops the man’s legs once he’s over the threshold.
The boy’s face is unreadable as he stares at his father’s covered body. He wordlessly unscrews the cap on the metal can and begins pouring clear liquid over the towels. When the can is empty, he sets it aside and opens the match box. His hands are shaking again and he struggles to light one. Satoru is about to offer his assistance when the boy finally manages to get the right speed to bring a small flame to life. The boy drops the match onto the towels and the small flame quickly spreads across the cloth.
Satoru quietly guides the boy off the porch and a safe distance away. They come to a stop some yards away from the house, all three bodies in their sightline.
“Was he religious?” Satoru asks tentatively. He’s not sure if he can bring himself to pray for that man the way he could for Ms. Amanai and Ms. Kuroi, but maybe he could muster up a few words of comfort for the boy.
“No,” the boy replies. “He didn’t believe in God. Or anything, really.”
Satoru has no response for that so he says nothing. The two of them stand in silence, watching the flames slowly devour the man’s body. If either of them are crying, the other doesn’t dare to bring it up. They stand there until the flames slowly die out and the sun is making its daily ascent, uncaring of the events that transpired the night before.
“What happens now?” the boy asks into the silence. His bloodshot eyes don’t leave the house.
“I don’t know,” Satoru admits, his own reddened eyes transfixed on the twin mounds of earth. “Do you have anywhere to go?”
“No,” the boy answers.
Quiet settles over them again.
“Do you want a job?” Satoru doesn’t know what possesses him to ask. The boy finally looks away from the house.
“What?” He asks incredulously, and it’s the most alive he’s sounded in hours.
“Do you want a job?” Satoru repeats, suddenly more sure of himself. “I could use an extra set of hands.”
“In security?” The boy asks suspiciously. “Don’t you want someone, I dunno, bigger?”
“Quite the opposite, actually,” Satoru replies, turning to face the boy completely. “The security thing was more of a personal favor. I’m really more in the banking business.”
“Banking-” the boy begins, confused, before realization dawns on his face. “You’re a bank robber.”
“You’re quick,” Satoru praises casually. “I could use someone about your size. I bet you fit into a lot of little spaces big folks like me can’t reach.”
“Why?” The boy demands. “You killed my father. He killed your bosses. That doesn’t mean nothing.”
“Exactly, it don’t mean nothing,” Satoru says lightly.
“You know what I meant,” the boy argues, unamused.
“I do,” Satoru concedes. “But my offer still stands. I could use the extra help.”
“Why,” the boy repeats.
“So I feel less bad about shooting your old man,” Satoru says, exasperated. “Does that answer your question?”
The boy seems to mull it over. After a moment he nods sharply, seemingly to himself, before nodding again, to Satoru this time.
“What’s your name, kid?” Satoru asks, holding out his hand for a shake.
“Megumi,” the boy answers. He accepts Satoru’s handshake, grip surprisingly firm for such a young kid.
“Well, Megumi, I don’t know about you,” Satoru starts, turning completely away from the house and walking back towards the wagon. “But I’ve had enough of this place.”
Satoru hears Megumi following behind him, apparently dragging the shovel along by the sound of it.
Megumi’s horse is awake by the time they make it back to the wagon. It’s a gorgeous thing, deep black and bright white. Megumi walks past him to reach it, murmuring quietly to it and guiding it back to the wagon.
Satoru lets the boy handle the horse, not wanting to spook it with his presence. Once the horse is once again secured to the wagon, Satoru joins Megumi at the front end. He lets the boy take the reins. Megumi seems much more confident with them than he was with the gun.
“D’ya mind if I take a nap while we’re headed back into town?” Satoru asks, planning to do so anyway regardless of Megumi’s answer. “I’m beat.”
“Aren’t you worried I’ll shoot you?” Megumi asks, looking puzzled.
“With that unloaded gun back there?” Satoru laughs, reclining comfortably.
“I meant in general,” Megumi clarifies, shaking his head. “Sometime in the future. You did kill my father, after all.”
“My dear Megumi, I’ll have you know I’ve got the quickest hand from here to the Pacific,” Satoru brags, gesturing in the vague direction of the ocean in question. “If you ever get good enough to get the jump on me, that’s revenge well-earned.”
“You still want me to work for you? Even if I could kill you one day?” Megumi asks, frowning.
“Nah, I’m not worried about it,” Satoru says casually, closing his eyes. “It’ll be a long time before you’re old enough for that.”
Megumi doesn’t say anything after, so Satoru takes it as a sign to really get some sleep. The steady motion of the wagon lulls him into unconsciousness.
He dreams of fire and blood; dark hair framing deep blue eyes.
He couldn’t protect Ms. Amanai. He couldn’t protect Ms. Kuroi. He’ll be damned if he fails to protect Megumi too. If the kid grows up one day and decides to kill him, well. Satoru’s not stupid. He knows he’d deserve it.