Chapter Text
"Do you remember your onboarding interview?"
Shishido feels his head swim – his entire body hurts, the pain searing through his nerves so that they can't focus on anything else, no matter how much he tries to draw his mind away from it. He never fully recovered from the wound in his gut when he was attacked a few months ago, and now it seems to open up at the slightest bit of disturbance, reminding him of the weakness of his flesh.
Yoshimura sighs as he opens his shiny black plastic folder. There's a little label on the front with Shishido's name, and some kind of code. It feels insulting, being reduced to a series of numbers and letters, but on the other hand it must mean something, although he would be the last person to know.
"Huh. It's been over a year since you joined us." Yoshimura laughs, the levity of it once again insulting, because why is he acting like Shishido is his employee and he is reading a normal performance evaluation? Why is he acting like they're sitting in a clean, brightly-lit office and not a dimly lit underground chamber smelling of blood and piss?
"Time sure flies, huh?"
Shishido takes a deep breath, trying to contort his expression back to a neutral one. The best way to survive these kinds of situations is to act unfazed at the insults, the physical pain – if your tormentor wants to get a rise out of you, and you give them exactly that, then they have no reason to stop. He knows this better than anyone.
He watches quietly as Yoshimura flips through the report – in this darkness it's hard to make out what is written on the pages. "Where is the interview section again… ah, found it." Yoshimura promptly stops, tracing the words with his gloved finger. Shishido wonders if he can even read them.
"You may not expect it, but we take these things pretty seriously, you know," Yoshimura says. Each of his words feels like bugs crawling his skin; not painful, but it's annoying, gross.
"Well, here's a fun one: 'What is something that keeps you going?' and here it says,
'Anger. Hatred. I won't accept the dissolution, as long as I'm alive. One day I'll get those guys back for taking everything away from me. I don't care. They lied to me, and I won't forgive them as long as I'm alive. I'm gonna kill them if I ever see them, whether it's Kiryu or Tsuruno or Watase."
Yoshimura lingers on the page, as if trying to contemplate some deeper meaning behind those words. Shishido vaguely remembers saying something like that – it sounds like something he would have said a year ago, his whole body still battered and bruised from his fight with Kiryu, his brain still fuzzy, coming off the adrenaline and chloroform.
How many times has he dreamt of it? For some inexplicable reason it's Tsuruno who adorns his dreams the most. Always with the pitiful look in his eyes, he never once fights back or tries to plead mercy when Shishido overpowers him, slams him down to the ground.
"That's a good answer," Yoshimura nods approvingly, "You know, people say anger is a bad thing, something you should try to control, but so many people do things and succeed out of spite. If it drives you forward, then it's not so bad after all."
Yoshimura puts the folder down before he walks over to Shishido, and he immediately feels his heart race. He tries to wriggle out of the ropes that bind his wrists again, hissing through his teeth when the rough fibers dig into his broken skin, but damn it, it feels like it's been days and the rope hasn't loosened at all despite his efforts.
"So what changed, Shishido?" He grabs Shishido's chin, forcing him to look up. "A year ago you said you wanted to kill the bastard, but I found the two of you having a nice little chat in the alley."
"Go to hell."
That earned him a punch to the gut, and Shishido keels over, the pain shooting through his whole body, like someone smashed a glass bottle inside of him and the shards flew everywhere, becoming lodged in his muscles, cutting him from the inside.
"You know what? You wouldn't be in this mess if you had just killed him."
"Fuck you!" Shishido yells, now feeling a new pain in his chest that threatened to explode his ribcage. "Leave him alone!"
"Why did you go out to see him?"
"I told you I was just passing by. It was a coincidence."
"I doubt that. You asked for permission to leave the temple three times in the past six months. You must have staked the place out."
"It's just a ramen stall. How was I supposed to know, out of all the ramen stalls in the city, that he was going to be in that one?"
Yoshimura lets him go, but not without punching him one last time in the face.
This he can take. Shishido lets his head fall limp to his right side, staring at his pants, ripped open where they had whipped him, exposing the bloody wounds on his thighs; at the floor, stained with his blood and sweat and god knows what else. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, letting his mind wander back to that alley – at this point he's not even sure it happened at all, it feels more like a dream, a hallucination – Tsuruno's hands caressing his cheeks, his beautiful, glimmering eyes, hiding pain and regret.
How many times has he pictured him dead? Shishido wanted to look him in the eyes, wanted to see that exact moment when the light fades from his eyes, wanted to hear his final gasp, wanted to feel the life force leaving his body. He wanted to see him die slowly, painfully – wanted to do it with his bare hands, or in some other gruesome way where he could touch him, sink his teeth into him and leave an ugly, permanent mark, or at least feel the warm splatter of his blood upon his skin; wanted to hurt him one last time, just to feel the power surge through him once more.
"Does it still hurt?"
Shishido feels a wave rising inside him – a wave that keeps growing stronger and stronger, despite his attempts to contain it all these years, but now it has grown into a tsunami beyond his control – harshly crashing through his entire body, snapping the decaying rope that has held his psyche for all these years, and just like that everything comes tumbling apart – he feels a sharp pain tear through his chest, coming out as a cry.
He shouldn't have gone. He should have left Tsuruno as a memory, even if it was a bad one. Should have continued thinking of things he could add to Tsuruno's list of sins, should have continued fantasizing about all the horrible ways he would kill him. Instead he went to see him, and all he got was proof that that's not the kind of man Tsuruno is–
Just for once he wanted someone else to feel, to understand his pain. It happened once, and it won't happen again. Tsuruno will not walk through that door and save him this time. He abandoned him a long time ago – but no, he didn't – he didn't, and yet that knowledge brings him no comfort whatsoever, only sorrow.
"Please don't kill him," he sobs, "I'm sorry. I won't do it again."
Yoshimura stands still, staring at him like a man would look at his misbehaving dog.
"I can't hear you. What's that?"
"I won't do it again!" Shishido screams, "I hate him! Next time I see him I'm gonna kill him!" And it's true, every single word, because Shishido hates feeling like this, hates that he can't understand this feeling.
"That's what you said last time," Yoshimura points out, his tone frustrated yet cold. "But you didn't kill him. Now that he knows you're alive, he's definitely going to look for you. What are we supposed to do then, hm?"
"I'll kill him. I'll be the one to do it," Shishido says, feeling the knife slide deeper into his throat with every word, "I'll kill him with my own two hands. It's the only way I can make up for my mistakes."
Immediately he is reminded of Tsuruno's face again, the gentle touch of his hands, his glassy eyes holding back tears. That dumbfuck, he should be smart enough to know he shouldn't run with his bad leg, especially not to chase the man who betrayed him.
Not knowing what else to do, Shishido bows his head, letting himself sink in the storm.