Chapter Text
The walk back to Zanka’s old home was quiet and tense like really, really tense. Zanka knew he was cooked. He had left his family to join the Cleaners, the number one organization he should have never had anything to do with. His father absolutely despised them. He loathed the Cleaners, and Zanka hadn't just committed simple treachery, he had active-duty defected to the exact group his father hated most in the world. He knew that, no matter what, it was endgame for him now. The patriarch would never stand for this kind of humiliation.
Zanka knew it would be way above a simple, standard beating. He was going to get a thorough, systematic disciplinary correction. 'But that's okay,' Zanka thought, fiercely swallowing the rising bile of anxiety in his throat. 'I won't let them break me. I have to go back to Team Akuta. I have to go back for my Lovely Assistaff.' No matter what his father would do to him, Zanka promised himself he wouldn't let his spirit get pushed down into the dirt. He wouldn’t! He kept pumping himself up, repeating the words in his head like a mantra, desperately trying to build a wall against his own terror. But even with the mental pep-talk, the deep-seated, primal fear wouldn't leave his body.
His father wasn't a man to do anything half-assed. On top of that, the elite sectors of the Hell Guards were literally trained in the arts of torture and targeted psychological breaking. The high-rankings of the Nijiku clan, in particular, were the absolute masters of that specific topic and his father was the patriarch. He was the one who controlled everything alongside his mother. He was the man who knew cruelties Zanka had never even heard of or imagined.
And Zanka was a traitor. He wouldn't get a single shred of mercy. In fact, the absolute worst part was that Zanka had been trained in these specific topics too. He had been forced to master them, just like his siblings, just like anyone from the Hell Guards only he had been drilled even more thoroughly. He was a Nijiku. Psychological and physical torture was the absolute baseline of their training. He needed to know exactly how to extract information and exactly how to make someone suffer. He had often watched it happen, he had been forced to.
Kyouka had personally made sure he was prepared and knew every dark, gruesome detail. But Zanka had always hated that side of himself. He had tried to completely delete it. He had tried to ignore the fact that, if he truly had to, he knew exactly how to make a human being talk in the most brutal, agonizing ways possible. He had completely erased that person the moment he joined the Cleaners. He had buried that monster as deep as he could, choosing to act entirely clueless around Team Akuta.
Zanka knew bits of Riyo's past as a hitman. He knew fragments of the shadows she carried. Whenever she had her dark, down moments, she would start to talk, and Enjin had always helped her pull through alongside Zanka, of course. But every single time, without fail, Zanka had acted entirely clueless, if not outright grossed out and scared by the topic of killing and targets.
In the beginning, when Riyo still carried that ruthless assassin mindset, his reaction had often prompted her to tease him with "scary" facts on how to efficiently target someone. It was only under Enjin's gentle guidance that she eventually stopped doing that, growing up and realizing it was bad to make those kinds of jokes. She thought Zanka was truly deeply uncomfortable with this kind of violence, so she stopped to spare his feelings. But in fact, he never was. He just always acted like it. When she gave him gross facts about anatomy and death, he would force himself to grimace, even though he had witnessed far worse or been forced to participate in it himself.
Riyo always had the luxury of only executing someone she was a hitman, swift and direct. And Enjin always saw death as the biggest sin, an absolute no-go. But Zanka had learned very early on in the Nijiku clan that death is often a mercy. He knew that there are far, far worse things in this world than death itself.
So he had always kept that terrifying realization to himself, too afraid of what Riyo or Enjin might think if they ever saw the rot inside his history. He had been so utterly disgusted by his own upbringing that he kept his lethal knowledge under lock and key. Riyo, Enjin, and everyone else at the headquarters genuinely thought he was just some pure-hearted, sheltered kid who had been lucky enough to escape getting corrupted by his family. They never knew what he was truly capable of. They never knew that in all his fights and spars with Team Akuta, Zanka had actively held himself back.
He was terrified that if he didn't tightly control his movements, his muscle memory would take over and he might do something unforgivable, that wasn’t killing. He knew the exact pressure points to stop a heart for a few seconds making the person loose conciouness. He knew how to break a man's breathing rhythm with a single touch and much more he didn’t want to think about. He threw it all away. He became a Giver. And even though he loved Lovely Assistaff with every fiber of his being, and even though he tried his absolute best to get stronger with her, he knew deep down that fighting with a staff actually made him weaker than he truly was.
He just couldn't let them know what things had been taught to him. More than anything, he loved Lovely Assistaff she gave him the beautiful, fragile feeling that he wasn't like his family. She proved he had a choice. So, for all those months with the Cleaners, he had completely acted innocent, convincing Riyo, Enjin, and even Rudo who had only come along a month ago that he was pure, and could never keep up with their brutal, street-smart minds, and that killing a person was out of his actions, Of curse he never acted like a whimp if he had to fight against other opponents that weren’t trashbeats he did, just never how he had been trained to making everyone belief he was a rather soft hearted person deep down.
That was exactly what he wanted. It was weird, but he had been so deeply terrified of losing his found family if they ever discovered the blood on his lineage, he wasn’t sure how much Enjin knew about what he was capable of but he was pretty sure Enjin didn’t belief he could be as cruel as his sister or brother or anyone of his family because of his perfect act.
The core problem now was that because of his training, Zanka knew exactly what kind of things were done to traitors. He knew the protocols by heart. He knew exactly what they were put through, and he knew he was truly, fundamentally cooked. Especially since the standard military training he had received was probably only half of what his father would personally do to him now. He had committed the ultimate sin. He had become a Giver, and he had joined the Cleaners. Whatever was going to happen to him would truly destroy him...
'Shit, I am so stupid,' his vision blurring as his boots dragged against the concrete. It was his fault to begin with. He hadn't thought things through. He shouldn't have left the academy in the first place if this was how it was going to end. Whatever nightmare was coming, it was deserved. He deserved it,
Suddenly, a hand landed flat on his shoulder. Zanka had been so deeply sunken in his own thoughts, staring down at his feet as he marched, that his head violently whipped up in a panicked reflex. His dark blue eyes widened as they locked onto the person walking right beside him.
Kyouka?!Her hand was actually on his shoulder. What the actual fuck did she want? Zanka’s jaw clenched, a surge of defensive anger mixing with his terror. She had absolutely no right coming over to him and acting all familiar. She was surely enjoying every single microsecond of this. This stupid, arrogant witch. She was probably the reason he was even in this horrific situation right now! He knew how she operated. He hated her with his entire guts. For years during his childhood, he had looked up to her, pushing his body to the point of collapse just to earn her approval, just to hear a single word of praise and he was never, ever enough for her.
She had done terrible, cold things to him in the name of "discipline." Just thinking about her past punishments made Zanka let out an involuntary, subtle shudder. She was fucking scary. He glanced up at her face, fully expecting to see her glaring down at him with that trademark, icy perfection, silently promising that she would make his life a living hell the second their father was done with him.
Instead, Zanka completely froze. Kyouka wasn't looking at him with contempt. Her sharp, military features were softened, her eyes fixed on his pale face with a look of pure, unadulterated worry. It looked like she was genuinely terrified of what was about to happen to him. ‘The fuck?’ That made absolutely no sense!Why would she be worried about his fate? She was the Commander of the Red Horns! She was the perfect soldier! Zanka’s mind scrambled, his paranoia flaring up. She was playing mind games with him. She had to be. She was just as bad as their father, a manipulative monster who wanted to see him break.
…Was she... was she actually trying to offer him a silent shred of comfort before they reached the estate doors? Why would she ever care…?
"Kyouka!" the patriarch suddenly said, his deep voice slicing through the cold air without him even glancing back.
Kyouka’s shoulders flinched in a rare, involuntary show of tension. She instantly dropped her hand from Zanka’s shoulder, shifting her posture back into a stiff, submissive stride closer to her father.
"I have always told you that you are entirely too soft on your brothers," the patriarch grumbled, his heavy boots clicking rhythmically against the stone pavement. "Goka, at the very least, still turned out decent under my parameters. But look at what your methods did to Zanka. You completely spoiled him."
"I apologize, Father. I did try-"
"Don't come to me with theese excuses," the patriarch interrupted, his tone chillingly level. "I told you years ago that I would take personal charge of his development. But you insisted that you could raise him to fulfill the family's standards. I trusted your judgment. I clearly overestimated you. Look at how he turned out, his mind filled with this independent nonsense, undisciplined, and a brat. He clearly frogott who he belongs to and what the blood in his body means."
Kyouka gritted her teeth so hard a sharp muscle twitched in her jaw. Her eyes flashed with a brief, hidden wave of frustration, but she remained entirely silent. No one argued with the head of the house. Not if they wanted to keep breathing.
Zanka walked behind them, his dark blue eyes wide with absolute, stunning shock. He stared at Kyouka’s rigid back, his brain entirely short-circuiting. She insisted? Spoiled? Too soft on him? Wait... did that mean everything he remembered about his childhood was wrong? Did that mean Kyouka had been... No. It was impossible! It made absolutely no sense! She wouldn't. She hated him! She was the one who pushed him to the brink of collapse with her high standartds!
Zanka desperately glanced over at Goka, but his older brother was staring straight ahead with a tense and unreadable look on his face. Zanka looked back at Kyouka, and a horrible, suffocating feeling settled deep within his chest. Had Kyouka... been protecting him from their father this entire time?
The realization hit him like a physical blow to the gut, making him feel incredibly, profoundly stupid. It made sense. If Kyouka had truly wanted to erase his existence or punish him like a true criminal, she could have pulled him out of the Cleaners a long time ago. She could have had him locked away in a military cell the second he defected. But she hadn't. She had left him alone .
‘Why? Why did she do that? Why did she care?!’ Zanka stared down at his feet, his teeth grinding as his mind spun out of control. It had to be a joke. A sick, psychological game to break his walls down. There was no way in hell that the terrifying, cold Commander actually cared about him as a brother. There was just no way.
"I will take personal charge of his punishment and his disciplinary correction," the patriarch’s voice boomed again, breaking Zanka out of his spiral. "Once I am finished erasing his defiance, he will be officially assigned as you under the Red Horns as a strategist. Perhaps his brain can actually be useful to the lineage. And Kyouka! Until that day comes, you will keep your fingers completely out of everything I do. Am I clear?"
Kyouka stayed quiet for a long, agonizing three seconds, the wind howling through her coat. "...Yes, Father," she finally said.
"Good."
Zanka swallowed the dry lump in his throat. He didn't understand any of this. It didn't fit into the neat, black-and-white narrative of trauma he had built over the past years. tsk, fuck it. He had far more critical things to worry about right now than her confusing motives.
His father was about to break him, and he needed every single ounce of mental strength just to survive the night, and the future days!
The rest of the march passed in a suffocating, clinical silence. Within minutes, the stone walls gave way to the massive, main headquarters of the Hell Guards.
"Kyouka. Goka. You are dismissed. Go back to the residential estate," the patriarch commanded, giving a cold, dismissive hand gesture without stopping his stride.
Goka paused, casting a brief, heavy glance back at Zanka. His sharp features were tight with a rare, underlying tension.
‘Yeah, great. Even Goka lookes worried.’ Zanka already knew he was completely doomed, there was absolutely no need for his brother to rub it in with a look like that.
"Yes, Father," Kyouka’s voice answered, steady and formal as always. But as she turned around to leave the corridor, her dark blue eyes locked onto Zanka's pale face. They were filled with the exact same raw, terrified worry from before. As she walked past him into the shadows, her hand suddenly reached out, giving Zanka’s shoulder one last, firm, and agonizingly tight squeeze. It was a silent, desperate goodbye. Then, her boots clicked away into the opposite hallway, leaving Zanka completely alone with the patriarch.
The patriarch didn't wait around. He turned on his heel and started walking deeper into the interior of the building, his heavy coat billowing behind him. Zanka followed behind like a ghost, his empty hands trembling beneath his grey kimono.
The moment they crossed into the main halls, the attention Zanka drew from the surrounding Hell Guards was instantaneous. Of course it was. He was the infamous third-born son of the elite Nijiku family. Word of his ultimate sin becoming a Giver, choosing a wooden stick and deciding to play with it, and active-duty defecting to the Cleaners had spread through the ranks months ago. Seeing him marched back in, completely stripped of his weapon, made every guard in the corridor lock their eyes on him.
"Is that the-" a guard whispered, leaning toward his partner as Zanka walked past.Before the man could finish, an older officer sharply shoved his elbow into the guard's ribs. "Pst! Shut up and keep your eyes on your post if you want to keep your rank!"
Of course. Zanka understood their reactions perfectly. He also understood why they didn't dare speak a single syllable louder. After all, despite his treachery, Zanka was still a son of the Nijiku clan and the terrifying patriarch was walking right in front of him. The old man wouldn't twitch a single muscle to execute a common guard on the spot if they disrupted his discipline.
The patriarch didn't take the stairs leading to the tactical offices or the commander quarters. Instead, he led Zanka deeper and deeper into the belly of the reinforced building, down a long, winding stone staircase where the warm auxiliary lights faded away, completely replaced by the sterile, freezing shadows of the interrogation levels.
---
For the next few weeks, Enjin, Riyo, and Rudo spent every spare moment gathering as much information about Zanka from the other Cleaners as humanly possible. The sudden switch-up in their daily routine was bizarre, especially considering how the first week after his retrieval had been a total living hell. During those initial seven days, the atmosphere in the facility had been completely paralyzed, no one was able to speak, and Team Akuta had been buried in a deep-rooted, unshakeable depression. But after that group talk in the common area, and after hearing everything Zanka used to quietly do around the facility, things changed and especially after Gris, Bro, and Eishia had pulled them aside privately to share even more, effectively snapping them out of their gloom.
Fueled by a new, burning resolve, Team Akuta went on a full-blown mission to pester absolutely everyone in the building. They started with Remlin, who tried her best to teach them the fundamentals of Shodō. Even though she was decent at it, her messy, casual strokes weren’t anywhere near Zanka’s immaculate, perfectly structured standard. Next, they targeted Guita, relentlessly questioning her about her market trips, before moving on to Dear who didn’t answer shit.
Through their constant nagging, a shocking truth emerged from behind closed doors Zanka had sometimes spent his free hours playing games like tag with Dear, Guita, and Remlin. He would play rough with the younger once just the kin dthey liked, or carry Dear right on his shoulders or throwing them around in harmless wrestling matches. Honestly, that was a mind-blowing surprise for all three of them, but they were more than ready to absorb every single hidden, heartwarming side of Zanka.
Then, they went to Bro and Gris, who possessed the most diabolic stories of all. It wasn’t just that single, hilarious night where Zanka had touched alcohol for his seventeenth birthday, apparently, the kid had done way crazier stuff down in the lower district clubs. It took an immense amount of physical effort and emotional blackmail, but Gris and Bro eventually caved, sharing a few more wild late-night chronicles though they strictly kept it to the lightest ones to protect Zanka's remaining dignity.
The revelation that bothered Enjin the most, however, was how Bro and Gris described Zanka's drinking habits. They talked about a side of him that was incredibly uninhibited just as loud, chaotic, and childish as Riyo. And even though they had initially claimed he had found his strict limit and only drank a little bit to relax, they accidentally let slip that it wasn't true at all. Zanka actually drank a lot. Like, a lot for someone with his uptight reputation, frequently getting completely wasted.
The news made Enjin deeply uncomfortable, a heavy knot twisting tightly in his gut. He had never once imagined that such a reckless side existed within Zanka. It made him wonder if he had unconsciously forced the kid into that rigid, overly strict personality by always loudly praising his perfect discipline.
He had only ever meant well, he wanted to make the boy happy and secure by showering him with praise for his hard work cosndering he was clearly craving it. But apparently, that had backfired horribly, forcing Zanka to act completely different and unnaturally flawless whenever he was around Team Akuta.
Every time his thoughts drifted down that dark path, Enjin violently shook his head. He couldn't allow himself to dwell on useless guilt anymore. He was going to bring Zanka back from that noble prison, ask him everything personally, and finally become the kind of brother where Zanka could just drop his guard and be his true, chaotic self.
Tho they didn't stop with Gris and Bro. They marched over to pester August too, who for some reason, was completely unwilling to share his private workshop secrets.
When they aggressively targeted Eishia next, she locked her jaw, refusing to reveal any more confidential medical archives out of respect for her patient's privacy.
They literally pestered anyone they could find in the corridors, until Semiu finally lost her patience. Marching into the hall, she physically knocked some sense into the three of them, delivering a sharp lecture that officially forced them to stop annoying the entire facility.
Exactly one month had passed since the Hell Guards had breached the gate. With the other Cleaners now firmly refusing to share any more private memories out of respect, the initial manic distraction finally faded away.
That evening the horrific reality of what Zanka was likely going to through right now under his father's hand crashed back into their minds with a vengeance. Without a word, all three of them found themselves walking down the residential corridor, their boots stopping simultaneously right in front of Zanka’s locked door.
Rudo had already been standing there in the dim light for a while, his arms tightly crossed, when Enjin and Riyo quietly stepped up to join his flank. Neither of them needed to say a single syllable. All of them knew exactly why they hadn't been able to bring themselves to just turn the handle and go inside over the past four weeks.
This was Zanka’s room his absolute, impenetrable sanctuary.
"Maybe... we should go inside?" Riyo finally said with a sigh, breaking the heavy silence. She took a slow step forward, her fingers pressing the metallic doorknob down and gently pushing the door open.
To be completely honest, they didn't know what to expect. Throughout their months together, they had rarely spent any real time inside this room. Honestly, almost never. Zanka’s quarters had always been his alone.
Sure, whenever Riyo was having one of her intense down moments, Zanka would either stay in her room to watch over her, or offer to carry her back to his own space so she wouldn't be alone. But outside of those emergencies, the threshold had remained strictly closed, not forbidden just closed.
Now that they knew about Zanka’s multi-layered, hidden personality, their imaginations were running wild.
But surprise, surprise the moment the door slid back into the wall, they were met by a shockingly simple, impeccably neat room. The bed was made with flawless, military precision, the sheets pulled across the mattress it looked like he would walk inside to lay down at any given moment. Every other surface was just as spotlessly clean.
Zanka had always been a guy who laid a remarkably high priority on maintaining order, regularly scrubbing his floors and tucking away his belongings. If anything, he was probably the cleanest, most organized person in the entire history of Team Akuta though, seeing the absolute perfection of the layout now, it made a painful amount of sense given his high-class aristocratic upbringing.
Sitting right in the exact center of his wooden desk lay his official Cleaners uniform, meticulously folded into a neat square, the fabric smoothing out without a single crease. The door to his connected private bathroom was firmly shut. The floor was completely clear of dust, and the entire space carried a comfortable, crisp, and clean scent. In general, it wasn't a dark or terrifying room at all, it was just a deeply comfortable like he wasn’t even gone… Like all the fear and nightmares stazed out of this room.
"Wow, seriously, this is like stepping into another dimension," Enjin said with a light chuckle. He had been in Zanka’s room a few times before, but only when Riyo was having one of her so called ‘down’ moments that’s what zanka an dhim used to call it, so he had never actually paid attention to his surroundings.
Riyo seemed just as stunned, but the only person who was genuinely, deeply shocked was Rudo. Having come from the slums of the Sphere ,into a world where trahs was everywhere, Rudo had never seen a single space this pristine. The absolute order of the room was mind-blowing. "Wow... how does he even keep it like this?"
"Don't know, and don't care right now," Riyo said, walking straight over to Zanka’s bed. She froze, resting right there on the corner of the mattress was Lovely Assistaff. Riyo sat down next to her, her eyes suddenly widening in a sudden flash of panic. Lovely Assistaff had been left completely all alone for a solid month. Now, with Zanka gone and no Zanka to hold onto her, the raw affection left inside the object was a ticking time bomb she was a serious danger of mutating into a dangerous Trash beast.
Riyo's eyes snapped up to Enjin, then back to the weapon. "Enjin... what about Lovely Assistaff?"
"Oh, shit. I totally forgot about her," Enjin cursed under his breath, his eyes widening as he quickly stepped deeper into the room. Rudo followed right at his heels. "We can't destroy her. But if we don't do something fast, there is a dangerously high chance she’ll mutate into a trash beast." Enjin grumbled, his heart aching as he stared at the wood,. How could everyone have forgotten about Zanka’s greatest possession? Enjin knew damn well that she had been Zanka’s anchor. Breaking it or throwing it away was absolutely not in the game.
"I will take care of her," Rudo said quickly, stepping forward. He loved repairing trash and deeply cherishing discarded items. And on top of that, this was his mentor's, his brother figure's Jinki. He reached down to pick the staff up from the mattress, but before his fingers could even brush the polished wood, Riyo sharply slapped his hand away.
She snatched the staff off the bed, clutching it tightly against her chest like a shield. "Don't touch her! I will take care of her!"
Rudo’s eyes widened, staring at her in complete shock. "Why?! I can do it too-"
"No!" Riyo shouted, her voice suddenly dropping into a fragile, heavy rasp as she stared down at the wrapped wood. "Zanka did so much for me Rudo... and I never repaid him for anything. He helped me through my darkest moments, brought me food, kept me safe, and till this day I was never able to give him anything back. It should be my job to protect her. At least let me do that. Let me hold onto and cherish his Vital Instrument until he comes home." She looked incredibly close to tears, her jaw trembling.
It made perfect sense tho, a whole month without Zanka, and the suffocating guilt was eating them alive from the inside out. Enjin stepped up, placing a heavy and warm hand firmly on her shoulder. "Don't worry. We will get him back. I promise you," His voice suddenly flooded with an unshakeable, booming confidence. He didn't doubt for a single second that Zanka would return, or that anything his father did could truly break him. "And until that day comes, you will make sure Lovely Assistaff is perfectly ready for his return."
Rudo just huffed, crossing his arms and plopping himself down into Zanka’s wooden desk chair. "Whatever, then you take care of her."
Enjin settled down heavily on the edge of the mattress next to Riyo, letting his eyes roam across the room. It was meticulously organized, perfectly clean, and entirely devoid of any personal items. It was so different from the rest of Team Akuta's quarters.
Rudo’s room was always a chaotic mess full of scrap because he loved collecting and repairing trash.
Riyo’s room was packed with Hairbrushes, mirrors, hair sprays, and even loose red hair ends she had just snipped off. She was a total mess.
And Enjin’s own room was perpetually filled with scattered lighters, empty cigarette packs, and the overwhelming smell of strong tobacco.
Every single room in the facility held its owner's messy personality. But with Zanka, it was just a clean, sterile void. And that fitted him perfectly.
Riyo gently placed Lovely Assistaff back onto the center of the bed and stood up, trying to shake off the sadness. "There has to be something hidden in here," she said with a small, determined grin, walking straight up to his closet and yanking the doors open.
No surprise there. It was a flawlessly clean closet, packed with neatly folded traditional clothes haori’s, samue shirts, hakama pants and more. It was all the stuff he usually walked around in. Everything inside was spotless, perfectly creased, and pristine.
"He can't be serious. Why is he so damn clean?" she grumbled, digging her hands deeper into the shelves but finding absolutely nothing but structured fabric.
"I mean, is it really a surprise, considering where he came from?" Enjin asked with a smirk, leaning his elbows on his knees.
Rudo tilted his head from the desk chair, looking confused. "Where he came from?"
"Yeah, Didn't we tell you about his family? His family is super rich, high-class, and deeply traditional. He is pure Asian. Maaaaaan, how I love their culture."
Rudo’s eyes widened, his gaze snapping back to the closet. "Is that why he always walks around in those clothes?" he pointed a gloved finger at the folded robes.
Enjin started to laugh loudly, the booming sound bouncing off the clean walls. "You didn't know?! Yeah, Zanka is Asian, and he grew up wearing those kinds of clothes his entire life. So he wore them here too especially since he is still the third-born son of the Nijiku clan and has to maintain an appropriate, noble appearance after all."
Rudo stared with wide eyes, processing the information. That made sense, though… wait. What the heck was an Asian? "Enjin, what is an 'Asian' anyways?"
Enjin paused, staring at Rudo with a raised eyebrow. "You don't know? Well, it's... he's from a completely different place than we are. A different kind of race of human than we are, you know? Like, there are white people, black people, females, males, and Asians. They're like an extra, unique race."
"Ohhhh," Rudo muttered, nodding his head. That made sense. "And what's so special about them?"
"Well, nothing crazy, they just have an entirely different culture and set of beliefs," Enjin explained, gesturing with his hands. "They live completely differently than we do. They dress differently, and they eat entirely different things. Man, their food is so incredibly delicious, and their clothing style I absolutely love it. Oh, and they don't eat their food with forks, either. They eat with chopsticks."
"Chopsticks?"
"Yeah. Like two thin, straight wooden sticks," Enjin said, holding his fingers out to demonstrate. "You use them like... uh... like a crab uses its claws to pinch things."
"But isn't that so useless?! It sounded like an incredibly inefficient way to pick up food.
"Haha, what do you want me to say? Different culture."
Rudo sat quietly, his mind racing. If Zanka had grown up completely different from everyone else different even from the people up in the Sphere then Rudo wanted to understand it. If his mentor wore those clothes, ate those foods, and used those sticks, then Rudo wanted to do it too. He wanted to match his mentor’s world. "I wanna eat with chopsticks too!" Rudo suddenly declared, his jaw set stubbornly.
Instantly, Riyo burst out into a loud, mocking laugh. She stopped rummaging through Zanka’s closet and spun around, pointing a finger at Rudo. "Ha! You can try, but I highly doubt Enjin will ever be able to teach you. He can't even use chopsticks himself!"
"Hey! They are just way too thin, small, and slippery!" Enjin defended himself weakly not that he tried or really cared.
Rudo just scoffed, looking down at his gloved hands. ‘Huh, Its hard to eat with them? It was just two pieces of wood. It couldn't possibly be that hard, right?’
Riyo immediately went right back to looking through his closet, but after another five minutes of aggressively sorting through fabric, she got completely bored. "In here is nothing!"
"Well, what did you expect? A hidden diary or something?" Enjin asked with a lazy smirk, leaning back onto Zanka’s mattress and making himself comfortable.
Riyo let out a long, dramatic sigh, closing the wardrobe doors. "Yeah, honestly, something like that."
Rudo glanced around the desk, it was pristine. Except for neatly aligned writing utensils, there was absolutely nothing left on the surface.
The single drawer next to the desk wasn’t mercied by Riyo either, she was already on it a second later, shoving her head inside the small cabinet to inspect the contents. But surprise, surprise it was only filled with paper utensils, calligraphy brushes, and a few books what she wasn’t intrested in even if books where down here valuable.
"Ugh, he is so damn boring," she grumbled, slamming the drawer shut and jumping back onto his bed with a huff.
Enjin chuckled quietly, but the humor didn't last, even if Zanka was boring which they now knew he wasn't he was their boring Zanka. And now he was gone.
The room dipped back into a heavy, quiet stillness. Enjin desperately wanted to light a cigarette, his fingers twitching toward his pocket, but he forcefully stopped himself. He couldn’t. Not in Zanka’s room. Not in a place that still held his clean scent, his quiet memories, and his daily routine. He couldn't dare pester this sanctuary with that bitter stench.
Riyo sat cross-legged on the mattress, she had started to nervously play with the Ripper to bleed off the rising anxiety. Until, a genuine smile broke through her face and she giggled a little. "Hey, Enjin... do you remember the time when I often talked about how easy it was to..." She brought her thumb up to her neck, making a sharp, sliding motion across her throat.
Enjin’s eyes instantly narrowed, his posture stiffening. He absolutely hated it when Riyo especially Riyo talked about killing people. For him, taking a humans life was an absolute no-go, the biggest sin possible. A humans life held too much worth. He knew Riyo hadn't been given a fair choice in life back then before he found her, which was why he had taken her in. She had promised him to never kill another person again, but growing up in that kind of ruthless environment did permanent things to your brain, so he didn’t like it when she out of all people talked about killing it was just to dangerous for him to risk Riyo slipping back.
Riyo didn't pay Enjin's dark expression any mind, completely lost in the memory. "Zanka always made that hilarious, grossed-out face and told me to shut up... He always acted so cold and strict, but deep down, he really just was a massive softie."
Enjin let out a long, heavy sigh before a small smile crept back onto his lips. He had never approved of Riyo making those dark jokes, and he had spent hours explaining to her why that mindset was wrong, which she eventually listened to and stopped doing. But it was true the memory was hilarious to think about now. All the times Zanka got visibly uneasy, all the times he snapped at her to shut up, and all the times he subtly shuddered. In the end, he had been a softie all along. "Yeah," Enjin murmured softly. "He really was."
Rudo, in the meantime, just quietly sucked the conversation in. He needed to know as much as possible about him. But honestly, he kinda already knew that fact. He had never seen Zanka act like that, but somehow, everyone in the headquarters knew that Zanka didn't like or well, didn't have the heart to kill someone. The only times he had fought against something other than an Trashb beasts were against vandals in literal life-or-death situations.
The tense silence returned to the room after that, and for some reason, Rudo became even more uneasy. "It’s been a whole month, and neither Corvus nor Kyouka have heard anything from Zanka," Rudo suddenly muttered, his eyes staring darkly at his boots. "Do you really think we will-" Before he could even finish that sentence, Riyo grabbed Zanka’s pillow and threw it violently straight at Rudo’s face, cutting him off with a loud smack!
"Shut up! Of course he will be fine! It’s Zanka!" Riyo snapped, her voice vibrating with a desperate, defensive anger. "Nothing can destroy him! And besides, what would they even do to him? He is still their own son and younger brother! He is fine, surely he is fine! Soon he’ll return and get totally mad at us for underestimating his durability!"
"HEY! YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO THROW THE PILLOW!" Rudo growled and glared at her.
Enjin watched the whole conversation unfold, his gaze drifting back to the floorboards. Even if he desperately wanted to think like Riyo, and even if he kept repeating those exact same comforting words to himself every single night... Enjin knew that Rudo was right. A whole month had passed with absolutely zero information about Zanka. Corvus had used every possible way to reach out to Kyouka, but she had straight-up ignored everything. And even if Zanka was their younger brother and son, Enjin knew this family did not operate on love. They operated on utility. He was truly, viscerally scared that they might actually kill Zanka if he proved too stubborn to break. Enjin kept desperately reminding himself that the patriarch had mentioned forcing him to become a strategist under the Red Horns, but the deep-rooted dread stayed exactly where it was. And looking at the clean, empty room around him,
Enjin couldn't imagine a fate worse than death for his little brother.