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“No matter how many times I see it, Chuuou’s outer wall is super impressive, huh?”
And Ramuda has spent nearly as much of his life outside of it as he has inside- though it feels like so much longer. He cranes his neck, runs circles in its shadow like a mockery of childhood, and wonders how many secrets he can keep this time around. Gentarou wants to prod and pry, to pick apart Ramuda’s mysteries until he’s bared the man that lives at the very heart of him.
Or, thinks Ramuda, rushing to wrap him up in a hug with a smile bright as victory, maybe he’s just intrigued by the only person bold enough to lie straight to his face.
That’s fine too, he thinks. Let Gentarou spend the rest of his life chasing the only liar that can outwit him. Let him write a thousand novels grasping for the truth he won’t find unless Ramuda chooses to tell him.
After all- it’s not as if he could possibly guess. Not when Ramuda will never tell him that by impressive he means nostalgic, by how many he means countless. He didn’t think to keep track of the times he ran the wall when he was a child. It’s just a distant thought now, dulled by the flow of the years- but he thinks, perhaps, he should have.
(Ramuda does not- cannot- remember this, but there is a controversy that surrounds his birth. His mother is weak of health- and though no one will say it- few expected her to survive the pregnancy. For her sake, they want to send him away. She’s frail enough without having to take care of another child. His mother will not allow it. In the later days, those that remember will say Ramuda inherited her stubborn will. It will mean nothing to him, though sometimes- rarely- he’ll wish it would.)
This is what Ramuda does remember, clinging tight to his sister’s hand and the folds of her pitch-black dress.
A middle-aged woman, face obscured with time and the unreliable haze of his childhood memory but contempt-laced voice left untouched by the decade and a half since. “Surely you could just send Ramuda to live with your father? That’s just pro-“
“We don’t speak of that pitiful man,” says Ichijiku with a determination that will serve her well as she works her way up the government ladder in the next two decades. She’s just a teenager now, but she shows no hesitation in the face of women twice her age.
“That kind of situation?”
Ichijiku does everything but turn up her nose. “As you know full well, our mother was divorced. That’s all that needs to be said on the matter. Now if you’ll excuse us.”
At the time, Ramuda doesn’t know. Doesn’t realize, perhaps, is the more appropriate term. But Ichijiku leads him away by the hand, carrying him away with her peerless strength- and he admires her.
(Though he still doesn’t realize.)
It’s not a year later before he does.
“That,” Ramuda says, staring down entranced at the stage, at the men atop it. It is not pretty, not clean- but the words fly with a brilliance that captivates him, a power that surpasses his wildest dreams. “I want to do that!”
From the seat beside him Ichijiku seizes his wrist, snapping his attention from the battle below to her looming over him.
“Don’t you dare say that,” snarls Ichijiku with a fire that Ramuda so rarely sees directed at him. He flinches back; Ichijiku falters as she realizes what she’s done.
She drops his wrist and Ramuda draws it back towards his chest, clutching it tight with his other hand. After a moment of silence- after someone on stage falters and falls to the screams of the divided crowd- she lets out a soft breath. “I’m sorry. But you can’t say those kinds of things. You’re-“
Ichijiku stops. Ramuda blinks up at her and thinks, but I am.
Being raised as something and being something aren’t the same, no matter how he’s starting to realize that his sister wants it to be. He’s still young, but he understands. He thinks that maybe it’s simpler for the children than the adults.
“I’m sorry,” Ichijiku says and reaches over to ruffle his hair, a rare show of physical affection from someone he’ll later realize has never been comfortable giving it.
“It’s okay,” he says, and means it.
They watch the rest of the territory battle together. Ramuda forgets who wins, caught up in the flow again. But in the end, it’s all outside the walls. It doesn’t concern him, and so the details are fine to forget.
Ramuda makes sure to display only a proper amount of interest in the territory battles, from them on. No more comments where Ichijiku can hear, no more playing pretend with clumsy, childish words. His classmates stumble laughing over the raps of their favorite teams, dropping their voices comically low in an imitation of their favorite members. Some of them, Ramuda thinks, are really quite good.
He gravitates towards them; even back then he finds himself drawn towards the most interesting people, the possibilities of those who’ll call themselves his friends.
One day, one of them gives him a poster. He doesn’t even particularly care for the team logo plastered across it, but it’s his and that is enough to make it precious. He holds it in careful hands as he makes his way home, unwilling to chance it falling out of his backpack, to have it catch on some low-hanging branch or be swept away by a sudden gust.
He puts it up on his wall after a day of deliberation. Ichijiku spares it a long glance as she comes to wake him up in the morning, but makes no comment- and so Ramuda leaves it up. An appropriate interest. Neither of them mention that day seated high above the battlefield.
(Ichijiku still takes him to every battle, doesn’t protest when he moves from the reserved seats to the very front of the standing space, practically pressed up against the stage. Ramuda thinks that’s apology enough.)
In his free time, he spends a long time walking along the wall. There’s no reason for it in particular, save the sweets shop he and his friends like to visit on the weekends near the central gates, or the park where he likes to watch the comings and goings.
Ichijiku doesn’t leave Chuuou, and so neither does Ramuda. There may be problems, she warns, when they try to get back in. Ramuda doubts it- he’s only nine years old, but knows perfectly well how paper-thin Ichijiku’s lies are. He presses her on it only once, and with a sigh does she reply- Just enjoy your childhood in Chuuou.
Ramuda is just astute enough to recognize it again as the wish she won’t make. She’s too set in her ways, forward-facing at the cost of whatever must be lost- even him, one day.
Well, Ramuda thinks, that’s fine. He’ll embrace now anyways. The rules all the adults have made still don’t apply to him, he realizes, and the longer he can take advantage of that, the better.
Today he waits at the park near the gate for a while, sitting up on a brick garden wall and swinging his legs idly until the moment he sees her One of his sister’s friends- a flirt, a charmer, a bright personality that draws people towards her like moths to a flame. She’s returning with shopping bags on her arms and a satisfied smile on her face, lighting up the very air around her. Ramuda leaps off the short wall and rushes up to her with one to match.
“Onee-san! Where did you go today?” He asks, all but crashing into her in an attempt to cling to her arm.
“Your sister is going to get mad that you’re calling people that again,” says the woman with false sternness as she laughs and pats his head. Already he understands that wide eyes and brightness leads to others indulging his habits, and already he uses it to its utmost potential.
“Onee-san is onee-san,” he replies just to be contrary, and the woman laughs.
“Here,” she says, reaching into her purse and pulling out a bag that crinkles and clinks with the telltale sounds of hard candy. Ramuda turns up his palms, and the woman drops the bag in with a smile, their mischievous little secret. “Now promise not to tell your sister that I’m spoiling you again.”
“I promise,” Ramuda chimes, and digs into the bag as she tells him a story of somewhere beyond the walls- of bright and sparkling Harajuku, of the clothes and the people and the exploits of her fashion student friend who made the bold decision to leave Chuuou for her studies.
Ramuda listens, glances over his shoulder as the wall is obscured by buildings and wonders, and wonders-
But it’s only a thought.
He is fourteen when he’s forced to leave Chuuou. No matter how high he tries to pitch his voice, no matter how feminine the mannerisms he’s spent his whole life living and speaking- it’s not going to fool anyone, anymore. There are permits, of course, both then and now- but in those days Ichijiku didn’t have the proper standing, and to explain things would be complicated at best, ostracizing at worst.
To make a clean break will be easier.
Ichijiku explains all this on one knee with hands on his shoulders, and Ramuda nods along. What he understands is that this: the world and its rules care nothing for where Ramuda was born or how he chooses to live. It isn’t compassionate- and no one is going to go out of their way for him. Not any longer.
“Do you remember-“ she catches herself- “Amemura Ramuda? All the things you have to take care of when you go?”
Ramuda nods. It’s all he can do. Ichijiku lets out a very long breath, then pats him on the shoulder. It’s more than a little awkward. Ramuda doesn’t mind- he’s long since figured out that Ichijiku and affection are about as compatible as a fork and a power outlet.
But it’s fine.
Ichijiku takes rare steps out of Chuuou to drive him out into Tokyo- the rest of it, anyway. He’s not selfish enough not to feel grateful as the scenery rushes past the tinted windows.
She drops him in front of his hotel, helps him take his suitcase out of the car, and reminds him to call once he’s settled on somewhere to live. Ramuda nods, lets Ichijiku check him in, and waves goodbye before taking the elevator all the way to the top.
His room is expensive, and when he looks out the window he can imagine that all of Tokyo is spread out before him. He presses a hand to the glass, then his forehead, peering out into the unfamiliar world- then curls his hands into fists and wonders, excitedly, just what he might find.
Names of divisions solidify themselves into proper places, into mental maps and broad strokes of people. Funny, Ramuda thinks, craning his neck in the crowded Shibuya streets on a Saturday evening, how the same city can feel so drastically different just a single stop up or down one of its dozen train lines.
And it’s no coincidence that he ends up here. The press of the Shinjuku skyscrapers are towering and unfriendly, a reminder of a place he can no longer call home. Ikebukuro is a fun place to play, but its nights don’t bustle in a way that sate the itch beneath his skin.
He goes out to Odaiba, rides the Ferris wheel and takes in his first sight of the ocean he’s grown up invisible alongside.
He dances through the crowded streets of Okubo, leaving well-fed and with a bag of cosmetics strapped around his wrist and a vague wonder as to the appeal of idols who don’t fight.
None of them settle. No matter how hard he tries to avoid the trap of comparison, it’s hard when he has only one frame of reference.
Ah, he thinks- he’s never going to find a replacement.
But Shibuya, he thinks- as something new, Shibuya might work. He’s not sure, but there’s something about it- Colorful? Bustling? Open and alluring? He’s not sure, but before he can think twice his phone is in his hand, dialing Ichijiku’s number with a request that doesn’t come out like one.
“Shibuya,” he says, “I like Shibuya.”
On the other end of the line Ichijiku is silent a moment, and then she sighs. “Of course you do.”
Ichijiku finances his apartment and arranges for his enrollment in a local school; Ramuda takes to it all with the sort of grace that accompanies a wordless demand for attention.
Charisma. The weapon he’s honed all his life, turned charming on people to carve out his place within them. He remembers very clearly the words that he’s supposed to speak about his old school, his old home, speaking nothing of the sibling he doesn’t have. His new classmates eat it up, though Ramuda personally thinks it’s boring as they come.
They don’t so much as suspect. It’s almost a little disappointing.
He seeks out women, because that’s what he’s used to- it’s easy to strike up conversations about trends, about music, about fashion. The only difference from Chuuou, he thinks, is that the girls here seem surprised.
“Oh,” says one of them, a usually quiet girl that Ramuda’s found out quick has an interest in appearances and everything that surrounds them, “Do you, maybe, want to be a designer or something?”
For a long lull Ramuda just hums. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. With his sister backing him, it’s not like he has to worry about money matters, much. As for what he wants to do...
“I want to rap,” he says, and the girls around him burst into peals of laughter, not ill-intentioned but certainly not understanding.
“That’s dangerous, Ramuda,” one of them chides. She’s the bright type, a little sisterly. She takes to Ramuda instantly, one shared interest and a general call to Ramuda’s attitude enough to forge a friendship.
“Huuuh?” Ramuda pouts, head swinging between the laughing girls gathered around his desk, “Don't you think danger suits me? Don’t you think I can be scary?”
“Ramuda’s too cute to be scary,” says one of them, a straightforward, sporty type who says what’s on her mind and doesn’t care much if no one else around her likes it. Abrasive, but not in the bad way- Ramuda knows already that they’ll get along just fine.
“You just haven’t seen me be scary yet!” Ramuda says, then puffs of his cheeks and waves his pencil at them as if to prove himself. The girls laugh again, charmed- but it’s true, Ramuda thinks, laughing right along with them with a sharp look in his eyes.
He’s lost home, but he’s found freedom. If Shibuya is to be anything- to mean anything- then it’ll be what he decides when he has it in the palm of his hand.
Ramuda’s approach to speaking with men eventually just takes on the flavor of how Ramuda approaches everything, outside of Chuuou- to simply assert himself, run them straight over, then see if any are left following him after as he glances over his shoulder.
Usually there’s not. Ramuda hardly minds- that just means they’re not interesting enough to waste his time on in the first place. Acquaintances are all well and good, but if he wants friends, his standards are high. They can’t be just anyone. They have to shine bright as the thrill of the battle. They have to live with intent.
(They’re much harder to find than he expects.)
He turns to the back streets, the darker sides of the midnight alleys that the tourists never see. Not that he’ll ever call Shibuya dangerous- but mics surface in places they’re not supposed to, Ramuda finds, in hands seeking outlets, seeking thrills, seeking a reason in the world that’s thrown them away.
They’ll never find that, Ramuda thinks ,watching mic pass from disillusioned youth to youth- but there might still be someone to keep an eye on here. Well. It’s not like he doesn’t understand. It’s not six months after he leaves Chuuou that he plucks a mic from the hand of a fallen acquaintance and turns it on with a curious hum, and lets loose everything he’s wanted to say for fifteen years spill out of him with a smile.
He’s the only one who walks out of that alley unscathed, that night.
(That’s how it goes most nights. After a while, he stops trying so hard for secrecy. If Shibuya’s unofficial strongest is a six-seven-eighteen year old student with a too-clean past despite what most would consider dirty hands, well- that just means someone in a high place is still looking out for him.)
It is a long time before he thinks of Chuuou so longingly again.
He’s not sure when, but sometime while they’re apart, Ichijiku’s attitude changes. She’s always had a foul streak, a nasty little no-nonsense thing that would see plenty trampled underfoot if it ensures her way to the top. Ramuda shares it, so it’s not like he’s judging.
Still, Ramuda thinks, when the admission papers for a temporary visit to Chuuou appeared in his mailbox with Ichijiku’s signature and a stamp marking it urgent, this wasn’t the kind of homecoming he’d been hoping for.
(Well of course not, he thinks, a reminder from the part of himself that’s still allowed to be honest. Chuuou is no longer his home.)
She picks him up at the gates; there is little time for reunion before she sweeps him up into her sleek car and drives them through the familiar old streets of Chuuou behind the safety of tinted windows. There’s the cake shop. There’s the corner store that used to sell used books. It’s a generic convenience store, now, and if Ramuda expected to feel any sort of pang at the change, it never comes.
Ichijiku has moved, Ramuda finds, both immeasurably relieved and a little melancholy he won’t get a chance to see his old neighborhood. That’s a bit of explaining he’s not sure he’s going to find very pleasant to do, after all. Still, he wonders if they remember him. He wonders if he’d care even if they didn’t- and then the elevator doors open, and Ramuda thinks on it no longer.
Her condo is penthouse- she’s done good for herself, Ramuda thinks idly, following a still-quiet Ichijiku inside. She has the aura of a woman who’s had far too long a day, and Ramuda remembers better than to push. Instead he pokes around her rooms a moment, searching for any sign that she’s finally got herself a girlfriend- or any sort of social life beyond the superficial, really- but comes up hands empty. Not that he’s any better, but-
“When did you become so inefficient?” Ichijiku asks, breaking into his thoughts with the tone of voice she uses when he knows she wants to chide whatever manner of perceived idiocy he’s settled on today but thinks herself just slightly too polite to do it. Good to see some things haven't changed, Ramuda thinks, and flops into the kitchen chair across the table from her. Modern and sleek, monochrome and no-nonsense. Just like her.
“So? So?” Ramuda asks, “why’d you bring me back to Chuuou after all this time?”
Ichijiku makes a pinched expression- unpleasant, exasperated. She doesn’t show it to others so easily. “It’s regarding the rumors.”
Ramuda perks up immediately. “Rumors? Hmmm, you don’t actually mean those-“
“Of course those are what I mean.”
And oh, Ramuda thinks, how interesting. If Ichijiku is coming to him over rumors of these sort, then-
Ramuda can’t stop the curl of satisfaction that slithers through him ruthless at the thought of finally setting hands on what he’s wanted long as he can remember. He turns it into a teasing smile before it can become a smirk- “Huhhh? What happened to ‘don’t you dare say that’?”
“Circumstances have changed,” Ichijiku says, good as an admission as she glares at him, leaning forwards over the table. “And will you stop with that character? It’s grating to listen to. And please stop calling every woman you meet onee-san. It’s embarrassing. You should have stopped that when you were six.”
“My own sister! Turning on me!” Ramuda says, but drops it. He can’t hide his mischievous little smile, though- both because he thought it would annoy her and because it proves she’s been looking out for him. A bit too closely, perhaps, but he won’t complain when the alternatives are all so bleak.
The energy slips from him, the bubblegum pops. He’s grown unused to it, but if Ichijiku demands seriousness, the he has no problems answering. “So? Are you going to tell me what it is you want me to do?”
Ichijiku leans over the table. He imagines most anyone else would find it intimidating. “Make sure you join them, of course.”
“You’re really giving me permission to join an actual team.” Not that he needed it, or even was seeking it in the first place- nothing could have stopped Ramuda from choosing this path. The way no scolding comes just proves the both of them know it- and besides. He’s long since become an adult; the days of him clinging to sister’s sleeve are nothing but a distant memory.
“You’ve wanted to do this since the first time I took you to watch the territory battles, haven’t you? I know you can rap. There shouldn’t be a problem.”
Ramuda can’t deny that. He’s had his run of the streets for years- practice for the real thing. A way to make the wait just a little more fun. He never gets hurt, so he can’t say he sees any problem with making things official.
But-
“Is it still what I want if it’s all a lie?”
Ichijiku glares at him. Ramuda supposes he kind of deserves that one. “I’m giving you a chance, Ramuda. Take it or leave it.”
The answer to that is obvious, isn’t it? Ramuda’s spent most of his life living a lie. This, at least, seems like it’ll be something fun.
(It is. Right up until the moment they all collectively screw it up and their kingdom comes down on their shoulders in plaster shards and brick dust. It scatters to the wind, and they along with it- though, Ramuda thinks, a few of them could have stood to scatter a little bit further.)
Ramuda goes back to devoting all his attention to Shibuya, and thinks that it was a mistake to neglect it so long in the first place. Not when he loves it, loves it, loves it- the press of tourists at the crossing, the dance of trends glittering across the storefronts of the 109, the cafes tucked up into the sixth floors of tightly packed buildings at his division’s beating heart.
And Shibuya knows his name, loves him in turn. This time, he won’t be dragged away. If he’s going to make something of himself, and if it won’t be on the Chuuou battlefields- then it’ll be here.
Home sweet home, he thinks.
(It’s a promise he’s not sure he can keep- he’s called Shibuya home almost a decade, and a part of him keeps waiting for the timer to hit zero. He only made it fourteen years the first time, and his time spent with The Dirty Dawg was a pittance in comparison- who’s to say it won’t be shorter this time?)
(He makes it anyway.)
A new team. A new team, Ichijiku says, as if Ramuda doesn’t still have a dozen grudges still remaining from the last one. Granted, they’re all directed at one former meddling teammate that happens to know too much in particular, but-
Well. No use wasting thought on it. Despite everything, Ichijiku is still his sister. He can’t say he’s loyal to much in this world outside himself, but if anyone else could lay claim, then he supposes it would be her and her ever-present oversight.
So he finds them- his ideal sort of people, the ones he’d be proud to stand beside (again). A lonely sort of liar in love with his nonsense, a gambler who couldn’t care less about the order of the world so long as he gets his way.
They light up his Shibuya so, stain it in the colors it was always meant to be. He grows fond of their games, becomes a player himself more often than not. When he calls they answer- any more naive and he’d call it loyalty. They do as they please in this division they’ve laid claim to and let the world around them reel. It’s terribly fun. Of all the people he could have called on, he’s glad he settled on them.
Which just makes it a shame it won’t last forever, Ramuda thinks. Every home crumbles, loses its luster and closes its gates in his face eventually. This won’t be any different- he’s learned enough to plan for that from the start. A fling. A night out on the town, a whirlwind affair before they go their separate ways.
Ichijiku’s call is only a reminder.
Can’t she wait until we get inside? Ramuda thinks darkly, glaring at the gate where she’d disappeared into her precious Chuuou again. Which one of us is supposed to be the impatient one?
The gates don’t answer, but Ramuda must. He runs off to take his sister’s call, begging quality time in a lie that already has Gentarou watching him with those fascinated eyes. Even Dice’s gaze on him has turned probing, and he can be convinced to believe anything with a few sweet words and a handy bit of bribery. He didn’t think there would be a problem, but...
It’s unfortunate. There’s only so many warnings he can give, and Gentarou seems intent on testing how far he can push Ramuda’s lines. If the two of them charge through the wall Ramuda’s built, he’s not sure that he can convince Ichijiku to be lenient.
Ramuda rushes off and leaving them behind in the shadow of the familiar Chuuou walls, thinking it really is a shame. They speak to each other to well, these free spirits who’ve perhaps forgotten just what their true nature is supposed to be. He has no qualms about shooting Jakurai down to earth- in fact, he almost hopes one of his dogs bite- but the ones he’s chosen to put his pride in are...
He answers Ichijiku’s call on the last ring and thinks on it no longer.
When he returns, Gentarou and Dice have already stepped through the gates without him, gone off to the hotel in what must have been a fit of Dice’s impatience rearing its head. And that suits Ramuda just fine. He hands over his papers, pulls a piece of hard candy from his pocket and unwraps it without looking. It isn’t as if he doesn’t know exactly where he’s going. The woman ushers him though after just a moment, but Ramuda pauses before he crosses the threshold.
I’m home, he does not say, because Chuuou hasn’t been his home for a decade- nor will it ever be again.
I’m back, he does not say, because that implies he plans to stay, and no force in the world will allow that. Not even his sister.
“Let’s make this fun,” Ramuda says, and skips into Chuuou to the taste of strawberries and the promise of a battle on the horizon. It’s been a while, he thinks, since he’s stood on stage. This time, he has no plans to lose.
(Not when the stakes are home.)