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Gin has never been strong.
(She kicks a man to the other end of a wall and jumps high as a group try to ambush her. She flickers from existence, like how a light turns on and off with a switch, and slices the necks of the men surrounding her with a flick of her wrist. She stands, unharmed, in a heap of bodies. She looks up as the door opens, and Hirotsu- san steps into view, the white light of the other room making the older man almost holy.)
Well, to an extent. There needs to be some strength to keep her alive, from the streets to the mafia. There is something inside her that has kept her alive for so long. But it isn’t the same strength that keeps her brother from being toppled over, it isn’t the same strength that weighs of the Boss’s shoulders as he directs an entire organization with a wave of his hand, it isn’t the strength that keeps Hirotsu’s hands gentle and his head held high.
(Hirotsu- san doesn’t smile at her, but it’s close. He steps into the room, somehow avoiding the pools of blood she has made, and comes to her. There is no one else besides the two of them, and for a moment she relaxes as he puts his gloved, white hand onto her head. She is still young, he has said before, and even in killing there is some needed encouragement. Gin just likes the feeling that she is solid, and not a shadow realized.)
She is not proud. That is the strength she is missing. She is not even devoted, like her brother’s subordinate, or Kouyou- san , or even Kaiji. She has no purpose or plan or someone she is staying in the mafia for. Not like that man back then, her brother right now, or even Tachihara, who believes he could do something good from it.
(As the two of them head out of the building, a reasonable distance between the two of them that she mourns the existence of, Tachihara barks at her for taking too much time for the job. Something swells in her, young and impulsive, that makes her grit her teeth under her mask, and curl her hands into fists—her knuckles white. He starts to berate her, his mouth curled to show his canines, and she cannot help it. Before he could even get a syllable out, to growl around her name, she uses her fist and punches him. More hits are exchanged between the two of them as he crumbles to the ground and she jumps on him. There is something unpleasant in the way that her hits resonate in her ears, like the echo emanating an orchestra hall. Hirotsu only stops them when Tachihara pulls out his gun, and holds them away from each other like they were children, the children they were supposed to be. They leave it at that, but there is something that changes in the way that Tachihara dances around her, like a predator scared of its prey. Gin scoffs at the idea.)
Gin doesn’t think she’s cut out for the mafia, she knows. Her hands and her legs, yes, they are made from the blood and sweat that keeps the mafia dark, but she—the things that make Gin Gin —is not.
(Even in the shadows in the mafia there is still light, but Gin does not even bathe in that light. Gin has never got to be in the light, even for a second. She thinks, as she stands at the edge of a grassy cliff, that it was always Ryuunosuke that was always at that tip, and her standing in puddles of shadows beneath him. She wonders if she ever made an echo for him to look back for, or if he kept his face to the light.)
What is she even doing this for? Why is she dippling her hands in pools of blood? Why did she even start?
(“Gin,” she turns around, her long hair blowing freely in the air rather than pinned to her scalp. Her brother reaches out to her, and brushes a piece of hair out of her face. She can feel the calluses of his fingers skimming the tip of her ear, only phantoms of scars on his skin, before he pulls it away.)
She is not suited for the mafia.
(He needs to stop with that habit, Gin cannot help but think. Even though no one knows them in this city, so different than what they are forced to appear as. He needs to stop, because Gin will yearn for this touch when she is alone, and then she will slip up and then the both of them will die, because you can’t even breathe a second too slow in the mafia and come out of it alive. She hates it, she hates it, she hates it.)
She is not suited for the mafia because sometimes she thinks of a life outside of the velvet carpets lined with red, the striped walls hanging overhead, the champagne and the beer and the sake that litters the lounges. She thinks of a life with flowers on grass hills, of the sun overhead, and a warmth to her open skin. She thinks and yearns and dreams about a life outside of a hanging crescent moon.
(She does not respond—only looks out to the cliffs and the seagulls flying away, feeling the presence of her brother at her shoulder. She can feel the waves crash into the rock below, the sea salt filling her lungs with a clarity she has yet to know. The sun is setting in an array of colors, all soft yet distinct from each other as the colorful clouds seemingly fade into the sun. Gin remembers, vaguely, about a tragedy during a sunset, and wonders if it looked like this. She wants to ask Ryuunosuke, but he was never interested in things like that. Always in his own head, trapped in his own mind. She wonders what he sees in the same sight she sees.
She says, instead, “isn’t this beautiful?”
She cannot see his face, but can hear the rustle of his clothes as, maybe, he tries to reach out to her, from where he stands in the light at the back of her mind. But he shifts so that his hand is in his pocket—he has turned his back to the light.
“I do not care for such things.” She looks down at her own hands, at that, and cannot help but see blood. She can hear her brother walk down the cliff, back towards their car they parked off to the side. She, too, turns her back to that beautiful sight, the warmth of the sun stinging her through her clothes.
And that was the end of an unspoken discussion.)
But she wakes up. She always, always wakes up.