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The perp’s status in the gang was fairly low. That much was obvious. By now there would normally have been at least one attempt on the part of the others to break him out, but this guy clearly just wasn’t important enough.
Also, he was sweating, and tugging at the handcuffs. He didn’t look like he’d ever been arrested before. Clearly a low-ranker.
“You’re one of the Crazy Diamonds, right?” asked Ishimaru Takaaki.
The boy - and really, he was just a teenager - sweated some more. “No.”
“Idiot. You already told us. Remember?”
A moment of reflection. “Oh, right.” Then, “Dammit.”
“Your name?”
“Um....” The perp twisted at his handcuffs some more. “Suzuki Takeshi.”
Takaaki crossed his arms. “You’re not very creative, are you?”
They were getting nowhere. The kid was being stubborn.
“Psst, Ishimaru-san,” whispered Officer Yamazaki from behind him. “Can we get information from him about the Crazy Diamonds, specifically their leader -”
“We can’t,” retorted Takaaki, and was about to embark on a list of all the reasons why that wouldn’t work - namely, trading information for a reduced jail sentence was fundamentally corrupt, and that damned leader of theirs now went to Hope’s Peak for some reason and was therefore granted legal protection - but the sound of incredulous laughter from “Suzuki” broke into his building rant.
“Wait, wait, wait.” The boy was leaning forward on the chair he was handcuffed to, tipping it forward on its two front legs. “Ishimaru? That’s your name, right?”
“Yes.” Whatever trick this kid was trying to pull, Takaaki hoped he’d get on with it. The sooner they got the interrogation over with, the better.
“Do you know happen to know a Kiyotaka?”
They’d been trained not to respond to perps going for the emotional baiting. Takaaki kept his voice steady. “Yes.”
“Suzuki” gave a loud guffaw. His voice was really annoying. “Would that Kiyotaka be the same Ishimaru Kiyotaka who’s dating our leader?”
“What?” He couldn’t help it. It shot out of him - sharp and short and punctuated with shock, but with the guttural undertones that prefaced a roar.
“You heard me.” Oh, but this guy was smug now. “You know, Oowada Mondo? The one in charge? The guy that goes to that fancy school and met the love of his life there or some shit? Personally I don’t know why he’d fall for a stick-up-the-ass like your relative Taka, but -”
“Shut the fuck up,” snapped Takaaki. His fists were clenching, his palms sweaty. He forced himself to take a deep breath and to keep his voice cold and clear as ice. “Please stop trying to mislead me with your lies, and let’s get back to the questioning, shall we?”
The kid was thoroughly enjoying his role by now, leaning back in the chair, voice going high and tight with glee. “He’s something, your little relative. Oowada goes all grumbly in this weird blushy sort of way whenever he talks about him. Goes into a rage if anyone tries to insult him. Mind you, I don’t know what he sees in that guy - he’s uptight, wimpy, really loud and from the sound of it, even louder in bed -”
“Ishimaru-san!” yelled Yamazaki, and grabbed Takaaki’s arm. Takaaki stayed there, fist still drawn back to punch this fucking upstart in the face, who was saying things about his son that Takaaki couldn’t imagine ever wanting to hear, that his son had gotten into bed with a man, a man who was dangerous and a delinquent and the scum of society that Takaaki thought he had raised his son to work against, why was this happening? Ishimaru Kiyotaka and Oowada Mondo? It couldn’t be happening, it...
It wasn’t happening.
The boiling rage in Takaaki’s mind began to subside. Of course it wasn’t true. This kid was obviously lying - he was being way too melodramatic to be telling the truth. This was all a tactic meant to unbalance him, and it was unfortunately succeeding. Come on, Takaaki, you were trained better than that. He unclenched his fist, painfully, and dropped his arm.
The perp was leaning backward, wide-eyed, but as Yamazaki let go of Takaaki’s sleeve and stepped back, he began to snicker.
“Nice,” he said, kicking at the rungs of the chair. “I’m guessing he’s your son? Must be. Are you proud of him?”
Takaaki entertained a brief and satisfying fantasy of wrapping his fingers around this little twerp’s neck and squeezing, squeezing hard for daring to disrespect the Ishimaru family name in such a way. He let himself indulge in the vision for a couple moments, then shoved it aside. “That’s beside the point. Have you made up your mind to talk yet?”
--
As the day wore on, however, and the kid’s words had time to properly settle in his mind, Takaaki couldn’t help but feel a twinge of doubt. It... it could, theoretically, make sense, in a twisted sort of way. How Kiyotaka, on his first vacation home from Hope’s Peak, had been unusually unforthcoming about who he’d met there. How Takaaki had, many times, demanded what the hell the headmaster of that school was thinking, let a dangerous delinquent such as that Oowada into such an elite academy?! and each time Kiyotaka had done nothing but nod distractedly, quite apart from the vehement agreement Takaaki had been expecting. How his attitude towards the Crazy Diamonds as a whole had gone from outright contempt to benign disapproval, and how he seemed far more familiar with its structure than he should have been.
God damn it.
And then Takaaki started to think more, farther back than just those last few months, to all the times he’d warned Kiyotaka against dating girls, or asked him when he would start to date girls (depending on how benign he was feeling), or searched for porn magazines in his room and found an issue on male athletes but no girls, or asked him when he was upset if he was having any problems with girls.... and each time he mentioned girls like that, as an object of desire, Kiyotaka had hunched his shoulders and shuffled his feet and looked away, as if realizing he was lost and trying to figure out where he was.
God damn it.
Doubt fermented into anxiety over the course of the day. It couldn’t be true, and yet... Kiyotaka seemed to like those with a passionate spirit to match his own... could it? And yet he’d seen that Oowada boy’s mugshot. He had a hard time imagining that delinquent being genuinely passionate about anything, except maybe mindless violence.
The thought struck him then, of all the romance novels in which the upright “good girl” became entangled with the dubious “bad boy” simply because she admired his delinquency. An image presented itself, lurid and frightening, of Kiyotaka draped over the back of a motorcycle. Oh, take me now, Oowada. Free me from the rules and respectability I’ve been taught all my life.
Takaaki felt faintly ill.
He realized he’d been reading the same sheet of paper over and over without absorbing any of its meaning. With a sigh he put down his pen and stretched out his arms in front of him.
Kiyotaka was not that silly or unreasonable. Kiyotaka was a boy, and he would never fall into any sort of romance-novel traps. Especially if they concerned other men. Especially if they concerned dangerous delinquent men.
--
In the end he went home early. He claimed there were family troubles at the heart of the dispute. That wasn’t untrue.
It was summer. Kiyotaka was home - some of the time; there was summer school and study sessions to be going to. But he should be home today.
Takaaki found him in his room, examining a new pair of boots. The remains of the parcel they’d come in littered the floor.
Takaaki nodded at the scraps. “Throw that away. Don’t leave a mess.”
Kiyotaka jumped. “Welcome home!” he said instantly, and then began scooping up the bits of brown packaging paper.
“I’m home,” said Takaaki, and watched as Kiyotaka finished cleaning up and dumped the pieces in the trash can before setting the boots in a corner, side by side. The floor was now spotless. That was his son - diligent, efficient, upright. Why was all this confusion happening?
“Father? Did you want something?” Kiyotaka seemed to have noticed the way Takaaki wasn’t leaving the room; noticed, perhaps, the serious intent on his face. He was standing straight in the middle of the floor.
“We have a low-ranking member of the Crazy Diamonds in custody,” said Takaaki. “Today we were trying to get information out of him, but he was unresponsive. He went off on some rather interesting tangents, though.”
“Ah.” A compressed syllable slipped out of Kiyotaka’s mouth.
Takaaki continued, heavy with dread, stern and full of intent. “He mentioned that their leader has a new boy toy. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
And it would be perfectly all right if Kiyotaka gave him an odd look and asked why he was being asked such a thing that he didn’t know anything about, it would be fine, he would have worried for nothing -
- except Kiyotaka went rigid. His back was ramrod straight, his arms went stiff at his side, and his chin was high as he stared at the far wall, almost drilling a hole in it with the intensity of his gaze. He looked very pale.
Takaaki felt a sick sense of disappointment settle into his gut.
The room was very quiet. Outside was the sound of cicadas, rich and buzzing in the summer air. Kiyotaka remained upright, as though trying to face a firing squad with courage and dignity. He was still not looking at Takaaki, who was trying to think of what to say next.
What first came out was, “Have you slept with him?”
It wasn’t what he wanted to say, but it was the image that had been plaguing his mind. That pest “Suzuki”’s words had been playing in his mind, conjuring up horrible images of his son, in bed with a male criminal, it couldn’t be true -
Kiyotaka hesitated, then gave the frantic, vehement nod of cornered prey.
Takaaki felt his gut clench, his throat stop up. He refused to accept this as true. His son, whom he’d raised to be decent and respectable, had let an uncouth delinquent lay hands on him. The world was turning on its head.
Maybe he could press charges. Hope’s Peak granted the twerp immunity from charges regarding his activities as an outlaw, but in the area of sexual assault...
“Completely 100% safe sane and consensual!” barked Kiyotaka to the air over Takaaki’s shoulder. His voice, loud in the stillness, cracked a little. He was still not looking at his father. “We were both very respectful of each other’s boundaries and strove to make the experience as enjoyable as possible for both of us!”
- which was not something Takaaki wanted to hear. He’d still had difficulties teaching Ishimaru which things were socially acceptable to share and which things weren’t. At least Kiyotaka hadn't been hurt or violated, he told himself, but ti was a small comfort.
But then an idea presented itself. It was not uncommon, was it, for teenage boys to... experiment, as it were. If the relationship were a mere dalliance, a curiosity, then perhaps this entire thing was not as serious as it seemed.
“Has he professed romantic feelings for you?”
Another nod.
There was a sinking, sinking in his stomach. “How strongly?”
Kiyotaka still looked terrified, but his faced softened a little, as though remembering. Reminiscing. Less loudly than before he said, “That’s not something I’m willing to share.”
And of course, the obvious follow-up question was, “Have you professed romantic feelings for him?”
A long hesitation. Then another nod, more furious than the last.
It was an effort to get the words out. “And did you mean them?”
This time, Kiyotaka’s “YES!” practically shook the room. He slapped a hand over his mouth and looked a little startled at the reply he’d given. His eyes were being to glisten, the skin around them turning blotchy red.
Takaaki took a deep breath. Let it out. Took another deep breath. Let it out. Tried to calm the emotions roiling in his stomach.
“I’m very disappointed in you.”
Kiyotaka nodded, just as before. A couple tears were beginning to spill down his face, silently.
“Very disappointed,” said Takaaki, trying to convey just how much he’d been let down. “I raised you better than this.”
Kiyotaka’s lips were pinched together, his chin held high. He was crying in earnest now, but no sound came from his mouth. This was unusual.
“I thought,” and Takaaki tried to grasp at an ideal future that just now was slipping away, “that you’d marry a nice girl, go into politics like your grandfather...”
“I’m still going into politics!” Ishimaru’s voice was cracked and tight from crying, but his tone was firm. “I’m going to enact policy that will improve economic conditions so that people like Mondo will not have to resort to crime in order to get by!”
His given name, Mondo, his given name. “How do you plan to do that when you’ve entered into an affair with a criminal? The scum of society?” Takaaki’s voice rose in volume; he felt he was about to start yelling. “How do you plan to do that when they find out you’ve had a relationship with a delinquent, a man?”
Kiyotaka flinched as though struck. His face was slick with tears, his nose a mess.
Takaaki took a deep breath. He shouldn’t have been that harsh. “I’m sorry,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I just... why, Kiyotaka? Why would you do this to me? To your family?” Helplessly he said again, “I raised you better than this...”
Kiyotaka sniffled loudly. He was still standing up perfectly straight, his chin held high.
“What do you see in someone like him?” Takaaki was almost pleading now. “How does he provide for you in any way?” God, he was treating Kiyotaka like a daughter. That was what you got, when your son went off with a boy...
Kiyotaka’s gaze flicked to the boots in the corner of the room.
“He sent you those.”
Kiyotaka nodded.
Takaaki felt a rising sense of helplessness. “As a gift?” No, the more important question was, “Did he steal them?”
“No!” - emphatically. “He tried to give me a stolen present once and I told him never to do it again! And not to buy me anything with stolen money either!”
Grudgingly, Takaaki said, “Well, at least you’re been a good influence on him...” He raked his fingers through his hair. “School starts again in - what, two weeks?” A nod. “You are to avoid all contact with Oowada Mondo until graduation.”
A day ago, Takaaki would have considered a mere order enough to keep Kiyotaka away from anyone unsavory, but now - now he wasn’t so sure.
“I’ll take that into account.” The tears seemed to be coming to an end. Kiyotaka’s face was still blotchy and red, but he wasn’t sniffling as much and his voice no longer had the cracked and saturated quality of crying. “He’s been a good influence on me, too.”
Takaaki sighed. “I can’t believe this,” he said. “You are abandoning your moral compass- your family’s moral compass - to go... cavort with a delinquent?”
“They have their own moral compass, you know,” said Kiyotaka, fumbling in his pocket for a handkerchief. “The gang. It’s just - different from yours. I’m not abandoning anything.” He blew his nose loudly and messily.
“Kiyotaka...” A brief vision of that hypothetical future, of Kiyotaka with a lovely wife and a good political position, flashed in front of his eyes. “I want you to be happy. I don’t want you to jeopardize your future by falling in with the wrong sort.”
“After graduation,” said Kiyotaka, putting away the handkerchief, “I’m moving in with him. He - ” His voice faltered. “He’s going to get a secure job. An honest job. He wants to be a carpenter.”
Takaaki was experiencing the sensation of the proverbial carpet being slowly pulled out from under his feet. “I told you to cut all ties with him.”
“I know.” He was being stubborn. What had happened? “I’m not going to.”
“I’m very disappointed in you.”
“I know.” Kiyotaka sat down, pulled the new boots towards him, and began unlacing his current pair. It was a clear dismissal.
When had things changed so much that the son was dismissing the father?
Takaaki stood there another moment, at a loss for words. “At least don’t bring him into this house,” he finally said, and then left the room.