Chapter Text
“Writers are free to write whatever narratives run through their minds, Keiji, but for the unlucky few, that ink of freedom doesn’t always bleed into their reality—it doesn’t bleed into your reality.”
Keiji, age seven, stared at his mother with curious eyes as she spoke the very words that would define his future like a prophecy.
He would remember this day in perfect clarity, tattooed into his brain as the first and only day his stern mother gave him a glimpse of her concealed heart. It was then that he believed she actually loved him, in a way, by warning him to take his heart off his sleeve and cage it behind iron bars, away from the prying hands of the fickle reality.
“What do you mean, Mama?” he questioned, putting down his pencil beside the sheet of paper on which he was practicing his simple sentences in perfect handwriting.
“Lower your expectations of the world from hereon out,” she placed a hand on Keiji’s head as she said so, and the young boy thought he almost heard an apologetic tone.
“Not everything will work out the way you want it to, my son.”
———
Three sleek, pressed tuxedoes sat neatly from the hangers in his walk-in closet. Keiji reached for the simple black one, gingerly slipping the pants on to avoid creases, before tucking in a crisp white long sleeved button down and fumbling with a tie to match his pants.
His bedroom door opened, his mother walking in donning a lovely maroon jumpsuit with beige heels.
“I don’t think that’s the most appropriate number to wear for this meeting, Keiji,” she looked at him from head to toe.
Keiji raised an eyebrow. “This is what I always wear to business dinners, I just switched the tie up a little this time.”
“It isn’t like any other business dinner,” she responded in her modulated professional voice that Keiji wasn’t a stranger to.
“We’ll be meeting with the Bokuto Family, the sports tycoons who own the MSBY Black Jackals and have sponsored Japan’s national volleyball team since the 2008 Olympics. They’ve reached out to me and your father to propose a generous partnership deal, however,” she faltered almost unnoticably, voice tightening, “there is one…condition.”
A beat of silence. She continued on.
“They have a son named Koutarou. He’s only a year older than you, a first year at Fukurodani Academy and plays volleyball there too. They want to make sure the finances remain only within our two families, and the way to do that would be to bind the deal by blood and matrimony,” she continued in her business-like tone.
Keiji’s face hardened into an outward mask, effectively hiding the anger seething inside of him right now. It was bad enough that his entire childhood consist of subtle hints that he was a profit opportunity for his family, but for it to be declared shamelessly to his face without any humanity—it sparked a different kind of resentment. Involving his romantic and personal life into it only added fuel to the dangerously growing fire.
“Okay, I understand,” he deadpanned. “I’ll get changed immediately into something more fitting for the occasion. I apologize for delaying our departure, Mother.”
His mother nodded in acknowledgement before leaving his room, the door closing with a firm click.
Keiji’s tear ducts got the better of him. He never knew how to properly get mad, having grown up suppressing the urge to yell or hit or throw something, so he often resorted to just crying his anger out.
He frustratedly wiped the tears stinging his cheeks, walked the eleven steps he needed to walk from the center of his room to the entrance of his walk-in, took the five steps from the entrance to the small couch situated in the midst of it all, and sat down as he took three deep breaths to calm himself down.
“…for the unlucky few, that ink of freedom doesn’t always bleed into their reality—it doesn’t bleed into your reality.”
The words echoed in his brain, gripping onto each neuron like a vice. He shed off his black tux, exchanging it for the navy blue set that had subtle pinstripes adorning the dark fabric. It was his father’s gift to him for his thirteenth birthday, a symbol of welcoming into the professional world for his dad, a symbol of his inevitable fate as a pawn for Keiji.
He fixed a pearlescent tie beneath his collar, pinned the miniature family crest he always despised on his lapel, and brushed his hair for good measure, checking the mirror to make sure there wasn’t a single trace of tears.
“Not everything will work out the way you want it to, my son.”
The entrance to the Bokuto family mansion was nothing short of lavish. It was everything one would expect of a house built from generational wealth—clean cut hedges marking the roundabout where a statue of a large horned owl sat, and topiaries with their tips cut to a point, aligning a path to labyrinth of a flower garden.
The interior was exactly the same, with its polished marble floors and grand staircase flowing from the center of the foyer, extending upwards into the east and west wings of the house. Keiji made a mental tally of how many owl-themed pieces and accents were etched subtly into the architecture.
“Keisuke, Hayami-san!” a lean, silver-haired man in a grey tux walked up to them from a corridor, arms outstretched and waving.
“Kaneko, it’s nice to see you again,” Keiji’s father reached his arm out to reciprocate a firm handshake, not before he was enveloped into a hug by the man named Kaneko. Keiji’s mother was not exempt from said hug.
“It’s been a while,” Kaneko replied fondly, his gaze landing on the young man standing awkwardly in front of the reunion. “Is this him? He looks just like you, Keisuke!”
“Bokuto Kaneko, this is our only son, Akaashi Keiji,” Hayami gestured to Keiji, who reached out a hand with a respectful smile. “Keiji, Kaneko-kun was your father’s fraternity brother back in college, they’ve been close not only with personal matters but with business concerns as well.”
“It’s lovely to meet you, Bokuto-san,” he greeted in practiced tone as he shook Kaneko’s hand.
He would have been more sincere if it weren’t for the dread crawling up his gut and reaching for his throat.
“Nice to meet you too, young man! You remind me a lot of your father back when he and I were younger,” he glanced at Keiji’s father fondly. “But you definitely are more handsome and more refined than he ever was at your age!”
Keisuke squwaked indignantly in feigned offense as Kaneko let out a hearty chuckle.
“Now, now, I’m sure the three of you are hungry, let’s head into the dining for some lunch and then we can discuss the matters of Keiji and Koutarou’s engagement,” Kaneko continued casually, as if they weren’t putting two complete strangers together in a forced marriage for the sake of business.
In his head, Keiji bolted out of the front doors and ran as far away from Tokyo as possible, where he would change his name to something inconspicuous so he would never have to meet with this Koutarou guy and be stuck in a loveless marriage with him.
In his inevitable reality, Keiji followed Kaneko and his parents into the grand dining hall of the Bokuto mansion, where a long banquet awaited them, as well as two people perched on one side of the table. A boy about his age with spiked silver hair and an older woman donning an elegant beige dress.
They stood up upon seeing them walk into the hall, and with each step closer towards them, the more Keiji felt like he was losing oxygen to breathe.
Run. I want to run away.
He barely registered the introductions that followed. The older woman introduced herself as Bokuto Okimi, who warmly praised him for his politeness. The spiky-haired boy nervously introduced himself as Bokuto Koutarou, only son of Okimi and Kaneko.
He barely registered the pleasantries and small talk over lunch, taking minimal bites out of his serving of beef wellington not as a show of table manners, but because he could feel his throat closing and his stomach burning up.
Don’t let it show on your face. No matter what happens, you cannot let your anxiety show, he silently repeated the words in his head like a mantra.
It was his father’s next exchange of words with Kaneko that did him in.
“Now, let’s talk business. How do we go about the merger between our company, The Tokyo Tribune, and yours, The Bokuto Corporation?” his father asked.
“We’ve asked the board of directors for their input, and did the numbers too, and we can guarantee that this merger will give our companies a 400% increase in profit in the next three years,” Kaneko responded, earning a nod from his fellow stakeholder.
“But,” Kaneko continued, his face hardening into an unreadable expression. “To ensure this path of financial growth remains consistent and without any extraneous factors and complications, we must make sure the money stays strictly between our two families, Keisuke.”
Keiji’s father let out a deep sigh, wiping his mouth gently with a napkin before speaking the last words Keiji needed to hear today.
”I believe we have all come to terms with this; Keiji and Koutarou-kun, as the only two heirs of our families, you are granted our blessing of binding this merger contract by marriage, for the sake of your future and that of the companies’ as well.”
Blessing? Cut the crap.
Keiji couldn’t bring himself to respond, neither could he bring himself to breathe.
The pent-up anxiety, dread, and anger that had been building up inside of him all day was about to come undone. He felt hot tears prick behind his eyes that he forcibly blinked back as he attempted to stammer out any words of acknowledgement—
Clear your mind. Clear your mind.
“You do see how unfair this is to both me and him, right?” a voice to his left responded, wavering in its tone, and Keiji turned to see a wide-eyed Koutarou, eyes filled with the betrayal and anxiety that he himself was far too familiar with. It was a little comforting, if he were to be insensitive about it.
Koutarou didn’t want this any more than he did.
Don’t let it show on your face.
When Koutarou looked him dead in the eye, he knew he failed to follow his own internal rule, that his outward expression betrayed him despite himself.