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...
kuzuryuu has been taught from a young age - no, ever since he could understand that the gibberish falling out of his father's mouth are words - that in the yakuza, you don't have time for diplomacy. fancy sentences and calm voices are for the cowards that are too weak to shatter someone's kneecaps at the slightest sign of resistance, or disobedience. violence is messy, sure. brutish, definitely. but it's quick and gets the point across. after all, pain is a universal language.
in the yakuza, violence solves everything.
and because of that, in the yakuza, you pay in blood.
your own, your parents', your sibling's, your dog's - doesn't matter. if you cross someone (because in the yakuza, you don't take anyone's shit, and your actions always have consequences), depending on how extremely, you'd better prepare to pay up. even if you try to defend yourself, one way or another, someone's going to bleed.
if you're lucky, they might not end up dead. or they will, if you want them to.
all his life, kuzuryuu has learned, studied, witnessed, sometimes even employed these principles. he sees how effective they are, and so he accepts them without question. this, he reasons, is the way life is for people like us. no strings, no paltry tricks, none of the garbage that comes with being a diplomat. just dishing out pain and paying in blood.
but there was one principle that he was never taught - that, with a powerful family who never pays and only collects, one wouldn't think he would have to learn. a very important principle.
he ends up learning it the hard way.
...
kuzuryuu never finds his little sister's body, and the crime scene is cleared before he gets a chance to see it for himself. but he does find the photograph that satou dumped in the trash.
the bitch vehemently denies it when he manages to corner her after school in room 1-B, just as she's packing up her things to leave. but he can see the fear clouding her eyes, especially when she spots the metal bat that he's hiding behind his back, and he knows. she's lying. this bitch killed his little sister. this bitch killed his little sister, and thought that she could get away with it. that he would actually let her get away with it. but she doesn't know that he's grown up on murder and that his world revolves around violence and revenge and that in the yakuza, when you cross somebody, you pay in blood.
he shoves her to the floor and gives her a good hard whack with the bat, right on the crown of her head, when she opens her mouth to scream. her body immediately goes limp, and he drops the bloodied sports apparatus-turned-weapon next to her and leaves without looking back. just like what she did to his little sister.
the tears don't fall until much later, in the empty silence of his dark room, buried under his covers and sobs muffled with a pillow so that nobody comes to investigate. (it's weak and unsightly for the heir to a powerful yakuza gang to cry, after all.)
when his little sister turned up dead, kuzuryuu learned that final principle that he was never taught. that in the yakuza, you have to be ready to make sacrifices. to be sacrificed. to have sacrifices.
nobody ever told him it would be so painful, though.
maybe that's why his father always told him that he wasn't cut out to be heir.
...
in the yakuza, all of your actions have consequences. in the yakuza, you pay in blood for most of them.
kuzuryuu's crying and screaming at the top of his lungs because fuck looking unsightly, this is fucking peko and he's been with her since he was a baby and now she's going to die and it's all his fucking fault! she cries, too, but there's no desperation in her tears. she's not crying because she's scared. she's crying as a release. because she's in the yakuza too, and she knows.
she accepts the consequence of her actions. kuzuryuu could never really come to terms with his. especially not now, now that he knows that because of his actions, peko's going to be executed.
in the end she faces her undignified death with dignity that could probably make his father crack a tiny smile if she were dying for him like she'd planned to instead of because of him. because she understands that in the yakuza, you have to be ready to be sacrificed. she's probably understood that since day one.
kuzuryuu's not ready to make another sacrifice, though. so he runs after her.
he gets slashed over his right eye and through the excruciating pain the last thing he remembers seeing is her horrified expression because she did that to him. and he wants to tell her don't worry, this is the consequence of my action too, i finally understand, wouldn't father be proud? he falls to the ground and all he can think of is that he wishes he could pay in his own blood for once.
but the pain of doing so doesn't lessen with repetition.
peko dies full of holes and with a serene smile, and he's glad that he loses consciousness before then.
...
saionji is glaring at him and shaking and saying that he'll never be forgiven, that he'll never have friends. she's right, of course. in the yakuza, you don't have friends. everyone is your enemy. but he knows that he's not in the yakuza anymore. (he's not even sure if he ever wants to be in the yakuza again.) he's on this godforsaken island, and here, the rules are different. here, his principles may be applicable, but they won't be forgiven. and right now, what he wants more than anything is to be forgiven.
but kuzuryuu doesn't know how to apologize. so he does what he does best, what he's always wanted to do. he simply whips out the knife hiding under his shirt and stabs himself in the stomach.
maybe he'll never be able to atone, he muses as the rest of the group panics around him and a sticky pink pool forms beneath him. after all, he only knows how to pay in blood.