Chapter Text
It was a real shit situation. Listening to the air conditioning hovering like a fly didn't make it any better. The dry heat under the tinted windows and a string of street noises that ranged from city murmurs to infrequent good-morning greetings.
The stillness sought to play with his sanity. He clenched his fists. A contained punch inside his body, waiting for the blow, but ultimately lost among the local chatter walking by. Continuous car engines turning on with the passing of the hours and his own sighs taking away his life and time.
His gaze wanders outside, a city that awakens, and then inside the car, the neatness of the mirage. There is a dry reddish stain on one of the seats, which the soap could not remove. He scratches it with tedium and disgust, but in the end it turns into an indifferent movement that distracts him. He looks at it, to shake off his boredom, but a blink takes him somewhere else.
And the red crawls up to his hands, his blood-covered fists, his own gasps screeching in his ears, his execution orders, and then... a bicycle bell: He returns to the car. A young woman gets on the bike and starts pedaling. He's still here. Takes another look at the apartment of that building, the same one he has been observing for a couple of hours now.
He wasn't used to this tranquility. His hands wander near his belt, searching for his gun to steady himself again. Force of habit. He rubs his eyes and shakes the images of blood and shrieks. Then he sees movement.
It's time. A door in apartment 4 on the second floor of the building opens and closes. Inui follows the guy in the gray suit. Focused, stealthy. With a non-palpable but recognizable and almost evident rush.
Matsuno Chifuyu looks both ways as he walks down the concrete stairs. He looks at the cars in the parking lot, and his gaze almost pierces through the black windows from where Inui looks, but he finds what he is looking for in another spot: a tall man, long black hair, leaning on the hood of a black Mercedes Benz. An almost motionless silhouette that had waited at least 10 minutes.
Their lips move, they are greeting each other and they both get into the front seats of the car. A few minutes pass and the adjoining stores open their doors when the car starts and makes its way into the usual morning of the neighborhood.
They leave the place. So does Inui.
A routine that he was beginning to internalize since Inui began to tail Matsuno.
This will be a simple, low profile task. Just watch. Discretion and observation. He hated that crap. I can't trust anyone else with this. Damn useless idiots who couldn't do this job and save him the trouble. This was not a job for him.
But Kisaki's orders were a knife to the neck. Sometimes a seemingly loose cannon, no direction, but in reality aimed with all the intention. His tight smile, revealing his teeth, the cracks in his skin that accentuated his malice. Inui hated looking at him because he was always holding back urges to punch him in the face.
These were Kisaki and Shiba's orders. And Shiba was all that was left from that glorious past. It was worth having the merest hint of the old days.
Inui's driver chases after the Mercedez. It has followed a mostly straight road, on a busy avenue. People walk with umbrellas to stop the passage of the breeze. The sound of the subway mixed with the phone calls, the syncopation of the train alarm.
If Matsuno had anything to do with the detentions, he was careful. Inui had started watching two weeks ago. The patterns did not change, and yet they were inconsistent. Designed to avoid something and give an appearance, with too much fragility to raise suspicions and obtain the necessary evidence.
But Inui still couldn't find what he was looking for. Scattered minimal changes and barely legible faces amidst rush and secrecy. A decipherable pattern and too easy to be about something complex like a plan to dismantle the organization.
Matsuno Chifuyu is a likely informer. He's off guard at the moment, so I can't let him know we're looking into him. It was confidential information that he didn't want to deal with. Koko shared the same alerted look with him. He knew he didn't like first-hand information either. It meant conditions. It was a kind of warning to more than one party.
Matsuno could take a bullet straight to the head as far as he was concerned. He never trusted anyone who came from the older ranks of Toman. They were parasites that had grown aimlessly. Lost without clear purposes that always led to the mention of Mikey as a shield from their failures. Their profits were next to nothing, they were bastards with no potential.
He didn't care about any of those pieces of shit. But it was an order. A threat, if seen from the right perspective. The words, soft in tone, but captivating like a subtle and corrosive venom. The years had led him to notice the poisonous nature of the high command.
You can do it, right? Inui?
The command made his stomach churn. That voice dragged on and continued to echo for hours. Even above the blows of his subordinates to a brothel owner and his own kicks settled in the stomach of the debtor.
Next morning, he remembers waking up with numb, bandaged knuckles, blood seeping through the fabric. Koko sleeping in the single chair in the room, next to an open medicine box on the nightstand. Inui contemplated the suffocating decadence amidst the luxuries, it was a replica of the scene that he lived since adolescence; the only difference was the expensive furniture and the crystal clear view of a rotting Tokyo through the window.
And then he thought –or wished he could think – about the purpose of all this, but… It wasn't the time.
This was his mission now.
Matsuno wandered through the streets once he was close to the place he wanted to reach. He'd misled anyone who wanted to pay even the slightest attention to detail. Although no passerby would dare to look at the black car disassociated from the common and legal activities of Tokyo.
Him leaving the different apartments he owned -including the one he left this morning in Roppongi- were nothing more than part of a facade to mislead the curious who stopped for a second to observe.This mechanic was not made for Inui. It was simple caution.
The crowded places were also a front or a decoy. A strategy Inui sometimes used himself, though more carefully. It could be a deal with another meth producer or some behind-the-scenes stock scam. It wasn't exactly an irregularity to see Matsuno act carefully.
What he still couldn't figure out was the presence of the other guy. There was no record of Matsuno having any siblings or other close relatives. Most of his companions were in Toman or dead. He hadn't bothered to dig any deeper into his past. It seemed like a waste of time that would complicate the already fucked up situation.
The guy was not from Toman. He knew most of the men who worked for Matsuno. This guy wielded a caution similar to Matsuno's, always alert to his surroundings but his attitude was more focused. A hint of experience, perhaps.
Arriving at the venue for this occasion –an izakaya in Ueno– they disperse among the crowd. Inui watches from the outside, still avoiding any unnecessary confrontation, as Koko suggested. Salarymen and office workers walk into and out of the place.
He waits.
He really hated waiting and stealth.
And waits minutes.
He hated staticity.
And waits hours.
His body involuntarily tenses up from drowsiness, one more blink and he sees a guy from another mob get wiped out. But the image cuts out instantly.
He really hates stillness.
Matsuno leaves the building unaccompanied. He looks around discreetly and boards the car he came in. From here, Inui knows exactly where he will go. The driver continues at an inconspicuous distance. He drives for several minutes until they arrive at a building in the heart of Shibuya.
Matsuno parks and lights a cigarette in the driveway. It doesn't take long before another car arrives and Hanagaki steps out of it. He curses his phone as Chifuyu follows him inside. Thus, the day ends for both of them.
Entering Koko's building was the only glimpse of ordinariness he had. At least that's what he thinks he would look like. Men working on servers, ringtones overlapping, talks inside meeting offices. It was exasperating in a less irritating way. It was almost like another commonplace dealing with the finances and information management of other national companies.
Money came out completely clean from here.
Koko would make all the moves from behind. Cautious. In an office that occupied an entire floor of the building, where the atmosphere changed, removed from everything earthly, floating above chaos. A perfect illusion that Inui loved to swing in. Here, his apartment and Koko's were the only places.
A glass of sake scratched his throat and made him lost himself in this place, the least hypocritical and real place.
"That bastard from the police station didn't want to talk" Koko mentioned, leaning against his desk after bringing him up to date on today's movements, a confrontation with a bank owner and the reports from his subordinates.
"At least he confirmed that there's a fucker hell-bent on investigating Toman." Koko leaned back to cross his arms and look at Inui as his head crouched down. "Apparently he's the one who arrested your men." Inui looks up. The problem had started because of that bullshit.
Mafia people arrests, nothing new. Last month two men who ran a brothel in Shibuya were arrested in an altercation with a Shinjuku faction.
Why Kisaki wanted to snoop through the trash and scum of his own kin, he didn't know. Although he loathed them, traitors were rare. There was an unbreakable bond, after all. So this could easily be one more unprecedented event, irrelevant.
Still, Inui must know if Matsuno's routine has a meaning that he has yet to perceive.
"We need a description" Inui stops looking at Koko to then look through the window of the place. Once again a dirty Tokyo adorned with opulence. His attention returns to Koko, he watches him smiling, his eyes on him. Inui could once again wonder who he is really looking at. The question always comes back. But then Koko approaches him.
"Don't worry, that fucker wasn't our only contact inside the police, we'll get the info from someone else" Koko concentrates on Inui's tie, adjusts it and slides his fingers slowly through the fabric. It almost feels like, rather than tie it, he's messing it to loosen it. Inui wants to focus on the movement right now, but he can't. He can never reconcile true calm. Much less now.
The silence betrays him. "Do you think he's our guy?" asks Koko, still adjusting an already well arranged tie. It is a hypnotizing gesture, which almost steals all his attention.
"I doubt it. He has a tattoo on his neck, he doesn't fit as a cop; not even undercover."
This was nothing more than a waste of time.
"But I don't have anything until now”. And they were bound to make sure it wasn't a waste of time.
At least in their ordinary jobs they would be busy doing something productive. Although he hated–
"Let's go get something to eat before I meet Shiba for payments report of the week" suggests Koko. They could go to Kabukicho or Shibuya's red district, and drink until they lose track of everything. He would feel Koko's skin brushing as they laugh and sway through the streets or his breath brushing his neck as he leaned back exhausted, dozing off to some club music.
Maybe he'd end up on one of Koko's couches with a sheet draped over him, hiding glances directed at Koko's sleepy serenity (if he was lucky). Or maybe he would end up in a stranger's bed, driven by compulsive desires.
Or perhaps they would be interrupted by a call that would take them to a dock where they would execute a middle-aged man, another dregs of society. And then he would use the sea waves to distract himself from the screaming and the gunshots and Koko's stern expression. That dissociated expression, far away from this place and so present at the same time, and his reflection in the blood that runs on the floor.
"I'll pass. I'm going to my apartment" There are times when he can't look at Koko directly. This is one of them. In his defense, the same thing often happens to Koko at inopportune times. And he knows exactly when it happens and why.
"I'll meet you tomorrow afternoon" he adds to defuse the situation.
Koko rests his hands on his shoulder, looking in the direction of the door. "See you tomorrow then, Inupi" and he leaves the room as he gives an order to one of his subordinates.
Inupi stays for a while. His reflection in the window glass. That silence that he has been sensing lately is here as well. It drills his head. He has to finish this job as fast as possible.
Once in his apartment, his body falls down not caring that he hasn't made it directly to his bed yet. In the armchair he has a better perspective of the coldness of the order in the place. He only comes here to sleep.
The night turns into another one of those nights where the image of his apartment is distorted by everything swimming in his mind.
Kicks and air escaping. A strong smell of tobacco from the corner. Distorted laughs. Dream or reality, sometimes he can't tell. He sees himself in the mirror with blood splattered under his eyes. This has happened too many times.
He closes his eyes.
He opens them.
He is here again, in the same apartment, accompanied by the cries of all the voices that he has silenced.
Matsuno Chifuyu leaves one of his many apartments before 8 in the morning. He tends to drive his car in the whereabouts of Ueno and Shibuya to do business with other people from Toman or other mafias. He meets the same long-haired, blonde-highlighted guy once or twice a week. The tattoo of that guy could mean that he is from another organization or maybe he used to be a gang member. But there are not enough leads yet.
Matsuno is methodical and diligent. But he could make a mistake at any moment.
And today he seems to have made that mistake when a third party approaches both of them. They meet after performing their mirror routine, and it's just an instant: a guy with black short hair, a gray suit and a stern facade; one too stoic for someone common, one that matches the determination driven under the yoke of the law.
This could be–
Matsuno Chifuyu might have a weakness if Inupi digs deep enough. He just hopes he can find it here and as soon as possible.