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Family. What a strange concept. Sure, he technically had a family. He had a mother he didn’t remember. And why would he? She died in childbirth. He had a father that cared more about what everyone around him thought than about his own son. So Saito’s concept of family was never a good one. The maids that took care of his old home were the closest thing he had and even then, his father made sure they never got too close.
And then Iris appeared. Bright and beautiful and full of hope, just like the Goddess of Rainbows she was named after. She made him feel something that up until that point in his life he had never experienced. Love.
It was still a mostly foreign concept to him, but he knew from the moment he saw her that Iris loved him. She looked at him in a way no one ever had, while promising never to leave him.
Everyone else in his life was only too happy to leave and get rid of him, but not her. And not Uru.
A brother and sister. Family he never knew he had until he was older. Family he never knew he wanted until he had them. And now he couldn’t imagine his life without his two eccentric siblings.
He smiled fondly as he watched the two sitting on the couch of the villa they currently called home. After taking care of So and Chikara, the trio had gone into hiding. Not that there was actually anything linking the three to the murders, they remained unsolved. It was more because Iris was a fairly well known idol that had just disappeared.
Well that, and the fact that Saito had left behind the bodies of Shoko Nadami and Renju Okiura. After taking a dose of PERGE and finally having his brain regulated, he did admit he felt a little bad about the two of them. Not enough to turn himself into the police, but as much as he was capable of feeling at any rate.
Uru was the only one that was able to go out with relative ease, but he still got stares wherever he went due to the half mask he wore. Lucky for them though, Uru had been siphoning money from Horadori Institute for years, placing the funds in various offshore bank accounts.
That, and Tokiko had felt so bad about her involvement she had given him access to the private jets, cars, and real estate that Naix owned around the world. The trio wanted for nothing and were able to fulfill Iris’ wish of going to both Egypt and Greece.
In fact, they had been staying in Mykonos for the last two months, enjoying the beach and everything else the island had to offer.
“What?! No! What just happened?” Iris yelled out, startling Saito.
Uru laughed loudly, throwing his head back and causing Iris to glare at him. She was shaking a handheld gaming device in his face, eyes narrowed in frustration.
“How can this be your favorite game? That was horrible! ShovelForge is way better than this!”
“Just keep playing. That’s not the only ending. But I can’t believe you got the submarine one on the first try.”
“Uh, are you ok?” Saito ventured, walking over to stand behind the couch.
“Noooooooo. I couldn’t save anyone. And I tried so hard too!”
“It gets better. Just keep trying. This was one of the few things that kept me sane all those years. Tokiko snuck this down to me one day when Chikara wasn’t around. She said I had to hide it, but she wanted me to have something to take my mind off of…everything. I guess it’s sort of nostalgic to me,” Uru said, a wistful tone to his voice.
Saito ground his teeth together, barely containing a growl. In moments like this, he could feel his old anger bubbling to the surface. PERGE had fixed his brain disorder, but his anger was also deeply engrained in his personality. “You sure we can’t kill Tokiko? She’s just as bad as Chikara.”
“No. I’ve forgiven her. She wanted to save her son. I understand why she did it. And she has apologized repeatedly.”
“I don’t see how an apology makes up for the fact that you were cut open for over twenty years and had your organs harvested like an animal. No, animals are treated more humanely than you were.”
Uru reached over and took his brother’s hand in his, squeezing it gently. “I forgive her because she did it out of love. Chikara did it because he was obsessed with his experiments and research. He never cared about Jin. He never cared about any of the children that he hurt. And that’s why he had to die.”
“Yeah, but-“
“And if it hadn’t been for him and all of his research notes, you never would have found out about me. We never would have met. I wouldn’t have you or Iris right now. I’d go through it all again to wind up here.”
“Uru!” Iris sobbed, throwing her arms around the older man. Before he could even react, she reached one hand up and grabbed the front of Saito’s shirt, throwing him off balance and half on the couch in a weird group hug.
“Iris, let go, my spine doesn’t bend that way!”
“Nope!” she yelled, squeezing two even tighter.
“Seriously! Uru, help me.”
“Ok,” his brother said simply, hooking his arm behind Saito’s back and pulling him the rest of the way on couch.
“This is not what I meant,” Saito groaned out, held oddly between his siblings, one leg stuck over the back of the couch and the other pinned under his own weight.
Iris giggled, her laughter vibrating through her body. “I love you big brothers.”
“I love you too,” Uru said, hugging the two tightly and then finally pulling back.
Iris sat back as well and turned to look at Saito, her expression expecting.
“What? You’re tolerable.”
“Sure, sure, I know you love me even if you don’t say it. I’m your favorite sister.”
“Not that hard when you’re my only sister.”
“I know fath-ummm…So discouraged showing emotion, but you don’t have to be afraid around us. We love you Saito. We’re not going anywhere,” Uru said gently.
“Exactly. Please trust us. We’ll never leave you. There is nothing you could ever do to make us walk away.”
“I…” Saito mumbled, pulling himself the rest of the way over the couch and sitting between his brother and sister.
They both looked at him with such love and adoration. Someone as imperfect and flawed as him. He was a murder. He had killed their father. Iris’ biological mother. And so many others. How could they ever look at him as anything other than a rabid animal that should be put down?
But yet they did. Uru looked at him like some sort of savior, while for Iris, he might as well have been the sun itself. They both idolized him, looking past his flaws. They could see the man he was beneath the anger and his bloody past.
And knowing all of that made him feel even more unworthy of their love. He craved it above all else, and was absolutely terrified they would leave him one day, just like everyone else. But that didn’t change the fact that he wanted their love and acceptance more than anything in his entire life.
How quickly things changed. He had been hell bent on revenge, finally focusing on Hayato Yagyu, or the man that had once been him. He planned on destroying everything the man held dear, but then his sister had managed to get him to simply walk away.
He didn’t regret it, even now, but he had to wonder if she did. She left the only mother she had ever known, her friends, and her career as an idol. She turned her back on everything, all for him.
“Hey,” Iris said firmly, poking him in the cheek. “You’re getting in your head again.”
“I’m fine.”
“No you’re not,” Uru answered. “You’ve got your ‘wallowing in guilt’ face on.”
“No I don’t.”
“You totally do. And you need to stop. You have nothing to feel guilty for. So threw us all away like trash. He never got you the help you needed for your brain disorder. He knew Uru was being used for human experimentation and as a living organ donor and did nothing. And he knew that brain cancer was hereditary on his side and that there was a chance I could end up with it. It’s better that he’s dead.
“And the same with Chikara. He was a monster. He deserved a more painful death than he got,” Iris muttered darkly.
“Just the fact that he’s dead brings me peace. I’m happy the two of you were able to help me,” Uru said softly.
“We should have done to him what he did to you. Cut him open and removed half his organs. Injected him full of unknown chemicals just to see what would happen. Rip his stupid fucking face off.”
“Iris,” Saito’s voice was firm. It wasn’t often that Iris let her anger take over, her deep resentments bubbling to the surface in an eerily dark matter. But when they did, both men felt the true depths of her hatred.
It was hard to compare this Iris, the true Iris, with her former cheerful, net-idol persona. The part she had been forced to play for so long. She still had a bit of her sunny disposition and at the end, she was also a teenager and prone to boughts of immaturity, but her darkness was just as much a part of her as the light.
It made Saito feel all that much closer to her. He had been pure darkness, stuck in a never-ending nightmare of hatred and emptiness. But when Uru had finally given him PERGE, the light that he had so desperately sought for years finally found him.
He wasn’t completely changed, not by a long shot. But he found it to be a relief that he was no longer plagued by thoughts of killing. It almost made him feel like he could live a normal life. Almost. The trio would never be able to truly settle down anywhere after all.
“Sorry, I just hate him so much. But I shouldn’t have overreacted.”
“It’s ok,” Uru’s kind voice was like honey. “We all feel the same way. But it’s over now. We don’t ever have to worry about him or So again. We’re free. The world is ours and we can do whatever we want. Let’s enjoy our lives.”
“You’re right,” Saito said, looking between his younger siblings. “We should try to enjoy ourselves. And on that note, where would you like to go next?”
“Huh?” Uru questioned.
“Where would you like to go? We can go anywhere, so where’s the one place you’ve always wanted to go above all else?”
“No, it’s your turn to choose. We went to Egypt and Greece for Iris, you should choose next.”
“I chose Mykonos. We went to Athens for Iris and while we were already in the country, I said I wanted to come here. I want you to choose. Where would you like to go?”
Saito watched his younger brother think it over, never being given the opportunity to actually choose something so important. The man had a hard time even picking foods he liked, always happy to go with whatever the other two wanted. Maybe it was too hard of a decision for Uru at this point. He probably should have thought of that before just springing the idea on him.
But, he figured they had to move soon anyway, so why shouldn’t his younger brother choose? He had been the most isolated of all, never getting out of his subterranean cell until they had rescued him. Saito desperately wanted to make his brother happy, to give him everything he never had. To give him the life he was robbed of.
“You read a lot of books over the years, right?”
Uru didn’t say anything, but nodded his head in agreement.
“Did you have a favorite?”
“It’s silly. You’ll laugh at me.”
“We won’t laugh big brother, I promise,” Iris urged.
“So tell us,” Saito said, his voice taking on an uncharacteristically softer tone. “What is it?”
Uru hesitated for a moment before finally answering, his voice not much more than a whisper. “The Phantom of the Opera.”
“The story of a young orphaned boy, half his face deformed and locked away below the Paris opera house, never allowed to leave. I can see why you would like it.”
“He just seemed so sad. And it wasn’t really his fault how he ended up like he did.”
“No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t fair at all. But, it was a very good book. I’ve read it myself. It made me really want to see the Paris opera house. Would that be something you would be interested in?”
Uru’s eyes lit up at that, letting Saito know he had hit on something big. His sweet younger brother seemed truly excited over the prospect of going to Paris, so Saito knew that would have to be their next destination.
“Paris sounds amazing!” Iris beamed. “Think of all the good food we can eat and all the things we could see! What if we actually get tickets to see an opera there? Would you like that Uru?”
“I…I would…very much.”
“Well, it’s settled then. We’ll make the arrangements and fly out soon. I think we could probably stay in Paris for at least a few months.”
Uru smiled brightly, his entire face beaming as he reached forward and pulled both Saito and Iris into another hug. Saito let the younger man do it, settling in to the embrace and finally feeling like he was where he was always meant to be. He had found his family. His reason for living. He was home.