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If Kiryu tried to say goodbye to everything and everyone he’d loved in Kamurocho, he’d end up never leaving. He had to make a shortlist: people who had helped him, places that had saved his life.
The door to Serena still opened for him. The place had regathered its dust over the past couple months of peace; when he switched on some of the lights, he could see it coating every surface like ash. Every time he’d been here since it had lost its heart and soul, he hadn’t had the luxury of brooding. It was about time he gave it a proper sendoff.
He sat in his usual spot at the bar. The ashtray he’d used most recently was right-side up, still holding a crumpled scrap of paper and filter in a pile of cold ashes. He lit up a fresh cigarette. It wasn’t exactly incense, but this suited the place better anyways.
He hadn’t been able to say goodbye to Reina, returned to her family’s grave out in the countryside. It made the whole thing feel oddly distant and open-ended, even if the knowledge of it still hurt and he still sometimes saw her bleeding out in nightmares. When he had brought Kaoru by, he had half expected the lights to be on for him and a drink to be waiting.
He had spent so much time here, with Nishiki, with Yumi. It was as much home to him as Sunflower had been. The people he cared about most had followed him here, had spent as many hours here laughing and talking as they had spent away. That had made Reina a part of the family, too. All of them were gone now. Only the house was left - haunted, but comforting in a way that defied conscious control. It was still the first place he ran to when he needed refuge, even if it only welcomed him as a silent ghost of its former self. It still smelled like a part of his life he couldn’t get back. Something of himself was buried here, too.
If he was really going to start fresh, he had to let it go.
He breathed out a cloud of smoke. His cigarette had burned down nearly all the way, so he stubbed it out. Emptied the ashtray into the communal trashcans below the stairs. There were rags and a still-working sink behind the bar. He got to work. The dead couldn’t clean their own headstones; that was the responsibility of the living.
An hour later, it was still far from sparkling, but it was serviceable, the tables and chairs no longer choked with dust and cobwebs, gleaming just enough under the lights to suggest the joys and sorrows they had been host to. Kiryu pressed his hands together and closed his eyes for a moment just long enough to say thank you. Then he was turning off the lights, locking the door, and leaving Serena to whatever its future might hold. His lay elsewhere. In a few days, a plane would carry him as far from this place as he could go while remaining technically in the same country. He didn’t plan to look back anytime soon - only forward.