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Majima would think “back here, of all places” if he didn’t know this was an inevitable scenario.
Sotenbori feels like a needle - a sharp sting at first before a numb, aching pain. It feels like time travel, as if as soon as he steps out of the taxi by the Poppo west of the Shofukucho sign, it’s 1988 again, and his legs feel like lead.
It’s 1992 again, and deep in his chest somewhere he knows things aren’t going to be ok.
It’s 2006 again, and he feels the 18-year knots wind a little tighter.
The evening sky is a rich navy, punctuated only by stars and charcoal puffs of cloud. Osaka has never been, and can never be, silent, its attention-seeking, glittering volume forever casting neon blasts into the pavement and those who tread it. This town’s not for the weak, the shy, or the quiet - entering Kansai’s screaming city of excess puts one under a spotlight, under interrogation, and Majima’s called into the hot seat once again.
He remembers their wedding day in split-second flashes of film in his mind. A quick city hall ceremony followed by a pint of piss water at some bar, his suit hanging off him as if he was a walking hanger. Her pretty little face was slathered with pink blush and silver across her eyes, her innocence and optimism about him, about everything, feeling like a knife twisting in his stomach as he rolled the ring on his finger around, its stark cold metal against his skin numbing his digits.
And yet, he loved her. He absolutely, undeniably loved her.
He loved her when she excitedly told him about songs she wanted to sing. He adored her when she hastily stumbled out of a cab in sunglasses to meet him at some hotel for a few hours together. He was smitten with her when she’d laugh at Katsuya’s shit jokes, and he let his arms cover her like a blanket when she cried at how hard it all was. To love someone, despite every odd in the universe stacked against her, and him, and how his ten years on her meant he knew somewhere in his thumping heart all along it wasn’t going to blossom. Knowing they were soulmates, that they were meant for each other, and yet the knowledge that the pain and heartbreak of separation was as predictable as the giant fugu and enormous crab’s looming, almost judgmental presence on Sotenbori Street.
He takes a drag of his cigarette as he recounts their destructive divorce, inhaling it for a little too long so that he deliberately feels a burn in his throat. Many a time has he inhaled the toxic fumes with a little too much intent - his first smoke out of the Hole was for Saejima, who Majima stayed alive for so he could be killed by his sworn brother and pay the price for a betrayal he was helplessly lured into. He smoked one outside the batting center for Haruka, a nine-year-old piece of collateral damage in his boss’ greedy schemes, and one in Club Sunshine’s back room when he had to leave his little found family behind without so much as a word.
Majima’s self-criticism has never formed thoughts in his mind, or words on paper, and even to say it came out in his fights would be a stretch, but he’s always used his burning tobacco as a cry of despair.
Makoto is long gone from Sotenbori, but Majima feels her presence as he walks by the old Hogushi Kaikan, her watch’s chime singing mockingly in his head as he swears he sees the green sign over the door. She rebuilt it from the ground up after the explosion that snatched Lee from her as quickly as he turned on the engine of the van, and Majima wonders how the hit they took from being hurled back by the blast didn’t knock any sense into either of them. They fell so close to each other, and yet so far - Makoto was whisked off to Kamurocho by Sera to meet her destiny, and Majima was dragged to a warehouse and turned into a bloody mess while listening to Sagawa talk about Mametaro.
He remembers how her watch ominously ticked in his pocket over those few days, the only thing left in one piece after Lee’s murder, and how she’d changed the straps to an aqua blue when they had their chance reunion. He briefly lets himself wonder what colour the watch is now, whoever its owner is.
Hogushi Kaikan is an office building now. He takes another extended drag of his cigarette.
He finally turns the corner of South Shofukucho, the walls not shielding him from the January air anymore. Odyssey is a new club now. The crunch of his jawbone echoes along the street as he grinds his teeth in hesitancy, the chill slipping under his eyepatch and penetrating through the scar tissue into his mind.
Closure is a privilege, Majima thinks. The people who get to have their moment in the spotlight, to say what’s on their mind so they can move on from a situation clear of all unsaid words don’t know how good they’ve got it. But, alas, he’s painfully aware, now more than ever, that life isn’t fair, and he’s one of the unlucky suckers who have to close the book on their own. The ones who’ve been deserted, split apart, or left alone to heal the wounds of the past, living every day knowing that days gone by can sneak up on them and send them spiralling, or appear in slumber to hang over their bed like a flickering lightbulb.
It’ll resurface in time.
He watches his breath disappear in wisps as he stops outside Dyna Chair, salty tears dripping from a lone swollen eye, the wind catching them and freezing his face further. The flowers in his hand feel like a bag of bricks pulling him to the ground, the crackle of the cellophane they’re wrapped in shattering his eardrums as his knees hit the pavement.
As he sets them down, gloved hands shaking, he takes the pen from where it’s nestled in the ribbon holding the bouquet together and scribbles one final letter to her on the blank card.
“私たちは試しました、 美麗.”
“We tried, Mirei.”