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Gau was a liability.
He learned of his special status the day the glint of steel turned toward him. In that moment, it was apparent. There was nothing Gau could do to defend himself. He was destined for no more than the mayfly. A brief smear upon the surge and fall of humanity, soon to be forgotten.
In the moment of his imminent death, he accepted this truth. Welcomed it. Was perplexed, even, when a sword stayed the death blow.
He had thought his would-be assassins had been death personified, but that was before he saw the elegant arcs of his savior’s blade, the blood flowing a clean, pure red from his would-be murderer’s throat. All of it was done in one clean swoop, like the swirl of a dancer’s step or the flight of birds. Natural, intrinsic, and mesmerizing.
Shimizu Raikou was Gau’s opposite in every way. Strong where Gau was weak. Important where Gau was nothing.
Still, if nothing was all Gau could give, Gau still owed that much to Raikou.
“Who are you?” Raikou demanded with annoyance when Gau had followed him from the site of the slaughter, three miles down the road, and clearly had no intention of stopping. His blade stilled at Gau’s throat.
Hours ago, Gau would have flinched in fear. But now he was a walking dead-man, alive but for Raikou’s grace. Ghosts had no fears.
“A liability,” was the only answer he had to give.
To his surprise, Raikou sheathed his blade. “Well, just as long as you’re something useful…”
***
Gau was a liability.
He’d known it before, but it didn’t really become obvious until the first time he’d gone on a mission with Raikou.
At first, Gau hadn’t even considered the idea. After all, he didn’t know a thing about how to fight, let alone ninja techniques.
It had all started, innocently enough, with Gau just trying to be useful. If Raikou had a need, Gau would try to fill it. Raikou’s place was a pigsty, so Gau scrubbed it until it shone.
Raikou just blinked when he saw the improvement. And Gau still insisted it was an improvement, even if Raikou was unimpressed.
Instead, Raikou had said with a yawn, “Hey, where’d all my stuff go?”
Next, Gau had tried doing something about the more atrocious entities in Raikou’s dresser (which were now actually in Raikou’s dresser instead of all over the floor, thank you very much).
“Where’s my plaid shirt?” Raikou asked the next day.
Gau’s eye twitched. “Plaid is a crime against nature.”
“But it was pink, orange, and yellow – my three favorite colors!”
Gau’s eye twitched more.
“Well, at least I still have my polka-dot shorts…” Raikou opened the next drawer down.
And Gau suffered the horrifying realization that Raikou had intended to wear those two monstrosities together.
Gau had mostly given up on trying to impose order on Raikou’s insanity at that point. Although he still refused to let their apartment turn back into an unholy mess.
And then one day Gau had being cleaning up Raikou’s email—“Snooping,” Raikou insisted—just to keep Raikou’s account from collapsing into complete chaos—“Snooping”—because heaven knew Raikou would never check his messages on his own—“Snooping!”—and there were over two thousand messages in Raikou’s inbox, for crying out loud!
“Call it whatever you like, it’s still snooping.”
Gau glared at Raikou. “At least I don’t have fourteen messages, all flagged as ‘urgent,’ from some guy named Hattori, none of which I’ve replied to.”
Raikou paused in flipping through his magazine from where he was lounging on the couch. “Oh. Oops,” he said sheepishly.
“What are these anyway?”
“The boss.”
Gau blinked at him in disbelief and opened the most recent.
I need your full report on the Shiratori matter IMMEDIATELY.
The previous six messages in the chain said approximately the same thing, but in more understated terms.
“You didn’t even submit your report?” Gau asked. “To the boss?”
“I sent it.” Raikou was flipping uncaringly through his magazine again.
Gau finally got back far enough the e-mail exchange to find Raikou’s ‘report.’
There dead. easy. Gimme something less boring next time.
Gau resisted the urge to bang his head on the keyboard. “From now on, I’m writing your reports.”
After three lengthy, painstaking attempts at prying details out of Raikou post-mission – “It was boring,” “I won,” and “Dunno?” respectively – Gau decided that he was accompanying Raikou to get his report firsthand.
And that was how he learned what a liability he was.
The plan, Gau had informed Raikou repeatedly on the way into the Ichiya complex, was for Gau to stay hidden and out of the fighting. “Yeah, yeah,” Raikou had said, which Gau hadn’t considered an encouraging sign.
Sure enough, approximately twenty seconds later, Gau was shrieking, crouched down on the floor while knives and swords and bullets flew over his head in rapid succession.
Raikou spun around him in elegant, graceful circles, halting dozens of projectiles that already should’ve killed Gau twenty times over. Every so often, one of the enemies would slip into range, and blood slid down Raikou’s blade, almost as if in slow motion. Stray droplets sprayed out and dappled Gau’s cheek.
There a sort of insane calm that came over Gau from having nearly died so many times. Almost casually, he reached up to smear the droplets from his cheek.
Later, while Gau stared blankly at the computer screen before him, Raikou sneaked up behind him and suggested, “That was pretty fun, huh?”
Gau turned slowly to face him.
“You’ve got blood.” Raikou wiped a few dried brown flakes from Gau’s cheek.
It wasn’t until two hours later that that sunk in fully and Gau blushed.
***
Gau was a liability. But he was determined to be a persistent one.
“You don’t have to do this,” Raikou finally said. “You’re not from the world of Nabari.”
“That’s exactly why I do have to do this,” Gau insisted. “I’m the only one who knows what you’re doing for the surface world. I need to chronicle it.”
“You need to relax more.” Raikou seemed to be braiding his own hair into some sort of bizarre spiral. The air conditioning was broken, so neither of them had been doing much moving lately.
Gau couldn’t relax, though. He wouldn’t have said that he had been particularly laid-back before, but now that his eyes had been opened to the real world that hid just beneath the surface, everything was different. He’d been awakened into something amazing, something great. He had to have a purpose. Why else had someone like him been given such a rare, sacred glimpse?
By their third mission, Gau was fairly sure Raikou was trying to get him killed on purpose.
By the seventh, Gau had to concede that Raikou just wanted him to be attacked, not killed.
“I know you’re doing it on purpose,” Gau grumbled as he fussed over the stove that night. He’d gotten a lot better at being unfazed by near-death experiences.
“It’s more fun that way.” Raikou was busy ruining his appetite for dinner by shoving mochi into his mouth at an alarming rate.
Gau didn’t even dignify that with a response. “You’re still eating this. Even if it makes you sick.” He’d learned quickly enough not to back down to Raikou’s mercurial whims.
Behind Gau, the sound of rapid chewing stopped.
“You should give up,” Raikou said after a lengthy pause.
Gau spun on him, frilly apron and all, chopsticks in hand. “I’ve seen what you call ‘reports.’ How are the Kairoshu supposed to achieve their goals without accurate intelligence on their enemies?”
Raikou paused and looked at Gau, almost as if really noticing him for the first time. “Why would you care about Kairoshu’s goals?”
“I am Kairoshu now.” Gau brandished his chopsticks in Raikou’s face. “I am dead without you. So that makes me yours.”
Raikou’s eyes crossed slightly when he looked at Gau’s chopsticks from only inches away. “You really need to relax more,” he amended his earlier assessment.
“The world of Nabari has given me life. Whatever worth my life has is for Nabari. And, believe me, you need an intermediary.” Gau rolled his eyes at the green, zebra-patterned boxers Raikou was wearing and returned to the sizzling vegetables over the stovetop.
“You’re not going away, are you?” Raikou finally sighed.
Gau froze for a moment. He hadn’t even realized that Raikou had been waiting for him to. Maybe this, however small it was, was something he could give back. No matter what – through the blood and fighting and horrors that the surface world never knew – Gau could stay constant, an outside observer of all that Raikou achieved.
“Eat,” he said instead and set Raikou’s plate on the table before him.
For the first time, Raikou met his gaze head on, like he had finally really caught Raikou’s attention.
***
Gau was a liability.
It was never more obvious than the first time he met Hattori. Even Raikou had thought for a moment that Gau was beyond saving this time.
One didn’t merely walk up to Hattori and demand a raise, a choice of assignments, and a vote in determining the Kairoshu’s missions in the first place. Honestly, Raikou hadn’t even really cared much about any of those things before. True, he was often bored with his assignments. But he had long since lost the right to decide such things.
Gau, however, would not be put off.
One of Hattori’s employees seemed a trigger-happy type and immediately had a gun pointed to Gau’s temple when Gau’s temper inevitably blew. Gau just put his hands on his hips in response.
“Raikou is the best assassin you have. You treat him like an outsider. Like you can’t trust him. But he’s proven himself to you time and time again. And he deserves to be treated better!”
Even Hattori looked a bit stunned to have a little, ordinary human mouthing off at him so self-righteously.
“It’s what’s just,” Gau insisted. “And what good are the Kairoshu to the surface world, if you don’t use your powers for justice?”
Hattori’s lips tensed, and Raikou winced in anticipation of the death blow. Gau, however, didn’t even blink.
Then, Hattori’s expression relaxed and he conceded, ever so slightly, “Maybe someone from the surface world has something to teach the world of Nabari, after all.”
It was the closest thing to approval that their unconventional partnership would ever get.
“And at least he knows how to write a proper report,” Hattori added, and waved all the weapons pointing at Gau aside.
Raikou got the raise, too. And he presumed Gau got the rest, although he’d never bothered to ask when Hattori himself had conceded to let a mere human into his inner circle.
***
Gau was a liability.
Because Raikou was starting to think that he might actually trust Gau.
Raikou had never thought he’d trust anyone again, not after watching his own family turn on each other in an orgy of blood.
But somehow Gau had gone from an amusing curiosity (and occasional challenge – defending an innocent required a surprising amount of finesse) to a seamless part of Raikou’s existence. Despite all logic, Gau hadn’t run screaming from the world of Nabari, even when it had nearly claimed his life. He hadn’t run screaming from Raikou, either, even though Raikou had slain dozens right before his eyes.
“I understand what’s necessary to protect my world,” was all Gau said when Raikou insinuated as much.
What Gau didn’t realize was just how exceptional he was, how he was one in a million who not only saw the world of Nabari but fully understood how it integrated subtly into every facet of surface-world society.
“You wouldn’t say that if you knew who I really was,” Raikou challenged.
Gau snorted. “What’s gotten into you all of a sudden?”
With the pseudo-trust that had been rippling in Raikou’s subconscious, it almost came out. That wound was buried deep inside him, and he couldn’t stop prodding it and reopening it again and again. But, in the end, Raikou didn’t have Gau’s bravery.
Instead, Raikou went to face Raimei alone and let Gau learn all of the Shimizu clan’s secrets from another’s mouth.
To tell the truth himself would have been a liability, and after all that Raikou had endured over the years, Gau was one liability Raikou couldn’t afford.
***
Gau was a liability.
Raikou had always known that Gau wasn’t of Nabari. But, before, Raikou had always been able to protect Gau. Seeing him like this, still and pale in his hospital bed, perhaps never to awake, brought Gau’s status as a surface-worlder into stark relief.
Raikou had never really thought of it in those terms before: just how different they were. Most saw Raikou as strong and Gau as weak, but Raikou knew the truth. Gau had given everything of himself to Raikou, and Raikou…
Just maybe Raikou was finally ready to try the same.
It would require a miracle to wake Gau up, the Kairoshu doctors said. It would take uncovering secrets buried so deep in the world of Nabari that they were but whispers in the wind.
Raikou knew that he had no choice but to seek every last one of them out.
***
Gau was a liability.
Before, Raikou was a ghost. Kin-slayer, assassin, the object of his own sister’s revenge. One day, Raimei would surpass him, and Raikou would have been no more.
Before, Raikou didn’t care. He almost welcomed his fate.
Now, however, Gau had made him want to live. Raikou hadn’t stood for anything after his own family betrayed him. But now Raikou had no choice, because those who had saved Gau had saved Raikou as well.
Before, Raikou was a ghost. Now, he wanted to see another day, just to see what snit Gau would get into. Or to see Gau blush at inappropriate moments. Or watch the way Gau slept with complete innocence after reorganizing their apartment for the third time that week.
The final battle was upon them, and for the first time, Raikou thought past the fight. He thought of peaceful, bucolic moments spent doing absolutely nothing. He thought of other things, too, and how much those would make Gau blush and how appropriately.
“I won’t forgive you, if you don’t return,” Gau practically growled at him.
And, as strange as it was, that was what made Raikou go into battle afraid for the first time since the Shimizu massacre all those years ago.
Raikou’s liability, indeed.
***
Gau was a liability.
He had told Raikou as much the first time they’d met, and it was true.
He was Raikou’s conscience, soul, and reason for living.
He was Raikou’s greatness weakness, too, and Raikou would move heaven and earth for him.
Some day, he would be the end of Raikou.
And, sitting together in peace for the first time in what must have been eternity, their hands barely brushing in an unspoken promise of all their lives to come, Raikou wouldn’t have it any other way.