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Somehow it made little sense why Hanayanagi would insist his children sit in during meetings with important business partners. The dealings were so crucial they were only ever held after hours once the school had been closed for the night.
Men would filter in through the back door with only the moon to light their way, settling around a kotatsu with the shoji doors securely closed.
Mahjong tiles would be set out with tea and snacks, and the group would share whispered words over their game.
Izou was young at the time, but he felt the uncomfortable atmosphere all the same. He could keenly sense the heavy air and hear the voices that were too loud in the room despite the fact each syllable was uttered in a whisper. He saw the shifting eyes and tightly wrapped parcels passing hands beneath the kotatsu. They sat with a posture that said if they were caught, the consequences of their actions would be damning.
Whatever his father was mixed up in, it was something he shouldn’t have been doing.
Izou, curious in his ignorance, questioned his mother in regards to his father’s friends. It never occurred to him that it wasn’t something he was permitted to ask about.
“Your father works very hard for us,” she stated simply as she took a comb through Izou’s black hair. “It would be best that you not ask such questions regarding his business dealings beyond your daily lessons.”
So she knew what was going on after all; why Hanayanagi carried himself with so much paranoia in his dark eyes. He was always so cautious and careful. With the daylight he was an attentive and loving father, but come nightfall, his demeanor changed on axis. As if the man he showed the sun was completely different from the man he showed the moon.
Izou was instructed to sit in the room quite soon after the night-time meetings began. He knelt beside the door with closed fans waiting on his lap and his hands folded on top of them. To his left was his younger brother Kiku, who held a shamisen that echoed a soothing melody as small fingers pressed the strings and drew the bachi across them.
In the past it was his mother who played the shamisen beside him, but once Kiku had been versed in the instrument, she’d given the spot up in favor of retreating to a more secluded room while her husband worked. Leaving her children to the will of suspicious men who certainly weren’t there for anything honorable.
“Where’s the entertainment tonight then, Hanayanagi?” The question from an older gentleman was what spurred his father that night.
He offered a smile. “Naturally it’s waiting patiently for us.” The smile faded and dark eyes moved to where Izou and Kiku were seated.
Izou stood at the silent order, flicking open both fans as Kiku moved the bachi lower to guide his brother through a dance he’d walked hundreds of times. The men began to laugh around the table, clapping their hands. As if watching a child perform a dance so cherished to his culture was a joke to them.
It always made Izou feel absolutely debased. Nothing more than an item for depraved men to gawk over while scheming money-making ventures that would have landed them in prison for laundering.
He was always told that the dances he practiced were an heirloom of his family, of his very blood, so having that be exploited to make bad men happy made him feel ill. It was even worse that his younger sibling was being made to entertain. If it were just Izou alone, he wouldn’t mind, but Kiku was even younger than him; an entirely innocent child.
If Izou could do nothing else, he wanted to at least protect Kiku.
“What’s next?” The words floated over Izou’s head as he snapped his fans closed with a curt bow. “Where are those pistols? I want to see him shoot the lantern out again!”
“No, I have a better idea!” A man stood from the kotatsu with a plum in hand, passing Izou without offering him a single glance.
Izou turned sharply to watch him pick Kiku from the floor and drag him to the center of the room. Izou reached a hand out, mouth opening to demand the man stop. A hand came around his other wrist, lifting his arm above his head and squeezing so hard he flinched, looking up in shock to see his father was holding him.
The glare he was giving Izou made his mouth dry up, knees knocking and mouth snapping closed. Hanayanagi gave a nod, slipping a heavy pistol into Izou’s hand before turning him with a firm hand on his shoulder.
The other man had stopped Kiku, who was hugging the shamisen with a bewildered expression.
“Let’s see him shoot this,” the man said, balancing the plum on top of Kiku’s head.
“What if he misses?” One of the men still at the table slapped his palm down with a guffaw. “He’ll blow out the skull!”
Izou felt immediate panic at the implication while the rest of the men laughed. Hanayanagi dug his fingers into his son’s shoulder.
“My son has never missed a shot yet,” he boasted; he seemed to hold no concern over the threat to Kiku’s life.
“Let’s make a gamble on it. I’m bored with tiles.” The man who’d dragged Kiku to the center of the room pulled a money pouch from his sleeve. “I’ll gamble your son blows this little shamisen player’s skull apart.”
Izou felt his father’s hand press deeper into his shoulder as the full group began to murmur agreement. They set money pouches on the center of the kotatsu. Izou caught up to the situation as his father bent at the waist to get closer to Izou’s ear.
“Don’t miss,” he ordered, then left his son to instead sit at the kotatsu with his companions.
Izou struggled to swallow around the lump in his throat. This wasn’t the first time he’d been asked to shoot at a target for the entertainment of these men — he’d been doing it for so long now that he’d gotten quite good at using pistols — but this was the first time they’d ever added such a ridiculous stipulation.
This was the first time they’d ever put Kiku at the other end of the gun.
He was meant to shoot the plum, but what if he missed?
His hand was suddenly trembling as he lifted the weapon, wide eyes locked with Kiku’s. A moment passed between them, Izou swore all noise had ceased though he could still tell the men were cheering and bargaining.
After a moment, Kiku blinked, the confused expression softening and a smile replacing it. Gentle music from the shamisen started up again as Kiku plucked the strings, eyes shutting, the smile still firmly in place. Hanayanagi’s friends seemed delighted.
Izou took a breath as he focused on his brother. Despite the situation, Kiku trusted him implicitly. Enough to close his eyes and play a sweet melody to calm Izou’s nerves. That, more than anything else, emboldened Izou enough to narrow his eyes and squeeze the trigger.
The plum atop Kiku’s head exploded. Applause echoed through the ring in his ears.
There would be other times the men would balance something inanimate atop Kiku’s head and hassle Izou into shooting it.
Izou became even more skilled at using guns after that, because they weren’t just a form of entertainment any longer. If he missed a shot, the consequences would be far worse than his father’s partners huffing about lost bets.
Izou couldn’t stand it, didn’t know how much longer he’d be able to handle his father’s silent neglect and disinterest in his children’s wellbeing.
So when the samurai came to arrest Hanayanagi and the school was set aflame, Izou merely watched as fire engulfed his home. He stood in the snow with one hand clinging to Kiku’s, his lips pressed into a tight line.
He’d heard that his mother, despite her compliance, had finally reached her breaking point and brought evidence of Hanayanagi's misdeeds to the shogun. Thanks to that, both she and her husband were arrested.
As the school burned, the citizens of Ringo whispered behind their hands and shot dirty looks in Izou and Kiku's direction.
Two children who had nothing to do with their father’s crimes, untouchable simply because of their blood. It didn’t seem fair.
With no one willing to help them, Izou was at a loss of what to do. How was he supposed to take care of Kiku when he had no means to do so?
He felt a squeeze around his fingers and turned to look at Kiku, who was watching him with an uneasy look. Izou turned, smoothing a hand down Kiku’s hair to press down the flyaways.
“We’ll be alright,” he promised.
Just like before when he’d held Kiku at the end of a pistol, the worry on his little brother's face faded into an expression of confidence.
Kiku smiled with a firm nod. Izou pulled him into a hug, one hand cradling the back of his snow-wet hair and eyes shifting back to stare at the fire that unbiasedly consumed every inch of the only home Izou had ever known.