Chapter Text
There is a distinct thickness in the warm air, teeming with anticipation. A Kanto summer, no doubt.
It's what the kids favored most about summer, after all. They favored it not for swimming, not for hide-and-seek, not for ice cream dripping onto scalding pavement and the taunting laughter of makeshift siblings. It was the turning season that only meant one thing: father was coming home.
Of course, it wasn't to say that they disliked the other adults working for Sunflower; there was just a particular something about Kazama that mounted him as the common father. Ask any one child, and they would agree.
Kazama seemed to resonate a frequency that connected them. Tragedy was their language, and he was more than fluent in dialect. All the time he had to spare was spent with them, every resource he could find he spent on them.
All the same, it wasn't enough. It was plenty for the children, of course; they were easy to please. It was not enough for Kazama.
It was an incessant hum. Haunting, really. It trailed his steps as he walked and burrowed itself in his eardrum. It was heard above all else. It sings to him. It says;
You administer your ruin.
You walk amongst the dead.
Executioners dispose their bleeding hearts.
Your own will strike you down.
Kazama knows this, he assures the wicked thing. He pays his penance when he looks into their eyes. Their losses incomprehensible. Their losses are his own.