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kamurocho, shinjuku’s personal filth-filled hellhole, littered with criminals, thieves and the like. breeding grounds for the impressionable, indoctrinated into the ecstasy of radicalisation.
but there are good people in kamurocho. sugiura knew this much.
sugiura was one of kamurocho’s rampant filths, as much as he’d perceive it all as a necessary good of the world, the truth to the pathetically scorn eyes of the painfully simple law would argue otherwise; but sugiura’s eyes were a tinted grey, and the law was as dull as any reoccurrence of his life.
if sugiura knew one thing, it was that everyone was scum. people couldn’t stick to a side even if it meant being on the right side of history. tragedy is a trend, something everyone paints an emotional facade for just for some meaningless gain. we are all inherently gluttonous for greed.
sugiura knew a filth like none other still dragging itself around kamurocho; its form of a broken, rugged and dishevelled detective, someone who had completely let go of any standard he had. his visage, carved with eternal guilt and suffering, dulled and aged as the days passed by. this person - if an autonomous corpse could be called as much - was a man in his mid thirties, identifying pitifully as takayuki yagami, a man disgraced by the world.
filth, always gathers more filth, so when sugiura began deceiving yagami all for close association and an authoritarian glare to hover over that detective filth, it could only be so. sugiura understood well that yagami was raised by filth, and spoke to filth, only cleansing the taint of this by interacting with his other family of distinguished, accomplished and anguished lawyers. but filth is still filth.
so when sugiura’s grand plan to take yagami down to the road of capital punishment, at the hands of sugiura’s murder of an even filthier drug researcher - his intentions to paint yagami as his willingful accomplice, something the man was oblivious to - had failed, leaving yagami victorious with sugiura’s complete truth, sugiura felt nothing but the personification of throwing the towel into the bucket. done, finished and ceased.
it was over. his sister was still dead at the end of the day, shono would be the twenty-first century’s hero and yagami would know how sugiura felt. it’s a displeasure to die this way, sugiura lamented, but ultimately accepted this finale as one fitting for a failure of even filth.
being surrounded by yagami’s associates, picturesque, cartoonish and utterly offensive coloured walls which snarked mockery to sugiura’s anguish and frustrations fuelled sugiura into a complete chaos, and despite all of this, the only person he could plead to spare just brief understanding was yagami. filth truly always gathers more filth.
“you saw it too right, yagami-san! right?!”
choked sobs came from a hysteria-drowned man, hunched over on cheap, plastic junk. pained eyes, weighed down by a 3-year-long mental exhaustion, and thoughts of berating cruelty that aimed to crush the very few fingers sugiura had gripping onto the edge of a cliff, called sanity.
yagami dictates cowardice, it’s earnest and honourable that someone would admit this much to the man who had just tried to send him to the chopping block fifteen minutes earlier. yagami’s verbal admittance of guilt turns to a psychological reading of sugiura’s intentions,
“the real reason you came to me, was deep down, you wanted to know the truth,” sugiura forces his rigid head upwards, to glare his tear-brimmed eyes at the one man he swore to never let win,
“that sound about right?”
there’s no clarity on what sugiura cries about, it’s a mixing pot of everything that’s stabbed him in the chest recently, but it’s truly mostly the fact that someone cares. someone understands. sugiura’s fictional view of yagami: a cruel, cold man, who couldn’t begin to care about emi, he proceeds with his days like only the ambition of a singular acquittal is his reason to get out of bed in the mornings.
but to hear yagami admit that he was dying? to know that he probably couldn’t get out of bed in the mornings, to know he couldn’t find surrender in his life? it was sentimental. sugiura’s own pearl, his own treasure he would fiddle with, to know there was worth in his life. it’s then that sugiura feels it, a distant feeling of belonging amongst the individuals in the room, and sugiura revelled in newfound hope of yagami’s own design.
upon immense self-reflection, as the months went by, sugiura accepts that he’d always cared about yagami. it was for that reason, back in the secret lab, that sugiura softened his tone with yagami, mumbling sweet words of ‘yagami-san’ at any possible chance, just to ease his own guilt and yagami’s own feelings.
talking to yagami, after they’d closed the ad-9 case of the rest of their lives, was one of slight discomfort but a necessity if sugiura wanted to bask in the light and hope that yagami offered him so generously, so with invitations and pure intentions this time around, sugiura brings yagami to tender.
tender’s interior arrangements produced feelings of homeliness and relaxation, it’s a small bar, but it’s filled with the biggest smiles around. sugiura wished for a place like that, somewhere where the lighting was warm and the atmosphere warmer. but nonetheless, shrugs the thought off and places himself upon a bar stool, waiting for yagami to arrive, and he does, just five minutes later.
“hey sugiura, you didn’t order yet?” yagami ogles the empty space in front of sugiura, glassless and drink-less, sugiura swirls himself about, and welcomes yagami with a soft smile,
“i was waiting for you, yagami-san.” yagami walks over to the chair next to sugiura and sits himself down, with a slight smile.
“did you want to talk to me about something?” yagami questions sugiura, it’s spoken in a way that almost sounds like genuine concern, as if sugiura was in some form of trouble, sugiura brushes it off simply accepting that yagami just cared about him and was cautious after sugiura received a bullet to his abdomen, which was unpleasant but yagami did everything in his power to make his recovery swift. sugiura faces yagami meaningfully, with indication of his full transparency with his words.
“yagami-san, i’m sorry for what i did to you. i never really got to apologise for lying to you, for trying to kill shono in front of you, because you wanted to carry on with it all, you knew what i wanted deep down all this time and i couldn’t begin to understand why’d you do something like that.” sugiura looks a little ashamed, his eyes facing away, but yagami just smiles, and says:
“look at me, sugiura, to anyone else, what you did was wrong, but i could understand that much. i spent years believing okubo murdered my career as a lawyer, as well as emi-chan, and i hated him for it, for having the guts to say he was innocent and yet, after all this time, he was really innocent. you were the same, sugiura, you believed i’d killed your sister indirectly and you hated me, i didn’t mind, if you needed someone to hate, it had to be me.” yagami smiles a somber smile, it’s far from hollow, but instead packed with forgiveness and comprehension, which sugiura sort of tears up a little at, hiding his face once more.
“yagami-san, i’m sorry this is.. stupid.”
“it’s okay to cry, sugiura. i know i did.”
yagami’s hand wraps around sugiura’s hands, placed in wall formation to hide his grief, and moves them away, unveiling sugiura’s tear stained face, he’s crying but this time it’s crystal clear as to why: somebody cares about sugiura after so long, they don’t care about his abilities, his wit or his looks, but really what he’s endured. yagami knows that sugiura’s really in no state to drink, and just orders two cokes for them each, to sip on here and then, which masuda happily obliges to, before asking if sugiura was alright, yagami nods his head as he scoots a little closer to sugiura and holds him in his arms, sugiura’s face hidden in yagami’s neck, still crying while trying to wonder why yagami cares so much. yagami cradles sugiura’s head reassuringly, with little mutters of ‘it’s alright’ and letting sugiura know that his drink was there, paid for by yagami.
after a while, sugiura lifts his head up, eyes still a little damp, and whispers a ‘thank you, yagami-san’, before taking sips of his drink, just resting in their mutual silence, it’s a sweet feeling and a sweeter desire to cling onto yagami tightly, and to not let go.
“we don’t have to stay here, sugiura, i’m fine with going back to the office, i’ll make you a cup noodle and a coffee and you can stay there for the night?” yagami suggests, it’s a great suggestion and one sugiura takes gratefully, so when both drinks are done with and paid for, the two men travel back to the office and sugiura throws himself onto yagami’s couch, looking exhausted as ever, while yagami boils hot water for two coffees and two cup noodles before reaching above his array of paperwork shelves to reach a cardboard box, inside is a futon, a blanket, a small pillow and some old shirts and sweatpants that yagami spares for sugiura,
“they might be a little big.. sorry about that.” yagami brings them over to sugiura, who takes them happily without hesitation and starts getting dressed on the other side of the room while yagami’s pre-occupied with following the cup noodle instructions.
when all’s done, yagami and sugiura are comfortably sat on yagami’s dual couch, ready to watch something on his laptop,
“i might fall asleep, so you can just change it if you’d like.” yagami indicates modestly in which sugiura nods at. yagami though, hits gold and has a better idea:
“sugiura, what if you just.. lay on top of me? that way you could keep watching and i could sleep.”
sugiura is immediately flustered, after all, nobody could say something as abnormal as this so calmly. but a good proposition is for the taking, he thought.
“sure, if you’re comfortable with it, yagami-san.” sugiura crawls over onto yagami, who shows no signs of discomfort and simply smiles at sugiura, who’s resting his head in yagami’s neck once more. eventually finding the courage to wrap his arms around yagami, as they both ultimately doze off to sleep.