Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When the plane touches down, Miyuki makes a beeline out through the concourse, bypassing baggage claim altogether. The only bag he has for this journey is the briefcase already dangling from his hand and despite its appearance, its contents consist of little else besides a single change of clothes. There's no reason to bring more, when Miyuki is on business.

It felt a little strange, back home, packing his sweats into the case like they were contraband. And it isn't as if Miyuki is ashamed of his wardrobe. But he has to put on a good face when acting in an official capacity, and the weight of the suit jacket across his shoulders is beginning to feel like too much of a burden after the flight alone.

The sooner he gets this done, the sooner Miyuki can change into his sweats and catch his flight home.

It's the sort of job where either he does it or he doesn't, no mistakes, and the people Miyuki works for won't put him up in another city if they want him to work fast. That's fine. If there's one thing Miyuki Kazuya can be counted on for, it's efficiency in his operations.

The car is waiting for Miyuki outside the airport, waiting to take him to the baseball diamond.

It's not an official meeting, not exactly. Miyuki has never spoken to Furuya Satoru before in his life, and to his knowledge, no one from Seidou has told Furuya about him, either. But the way this stuff works, someone will have dropped Furuya a line, a mention, some form of little comment just to ensure he stays where he's meant. Miyuki has never spoken to Furuya before, but he's done his homework, and the idea of needing to keep Furuya on a diamond with a mound seems laughable.

Maybe Miyuki will even get to catch today. He hasn't done that in a while. Not that leather shoes and a new suit are ideal for playing baseball, but it isn't as if Miyuki feels any great personal attachment to this uniform.

The car slows to a stop outside the stadium, which is uncannily quiet for any sort of structure with that many seats. It seems that besides Furuya, not many people come out this way any more. Miyuki asks the driver to wait, then swings around to the stadium's front gate. His footsteps echo as he walks beneath the stands, out to where he can catch a glimpse of the diamond.

Furuya is easy to identify. He's the only man on the field, scuffing his shoes on the dirt where he stands on the mound alone. Even from where Miyuki waits, he can see Furuya's fingers curled tight around the baseball pressed against his palm, but he makes no move to do anything with it. Just wraps his fingers around it, turning it over and over inside the grasp of his hand.

Miyuki steps out from beneath the shadow of the stand and makes his way across the field. He has to pass the plate to do it, can feel the exact moment concrete gives way to grass, to dirt, to a reality that Miyuki hasn't known so well of late. There are other things Seidou wants him to catch, these days.

"It must not be a lot of fun, playing baseball by yourself," he says, as soon as he's within a few steps of Furuya.

For his part, Furuya stands his ground, not quite looking at Miyuki. He's staring back at the plate, as if imagining the crouch of the catcher who ought to be there, imagining the presence of other players all around him as he performs his role in the thick of a game. Miyuki knows there hasn't been so much of that for Furuya in a while, either. His research has been thorough. It's strange, that Seidou has bothered to send him of all people — for someone as hungry as Furuya, as eager to throw himself into the game as Furuya is rumored to be, it seems Seidou could have gotten by with far less persuasion.

"Hey," Miyuki says, when Furuya makes no move to acknowledge him. "Are you ignoring me?"

"What?" Furuya says after a moment, his gaze focusing slowly in on Miyuki's face. "I wasn't listening."

"No kidding," Miyuki says. "So is that ball for show, or do you maybe want to play catch with me?"

Furuya looks Miyuki up and down, his gaze sliding from Miyuki's face all the way down to the polished tips of his shoes, then back up to treat Miyuki with a blank-faced stare, like maybe he's trying to figure out if he misunderstood the question.

"You don't look dressed to catch my pitch," Furuya says, after a minute.

"Toss it underhand," Miyuki says, with an easy, joking smile. "Or lend me some gear, and I'll do it properly."

Furuya stares at Miyuki for another long minute. Miyuki flashes Furuya another lazy, winning smile. They both head back into the stadium, venturing through its underbelly in pursuit of the old gear Miyuki was sure would be around somewhere. If it hadn't been there before, his organization would have made sure it found its way there today.

When they head back out, it's to the bullpen.

"I'm only offering because I think you're going to talk to me," Miyuki says, as he walks past Furuya to assume the too-familiar crouch. "So talk to me."

Furuya doesn't say anything, which is about what Miyuki expects. He's proving a tough nut to crack, difficult to get a good read on, and it's sinking in for Miyuki just why the Seidou organization chose to send him. No one else dealt with bullheaded types better than Miyuki Kazuya.

So he holds up his glove, and lets Furuya throw him his pitch. The sound of baseball hitting glove is one of the sweetest sounds in the world to Miyuki, and few impacts have sounded nicer to him than that of Furuya's ball striking his leather-covered palm. His arm stings a little from the force of receiving it, and he realizes, he may be rustier than he thinks.

He transfers the ball to his other hand, and tosses it back.

Furuya makes a few more throws, and they get into a steady rhythm of it for a minute or ten. Miyuki is casual about tossing the ball back, always taking his time, always making certain Furuya has to wait even just that littlest bit before he can throw again. The distance between them isn't so great as to hide the frustration on Furuya's face, his brows drawing down in confusion every time Miyuki is so needlessly slow.

Miyuki calls it off after ten tosses. He stands up, the baseball still cupped in his palm, and flashes Furuya a grin which Furuya appears far less than thrilled to catch sight of.

"Feeling a little better?" Miyuki asks, pretending he hasn't noticed Furuya's irritation at having their little two-man practice cut short.

"Catch more for me," Furuya says, blunt, to the point. "I wasn't done."

"Oh, I can't," Miyuki says. "Like I told you, I'm offering because I think you're going to talk to me — and you are. I have places to go, but hey—"

He tosses Furuya the ball, from just a few feet away. Furuya seems so startled by this that it slips right through his fingers, dropping into the dirt. Miyuki can't help but laugh, a loud bray of mirth he punctuates by clapping Furuya on the shoulder.

"Hey," he says again. "If you consider coming with me, maybe I'll catch for you again."

"Are you a recruiter?" Furuya asks, slowly, suspiciously. "Someone spoke to me, before you came. But he didn't sound like a recruiter. You don't sound like a recruiter, either."

"Oh, I could be," Miyuki says with a shrug. "Depends who you think I'm recruiting for."

Furuya is silent a moment, waiting. When he realizes Miyuki isn't going to speak up on his own, he prompts, "Then who are you recruiting for?"

"Seidou," Miyuki declares, with his cheekiest grin yet.

"The yakuza?" Furuya breathes out. "That Seidou?"

"Hey!" Miyuki says. "I guess you're brighter than you look! So, what do you say? Wanna play another game of catch, on Seidou's pitch? I hear there are a lot of things you could offer us."

This time, the silence draws out much longer than before, long enough that even Miyuki is struggling not to go ahead and break it. Then Furuya shakes his head, and scoops the ball up from the dirt.

"If you have a good field, and you'll catch my pitch, I'll do it," Furuya says.

"Excellent!" Miyuki replies, throwing an arm across Furuya's shoulders and using it to steer him back out of the bullpen. "So lemme grab you a few things from my briefcase, and get me out of these clothes, because let me tell you, things are about to get much more exciting."

Miyuki stands outside the Tokyo Dome, indulgently rocking back on his heels as Furuya stares up at it with a look of purest wonderment. He's only known the guy just outside twenty-four hours, but Miyuki is already getting the sense that this is something Furuya does often, this slow, sensing sort of processing. He can work with it. He just can't tolerate it forever.

"C'mon, big guy," he says, patting Furuya twice on the shoulder. "The inside's twice as interesting."

That gets Furuya's attention, and he allows himself to be led inside. They make slow progress, Furuya looking around so much that his footsteps drag and so Miyuki is forced to constantly glance over his shoulder, darting little looks back at Furuya to make sure he hasn't been left behind. The dome itself is a grand building, four levels tall and cupped around the baseball field itself like a magnificent protective shell. But Miyuki isn't interested in the stands, or the upper levels. They're going lower.

"Come on," he says again, jerking his head toward a flight of stairs leading down. "The Baseball Hall of Fame is down here, bet you wanna see that."

Furuya nods enthusiastically, and suddenly he's a bit too close on Miyuki's heels. Miyuki speeds up, taking the stairs two at a time with a cheerful skip in his step, all too happy to be back on his home turf. He's played in the Dome before, during that distant part of his life when he'd gone pro. It feels very far away, now. But the Tokyo Dome remains familiar, because Miyuki knows who the Tokyo Dome Corporation really belongs to.

"Go ahead," Miyuki says, as they continue into the museum housed in the stadium's basement.

Usually there's a ticket-taker guarding the way, but today there's no such barrier. Miyuki and Furuya walk into the museum unimpeded, staring around them at the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, Miyuki with a proprietary sort of smugness, Furuya with a sense of building awe.

"You can read the plaques," Miyuki suggests, magnanimously, "if you want to."

He ends up reading them with Furuya, following him around the room as he peers at all the memorabilia and relics of games long past. To his credit, Furuya isn't nearly as slow in this — he seems to hardly read the text mounted with each object, choosing instead to stare intently at the items themselves, soaking in the history, steeping in them. They tour the room for maybe fifteen minutes all told but by the end of it Miyuki gets such a sense of contentment from Furuya, like he's returned to the motherland of baseball and the experience is healing him.

"Hey," Miyuki says, snapping his fingers under Furuya's chin to get his attention. "This isn't all we're here to see. If you've gotten enough of a look at everything, there's somebody else you need to meet."

"Your boss," Furuya surmises, pulling himself together slowly and drifting back into Miyuki's orbit.

"Yeah," Miyuki says, rolling his shoulders in his suit jacket and nodding down the hall. "Let's go."

The ground floor of the Tokyo Dome is home, most notably, to the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, the Fan's Fun Plaza, and the little museum to the Yomiuri Giants housed within it. But it has guts and arteries beyond those areas made accessible to the public and that's where Miyuki leads Furuya next: to a door he has to unlock with a key, and into the nondescript hallway beyond.

Miyuki pulls open another door, and gestures Furuya inside.

The room is an office, done up subtly in neutral colors and filled with sturdy wooden furniture. The largest items among that number are the few bookshelves staged against the walls and the desk waiting towards the back of the room. The chair behind it is pushed in, and nobody sits at it. Instead Kataoka stands before the desk, arms tucked behind his back and expression closed-off and unreadable.

Inscrutable as he is, Kataoka is as much of a familiar touchstone to Miyuki as is the Tokyo Dome itself. He isn't quite so foolhardy as to say that having Kataoka around is relaxing, but he does experience a sense of rightness, just to stand in the same room as the man currently heading the Seidou Organization, someone who has served as a mentor to him: someone Miyuki answers to as "boss."

"Introduce yourself," Miyuki says softly, more seriously than when he'd been talking and joking with Furuya outside.

Furuya takes the hint, proving that perhaps he has better manners than Miyuki feared. He bows, deeply enough that he's nearly bent parallel to the floor, and announces himself as, "Furuya Satoru, sir."

He straightens up, almost — but not quite — until he's again standing steady at his full height. His eyes track Kataoka as if for acceptance, approval, and Miyuki is hit with an unexpected wash of pride that Furuya is performing his role as well as this.

"Thank you," Kataoka says in response. "For coming. I'm sure the invitation was unexpected."

Miyuki has to restrain his urge to laugh at the word invitation, as if the reality wasn't that he'd been sent halfway across the country to recruit this person by whatever means necessary. But Kataoka is doing a rare thing, initiating someone into the organization purely by his own choice, rather than because that someone had come before him to prove themselves. There were different protocols involved.

"I understand you've been out of work lately?" Kataoka asks.

Furuya is quiet a moment, as if puzzled, before he nods his head. "Yes."

Kataoka nods as well, a respectful acknowledgment of that misfortune. He moves on. "I happened to know your grandfather, a number of years back. Did you know that?"

There's another pause as Furuya considers the question, as he deliberates over whether he's meant to respond. Kataoka doesn't wait for him to figure it out.

"It would be most unfortunate," he explains, "for me to allow that man's grandson to remain out of work. Your grandfather provided some innumerable services to our organization. I'd like to repay the favor."

"That's why you're recruiting me into the yakuza," Furuya summarizes.

For a moment, both Miyuki and Kataoka stare at him in surprise. Neither of them is expecting that level of bluntness. In hindsight, Miyuki wonders whether he might not have given Furuya enough pointers on manners after all. They had been given the entire duration of a flight back to Tokyo to talk to each other, and sometime more in the hotel afterward, while Miyuki kept Furuya company before leaving him in the room Seidou had provided. Miyuki thought he'd told Furuya plenty in that time — evidently he hadn't chosen his topics well enough.

Kataoka is the one who recovers enough to speak. "I am," he agrees. "The Seidou Organization can offer you work. It can also offer you a place to belong."

At that, Furuya's eyes light up, Kataoka's words kindling a naked, raw sort of hope inside of him. He comes close to taking a step forward, drawn in by the promise of camaraderie, of family. Miyuki remembers that Furuya had been dropped from his old pro team in Hokkaido, realizes that maybe, besides pitching, there was something else Furuya missed.

"The Seidou Organization will take care of you," Kataoka promises, clearly catching onto Furuya's fledgling hope as easily as Miyuki had done. "And in exchange, we ask only that you take care of the Organization in return."

"What is it that you want me to do?" Furuya asks.

"Nothing complicated," Kataoka assures him, brusquely, returning to business. "Miyuki will get you settled with everything you need to know. For any questions you may have, I entrust you to Miyuki's guidance."

Furuya only nods slowly to himself, as if this makes sense, working from everything he's experienced already.

Miyuki isn't so easily taken in. He can read between the lines, can hear the way Kataoka says trust and can from there deduce that this is a test of him as much as it is a test of Furuya. This won't be the first time Miyuki is given authority over someone in the Organization — he has quite a bit of that already, and makes a point of using it well — but it is the first time he's been given responsibility for someone so new.

Kataoka is trusting Miyuki to bind Furuya to them, to show him not only how to do the work of the Organization, but why he should want to, why he should be loyal to them. In that way, Miyuki is only a tool himself — but if Kataoka wants the use of him, he'll absolutely ensure he performs up to the man's highest expectations.

"Don't worry," Miyuki says, his usual easy drawl rolling off his tongue far more lightly than his thoughts have been dragging through his brain. "I'll take good care of him."

"I'm counting on nothing less," Kataoka agrees.

And there, there it is, the confirmation that things are exactly as Miyuki sees them to be.

"Come on, big guy," Miyuki says, gesturing with one hand for Furuya to come along with him. "So long as the boss is satisfied with you, I'll show you the ropes."

"Furuya," Kataoka says, halting them both before they can move any farther toward the door. "Will you be loyal to Seidou?"

Furuya is silent, and this time it feels less like uncertainty, less like processing, and more like he's allowing the weight of the question to sink into his bones. He stares back at Kataoka, with a single-minded intensity that's enough to render Miyuki impressed. Then he nods his head, steeply enough that it becomes an understated bow.

"I will be loyal to Seidou," he says, very seriously.

"See that I have no cause to doubt that," Kataoka tells him. "You may leave."

"Guess that's actually the end of that," Miyuki says, a little too cheerfully for the tone Kataoka has set. "Come on, come on, out of the room with you. We have things to do."

He shoos Furuya through the door, giving him a little push on the shoulder to urge him along. Furuya walks through the doorway amiably enough; it's Miyuki who pauses on the threshold, hesitating just enough to toss a look over his shoulder in Kataoka's direction.

"I still want to talk to you," he says, very softly.

Kataoka stares back at him, sternly enough that he's utterly unreadable. Then he nods his head, with the barest of inclinations, as if he doubts the wisdom of giving Miyuki this concession. All he says with it is, "Later."

Miyuki nods in return, satisfied with even that much. "I'll talk to you later."

And with that, he follows Furuya out of the room.

Back on the stadium level, Furuya begins to look a little lost.

The determination he'd put on for Kataoka washes away, leaving him unmoored as he stands in the hallway leading out to the field itself. Miyuki comes to stand beside him, positioned so he can just glimpse the bleachers down the way and catch sight of a snatch of turf that's all he can see of the field. Furuya notices where Miyuki is looking and comes back to alertness, craning his neck to try and see the diamond that's just out of view.

"There's not much you care about more than baseball, is there?" Miyuki asks.

Furuya's head swivels back toward him, a look of such puzzlement on his face that Miyuki can't help but laugh. It's as if the idea of caring about anything else has never even occurred to him. Not surprising — it isn't as if Miyuki cannot relate.

"You're gonna have to at least fake caring about stuff other than the game," Miyuki continues, bending his elbow out to nudge Furuya teasingly in the arm. "We didn't bring you here to play baseball."

"But you said," Furuya protests. "You said if I came to Seidou, you would catch my pitch."

"I said maybe I'd catch your pitch," Miyuki clarifies. "First you have to earn your keep."

Furuya frowns, and Miyuki can just see him digging in his heels, can see him glancing back over his shoulder to the field like he doesn't think this is a very good deal, not when the mound is right there, just out of sight but not so far Furuya couldn't be standing on it. The intensity of his desire tugs at Miyuki, weighs on him with a pressure he can feel.

Miyuki shrugs it off, and flashes Furuya an apologetic, too-toothy smile. "Don't worry," he says. "We'll find something you can do."

"Like what?" Furuya asks. He shifts his body closer to Miyuki, physically pulling himself away from the lure of the field.

"Don't know," Miyuki admits. "You like baseball so much, maybe we could put you to work selling the tickets!"

Furuya's eyes start to light up, and Miyuki immediately regrets making the joke.

"Not today," he's quick to clarify. "There isn't a game today. Stadium's closed, we're just here because, well, we work here. Or Kataoka does, anyway."

"What do you usually do?" Furuya asks. "Do you work at the stadium?"

"Nah, I don't," Miyuki admits. Then, with a sly smile starting to pull up the corners of his lips: "Do you want to see what I usually do?"

Furuya nods, two quick, eager bobs of his head. His eyes are bright when he stops, focused on Miyuki with an intensity that's flattering, if a little overwhelming. He hasn't commanded anyone's attention that thoroughly in... Well, a long goddamn time, to say the least. It makes him grin, when he thinks about it.

"Come on, big guy," he says, much like when he led Furuya into the Dome in the first place. He gestures back toward the entrance, leading the way outside. "Maybe you'll learn a thing or two."

It's early afternoon when Miyuki and Furuya step out onto the street — several hours earlier than when Miyuki would usually get to work. They walk back the way they'd come earlier that morning, Miyuki leading the way, Furuya following complacently enough just behind him. The Tokyo Dome Hotel rears up before them, majestic in the heights it ascends to and impossible to miss from anywhere in the area.

"Hold on," Miyuki says, before they've fully drawn up alongside the entrance. A thought has occurred to him.

"Did we forget something?" Furuya asks, as Miyuki leads him inside.

Miyuki pauses, then shakes his head. Furuya has been given a room in the hotel, seeing as he's only just arrived in Tokyo and couldn't be expected to have somewhere else to stay. It isn't where Miyuki had been intending to take them, but...

He looks Furuya up and down, eyeing the dark jeans, the nondescript, navy-colored shirt. Miyuki had told him to dress smart for their meeting today, and it could have been worse. But standing in the lobby in the black suit Miyuki only wears for business occasions, the nice one with the expensive tailoring, he cannot say he's impressed.

"You don't have anything better to wear, do you?" Miyuki asks.

Furuya glances down at himself, skeptically eyeing his own arms in their shirtsleeves before looking back up at Miyuki with a perfectly neutral expression on his face. Yeah, Miyuki hadn't thought so.

"Nah," he says. "You didn't forget anything. We're just picking something up."

Miyuki leads Furuya into an elevator when its door opens, and presses the button to go down.

The Dome isn't the only thing not owned by who the public might expect. The hotel is Seidou's, too, and Kataoka has a room on the basement level there as well. This one is more cluttered than the Tokyo Dome office, and Miyuki has to let them in with a key before rummaging around inside. He goes through three drawers before he finds what he's looking for.

"Here," he says, shoving the baton at a confused, waiting Furuya with a sharp-edged smile. "Just in case you need to protect yourself."

Furuya takes it, gingerly, like he isn't quite certain what he's holding. "Am I going to need to protect myself?"

He looks up to meet Miyuki's eyes, gaze a little too heavy, a little too serious. Miyuki no longer feels as if the words are really a question, but he only shrugs in response with a careless roll of his shoulders. "Don't worry about it. If you do, it's nothing hard. You're a pitcher, you should be used to swinging your arm."

At that, Furuya hefts the weight of the blackjack in his hand. His fingers are curled around the handle, his arm starting to draw back like he's winding up for a pitch. Miyuki reaches out quickly, grabbing ahold of Furuya's wrist before he can follow through with his swing.

"Not in the office," he says.

He waits, hand around Furuya's wrist, until Furuya starts to lower his arm. Judging from his disappointment, Miyuiki wonders if he shouldn't have worried about how Furuya might hold his own in a fight. It's still better safe than sorry.

"If someone tries to hit you," Miyuki continues, "you hit them first, and you knock them down. Nobody who attacks you in this business plans on giving you a second crack at them, so you had better make sure your first crack counts. Hit them, and hit them hard."

Furuya nods in solemn acceptance. Miyuki tells himself it's not unsettling that there are no further questions, no expression of doubt. He tells himself it isn't strange that a former baseball player, one with no reputation for brawling or disciplinary problems, would accept advice on doing violence with such an utter sense of calm.

Or maybe Furuya hasn't realized the magnitude of what Miyuki is telling him; perhaps he doesn't recognize that what Miyuki is saying is, hit to concuss, because even if there's internal bleeding or brain damage, what matters is that they'll go down, and they won't be hitting you back.

"And put that somewhere where no one is going to see it," Miyuki adds, as an afterthought.

Furuya carefully tucks the end of the blackjack into the waist of his pants, and for a moment Miyuki can only think of foreigners with guns in their waistbands. Maybe Furuya watches those sorts of movies. It isn't what Miyuki would have expected, and the thought almost makes him laugh. He's amused enough that he doesn't argue with Furuya's holstering technique.

"Come on," he says. "Let's get to work."

The elevator ride back to the ground floor of the hotel is quick and silent, and in short order Miyuki and Furuya are back on the street outside. The streets directly around the Dome and the hotel are all tourist attraction, the tops of the rides in the amusement park clearly visible from where Miyuki stands. He's taking them farther afield than that. Furuya doesn't argue, merely follows a step and a half behind Miyuki as he leads them through the city.

Their first stop is at a convenience store. There's nothing remarkable about its exterior, and it doesn't belong to one of the larger, country-wide chains. Miyuki strolls inside first, Furuya following on his heels and looking around inside the store with a vague sort of interest.

They walk up to the register, the man behind it glancing at them once before his eyes slide away. Then comes a protracted moment of realization, before his eyes pan back towards Miyuki, looking him up and down. They scan from the square shapes of his glasses frames down toward his polished leather shoes, then back up the length of his neatly tailored suit. This time, when the man meets Miyuki's eyes, he doesn't look away.

"One moment," he says, before Miyuki has to ask him anything.

Out of the corner of his eye, Miyuki can see Furuya's brows starting to draw in, can see the confused expression beginning to materialize on his face. He's puzzling out what he's watching transpire, but hasn't been able to place the nature of Miyuki and the shopkeeper's relationship.

The shopkeeper ducks out of the way, after Miyuki gives him a little nod of approval. He opens up the cash register, lifting up the drawer and pulling something out from underneath. It's a small paper envelope, like the sort given out stuffed with new years money, or offered up in condolence at the wake before a funeral. The color is wrong for either of those purposes, though — this one is a pale blue.

The shopkeeper bows over the envelope, and offers it to Miyuki rested across the span of both hands.

Miyuki nods in return, that inclination of his head as much of a bow as he gives before taking the envelope out of the shopkeeper's hand. He slips it inside his suit jacket, tucking it into the interior breast pocket. In the span of perhaps a minute, maybe two, the entire exchange is complete.

"Thank you," Miyuki says when it's through, as if the man had just helped him with a purchase.

The man nods again, more perfunctory and less respectful than before. "Thank you."

With that, Miyuki turns on his heel to head back out of the store. He's forced to do it slowly; Furuya's steps are slow and ponderous, trailing in Miyuki's wake as if his feet, not just his thoughts, are lingering over matters. Miyuki is patient, taking his time until they're again outside on the street.

"He paid you," Furuya surmises, in what should not be a breathtaking leap of deduction. "Because you're—"

But he cuts off, seeing the look Miyuki is leveling him with. For a moment they are both silent, then Furuya nods, as if that response and the quiet are answer enough. He's getting the hang of it — and without Miyuki having to spell out what they're doing, either.

"Is there anything I can do?" Furuya asks.

Miyuki stares back at him, aware that he's meant to be teaching Furuya, aware that this is something Seidou might decide on having Furuya do on his own. Collecting protection money isn't Miyuki's usual line of work, though he does do it on occasion. Doing it usually falls to the most junior members of the organization, young punks eager to prove that they are deserving of the name they've sworn fealty to. But he's been by enough of the establishments that have an "arrangement" with Seidou that he isn't surprised, when the proprietors recognize him.

"Sometimes the store owner gives you trouble," Miyuki says. "That's why anyone doing this, we send them in pairs. If someone gives me trouble, you make sure they stop."

With that, he flashes Furuya a crooked, toothy grin. A bit more slowly, Furuya starts to smile back. He's a little too withdrawn, a little too deliberate. But one of those things, they can draw him out of, and the other one need not become a flaw. He has potential, and Miyuki is seeing even more why he was worth proactively recruiting.

The next business they stop by is an izakaya, doing slow business at an hour so early in the afternoon. The woman who greets them takes one look at Miyuki before bowing her head and excusing herself, heading to the back and returning a few minutes later with the proprietor. Miyuki watches Furuya during the moments in which they're left alone, noting the turning point when he goes from being intent on Miyuki to instead allowing his attention to wander.

It's a bit concerning, as is the slow speed at which Furuya's focus returns, when the proprietor clears his throat and apologizes to them for the delay.

Miyuki brushes it off, making idle small talk about the last Giants game held in the stadium (Furuya's attention laser-focuses at that) and the recent rate of business, before accepting the envelope he's offered and tucking it away with the first. He thanks the proprietor, who offers his own thanks in return, before again leading Furuya outside.

"You can't do that," Miyuki says, quiet but intent as he stops in the street. "You need to be focused on your surroundings."

"I was," Furuya insists, eyebrows drawing down in a frown.

"Is that what you call that?" Miyuki asks. "Alert? That vacant look you made, staring off into space?"

He reaches out to rap Furuya on the side of his head with his knuckles, like his seniors used to do when he was new to the organization. Then he slaps the back of Furuya's head — not hard — because if he's taking one leaf out of those guys' book, he might as well take them all.

But Furuya looks contrite, or at least confused that Miyuki is scolding him and not too interested in disappointing him again, so Miyuki drops his arm, and they keep walking.

"You wanna do this one?" Miyuki asks, stopping outside the next shop on their route.

It's a jewelry store, not an especially high-end one, but one that does do a brisk business in selling trinkets and other shiny things. They've been undergoing a change of staff recently, and though the business owner is still liable to recognize him, Miyuki figures it's as good a place as any to let Furuya try his hand.

"Don't be obvious," Miyuki says, when Furuya gives him a nod of his head. "A lot of places are expecting us, so they'll know who you are and we'll be done with that stop quick. But if they don't, just tell 'em you have a message from Kataoka-san. Everyone who knows Seidou knows about Kataoka."

"Alright," Furuya says. "I can do that."

They head inside. This time, there's no recognition from the couple of sales girls working the floor and ready to help customers, and Miyuki hangs back, staring idly at the displays and letting Furuya fend for himself. Furuya squares his shoulders and steps up to the register without further encouragement.

"I'd like to speak to the owner of the store," Furuya says. "If he's in."

He looks so polite, so clean-cut, from Miyuki's position of enforced removal. One of the sales girls moves over to him, and asks if there's anything he's looking to find? Miyuki turns toward her, obligingly playing the role of the customer, though he can still see Furuya beyond his shoulder, his head visible from out of the corner of Miyuki's eye.

"I have a message from Kataoka-san."

Furuya says it just as Miyuki had instructed him, his voice coming out low and very serious. The store owner murmurs and hums his agreement, saying that yes, he thinks he knows what it was Kataoka-san means to ask him about. If Furuya could just give him a moment, he'll find just the thing.

There's a bit of shuffling, and the sound of the cash drawer being ejected. A pause draws out between them, and at the edge of his vision Miyuki can see Furuya staring at the envelope, momentarily at a loss for what to do with it. He lets his hand fall to his side while Miyuki makes his excuses to the sales girl, moving over to stand by Furuya's side.

"Thank you," Furuya says to the store owner.

Miyuki delicately plucks the envelope out of Furuya's hand, tucks it into the usual pocket inside his jacket. Furuya bows to the owner and they turn to leave the store.

Furuya is smiling, his lips only just turning up at the corners. Miyuki claps him on the back, and tells him that he didn't do too bad.

They follow the rest of the route, making good time and meeting no trouble. There's one point when Furuya gets overzealous, staring hard at a man who'd given Miyuki a dirty look, his hand starting to move toward his waist. Miyuki stops him, not feeling nearly as threatened by something as inconsequential as that kind of glare. He can't help but think, Furuya's reflexes may be better than he feared.

By the end of the day, Furuya is glowing, smiling contentedly over a job well done. Miyuki laughs and teases him for it, but if he's honest with himself, he can't say that he has any complaints.

Chapter Text

The lobby of the Tokyo Dome Hotel is bright and welcoming, its pale cream interior lit up by the warm, butter-yellow glow from innumerable fixtures. To anyone else, it might simply look like the place to check in for a weekend stay. To Miyuki, after a long if satisfying day collecting protection money with Furuya, it looks like home.

But before he can make it to the elevator bank, he catches sight of a man's familiar, close-shaven head as he rises from one of the lobby couches and moves to intercept Miyuki's departure.

"Tanba," Miyuki says. "I didn't expect to see you here."

He deliberately injects some extra warmth into his voice, like he's delighted at having run into an old friend. It doesn't win him even the slightest shift in Tanba's usual serious expression. Miyuki keeps an easy smile plastered on his face all the same.

"Miyuki," Tanba replies. "I wanted to talk to you."

"So talk," Miyuki says, laughing. "It isn't as if I'm stopping you."

Tanba levels him with a disapproving look, before glancing off to the side like he's worried somebody might be watching. Miyuki allows himself to follow the direction of Tanba's gaze, but nobody is there. Just the usual tourists relaxing in the hotel lobby, nothing suspicious, nothing out of the ordinary.

"Let's get a drink," Tanba finally says. "Come on."

Miyuki follows willingly enough, allowing Tanba to lead him across the lobby and down a meager stretch of hall to where the hotel's bar is tucked away. It isn't as brightly lit as the hotel's entryway, its low lighting and small tables providing a more intimate atmosphere. Tanba heads directly for a stool at the bar itself, and Miyuki settles into the space next to him.

"So are you buying?" he asks, nodding sideways at the array of bottles positioned behind the bar. "Since you're the one making a big deal about saying two words to me?"

Tanba shoots him another look, this one midway between disdaining and confused, then he shrugs. "What do you want to drink?"

"Since you're buying," Miyuki says, "I'll have whatever you're having."

Tanba gets the bartender's attention, and in short order two tumblers are placed on the counter, one in front of each of them. Miyuki picks his up, swishing it around and peering at whatever Tanba has bought for him, but doesn't immediately take a drink.

So far he's just making small talk, exchanging empty words that aren't meant to be saying anything. He doesn't know what Tanba is here to talk to him about, but he could make his guesses. Doesn't mean he has to make it easy for Tanba. He's a man who makes the smallest of details into capital offenses; if that's what's going on, Miyuki will let Tanba handle that all on his own.

Tanba, meanwhile, is sipping slowly from his drink. Miyuki sees the moment when his expression relaxes, however slightly, at the feeling of the liquor washing over his tongue. Liquid courage — just the thing for tough conversations.

"It happened again," Tanba says, softly, after he swallows.

"What did?" Miyuki asks in return.

Tanba stares straight ahead, not looking at Miyuki, just gazing at the shining bottles of liquor lined up on their shelves. His voice comes out low, serious, saying, "One of our people got jumped."

"By somebody they were picking up money from?" Miyuki asks, just to be sure. "Do we have to remind someone why they're paying us in the first place?"

"No," Tanba says. "It was after they were done for the day, once they finished making all of their stops."

"Shit," Miyuki says.

"Yeah," Tanba agrees.

For a moment they're both silent, thinking of all of those little envelopes, and of what it means for a member of the yakuza to get ripped off when he's carrying the organization's cash.

"They knew what they were doing," Miyuki surmises.

"I think so," Tanba admits, slowly, as if it pains him a little to agree with Miyuki.

They don't always see eye to eye, him and Tanba. Tanba is a little too conservative for Miyuki's tastes. A big guy like he is, broad in the shoulders and thick in the arms and more than capable of teaching someone a lesson with his hands if he needs to, but focused on rules and the reasons for things, always insisting on taking the appropriate amount of care.

Miyuki had been skeptical, the first time Tanba told them someone in the organization got jumped. Most people weren't stupid enough to pick a fight with the yakuza, not if they realized who they were dealing with. It had sounded more like one of their young toughs picked a fight, and didn't handle well being defeated in it.

But this time, if money was missing... That was a different matter altogether.

"What did you want to do about it?" Miyuki asks, finally taking a sip from his drink.

It's bitter, burning at the back of his throat, and Miyuki makes sure not to grimace. He knew Tanba preferred whiskey, when he agreed to have whatever the man was having. For himself, Miyuki tends to favor something sweeter.

"We need to protect our people," Tanba says.

"Uh huh, sure," Miyuki agrees. "But that's an ideal, not a solution. If you want to keep people safe, and you think this is going to happen again, we need to do something about it."

"We'll be prepared now," Tanba ventures, before taking another drink from his own glass. He grimaces in swallowing it, and Miyuki knows from experience that with Tanba, it isn't because of the taste. "I wanted a second opinion on whether I'm overreacting."

Ah, there it was. Like hell Tanba relished having to come to Miyuki for advice.

"You aren't," Miyuki admits. "Not if somebody's robbing us."

He leans back against the bar, hip cocked against the wood of the counter top and body facing out toward the tables that are arrayed before them. They aren't the only ones drinking, even at the early hour, but all the other patrons in the room make for a subdued crowd. The low din of their voices washes together into meaningless background noise, something for Miyuki to filter out of his awareness as he cranes his body back toward Tanba.

Tanba is still staring away from him, looking discontent.

"You don't like doing nothing any more than I do," Miyuki says. "And we both know it."

Tanba remains quiet, not disagreeing. There's a deepening frown on his face and when Miyuki glances down toward the glass he's holding, he notices that it's empty. There has to be some plan Tanba's thinking of, otherwise why solicit a second opinion? Miyuki wants to dig into it but with Tanba, he isn't going to get anywhere by pressing.

"It's another gang," he continues. "Another family, whatever. Everyone knows we're not the only power in Tokyo."

"Everyone used to respect that this is our ward," Tanba replies.

At that, Miyuki laughs, loud and mirthless. "No they didn't," he says. "We just kept kicking them out until the message started to stick."

Tanba snorts at that but again, he doesn't argue. He's stewing some more, silent and brooding, his hand clenched tight around his empty glass until he makes himself push it away. He pushes it out toward the bartender, in silent askance to be served another. Miyuki wonders how many drinks they're in for, wonders if Tanba has gotten better at putting them away. He was already pretty good, the last time they gave it a shot.

"We need to take it to their doorstep," Miyuki says, watching as the bartender refills Tanba's glass.

Tanba scowls, and takes a hefty gulp of his whiskey. "We don't have to do anything like that. Starting a fight isn't going to protect anybody."

"It's how we've always done things," Miyuki insists. "They encroach on us, we push 'em back. If we don't throw them off, they're just gonna keep coming. Or, what, did you have a better idea?"

"I want to change the way we collect the money," Tanba says.

"How?" Miyuki asks. "More guys? Different routes? Make all those store owners come to us? Nobody is going to like that, I can tell you now. But hey, you're the one in charge of this! Whatever you want to do with your manpower is your decision, and you'll get to explain to Kataoka what you chose when it's a big waste of time."

Tanba is scowling at him murderously by the time Miyuki finishes. He can't help flashing Tanba a winning smile in return, saccharine sweet but too sharp around the edges. He's gratified when Tanba can't help but pull a bit of a face at the sight.

"I'll think of something," is all he says.

"Uh huh," Miyuki replies, rolling his eyes. "It's Inashiro, you know that, right? They've always been our only real competition, and something this blatant is exactly like them. It's a challenge. We should meet it."

"We don't know it's them."

"You don't know it's them. I know Inashiro. There's no one else it could be."

For a moment Tanba can only stare irritably at Miyuki, while Miyuki holds his ground and stares steadily back. Then Tanba breaks his gaze away, dropping it to his glass and polishing off the rest of his drink.

"I don't think we should start a war with Inashiro over this little provocation — provocation we're without proof has anything to do with their family in the first place."

"And I don't think we should change the way we run business simply because someone robbed us," Miyuki replies. "It doesn't have to be a war, I can just... Arrange a bit of negotiation."

Tanba shoots him a skeptical look. "I don't think that will go very well."

Translation: Tanba doesn't trust Miyuki to organize it peacefully, or maybe honestly, because Tanba hasn't been able to agree with Miyuki on anything for months. They both have sway within the organization and responsibilities delegated to them from Kataoka; they work together constantly, and need to be able to do it well. Unfortunately, Tanba has not given Miyuki many opportunities to build some good faith.

He falls silent, picking over the problem in his mind. Changing the way they run things is a bad idea. It'll only slow down their operations; internally, they have a good system, and Miyuki is a strong advocate for the policy of if it isn't broken, don't fix it. But if it is, he'll be the very first to tear a system down and build something new.

They need to make a direct response that shows they aren't cowed, yet Tanba is putting his foot down.

"Don't change the protection system," Miyuki finally says.

It takes Tanba a long minute to agree, but ultimately he does. "I won't."

"We need to respond to the attack, something they can see," Miyuki adds.

"I can't," Tanba says.

And then they're silent again, stuck at an impasse and both too stubborn to budge. Miyuki turns the problem over again, but he knows Tanba too well and sees no means by which to sway him. The moment stretches out, long enough that the weight of the silence begins to grow uncomfortable, until Miyuki almost raises his glass again to his lips to drown his discomfort in the bitterness of the liquor.

"I'll work something out," Tanba says, before Miyuki can do it.

He throws a handful of bills down on the counter, more than enough to pay for their drinks, and before Miyuki can say anything else he's up from his stool and walking away from the bar. Miyuki could follow after him, but he doesn't.

He simply swings back around, lowering himself onto his seat and silently nursing the last of his drink.

Miyuki knocks on the hotel room door, swift little raps with his knuckles that are far too cheery for such an early hour. He isn't ordinarily a morning person, but the sour taste of the previous evening's conversation has stuck with him through the night. Miyuki is ready to push past that and forget about it, by whatever means necessary.

The door opens slowly, more than a full minute after Miyuki had begun to knock, and Furuya's sleep-tousled head peers out from around the edge of it.

"Miyuki-san?" he asks, blinking blearily out into the hall.

"Rise and shine, big guy," comes Miyuki's breezy response. He scoots around Furuya and walks right into the room. One glance was all he needed to confirm that Furuya is still in his pajamas (actual pajamas, too, the kind that match). Miyuki is prepared to do something about that.

"What are you doing here?" Furuya asks, even as he steps back and allows Miyuki the run of his room.

There's more than one answer to that question, but Miyuki picks the easiest one. "We're going for a run, and then you are getting put to work. What did you think you were gonna do today?"

Furuya shrugs, as if he hadn't thought about it. "Are we collecting money again today?"

"Not 'we,'" Miyuki corrects. "You. Yesterday you seemed pretty excited about selling tickets at the stadium. So I figured, until we get everything else sorted out, why not?"

Suddenly he has Furuya's full attention, the fogginess of sleep fading away before a tide of eager interest. Without any further prompting, Furuya begins going through his things for a change of clean clothes.

There's a park not far from the hotel and the Dome, a big green one with lots of well-paved paths that sees a good share of foot traffic. A morning run isn't a staple of Miyuki's usual routine — if he doesn't have to be up early he's often awake late into the night instead and the hotel does have exercise equipment he can use at any hour — but he's done it more than a time before, and knows that the park is a fair place to stretch their legs.

"C'mon," he tells Furuya, once he's dressed, and takes them both down to the street.

It's convenient, sometimes, living out of a hotel. Miyuki could keep an apartment, but why should he? The Tokyo Dome Hotel is right in the center of everywhere he needs to be, functioning as the axis of the world he's come to operate in. He doesn't pay rent and he doesn't need to clean house and it isn't as if he hasn't spent half his life in communal living anyway. Between high school dorms and bunking with other baseball players on his pro team he's gotten used to living in space that was shared. Living in a hotel is just more of the same.

Furuya turns out to be in pretty good shape, even with how long it's been since he last played pro. Miyuki jogs with him down the street and onto the park trail, he taking the lead, Furuya easily keeping pace behind him. Usually, Miyuki exercises by himself. He's lost the hang of doing it with a team, isn't sure he could hear himself think if he tried that now, moving along while crowded by a whole host of dissenting voices. But Furuya is silent, proving steady, easy company for the duration of their run.

There's only the sound of his breathing, audible in its regular rhythm and as good as echoing Miyuki's own.

The Inashiro problem continues to plague him, regardless of how Miyuki tries to clear his mind. Oh, he's aware he doesn't know it's them, but any other possibility is comparably slim. He doesn't have an argument he can use to convince Tanba but he alone has met certain of Inashiro's enforcers, and it makes too much sense that they'd raise Miyuki a challenge.

He'll just have to solve it himself, if Tanba is too stubborn to do anything other than dig in his heels and wait for their enemies to meet him face to face.

"You feeling energized yet?" he asks Furuya, as they complete their first lap around the park's widest loop of trail. "We've gotta make sure you're fit enough to do the work that gets given to you."

He's teasing, but when he glances over at Furuya there's a look of determination on his face. He's taken Miyuki's words to heart, burning with the purest need to achieve the goal that's been set out for him. Miyuki starts to laugh but it's quiet and short-lived, when he needs to save his breath for running and knows to cut himself off.

"Come on," he says instead, when Furuya doesn't reply to him. "Let's swing around to the Dome."

They do, and even though Miyuki hasn't pushed either of them too hard, Furuya is slick with perspiration and panting softly when they again slow to a walk. Maybe Miyuki should let him go back for a wash, but he looks like the kind of guy who should be selling tickets to baseball games, when he's sweaty and a little disheveled.

"Hey," Miyuki says, stopping outside one of the entrances to the Dome. "This isn't gonna be glamorous but you know, you just might get to see the pitch."

He should feel bad, for how easily Furuya lights up at the suggestion alone. But he doesn't, just laughs it off and slaps Furuya on the back in encouragement, pushing him toward the stadium and sending him on his way. He's coming along, taking direction well, proving he can be a hard worker. Miyuki has high hopes for him yet.

He heads back up the street toward the hotel, reasoning at least one of them can grab a shower for the day.

"Come in," Kataoka's voice calls out.

Miyuki pauses, hand only just lifting from his side to rap at the half-open door. He can't see much through the minimal gap and doubts Kataoka can see him, yet it isn't especially surprising to realize Kataoka is aware that he's there. Kataoka is perceptive like that.

So Miyuki shrugs, and he steps into the office.

This time, Kataoka is sitting behind the desk, bent over a whole sheaf of papers spread out upon its surface and with his glasses perched atop the bridge of his nose. For a moment Miyuki's expression softens at seeing his boss like that, somehow more human with the evidence of weakening eyes and long working hours visible on his face. He makes sure to sober up before Kataoka lifts his head to look up at him.

"Did you need something?" Kataoka asks.

"You said I could talk to you later," Miyuki reminds him, walking farther into the room. "I thought this might be late enough."

He flashes his boss a little slice of a grin, and is gratified when Kataoka puts up with it. He doesn't argue, simply closes one of the folders laid out on his desk, neatening the various piles of paper laid out before him and sitting up straighter in his chair. His arms cross against the edge of the desk, fingers lacing together.

"Go ahead," Kataoka says. "Talk."

"Bets are in for the game tonight," Miyuki says. "I thought you might want to look at the books."

They both know it isn't what Miyuki came to talk to Kataoka about, not as a follow-up to the other day. Miyuki has been overseeing the gambling business at Seidou for well over a year now, and any concerns he's had on that front have long since been ironed out. But Kataoka leans forward all the same, telegraphing obvious interest in the night's numbers.

"Please," he says, beckoning Miyuki around to his side of the desk. "Let me see how things are coming along."

The thing about gambling, as far as Miyuki is concerned, is that you simply have to win more often than you lose. He's not big on it for himself — not as someone who hedges his bets, who always knows the numbers, who never truly gambles even when he takes the long odds because he's always prepared to deal with the outcome. But in the business, he is the house, the one who determines how the chips are going to fall.

Miyuki is the one who runs the numbers and determines the odds, the one who decides just how many bets they can take on one team or one outcome before they need to even things out on the other side. There's a definite power there, to being in the business of orchestrating how fortunes, even small ones, are won and lost.

He isn't the one who takes bets from their clientele, not directly. That's what subordinates are for. But the numbers are coming in from everyone who works for him, and that's what he has on hand to show to Kataoka.

"It's only preliminary," Miyuki cautions, modestly, as Kataoka looks over his work. "There are still a few hours until the game, and then we do have to collect."

"Of course," Kataoka says, distracted by his reading. His voice is soft and vague, not as commanding as it usually sounds, and again Miyuki's expression softens for a moment.

"There is something else I wanted to talk to you about," he admits.

He doesn't get a response right away. Kataoka is absorbed with Miyuki's notes, silent as he runs the math on what the day's income is likely to be — supposing that everyone who loses pays in when they're supposed to. There are plenty of stragglers who owe them gambling debts, but that's what Tanba's arm of the business is for.

"What is it?" Kataoka finally asks, looking up and passing Miyuki back his work.

"Inashiro is challenging us again," Miyuki says.

Better to be blunt. Better to put the information forward outright. Kataoka stares back at him, his thoughtful expression from before hardening into one that's more critical.

"What information is this based on?" he asks.

"Information from Tanba," Miyuki says. "He told me last night that somebody from his protection detail got jumped. Right after they finished collecting all the protection money owed to us that day. That isn't a coincidence, or somebody too stupid to realize who they're mugging. That's a deliberate attack."

He says it confidently, but part of him is still waiting for Kataoka to contradict him, is waiting for his boss to pierce through some flaw in his logic that was somehow beyond him. Tanba wouldn't be able to do it. But if anyone could propose an alternative Miyuki hasn't seen, it is Kataoka.

"And where is the proof that this attack was coordinated by the Inashiro family?"

For a moment, Miyuki experiences a swell of pride at this attack, at the confirmation that Kataoka is characterizing the robbery in the same way Miyuki has. But then he still has to admit, "I don't have anything concrete."

"So there was an attack," Kataoka confirms, "which you believe to be a challenge by Inashiro, but the specific perpetrator hasn't been identified and there is no definite connection?"

Miyuki's jaw clenches, clamping down on the agreement he doesn't want to give. The connection is simply something he feels, based on the precedent of Inashiro and Seidou's past rivalry, based on bad blood between them and Miyuki's personal gut instinct that stealing from them is personal. He knows that Kataoka understands that feeling. He also knows that Kataoka is too good a head to make decisions on that feeling alone.

"That's right," he says, trying to keep his voice light, not overly concerned.

"We aren't going to retaliate for an attack without proof," Kataoka tells him bluntly. "We don't have the manpower to fight that war."

Miyuki knows it, has begun to parse it out that this is why things are changing. This is why Kataoka is recruiting, instead of letting new members come to them through the usual channels. It's why Furuya has been brought in, someone who has the family ties to the Seidou name and the loyalty that the concept of "yakuza" has always been based on.

"We still need to respond to being attacked," Miyuki insists, making his case. "Even if we aren't certain beyond doubt that it's Inashiro challenging us, that's only more reason to speak to their people."

"And tell them what?" Kataoka asks. "What can you possibly say?"

Miyuki can't tell his boss that he wants to go to Narumiya specifically, that he thinks he can charm Mei into being honest with him over just what Inashiro thinks they're doing around Seidou's territory. He doesn't really want to talk to Mei at all, but if he has the tools he has to be willing to use them.

When he's silent too long, Kataoka resumes without waiting for an answer. "You can't tell Inashiro that there was an attack, because that reveals weakness. You need Inashiro to claim knowledge of what's happened without directly asking. But you can't invite them to do that, because speaking to the Inashiro family means venturing onto their territory. Any of our people will not be well received."

Miyuki might be. But then again, Mei might not make the exception, even for him. Miyuki might be in charge of Seidou's gambling income, but with matters such as this he's far less willing to take a wild risk.

"You don't have a plan," Kataoka tells him, gently enough that it makes Miyuki's pride smart.

"I'm working on one," he says. And then, even though he knows it's petty and unwise: "Which is more than Tanba seemed willing to do when he spoke with me."

Kataoka levels him with a reproving look, but doesn't chastise him outright for the infighting. He leans back in his chair and pulls his glasses off his face, massaging at the bridge of his nose with his other hand. In that moment alone Miyuki can see how tired he must be, standing for so many years at the apex of as many rackets as Seidou runs, keeping their niche carved out of its space in the world. Then Kataoka again opens his eyes, and Miyuki pushes the thought away.

"When you have a plan," Kataoka says, "we'll talk. I'm no more willing than you to let us be painted as weak."

Hearing as much reassures Miyuki more than he thought to expect. He relaxes, feeling a tension he hadn't realized he was holding drain from the too-straight set of his shoulders and spine, feeling the rigidity of his posture easing to something more comfortable and natural. He hooks his thumbs into his belt loops, and leans casually back on his heels.

"I'm going to do that," Miyuki assures Kataoka. "I won't leave it be."

Kataoka only glances at him a moment, like he wouldn't have expected anything else. It should seem dismissive. It feels instead like an expression of trust.

"How is Furuya doing, by the way?" Kataoka asks, changing the subject.

"Getting settled in," Miyuki shrugs. "He seems like a good kid."

"His grandfather was a good man," Kataoka says. "I can only hope that his grandson will be more of the same."

"What are you gonna want him for?" Miyuki can't help but ask. "When he's finally settled in? His focus isn't always so good, and he loves the Dome like that stadium's his own home. But he's fit, and he has an arm on him, and he's willing to work hard."

Kataoka only stares back at him, allowing his eyebrows to momentarily rise. He says nothing but at once the pieces click into place. The same day Furuya is brought to Seidou, another attack is made on their little family. He's insurance, he was always meant to be insurance, and if there's a war to be fought, Furuya is going to the front lines.

"Alright," Miyuki says. "Alright. I can get him ready for that."

"Of course you can," Kataoka agrees. "That is why I gave him to you."

Miyuki wants to feel proud about that, wants to enjoy the vote of confidence. But he's still thinking about Furuya, about this kid (but he's not, a voice inside Miyuki says, he's not a kid, he's at most a couple years younger than you) who loves baseball and pitching and clearly has great respect for real authority, about this young man who came to Tokyo for no better reason than that somebody wanted him, when everyone had stopped wanting him back home. Miyuki's got his hands in Furuya's guts already, he doesn't need the reminder that he's the one calling this play.

"Yeah, I know," he ends up saying, and falls silent after that.

Kataoka glances at him, then back down at the papers still spread across his desk. The dismissal comes through crystal clear.

"Thank you," Miyuki says. "For meeting with me."

"Of course," Kataoka replies.

Miyuki turns on his heel, and heads back out of the office. The hall beyond is quiet as always, and for a minute he simply stands there, breathing in, breathing out, planning what it is he's going to do next.

The results of the gambling business come in as they always do, in waves throughout the day following a game. The winners are always first, quick to cash in on their victories and walk away with their earnings. The losers come slower, but many of them are regular customers, brought back by the siren call of that next bet just waiting to be made. There's always that next chance to make a buck, that opportunity to win it back.

Miyuki doesn't run a book; Miyuki runs the bookies. His results come slower, washing in at the end of the day with news that is ordered, expected. The money comes to him, and he always knows how much the organization is owed. It's a rare day when his business throws him a genuine curveball.

He isn't expecting it, when he hears that one of his people got jumped.

They all have day jobs, respectable businesses that they operate out of. Seidou doesn't sustain itself entirely on its shady operations — much of their enterprise is entirely above water. Anyone who wanted to roll one of Miyuki's people would have to know who he was after, because how else would they know exactly which corner store owner to hold up, and at what time?

Miyuki is furious. But he can't snap at this, can't react, can for the time being only calculate what earnings they've lost and factor that into his ledgers. He grits his teeth and digs in his heels, flashes his usual toothy smile as he gives his reassurances to everyone in his employ, one by one. He won't blame them for being conned or overpowered. He's after the attacker, and won't catch them just by biting the victim of their attack.

It has to be Inashiro, coming after him with such flagrant disrespect. It's an error in judgment. Before, the attacks were on other people, other segments of the organization who had best figure out how to retaliate for themselves. Now they've made a move against him, specifically. It's personal.

He'll devise whatever plan Kataoka wants from him, will be exactly as clever as it takes. He'll do what he must to counter these slights not just against him but against the family he's sworn fealty to.

Chapter Text

Miyuki is at the little desk in his room when he hears a knock coming at the exterior door.

He squints, eyes scrunching up behind his glasses as he attempts to squeeze the tiredness from them by willpower alone. Weak, watery morning light is filtering through the slats in the blinds where Miyuki has shuttered them, and he realizes only when he stops peering at the papers spread out before him that this is the only light he's been working by. He doesn't know when, or why, he turned off the desk lamp.

He makes himself stand up, moving to the door to answer whoever has come calling. It's Furuya he sees standing in the hallway; his gaze focuses in as soon as Miyuki opens the door but still Miyuki can tell that while he was waiting, Furuya had fallen back on his old habit of spacing out.

"One of these days," Miyuki says, voice an amused drawl, "somebody's gonna get the jump on you while you're doing that."

"Doing what?" Furuya asks, acting for all the world like he has no idea what Miyuki is talking about.

The worst part is that at the point they're at, Miyuki can't say whether Furuya is genuinely this oblivious, or whether he is self-aware and is avoiding having to answer for his bad habits by feigning confusion. What's worse still is that while Miyuki respects the cleverness of someone playing him, he's come to like these little moments of Furuya's denseness, if that's really all it is.

"Never mind," Miyuki says. "What can I do for you?"

"I thought we were going for a morning run. You never came to meet me."

"Is it..." Miyuki starts to say, screwing up his eyes as if he'll see the time written on the interior of his eyelids. "It's not that late already, is it? Guess I forgot."

He laughs, shaking his head in something like apology, and pushes the door to his room open wider. It's neat inside, the bed still made and all of the laundry put away in the dresser across the room. Miyuki chooses not to think about the fact that the bed is made because he hasn't slept in it, or about how he's still wearing his rumpled suit from the day before, the jacket hung over the bathroom door handle and the shirt come untucked, its top two buttons undone.

"Gimme a minute," he says. "Let me change into something I can run in."

Furuya glances around for a moment, eyes clearly falling first upon the arm chair in one corner, then on the smaller chair behind the desk. Though he assesses the options calmly, he makes no move to sit down in either. Miyuki looks back at him a moment, seeming deceptively at ease for someone who hasn't quite made himself at home, then proceeds with pulling clothes out for the day.

He's gotten in the habit of running with Furuya every morning. The first day had been easy, comfortable, while Miyuki was aware he was allowing his exercising to grow lax. Sure, he didn't play baseball any longer and got into fights less often than the movies might predict, but he was still in a line of work where being physically attacked wasn't outside the realm of possibilities. It paid to stay in good condition.

Running with Furuya meant uncomplicated companionship, meant Miyuki could choose not to speak a word and Furuya would never question him for it. He's rarely that quiet. He likes having the captive audience and makes frequent use of the opportunity to ask Furuya how he's been, what sorts of jobs he's being given, whether there's anything Miyuki can do to make his life easier. He's gotten in a few fights, in the past couple weeks, but nothing serious. His descriptions of the encounters are spare but Miyuki suspects that the feeling he's experiencing when he hears about them is pride.

He's given Furuya some pointers on self defense, on how to fight cheap and dirty when you don't really want to injure an opponent and just want to end an altercation fast. He doesn't want Furuya to be attacked. But he is smug that his advice has been put to good use.

"Alright," Miyuki says, once he's dressed and has splashed a bit of cold water on his face to wake up. "Let's go."

They still run in the same park as the first time, though they take it a bit faster now, and go for a bit longer. Furuya no longer gets as flushed; he's fit but as the weather has gotten warmer his endurance has measurably decreased, and Miyuki has modified their routine to minimize the chances of Furuya overheating. It's pathetic, but the guy just melts in the sun and sometimes Miyuki can't help but laugh.

For once, Miyuki is planning on taking advantage of Furuya's perpetual silence. There have been more attacks on Seidou members since the one Tanba told Miyuki about in the bar and since the one on Miyuki's bookie subordinate. Seidou knows to expect them now, which means their enemies can no longer plan such successful robberies. But their members are still getting jumped and getting into fights, and the descriptions of the thugs aren't enough for anyone higher up to judge whether it's Inashiro or some other power.

Kataoka still won't allow Miyuki to challenge Inashiro over it; Miyuki has taken it upon himself to ground out a solution in his free time.

"Miyuki-san," Furuya says, proving that he isn't willing to be silent. "I did a protection run yesterday."

Miyuki wants to use their run to pick away at the Inashiro negotiation problem in his head. Furuya is interrupting that, but Miyuki is still interested to hear it. They've kept Furuya on the ticketing job just so he has a normal source of income on the records, but Miyuki always expected Furuya would wind up doing stuff like this, ever since Kataoka made it clear that Furuya has the same value to Seidou that Tanba does — they're strong and broad and can solve problems with their bodies, if need be.

"Oh yeah?" Miyuki asks. "How'd that go?"

"I went with Tanba-san," Furuya tells him. "It was more like when I went with you on my first day, than it was like the other times I've done this."

Miyuki pretends, not entirely successfully, that he isn't starting to frown. He knows that Furuya and Tanba have a similar, physical strength, but he hadn't previously considered that they would be paired together. To him it seems a waste, consolidating the same type of talent that way. He would diversify, put them each with somebody else who complimented them. But Miyuki isn't able to make all the calls.

"Tanba-san had a lot of pointers," Furuya continues. "Some of them were about fighting. When he talked about it, he reminded me of you."

Miyuki snorts, at the thought that he and Tanba are even that much alike. He doubts their fighting styles are very similar at all (doubts, but cannot personally confirm, because even when Miyuki tried to bait Tanba into a round of hand-to-hand just for fun, Tanba absolutely refused him).

"He also gave me a gun," Furuya says, as if this is the most ordinary thing in the world. "For protection."

"Those are illegal," Miyuki immediately objects.

"Miyuki-san," Furuya says. "I'm working for the yakuza. Everything I do is illegal."

It isn't as simple as that, and Miyuki already has his mouth open to protest before he makes himself shut it, makes himself bite his tongue. Furuya isn't wrong but Miyuki is frowning, mouth pressed tightly closed around his disdain for the need for firearms.

"Shooting someone isn't the same as physically attacking them with your hands," he finally says. "If you make a mistake, there isn't time to take it back. You need to be certain you mean what you're doing."

"I know," Furuya says. "Tanba-san told me something like that, too. But he taught me how to fire it. I want to do anything I can for Seidou. If this means I can do my job in a tough situation, then I want Tanba-san's gun. He gave it to me for a reason."

Furuya sounds so intent, burning steadily with resolve through every word that he speaks. Miyuki is silent, choosing to focus on his jogging rather than on formulating a response. This is what Kataoka wanted, part of him thinks, knowing how much he trusts the boss's judgment, knowing that loyalty is immeasurably valuable to Kataoka. It still doesn't sit right with him; he looks at Furuya's unswerving trust and there's another part of him that's absolutely certain it is a liability.

"Be careful," Miyuki says, with more sincerity than he meant to use. "That's all I'm saying."

Furuya only nods, and for the time being they both continue to run in silence. Miyuki once again has the opportunity to pick at the Inashiro problem, wondering not for the first time whether he should simply confront Mei outright. No matter how badly it goes, he's beginning to think he can take it, wants to risk it just for that slim chance of a payout. There's an underlying thrill to that thought, and it's his own excitement that makes Miyuki reconsider.

Miyuki could ponder the problem of catching Inashiro out, of preparing for the turf war that's bound to ensue when he's inevitably proven right. But instead he's thinking of the first day he spent with Furuya in Tokyo, and how Furuya had taken his blackjack without question and tucked it comfortably into the waistband of his pants. He thinks of Furuya doing the same with the heavy pistol Tanba must have given him, and the frown on his face deepens into more of a scowl.

The face of the wall is rough against Miyuki's back even through the heavy wool of his suit. He leans casually against it all the same, waiting it out as the sun drifts lower in the sky and as its orange light slants down between the buildings lining the street. He knows just how long it takes to run this particular protection route, so he isn't waiting long.

"Tanba," Miyuki says, when he sees the familiar shaved head rounding a corner.

Tanba's footsteps falter when he hears his name, steps slowing until he comes to a stop and brings the man with him to a halt alongside him. For a moment he simply stares at Miyuki, gaze heavy with appraisal. Then pulls a packet of envelopes out of his jacket and hands them to his companion. The man fumbles a moment, before stowing them and continuing on his way.

"Miyuki," Tanba says in return. "I didn't expect to see you here."

Considering that "here" is the butt-end of an unremarkable street in one of the most tourist-y parts of the ward, yeah, neither did Miyuki. He's only spending his time lurking around corners because he knows when people he wants to see will have no choice but to run into him.

"I wanted to talk to you," Miyuki says. "You gave Furuya a gun."

Tanba frowns, pausing before he points out, "You gave Furuya a blackjack."

"Those two things aren't the same," Miyuki insists. "A blackjack isn't so illegal. A blackjack only kills someone if you know how to use it. A gun is more likely to kill someone if you don't, with equal chance that someone will be you."

"Are you of all people worried about the legality of something? Do you think that when the police take you in, you'll be looking at a lighter sentence because you didn't have a gun, and I did?"

"I don't know," Miyuki says. "It depends on whether a court of law can prove that you killed someone."

Tanba's face darkens and for a moment Miyuki considers whether he's said too much, whether he's struck too close a blow. For a moment, he wonders whether Tanba is going to hit him. But Tanba's fists only clench at his sides, flexing in and out and holding steady, though Miyuki can see how it highlights the firm definition of his muscles past the rolled-up cuffs of his shirt sleeves.

"If we got taken in," Tanba ends up saying, "you'll face that too, same as me."

"The difference is, I never have. Everything we've been though, and you can't put that on my hands."

But it isn't that there is no blood there; it isn't that Miyuki's hands are clean. They shake where he's holding them, tiny tremors that he begins to suspect are rage, or maybe fear, though the feeling is simmering deep beneath his surface and on the outside he experiences nothing else but calm. He's done plenty for the organization, has proven his loyalty in countless different ways. But he hasn't handled a gun, and if he has his choice, he isn't going to.

"I do what has to be done for the family," Tanba says, glancing away. He's looking off down the street, back toward where the towering shape of the Tokyo Dome Hotel is visible along the skyline. "Furuya will do the same."

"Does he even know how to shoot?" Miyuki asks him. "He said that you taught him. Did you?"

Tanba shrugs, his attention coming back to Miyuki, his mouth pulling wide in a vicious sort of grin. "From the very first time he fired it, the kickback didn't faze him at all."

Tanba sounds proud of Furuya. Miyuki crosses his arms back over his chest, picks at his sleeve and pushes his thoughts down. Furuya doesn't need to learn how to shoot. It doesn't matter if Tanba taught him it easily, effortlessly, the way that it sounds. Tanba didn't teach him anything with any value.

"He can defend himself without a gun," Miyuki says, one last time.

"He can defend himself better with it," Tanba counters, so that Miyuki suspects he's enjoying it a little too much, having the upper hand.

It's more than Miyuki likes to give him, but he's realized too late he has no leverage to work with. He can do only as much as Tanba can, give Furuya tools, give Furuya advice. Beyond that, what Furuya does with them is entirely up to him. Miyuki has the momentary, horrifying thought of, this must be what a parent feels.

"Furuya isn't the only one arming himself heavier," Tanba tells him, when Miyuki says nothing else in reply. "Everyone in Seidou's doing it. Not everyone wants to mess with guns, some of the rest of us are like you. But everyone is watching his back."

Because of the attacks, Miyuki finishes in his head, though there's no reason for him to say as much out loud. He and Tanba are both already thinking it.

"Someone is going to get shot," Miyuki says, point-blank. "It might be one of us, or it might be somebody from Inashiro, or it might just be somebody who ended up in the wrong place in the city at the wrong time of day. And we won't have control of it."

It's not like dying isn't a part of their business. There's always the possibility that an altercation will go south, that a deal will go wrong, that the thoughtful machine that is their enterprise won't run as smoothly as so many smart people have planned it to do. But there's a predictability to it, a security in knowing that though there are countless ways shit can go wrong, Miyuki knows about most of them, and is as smart as he needs to be in avoiding them.

"It will be the end of the peace we've been having," Tanba says, and it's exactly what Miyuki's thinking, too.

Maybe they've gotten too used to the old order. Maybe prosperity without strife is more than a criminal enterprise deserves. Miyuki thinks about it sometimes, that they are criminals, that there's more to Seidou than the baseball dome and Miyuki's books and the clean, efficient numbers that are all he works with any more. But he isn't afraid of risk and this knowledge has never deterred him. He only wants to choose where he risks himself with both eyes wide open.

"It'll reflect badly on Kataoka," Miyuki says. "He's our head while everything starts going wrong."

"We won't cut off our own head," Tanba insists. "It won't matter, because Seidou is not that hasty."

Miyuki can't argue with that. Kataoka, at least, is too entrenched in his honor to be anything other than deliberate. If he were more bloody-minded, they'd be waist-deep in a turf war already. The thought makes Miyuki's lip curl, though he can't say whether the uneasy waiting, full of first strikes and feints at their extremities, makes him feel any better.

"Kataoka isn't so secure in his spot," Miyuki argues, softer than before.

Tanba frowns, but they both know the same facts. Their talk alone proves where Kataoka is weak — they say it over and over, Kataoka, Kataoka, his name which isn't the same as that of the old head. Families like theirs value blood, and Kataoka's is a bit thin for the tastes of those more literal-minded.

"He doesn't have a family," Miyuki continues. "We won't have sibling infighting, if he's out of the boss seat. We'll have a coup."

"What do you want me to do about it?" Tanba asks. He's brusque, but the question rings true as he invites Miyuki's opinion. "Nothing has happened yet."

"Nothing, I guess," Miyuki says, making himself laugh.

He doesn't know what he wants, and he hates to admit it. He doesn't want for Kataoka to fall from favor, not when his leadership is what brought Miyuki to the comfortable position he's gotten used to in the first place. But he's not a creature of comforts, and has always had more ambitions.

"Who do you think would fight for it?" Miyuki continues. His voice is deceptively light, almost playful, like they're talking about a fun hypothetical. "Chris won't come back, not for this. He was out of the picture a long time ago. None of Seidou's new officers have been here for long. Who else is there? Do we leave it all to, what, you?"

He laughs again, and this time is a little more genuine. In the awful future where nepotism is dead and Kataoka's favor means nothing, maybe Miyuki loses, but Tanba certainly wouldn't win. Who would follow him, the muscle, if he stepped up and tried to lead?

But Tanba is silent, expression stern and composed as he hums through closed lips.

Miyuki realizes, the awareness dawning on him in an unfamiliar tide, that Tanba is considering it. If the Seidou Organization suddenly came into the market for a new leader, he'd consider throwing his hat into the ring — perhaps entirely because of Miyuki's joking suggestion to the same effect.

"Even if Kataoka is dead and buried, you aren't about to be Seidou's next head, don't be ridiculous."

"Don't you think I could do it?" Tanba asks. But the way he says it, digging in his heels, it doesn't entirely sound like a question. "Don't you think our people would listen to me?"

Maybe they would. Tanba is steady and dependable, and he does look out for the guys who work under him. More than that, Miyuki isn't the only one who's heard the rumors about Tanba's time as an enforcer back when he was young and green and relations with the smaller gangs in the area weren't quite so peaceful. If Seidou wants a leader everyone can believe has killed a man just by looking at him, Tanba cuts a pretty enough picture.

"What does it matter?" Miyuki asks, turning his usual smarmy smile back on. "Seidou isn't cutting off its head. Or are you that ready to be Kataoka's replacement?"

Tanba shakes his head, squaring his shoulders and taking a step back. The mantle of the bodyguard descends again to his shoulders, as he visibly puts aside the idea of being anything other than he is. But the intention is still there. Now that it's risen to the surface once Miyuki can feel it, simmering under Tanba's skin like a promise. He's proven he has more ambition than Miyuki was counting on.

He realizes, loyal though he might be to his boss and vicious as he might fight to keep the man in power, if Kataoka steps down, he wants to be among those in line to puppet Seidou's strings.

He and Tanba rarely see eye to eye. When that day comes, Miyuki doesn't want to have to fight him for it.

"Are you doing this again?" Miyuki asks, waving one hand vaguely to the side in an indication of the protection money route. "With Furuya?"

"I may," Tanba allows.

"If he wants to?" Miyuki hedges.

"If his time off from selling tickets lines up with when the money is due."

"So he's a dog now," Miyuki says. "And he'll jump whenever you say?"

He laughs, a scoffing sound he doesn't bother to stifle. Tanba shoots him an irritated look, which only manages to feel normal. The two of them aren't meant to talk about wars and futures. They're meant to give each other a hard time, each undermining the other but nevertheless continuing to work together.

"Take good care of my dog," Miyuki says, laughing again as he begins to turn away. "I am the one who trained him."

He thinks that Tanba wants to say something else, though he's forestalled by the presentation of Miyuki's back. He doesn't give Tanba long enough to say it. He stuffs his hands down into his pockets, shrugs his shoulders, and strides away.

There's a big game at the Tokyo Dome that week, though Miyuki doesn't go himself.

He's working until the end of the match, brain filled with numbers and profits and projections into the next few weeks, his hands kept busy with Seidou's books. They've got a CFO somewhere in the corporation itself, someone with a degree from a good university and the ability to keep his nose clean. Miyuki is peeking through information he will never get to see.

He keeps a radio on his desk and at the end of the day, as a reward for all his hard work, he turns it on to listen to the last couple innings of the game. With the roar of the crowd in the background as he writes, it's almost as if he's there, two of his passions running together into one. The game is a tough one for the Giants, but they pull out the win at the bottom of the ninth. There's going to be revelry in the streets that night, Miyuki just knows it.

There's going to be a pretty payout for Seidou, with the way the betting looked at Miyuki's last check.

This, at least, he can do without difficulty. He knows baseball stats and game odds, can run the numbers more cleverly than anyone he's met. He's made himself indispensable enough, this way.

He isn't having such luck with the turf war brewing. He won't bring anyone from Seidou down with him, nor is he foolhardy enough to walk into Inashiro's jaws alone. Their operations have been proceeding with unsettling quietude, based on what poking around Miyuki has managed to do. It's almost as if Inashiro isn't involved with Seidou's current struggles at all.

Miyuki refuses to believe it. He's grit his teeth and swallowed his pride, put on a smile and asked Mei to meet him to talk. Mei agrees too readily, easily, telling Miyuki to meet him at that place with the good koshu Mei loves so well. He sounds absolutely certain Miyuki will come, like there is no possibility Miyuki could ever tell him no. The bar is one of Chris' old favorites. Miyuki says he won't be able to make it after the game.

It isn't a lie. The game is over, and Miyuki's profits will be coming in. There's plenty else he can busy his empty hands with, besides Mei's honeyed sake in a bar Miyuki never meant to go back to.

Miyuki drinks more, amidst cheers and celebration and while away from anyone who knows well enough to watch him.

He comes to the bar with two of Seidou's bookies, each of them flushed with the excitement of the game and the promise behind their gambling numbers. The space is packed with rejoicing Giants fans and soon Miyuki loses his companions in the roiling crowd. He can't say he misses them.

He buys a round for the room. He isn't the only one. Though he knows his own limits he can't help but ride the tide of emotion, drinking beer after beer until the inside of his head is pleasantly warm. There are recaps on the television, snippets of the game played back and back again as commentators report on the fortuitous win. The words begin to blend together, melting into an incoherent hum that rings in Miyuki's ears but means nothing to his wandering mind. He stays at the bar until it's late, until last call is made and there's no one left to chat with.

Miyuki steps onto the street, still pleasantly buzzed when the chill early morning air hits his face.

The bar they'd chosen isn't far from the Tokyo Dome Hotel and Miyuki thinks nothing of walking home alone. The streets are quiet at that lonely hour — most of the other revelers have already filtered out and in short order Miyuki is left with no company save his own. His steps are slow, only a little bit unsteady, plotting the familiar course back toward the Dome.

That's where Furuya will be, early the next morning while Miyuki will doubtlessly be nursing a hangover in bed. Maybe he'll beg off from their usual morning run; he's done enough for the organization, if he decides he deserves a day off there's no one around to tell him he hasn't earned it. Maybe he'll make it up to Furuya later. Busy as things have gotten, there's been no time for them to play catch.

They could play now, if Furuya was only up. The entire stadium will be shut down for the night but Miyuki can let them in, can turn on the field lights so Furuya isn't pitching in the dark. It's been so long since Miyuki has caught on that field. With a clarity that comes only with significant intoxication, he realizes that he might miss handling a ball far more than he'd thought.

There's a sound from behind him, and suddenly something hard is pressing in against the small of Miyuki's back.

He reacts instinctively, though his body has gone clumsy with the liquor. There's a hand on his shoulder but he breaks from the hold, rolling away from his attacker's grasp and bending their fingers back. Part of his brain thinks, gun, at the heavy weight that shoves up against his gut. He stomps the man's instep and hears the dull clatter of the weapon dropping to the ground.

They grapple then, bare-handed and fumbling, Miyuki too drunk to think where he's hitting. The wind is knocked from him and a hand pries clumsily at his throat, thick fingers tightening down and giving a malicious squeeze. He kicks at them, misses, and can feel his breath growing dangerously short. He kicks again and his aim is truer, striking them into windedness and making the other man drop his hand.

Adrenaline is singing bright in his ears and then he's gotten his knife out into his hand, yellow light from the street lamps glinting off the edge of the blade. He shoves at the man's shoulder and pushes him up against the alley wall, his knife pressed close to the line of his attacker's throat.

For a moment all he sees are the bright whites of a stranger's eyes, gone wide enough that the milky pale of them is visible all the way around.

"I'll kill you," he says, because in that instant it is the only thought in his head.

His voice is roughened, raspy from his choking, and his teeth bare in what is more of a grimace than a grin. His mirthless smile only cracks wider when the man sucks a surprised breath in; he lets the height of someone else's fear calm him from the precipice edge he's been pushed against.

"You're part of the group that's been attacking us," he continues, calmer than before. He presses his knife in closer, careful, just enough to nick through the man's skin. "If I slit your throat, what will your people do?"

But his rationality is returning after the frantic fumbling of their fight, and Miyuki knows that he won't follow through on his threat. His gut is lurching, queasy from the alcohol — or perhaps because he's lost his stomach for this kind of trade.

"Don't!" the man insists, gasping. "Don't."

Miyuki isn't, but not because his assailant has reduced himself to begging. Now that he's paying attention (and standing within the golden glow of the streetlight) he's gotten a good look at the man whose shoulder his fingers are digging into. He's dressed rough and thuggish, but more than that, nowhere on his person can Miyuki pick out Inashiro's distinctive mark.

Inashiro is prideful and confident, a family who wears their name with no reservation. Though Miyuki has entertained the thought that perhaps they are bankrolling attacks carried out by some smaller gang, one thing makes itself immediately clear: this man is not a member of the Inashiro family itself.

"If I don't," Miyuki says, voice coming out calm and conversational. "What will you do? You've already attacked me, given the chance you should kill me now, just as I ought to do to you."

"I wont!" the man declares.

Miyuki doesn't believe him. His stomach gives another unfortunate roll, his mind churning away at the question, what to do. He could haul his captive back to Seidou, where people crueler than him will drag from him his allegiance. But he's tipsy and worn; there's no guarantee he'll make it that far without being overpowered.

He could send the guy back to his sorry gang, hiss more intimidation and leave him with a message to take home. But he isn't so kind as to think that a few kicks to an underling will end a string of coordinated attacks.

"I could take you back to Seidou," Miyuki continues, beginning to speak his thoughts aloud. He turns his knife over in his hand, pressing it up beneath the man's chin and forcing his head back. Blood runs down his throat, shining black in the two-tone light from the street lamp. "I could bring you to a place where you'll have worse things to worry about than whether I'm going to slit—"

He doesn't get the chance to finish. The man panics, kicking at Miyuki with remarkable aim. He's jarred enough that he reflexively curls over, the hand that he'd seized the man with weakening its grasp. The man twists out of Miyuki's hold, squirming away and streaking off down the alley, the sound of his swiftly retreating footsteps heavy on Miyuki's ears before the man turns a corner and darts away.

Miyuki is abruptly aware that he could have handled the situation so much better.

Chapter Text

Miyuki's hands are shaking, when he pushes open his door and steps out into the hall.

All the alcohol from the night before has burned out of his blood but no calm has settled in to take the place of his intoxication. His best attempts to clear his head fail him, his nerves screaming their distress and leaving his body restless and tense. He spends a stretch of time simply pacing his room, working off the anxious energy that is the byproduct of an adrenaline crash.

He's restless still, when he lies down in the dark to sleep. His mind won't stop churning, turning over his recollection of the attack. He remembers the weight of the gun against his back, against his gut, remembers the pure clarity of the fear he'd felt in wondering whether he was about to be shot through. He's impressed, in hindsight, that he'd reacted so cleanly to the possibility of his own murder.

He's disappointed in all the ways he didn't react better. He was sloppy, allowing himself to be ambushed, allowing himself to be grabbed and roughed up. He was idiotic not to keep a hold on the man who'd attacked him; he could have improvised some means of restraining the man while pondering his next move, rather than relying on intimidation and surprise to keep an enemy docile and within his sway.

Miyuki thinks all of these things, the altercation playing out over and over in pieces behind the thin film of his eyelids. The dark of his room is close and oppressive, quiet enough that he can hear every last heavy breath he takes in. His throat is still sore, will likely be bruised where his assailant grabbed him. He sits up, writing rest off as a lost cause.

The cool air of the hall is pleasant on his face. He doesn't know if it's only his motions stirring it but the movement feels good, feels less claustrophobic than the too-small confines of his room. He takes off toward the elevator bank, not yet aware of where he plans to go.

He considers, briefly, heading down to Furuya's door. It's almost dawn but he's certain Furuya wouldn't at all question the intrusion.

When he steps into the elevator, though, he finds it's the button for the basement his fingers are reflexively itching to push. He lets them, wondering whether Kataoka will really be in his office in the hotel at what must be four in the morning. It's a more lived-in space than the office at the Tokyo Dome, that one reserved for legal business and for quick meetings with family underlings, in a setting that parses as no less than semi-formal.

The office in the hotel is closer to a personal study, stuffed with a strange profusion of personal items and with a couch pressed against one wall. Miyuki is aware that Kataoka sleeps there, sometimes. He's wondered more than once whether Kataoka sleeps anywhere else, wonders when he has time to return to any home other than this.

He pushes open the cracked office door, forgetting in his agitation that it would be more polite to knock. The lights are turned down low, overhead illumination foregone and only the lamp on the desk left to illuminate the room with its soft yellow glow. Kataoka is behind it but he doesn't appear to be working; he's leaned back in the chair, a book propped between his fingers at the edge of the desk.

Miyuki stops just inside the threshold and a moment later Kataoka glances up, attention drawn to the soft squeaking of the door's hinges.

"Miyuki," he says, sounding faintly surprised.

But he doesn't sound displeased, and what tension had crept back into Miyuki's shoulders drains back out of his body. He takes a few steps forward, moving up to the other side of the desk. He doesn't have a plan for what he intends to accomplish; he's entirely winging it.

"I was attacked," Miyuki says, point-blank.

Kataoka is silent a moment, before he folds his book closed and sets it aside before him on the desk. He sits forward in his chair, pensive expression from before shifting to one that's more serious.

"What happened?" Kataoka asks.

"I went out to celebrate the Giants win," Miyuki says. "I had a few drinks with the guys and stayed until the bar closed. On my way back, someone came up behind me and took me by surprise. I fought with him, disarming and restraining him, and meant to ask him who he was working for. Before I got that far, he lashed out at me, and ran off."

He makes his report as matter-of-fact as possible. Laid out that way, with no specifics and no embellishments, it feels like something that must have happened to someone else. Laid out that way, Miyuki wonders why he hadn't simply asked the man who he was working for. With a knife to his throat, there was little reason to believe he wouldn't comply.

"It wasn't Inashiro," Miyuki adds. "I can't say whether these guys are working with them some other way, but it's somebody else."

"That's more than anyone else has thought to say," Kataoka points out. "How do you know?"

"Inashiro wear their colors very plain," Miyuki says, flashing an unpleasant slice of his teeth. "If he was somebody from Inashiro, I would have recognized it."

Kataoka doesn't contest him on that. They're both aware that a clever enemy could choose to disguise himself, to distance himself from his faction and thereby avoid retribution. But they have both met Inashiro's Kunitomo, and after encountering that man and his choice in lieutenants, the possibility feels painfully remote.

"It's going to be a turf war," Miyuki says. "Someone is challenging us, someone we don't know."

"Things have been peaceful for too long," Kataoka agrees. "I was expecting this sooner, as a matter of fact."

"You know who it is?" Miyuki asks, trying to push down his surprise, trying to push down the strange feeling of betrayal that bubbles up in his gut.

"That isn't what I said. What I know is that there are always those who disagree with the dominant opinion. I have made enemies for us, with the same strides I took to claim our victories. It was only a matter of time before those pockets of discontentment found themselves a voice."

Miyuki cannot argue with that. "We need to know who's in charge. Once we know that, we know where to strike."

"I thought that was something you were working on," Kataoka says, tilting his head to the side.

Miyuki has been working on it. Though his conversations with Mei have born little fruit, he has caught wind of some things — news of little gangs operating on their fringes, of robberies in the surrounding area, of altercations that might not have been reported to the police. He's been piecing it all together, painting for himself a picture of the criminal landscape.

"I haven't figured it out yet," Miyuki admits. "But I am working."

"Then it will be fine," Kataoka says. "We aren't so weak that we cannot withstand a few foolish attacks. When we retaliate, it will be swift and uncompromising. We'll send a message that cannot be denied."

It's all Miyuki has wanted — to do something, to have any kind of results from their little guerrilla war. When Kataoka says it he can't help but feel placated, secure in the belief that they won't allow their empire to be broken up without fighting back. The anxiety from his attack is already leaving his mind.

"Thank you," Miyuki says. "I know Tanba is working on the problem in his way, too. We'll give you results."

"I'm counting on that," Kataoka agrees. Then, after a pause: "Was there anything else?"

Miyuki cannot think of anything. But he lingers before the desk, some of his agitation from before winding back into his muscles. His shoulders draw in, defensive and uncertain, waiting underneath the weight of Kataoka's gaze as his boss looks him over.

"Sit down," Kataoka suggests, gesturing toward the couch that's half-hidden along the side wall.

"I— What?" Miyuki asks.

"There's no need for you to do anything else tonight," Kataoka explains. He's already reaching to pick back up his book. "If you need to clear your mind, you may as well be comfortable for it."

Miyuki moves over toward the couch, accepting the suggestion with ill grace. Kataoka might have a book to read and might be at peace within his own office but Miyuki is at loose ends, a trespasser on someone else's private space. But as he settles back against the plush cushions and allows the couch to supportively cradle his tired body, he finds that it doesn't actually feel that way.

"Stay as long as you please," Kataoka adds, flicking forward a single page in his book.

Miyuki leans his head back, staring up at the room's dimly-lit ceiling. It's quiet in the office, almost peaceful, the only sound that of the occasional rustle from the pages of Kataoka's book. There are no demands from his boss's company, and Miyuki allows the steady, familiar presence to soothe his mangled nerves.

The stadium opens up before Miyuki, the field spread out beyond the ringing cup of the stands.

Furuya stands beside him, looking out at the pitch with cautious eyes. After so many weeks of selling tickets, the Tokyo Dome no longer holds so powerful a sway over Miyuki's ex-pitcher. But still his eyes light up when they land upon the mound, catching with a hope Miyuki doubts will ever be extinguished.

"Let's go," Miyuki tells him. "Just gimme a minute to put on my gear."

The Tokyo Dome is closed for the day. There are no games scheduled to be played, nor any other events slotted to take place in the stadium. Other workers are cleaning up and doing maintenance but in that moment Miyuki and Furuya are the only ones walking out to stand on the grass. Miyuki lingers to one side, taking his time strapping himself into his gear. When he looks up, nearly dressed, Furuya is already standing on the mound.

"Is that how you wanna do it?" Miyuki calls out, jogging over to stand behind the plate.

"I won't get to do this again any other way," Furuya calls back. "I want to pitch like I would in a game."

Miyuki can respect that. This is what he'd promised Furuya, dangling the temptation of real pitching before Furuya's starving eyes. It feels surreal to make good on that offer, while Seidou as a whole is marshaling its forces in preparation for a gang war. But out here the grass is green and neat, the smell of scuffed earth filling Miyuki's senses as he crouches down behind the plate. He can allow them a day's worth of escapism.

He gives Furuya the sign for a fastball, that terrifying one he's thrown in so many pro games. Even at a distance Miyuki can see the way Furuya's eyes ignite with purpose, his posture condensing into the familiar stance of his pitching form before his arm snaps around and out to throw the ball. The impact against Miyuki's mitt is just as sweet as he remembers.

He tosses the ball back, feeling it in his arm when he makes the throw.

They get into a good rhythm, Miyuki making calls less because Furuya needs the direction and more for the fantasy of it — if he's calling the pitches, it's almost as if they're playing in a real game, almost as if there's a batter standing ready at the plate. Furuya gives him everything he asks for and though his control seems a bit worse than when Miyuki had watched his pro games, he delivers every pitch with his same game intensity.

Miyuki lets him throw twenty pitches, thirty pitches, watching his form and the way sweat begins to drip down his face. He watches as Furuya wears himself down, nostalgic with the feeling of looking out for his pitcher and reading his mood. All he get off Furuya is the pure joy of making his throws.

"Break!" Miyuki finally calls out, rising up from his crouch with the ball still cradled in his hand.

"I want to pitch more," Furuya immediately shouts back, internal fire still burning steady in his eyes.

"Come sit with me," Miyuki insists, jerking his head to the side toward the stands. "You can throw a few more after."

Furuya hesitates, visibly digging his heels in like he wants to refuse. But Miyuki has made good on every promise he's made to him, and he thinks that's why Furuya relents, his posture loosening as he steps off the mound. Once he sees Furuya is following him, Miyuki moves to take a seat right at the front of the stands.

Furuya sits next to him, arms at his sides, even as Miyuki leans his own forearms on the railing.

"There's a big fight coming," he tells Furuya, his voice coming out low and soft. "I wanted to be able to do more stuff like this with you, going running in the mornings, playing catch when there's time, getting dinner in the little restaurants in town, maybe. But we're not gonna have much time for that for a while."

Furuya looks down at him, expression uncertain. Miyuki can't tell if he's concerned, or if he's simply confused what Miyuki's news has to do with him.

"You're gonna need to make good on that promise Kataoka had you make to him," Miyuki says. "You're gonna have to prove your loyalty."

"I've always been loyal," Furuya replies. "I've done everything anyone has asked of me."

And he has, virtually without argument and always to the best of his ability. Miyuki has seen how hard he works — too hard, sometimes — firsthand. But they've never asked him to do anything difficult. They've never done more than dump him into petty fights, knocking the heads of business owners who didn't want to pay their tithes, or roughing up bettors who weren't making good on what they owed. Miyuki wonders, not for the first time, whether Furuya has ever been in a real fight, one with more than a few bruises on the line.

"Yeah," Miyuki says. "I know."

It's surprisingly difficult, telling Furuya the things Miyuki knows he has to say. He's a big steady lump of longing, a loyal puppy whose need to belong Miyuki has all too happily catered to. There's no need to make him prove his loyalty. Miyuki has seen it, but he isn't the only one who needs to know.

"Seidou's taken pretty good care of you, haven't we?" Miyuki asks, flashing Furuya a little sideways grin.

"I think so," Furuya agrees. The words come easy, a smile starting to rise to his lips. "I like it here."

"Yeah, we like you here too," Miyuki says. "We want you to take good care of Seidou, too. You're gonna do that, right, when it comes down to it?"

"Of course," Furuya says, no hesitation at all.

Miyuki doesn't think Kataoka means him to say this much, but he forges on all the same. "Even if it means killing somebody? Tanba gave you that gun, if he asks you, are you gonna use it?"

Furuya stares back at Miyuki, gaze steady and face composed. Miyuki wonders what he's thinking, completely unable to read his intent. He wonders whether Furuya is picturing it, that situation where he'd have to shoot a man. He wonders whether Furuya isn't picturing anything at all.

"I'll do it," Furuya says, soft and steady. "I'll do what is necessary for Seidou."

It gives Miyuki a funny little chill to hear it, a little bit unsettled, a little bit proud. He falls silent, pushing away from the stadium railing and leaning instead back in his seat. He feels remarkably comfortable, sitting next to someone who's just promised to do violence solely on Miyuki's word.

"Is it really that easy for you?" he wonders, slanting a look sideways in Furuya's direction.

Furuya shrugs in return. "I don't know if it's easy. I've never done this before. But Kataoka-san has put his trust in me, and Tanba-san has taught me, and you have always been here for me. If you believe I can do this, then it shouldn't be too hard."

To his own surprise, Miyuki laughs. "Tell me that again when you've got the blood on your hands."

"I will. If I have to protect you, I want to be able to tell you it wasn't hard."

That shuts Miyuki up. It's one thing for Furuya to do murder in Seidou's name. It's another for Furuya to do it for Miyuki, and not because Miyuki ordered it of him, but because Furuya himself deemed it necessary. Miyuki tries to visualize what that situation would look like; he gives up when he gets no farther than imagining Furuya holding the gun in both hands, finger poised to pull the trigger and release far more force than he's ever put behind a pitch.

"Can I throw again?" Furuya finally asks, when Miyuki's silence has stretched out uncomfortably long.

Miyuki startles, thrown out of his thoughts until the words register and a grin rises to his face. Leave it to Furuya to go from a conversation about violence and duty to the far simpler matter of whether Miyuki will still catch his pitch. He's shaking his head, but he isn't saying no.

"C'mon, then," he tells Furuya, pushing up from his chair. "I guess you've rested enough. Let's get out there, before the maintenance guys come in to tend the field."

Furuya is up from his seat in an instant, long strides carrying him back out to the mound. Miyuki follows more slowly, his eyes trailing up toward the apex of the dome. It's not quite the same as playing beneath the open sky when it's cloudless and near blue enough to be blinding. But Tokyo Dome is vast and wide, big enough that Miyuki feels dwarfed when he stands in its middle. It's big enough that, if he concentrates, the outside world starts to feel very far away.

"Let's do it," he calls to Furuya before he crouches down again behind the plate. "Make 'em count like it's the last game in the season!"

The gambling money comes in, steady as clockwork.

The winners claim their glory while the losers forfeit what they owe, the cycle continuing as new bets are made. Not everyone pays on time, or in full, but that's what payment plans are for. That's what loans are for. Seidou does a brisk business loaning cash, as well.

Sometimes debts aren't paid, at which point someone needs to go out and collect. That's Tanba's area of expertise. His subordinates are the leg-breakers, the skull-crackers, the ones who stand outside places of business in their slick black suits, lingering just long enough to be noticed and send their message home. No one wants to see them at their door twice.

For a week past when Miyuki was attacked, every part of Seidou's enterprise continues as usual. The money comes in, the money goes out, an efficient machine that grinds capitalism down to its bones and strains from them the marrow the yakuza likes to live on. After a week has passed, Miyuki's routine returns entirely to normal.

Another two days, and the attacks set in again, more brutal than before.

Before, their enemies were after their money, timing their ambushes to points when a particular person would be weighted down by cash. When they caught somebody without much on him the fights were brief and dirty, scuffles that ended in bruised egos and no worse than broken bones.

The attacks set in again, and this time their rivals are out to maim. The injuries are more vicious, more targeted, cutting into muscles that would make it difficult to walk, difficult to squeeze one's hand or move one's arm. Breaking big bones in men's legs, leaving them crippled and screaming. Their men limp back to Seidou safehouses and businesses, crawl home snarling with promises of revenge.

There comes a break-in at one of Seidou's legitimate businesses, the windows all smashed, the money taken from the till. That isn't what brings half the members of the organization by, walking slowly past the building and letting their eyes drag across the store.

They make their pilgrimages to see the graffiti, tall as a man and spelled out in vibrant black and red.

Across the building there reads the word: "Yakushi."

The bar is dimly lit as always, its low lighting giving their meeting a bit of a clandestine feel. Miyuki sits at his stool, one elbow propped on the counter along the bar and with his body twisted to lean in toward Tanba. Somehow, Tanba is the only person he ever meets in this place.

"We need to do something about Yakushi," Miyuki says, no preamble.

Tanba only nods grim agreement, tipping his glass back and swallowing a hefty gulp of its contents. Miyuki idly wonders, between this and the last time, when Tanba became such a heavy drinker.

"You're right," Tanba says, voice heavy with the implication of, much as it pains me to admit it. "The time has come for retaliation."

Though Miyuki isn't expecting anything different, confirmation that Tanba is with him settles weightily into his bones, warms him from the inside out with a feeling of utmost vindication. There's a rightness to it, a feeling of justice soon to be done. Tanba can be intractable and stubborn, but united with him, Miyuki knows there is much they can accomplish as a pair.

They've done it before. He sometimes misses it.

"We need a plan," Miyuki says. "Kataoka asked me to bring him one. And lemme guess, he tasked you with that, too?"

Tanba shrugs, a slim roll of his shoulders that brooks no apology. "He did talk to me about the attacks."

Miyuki laughs, low chuckles that are scoffing but unfazed, because of course Tanba will be difficult, brusque, right to the bitter end. It's no matter. Miyuki's dealt with that before, too, and he knows how to handle it.

"Will you back me up?" Miyuki asks, skipping to what's important. "You're the one who thought about cutting off heads. I wanna lop theirs clean off. Everything else will fall apart if we get to who's in charge."

"I agree with that," Tanba says. "Do you know where their base of operations is? When are we doing this?"

Miyuki abruptly deflates. "I haven't figured that out yet."

He waits, for Tanba to retract his cooperation, for Tanba to insist on standing alone. The rejection doesn't come. There's only pensive silence, broken by the faint sound of ice clinking together in Tanba's glass as he tilts his wrist, as he thinks upon the problem staring them in the face.

"I'll back you up," Tanba says. "When you know where you want to move, I'll make sure we have the bodies."

There's a feeling pulling tight inside Miyuki's chest, hot like the vindication he feels whenever he's proven right, but deeper, sharper, resonating off his insides along with Tanba's words. He isn't expecting such a solid vote of confidence, isn't expecting Tanba's steady resolve. He should have known better. He's a little bit mad at himself, that he didn't.

"Kinda funny of you to say that, don't you think?" he asks.

He punctuates his words with a dry little laugh, swirling his own drink around in its glass. When he sips from it, it's more slowly than how Tanba has been knocking back his liquor. Miyuki allows the liquid to flow over his tongue, savoring the sweet, nutty taste of it before the liquor drains down his throat.

He's aware that Tanba is staring at him, that intent look he sometimes gets when he's trying to figure Miyuki out.

"What do you mean?" Tanba asks, begrudgingly.

"This," Miyuki says, waving a hand between them, flashing a cheerful slice of his teeth. "When you talk to me like that, with that much trust, it almost sounds like we're friends!"

Tanba is the one to laugh then, a brief bark of sound that startles unwillingly from his throat. He appears embarrassed a moment, before he smooths it over and shakes his head. "I don't hate you, if that's what you mean."

"Don't you?" Miyuki asks. "I gave you plenty of reason to."

Tanba shrugs, and pushes his glass away. He leans forward so his arms are resting heavily against the edge of the bar, his eyes staring straight ahead at the array of bottles clustered behind it. Miyuki can tell at a glance that he's as good as staring through them.

"I hate the way you are with people," Tanba admits. "It makes you hard to trust, when you keep the people you work with at arm's length and judge them solely for what they can do. It makes people around you expect to be thrown away when they make one too many mistakes."

"That's not the problem we had," Miyuki says, shaking his head as if Tanba's words haven't cut him close. They have, have struck to the heart of him and prised it open with powerful accuracy, but what Miyuki says is true — he and Tanba had issues all of their own.

"There are things I don't mind trusting you with," Tanba says. "And other things where I know not to try."

Miyuki "hmph"s to himself, and looks away.

The pause draws out between them, though it's less uncomfortable than Miyuki might have feared. It occurs to Miyuki how much Tanba is like Furuya — a steady, unyielding presence, a man who's content to be of few words unless someone else makes the effort to draw him out of his shell. Each of them are stubborn and hard-working, are loyal to a fault if one can only get through their thick skulls. Furuya alone defers to Miyuki, and that fact is always good for a momentary, gratified thrill.

Tanba doesn't do that. What respect he gives to Miyuki is grudging and negotiated, traded back and forth with frugal care and measured out so that Tanba might determine exactly how much he ought to give. Tanba holds him to his faults, but without hypocrisy. After all the years they've known each other, Miyuki is aware that Tanba attempts to better himself of any habits he finds himself disdaining in another. He's a little like Furuya that way, too — too goddamn pure in his unexpected streak of high-minded ideal.

Miyuki is comfortable around guys like that. He always knows where he stands, can use them as a compass for his fluctuating morals and guide by them to determine what course of action he thinks is right.

"I miss it, you know," he says, tilting his head to one side, his hand again swishing his drink.

"Hmmn?" Tanba murmurs, more of a grunt than an actual question.

Miyuki allows it, can't stop himself when simply getting on the subject has the words bubbling up insistently at the back of his tongue. "The thing we had, all of it, the way things used to be."

"That's not my fault," Tanba immediately says.

His body instinctively pulls away, his spine drawing up straighter and the rest of him leaning back over his stool. Miyuki can't help but lean in, craning in toward the heat of Tanba's person with a familiarity born of practice. They used to be close like this. They used to be a pretty damn good team.

"I didn't say that it was," Miyuki says. He leans in enough that his arm brushes Tanba's, lets his hand settle to rest just back from Tanba's knee.

He's sincerely surprised when the tension in Tanba's legs eases underneath his waiting fingers, as Tanba's posture relaxes back to easy, patient comfort. It feels like a victory. Miyuki wants to crawl all the way into Tanba's space just to revel in the closeness of it. He doubts Tanba is about to let him get away with that much.

"Let's just get this done," he says, bites back the other words on his tongue, the invitation of, and then let's try again.

"That I can do," Tanba says.

Once again, they're talking about something much larger than them. But they're once again united on the same page, committed together to clearing up a problem. Miyuki gives Tanba's knee a little squeeze, then pulls back and straightens up.

"We should clean house, too," he muses. "After the shit those guys pulled. It's not a lot of fun, sure, but we ought to run damage control."

Tanba nods agreement, and stares down at the empty glass still before him on the bar.

"Another drink?" Miyuki asks, glancing down into it with a crooked smile.

"I wouldn't say no to one," Tanba admits, as Miyuki is already beckoning over the bartender.

Once they've both had their glasses refilled, Miyuki lifts his, inviting a toast. Tanba is slow in complying, unable to help himself from begrudgingly resisting. But his glass eventually joins Miyuki's in the air — just in time for Miyuki to grin smugly at the victory.

"To Seidou," Miyuki says. "And to our scrubbing Yakushi off the face of Tokyo."

"To Seidou," Tanba agrees, before they clink their glasses together, and drink deeply to the toast.

Chapter Text

Furuya pushes open the door to the convenience mart, holding it while Miyuki and Tanba precede him inside. The other two men with them wait on the street, relegating themselves to being broad-shouldered sentinels, standing watch at either side of the door. Miyuki leads their remaining trio to the back of the store.

It's evening, and though the night is young yet, it's late enough that they aren't inconveniencing the shopkeeper and his family by encouraging him to close the store. The interior is sterile and quiet, empty shelves lit up by overhead flourescents, the aisles seeming too wide without a single customer walking down along them.

"I feel like a mafia don from some old movie," Miyuki laughs, glancing up at Tanba following at his right.

He's never had call for an entourage like this, and he'd be lying if he said it wasn't going to his head a little. He's sharp in his tailored suit, not black this time, the collared shirt underneath an even more garish spot of color than the shade of his jacket. Tanba and Furuya appear more reserved, dressed in dark colors and arrayed to his either side. It's like he has bodyguards. He can't help but revel in it.

"Don't get ideas," Tanba tells him. "If someone does attack us, we might not want to watch your back."

"I will," Furuya counters, completely undermining him. "I promised Miyuki-san that I would protect him."

Miyuki laughs again, shaking his head in helpless amusement. Furuya's loyalty is so unbelievable he can't help but accept it. They stop at the door leading to the back, and the owner comes out to meet them in the little hallway that dead-ends there.

"Everything been okay?" Miyuki asks him.

He doesn't need to feign the concern in his voice. His jokes aside, he knows why they've come. The attacks in the area are unsettling and as the ward's self-appointed protectors, it's their job to assure their people that they will look out for them and their businesses.

"Everything here has been fine," the shopkeeper tells him fretfully. "But Amano-san down the street was talking about being hassled in his store."

"Hassled?" Miyuki asks. "But not held up?"

The man glances aside, worrying at the hem of his apron. "I don't think so. Amano-san would have said if he'd been robbed. He would have shouted a lot more."

Miyuki nods, cracking a bit of a smile because the man in question, Amano, is someone else he's dealt with before. A braggart who spoke up as readily when he experienced misfortune as when he'd had a streak of good luck, he was a trustworthy source of information by simple virtue of being too much of an open book to know how to lie.

"We'll talk to Amano-san too, then," Miyuki decides, sparing a glance to one side to meet Tanba's eye. "If you see anything else happen, you let us know, okay?"

"But you won't see anything else happen," Tanba adds, confidently enough that Miyuki wants to believe him on gut instinct alone. "Because we'll take care of things."

"Like he said," Miyuki confirms. "We have everything under control."

Placated, the tension plaguing the store owner starts to drain out of him, his shoulders slumping as he relaxes. All at once he appears tired, soft cheeks sagging around his gently frowning mouth. Miyuki can't blame him for not looking happy, even amidst the wash of relief.

"Thank you, Seidou-san."

Miyuki grins. Some of the shopkeepers know him by name, sure, but most of them fall back on referring to anyone from Seidou as if they're one and the same. Miyuki has always loved it — there's a sense of solidarity behind the name, as well as an acknowledgment that regardless of their blood, everyone who swears allegience to the organization is family to their bones.

"Don't worry," Miyuki says, rather than "you're welcome." "We got this. You don't have anything to worry about."

The store owner thanks them again, and together Miyuki, Tanba, and Furuya turn to head back out. This store isn't the first stop they've assigned themselves for the night, and it won't be the last. There are two other shop owners Miyuki had warned of their impending visit, and he supposes now he ought to add Amano to the list — no reason to delay talking to him, when they're already a block from his store.

Outside, the other two members of their group rejoin them. For a moment that feels powerful, meaningful, but it's fleeting. Miyuki likes the strength of numbers and the surety of working in a group but he hates how it feels like overkill, hates that it reminds him that their large party is something that's necessary. He and Tanba both agreed that anything less, giving warnings like they're doing on the edges of Seidou's territory, might end very badly for all of them.

"Who's next?" Tanba asks, as Miyuki leads the way down the street to the corner.

"Sakaeguchi-san," Miyuki says. "She runs the used-goods store on the next street over."

Miyuki turns down a side-street, choosing to cut through the narrow alleyway rather than walk around the block. As soon as he steps past the friendly glow of the main road's last streetlight, he realizes he's made a significant tactical error.

His eyes light on the silhouette of someone standing at the other end of the alley. It's a tiny space, only the length of two buildings and narrow enough that if Miyuki were to walk with both arms outstretched, his fingers would drag against the brick on either side of him. His eyes track the motion of the figure in the mouth of the alleyway automatically, watching them duck out of view into the shadow of one of the buildings. Then someone else hits him from behind.

Miyuki stumbles, striking blindly behind him with the arm he throws out for balance. His wrist is caught, yanking him in toward the fist rushing to meet his face. He sees stars, bright spots of white against the insides of his eyelids. He's disoriented, but his body moves automatically to get his knife into his hand.

There are sounds of scuffling all around him, but Miyuki has no idea how the rest of his group is faring.

He doesn't have time to worry about it. The spots clear from his eyes while he takes a blind swipe out with his knife, hoping he'll only clear his assailant from his space and not slice any of his allies somewhere vital. The alleyway is dim but his eyes are adjusting. He sees the bulky figure stumble out of the way of his blade, follows up on it by stepping into their retreat and reversing his swing. He slices in at their face, cutting only air.

But they stagger another step back, and Miyuki seizes that. He backs them into the wall, grappling at them with one hand. They hit him, and the air heaves from his lungs even as he drives his knife up between their ribs. The wheeze they make is wetter than the one that leaves his lungs, and he can feel the strain in his face when it pulls into an involuntary grin at his victory, teeth bared in feral pleasure. He pulls back on his knife, but it sticks.

Fuck.

The dilemma seizes him — leave the knife and lose his weapon, but be free to help his friends, to protect his naked back? Or linger long enough to pull it free, but leave himself vulnerable and exposed?

A hand grabs at him, reaching around his body and seizing him by the throat. The handle falls from his fingers, the decision taken from him as the weight of the injured man sliding down the wall pulls his knife out of his weakened grasp. He wheezes in, sucking air shallowly past the fingers grasped around his neck, choking off his air.

The sounds of fighting all around him, already relegated to background noise beneath his all-consuming focus on the fight that filled up both his hands, dims further to an indistinct, distant rush. His hands reach up automatically to scrabble at the hand squeezing off his breath. It's to no purpose. His awareness of the best course of action opens up but it's too late; his limbs become sluggish as his vision grays, and when he makes a calculated strike to break the man's hold, it's too weak to get him free.

He sees the subtle flash out of the corner of his eye, thinks with astounding clarity, oh, I am about to have my throat slit.

Then there's the flash of muzzle fire, and an impossibly loud crack Miyuki swears he can feel ricocheting off the inside of his skull. He has the equally useless thought, as he sucks in his first breath of unimpeded air in more than three minutes, that of course Tanba didn't give the kid anything like a silencer.

And then he's free, left with the breathing space to look around him.

He flattens his back to the wall behind him, left jumpy and wary of again being grabbed from behind. Out of the corner of his eye he can see the man he stabbed, still alive but gurgling with a wet rattle that makes Miyuki think he won't stay that way for long, and the one Furuya shot, unmistakably dead. Miyuki stares across the alleyway to where Furuya is standing, arms still outstretched, gun grasped in both hands. His face is a mask of smooth composure, his expression frighteningly serene.

Miyuki breaks his gaze away, looking down again at the man sprawled by his feet. The back of his head is blown apart, a bloody mess that Miyuki doesn't require more than the alley's half-light to make out.

It occurs to him, if Furuya's aim had been any less pinpoint-accurate, his brains might have been similarly blasted out of his skull.

Then there comes the sound of a grunt somewhere to his right, and Miyuki and Furuya are both startled out of their momentary paralysis. Miyuki shoves away the sudden and terrifying awareness of his own mortality, letting everything happening around him reappear on his mental radar. Two bodies at his feet. Furuya across from him. Another man down at Furuya's feet, incapacitated but seemingly breathing. Tanba fighting off two assailants to his right. The last two members of Seidou at the mouth of the alley. Anyone they're fighting with is out of Miyuki's sight.

He watches, grimly appreciative, as Tanba ducks around one of the men he's fending off and lays the other one out by a strike from his fist alone.

His smugness is short-lived. He's too slow, as the dull crack sounds across the alley, to stop the impact of something dense from connecting with the more fragile dome of Tanba's skull. He falls first to his knees, before there's the more muffled thud of his body dropping to the dirt.

Miyuki moves at the same time Furuya does. He's lucky Furuya is faster. The crack of a gunshot echoes again off the walls of the alley, the man who'd hit Tanba falling to the street. Miyuki dives after him, his trajectory shifting in an instant as he drops himself to Tanba's side. Part of his brain reminds him, don't touch him, concussion, but his hands are already gingerly turning Tanba over, moving before he can decide whether to follow a foggy recollection of medical wisdom.

He's still conscious, at least, his eyes tracking Miyuki's gaze on a measurable delay.

Out of the corner of his vision, Miyuki can see Furuya hovering just over his shoulder. His hands lift up before him, half-raised in hesitation, uncertain of whether he should move to help. When he stops short, it's with obvious deference to whatever orders Miyuki is prepared to give him.

"Help the others," Miyuki says, not looking at him. "Finish it. I'll take care of him."

And then Furuya is gone, backtracking to their end of the alley to make sure no one else is lingering behind, before jogging to the alley's mouth to join their other two men. Miyuki loses track of him then. His attention hyper-focuses on Tanba, whose hands are working weakly at the street beneath him, struggling to push himself up from the ground.

For a moment, Miyuki is utterly at a loss for what to do.

Tanba is bleeding, in thick streaks across the meager stubble of his hair, so much blood that Miyuki's stomach turns in sympathy. But head wounds always bleed a lot, it doesn't necessarily mean anything serious. The glazed cast to his eyes concerns Miyuki more, as does the way they refuse to fully focus on Miyuki's face. Concussion, then. Maybe more internal damage than that, maybe the blood isn't just from splitting open his scalp.

"You didn't watch my back," Tanba tells him.

Miyuki cannot tell whether it's a joke or a genuine accusation. It's true in either case, and for a breathtaking instance of crystal clarity, it occurs to Miyuki that he doesn't have to. There's no need for him to repair the thing he's broken with Tanba, though he's made the first overtures, though they've promised to fight for Seidou side by side. It's a legitimate attack, nothing that would come back to him. Miyuki could just... Leave Tanba to his brain damage, and never face the future of fighting him to be Seidou's next head.

If Tanba passed out, from the blood loss or the dizziness, he could do it. Furuya and their other two men would never think to contest his assessment of Tanba's condition.

But as quickly as the realization washes over him, he's flooded with a noxious guilt. Bile rises in his throat and he swears off the traitorous thought. Tanba doesn't hate him. Tanba trusts him, if not with everything, then with this. When there comes the day on which a successor to Kataoka must be named, if they're both still in the running, Miyuki wants to face Tanba head to head. He doesn't want to be a leader who won out simply by being the only option.

"You didn't watch mine either!" Miyuki shoots back. He doesn't think Tanba notices the delay, delirious as he is. "You know how many times I got jumped from behind? Twice. Somebody only got you once."

"I was a little busy," Tanba says.

Miyuki rolls his eyes, but accepts it. "Yeah, I was busy when they hit you, too."

And then somehow they're both laughing, weakly, shaky with adrenaline, but it feels good. Tanba starts to sit up again and Miyuki hastily puts a hand back to his shoulder.

"Don't," he says. "Not yet. Furuya and the guys are cleaning up."

As he says it, the sound of footsteps drifts back to them. He looks up to see Furuya and Tanba's men backtracking to meet them.

"Is he okay?" one of the guys says, sounding entirely taken by surprise to see that Tanba is hurt.

"He'll be fine," Miyuki says. "As long as we get him the hell out of here, anyway. Nobody else waiting to ambush us if we drag our asses home?"

"There were a few more men," Furuya says. It surprises Miyuki when he speaks up but his voice is even, matter-of-fact. "They were waiting down the street. We scared them off."

Miyuki takes that opportunity to take stock of what they're left with. Two unconscious men, one of them bleeding badly. And two dead, shot by Furuya's hand. All five of them are alive, though one of Tanba's men is favoring his arm like it might be broken, and Tanba's condition remains shaky still. Miyuki chooses not to think too hard about it.

"Get rid of the gun," he tells Furuya, still staring at the mess of gore smeared across the street beneath one of the men Furuya shot. "Or better yet, get Tanba to do it. Once he's better."

Furuya nods in unhesitating agreement, then says softly, "I told you I would do it."

All at once, Miyuki remembers their conversation from only so many days before. It had been... A week? Two? Crouched in a dirty alleyway over Tanba's prone body, that day in the Tokyo Dome feels like it took place an eternity away. He sees Furuya's face in his mind's eye, perfectly composed, as good as fearless. He looks up at Furuya then and he looks much the same, expression resolute. Miyuki pushes his thoughts away.

"Later," he says. "I'm gonna talk to you about that later."

Furuya shrugs, and accepts it.

"Should we..." one of the men starts to say, his eyes darting back toward the mouth of the alley.

"Yeah," Miyuki replies. "We shouldn't really move him, not carelessly, but... We've got no choice. Watch my back. I'll do it."

Furuya nods faster than either of the other two can, and Miyuki is unable to hold back the slightly hysterical laughter that bubbles briefly up from his throat. It lasts only a few seconds before he cuts it off — telling himself viciously, later, he'll worry about Furuya and his damning loyalty later — and moves to scoop Tanba gingerly up from the ground.

It's slow going. Miyuki takes several minutes just to shift Tanba with careful motions, getting him sitting up, then standing. He props Tanba against himself even though he's far from the largest in the group (he knows Furuya would be better, knows either of Tanba's men would be sturdier, but this is his burden to bear and like hell is he going to let any of them do it for him) and begins to move off down the street beyond the alley.

One of Tanba's men immediately ranges out in front of them, scouting ahead by a handful of paces to ensure that they aren't walking into anyone else lying in wait. The other lingers behind them, watching their back and making certain they aren't being followed. Furuya sticks close to Miyuki, a persistent shadow hovering just to his one side, visibly ready to step in the moment Miyuki needs him.

It's touching. Miyuki doesn't think about that, either.

Tanba is disoriented, but not incapacitated. With assistance he can walk just fine, and their entire sorry procession makes good time back to the heart of Seidou's turf, walking until they see the towering shape of the Tokyo Dome Hotel rearing overhead, welcoming them.

The old house rises up before Miyuki, a dignified residence which nevertheless blends in seamlessly with all the other houses on the quiet street, each with its own little stone fence around the perimeter. It looks peaceful, a space removed from the city's frenetic bustle. There's even a garden, its small hedges neatly trimmed.

Miyuki has always known Kataoka had a home outside the Tokyo Dome Hotel. He's been there exactly twice before.

The door is unlocked. Though it feels strange, Miyuki lets himself inside. There are a couple of Seidou's other lieutenants standing in the entryway. He isn't late, then. He picks himself out a space along the wall, leans back against it, and crosses his arms over his chest. It's easier not to think about the solemnity of the summons. Kataoka was never one for pomp and posturing; the fact that he's invoking those traditions is a worrisome anomaly.

Furuya comes in next. He glances from the other officers, to Miyuki, to the empty arch of the doorway leading farther into the house. His feet remain on the stoop as he performs his surveillance, not entirely willing to trespass on the space beyond without a proper invitation. His gaze returns to Miyuki, and then he walks inside, moving to take a place at Miyuki's side.

Miyuki doesn't think too much of that, either, filing it away in the same charged box that is Kataoka inviting them to the family home.

He's pretty sure it's the same one that belonged to the previous head before Kataoka. Located well outside the heart of Seidou's territory in the city, it's neutral ground, a space that is at once removed from any intra-organization disputes while remaining unarguably Seidou. The previous head used to hold court in the house constantly. It's the home in which Kataoka grew up, during the latter portion of his youth.

Miyuki never met the man Kataoka swore fealty to in his teens. He was a teenager himself when the previous head passed, and Kataoka is the only boss Miyuki has ever known beyond himself.

Another of Seidou's lieutenants slips inside, and a few minutes after that another straggler joins them. The time for the meeting grows close, arrives, and Kataoka's voice sounds out from deeper within the house, calling to them, "Come in!"

They sort each other out silently, falling into line by unspoken agreement and filing through the hall into the study.

It isn't the first time Miyuki has been in that room. But it looks so much like Kataoka's office in the Tokyo Dome's basement — a near-identical desk at the back of the room, bookshelves along the walls, austere absence of decoration leaving little recourse for distraction from the man commanding their attention at the center of the room — that Miyuki cannot help but smile.

Kataoka is standing before the desk, his palm resting idly on its surface and his back held straight and proud. "Thank you for coming," he tells them.

There's a murmur of assent; their words blend together, the specifics less meaningful than the consensus of respect.

"There is a new power in Tokyo," Kataoka tells them. "This gang calls itself 'Yakushi.' They are the ones who have been harrying our enterprises for the past months, and they are the ones who attacked us outright a week ago. I choose to view this attack as a declaration of war."

A ripple of sound passes across the room, the other lieutenants reacting to the news before again falling silent. Miyuki and Furuya are the only ones who don't react. Miyuki, because he already knows. Furuya, he suspects, would not have reacted even if he'd known nothing.

"This isn't new," Kataoka continues. "Seidou has made its home in the neighborhoods we do for decades. We have been challenged before, and have won before. This hasn't been the case for numerous years now, but that does not mean we are incapable of protecting what is ours, or winning a fight brought to our doorstep."

Miyuki has worried about that before. He doesn't want a turf battle on their territory, he wants to take the fight to their enemies, wants to go on the offensive.

"This is a call to consolidate our forces. Each of you is looked to as a leader within our family. I will be relying on you in the weeks to come to protect our interests."

To Miyuki, it sounds like we will stay on the defensive. It isn't what he wants to hear.

"That isn't the only news at hand," Kataoka says. The change in subject is abrupt; multiple people in the room start as if surprised that Kataoka has nothing else to say about the gang war. "Tanba Kouichirou was injured in the attack that now provokes our response. He has been hospitalized, and treated, but will be a time in recovering."

There's another distrustful murmur that passes through the room then, a combination of worry for a man all of them know well and of anger at the insult, at the idea of something that has been done to them, collectively. Miyuki has been busy the entire week since the attack, continuing to wage his infowar against anyone inside the ward Seidou has claimed as their own. He's finally getting the results he wants.

"In the meantime," Kataoka adds, voice rising with a sharpness that cuts off the conversation that has sprung up across the room. "Someone will be named to take over Tanba's responsibilities."

Everyone hums again, quietly impressed with the honor of the position being offered up.

"Whether the appointment remains permanent," Kataoka says. "Is yet to be determined."

Silence follows that. Miyuki can tell that momentarily, discussion will again break out between those assembled, all of them deemed those most valuable, those most loyal, to Seidou. He isn't about to let the opening pass by.

"I think we should take the war to Yakushi," he calls into the quiet. "I have information about their gang."

Suddenly, everyone is looking to him.

"Go on," Kataoka allows.

"They don't have a base of operations that I've determined," he says, ignoring the way that "I" tastes on his tongue, ignoring the fact that it's his team who have built him this position. "But I've found out about several of their safehouses. Their businesses. Their homes. I know where their territory is."

There comes a rush of voices, everyone in the room agreeing at once, shouting ideas, calling for blood. Miyuki takes a step back, arms crossing over his chest, and allows himself to feel pleased with what he's started. The calling out continues for more than a minute, before Seidou's lieutenants slowly sort themselves, cutting off one by one so that everyone can be understood.

Miyuki clears his throat, only a bit self-consciously. As the bearer of good news, everyone present defers to whatever else he wants to say.

"I also think we should negotiate with Inashiro," he adds.

"What?" someone immediately speaks up. "Why? What do they have to do with anything?"

"It's not like we're on bad terms with them," someone else says doubtfully, followed by a self-conscious laugh. "And we worked to get there."

Miyuki isn't usually one to ask for help. It's his idea and still it rankles, the thought of cooperating with a rival family, of admitting that Seidou cannot solve their problems on their own. But they've each carved out their space in Tokyo, and in recent years have existed side by side with surprising amicability. And Miyuki has larger plans than simply winning a turf war against Yakushi.

"I have reason to believe that they will be willing to work with us," Miyuki says. "In more ways than just with this fight, if we invite them on now. I don't think we should miss the opportunity to cooperate."

There are a few more calls of "What?" and "Why?" shot through with the rare shout of "Who needs their help, anyway!" But the bickering continues for a minute at most, before Kataoka clears his throat meaningfully and everyone else in the room swiftly falls again into silence.

"You have a plan for how to navigate these negotiations?" he asks.

"I do," Miyuki replies.

"In that case," Kataoka says. "We will speak with Inashiro. If it appears promising, we will form what alliance we can. And we will bring the fighting to Yakushi. We no longer have need to face them from behind what defenses we have built. Yakushi is about to meet a different Seidou than they last knew."

A wave of assent washes across the room. Miyuki is adrift in his own sea of satisfaction, gratified that after all the lobbying he's done before Kataoka, he's gained the man's support for his plans.

Kataoka dismisses them, and the core of Seidou's family begins to disperse.

Miyuki tips his head back against the wall of the train car, able to only just see flashes of the scenery whipping by him in the window from out of the corner of his eye. Furuya sits beside him in companionable silence.

It isn't a long ride they're on, training out of their little corner of Toyko in order to meet up with Inashiro on neutral ground. Agreeing on a location had gone more smoothly than Miyuki expected. He wonders who Mei will have brought with him for their meeting. He hopes it's the redhead. That guy hated him.

"You don't mind coming with me, big guy?" he asks, glancing up at Furuya.

"Of course not," Furuya says. "I'm glad to be able to help."

Help. Furuya's done a lot of that lately, more readily than Miyuki ever could have asked. He wonders where the line is drawn, wonders what Furuya wouldn't be willing to do, when asking him to kill isn't too great a cost. What limit do they have left to surpass?

"I wanted to talk to you about that," Miyuki says, though the words come slow, as if pulled from him at great expense. "Just because I ask you something, doesn't mean you have to do it. I mean — don't start ignoring me just because I say so, it's not like I don't tell you things with good reason, it's... You really do pay attention to me more than anybody, don't you?"

Furuya shrugs. "You were the one who came to Hokkaido to talk to me, and you were the first person I met at Seidou. No one else did those things."

"And that makes me special?" Miyuki asks, laughing. "You're like a puppy! Or a baby duckling."

"It does," Furuya agrees.

Miyuki's teasing laughter abruptly cuts off. He doesn't think he did anything special, barely did more than what Kataoka asked of him. Kataoka could have told someone else to take that flight to Hokkaido, and then Furuya would have become that guy's deadly little shadow. He didn't do anything more than he was told, and yet...

"You're impossible, you know that?" Miyuki asks.

Furuya simply starts to smile, like he's satisfied with that, like he thinks it's a compliment. Miyuki slaps his arm, exasperated, before he's left simply shaking his head. He doesn't know if he could drive Furuya off now if he tried. He doesn't know if it's something he wants to do at all.

"So, what?" Miyuki says. "You're my bodyguard now?"

Furuya beams at him with such sincere joy over the idea that Miyuki doesn't even need to hear his answer. "I will protect Miyuki-san," he says to himself, with calm, heartfelt resolve.

He's hard to argue with, when he's that determined. "Yeah, well. I hope you're watching my back today. Nobody's gonna try anything," he's quick to clarify, when it looks like Furuya is gearing up to hit someone. "But the guys we're meeting with, they're tricky. You can't let Narumiya have his way with you."

"You'll handle it," Furuya says, unconcerned now that he's been reassured he won't have to fight anyone. "Miyuki-san is good with people."

Miyuki laughs, and leans more comfortably back in his seat. Yeah, maybe he is that. He's gotten them this far with Inashiro, dangling their olive branch in just such a way that he knew Mei would fight for him to Inashiro's head. If talks went well that day, Tokyo's underground might be dealing with a frightening new consolidation of power. The thought alone gives Miyuki a funny little chill up his spine, giddy with the possibilities.

"Yeah," he ends up saying. "I guess we will."

Furuya starts beaming again, that soft-edged glow he gets when he's pleased with himself, and Miyuki realizes it's because he said we. He hasn't really had one of those in a while. Not since his partnership with Tanba went south, not since he was catching for the Giants, working with that one bullheaded pitcher who Furuya, at least initially, seemed to resemble. He'll take it. In the business they're in, he needs people he can trust.

"Is this turning out the way you expected?" Miyuki wonders. "I promised you excitement, remember, when we met. How's that turning out for you?"

"It has been exciting," Furuya admits. "And I am glad that I came."

It's what Miyuki wanted to hear. Furuya's blind loyalty isn't going to stop putting his nerves on edge, but as long as Furuya is walking into it with that awareness, that appreciation, it's not like there's any reason for Miyuki to put on the breaks. There's a hell of a lot he could accomplish, with Furuya's rising star behind him.

"I don't know what would have happened if I stayed in Hokkaido," Furuya says softly, surprising Miyuki when he speaks up without any encouragement. "I wasn't going to get to pitch any more. The Fighters didn't want me any more. I don't think I would have done anything else, if I stayed in Hokkaido. So I'm glad, that you invited me here. I'm glad that Seidou needs me."

"Hey," Miyuki says, cutting in before Furuya can get more sentimental. "I'm glad you came, okay? Though, all I really had to do was offer to let you pitch..."

"Catch for me more," Furuya immediately says, leaning forward. "When we get back to Seidou. Catch for me."

Miyuki laughs, and shakes his head. "Yeah, yeah, we'll see when the field is free. The pro guys kinda have to use it too, you know. And we're going to be busy for a while. There's a lot of stuff happening."

"I know," Furuya says, sinking back in his seat as a more somber expression returns to his face.

"But don't worry about it," Miyuki continues. "Between the two of us, we've got it handled, right? Because we're partners."

"Partners," Furuya repeats.

He sounds so utterly satisfied with himself. Miyuki feels pretty satisfied, too. As their train pulls into the station, he can't help believing that if they meet whatever problems they come across head on, they'll come out on top of anything that hits them.

Chapter Text

"So how much do you hate it?" Miyuki asks, nodding toward the end of Tanba's bed.

Tanba rolls his eyes from where he's propped up against too many pillows, and gingerly shrugs his shoulders. He's been out of action for a couple weeks at that point, and his doctors are very adamantly insisting that he rest. Miyuki is impressed that Tanba is holding to it; like hell he'd be able to sit around doing nothing for that long.

"It isn't that bad," Tanba says.

Miyuki doesn't remotely believe him. "Yeah, if you say so. Has anyone else come by? Brought you flowers? Get well cards? Or told you anything about what's going on back with Seidou?"

He doesn't have to ask. There's no sign of tokens or well-wishes anywhere around his small, spartan bedroom, and though Tanba is the type of man to inspire loyalty and trust, he hasn't often been the recipient of that sort of fawning adoration from his subordinates. They aren't the type to visit him at home.

"I thought that was what you were here for," Tanba says, with the slimmest sliver of a smile. "What have I missed, Miyuki."

Miyuki shrugs, and grins back at him. He's tempted to hold his information over Tanba's head a little, make him ask for it, but it feels like especially poor sport when he's dealing with an invalid. "We're going to war with Yakushi."

"Of course," Tanba says. "We had to retaliate, after their disrespect."

"We've made an alliance with Inashiro," Miyuki adds.

That gets more of a reaction out of Tanba. He startles, eyes flicking hard toward Miyuki, then glancing searchingly down at his hands, before rising once again to stare Miyuki disbelievingly in the face. "Who decided on that? Who from Inashiro agreed to that."

"I did," Miyuki says, smugly. "It wasn't even that hard."

"An alliance with Inashiro..." Tanba says softly to himself. He's looking down again, turning the information over. "Things are changing."

"Yeah," Miyuki agrees. "It's gonna be a new age, for Seidou."

For a minute they're both quiet, Miyuki sitting forward in the chair he'd drawn up close to Tanba's bed, Tanba leaning back against the pillows but staring off as if looking at something very far away. Miyuki had thought it might feel strange, being back in Tanba's little apartment after so many years, but it isn't. Everything is more or less the same as he remembers and its as if no time at all has passed.

It does leave him increasingly aware that things will change, that perhaps Tanba can sit in the static bubble he's carved out for himself, but Seidou will keep moving forward whether he chooses it or not.

"Do you regret it?" Miyuki asks. "That you aren't going to be there while shit goes down?"

"I haven't actually gone anywhere," Tanba says. "I may not see everything that's happening for myself but I will always be part of Seidou. The men I have trained will act as they do in a fight, in this war, because we worked together. Seidou will not be able to move on without me, not right away."

"Yeah, I guess," Miyuki says. "Doesn't mean it won't be a whole different place when you get back. You'd better hurry up and get well quick, otherwise we will do our damnedest to leave you behind."

"Oh yeah?" Tanba asks, actually smiling. "How are you going to do that?"

Miyuki shrugs, grinning back at him in cheerful challenge. "I've made a new partnership. Furuya is going to back me up."

"Furuya?" Tanba repeats. "He's a good kid. I thought you turned him loose."

"Nah," Miyuki says. "After that last fight, I don't think he's going anywhere. I tried to — I let him work with you for a while, didn't I? But we work pretty well together. He listens to me, way better than he does to anybody else, anyway. We're gonna do great stuff for Seidou."

Tanba simply accepts it, nodding his head in agreement with the sense of Miyuki's words. Miyuki can't help feeling a little bit put out.

"Kataoka wants to replace you," he points out, changing subjects. "He said as much, when he called all the lieutenants in to the house. He said it was just going to be temporary, while you get better. But if you aren't careful, someone really is gonna pass you by."

Tanba frowns, expression darkening. "I can only heal as quickly as my body will let me. If it takes too long, and Kataoka finds too capable a replacement for me, I won't argue for my position back."

"I'm going to suggest Furuya," Miyuki says. "Your second has been doing it, since before Kataoka said anything. But he isn't really any good. So I'm going to put Furuya's name in."

The shock on Tanba's face is plain. Miyuki feels a little bit smug.

"You think he'll be good for it?" Tanba asks.

"I don't know," Miyuki admits. "I know he'll work harder than just about anybody. I'm probably gonna have to make him stop working so much, if he steps up. But you know, I think he'll inspire the same kinda loyalty you do. He's someone who can stand proud, so other people will look up to him."

Miyuki wants to be rubbing it in Tanba's face, that he won't be able to come back to his old job with Seidou, that the person taking his place is someone Miyuki has hand-picked, who is loyal to him above anyone else. He wants to push at Tanba because this is what they do — he pushes, and teases, and Tanba pushes passively back, as inviolable as a wall. This should have been a decisive victory in the little dance they do. It feels surprisingly hollow.

"Sounds like he'll be good for it," Tanba finally says, after a significant pause. "If you help him."

"I plan to," Miyuki agrees.

They fall silent again. Miyuki goes over in his head whether he has anything else to say to Tanba, any more news to share. He needs the excuse, a reason to stick around in the familiar little apartment that he used to know quite well. He remembers where Tanba's liquor cabinet is, remembers drinking from its contents late into the night, while talking about their future plans and all the things they were going to accomplish.

"What are you going to do," Miyuki starts to say. "When you come back? It's not like you won't, you're too stubborn to stay down. But I'm not going to let you do what you used to."

Tanba takes it in stride, admitting, "I don't know. I'll figure it out when I get there."

Miyuki laughs, a drier chuckle than anything meant to be mirthful. He's made that decision before, himself. He hurt a lot more people, when he first joined up with Seidou. And he'd been good at it, with his need to prove just how talented and resourceful and valuable he was. Now he runs books, looks after numbers. The fact that he's been in two bad fights in only a month is an anomaly of his current life.

"Isn't that what we always do?" Miyuki asks, almost wistful.

Tanba shrugs. "This is the life we married ourselves to. We can't do anything else."

"I can't get rid of you, either," Miyuki laments, leaning back in his chair as if in defeat.

"Were you really trying to?" Tanba asks, looking slantwise at him, eyes sharp with disbelief.

"I'm taking your job away from you," Miyuki laughs, like the answer should be obvious. "How much harder do I have to try?"

"Harder than that," Tanba says. "I'll still be a lieutenant. Injuring myself won't lose me that much. You'll still be working with me, just in some other capacity."

"Guess I don't wanna get rid of you that bad," Miyuki says. "We're just gonna be two old men, sitting around weighing in on this stuff even when the next generation takes over. God, can you imagine getting to live that long? Getting to see what happens with Seidou when we aren't the ones making it happen..."

Tanba's expression looks a little too soft, a little too sympathetic. Miyuki ignores it. He hadn't meant to get sentimental.

"Furuya still has that gun of yours," he says, changing the subject.

"You glad I gave it to him yet?" Tanba asks. From the way he says it, Miyuki knows, he knows Tanba did it with full knowledge of how much Miyuki would hate knowing that weapon was in Furuya's hands.

He shrugs, ill at ease. "If you mean, am I glad he kept me from getting my throat slit, sure. I'm not glad he killed two people. He's too good at it."

Tanba chuckles. "You sound jealous."

Miyuki scoffs at that, trying — and only somewhat failing — to laugh it off. "I don't want to be able to do what he did. I just want you to take your damn gun back, and make sure that if any police come sniffing around for a murderer, the weapon that did it won't be anywhere to be found."

"Furuya did visit me, once," Tanba says, surprising Miyuki.

"Did he?" Miyuki asks, trying not to sound too interested.

"He didn't know who else to ask about firearms," Tanba says. "He didn't want to get rid of the one he has until I could find him another one."

Miyuki makes an exasperated noise, and rolls his eyes up toward the ceiling. Furuya is impossible. Tanba is impossible. He has no grounds to be frustrated about it because if he's very honest, he's the exact same way.

"You picked your partner well," Tanba tells him, as if in consolation. "He'll shoot anyone who opposes you."

"Don't remind me," Miyuki says.

Tanba laughs, and despite himself, Miyuki finds that he's laughing along with him. He's not going to learn to love the idea of a gun any time soon, but Tanba is right — Miyuki cannot be mad that Tanba taught Furuya to shoot, not any longer. He is too good at it. And Miyuki plans to utilize every last thing at which Furuya excels.

"Thank you for coming," Tanba finally says, when their laughter dies off and quiet has once again seeped into the room.

"Don't mention it," Miyuki says immediately. "Had to keep you in the loop, since we're stuck with each other."

"It could be worse," Tanba says.

"Yeah," Miyuki agrees. "But between me and the kid, we're gonna make things a lot better."