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When Gin is fifteen, she receives her first real paycheck from her work in the mafia. She works small jobs, mostly—infiltration, reconnaissance, and the like—and in the past her jobs have all been either insubstantial or as part of a team. However, after her first run of solo jobs, she’s deemed worthy of a reward. Her pay isn’t enormous, but it’s respectable. It’s something. It’s overwhelming.
Hands stuffed in her coat pockets, she flicks her thumb over the corners of the bills again and again while she waits to cross the street. Until now, Gin’s pay had all gone to the woman who was legally in charge of them and several other mafia children. The woman signs leases for apartments and plays escort on the occasional hospital visit and other activities like that; the mafia employs children for a number of reasons, so a fake guardian is practical. Ryuunosuke sometimes got angry about the fact that her money always went into their “guardian’s” pockets, but all Gin can do is shrug. They’ve never had money before, so what does money mean to Gin now? They’re provided for.
It isn’t fair, her brother says. And it isn’t. But they both always have full bellies now and clothes on their backs, so Gin is not going to complain. She knows she’s not as valuable as her powerful brother, and she’s never had any connection with an executive—current or former—either. The mafia supplies her with any disguise she pleases, any weapon she might require, so she doesn’t care enough to jeopardize her position.
She finds paper money far more satisfying—though perhaps not as secure— than a blade in her pocket.
Ryuunosuke isn’t home when Gin returns to their apartment. He rarely is. He probably won’t be home for a week or more; he disappears often on jobs or just whenever he begins to feel that someone might discover them living together.
Over the next few days, Gin counts her money eighteen times. The first day is filled with another job; she slips through the doors of a law firm and ferrets out the location of several key documents. It’s her least favorite kind of job. The building is old, and reconnaissance determines no safe way to get in and out without being seen. So Gin unties her hair, changes her normal mask out for a simple surgical mask, and pulls a dress from her closet.
The receptionists don’t look twice at her when she pushes open the door and whispers to her feet that she’s here to speak to her father, who is in a consultation at the moment. One woman kindly offers to show Gin the way to the correct office, but she shakes her head and, apologizing, hurries away with hunched shoulders. Gin plays timid well. She specializes in going unnoticed, unseen, and unexamined; no one she passes in the hallway even stops to hand her a tissue for her fake tears. By the time Gin reaches the records room, she has changed her shoes, removed her coat to reveal a simple dress, and wound her hair up into a bun, transforming her appearance from shy girl to young but serious assistant.
A young man flips through boxes of file folders in the corner of the room, but he doesn’t acknowledge Gin outside a polite nod when their eyes meet briefly. Gin goes directly to the files she has been sent to collect—briefs for a case in the defense of one of the mafia’s recent enemies, which will be altered to make them weaker and then returned—and leaves the room. An empty janitors’ break room sits at the end of the hall, and Gin slips into it and out the side door, re-locking it behind her. She delivers the folder to her handler and returns to the empty apartment. Her money is still where she left it, in the drawer beside her bed.
Her fingers brush her mouth over the mask. Perhaps she should have left the mask off when entering the building; it’s far more common to see her with it on than with it off, so perhaps she’s more recognizable now—
The thought of removing the mask on the job curls her stomach like her handler’s eyes would have looked right through brick and mortar and plaster, fixed on her mouth, and knew.
Everything they have is owed to the Port Mafia. Whenever Gin thinks of the work she has done, of what her brother may be doing when he disappears for days or weeks, it feels like thinking of a wide, featureless room. Whether or not she wets her blade. At age fifteen, Gin is unsure whether or not she has killed anyone. Probably.
She has to press through muscle if she wants to count her ribs, now. No, it isn’t fair that her earnings have lined someone else’s pockets for years. Yes, Gin would rather be safe than endangered. But it doesn’t matter. She irons out any dissidence. She lives.
--
On the second day, she’s left to her own devices. Her meals consist of whatever is left in the cabinets. A steady breeze flows outside, so she flings the windows open and spends the day doing laundry, cleaning, and polishing knives. Domesticity comforts Gin. Cleaning clears her mind; she likes the steady little movements of wiping and folding and tidying. She runs the duster twice over bare shelves, then stands back to look at her handiwork.
The apartment Gin and Ryuunosuke share has two bedrooms, a sitting area, one bathroom, and a small kitchen. Ryuunosuke doesn’t see the place--or anywhere--as home; he is powered by a single thought, a single purpose, one that frightens Gin sometimes. Gin watches her brother be consumed by Dazai Osamu and doesn’t know whether to bless the boy for providing them a way to live or curse him for taking her brother away.
All of Gin’s memories of the slums are of gnawing, black hunger. Of thrusting a handful of dandelions into her brother’s hand and picking apart the stems to feed each other. Of pressing her face to his shoulder while he retched up blood. Of holding her hand over his mouth while he slept just to feel his breath after their friends died around them.
Her brother has always been sickly. He’s always had rough lungs, weak knees, and bad eyes. Those things made him an easy target for thieves and drunkards, adults who were free with slaps and kicks whenever they were around begging children. And the adults were afraid. Ryuunosuke held out a trembling, curled hand, begging for any scrap or coin, but his hollowed, sagging eyes held no spark. No tears. No desperate quiver shook his lip. Demon child, they hissed between them, and treated her brother accordingly.
Gin had never been afraid. Not then, and not now, not even when their paths crossed on business and they regarded each other with appropriately hostile, unfamiliar glances, when she would eventually bow and mutter Akutagawa in reluctant respect, like that name doesn’t belong equally to her.
The last time her brother returned from a mission, he returned victorious. Gin was sleeping on the couch when he opened the door, and she was awoken by an even voice saying:
“I’m home, Akutagawa.”
She had smiled a sleepy smile, and saluted him from the couch. “Welcome home, Ryuunosuke,” she sighed, drifting back to sleep.
But now he’s only been gone for two days, and Gin knows better than to expect him back anytime soon. That night, she slips the smallest bill out of the stack and buys herself buns from a convenience store. She eats them all on the bench outside and watches people walk past.
--
On the third day, Gin folds the entire stack of bills into her pocket. Her cleaning the previous day catalyzes her out of the apartment and down to walking the streets and peering into storefronts. Ryuunosuke may not see the apartment as home, but Gin wants more to possess than a handful of disguises and knives. Not much, never more than she could carry if necessary, but something.
She ends up in a bookstore. Ryuunosuke had been taught to read by Dazai, and he had passed it on to Gin in lessons given on the days when he was too hurt or sick to move—days that wouldn’t come often, as her brother would rather walk on broken legs than admit to being weak.
Shelves upon shelves of books line the walls and fill the floor. Gin spends several hours wandering the stacks, pulling out books without reading the titles and skipping to the middles just to read several pages. Eventually, she discovers the stationary section.
All mafia members are taught the importance of never leaving records. Any incriminating evidence, any connection the organization, it all must be destroyed. Keeping a diary, even if she didn’t record any mission details or any names, would certainly be frowned upon if not seen as outright treason.
Even so, she buys a notebook. It’s gray and embossed with black feathers; even if she doesn’t plan to fill it, she likes the potential of each blank page. She buys a pen to go with it. On her way to the register, she passes through the poetry section. Drifting her fingers along the spines as she makes her way down the aisle, a small, plain-black volume catches her eye.
On a whim, she adds the poetry book to her purchases.
--
Back at the apartment, Gin puts her notebook on the shelf, then takes it off again, then sits on the couch. She strokes the cover reverently, flips through each smooth page. Slowly, savoring each stroke, she writes the date on the top of the first page. A smile quivers on her face for a brief moment as she stares down at her writing. She centers the notebook and pen on her bedside table, and then turns her attention to the poetry book.
Where best to put it? It sits on the little kitchen table while she tries to make a decision. Will Ryuunosuke even care? Does her brother care at all for poetry? Gin has occasionally seen him with books in the past, but most if not all of those books had been lent to him by Dazai, so Gin isn’t sure if that really counts.
Dazai taught Ryuunosuke how to read, so Gin knows he treasures the knowledge. However, dedication does not make reading any easier.
“I have to do this,” she remembers him shouting, wailing, in the night when she asked him why he was still awake. “Dazai-san is only so hard on me because I keep failing! If I can do this, then—“
She hadn’t said anything at the time. Regrets are not useful, but Gin cannot banish them all.
In addition to his sickly disposition, Ryuunosuke has always had weak eyesight. Light hurts his eyes, so it isn’t uncommon for him to close them and use Rashomon to navigate around the same way he uses Rashomon to keep himself standing some days. Gin knows that her brother’s pride runs deep and strong, but she can remember better than anyone else how he struggled and raged and despaired before finally achieving the ability to read. And even now it leaves him with terrible migraines, and he fears a day when he might miss something in a mission briefing or be asked to read something and get the words wrong.
Even though she had resolved to spend her money, to do something nice for herself, the books she had bought that day hadn’t depleted her stash much at all. She still had plenty of money left for another present for her brother.
Ryuunosuke has no imagination whatsoever; all his money goes towards food and rent, with everything else just put in an account and never touched. He can occasionally be coaxed into buying new clothes, and those are Gin’s favorite times. She lets her hair down and pulls his back into a ponytail. Putting on street clothes and leaving the apartment together feels more secret than any uniform or mission. They go down to a boutique and she giggles behind her hand while she watches her brother try on coat after identical black coat. He runs his hand over different fabrics and looks at peace.
Gin wants to help him because no one else will, certainly not himself. Mafia members fall off the map all the time. They run and then they die, or they’re killed, or they’re arrested on a mission, which spells their death anyway. Their shared past amounts to no sure future. In some ways, Gin feels that she has already died. She flattens her soul and models her eyes after her brother’s hollow gaze.
But her heart still beats. His lungs still draw breath. They have to be strong if they want to live, and Gin wants them to live.
--
On the fourth day, Gin goes to the library and goes directly to the wall of computers in the back. An hour or so of research leads her to several conclusions. First, glasses are expensive. Second, her options are limited unless she can somehow convince him to actually go to an eye doctor. And a prescription is not something she can simply steal or trick someone out of. Feeling frustrated, she abandons her search and stalks out of the library. She steals two random books on her way out.
--
She has another mission on the fifth day, this time a team effort that eats up most of her day. The coordinator mentions through their comms that they’d better not mess this up or else they’d get reprimanded by the mafia’s rabid dog the next day.
So Brother will be home soon is the only thought occupying Gin’s mind as she makes her way home, sore and exhausted. Stopped on a street corner, she catches her own reflection in a shop window. Gin’s never sure which reflection she prefers; both the shy, quiet girl in the bathroom mirror and the scowling, ragged boy in the shop window belong to her. Why dwell?
It’s dusk, and the rapidly darkening sky makes it easy to peer past her reflection and into the drugstore. Past rows of candy, beauty products, and boxes of medicine, Gin spies a small display of reading glasses.
Maybe something’s better than nothing, yeah? She darts into the store, only taking the time to tug her mask down and pull her ragged mission coat tightly around herself. The glasses display only has a few options, so Gin quickly chooses simple oval frames with slightly tinted lenses, the strongest ones offered. She pays, shoves the case into her pocket, and nearly runs all the way home.
--
Gin has attuned herself to the sound of the door opening, partially for fear of being attacked by the mafia’s enemies and partially to alert herself to her brother coming and going. The door wakes her up at 4 am, and the first thing she does is snatch the glasses case off her bedside table. She throws her covers off and puts on a robe and slippers as quickly as possible, but Ryuunosuke has already made his way to his room by the time she leaves hers.
He’s standing next to the bed, running his fingers over the cover of the poetry book she left on top of his pillow. “Gin?” he questions quietly, glancing up at her when he notices her in the doorway.
Gin digs her fingers into the glasses case. A quick once-over doesn’t reveal any obvious injuries, but her brother is annoyingly adept at hiding such things.
“I got paid. I thought you might like it.”
“…My gratitude, sister,” he says, but his painful formality belies his awkwardness.
“There’s something else,” Gin pushes, before she can lose her nerve. She takes two quick steps into the room and thrusts her hand out.
Her brother takes the glasses case and turns it over in his hand. He takes the time to examine the entire exterior before flipping open the lid. His shoulders tense the second he realizes what she’s given him.
“Gin…” he says, and her stomach sinks at the wary narrowing of his eyes and the way he leans back from her slightly.
“Brother, I—“ her voice fades and dies, and frustration at herself wells up. “I bought them because you don’t always have to struggle.” His mouth thins further, but she pushes on. “I know you can’t wear them on a job or anything like that. But…I know you get headaches. I bought the book because I know you like reading even if it’s hard and I bought the glasses because…because it’s okay, Ryuunosuke, if you don’t fight when it’s just the two of us.”
By the time she finishes her speech, she’s finding it hard to draw breath. Ryuunosuke remains motionless the entire time she talks, but once she finishes he plucks the glasses from their case delicately. Gin holds her breath. His fingers may be thin, but she knows all too well that he could easily snap the wire frames and toss them aside, full of bitter scorn at his sister’s pitiful, unsolicited attempt to help him.
He unfolds the arms and settles the glasses on his nose. He blinks a couple times at her, looking slightly surprised. The tint of the lenses suits him, and the thin frames don’t look out of place on his thin face.
Ryuunosuke opens the poetry book to a random page and begins to read out loud, his voice growing more confident as he reads—though still slow and cautious; the reading glasses only do so much. After finishing one poem, he gently closes the book. He removes the glasses slowly, then fixes his gaze on Gin.
“Thank you, sister,” he says, and bobs his head in acknowledgment.
She lowers her head as well, relief and gratitude coursing through her body.
--
From that day on, Gin sometimes comes home to see her brother lounging on the couch with the glasses on, engrossed in a book. Gin adds her stolen library books to the shelf, steals a couple more, begins setting aside small portions of her money for buying books and notebooks. The shelves of their apartment fill up quickly.
It is not easy to be a member of the Port Mafia, and it is not easy to be the sister of Akutagawa Ryuunosuke. They accumulate scars and kills faster than they accumulate books. Neither of the two siblings ever asks for details of jobs, and they never talk about the past or the future. They don’t have birthdays, but every now and then one will buy or steal something for the other. Gin favors books and Ryuunosuke favors clothes, so they swap sometimes. Ryuunosuke buys her new disguises as the old ones grow too small or too known; Gin hunts down increasingly specific volumes for him.
In the clean silence of the apartment, Ryuunosuke turns a page. The soft rasp settles in Gin’s heart. It’s home. She measures her breathing, twirls her pen around her fingers, and, for the first time since the first date she wrote, she presses it to the paper.
She doesn’t know what she’s going to write, but she lets the words flow anyway.