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Spoiler Alert: If you have not seen Episode 11: Coffin, please click the back button. Now.
I’m serious. This will ruin the episode for you.
Much like the episode has ruined the day for many of us.
Vital plot points can be inferred from reading this fic.
And it’s possible I might go on a rant or something in my notes because
*()&#$*(&B *( *(#W$&*( U$*H*(P !!@!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes. That is my reaction to Episode 11. You may quote me on it.
But one thing should not be discounted. And that is the singular fact that in this anime, whenever people thought they knew what was going on, they didn’t. Joker Game is a series built on layers of misdirection.
And little things that may first seem like a throwaway line can sometimes turn the entire plot on its end. Details that you take to mean one thing can sometimes actually mean both that thing . . . and something completely different. Especially where our D-Agency boys are concerned.
*cough* Quinine *cough*
“He died instantly, that’s why he looks so peaceful” my ass!
That should have been enough space for the spoiler warning.
If you’re still reading and you haven’t seen the episode, it’s clear that you want spoilers. And considering the mental state this episode has left me in, I cannot find it in me to care right now.
Now, onto my fic.
生きる
There’s always a way to survive.
生きる
“Please . . . Please . . .”
“I didn’t know you were religious.”
“ . . . I’m not.”
“Your words sound suspiciously like a prayer.”
“ . . . Maybe they are.”
“Then –”
“Just shut up and dig.”
生きる
Screeching metal.
Screams.
The smell of smoke and burning oil.
The smell of death.
And
Red
Hot
Pain
And the knowledge that this is it.
This is where you die.
Because that’s a piece of metal sticking out of your chest, and you’ve just been in a train crash during wartime.
Miyoshi knows what happens next.
Yuuki warned him to beware the wolf.
For some reason the myth of Fenrir storms through Miyoshi’s mind at that moment. The wolf that will swallow the sun. The gods chained him, but at the expense of one of their greatest warrior’s hands. Usually the right hand. But sometimes depicted in art as the left hand. In legends too. Ambiguous. Like no one can figure out which hand is actually the missing one.
Stupid people. It’s not that hard!
Fucking. Hell. The. Pain.
Distraction. Focus on the myth. The metaphor.
Yuuki-san. The greatest warrior. But no one knew it.
Stupid fucking imperialists with their stupid fucking brainwashed notions.
Overshadowed by the heroes who people actually remembered. Like Odin. And Thor.
And even Loki. But he was no hero.
The trickster.
And Fenrir’s father.
Now Miyoshi’s just getting lost in the metaphors. There’s no logic to this.
生きる
I
Am
Going
To
Die.
Not like this.
Tears burn at the corners of Miyoshi’s eyes.
Not like this.
If he’d made a mistake . . . if it had been because of something that he did, some failing or shortcoming . . . that would have sucked. But he could have accepted it.
But to die in a train crash of all things.
I don’t want to go . . .
They say that when you die, your life flashes before your eyes.
Well Miyoshi’s wasn’t.
I’m
Not
Dead
Yet.
生きる = to live
Death is the worst choice you can make.
Don’t die. Don’t kill.
Find a way out of this. Find a way to live.
生きる
Situation hopeless.
Situation report: I’m bleeding. A lot. There’s a piece of metal sticking out of my chest. I think it’s missed anything vital. But blood loss is going to be a problem. And if I somehow survive that, I’m still screwed.
Because a trainwreck in a time of war could never just be seen as a train wreck.
Every detail, every passenger, survivor, victim, they would all be analyzed, down to the tiniest details of their lives. No one was above suspicion. And though Miyoshi was careful, even though he took every precaution, he wasn’t perfect. No one was. Not even Yuuki-san. Even right now he had incriminating evidence on his person. Microfilm sewn into his collar. An ingredient for invisible ink in his wallet.
Fuck me.
There was no way out of here.
Even if by some miracle he survived, they had him. The wolf would catch him. And the wolf held a grudge. Miyoshi wouldn’t get out of this with only a missing hand.
生きる
Yuuki-san.
The Lt. Colonel secretly liked hearing them refer to him as such.
He wasn’t typical military, obsessed with ranks and protocols, decorums and dumbassery. He was like them. Like his spies. Or they were like him, more like. He’d seen the seeds in them, the potential. And he’d taken them and made them like him.
Are you disappointed in me?
I’ve let you down, haven’t I?
生きる
The mission.
Yuuki needed . . . microfilm. Miyoshi’s list. His life’s work, essentially.
His death’s work.
Leave a sign.
Miyoshi smiled at the blood on his hand. Then lifted it to mark his collar. To anyone else, it would just look like a stray spot of blood. To Yuuki-san it would be a beacon.
I’m
Sorry.
I really don’t want to go.
生きる
“Then don’t.”
Miyoshi blinked. Maybe now was when his life was going to start flashing before his eyes. Because the others were in front of him, and for a moment he was back in D-Agency. In the cafeteria. Playing cards with the only people in the world who had ever gotten him. The only peers he ever had.
“I can’t imagine anyone forcing you into anything you don’t want,” Kaminaga said.
“Not even the Ace of Spades,” said Odagiri.
“Even if you have a losing hand, isn’t it still your choice whether or not to fold?” asked Jitsui.
Hatano threw his own hand of cards up into the air. More cards than he could have possibly been holding cascaded down around them. It looked like two, no three full decks worth. “If you don’t have that ace in the hole, just find the hole in their ace. And no, that’s not a double entendre.” He smiled then, all cheekiness and impudence, and Miyoshi didn’t think he could be in any more pain than he was already, but the thought of never seeing that shit-eating grin again proved him wrong. The thought of never being with these men again . . . his friends . . . his brothers.
A hand fell on his shoulder. He didn’t know which one of theirs it was. No, it was all of theirs. But just one hand.
It was a hallucination. It didn’t have to fucking make sense.
“So?” asked Fukumoto.
“Do you call?” Amari wanted to know.
Miyoshi stared at his cards, only to realize they weren’t cards at all. They were folders of matches. How could they expect him to play with matches?
Tazaki snapped his fingers, and suddenly the room was full of pigeons. Their wings beat the air like angel feathers, obscuring everything. Miyoshi expected Tazaki to perform a magic trick then. Produce more cards out of thin air. But instead he just leaned forward and whispered in Miyoshi’s ear.
“Why don’t you check your wallet? You might find you have more cards than you think.”
Miyoshi almost did just that. But then he heard the sound of Yuuki-san’s cane at the door, and instinct had him sitting up straighter to give his boss his full attention.
He was surprised to find Yuuki already in the room. Not at the door. The old man couldn’t usually sneak up on them, since he maintained his disguise even in D-Agency. But now he stood right in front of Miyoshi, holding an ace of spades.
Then, he gave Miyoshi a stern look and tore the Ace of Spades in half.
生きる
Miyoshi blinked again. He was back in the train.
Dammit.
If he was going to die, he would rather go out in a hallucination that he was amongst the only friends he’d ever had.
Not surrounded by strangers in this cold foreign land.
I’d live for you all if I could.
I’d die for you too. Of course I’d never tell you that.
生きる
Live.
Live.
Live.
Death is the worst choice you can make.
I’m not making it, Miyoshi argued with the voice that he took to be his subconscious. It’s been made for me.
You’re deciding that without even trying to put up a fight?
Even if I live, I’ll be caught and arrested, and then die all the same.
You’re not even going to listen to your friends’ advice?
A growl caught in Miyoshi’s throat. Fine, he thought. Fine. I’ll take their advice. For all the good it will do me.
So he struggled to remove his wallet from his pocket. He ended up dropping it in his lap. It fell open. And Miyoshi found himself staring at his wild card.
生きる
The phone rang once then cut off.
The spies gathered around the table all looked up from their card game. Waiting. Waiting.
Twenty seconds passed. And the phone rang again.
Kaminaga lifted it off the hook and held it to his ear.
“New orders. You are to report to the Sansaka Airfield immediately. A diplomatic mission is leaving for Germany in three hours. You are to be on that plane.”
“Which of us?” Kaminaga asked without hesitation or any inclination that these orders were strange.
“All of you.”
“All of us?” Kaminaga was unable to help sounding incredulous. “But there are seven of us here right now, and –”
“Good.”
The other spies were staring, now aware that something was up.
“Can I ask what’s going on, sir”
Yuuki was silent for a moment. Then he answered. “Miyoshi is dead.”
Kaminaga hissed as though he were in physical pain.
“But if our mission is successful, that is only a temporary condition.”
生きる
Pharmacology. The most boring of all their classes. Miyoshi despised any subject that was learned primarily through memorization. It reminded him of elementary school. The different drugs were simply more boring vocabulary words to commit to memory, with longer definitions.
“Why don’t you try staying awake in class, so you don’t have to borrow my notes?” asked Miyoshi, when Hatano came to him, asking if he could read his notes yet again.
“Because that class is way too boring,” said Hatano. “If they gave us a textbook, I wouldn’t need your notes at all. I’d just read the textbook and be done with it.”
“If they gave us the textbook we could all just read it and be done with it.” In Miyoshi’s opinion, that would have been a better way to teach the class. They didn’t need someone giving them a lecture on each drug, listing its uses and side effects, and historical significance in the medical field. Especially when that someone was pretty much reading from a book as it was.
“Let’s see, anti-malarials . . . bla-bla-bla. Amodiaquine, lumefantrine, mefloquine, quinine . . . Your list of uses is incomplete, by the way.”
Miyoshi gave him a look. “I wrote down everything that the lecturer told us.”
“Then his list of uses was incomplete,” Hatano said. “And he’s got the history of it wrong too. Historicially, quinine’s a muscle relaxant. Ancient Peruvians would mix it with sweetened water and drink it to stop themselves from shivering.”
Miyoshi looked at him doubtfully. “They drugged themselves to stop themselves from shivering?”
“Don’t be so ethnocentric –”
“Oh, you know big words,” teased Miyoshi.
Hatano swatted at him. “They lived on mountains and in mountain valleys with really low temps. People do what they have to do to survive.”
生きる
It was a risk. The biggest gamble of Miyoshi’s life.
He could fold. And that would be it.
Or he could play this joker and risk gaining everything. Or losing even more.
Don’t die. Don’t kill.
The powder was bitter on Miyoshi’s tongue. And shoving its wrapper into his chest wound just might possibly have been the worst idea in the history of the world. But it was his one chance to stop the bleeding.
Half of his plan was left to chance. Would the drug work the way he needed it to? Was the dosage even close to being right? Would his body be able to hold off infection?
The other half was up to him. How well could he play the role of a corpse?
生きる
At D-Agency they were taught control. Control over every aspect of their body and mind.
How to slow their breathing, their heart rates, their thought processes. How to sleep with their eyes open. How to rearrange their own consciousness.
By the time they’d mastered everything Yuuki-san demanded of them, it might not have been so inaccurate for Sakuma to call them monsters. For they were certainly more than human.
生きる
“Want to make a bet?”
“Now’s really not the time.”
“There’s never been a better time for this bet than now.”
“Fine. What’s the bet?”
“Drinks for a month that Hatano breaks the rule tonight.”
“I’ll take that bet and say he doesn’t.”
“Really? I didn’t think anyone would take that bet. What makes you so confident?”
“Because it’s 3:00AM and Yuuki-san said Miyoshi laid down the façade perfectly. The Germans have no reason to think anyone would risk something as stupid as grave robbing for the sake of retrieving a spy’s corpse.”
“So your reasoning is that Hatano’s not going to kill anyone because there’s not going to be anyone to kill?”
“Yes.”
“You’re such an optimist.”
“You say that like I’m the only one. But you don’t think Miyoshi’s dead either.”
“It’s not optimism. It’s logic.”
“What logic is that?”
“Everything we know about Miyoshi clearly leads to the conclusion that he will never let Yuuki-san down.”
生きる
I wonder if this is what losing a son feels like.
Time was of the essence. But Yuuki wanted it to slow down. He wanted to put off the inevitable confirmation that he’d lost one.
The worst part of all this was that this hadn’t happened from a mistake. It had been an accident. A stupid, unrelated accident. And now there was this pit inside Yuuki’s chest that felt like it was sucking all the light in the world into it. Losing his hand hadn’t even felt like this.
He didn’t want to do this. But he had to. Miyoshi’s final work would be on his person. To let it fall into enemy hands would be to negate all that he had lived and died for.
So Yuuki gained access to the room where they were keeping his boy’s corpse.
When he saw him, he felt like he was the one who’d been stabbed in the chest. Miyoshi looked alive. Like in a moment he could sit up, and smirk, as he tried not to look to Yuuki for approval in passing his test. Miyoshi had always been extraordinarily adept at controlling his body’s functions. The spies were all skilled in every area. But in each subject there were some who stood out over the others. Hatano in hand to hand combat. Tazaki in sleight of hand. Fukumoto at disguise. Miyoshi at slowing his pulse, and breathing . . .
No. Don’t think like this, Yuuki told himself. The cruelest thing he could do would be to give himself hope. He couldn’t afford to fool himself. He was here for one thing and one thing only.
There. A stray splotch of blood on Miyoshi’s collar. Coupled with the memory of how Miyoshi had toyed with his collar on their last meeting when he spoke of his informant list, that splotch of blood was the equivalent of X marking the spot. Yuuki worked quickly and tore it out of Miyoshi’s collar.
And then he allowed himself just one personal gesture. He closed Miyoshi’s eyes.
And beneath his hand, against the smooth white fabric of his gloves, he felt Miyoshi’s eyelashes flutter. He felt Miyoshi blink.
生きる
He was lucky that it was winter.
(Wait. No he wasn’t lucky at all. If he was lucky he wouldn’t have been in a fucking train wreck!)
The cold helped in his disguise as a corpse. (Eat your heart out, Fukumoto.)
If the weather had been warm, there would have been no fooling the Germans. They’d have noticed when he didn’t start to smell.
He laid in place for days, unmoving. Eyes kept half open to better feign being a corpse. But only half so that they wouldn’t dry out. And even that was murder on them. By the time Yuuki-san finally came to him, his vision was so blurry, he couldn’t even see the man.
But he knew it was him. Yuuki’s presence was not one that Miyoshi could ever mistake. The tap of his cane on the floor, the smell of his favorite tobacco brand, and the glove on the hand that closed his eyes for him.
When Yuuki’s hand stayed in place a moment too long, Miyoshi knew that his signal had been received. Yuuki had felt him blink.
The hand stayed rested there another second and a half. And to Miyoshi that felt like a promise.
生きる
The shovel hit the lid of a coffin. Amari and Kaminaga looked at each other briefly, then continued digging.
“Please,” Kaminaga whispered over and over. “Please.”
It was taking much too long. But they couldn’t afford to do a rushed job. Not one speck of dirt could afford to be thrown out of place. If they left any indication that this grave had been dug up then . . . well they weren’t going to leave any indication that it had been dug up. They didn’t need to worry about that.
Finally, after a long forever, the coffin lid was clear. Kaminaga set about picking the lock on the side. In seconds it was open.
“Ophelia?” Kaminaga said softly, teasingly. He had to make a joke out of this. If he didn’t he was just going to break down. “My lady, Ophelia? It’s time to wake up.”
Please. Please. Please. Please.
Miyoshi looked so damn beautiful in his coffin, he could have been captured by a Renaissance artist.
Dead.
Alive.
Asleep.
Awake.
Please . . .
Miyoshi opened his eyes.
“Thank you.” Kaminaga’s voice cracked and he bowed his head. He accidentally let his tears drop on Miyoshi’s face. “Thank you.”
Miyoshi blinked up at him. There were tears in his eyes too. But he didn’t make any move to sit up. Or any other movement at all. He only followed them with his eyes.
“Hypothermia,” said Amari. “In addition to whatever other complications he has from his wounds. He shouldn’t move on his own.”
So they lifted him. They were lucky he was light. Since they had to lift him out of the six-foot-deep hole they’d just dug.
Jitsui was waiting in the getaway car. He took one look at Miyoshi and cranked up the heat all the way.
Kagami and Amari laid Miyoshi down in the back seat. As Kaminaga started to move away, Miyoshi made his first movement other than his eyes, and tried to cling to Kaminaga’s hand.
“Miyoshi . . .” Kaminaga was torn. He wanted to stay with his friend. Knew he needed to go. The job wasn’t finished yet.
If he didn’t clean up the gravesite this could all be for nothing. And it wouldn’t just be Miyoshi on the chopping block this time. All of D-Agency was here in Germany. They would all be hunted down. And there would be a lot of rule breaking. Too much.
“You’re safe now,” Kaminaga said. “I promise. We’ll take care of you. Jitsui’s right up front. Aren’t you, Jitsui?”
“I’m here,” said Jitsui.
Miyoshi released Kaminaga. His face pulled into something like a grimace, but Kaminaga got the feeling from the look in Miyoshi’s eyes that he was trying to smile.
“Kaminaga,” said Amari. “Come on.”
Anyone could tell that it pained him to say it. No one wanted to deny Miyoshi anything right now. But their job was not yet done. And what they did now was to defend him. To defend them all.
生きる
“I can’t believe I lost that bet,” grumbled Tazaki.
“I can’t believe you even made that bet,” Odagiri said.
“You didn’t win it for the reason you thought you would, don’t look so smug.”
“What was the bet?” asked Jitsui.
They were in one of their safe houses. Well, it was more a way point than a safe house. For their own protection, they’d split up and scattered. Tazaki, Odagiri, and Jitsui would be traveling together. They didn’t know how the others had split up. It was in everyone’s best interest that they didn’t know. If they were caught, they couldn’t reveal what they didn’t know. But they all had their suspicions that Yuuki had already gotten Miyoshi on to a plane back to Japan.
“He bet that while Hatano was keeping the lookout, if he found someone then he would kill them,” said Odagiri.
Jitsui looked at Tazaki with an almost sweet expression. “Are you stupid?”
“No. I just know Hatano –”
“An extra corpse turning up in the cemetery where a Japanese spy was buried the previous afternoon? No. There is absolutely nothing suspicious about that at all.” Jitsui looked at Tazaki in disgust.
“Everyone was high strung, and Hatano has both a horrible temper and the skills to kill without even thinking about it,” Tazaki argued his own case. “I assumed –”
“That he would let his emotions cloud his judgement? That he would put all of us in danger to settle some imaginary score with a faceless enemy who he wouldn’t actually be hurting at all, but rather tipping off our hand?” Jitsui was clearly incensed on his age-mate’s behalf.
“Well, it’s not like we didn’t have a great spot to hide a corpse,” pointed out Tazaki.
“Disappearances are no less suspicious than murders in times like these,” said Jitsui coldly. “We all know that.”
“Hatano did a good job,” said Odagiri, to placate everyone. “Knocking out that officer and splashing him with whiskey effectively killed the man’s credibility.”
That had been a nice touch. No one trusted a drunk guard.
“What were the stakes?” Jitsui asked.
“Hm?”
“The stakes of the bet? What does Odagiri get?”
“I buy his drinks for a month,” said Tazaki.
“You can buy mine for a month too,” Jitsui told him.
“What?”
“Unless you want me to tell Hatano about that bet.”
Tazaki threw up his hands. “Fine.” Then he muttered something that sounded like, “You little rat.”
“You know pigeons are pretty much just rats with wings.”
“You take that back.”
生きる
He was cold for a long time. And everything hurt. The quinine had helped him control his body against the frigid winter temperatures. But a painkiller it was not. And his own impromptu medical treatments had given rise to complications.
The wrapper that he used to staunch his bleeding had gotten infected. And he was down quite a bit of blood. Miyoshi was only partially aware of Yuuki-san flushing his body full of antibiotics and forcing liquids down his throat.
He drifted.
It was like floating in a cold stream. Like Ophelia’s fate. But he wasn’t afraid. Somehow now he knew everything was going to be alright.
He heard voices. Yuuki-san’s. And Hatano’s. One made sense, the other didn’t. Yes, Hatano would be assigned to him for protection. But one of the others should have been there for his medical care. Amari, or Fukumoto. One of the taller ones, to help carry him. Yuuki was too important for him to be near Miyoshi right now. He was their king piece. Miyoshi was now little more than a crippled pawn. So why was Yuuki here?
He didn’t know. But Yuuki’s presence was a constant, as Miyoshi hovered in various states of semi-consciousness. The smell of tobacco. The gloved hand on his brow. The deep, soothing voice. They all helped Miyoshi rest. Because Yuuki-san was here. Which meant everything was okay.
生きる
A jolt against restraints. A stab of pain.
Miyoshi cried out before he could control himself and remind himself not to.
“Miyoshi!”
A small hand seized his and squeezed.
“Ha . . . ta . . . no . . .” His voice was so ragged, it was a wonder the youngest spy could understand him.
“Yeah. It’s me.” Hatano gave him his trademark pert grin. “Welcome home.”
“Home –”
Everything lurched. Around Miyoshi. He mainly stayed in place. But Hatano nearly went flying out of his seat, even though he was wearing a seatbelt. Of course he wore it too loose, which was his own fault, but that didn’t stop him from swearing a blue streak as the plane around them continued to rattle.
“Worst landing ever,” he grumbled, and rested a hand on Miyoshi’s chest, on the opposite side from where he’d been wounded. The gesture was protective. Like he was trying to brace Miyoshi against the turbulence. “But the good news is, we just touched down in Japan.”
“I’m . . . a . . . live.”
“Yes.” For once Hatano wasn’t being insolent and cynical. He had a strong aura of relief around him, despite looking so tired.
“The . . . o . . . thers?”
“They’re all fine. The cleanup went without a hitch, the sole witness is not a problem, and everyone made their final check ins before Yuuki-san and I got you on this plane. He issued an Oz Protocol.”
“There’s . . . no . . . place . . . –”
“Like home,” Hatano finished for him. “Yes. Oh, by the way, thanks a lot.”
“Hm?”
“You had to nearly get yourself killed in a train wreck. The one thing we didn’t train for. Now Yuuki-san’s going to add that to the cirruculum, you know. We’re all going to have to figure out contingency plans for what we should do if we get ourselves impaled by railroad debris. So when I say thanks a lot, I really mean thanks for nothing.”
There was the Hatano Miyoshi remembered. His sarcasm seemed a little bit forced, but he was definitely trying. For Miyoshi’s sake, he knew.
“Seriously, though. You gave us all a scare,” Hatano said.
Miyoshi licked his lips. “Sorry.”
The younger boy sighed and looked away. “Don’t be sorry. Just don’t do it again.”
Miyoshi closed his eyes. Then mumbled something.
“What? I didn’t catch that. Miyoshi?”
Miyoshi coughed and tried again. “I’m . . . home.”
生きる
When Miyoshi thought of D-Agency, he didn’t think of the classes and the training. He thought of the other spies. His friends. And when he thought of it as a place, he knew that he should have been thinking of Lt. Colonel Yuuki’s office, where all the important business was done. But instead to him, D-Agency the place was the cafeteria. It was where he and his brothers drank whiskey, and smoked, and played their charade of a card game.
His brothers trickled back into the agency, no worse for wear. Miyoshi made sure he was there to greet them when they did. Then again, where else would he be? With his injuries, he was confined to the agency. His body was still fighting off infection and he’d been weakened by his ordeal. But even if he’d been able to be up and about, he still would have stayed and made sure he was there to greet the other spies. Because there was a tenseness in all their expressions when they arrived home. And he liked watching it melt away when they saw that yes, he was alive.
Kaminaga and Amari were the last to make it back. The self proclaimed big brothers of D-Agency. Miyoshi had no warning that they’d be arriving that day. He never did. But the moment they entered the building, he knew. All the spies had their own unique tendencies. Footsteps. Ways of shutting doors.
He called out to them from the lounge where he’d been reading. “Kaminaga. Amari. Welcome back.”
Fast footfalls. Grown men running through the halls like children. The looks on their faces as they saw Miyoshi alive and well, like the looks on Western children’s faces on Christmas morning.
“You’re the last to get back,” Miyoshi told them, giving them the rest of the information he knew they’d been craving. Information he would have been craving had he been in their shoes. “Which is not to say that you’re late – oof!”
“Sorry.” Kaminaga had wrapped him in a hug. He loosened his hold. “I’m just glad . . .” he coughed. “Glad to be back home.”
“Yes. Me too.”
生きる
“You know the rule. Don’t die. Don’t kill.”
“I didn’t break any rules, sir.”
“No. But you came closer than is acceptable.”
“My apologies. And . . . my thanks.”
. . .
. . .
. . .
“With your permission, I’ll excuse myself, then. If there’s nothing else –”
“There was no one to save me, when I was in the jaws of the wolf. I had to save myself.”
“ . . . Yes sir.”
“I promised myself, when I built D-Agency, that I would do everything within my power to make sure none of you were ever in that situation.”
“Thank you . . . for keeping your promise . . . Sir . . .”
“Go rest now. Our work isn’t finished yet.”
生きる
Poker night. Joker game night, actually. The heart of D-Agency.
It was their first time playing since everyone had gotten back, but everyone was doing their best to get things back to normal. Meaning people weren’t simply favoring Miyoshi, just because they were glad he was alive. Hatano had started on Miyoshi’s side, or so Miyoshi thought, but promptly betrayed him for Fukumoto. Tazaki was giving signs to Jitsui. Miyoshi was pretty sure Jitsui had something over him, because Tazaki looked quite perturbed. Kaminaga was throwing out fake signs, and confusing both Odagiri and Amari, who hadn’t yet caught on.
It was nice. Peaceful. It was even heartwarming. But bittersweet, because there was no way it could last.
Their line of work was dangerous. Miyoshi had cheated death this time, but only with their help. Next time he might not be so lucky. Or any one of them could fall. It didn’t even have to be a spy mistake that could end them. Miyoshi had nearly died in a stupid run of the mill train wreck. Any one of them could go down from a similar accident. A car wreck, a boat sinking, an air raid. There were no guarantees in life. Every time they were together could be the last time.
Thinking like that all the time would be mentally crippling. But in some ways, it was also motivating. It prompted Miyoshi into saying to them what he needed to say. Words that were embarrassing, but important for him to let them know. And it took him a few hands for him to build up the courage for it, because emotional speeches had never been his forte. But he refused to let any of these men die without having heard what he needed them to know.
“Miyoshi? You won. Miyoshi? Hey?”
The others were waiting for him to take the pot. His pause had worried them.
“Are you feeling well?” Amari asked.
“Yes,” said Miyoshi. “Never better.”
“Then take your winnings,” said Hatano, and he started scraping the stacks of coins toward Miyoshi. “Geez, don’t worry us for nothing.”
“I was actually trying to work up the nerve to say something to you,” Miyoshi said. And that got all their attention. Because Miyoshi didn’t need to work up the nerve to say anything. At least not that they’d ever known him to admit.
“Okay,” said Hatano, after a lapse of silence. “Well?”
Jitsui elbowed Hatano. He didn’t speak but the message was clear. Give him a minute.
“When . . . when I was in that train wreck, and I had that piece of metal stuck in my chest . . . for a moment I suddenly found myself back here.”
He could see from Hatano’s expression that he wanted to make some kind of quip about out of body experiences. But the imp exercised remarkable restraint and held back.
“I was thinking about how I really didn’t want to go. How much I wanted to stay. Then I suddenly found myself here, with all of you. And you told me that if I didn’t want to go, then I shouldn’t,” said Miyoshi. He couldn’t meet any of their faces as he said this. It was too embarrassing. But it needed to be said. “You all told me not to fold if I didn’t want to. Even if I had a losing hand. And you helped me realize that I actually did have a wild card. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have figured out a way to survive. So thank –”
“You don’t need to thank us for what your hallucinations of us told you, Miyoshi,” said Hatano.
“Hatano,” several of the others growled.
“What? I’m just saying what we’re all thinking.”
“And you have a point,” said Miyoshi. “But the parts of you in my subconscious . . . well, they’re there because of you. And maybe the answer would have manifested in a different way even if I didn’t know you. Or maybe it wouldn’t have manifested at all. But even with all that aside, the fact still remains that you all did save my life. You all came for me –”
“We were just following orders,” Hatano interrupted. He took another elbow to the ribs for his impertinence.
“I’m trying to thank you all,” said Miyoshi tiredly.
“And I’m trying to make it easier for you,” said Hatano. “I mean, come on, you cannot deny that me being confrontational and annoying is helping you feel better about all this. You were way too embarrassed when you were just focusing on giving us your gratitude.”
Silence fell around the table.
“That . . . is true,” Miyoshi finally admitted.
“You’re welcome,” Hatano told him cheekily.
“I just wanted to make sure you knew I was grateful,” said Miyoshi, regaining his composure. “And I hope you know that I would also go all in for any one of you.”
They knew. They didn’t say it in as many words. But they responded in their own ways. Amari poured him another drink. Hatano cheerily betrayed Fukumoto, switching back to signal for Miyoshi for a couple hands, before switching to Jitsui’s side. Kaminaga brushed his shoulder against Miyoshi’s, a gesture of solidarity. Tazaki dealt him a few choice cards from the bottom of the deck. Jitsui flashed his angel smile. And Odagiri just gave him a fond gaze. They all had their own codes. And they all knew each other’s codes. So no more needed to be said.
生きる
And on the other side of the door, an old man listened as the sons he’d never thought he’d have laughed and cajoled each other, as they went back to their game.
生きる
Thank you Tivanny for this beautiful piece of fan art: http://tivanny2292.tumblr.com/image/150117361891. Just look at Miyoshi's expression. You can tell by it that Kaminaga and Amari have been at this for awhile. But the last two to make it home have been worrying the longest and they need this. And Miyoshi knows. (And deep down, Miyoshi needs this too)