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Ichiyo is awake again when Gin drops in through the window. She startles, but relaxes when she sees it’s just Gin’s lithe form, as usually. She’s always surprised. Gin’s always been good at gaining the upper hand.
“Gin,” she says, and her voice is all scratchy from disuse again. What use is a voice when she has no one to talk to in the lonely hours of the night, the stifling hours of the day? “You’re here again.”
“Someone has to make sure you’re alive,” Gin replies, not trying to hide their voice anymore; they haven’t bothered for a while. The sound of it instantly sets Ichiyo at ease, no matter how she tries to stay vigilant. (Gin has never hurt her. She shouldn’t be afraid, but the Port Mafia always collects their debts in blood.)
(She would know.)
“My brother didn’t think you entirely incompetent,” Gin says, sliding down the wall into a cross-legged sitting position. They seem so exhausted, trying to run the Black Lizards in the aftermath of it all with just Hirotsu. Tachihara doesn’t take to the frontlines much anymore.
Ichiyo doesn’t dare ask about Gin and Tachihara.
“All I ever wanted,” Ichiyo says quietly, “was to accomplish my goals. I thought the Mafia would help me achieve it. And it did, for a while, just—”
“You were never suited for the Mafia,” Gin agrees, and though the admission is painful, though the admission is one she’s been told countless times and thought to herself a hundred more, her throat constricts painfully anyway.
“I wanted Akutagawa-senpai to acknowledge me,” Ichiyo admits. Not like Gin doesn’t know that. Who doesn’t?
“And what he left behind for you isn’t enough?”
She swallows. “I don’t think it ever will be.”
Gin remains silent, and Ichiyo can’t tell if it’s because they agree or if they don’t have anything more to say to that. She almost edges closer, wanting—what? To hold their hand? Listen to their voice from closer up?
Ridiculous. Gin is no softie. They hold no one’s hand, does not coddle anyone. At least, Ichiyo thinks so. What does she know about them, anyway?
“If you want something enough,” Gin says at last, “no amount except for all of it will ever be enough.”
Ichiyo holds her breath. “Are you speaking from experience?” she asks. Thinks of how she’s taken to waiting for Gin’s silent form to slip in through the window, seat themselves cross-legged on the floor beside her bed.
Gin eyes her sideways. “If you want it to be.”
Ichiyo is someone who’s spent her entire life wanting more than what has been given to her. She’d longed for so much change. For so much validation, for some way to lessen the burden on her shoulders.
She’d wanted Akutagawa Ryuunosuke’s approval so much that she’d doom herself for it. Look where that’s gotten her—a grave and a thousand unspoken regrets and an ability Gin wants nothing to do with, an ability they refuse to use.
And what is it that she wants now? For Gin to stay by her side. It’s not even a question. She doubts it’s because their brother is Akutagawa Ryuunosuke. She doesn’t understand and she’s too tired to try and make sense of it.
Try as she might, she can’t make much sense of many things. She only carries bitter regrets and wishes that won’t come true in her heart.
And this is what it has culminated in: a woman who’s left despondent and an assassin who has little left to lose. A dead man whose dying wish is a mystery more than anything.
A thousand and more wishes, between the three of them, that’ll hardly come true, whether spoken into existence or not.