Chapter Text
Soundtrack: Daft Punk - Instant Crush ft. Julian Casablancas
It was a sunny April morning in Tokyo and the office of the Principal of Mishima Polytechnic High School felt to Jin Kazama like a sensory assault. Ornamental and... personal? Designed, intentionally or not, to be utterly unbearable to him.
The smell of fresh roses and expensive jasmine was torturing his nasal receptors, transforming the neural signal into a vicious, rhythmic throb pulsating behind his left eye. The static, low-frequency of the monitors and technical equipment, merging with the sound of Bach's Cello Suite No. 1, was transforming it into a creeping migraine that was clawing its way up to the back of his neck.
It felt like being in a pressurized chamber that smelled like a garden and sounded like a nightmare.
But right now, this sensory overwhelm was the least of his problems. His problem, methodical as the torture he was enduring, was currently sitting in front of him at a ridiculously expensive, carved black mahogany desk. He was wearing a loud purple velvet waistcoat and was holding a sheet of paper as if it were made of nuclear waste. He had a question for him; he always had one.
"Jin," Lee Chaolan sighed, the sound of his words dragging with a theatricality that felt effortless and that was certainly trained, probably in front of a mirror. "What, exactly, is this? Enlighten me."
Jin was sitting in the visitor's chair, his spine stubbornly rigid against the leather. He kept his gaze fixed on a small gold statue on the desk, trying to breathe shallowly, his arms crossed. Without blinking he merely stated the obvious: "It is the Shinro Kibou Chousa. The Career Aspiration Survey. Due today."
Lee inhaled deeply, closing his eyes, his manicured thumb pressing into his temple. "I am fluent in the Japanese language, my dear nephew. I can read the header. I am querying you about what you have written on it." He swept his hand from his temple in a grand gesture of frustration, then flicked the paper with his fingertips. The dry snap of the page echoed across the room like needles aimed at Jin's throbbing eye.
"Specifically, the incredibly inelegant line that is scrawled in the first box, and the second and," he paused, "the third?" He said, emphasizing the last word, turning the question into almost a plea. Almost. Lee Chaolan never pleaded.
Jin shifted his gaze from the gold statue to the crime scene. While he leaned forward the leather of the chair creaked and needles shot at his eye again, forcing him to blink. Exhaling to resume focus, he then pretended to examine the paper with great care and began reading the first box, slowly.
"... It says 'Head of Mishima Zaibatsu'."
He halted, meeting Lee's gaze to assess his commitment to the charade. Absolutely committed. Of course he was. He always was. Defeated, Jin resumed reading, very slowly.
"Head of Mishima Zaibatsu and... Head... of... Mishima... Zaibatsu?"
The last word landed between them like a subtle mockery of the previous plea, a jab that Lee chose to ignore, for Jin's sake and, more importantly, for his own.
"Precisely!" Lee exclaimed, throwing his arms wide, the form fluttering from his fingers to the floor. "Dreadfully boring! Monochrome. Bleak."
"Can you get to the point, Lee?" Jin snapped, cutting off the adjective assault.
"It lacks the ardor of youth and it lacks imagination. You are eighteen years old, surrounded by the bloom of life, and your greatest aspiration is to sit in a leather chair and look at... financial reports?"
"Nineteen, actually. And it's basically what you do, Uncle."
"...It lacks life, Jin." Lee declared, smoothly ignoring the jab. Again.
"It lacks imagination because it's reality," Jin retorted, patience growing thin, the snapping point near. Lee opened his mouth to counter, but Jin pressed on, seizing the only opening he had: "Heihachi is probably dead. The Board has been fired at your suggestion. I am the head. Lars was the one who told me the company needed a leader, a face. You were the one who said it had to be mine."
He paused, looking at Lee, whose perfect slenders hands were now cradling his head.
"Am I wrong?"
"No, you are not, but—"
Jin didn't let him finish; he had no interest in hearing the rest. "...so I don't see the point in lying to the Ministry of Education." He delivered the line deadpan, staring straight into his uncle's eyeballs.
"Technically," Lee corrected, sustaining his nephew's gaze and wagging a finger, "you are the conditional head. A condition that, I might remind you, involves a diploma you do not yet possess."
"I know the clause," Jin said under his breath, his jaw tightening as he stared at the form on the floor. He hated the clause. The last mockery left by Heihachi before disappearing into who knows where, freezing half of the Zaibatsu assets behind a high school diploma. He also hated the leather chair, the meetings, and he hated the suits most of all. The itchiness, the tightness, the wrongness of it on his skin.
But he knew very well that he could not escape the chair nor the suits. Escaping the meetings, maybe. Lars didn't appreciate that option, a fact he made sure to point out with exhausting persistence. So what was the point of lying on a thin piece of recycled paper? The future that form asked about had been set in stone the moment he decided to return from Australia, stepping out of the shadows that had hidden him so well. That future didn't give a damn about his feelings.
The bitter taste rising in his throat stung more than the smell. His composure snapped the split second he intercepted his uncle's gaze, catching the faint pity lingering on the dark circles under his eyes. His cool shattered, leaving him spitting back all his frustration.
"This is why I am here in this stupid school, wearing this stupid uniform, and filling out this stupid form, in this..." He gestured vaguely and angrily at the desk, the gold statues, the violet drapes, the overwhelming excess of the room and his uncle himself. "...this nightmare of an office."
"Oh, don't you dare hate the office."
Lee paused, feigning insult. The tone was offended, but the curve of his lips twitched upwards imperceptibly, a well-hidden sign of relief at seeing the teenager finally bleeding through the cracks of the mask Jin had cobbled together from a vague idea of a stable human being. It was unpolished for him, worrying for Lars, and troublesome for the Zaibatsu, but it was alive nonetheless.
"And while you are in this stupid school, in that stupid uniform..." Lee paused again, his eyes squinting, focusing on Jin's blazer. A polyester mess completely void of personality, absolutely full of Heihachi's bad taste. He made a mental note to schedule a meeting with the design department. If he had to run that place, he refused to let such lack of style haunt his corridors a moment longer.
He cleared his throat, refocusing. "...and filling out this stupid form, Violet Systems is burning through a rather unseemly amount of capital to keep the Tekken Force fed and the lights on in that tower of yours."
Jin dropped his gaze, the shame of that debt seeping in, its heavy weight settling deep in his chest.
Lee stood up, velvet rustling softly. He rounded the desk to lean against the edge, arms crossed, his eyes locking onto the boy's left wrist. Jin looked up, caught his uncle's gaze, and instinctively covered the heavy nenju beads with his other hand. His head pulsed as he felt his heartbeat rising, the throb behind his eye worsening with every second.
"Is it holding?" Lee asked quietly.
Jin looked away, trying to focus on anything but Lee and the form. "The hum is... steady. Its voice is quiet. Sometimes I can feel it... scratching. But it can't take control." He paused, letting out a shallow exhale. "It doesn't like it."
"That sounds good," Lee murmured, a flicker of genuine relief passing through his eyes.
"It doesn't need to sound good," Jin muttered, gripping his wrist tighter. "It needs to work."
"It will," Lee assured him, glancing at his nails.
"It needs to last," Jin insisted, his grip tightening further.
"Are you doubting the expertise of Violet Systems?" Lee retorted smoothly.
"I'm questioning the sketchy beads a guy in obnoxious armor gave you."
"Yoshimitsu has a very peculiar style," Lee sniffed, flicking an invisible speck of dust from his sleeve."Only men of true taste can appreciate it."
Jin rolled his eyes, the movement exacerbating his headache. "Right," he said dryly. "I'm just wary of relying on it as the only way to keep that thing quiet." He stared at a random point in the room, the alien, disturbing geometry of that armor flickering in his mind.
"Regardless," Lee continued, "I didn't spend months tracking your ghost across the Australian Outback, using my precious time to find a way to bind that thing back into the void, just so you could turn yourself into a hollow corporate shell."
Jin huffed, annoyed, but Lee quickly clarified: "I didn't rescue your soul for you to throw it back into the burning pit of a different kind of hell."
But even as he spoke, his thoughts drifted toward another soul, a living witness to his previous failures. The reminder hit Jin, pulling him back underwater. Memories resurfaced with their sheer violence: the taste of blood and dust in his mouth, the aftermath of actions he couldn't even remember committing. The consequences of losing himself in the void.
He felt the walls of the room closing in on him and the throb quickening its rhythm. Instinctively, his hand shifted from his wrist to the edge of the desk, searching desperately for a harbor, an anchor to hold him in reality. Finding the cool wood, he gripped the surface hard, his knuckles turning white as he sought rescue in its solidity.
Lee, noticing the shift in his nephew's demeanor and realizing the weight of his words, reached for the floor, picking up the form faster and with less grace than he had calculated. He then dropped it back onto the desk, the sharp thud of his hand against the wood in a caring attempt at winning back Jin's attention.
"Take. It. Back," he urged, sliding the paper across the polished surface until it nudged Jin's hand.
After a brief moment spent clawing his way back to reality, Jin looked at him, incredulous and slightly offended. His eyes narrowed into two slits, emitting an intensity that reminded Lee, again, of someone else entirely. He took note of the similarity, then quickly pushed the thought back into the depths of his mind.
"Wait, you called me here to redo my homework? What are you going to do, Lee, fail me?" His voice rose to a higher pitch, the arrogance of his age finally leaking out of it.
"I called you here to ask you to try," Lee said, his voice softening just enough to show the uncle behind the charade. He tapped a fingernail against the paper, right over the heavy black ink of Jin's handwriting. "To try to envision a future less depressing than... this. Consider it an exercise in fiction."
"An... exercise… of fiction?" Jin echoed the words slowly, a clumsy attempt to grasp a meaning that remained stubbornly out of reach.
"Exactly that. But do not bring that paper back to me until you have written something that proves you took this as seriously as a hostile takeover bid by G-Corp or, better yet, styling your hair in the morning."
Jin stared at him, speechless. For a brief moment, he thought about reminding Lee Chaolan that he was, in fact, technically his boss. But even brooding in his miserable state, he was capable of acknowledging that he was trying his best. The fact that his uncle's 'best' was so profoundly inconvenient was collateral damage Jin was willing to tolerate. Not for long, perhaps, but at least for now.
He huffed, defeated, and snatched the paper, stuffing it into his pocket while looking at him sideways. "You're enjoying this."
"Immensely," Lee beamed, checking his expensive watch. "Now get out. I have a meeting with the board regarding the cafeteria menu."
"The menu? Why?" he asked, a little curious and hopeful, remembering its scarce vegan options.
"Apparently, they want to cut the budget for the pâtisserie and restrict the tea flavors from twenty-five to just five. Can you believe it? Barbarians."
Jin shook his head at his uncle's plans, giving him a look that hovered somewhere between gratitude and annoyance. He stood up and walked out without a word. Resigned and defeated. It happened almost every time Lee Chaolan was involved, and inevitably so if Lars tagged along. Pushing it too much would only invite an additional lecture. He would not risk it. Lars was definitively the boring cop of the duo, not that his Uncle was remotely equivalent to any type of cop. He was simply Lee Chaolan, a definition in itself. His headache didn't deserve and couldn't handle both of them, not today at least.
The heavy oak door clicked shut behind him with a force that Jin intended, to cut off the scent of roses, the music and intrusive memories. The hallway was empty. The white light of that morning was a little too bright for his taste, but better than that objectionable office.
He could hear the chattering sounds of students in the courtyard coming from a window left open before him. He automatically reached for the handle to close it, trying to reclaim something that was hardly in his life anymore. The silence finally rushed in to fill the space. Jin tried to let it fill him whole as his mother had taught him, but it did nothing to quiet the noises in his head.
He leaned back against the wall, feeling the cool plaster reaching through his blazer and shirt, invading the skin of his back. Meanwhile, the faint heat of the sun's rays sat placidly on his closed eyelids, passing through his fringe. He reached into his pocket, his fingers brushing against the crumpled paper, reminding him that the day had only just begun.
A future, Lee had said. A future he wants, he actually insisted.
Jin closed his eyes. The thrum of the beads against his wrist was a constant reminder of something living just beneath his skin, ready to swallow him again, waiting for his guard to drop. The thing he had tried to bury in the red dust of Australia. The thing that still hunted him in his sleep. A violent protest against the audacity of imposing a leash on it.
He breathed out a shaky, little, hollow sound in the empty hall.
He realized, with terrifying clarity, that the boy in the Yakushima forest was gone, lost, and if he wasn't the Head of the Zaibatsu, and he wasn't the Devil... he had absolutely no idea who Jin Kazama was supposed to be.