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Shishido barged into the apartment, hastily kicking off his shoes and stuffing the apartment keycard into his pocket before moving to the main room. He knew he should show some more decorum, but as the days wore on and he found it harder to maintain the double life, his stress began to manifest outward. Usually here, in Nishitani’s apartment, where he didn’t have to lie quite so much.
After having him pulled from the fire, Shishido had directed his men to bring Nishitani to his own apartment. He wasn’t familiar enough with the Kijin Clan to use any of their properties, and anything under the Watase Family ran the risk of Tsuruno finding them out. This had led to three long, unpleasant days of Nishitani sweating out his injuries on Shishido’s couch until he recovered enough to inform Shishido he had his own luxury apartment near Sotenbori, that was known only to him and a few trusted advisors.
They had both agreed that it’d be troublesome for too many people to know of Nishitani’s survival. A small group could reasonably keep a secret for a month; the entire Kijin Clan certainly could not. So Nishitani had reluctantly consented to staying confined in his apartment. A handful of high ranking Kijin men contacted him often to keep him informed of all goings-on and to relay his orders to the rest of the Clan; otherwise, his only visitor was Shishido.
Shishido still had his own duties to attend to, but as the time for Watase’s release drew nearer, he found himself visiting more. There were only two and a half more weeks to go now, and Shishido wanted to ensure everything lined up perfectly. He’d slowly brought more and more Watase Family men over to his side, until he had his own small army. But the news from the Kijin Clan troubled him. The man Nishitani had appointed as acting leader didn’t command the same respect as Nishitani himself. Some of the lower ranks were becoming restless and belligerent.
“Patriarch Nishitani?” Shishido called. Nishitani usually popped up somewhere as soon as he heard the door open, ready to complain ceaselessly of his boredom and demand Shishido do something to entertain him, but the apartment was still. Nothing but the hum of the climate control system broke the silence.
Shishido stepped further into the apartment. The main room was empty. In the kitchen, the sink faucet dripped steadily. Shishido turned it off. A glass sat on the marble countertop next to the sink, a thin ring of water in its base. A faint red lip impression stained its edge. The sight of it made Shishido uneasy. Usually it was empty soju bottles he found in here. He hurried on to the bedroom.
“Patriarch?” Shishido called again. The red silk sheets on the bed were rumpled and twisted. The bathroom door on the far wall stood slightly ajar. Shishido crossed over to it, but the bathroom was empty as well. He turned back to the bedroom and stopped.
Nishitani laid prone on the floor by the bed. A corner of the bedsheet trailed down behind him, as if he had fallen off the bed and then decided to stay there on the floor. Shishido knelt beside him and touched his shoulder hesitantly. When there was no response, Shishido gripped it and rolled Nishitani over.
“Shit,” Shishido muttered. A thin sheen of sweat coated Nishitani’s face, which was flushed a faint red. He was warm beneath Shishido’s hand. Shishido gripped his other shoulder and shook. “Hey, Patriarch!”
Nishitani groaned, a dry, hoarse sound. His eye fluttered open briefly and immediately slid back shut. “No.” He pushed at one of Shishido’s arms weakly. “Snooze,” he mumbled, his voice cracking.
“I’m not yer fuckin’ alarm clock! Wake up!” Shishido shook him again, but it was no use. Nishitani’s head lolled to the side as his breathing evened back out into sleep. Shishido huffed and released him. He pressed one hand to Nishitani’s sweaty forehead and another to his own. Nishitani’s skin burned beneath his palm. Definitely feverish.
“Shit,” Shishido muttered again. Now what? Whether he liked it or not, Nishitani was his most valuable ally. Shishido needed him for the fight ahead, and for everything that came after. With Nishitani out of commission, his chances would get a whole lot worse.
No, failure wasn’t an option. He’d have to find some way to fix this. Step one: find out what the hell was wrong with Nishitani. Was he sick? Had he been poisoned? Did his burns get infected? The doctor had mentioned that as a possibility to watch out for, and Shishido wasn’t sure how well Nishitani had been tending to himself.
Nishitani shivered against the hard floor, and Shishido mentally revised his plan. Step one: get Nishitani back on the bed. He stood to straighten the sheet and pull it back, then scooped Nishitani up. Nishitani mumbled something under his breath but didn’t wake as Shishido deposited him on the large bed and draped the sheet over him. He kept shivering underneath the thin sheet; there didn’t seem to be any blankets on the bed. Shishido checked the closet and found a thick red comforter.
Nishitani started mumbling again as Shishido spread the comforter out. “Watase-aniki… I’ve never… Why would you…” The rest was incomprehensible but spoken with the regular cadence of words. Korean, maybe. Shishido sat on the edge of the bed with a frown.
Nishitani kept going on about something, but Shishido couldn’t understand any of it, so he moved on to step two: find out what the hell was wrong with Nishitani. Physically speaking. Shishido pulled his phone out and searched through his contacts until he found the back-alley doctor he’d gotten to treat Nishitani the first time.
The call was brief, and afterwards there was nothing to do but wait. Shishido fiddled around with his phone for a while, but Nishitani’s steady stream of whatever the hell he was saying made it hard to concentrate. Shishido backed out of the social media app he’d been messing with and downloaded a translator. He might as well be nosy. Nishitani wouldn't know. He flicked the translator over to the text to speech feature and held his phone out to catch Nishitani's mutterings.
The translator successfully identified his speech as Korean, but Nishitani wasn't speaking clearly enough for it to pick up much. All the translated sentence fragments Shishido scanned through were nonsensical. The only bit that seemed correct was something about polishing knives. Literal or euphemistic knives? Shishido debated it with himself until the door buzzer rang.
The doctor, a portly older man with large wire-rimmed glasses, went promptly to the bedroom to examine Nishitani. Shishido milled about in the front room until he reemerged, nearly an hour later.
"What’s wrong with him?" Shishido asked.
"He's tested positive for influenza. Seems like a particularly nasty case, too. Do you know if he's been vaccinated recently?" The doctor answered.
"The flu? He has the flu?" Of all the things to go wrong – the flu? "But he hasn't left the apartment in weeks. How'd he even get it?"
"Does he have food delivered?" The doctor adjusted his glasses, face mild. "He must've been in contact with someone. It doesn't take much, especially if he hasn't been vaccinated."
Shishido went cold. "Fuck. Am I in danger?" He couldn't get sick, not now. Not with victory so close.
"It is certainly contagious," the doctor said. "Do take care of yourself, Shishido-san. As for Nishitani-san, I've left him some medicine. He was quite dehydrated, too - I've given him fluids, but please make sure he drinks something when he wakes back up. If he gets any worse, call me."
Shishido handed the doctor a crisp stack of bills and followed him outside. He went straight to the nearest pharmacy, to purchase a pack of masks, hand sanitizer, and a small bottle of vitamins that promised to boost his immune system. Sufficiently armed, he returned to the quiet apartment to enact step three: make this somebody else's problem.
Shishido slipped on a mask and went back to the bedroom. He found Nishitani's phone on the bedside table, unplugged, the battery dangerously low. It prompted him for a fingerprint. Shishido gingerly grabbed Nishitani's hand and pressed his thumb to the phone, but it didn't take. His next few tries were similarly rejected. Had he used his pointer finger or something? Or-
"Wait, you're left-handed." Shishido tried Nishitani's other thumb, and the phone unlocked. Unlike Shishido's phone, there was very little on the home screen. He found Nishitani's contacts quickly. The man Nishitani left in charge of the Kijin was named Tsuda – Shishido started to flick through the contact list to find him, but paused with a surprised huff of laughter.
Nishitani had put emojis after the names of his contacts. Shishido scrolled through, looking for familiar names. There was a bird emoji after Tsuruno's name. Tsuda was followed by a cigarette - the one time Shishido had spoken to him, he remembered the man smelling like an ashtray. He must smoke a lot. Curious, he scrolled to the bottom for Watase, but there was nothing after his name. Maybe Nishitani respected Watase too much to do something so frivolous. Or maybe there had been something here, and he'd deleted it. Nishitani hadn't seemed pleased by the news of Watase's impending betrayal.
Shishido scrolled back up to search for his own name. He found it, followed by a black heart emoji. Shishido blinked. And then he decided that wasn't worth thinking about right now and called Tsuda.
"Patriarch, what can I do for you?" Tsuda picked up promptly.
"No, it's Shishido. Patriarch Nishitani caught the flu. Can you send someone over to help him out? He's in pretty bad shape."
There was a pause on the other end. "The flu?" Tsuda sounded as baffled as Shishido felt by the diagnosis. "I- yes, of course. I'll send someone over right away."
"Thanks. I've already had a doctor look at him, we just need someone to make sure he doesn't get any worse."
After Tsuda's assurances that he would handle everything, Shishido hung up. Just in case, he copied Tsuda's number into his own contacts. He returned Nishitani's phone to the table and plugged it in this time.
Nishitani had quieted down on the bed. His chest rose and fell in deep, even breaths, but his face remained flushed and drawn. All Shishido could do now was hope he recovered in time. He sanitized his hands and left the apartment.
Shishido had just gotten away from Tsuruno when his phone rang. “Nishitani Homare III,” the caller ID proclaimed. Shishido looked around to confirm Tsuruno had really left, then ducked into an alley.
“Patriarch? Are you feeling better?” Shishido answered. It had only been a day. If Nishitani was reaching out already, then maybe this was nothing to worry about after all.
“Shishido.” Nishitani’s voice crackled through the receiver. “I need you to come over here.”
Never mind, Shishido should keep worrying. Nishitani sounded miserable. “I’m actually in the middle of some Watase Family business…”
“It’s important,” Nishitani insisted. He sniffled loudly.
Shishido pulled the phone from his ear with a wince. “Okay, I’ll be over as soon as I can.” What a pain. Nishitani was probably only tired of seeing his own men and wanted someone else to harass for a while. Now Shishido would have to expose himself again, unnecessarily.
“Good.” Nishitani sniffled again, and then the line clicked dead.
Upon entering Nishitani’s apartment, a corpse greeted Shishido.
The man wore a sharp black suit and had collapsed just inside the main room. He laid prone on the floor, one arm outstretched as though he’d been reaching for the door. A knife stuck out from his lower back; judging from the depth and angle of it, it may have severed the man’s spine. A foul-smelling concoction of blood and piss puddled underneath the man, soaking into the polished wood floor. Shishido wrinkled his nose beneath his mask and carefully stepped around the body.
In the bedroom, Nishitani had propped himself up against the pillows. A ring of soiled tissues surrounded him, and he pulled a fresh one from a box on the bed as Shishido entered. He wasn’t under the covers, and he shivered as he blew his nose. This seemed to pain him – he clutched his head with a groan as he tossed the tissue aside.
“Who’s in the other room?” Shishido asked.
Nishitani blinked up at him blearily, his eye bright. “One of mine. He said Tsuda sent him.” Snot began to trickle out of his nose again. He reached for the tissue box. “He tried to rob me.”
Shishido nodded. “Did you want me to take care of it?”
“Yes.” Nishitani blew his nose again.
All Shishido was going to do was call Tsuda to handle it. Couldn’t Nishitani have done this himself? But there was no use arguing with him. Shishido stepped back out to the main room and phoned Tsuda again.
“Hello?” Tsuda answered on the first ring again.
“This is Shishido. You need to send someone else to Nishitani. Someone who knows how to… clean a mess. And vet them better this time.”
“A mess…?” Tsuda exhaled heavily. “I-I see. I apologize for the inconvenience, Shishido-san.”
“Apologize to yer boss.” Shishido hung up and went back to the bedroom.
Nishitani had laid back under the covers. He turned his head at Shishido’s approach. His eye watered.
“Someone will be here to take care of it,” Shishido reported.
“Okay. I’m going back to sleep,” Nishitani mumbled.
“I’ll leave you then, Patriarch.” Shishido frowned, suddenly remembering the doctor’s words. “No, wait. Drink something first.” He fetched a glass of water from the kitchen and returned to coax Nishitani into sitting back up. Nishitani glared balefully but allowed it, draining half the glass before handing it back. Shishido placed the glass on the bedside table and noticed the bottle of medicine the doctor had left for the first time. “Have you had any of this yet?” Shishido asked.
“Any of what?”
“The medicine.” Shishido pointed.
“There’s medicine?”
Shishido sighed and handed him the bottle.
Nishitani stared blankly at the bottle and handed it back. “I’m tired. You fix it.”
Shishido bit his tongue and measured out the appropriate dose. At least Nishitani drank all of it without complaint. Afterward Nishitani turned away from him and curled up on the bed, and Shishido took his cue to leave. Now, it was back to waiting.
In retrospect, he should’ve known this would happen. Shishido took a few moments to stare glumly at the ringing phone in his hand before he answered. “…Yes, Patriarch?”
“Shishido… Um, I did it again.” Nishitani’s voice came clearer today, albeit still congested. His tone was contrite, almost. “Oops?”
Shishido rubbed his temple. “I’ll be right over.”
The corpse greeted him again at the door. Someone had turned it over, and now he could see the man’s glassy eyes and slack face. It wasn’t anyone Shishido recognized. The puddle on the floor had increased both in size and stench. Shishido jumped to avoid it.
In the bedroom, a broad man in a crisp white suit laid on the floor by the bed. A knife stuck out from his eye, buried almost to the hilt. It likely went to his brain; he would’ve died quickly. A second puddle was already starting to form beneath him.
“I didn’t mean to,” Nishitani said.
Shishido didn’t ask how someone could accidentally stab a man in the eye, but he did raise an eyebrow.
Nishitani shifted on the bed. His pile of tissues had grown and begun to spill off the bed onto the floor. He clutched the blankets around himself, but he didn’t shiver.
"He was standing over me when I woke up," Nishitani explained, picking at the comforter. "For a second, I thought... He looked like Watase-aniki."
"Ah." Shishido could see it; with the man's large build and white suit, he might look like Watase to someone just waking from a fevered dream.
Nishitani sniffled. "I moved too quickly. I should kill Watase-aniki slower than that anyway. Shouldn't I?" His voice trailed off. He didn't look at Shishido.
Honestly, it was impressive that Nishitani managed to keep killing people in his condition. These skills were exactly why he needed to hurry up and get better. But if he kept going at this rate, the Kijin Clan’s ranks would start looking awfully thin, and they needed numbers to be of any use to Shishido.
Shishido sighed. It was time to admit that step three had been a bust. He would have to move on to step four: nurse Nishitani back to health. Fuck, this sucked. "Just come back to my place again. You can't stay here with all this."
“Okay,” Nishitani said, still looking forlornly at his comforter.
Shishido spent the next several minutes rummaging through the apartment at Nishitani’s behest to gather his things. When Nishitani finally got out of bed, he clutched his tissue box to his chest and shuffled slowly across the floor. He refused to jump over the entryway corpse and insisted Shishido carry him instead – for his efforts, Shishido’s socks were ruined by the foul puddle. At least Nishitani’s skin beneath his hands was pleasantly warm, and not burning.
By the time Nishitani shuffled into Shishido’s apartment, he looked one misstep away from passing out. Shishido dumped Nishitani’s things on the table by the couch. “I’ll make up the couch,” he said.
“The couch?” Nishitani found the energy to laugh. “I’m not doing that again. I’ll take the bed.”
Shishido took a deep breath. And then one more deep breath. “Of course, Patriarch. But perhaps you’d like a bath first?” Nishitani reeked of old, sour sweat, and Shishido didn’t need that soaking into his mattress.
“Draw me one, then.” Nishitani flicked a hand dismissively, which made him sway dangerously to the side.
Shishido drew the bath. Once the bathroom door clicked shut behind Nishitani, he called Tsuda.
“Hello, Shishido-san.” Tsuda sounded wary.
“You need to send a cleanup crew to the apartment.”
“Not Sato too,” Tsuda moaned.
“If it helps, I think he feels bad about this one?”
“Truly?” Tsuda went quiet for a moment. “Sato was one of our best. I’ll send a crew.”
“Thanks. I’ve moved Patriarch Nishitani to my place for now.”
“I see. Please ask him to call me when he feels better. Thank you, Shishido-san.”
Shishido hung up. Nishitani hadn’t reemerged yet, so he took the time to change the sheets on the bed and make up the couch for himself. He moved Nishitani’s things to the bedroom and placed the medicine bottle and a glass of water on the bedside dresser. Then he went back to the main room and turned on the TV.
Forty-five minutes later, Nishitani still hadn’t reemerged. Shishido knocked on the bathroom door. “Patriarch?”
No answer. Did he drown in there? Shit. Shishido pushed the door open.
Nishitani slumped against the side of the square tub, his eye closed. The water lapped at his chin while steam curled around his head. As Shishido watched, he shifted and slid down another millimeter.
Shishido rushed over and shook him. “Hey, wake up!”
Nishitani’s face scrunched up as he groaned. “’M tired,” he mumbled. A pale arm rose from the water to push at Shishido.
“No, wake up!” Shishido shook harder.
Nishitani cracked his eye open, looking thoroughly put upon.
“Sit up. Yer gonna drown.” Nishitani only stared, so Shishido huffed and gripped under his arms to pull him up by force, until he sat properly against the tub.
Nishitani gazed down at where Shishido’s hands circled his arms. He turned back to Shishido. “Did you want to join me?”
Shishido pulled his hands back.
“I don’t mind,” Nishitani said.
“I think you should go to bed,” Shishido said.
“Okay.”
“Alone,” Shishido clarified. If Nishitani truly wanted to fuck him, he could try asking when he wasn’t about to drown in a bathtub.
“Okay.” Nishitani yawned.
“C’mon, get up.” Shishido dragged Nishitani to his feet.
After some fussing, Nishitani agreed to wear a shirt and some sweatpants, then took some more medicine when Shishido measured out a dose for him. He collapsed back on the bed and watched as Shishido stepped away.
“I’ll be in the other room if you need anything,” Shishido told him.
“You could still join me here, too.”
“…No, thank you.”
“It’s okay if I fall asleep. You can keep going.”
Shishido’s lip curled. He preferred his partners to participate. “You’re sick,” he said, carefully. “I can’t help you if I get sick, too.”
Nishitani considered that. “Fine.” His eye closed.
Shishido stepped to the door and turned off the light. “Good night, Patriarch.” He returned to the couch and the TV.
The ensuing days weren’t as bad as Shishido had feared. Not because Nishitani wasn’t annoying and demanding – he was – but because he spent most of the day sleeping, to the point that Shishido occasionally forgot he was there. And even as Nishitani regained his strength, having him on hand to discuss future plans proved convenient. Shishido found he didn’t even care when Tsuda called Nishitani to tell him his apartment had been thoroughly cleaned, and Nishitani made no move to leave.
Everything would change soon, and it was important for them to get along. At least in the beginning. Once Shishido had laid a strong enough foundation for his own power, then he could start thinking about whether keeping Nishitani around would be worth it.
Unfortunately for his revenge fantasies, it did seem that keeping Nishitani around might be worth it; Shishido gleaned from their discussions that Nishitani was willing to support him in the same way he'd supported Watase. But maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. The old adage about keeping your enemies close must have something to it.
After a week and a half, Nishitani made a full recovery. A week after that, and none of it fucking mattered.