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Okinawa is too balmy for suits, and Daigo swiftly understands upon exiting the Arrivals terminal at Naha why Kiryu spent so much of his time here in tacky florals. In his two-piece, he is drastically overdressed, and dewy at the temples by the time security delivers him to the end of the long driveway that is Morning Glory Road.
Oh, boy. Only now does his brain helpfully supply the negging question of what on earth he’s doing here unannounced and uninvited.
There’s a neatly folded letter in his hand, and a springy crunch beneath the feet of he and his pair of private security for the day (the names of whom he has asked, like a good Chairman, and then promptly forgotten) as they mow over pearly white seashells and sand and fine gravel. Morning Glory looms ahead over a high wall of grouted shells, light wooden slats singing in syncopation with the windswept palms above. It is idyllic, and Daigo has never been so intimidated by a measly fucking building in his whole life.
A pudgy shiba snoozes in a doghouse by the porch. Its ears prick, and it stands at attention at the sight of Daigo and his men approaching, mouth open in a welcoming grin and curly little tail thrashing happily at its backside. From within the orphanage, Daigo hears sports newscasters on TV, children chattering among themselves, something hissing on a stovetop. A cacophony of domesticity. Daigo has trouble picturing Kiryu among it all; his guardian has seemed stressed to some degree in their every encounter.
Daigo shakes his head. But he isn’t here for Kiryu, not really.
“Let me,” he tells his staff, and the duo give shallow bows, stepping back while Daigo alights the porch steps. He gathers a breath, reaches up to tuck stray hairs back into place, raps on the wooden doorframe and attempts to calm the thudding of his heart when the din goes partway quiet and a pair of footsteps come tromping over tatami towards the open front door.
A teenage boy appears, tank-topped and bare footed. His skin is dark, hair tightly curled, and Daigo realizes with a pang of shame that he has never known any of Kiryu’s children personally, least of all the most noteworthy Haruka.
“Hey,” the kid says, not standoffishly.
“I am Daigo Dojima, Sixth Chairman of the Tojo Clan.” Partway through his precursory bow, Daigo realizes how stupid all this must seem to a--what, high schooler? “Is it correct that Kazuma Kiryu was caretaker of this orphanage?”
The boy pulls an uncomfortable frown. “Um… yeah, but--he isn’t…”
“Oh, I--I know,” Daigo butts in hastily. “Forgive me. I was… closely acquainted with Kiryu-san, is all. My condolences.” Fuck this; Daigo should be on the receiving end of the awkward sympathy. It’s no goddamn cake walk being sprung from an indefinite sentence one month in by his two closest advisors wearing grim masks of death on their sorry faces only to be informed his dearest mentor has allegedly died--and, oh by the way, has reciprocated Daigo’s wish for his paternity all this time. Seems all he does these days, making nice with the Yomei Alliance bigshots aside, is hold at bay the black depression that has overtaken all his best men.
Nobody thinks to ask him how he feels because they probably worry he’ll explode, or something equally plausible.
“But I’m actually here to see Sawamura-san,” Daigo finally rejoins, steeling himself. The boy at the door looks skeptical. Daigo supposes paparazzi could still well be hounding this household after even three years’ absence from the spotlight; if even he heard through the grapevine of the scandal regarding Haruka’s brief stint with fame, it must have been massive. “I-it’s regarding Kiryu-san’s last will and testament.”
“If this is about money stuff, we’re not budging,” the boy says with a scowl. “Not like Uncle Kaz had all that much to leave us, anyway; I’m sure big shot gangsters like you guys got twice as much under your car seats. Buzz off.”
“I’m not here for that, either.” Daigo fans out his fingers and tents them together, trying to look placating but in reality probably just looking like a dipshit. “Would you please just let me see Sawamura-san?”
“No. She’s waking Haruto up from his nap, anyways. So she’s busy.”
“Who--?” Daigo begins to ask, but there’s suddenly a second set of footsteps approaching down the hall, and Daigo has no choice but to force himself to look even-tempered once more.
“Mitsuo, who is--” Another young man manifests behind Daigo’s interrogator, this one older, and proceeds to turn as white as a sheet. “Oh. Oh, shit.” He bows. “Sixth Chairman, sir. I’m so sorry about my, uh--how can we help you? M-my name’s Yuta Usami, by the way. Ex-Yomei. Thank you for not declaring war on the Alliance.”
“Daigo Dojima,” Daigo says, bowing back and trying desperately not to look as exasperated as he feels. He doesn’t even bother wondering why some punk from Hiroshima is in Kiryu’s house. “Please, Usami-kun, may I speak to Haruka Sawamura? It is a somewhat urgent… personal matter.”
Now it’s the new kid’s turn to look skeptical, but at least he has the good sense not to argue. The dark-skinned boy gives Daigo one last sour look before disappearing down the hallway, and Usami holds up a placating finger and scurries away, leaving Daigo to shoot an apologetic glance towards his security guards.
Straight across two tatami floors and through the basswood hallway strides a young woman with an appallingly familiar gait and a gurgling infant on one arm. Before she’s even stepped out of the late afternoon shadow, Daigo knows without question this is Haruka Sawamura, carrying all the ferocity of their father in a distinctly tinier frame. She even wears his colors: pearl gray, blood red. And when she approaches him, she doesn’t even bow.
“Sixth Chairman,” Haruka greets him. She looks perfectly calm, almost blank. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
Daigo’s mouth hangs open for an idiotically long moment before he merely utters, “Daigo, please, Sawamura-san. To you and your family, it’s Daigo.”
At once, Haruka’s gaze softens. Belatedly, the Usami boy appears behind her, lifting the infant from her arms. “Then it’s Haruka to you,” she replies. “Come on, let’s sit. Yuta, can you feed Haruto? There’s a bottle in the fridge.”
“‘Course.” Usami leans in to give her a peck on the cheek, which surprises Daigo; since when is Kiryu’s daughter involved with a Yomei boy? “Give me a shout if you need anything.”
Haruka jerks her head towards the yard and steps past Daigo down from the porch. She leads him towards the front gate, at which point Daigo turns and gestures for his guards to stay put.
Haruka leads him across Morning Glory Road and onto the beach. Daigo stops when the solid ground drops away into dune, awkwardly calls after his hostess: “I’ll, uh--get sand in my shoes.”
She gives him a thoroughly amused look. “So take ‘em off.”
Which--yes, Daigo was planning on doing that; he’s not an idiot. He tugs off his oxfords and black socks after them, reveling with an involuntary shiver at the hot sand between his toes. He can’t remember the last time he went to the beach. Probably one of those far-off family vacations before his father--his biological father, he reminds himself bitterly--became patriarch and lost time for he and his mom.
Haruka seats herself down by the waves, midway up from where high tide threatens to eventually crawl. She is putting a timer on their talk, Daigo realizes. He has precious few words to state a case he’s barely thought through himself. Why is he here, anyway?
Daigo thumbs the folded paper in his pocket and walks over to sit beside Haruka, a few feet safely separating them.
“You’re probably sick of hearing it, but--”
“You’re sorry. I know,” Haruka cuts him off. “I am sick of it.”
Daigo clamps his mouth shut.
“But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry, too,” the girl goes on, scraping idle whorls into the sand by her seat. “Uncle Kaz talked about you a lot. He really loved you.”
Daigo’s heart aches. He shrugs his suit jacket onto the sand, filing through a pocket for the note and passing it wordlessly to Haruka.
“What is this?”
“Found addressed to me on Kiryu’s person. It was given to Goro Majima. Do you know him?”
Haruka snorts. “Uh, yeah. Part of me wonders why it ended up in his hands over mine, but then again…”
“Right,” Daigo mutters, and they share a laugh at the paradoxical relationship so legendary it is as famed outside Tojo Circles as it is within.
Haruka begins to unfold the paper, but hesitates. “Uncle Goro and Uncle Taiga were at the hospital with us when we heard.” Her voice is soft. “Do you work closely with them? Are they alright?”
“Your father all but ensured I do, and will for the rest of my life,” Daigo exhales, rolling his eyes. He pauses. “They’re… figuring it out, I guess, like the rest of us. Glum as you’d expect them to be. Majima throws a fit anytime somebody talks about Kiryu in the past tense, and Saejima throws a fit right back when Majima gets up in arms over how he thinks Kiryu is still alive. I found him crying in one of the conference rooms the other day. You wouldn’t expect a guy as big and tough as him to react that way, but Majima told me it wasn’t anything new.”
Haruka’s nails scrape through the sand, but she says nothing.
“I’d really like you to read that note,” Daigo murmurs, “if you wouldn’t mind.”
She does. Unfolds the cream-colored paper and scans it, slow as molasses, with the same unsurprised but evidently pained glaze Majima took on when he looked it over. Difference being that, by the time she has reached the bottom of the page, there are angry tears making Haruka’s eyes sparkle. She places the note delicately back in Daigo’s hands before furiously wiping them away with the sleeve of her hoodie. Daigo doesn’t know what to do--apologize for making Haruka cry for what must be the umpteenth time this week? It feels silly to even think it, because he isn’t really sorry. It’s nice to see someone externalize the lump this stupid note has lodged in his throat since Majima first handed it off, unopened, to him.
Haruka keeps opening her mouth like she wants to speak, then rethinking. Eventually she just asks, “Why did you want me to see this?”
It isn’t a rhetorical question, and she doesn’t ask it unkindly. Daigo picks at the hem of his pant leg, suddenly feeling very childish and meek.
“Isn’t it funny? The age gap between he and I is lesser than the one between the two of us.” His voice comes out so, so quiet. Very Chairman-like, he taunts himself. “But I wished for so long I could have called a man like that my father. And now he drops this on me, and suddenly I’m losing a dad for the second time in my life.”
Haruka says nothing.
“I’m--I was an only child. When my birth father was killed, I didn’t have anyone there to comfort me. Not even Kiryu. I can’t do that again. It wouldn’t feel proper in memory of a man like him.” Daigo takes a deep breath and squeezes his eyes shut. “I know we’ve never met, Haruka, and I’m sure you resent me for even being involved in the line of work that killed him, but--I… I would be honored, and eternally grateful, if I were able to call you family in the aftermath of all this. I-I can’t help feeling it’s what he would have wanted.”
“At the very least,” Haruka murmurs. “If our dad had it his way, we’d all be living here as one big, happy, horrifically dysfunctional mess under the same roof. Uncle Goro and Uncle Taiga, too. Any poor sucker he could rope in.”
Daigo snorts half-heartedly at that before fully registering the phrasing Haruka has used-- our dad-- and he turns, eyes big and mouth crumpled up in a sappy frown. Haruka meets this look of unabashed awe with a sad smile.
“What daughter of Kazuma Kiryu would I be if I didn’t welcome in all the people he ever loved? Uncle Goro and I first met because he kidnapped me, you know. But Uncle Kaz loved him, and that meant I did, too. Against my better judgement.”
Daigo still sits in stunned silence.
“Kazuma Kiryu was your father, Daigo,” Haruka states, “and that makes me your sister. One of many. Nothing to discuss.”
Daigo feels like he’s going to run like a river straight into the sea, or float into the cotton candy clouds clothing the sunset above them, or both.
Instead of saying that’s the kindest sentiment anybody’s ever expressed to him, telling her she will forever live under the greatest honor and protection of the Kanto underworld, Daigo says something incredibly stupid: “Why do you call him your uncle?”
“Not my uncle. Uncle Kaz. It’s his title,” Haruka winks.
“Why?”
“It’s what I called my birth mother, Yumi. She posed as my aunt to visit me at the orphanage where I spent the earlier part of my childhood, and it’s what I knew her as.” Haruka wipes her eyes again, but she looks notably happier than she did a moment ago. “We came up with the idea when he first adopted me, because he felt like more than just a dad after all we’d been through.”
Slowly, Daigo nods.
“ You don’t have to call him that, of course, but you won’t be in the company of any of us here at Morning Glory if you opt for the traditional.”
Daigo laughs. Haruka laughs right along with him.
“I don’t think I ever could call him ‘dad.’ What I wouldn’t have given to grow up the way you did,” Daigo says wistfully. “As much as I saw Kiryu as a father, and as much as his guidance changed me, he didn’t parent me. Probably didn’t think it was his place. What was it like? What was he like?”
“Probably pretty hard to picture him attending parent-teacher conferences when you’ve only ever known him as the Dragon of Dojima, huh,” Haruka accedes.
Chuckling, Daigo nods.
“I mean… infuriating, sometimes. Obviously his penchant for self-sacrifice didn’t end with his job.” Haruka sighs, releasing with her breath palpable frustration. “He could make me angry like nobody I’ve ever known. So many fucked up ideas of his role in a child’s life learned from Kazama, from the yakuza in general.”
Daigo hums. It’s strange to hear a young lady as sweet and kindly as Haruka curse.
“All that on top of what were obviously a handful of undiagnosed mental illnesses--and having seen so many loved ones die throughout his life eventually got it into his head that he was the through-line in all that tragedy, so when the going got tough, he tried to isolate. Justified it as wanting to put me and my siblings out of harm’s way when in reality he just wanted to keep us at arm’s length as insurance for the inevitable disaster he was convinced he’d cause. He wasn’t dumb, but he could just be so… dense. ” Haruka lets out a harsh half-laugh. “Having to fight so hard to live in safety and comfort with his family made him treat us like property sometimes. His own little dragon’s hoard.”
Daigo feels his face falling. So soon after his death, he would expect Haruka to be far more forgiving of her father’s many sins.
“And I won’t even pretend to know what was going on with his sexuality,” Haruka goes on; this change in topic takes Daigo aback. “It’s like it wasn’t something he ever let himself think about out of some bullshit machismo, so he just accepted that he had absolutely zero interest in women without ever choosing to wonder why.”
Daigo can’t help laughing a little; this, at least, is a Kiryu-ism he’s familiar with. “Worth sitting down with your Uncle Goro to chat about that one, because I can’t help you there.”
Haruka fervently nods, grinning. “Yes. Exactly. God, you should’ve seen them the few times Uncle Goro came to visit back when I was in middle school. Uncle Kaz would’ve been scandalized if any of us had suggested they were acting like complete teenagers.”
Distantly, Daigo hopes Majima will calm his frenetic conspiracies in the wake of Kiryu’s death and visit Morning Glory as Daigo is now. Simply to sit in the calm presence of the Dragon’s favorite daughter feels healing; Daigo sorely regrets not making her acquaintance sooner.
“So what I’m gathering from your testimony is that he was a terrible dad,” Daigo eventually cracks, after they have cooled the bittersweet laughter alight in their chests in a moment of quiet beneath the sound of the waves.
Haruka snorts. “No. No, he was a wonderful dad. The best anyone could ask for.”
Daigo watches her, smile growing as the adoration pours slowly, lyrically, from her.
“When I got a little older I started to realize that was part of why he found it all so difficult. Existing. It’s like he was made with a heart a dozen sizes too big. There was so much love in him, so many people he wanted to share it with. Maybe it didn’t matter he never got a grasp on his sexuality, y’know, whether he was gay, or-- whatever . He was so indiscriminate. Love for his friends, for me, for you, for the world he made for himself--it was all the same to him, equally as valuable. And while at the worst of times it meant he got his heart shattered every other day, at the best it meant he was downright euphoric, just… hazy and filled with joy in the life he got to live. The life he got to build for us.”
Daigo feels his own heart, comparatively shrimpy, warming at the thought. He cannot fathom what it must feel like to live that way, but he envies it horribly.
“It was hard for him when it was just me. So much attention and just the one person to give it to. Meant I was spoiled to the point my schoolmates hated me,” Haruka laughs, “hence the move to Okinawa, in part.”
“That was why you left?”
“Yeah, a little. But I also think Uncle Kaz wanted to get to know Japan beyond Kamurocho, genuinely. The older he got, the more jaded he felt about the Tojo Clan, and it made him realize how small his world was.”
“I can’t blame him,” Daigo sighs.
“Having him for a parent was incredible, because everything we learned, he learned with us. Having been an orphan just like us, he didn’t know what it was to be a good dad. And whenever he hit that mark, whether it was by his own vague standard or one somebody else had taught him, it was like he’d won the lottery. As early as his first year with me, when I told him my classmates were jealous of the bento I brought in--”
Daigo bursts out laughing, and Haruka follows.
“He’d be so mad at you for laughing,” she exclaims. “I’ve never seen anybody prouder of themselves in all my life.” Haruka catches her breath and stills. “To him, that kind of thing was a greater accomplishment than anything he’d done as the Dragon of Dojima.”
Wind brushes through Daigo’s hair, mussing up its tight backwards pull. He lets it stay messy. “I never would have expected he’d be so… open to telling you about his experience--identity, really--as yakuza. It was always something he tried to downplay with me.”
“He and I would never have met without his involvement,” Haruka shrugs, “so we couldn’t not talk about it. Around when I got involved with Dyna Talent--that was my agency when I was an idol--it finally occurred to me that familial connection with the Tojo Clan was much, much more taboo than being raised by Uncle Kaz had led me to believe. I mean, my closest friends growing up were my siblings, so it wasn’t like I’d ever been very public about it. I learned that the facts about my father I had always considered just that--facts--had an effect on my life moving forward independently of him.”
“How do you feel about that?” Daigo hopes Haruka will not detect that this is just an ill-disguised plea for guidance in his struggles with the same concern.
“If I’m being totally honest? Proud. And happy. Comforted,” Haruka states, firmly enough that it’s evident she’s given it a lot of thought. “Any faltering I ever felt at the thought of not being Kazuma Kiryu’s biological child, whoosh. The Dragon isn’t his legacy. I am.” She plucks at her hoodie string. “And so are you, Daigo.”
Daigo feels his chest ballooning with love--for Kiryu, certainly, but also for this veritable stranger he will now and forever call his sister. To be part of something at once smaller and infinitesimally more important than the Tojo Clan, because even yakuza seek finances in some part alongside all their spouting about honor and loyalty and fraternity. Morning Glory is tied together only blind faith and trust, the promise not of returns but merely the joy of declaring another your blood, in the metaphorical sense. Haruka and Daigo may not share Kiryu’s genes, but their hearts are filled with the same stardust that comprised his: idealism, fortitude, tenacity, hope.
Beside him, Haruka perks up at the nigh-undetecable pad of feet in the sand well behind them. Both turn.
It’s that Usami kid. He’s carrying the baby with him.
“Hi, Yuta,” Haruka greets him, warmth and love radiating from her. “Did he eat okay?”
“Yep. Are you two good out here? Chairman Dojima, sir, can I get you anything?”
Daigo opens his mouth to reply, but Haruka interrupts, nudging an elbow against Daigo’s forearm: “Turns out Daigo here was Uncle Kaz’s kid, too. No need to be so formal.”
Yuta smiles but, fascinatingly, looks unsurprised. “I would end up co-parenting with the sister of the Tojo Clan’s current Chair. Welcome to the family.”
“Thank you,” Daigo stammers, amazed by how warmly he’s already been welcomed by yet another party here at Morning Glory. He supposes this is Kiryu’s legacy, too.
“We’ll leave you be, then,” Yuta says, turning to go.
“Wait, hand over the little one. He’ll be thrilled to meet his--” she goes quiet for a second-- “seventh uncle, I think? Gimme.”
“All yours.”
Daigo watches this foreign little creature squirm and squeal happily in his mother’s arms, pulling at the fabric of her clothes as though being held in her embrace is not close enough. Yuta strolls back to the house.
“Hi, peanut,” Haruka is cooing. She turns to Daigo. “You wanna hold him?”
“Oh, I don’t really know how to talk to babies, so…”
“I’m asking if you wanna hold him, not if you’ve prepared an interview for him.”
It’s strange; there is something so Kiryu to the blunt way in which Haruka speaks. Daigo finds it so surreal to hear the Dragon’s willing misunderstanding come sarcastic and carefree out of his far more socially apt offspring that he doesn’t even protest when there is, suddenly, a gurgling infant in his lap.
“Yep, just support his neck like that, and--there you go.” Haruka files absentmindedly through Haruto’s hair, pushing pitch dark locks from his lumpy little forehead. “That’s Uncle Daigo. Can you say, ‘hi, Daigo?’”
“ Brurrbh, ” Haruto offers.
“‘Hi, Daigo!’”
His little hand latches around Haruka’s finger. She draws it up and down, extending his fat, stubby little arm and making him giggle.
“Was Kiryu angry with you when he learned you--” Daigo pauses, realizing this is probably a sensitive subject, and absolutely not his business.
“When he learned I’d become a mom at twenty?” Haruka finishes for him. When Daigo, silenced by embarrassment, says nothing: “No. Not like he found out ‘till well after Haruto had been born, anyway. I disappeared for a while to keep the media away from Morning Glory, and then… oops!” With this, she pokes a finger into Haruto’s belly, and he blows a cheery spit bubble in reply. “No, he actually took it really well. I think he was just sort of fascinated by this thing--creating life, literally--that had always been so detached from his own experience as a parent. Was furious with Yuta for not knowing or being involved for the first few months, though. Apparently he punched him straight through the wall of the Hirose Family offices.”
Laughing, Daigo says, “yep, that sounds like the Kiryu I know.” He considers Haruto further, tries to see Haruka or her partner in him--but all he sees is baby , utterly alien as far as Daigo’s concerned.
“Did you ever want kids?”
Daigo shakes his head. “Not really.” He pauses. “I guess there was something kind of appealing about what Kiryu did with you, though; pairing up never interested me, but I wouldn’t be intrinsically opposed to going it alone.”
Haruka replies with a slow, contemplative nod. “The wonderful thing about parenting, regardless of whether you take it on solo, is that you’re not alone, ever. Even less so when they’re inside you for nine months,” she says, clutching Haruto’s balled fist in hers.
“I’m sure that was difficult on your own,” Daigo says gently.
“Logistically, maybe. But there are some things the human body and brain are just… built to do when faced with certain situations.”
There is a moment of silence but for the rushing sea and whispering foliage. From a distance that feels like lightyears, Daigo can hear the sounds of life coming from Morning Glory.
“Do you think Kiryu resented never having had biological children of his own?” Daigo asks, passing Haruto from his arms to Haruka’s. She takes her son on her crossed knee and bounces him lightly, his head resting on her chest. “Not necessarily in relation to the yakuza’s patriarchal values, though I don’t doubt that would have played a part.”
Haruka fixes him with a very intense look. It reminds Daigo of the sort of non-expression Kiryu wore not when he was angry, sad, at peace--but the blank tranquility of a mind working through the best possible course of action. Contemplation in a visceral, intimidating laser focus.
“Daigo, as far as Uncle Kaz was concerned, he did.”
Daigo sniffs out a self-conscious snicker.
“No, I mean that. I’m not being sentimental.” Haruka finally breaks that godforsaken stare to consider Haruto, which Daigo is grateful for. “Since becoming a parent, I believe-- know, honestly, with every fiber of my being--that Uncle Kaz saw you and I in the same primal, hormonal simplicity any other parent might.”
Daigo furrows his brow. The ferocious, clinical assurance with which Haruka speaks kind of frightens him, in an existential way.
“Look, think of it this way.” Haruka actually smiles now, thank God, though it’s still wry and unsettlingly all-knowing. “I didn’t know before I had Haruto, but since becoming a mother myself, I realize the joy Uncle Kaz took in parenting wasn’t at all the kind of benevolent love people picture, movies and books portray. It wasn’t just pride, or affection; it was… violent. The love Uncle Kaz felt for us was violent.” She looks back at Haruto, and then Daigo again. “I mean, the base instinct there is to protect your lineage, right? It’s all so evolutionary. And when you have this little miniature extension of you made manifest--everything you are, what you wish you could’ve been, what you never will be--suddenly the whole world both exists in opposition to them and exists exclusively for them. Everyone is an enemy. Everyone is an asset. Does that make sense?”
“Uh…”
“When you love someone as much as Uncle Kaz loved us, as much as I love Haruto,” Haruka assists him, “you’re putting forth a challenge to the universe. ‘Just try to take this from me.’”
Speechless, Daigo can only give a slow nod.
“To put it a little more bluntly, there isn’t a doubt in my mind that Kiryu loved all the horrible, glamourless bits of parenthood as triumphs, just as much as he did the fun ones. When he woke up in the middle of the night to hold my hair back for me while I puked my guts up ‘cause of norovirus, or had to buy me tampons for the first time because I was too mortified to go myself--that was purely hormonal paternal instinct, through and through. Having sprung me from his own stupid loins wasn’t ever gonna change the power that had over him. Sure, he had to learn the technicalities of it all, but we all do. The love of it was hardwired into him.”
“Wow,” is all Daigo can say.
Because… yeah. Wow.
“So when this little worm has a blowout and gets shit all the way up his back at two in the morning,” Haruka abruptly begins again, which makes Daigo laugh like he’s never laughed before, “I know in my bones Kazuma Kiryu would’ve taken that same nonsense in stride with you or I or any of our other siblings, had he known us early enough.”
Daigo wipes tears from his cheeks. Haruka is probably the coolest person he’s ever met.
“Dammnit, Haruka, I wish to God I’d gotten to meet you back when you and Kiryu were still living alone together in Kamurocho. There were so many times when I could’ve used a fucking sister like you.”
Haruka grins at him. “Lucky you found me in the most stationary period of my life thus far. Swing by Morning Glory whenever you like, and I guarantee I’ll be reading Momotaro aloud on the floor for the millionth time.”
“I’ll be looking forward to it.”
He already is.