Chapter Text
Haruka catches her first glimpse of the monster-man Kamurocho calls the Mad Dog of Shimano on that first dreary Tuesday after meeting Kiryu Kazuma. It’s almost drizzling, a mist that might have turned into proper rain if it had come down any harder, and one moment she’s walking hand in hand with her large, silent savior and the next-
The next moment something lanky and shrieking explodes out from under a traffic cone larger than she is, scrambling upright and cackling as it croons Kiryu-chaaaan~
Instantly, almost as if Kiryu had been expecting something like this to happen, Haruka finds herself scooped up and deposited (gently of course) under the awning of the nearby Poppo. Kiryu gives her head one pat, grunts something that might be just a minute, and then throws himself at the snakeskin wearing mad-man with a knife.
By Friday that same week, a day where the sun shines watery and their quest to find her mom and Aunt Yumi is still fruitless and yawning before them, Haruka has witnessed more ambushes than she can count. The knife-wielding, eyepatch-wearing, snakeskin-clan man who croons her temporary guardian’s name has spawned from corners, and drainpipes, and the back of passing taxis, and underneath boxes, and from inside trash cans, and-
Well. The trash cans are still the weirdest to her. Kamurocho is kind of a dirty place, with alleys that smell like toilets and crumbled up flyers with images of barely dressed women piled up in the gutters alongside the roads. So she isn't sure why he'd hide there when he obviously has other options, but from what she’s gathered he was kind of weird. So.
But anyway, Haruka gets used to it, insomuch as someone can get used to someone leaping out and yelling at their temporary guardian to fight them. (And insomuch as someone can get used to their temporary guardian throwing himself into the fight without question or hesitation. Honestly sometimes Haruka thinks Kiryu kind of enjoys their fights.
He’s kind of weird too, honestly.)
The third or fourth time this happens a man trots up to Haruka’s side, Poppo bag swinging from one hand and the sleeves of his blue button up rolled up to his elbows, even in the sharp bite of the December air. He gives Haruka a hesitant smile as he comes to a stop at her side before he crouches down to her level, the way Kiryu does when he checks in on Haruka after a fight.
“Sorry about oyaji,” the man murmurs, opening the plastic bag and beginning to rifle through it. In the alley next to them where the fight has sloshed up against dirty walls like spilled milk, the sound of the weird man cackling echoes off the bricks. The man in the blue button up winces and shakes his head, before reaching in and plucking out a meat bun, warm enough to steam up the waxy paper it’s wrapped in. “He’s been excited ever since Kiryu-san was released from prison. You two were on your way to get some lunch, right? Would you like a pork bun?”
Haruka likes to think she’s a good judge of character - the soft and steady way Kiryu takes care of her is proof of that and she’d known he was okay to trust from the very first moment they’d met. She looks at this man, with his kind eyes and hesitant smile, and grins back at him as brightly as she can.
“Yes, please!”
(This is how Haruka meets Nishida, though it takes many, many, many of these meetings before she learns his name.)
-
Haruka meets the Mad Dog of Shimano nearly a week after the first time she’d seen him, tucked into the back of a smelly storage closet of a batting cage place. She’s scared, more scared than she’s been since meeting Kiryu, and so she’s trembling and shaking and teary eyed when the door opens and in steps the man who’s spent the last two weeks jumping out from ridiculous places in often ridiculous outfits to get Kiryu to fight him.
She puffs herself up, trying to make herself seem less scared, the way the cats at the orphanage always did when the neighborhood boys came by to throw rocks at them. The man with the eyepatch strolls forward, slow and casual, only to stop and drop to a crouch just out of arm’s reach of her.
“Easy there, lil’ lady,” the man drawls. His voice is low and raspy when he’s not cackling and cooing at the top of his lungs. He sounds a little like a yokai, like the kind of creature she’s glimpsed inked on his back during his fights with Kiryu. He holds his hands up in front of himself, leather gloves gleaming under the dirty fluorescent lights buzzing above their heads, and Haruka feels her hands ball up into fists at her sides.
The corner of his mouth quirks, like he’s trying not to smile, but his eye peers at her in a way that almost seems sad.
“Gotcha somethin’, kiddo,” the man rasps, slowly moving one hand up into his jacket. His moves are all obvious and easy to follow, in a way that feels almost too obvious. She bites her tongue on a retort that she’s not a kid or a little lady and instead just shakes silently with her back against a shelf.
“Here,” he says, producing a little red something from some hidden pocket inside his jacket. “Next time someone tries to grab ya, show ‘em the business end of this and they’ll hafta rethink their plans.”
She clears her throat, rough and quick the way she’s heard Kiryu clear his, and manages to bite out, “what is it?”
“It’s a knife,” the weirdo explains with a lazy kind of tone, waggling it up and down at her, but- gently. Like the way Kiryu puts her down after he scoops her up - gently. Haruka didn’t know a knife could be waggled gently and yet, somehow, it still comes off that way. Weird. “Somethin’ ta help keep ya safe, y’know?”
Haruka feels her face scrunch up, more with confusion than anything else. “You're giving me a knife,” she says in disbelief, crossing her arms over her chest. It doesn’t feel like a trick, but as far as Haruka knows kidnappers don't usually arm their kidnappees.
The corner of the man’s mouth quirks up, just a little, like he’s trying not to smile at her. Haruka feels herself try to puff up like a cat again, but before she can he drops the knife onto the ground and then flicks it, so that it skitters across the ground to knock against her shoes.
“I’m givin’ ya a knife,” he agrees, not quite mocking, but not entirely without a little twist around his words, one Haruka can’t quite figure out. He nods his head at it after a second, leaning back on his heels more, so that he’s just a bit further back from her. It’s a tiny and overly casual move, but one Haruka notices all the same. Like this weirdo’s trying to give her even more space. “Go on, pick ‘er up. Anyone tries anythin’ ya don’t like, just stab ‘em and run. Got it?”
Cautiously Haruka crouches down, keeping her eyes on the man in front of her the whole time. The red bit around the knife is cold and solid to the touch, not the brittle plastic she’s expecting, and it weighs more than she thought it would too. She straightens up, fingers tracing the widest part of the red metal handle-casing-thing. She doesn’t know how to open it, but she tries not to let that show.
“Anything I don’t like,” she repeats, doing her best to keep her voice from breaking. “What, like kidnap me?”
Despite everything so far Haruka still half expects the man in front of her to lunge at her for talking back, or for him to toss his head back with a cackle the way he does when he picks fights with Kiryu. But instead the man just huffs, his chuckle so low and breathy that Haruka only knows he's laughing because she's looking at him. He peers at her, the corner of his mouth pulling up in another weird kind of smile, and then says, low and serious, “exactly like that, kiddo. Anyone tries to lay a hand on ya or, hell, even says somethin’ ya don’t like, ya give ‘em the business end of that thing and haul ass outta there, capiche?”
There’s a commotion outside the door, a lot of voices all talking at once before someone gets close enough to the thin wood to shout through oyaji, we’ve spotted him, he’s heading this way! Something flickers over the man’s face at that, something kind of conflicted, and he sighs before twisting his head to yell back, “I hear ya, fucker, m’comin’!”
The man rises to his feet, slow and steady with his hands where Haruka can see them. He tries to make it look casual and accidental, but Haruka notices. It makes her gut tighten, confusion and fear and frustration all boiling and bubbling up within her, until she blurts out, “why are you doing this,” just as the man turns his back on her.
The man turns to glance over his shoulder at her, eye dark and searching as it seems to pierce through her chest. Her question hangs in the air between them, looming and loaded, and then suddenly the man deflates, shoulders bouncing as he sighs.
“Believe it or not, kiddo, but I'm doin’ this to keep Kiryu-chan and ya’self safe.” He pauses, head turning back to the door, and then tosses over his shoulder, “the release is the lil’ button on the side. Anyone who ain't your new guardian comes in, let ‘em have it. Just be careful ya don't cut ya’self.”
The door shuts behind the man without another word. Haruka sinks back down to the floor and then, carefully, hits the button on the side of the knife.
The blade pops open, shiny and solid and sharp. She pushes it carefully back into place the way she's seen grown ups do back at the orphanage and then sits there with baited breath. A man tries to come in who isn’t Kiryu, but once he sees her flick open her knife he stays pressed up against the door, wary and alert, like she’s an actual threat. He’s only in there for a minute, barely long enough to wait for her to answer his question, and then he’s slipping back out like he was never there.
Minutes drag by and the sounds outside the door are a messy jumble that looms just outside her understanding, until finally the door opens and a blood splattered Kiryu rushes in and drops to his knees before her, big warm hands reaching for her face as his eyes scan her for injuries.
She tries not to wonder what happened outside the door, tries not to worry that he’s got blood staining the cuffs of his jacket and smeared along his chin, even though it doesn’t seem to be his. He scoops her up without a word after he checks her over, tucks her head against his throat, and carries her out of there like the building’s on fire.
The Mad Dog of Shimano is nowhere to be seen as they leave. Haruka tries not to worry about that too.
-
A few days after Christmas (but not quite New Years yet) Haruka finally meets the man hiding underneath the cackling chaos and not the myth or monster he pretends to be.
She wakes up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, gasping as she tries and fails to keep the tears from falling and choking on the lump in her throat. The dream is already slipping away as she lurches out of the tiny cot in the back room of the Serena, but she remembers blood, and shouting, and her mom-
She scrambles to her feet and then tumbles into the main room still shaking and half asleep, too upset to notice the slight chill in the air, too focused on trying to find her guardian that she only registers that he’s not in his usual booth when she’s already clawed her way up onto the sticky vinyl seating.
“Kiryu-san,” she calls out, softly so that she doesn’t wake him by accident if he’s actually asleep somewhere nearby. In the lights left on in the main part of Serena the terror leftover from her nightmare is starting to feel silly and childish, especially since she knows that Kiryu’s suffered just as much if not more loss than she has.
“Over ‘ere, kiddo,” a low, gravely voice calls. She jumps, just a little, and then cautiously slides out of the booth to approach the corner where the chairs are usually stacked. Instead of the chairs being in the usual place, though, there’s a smattering of beer cans and hard liquor bottles spread in an arc around two bodies - Kiryu, who’s curled up with a yellow snakeskin jacket tossed over him like a blanket, and-
“Hey there, squirt,” the man, Majima Goro, mutters as she shuffles closer. His one eye is bloodshot, his shoulders slumped. There are stark white bandages wrapped around his middle and he’s curled up against a wall on the other side of Kiryu’s body, one arm wrapped around his stomach. “Don't worry, I didn't do anythin’ to this oaf here, he's just sleepin’.”
Haruka swallows and shuffles closer, until she can hover just beside Kiryu’s sprawled legs. His suit jacket is stuffed under his head like a pillow and his shoes are kicked off to one side along with a pair Haruka assumes are Majima’s. They’re both wearing worn thin, mismatched socks. She doesn’t know why the sight makes something start to unwind in her chest, but it does.
“I know,” Haruka says, hoping her voice isn't scratchy or squeaky in a way that tells Majima exactly why she’s awake right now. She rubs at her eyes as casually as she can, wiping away remnants of tears, hopefully before the man notices. “Kiryu-san told me that you’ve helped him a lot the last couple of weeks.” She pauses, weighing what she wants to say, and then just goes for it anyway and adds, “even if your way of helping was really, really weird at times.”
Majima’s face twitches for a second and then suddenly he snorts, face screwing up as he curls up further like a disrupted pill bug. “Damn, kid,” he says, laughing under his breath before he straightens up just a little and shakes his hair out of his eyes. “Ya dont pull any punches, do ya? Shit, with that kinda fire m’surprised ya didn't just stick me with that knife I gotcha, just ‘cause.”
Haruka looks away, feeling her face twist against her will. She huffs out a breath, like that will cover up how everything feels sticky and tangled inside her chest, and then carefully picks her way over Kiryu’s legs so she can settle on the ground, her back against his shins. Like this she could reach out and touch the other man, though it would take a little bit of leaning.
“Even if I wanted to, I couldn't,” she tells him, picking at a piece of lint at the edge of the nightgown Kiryu’d gotten her a few weeks ago. It’s really just an overly large t-shirt from a thrift store around the corner, but Haruka’s been calling it her nightgown, at least in her own head. “I lost it when those other guys grabbed me last week and there wasn’t time to try and find it when Kiryu-san came to get me.”
Something like regret flickers across Majima’s face and he blows out a breath, which tries to bounce a greasy lock hanging down across his eyepatch strap up out of his face, but only for a second. “Fuckers took it from ya, huh?”
Haruka bites her lip, twisting the fabric of her nightgown round and round her finger. She hesitates, only for a second, because Kiryu hadn't been happy about it when he heard, but-
“I guess,” she mutters quietly. “Or, I mean, yeah, if you count pulling it out of one guy’s leg and tossing it aside as taking it from me.”
Her words hang in the air between them, almost like the holiday lights outside store awnings out on the street, and then all at once Majima laughs.
It’s a loud sound, closer to his cackle than the soft, rough chuckle she's heard him let out before. The sound is airy and bright, sharp and almost dancing, kind of like how the man moves when he fights, flowing and wild. It startles her, but only for a moment, because then she finds that she's giggling back at him, her hands flying up to cover her mouth in a useless attempt to not wake up Kiryu.
The man behind her shifts, snorts a little in his sleep, and then murmurs something like Majima-no-nissan, be nice to Haruka.
That only makes them laugh even more, Haruka rocking forward just enough that when Majima leans forward to curl around his wounded stomach, their arms kind of touch.
“Shit, kid,” Majima laughes, the bright airy sound trembling out and sinking down into the low chuckle, “that’sa fuckin’ girl! Balls like that, yer gonna keep Kiryu-chan on his toes, ain’t ya? Shit, don’t worry ‘bout losin’ it, I’ll get ya another one tomorrow! Late Christmas present or somethin’, we’ll figure it out.”
Haruka surprises herself with the way her chest tightens (in a good way) at the thought of replacing the knife, even though she’d only had it a few days before it got lost. “I- really?”
Majima eases himself back mostly upright, tips his head against the wall, and grins, crooked and a little sharp. “‘Course, Haru-chan,'' the man answers. “S’what I’m here for, ain’t it? Gotta keep yerself and Kiryu-chan safe and happy somehow, even if it means bein’ really weird.”
Warmth blooms in Haruka’s chest, rising up inside her until she can feel the edges of it touch her cheeks. She feels bad, almost, for saying that, even if it’s true, but when she glances up at Majima his grin has slid into a smile, one that’s gently sloped and odd and- and soft.
Haruka likes to think she’s a good judge of character and she’s gotten this far by trusting her gut. And right now, despite everything, her gut’s telling her that the man in front of her, weird and wild as he’s been before, isn’t so bad.
“Okay, Majima-san” she murmurs, trying not to squirm when Majima’s smile grows, just a little. “I’d- I’d like that, then.”
(In the morning she wakes up back in the cot in the backroom, wrapped up in the yellow snakeskin jacket and tucked under the ratty old blanket.
Out in the main room she can hear Kiryu and Majima talking, their voices mixing into a soothing kind of rumble that almost lulls her back to sleep. She shuffles out from under the blanket only to find that it's freezing, and so she slips her arms through the sleeves of the jacket, which smells like cigarettes and something sharp and spicy, and then pulls on the socks she’d kicked out of sometime in the night.
Majima’s slumped against the bar on the customer side, while Kiryu leans against the other side, where Reina used to stand. They’re sharing one cigarette together, heads bent over the single ashtray down on the countertop between them, and Majima’s got Kiryu’s rumpled suit jacket tossed over his shoulders like a cape.
Majima notices her first, even though she's on his blind side, and he pulls the cigarette out of his mouth to call, “mornin’ princess. Wanna c’mere and help me talk your mule headed guard dragon into goin’ out for breakfast?”
Kiryu rolls his eyes at the other man and snags the cigarette, leaning back to breathe in and then blow smoke to the side, so it doesn’t puff up in Majima’s face before he says, stern and just a little bit exasperated, “we have stuff from Poppo here, nii-san, I just have to find it.” He tucks the cigarette back in his mouth, gives her something approaching a reassuring smile, and then ducks below the counter, supposedly to find the food from the Poppo down the street that they supposedly still have.
Majima acts out a silent wail as if Kiryu’s words have struck him, one Haruka is not so startled to realize is entirely for her benefit. He slumps, dramatically defeated on the bar counter, which is starting to collect dust in some places since Reina died.
His head lolls toward Haruka and he looks at her with an exaggerated pleading look, his eye bugged out in a way that’s both frightening and pitiful.
Haruka surprises herself, not just by the way she has to stifle a giggle before she shuffles over, but by the urge she has to play along with Majima’s dramatics. She shouldn’t, she knows that, and yet…
As she approaches the counter’s edge she holds her eyes as wide as she can before blinking rapidly until they start to water. She goes up on her tiptoes once her eyes feel wet enough, her fingers curling around the edge of the counter, and peers up at her guard dragon, as Majima had called him.
“Kiryu-san,” she mutters, as softly and sadly as she can. “I think we had the last of the things from Poppo yesterday. And it's kind of cold in here…”
Kiryu halts almost comically before he twists to stand upright and then looms over the counter to look at her. It would be a scary set of moves, probably, if she didn’t know him, or maybe even then it would be unnerving, if his hair wasn’t still smudged up on one side as his cigarette dangles like it’s going to topple out of his mouth. As quick as she can she widens her eyes further and tries to stick her lower lip out a little in a way that isn't obviously overdone, doing her best to look tiny and pitiful and cold.
“Ah, I- Haruka, did we? I thought we still had more- the cold, though, I'm sorry, I think the heating’s gone out, but I-”
Majima nudges Haruka in the leg with a tap of his fingertips, gently and almost nervously, and Haruka does her best not to jump. Instead she pulls out her smallest voice and looks down, muttering a quiet, “oh, that’s okay,” to herself as she does.
She feels a little bad pulling this kind of trick on Kiryu, especially since he’s taken such good care of her and double especially since he’s been working with Date so that he can adopt her so she doesn’t have to go back to the orphanage. But then she peeks at Majima out of the corner of her eyes and remembers gotta keep yerself and Kiryu-chan safe and happy somehow, even if it means bein’ really weird, and thinks that it’ll be okay.
There’s a pause, just long enough to feel a little smothery and for the guilty squirm in her chest to get worse, and then she sees Majima flash her a thumbs up from below the counter. A split second later Kiryu sighs, a sad, defeated and gusty noise, and mutters, “nii-san, if we go out for breakfast you need to find a shirt.”
Majima squeaks and squawks, somewhere between dramatic offense and genuine upset, which makes Haruka duck her head under the counter to hide the way she laughs.
Kiryu wins the argument about the shirt, but Majima only concedes at the promise that he can pay for everyone. Haruka ends up lending her nightgown t-shirt to Majima since Kiryu’s down to his last button up, which looks silly when paired with his usual leather pants and, once Haruka returns it to him, his snakeskin jacket.
“C’mon, kiddo,” Majima says, when they’re finally all ready to shuffle into the elevator together to go find breakfast. “First stop, breakfast! Then we’ll getcha another knife and see if we can’t hit the arcade or somethin’, whatever you’d like.”
“Majima-no-niisan,” Kiryu groans, “don’t give her another knife!”
Haruka gets three new knives and by the end of the day they’ve somehow wrangled Kiryu into agreeing to temporarily stay at Majima’s apartment instead of the Serena, where they can all sleep in beds and the heating doesn’t go out.
It’s one of the best days of Haruka’s life. Which is probably sad, at least by other people's standards, but she’s too happy at that moment to care.)