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1.
Sun fills the screen of his phone. Kanetaka turns at the shutter’s click: the crease of a frown, mouth half-open in a question.
Muro laughs.
He isn’t good at remembering. His body recalls what it shouldn’t, haunted by phantom hunger; his mind forgets in self-defence. But he’ll remember this afternoon, he thinks. Kanetaka, sunlight, a warm body against his. Years from now – if he lives that long – he’ll remember this.
2.
The transport glides away from the mansion of corpses and onwards into morning. Muro’s in the backseat with Kanetaka, this time. The older man’s eyes are closed, hair hanging over his face. The stench of blood clings to him – shirtfront stained afresh – but it’s not as comforting as usual.
Muro thinks of Toake’s farewell to Bear: forehead to forehead, gloves red, a shaky apology. Wonders what Kanetaka would look like if he died. Wonders what he’d do if–
“Aniki,” Muro says, low enough that Slick won’t hear from the seat in front.
Kanetaka doesn’t lift his head, but Muro can see a flicker of movement behind his hair, the glint of an open eye. He swallows, goes on: “If you died, I’d hunt down the bastards who did it. You know? Even if it took a decade. Like that cop–”
Kanetaka moves his head; the slightest of gestures, more a twitch than a shake. Their signal. Muro usually obeys – but tonight, two massacres behind them, within the fragile luxury of a hypothetical, he laughs. “What? I’d love it. The ideal life. I’d break my five-a-day rule for you. Hey, you got any– you know, any people you’re leaving behind? I’ll look after them, just like–”
“Muro,” Kanetaka says, soft, and Muro falls silent. Senses the sudden emptiness left behind – he’d been talking too loud. He can feel Slick’s curiosity radiating from across the car.
“You won’t have to,” Kanetaka says, closing his eyes. “I promise.”
/
A funeral: First the boss takes Kanetaka from him. Then Slick does so again.
Idezuki Gorou? Undercover? Impossible, Muro snarls, hands grappling for purchase on Slick’s expensive suit. Impossible, he thinks, as Slick invokes a time before Kanetaka: absurd, meaningless. He gives Slick the farewell he invented – it tastes bloodless, even now – and heaves him over the edge. The metallic echo of an ending.
Later, in the rain, Muro’s body remembers: the twist, flip, dragging someone down with him. Kanetaka arrives too late to see. Muro wishes he’d seen it. Muro wishes–
He has to ask. He asks and Kanetaka leans in, forehead against his, and Muro knows.
3.
By the time Muro enters the apartment, Toki’s body has cooled. No one else remains.
/
(Muro’s call arrives half a minute after Anai leaves the church.
He doesn’t need to answer. He doesn’t need to be Kanetaka Shogo any longer. Anai confirmed that Noriko and Emiri had made it out. Muro has no possible leverage over him.
The ringtone echoes. From the tiny circle of the caller profile image, Muro grins up at him.
He raises a finger to the screen. Rests it lightly beside that smile.)
/
A retirement home for the yakuza. Funny to think about it, now; as if any of them would make it that far.
There's an empty-handed silhouette in the doorway. Muro waits until the other man gets within earshot.
“Tell me who I need to kill,” Muro says, words steadier than his grip on the pistol. “You? Nah, you wouldn’t use poison. It was Emiri, wasn’t it? I’ll find her. I’ll hunt her down and–”
“Muro,” says Kanetaka – no, not Kanetaka. Idezuki Gorou. “It’s over. Toshokai is gone.”
Muro feels his smile widen, a jagged gash across his face. “Because of you. Yeah? Undercover cop Idezuki-san.”
Idezuki nods, the gesture slow and deep. “Yeah.”
“This was–” Muro swallows. His hunger threatens to claw its way out of him, so fierce it could take its own form. He wants blood, gore, the clarity of violence. He could eviscerate Idezuki’s corpse and feel no better. “This was your mission from the start.”
Another nod.
“So what was I?”
A reaction, finally: a sideways flick of his gaze, away and back again. Muro can’t tell if Idezuki has to actually think about it.
“You were the King of the Wood,” the cop says at last, slowly. “‘The priest who slew the slayer, and shall himself be slain.’ You were supposed to...”
“I’ve never shot a cop,” Muro says, raising the gun. “If you–”
“I remember,” Idezuki replies, and moves.
Impact, a firm body, a hand around his wrist – the cop leans back and drags Muro with him and no, no, this is unfair, he remembers this: an overgrown building, dust dancing in the sunlight, Kanetaka’s warm weight against him. How he’d finally learnt it, the twist and flip, the trick of hitting the ground first. Kanetaka’s rat-a-tat laugh, each syllable a bullet through the heart. Kanetaka.
He hits the ground, gun spinning out of his grip and away. Pressure on his chest, his neck; a fall of hair against his face. Muro hasn’t felt anyone this close since Mole stabbed him. Maybe this cop will do the same. Blade, bullet, a bare hand, as if anything could tear him open further. As if he isn’t already hollowed out, grief and betrayal the same bile at the back of his throat.
“Muro,” the cop says, low and urgent and familiar – the voice of a man whom Muro called aniki, meaning it with his life. A man Muro had killed for, would have bled out in the rain for. A man who doesn’t exist. Who never existed.
“Muro,” Idezuki says again, breath hot against Muro’s ear, and the emptiness in Muro’s stomach seethes. He wants to throw up. He wants to tear this man’s throat out with his teeth. “You can kill me, but listen. What will you do afterwards?”
Muro wheezes, breath breaking through gritted teeth. As if there’s an afterwards. Anna had offered one – the softness of Hideki-kun, a land where they have no history – but he’d had no reason to accept, then. He has no reason now. “I’ll kill Emiri.”
“It isn’t worth it,” the cop says quietly.
The realisation arrives on a wave of nausea: “You’re protecting her.” Muro tries to laugh, to free the poison in his chest, but the pressure doesn’t ease. “You just don’t want me to kill her.”
Idezuki’s grip tightens around Muro’s wrist, tell-tale. “Leave the country,” he says, steady and commanding, and Muro hates how part of him still snaps to attention, eager to obey. “Start a new life. No one will go after you. You’re free–”
“Not without you,” Muro whispers. He doesn’t mean to say it. He means every word.
The weight on his chest lifts. Muro blinks up at the face that fills his field of vision, close and too-familiar; wants to tear it off, unmask the cop underneath. Idezuki looks at him the same way Kanetaka did.
Feeling rushes back as Idezuki releases Muro’s wrist, too-hot and tingling. Idezuki pushes his fingers through Muro’s hair, an echo of Kanetaka's touch, and leans down to kiss him.
It’s rough, hopeless, empty of desire; it’s exactly like how it would be with Kanetaka. Muro hates it. He bites back, fills the kiss with blood, desperate for a taste of something real.
Idezuki doesn’t respond in kind. He pulls back, licking blood from the corner of his mouth. Muro wishes it were his.
“So that’s it.” Muro laughs, short and halting. Maybe the cop won’t bother with a gun. Maybe he’ll strangle Muro, or break his neck – cleaner, swifter. “The kiss of death.”
“That was Slick’s thing,” Idezuki says. “Not mine.”
He stands up, backing off, and Muro realises what he meant. He isn’t going to kill Muro. He’s walking away, hands as empty as when he arrived. He’s already halfway to the door. Muro struggles to his feet, drags air into his lungs to yell: “Don’t you fucking walk away. You can’t leave me. I’ll find that bitch, that precious Emiri of yours. If you don’t stop me, I’ll kill her. If you don’t–”
Stop me, he thinks. Remembers: A hand on his shoulder, the slightest head-shake of no. Something to hold him back. He stumbles forward, still unsteady – trips on something that skitters metallic against the ground. His gun, still unfired.
He looks at it, its leaden weight; looks back up at that distant figure, already disappearing down the hallway, around a bend.
He breaks into a run–
4.
Afternoon sun through broken windows. Dusty concrete beneath Muro’s back. He turns his head, just enough to make out Kanetaka’s seated figure, and asks: “Ozu or Kurosawa?”
“You’ve asked that before,” Kanetaka replies. “Ozu.”
Muro prefers Kurosawa: epics of honour and death and lies. Kanetaka’s never asked him in return.
“Nietzsche or Sartre?”
Kanetaka leans back on his palms. “Sartre.”
“Past or future?”
Kanetaka looks down. Backlit, haloed; Muro can’t see his face. “What about you?”
“I asked first,” Muro grumbles.
“Still.” Kanetaka’s voice softens, unfamiliar. “What about you?”
There was something he wanted to remember. Sunlight. Kanetaka. A broken window opening onto the sky.
“Future,” Muro says. “I’d choose the future.”
Kanetaka smiles.