Kamurocho was a red-light district. This meant that, even as establishments opened and closed for the night, the city was never truly inactive. People were up and about at all hours of every day.
But there was a shift that happened a little after 4 in the morning. After a majority of the nightlife crowd had gone home to sleep off a hangover that would follow them to work the next day, but before the early risers could set off for their straight-laced office jobs, this was when the city walked but was, by all means, completely dead.
The last drunken stragglers were being kicked out of closing bars and shambled in the streets. Only a few would be cognizant enough to make it home. Several would wake up on the sidewalk, stiff and covered in dry vomit. The only business to be conducted at these hours was the most illicit kind. Those who deal in the business of death, after all, fear the revealing light of day and the sounds of humanity being so close to their plans.
It was at this point in time that Haruka snuck back into Kamurocho Hills and took the elevator down to see Majima.
The lights were kept on. Majima didn't seem to even notice her come down. He was sitting in his chair, slouched and dazed looking, staring up at the largest wall monitor. In its screen was the front of a big, fancy, glass-fronted apartment complex. It was too bright to be a live feed, this looked like it had happened around sunset.
A woman walked into frame. She looked clean, professional, powerful almost. Her dark hair was kept short, stopping just above the shoulders. Her bangs were sharp and her gaze was soft. Everything about her seemed youthful, but if Haruka looked hard enough she could make out the lines of age and experience about her eyes. She had a blue blazer with a matching skirt, and a cluster of flowers held gently in her arms. She entered the building through the revolving door, gave the person behind the desk a nod and a smile, then walked off frame.
Majima pressed a key. The monitor shifted to an awkward, upward angle of the apartment building. About five or six stories up the same woman appeared in the window. She placed the flowers in an empty vase, adding it to a collection of several others that lined the bottom of the windowsill. Someone called for her from inside the apartment. She turned around, calling back, and left the frame.
Majima pressed a key. The monitor shifted back to the footage at the apartment's front door, and looped onto itself.
"She's very pretty," Haruka said.
Majima nearly jumped out of his seat.
"Jesus Mary and Joseph, Harry. You trying to give me a heart attack?"
"Who is she?"
"Huh?" Majima looked back up at the monitor, watched the woman go in again, then turned away. "Ah, you know. Just a hot piece of ass I managed to spot out on the streets. Thought I'd follow her home, see if I couldn't catch her undressing. You know how city girls be."
Haruka gave him a look. "It's okay if you don't want to tell me."
"Ah well, past is the past. What're you doing back here so soon? Facial recognition scanner hasn't finished doing its whole shebang yet."
Haruka blearily rubbed her eye. "Couldn't sleep."
"Nightmares?"
Haruka nodded. "A few."
"Yeah, I feel that."
Majima spun his chair back around to face the monitors. Haruka walked up, crossed her arms and laid her chin on the backrest.
"What happened Uncle Ma?"
Majima glanced up at her the best he could. "Hm?"
"What happened?" She repeated with a sigh. "Uncle Kaz left you and Daigo to fix the Tojo Clan. I don't recognize anybody there now, and it feels like things are back to exactly where they were."
"Ha. Daigo spent like 10 years trying to 'fix' the Tojo Clan, didn't seem to do a lick of good then. What were we going to do now?"
"So you just… gave up?"
Majima sighed. "Kazzy left us to keep the Tojo in line, sure. But I think the only thing capable of holding that hot mess together was him. The day after he kicked it, me and Daigo both had enough. The two of us handed in our resignation letters, same day. Last I heard, Daigo moved up north, started herding sheep or something. I'm sure he's happier now."
"You couldn't even wait a day before going back on your promise?"
"My promise?" Majima spun his seat around to face her, knocking her off the chair. "Kazzy always wanted me back in the Tojo. Always wanted me back into trying to hold this collapsing shit pile together. He never seemed all that interested in what I wanted. What was I promised in return, huh?"
"Stop it."
"I was trying to get out of the business all the way back in '06. But it was always more important that I come back and clean up someone else's mess. I'm not nobody's janitor, and I wasn't going to spend the tail end of my life being one. Maybe Kazzy wanted me to stick around but I wanted literally anything else."
"How can you not see how selfish you're being?"
"You want to talk about this? You really want to get into this? Well, what happened to you, Harry? Pretty sure the last thing Kazzy wanted was his kids involving themselves with the Tojo."
"I'm not involved with the Tojo."
"Good one. Kicking the hornet's nest and claiming absolute innocence. Smart thinking."
"I'm fighting against them! I'm not involved with them! That's the exact opposite!"
"It's not the opposite. It's the opposite of the opposite in fact. Whatever you want to call it, what you're doing is sticking yourself into their world."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Majima pushed himself to his feet and began to pace.
"The world of the civilian and the world of the yakuza. They're distinct, separate realities that people live in. A civilian can range from the homeless dudes stinking up the street to the billionaire tycoon living on top of the world. They can have not a single problem to their name or every single kind of problem on earth. But you know the one thing that ties them all together? Insignificance. In the world of the yakuza, they couldn't tell you jack shit about any given civilian. At best they're a nameless, faceless source of revenue. But once you enter the world of the yakuza, everyone in it knows your name, your face, your past, who you care about and how to break you."
Majima stalked back over to the desk and jabbed at a key. The footage from earlier, the apartment building, started looping again.
"You wanted to know who she is? She's the woman I loved." His face faltered. "Love. Have for thirty fucking years now. And the reason she's up there while I'm down here is because she deserves better than to get shot in the back by someone trying to make my life more of a living hell than it already is. She deserves better than to be trapped in this – in this prison cell with me. She had the chance to cut all ties and burn all bridges to the yakuza world and I made damn well sure to get her out while I could. Staying out of it makes you a nobody, and that's exactly what you want to be with these people. Somebody worth noticing always has a bad time of things."
"If you say she had her chance to get out, well, I didn't. The only thing I've done is fight back."
"Looking for the guy they want to off is a bit more than fighting back, isn't it?"
"They'd think I'd know where to find Taro whether I went to Purgatory or not. Whether I came to you or not. I didn't try to be somebody, they made me somebody, I didn't have a choice Uncle Ma."
"You had a choice. Don't pull this bullshit on me, you had a choice."
"Well – Well, you had a choice too. You had a choice and you chose to betray Uncle Kaz and live down here by yourself in your own filth."
Majima turned on Haruka with an intensity in his eye that made her, for a split second, wonder if she'd made a terrible mistake.
"Yeah, you're right. I had a choice. It was a much harder choice than you seem to think it is, but I had a choice and I stick by my decision. In my entire tenure as a soldier to the Tojo Clan, it's the only good thing I've ever been able to do for anyone."
Haruka narrowed her eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Majima's frown peaked, then softened. He slowed his breathing, walked over, and collapsed back into his chair. He turned to face the monitors again, away from Haruka.
It looked like he was about to start saying something a few times. Each time he'd turn, look at Haruka with his eyepatch, then turn away and fall back into silence. Haruka waited with concern for what he had to say.
"The day after Kazzy kicked it, both me and Daigo handed in our resignation letters."
"You said that already."
"Daigo did everything the proper way. Did the paperwork, named a successor, got all his affects in order, bowed out to a huge, respectful procession, and left."
Haruka wasn't sure where he was going with this.
"But you know me. Your old Uncle Ma can never do things the easy way. Daigo probably had the right idea, just get out and don't look back. Maybe I could be relaxing on a beach somewhere right now, but I had a choice and I chose what I thought was the right thing to do."
"What do you mean?"
"They arrested the guy who did it. He'd been caught in his grand scheme, he would atone for all his crimes, the way Kazzy would have wanted it. Nice and clean. No one gets hurt. The guilty receive their punishment and all that jazz. But that night – that night I betrayed your Uncle Kaz before I even considered leaving the Clan."
Haruka's brow furrowed.
"I broke into the holding cell where they were keeping the ratfuck, and I slashed his throat while he slept."
"You – what?"
"Daigo hadn't been reinstated as chairman yet. It had only been a couple hours at that point, there wasn't really time. I killed the acting patriarch of the Tojo Clan. Whether people liked him or not, whether he was basically out of the game or not, that's a crime punishable by death in the world of both the yakuza and the civilian. Civilians have laws, and the yakuza have their code. You pegged it right, this place is my prison cell, Harry. And it's the only thing keeping me alive at this point."
Haruka didn't know what to say. The two of them just sat in the silence for a minute.
"If you want to, I don't know, leave or beat me up or what have you, that's understandable. I-"
Haruka spun Majima's chair around, pulled him to his feet, and hugged him as tightly as she could.
"Thank you…" she breathed.
Majima looked confused, and awkwardly patted Haruka on the back.
"Ah, well," Majima smiled. "Now we're both defiling Kazzy's memory."
"Stop it," Haruka mumbled from inside Majima's chest.
Majima nodded and stopped talking. He returned the embrace, though awkwardly and mostly with reassuring pats. He was largely waiting for Haruka to release the hug, but as the moments went by that wasn't seeming likely.
The computer at the far end of the desk lit up and gave a beep. Haruka and Majima both looked up at it.
"What's that?" Haruka asked.
Majima sat down in his chair again and kicked his way over to the computer.
"Looks like the facial recognition program finished its shit. Want to see what we got?"
"You're still going to help me?"
"Well shit. You're Kazzy's kid ain't you? If I told you no, you'd just find a way to do it anyways."
Haruka gave a sniff, steeled herself, then nodded. Majima smiled, nodded back, then went to town on the keyboard.
Footage popped up on the largest monitor. Taro stepped out the doors of the Anytime Fitness, Haruka managed to spot herself coming out just after him before the camera cut away. Taro continued to head south down Senryo Avenue. The camera cut to an intersection, Taro approached it and turned right down Taihei Boulevard. A couple more cuts and he was walking next to the Millennium Tower. He rounded a corner, then went into the tower's east basement exit. The footage cut to the opposite side of the tower just outside Theater Square, and Taro slowly exited. The footage cut to a wide shot of the square, Haruka watching his head bob in and out of the crowd before reaching the end and turning down Theater Alley. The footage cut to him exiting the alley along Taihei Boulevard. One more cut and he finally went down a set of stairs and into a building. The footage stopped there.
"What happened next?" Haruka asked.
"As far as I can tell, that's the last time he's been seen anywhere in the city."
"So - he's still down there?"
"I don't know. It's strange."
"What is? If he hasn't come out, then that means he's still in that building, right?"
"Not necessarily, but probably. That's not what's strange though. See that, that's a whorehouse."
Haruka's eyebrows furrowed. "A brothel?"
"Nah. Brothels are big, soapland looking places with nice smelling pretty girls who let you get it wet. That is a whorehouse."
"So he went into a brothel…"
"And hasn't come out for two days. I know a lot of guys who wish they never had to leave places like that, but they don't usually allow overnight guests."
"Something's up." Haruka spun on her toes and ran onto the platform in the middle of the room. "Thanks again, Uncle Ma."
"Don't mention it," he called back out. "And I'm serious, get some fucking sleep."