Chapter XIII: Deliverance

…

Over the course of months, the nature behind Youhei Mito and Mitsui's secrecy will prove harder and harder to decipher. Often they are rolling around town on Mito's motorbike, only to return when the rest of us are ready to retire to our respective abodes. Among the five of us, only Kaede has once managed to muster the courage to question Mitsui and his secrecy over his enterprises with Mito.

"Well, Kaede, I don't want our petty undertakings to get in the way of your basketball training. My sentiments also apply to Ryota, Hanamichi and Kiyota. As for Kiminobu, as he is a graduating student, it would be best to leave him out of my distracting activities."

"Aren't you planning to graduate, sempai?"

Mitsui merely grins. Something about his smile is boding ordinary mischief, but if anyone insisted on being accurate, I'd say he is using his charm to haul himself off the topic. This mystery goes on for long, until the graduation ceremony is idling no more than one week away. By this time, Kiyota and Mito have only been hanging out with us for more or less six months, while Ryota, Kaede and Hanamichi for well nigh nine months. All the same, each of them insists he can't be anywhere else in the world. It's as if Mitsui, right from the beginning, has bound them into this web of some dark thrill he alone can unwind.

…

By any standard, Mitsui is daring, fearless even, and he is exactly the type who wouldn't utter non-subtle words should his life depend on it. Right now, however, his subtlety finally will fail to obscure the enormity of the heinousness he is proposing. Somehow, this is one of those rare times when the absence of more heads during brainstorming comes to advantage. As the four athletes of Vault are presently sweating themselves shitless inside their respective sporting enclosures, Mito and I are the sole witnesses to Mitsui's grand oration.

"Hisashi, I'm begging you, leave this to the authorities." I plead, trying to steer him from the decidedly ugly future he means to bring upon himself. This time, he means to accomplish something beyond the common bounds of frivolous justice-seeking we are so fond of committing.

"How many times has it been made apparent that Shinjuru Maki is untouchable? How many minutes of negotiations must he host to get the entire police department marching at the beat of his drum? Five, ten?" Mitsui asks me, Youhei nodding beside him, believing his next operation to be below what he can construe to be complicated. Continuing with the same reverence of tone, "He goes around, with an air of someone entirely respectable, all the while circulating and distributing the largest amount of crystal meth you can imagine, in the whole of Kanagawa, through his equally sleazy minions, all for the fetching of handsome price. How many lives, exactly, has this man ruined? This is the kind of debauchery which ought to stay out of his children's and wife's knowledge, but one can live a double life only for too long. It has been too long, hasn't it, Youhei?"

"I think so too, sempai. Well, Kogure-san, we will be careful. I do have a set of duplicate keys to Maki residence." Mito assures me, as if none of his words were disconcerting. So the daughter of the Maki family trusts and loves him enough to give him full access to her abode. And here is Mito, seeking to repay that trust by breaking into her house in the dead of the night, to inflict wrong for all the wrongs her father has tendered to the world.

At this point, I have become too distracted to be properly scared. There are thousands of unknown, uncharted aspects to this plan, hence it will never be foolproof. At this time, as fortune would have it, there's just no way Mitsui and Youhei's determination can see that. At this time, it's just impossible to stop them. They go on discussing the rest of their actions for the night, while I hardly listen. Whether Mitsui has taken advantage of the absence of the other four is pretty much anyone's guess, but then again I wouldn't put it past him to acquit them of the potential guilt and misery his latest devices are bound to procure.

In the end, Mitsui has this spiritual durability such as I have never seen in anyone before. In the end, he chooses to leave me, Ryota, Kaede, Hanamichi and Kiyota out of the hell he is about to dive into. The worst part is, he truly believes he has to be the savior and the sacrificial lamb at the same time. I, however, will not know how accurate this predilection is until several hours later.

With the sight of the two Berettas on his coffee table disconcerting me to no end, I stand up, never realizing this is the very last time I will convene with Hisashi Mitsui in an enclosed venue.

Several hours later, Vault will meet its end.

…

Five hours following my exit from Mitsui's apartment, I find myself lying awake on my bed. But this unsteady state between waking and sleeping shall soon be blotted out, because here is Youhei Mito, pounding his fists frantically at my window. With equal amount of panic, I pry the panels open.

"You'll wake the neighbors!" I hiss. What exactly is preventing me from inquiring about the present whereabouts of Mitsui remains unknown to me. Maybe, just maybe, I'm dreading it as much as I would dread my own death. Meanwhile, Mito is already climbing over the sill, and into my room, every bit of him in disarray. Perceptively trembling, he speaks,

"Sempai, he asked me to leave."

So it has come to this. I figured earlier something would go out of hand, and along with that, at the farthest corner of my consciousness, I knew Mitsui would eventually cede to his greater self, that he would do what it would take to minimize the damages. For that, he has to finish this task all by himself. Mito's conduct alone is a clear testament to that.

"What happened, Youhei-kun?"

At my query, he sinks to his knees, clutching his head. His vexation seems as real a deal as any other. As much as I'm feeling impelled to assign to my heart the commiseration the situation requires, there is no mistaking what's being made clear here and now; something has gone really bad this time.

"I—I shot the bastard, just as planned. But—but his wife appeared out of nowhere. She and their children were supposed to be sleeping! Fuck! And I…"

"Y—you what?"

Youhei's hysterics start shooting through the ceiling, and so do mine, but mine don't even come close to the degree of vexation present in his. I know then that Mitsui has come to a point of no return. Really, seeing Youhei like this convinces me of that. But worse is to follow.

"I shot her too! I—I didn't mean to! The plan was to eliminate him only… I panicked, and… Mitsui-sempai asked me to leave. I said I couldn't because it was my fault. He said he'd shoot me if I didn't scram. I told him I wouldn't budge a fucking inch. And then he pointed his gun at me…the rest of the house was still sleeping, but two are d—dead! Sempai, I'm sorry!"

I can perhaps end up five years older trying to figure out what to do next. This is when it becomes known to me what wasn't clear to me in the beginning; letting Mito into our circle would carry a far greater consequence than I have earlier expected. Right now, he can wring his own neck for all the good it would do and it wouldn't make the slightest of differences. Left with nothing but intuition, I ask him,

"Stay here. You rode your Harley all the way here, didn't you? Hand me the keys."

Youhei remains curled up on my bedroom floor, swallowed by an anxiety against which he cannot fight. So I personally fish the keys from his pockets, whereby his restrained sobs continue to muffle themselves. Just then, I leave him to collapse in his own helplessness.

…

My intuition, plus an urging from the unknown regions of my heart, carries me to Embankment 14, a sloping river bed where Hisashi and I used to muse about random things. The exact location of the Maki family residence eludes me and, more than that, I'm pretty sure Mitsui has left the premises long before now. Right now, sirens can be heard from a distance, but the sound I'm hearing bodes fire trucks, rather than patrol cars. Parking Mito's handsome motorbike against the concrete reinforcement of a nearby bridge, I crane my neck toward a pillar of smoke rising to the sky from a couple of kilometers away. The night is dark, but the smoke is easy enough to discern.

And, of course, Hisashi Mitsui shows up.

"I knew you'd be here. So, I think Youhei has told you everything." Mitsui starts, and something in the way he's speaking makes my heart break.

"It isn't your job to right the wrong, at least not in this occasion."

"It is every man's job to see justice done, Kiminobu."

"There's always going to be an exception, Hisashi."

For some reason my remark compels him to sigh sorrowfully, something I haven't done in a long while and it seems I won't be able to see it done by anyone else for the same amount of time.

"Well, the turn of events over there at Maki residence left me no other option but to resort to arson once more."

"So that raging fire over there is your doing."

"As a matter of fact, yes. I'm sure the autopsy will sooner or later reveal the gunshot wounds, but the fire is enough to buy me time. Ashes for evidences. Fancy, isn't it?"

"What of Shinichi Maki and his sister? Did you for once think of them while you douse gasoline over the very house where they sleep?"

"The house is swell. The sprinkler system will, rest assured, provide them a clearing for escape."

"And you? Just how on earth did you manage to escape?"

In his mind, it must have been that he has been faced with a rhetorical question. What would you do if you had in your hand a detonator that would annihilate a quarter of Japan's population? Would you press the switch if it meant that not doing so would obliterate the entire continent? Ultimately, he made the choice to press the switch. But why face the dilemma alone? We were brothers, at least in spirit, but why stand alone in the end? My heart now contracts with pain, a shot of adrenaline one too many in my system.

"Does that matter? I'm here now."

"I guess not for long."

"You're right."

"Hisashi, do you even regret this, in the very least?"

"I regret nothing."

He means to leave; that much is obvious. I figure the state of my emotions now is looking worse than the arson he has just committed. Sooner or later, witnesses to his crime will abound, until he be pushed into a corner. Maybe not. Whatever the case, Kanagawa now holds neither a place nor chances for one such Hisashi Mitsui. Because he deems himself unsalvageable and utterly corrupted now that he has bloodied his hands, he alone holds the power to limit this corruption to himself. To bear all the brunt and to absolve his brothers of the remorse that has the potential to eat them whole; that is his resolve, even though he himself does not feel any remorse. Yes, he will forever depart, only because he believes this sacrifice is necessary. But, at the very end of everything, there remains still one crisis he can acquit himself of; to stand not alone. With that in mind, he asks me,

"Are you coming with me?"

My mouth idles around, until I realize that what I am in fact doing is to defer the movement of time. But time freezes for no one, not even for someone like the enigma that is him.

"I—I won't forget you, Hisashi."

That is how my refusal comes to sound like. Well, in the long run, it won't cost me anything—except my happiness in life.

TBC