Warnings: Spoilers for all of the manga.
Notes: 7/27/06: My first reviewer! Thank you so very much for your kind words, eternalsailorsolarwind. I'll do my best to make the future installments to this project as entertaining as I can. 7/31/06: Made some changes to this chapter, particularly concerning the events of volumes 3 and 4; hope it is a bit better now.
Disclaimer: Yellow is owned by Makoto Tateno; I'm just borrowing it so I can make myself feel better about the plotholes...

Revenge

Six years. Six years. That's how long I waited. Six long years of torture, regret and a nearly unfathomable thirst for revenge.

You can't imagine how it feels. To have a life and a family and a job that you can feel proud of, and all at once it is taken away from you. A flash of an instant. A phone call from work, and you kiss them goodbye and you never see them again.

Torture, yes. To have a love like that, to have that kind of joy in your life, and then not have it, and know that you will never have it again. To believe that you will never feel such human emotions as love for anyone or anything ever again. Gone and as final as the moment when the sheet is pulled back on a corpse that was once a lively woman you would come home to every evening and kiss goodbye every morning as you left.

Regret, yes. To believe, if only I had stayed; if only I had taken them with me; if only I was there. Can you even imagine? Do you even know what it is to reflect upon past actions? To be consumed by them? To abandon your job in despair; stepping for the first time into a world that you hadn't even realized until then that you hardly knew at all? If only you had known. Then, maybe you would have stayed. You would have told your bosses to go screw themselves; there are more important things in life than a thankless job helping ungrateful people with their worthless lives. It all amounts to nothing when the people you work so hard to protect and to help are the very people who take it all away from you.

And revenge, yes. To take an equal amount and leave an equal amount of suffering upon those who caused this pain. To be consumed by a singular goal. To abadon and old life that is no longer compatible with this new driving force and start over with only one need; vengeance. And only one clue; a cryptic card with pictures of lizards. Sandfish.

Hate was such a new emotion for me. I had never hated anything before. Sure, I had said the word, in passing, as a joke, in reference to things that I now understand are very distinctly different from true hatred. True hatred twists your very core into something unrecognizable. It consumes you in a way that only it can, and destroys the man you were just moments before.

But, still was the old man; the cop, whispering in my ear, telling me that I couldn't do this thing that I wanted. That I needed. I couldn't take lives and impart vigilante justice. Oh, but I could watch. Yes, that's when I had thought it. Someone else can do it. I'll find them. I'll train them, and then, I'll send them to kill for me.

So, I opened a cafe. It had to be a cafe. A larger business would consume too much of my time in pursuits I had no real interest in, and it needed to be a place people could frequent for short periods of time and be inconspicuous. I had my old contacts, so setting up "shop" was easy. It had to be simple work, though. Nothing too involved. Minor jobs, with moderate risks that could be handled by individuals who weren't consumed with the same evil as the people who destroyed a poor cop's life, but were skilled enough for the job. Snatchers; perfect.

Goh wasn't the first. He wasn't the second either. There were too many variables. I had to find just the right mix of talent and personality. When I found Goh I knew he was a keeper. Kei was a little flighty, I could see that straight away. I wasn't exactly heartbroken when he ran off. Then one day, not long after, Taki walked into the cafe looking for work. He had said, "anything will do," with a look in his eyes that I knew meant he wasn't looking for a bus boy position.

Seeing them together was strange. They formed a bond that took me a long time to realize was something I had believed I would never witness or care about again in my life. I cared about them. It wasn't part of the plan. I wasn't supposed to get close to these kids. Keep distance, don't get involved. Get them to do the job and walk away from it. For a while I was strangely comfortable. My life was a semi-pleasant routine.

It scared me. I felt guilt. Guilt for being almost happy when the people I cared the most for in the world were long gone; gone because of me, and would never feel that same happiness again. So, I started bringing their picture with me to work. Their picture, and the other one. I hid them of course; couldn't have any questions. When I started to get too comfortable, I would have that reminder of what I lost.

When Sandfish showed back up, I guess I saw my chance. I still can't believe I actually managed to ask the two of them to do it. Part of me didn't want to. The part that still clung to old ethics. No, that's not true. It was the part that didn't want to corrupt those two good men. The part that wanted to protect them and not force them to suffer for my own selfish desires. Unfortunately, that desperate part of me that couldn't let go of this, my one chance, won out. I felt so weak, and vulnerable. When I discovered that Taki had received a card from Sandfish, I realized my selfishness. I hedged. Not even discovering Taki's parentage changed my interest in protecting him. It didn't last long though, as I felt the murderers of my family start to slip out of my grasp. I decided then that I would do it myself.

I had to find them though, which was difficult to accomplish after Taki ran off. I was past asking the two of them to do my dirty work for me, but I guess I wasn't past my willingness to use them for my own ends. Some of the things I said and did to both of them I regret now, but it was my only chance. I was patient and let Goh find Taki; afterall, he would be better to find his own partner, and now apparently, lover, than me. After that it was just a matter of using the transmitter signal to find them both. I wouldn't have hurt Taki. At least, I hope I wouldn't have. Things were so confused then and I was so desperate.

When it all came down I was left shaking. Everything I had built up for six years was torn down. Half of my life returned to me in an instant by the very people I had blamed for taking it away. The people I had blamed. What do I do about them now? My desire for vengeance against them has dwindled, and my resentment for my former colleagues and superiors has grown in its place. At once I had thought to continue my quest anew against my new enemies, but what now? I have my little girl back. To abandon her alive now in selfishness for what I want would be worse than my crime in allowing her to be taken in the first place.

I have to be strong. I have to do things the right way. I decided not to seek that revenge. Instead, I will continue to play this game of service at a distance, and live this life of comfort with the people who have come to mean to me almost as much as the life I lost six years ago, and I no longer care to live. I'll do this, at least for now.

Tsunuga
7/31/06
1334 words