Majima Saga

Chapter II

"Choice"

"You want me to do what?"

"I want to look after my son, in the event that something should happen to me."

So he wasn't hearing wrong.

"Why me?"

The older man chuckled at this. It wasn't anything like his previous bout of laughter; a genuine show of merriment.

No.

This laugh was hollow.

Bitter, though not quite angry, just…

Tired.

"Majima-kun, I've been yakuza since I was fourteen years old. I didn't swear up until three years after, but I've been yakuza since I was fourteen. I was just a punk with nowhere to go, then. Deadbeat dad, trying to make a profit offa gamblin' all around Kansai. Missin' ma, left after my pops racked up the first hundred grand in debt. So it wasn't exactly what most folk would consider a stable environment. Prob'ly didn't help that I had my old man's temper. By the time I was old enough to really think about it, I just figured that since I came from shit, I oughta act even shittier."

Midoriya had been speaking with a proper Tokyo dialect before. But as he went further and further down memory lane, he became more and more vulgar.

"Left home at around 11, wandered for a bit. Shoplifted and dumpster dived for a time. Slept in the subway, on rainy nights. Kept to empty parks on clear ones. Getting around unnoticed wasn't hard, 'specially when no one wanted to notice me, y'know? It was a lonely year for me, one of the lonliest in my life."

"..." What could he say to that?

"A little bit after my twelfth birthday, yes I was keeping track while on the move, I ran into a gang. Not a huge operation, but rather sizable. Some of the folks were a little older, others, a little younger than me. We were all punks that ran away from home, though. Came together to form some pseudo-Neverland and wreak havoc on the streets of Osaka. Now, I couldn't give ya a good reason why I thought it'd be a good idea to join up with 'em. But, if I were forced to give an answer, I'd say… I just needed something, anything to look up to. The world's a cruel place, especially for those too young to know just why that is."

"..."

"I rolled with that gang for a good six months or so. Beatin' the crap outta people who looked at us funny, shakin' down assholes so we could go eat at fancy places, causin' trouble at fancy places. For the time I did it, being a goddamn nuisance was fun. Way more fun than being ignored. But then, one day, Just before I turned thirteen, I got my ass kicked during a shakedown. Right here in Sotenbori."

His tone was oddly fond.

"Some yakuza in charge of the turf happened to be passing by when I was doin' it. Told me stop and I told him to fuck off. He said two words to me and I saw red. Just two. You know what they were?"

"..."

"'Make me.' Can ya believe it? I sure as hell couldn't, and it got me pissed. So I tried… and failed, miserably. He kicked the crap outta me. Humiliated me. And he hardly broke a sweat."

He could see where this was going now.

"And after that, he didn't kill me or tell me to leave town. No, instead, he said 'Good fight' and offered me a job. Next thing I know, I'm runnin' errands for the newly-minted Sawada Family."

Of course. That's how most folks got their start after all. Not specifically like that, of course, but with similar set-ups. Young men with no places to go and no people who want them. They get brought in by new patriarchs and boom! Loyalty bred. Simple and somewhat morally ambiguous, but effective.

"Worked my ass for about ten years, before Sagawa-han took me aside and told me I was in line to become a patriarch. I just had to do one thing… I had to 'get rid of' one Hideo Midoriya."

"What?"

"My father, and an ex-Omi man who was sidling up to some Tojo boys in the area. Probably hoping that they'd pay off his debts for him if he gave 'em some Omi exclusive info. He got banished a little while before my ma had me. Asshole was a lieutenant who tried to start his own gamblin' scam and fucked up royally. Ended up bringin' the law down on his family, and the patriarch ended up footin' the bill. He was out on his ass the day after the sentencing."

The guy sounded like a real piece of work.

"So, I had a choice to make. I had to choose between my asshole dad, who I hadn't seen or thought of in well over a decade, or my patriarch, who had looked after me and seen that I was looked after for just about a decade. It wasn't a hard choice, but a choice nonetheless."

Majima could imagine so.

"So I found out that he was movin' in & around Sotenbori. Figured I'd find him at some bar or another, so I just hopped from one to the next, before I smelled the stench of the prick that I never seemed to forget. The scent of tobacco from a cig brand that I can't remember the name of for the life of me.

"He looked even more pitiful than he did when I left him twelve years earlier. His hair was grayer, eyes sunken, cheeks were hollow and pale, he was a mess. To this day, I still don't know if the lift in my gut that night was some sadistic glee that he was suffering after the crap he'd been pulling for all those years, or if it was... relief. Relief that I'd be killing a man that was already dead."

Another chuckle.

"Whatever it was, it didn't change what happened next. I approached him, took a seat next to him, and got a drink. It wasn't exactly part of the plan, but I felt like it would make things more… believable. Mighta also needed some courage, iced and in the form of hard liquor. When I was on my third glass, I looked over and saw that he was still nursing the bottom half of his first. It was strange, I could remember him draining whole bottles in the time it took him to get to the bottom of that one glass. But even then, it didn't matter. I had a job to do. I looked closer at his face, pretended to try and place it, but before I could go through with the whole song and dance, he looked at me and I could see the recognition in his eyes. When he asked if it was me that he was lookin' at, I jumped on the chance, hugged him, offered him a bed at my place for the night."

If the patriarch's voice was tired before, it was absolutely strained now.

"We got maybe a block before stoppin' for a smoke. It was nice, dark, and secluded. It was almost like the world was tellin' me that that was the place to kill him. The knife in my jacket felt heavy. It felt like it was pushing me into the ground further and further with every step that I took with it. I handed him a cig and lit it for him. I had to kill the man, what could it cost me to, at least, be polite? It was gonna be his last smoke, after all. When I lit my own, we just sat there for a minute."

Strained to wistful, the man's voice swung from emotion to emotion as his story went about its course.

"It was… nice. But I still had a job to do. So, I pulled out the knife. He had his back turned to me, so I figured I could just get him in the back and be done with it then and there. I pulled it back, my knuckles were turnin' white from how hard I was grippin' the damn thing, and I shoved forward. That's when he turned around. And the blade pushed right into his chest."

Midoriya's hands and voice were starting to tremble.

"It's amazing how easy it was. He was surprised, but he didn't struggle. He looked down at my chest and just seemed to accept it. After that, he looked me in the eyes and patted his pocket. Then, he was gone. Just like that."

He clenched his fists tightly.

"I realize now, that when he looked at my chest, he was looking at my badge. He knew what he had done and it seemed that for the first and last time in his life, he was willing to take responsibility for it. I could respect that. And his pocket, the one he patted, he had a photo. It was one of me and my ma, before she left. He took it when we went to the beach for my birthday. I hardly even remembered it at that point, so I could hardly think of why he would still have it, I tried to not let it fuck with me though."

Fists unclenched.

" Lo' and behold, that night would fuck with me for a good ten years after that. I could never wash that blood off my hands or get that picture outta my mind. After I did the job, and told Sawada-han, he patted me on the back and told me my instatement was happening at Omi headquarters the next week."

Clench.

"I would go on to kill a lot more people afterwards, just on instinct at that point. I got so good at it that they started calling the Omi's very own 'God of War'. A stupid fucking title, I know."

Back came the bitterness. It was more self-deprecating than anything else, this time around.

"Got married to a lovely spitfire of a woman when I was thirty, and she helped me cope a bit. Then, three years later, she died giving birth to a bouncing baby boy. I was grieving, but I couldn't just shut down and go on autopilot like I did before. I had someone countin' on me now. I had to be there for him. For my son. And I've tried to be. He's real bright, y'know. Prob'ly gets it from his ma. I'm doin' my best to turn him into a proper Tokyoite, so he can get outta here, become a doctor or a scientist or something like that. Anything but a yakuza, honestly."

That slightly threw Majima. He knew the kid was smart, but he didn't expect his father to be so against him joining the family business.

"Why?"

"Because it'd be a waste of his talent. And any father, any good one at least, would want his son to at least be a contender, and would hate to see his child's talent wasted. I want him to live better than I did. I want him to have good memories of his father. To be able to go to sleep at night without worrying about the nightmares creeping in and shocking him out of his sleep in a cold sweat. I want him to get married and have kids and not worry about fucking them up for the rest of their lives because he didn't know what he was doing. I don't want him to join the Yakuza, Majima-kun, because I want him to differ from me as possible."

Okay, that answered that.

"So where do I fit into this?" That was the billion yen question. He had just met the man that day, so why was he being entrusted with what clearly the most important thing to him?

The Midoriya patriarch smiled once again, a kind smile. A genuine one.

He didn't start off on another long tale this time. Instead, he said three words.

"Because you listened."

Sotenbori, Osaka- Cabaret Grand- June

Because I listened, huh?

Majima sat back in his chair. There wasn't much going on in the club downstairs, so he had a rare bit of time to sit back and breathe. He had started to make a bit of a name for himself in the biz in the past few months and that name led people to find Cabaret Grand: "Where the customer is king".

The shit was exhausting, but he was making bank, so he couldn't really complain. The Grand made about ten mil the past month. At the rate they were going this next month, they'd likely double it before the 20th.

This was good. It wouldn't be long before they reached 100 mil, and he'd be out of his cage. He'd be able to breathe without assholes watching his every move.

Sawada had people watching him 24/7, making sure he wouldn't just up and skip town one day.

Not like he could, what with his new… roommate. He was almost certain that Sawada knew about him. He couldn't exactly keep him a secret with the, at least, ten people keeping an eye on his place.

He ain't said anything yet, but if I were a bettin' man…

The cyclops took a breath and shook his head. There was no use dwelling on that, he just had to make the money and he'd get both himself and the boy outta Sotenbori.

He made a promise, after all.

Thirty minutes later- Tsuruhashi Fugetsu

"Thanks."

"No problem. Come back soon, Majima-han!"

With a box of Okonomiyaki in hand and his wallet even lighter than usual, Majima left the eatery and started to walk back to his apartment. His roommate seemed a bit down lately, hopefully a hefty serving of his favorite food could help a bit.

Another long day at the Grand, but it was over until the next night at least. Now all he had to do was go home and hit the sack. That plan was kiboshed as soon as he turned onto East Shochofuku and felt his wallet moving up and out of his pocket.

He whipped around, prepared to slug the shit outta whoever thought it'd be a good idea to filch his stuff.

"What?"

He was surprised to find no unlucky schmuck on the receiving end of his punch.

Instead, he found his wallet floating in mid-air and lazily moving towards a small hooded figure.

The hell?

As Majima got ready to move towards the figure, they seemed to realize that their mark was wise to their antics and let their would-be loot fall before turning around and sprinting into the Bunzaemon Outdoor Mall.

Shit. "Hey, get back here!"

And he took off after them(pocketing his wallet along the way, of course).

Neither the pursuer nor the pursued made it far before the latter was cornered in Ashibata Park.

Majima had arrived just in time to hear a thud! and see the figure being surrounded by a few yakuza toughs. Normally, he'd let that be it and go about his day. No real choice to be made there.

"Look, I said I was sorry, so could ya just let me get past?"

"The fuck you just say to us, brat?"

Unfortunately, his moral compass kicked in when he heard just how young the voice was.

As one of the men raised their hand to strike the kid(?), the one-eyed man called out to them.

"Hey, could you not do that?"

"Huh, and who the fuck're you s'pose to be?"

Okay, rude.

"A concerned citizen, one who would rather not see you beat on a kid."

"Oh, I get it. You must be volunteering for us to beat on you instead!"

Not exactly, but I'm guessin' they're not gonna take no for an answer.

Settling into a low stance, Majima got ready for the punks to come at him.

"Get him, boys!"

Here we go!