11
Oh, but this is fine. Aye. Very fine. Straight loverly, it is.
Benzo Ichikawa woke up this morning with a headache and bad case of junk-itch. The sensation crawled up and down his spine like an irritable scorpion. He barely even made it to the chamber pot before his bowels released in a series of groaning spasms.
Hiroshi and Ken were even worse off—fully sick with their need, rolling in their bunks, sweating copiously, near to the point of hallucination. Ichikawa promised the both of them that they would score today, even though there's barely enough ryō in the squat's stash to buy a box of rice—much less a ball of dope.
All the same, Ichikawa climbed Black Tooth Point an hour after dawn, sending up a flare in the hopes that old man Daigo would see it down south. After almost fifteen increasingly tense minutes, an answering flare rose like a manmade star in the gloaming. Shimura knew the score. He would have the merchandise ready when they arrived.
Ichikawa knows he isn't the smartest man in the world. He may continue to chuff and bluster like a proper yakuza, but the eight months since Boss Ozu put a bounty on his head and drove him out of Dokusei have been humbling ones. Something about sleeping in a shack and shitting in a tin can tends to erode a man's trust in his own instincts.
But that don't mean he ain't a man without a bit o' grit still in him. Benzo Ichikawa may be little more than a road agent these days, but that doesn't mean he can't muster a bit of pride in his work. And though he might not have the coin to pay Daigo for his opium, Ichikawa's got plenty of guns at his disposal. Bullets are their own sort of currency.
But now . . . now! This is some fuckin' luck, right here.
Right when he was readying to draw down on Daigo—ensuring his exile not only from Dokusei, but the whole damned region—Ichikawa runs into some dumb greenhorn fresh off the trail. Might not look like much now under all that road grime, but this dude's clearly come out of some money. Nobody wears a coat and hat like that without some sort of scratch to back it up.
So here they are: Ichikawa and Hiroshi stand in the front yard of Daigo's shitheap of a way station, sun swatting down on the backs of their heads. Hiroshi holds his scattergun with unsure fingers, one eyelid twitching. Ichikawa's already slid one of his wheel-guns out, thumb resting on the gear behind its cylinder. Just inside the door to the shop, Ken lingers like a junk-sick ghost.
The stranger—this greenhorn in his wide-brimmed hat and formerly white coat—steps off the last of the stairs and into the yard. Ichikawa can tell the man ain't happy about the situation. Blue eyes skip between the men in the yard, clearly trying to figure out how to play the unplayable.
Fuckin' greenhorns. Men like this have been tryin' to shit on Ichikawa his entire life. Ain't so pretty when the sandal's on the other foot—is it boy?
Time to earn some dope.