Spring, 2016

Not a single morning in the 953 was peaceful. Ai Ebihara, the bartender, screamed not at employees, but at her coworkers to get the place suitable for more "coworkers." Ryuji learned that until eleven each morning, anywhere but the 953's office was inhospitable for him.

Even the office was a total shit show. It housed every piece of paper ever associated with the Aka Ikka, tax records included. They were gyangu scum, not tax-evading animals. Obviously, Ryuji couldn't read whatever info the government and police had on him and the family, but he could assume they knew the basics.

Ryuji Sakamoto was a key figure in a crime family who paid his taxes. That meant that he got roughly half of a get-out-of-jail-free card. So long as he kept his head down and out of the fire, he could be a free man. If a body or some other crime got pinned on him… prosecutors and judges wouldn't be so lenient.

Of course, he knew all these ideas were just assumptions, ones that his contact on the other side of the conflict refused to verify because he couldn't or because he intended to turn on Ryuji. Likely, it was the former. If his contact gave up on him, then Ryuji would've been in jail long before 2016.

Cabinets upon cabinets held enough records to compile a financial bible for the hungry criminal across Tokyo to study and learn. The desk, featuring one swivel chair (because the Aka Ikka were frugal bastards) on each side, was sacred. A decent desktop PC sat atop its fine wooden surface, seeing use exclusively from Ryuji. The computer was off limits to everyone else, except Ren but that didn't matter because of his poor attendance habits.

And so, Ryuji's fortress kept him safe enough from the danger of cleaning. It kept Ai from throwing too many orders in his direction, while the ones that slipped through were directly dismissed by Ryuji.

He looked up from the computer as the door slammed into a filing cabinet. "Ryuji! I have four bar stools that need to be fixed, five guys who refuse to get off the pool table, and two strippers asking about their pay. I'm not going to wait any longer!" An empty threat, nothing more. Ryuji slacked off a million times and he would do it a million more times. Ai may have been the rest of the family's coworker, but to Ryuji, she was his employee. She had been granted the privilege to have an intense attitude to bartending, not to order a saiko-komon around.

Ryuji got up from his chair and grabbed his coat from the back of it. As he put it on, Ryuji gave a legitimate excuse, courtesy of orders from the previous evening's rendezvous with the boss. "Can't. I got a job to do. And so does the Hanamura kid, so get someone to take over whatever chores you stuck on him."

Ai rolled her eyes. "You always take off like this."

"I'm a busy guy."

Ai forgot plenty of things, some more important than others. "You're second in command of the smallest of the major fam—" She learned the hard way that she talked too much.

Ryuji advanced on her, jamming a finger in her face to threaten her eyes as he backed her into a wall. "Who runs this bar? You?" Ai shook her head, her curled strands swinging side to side. Ryuji's weight pressed her firmly into the wall, her head pressed against rough stone. "That's what I thought." Ryuji pulled back, but Ai stayed against the wall. "What? You're afraid of me now? Ai, I'm your fucking boss, not some lowlife. Go bitch at people who should be bitched at."

Quivering eyes that saw all met Ryuji. No words, only harsh, trained judgment—judgment that saw what Ryuji did, who he wronged, and those he hurt. All of it packed into the tiny eyes of an overly-assertive bartender.

Ryuji wondered what his mother would say.

"I'm sorry. Tough morning," he said, waving his finger around his temple. "Hanamura buried one instead of the usual, Kitagawa allegedly got a little trigger-happy and won't return my calls, and the boss is pissed at me for all of that."

Just when Ryuji showed Ai his neck, she regained her ferocity. "Oh, that explains everything," she retorted with scathing sarcasm. "Fine, Ryuji. Take Hanamura, go on a nice long drive, and skip coming back tonight." Ai pushed Ryuji as she walked past him, slamming the door behind her as she returned to the 953's main floor. Ryuji heard even more of her authority return from the other side of the same door. "Guess who did a burial?!"

Ryuji took his turn to roll his eyes. The guys got to laugh because none of them were the ones who had to take the kid to do it properly. Bodies needing hiding were few and far between, too, so most of them had endured the process the same number of times as Yosuke: zero. Ryuji exited the 953's office with his coat on his back and a scowl on his face. Even though it had to be done for the sake of the business, no one would be excited to oversee baby's first asphalt mixing.

"Hanamura!" From the side of the room, the scrawny kid, barely even twenty, popped up among the 953's rapidly moving parts. Aka Ikka soldiers walked across the room carrying barstools, chairs, extra supplies for the bar, and whatever else Ai deemed necessary. Not a single one of them had a smile on their face. No one liked setting up what was essentially a strip club before noon.

"Boss?"

Ryuji's eyes rolled at the unnecessary respect. Ren's refusal to show his face at the 953 or step into his full role as the boss led most of the Aka Handan Ikka's footsoldiers to consider Ryuji the real leader. Ryuji complained to Ren many times, yet Ren never changed his ways. Ryuji didn't see why he would; the Aka Ikka were immensely successful for their smaller size and dodged most of the legal disruptions that other clans faced for not being so careful where they showed their faces.

"Time for your baptism," Ryuji said, hearing a few chuckles from the other guys. "C'mon. We're taking a drive." Hanamura nodded, following Ryuji to the front entrance of the 953. Ryuji turned, taking one last look at the bar and Ai. "Ebi-chan, you're in charge today."

"Got it."

Putting Ai in charge meant very little. Any business that came to the 953 would be told to wait or a message would be sent to Ryuji and Ren. Anything else was well within Ai's capabilities as one hell of a shrieker; how else could she command the respect of a club's worth of bōryokudan?

Ryuji pushed and held open the door for Yosuke, letting it close behind them as they stepped into the searingly bright world. The 953 never saw a healthy amount of light and, as a result, neither did Ryuji's eyes. The only well-lit room in the 953 was the office, but no one liked spending time in the office because dancers weren't allowed.

A sleek, black sedan waited along the curb directly in front of the 953's entrance. The lights blinked twice as Ryuji unlocked the car, rounding the front of the car and opening the driver's door. Yosuke stood on the curb like an idiot until Ryuji corrected him.

"Get your ass in the car. Decomposition waits for no one!"

Ryuji didn't mind the silence. He drove in peace, only irritated when the radio picked a bad song to soundtrack his drive to Tokyo's outskirts. Yosuke, on the other hand, couldn't sit still to save his life. He knew where they were going, he plugged in the address, yet he behaved like a little kid trapped in the backseat for a road trip.

For one of them, the j-pop-tinged silence became unbearable.

"Has anyone fucked up like this before?" Yosuke blurted. Ryuji took his eyes off the road to check on his passenger. Yosuke nearly ripped his dark jeans with his harsh grip on them, both hands trying to tear apart the denim on his knee.

Ryuji rolled his eyes. "Like what?"

"Burying the body instead of—"

"No." Yosuke's satisfaction kept him silent, though Ryuji had more to say. "But I'd say it's because we usually don't have bodies. Not a whole lotta killing to do, ya know?"

"Then what made," Yosuke paused too long for someone comfortable with their actions, "him special?"

"Nothing special 'bout him. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"That's way, way too simple for something like murder!"

"You questioning me and the boss?"

Yosuke's tune changed immediately. For most of the Aka Ikka's soldiers, the real boss was a mystery. It inspired a lot of conflict within the clan, but it also kept them in check. Rumors of the boss's ruthless, unforgiving attitude incinerated any uprisings against him, not to mention the confirmed stories of all departures from the family winding up as 'suicides.' Ren's influence was all too real for people who didn't know he existed. "This was the boss's?" Yosuke asked, referring to the body he so mistakenly buried.

"Nah. Was s'posed to be but…" Ryuji weighed down on the gas pedal as he swung the car around an SUV too slow for his taste. "Guess he's losing feeling in that right hand of his." Ren was the boss and him not killing was a non-issue from a business perspective. Getting his hands dirty was an unnecessary risk that he'd earned the right to ditch.

Did Ren's refusal of the gun in Leblanc change Ryuji's perception of his boss? It shouldn't have, but Ren shouldn't have refused, too. What changed his mind?

"You mean like nerve damage?"

"Sure—nerve damage."

"Why does he never, you know, show up? You're always saying, "Boss this, boss that," but I've never seen him."

"You're never gonna see him, either," Ryuji said, laughing at the idea of it. Ren wouldn't put up with half the people Ryuji had working for them. Sure, Ren approved them, but there was no way in hell he would willingly spend his day with people who buried bodies instead of melting them. "Think of it as a precautionary measure. We operate the family pretty loosely; it'd be too easy for someone to cram a mole in the 953 and take out the boss."

"They could do the same thing to you, though."

"I'd like to see them try. Boss has always been a little… slow to react, but I'm quicker than I look. Used to run a little in high school, actually."

"Were you any good?"

"I got a medal or two."

"Why'd you stop?"

Ryuji thought about running every day. Not that he enjoyed it anymore, but the last days of his running career were the most difficult of his life. Adult life arrived for Ryuji faster than his third year at Shujin Academy. Bills, work, and trying to find some relief from it all forced him into too many unexcused absences and near-expulsion from Shujin until Ren pulled a few strings.

Kobayakawa, Shujin's perfectly sane principal, always took to Ren a little too well. Ryuji figured that Ren got dirt on Kobayakawa through his connections early on in their time at Shujin and blackmailed the principal at every opportunity. Unfortunately, Ryuji's theory never became more than that; a theory.

"Why does anyone give up? They get a reality check. Bills caught me earlier than I expected, I had to get a job, and there went my energy to run."

"Depressing."

"Eh, I got over it. I wouldn't be here if I kept running." Ryuji hadn't physically run in years; he did it every day with his memories. Regrets filled every corner of his mind, but no one could ever know about them. No detective, no wife, and no friend from high school could get an admission of regret out of Ryuji. Instead, they received the idea of Ryuji Sakamoto: a man terrifyingly efficient at his job that also failed to take things seriously enough. Some of the teenager in Ryuji never died. "What 'bout you? How'd last week's graduation go?"

"I'm twenty. Not that young."

"Relax, kid. I know. Just messing around. But you got something like running? Something you left behind for this life?"

"Family business. I grew up in the countryside where the average afternoon was spent walking up the biggest hill in town, admiring a bad excuse for a view, then walking back down."

"If you're in this for the excitement, I'd get ou—"

"I'm not. I'm here for a lot more than that."

"If you're here for the money and the excitement, I'd—"

"Yeah, yeah, you'd get out." Ryuji let the disrespect go unchecked because he saw a moment to teach Yosuke. The kid was dumb, but he did ask a lot of questions, meaning that he was impressionable. Ryuji saw Hanamura's potential if nothing else. "If it's not about the money, what's it about?"

"Fighting fire with fire. Ya see, we're of the same cloth as the guys you see on the news pushing bullshit policies to get their bullshit votes and win their bullshit elections. Two key differences: we're not born into being bōryokudan, and we have severe anger management issues."

"The first one makes sense, but… Anger management?"

"You'll see it in action eventually. Hell, Ebi-chan's dealing with it right now. Some guy probably broke a chair over another for blinking too much... That reminds me of the last difference between us and politicians."

"Which is?"

"Everyone's an idiot, politicians just cover it better than us. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone. We have binding laws that say, 'Don't do this, don't do that,' so what do we decide to make a living off of? Doing a bit of this and doing a bit of that. " Yosuke didn't respond, making Ryuji realize he may have laid it on a bit heavily without answering the kid's question. "Uh… what was your original question?"

"What's our business about if it's not about the money?"

"Oh, yeah. You see, the idea of fighting fire with fire comes from how we do the same shit as the politicians. We break the law, cover it up, then move on to the next law. Crime families and politicians do that until their eyes dry out and their bones turn to dust, but most bōryokudan don't lie. Our hearts aren't cold enough for that yet."

"Come on. A few of us have to lie. It's a part of life."

"You're right."

"What happens to them? The liars, I mean."

"They either get the asphalt treatment or…" Ryuji saw nothing but the highway ahead of him. No cars, no lazy SUVs, no traffic—it was perfect. He took his eyes off the road and finally made eye contact with Yosuke so he could finally start teaching the kid. "They get good enough at lying that no one else knows they're lying, then they become the boss."

Ryuji lost all hope for Yosuke when they arrived at the location of the buried body. His voice started quiet, in a whisper of disbelief. "You were told to dispose of a body. Now, you're still new, so you're forgiven for burying the body and ruining my day, but you did not tell me that—"

"I didn't think—" Yosuke's attempted defense only poured gasoline on Ryuji's simmering anger.

"Zip. You've lost all speaking privileges," Ryuji said, turning off the car and grabbing the keys. As he reprimanded Yosuke, he got even louder as more and more of the absurdity came to him. "Sit tight and let me marvel at the fact that you tried to hide a body by burying it in a cemetery!"

At least Yosuke did as told. No protests in favor of speaking privileges occurred while Ryuji sat in the driver's seat, dumbstruck that anyone willing to be a criminal would think a cemetery to be a good spot to dispose of a fresh corpse.

"Shovel is in the back," Ryuji said as he got out of the car parked along the sidewalk next to the cemetery. Yosuke exited as well, heading straight for the trunk. Instead of making sure Yosuke knew a shovel from a spare tire, Ryuji walked up to the short fence that surrounded the cemetery. "You're gonna be graverobbing in broad! Fucking! Daylight!"

Yosuke exhaled all the frustration of being yelled at by Ryuji away as he joined his superior at the fence, shovel over his shoulder. "No one walks around out here. It's a shit hole." He had a point. Ryuji saw barely any pedestrians along the streets, nor any homeowners around the downtrodden shacks that the area showcased.

Tokyo's sprawl grew so big that its imagery demonstrated every aspect of life. If Ryuji had to guess, the area the cemetery called home was the subject of a push for expanded industry, only for the factory to close and workers to move away as the world entered the digital era, leaving only impoverished stragglers behind. Ryuji would've been sad if scenarios like that weren't the lifeblood of organized crime in Tokyo. People were fed up with being sold out by people more powerful than them; why not take some power for themselves?

Yosuke and Ryuji easily stepped over the fence. Ryuji followed his underling to the site of the fuck up, a very noticeable mound of brown dirt in a sea of green grass. "Your parents dropped you as a baby and I couldn't see the giant fucking bump on your head because I was busy keeping my eyes on the road. That right?"

Yosuke sighed and sighed at Ryuji's insults, not protesting because deep down, he knew Ryuji to be right. Ryuji knew it too, that's why he continued to berate Yosuke. He was teaching Yosuke important lessons, ones that he once had to learn. Granted, he never killed someone and then did them the polite courtesy of burying them in a cemetery, but he did have his lapses.

"Get to work. The plant closes at six, so I hope you committed to your stupidity and only buried him a few feet below."

"You're not gonna help?"

"Did you see two shovels in the car?" Ryuji took a few steps backward, leaning against a tree. "I'll take my sweet, sweatless break while you look like a graverobber that came from Sunday brunch. Matter of fact, I'll be the first to rat you out if someone comes over. Can't have anyone thinking I'm as dumb as you."

Yosuke kept his mouth shut and stuck the shovel in the mound instead. He got to work, shovelful of dirt by shovelful of dirt. The mound got lower and lower while the pile of dirt next to it grew larger, showing Yosuke's slow progress.

Apparently, dirt wasn't interesting enough to hold Yosuke's full attention. In between breaths, he attempted a conversation with Ryuji. "So who was this guy?"

Ryuji looked up from the shade of his tree, surprised that Yosuke possessed the balls to speak after how much of a hard time he'd gotten. "You care?"

"Kinda, yeah."

"That's another mistake. First thing you gotta do when working on something like this is dehumanize the enemy, not care about them. You can't see them as an equal, or else you can't do the job properly."

"But this guy had a life, too." The shovel hit a rock. Yosuke pulled back, then stabbed it back into the mound. "People he cared about, things he wanted to do, plans for th-"

"Stop with that shit," Ryuji interrupted, shaking his head. He stepped off the tree and walked over to the shrinking mound of dirt, standing directly in front of the still-digging Yosuke. "So what if he had his own thoughts? He's not in our family, he doesn't matter. In fact, he's a member of the family that's hated our guts since the start."

"I thought we were too low-key to have enemies."

"Nope. We keep a low enough profile to avoid all-out war, but the Second Kaneshiro's boss has a bit of a personal thing with our boss. I dunno too many details—that's why I can tell you about it—but this guy wouldn't be dead if their clan didn't try to fuck us in the ass at every opportunity. Now that some dumb cop killed Kubo, half the city's up for grabs. People gotta die, and it ain't gonna be us."

"Why doesn't the boss straighten things out?" Yosuke stopped shoveling, sticking the tool in the mound. He stretched his back by reaching around and pushing it with closed fists, then wiping the sweat from his brow. "Killing each other over personal beef or territory stuff… It's not worth it."

Ryuji asked the same question many times. He knew that Ren used… unconventional methods of doing business, but he knew very little about the actual process besides the fact that the names he sent to Ren usually ended up with unexpected demises.

Then again, Ryuji couldn't be known to question the boss. "The boss is the boss because he doesn't have to do anything. And don't forget that all of us are idiots, so killing each other over stupid shit?" Ryuji said as he grabbed the shovel and pushed it toward Yosuke. "That's just business. Keep digging."

For a second, Yosuke looked Ryuji in the eye. The short-lived stare meant more to Ryuji than it did to Yosuke, surely. Ryuji saw it as a challenge, as a denial of everything Ryuji tried to instill in his pupil that day. A stare became a threat in Ryuji's head and he was ready to do something about it.

He felt the shovel slip from his hand as Yosuke took it. Ryuji stood motionless as he blinked back to thinking straight. "Yeah, keep digging. Clock's ticking," he said, retreating to the shade of the tree. He didn't know why that stare threatened him so much, only that it changed what he thought of Yosuke.

The kid wasn't dumb—he was nothing more than a slacker. One of those kids in high school who would joke around with the teacher and then do none of the work; the kid who was less likely to do something if someone told him to do it. A rebel without a cause, and a particularly flawed one at that.

Ryuji needed to get stricter about recruitment.

The self-described "Asphalt King of Tokyo" was an insufferable person in every sense of the word. Ryuji tried his best to not hate any of his numerous coworkers and associates, but Nozomi Suemitsu's personality outpaced Ryuji's patience.

"Sakamoto! It's been too long!" Nozomi said with open arms. Behind him was the looming metal defacement of a Todo Iron Works asphalt plant. Ryuji saw the plant very little—as he said, there weren't many bodies—which he could not be more thankful for. It smelled like shit, goggle-less eyes started to burn after a few minutes, and Nozomi Suemitsu was there. That was more than enough for Ryuji to hate it.

Nozomi's wider frame always made the crisp white suit he wore around look a few sizes too small. His tie practically ran perpendicular to his gut and the bottom of the jacket failed to reach his matching white pants. A pink tie was the cherry on top for the worst-dressed person that Ryuji knew.

Ryuji met Nozomi with a smile, albeit a fake one. Understandably, he kept his difference from Nozomi. "Has it?"

"Of course it has!" Nozomi slapped Ryuji on the back as he pulled him into an unwilling hug. Ryuji cringed as Nozomi embraced him, holding on for far too long for comfort. As Nozomi pulled away, Ryuji stepped back as soon as humanly possible. "You never come out to the sticks for one of my sermons," Nozomi elaborated with his dreadful smile plastered.

Ryuji desperately wanted to tell Nozomi the truth. Unfortunately, that would forever tarnish their working relationship. The problem with Nozomi's "sermons," was that they were just a tad bit more than that.

Nozomi ran a cult. Now, Ryuji followed the principle of (selectively) see no evil, (selectively) hear no evil, so anything beyond the fact that Nozomi was a cultist Ryuji forgot. Hell, he tended to forget ever talking to Nozomi after visiting the asphalt plant. The man had very few things of substance to say.

Ryuji shrugged. "I'm a busy guy."

"I'm sure you'll make time for it one day." Also, Nozomi could be one passive-aggressive son of a bitch. "Long as I keep doing favors for ya, right?" Nozomi stared down Ryuji's still face with a smug smirk. The smirk itself didn't annoy Ryuji, no. It was the fact that Nozomi couldn't do shit to back it up. The man was a coward. And so, as always, Nozomi backed down from confrontation first. "Anyhow, let's get down to business. What've ya got for me?"

Ryuji pointed behind him at his parked car. Yosuke sat in the passenger seat because Ryuji didn't trust him to speak at all, only to watch. "We got a—"

"You're giving me him? Hey man, it's your money but live ones are extra." Nozomi paused, his smile flattened completely; his eyes unblinking with absolute seriousness. "I'm just kidding!" He burst out laughing, slapping Ryuji hard on the shoulder.

Ryuji looked into having Nozomi taken care of quite a few times. He had slipped Nozmi's name onto the list for Ren once or twice, but Ren resisted no matter what. Supposedly, Nozomi had a bunch of friends with unions as well as great appreciation from his subordinates at the asphalt plant. Nozomi was too essential to be within the reach of Ryuji's power.

"As I was about to say, we have one in the trunk," Ryuji said. Nozomi leaned his weight to look behind Ryuji, nodding as he tilted back to normal. "When's the next shipment to Hokama?" Hokama referred to the Hokama Corporation, a construction company that the Aka Ikka were on decent terms with. Decent referred to having to send a guy every year or so to straighten out who got what of the income.

Another mark against Nozomi: he never knew the necessary specifics of his job. "You'll have to ask them about that. They don't tell me shit."

Ryuji's foot twisted into the concrete below him. Contacting Hokama meant more driving—more dealing with people he preferred to keep out of his daily life.

"Fine. Send a few of your guys out to get it. We'll wire you by midnight."

"Same-old Sakamoto, hah! Why not see the place? We just washed all the goggles."

"Maybe next time I come back. How's that sound?"

For the third time that day, a stare challenged Ryuji. Nozomi's restrained anger bore down from his eyes. "Swell," he said with just barely enough energy to communicate his true feelings.

Yosuke peered into the phone booth Ryuji occupied. Annoyed, Ryuji shook his head and the kid took a step back. "Are you really using a pay phone? It's the twenty-first century, you know." The setting sun created an immense glare on the glass wall of the pay phone.

Ryuji rolled his eyes and didn't respond to Yosuke. If the kid couldn't guess why they'd driven even further out of the city to get to the payphone, he wasn't worth answering. After dropping a coin in, Ryuji pressed the cold metal buttons of the pay phone. He held the phone to his ear as it rang.

It only took three rings, three excruciatingly painful rings, for Ryuji's connection at the Hokama Corporation to pick up. "Speak," said Hidetoshi Odagiri. Like Nozomi, Ryuji did not care for Hidetoshi. Still, Nozomi and Hidetoshi weren't even close to comparable because Hidetoshi had the rare trait of being tolerable.

"When's the next pickup?"

"Hm…" Hidetoshi liked to think he was powerful. Much like Nozomi, he thought his yakuza connections put him above the average citizen on Tokyo's chopping block. In Ryuji's eyes, people like that were the lowest of low—desperate for power but too cowardly to take it for themselves, reliant on others to give them that fleeting feeling. "I dunno. Next week?"

"Make it tomorrow."

"The guys aren't gonna wa—"

"I couldn't care less. They work for you, not me. Make the next pickup tomorrow or—"

"Ya know, you never showed at my daughter's wedding. Where were you?" Ryuji skipped the few weddings he was invited to—except for Ren's—because the tedium drove him mad. For Hidetoshi, he skipped it as an insult. Unlike the other people who invited Ryuji to weddings, Hidetoshi wanted Ryuji there for appearances. He wanted all his friends to be impressed when a guy like Ryuji strolled into the hall. Hidetoshi wanted to show off his yakuza connection to the people he was desperate to feel superior to.

"I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm a busy guy. You got the gift I sent, right?"

"Which one was it?"

All the people who considered Ryuji obligated to be in their social lives received jack shit from Ryuji. When necessary, they received less than shit. For the wedding, Ryuji sent the couple a single firework because he couldn't think of anything worse that wasn't overtly offensive. "I sent the firework. Custom made from our store. Did your daughter set it off?"

Hidetoshi's demeanor shifted to wanting to end the conversation. "Er… I'll have to ask…"

"Good. You do that, and make sure they make the next pick up tomorrow." Ryuji slammed the phone down on the hook and got out of the booth as quickly as possible.

"Why'd you send him one firework?" Yosuke said, following behind Ryuji as they walked back to the car.

"His daughter was getting married. Wanted to give them a nice 'Fuck you' on their big day, guess they never got the joke."

"I'm surprised he invited you to a wedding. You didn't sound like you got along very well."

"Yeah, well, he's an asshole. He only wanted me there so he could have me shake hands, then whisper to everyone that I'm his bōryokudan friend."

"Okay, even I can recognize how lame that is."

"You'd be a lost cause if you couldn't. No clue how he managed to get a manager position."

"It seems like you deal exclusively with incompetent people."

Ryuji sighed, looking at the most incompetent person he'd spoken to that day. The only difference between Yosuke, Nozomi, and Hidetoshi was youth. Eager to ask questions, hopefully to learn, the potential for Yosuke to improve existed. Nozomi and Hidetoshi were stuck in their ways. They were outsiders looking inward to Tokyo's underworld believing that they made it go around. Every phone call or visit from Ryuji was a power trip.

As the duo started to get in the car, Ryuji stopped. Yosuke shut the door as Ryuji stood in the empty suburban street for just a moment. The orange sky bore down on the distant Tokyo skyline, hulking metal pillars and lights cutting faded clouds in half.

"That's the job."

Ryuji, finally done with the day's chores, got into the car.

"I still don't get it." Ryuji maneuvered the car around through the intersection, not paying much attention to Yosuke. Their drive back to the 953 remained quiet until that moment. "All that for a body? I mean, how does it even work?"

Ryuji thought the process to be self-explanatory. Yosuke had watched as Nozomi's crew carried the disguised corpse into the asphalt plant and listened as Ryuji told the construction company to make a pickup. Then again, Yosuke's idiocy—no, his plain ignorance to the reality of the business—was on display all day long for Ryuji. Maybe he did have to sound it out for the newcomer.

"The guys who took the body drop it in their vat of asphalt, or whatever it is. Body melts into the mix, Hokama Corporation sends a pickup truck for the mix the next day, then paves it into the street. No DNA evidence, no physical remains, nothing."

"That's… scary."

"Scary? It's smart."

"I mean, yeah, it's definitely a lot more reasonable than burying a body or trying to decompose it somewhere, but…" Yosuke looked out the window. "Are we the only family that does that?"

"Probably not. Boss picked up the trick from an old friend of ours, so the Second Kaneshiro is probably doing it, too. It's hard to tell for obvious reasons. Not like we're able to detect what parts of the street have some limbs baked into them."

Silence resumed in the car. Ryuji's rough pace of driving continued, making rapid lane changes to get around other cars. He considered himself a good driver—what the average Tokyo driver thought of his road antics couldn't matter less to him. During one of his dramatic lane changes, the car jolted right over a pothole.

"Hey, I think I knew that guy." Yosuke's slow turn of his head, disbelief and paranoia written across his face, is what got Ryuji. He didn't laugh at his joke, he laughed at Yosuke believing a joke to be the truth. "I'm fucking with you. Lighten up a little. I know I've been harsh on you, but you'll thank me for it."

Ryuji believed what he said with complete confidence. Yosuke was dumb, but he asked questions. There was promise. "Yeah, for sure…" Unfortunately, Yosuke didn't sound like he believed in himself.

"Look, uh, Yosuke…" Ryuji wanted to give the kid confidence, but he wanted to avoid gassing up an already delicate ego. Yosuke's ego deflated over the course of the day to a point where Ryuji considered it suboptimal. They wouldn't be able to find a use for him if he wallowed in self-pity. "You're from the countryside, right? How'd you get your start?"

"I ran scams with some of the guys in the current crew."

"With… Shit, what was his name? The skinny one with glasses."

"Shu Nakajima."

"That's it! Ebi-chan's been mentioning how much she likes Shu because he punches the numbers for her at the end of the day. Good kid."

"Yeah, I guess. He and I used to extract credit card info from gas stations with this computer thingy he made. Got a lot of money out of that."

"And you came to Tokyo to keep up the scams while getting some other action?"

"We stopped the gas station scams. Much harder when there's a well-funded police force."

"So you joined up with the Aka Ikka to make money doing shit along the lines of scams?"

"It was my only choice at the time. I couldn't go back to the countryside, and I knew I needed to prove myself here. I needed the best opportunity for myself."

"I respect that. Matter of fact, I respect you. You put up with me shitting on you all day long and I didn't hear you complain, or make an excuse, or ask to go back early," Ryuji said, turning the steering wheel as the car slowed. It slid into the round-about entrance area to the 953 and came to a stop so that Yosuke's door faced the 953's entrance. "So when the guys who spent the whole day playing pool and watching the girls dance give you shit, shut up and take it. You're on a more direct path to success than they are. Got that?"

"Yes, boss."

"And don't do the 'boss' shit with me. Ever."

"Sorry."

"Good. Now get the hell out of my car." Yosuke swung the door open and started climbing out. When he didn't close the door behind him, he leaned through the open door to talk to Ryuji.

"Aren't you coming in?"

"Me? I just spent all day driving your sorry ass around. I'm tired." Ryuji held his foot on the break as he put the car into drive, still looking at Yosuke. "You can tell Ebi-chan she can close early."

"Where're you gonna go?"

"I'm gonna go home, think about my day, spend some time with my lovely wife, then get some sleep. You'll get there one day, so long as you close my door and go into the club." Yosuke got the hint and slammed the door shut. As soon Ryuji heard the automatic lock click, he exhaled and rested on the headrest. Dazed eyes looked out the left window to the lit-up street. Seeing Shinjuku lights in the area's prime hours was either the best or worst part of Ryuji's day—a reminder of the regretful life he lived or a reward for all he put up with. "And then I'll do it all over again tomorrow..."

Ryuji took his foot off the brake and let the car accelerate.

"Looks like this is the one," Mamoru said.

He and Adachi approached the plain storefront, the surrounding sidewalk blocked off by police tape. They ducked under the tape and strolled through the front door. Immediately, the front counter of the store stood out to Adachi as the main evidence of the crime.

All over the shelves behind the counter was the store manager's dried blood. Adachi's weak stomach quivered at the sight, but he steeled himself enough to continue. Thankfully for him, the detective they were there to meet did them the courtesy of having the body taken before they arrived.

"Jesus… talk about overdoing it," Adachi muttered as he stopped in front of the counter to behold the wall of blood.

Mamoru, as proper and appropriate as anyone on the force, reminded Adachi to put a stick up his ass. "Not the time, Adachi-san."

Adachi liked Mamoru quite a bit. They never met until that day, but they got along well enough while working together. Mamoru kept to himself, generally staying silent while letting Adachi do most of the talking. It was fine for Adachi, as he always had plenty to say. Whether it was about recent cases he worked on, his confused opinions on Makoto Niijima, or what new officers caught his eye, Mamoru listened to Adachi's bored ramblings.

That being said, maybe Mamoru was a little too focused on the job. Adachi had a difficult time trying to break through Mamoru's exterior shield, if there even were any thoughts behind those fading brown eyes.

But Mamoru's silence hurt the quality of the day very little. They mostly just drove around, patrolling known bōryokudan hot spots with their windows down, listening to every person dumb enough to not notice them. As Adachi assumed, jackshit came to them.

Just the way he liked it.

The way Adachi saw it, the Aka Handan Ikka case was dead in the water. Even before the top brass shit it down the vine to poor little Niijima, most of Adachi's coworkers knew nothing would ever come from the case. Any hope of progressing with the Aka Ikka was a baseless prayer. The last attempt the department made at cracking the Aka Ikka open resulted in empty hands and a whole lot of wasted resources.

Hopefully, that would happen again. Adachi could drive around, talk about himself with whichever lucky team member accompanied him that day, and do little work of actual substance all while getting paid for it. Adachi equated the feeling of receiving Makoto's request for him to join the team to how the disciples must have felt after Jesus rose from the grave.

Adachi wasn't religious; that was just the only parallel he could imagine for his elation.

A voice came from behind Adachi and Mamoru. "Finally here, huh?" They turned around, staring into the center store aisle to see Detective Dojima strolling up to them. His usual gray collared shirt and strikingly red tie brought a smile to Adachi's face. In all his years on the force, Dojima wore the same thing every single day. The man was committed to looking the part. "Traffic better have been bad."

"Oh, it was super ba—"

"Not particularly. We were slow to leave the office," Mamoru interjected, oversharing to the point of damaging Adachi. "My apologies."

Dojima was a hard-ass, someone like Mamoru but differed by wanting everyone else to adhere to the same standards as him. He worked in the First Investigative Division of TMPD's Criminal Investigation Bureau. Long job title short, he worked on violent crimes.

"Eh. I needed more time to copy this." Dojima said as he held up a thumb drive in his hand. Without warning, he underhand tossed it to Adachi with an arc high enough for the bumbling cop to lose it in the light. A moment later, it hit him square in the forehead and dropped to the ground. "Still working on your hand-eye coordination?"

Adachi sighed as he bent over and picked up the thumb drive. "Security tapes, right?"

"Yep, and your man made things easy for you." Dojima pulled a file out from under his arm and opened it up. "I've got four eye-witnesses, one that can verify your guy is a member of that syndicate you're tracking, and the tape's got everything you want. He comes in, appeals to the manager, takes a phone call, leaves, then returns for a short conversation before pulling his gun out. If we can't get a judge to call that premeditated, then I'm Teddie the fucking Bear."

Dojima officially became Adachi's least favorite officer on the force and the idiot dumb enough to shoot someone on video became Adachi's least favorite member of the Aka Ikka. All the evidence meant that there was a case to build.

Adachi's laziness would have to wait. He could be good at his job when he wanted to be, sure, but he just wrapped up two whole months of very, very hard work. A paid break of six months was warranted for a job as stressful as law-enforcement, right?

Mamoru took the file from Dojima and tucked it into his jacket. "Thank you, Dojima-san. This is an important first step for us." Mamoru looked around the store, checking for undiscovered details. "Any luck on identifying the suspect yet?"

"Yeah, actually. Got one of my buds back at the precinct to pull a match on a 'Yusuke Kitagawa.'" Dojima laughed at how easy it was. "The fucker has blue hair!"

Adachi took his turn to be surprised. "You're shitting me. No disguise?"

"With how dumb this guy is, I have no clue how we don't have shit on the Ikka Aka Hooka Maka, or whatever they're called. They're not nearly as smart as the brass thinks they are, I guess." Dojima looked at the file under Mamoru's arm, then up to Adachi. "But that's not my problem anymore, huh? I'll do the murders, you go after the bōryokudan. Get to it, won't you?"

Mamoru rigidly nodded as he began to leave without Adachi. "Uh… th-thank you!" Adachi called to Dojima as he rushed to follow his partner on the way out. Dojima stood at the center of the crime scene, too enamored with the ease of it all to say goodbye to cops he deemed lesser than himself. At least, that was how Adachi saw it.

Once outside, Adachi caught up to his partner as they walked back to the car. "It can't have been that easy, right? There's just no way we got a break like that!"

"We'll have to judge that for ourselves when we watch the tape." Their short walk to their car— courtesy of Mamoru being the greatest parallel parker the world ever knew by squeezing into a spot Adachi didn't think would fit a motorcycle—was capped off by Adachi taking the file. Mamoru unlocked the car and they both got in. Immediately, Adachi put the thumb drive and the file in the glove box for safekeeping.

"Also, it may not be as easy as we think." Confused, Adachi looked at his partner while the car began to hum around them. "Prosecuting this guy is easy, getting anything out of him is the hard part. He's dumb enough to shoot someone and get blood on the camera, but it doesn't take a genius to keep his mouth shut."

"Well… Fuck."

"Fuck is right." Mamoru turned over his left shoulder to look behind him as he adjusted the car little by little, going back and forth to increase the car's turn angle. "You wanna bring him in? No need for a warrant with what we saw back there."

"Nah. Let's give it to… Satonaka and Amagi. They could use something to do other than knitting in their car, right?" Adachi laughed to sell the joke, but Mamoru stayed quiet.

"That's rather sexist of you, Adachi-san. Those are our coworkers; the people who we're suppos—"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm out of line. Just a joke, alright, man?" Adachi lightly elbowed Mamoru. "You need to lighten up a little bit."

"I'll think about it."

Adachi knew that Mamoru didn't give a shit about what he thought. He was so stuck in his do-gooder mud that any thought of "lightening up" was blasphemy. Adachi looked away from his partner and out the window. The storefront stared back at him as they drove past it, his dreams of having an easy few months of slacking off being crushed by some dumbass with a gun.