Chapter 02: Sumire - And So It Begins
In a way, I'd been fighting my entire life.
Whether literally or figuratively, that's something up to the people to intercept on their own. I'd never cared for the semantics, preferring to go with the flow and letting the currents decide which direction I should take, instead of planning it all out. This way, heading head first into the unknown, was more fun than the boring normalcy I kept seeing everywhere I looked. Sure, it may have caused some dissatisfaction in my life, mostly from the adults who kept expecting too much from me.
But by the time anyone dared to interfere, it was already too late — I was in it too deep to simply walk away. And even if I could've, I didn't want to.
I let out a yawn, eyes slightly watering due to lack of sleep, feeling the boredom threatening to overtake me as Yamaguchi-sensei's lecture was even more monotonous than usual. He had nothing new prepared for us—instead, he kept repeating the same things he said two weeks ago. I knew it was in preparation for the exams, but damn...he could, at the very least, make it more interesting. A glance around the class showed I wasn't the only one nearly asleep. One guy was discreetly playing games on his phone while another was blatantly sleeping, blissfully unaware of his two friends drawing something on his face.
A couple of girls were giggling at the sight of it. Someone was checking out the newest fashion magazine and gushing about models. Another talked about the latest drama episode they saw, discussing it with vigour. There was a faint smell of food coming from behind me, making me roll my eyes. I don't know if Yamaguchi-sensei was purposely ignoring the lot in the back of the class, opting to focus on those sitting at the front. Or if he was that deaf and blind to our antics.
My class was known for being difficult to deal with, even in our school. So maybe he'd simply given up...My mind was drifting off, with my patience running low.
It hadn't been the easiest month, not with how my younger brother was behaving and seemed to be hell-bent on pushing me away. I knew the signs Michi was showing, coming home with bruises and scattered ego - a picture I saw daily minus the scattered ego part, but a part of me was hoping it wasn't anything close to what I feared it to be. I'd tried to talk with him, only to be pushed away. His avoidance of telling me the truth had put me on a short fuse, in a constant state of irritation and barely holding it together. Our last conversation hadn't gone well. Far from it. It had been something that resembled that of a one-sided screaming match.
Our fight ended with me slapping Michi, and me watching him storm up to his room, unable to process the shock that I'd actually slapped him. Not even our parents had ever raised a hand on us, and I had always gotten along with Takemichi incredibly well for a pair of siblings. When we were younger, we used to be attached at the hip, until something changed - until I found my own friends. First came Mitsuya, then Draken and others.
I groaned at the memory, burying my face behind the open textbook, barely seeing any words or letters on the pages. Since that day, since the slap, I hadn't really run into Michi much. He was aware of my morning routine and made full use of it to avoid me, giving me glares or empty looks whenever we did bump into each other. It hurt, and I couldn't find the right time to apologise for the slap. I'd cried about the incident to Mitsuya, Draken, and even Mikey.
That same night, I'd gone over to Draken's where we ended up getting drunk after calling Mitsuya over. Mikey couldn't come due to something, I'm still not quite certain why, but he hadn't been happy to miss out on our drinking party. We'd gotten alcohol from the girls living in the brothel, where Draken was born into; they'd grinned and smirked before telling us not to do what they wouldn't do. It ended with me falling asleep while cuddling with a blushing Mitsuya after I planted a sloppy kiss on him, ranting about how lucky his sisters were to have him and how cute I found him to be. Draken, I remember, had passed out on his floor, arms and legs sprayed all over with his face covered in drawn gibberish.
It wasn't my first kiss with Mitsuya, but Draken's endless teasing made it feel like it was.
Mh? I blinked at the sudden shouts coming from the hallway, demanding to know who the hell they thought they were to storm in like that. Don't tell me… I thought with a slight dread, not in the mood to deal with the two idiots. I couldn't help but hope it was Chifuyu going nuts before my hopes were dashed by a very familiar voice speaking.
A voice, that I could recognise from anywhere, said something I couldn't hear before there was the sound of a rather loud crack and thud. I shook my head, rubbing the bridge of my nose, and muttered some colourful curses. It startled my desk-mate, who was giving me wary looks before he glanced at the doors.
By now, I wasn't the only one who'd noticed the commotion outside our classroom, in fact, it seemed to be coming closer and closer. Even Yamaguchi-sensei paused in his lecture, barely glancing up from the book he'd been reading before his eyes bulged out when the door was pulled open.
An unfazed Draken stood in the doorway, one hand leaning on the doorframe as he easily towered over everyone, calmly glancing around the classroom before his dark eyes rested on me. The groans of the defeated idiots were now louder with the door open, startling my classmates enough to pull them out of a lulled boredom.
"Oi, Mikey!" Draken glanced over his shoulder. "I found Sumire." He pointed a lazy thumb in my direction, blatantly ignoring Yamaguchi-sensei's stuttering. Draken's blond hair was pulled into its usual neat ponytail, and a lone strand hung in front of his face, showing off the signature dragon tattoo on his left temple. Just like always, he was wearing his favourite black-and-white patterned cardigan.
"Umi-chan !" Mikey popped into the doorway, nudging Draken out of the way and joyfully waving at me. "Let's go out and play!"
I grabbed my eraser and threw it at him. "Don't go calling me that in public, dumbass!" My eraser hit Mikey's forehead, making Draken chuckle and Mikey pout.
"...No need to go around throwin' erasers at me, Umi-chan!" he whined, staring at the eraser I'd thrown at him with a twitching eyebrow. My forehead hit my desk with a rather loud thud, startling my seat neighbour. Why did I even bother?
"Maybe she wouldn't need to," Draken said, sounding amused. "If you didn't call her that."
"I call my friends whatever I want," Mikey protested, whining.
I looked up, finding them casually walking over to my desk. I was seated in the middle of the back rows, in a perfect spot to chill and not be discovered by our teacher if I wasn't paying any attention. It was a bit funny to see my classmates pulling their desks out of their path, watching the duo in stunned shock. This wasn't the first time both Draken and Mikey showed up at my school, but it sure did feel like it.
"Hanagaki-san!"
"Why are Toman's Top Two here?"
"...I thought it was weird that Hanagaki's good at fighting..."
"Remember the incident with that gang who invaded our school?"
"I heard about it, but Toman?"
"She's friendly with both Matsuno and Satou from first-year, the ones who got suspended after that incident."
"Hanging out with delinquents, scary."
I slammed my hands on my desk, effectively startling the idiots. Even Draken and Mikey seemed surprised. My eyebrow was twitching, and I threw a nasty glare at the dumbasses. They flinched, instantly feigning ignorance. I knew what people thought about me, and what they said behind my back. I was aware of it more than the guys, which I called my best friends, were.
There was a reason why I barely had any female friends. I was unable to stand the need for gossip and constantly competing with each other. The constant need to look prettier than your neighbour, or a desk-mate. Or a girl in a cram school. Or the need to get the most popular guy to be your boyfriend. I'd tried fitting in once, mostly to please my mother, and instantly regretted it. I stayed out of their way ever since.
It didn't stop the rumours from saying how I must be sleeping with the guys in the gang. Sometimes, it was Draken whom I got paired up with. One time, when Pah took me to school as a favour for Mitsuya, rumours instantly sparked up. It happened so often that I'd become immune— however, Chifuyu wasn't.
I once had to bail him out of trouble for being so protective of me, coming up with an enormous bat-shit lie that he'd defended my honour and whatnot. Ryusei had to hold himself back from laughing: his shoulders kept twitching and weird coughs kept escaping from his lips as he stood there with an annoyed Chifuyu. In the end, he got off with a warning.
Baji told me, later, how Chifuyu had complained to him about how I wasn't doing anything to put a stop to such disgusting rumours and how he'd whacked the dumbass for this. I responded that I knew what I got myself into the day I joined Toman, the day I met them and decided to stick around. The rumours were of little to no importance to me. I cared more for the safety of my friends.
"Come on, Umi-chan…" I was pulled back into the present by Mikey tugging on my sleeve, his dark eyes flashing. Behind him, Draken no longer looked amused. Instead, there was a scowl on his face.
"We got some intel about that Fight Club you mentioned," Draken said, eyes glancing around the classroom, almost as though he dared them to say anything.
A few days ago, I'd caught some of my classmates talking about Tokyo Manji's Fight Club, making me instantly interested since I knew we didn't accept such a lame shit. Especially not when they bet money on the winner and the participation wasn't voluntary. It made me think of the stuff I knew the Yakuza were doing, hidden from the eyes of the law.
I notified the Captains during the last meeting, asking them to do some research in their divisions. Mucho instantly denied any involvement with it, saying how his guys knew better than that. Mitsuya and the Kawata twins agreed, and Baji grumbled how the idiots in his division weren't that idiotic.
Pah-chin and Peh-yan hadn't been happy that their division was under suspicion right now but agreed to check on the matter. In the end, I told them all to do a discreet check on their guys, no matter what their gut feeling told them. It was my job as an assistant leader to ensure everything was running smoothly and if I discovered some little shits were going around and ruining our name, I was to turn them over to Mucho's division. Or beat them up, depending on my mood and the gravity of their offence.
"Finally," I grinned, devilishly licking my lips. "You should've led with that," I said, gathering my stuff, and pushing back my chair with a loud screech. I took in a secret pleasure upon seeing Yamaguchi-sensei grimace at the sound.
"I was going to, but Mikey went ahead and called you Umi-chan," Draken said, shaking his head while wearing a small smile. I flipped him off and looked around my desk to see if I missed anything before I threw my bag around my shoulder.
"Shut up, Kenchin!"
"Don't call me Kenchin!"
"You're both idiots," I grumbled, walking towards my shoe locker and grabbing the outdoor pair. I was blatantly ignoring my classmates, and teacher, in favour of getting the hell out of here. As a response, I got shoved by both of them, making me nearly lose my balance.
"W-wait, Hanagaki-san!" Yamaguchi-sensei blurted out, attempting to find his voice and stop us from leaving. We briefly paused at the second doorway; I glanced at him while Draken and Mikey were arguing which one was stupider. "Where do you think you're going?!"
"Didn't you hear us? We're going out to play with some idiots ," I faked a smile and winked at some girls, who had been gawking at Mikey.
...卍...
The afternoon air felt nice on my face, a good change from the suffocating air back in the classroom. My arms were clutched around Mikey's waist, legs pulled over one side of his bicycle. The boys hadn't taken their motorbikes; Draken said something about how the sounds were too much of a giveaway, wanting our presence to be a surprise. Mikey complained how his Babu would've gotten us there faster, earning a smack from me.
It caused Mikey to nearly crash and Draken to heartily laugh.
My worries seemed to fade whenever I hung out with the guys. They were dear to me. I did see Draken glancing at me, a questioning look on his face, knowing the awkwardness I had with Mitsuya. And the cause of it. The three of us - Mitsuya, Draken, and I - had known each other long enough, much longer than I knew Mikey and the rest.
In a way, I considered Draken my brother and I knew he thought the same. But having to explain who Mitsuya was to me…now that was hard. The easiest answer would be he's my best friend, while a bit more complicated one would delve into the various feelings I felt for him. Pah-chin had described us, to a curious Kazutora, as a couple that wasn't officially dating. It had earned him some aggressive blushing and a bag thrown at him.
"So, what did you two find out about that fight club?" I asked, wanting to get down to the matter at hand and clear my mind.
"Ah, that," Draken said, calmly leaning on the bike's handles. "It seems that 3rd Division's Kiyomasa and his underlings are running it."
I craned my neck to stare at him. "Damn, Pah-chin and Peh-yan aren't gonna like it."
"That's why we're the ones going," he said, looking annoyed.
"Who the hell do they think they are to sully Toman's name like that?" Mikey grumbled, and I could almost feel irritation rolling off of his shoulders.
I dared to pat his shoulder, before clutching his waist again. "A pair of idiots, using our name to make themselves bigger than they are."
Draken laughed. "Sounds like you're hinting at something more there, Sumire~."
I snorted, "Not hinting, I'm saying it."
"Damn girl," Draken kept laughing, shaking his head in amusement. I didn't see Mikey's face, but I felt a rumble from his body. He was laughing as well. My eyes stayed on his blond hair, watching the way the wind kept playing with it.
There was something about Mikey that kept pulling me to him, commanding me to follow and seek his approval. It was a devotion that I knew might just lead me to my doom, but I didn't fight against it. I'd promised my life to Toman – to stay by his side until he said otherwise. However, my hand was promised to someone else.
What Mikey had was my loyalty, blind faith and understanding, while my heart and soul belonged to another.
...卍...
The sight of my younger brother being brutally beaten up by fucking Kiyomasa was not what I expected to find in Tokyo Manji's Fighting Club. I frowned as I stared down at the crowd gathered to watch the fight. Well, at least, I finally had my answer as to why Michi had been in a bad mood and why he refused to tell me anything. My brother had no idea about my affiliation with the gangs; I'd done everything to keep things that way and straight out forbade Toman members to be anywhere near my house (I only allowed Mikey and the founding members when Michi wasn't at home).
I didn't even give people my last name when I introduced myself — it being my way of keeping my family out of gang problems, to keep them safe. I wasn't naive when it came to this part of the delinquency world. Hell, I knew what would happen if we messed with the wrong sort. I'd been told and shown by the two guys who agreed to train me not to fight but to survive. But somehow, it wasn't enough to keep me away from the guys I considered my family. In fact, it made me less willing to part from them.
That's why it hit me hard to discover that my brother ended up being dragged into my world. Of course, I'd known he was pretending to be a delinquent. I knew about him and the Mizo Five, as they called themselves: Akkun, Makoto, Yamagishi, Takuya and Michi. But I also hadn't expected them to be serious enough to have to warn. In fact, I'd hoped that Yamagishi would've had the intel not to get involved with a fuck-head such as Kiyomasa and his gang.
"The bastard's dead," I muttered. It came out more as a growl than any coherent words, gaining questioning looks from both Draken and Mikey, which I ignored.
As much as they'd heard me talk about my brother, and sometimes his friends, they'd never seen his pictures nor knew his full name: to them, he was just Michi. Only Mitsuya was aware of how he looked since he'd been over enough times that dad no longer stared at him with a twitching eyebrow, muttering how his daughter was being stolen by a delinquent. He'd also been shown my baby albums by my gushing mother, much to my displeasure.
However, the interactions between Mitsuya and Michi were little to none. They both knew of each other, but that was about it. Just as I knew Michi had a girlfriend and what she looked like – it didn't mean I knew her name or anything else.
"Mh? Who?"
"The kid getting beaten up?"
"Fuckin' Kiyomasa," I hissed, and something in my tone caused Draken to stop me from going down there to take the bastard down. His hand caught my wrist, preventing me from doing whatever it was he thought I would.
"Not worth the trouble that comes with what's in your mind, Sumire," Draken warned, shoving me towards Mikey, who used it as a chance to find the sweets in my bag. He steadied me with one hand, while the other happily snatched the last bag of dorayaki I'd kept for later. I was too pissed at Kiyomasa to direct any anger at Mikey's typical behaviour. "Toman needs you around more than they need you rotting in jail."
I snorted. "I wasn't going to kill him."
Draken didn't buy my lie.
Okay, so maybe, I was.
Our conversation was cut short by Kiyomasa shouting for someone to hand him his bat, gleefully saying how he'd kill my cousin. His demand caused the audience to fall back in shock, whispering about how this was supposed to be a one-on-one fight without weapons. As I glanced at Michi's friends, I saw fear reflecting on their faces. I pulled out my Toman jacket from my bag, exchanging it for my school jacket.
"Oi, Kiyomasa!" Draken suddenly called out, making his path over to the ringleader. Mikey pulled me with him as he followed our friend.
"You're losing the audience. Calm the hell down, you're the organiser."