The man considered me a moment, crossing his arms and giving me the once over. “What’s your angle?”
“My what? I just told you!”
“If Harada really did kill one of our lieutenants, as you say, I dunno what I can do for you. I don’t make the decisions. The big man does. And, mistake or not, he’s not gonna take the death of one of his men lightly, no matter the reason.”
“That’s why I need to see him myself. I need to talk to him. Harada just wants revenge. He’s not thinking straight. But there are ways we can end this without a bloody war. Ya get me? We can’t afford this war. Not now.”
He sighed. “The boss ain’t here, but I’ll pass your message on. What he does with it is up to him. I promise nothing.”
“Fine. Whatever. Look, tell him to give me two days. That’s it. Just two days. I’ll handle this, okay?”
“Where’s the body?”
I took them back to my car and popped the boot. The two men behind him dragged the body bag out and unzipped it. They were greeted with the bullet hole in the lieutenant’s head.
“That moron,” he muttered, then gestured for the men to zip it back up.
“You got one day. Whatever it is you’re gonna do, better do it quick. I don’t think I’ll be able to hold the boss back any longer than that.”
I nodded. One day. Better than nothing. The man jerked his head again, and the underlings dragged the body inside the compound.
“And Tiger.”
“What?”
He turned to look at the body and then to me. “Toyotomi is gonna want repayment for this. Eye for an eye, you know? One lieutenant for another, regardless of what you do.”
“I know.”
He nodded and closed the gates behind him.
“Oh, and you really should look at getting your car cleaned. It stinks like a swamp.”
I knew that too.
28
The bay loomed large before me, the lights of the capital sparkling on the opposite side of the shore. One day. What could I do in a single day to stop a looming war? Harada wouldn’t listen to me, not anymore. He was beyond reasoning. He wanted this war, despite what he said. Personal feelings left to brood for too long had brought him to this point. His anger over the mother not signing over her apartment, and the death of several men involved; anger clouded his vision. A little gang war would clear that up nicely.
Only one option remained, and it was the option I liked the least. I had to challenge Harada myself. Stop him before things got too far, if they hadn’t already. There was no telling how Toyotomi would react to such a direct threat. His men had given me their word, sure, but one day wasn’t a lot of time. I had to act fast. I had to move now.
Picking up a rock from the shore, I clenched my fist tightly around it, letting its jagged edges cut into my flesh. Could I do it? Could I bring myself to kill my own father, if killing him meant saving the lives of countless others? It was the ultimate betrayal. Even if I did succeed, I would be outcast. Hunted down by the rest of the family until one of them finally found me. A man standing over my bed as I slept in my quaint little farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, where nobody knew my name and nobody knew my past. They would find me. That was what family did.
But family also made sacrifices. Harada’s lust for revenge would drag the family into oblivion with him. Their lives or his. His rage would rather see his entire family die before admitting defeat. The man picked me up off the streets when I was nothing more than a stupid kid. He saved me from joining one of the growing colour gangs and instead trained me, moulded me, into the man I’d become. The man contemplating murdering his own father. That was the man he trained me to be, was it not? Honour above all else. Harada had lost his honour.
If I were entirely honest with myself, I had seen it coming for a while now. Small things here and there. A random comment. A stray job. His assertions that nothing was wrong despite evidence to the contrary. Money became the new goal. Personal prestige. Desire to rise through the ranks. When Harada took me in, none of that mattered. What changed? Maybe all men changed as they grew older. Perhaps I would as well. Perhaps, if I survived, I’d look back on this and understand where he was coming from. My innocent view of the world shattered and the realisation settling in that Harada, my father, was doing the only thing he could to survive in this world.
Or maybe not. Maybe this was a long time coming and my gratitude towards him had long blinded me.
I tossed the rock into the water. Rather than skipping across its surface, the rock sank straight to the bottom. First, I had to get the boy. We needed to be ready to leave as soon as possible, just in case, with nothing more than the shirts on our backs. Kazumi could join us later; she would be okay for the immediate future. Nobody knew about us—we were always careful of that—and at times like this I was grateful for it. Once the deed was done, however, I would be priority number one for a large portion of angry gang members in Rakucho. No going back home. No going anywhere where people knew or recognised me. I had to get out of there immediately. As much as I didn’t want to take the boy back to HQ, what other choice did I have? He’d be okay in the car. He had to be.
I clenched the talisman in my pocket and a quick stab of guilt penetrated my heart. Was it wrong to hope that the mother’s spirit had already dealt with him? That by the time I reached HQ I’d find his office stinking of swamp water and him bloated and twisted on his own desk? That would solve a lot of problems. Nobody to lay the blame on. Toyotomi’s blood vengeance would be satisfied. As horrible as it sounded, the boy’s mother killing Harada would fix everything. Then everybody else who already knew about the boy would be dead, so he would also be safe.
No. Not everyone. Kame. He was still out there somewhere. As long as he was alive, the boy wouldn’t be safe. The one person who most deserved to be torn apart by a dark spectre, and yet he avoided her grasp.
Then it would be my turn.
I turned to go back to the car and my heart stopped. The stench of bog water seemed to wrap around me like tendrils, freezing my limbs in place. A face, green, pale, and wrinkled stood mere centimetres from my own, bloodshot eyes looking deep into mine. My lungs constricted and my throat tightened. A cold hand gripped my spine and it felt like something inside me snapped. I was already dead, I just didn’t know it yet.
No.
I tried to shake my head, but nothing happened.
Not now. Too soon.
I groaned. Did the sound escape my lips, or was that all in my head as well?
The boy. I had to save the boy. I had to stop Harada. No. Lives were on the line. Too soon.
The mother opened her mouth, her jaw unhinging and revealing more swamp water and mud packed into it. Dark clumps fell from her hair as her jaw dislodged further, opening so wide that I feared this was how it would end. She would swallow me whole and spit out nothing but a broken mess. Nobody would know how it happened, but they sure would pity the man who had to die like that. What a way to go, huh? That’s what you get when you mess with the yakuza. Hard to say he didn’t deserve it.
She screamed. The invisible forces holding my body in place let go and I fell back into the water, scrambling further in to get away from her. I wiped my eyes and searched the beach, but she was gone. I sat alone in the water as it softly lapped the edges of the shore. My heart pounded like a drum in my head and I coughed. A chunk of mud fell into the water and the taste of it permeated my mouth.
She let me go. No, she didn’t just let me go. She never planned to kill me in the first place. Not yet, anyway. She came to tell me something. A message, loud and clear, audible in her otherworldly scream before she vanished into thin air.
“Go.”
29
The mother’s scream echoed in my ears, sending another shot of adrenaline through me. She could have killed me, but she didn’t. I felt the icy-cold tendrils of her hand grip around my spine, prepared to twist and end my life, but she didn’t. There was something more i
mportant to her at that particular moment, and that could be only one thing.
Rai. The boy. And he was with Kazumi.
My heart pounded as I sped through the streets of Rakucho. “Go.” I slammed down harder on the accelerator, clipping a trash can as I turned the corner and sending its contents sprawling onto the street. I pulled into Serenity’s parking lot and jumped out of the car, leaving it open and running as I bounded up the stairs.
“Kazumi!” I flung the door open. The bar was empty. No customers. Nothing. A gentle jazz tune played over the speakers, but that was the only sign of life. Serenity opened at 8 p.m. The clock ticking on the wall said it was just after 9.
“Kazumi?”
I stepped over a fallen chair, a feeling of dread washing over me. It was quiet. Too quiet.
“Hello?”
I stopped. My heart stopped.
“No. No no no no no!”
Kazumi lay on the floor behind the bar, a pool of blood beneath her head. It wasn’t even dry yet. A single bullet to the forehead.
“Kazumi!” I grabbed her and pulled her close, her body soft and limp. “Kazumi! No no no!”
The bullet was in the exact same spot as the Toyotomi lieutenant. Sickness rose in my throat and anger clouded my vision. The Toyotomi. They did this. This was payback. They never intended to give me any time to sort this out. They didn’t care. They wanted war. It was the excuse he’d been looking for to finally wipe the Harada out and take our claim over the west of Rakucho. Harada believed Toyotomi was after his development project and would do anything to get it, not knowing that if he just waited it out a little longer, we’d be wiped out by other means anyway…
I rocked back and forth on the spot, holding Kazumi close to me. The only woman who ever meant anything to me, and despite the lengths we went to to keep things quiet, they knew. The Toyotomi had spies everywhere. Apparently their spies were even better than the Harada’s. They knew and when the opportunity presented itself, they struck like a cornered snake. Straight for the jugular. They must have been on the road the moment I pulled out of their parking lot. Kazumi’s body was still warm. The blood coating my hands was still warm. I must have missed their car leaving as I came in.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, holding her head close to my chest. All I ever wanted was to protect my family. Kazumi was a part of that family, perhaps even more so than my brothers, and I’d let all of them down. They were all dead now, or soon to be.
I sat up.
The boy.
Where was the boy?
“Rai?” I placed Kazumi back on the floor and stood up. No. Oh no. If they had the boy, then… I didn’t know what would be worse, finding his tiny little corpse with a bullet hole in it, or not finding anything at all. “Rai!”
I looked under chairs and tables, beneath the bar, out the back, but nothing. Other than Kazumi lying in a pool of her own blood, the bar was empty.
“Rai!”
Kicking the door to Kazumi’s office open, I burst inside. Empty. Pencils and paper lay strewn on the desk and floor, as well as a broken glass by the desk and some knocked over files from the back wall. They must have grabbed him while Kazumi was behind the bar. I punched the wall, pain exploding through my knuckles. They would pay. Every single one of them. I would hunt every last Toyotomi down until I found myself face-to-face with the man himself and I’d make him regret ever coming here. Some lines were not meant to be crossed, and now he’d crossed two of them.
Something crashed behind the wall and I jumped. “…Rai?” Stepping around Kazumi’s desk and the files on the floor, it suddenly hit me. I grabbed more files from the shelf and threw them to the floor. There. A single button behind the books. Pressing it opened a keypad. A sob escaped my throat before I could stop it. I entered the five digit code, and the bookcase dislodged. Kazumi’s safe. Pulling the bookcase forward revealed a tiny room, barely large enough to fit an adult man, and amongst Kazumi’s valuables and some of her most precious stock sat the boy, huddled in the corner with his head between his knees.
I knelt down and grabbed him before I could stop myself, pulling him close. The boy looked up at me and, realising who I was, flung his arms around me, burying his face. Even in her final moments, knowing that the end was near, Kazumi hid the boy in her secret safe so that whoever was coming wouldn’t find him. She must have been in here when it happened, and not knowing whether they were Toyotomi or Harada men, went for the safest option and hid the boy, regardless.
“Are you okay?” I asked. The boy nodded. No blood on him. No injuries. Just a scared boy who had already seen too much death in his short lifetime. “What happened here?”
The boy’s big eyes looked at me in fear. He made no attempt to talk.
“Were you drawing?”
He nodded.
“Was Aunt Kazumi with you?”
He nodded.
“What happened then?”
He turned his eyes to the door and then back to me again.
“Did you hear a noise?”
A single nod.
“A loud noise? Like crashing?”
Another nod, and then he opened his mouth. “And yelling.”
“Yelling? Okay, good. Crashing and yelling. Then what?”
“Aunt Kazumi said to hide. She said not to make a sound until Uncle Yotchan found me.”
Uncle Yotchan. It sounded so foreign. So… not me.
“You did well, Rai. You did well.” I stood up, holding him in my arms, and closed the bookshelf behind me. The Toyotomi didn’t know about the boy. If they did, they would have torn the wall itself out to get to him. They knew about Kazumi, and only Kazumi, and she hadn’t given anything away, not even at the end. This was personal, and they hoped by retaliating that I would escalate things even further, bring the war Harada wanted so much to the streets of Rakucho. Only one family would survive, and Toyotomi was willing to bet it would be his.
I held the boy’s face tight against my chest as we passed by Kazumi’s body. The remains of my heart shattered. This would be the last thing I ever saw of her. We’d never grow old together. I’d never again see her smile when I stepped into the bar. Never again hear the sweetness of her voice when she spoke to me, or the warmth of her touch as she held me. Her beauty lay marred on the floor, destroyed by a single bullet, and when I remembered Kazumi, it would forever be tainted by this one final image.
I would remember her smile. I would remember her eyes. I would remember the dimple on her left cheek when she laughed, and the way she always touched her neck when she was confused or stressed. But I would also remember the sight of her lying in a pool of her own blood, and the fact that we never got to say goodbye.
They took that from me. If they wanted a war, then who was I to keep them from it? I would oblige them. They called me the Tiger of Rakucho, did they not? A stupid nickname that I hated, a name even more embarrassing than “Harada’s Iron Fist.” Well, if that was what they wanted, that was what they would get.
They took everything from me. Kazumi’s death wouldn’t be in vain. War would come to them, whether they were ready or not.
30
The boy snored in the back seat of the car as I pulled into my driveway. While I had initially thought to bring him with me, the more I thought about it, the stupider I realised it was. I wouldn’t be able to take care of matters knowing he sat in the car, wondering whether anyone had seen him, or whether he might decide to get out and go for a walk. That was an instant death knell for both of us. I needed time, and Harada was no longer the only hit on my list.
“I’ll be back soon,” I whispered as I lay the boy on the couch. He didn’t wake up. I pulled the blanket over him, locked the door behind me, and got back in the car. The Toyotomi were out for blood. If they’d already struck at Kazumi to get at me, no doubt the rest of them would be at Harada HQ already. I turned the key and pulled out, hurtling towards Rakucho as fast as the car would take me.
My suspicions were right on the mon
ey. Cars surrounded the Harada HQ and screams escaped from inside the building. I stepped through the bent gate and over the bodies of two Harada guards. A man crashed through a first-floor window, landing in the garden. I jumped. He didn’t get up again.
“They started without me, huh?”
The body of a Toyotomi soldier blocked the door. I brushed him aside with my foot and stepped inside. More bodies littered the hall, and blood stained the walls.
A man’s scream drew me from my revelry and he charged me, sword in hand. I jumped back from his swing and as his momentum carried him forward, I gave him an extra shove. He collided with the wall, his nose crumpling with a horrific crunch before he hit the ground. He fell still.
A weapon. I needed a weapon. Everyone was armed but me. Taking my jacket off, I threw it on the board room table and made my way to the shrine room. Hoping against hope it would still be there, I smiled. I grabbed Harada’s prized sword from its case and let the weight settle in my hand. The oni-slaying sword, huh? If it were sharp enough to pierce oni flesh, then human flesh shouldn’t be a problem.
Another scream rippled as I stepped out. A Harada man came flying through the boardroom doors and collided with the table, smashing his back on the edge. A Toyotomi soldier jumped on him and pierced his throat with his sword. He looked up and saw me at the other end of the table. For a moment his eyes went wide, confused, and then his entire face lit up.
“Well, well. If it isn’t the Tiger. We thought you’d be a little slower getting here, but I guess we underestimated how much the woman meant to you. Kazumi, was it? She didn’t do much talking at the end. A pity. We did try.” He pushed the Harada man’s dead body aside and ran his finger along the blood coating his sword. “She did mean something to you, didn’t she? I sure would have hated to kill a woman as beautiful as that over nothing.”
He readied his sword as I stepped around the table. The world turned red. I was no longer in control of my body, and I watched in third person as the sword in my hands found its mark. It sliced through the man like butter, severing his head and upper torso from the rest of his body. The sword thrummed in my hands and as the remains of the Toyotomi soldier’s body hit the floor, a feral grin peeling my lips back. With this in hand, nothing could stop me.
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