when you wake up | sunki

sixteen.

The Nakagawa-kai's compound is big, a traditional Japanese style house with many many rooms joined by outdoor breezeways, and dotted with beautiful, clear ponds swimming with pristine white koi fish.

"The white koi are representative of good luck and good fortune," Riki explains to Sunoo as they enter the gates. "The compound has expanded in the three years since I left, but the koi have always been here."

Sunoo stays back as Riki bows deep and presents the TSUNAMI ringleader's revolver to his yakuza family's boss, a woman with platinum hair and a dark tattoo that snakes up from the collar of her jacket. She accepts the firearm, setting it on the table before her.

"Nishimura-san, welcome home."

They are shown to one of the rooms towards the back of the compound for Sunoo's temporary stay and Riki's permanent one. "This place really is beautiful," Sunoo remarks, as the younger boy shows him around the estate. "I didn't expect that."

"What, you expected guns and knives and blood everywhere?" Riki retorts playfully, and he laughs. "We might be yakuza, but before we are yakuza we are family. Unity above all is our motto, remember? Together we stand, divided we fall."

"That's oddly meaningful," Sunoo says. "I wish I had a family, but no one can have everything in this world."

"I don't think you'd be happy in the mafia world," Riki counters, thinking. "But you'll always have me, and I will always be here for you. That counts for something, right?"

"Yes," the older boy answers. "Yes it does."

─

The funeral service for Riki's family is beautiful. His parents' ashes are transferred to clean, white urns engraved with their names, and his sister's is transferred to a blue one, for children who've not yet turned eighteen. The urns are arranged neatly into the room that they call the memorial room, a shrine for all the family members they have lost over the years.

"The blue urns are reminders to us of what we must strive most to protect in this world," Riki explains to him. "White is for adults. We mourn their deaths too, but they at least have had a chance to live their lives."

"What do the black urns mean?" Sunoo questions. He's gathered that pointing to things is somewhat of a taboo in Japan, and he uses his hand to gesture towards a small row of ten or so black urns at the far end of the shrine.

"Those are for people who lived beyond eighty," Riki answers. "You'd be surprised that there are so few, but people die early in this profession, or they cut ties and leave before they get old. Most of them die, to be completely honest. That's just how it is."

They gather all the members in the courtyard when the evening falls.

"In remembrance of Nishimura Sen, Yamazaki Keiko, Nishimura Konon."

The boss that Riki had greeted when they first got here, a woman who'd been introduced as Nine, stands before the members of the family. Sunoo is taken aback by the sheer number of people present; there are almost two hundred in the courtyard, and another hundred scattered around the compound, looking down from windows and corridors, all dressed in respectful mourning colors. Riki tells him the compound barely houses one-fifth of their members; it's reserved for those who don't have a family or a home to stay in. The rest of them are scattered around Okayama, some even further.

Nine lifts the revolver into the air, letting the moonlight illuminate the insignia of the knife. "They have paid the price for our members' lives," she announces. "Blood for blood, fire for fire. Unity above all."

They lift three lanterns into the night sky, two big ones and one smaller one. A final send-off, a proper goodbye for the lost.

─

Sunoo returns to Korea after five days. Riki's new position in the Nakagawa-kai means he has work to do, and as kind as they were to extend their hospitality to Sunoo as Riki's partner, he knows he can't stay for too long. He has a life to return to in Seoul, just as the younger boy had a life to return to here.

"How long do you think it'll be before you come back?" Sunoo asks, standing in the doorway as he prepares to leave. "You won't leave me alone forever, will you?"

"Of course I won't," Riki says, getting up from where he's seated on the edge of the bed. He takes Sunoo by the hand, pulling him out into the courtyard.

"It's a full moon tonight," he says, looking up. "My mother liked to tell me this, and I'm telling it to you now. No matter how many miles separate us, as long as we keep the same moon in our hearts, we will never be far away from each other."

─

"In the case of Kim Sunoo against Kim Donghyun and Kim Sewon," Jay begins, setting down his papers. "I represent my client in requesting for full charges against the couple in question on these grounds; referral to the Child Welfare Act, Act No. 12361 amended on January 28th 2014..."

Jay looks back at Sunoo, and the younger boy smiles.

It is the last thing Sunoo requested for Jay to help him with, and Jay is more than happy to help with it.

─

"Hey, you punk, you promised to call yesterday and you didn't."

"Yes hyung, I'm sorry about that. I was otherwise occupied, really I was."

"I see how it is. You don't have time for your Sunoo-hyung after you've gone back to the Nakagawa-kai, huh? I hate you, go away."

"What! That's not how it is..."

"Ah, nevermind. I'm glad to hear your voice again, anyway, I miss you. I can't believe you've already left for two months now."

"It's been a long time since you went home, hyung. I miss you too."

"What are you doing now?"

"I'm in the courtyard, looking up at the moon."

There's a pause, and comfortable silence hangs before he continues.

"Hyung, I told you that as long as we held the same moon in our hearts, we would never be too far apart, do you remember? Can you see the moon from where you are?"

"You're tempting me, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am. Is it working?"

"Okay, fine. I'm going up to the rooftop."

Sunoo doesn't hang up the phone as he leaves the apartment. The route upstairs is familiar to him by now, after days and days of visiting, and he opens the door without much mind to it.

"Do you see now?"

The boy in the flannel with his Nintendo Switch in hand waits for him at the rooftop with a smile.

─

"It's you, it's you! The one who taught me

That the darkness will end

It's you, it's you! The one who made me realize

That if we can make even the darkness shine, then it'll become a night full of stars."

- Hikaru Nara