Blackened moonflower and flourishing sunflower

Fifty-two. Ryuunosuke

I couldn't believe what he'd told me...

Atsushi had made a promise to Mirai all those years back, everything he did made so much sense now. All the times he'd sacrifice himself for me, the concern and care. It was all for a stupid promise he'd made.

Was that why he cared for me so much? Because he'd made a promise to a dying person. It wasn't because he felt the same as I did, he was just doing it out of loyalty. Out of regret.

So everything he'd written in that book... Was that a lie as well?

Was any of the care he'd shown me and Gin real?

I'd been so worried about him for all these years, felt all this guilt for abandoning someone who I presumed had cared about me for so long. Yet it was all fake!

So was his attempted suicide all just an excuse so he could get out of the debt he'd given himself. So he wouldn't be stuck dealing with us.

Does Gin know about this? No, she would have told me if she knew...

But she was closer with Atsushi than she was me, those two acted more like blood siblings than Gin ever did with me. I mean she held a blade to my throat, that's not exactly sisterly love.

The debt I'd initially given to Atsushi wasn't one that consisted of helping me and Gin, I had always referred to him living life as much as he could, seeing as Mirai had given his life for Atsushi.

But he had been willing to throw his life away because things tired him. Well, I was tired as well! I was tired of being forgotten, tired of being used as a thing that could be passed between people. But had I given up? No!

I felt anger begin to build up inside me, but a voice in the back of my mind began to calm me.

'Calm down Ryu, getting angry won't solve anything.'

Yosano's voice...

She'd always been so kind to me, ever since I joined. She'd spent countless hours helping me overcome my lung illness when I'd first transferred to the Agency. She had treated me as a younger brother of sorts, she'd been more of a sister to me than my own blood sister had been.

I took a deep breath to calm myself, Atsushi looked at me in confusion for a second but ignored me once I'd regained my calm composure. I couldn't jump to conclusions, after all there was pages upon pages of notes within that book stating he cared for me. Stating Gin had been helping him try to locate me.

I can always question him on the real motive behind his actions. There was always time, always time to find out more.

"So does that mean the only reason you stuck around us was because of your promise to Mirai?" Atsushi seemed to stall in his words for a period of time before he finally spoke.

"Yes," I knew it, I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. "But that was the beginning." That caused me to freeze in my thoughts, the beginning?

"I initially saw it as a debt to Mirai, he was your family. I didn't want to be a replacement for him so I saw myself as a stand-in instead. I was just a body who was carrying out Mirai's final wish. But overtime I began to realise you were more than just a task I'd put on my shoulders." I felt my hopes begin to rise once more as he continued his words.

"I began to see you both as a family in a way, Gin was my older sister. But I could never place my feelings with you at the time, I knew I cared for you but not in a brotherly way. It wasn't until we were on that rooftop, in fact it wasn't until we'd started to fall that I realised what I felt." What he felt... I so wanted him to continue his words but he seemed to jump topics and move back to our initial conversation.

"Anyways, the second reason I found to live was Kyouka." That surprised me, why would the little brat be of so much worth to him? Although she did sound nice from the few things I'd heard from Kenji.

"I bet you're wondering why. Well on the morning of that day I had intended to kill myself that very evening, I wasn't sure how I was going to as my ability kinda heals all my injuries but I was adamant of doing it that day. However, I had to investigate something related to Misao that day. So I had travelled all the way to the countryside to locate one of her siblings." This took me aback, when we'd investigated her file all those years back all her other siblings had died. Her brother had been her only living family member until his unfortunate passing.

"It turned out that one of Tsumugi's older sisters along with their mother had survived the car crash but they had been removed from the documents. They had fled to the countryside to live a peaceful life, well as peaceful as an assassin's life can be." I nodded in agreement, being an assassin never led to a peaceful life in the end. There was always someone wanting revenge on you killing someone, even if they had been an absolute scum of a person.

"She ended up having a daughter, that girl was Kyouka." That was not where I thought this was going. I wonder what the poor girl would think if they ever told her.

"When I arrived Kyouka's father had been murdered, her mother however was still alive. She asked me if I could care for Kyouka, to give her a normal life in the light." Atsushi laughed at his words.

"It's funny how I end up making promises with people who are at death's door." It was a sad but true fact.

"Anyways, I brought Kyouka back that day. I ran into Chuuya when I got back and he agreed to babysit her for a couple hours while I cleaned up some issues back at headquarters. When I finally got back I'd learned that Kyouka's ability had been activated somehow," I'm sorry, WHAT!?

"That girl has a special ability!?" I exclaimed in horror, we didn't have that information back at the Agency.

"Yes, we've kept it under wraps. Even she's unaware of it." That didn't make me less nervous about a fourteen year old girl wandering around with an untrained ability. What if she accidentally used it on Kenji? I wasn't aware of what her ability was exactly but by the sounds of it, it wasn't one to be trifled with.

"As I was saying, Kyouka was under my protection. After a conversation with Chuuya he agreed to help me in raising her, after all I was a sixteen year old kid. I could barely take care of myself, never mind a child as well. Which leads us to today where me and Chuuya are the proud older brothers of Kyouka Izumi." He seemed so proud of himself, I was glad she had been able to save him that day when I wasn't able to.

"Can I meet her?" I questioned, it may have seemed a bit odd for me to want to see a child that I had no relation to. But I owed her, I owed her a lot more than she probably knew.

"I would love for you to meet her, I'm sure she'd be plenty happy to meet you." He gave a soft smile, one I hadn't seen in such a long time. I felt face begin to flush slightly at just the sight of it, I quickly turned my face away before he could see.

"So what do we do about us?" I began to question as I continued to face away from him, I never really knew where I stood with Atsushi. For a long time he saw me as an older brother, nothing more, nothing less. But after reading that book I still wasn't a hundred percent sure where I stood but I knew that there was a chance. And that was all I could ask for after all these years apart.

A chance to start again, a chance to do things right.