A/N: This chapter is a rewrite of The Day I Picked Up Dazai in Dazai's POV
Dazai POV
The underground bunker had long, intricate tunnels that made me feel as if I understood, at least in part, how demigods back at Camp Half-Blood must have felt when traipsing through Deaduls's labyrinth. The tunnels were darker in this part, as if they were more concerned about those that they kept here escaping. Though it almost stung to have my capabilities questioned and completely disregarded in such a way, I didn't hold the assumption against the lot. Any other sixteen year old would have deserved the classification, or at least the ones that hadn't been trained as I have.
Fingers tracing the cool stone, Oda and I walked quietly through the bunker as darkly colored bugs scurried across our hands when we couldn't see.
"Even if we can get out of here," I started, walking lightly behind the postman as we made our way through the halls, my voice low, "that doesn't mean that they will give up on getting this painting of yours just like that," I informed the other, telling him things that I was sure that he already knew, but was curious to hear his answer anyways. It was always an interesting one, never normal in the least. "You'll need to implement some kind of safety measures, unless you're going to be moving every week."
I already had an idea of what he could do, of what I wanted him to do, but I wasn't going to say it just yet. It was a strange thing to want something again after such a long time not allowing myself to do so. I just hoped that I wouldn't lose it, and that the other would choose it.
Oda only continues to walk, his steps not faltering once and his breathing even as ever, as if I hadn't told the older man that his past was sure to continue to hunt him. I knew the feeling of your past chasing you, running fast at your heels, the only difference between the pair of us was that I had run right for it with a knife.
"There is no need to move," Oda decided as we walked. "I've been attacked more than a few times for the things that I have done in the past. I've always managed to get out of it one way or another. This will be the same," the older man explained, his voice as calm as ever. "I will live until I die."
My eyes rolled in the darkness, not that the other could see. "That is such a wise way to go about life," I sighed, my voice laden with enough sarcasm to level a small town.
I may not want to live, but even I knew that the other man's philosophy wasn't the healthiest one to have. It was like someone aiming a gun at your back and all that you do to shake them off is walk very slowly away. You were bound to be hit eventually. And it would be a hit that he wouldn't survive.
In that moment I knew that I didn't want to see the other man in a casket.
I didn't want to see the day that he became little more than a fond memory.
Well, fuck.
There had been a pain steadily growing in my chest since waking, something slow that I could pretend it wasn't there at all at first, letting my mental walls rise to a level that pain was little more than a memory. But memories become very vivid things when your breathing grows shallow and labored. They become all the more real when your body begins to tremble, growing colder and colder as I slowly collapse against the wall.
The postman kept walking, not having noticed that I had stopped, but I don't call out to him. I would just slow him down if I did. His chances of making it out of here dropped exponentially with him having to drag me along at his side. But that idea didn't seem built to last.
There's a hand pressing warmly on my side as Oda crouched down next to me, taking some of my weight with his own. "What happened?" the postman asks and I almost want to cry at the concern in the other's voice, something raw that hasn't been directed at me in years.
Shit, I almost forgot how much drugs fucking suck.
"When I was kidnapped... while I was out... they probably have... something." I want to curse at how hard it is to speak, to breathe.
When I had imagined death, it had never been this slow or this painful. I wanted to kill the 48 bastards for finding one of the few drugs that I didn't have some kind of immunity to, and wanted to kill myself for the brief flash of pitty anger that flashed through me at the fact that Mori handn't used this one beofre. For the fact that a large part of me wished that he had so I wouldn't be in this position.
But any mixed emotions that I felt were completely disregarded when Oda grabs the back of my neck with a swift grace and pulls me quickly towards him. A bullet wheezed through the space that I'd been in only a moment before, tearing through the air with a lethal accuracy that would have had my body splayed messily on the ground had I not been moved first. The bullet sank into the wall behind the postman and I with a deep sound that I felt almost in my bones.
Oda drags me out of the corridor and hides us behind a storm pillar before the shooter can pop off another shot. I knew how bad of a position I was putting the other man in by being her, how much of vulnerability. This would have been hard enough to pull off for Oda without him having to drag around a teenager that couldn't move.
"I seem to have underestimated you a little bit." The words are as familiar to me as breathing, but for the first time they are not being directed at me at all.
Through my hazing visions, I can see that there is a former cop with graying hair standing not nearly far enough away from the pair of us, a double-action revolver neatly splayed in his steady hand. Five bullets, it was the standard police pistol used.
Oda is unarmed.
The thought strikes more panic within me then I rightly thought that it should be allowed to.
"We gave your little bandaged friend there some percutaneous poison when he passed out. Pretty soon the brat's limbs will become so numb he won't even be able to search his own head for a good while."
The former cop fiddles with the gun in his hand in the same manner that I might a knife, something deadly that I knew the sting of enough to not care if someone else felt it too. The man ordered Oda to come to him, or else he'd kill him while the postman tried to protect me. The former cop didn't seem to know how much of a tall order that would be.
Oda says something about the other wanting money as he shifts his position to better block me from the eldest man's view. It was an action that startlingly reminded me of what I had dome with Nico at Mrs. Castellan's home. I chose to ignore any of the implications there.
"...There is no way a mere liaison at the bottom of the organization should give up his life for the money, right?" The dog asked, sounding so overly sure of himself in the way that all cops did that it made me feel almost sick. And maybe it would've if the words that the man had spoken hadn't been so spectacularly wrong.
As if on cue, twelve men dressed in various uniforms appeared one after the other, automatic guns, shotguns, and rifles in each of their hands. It was a vast difference in strength.
Too bad it still wouldn't be enough.
The cop in the lead monologues about how poorly paid they all were while operating inside of the law until I was almost willing to fall asleep. "We will take what we deserve with our own hands," the man said as if he wasn't acting just the same as me and all of the other people that they were supposed to hate, not emulate. "That is why the 'painting' that you know of is like a little blessing to those that maintain Japan's order. Isn't that an honor?"
I was less than impressed by the cop's speech, and if the small twist of dislike in Oda's lips was any ring to go by, he wasn't either. Something told me that it took a lot for the postman to actually become displeased enough with another for him to truly dislike them, and yet in the span of a minute and a half, the dog had managed it. Truly spectacular.
"Well, we'll..." I sigh boredly, not meeting the Postman's eyes when he looks back at me with barely concealed concern. "It is such a pain to have to listen to such small dogs blabbing their mouths when someone should have muzzled them a long time ago." I glanced at the postman before speaking once more. "I'd like to get out of here now. They're boring and I'm thirsty."
"You don't seem to understand the situation here," I could hear the cop in charge growl as all of the guns in the room snapped to me. Each safety was off and any shot would mean death. I knew that much. And yet, adrenaline was seeping into my veins like liquid fire. "Oda Sakunosuke, if you don't want the boy to die, then surrender obediently. We will need to have a long talk with you."
It was a talk that everyone in the room knew that the red head wouldn't survive. I want to say as much but before I can, the postman is already looking at me and opening his mouth.
"If I surrender, will you let Dazai go?" He foolishly asks.
There's a beat of silence as the cop seems to be considering the idea, but I knew that it was only an act.
"Okay," the man seems to decide. "The boy has no value to any of us to begin with. All we ever needed was you from the start."
It was a lie, I knew it was. They had no intention of letting either of us leave alive. They never did. Not one of the men present gave a damn about how old their victims were. From the way that Oda reaches to scratch behind his ear, a small signal telling me to let the man with a foresight ability handle the situation, he did understood all of this too.
"Got it. I surrender."
My teeth grind together as one of the former cops step forward and cuff the postman. The other man was being stupid believing them, but there wasn't really much else that he could do at the moment without a weapon of any sort.
"Tie him up properly this time. We didn't want him escaping again, now do we?"
Oda looked at me as the cop spoke, his face as calm as it had been since the day that I met the other. I couldn't say the same for myself. I could feel my face contorting into something deeply upset, though it only really showed as a mild discontent.
Oda didn't say anything, so I didn't either.
The former cop steps forwards and grabs the chain attached to Oda's cuffs, pulling it and the man himself towards him and away from me. A part of me wants to reach out to Oda like a small child, but I know that it's for the best that I don't. "Finish off that bandaged brat," the cop growls.
Some of the men turn their weapons onto me, while other remain pointed at Oda.
"You promised different," Oda says, and in his voice I can hear the anger there like it's something physical. It almost hurts to hear it, to have someone be angered on my behalf instead of with me.
"Promise?" The other man asked, his voice twinging with something of a self righteous note that I want to cut out of the cop's vocal cords. "Oh, yes I suppose I did. But tell me, have you never broken a law in your life either?"
The postman had a look on his face as if he was watching a movie flash behind his eyes, one that he didn't particularly like or ever wanted to remember. "I see," he says slowly.
"This is not the time to be convinced," I tell the older man flatly, though I knew that he wouldn't be.
"I know," the postman says. Reflow flushes through my body like something palpable. "Dazai, I am just like you. I am thirsty too. Let's get out of here quickly."
The former cop doesn't seem to like Oda's answer as much as I do if the sound of a gun being pointed at the other man's head was anything to go by. "And just how are you going to get out of here?" The former cop in charge asks. "With this vast difference in numbers, you being so uselessly unarmed, and am injured hostage draggin' you down? You are just a worthless underling, yet you are quite full of yourself, boy. And why? Just because you used to be in that shit organization?"
"You shouldn't curse in front of minors," Oda chides, not seeming to care how preposterous of a thing it is to do right now.
I laugh at the irony of the dog's statement and the postman's answer to it, a real, boisterous laugh that lacks the depth of humanity. Because for someone that holds this 'organization' in such high regards, he sure hadn't done too much research on it.
All eyes turn to me but I don't mind. Most eyes are normally on me anyways, this was nothing new.
"'That organization'?" I mocked, the laugh dying on my lips as I looked at everyone around me, my eyes lingering on Oda for a second too long. "How about I tell you just why I chose to go and collapse in front of his house in the first place? It was because I heard a rumor. It spoke of a house that no evil can come close to, be burglars, smugglers, or even the fucking mafia." Oda shoots me a look as I speak, but it feels more like a father reprimanding their child for cursing than him being angered that I decried him. "No matter who it is, just around that house no one can cause any trouble. It's a 'calm - zone.' As if us criminals are afraid of something, or someone, there."
I can't help but think back to the way that the postman had said that he was like me. Such a sentence seemed like something of a cruel joke.
No Odasaku, you are nothing like me.
I'm the evil that never should have been allowed near your door.
"It seems like these guys don't plan on letting us leave here alive, so I'll leave the rest to you."
I lean back and drop my body the rest of the way to the ground, laying myself flat against it. It was the optimal position for an injured person in a shootout to take, it gave them the lowest chance of being hit by a stray bullet.
It was also a signal.
I close my eyes and listen to the sounds of Odasaku fighting, drowning peacefully in the familiar melody of gun fire. I could tilt my head and watch the other if I truly wanted to, I could only imagine the show that it would be, but I don't. My eyes stay closed for two reasons, no more. No less.
The first was that I knew what it was to leave a piece of yourself behind, to hurry it so deep within you that you thought, hoped even, that it would die if you never let it see the light. I knew what it was for someone else to see this piece of yourself. Even if you love them, it hardly feels right for them to know. And I knew that Odasaku was far away from loving me.
The other reason was a much more selfish one in nature. Simply put, I preferred the fights that I watched to have a red glow to them and to defy the laws of gravity that everyone else knows to be true.
Silence falls not much later, the only sound that can be heard in the room is that of the groaning men on the floor and labored breathing all around. Odasaku has his back to me as I stand, allowing me a full view of the damage that he'd created all on his own.
"This is amazing," I mutter earnestly, my voice sounding louder than I thought that it would in the now still room. All of the 48 members were lying injured on the ground, but from what I could see not a single one of them were dead, or in danger of dying before they could get medical attention. "No one is dying. Badly wounded from being shot in the arms and legs, sure. But no one is dying."
Odasaku turns to look at me and in his eyes there is something haunted that I almost wish I hadn't seen. "I shot them so that they wouldn't die," he explains honestly.
I only shrug at the other's confession. "No, no that's not what I meant. I mean why you did what you did... whatever, doesn't matter. I'll just ask you later. There are so many things that I want to know, but let's get out of here first."
I really did have so many things to ask.
Walking forwards, I pass the other man but stop as he calls out my name.
"Count to two, then take one step to the left," Odasaku instructs.
I look at the other man briefly before doing exactly as he asked and slide to the left. I knew better than to question the judgment of the man with the ability to see into the future with strange commands such as this.
For the second time today, a bullet shoots through the spot where I had been standing only a moment before, imbedding itself into a wall further down the hallway.
I watch, almost mystified, as Odasaku turns to the man that had shot at me with a gleam in his eyes that seemed as if he wanted to shoot him. Instead the postman only throws the gun in his hand at the shooter. The two firearms collide, Odasaku's hitting the other's as the shooter curses, a move that definitely didn't win the man any points in the former assassin's book. Both guns are thrown to the side as the man screams.
"Damn it! What are you? What in the world are you?"
Odasaku seems to pause, but answers in his own way in the end. "There was no such thing as the legendary assassination to begin with."
"What?" The shooter asks as I cross my arms and lean boredly against the wall. Reveals we're only really fun when you are the one doing them, not so much when someone else is saying things that you already knew.
"You said that you couldn't find any other members of the organization," the postman continued, sounding almost as bored as I was. "Of course you wouldn't be able to. It was never an organization at all."
A look of comprehension and astonishment seeps into the former cop's face. Like this, in the dark, he almost looks like a child,being told that the monster under his bed was real. "Only you...?" He asks slowly, shrinking in on himself as he did. "You're saying that the organization that I sorted so many sororeos, spread so much damage, was so fearsome that not even the government itself wanted to touch it was the work of... you alone?"
But the former assassin doesn't answer, he only walks to the other wall and grabs a submachine gun, pointing it at the man in the ground with a dull, almost lifeless look on his face that I've seen in the mirror too many times to count. "Any last words?" The other man's voice is harsh and only becomes more so when the shooter freezes and doesn't answer. "You have messed with the wrong person this time. In this world, those who make mistakes pay the same price."
"Wait! Wait! Don't shoot!" The man screams, his limbs flailing uselessly as he seems to be trying to get his body to move. Fear makes it not listen to him.
"Why should I wait?" Odasaku asks, his voice holding that same note to it.
The former inspector rants and bemoans about his life, but I don't listen. It was the same shit speech that had been given by his boss earlier. The same thing that anyone in this labyrinth would say when asked for their motives.
How dull.
A dry laugh scratches ast my throat as I look at the scene before me. "You are really so predictable, aren't you? Even your final speech was exactly as I had expected it to be." Looking down at the man, I can't find a single interesting thing about the other. Nothing that should have allowed him to live this long. "You see, I have this tendency to get mad when people don't exceed my expectations," I inform the man on the ground before turning to look at the former assassin. "Just go ahead and shoot this guy already. You..." I pause, considering my words, "by the way, what should I call you?"
I had a name in my mind, one that I liked even, but I wasn't going to call him by it if he was going to hate it. I didn't want him to leave me.
And what a startling realization that was.
"Call me whatever you want," is what the man answers, punctuating the sentence with a spat of bullets.
Debris scatters everyone on the ground, some of it nailing the shooter when very few bullets do so. I watch with a twisted fascination as the former cop lets out a soundless scream before his eyes close once more.
"Wow. You really didn't kill him," my voice is much lighter than any sane person's would, or should, be in this situation, but I figure that it's allowed. I'm hardly a person after all. "Compared to this guy, you are much more interesting," I remarked before looking at the other man fully. "You do know that so long as he is alive, he will keep coming after you right? Don't you have to kill him?"
"I do," Odasaku says, nodding as he throws the gun away in a complete contradiction to his own words. "Let's go."
A bazaar smile ghosts over my lips as I watch for a moment as the older man walks away towards the bunker exit. I knew that I would never meet anyone as interesting as him.
What a fool.
I followed after the other man, but not even I knew if I was talking about him or myself at that moment.
—-
The sun was burning low in the sky by the time that we left the bunker. The stars were just beginning to sparkle across the sky as the moon began to rise in the sky. On nights like these it was easy to remember where I came from. You would never see a sight like this back in New York, but maybe at camp I would have.
The walk through town was done in a comfortable silence, neither of us having much to say with so many people that could so easily hear. The others on the street, done up in their nice work clothes, all turned a cautious eye to the pair of us. Their eyes lingered over the injuries painted across our skin, the mud cracking our clothes, and - on top of it all - the black clothes that inworse like some sort of armor. Odasaku didn't seem to notice the last one though, too tired to pay proper attention to the way that eyes lingered on me for a moment longer than they did him.
"How tired," he said after some time had already been spent in silence.
"Yeah, so tired," I agree, feeling the way that my body seemed to protest each step that I force it to take. It wasn't the first time that I'd felt this way by a long shot, but it had probably been a while since the other man had been like this. "Where are we going now?"
But the former assassin doesn't answer. Instead I watch the man pull out a pack of cigarettes from his coat, placing one between his lips before he stops and begins to put the match away. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the man that tells others not to cuss in front of children would have a problem smoking in front of one. It made me never want to tell the man just how much the slug and I normally do so.
"Don't worry about it," I tell the man, my voice soft with exhaustion. "Just smoke."
A moment of indecision flashes across the postman's face, making his hands still, but in the end he just dies as I say and smoke fills the air.
Odasaku suddenly turns off of the main street and down into a narrow alley and I follow him without a second thought, putting more trust in the near stranger then as would almost anyone else. I choose not to think about what that says about me. It's easier not.
"Here?" I ask as we stop in front of a store with an old sign above it. Odasaku just nods and silently urges me on inside.
The soft sound of jazz fills my ears as I walk down a narrow, but steep staircase that reminds me a bit of the speakeasy that I told Chuuya about all of those months ago. It feels a bit like stepping into another time, one where you can be anyone else.
The bar is simple with a long table and stools pulled up to it and an area for groups just through a small archway. The only other person inside of it is the old bartender who is cleaning glasses, yet, in the golden light, it doesn't feel lonely in the least. It almost feels as if it is only waiting for others to come, but would be perfectly content if left alone too. I could understand that.
"Is this, by any chance, the place that you should go before you die?" I ask, my voice twinging with a disappointment that I don't truly feel. It's just easier to use it than trying to express the emotion coiling in my chest. "It's just a normal bar."
"Right," Odasaku confirms. "There is nothing special here, just a normal bar. You have been tricked."
I stare at the other man for a long moment before finding my voice once more. "What?"
"Just think about it," the older man continues, not seeming to understand that I wasn't asking because I'd been tricked, but because I'd already told the other that I wouldn't mind if 'that place' really was something just like this. "How can a little gut like me know something that the mighty Port Mafia doesn't? And didn't you say that you were thirsty? Master, I will have the usual."
The man walks past me and sits down at a bar stool as the bartender quietly puts a glass in front of him. All I can do is watch in muted shock because after everything that I'd heard today, it was hard to believe that the man before me considered himself to be something small.
"Why don't you sit down?" Odasaku asks. And I do.
Sitting down next to the former assassin with a glass of my own in front of me, neither of us say anything for a little while. For the first time it was hard to form words. I'd grown fond of being able to use a certain amount of bluntness in my life, but now I was having to be careful, even if only for a moment or two.
"How should I put this..." I ask quietly, my eyes glued to the glass in front of me. "Did you lie to stop the... suicidal me... from dying?"
"No," the postman says much too quickly. "I am not that kind of admirable person. I just saw someone who was younger than me and already knew all of the secrets of the world and thought that it would be fun to mess with them."
I studied the other man for a long few moments, seeing the way that thoughts seemed to war inside of his mind. He seemed like someone that was just as clueless to his own thoughts and motives as he would be to anyone else's.
"I can't really say that I believe you," I decide, "but let's leave it at that for now."
"There is no need to be upset," Odasaku says, pulling the attention off of himself. "There is still something in this world that you can believe for sure. And there are two." I watch with interest as the other man takes out a familiar deck of cards from his coat. "One, you haven't beaten me at poker yet. And two, the living cannot play power with the dead."
I look at the other for a moment before my face morphs into something kinder, younger. "I will get rid of that leetway of yours soon enough."
The conversation flows endlessly from there, going widely from one thing to the next without there ever being a lag. Glasses clinked and bodies leaned together over the flip of cards as if to tell a secret.
"Why is someone with your background doing something as dull as being a postman?" I ask after a while.
"Because there isn't really much else that I can do," the postman explains. "After four years of doing this job all of the other guys have either retired or died on duty every month or two, so I can't quit because we're always short staffed."
I feel my eyes go wide as the older man's words process in my mind. "Did you just say die in duty?"
He's just a postman, what the actual fuck?
"Last week, our warehouse was bombed," Odasaku says nonchalantly, taking a sip of his drink as if he hadn't just confessed something as he did. "There was a bomb sent to us in one of the packages, I threw it outside just before it exploded. If I'd been a second later, the whole place would have blown up, packages and staff included."
I resist the urge to curse, knowing how much the other man seems to hate it when I do. "What, do postmen work in the battlefield these days or something?" I ask instead.
I didn't know much about postal work, but I knew enough to know that it doesn't work like this.
"Close to that," Odasaku admits, a small, amused, smile ghosting across his lips at the state that he's put me in. "We're a group that specializes in transporting dangerous packages to the dangerous parts of Yokohama," he explains. "Yokohama concessions, the port and all of the pirates there, military research facilities, the list goes on. We deliver our packages on time to the places that ordinary mailing families can't or won't for valid reasons.
"There have been times that we have had to deliver development parts while avoiding industrial spies, or get a gun to a billionaire that had been abducted. My boss is very good at what he does, so together we are able to do almost any job. Despite the risks though, we don't earn much. I haven't gotten my wages in almost four months now."
"Hey, wait a minute!" I protest and my amazement gives way to a healthy level of annoyance for the situation at hand. "Where were all of these stores when I was injured, bored out of my mind and sleeping all of the time?l
"Sorry," the other man says almost sheepishly, though I know that he could easily kill me where I sit in as many ways as I could kill him.
"I don't need your apology," I tell the man indignantly. "Now that it has come to this, I will have you tell me everything that you have ever done with this company. Everything! Starting with the billionaire that you delivered the real gun to." I could feel my cheeks puff out like a little kid, but I didn't care.
I just wanted to know.
"It can't be helped then," the other man decides before finishing off his drink and begins his tales.
And so we talk for hours as the music plays in the background. It's our own little world that no one else can touch.
"There were really two billionaires? Which was the real one?"
The guests come and go like the tide, but for once I don't care for the sea.
"Dazai, is that for real? The guy that went against the Port Mafia actually turned into a monster? Shot destructive rays of light from his mouth and tried to destroy Yokohama? Which part of the story is a lie?"
The cards continue to shuffle and flip as endless games are played, and the conversation carries on like something that had been locked in Pandora's jar for so long, it can't help but flow out.
"Okay, I have decided," I say at last, placing my glass down and leaning in almost conspiratorially. "You are Odasaku," I inform the other. "You are much too interesting for a name like Oda, and Oda Sakunosuke is much too long of a name for someone to call. So you are Odasaku."
"Odasaku?" The postman asks as if tasting the name on his tongue. "That is a strange name. Sounds like something that a farmer would have. Do I have the right to change my name?"
"No."
Odasaku takes a sip from his glass, the ice clinking nicely against it. "It can't be helped then."
The other man continued his tales.
He told me of the time that he found a baby in a box labeled 'Do Not Shake.' And of the time that he outran five hundred armed religious soldiers just to protect a glass of milk that he had to deliver.
I told him the story of how I met Chuuya.
"It's been a long time since I've spoken with anyone this much," I lie, because in reality I've never spoken with anyone like this before.
"Good to know," Odasaku informs me as he deals the cards for the nth time, a number so large that we've each lost count as the hours waged on. "But we have been here a little too long. It's almost closing time. You are going home after this, right?"
It's such an innocent question that I almost wasn't to balk at it. It was strange to speak with someone that just assumed that I had a home at all.
But I understand what he means.
My wounds have already healed, today was a testament enough to that. The rest will heal easily enough on its own. We had no reason to stay with one another anymore. No reason to ever see the other again.
And yet...
And yet I don't want to let go. I want to ask the other when I can see him again. I know that it is a foolish thing to do so, I know better than to wish for things that I could never hope to have, and yet as I nod and take the next card I can't help but wonder if I could have this.
"When are we to meet next?"
Odasaku's eyes snap to mine, shock so clearly written in them as I'd known that there would be. It wasn't really a normal thing to ask, it seems. But I only look at him and wait for an answer with a sad smile curved on my lips. I'll accept whatever he says and that will be that.
"I wonder," the other man says slowly, his gaze wandering anywhere but me as he searches for the right words as if they were written in the wall art. "I don't know. You seem to be very busy, but if you want to..."
Unable to stand the tension any longer, I smile brightly at the man. "Okay! Showdown!" I exclaim, turning my cards over. "Four kings. I won."
I watch as Odasaku looks at his cards and then at my own surprise, still lingering there in a lesser amount as he sees that I'm right.
"All of the games up to this point have been to figure out the perimeters of your skill," I lie slightly. In reality I've known how it works for a while now, I was just saving this revel for a moment like this. One where it would buy me time before disappointment struck as it always does. "Generally the future that you can see is only between five and six seconds, so if I wait seven or more after the last bet to open and switch my cards at the same time, you will not be able to see that future."
I hood up a card, the King of Clubs, and with a flick of my hand it changes to the Eight of Hearts. Another flick and it's the King of Clubs once more. It was a trick that I had learned from one of the dealers in the Port Mafia. I had him teach it to me just before I cut off his pinky and soaked the cards in blood. He'd been skimming off of the top, and stealing wasn't tolerated in the port.
"Of course you would be wary of the switch," I continue. "So, I had to distract you with conversation."
Neither of us mention that this could have been done at almost any time. We all tell our little half truths it seems.
"So the games and the flow of conversation till now, were both according to your plan, you mean?"
I shrug. "Saying important things as a camouflage to get what you want, that is the basis of the negotiation technique."
Or at least that's what Mori likes to say.
The other man organizes the cards once more. "Which is a camouflage of which?" Odasaku asks almost innocently.
My body freezes up at the simple question, the feeling of being caught sweeping through me. Of being known. I turn to the side and hide my face, unsure of the expression that it is making, hoping that the dark light king would be enough to hide anything.
"'It is foolish to die without coming here'... you say some nice things sometimes."
"Sometimes I say the right things too," Odasaku says, still sorting out his cards.
People start to leave but we don't move just yet, not even as silence absorbs all around us.
"Even if you flip a card a thousand times and it comes out exactly as you expected, there is no guarantee that you will be right the next time," the older man says almost suddenly, but he's been staring at his cards for so long g that I guess it couldn't really be all that sudden for him at all.
"Yeah. I've learned that this time too."
And I had, because Odasaku was number one thousand and one.
The other man shakes his head and stands up from the stool. "As to your question," he starts and my stomach drops at his words. "I can't be sure if I can meet up next time. I'm a pretty moody guy, you know it too. And I still have my own problems to deal with."
I nod slowly, forcing myself not to look away even as rejection coils in my gut. "You mean those ex - cops?"
He nods as well. "They won't give up, and even if they do they won't be the last to come after me. It would be safe to assume that the information about the gun has been leaked. Even if I run to the other side of the world, my past will eventually catch up with me."
It was almost ironic hearing those words, as that was exactly as I had done almost four years ago.
"There's a pretty simple solution to that," I say, folding my arms across the bar top.
"There is?" Odasaku asks, his brow raised highly at me.
"You don't need to run to the other side of the world when you can just dive deeper into it," I say, my voice much too light for the dark future that I knew that I was offering the other. "A place so deep that no criminal organizations could hope to reach. It's not even that far away from here. You wouldn't even have to move as it is right here in Yokohama." I wait a beat before a small smile shows on my lips, the killing blow. "You would be a fool to die without going there."
It was a place where everyone bled shades of black and violence was the vernacular. But any outside that hurt one of our own was met with something far worse than they gave.
"No one can run away from their past, but if you got there then it's a different story."
"Are You saying that I should join it?" The postman asks carefully, as if considering.
I shrug, an earnest smile still on my lips. "That's up to you. But I will promise this: if you join, you will no longer be bothered by anything from your past. Because no one can touch that place."
"Where is that place?" He asks. He already knows the answer, so do I.
I smile at the man, at the one person that I knew I wouldn't have to fight not to lose. Someone who was nearly impossible to kill. And who was simultaneously interesting enough to keep around.
"That name? You'll just have to come with me to find out."
—-
Third person POV
That night the Port Mafia gained a member and a new plan was set into motion.