Five years later.
Nana Komore was alive and well - perhaps not all of either, but some of them both. By being alive, she was breathing and talking and walking...and well...well enough to drag herself from bed to work then back to bed by the days' end.
The years had been hard on Nana. That is all this author could cough up about that. She was different now, in all ways. She decided five years ago that if all the world would do to her is treat her like shit, then she'd give it a reason to.
Perhaps it was her early twenties rebellion, and maybe underneath the exoskeleton she had created to house her soft heart, maybe underneath all that she was still just a girl reaching out in the dark. But on the outside, Nana Komore was not Nana Komore, she was now known through the city of Tokyo as an alias of The DeadEye. Because in her current position within Tokyo Manji her signal, her single glance would mean that someone was about to die.
That's the thing about the human form, with all that changes and grows on the outside, so little changes within. The interior make-up of Nana Komore was a fortified shell. She still knew how to watch people, to stand on the sidelines and deduct who was going to go for the kill first. It was her, her and her past; all wrapped up into a neat little package for her commanders to show off like a little lethal trophy during meetings.
Manjiro Sano had built himself into a monster. He was half the friend he used to be to her. Tetta Kisaki was a monster, but Nana believes he was just born that way. Some days Nana believes she was also born to be not much of anything more than a half-good half-bad rendition of another person. That she was shoved into a mould and forced to accommodate herself.
After the years, Nana now did believe there were bad people. That perhaps she was a bad person. These thoughts swindled - typically saved for her sleepless nights where days had worn her down to raw memories. But Kisaki; he was, down to his very core, a bad fucking person. She had known it the second she met him and the years had not turned in his favour.
Nana stood under a haze of flashing coloured lights and thick smoke, watching Manjiro and Kisaki drown themselves in cocaine and half naked women. Basking in their complete ignorance to the fact it was 2am on a Tuesday, and the women around them were sober and milking them of the money they so flimsily jerked out of themselves.
Her eyes darted over to the other right hand of Kisaki, Shuji Hanma. He hadn't taken his eyes off the door the entire night. Which was odd, considering that there were women sprawled open at every single corner of this place, and he hadn't even stolen a single glance at them? Sure, they were strippers, but they were the best strippers money could buy.
Nana's bosses were frequent flyers at a nightclub called the IVE. It was a cesspool of the criminally elite. Gangs, drug manufacturers and sellers, their women wives and concubines in small dresses and designer shoes. For a place that dealt only in dirty money, it was the cleanest prestige a strip club could provide.
Now Nana wasn't one to judge a woman for her profession. She did, however, judge the fact that Mikey and Kisaki were such boys about their money. They were stupid, and those strippers were smart. Nana wasn't as modest as she'd like to be. A small black dress and the usual large trench coat she wore, and some leather gloves so there was no trace of her. Her counterpart, Hanma, wore what he always did. A suit, one glove and a matching trench coat.
Nana felt someone approach. She stayed still and caught sight of a man entering the club from the elevator that connected to the conference rooms below the club.
Seok Taeyang. An extremely well known man amongst the drug scene across Japan and Korea. He was a kingpin in the distribution and manufacture of Methamphetamine. He operated on a much larger scale than the backwater drug dealers Nana grew up around in the red light district. He was the best, the only man to have a drug operation running for 15 straight years. He was renowned, and he was walking around the tables, kissing the hands of women and sharing looks with the men.
Nana walked over to Kisaki and alerted him of Taeyang's presence. Kisaki smiled and stood up immediately, ushering the druglord over to their private raised corner. She looked over to Hanma and they conversed silently. Seok Taeyang sat down, throwing his blazer off to the side of the couch that was now doused in sweat from the women who had scurried off by the flick of Manjiro's hand. Amidst their conversation, Nana had no bad speculations about the man that had joined them, save for the drugs and murders he had laughed about as if they were nothing at all. Sure, Nana had enough names on her list that didn't exactly deserve to die, but at least she didn't parade it around.
Nana's life hadn't exactly come full circle...nor had it come to any reality she could have mustered up the courage to stomach in her early days. She never thought she would be part of a gang, and even less so the right hand of Manjiro Sano. she would have laughed in her own face if she had heard what Nana had done to some people - the old Nana Komore would probably never leave her room again in fear of herself.
But that was the old Nana Komore. As much as time heals things, time can also reap open old wounds, and stuff in their new, heavier burdens. Nana never really found a way to stop the pain, just how to house it softer. She was mostly sure that it may last forever, that it may consume her just enough that there is no old Nana left at all - just a killer with a scar.
But hey, who was she to complain? Nana's line of work paid off, and it paid well. Well enough for her to live in a large penthouse apartment, too high to feel the urge to jump and high enough to be closer to the stars. She was good. She was comfortable. If she had to kill a few lowlifes who couldn't pay up in time, or the pompous assholes who thought they could attempt to cross Toman, then that was just that.
Because Nana just had the worst luck in the entire world, each night she had to endure the hell of being Shuji Hanma's neighbour. Of course, they both had more than enough money to move... but there was a slight pleasure she derived from being a bitch to him. It was the least he deserved. They both were at their doors after the club when Nana turned to him.
"Listen, next time you bring a woman in there, try practising your man moans. It sounds like a lesbian couple you know." She smiled, and his face stayed still for a moment, until he seemed to collect his rebuttal.
"Oh, I'm so sorry I didn't know I had an audience. You're off the clock, Nana, you don't gotta be on the lookout all hours of the day" He offered her a sarcastic smile.
"It's an unwilling audience, believe me" she rolled her eyes at him.
"Well at least i'm getting some"
"Exactly. It's not us getting some, so keep it down" she opens the door and begins to walk inside her apartment.
After some silence, he piques up. "You're jealous"
"And you're still talking, wow isn't your mouth tired from all the high pitched wailing?" She rests her chin on the skirt around her door, and he is standing in his open door now, resting his hands up on the top of the skirt, facing her. He smiles at her jab.
"You're jealous because I have constant streams...where's your line, Angel face?" he Jokingly looks around the hallway.
"It's actually waiting for me on my coffee table...right between a platinum card and a ¥10,000 note, so excuse me" she turns completely and goes to shut the door on him when she sees its pried back open by him. Their banter to her falls into place like a puzzle, she wasn't even holding the door.
"Aye, you snort lines?" there was an air of interest to his words.
"No. I'm lying..." She smiles at him and moves forward to close the door. "idiot" she murmurs to herself before retreating back into her home. She pulled out her phone.
'And stop calling me that'
'Why? Scared you'll fall for me?'
She rolled her eyes at the screen and threw her phone on her couch. There was a numbing silence that followed. She chased it away with a bath, one simple pleasure she gave herself every night since her bath back home always had black mould growing around the edges. This one was perfect, Nana would argue too perfect. That kind of thing takes time to get used to.
This one had no cracks, or mould or faulty taps. Most of her life was like that now. There wasn't any problem that needed to be fixed - and that made Nana uncomfortable. There was just this one large crack running down the middle of her new life - her fatal flaw.
Nana undressed in front of the mirror, dropping her layers onto the dark grey marble floors. There were no lights on, but the large window in front of the bathtub overlooked the expanse of the city scene; the shimmering of manmade light. She squinted her eyes to blur it all together, muddling the colours to a soupy glimmer. After a few seconds, her face fell back to its normal shape she realised how odd what she just did was and she laughed at herself.
She kicked all her clothing to one corner of the room, and turned her head to look at her body. It wasn't anything special. It never really was. But there was one thing that was always just there, and if she was found dead tomorrow, it would be the only interesting thing about her body. It didn't bother her as much anymore. It didn't eat away at her like it used to...but it was just so ugly to look at.
The words that live there were just a scar now, they weren't her life - just a faded single moment in time. Even if it was long covered by a tattoo, Nana saw right through it, right down to the fractured line it lived on.
She turned on the tap, and filled the bath. Nana didn't have the patience to wait for it to be full before she sat in it. She watched the city as the water enveloped her feet, legs and torso.
Nana knew that she wasn't a good person anymore - and sometimes she couldn't handle that. She visited the graves of the people she killed every now and then to try and rectify it; even though she never killed someone who didn't deserve it. She had come to the conclusion some time ago that there were no perfect legends, and no heroes that can save everyone. There was a great loss that came with being someone like Nana Komore...a deep rooted expectation of loss followed her ever since that one spring night. Perhaps at the beginning, Nana felt as though she would do good - that she could just do her job while keeping her hands clean...But she's no hero in the end.
She traced her fingers on the surface of the water, watching the water form ripples. She stayed in the bath for 20 minutes so she didn't have enough time to dwell too long on her past.