Title: Season of Black Chrysanthemums: Summer

Author: corbeaun

Fandom: Hikaru no Go

Disclaimer: Hikaru no Go belongs to Obata Takeshi and Hotta Yumi.

Summary: Fear not enemies but friends.

Summer

Part 1

[Tokyo]

Akira shoved the spreadsheets away from him, closed his eyes against the receivables, deductibles, and amortization crowding his head. The daily grind of business as usual that even yakuza were subject to. "Leave it," he snapped when an underling tried to give him the monthly tribute from a sub-gang. He waited until the study door hastily slid shut before he pushed away from his desk and strode to a side door. His hand hesitated on the wooden frame of the sliding door, a small, nearly indiscernible spasm of the fingers -- Forgive me, father, for my trespass -- before he opened the door.

His father's old go room was cold and empty.

And here Akira squeezed his eyes shut, pressed his face against the wooden frame of the door as if he could block out the emptiness of the room...block out the memory of Shindo's wide shocked eyes above a swollen mouth...the implacable surety of Shindo's voice yesterday as he denied Akira a place in his new life.

"I'm sorry, father," he whispered again as he sank to his knees before the threshold of the room.

Nothing had been moved. Akira had appropriated the study but he had not once stepped into this adjoining go room. Not since the funeral, more than seven years ago now.

His father's goban still stood prominently in its place of honor. Someone had been dusting regularly, but not enough to prevent the thin film of pine pollen blown in from the garden -- the yellow dust covered everything, from the tatami, to the antique tonsu chest in the corner, to the goban in the middle of the room.

But in his mind's eye, what he saw was not this pitiful detritus of a dead man's life; instead, he remembered a bright, sun-drenched spring day and his father as he had been eight years past.

It had been after their morning game. The last stone had been placed, and his father had fallen silent, had gazed at the go board between them. He didn't speak for a long time. Akira had studied the board too. But when he looked up again, his father's eyes had been on him and not the pattern of the stones. There had been a softness to his father's face, worn and tender, that Akira had seldom before seen. It had made Akira feel all at once small, shy, and very, very warm. "That was a good game of go," his father had told him. And then quietly, with a smile:

"I just can't help but have high expectations of you."

Years later, alone by himself and kneeling outside a dead room, Akira remembered that moment, those words. That feeling. Because that was also the day he met Shindo Hikaru. It was as if some bored and malevolent god, tired of the endless procession of his days, had given Akira the happiness of that day and those words, now turned to bitterest gall.

"Ohba's become a burden," one Sumiyoshi oyabun had told another, exactly as Akira knew he would. The others had agreed; it had been a death warrant.

He hadn't needed his cell phone to ring later that day as the car took him away from that restaurant in Osaka to know that Ohba was dead. Merely the latest in a long list of casualties if all continued as planned.

Bullet to the head, if he guessed correctly. A clear message to the those who would let their own ambitions threaten the well-being of the group.

Now, a day later, Akira knelt in the bright, late spring sunshine, sick with the delayed knowledge that he had murdered a man with nothing more than words and a few well-chosen strategies transposed from the go board to real life. Sick with the knowledge of how easy it had all increasingly become.

He didn't regret it, Akira told himself fiercely -- he felt something inside his chest clench -- he didn't regret any of it. He couldn't go back. He could only go forward. Wasn't he the one who had told Shindo Hikaru that?

Regret was an indulgence he could not afford.

The study room's door rattled and slid open. "Boss! Boss!" The punch-permed neophyte almost tripped in his haste to talk and bow at the same time. "B-boss! Mr. Murata is at our place in Nishi-shinjuku!"

"Mr. Murata?" Akira was startled, already half risen on one knee. By the time he stood up completely, he had already cleared his mind of all lingering personal concerns with the brutality of long practice. "Bring around my car," he ordered brusquely.

When Akira stepped into the Touya-gumi's Nishi-shinjuku office a short drive later, he found the man himself seated in the middle of room, leisurely smoking his pungent, imported cigars and contemplating the panoramic view before him.

The entire building was the property of the Touya-gumi, purchased by Touya Kouyo through a series of dummy corporations in the glut of the 1990s real-estate collapse. The bottom levels were currently lent out to various accounting and law firms, but the top floor had been kept exclusively as the Touya-gumi 'High City' office. After all, it was much easier for politicians and businessmen meeting with their yakuza associates to explain visiting an office in Tokyo's illustrious Nishi-shinjuku district than one in the red-light district of Kabuki-cho.

The current visitor, however, was neither politician nor legitimate businessman - though Murata, oyabun of the third largest faction within the Sumiyoshi federation, easily took in at least a few billion yen a year from his various enterprises.

Murata only grunted when Akira bowed and apologized for not being there to greet him. So Akira sat down across from the man and, after accepting the cup one of his underlings handed him, patiently sipped the newly brewed tea as he waited for Murata to stop admiring the scenery and tell him what he'd come to say. Though they were both oyabun within the Sumiyoshi federation, Murata was a yakuza from the days of his father and, like most things, seniority claimed certain privileges. In this case, allowing the older oyabun to ignore him in favor of the scenery.

The man finally turned from the window and, reaching into his jacket with one hand, tossed a small plastic bag onto the coffee table between them.

Akira narrowed his eyes at the distinctive gem-sized rock inside the plastic bag. "Shabu," he muttered. The Japanese narcotic of choice and the mainstay of the typical yakuza income. But not of the Touya-gumi. Akira's fingers clenched around his teacup -- he suspected he knew exactly what Murata had come for.

Murata gave a short, hard guffaw. "Well, it sure ain't rock candy, boy." Akira felt a lightening flash of anger tighten his mouth and, with effort, recomposed his face. Murata leaned forward toward him. "Your club in Kabuki-cho -- I want you to deal them from there."

Akira set his tea cup down on the tabletop. "Mr. Murata," he said coolly, "I must refuse."

"Nothing I can do to convince you?"

Akira remained silent.

Murata pursed his lips. "So..." He leaned back in the seat, took a long drag on his cigar. "No good, huh?"

Akira studied the man seated across from him. The other Sumiyoshi oyabun should have already known the Touya-gumi didn't deal narcotics; Murata needn't have come all the way to Nishi-shinjuku to ascertain that. No. There was only one recent event that Akira had had a hand in that could have rustled an old guard like Murata Ken from his lair.

Akira wondered, distantly curious, how direct and heavy-handed Murata was willing to be. But more importantly, had Murata come as himself or as a mouthpiece of the other Sumiyoshi oyabun?

"I heard that poor Ohba, before he suddenly...passed away," and here Murata smiled thinly and knowingly at Akira, "he offered you a similar deal. Pushed you too hard, did he?"

Around him, Akira saw his underlings just beginning to respond to the hostile direction the conversation was going. Akira tried a noncommittal, polite smile. "Mr. Murata --"

"But you didn't even kill him yourself -- had to get a committee together." Murata inhaled sharply, like he had smelled something bad. He aimed a scornful look at Akira. "Touya Akira," the man carefully enunciated his name, "How many times have you been in the joint?"

Akira returned Murata's scrutiny with an inscrutable gaze. He didn't deign to answer -- it was a rhetorical question. Personal conviction rates were a matter of public knowledge among the yakuza. The answer was zero. Zero times. There wasn't even a criminal record on one Touya Akira.

"And that's what I detest most about you, boy," the older, prison-scarred oyabun gave a short, hard laugh, "how when the rest of us have to get down and dirty--" Murata blew out a breath of smoke in Akira's direction and bared his teeth, "-- you always come out looking as prim as a school girl."

Akira stopped his men from reacting with a sharp, abortive hand gesture. Enough. Whatever, the old man's game was, he was out of patience. He stood up. "Mr. Murata," he said coldly, "if there's nothing else, I won't waste any more of your time."

Murata stood up too and dropped the cigar, grinding it into the white carpet beneath his heel. "Right now you've got the others by the balls," he growled, "but in this business, boy, sooner or later you'll have to wallow in the mud just like the rest of us. And when that day comes --" Murata grinned, his eyes bright and predatory, "I'll be the first to show you the proper way to be a yakuza."

He and his men left.

Mouth tight, Akira watched the door slam shut behind them.

"Boss--"

"Let them go."

He walked over to the window that had held the other oyabun's attention for so long. Two adjoining walls of floor-to-ceiling bulletproof glass that had been polarized to see out but not in. It had cost almost one-tenth the original price of the entire building when Akira had it installed, but it never failed to impress whoever walked through the door -- be it politician, businessman, or yakuza. It was also one of the few windows Akira allowed himself the luxury of standing in front of.

He took a moment to gaze out at the white, mid-day sky, at the glittering layout of the business district spread out below him and, directly in front of him, the imposing Gothic facade of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building.

It didn't take him long to come to a conclusion.

Murata wasn't the kind to barge into another faction's office like this. As a threat, there were more efficient ways to deliver it than in a personal visit to the Touya-gumi's 'High City' office. But as a friendly warning...

Murata Ken had been one of father's few friends. Akira remembered as a child hearing his distinctive short, hard laugh behind closed doors every so often when his father had conducted business at home. A crude and violent man, uneducated but with the animal cunning common to yakuza everywhere -- and honorable within the confines of his rather special set of ethics.

This was his way of telling Akira to watch his back.

Regardless of what game he was playing, Murata Ken apparently still held enough esteem for Akira's deceased father to spare a warning for the son. It was beside the point that Murata hadn't been acting when he'd clearly and explicitly stated his distaste for Akira -- and his readiness to exploit any revealed weakness. Some things went beyond personal feelings.

Enemies I do not fear, Akira thought, quoting someone he'd once known and loved. But friends I fear greatly.

"Where is Ms. Ichikawa?" he asked abruptly.

Unsure shuffling around him. "She, uh, she really didn't say, boss."

"Gone again," Akira murmured to himself.

Yes, some things must be beyond personal feelings.

end of "Summer - Part 1"