The gravel crunches under Yosano’s feet like shells as she descends the slight slope towards the warehouse district on the very outskirts of Yokohama. The sun is setting in the horizon, its orange hues bleeding into the skyline and leaking into the ocean like an oil spill. She’s careful as she places her feet, heels unstable on such ground – one wrong move enough to cause an avalanche of pebbles and send her flying.
Today, it’s quiet, punctuated only by a few trucks moving in and out between the warehouses, little grey smudges as they extend into the distance.
The tire tracks beneath her feet have started to gather water from the september rain, unmoved as proof of the decline in business over the past few days. The most Yosano can hear are the birds in the sky, and the traffic off on the road above.
It’s quiet. Too quiet.
Yosano frowns, lips pursing as she surveys the area around her. She pulls her phone from her pocket, opening up the messages between her and Ranpo, who had referred Yosano onto this case on account of him being summoned up to Saitama by the Tokyo Police force.
She grimaces. The case could’ve waited – just a simple investigation into mild business fraud and stolen packages – yet Yosano has a gut feeling, deep down, unsettling like nausea, that Ranpo has put her on this specific case on purpose, that he has a plan she’s not privy to.
She doesn’t like that feeling; of being a mouse in a trap waiting for the metal to snap around her.
But fine, she’ll bite. If Ranpo has some grand plan, there’s no use resisting. She might as well play along, rather than fall victim to his I told you so’s later.
She quickly checks the details – Warehouse 13-B – before heading down the slope towards the sprawl of identical buildings.
….
Kouyou sighs, the smell of copper tangy up her nose as she wipes the blood from her face.
She stares at the bodies that litter the ground, blood soaking into concrete floors, overpowering the pungent scent of sawdust that had greeted her upon her arrival. If Kouyou were a better person, maybe she’d have the decency to at least grimace, to at least feel bad about the lifeless corpses she put there.
But she’s not, so all she can do is roll her eyes.
God, she really hates cleaning up other people’s messes.
But, you know what they say – Kouyou thinks, as she uncaps the container of petrol she’d left by the door – if you want something done, you better do it yourself.
What use is having all this power, rank, status, if your subordinates can’t carry out the most basic of tasks? Executions are dead easy, yet somehow they still managed to screw it up.
Her katana glints, a crimson shine illuminated on the hilt through the meagre streams of light that filter through the roof of the warehouse where it hangs on her waist.
She’d made sure everyone who usually worked out of this specific block were absent, had made sure that business ground to a startling halt for this one day. The petrol splashes onto the ground, mixes with the blood like oil and water, greasy as they repel each other with a force stronger than gravity. Some of it splashes back up, stains her black overalls and leather boots she’d worn to avoid being identified.
She scoffs, but pays it no mind, not letting up until the container is completely empty, the petrol spread across the bodies of their rivals, cut up and maimed on the ground.
Kouyou pulls the pack of matches from the inside pocket of her coat.
Most mafia traitors get the same treatment: Jaw kicked in on the curb and three bullets to the chest.
Yet these men, for how so they’ve infuriated her, dragged her away from her first proper day off in over a month, they deserve nothing, not even bones remaining of their corpses. Just ash.
They’ll mix with the sawdust, with the metal, with the ground. They will become nothing, and everything at once. They will get what they deserve.
Kouyou strikes the match.
It’s not often she gets to watch it all burn.
….
Yosano manages to make her way some three hundred metres down the rows of warehouses before she sees it.
At first, it looks like nothing, the colour matching the horizon of buildings that stretch for thousands of metres. Yet at a closer inspection, the woman realises, lavender eyes widening in shock – it’s smoke, rising above the skyline, pluming in mushroom shaped clouds as it reaches for the stars.
She swallows, hard, legs moving underneath her involuntarily, on autopilot as she runs towards the source of the smoke. The stolen packages are now longer a priority, as she clears warehouse 13-B, rounding the corner to a sight not so pleasant.
The warehouse is burning, bright and violent in its red and orange laughter, hot and quick as it suffocates the grey building, choking it to death. The smell of burning plastic and wood melt together in the air, along with the tang of blood unmistakeable and the sizzling of flesh as it turns to dust.
The hot air blows in her face, like an open air oven, hair flowing in the heatwaves like its wind. She can feel the polyester in her clothes start to itch with the heat as she braves forwards towards the open door, towards the glow of the fire like a moth to a flame.
The inside is worse than she’d imagined.
Yosano stumbles forwards, foot catching on something lying on the ground sending her to the ground, sticky as she tries to make out the object over the dryness of her eyes. As they focus, nausea comes rocketing up her throat, and Yosano chokes down a gag at the sight of the body at her side.
She’s not phased by death, is deeply and intimately familiar with it like no one else in the world, has seen its face, felt its breath on hers and returned to the land of the living, dragging other souls with her on her tailcoats.
But that desensitisation can only get her so far, as she stares into vacant brown eyes sliced apart, face unrecognisable and body a mess of blood and organs bursting from their crevices like the skin they are trapped in is much too tight. Crimson pools all around it, staining her shirt, her skirt, everything it touches.
In an instant, she’s leaping forward, holding hands out to the body’s neck, face, chest, and begging to all who might hear her pleas to save this one life. She’s never asked for much, but as she tries desperately, to no avail, to summon her ability, it feels like being let down again.
Red spreads like a plague, to everything it can touch, boiling and popping inside its skin like something is cooking. It’s too late.
Yosano itches her collar. It’s starting to get uncomfortably hot in here, the flames spreading rapidly around her.
Footsteps racket over the sound of heatwaves keening, Yosano’s head flipping to the side as she scrambles to her feet. A woman stares back at her, familiar, in a long black jumpsuit and jacket, a cap atop her head.
“Look what we have here. The angel has come down to hell.” Kouyou smiles, a sharp lilt to her voice, teeth glistening like fans in the fire light, her red hair expanding, becoming part of the flames as she speaks.
Yosano bristles at the remark, attempting to shuffle back, only for her heels to hit the body on the ground with a wet squelch.
“What have you done?” She asks, horror in her voice like she’s surprised at the scene. She shouldn’t be – Kouyou is a mafia executive and one of their most prized assassins at that – yet it nags at her mind, that disappointment, that fear, that disgust as she looks the woman in the eyes.
It’s her own fault for getting too close, for failing to reconcile the kind and witty woman she shares an occasional drink with to the feared Golden Demon of the Port Mafia. Her own fault, for having too much faith in someone who’s hands are already doused in as much blood as they can manage to hold, from where it flows down like a waterfall, unable to be contained.
Yosano swallows, bites her cheek and prays that this is a dream she will wake from momentarily. There are most bodies in the flames, sizzling and turning to ash, caught on fire as the deep orange rips them of their dignity in death, after having their lives violently snuffed out.
Kouyou tilts her head, crosses her arms like the subject is amusing. “Just my job.”
“Thats-!” Yosano finds her mouth too dry to respond, her throat to tight to throw the words back in Kouyou’s face like she normally would. A cough rackets up her throat, scorches the skin of her larynx as they come, again and again, unfiltered and unable to stop. Mauve eyes sting, water running down her cheeks.
“Why? Mafia kills are clinical. This is pure overkill.”
Kouyou takes a step forwards, sakura eyes more the shade of the spider lillies embroidered on that kimono she wears so often. Her gaze is harsh, cold, unforgiving. “They deserved it.”
“Did they?!” Yosano challenges, through another fit of coughs that has her falling to her knees, limbs shaking and breath hoarse.
“That’s not your place to decide, unfortunately, detective.” Kouyou fires back.
“And why is it yours? Why do you get to play god?” Its harsh, bitter, spat out through vengeance and hurt. Of confessions under the sakura trees made useless with this senseless violence, with the woman’s inability to change.
Though Yosano wonders herself if she’s a hypocrite, saying that, accusing Kouyou of stagnance where she’s sure she hasn’t changed at all either.
“Because if not me, then someone worse.” Kouyou glares.
Yosano thinks she can hear sirens in the distance. She coughs again, doubles over herself as she prays for oxygen. Her head aches, pressure pounding on her skull like hammers, behind her eyes like needles.
“That’s nothing but an- excuse.” She spits out, yet it sounds pathetic, sounds weak, through her ragged voice and shaking hands. The sirens are getting louder. Black spots start to pool in her vision as she begs herself to just stay upright.
“And yours is?” Kouyou accuses, a cleaver to Yosano’s heart as she hacks it to pieces.
Kouyou isn’t given the dignity of a response, before Yosano is coughing again, violent, the spots filling her vision through her haggard breaths, unable to get oxygen into her lungs. The pain flashes through her head, agonising. Her arms give out before she can react, crashing to the floor.
“Aren’t you supposed to be the doctor? What am I doing, saving you?” Is the last thing she hears before her vision goes black.
….
Yosano wakes up with a jerk, gasping breaths and eyes wide.
The fluorescent light overhead stabs needles into her eyes, blinding, her head thumping in a dull pain as her vision clears.
A woman in scrubs and a mask enters her peripherals as she stares up at the ceiling in dazed confusion. From the smell of antiseptic and the feeling of paper sheets over her body, Yosano reckons she must be in a hospital, yet she can’t work out why.
“Ah, Yosano-san, are you feeling alright?” The woman says, the fabric of her mask moving up and down with the words.
“Uh. Yeah.” The words scratch on their way up her throat like thorns, rough as they send pain lacing through her oesophagus as she swallows. “Why am I here?”
The nurse shifts on her feet, turning to the metal tray she’d brought in with her, as Yosano shuffles to sit up, wincing as she bends her arm, the needle in her vein that she hadn’t noticed digging in uncomfortably. “Your coworker brought you in.”
Yosano squints as the nurse takes the needle to the injection port, trying to remember. Her mind is still in a haze, over the ache in her bones and the tingling on her skin that she can barely register.
“What’s in that?” She asks.
“Just some painkillers. Those are some nasty burns.” The nurse comments, and Yosano blinks in mild surprise.
“I don’t need them, I’ll heal myself.” It’s not said unkind, moreso a concern that this wellwishing woman is wasting treatment on her when she could cure herself in the blink of an eye.
“I am aware, but please do wait until we discharge you. After that point, you are free to do as you please.” The woman smiles, withdrawing the empty syringe from the port. “I’ll let your friend know you’re awake.”
Yosano stays silent as the nurse exits through the sliding door, abandoning her alone with her thoughts, with a clouded mind filled with cotton from the smoke residue in her lungs.
There’s a flash of orange, of pink that bleeds into red.
Kouyou.
Yosano gulps as the memory flashes back, of burning heat searing her skin, of smoke in her lungs and blood on her clothes. Of an argument, of vitriol and hypocrisy. “Fuck.”
The door slides open. Yosano tenses, pain jarring as the burns on her hand contort with hands made into fists, expecting a Katana to her throat, expecting red hair and pink eyes and something she can’t make out in the smile of the woman’s face.
It’s not her.
Despite the relief flooding her bones, as Dazai is the one to walk through that door, there’s disappointment, threaded between layers of her skin, uncomfortable as it itches beneath flesh warped by the fire.
Dazai is quiet as he enters, shuffling in and closing the door behind him with an awkward expression on his face.
“Why am I here?” Yosano interrogates instantly, voice cutting and eyebrows furrowing. She may be a doctor, but Yosano has never liked being in hospitals – as the patient, that it. It’s something they both know.
Dazai sighs, reads between the lines in her words. “’Cause you can’t heal yourself while unconscious, ‘kiko.”
He looks tired, bags under eyes not so subtle in the way that they’ve grown.
“How long have you been here?” Her voice cracks on the words, still raspy.
“A few hours.” Dazai shrugs, like it means little.
Yosano raises an eyebrow. “The nurse said a coworker brought me here.”
Dazai scoffs in response, like the answer is obvious. Like it’s Yosano’s lack of foresight that’s the problem here. Maybe it is. “Yeah well most nurses here get paid not to mention when the mafia drops someone off.”
It’s not surprising. Kouyou was the only one there, besides, well, the corpses – and they certainly weren’t taking her to the hospital. It’s the logical answer, yet a part of her winces, can’t possibly believe, and maybe doesn’t want to believe, that Kouyou would do such a thing. Not after she’d seen what she had, flesh shredded to pieces with intentional cruelty she seemed to enjoy.
And she’s definitely a hypocrite for that one, over the rush of adrenaline every time she uses her ability, every time she almost kills someone just to bring them right back. She doesn’t like the feeling, wishes it would stop as she tears at her hair and loses sleep as a result, but it doesn’t make it any less true.
The idea that Kouyou would save her life is something so foreign it feels like it must be untrue. They’re enemies, in the plainest sense, despite the momentary agreements caught in vulnerable moments under lighting to warm, to mired by delusion to see that it doesn’t belong. Kouyou is a part of the mafia, an executive under Mori’s direct command. Yosano is everything he seeks to destroy.
It would never work. They both knew that, with knives at throats ready to cut the moment they let their guards down.
In that warehouse, that was the moment. Yet Kouyou didn’t slit her open, didn’t take the opportunity to pierce her heart while it was open and unguarded.
Dazai watches Yosano think, gears turning in her head and eyes slightly clouded. “Ane-san called me when you were already here.”
Yosano hums. It’s not perfect, it never will be. She supposes it will always be like this, across lines from each other they really shouldn’t step over. The hostility will never fade away completely. But it dulls.
And for Yosano, maybe that could be enough.
____