22. Chapter 22
Chapter 22
Chi
It feels like seconds before I bolt upright, sweating and shaky, but wide awake. It can’t have only been seconds, though, because I’m in a room. I know this room…
The Japan mansion.
That’s when it all comes back to me: my inadvisable idea of sneaking into the office building we were in last night, being chased out by guards, Andy getting shot, and the needle to the arm that must have been from a tranq gun. And if I’m in the Japan mansion…
“Chichi-san,” Akihito says from a chair by the doorway, causing my anxious body to jump halfway to the ceiling from the bed.
“Fuck!” I yell, and once I get my bearings, not a second later, I decide that going completely apeshit is probably the best move. “Where’s Andy? What have you done with him? Why did you show up? What are you planning to do to us?” I gesture wildly with my arms, despite the trembling in every limb, trying to take up as much space in the room as I can and be as intimidating as possible.
Akihito stares at me, a peaceful aura surrounding him like a halo. It wants to suck me in; I feel it reaching out to me, begging me to join him and speak rationally, but I fight it with everything inside of me.
“Which one of those questions would you like me to answer first?” he asks, hands clasped neatly in his lap.
“Andy!” I nearly scream his name.
“He’s fine. Recovering. Sedated, because we don’t want him to wake up in the same way that you just did.”
“We? Who’s ‘we?’ And what, you’re afraid of him? Afraid of what he’ll do to you if you don’t keep him sedated? Trust me, I may be small, but I swear to God, I will kill you if you hurt him.”
Akihito waits, with a polite but bored expression, for me to finish. “I know you have many questions, but you seem most anxious about Andy-san, so I’ll answer your last one first. We are not afraid that he will wake up and hurt us. He was very injured, and if he wakes up and tries to move around too much, he could easily rip his stitches and undo hours of work in the operating room. He could further injure himself worse than he was when we found the two of you.”
I cross my arms over my chest and look at him unyieldingly. “Okay, this is an interesting tactic. Trying to get me to believe that you’re helping us.”
“I don’t need you to believe me, Chichi. You can come see for yourself, if you’d like. But I have to insist that you walk calmly to the infirmary here, because our mother is sleeping, and I don’t want her to wake up.”
Bringing up my mother so casually just reminds me that I’m in their territory and not my own, which makes me angrier than I am already. I scoff. “Why not? What, like she’ll care about you shooting me with a tranq gun and planning how to kill me? She never gave a shit about me anyway. Why would she start now?”
He ignores my quip. “Do you think you can do this, Chichi? Or do we need to talk in this room first?”
I realize the churning in my stomach isn’t from whatever was in that tranquilizer, but from the idea of Andy not being okay. I need to see him immediately. “Fine. Take me to him, but I swear, if this is some sort of trick…” I let the threat hang in the air, mostly because I don’t know how to end the sentence.
“It’s not a trick. We are truly trying to help. But if you can be calmer after seeing that Andy is okay, then we will go to him first.”
He stands up and puts out his hand for me, but I stumble out of the bed on my own. He retracts his arm without so much as a thought and leads the way. There are no guards as we walk, but I’m sure if I tried to leave, they’d come out of the woodwork. We’re not in here alone.
We come to the infirmary room, and I see Andy, asleep but with tubes and wires hanging out of him. I can’t help but be slightly shocked. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t for my brother to be telling the truth.
“Do you think you can speak with me now?” The question isn’t sarcastic or mean-spirited in any way. My brother truly wants to know if seeing that Andy is okay is enough to allay my biggest concerns.
“Yeah, whatever. So, if you’re not working against me, then what the hell did you just do to us? And why?” I can’t help but realize that my tone is considerably calmer than it was when I woke up.
“We found out you were there and came after you. I can’t believe you got as far as you did. We found the device you were carrying, and I have to admit that I’m extremely impressed. We have been trying to infiltrate the Kantoku-sha’s systems for weeks now. However, it was extremely inadvisable for you to go in there. Luckily, we took care of any guards that might have seen your faces and had our guy wipe the cams.” He looks down at his hands. “We didn’t kill anyone working inside the building. Honestly, I’m sure they are so low-level that they have no idea what happened anyway. We all had masks on and…” He sighs and smacks his fist onto the wooden armrest beside him in the first show of emotion I’ve perhaps ever seen from him.
“Why were you there?” I ask, eyes narrowed and expression fierce, even as banged up as I am right now.
“Because Riku finally broke and called me when you didn’t check in.”
“He’s a traitor!” I say in indignation. “I can’t believe we thought—”
“He didn’t betray you, Chichi! He got nervous when you didn’t return. He doesn’t fully trust me either, but he certainly trusts me more than you or Andy do. He came with Daiki on occasion and knew we were close. So he got in touch when you were in that building for double the length of time you said you’d be in there. And what a relief that he did, right?”
It finally clicks. My brother wasn’t there on shady business. He hasn’t hurt either of us and doesn’t seem to want to. Riku didn’t betray us. My brother came to save us. He’s got to be on our side.
“So you… you didn’t kill our father and Daiki? You don’t want to kill me?” I ask in a tiny voice, foreign to my own ears. I never talk this way, but I know that no matter how he answers my question, it’s going to break me. Part of me doesn’t want to consider it one way or another, because I don’t want this dramatic scene to unfold anymore than it has. But the other part of me — the one who misses her family and wishes she had more people to count on in this fucked up world — desperately wants to know. Desperately wants this new realization to be correct.
“No, Chichi. You are my sister. I…” He looks off and sighs something akin to disappointment. “I loved our father, whether or not he ever loved me. And I—I loved Daiki.” When he looks back at me, his eyes are glassy. I know in that moment he’s not lying to me. I know that he’s been with us this entire time, not against us. And with that knowledge, my own tears start to flow.
“My whole life, you’ve just ignored me. How could you… why didn’t you…” I don’t know how to finish my thought. I don’t know how to ask him why he’s hidden this way for so many years. “You should have told me,” I finish awkwardly.
At least he’s just as awkward; in fact, he’s actually far worse. “I wanted to, Chichi-san. But our father forbade it. As did Daiki. You know how it was. When they made a decision together, nothing could dissuade them.”
“You knew he was gay, didn’t you?” It just bursts out of me; there’s no way for me to hold it in anymore.
“I knew he was since I was about 12-years-old. I was told after we all stopped denying that I was, too.”
“So, you just—” I stop and gasp. “Wait, what did you just say?”
His lip curves into a smirk. “Yes, you heard correctly. That is why I am such a secret. That is why you are the heir. In fact, Mother was summoned when I was eight years old because they suspected, and… I assume she was part of their…”
“I loved Papa and Daiki, but you really don’t have to finish that sentence.” It’s not that I feel love for my mother, but on top of the ick that comes with imagining your parents getting it on, I also feel horrible just thinking about my mother caught in the middle of this torrid affair that never ended. No one deserves to have to live like that.
“So, he was only ever with Daiki? He didn’t love our mother at all?”
“They were friends, as far as I know. It is complicated. You know this life. You must do what is expected, and it was expected that they wed and have children. I know they didn’t dislike each other. But they were never in love. I think our father was… a better choice than many other men she could have gotten matched with. But I’m certain there was never an attraction.”
“Did she… was she able to… have other men?”
Akihito smirks and nods. “Yes, Chichi. Just as I have been able to have affairs, she has too. That is why we hide away and take little outward part in the business. If others thought we were involved, they would dig into us more. As it is now, Mother is a glorified bookkeeper, and I am just their wayward son.”
Tears spring to my eyes. I think I may be feeling guilty, and as I speak with Akihito further, I figure out why. “I don’t understand why they wouldn’t tell me. I guess I was the only one who lucked out. I guess I got to live the ‘normal’ life while all of you had to suffer. Father and Daiki hid who they were and their love from the world for decades. You and our mother have been secluded here for decades as well. It’s so unfair.”
Akihito shrugs. “Many things in life are unfair, Chichi. Perhaps others would think it unfair for you . Mother truly is just a bookkeeper. She has successfully stayed away from this business and the people that come with it, just the way she has always wished. She has been in love with the same man for nearly two decades. He’s a nice man, nothing like our father: unassuming, middle-class, and he’s her age.”
He shrugs and continues. “As for me, at least I can be who I want to be in seclusion. I only go out with my face covered under a pseudonym. I don’t believe you were truly allowed the same. We both have had our fair share of burdens.”
“A pseudonym?” I think for a moment. “You’re against the Kantoku-sha . You saved us from them, and they killed our father.” I remember the name that Andy told me so long ago — a name that didn’t seem to make sense to either of us. We thought it might have been another group that the hitmen who gave us the name belonged to. But now, speaking to my brother, I wonder…
“You can’t be…”
“ Kyouka Suigetsu .” The same name that the man Andy tortured, who was hired to kill my father, said in drugged-up anger.
I sit with this knowledge in silence for a couple of minutes, considering what it means. There are so many thoughts and questions going through my head. I’m so confused and surprised, but it makes perfect sense, really. It all fits. But I still have so many questions about the totality of who my brother is and what he does here in Japan.
But we will have plenty of time to discuss that, and I have no choice but to focus on my emotions right now anyway. I’m sad. There are so many more mysteries to my father than I would have ever thought possible. How could he keep all of this from me but confide in his son? A son he never saw? A son who isn’t even sure his father loved him?
I focus on Daiki; at least I can swallow the idea that Akihito learned from him. “So, you were even closer with Daiki than I ever knew.”
He flinches — it’s obvious that thinking of Daiki affects him deeply. I can’t deny that I feel a bond to him right now that defies my logical reasoning, but I suppose it makes sense in a way. We both loved Daiki and my father. We are both grieving the loss of them.
“Daiki was truly my best friend, Chichi. I loved him as a father, a mentor, and a confidant. He wouldn’t speak to me about Akio, but he did not deny me my feelings, either. He listened and gave me his wisdom, and that was enough for me.”
I’m crying again, and it feels like that unpredictable monster that spirals out of control when I’m not careful. It will probably happen every time, but I want to talk about Daiki and my father. Even if it might spiral out of control, I want to try.
I consider my next move carefully, even while every feeling I’ve been holding in this past week threatens to explode out of me, so that I can digest what I’ve just been told. Akihito saved mine and Andy’s life, and he has done nothing but try to make me feel comfortable in a scary situation since I’ve been here. I’ve been taught my entire life not to allow my vulnerabilities to show in front of others, including even those I love, but Akihito has been completely vulnerable with me . He has been open about his relationship with Daiki and in telling me everything about his life up until this point.
So I push the feeling of inappropriateness away. I make the decision to go with my gut and unload these feelings onto someone who I don’t know very well but just saved my life anyway. “I know what you mean, Akihito. I miss him so much it hurts. I miss them both so much.”
I sob and break down, and Akihito comes to me and hugs me awkwardly. I laugh at how uncertain his embrace is, but then I cry harder when I realize that this is the first time I’m hugging my own brother, who was hidden away due only to an uncontrollable predisposition to be attracted to men instead of women. Such a stupid, insignificant reason, which dictated that we would be near strangers for the first twenty-four years of my life. It’s just not fucking fair.
“I… I miss them too,” he says, and for some reason, when I see a tear fall out of his perpetually stoic, hardened eyes, it comforts me instead of winding me up further. I need Andy like I need air to breathe, but what I have with my brother right now begins to heal a gaping wound that my grief has ripped into me. One that I might have never realized was there if not for this time with him.
It appears that Akihito doesn’t need to say anything at all. Just being with another person who loved the same people I’ve lost is a level of comfort I didn’t know I could have. I’m still crying, but it’s not the overwhelming, painful cry that I’ve been devolving into more often than not. It feels like it might be helping, rather than hurting, and as I squeeze Akihito a little harder, I hope it’s helping him, too.