#but hes not in a good place

The inn was cheap and that was what mattered. Daisuke didn’t intend to spend much time in his inn room, anyway. There was information to be gathered and people to track. It wouldn’t be that hard to find the Yamagarasu offices, of course, but he also wasn’t about to go walking straight into them. He needed to be ready. He needed to know what he was going to say. It would take lotsof time spent out and about the city. Weeks, at least, if not more.

Surveillance began immediately. All it took was a little patience and a handful of luck for Daisuke to overhear the right conversation. The two young men were Yamagarasu, all right, and unknowingly led their tail directly back to the head office. If Daisuke hadn’t been quick on his feet, their Boss would have caught him prowling on the roof opposite the building. But it gave him a place to go every day. He found new routes and hiding places and kept a watchful eye on the yakuza boss every day for the rest of that sennight and into the next.

Becoming the prey himself was a fear that constantly gnawed at the back of Daisuke’s mind. If he thought he heard the scuff of a boot, or saw a shadow out of place, or smelled the wrong cologne on the wind, he fled. Each time he sought a new place to hide and waited, barely breathing and with daggers drawn, for an eternity while nothing happened. It was beginning to fray his nerves.

The first time one of those uncertain, heart-stuttering encounters became a confrontation was almost a relief. Daisuke was at a disadvantage - he attacked only in defense, and without deadly force. The flats of his blades, the pommels, even punches and kicks and a well-placed tackle were his arsenal. He left his assailant bleeding but only unconscious, and did the same thing each successive time another darkened figure detached from the shadows to come for him again.

Some were the Yamagarasu themselves. Trust Oka to not miss that someone was staking out his family’s turf. So far Daisuke was reasonably sure his identity hadn’t been found out and he had every intention of keeping it that way. Some, however, were decidedly not Oka’s little birds. Daisuke recognized the mark of the Akizuki clan embroidered into the clothes of several men he fought and left alive but unconscious and with bruised egos. If he was going to do what he came to Kugane for, Daisuke was going to need to pluck himself up and do it.

Perhaps it was that knowledge that influenced his bad decisions when he found himself face to face with the Raen’s own second in command. Rei caught him fair and square, both if them drawing blood in the ensuing scuffle. But the fact that she saw his face was Daisuke’s biggest mistake. She saw him and she recognizedhim. And when he could have broken and run, instead he let her talk him into staying.

He should have run, he thought distantly. Hindsight was always clear in such a regard. Had he not stayed, had he not made the mistake of trusting her, he wouldn’t have had to confront the man he wasn’t truly ready to encounter. All thoughts of what he’d wanted to say, the close-held and awkward feelings that formed a confusing tangle in his chest that he wasn’t sure how to explain but wanted to try, were quickly condensed into a hardened knot and buried deep under layers of numb distance.

Despite Daisuke’s attempt to ensure that his only reason for being there was to return the gift he’d received and the pearl Oka refused to answer, he doubted he’d been believed. And the words that repeatedly echoed through his mind now cut as deeply and sharply as steel. “It would’ve been awkward if a fling would’ve decided to pursue something more than that.”

That was all it had been. Logically, Daisuke knew that. But he had wantedso badly for it to be something else that he’d convinced himself otherwise. He had twisted himself up in the memories of their short time together and made a muddle of all of it. A single date that shouldn’t have meant anything, a silly nickname, even the unadorned use of his own given name - there was nothing between them that should have driven Daisuke to follow the Raen across the ocean like some sort of besotted youth.

But he had. And the absolute denial that he should have seen coming had sent him reeling.

Rather than his usual roundabout, carefully unique pathing to get back to his temporary quarters, Daisuke walked straight back. He looked straight ahead of him, his gaze never straying to the side or above to check the shadows of nearby streets or rooftops. Such things simply ceased to matter. Why should he care if someone was after him, when there was nothing left of the moorings that had kept him tethered in the first place?

He had left Lydia. His friends from his life before were either dead or otherwise gone. And the very reason for his return to his home city had been spelled out as nothing but a misunderstanding. A mistake. Daisuke had already cut all of his other ties. The Yamagarasu had held the final cord.

At first, nothing within Daisuke’s rented room seemed out of place. The bed was unmussed and his spare clothing untouched. But as his uncaring eyes skimmed over the surfaces they finally recognized the thing that shouldn’t have been there.

A single, ornate dagger lay innocently atop the bedside table. Its blade gleamed with care and hinted to a razor’s edge, and its golden hilt glittered in the low light with rows of intricate filigree and tiny studded gems. It was expensive to the point of gaudy. It had also been Daisuke’s own weapon, years before. A gift from Tachibana to his dear, beloved monster.

As if there could be any doubt of the dagger’s origin, as if Daisuke didn’t recognize every swirl and ridge of the fine decoration, the tiny etching of the Tachibana crest in the base of the blade was impossible to deny. Daisuke walked to it as if in a trance, gloved hand reaching for the hilt and lifting the exquisitely balanced weapon with ease.

It fit as perfectly into his grip as it had before. He would know this blade anywhere. But the last time he had held it was when he had driven it deep into his victim’s body. This weapon, its twin, and the man he had killed with them had all fallen off a Kugane pier and into the ocean that fateful night. There was absolutely no explanation for how it could have found its way here now.

“Ah.” Daisuke’s sudden small noise of understanding was loud in the cramped space. He turned as the door opened behind him and nodded to the man who stood in its frame. It was with an overwhelming apathy that Daisuke allowed himself to be grabbed and disarmed and hauled unceremoniously from the premises. Perhaps he should have fought back. Only bells before he would have fought like a dervish to keep himself free. But such passion was just a memory he could no longer comprehend. His last thought while they threw a bag over his head, before the fist that smacked against his skull was able to find his temple and send him reeling into blackness, was that at least he would keep one promise he’d made: he really was going to disappear. Rei would never have to bother dealing with him again.

((Oka and Rei are @grumpy-limsan-customs-cat​ ‘s ♥))