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His blood was getting in his eye. The Suwa blood was always like that, restricting, annoying, trying to obscure the world with pain and darkness. His Suwa blood dripped off his chin and trickled from all the cuts and scrapes from the fighting before. It pulsed heavily in his neck, chest, and trigger finger. The exhaustion from the loss of that Suwa blood tried to distract him, easing him into lowering his guard and gun, but Rei kept it pointed at his Boss.
His hair was down around his face in a style his Bos—his father hadn’t seen since he failed to kill that dog on his own as a kid. Rei kept his hair up after that to help him see and focus clearly on whatever task he was given. When he left home, but still killed, Rei’s tied-back hair had grown out, blocking his vision more and more each day as killing took more and more of something small and warm within him.
Kazuki was the one to cut it back so he could pull his hair from his eyes again, and he eventually was leaving his hair down when he was off the job and at home. With the gift of a gaming console from Kazuki, Rei started playing video games, working through series and genres he saw at a distance as a child and on jobs and errands. It was a task to focus on like always, but he chose the task, and no one was ever truly hurt. In a video game, he could use his training to hunt and shoot people, but never had to see the life truly leave their eyes or hear their last words or be the only one left standing in an abruptly silent, messy room. Even in the field now, as he stood in such rooms, Rei only sunk into that feeling for a moment before Kazuki was talking in his ear or Kazuki was sighing at his side about his recklessness. His video game collection grew quickly as Kazuki melted into his life, trimming his hair every now and then.
After Miri came, his hair was only up at home to match hers or to be used for Miri’s styling. She’d started messing with it when he was playing a game she wasn’t interested in. As she haphazardly pulled at the strands, made untrained attempts at braids, and yanked his head unexpectedly, he played, but with less and less focus. Soon, he only really played the games Miri liked or played ones he didn’t have to pay much attention to so he could hear her talk about her day more easily, while she played with his hair. Now, whenever he looked at the piling dust on most of his video game collection as Miri’s hands tangled in his hair, he wondered if he should tell Kazuki that he wanted to grow his hair out.
So, there Rei stood, in the preferred uniform of his father, but his hair was his own, his focus was his own, his family was his own. That’s who his father needed to see and understand. The Rei he nearly killed in spirit after all those years. The Rei he was ready to kill in body at this very moment.
Words hadn’t worked. Telling his father all these precious new experiences he felt, letting him peek into the healing small warmth in Rei’s chest he dared to call “affection” to the bathroom ceiling in the hours before dawn, hadn’t changed his father’s stance. It was still the Suwa blood that mattered, all while it continued threatening to block his vision.
His father said something about how he couldn’t escape the Suwa blood, about how his new family was false and pretend.
Kazuki rummaging for car keys in drawers and in the pockets of dead men as he limped along came to mind. He was probably complaining about it being too much work for an injured guy to the smoky air, but would find the keys and get them a getaway car regardless. Kazuki would be feeling his injuries fiercely but will have everything set up, with even the Santa costumes moved to the new car, when Rei comes out of the mansion. Rei can depend on Kazuki to do the important things and follow through on the small details.
Miri practicing her song for the Christmas Party in the bath came to mind next. Then, her wakeup attack he still felt a little in his ribs. Then her pinky, gone a bit too cold for his liking in the December air, wrapped in his. He didn’t want to swallow any nails for breaking their promise. He didn’t want to miss anything that was important to her.
Rei wished his father had ever felt that way about him, but not in a hopeful, wistful way. This wish wasn’t about the family of blood he could have had. It was out of pity for the lonely man he could see now. His father was ready to shoot him to maintain something Rei suddenly felt was a kind of fairytale like the ones he read for the first time with Miri. It was a story of kings and knights, of war and peace, of darkness and light, of blood and destiny. If anyone was going through the motions, it was his father, clinging to a story of Rei and their blood just to keep himself company among the dead.
“It might just be going through the motions to you, but it isn’t for me,” Rei explained. “Miri, Kazuki, and I share a bond stronger than blood. I want to believe in that. I want to become a real family!”
He could almost taste the french toast they made together that morning. His first success at a homemade dish with Kazuki’s approval. The easy smile across Kazuki’s face as he ate and enjoyed something Rei created with his own hands made Rei understand what Kazuki meant about people liking the food you make. When the french toast was gone, Rei nearly wanted to make it again or turn back time just to see the look on Kazuki’s face and hear his praise once more. Something had weaved its way within him and wasn’t letting go. It nearly overshadowed the smile Miri pulled from him when she told Kazuki that maybe his french toast would be better than Kazuki’s one day. Kazuki didn’t even get fake-offended for once and said, “If he practices, he just might.”
His hands didn’t have to be for killing. They could be for cooking, for video games, for Miri, for—Rei remembered the last time the three of them all slept together, and his right hand involuntarily reached for Kazuki’s sleeping face, wanting to brush his fingers along the bit of blond stubble on his chin.
Rei’s fingers tightened on the gun, as he continued, louder now.
“If my killer’s blood gets in the way of that and won’t let me protect the two of them, then these hands have no purpose!”
He knew where to shoot then. His mentor had taught him anatomy.
Rei jabbed the gun into his upper right arm, at an angle even Kazuki had warned him about when patching him up once, and shot through.
There was pain and then the numbness, but he only saw the controller he couldn’t use anymore to show off to Miri in Morio Kart, the fingertips that would never move along that soft face and feel the prickle of stubble, the ways french toast would be harder, but not impossible, to make for his family.
His father likely only saw the loss of a weapon and a reputation fitting the Suwa blood. A failed heir that could no longer shoot with nor use his dominant hand.
“I’m worthless to you now. Aren’t I?” Rei asked, unable to prevent the bit of begging in his voice, a final plea from his child self for a father, not a boss.
At a small shift in his father’s expression, he dropped his gun and turned to leave. If his father shot now, he was defenseless. His back was a free target. Rei looked over his shoulder, “Farewell, Father.”
As he walked to the door, he heard his father pick up the gun and felt the aim settle between his shoulder blades.
Rei kept walking, and, as he cleared the threshold of that office for the last time, he heard the gun clatter softly on wood. He breathed and continued.
He walked by familiar scenes, his childhood home and dead bodies. His Suwa blood dripped off his chin, trickled from cuts and scrapes all over his body, and flowed down his unfeeling arm, and it almost felt like the last of it was leaving his body. His body was replacing it and making new blood. Blood that was his own.
Rei saw Kazuki and their getaway car through the windows. Kazuki lounged against the car as if it was a casual thing, as if it was no trouble at all. After the past year, Rei suddenly realized that Kazuki made it look easy so Rei didn’t worry about him after whatever would happen with his father. His footsteps got a little faster. He paused at the front doorway to watch Kazuki notice him and couldn’t help but say, “I’m home now.”
“Ah, welcome—Hey, your arm!” Kazuki was always the bigger worrier of the two of them.
“I did it to myself,” Rei said simply.
There was now disbelief and exasperation fighting with the worry on Kazuki’s face. “To… yourself? Seems a little overboard…”
He sighed with the tremble of a fake laugh. Rei started walking again to be closer and breathe his air, but Kazuki gestured for him to get in the car. The steering wheel was placed on the opposite side than in their Western car, so they sat in each other’s usual seat. It shifted Rei’s world a little off kilter, but he didn’t think he disliked that, especially if Kazuki was with him.
“Hey, Kazuki,” he began. “You think we managed to change?”
The last times they’d talked about this, Kazuki was quick to talk. On his birthday, he was quick with uncertainty in a positive tone. When Miri went with her mom, he was quick to say they weren’t able to change. This time, he was slow, taking his time to think about what he wanted to answer with, before breathing out through his nose, almost like a half laugh or, “Oh, well.”
That smile, the one Rei now thinks is one of his favorite things, tore away Kazuki’s pensive look. “We’ve still got a long way to go.” He started the car. “Anyway, want to head back?”
Rei smiled just a bit, crinkling the dried blood on his face. It wasn’t like Kazuki’s smile, but it came naturally and easily to him, and that mattered far more. “We’ve got the Santa suits, after all,” Rei replied, looking back at the bag he knew would be there.
With Kazuki by his side, driving a bit recklessly, Rei was certain that he wasn’t going to break his first, and definitely not last, pinky promise. The blood on his face was dry, and he wanted to see his daughter, their daughter, more than anything else in the world.