In the gutters of Ashland, the poorest district in Osaka's Glen River area, Kuzuha Ritsu learned early that silence is survival. The son of a low-ranking yakuza and an alcoholic mother, he wakes each morning to shattered glass and screaming, then walks to school wearing the only armor he has: a perfect test score and a face that never gives anything away. His plan is simple—use his mind to claw his way out of this city of brothels, gambling dens, and biker gangs, and never look back.
Then he me
Until It Turns to Ashes - The Piece's Fangs — The Price of Domination
By the time night's curtain had fully swallowed Ashland, the city finally showed its true face. The alleys that lay dormant through the day filled with the smell of liquor, tobacco, and cheap perfume. Across the Glen River, the lights of the Granveld district bled faintly into the distance, while on this side a different kind of light flickered to life—the red of neon signs, bare bulbs strung over shopfronts, and the embers of cigarettes in the hands of men standing on street corners. Together they traced the outline of the city's night.
The Kuzuha family's apartment sat a little apart from that clamor. A two-story wooden building, its walls darkened with rain stains, its outer staircase groaning with every step. Ritsu's room was at the far end of the second floor. In the six-mat space, only a bed, a study desk, and a bookshelf stood in neat order. Economics and psychology texts lined the shelf, their spines perfectly aligned. This room alone was quiet—like a different world cut cleanly out of the city.
Ritsu sat at the desk, a black-covered ledger open before him.
Inside, dates and names, amounts and repayment deadlines were arranged in meticulous handwriting. Records of debt. In the year since he'd started at Shinonome Technical High School, this ledger held the entirety of the "business" Ritsu had built. Mimura, Inoue, Sasaki, Toudou—beside each name, their circumstances were noted. A parent's debt, motorcycle repair costs, gambling losses. Ritsu carried all of it in his head. Who owed how much, who looked likely to pay, who was trying to run. He didn't need the ledger—close his eyes and it all surfaced.
From the next room came the sound of his mother sobbing.
A faint, damp sound. On the other side of a single wall, his mother was drowning in drink again. His father, Gou, still hadn't come home. A job for the gang, or maybe another woman's place. Either was fine. To Ritsu, his parents' existence had long since become nothing more than noise on the other side of the wall.
The back of his right hand throbbed faintly.
An old burn scar. Two centimeters across, from where he'd touched a stove. Unconsciously, Ritsu traced it with the fingers of his left hand. It felt as though the heat of that day still lingered beneath the skin.
That was when it happened.
Someone came running up the outer staircase.
One step, two, three—the footsteps stopped without hesitation in front of Ritsu's door.
Bang, bang, bang.
Knocking. Violent, desperate.
Ritsu closed the ledger and slid it into the desk drawer. Locked it. Then, slowly, he stood and walked to the door.
Bang, bang, bang.
Again, the knocking.
Ritsu opened the door.
Misaki Tooru stood there.
His Reimei Academy uniform. The dark navy blazer was made of fabric far too fine for this neighborhood. Silver-rimmed glasses. Neatly kept black hair. Dark eyes with double lids. The only son of a major bank president, raised in the upscale residential district of Northgate. And now he stood in the hallway of a run-down Ashland apartment, shoulders heaving, glaring at Ritsu.
"...Give them back."
Misaki's voice carried a rage he couldn't quite hide beneath his refined manner of speech.
"Give them back. Those IOUs. All of my debt notes."
Ritsu stared at Misaki's face.
His expression was blank. The usual Ritsu face, showing not a fragment of emotion. Behind his sanpaku eyes, something glinted coldly. Misaki, pinned by that gaze, flinched for just a moment. But he quickly smothered it with anger.
"You can hear me, can't you? The IOUs with my signature that you're holding. Give them back. Right now."
Ritsu slowly leaned his back against the wall.
"And?"
A flat voice. Just sound, no feeling.
Misaki's right pinky trembled.
"Don't 'and' me!"
Misaki's voice cracked. The fast-talking tone of a cornered man making excuses. Ritsu didn't miss it.
"You threatened me, made me run a gambling den's book, turned me into a criminal! If it weren't for those IOUs, I could escape your control!"
Misaki's words came faster and faster.
"My father told me. That I shouldn't get involved with people like you. I didn't know our bank had connections to your father's gang. I didn't know! You got a hold of my weakness, made me run the book, and every night in that basement—"
"Misaki."
Ritsu spoke his name quietly.
Misaki's mouth stopped dead.
"What did you come here to do just now?"
Ritsu's voice was as flat as ever. But that flatness only scraped at Misaki's nerves.
"I came to get those IOUs back!"
"I see."
Ritsu blinked slowly.
"And you thought I'd return them?"
Misaki's face went bright red.
"You—!"
Misaki took a step forward. At that moment, Ritsu looked at Misaki's right pinky once more. It was trembling. A habit that surfaced when he lied. Misaki Tooru was the kind of man whose emotions always showed there when they ran high. Ritsu had known that since the first time they'd faced each other in that back alley.
And now, Misaki's pinky seemed to tremble for a reason other than anger.
(He's hiding something.)
A cold calculation ran through Ritsu's mind.
Misaki was pressing him to return the IOUs. That in itself was the natural reaction of a man under someone's thumb. But in Misaki's eyes there was a color that wasn't anger. Impatience. And a strange confidence. The precarious composure of someone holding a "trump card."
"Misaki. Did you give something to someone?"
At Ritsu's words, Misaki's shoulders jumped with a start.
"W-what are you talking about? There's no way I'd give anything to anyone."
Fast words. His tone pitched up a notch.
"I see."
Ritsu pulled his gaze from Misaki and looked down the hallway. Below the outer staircase, in the shadows, he could see a figure. It was Masashi. Ritsu gave the slightest tilt of his chin. With just that, Masashi understood and vanished soundlessly into the dark.
"Get inside. It's a hassle if you make a scene in the hallway."
Ritsu stepped aside and opened the door to his room.
Misaki looked at Ritsu's face as though hesitating for a moment. But in the end he stepped inside. Ritsu's room. Six mats of perfectly ordinary space. Misaki's face twisted for just an instant at how utterly plain it was.
"...You live in a place like this. So you really are poor."
Ritsu ignored the remark.
"Sit."
Misaki lowered himself onto the edge of the bed. Ritsu sat in the desk chair. The distance between them was about a meter. The air in the room sank, heavy.
"Now. The real question. Who did you give what to?"
"I'm telling you, I didn't give anything to anyone!"
Misaki's voice cracked again.
"Your right pinky is trembling."
Misaki hurriedly covered his right hand with his left.
"Th-this is because it's cold. Nights get chilly, don't they."
Ritsu slowly tilted his head.
"You met with someone from the Minamigawa Union."
It was plainly visible—the blood draining from Misaki's face.
"H-how—"
"You coming here alone to demand the IOUs back. That in itself doesn't make sense."
Ritsu's voice was cold and matter-of-fact.
"You have a weakness I'm holding over you. You shouldn't be able to defy me. And yet you came alone, in the middle of the night, to a place like this. Which means you have a basis for believing 'this will free me from Ritsu's control.' You couldn't have created that basis on your own. You'd need someone backing you."
Ritsu looked straight into Misaki's eyes.
"And I'm telling you that someone is from the Minamigawa Union."
Misaki gasped.
Silence.
Through the wall, his mother's sobbing was still audible.
"...That's right."
Misaki's voice was hoarse.
"I contacted an executive of the Minamigawa Union—the organization your father's gang belongs to. I told him everything. That you threatened me, made me run a gambling den's book, that you're holding evidence. And then that executive said that if I handed over copies of the evidence you have, he'd protect me from you—"
Misaki spoke rapidly, as though lining up excuses.
"I'm not the one in the wrong! You are! You tried to make me a criminal, so I did what I had to do to protect myself! Even my father said people like you should be handed over to the police! With our bank's power, we could crush your father's gang easily!"
It was no longer clear whether Misaki's words were aimed at Ritsu or at himself.
Ritsu listened in silence.
(I see. Misaki is trying to turn my hand into a blade to stab me with.)
Deep in Ritsu's chest, something contracted coldly.
Fear.
It was a kind of emotion Ritsu had never tasted before. The weakness he thought he held could actually become the other man's weapon. The person he believed he controlled was, behind his back, joining hands with a different master.
(My own cards are stabbing me.)
Ritsu looked at his right hand resting on the desk. The burn scar. The memory of the fist he'd swung that night to protect Ai. And now this hand, moving to bind people by their weaknesses.
(...I see.)
Ritsu exhaled slowly.
"Misaki. What you're about to hand over is copies of the evidence."
"Yeah, that's right. Copies of all the IOUs you're holding—I'll give them all to the Union executive. And then you'll be erased by the Union. And I'll be free."
There was a note of defiance in Misaki's voice now.
"Have the date and place been decided?"
Misaki faltered for a moment.
"...What about it?"
"Answer me."
For the first time, Ritsu's voice sharpened, just slightly.
Misaki's body jerked.
"...The night after tomorrow. Eleven o'clock. An abandoned factory along the Glen River, in Ghost Town."
Ritsu etched that information into his mind.
"I see. And now you've just told me."
Misaki's head snapped up as though startled.
"Wh-what? So I told you—what can you even do? The Union executive is far above your father. He's not someone you can handle on your own!"
Ritsu stood.
Misaki instinctively shrank back.
From the bag in the corner of the room, Ritsu took out a single sheet of paper. The debt note bearing Misaki's signature. The original. He held it out in front of Misaki's face.
"Do you want this?"
Misaki's eyes fixed on the document.
"...You'll give it back?"
Ritsu raised the note to a height Misaki couldn't reach.
"The night after tomorrow, you'll meet the Union executive. I'll be there at the scene."
Misaki's face twisted with terror.
"Wh-what are you saying—"
"I'll witness the moment you hand over the copies. And in exchange, I'll wipe your betrayal clean."
Ritsu's voice was cold and quiet.
"I-if you do that, you'll be killed by the Union! And me too—"
"You don't need to worry about that."
Ritsu set the note on the desk.
"The night after tomorrow, you'll meet the Union executive. But before you hand over the copies, you will call me. If you don't, this note goes to the police, to Reimei Academy, and to your father's bank—by tomorrow."
The blood drained completely from Misaki's face.
"Th-that's—"
"Your father is a bank president. What do you think would happen if it came out that his son was running the book at a yakuza gambling den?"
Ritsu looked down at Misaki, straight into his eyes.
"Your family would be finished."
Misaki's right pinky trembled violently.
Silence.
"...Fine."
Misaki spoke as though forcing the words out.
"The night after tomorrow, before I meet the Union executive, I'll call you. That's what you want, right?"
Ritsu didn't answer.
He simply picked up the note from the desk and put it back in his bag.
"Get out."
Misaki rose unsteadily to his feet.
At the door, hand on the frame, Misaki turned back.
"...Someday, you'll definitely be stabbed by the things you've taken hold of."
Misaki's voice carried resentment and a strange, prophetic ring.
Ritsu watched Misaki's back in silence.
The door closed, and the sound of footsteps descending the outer staircase faded.
Ritsu sat back down in the desk chair.
(Stabbed by the things I've taken hold of.)
Misaki's words echoed in his head.
Ritsu looked
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