The Tokyo 2020 Olympics were a record-breaking financial disaster. Coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic, Japan found itself in the mires of debt and economic insecurity. The poverty rate, rising since the 2010s despite official statistics claiming otherwise, started rising even more rapidly, and the gulf between rich and poor widened dramatically in the early 2020s. The underemployment rate soared to more than 60% for both young men and women, and even with a full-time job they knew they would be overworked and underpaid. Naturally, the suicide rate shot up in tandem. Japan was going through a major, unprecedented recession.

With one exception.

The special economic zone of Shinkōmi—an area previously called Tokyo Waterfront City—became the only part of the country where casinos were legally allowed to operate. The project for the development of this district was called the "Casino Bill", and it was widely criticised at the time. The government accepted bids for the contract to build the area, and the winner, a conglomerate called Takasato group, was suspected of rigging the bids. After much political struggle, the bill's ambitious designs were shrunk to a more realistic proposal, only allowing small-scale public casinos in specific areas. When the dust settled, all that remained was a steel-frame monument on a vacant lot and a community of homeless people and sex workers.

After this disaster, the leader of the Takasato group, Takasato Ryūjirō, offered to buy the whole area and take over operations. Everyone assumed that would fail just like the first attempt did, but the government was in such dire straits that they accepted the offer, and Takasato was given full control of Shinkōmi. The Casino Bill was amended to slash the public-only requirement, and a year later the city was overflowing with people in pursuit of liberty and money, locals and foreigners alike. All-encompassing resorts, office buildings and recreational attractions, entertainment facilities sprung up one after another. Next came the residential and business districts, and from then on, Shinkōmi became the one bright spot in the darkness Japan found itself in.

But of course, not all of the attention the place attracted was positive. Gangs started competing for territory, and Japan's recovering economy couldn't pay the upkeep costs of a police force strong enough to deal with these problems. Once again Takasato came to the rescue, and in ceding that last bit of power the government effectively gave up on controlling Shinkōmi, and soon after they designated it a "special administrative region", all but fully ceding control to Takasato. The bridges connecting it to the surrounding mainland and the ferries in and out were now under their purview, and people were allowed in only by their grace.

...people are allowed out only by their grace.

Now, more than a decade later, the economic bubble around Shinkōmi has shrunk back to normalcy, and though the casinos are still thriving, regular jobs and poverty exist once again, as does petty crime. The old city center has been condemned as the many corners and safety regulations that were cut in the early days of construction have come back around to demand their dues, and it's become a lawless core to a city that is itself not entirely lawful. The surrounding districts are busy the way cities tend to be, their people living and dying as people tend to do.

Murase Clinic stands concealed among rows of prefab houses, opened seven years ago, privately owned and operated by Dr. Murase Takuma. He specialises in internal medicine, dermatology, and gastroenterology, and has an upstanding reputation that attracts not just patients from the local neighbourhood but also workers from the business district. It opens late, relatively speaking, at 10AM, then Dr. Murase takes a long lunch break between 1:30PM and 4PM, and then it stays open until 1AM. These unusual hours are appreciated by workers who themselves work unusual hours and would have more difficulty getting appointments elsewhere.

Towa has a part-time job at the clinic in exchange for low wages and being allowed to live in the apartment on the third floor of the building. The second floor contains the secondary medical ward, full of hospital cots, and the first floor is where the primary medical ward is, next to the exam room.

Dr. Murase doesn't, himself, live at the clinic, and actually the idea of employing and housing Towa there was his; he claimed he wanted Towa to "build character" or something, and so he never fired Towa, no matter how badly he overslept. That said, he was used to Towa's antics, and so he didn't really rely on Towa showing up on time, either.

Not that Towa cares. Quite the opposite, really; improving his life would be a hassle, and he has no interest in it. If Taku someday decides to kick him out on the street, then so be it. He doesn't feel any fear for the future, and doesn't have any sense of urgency. He knows that things will work out regardless.

Or they won't, and then he'll die. It's about the same to him, really.

He steps out of the shower, not bothering to dry his hair, and sleepily scans the room. His gaze settles on a pocket watch hanging from his easel, a golden hexagonal piece with rose petals engraved in the center surrounded by thorny vines and underlined by the word "euphoria". One of his coworkers, Rei, found it lying around somewhere in Towa's room a few years ago and put it where it is now, but Towa himself can't remember when or where he got it or how it ended up in his room in the first place. The actual clock is stopped, but Towa's never felt like winding it, so it's basically only there for decoration.

The ticking of his functioning wall clock distracts him from his reverie, and he looks up at it: 11:15AM. Which is to say that Taku lied about the time. He doesn't care, but he does hurry up a bit, because otherwise Taku will come back up to bother him and no one wants that.

Towa gets dressed quickly, steps out without locking the door behind him—there's nothing worth stealing in his studio anyway—and calls the lift—he can't be bothered to climb down the stairs.

Arimura Tsukasa, another part-timer at the clinic, is manning the reception. When he spots Towa he scowls, rises to his feet, and leaves the desk, his facial expression screaming "YOU'RE LATE". He probably came in to cover for Towa, which happened on occasion... and that occasion happened a lot.

"Yo."

He doesn't respond immediately, opting to instead just glare at Towa in distaste. "Towa-san," he says after a moment.

"Look, I'm sorry I'm late, okay?"

"...I'm quite used to that by now. I just wish you'd take your things to your room rather than leaving them lying around." He gestures at a box that seems to have come in through the mail.

"...uh..."

"Or would you prefer I threw it all out?"

All mail delivered to the clinic is taken to the staff room and Arimura is in charge of sorting it. Towa occasionally buys art supplies or books online, but other than that, he never gets any packages, so anything else he received he assumed was junk and didn't bother collecting.

"Yeah, go ahead," he says with a shrug as he walks past him to step into the staff room.

Arimura narrows his eyes and his gaze follows Towa until he's walked into the staff room and then past the curtain that divides the reception area from it. He sighs again and walks off down the hall.

Towa's already forgotten about this interaction by the time he sits at the reception desk and starts his work day: several hours bored out of his skull, calling patients to the exam room and processing their payments and prescriptions one after another.

He goes through it robotically and gets lost in the haze of understimulus.

After his shift ends in the afternoon Towa goes back up to his apartment, does nothing for several hours, and finally comes back downstairs once the workday is done. He walks into the empty waiting room and sits slumped on a bench there. Not for any reason, really; he just feels like it.

Taku yawns and stretches while he walks out from the hallway, trailed by his orange Smoke. He turns his head from side to side, cracking his neck so loudly it sounds almost like he broke something.

"Good work today," Towa says without any feeling.

Taku snorts. "Wish I could say the same for you."

"Hey, I worked hard."

"If you want me to believe that you're going to need to try waking up on time for once." He reaches into his coat pocket then underhands Towa a can of coffee. "Here."

He catches it and looks up at Taku. "Not fresh today?"

"Buddy, you don't deserve fresh."

The door to the exam room opens and a bubbly voice comes out. "Placed the orders, finished the cleaning, and I'm all done!"

"Great, thanks a ton!"

"Yeah, no prob!"

"Good work today," Towa repeats, in the same emotionless tone of voice.

Upon hearing that and seeing Towa, the other part-timer storms over to him. "Excuse you! You overslept again, didn't you? Poor Arimura-kun had to pick up your slack!"

"Just for a little bit..."

"A little bit my ass, late is late," he replies, hands on his hips. His bright-yellow Smoke isn't swaying, though, so clearly he's not actually angry.

"Hear, hear," Taku says, clicking his own can of coffee open. "But, where's Arimura-kun? Did he already leave?"

"Yeah, a while ago."

"Ah... Well, thank you for staying longer than your usual shift, Rei. You were a big help."

"You're very welcome! Thank me later by buying me something sweet."

"I'll get you a parfait at the diner."

"Excellent!"

As Towa watches the two of them without saying anything, his gaze snatches on Taku for some reason. He thinks that...

"You look tired."

"—hm?"

"Your face. You look tired."

"Oh." He touches his cheek and sighs.

"What's wrong? Not getting enough sleep?"

"Yeah, kind of, but mostly I'm just... mentally drained."

"Oh?"

"Yeah." He sighs. "You know how a lot of our patients work night shifts?"

"Yeah...?"

"And you know how a lot of them have... some baggage. Or a lot of it. And sometimes they ask me for advice during their checkup."

"Advice? ...you mean, mental health stuff?"

"Yeah. Heavy stuff, stuff they can't tell their friends. Family problems. That kind of thing." Another sigh. "I'm not a therapist, but... if they want advice, I try my best to hear 'em out. I can't just ignore 'em, y'know? And if talking makes 'em feel better, then why not?"

"Right..."

"And lately, for some reason, there's been... a lot. More than usual. I used to get maybe one or two a week, maybe, but now there's a ton of 'em. And it's not just numbers..." He shakes his head. "Feels like the stress has been getting to a lot of 'em. Some even start yelling or crying in the middle of the conversation."

"—ah. I did catch some of that from the exam room, but I figured if it were important you'd call us..."

"I'd like to be able to offer mental healthcare, but there's just not a lot I can do. And when they're worked up like that, I can't exactly tell 'em to get out, y'know? And I keep trying to figure out what to do about it, but..." He sighs once again, rubbing the back of his hand.

"So, basically, you got a lot of nutcases coming in."

Taku and Rei both frown at him. "I can't say I appreciate that term."

"I'm just telling it like it is." He downs the rest of his coffee, sets the empty can on the floor, and rises to his feet.

"Where are you going?"

"For a walk."

"...now? Are you joking?"

Towa ignores Rei's disbelief and walks past him and through the door. The night is cold enough that his breath fogs up, and he forgot to grab a coat, but he's too lazy to go back to do that. He'll be fine, probably.

He grabs his pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lights one, then starts walking down the sidewalk with no particular destination in mind.

No particular destination, but yes particular goal. He wants to find someone to fuck.

Not that he's feeling lonely, or even particularly horny. He's not feeling much of anything; he never does. That's the entire problem. The only things that make him feel alive are rough sex and incredible violence. Really, it's the violence that he wants, but no one's really willing to go all-out the way he craves, to fight him like they mean to kill him; they always hold back, even if subconsciously, afraid to hurt others beyond a certain threshold.

Sometimes he can provoke someone badly enough, get them so riled up they forget themselves. Sometimes he can get someone to rape him (is it even rape, if he's seeking it?), to fuck him like they don't care what he's feeling, to throw him around and beat him up and make him hurt. Use him like a fucktoy, then discard him.

He holds out hope that he'll find someone to do that to him tonight. Not a lot of hope, but it does spring eternal.

The next day, Towa wakes up a quarter past noon. He never did find anyone to hurt him, so he just ended up picking a random bar and having some drinks. Compared to the night before, it felt really lackluster.

He lights a cigarette as soon as he's up then just stares at the TV he left on all night, eye going unfocused, not thinking of anything.

After a few minutes of that, a news chyron flashes up onscreen:

TAKASATO GROUP LEADER TAKASATO RYŪJIRŌ, 81, DEAD OF HEART FAILURE

That shakes some awareness into him. He looks at the white text on the TV, processes the information, and... puffs some smoke out. It's not that surprising, really. Not at that age, especially when he'd been in the hospital last Towa heard.

He looks away from the TV and leans back against the sofa, the interest fading just as quickly as it appeared.

Just then, his phone starts buzzing, on the far edge of the sofa. Its caller ID says that the person calling him is someone named Sakaki.

Sakaki, i.e. the old second-in-command of the Takasato group, probably now its new leader. There's also a series of notifications; apparently Sakaki had been trying to call Towa for a while. He probably wants to talk to Towa about the dead guy. Probably thinks that the fact that Towa is Takasato's biological son would matter at all. And Towa's just not interested. He doesn't have many memories of interacting with the guy, and actually barely remembers what he looks like. Calling Takasato Ryūjirō his "father" is grossly misleading at best; Towa's mother was Takasato's mistress, and that's all there is to it.

He drops his phone back onto the sofa without answering it and leans back again, staring at the ceiling, cigarette dangling from his lips.

Towa takes one final drag of his cigarette, then crushes it into the ashtray, rises to his feet, and pulls his coat on. He doesn't have any plans for the day, but he feels like going on a walk downtown, so he might as well do that.

The clinic isn't busy at this hour, given that Taku has his lunch break soon, but it's busy enough that the doctor is nowhere to be seen when Towa steps out of the elevator downstairs. He ignores Arimura's glare from the reception desk, pushes past the glass door, and walks out into the midday sun, lifting a hand to block its glare while his eye gets accustomed to it.

—was someone over there just now behind that building? He could've sworn he felt someone's gaze on him but when his eye's finally adapted to the light there's no one.

No one, that is, except for this very strange young man with green hair and a thick puffy jacket standing right in front of Towa, blinking at him, his pale purple Smoke gently shifting in unfelt wind.

...this guy's dead fish eyes are giving Towa's own dead fish eye a run for its money, that's for sure.

"You're... Towa, right? That's you?"

...?

"...aren't you? You've gotta be," he says, starting to look anxious, a feeling which is reflected in the increasing agitation of his Smoke.

"I can't be wrong about this... You're Towa, aren't you?"

"I'm guessing I should interpret that silence as a yes, right?"

"...maybe."

His Smoke slowly calms back down as he confirms that he was not wrong. "You're Towa... Right, and the reason I know... is because he knows... Right..."

"...he who?"

"I'm going to surpass him... Heheheh... Or my name isn't Inada...!"

...what the fuck is up with this dude.

Whatever it is, he seems happy enough to fuck off for now.

Well, that wasn't even the strangest conversation he's had this week.

His feet take him northwest to Douraku St., the main street of District E. It's lined with diners, convenience stores, discount stores, and drug stores, all packed together like sardines making it really easy to find whatever you need. It's not as packed as District D, but that's not saying much; everywhere you look there's people, people working and people buying stuff and people walking and people getting wasted.

He's not looking anywhere in particular as he walks with a cigarette between his lips, but just as a traffic light changes and the crowd starts walking he spots a familiar face out of the corner of his eye.

It's Rei, carrying a paper bag in one hand. "Oh, hi, Towa. What's up?"

"Just wandering. You?"

"On my way back from Tajima's. She gave me a bunch of stuff, so I thought I'd share some with Taku."

"Again?"

"It was a thank-you gift for helping her move some stuff in the store."

"Oh, but that reminds me. I left a croquette in the fridge for you; did you eat it?"

"A little."

"For real?"

"Just a bite."

"Still, that's a big step for you! I added condensed milk when I was making them. It's supposed to improve the consistency."

"...condensed milk? In croquettes?"

"It sounds crazy, but it works! You tasted it yourself, right?"

"...well, yeah."

"Next time I think I might try rice croquettes.

"Anyway, I'm headed back to the clinic. Seeya!"

"Bye."

Towa's subconscious was probably influenced by Rei's words. Without particularly meaning to, his feet lead him all the way to Tajima's in District D. He stops at the door and peers inside through the glass.

Its interior is cramped, packed to the gills with sweets and snacks of every kind, and amongst them is the white-haired, stony-faced octogenarian shop owner.

The store is as much a relic as Tajima herself is. It's been around since before Shinkōmi started to decline, and despite the expanding casino industry's attempts to force evictions on older homes and stores to construct taller and more modern Tajima's managed to stand her ground and hold onto it. Now it's the last shop of its kind in the area, and it's acquired some popularity amongst older folk who want a taste of nostalgia as well as some younger people curious about traditional snacks.

"Come on in," she says, sounding irritated.

He walks in, only somewhat reluctantly. Part of him always felt at home here, though he didn't understand why. The other part, though, was really uncomfortable with one small detail in the shop: a painting hanging on a wall above the clutter. It barely counts as a painting, really; at some point in the past the framed canvas might've had something on it, but a layer of black was added onto it obscuring every detail and making it look very out-of-place in the familiar and homey style of the store. Yet despite the discomfort, Towa always found his eye wandering towards it, like something in him wanted to unravel its mysteries. It felt almost like something out of a horror story, the one incongruous detail in an otherwise ordinary scene hinting at some dark secret.

"Are you buying or not?" Tajima snaps after watching Towa spend far too long standing there without even browsing. Her Smoke is a deep dark brown, and it's never wavered for as long as Towa's known her; she's just always snappish and grumpy.

He grabs some stuff at random and brings it to the counter, broken from his reverie and suddenly feeling like he doesn't want to stay there anymore.

She starts scanning the items, but after a couple of quiet seconds decides to speak. "This city keeps changing. I'm terrified someday it'll all go to shit," she mutters, mostly to herself. It's a common occurrence, regardless of whether anyone's listening, but some people found value in her stories of the old days. "It was never this filthy before, I tell you. Used to be you could let your daughters play outside, but now the streets are full of sluts and whores! Men and women! And you're one of them, you understand me?"

He nods. "Yeah." No use denying it, not that he'd even want to. He actually kind of likes Tajima. She's blunt, but honest and straightforward, and sometimes it feels like she's the only solid thing in the world while everything else changes around her. That makes her seem like an outsider, but really that's everyone else.

"Day in and day out, I hear about all this death and murder. Now when I see a dead body, I don't even care! It's not right, I tell you. But I'd sooner die protecting my store than lick the boots of that yakuza scum."

By which she means, of course, the Takasato Group.

"...that'll be 240 yen."

He pulls a thousand-yen bill out of his trousers pocket and hands it to her. "Keep the change."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"Thanks for your business," she says, taking the money and handing Towa his items without a bag.

Towa stuffs out of them into his coat pockets and heads for the door. He doesn't notice that the old lady is following him until he's stepped outside.

"Come by again sometime," she mutters with a scowl.

That makes him smile a bit. He waves then sets off again.

Late that night, after the clinic closes, Taku and Rei decide to go to the local diner so that Taku can make good on his promise of getting Rei a parfait. Not that they need the excuse—it's one of the few places still open at this time, so they come here often. Since Towa was downtown at the time, they invited him, too.

Taku orders the Salisbury steak special, Rei gets steak fried rice and his parfait, and Towa gets a coffee. That's pretty usual for him, since he doesn't like eating, and yet every time it happened, like clockwork, Rei would tell him how "it's not healthy" and "it's going to kill him one of these days". Towa figures that actually what's probably going to kill him is some hookup gone wrong and playing a bit too carelessly with a knife, but if that by some miracle never happens he supposes his unhealthy lifestyle is a good bet for what'll end him. Anticlimactic, but he's not about to change anything about his life to prevent that from happening.

Rei does in fact start to grumble something along those lines, but his face lights right up when his parfait arrives. "Oh my god these strawberry cream parfaits are so good," he squeals.

"I bet the guy who makes 'em appreciates how much you like 'em."

"I'll appreciate anything he wants to make, because he's doing great!"

Towa ignores them and puts a cigarette between his lips.

Before he can light it Rei complains. "Excuse me! I'm still eating here!"

"Uh huh."

"Don't uh huh me, mister!"

"We're in the smoking section."

"Yeah but have you heard of common decency? Taku already quit, so you should, too!"

"This may not mean much coming from me, but trust me, there ain't nothing good about smoking."

He ignores their complaints, lights his cigarette, and takes a drag.

Rei's Smoke instantly turns red, mixing with Towa's cigarette smoke. "I swear, everything's cigarettes and alcohol with you. You're such a great artist, but you're so boring!" He sighs exaggeratedly and puts his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand.

"All famous great artists are weirdos. Alcoholics, womanisers, crazy, all sorts. Maybe it's that weirdness that makes 'em good."

"Maybe, but it doesn't make them fun to hang out with. At all."

And yet here they are, hanging out with him.

"You're wasting your time complaining about Towa anyway. He's always been like this."

True.

"He does have a secretly cute side, though," says Rei with a grin.

"...cute side?"

"That little bunny plushie you have in your room. You say you don't care about it, but you never throw it away! You like it, don't you?"

"...no." He just randomly spotted it at a store one time and felt like buying it, so he did. He hasn't thought about it or touched it since, though, and now it just sits collecting dust in the corner.

"You sure you don't snuggle with it at bed time?"

"Oh my god, are you secretly, like, super adorable?"

He ignores them and turns away to look out the window, taking a slow drag of his cigarette.

"On a different topic," Taku says, turning to Rei. "Are you going to the Deathmatch Area tonight?"

"No, not tonight. Honami had to cancel. Why, need help at the clinic?"

"No, nothing like that. It's just, I've been hearing some rumours about some real nasty types lurking around."

"Yeah, I know. But it's, like, super fun to kick their asses. Nothing feels better."

"Alright, if you say so. The Takasato Group’s gonna have a rough time ahead of them, anyway, with what happened, so they’ll have trouble controlling that area. Both of you should keep your heads down for now.”

"That's okay, they can try. I'll just shut them up with my fists if I need to."

"Save it for your Deathmatches," Taku says, rolling his eyes and smiling.

"Yessir! After this parfait you bought me I'll do anything you ask of me."

His smile widens and he shakes his head. "Anyway, we've got work tomorrow. Let's call it a night."

"Right-on!"

"And Towa, you'd best get some actual sleep. No bar-hopping or hookups, hear me?"

"Sure."

So Taku and Rei get up, and Taku walks over to the register to pay.

Rei blinks and turns to look at Towa again. "He's paying for yours, too?"

"Well, I just got a coffee."

He frowns exaggeratedly. "Everyone always waits on you hand and foot, don't they? Are they scared you'll wander away like a stray cat?"

Rei should know the answer better than Towa, being one of the people who "waits on him hand and foot".

"Beats me."

Towa doesn't have to work the next day, so he only gets up in the afternoon. He lazes around in his room until Taku shows up to drag him out to eat at this little hole-in-the-wall café near the clinic that he discovered by accident on one of his walks one day. After that, Taku goes back to work, and Towa decides to spend the rest of the afternoon wandering around town. When the sun sets, he decides to go to a park in the District E residential area.

On such a winter night, the place is deserted, and the white glow of the streetlamps against the shadows of the trees swaying in the breeze give the place an eerie atmosphere. The playground looks like something out of a horror movie, like the killer is about to step out of one of the concrete tunnels to come after their victims.

He's not willing to take any actions that would make him any less of an easy target, if that were the case. He sits down on a chilly metal bench, lights a cigarette, and stares at the sky. He had nothing to do all day, so he did nothing, and he's going to keep doing some more nothing. That's fine by him.

The sound of footsteps can be heard approaching, and three people Towa's familiar with walk up to him at the same time.

"Seee? I told you it was Towa," says the tallest of the bunch, a fuchsia-Smoked man by the name of Mayu with long straight blond hair and a couple of silver ear piercings wearing a black overall with hot pink accents over an otherwise bare torso that shows off many different tattoos: barbed wire circling his right forearm, a bunched up metal chain with a bell hanging from it around his left, black bands around the base of the index, ring, and little fingers and the thumbs of both hands, stars around a waning moon with a drooping face on his right shoulder, a black-and-white star under his right collarbone, some kind of angelic green-haired anime girl on his left upper-arm, a fiery monster on his left pec, and Towa knows from close experience that that's not at all the full breadth of all the tats he has.

"Damn, you were right," says the second one, Kotarō, a man with red Smoke, spiky white hair, and far too many piercings and studs on his face including a piercing on the left of his bottom lift that has a chain connecting it to an earring. His open long-sleeved leather jacket doesn't reach halfway down his torso, but he only has the one black dragon tattoo covering the left of the front of his torso and wrapping around his upper back then back over his right collarbone.

"Towa-san!" greets the third one, Eiji. He isn't topless or showing off any tattoos, opting instead for a thick baggy hoodie over a black skintight top. He's also wearing a beanie and his eyes are hidden by reflective orange single-lens sunglasses. His Smoke is a soft blue-green, and Towa's hardly ever seen it waver.

Which just goes to show that the old adage that sluts don't feel cold is completely true. "Yo."

"Man, how'd you even spot him from that far off?"

"My eyesight is perfect."

"That just doesn't add up with the amount of time you spend watching anime."

"It trains my eyes!"

"Anyway, Towa, what are you up to out here?" asks Kotarō, leaning down to peer at Towa's face.

"Thinking dirty thoughts, I bet."

He straightens back up. "That'd be like him."

"It would?"

"I think it's the two of you who're always thinking dirty thoughts."

"Guilty as charged."

Towa shrugs. "I'm just having a smoke."

"So you're bored? Come with us to the Deathmatch Area, then."

"That's too far. Pass."

"I knew he was going to say something like that."

"You don't have anything better to do, right? Just humour your," he quirks one of the corners of his lips, "former blood brothers and come with us."

"Blood brothers? I never performed any sake rituals with you lot."

"Ah, speaking of rituals, you never showed to your old man's funeral."

"Like hell I would."

Kotarō smirks, as if he'd expected that response.

"There was a midnight vigil last night, and the funeral was earlier today."

"Cool."

"You really don't care at all, huh?"

"No."

Towa's certain the questions are at least partly Sakaki or someone else from the Takasato Group trying to confirm that he has no interest in inheriting his father's business. Anyone who's known him for five minutes should know the answer to that question, though, so he's not sure why they'd bother to ask. Maybe it wasn't Sakaki, after all.

"Eh, whatever. Let's go to the Deathmatch Area, c'mon!"

"You used to like punching people, didn't you? You might like it if you give it a try!"

"No."

"Quit your bitching and let's go already. C'mon, up you get," he says, grabbing Towa's arm and hauling him up to his feet and starting to drag Towa away, keeping a firm hold on him to prevent him from bolting away.

Not that he would. It'd be a lot more effort to resist, if he's being bodily dragged like this. Might as well go with it.

"We can just watch anyway," he sighs. "The higher-ups don't let us participate in the Deathmatches once we join up. If I'd known that when they scouted me I wouldn't'a joined."

"But you could fight to your little heart's content! It makes me so jealous and you just waste yourself like that."

"You still get to beat people up when you're out debt-collecting," he points out.

"Well, that's work. It's different."

"You two sure love chasing them up and down the street, though. I'd be too scared."

That is a complete lie, of course. Eiji is probably what they call a "high-functioning sociopath" or something adjacent. He doesn't chase people around but he loves to dig up all of the dirt on them he can find, and he can find a lot. And when someone's debt mounts too high he finds them and sics people like Mayu and Kotarō on them so that they can rough the debtors up and implant chips in them that surveillance towers all over Shinkōmi can track. Those people are forbidden to step foot outside the city until they fully repay their debt, and if they try anyway... Eiji will find them, and the Takasato Group will kill them, end of story.

Also bombs. Eiji really, really likes bombs. Towa thinks he probably feels like he doesn't get as much opportunity to set bombs off as he'd like to.

"Less chatting, more walking, come on, you're wasting time."

"It's 'cause Towa's such a deadweight."

Yeah, no argument there.

The Deathmatch Area is a special section of town located in District A at the center of Shinkōmi. It was once ground zero for a lot of yakuza infighting, and as a result the whole district was torn apart, and residents were barred entry. Naturally, this attracted all sorts of unsavoury types, and eventually it became known as a place for fistfights, with people starting to use it as a battlefield to test their strength. Nowadays anyone who wants to fight can meet up in District A to take part in what is now referred to as a "Deathmatch".

Of course, the Takasato Group noticed this, but they choose not to interfere. It's a way for people to vent their stress, and so long as no one tries to live there or start a business, they don't get involved. In fact, as Kotarō mentioned, their employees are explicitly prohibited from doing so, even ones that were originall scouted from Deathmatches like Kotarō and Mayu themselves.

"Oh, nice and peaceful today," Mayu observes.

The place is filled with the people who show up at night for those matches, and even now it's busy and chaotic, the sounds of scuffing and jeering getting mixed with the smell of dust and copper and the multicoloured Smoke to create a shrill cacophony assaulting all senses at the same time.

"Huh? Oh, you mean the guy who was goin' around firing his gun the other day? Yeah, they strung him up good."

"Are guns banned now?"

"Not explicitly, but nothing's explicit here, is it? It's all unspoken rules. And people have been getting a bit too upset over losing and trying to get revenge, so everyone else's started to crack down on them really hard and make an example of people who try bringing weapons, so it might as well be an official rule, now."

"Hell, we tried to save the poor bastard, but then he turned the gun on us. He was just begging to get his shit fucked up, and he got what he asked for."

"Why'd you try to help?"

"Keepin' the peace's part of our job. If people start shooting each other up and killin' each other over here, it's all going to blow up in the Takasato Group's face and they'll be blamed for it." He shrugs. "Nothing we can do if the bastard's too stupid to live, though."

"Shinkōmi's balance is very delicate. We need to work hard to keep it the way it is."

Eiji sure has a way of saying things that makes him sound like a psychopath. Ironically, it makes Towa like him more.

Anyway, he's not going to fight no matter what Kotarō tries—he'd rather just lie down on the floor passively and wait for his opponent to kick his ass—so they'll probably just hang out watching the fights while the three gangsters make sure to "keep the peace".

He lights a new cigarette.

After he leaves the Deathmatch Area Towa makes his way to some random bar to get drunk, but he's not even into his second cup when his phone buzzes with a message from the group chat between him, Rei, and Taku.

Got a call about a critical patient

Come over ASAP

Well, alright. He hadn't really been planning on staying long anyway, so he just pays his tab and walks out.

Rei shows up at the clinic a couple of minutes after Towa does, and they both join Taku in waiting for the patient to arrive.