Peace Village: No Way Out

[ItzToxie]

Sho was dead.


Mitsuru sat on the steps outside the town hall building. He took a drag of his cigarette. Before the program, he never saw a point behind these things. Just smelled bad and made you cough, and then twenty years later you died. They were supposed to calm you down. Didn't really work, but it was all he had.


Sho was fucking dead.


He wanted to deny it. Maybe he found a way out. Maybe they'd said he'd died and him and the boss found a way out and right now Sho was on his way out of here, maybe on the first boat to America to live it up with the 'degenerate enemy'. Mitsuru wished it was the case, but he knew it wasn't. If he stuck around, maybe he'd still be here. Mitsuru realized what had happened. He didn't think nothing of it, because Sho was always around, even when he wasn't. The man was like a hawk, an eye in the sky, and you'd never know when he'd swoop in for the kill. There's a lot of times he'd saved their asses in a street fight, when the family was outnumbered, only for that goliath with the well-groomed hair to just sweep in and yank someone right out of their shoes and slam them to the deck. He wasn't one for dick waving (metaphorically speaking). He didn't talk shit. He didn't have nothing to prove. That made him one of the best members of the Kiriyama family. He was there for the fight; he had your back.

It made Mitsuru feel all the worse for what happened to him. People always gave Sho shit for being him. Before the Family came into form, Mitsuru was one of them. When he was younger and more naive, he drank The Republic's kool aid. Eccentrics and stand outs needing to be hammered back in. Be more uniform. It wasn't until near the end of secondary school he grew up a bit himself. Mitsuru didn't change what he did, he just did it for different reasons. Sho had nothing to prove. He didn't need to hide. Mitsuru guessed he was jealous. When Sho joined, there wasn't any bad blood between the two, at least none Mitsuru could decipher. He figured there weren't none because if there were he'd have said it. They were a lot more similar than he'd realized. That's when Mitsuru became the first to jump in whenever Sho was targeted. Someone talked shit or tried it, Mitsuru was there to put them in their place, even if Sho could've handled it himself.

Going back to the present, he realized why Sho hadn't stuck around. He saw the Kiriyama family for what they were when Akamatsu died. He didn't want any part of it. Mitsuru felt like he should have felt betrayed or angry, but he didn't. He got it. Especially after what happened afterwards. Part of Mitsuru wondered if he did the right thing, if he was still doing it. Shuya and Nobu, they didn't know. Nobody knew but the family and Mitsuru had to think, was it right? It weren't right for Akamatsu. Or Yuko, or Haruka. If you asked them, would they give the Family a second chance? Mitsuru gave Ryuhei and Hiroshi three of them now...


"Fuck."

He threw the cigarette butt away. He couldn't change the past. He couldn't fix what he'd fucked up. He could fix what happens next though. If everyone gets together, if he could reign in his crew, keep them from fucking things up for the final time, maybe. Maybe it's not all in vain. He owed it to a lot more people beyond himself and the dead to try. He didn't know what he was doing truthfully, but he'd come too far to give up now.

[ItzToxie]

He took a swig of his water bottle, and walked inside.