Takemichi had just started typing a reply. Just a simple line: No. I'm not mad.
He didn't even get to send it as the door slammed open with a bang that echoed through the shop like a gunshot.
Everyone turned.
Mikey stood in the entrance, framed by sunlight and shadows, his expression unreadable. Blank. Except for his eyes. They were dead. Emotionless in that way Takemichi had only ever seen once before—on the face of a man with nothing left to lose.
Behind him, Draken entered more quietly. Shoulders tense. Eyes already sweeping the room, settling protectively on Mikey. Tired, but ready.
"Mikey?" Shinichiro's voice was quiet. Uncertain. Guilty. He stepped forward like he might try to meet him halfway, but Mikey didn't move.
"Which one of my friends did it?"
Shinichiro stopped cold. The silence that fell after the question was like glass cracking under pressure. Takemichi's breath caught. The others—Benkei, Takeomi, Wakasa—they all stilled. The question hadn't just dropped into the room.
It had landed like a bomb.
Shinichiro tried—he really did. His voice came soft, carefully measured. "Mikey, I—"
"Don't," Mikey said. Not sharp. Not loud. But final. He stepped further into the room, the concrete floor cold under his sandals. His hands were at his sides. His shoulders, straight. But his face—It didn't match the one he saw at the hospital anymore.
"I asked you a question," Mikey said, looking his brother dead in the eye. "I want to know which of my friends bashed your skull in."
Shinichiro looked away for a split second and that was all the answer Mikey needed.
"You knew I'd want to know," he said, voice cracking slightly. "But you didn't tell me. You told them."
His hand jerked slightly in the direction of Shinichiro's friends. Not accusing. Not angry. Just… lost.
"Do you not trust me?"
The question hung in the air like smoke and Shinichiro didn't answer. He couldn't. Because anything he said now would be too little. Too late.
Mikey laughed once. A short, bitter sound. Like something inside him had cracked.
"Emma told me once," he said, quieter now. "That we had another brother. That you adopted him."
The room tensed again as Takemichi froze.
"I've never seen him," Mikey went on, voice soft but steady. "Never heard his name. You've never told me anything about him."
He lifted his eyes to Shinichiro again.
Red-rimmed. Angry. Hollow.
"So what is it?" he asked, voice hardening. "Do you not trust me with that information, either? Or did you already fuck up that relationship, too?"
Shinichiro opened his mouth, but no words came out.
Takemichi's heart twisted painfully in his chest. He'd felt this before. Not from Shinichiro. But from a hundred quiet silences in long halls. From the way people looked at his last name before they looked at him. From the quiet caution in everyone's voice whenever they said, "you don't need to know that."
And now Mikey stood in the center of it—burning with the same ache. The same emptiness. The betrayal of being protected from your own life. And Takemichi—who had just barely started to believe he might belong somewhere—watched it all unfold.
Silent and helpless. Because this wasn't his choice, but he still felt every inch of it like a mirror. The tension snapped—not with a shout or a punch—but with movement.
Mikey stepped forward without warning and grabbed Takemichi's wrist. Not rough. Not gentle. Just firm—like he'd made a decision and nothing was going to stop him now.
Takemichi barely had time to gasp before he was being pulled toward the door.
"Mikey—?" Shinichiro said, startled.
"Don't," Mikey cut him off, not looking back. He pushed the door open hard enough to rattle it in its frame, dragging Takemichi into the warm sunlight, out of the shop, out of the conversation, out. And Takemichi stumbled to keep up, his brain catching up only after they were halfway across the door.
"Mikey—what are you—?"
"Don't mix with him," Mikey said, his voice low but sharp, warning. "He won't trust you when it matters."
The words sank like iron in Takemichi's chest and, he guessed, in Shinichiro's chest, too. He didn't pull his arm back. Couldn't. He just stared at Mikey's grip on his wrist, then lifted his gaze to his eyes—past the rage, past the betrayal—to see hurt underneath.
Real, deep, familiar hurt.
Takemichi turned back toward the shop, toward the open garage door, where Shinichiro still stood on the threshold—frozen. Their gazes met.
Don't let this break, Takemichi's eyes begged. Don't make the same mistake my parents almost did.
But Shinichiro just stood there, stunned.
Still not getting it.
Takemichi pulled his wrist free—not harshly. Just enough to step back and grab Mikey's instead. He placed himself halfway between them. And then, voice soft but steady, he spoke, "My parents used to do the same thing to me."
That got Shinichiro's attention and Mikey's.
Takemichi didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.
"I was ten," he said, eyes still on Shinichiro. "When I realized how much they hid from me about our life. Plans. Decisions I wasn't allowed to be part of. Because they wanted to protect me. Because I was still a kid."
His hand curled slightly at his side.
"And yeah, I was ten, a kid for you, true, but in the mafia, age is but a number. I knew that and because of that, I thought I had to fight to be heard. Had to prove I was strong enough to deserve the truth. And even then, it wasn't enough."
Shinichiro's jaw tightened, but he didn't speak.
Takemichi continued, quieter now and without looking at anyone. "It was my aunt—Yuni—who finally stepped in. She told me my parents were just scared. That they didn't know how to let me grow up without thinking they were letting me go."
He took a shaky breath.
"But she also told them something. She said that if they didn't trust me, I'd stop trusting them. That if they wanted me to be honest, to come to them when something mattered, they had to show me that they believed I could handle it."
Takemichi looked at Mikey now—really looked at him. At the way his wrist trembled under his hold even as his face stayed cold. At the way Draken stood behind him like a wall, worried and quiet.
"I don't know Mikey very well yet," Takemichi said softly. "I don't know how he reacts when he's upset. I don't know if he's mature enough to say the right thing all the time."
Mikey bristled.
"But I do know this—" Takemichi said, turning back to Shinichiro. "You have to trust him first. That's how you keep a relationship strong. That's how you show someone they matter. You start by believing they can take it. That they'll make mistakes, yeah—but that they'll come back. That they'll try."
Shinichiro's expression shifted. Not only guilt and regret, but something that looked too much like fear.
"If you want to keep him close," Takemichi said, gently, "you can't keep choosing for him."
He let Mikey's wrist go and stepped away from his side, giving them space. Not forcing a reunion. Not demanding forgiveness. The silence after stretched and stretched—thin and taut like a wire pulled to its breaking point.
Shinichiro didn't speak right away and didn't look at anyone else as he stared at Mikey, like something inside him was crumbling. Then finally—slowly—his lips parted. "…It was Keisuke."
Mikey blinked.
Shinichiro exhaled, eyes dull with something heavier than guilt.
"The day I got hurt," he said, voice low and stripped of its usual calm, "I was scolding Keisuke. Baji. He was trying to steal a bike—the one I gave you today for your birthday."
Takemichi's breath caught. He glanced at Mikey, who had gone rigid, jaw clenched so hard his teeth might break.
"I didn't see who attacked me," Shinichiro continued quietly. "I never got a good look. But they ran together. Whoever hit me… he left with Keisuke."
Mikey's face didn't change. But the silence around him did. It vibrated, like a second heartbeat pounding beneath the surface. Takemichi stepped closer, instinctively reaching for Mikey's wrist again—not to stop him. Just to be there. A tether.
"I didn't want to believe it," he said, eyes dropping to the floor.. "Didn't want you to know that the people you trusted… the ones you called family… could do something like that."
He looked up again, and this time; the mask fell completely.
"I did the same thing once," Shinichiro said, the words scraping like gravel. "To our other brother."
Takemichi blinked, letting Mikey go as they both looked up.
"Izana," Shinichiro said. "When he was younger, there were things I didn't tell him. Things I thought were better left unsaid. I thought I was protecting him."
He let out a breath, shaky and raw.
"He doesn't talk to me anymore. I don't even know where he lives. I just know he's okay because I see him pass sometimes."
There was no dramatic music. No breakdown. Just a man saying a thing he had never wanted to say out loud. And Mikey—who had stayed so quiet, so still—finally moved. He stepped backward once. Then stopped.
"…Are we gonna be okay?" Shinichiro asked softly.
Mikey didn't answer right away. Didn't even look up. He just stood there, hands at his sides, eyes trained somewhere in the middle distance. Like if he moved wrong, he'd break something he didn't know how to fix. Then, finally—"…Thanks for telling me."
His voice was quiet. Not cold. But not warm either. Then, turning to Takemichi, he reached out again. Not grabbing this time. Just a touch at the sleeve.
"C'mon."
Takemichi blinked. "Huh?"
"We're leaving."
"Wha—wait, Mikey—"
Mikey didn't raise his voice. Didn't look back, but the finality in his tone left no room to argue. "I don't need Shin-nii to pick my friends."
Shinichiro flinched.
"I don't need him to protect me from them, either." He looked up once, just enough to meet his brother's eyes. "And I don't want him touching them anymore."
Takemichi glanced between them—between Shinichiro's devastation and Mikey's quiet burn. And without a word, he followed.
Out of the shop. Into the sun.
Out of one story and maybe—maybe—into the beginning of another.
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Also, if you want to support me and read chapters ahead, go to my p@treon: JorieDS