“...a man with strong principles, a strong character and respect for justice! He didn't start a fight for no reason! This is a period in his life where he, like a shonen manga hero, wants to protect everyone who can't protect themselves... You know what I mean, Ojisan. But Yuta didn't understand, scolded him and took the teacher's side!”

Kiryu Kazuma closed his eyes to the antiseptic hum of the hospital. The air smelled of alcohol wipes and sterile walls. Haruka’s hand, warm and trembling, held his like it was the last thread keeping him in this world. He squeezed back weakly, the rasp of his breath heavier than it should have been for a man who had fought through bullets and blades his whole life. He blinked…

“Ojisan? Are you alright?”

Then – blackness.

When his eyes opened again…

Pain came – blinding, sharp pain that claws through every nerve in Kiryu’s body like a jagged knife. His mind feels sluggish, wrapped in a fog of agony and confusion. Unclean water and the metallic tang of blood fills his mouth. When his vision clears, the faces hovering above him are unfamiliar – hostile. He recognizes the situation before the details come together: tied to a chair, shirt ripped and sticky with sweat and blood, mold, a dimly lit room stinking of cigarettes. A single bulb buzzed overhead, its light quivering like it was afraid to be here.

Torture.

The realization snaps him to full consciousness, and suddenly the voices become clearer.

“I’ll ask one more time,” growls a man in heavily accented Japanese. “Why is the price twice as much as usual?”

…Kiryu blinks. His face is wet, his hair is wet, he is coughing, water mixed with blood is pouring out of his mouth. He isn’t in a hospital bed – he’s in a chair, hands bound tight behind his back. The cracked floor tile beneath his shoes is dirty, wet in places.

Another voice cut through the static. Harsh, foreign. A thick Chinese accent rasped in broken Japanese:

“Hnnh. Thought we went too far this time. Looked like you were gone. Heh… Guess not.”

I admit that I am extremely biased towards my son-in-law and often disagree with him... but I really hope that this is not his (or his relatives) idea for a surprise.

Kiryu lifted his head. His neck felt heavy, his vision swimming. A poster in Chinese, dishes, red columns. The man in front of him was broad-shouldered and wearing… Kiryu hadn't seen anything like this in decades. His mind, fractured by confusion, clicked the pieces together too fast.

No… Buttons in the front? Is that something their politicians wore when I was a kid? They were long gone... Unless… Some people tell me that I'm old-fashioned.

The thought cut off as a hand came down across his face. A sharp slap not enough to hurt, but enough to humiliate and remind him he was no longer the one in control. Then Kiryu sees his reflection in the water in which they tried to drown him.

What is it? His brain, rotted by chemo and age, was collapsing into madness? Am I in a coma and being injected with opiates? This must be the fever dream before death. Maybe the cancer had finally dragged me to the afterlife. A land of the dead? Yomi? Jigoku? Hell?

The room tilted. His hair wasn't just wet – it was black. His body felt… different. Yes, every cell in his body ached, and his throat was sore from being drowned. His wrists were rubbed raw. For some reason, almost the entire area from the middle of his thigh to his navel, including his hip joint, ached… but it also felt stronger. His arms weren’t the brittle sticks chemo had left him. His skin was tight, not loose with age. His chest rose with the lungs of a man in his prime. And suddenly the cruelest possibility entered his head.

I was in a similar torture situation… more than 30 years ago… is this the basement of a restaurant in Yokohama's Chinatown?

But now the mind behind those eyes isn't a naive twenty-five-year-old. It is the mind of a grown man (an elderly man, a father and grandfather of several children), burdened with decades of betrayal, loyalty turned to ash, people he’d killed (self-defense or involuntary), family… families he’d lost. The man they thought was just some rookie chinpira tied to a chair was something else entirely: a ghost in borrowed flesh.

Kasuga's friends taught me that even if you are not in your right mind and doubt the reality of what is happening, you can still continue to live, can still enjoy life. My immature hysteria is not important now. I need to understand what is happening and whether there is any meaning or rules to what is happening. If this is the afterlife – I'll see what kind of demons it held. If it is madness – I’ll ride it until it broke. If it is real… then the underworld had given me one more game to play.

The Chinese man leaned closer, his breath sour, his smile wide.

“So. You awake. Good. That means we start again.”

The Dragon of Dojima met the thug's eyes, his gaze flat and utterly devoid of fear. It was the look of a man who had walked through hell so many times that the flames no longer impressed him.

***

The slap was just the start.

Two men worked in rhythm – rough hands forcing his head back, another tilting a bucket. Water cascaded down, flooding his nose and mouth. His lungs seized, body convulsing, muscles betraying him as the instinct to breathe fought against drowning.

Kiryu held on as long as he could, teeth grinding, mind spiraling. This wasn’t the cancer ward. This wasn’t Haruto's warm grip. This was a torture chamber with men who had long forgotten what mercy meant.

The third man entered the room and began to push something towards the ceiling. The water stopped. Kiryu gasped, coughing hard, ropes dug painfully when he doubled over.

They didn’t give him time to recover. The newcomer came up behind him, finally getting rid of Gokudo's red shirt. And then Kiryu realized that his hands were now tied separately.

I was so distracted by the torture that didn't even notice it…

They started to pull up. The ropes at his wrists tightened, dragged higher. His shoulders screamed as his body lifted from the floor, boots dangling in the air. The strain clawed into him, every muscle pulled taut, the joints threatening to rip apart.

“You thought you could cheat the Snake Flower Triad. You think the Tojo clan can use us like dogs?”

Questions followed, sharp and insistent: names, contacts, deals. Kiryu didn’t answer, he couldn’t, because he didn’t know. If his mind was truly trapped in the past, then anything he said (true or false) could unravel everything. If this was afterlife or madness, then silence was the only armor left.

The Triad men grew restless: one cursed under his breath, jabbing a knife into the air near his ribs, another punched him across the stomach, the impact harder with his body suspended, unable to brace. Kiryu clenched his jaw, the pain rolling through him like broken glass. Time blurred into ache, a chinese man in a grey 'political' suit dragged a long razor blade across his pectoral muscle…

Then the air shifted. The men straightened. A shadow entered, heavy and deliberate.

Lau Ka Long.

All right, my son-in-law has been rehabilitated in my eyes. He is definitely not guilty. I have either gone crazy or some supernatural nonsense is going on. Still unpleasant.

Kiryu remembered the last time they met. With his hair down and wearing a leather jacket like some kind of bosozoku… ‘Chau’ looked at ‘Taichi Suzuki’ with paranoia and almost fear. Seonhee, in turn, also looked at Kiryu with suspicion. Saeko asked several times, ‘Are you sure you don't know this underground arm dealer? For a moment it seemed like he recognized you.’

They really did become complete strangers. Yes Kiryu remembered the fights, the bodies left in his wake years ago, his own kidnapping (and Haruka's and Rikiya's) and many things are not worth forgiving… but the dying Dragon of Dojima no longer had the strength for hatred. That was a long time ago. So he lied to Saeko.

Here, Lau-san was younger, sharper, eyes bright with ambition. The Triad leader stepped forward, studying the prisoner like a butcher evaluating livestock.

“We slipped drugs into your drink, Kiryu-san,” Lau-san said in deliberate Japanese, his accent cutting each word like a blade. “The Dojima family really has the audacity to think they're better than us?”

Something has changed. What did he do? Blinked wrong? Last time he tried to say something - but this time Kiryu was just breathing heavily and wheezing in pain. It is not his fault that he has been through all this before and… apart from worrying about what has become of his children and grandchildren, he feels almost boredom. He wasn’t afraid to die - he'd already lived too long for someone who has committed so many sins. Kiryu had already been accused, judged, condemned…

Lau-san leaned closer, his perfume of smoke and sandalwood barely masking the rot of the room.

“20 million for fake passports?” The Triad leader is indignant and throws 3 passports on the bloody floor, under the feet of the hanging Gokudo. “You disrespect us, that’s why you treat us like this… that’s why we’ll have to teach you. We’ll be glad to have your cooperation, Kiryu-san.” Lau Ka Long paces while the prisoner still frowns, “The harsher your death – the more effective our message will be. It’s very simple. Farewell.”

Then he left. Just like that.

A Chinese man in a three-piece suit holds a long rod up to gokudo (Whether it's a surgical tool or a construction tool, Kiryu doesn't really understand. Something tells him that no one has disinfected it.) and sticks it into the top of his chest muscle. Again. Kiryu tries very hard not to scream, but the sound comes out on its own. Then another thug, with a ponytail, sticks it into the ill-fated biceps on the other side. Then into the lateral abdominal muscles. Again and again. How long does this go on? How many minutes? How many hours? The knives came next. Not in the gut, not in the chest – the Triad knew better. They dragged the edge across his arms, his legs, shallow cuts designed not to kill but to peel away at the will. Blood welled, dripped onto the concrete, mixing with the water at his feet.

“You hear that – you will die here, and your corpse will speak for you, the Tojo clan will understand.”

The voice chuckled, but the sound was flat, mechanical, stripped of humor.

Kiryu’s head hung, breath ragged. He thought of Ayako, of Koji, of Shiro, of Mitsuo... He thought of how fragile the balance of his choices had always been.

The door opened again and a man entered, carrying something that didn’t belong here. A landline telephone. Scuffed beige plastic, the curly cord wrapped tight around his fist. He set it down on the table in front of Kiryu, then shoved the receiver into Gokudo's face, pressing the cold plastic against his ear.

“I call the number,” the new man said, his tone flat, businesslike. “Tell your Captain you left hours ago, tell him he won’t find you here.”

The words were already written on a crumpled scrap of paper, shoved into his eyes.

Kiryu’s breath froze. His mind sharpened through the pain.

No.

I forgot about it. Not now. Not like this. Not again. I'm not ready for it.

Kazama-san, his father figure, his Captain, his shield, his curse, the killer of his biological parents. For the first time in 20 years he’ll see Shintaro Kazama… so badly injured that he can no longer work as a hitman… and Otou-san will save his life.

Panic rises in his chest as the pieces fall into place. The body is all covered in bruises, the biceps is painfully sore and the cut is itchy, which is already starting to heal, it’s hard to speak,… If he spoke, if he said those words, he would set in motion something he didn’t yet understand.

If he refused – the knives would go deeper.

The dial tone buzzed in his ear. The man’s hand hovered near the cord, ready to slam the phone down if Kiryu tried anything clever.

Kazama’s voice, steady and familiar, answered on the other end.

“…Yes? Who is this?”

Kiryu’s throat tightened.

He opened his mouth.

And then –