THIRTY-ONE

Kenji Kojima stood in silence by the condo’s main scenic window, his eyes completely vacant as he looked out over the city. The small satellite phone, which he carried with him at all times, had been at his ear for over an hour now as he tried in vain to get through to his father.

“Come on, father,” Kenji hissed impatiently. “Pick up your fucking phone!”

According to the airport staff Kenji had called earlier, Kazuo’s plane had landed at Tocumen International Airport over three hours ago. Yet still Kenji was having no luck reaching him, and his concern was only growing with each passing minute of silence.

Kenji took a deep breath and turned around, his eyes quickly scanning the condo’s spacious interior. He did not feel comfortable in doing so. Just seeing this place again, virtually untouched as it was for so many years, took Kenji’s mind back to a time many years ago; a time of unbearable pain for the entire Kojima family.

Kenji had been sixteen on the night when it all happened. He and Meyoko had been the fortunate ones; they had been back at the Kojima building with their father at the time, hence avoiding the carnage.

One that fateful night their mother, Elaine Kojima, had been staying in the condo with Saito and Kenji’s youngest brother Yahiko. There the condo had been raided by several sadistic members of Fang Fu’s triads. The triad killers had been ruthless. They had targeted Elaine Kojima first, raping her and then carving her up into pieces with a katana sword, all the while forcing her two sons to watch. Then they had then gone to work on young Yahiko, ripping him in half in a game of tug-of-war in which the boy had been used as the makeshift rope.

Saito Kojima had been left alive, but only barely; the mark of Fang Fu’s triads had been carved deeply into his back with the same katana blade used on his mother, branding him for life with the bloody crest of the Kojima-gumi’s greatest enemies.

That horrific scene that Kenji had come home to that night had been the most chilling he had ever witnessed. Looking down now at the wooden floorboards around his feet, Kenji could still see little Yahiko’s body lying right there in two pieces, and he could still see his mother’s many remains through the corner of his eye, his father screaming out at him not to come any closer.

Kenji still remembered seeing Saito lumber out completely naked from a nearby bedroom, his face a pulp of bruises, tears and blood. He had collapsed right into his father’s arms, the bloody carving on his back beaming up right into Kazuo’s tear-filled eyes. It was the crest of a dragon coiled around a sword: the mark of Fang Fu’s Triads.

On that night Kenji had learned just how ruthless the world could truly be. For one who was kumicho there could be no room for weakness in dealing with sadists and monsters like Fang Fu and his men. Kenji had felt the pressure of such impending responsibility every day since, yet always he had sought to shelter himself from such thoughts through his excessive drinking and partying with his friends.

Still no answer from his father.

Fuck! Kenji tossed the phone away. It tore right through a thin paper wall, clattering noisily down the outside hallway.

“You couldn’t sleep, Kenji?” a voice behind him suddenly asked.

Kenji turned to find Sakura Inoue standing there.

“Sorry,” Sakura said, “I didn’t mean to creep up on you.”

“It’s okay,” Kenji said slowly. “And no, in this place I can never sleep. It gives me the creeps just being here.”

Sakura took a step towards him. “I heard about what happened. About what those horrible people did to your family…”

Kenji turned away from her, trying his best to hide the tears forming in his eyes. “It’s in the past now. Besides, if it had never happened, we may not have been safe right now. Given the history of this place, nobody would think to look for us here. Meyoko and I haven’t stepped foot in here since that night.”

***

Kazuo Kojima found himself seated in a familiar seat at a familiar table. He was inside the main meeting room at the Kojima-gumi’s HQ, and his hands were cuffed around the back of his very own chair.

He looked around, trying to work out exactly what was going on. He knew he was being held hostage, but for what exactly he had no idea. There were several captors present around the room that he could see. Five of them; his son Saito’s two bodyguards, Ude Pikamoto and Sano Sayo, were among them.

“Like what I’m doing to the place, father?” a voice behind him asked, interrupting his thoughts.

Kazuo turned his head to find his own son Saito standing there right behind him with a long katanta sword in his hands.

“Saito,” Kazuo grimaced. “What is this? What the hell is going?”

“Progress,” Saito said. “These men around you will be taking the Kojima-gumi into a bright and glorious future. Under my leadership, we will go on to do many great things.”

“What are you trying to tell me?!” Kazuo’s eyes widened in horror. “That you are the one behind all of this madness? That you orchestrated my kidnapping and murdered all of the Lone Wolves?”

“Come on, does it really come as such a shock to you?” Saito glared back at him, relishing the surprise he saw there in his eyes. “You should have seen this day coming a long time ago, you old fool!”

“What do mean?”

“I know everything now, father; all of your dirty little secrets! An old friend of mine works as a nurse at our local hospital. About a year ago, she came across some rather unusual test results from my brother Kenji. His blood type did not match yours or our mother’s.”

“What’s that got to do with…”

“Save your breath,” Saito snorted. “The truth was not so hard for me to find out. A few bribes here, a few tortured doctors there, and voila. Long story short, Kenji is not really your son. And you thought you could hide it from me! You tried to hand him the keys to an empire that should rightfully be mine!”

The entire room fell silent. The faces of all the captors were as serious and cold as could be. Their eyes all shared Saito’s disgust.

Kazuo took a moment to clear his head before he spoke, choosing his next words carefully. “It was not my intention to exclude you in any way, Saito.”

“Then please enlighten me, just what the fuck was your intention, father?!”

“You must understand that I loved your mother very much. I just wanted her to be happy.”

“Shut up!” Saito shouted, punching the air with his fist in frustration. “Don’t you dare try to pass on the blame for all this to a dead woman, you fucking coward! Own up to your mistakes for once in your life!”

“No, Saito, you are going to hear what I have to say, whether you like it or not!” Kazuo shouted back at him. He took a few seconds to compose himself before he spoke again. “Your mother and I needed to have a child; an heir to carry on leading the Kojima-gumi after I was gone, to cement our family’s legacy. But there was a problem: I had been informed by my private doctor that I would never be able to father a child, that I was infertile.”

“Infertile? You?” Saito’s eyes had started twitching in anger, his teeth grinding together. “That’s a good one, father!”

“No, my son, it’s the truth. I had been led to believe that I was unable to father a child, so I found Elaine a donor and had Kenji conceived through a procedure of artificial insemination.”

“You selfish fuck!” Saito screeched. “You were firing blanks, so you made my mother give birth to a fucking test-tube freak?!”

“Two years later,” Kazuo pressed on, determined to finish the story, “you were born, Saito. It was like some sort of miracle. Somehow, someway, nature had found a way to give me the son that I had always wanted. You were mine. I even had to have it confirmed through proper testing. I thought at first Elaine must have been unfaithful. But no, Saito, you were simply… a miracle of life. That’s the truth, so you may take it or leave it. Clearly my doctors were mistaken, and modern medicine has come a long way, but how was I to know that back then? By the time you were born, Kenji had already been approved by the council back in Kobe as my successor. I guess you could say that fate forced my hand.”

“You could have corrected your mistake at any time,” Saito said. “I could easily have taken Kenji’s place after I was born!”

“No. The scandal that would have developed if I told the elders the truth would have cost our family everything. This was not just about me and my ego. The Kojima name would have been dishonoured. You, Kenji and Meyoko would have ended up with nothing. I did not have the influence back then that I do now; we all would have been cast out and exiled!”

“So your solution was to let an illegitimate child be your successor and spit in the faces of all our forefathers who bled and died for us?!”

“Despite what you or anyone else might say, in my eyes Kenji is just as much a son to me as you or Daigoro. And being the eldest, he is the next in line to be kumicho, not you, Saito!”

“Well, like it or not, that decision was not yours to make, father!” Saito said. “Tradition dictates our line of succession, not the will of one selfish, senile old man! And by our traditions, I was always the rightful heir!”

“Think whatever you like,” Kazuo shrugged. “I have no regrets over anything I have done. If I had it all over, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. Except perhaps ever raising you as a son…”

“Fuck you!” Saito removed the blade of his sword from his father’s throat, stepping in front of him. “You know something, I should actually thank you for one thing, father. Your lousy parenting taught me a valuable lesson: this world is a ruthless place and nobody can be trusted, not even one’s own family. Blood means nothing when all is said and done. Everyone is out for themselves, and they will walk all over you if you don’t stand up and fight for what is yours! That’s the way of the world!”

“Enough!” Kazuo snapped, losing patience. “Saito, I know that deep down you’re not a monster. It’s not too late to put a stop to this!”

“Oh, I’m afraid you’re wrong on that point,” Saito snorted. “There are plans already in motion; I couldn’t stop this now even if I wanted to. Whether you like it or not, a whole lot of people are going to die because of your selfishness and stupidity.”

“Saito… my god,” Kazuo closed his eyes. “What have you done? What has happened to you? I know what Fang Fu’s men did to you… what they made you watch, but…”

“This has nothing to do with that, father!” Saito cut him off. “Fang Fu is our enemy; he did not betray me! He did not cast me aside like I was nothing! That was you, father! That was all you! And from what you tell me, that whore I used to call a mother is just as complicit as you; she got what she deserved that night! I couldn’t be happier the bitch is dead!”

“You are a damaged young man, Saito,” Kazuo shook his head. “What on earth are you hoping to achieve?”

“I will take back everything that you and Kenji tried to steal from me, father. And I will kill any man, woman or child who tries to stand in my way, family or not.”

“Please, Saito, kill me if it would satisfy you, but don’t hurt Kenji or Meyoko,” Kazuo pleaded. “They don’t know anything; I never told them the truth. They are innocent in all this.”

Saito snorted and turned away. “Don’t worry, father, their lives are no longer your concern. But if it is any consolation, I very much doubt you will have the chance to outlive them now.”