The man who was never

One point two billion yen.

One billion, two hundred million. A mountain of cold, hard, rectangular paper stamped with Yukichi Fukuzawa’s unblinking countenance. It was the kind of obscene fortune ordinary men broke their spines over across three lifetimes, yet here it was, resting in heavy industrial duffel bags beneath the scuffed wooden sink of a six-tatami room on the outskirts of Tokyo.

Chang and Mario were gone. Their tearful farewell at the port had left Kaiji alone on the tarmac, clutching his cut of the prize like a shipwreck survivor grasping a crate of gold bullion. At twenty-five, he was technically a billionaire. A triumphant warrior of the underworld! A master of lethal gambles!

And yet, here he sat on a threadbare tatami mat, slurping lukewarm instant noodles in his underwear.

"A mansion," Kaiji muttered aloud, chopsticks dangling from his lips as he stared at the water-stained ceiling. "A grand estate in Roppongi. No, Meguro! A marble entryway with a chandelier the size of a minivan. And women... at least three. No, four! Tall, soft, gorgeous girls with huge chests who peel grapes and feed them to me while I lounge in a velvet bathrobe..."

It was the ultimate, infallible dream. But the trauma of being hunted across Kanto by Teiai’s merciless dogs had instilled a deep, shivering paranoia in his bones. Before buying a paradise, he had to lay low. Just a few weeks. Just a little time to breathe in this drafty, sixty-year-old wooden shithole where the rent was twenty-eight thousand yen a month.

It was on his fourth evening, while slinking back from the local convenience store with a plastic bag full of canned beer and meat buns, that destiny slapped him across the face.

In the damp shadow between an abandoned pachinko parlor and a row of rusty vending machines, someone was curled beneath a sodden cardboard box. At first, Kaiji thought it was merely another broken soul cast aside by the harsh wheels of Tokyo. But then the figure shifted, pulling a frayed woolen cap lower over their brow, and the sickly fluorescent light caught a flash of striking, shoulder-length reddish hair.

Kaiji stopped dead in his tracks. The hair. The sharp, effeminate cheekbones. The hollow, desperate glare of a caged predator.

No way.

"Ichijō...?" Kaiji breathed.

The figure jolted violently, scrambling backward against the concrete wall, fists coming up in raw, animal terror. "S-Stay back! I don't know anything! I'm—"

"It is you!" Kaiji stepped closer, his jaw hanging open. "The manager of The Bog! What the hell are you doing out here looking like a drowned rat?!"

Ichijō—the proud, arrogant prodigy of Teiai, the man who had looked down on Kaiji like dirt beneath his designer oxfords—stared at him in utter disbelief. He was shivering violently, clad in filthy, oversized clothes that smelled of grease and stale rain.

Within ten minutes of whispered, frantic panic behind the vending machines, the truth spilled out. A temporary one-day compassionate furlough—granted by Teiai only because an underground pipe burst had flooded the labor camp and required external supplies—had turned into a desperate, reckless escape. Ichijō had slipped past the black-suited guards at a supply depot, vanished into the urban sprawl, and was now hunted like a feral dog. The seven-hundred-million-yen debt from The Bog’s defeat still clung to his neck like an iron guillotine. He had no money, no allies, nowhere to go.

Kaiji looked at the trembling wreck of the man who had once ruled a subterranean palace. He remembered the cold smirk Ichijō had worn when he ordered the pins adjusted. He remembered the unbearable agony of steel pins driven beneath his own fingernails.

Yet, Kaiji’s chest swelled with that absurd, self-destructive warmth that had always been his greatest flaw and his only saving grace.

"Come on," Kaiji grunted, turning around. "My place is just around the corner."

Ichijō froze, eyes wide with suspicion. "What? Are you insane? Do you have any idea what you're saying? I ruined you! I tried to bury you alive in the ground for a thousand years!"

"And I crushed your machine and sent you to the mines instead," Kaiji retorted, though his voice lacked heat. "We're even. Besides... I told you when they dragged you away, didn't I? Come back up. Challenge me again when you're standing on your own two feet. Until then, you dying in a ditch doesn't do anybody any good."

Ichijō stared at him as if Kaiji were speaking fluent ancient Greek. But the rain was turning to sleet, and his lips were already blue. With a ragged, humiliated swallow, Ichijō followed.

Inside the tiny apartment, Kaiji shut the door, turned the bolt, and exhaled heavily. He fished an oversized grey t-shirt and a pair of drawstring sweatpants from his laundry pile and shoved them into Ichijō’s chest.

"Bathroom’s there," Kaiji said, pointing with a thumb. "Water heater is finicky. Turn the knob slowly or it'll scald you."

Ichijō took the clothes without a word, his knuckles pale, and vanished behind the flimsy sliding door. Moments later, the hiss of the shower echoed into the cramped six-tatami living area.

Kaiji sank onto the floor, resting his back against the wall. A wry smile tugged at his curved chin.

Look at me, he thought, practically glowing with smug self-satisfaction. I really am a saint. A bona fide, legendary saint! Who else in the entire world would harbor their mortal enemy? The guy tortured me! He drove needles under my nails! And here I am, offering him a hot shower and shelter. I’m just too damn good-natured. A man of truly terrifying moral character!

He chuckled to himself, basking in his own nobility. Then, his eyes drifted toward the small shelf near the kitchen sink.

A clean towel was sitting right there.

"Ah, idiot," Kaiji muttered, scratching his messy mullet. "Forgot the towel."

He picked it up and walked to the bathroom. In Japan, men sharing a public bath or seeing each other naked was as routine as breathing. Kaiji didn't think twice about it; he simply slid the thin bathroom door open half an inch, intending to toss the towel onto the rack.

"Oi, Ichijō, you forgot the—"

The steam billowed outward.

Standing in the small plastic basin, with the water cascading down pale, dripping skin and slick reddish hair clinging to slender shoulders, was Ichijō.

Ichijō had turned toward the door at the sound of the sliding latch.

Kaiji’s brain completely seized. The gears of his mind ground to a screeching, violent halt.

There was a waist—narrow, elegant, curving sharply into slender hips.

And above that... breasts. Small, firm, undeniably female breasts with pale, flushed peaks dripping with hot water. And lower still...

There was no cock. There were no balls.

It was a woman.

A completely, undeniably, thoroughly naked woman.

For a full two seconds, silence reigned, broken only by the hiss of the shower spray. Kaiji’s triangular nose practically twitched in sensory overload, his eyes bulging until they threatened to pop out of his skull.

"K-K... Kaiji...?" Ichijō stammered, her voice pitching an entire octave higher than usual.

Then the realization struck like lightning.

"GYAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Ichijō shrieked, a bloodcurdling, glass-shattering sound, and hurled a plastic bottle of shampoo with terrifying precision straight at Kaiji’s forehead.

CLANG!

"OUT! GET OUT, YOU DISGUSTING FILTHY PIG! GET OUUUUUT!"

Kaiji took a bottle of conditioner to the cheekbone, stumbled backward over his own heels, and slammed the door shut, landing hard on his tailbone on the tatami mats. He sat there in the dead center of the room, panting like a dog that had just swallowed a wasp, clutching his bruised face.

Boobs.

The word echoed in the vast, empty cavern of his skull.

Boobs?! Ichijō has boobs?! The manager of The Bog?! The ice-cold ace of Teiai?! A woman?! That slick bastard who threw Sakazaki into despair and sneered at me from behind the glass of a seven-hundred-million pachinko fortress is a girl?!

Ten excruciating minutes passed. Kaiji sat paralyzed, staring at the floorboards as if they might open up and swallow him whole.

The bathroom door creaked open.

Ichijō stepped out. She was swallowed whole by Kaiji’s baggy grey shirt and worn sweatpants, the sleeves rolled up past her slender wrists. Her damp hair hung in heavy strands around her neck, framing a face that was burning bright, furious crimson. She stood as far away from him as the tiny six-tatami room allowed, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, eyes narrowed like dagger points.

A heavy, suffocating silence descended.

In Ichijō’s mind, pure chaos raged. A man and a woman alone in a room this small only leads to one thing. It's an iron law of nature! And to be trapped here with Itō Kaiji of all people?! A degenerate, unmotivated bum who reeks of stale beer and cheap tobacco?! I should leave right now. I should walk out the door!

...But Teiai is out there. The thought sent a chill down her spine. The moment she stepped into the street, Kurosaki’s hounds would drag her back to the pit. A thousand years of hard labor in the dark.

She had nowhere else in the world to go.

Meanwhile, Kaiji’s brain was spinning out of control. She has boobs. A bit small, sure, but definitely boobs! And I let her in! How the hell am I supposed to share a broom-closet apartment with a girl?! Especially a girl who tried to tear my fingers off!

Unable to bear the quiet any longer, Kaiji snapped, "Why the hell didn't you tell me?!"

"Why would it matter?!" Ichijō hissed, her voice sharp and defensive. "What difference does it make what’s between my legs?! I was Teiai’s casino manager! That’s all that ever mattered! In that world, showing weakness means you get devoured by beasts like Hyōdō! You think I was going to advertise it?!"

"It matters a lot when you come home with a guy to a six-tatami room!" Kaiji yelled, flailing his arms. "You can't just live in a shoebox with a healthy twenty-five-year-old man and expect nothing to be weird! What, do you think I'm a monk?!"

Ichijō’s glare sharpened into pure venom. "If you so much as lay a single dirty finger on me, Itō, I will take a kitchen knife and finish the amputation Hyōdō started on your hand."

"Oh, please!" Kaiji scoffed loudly, waving a dismissive hand with an exaggerated sneer. "Don't flatter yourself! You think you're in danger from me?! Look at you! You're completely, totally, one hundred percent NOT my type!"

Ichijō blinked, her defensive sneer faltering slightly under a sudden prick of offended pride. "What?"

"You heard me!" Kaiji stood up, puffing his chest out recklessly. "You're tall! You're practically my height! You dress like an angry juvenile delinquent! Your face is way too sharp, you glare like you want to murder my bloodline, and let’s be entirely honest here—your chest is practically flat!"

SLAP!

The strike was instantaneous, echoing through the thin walls with the crack of a pistol whip. Kaiji spun halfway around, clutching his freshly stinging cheek.

"Sleep on the floor and die, you idiot," Ichijō snarled, grabbing the spare futon from the closet and practically throwing it onto the floor as far away from Kaiji as physically possible.

Which, in a six-tatami room, was approximately four inches.

The first night was an absolute psychological nightmare.

The two futons were laid out side-by-side, practically touching. Ichijō lay on her side, her back firmly turned toward Kaiji, wrapped in a blanket like a cocoon.

Kaiji lay flat on his back, staring at the dark ceiling, every nerve in his body screaming. He tried to think of anything else. The 1.2 billion yen under the sink. Pachinko pins. The magnetic fields of The Bog. The rules of E-Card.

It was useless.

Whenever he closed his eyes, the image seared into his retinas flashed back with terrifying clarity: the pale curve of her waist, the droplets of water sliding down the gentle slope of her chest, the flushed, vulnerable look on her face before the shampoo bottle flew.

Dammit! Stop thinking about it! he screamed at himself internally. She’s a monster! She put pins under your fingernails! Remember the pins, Kaiji! The pins! The blood! The pain!

He rolled onto his side. His eyes instinctively locked onto the curve of her back. She was breathing softly, the blanket rising and falling. The faint, sweet scent of the cheap convenience-store apple shampoo drifted across the minuscule gap between their pillows.

Slowly, involuntarily, Kaiji found himself inching forward. Just an inch. Just two inches.

He inhaled deeply.

She smells... really nice.

Down below, the traitorous machinery of his body responded immediately. Blood rushed south with the force of a tidal wave.

NO! BAD! WRONG!

Kaiji bolted upright in sheer horror, clamping a hand over his groin. He scrambled frantically out of his futon, threw the bathroom door open, slammed it shut, and flicked the light on.

Breathing heavily, staring at his flushed reflection in the mirror, Kaiji leaned over the toilet. He felt like the lowest, most pathetic scumbag on the face of the earth.

To get hard over Ichijō... over that sadistic Teiai manager... I’m sick. I’m a depraved animal. God, forgive me...

Ten minutes later, after quietly resolving his physiological dilemma with deep, self-loathing shame, Kaiji washed his hands, crept back out, and collapsed into his futon, pulling the blanket over his head until morning.

Across the four-inch divide, Ichijō lay rigidly in the dark, her eyes wide open, her face burning hotter than the surface of the sun. She hadn't slept a wink. She had heard every rustle, smelled his scent drawing near, heard the sudden panicked dash to the bathroom, and the distinct, unmistakable sounds that followed.

She clamped her teeth together until her jaw ached, pulling the blanket tightly to her chin.

I am going to kill him, she thought, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs. The moment I get my money back... I am going to kill him.

The morning was greeted with heavy, bruised silence.

Neither of them had slept more than an hour. Dark purple bags hung beneath Kaiji’s eyes, and Ichijō looked like a ghost with a homicide charge pending. Without exchanging a single word, Kaiji threw on his brown motorcycle jacket and bolted out the door into the crisp Tokyo morning, desperate to escape the suffocating density of the apartment.

"I'm going out!" he barked, slamming the door.

Ichijō remained on the floor for several minutes before exhaling a long, shuddering breath. She looked around the dingy room. Beer cans were piled in the corner. Stale takeout containers sat on the low table. Dust clung to every surface.

"Degenerate pig," she muttered, rolling up her sleeves. "If I have to hide in this pigsty, I’m at least going to make it habitable."

Meanwhile, three blocks away, Kaiji was casually perusing the cigarette rack at a tobacco shop when the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

Two men had just rounded the corner. Black tailored suits. Crisp white shirts. Jet-black sunglasses.

Teiai!

Panic seized Kaiji's throat. He immediately dipped his head, pulling his collar up, pretending to be deeply engrossed in a vending machine display. But one of the black-suits paused, whispering to his partner. The two men marched straight toward him.

"You there," the lead suit commanded.

Kaiji forced his trembling knees to lock. He turned around slowly, slapping on the dumbest, most vacant expression he could muster. "Eh? Me?"

The black-suit pulled a glossy photograph from his breast pocket and shoved it into Kaiji’s face. It was an older company portrait of Ichijō, looking sharp, immaculate, and undeniably haughty in her Teiai manager uniform.

"Have you seen this man?" the agent demanded coldly. "He’s an escaped debtor. We have reason to believe he might be hiding in this district."

Kaiji’s heart hammered against his ribs like a captive bird, but the gambler’s instinct—the razor-sharp focus that had saved him on the steel beams of the Castle of Despair—kicked in instantly.

He squinted at the photo, scratched his nose, and chuckled lazily. "Woah, who’s the pretty boy? An idol? Nah, haven't seen anyone that fancy around here, mister. This neighborhood’s all old farts and broke bums. If someone looked like that, they’d stand out like a gold tooth."

The two men scrutinized Kaiji’s face. For a terrifying second, Kaiji worried they might recognize him, but the 2.4-billion-yen bounty search was primarily being handled by Endō’s specialized task force, not the local labor-camp retrieval squads.

The lead suit grunted in annoyance, pocketed the photo, and waved a dismissive hand. "Keep your eyes open. If you see him, report to the authorities."

"Sure thing, boss!" Kaiji called out cheerfully.

He waited until the black-suits vanished around the block before slumping against the brick wall, wiping a torrent of cold sweat from his forehead.

Holy shit. They’re right on top of us. If she had been walking the streets today, she’d be back in the pit by nightfall.

A strange, protective urge settled in his chest, surprising him. He bought a carton of eggs, some scallions, and two cold beers, and briskly made his way back to the apartment.

Climbing the creaking external stairs, a rich, savory aroma drifted through the cracks of his door. Garlic, toasted sesame oil, and sizzling soy sauce.

Kaiji blinked. He cautiously turned his key in the lock and pushed the door open.

The apartment was unrecognizable.

The mountain of empty beer cans was gone. The trash was bagged neatly in the corner. The tatami mats had been swept clean, the futons were folded and stacked meticulously against the wall, and the grimy low table had been wiped until it practically gleamed.

Standing at the tiny gas stove, a frying pan in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other, was Ichijō. The sleeves of Kaiji’s oversized grey shirt were pinned back with rubber bands, and she had tied her reddish hair into a messy, practical ponytail.

She tossed the pan with practiced, fluid precision, the rice and golden eggs dancing in the heat.

Hearing the door, she turned around. A stray strand of hair fell across her forehead, her cheeks slightly flushed from the stove's flame.

"Welcome home," she said, her voice completely neutral, almost habitual.

Thump.

Kaiji’s heart did something profoundly stupid. It gave a violent, awkward leap right into his throat.

He stood frozen in the doorway, plastic grocery bag dangling limply from his fingers, staring at her.

No. No way. Absolutely not! Kaiji screamed internally, his mind practically reeling. Don't you dare, Kaiji! She is NOT your type! You like soft, short, bubbly girls with massive racks! You don't like sharp-tongued, flat-chested, six-foot-tall former casino managers who tried to drill holes into your fingers!

"What are you standing there gaping for?" Ichijō asked, setting the pan down and scooping the steaming fried rice onto two mismatched ceramic plates. "Take off your shoes. It’s going to get cold."

Kaiji swallowed hard, kicking off his sneakers. "Yeah... yeah, right."

He sat down across from her at the immaculate table, placing the beers between them. Ichijō pushed a plate toward him. The grains of rice were individually coated in glistening oil and egg, flecked with finely chopped scallions and bits of leftover pork belly.

Kaiji picked up his spoon, entirely prepared to find something to criticize. He shoveled a large mouthful into his face.

The savory crunch of the scallion, the smoky breath of the wok, the deep umami of soy sauce and rendered fat exploded across his tongue. It was flawlessly balanced, light yet incredibly rich.

Tears, genuine and unashamed, pricked the corners of Kaiji’s eyes.

What the hell is this?! he thought, practically shoving another three spoonfuls down his throat without chewing. It’s incredible! It’s the best damn fried rice I’ve ever eaten in my entire miserable life!

"Well?" Ichijō asked, crossing her arms and looking away, though her eyes subtly darted toward him, clearly seeking approval. "Is it edible?"

Kaiji chewed furiously, swallowing with a loud gulp before raising his spoon in an enthusiastic salute.

"It's amazing!" Kaiji blurted, a wide, goofy grin spreading across his face. "Seriously, Ichijō, you could open a restaurant!"

Ichijō stared at him, taken aback. For a brief, fleeting fraction of a second, the harsh walls around her eyes melted, replaced by a faint, flustered pink along the bridge of her sharp nose. She hastily cleared her throat and grabbed her beer, popping the tab with a sharp snap.

"Don't be an idiot," she muttered, taking a long sip to hide her face. "It's just fried rice."

Kaiji laughed, diving back into the plate, completely forgetting the duffel bags of billions beneath the sink, completely forgetting the black-suits roaming the streets below. For the first time in months, the tiny room didn't feel lonely at all.