roppongi is a place that burns up at night, edifice upon edifice polluted with a kaleidoscpe of smeared neonlights that pretend to be artificial suns - here, secrets and lies grow like weeds; Using and being used is a daily occurrence. Fools lay, just waiting to get chewed up and spit out like trash. But that wouldn’t be the case with ran. he could chew them back, and he would do just that. 

 

there is the basic rule that holds true in this crime milieu: power is a vital requirement for survival. but power doesn't always strictly come in the shapes of mikey, of brawn or financial might. Ran would not have obtained his current status as Bonten’s executive, let alone kept his head, if he had only depended on his wealth. He had to go against the odds, shatter some rules of stone and rewrite his own. Be bold and demand; a certain audere est facere. 

 

(he has met many that challenged him, previously.

 

some of them bow under him now, his shoe pressed his their backs as he stomps them down to keep them in place and line. )

 

he thinks, He deserves at least as much, considering what it had taken to gain said power and cement his place at the top, The time, the acuity, and most of all the unpleasant people he had to win over to create a sturdy safety net of alliances. Few reasons, and even fewer people, could force him to submit and bow his head, and everyone knew neither of those ever came easily from Haitani Ran, but for the illusion of subordinacy, he did.

 

all of this had been time-consuming and fatiguing, but in the end, Ran had managed to twist some things and people around his finger, and no one could love him and he couldn't love back, because his entire world now merely exists in a simple, cruel binary of apathy and fondness, the latter only reserved to a select few. 

 

This leaves him with little sincerity to spare others, no incense to light for prayers, no blood to shed in atonement. but Ran neither takes pride or disgust in how he conducts himself. He acknowledges. this is who he is and has to be. If his mother could see him, she would chastise, “how do you sleep at night with all that blood on your hand?” and he would comment on it, a half-hearted grin, “like a baby.”

 

(In a dog eating dog world, empathy and trust might cost him.

It could cost him. But he won’t pay the price, as he knows better.)

 

when the strong had hurt his sibling for the first time, he had been taught anger - an ugly feeling that congeals and putrefies like blood. anger was like poison thrumming through his veins, like parasites at the back of his throat. It had been nice then to pluck it right out, let it run rampant: knuckles to teeth, to skin, to bruise, crimson blotting and oxidizing on hot asphalt, his and the other delinquent's - all of it was liberating just as it was painful. He was far too good at pulling things apart at the seams, opening people up like flowers, pouring metallic dew in divinity. 

 

but he tries to not embrace anger, to not cultivate it. He tucks in his irritation behind a smile, and advises Rindou to mind his manners, using soft intonations that make his words seem sweeter than they actually are. It’s unrefined to display brute aggression and petty threats to reach a goal. It’s more effective to convince somebody to do his bidding than to intimidate them into doing so.

 

an opportunist that sees the big picture first, intuitively sizing up the enemy's weaknesses to take advantage of. it's doing things effectively and not justly. when it's time for business, there is no line between who you are and what you do. he learns to be a stranger at one moment, and someone’s best friend at another. they are who he needs to be for his objective. Like liquid, He is unreadable because he is reflective, letting people stare through him and find what they think they want to find. They are Narcissus, gazing fondly at their own reflection in his waters and falling in love, not knowing that the creek is too deep and they’ll end up drowning.

 

If a half-hearted apology doesn’t cut it, he believes he could simply buy people’s forgiveness — with the overabundance of money at his disposal and little consolation in the depravity of it all, why not burn it on the finer things? Things that forge his appearance and status. Things that will cling and ultimately waste away with him.

 

Adults always chalk it up to childhood ignorance when kids stomp on plants, break each other's toys or spill a bottle of water over ant colonies — they will be chided, but gently so — because children don't know better.

 

The wounded cicada was still flapping its wings atop of his hand and ran had felt a similar rush; the sensation when something small and delicate is balanced in his open palm, his fingers itching to close in on it. 

 

He was so small then, so filthy.

 

Ran isn’t any cleaner now, but Yves Saint Laurent covers up the worst of it, and the candied smile does the rest.