[Ryuju Estate, Tokyo — Modern Japan, early evening]
"Yes — pardon the intrusion!"
Realizing at last that these were Ryuju Momo's parents, Kazama Haru dipped into a textbook-perfect bow before easing onto the zabuton beside her.
Under Momo's smirking side-eye, he slipped effortlessly into the role of the polite, well-mannered young man, exchanging warm greetings with the couple at the head of the low table.
Their bearing genuinely caught him off guard.
Such an easygoing warmth — nothing in the way they laughed, poured tea, or teased their daughter betrayed the fact that they sat at the top of a yakuza pyramid. Then again, only the foot soldiers doing the "dirty work" would ever be boisterous. The men and women who made the real decisions guarded their reputations like porcelain, never letting a single drop of blood so much as splash the hem of their kimono.
So then… what did that say about Momo's personality?
"Oi. What's with that grin?"
Catching his amused glance, Ryuju Momo — the only one at the table not in traditional dress, but in a slim, cropped top and short skirt that bared her pale midriff and long legs — jabbed a sharp elbow into his waist without ceremony. Her long salmon-pink waves shifted as she moved, and the small mole beneath her right eye caught the lamplight when she twisted toward him.
Ryuju Riho, her mother, recognized the roughhousing for what it was and sighed with mock exasperation.
"Ara, my apologies, Kazama-kun. Our Momo-chan has been indulged since she was a little thing. She must be causing you no end of trouble at school. Please, look after her a bit more from here on, ne?"
Rubbing his smarting side, Kazama Haru put on a slightly pained smile. "Not at all, oba-san. Momo-chan and I are clubmates — helping each other comes with the territory. And really, she's covered for me more times than I can count."
"Hah?! Since when did I say you could call me by name!"
Displeased at the casual honorific, Momo fu-n'd~ through her nose and turned her face away with a pointed toss of light hair.
Catching her daughter's rare fluster, Riho covered her mouth with one sleeve and giggled behind her hand before smoothly cutting in on Kazama Haru's behalf.
"Kazama-kun most likely used Momo-chan's given name just to keep the three of us straight, ne?"
Kazama Haru smiled and nodded. He hadn't been angling to insinuate anything about his closeness with Momo, nor to worm his way into her parents' good graces.
In Japan, distance between people — especially between a boy and a girl — was measured in name usage. Surnames came first, always. But after marriage, a wife typically took her husband's family name, and all three seated across from him bore the surname Ryuju. Had he simply said "Ryuju-san" the way he did at school, three heads would have turned in unison, and any lighthearted jab at Momo could have curdled into misunderstanding.
Plucking up a piece of glistening unagi nigiri with his chopsticks, he asked with an air of idle curiosity, "By the way — is Momo-chan an only child, or are her onii-san and onee-san simply not home tonight?"
For all his relaxed manner, he was acutely aware that this lavish welcome was not merely "come have dinner with our daughter's classmate."
By his estimate, tonight should have been sharper. More formal. More people at the table. Perhaps a classic archetype thrown in for flavor — a sister-doting older brother knee-deep in the family business, half a dozen enforcers looming at the sliding doors, the whole atmosphere pressing down like a low ceiling to squeeze out how he'd come by inside information on the Ryujin-kai.
Instead, this warm, family-style dan-ran dinner. Which was exactly why his antennae were twitching for more.
But Momo's father showed no rush to "talk shop." "You're not wrong, Kazama-kun. Momo-chan is our only daughter."
"And precisely because she's our one and only, we've spoiled her a touch too rotten, ara ara," her mother added with a soft laugh.
The couple then eased into asking about his family, and when Kazama Haru answered plainly that he'd lived alone since the age of ten, the middle-aged pair — parents who had spoiled their only daughter with the whole world — traded a long, quiet look.
Ryuju Yuuki's face lit with genuine admiration, and he praised him aloud as "otoko no naka no otoko" — a real man among men.
Riho gazed at Kazama Haru with eyes gone suddenly soft and glistening, motherly instincts cresting like a wave. Were it not for fear of bruising his pride, she looked half a heartbeat from proposing to take him in as her godson on the spot.
"Kazama, you… wait, seriously? You're not messing with me?"
Momo, who had never heard a word of this either, froze mid-bite. A piece of Ise lobster slipped from her chopsticks and landed on the lacquered tabletop with a wet petan.
The smug little face that a heartbeat ago had been enjoying his "goody-two-shoes act" slowly crumpled into a look of ugh, I'm the worst. She'd never once imagined that the boy who breezed through school sunny and unbothered, who'd untangled even the yakuza's ambush with the elegance of a scripted anime protagonist, had been quietly hauling that kind of load behind the scenes.
On the surface she still wore her usual scowl — the one she reserved for complaining about him stealing snacks off her plate — but deep down, a very quiet promise formed: maybe I'll be a little nicer to this idiot. Just a little.
Halfway through dinner, coaxed by both parents into a mouthful of chilled daiginjo, the family of three burst out laughing in unison at the pink flush spreading up Kazama Haru's cheeks.
There was no mockery in that laughter — only the warm teasing of relatives egging on a kid who couldn't hold his sake. His chest went strangely warm, and it wasn't the alcohol.
After swirling his own cup and sipping, Ryuju Yuuki narrowed his eyes.
"Kazama-kun. Momo-chan told me the broad strokes of the mess with Uda Koji from the Ryujin-kai."
Sensing the shift into serious talk, Kazama Haru — pleasantly buzzed a moment ago — sobered instantly, straightening his spine and pricking his ears.
Unlike his earlier softness, when Yuuki spoke of "business," an invisible pressure rolled off him — the quiet weight of a man used to being obeyed.
"That incident wasn't your fault. For a yakuza to personally wade into a student squabble — utterly hazukashii. A disgrace to the trade."
Tapping the edge of the table once with a curled knuckle, Yuuki fixed him with a look that smiled on the surface and probed underneath.
"That said, Kazama-kun — your response was clean. Sharper than clean. Not only did you break their encirclement single-handed, once you realized their malice hadn't faded, you took the initiative to strike first…"
Reading the compliment for the reconnaissance it was, Kazama Haru felt his pulse quicken despite himself.
That pressure — the effortless haki of a man who'd sat at the top too long — brushed over him, and he drew a small, controlled breath through his nose.
He wants to know how a mere high schooler got his hands on that recording.
To reclaim a sliver of tempo, he smiled and spoke first. "Ryuju-oji-san, about Hirayama Naoya—"
Yuuki raised a hand, cutting him off before he'd finished half a sentence.
"You misunderstand, Kazama-kun. I didn't call you here to interrogate you. Everyone has their secrets, their trump cards. That you walked out of that trap under your own power is proof enough of your capability. As for how you leaned on Kamimura Ryu's adopted brat — I've neither the interest nor the right to pry."
Trading a glance with his wife, Yuuki chuckled.
"To be blunt — the information you passed us through Momo-chan has been of immeasurable help to us. Our subsidiary, 'Naniwa-dō,' has been going back and forth with the Ryujin-kai for years over the freight moving in and out of Yokohama Port. Once we cross-checked your intel through our own mole and confirmed it, Naniwa-dō moved decisively and swallowed them whole during their internal collapse. The long-term gains from that alone go far past tens of millions of yen. Really — I hardly know how to thank you properly."
With a half-teasing air, Yuuki glanced sidelong at his daughter, who was studiously ignoring the topic, and something mischievous flickered in his eye.
"Looks, guts, technique — from every angle, Kazama-kun, you're a proper young hero. My wife and I have taken quite a liking to you tonight."
Catching her shitty dad's look, Momo felt an unmistakable shiver crawl up her spine — the sixth sense of a daughter who knew something absurd was about to leave her father's mouth.
Ignoring her furious don't-you-dare stare, Yuuki dropped the bomb.
"Kazama-kun. You said earlier you live alone, correct? In that case — why don't I decide right here, right now? Our Momo-chan is a touch hot-headed, sure, but she's grown into a fine young lady, ne? As a token of our gratitude, how about I betroth her to you? And, well — our family's long fretted about the lack of a male heir. What do you say to becoming the Ryuju family's muko-yōshi?"
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