Pillars of History

My father is named Shirogane Yuuto. He was born and raised into a high-ranking Japanese assassin guild called the Kokuja no Kiba (Black Snake Fang). This criminal group was led by the Shirogane clan and lasted for 813 years under its control. My father was born almost 15 years before the organization collapsed. My grandfather, Kazuma, was the current and final head of the organization. His daughter, Rie, was his elder potential heir, albeit only a few months older than my father. Neither my father nor especially Rie were born killers.

In fact, Rie herself was an extremely gentle and kind girl. Of course, as the heir to the guild, she was treated very strictly and had to undergo rigorous training for her succession. My father, despite not being initially planned to directly inherit the organization, was no exception to their training procedures.

Both he and Rie were horribly abused as they were being raised to become worthy warriors for the organization. They were both beaten, degraded, forced to exercise and practice stealth and murder on extreme levels, left without food, tortured, and treated like the scum of the world. This was standard procedure for the organization, which had no leniency for any of their members. My grandfather, as head of the organization, was especially brutal and aggressive in outlining and enforcing raising his children by this model. He refused to allow a weakling to inherit his organization, so he made sure that both his children would be forged into exceptional offspring of his caliber.

Rie was always reluctant to kill her targets, to the point that Kazuma gave up on her and changed the organization’s heir to my father. He always looked up to his sister for being the only person who would treat him with kindness amongst the extreme abuse that they both received. He carried out his father’s orders with absolute obedience, but only because he knew that if anything happened to him, his dear sister would have her heart broken by his death.

He knew that Rie didn’t want him to partake in what made their father so evil, but he didn’t feel like he had a choice in the matter. He loved Rie with all his heart, but he wanted to be alive to receive her love and kindness. The truth of the matter was that he hated Kazuma. He considered him to be the opposite of his sister and believed that he deserved to die for making them both suffer: for making Rie suffer as much as he himself. He would have gladly escaped with his sister if he knew he could.

Here are some of the things my father had to do in order to appease Kazuma. He had to train like one would do in the military special operations forces. 4 separate times, he forced him to survive on his own bare naked for a month each with the rest of the organization hunting him down. If they found him, both he and Rie would be tortured for a week with needles and tight confinement. My father was discovered the first time this happened, but he succeeded every other time. He also had to take on high priority targets: chiefs of police, high ranking politicians, military commanders, etc. He succeeded every time. He had to, or else he and Rie would pay the consequences.

Exactly one year before the ceremony for him to become the official heir to the organization, it was time for him to prepare for that moment; he had to work especially hard in a marathon fashion for his skills as an assassin. First, on that day, Rie was to be taken away from him. Kazuma said that the one dearest to the successor was to be kept away in wait for when the event would happen. Neither he nor Rie put up any resistance, because they both believed they would see each other again, but he cried loudly as they drove her away from their home, not to be seen again until one year later.

3 months later, Kazuma brought a sex slave to my father for him to rape. He said that the heir of the organization must have his own secure heir to the organization and forced them to have sex. If he refused, Rie would instead be raped by a high ranking assistant of his. My father raped the slave, to his own immense disgust and misery. As you may already believe so, this slave was my mother. To this day, neither I nor my father ever knew her identity.

Finally, a month before the ceremony, Kazuma came to confront my father and give him a preparation talk for the ceremony. Kazuma said that he made him proud and told him that he was to be even stricter on the organization than he himself was. He said that he would never forgive him if he ended up failing as the new head. As soon as he left, my father promised to himself that if he ever had his own family, he would treat his family only with the upmost respect and kindness. He promised himself that he would be like his sister and never be anything like his father. He planned to escape from his ties to the organization as soon as both he and Rie had the chance.

The ceremony was late at night on Christmas Eve. It was supposed to go like so: first, the head would be alone with his heir and his 2 witnesses of choice: in his case, his 2 right hand men. Then the head would give his speech to his heir and have him draw the heirloom of the organization: the katana. Then the one taken away from the heir would return to witness him conduct the remainder of the ceremony. The heir would stab into the corpse of the previous head of the organization, and then he would officially inherit it upon the current head’s death.

But there was a problem. When my father drew the katana, he just simply hesitated. He could not conduct the rest of the ceremony. Rie never came. She was gone. My father was scared and wanted to know what happened to her, so he spoke up and asked why she would not come. He could recall the conversation perfectly, and I too.

「姉様は… どこにいる！」

（My sister… where is she!）

「理恵がこないようだな。」

(It seems that she won’t come.)

「なぜですか？約束だったんでしょう？「一年で絶対に帰る。」って…今はどうなりました？」(Why? You promised, right? You said she would absolutely return in one year… What happened now?)

「すまない、勇刀。お前はもう、理恵に会うことはない。」(I’m sorry, Yuuto. You will never meet Rie again.

「本当ですか…」

(Is that true…)

My grandfather nodded solemnly.

「わかりました…」

(I understand.)

Kazuma signaled him to finish the ritual, and my father nodded. He hovered the katana above his grandfather’s corpse for a few seconds. And then he snapped. He rushed towards one of the guards with the blade, killing him instantly. Then the other guard shot at him, but he sliced the bullet into 2 and killed him as well. He then rushed at his father and started a long battle with him. He was furious. His hatred could no longer be hidden from the crime leader, and he screamed at him that it was his fault he and Rie couldn’t live in peace together. Kazuma put up a great fight in response to my father’s rebellion and badly injured him in his counter assault. But in the end, my father defeated and killed him with a stab through the heart.

After he was clearly dead, my father slashed Kazuma’s head off, grabbed it by the hair, and went to look for the organization’s intelligence chief to interrogate him on where Rie was. When he finally found him and revealed he had killed Kazuma, the chief was stuttering scared for his own life. Unfortunately, the chief had no idea where Rie was, nor whom to speak to. But he assured him that Rie was alive and well and was living a good life. My father was relieved by his explanation, but he still missed her and vowed to search for her.

Then he remembered that he was about to have a child born, so he rushed to see Kazuma’s slave. When he found the slave, he apologized profusely to her for what he had to do to her. He didn’t know whether or not she forgave him, because she died in childbirth. It was 1:00 in the morning of Christmas Day, and I was born. My father ran off with me and never interacted with the Kokuja no Kiba (Black Snake Fang) ever again. He alone raised me as I grew up, and I was always absolutely loyal to him because of the pure kindness he would always express whenever he interacted with me. He acted exactly like how he had described Rie. I was extremely grateful for this treatment of his and wanted nothing more than to please him. Conversely, all he wanted to do for me was please me and let me live as happy a life as he could.

In order to make sure that I would survive if I ever had pursuers from the organization, or if they had enough information to place us onto a most wanted criminals list, he trained me in the ways that he learned from his father so that I would be capable of hiding from them and defending myself if the time came. The difference was that he was much gentler in his teaching than Kazuma and would always make sure I was fine with what he was doing. If he thought that I couldn’t bear what he was having me exert, he would stop the training immediately and move onto a simpler task for me. Sometimes he would even cook delicious meals for me in order to make up for having me suffer.

In reality, I was more than ready to do whatever he had in store for me. At first he didn’t want to risk upsetting me, but he eventually came to realize my loyalty to him and became more rigorous with how he trained me. Eventually, I reached a point where he believed that I was ready to handle myself if the time came. That was 4 years before his death. The remaining years, we lived peacefully as we searched for Rie.

I trust that you remember what happened after those 4 years ended, so let’s proceed back to where I left off. When I woke up, I remembered my plan to contact Alice through a paper message. I knew she and the guild would become more alert if she didn’t side with me, but I considered it a minor risk. Because at worst, I would camp out in the forest, hunt for a few days and then break into the base in another nearby home to camp in. So long as I didn’t give enough information about myself, I could keep the guild barely alert of me. I thought carefully of what to write in the message to her. Eventually, I wrote this.

“Hello, Alice. I do not mean any harm to you. I know that you are an assassin and hate your work. I wish to help you.”

I slipped the message onto the counter of Alice’s kitchen and waited for her to read it. She noticed the note and started to read it. Then she looked all around herself in a panic and ran upstairs. I was already at the top of the stairwell, so I ran to her room to hide and see what her reaction would be. She was staring at the floor slightly hunched over with her hand pressing against her chest. She slowly looked around herself and then got her revolver. Then she went back downstairs warily. I decided to write to her again to tell her she had nothing to fear. I placed it onto the living room table and waited for her to read it. She was shocked when she found the next letter. She looked around herself and carefully picked it up to read.

“Please, Alice. I know you’re frightened, but I truly mean no harm to you. I will not threaten you at all. Please: just let me speak.”

After reading the message, Alice no longer seemed to be wary, which normally would be good for me. Unfortunately, she now seemed to be dismissive of me. She placed the letter back onto the table and let out an annoyed sigh. Then she spoke out just barely shy of the direction I was hiding.

“I’m not joining your guild- you can go find another lapdog to add to your enforcement, got it?”

Since Alice appeared to believe that I was a recruiter from another organization, I had to tell her information about myself so she would trust me: just enough to establish that I could get her out of assassination for good. I wrote another letter for her to read and placed it in her bathroom for her to read.

“I’m not a recruiter. I’m an affiliate of the God of Death.”

“Yeah, and I suppose that other guy from the God of Death was just some random journeyman after all, right? Try a more convincing cover, buddy.”

I gave her one more piece of information about myself to prove that I was connected to my father: my katana. Not the katana itself, but rather what it looked like. She went into her bedroom and read my message which I placed onto her bed.

“Do you remember a katana? One with a black blade? Surely you do if you tried to steal it.”

Alice gasped frightfully at the letter, and she started to panic once again. She immediately ran downstairs, trying to get out of the house. When her hand firmly grabbed onto the door handle leading outside, her momentum immediately stopped. After a couple of seconds, she started shaking her head and released the door handle. Then she went back up to her room and gave her response.

“What do you want from me?”

I gave her a message at the bottom of her stairwell (from here on out, I’m going to write our dialogue more fluidly and assume you know that it’s still in message form).

“I need to learn what you know about my affiliate: the God of Death, as well as what Eric knows about him as well.”

“He sent you, right? What are you trying to do gaining that information from me?”

“That is ultimately for me and my affiliate to decide. Now please. Give us your cooperation.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Please believe me. I will not harm you or coerce you at all; the reality is that nothing will happen to you if you refuse. In fact, as I have said before, I want to and can help you escape from Eric.”

“Why would you want to help me?”

“Let’s just say that I sympathize with you. I’ve been watching you for a long time. I knew from the start your contract to assassinate the bartender. I was there when you killed him by forcing him to drive to a remote park. I even heard your monologue when you were lamenting that you had to work for Eric. You called out to my affiliate to save you, and now I am here in his place to fulfill your wish. Do you trust me?”

Alice let out an exhausted sigh at this message and spoke.

“Alright. I trust you. What do you want to know?”

“Firstly, you know my affiliate’s name. So you have met with him, right? How did you encounter him?”

Alice gave her backstory for how she met my father. She said that as an assassin, she was struggling horribly with the work that Eric was having her conduct. One day, my father confronted her directly and offered his assistance to her. At first, she was intimidated by him and tried to shoot him dead. But he used his katana to block all 6 of her bullets. She put her arms in front of herself defensively and waited for what would happen next.

Then she felt him stroking her shoulder gently with his hand. When she looked up to see him, he was gazing into her eyes with a gentle smile. He backed away from her and offered her food by extending his arm out with an apple in his hand. Alice took the apple and ate it. My father assured her that he would not harm her. He introduced himself as Yuuto and offered to aid her in her mission. Alice was skeptical at first, but she came to trust him after his kindness to her. Alice gave him her name, and they departed for the mission.

My father took on a support role to allow her to reach the target more easily. He, along with an accomplice, scouted the area for infiltration routes and gave Alice consistent contact with telecommunication. Alice killed the target easily and even managed to accomplish a good number of bonus criteria as well. It was the first S rank that she had received. She ended her response there, so I asked her when she next saw him. Her next encounter was a violent one which she instigated.

According to her, Eric was suspicious in Alice’s sudden ability to achieve an S rank, particularly due to the difficulty of the assignment. He correctly accused her adamantly that the God of Death was behind the actual assassination. He didn’t seem to have any evidence. He just simply assumed that it was he because of the S rank, which almost nobody in the organization could ever achieve, so he ordered her to go out and search for him. She expected to turn up with something. But to her surprise, she found him sleeping under a bridge on one of its connecting hills and shot him immediately out of desperation, fearing that Eric would have done much worse if she hadn’t gone through with it. He got away without a trace, but as Alice was walking back, trying to keep her composure in case he was setting up an ambush, she found that he had left behind his katana.

Realizing that his katana had to be strong enough to deflect her supersonic bullets, she realized that if she presented it to Eric, he would be impressed enough to consider her endeavor to be a success. That night, to her horror, she woke up to see his breaking into her house recovering her katana back. She was initially dazed, but quickly rushed down once she realized what could happen if she didn’t recover it in time. She was in the basement, and she barely managed to catch my father in time before he could retreat with the sword. My father seemed different; his voice was the same, as well as his appearance from what she could tell, but his demeanor was much less stable. He seemed fearful. He suddenly challenged her to shoot at him, and he deflected her bullet just like when they first met. Alice feared for her life, because my father turned from unbreakably kind from their first encounter to relentlessly cold, just like Eric. He retreated with the katana and locked the door behind Alice with a hard object. She managed to break out from his trap, but it was too late. My father was gone.

I knew better, but it was clear that Alice believed that I was my father. I allowed her to keep her belief and moved to my questions about Eric, because it was clear that she did not know anymore about my father directly. I asked her what Eric knew about the God of Death. She said that Eric was irrationally obsessed with finding him because of his consistent S-rank performance. I thought there was more to it; everything seemed to add up, but I was curious why my father would be a regular assassin at their guild.

My next question brought up the possibility that Eric too could potentially know my father personally. Alice said that it was possible, but that she didn’t believe so since she couldn’t find any documentation about him. So for the time being, I had extracted all the information about my father that I could from Alice. I proceeded to ask Alice questions about the guild, which I could use both to help free her from her position as an assassin and to more easily infiltrate the building myself as I looked for information in the more heavily guarded parts.

My first question pertaining to the guild was why she was working for Eric in the first place. She said that she grew up as a child under his care. He was determined to train her to be an assassin worthy of being called his student. Alice simply worked for him out of being compelled to as his daughter. I asked her why she didn’t run away from Eric. She explained that she had to stay in order to protect her friends. As it turned out, Alice attempted to escape from Eric once. But as she was sneaking away, Eric called out to her and had a shotgun to one of Alice’s friends: one of Eric’s own workers. Eric threatened Alice by saying one of her friends would die for each day she was gone from the guild without his permission. Alice therefore had no choice but to stay and do whatever he told her to.

I asked Alice what I might do in order to help her escape from Eric. She said that we would both need time to analyze the guild and plan accordingly for what to do. She couldn’t be at the guild without raising suspicion since she was on break from assassination. This break, however, gave us plenty of time to come up with what to do in terms of how to break free from Eric without endangering any of Alice’s friends. I reminded her that I wanted her to extract information on my father once we set the plan into motion, to which she acknowledged she would do so.

There was one more question that I wanted answered. I wanted to know what kind of person Eric was. Alice told me that Eric was a very cold, vicious man. He was an extremely fierce, proud assassin and a heavily demanding, strong leader. Alice was raised as his own child from as early as she can remember, and she was made to work herself agonizingly in order to more quickly become a strong assassin. Eric was the kind of man who would use any force necessary to control his workers to do what he wanted them to, and Alice was no exception.

Of course in Alice’s case, he rarely resorted to physical contact in order to condition her into obeying him. Instead, Eric was smart. He spent the first couple of years of Alice’s conscious childhood to have her befriend his workers: people whom she would consider dear to herself. Rather than targeting Alice directly with his abuse, he would threaten her by regularly torturing and humiliating his subjects when she would fail to meet his expectations. I thanked Alice for telling me the information and told her to rest well.

That night, I reflected on Eric. He was undoubtedly very brutal. But having remembered what he sounded like in his chats with Alice, he was also unbreakably calm and highly sophisticated. He scared me. On top of sounding like a massive threat in combat, Alice’s description of him sounded exactly like my grandfather. My father had a horrible life and was forced into a life similar to that of Alice’s. He hated my grandfather for what he made him do and for what harm he actually inflicted onto those he loved.

While I was immediately fearful of Eric because of whom I would have to deal with in order to free Alice, I also started to resent him on a personal level because of his mirror-like similarity to my grandfather, as well as his sharp contrast to how my father treated me. I absolutely sympathized with Alice and wanted her to live a good life. I wanted her to have a good father like my own to take care of her instead of somebody horrid like Eric. She even had the chance to know first hand what it was like. Her goal was in sight, but she couldn’t achieve it: not on her own. I had to help her, just like I did before.

That’s another thing. Remember the accomplice who scouted with my father when they were helping Alice? I was the accomplice. I didn’t know at the time whom I was helping, but I remember vividly completing a mission just before my father’s death, and it was exactly like what Alice described to me. It made sense why my father would interact with such a child. I realized that night why he would be connected to her, and I had to help her. I wanted to fulfill my father’s wish. He was no longer there to do it himself, so I had to be his emissary. I had to be his angel. I curled up as I thought about what Alice was suffering through and how she wanted to live free of the torment Eric was inflicting to her. The last thing I remember from the night before I fell asleep was softly muttering to myself desperately calling for my father.

「お父様…」(My dearest father…)