The Mafia's Daughter

Chapter 4

"What have I told you about leaving this room, girl?" Mori asks the child once he has gotten her back to the room he has kept her in since the day he convinced Dazai that he had killed her.

Sakura lowers her head in shame. "There are people out there who would kill me just for the fun of it. It is far more dangerous out there than it is in this room."

Mori has a mind to take the shirt from the girl, to burn it, but looking at the oversized shirt on her tiny frame is appealing to him in a way he didn't initially think clothes on her would be. Perhaps he could let her keep it, and tell her that it should be a reminder that the halls are dangerous because she never knows who she could run into. Once he has told her as such, she nods numbly in response before he leaves telling her that as punishment for her disobedience, Elise would not be cleaning her or the bed, and she would not be eating for the next two days.

The girl accepts her punishment without complaint, and as soon as Mori leaves the room, she buries herself in the shirt of the man who promised to save her. She's certain that he'll make good on his promise.

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"I'm really sorry," Tanizaki bows at Atsushi to the best of his ability from his seat across the booth from the boy. "I know it was for a test, but I was still really rude to you. I'm sort of an assistant here at the agency, my name is Tanizaki Junichiro. Can you ever forgive me?"

"It's fine, don't worry about it," Atsushi holds up his hands placatingly.

Tanizaki then introduces Atsushi to his sister Naomi who the boy doesn't entirely believe is the boy's sister due to reasons of how the pair act with one another. Atsushi is exceedingly creeped out by how the pair interact with one another, but Kunikida cuts in and tells him that it's best if he were to just leave the subject alone.

Just as Kunikida is lecturing Atsushi about how he needs to uphold the agency's good name, Chuuya and Youko come in, the latter of the two rushing to hug their big brother having missed him terribly the night before having never been separated from him since the day the child was dropped off at the orphanage. It is also at that point that Dazai decides to ask the waitress if she would be willing to strangle him with her beautiful hands, leading to Kunikida threatening to break Dazai's neck for him.

"Who's the kid?" Tanizaki asks, looking at the similarities between Atsushi and the child now nestled in his arms.

"This is my younger sibling Youko. Dazai and Chuuya are going to be adopting them so that they'll have a real home." Atsushi looks to where Kunikida is still scolding Dazai with Chuuya simply watching and shaking his head before deciding to spare the poor man any further lecturing by asking about everyone's prior jobs. "I was wondering, what were all of you doing before you joined the agency?"

The question catches Dazai's and Kunikida's attention long enough to stop their fighting, but the looks on their faces makes Atsushi think that he stepped into the wrong territory with his question.

"It's no big deal," he tries to placate the men who he thinks he angered. "I was just curious is all."

"Take a guess," Dazai tells him with a smirk on his face. He knows that no one is going to ever guess his and Chuuya's prior professions. No one could ever imagine guessing that the two of them were executives in the Port Mafia. "It's a game. We've played it a lot here, actually. The newcomer tries to guess his colleagues' former occupations. Think of it as part of training to be a private investigator."

Atsushi gives the suggestion some thought before making his first guess. "I want to say that Jnichiro and Naomi were students."

"You got it," Junichiro responds. "Nice one."