Ryunosuke stared at Hasegawa, who had taken over the Shiba Inu's kennel, and voiced his complaint with a flat expression. "You know, doing that to the dog is just cruel."
"Cruel? Is he more pitiful than me? At least he has a kennel to live in. I don't have anything left."
"Eer..." Ryunosuke didn't know what to say to that. He settled down cross-legged nearby and made small talk. "By the way, I got married."
"Oh, congratulations then!" Hasegawa called back, though he made absolutely no move to come out of the dog kennel.
Ryunosuke tossed him a single wedding candy. "A belated celebration gift. Think you could do me a favor?"
"Heh, you little punk. You think one piece of candy is enough to ask me for something?" Even as he said it, the old man unwrapped it and popped it in his mouth. "Hmm. Not bad, actually. It's been three months since I last had candy."
"And even then, I found it in the trash. The leftover end of a lollipop some kid didn't finish."
As he spoke, a single clear tear slid from the corner of his eye.
"Eer..." Ryunosuke unconsciously scooted away from him. He was genuinely happy right now and had no intention of being infected by this man's catastrophic aura of misfortune.
Hasegawa's expression turned serious. "All right. Tell me what you need."
(It would help if you said that from outside the dog kennel,) Ryunosuke thought, though he kept it to himself. He held out an envelope. "Help me deliver this letter to a girl named Shiina Mahiru. She's my wife."
"What is this, a will?" Hasegawa took the envelope.
"More or less..." Ryunosuke reached into his pocket and pulled out the earnings from his two underground fights that day, 400,000 yen in total, and held it out. "Take this as your payment. Please, just make sure she gets the letter."
"What's going on with you, kid?" Hasegawa's expression grew sharp, his brow furrowing hard.
Ryunosuke had no choice but to lay it all out. "That's the situation. I have a home, but I can't go back to it. I'm afraid my father will show up and go after my wife. If he finds out there's a girl living with me, he'll never stop harassing Mahiru."
To keep his father from tracking down where he lived, and out of fear that the debt collectors might find him as well, Ryunosuke had decided he couldn't return home. His father was not a decent man. He was perfectly capable of selling his own son out to the collectors, and it wouldn't even be the first time. For Mahiru's sake, for her safety, Ryunosuke had resolved not to see her, at least for now.
He stood, walked out into the downpour without a word, and disappeared from Hasegawa's sight.
Hasegawa looked down at the 400,000 yen and the envelope in his hands, and his thoughts drifted to his own story. He had once been the Director-General of the National Police Agency, a position of enormous authority within the government. Yet when the time came to receive a Saudi prince on an official visit, he had been made to bow and scrape like a man with no dignity at all.
Japan's geography left it almost entirely without oil, which meant buying it from abroad. If the prince's side cut off the supply, Japan would sink into a catastrophic crisis. Everything ran on oil: vehicles, the military, rubber, even medical gloves. No one in the government could afford to offend him.
Then one day the prince's pet went missing, and Hasegawa failed to find it. His superiors, eager to wash their hands of the mess, made him the scapegoat and stripped him of his position.
It was absurd. A man who had served as Director-General of the National Police Agency, fired over a dog. The people at the top had rotted through long ago.
In that moment, Hasegawa had reclaimed the dignity he had quietly buried for years. He told his superior exactly what he thought of him. He had even felt the urge to draw his pistol and put a bullet through the man's head, just to see whether there was anything inside worth calling a brain. Was a dog really worth more than a person?
He didn't regret it. At least he was still a man who could look himself in the eye. He had beaten his superior on the spot, then calmly lit a cigarette and waited to be arrested. Strangely, his superiors left his wife and child out of it and brought the punishment down on him alone. He wasn't imprisoned, but he lost everything. His house was gone, and too ashamed to let his child see him like this, he had never gone back.
Back to the present. Hasegawa surfaced from his thoughts and looked at the envelope in his hand. "This kid Akasaka, he's not so different from me." He paused. "All right. I'll help him, just this once."
He crawled out of the dog kennel, tucked the 400,000 yen and the letter under his arm, and made his way toward the Yorozuya, the odd jobs office, to find Gintoki.
The place looked exactly as chaotic as expected. It was clear no one had cleaned it in a very long time. In the corner of the room sat a pile of dog droppings so impressive it was nearly half a meter tall.
Hasegawa walked in without hesitation. In the middle of the room, a young man with a wild mop of silver curls had his feet propped up on the table, holding a newspaper. Or rather, he wasn't quite young anymore. He was cackling to himself as he read, though on closer inspection the newspaper had an adult magazine tucked inside it. Every so often he picked his nose and wiped it on the sleeve of his white coat.
Hasegawa let out a long-suffering sigh. "You're as filthy as ever, Gin-san."
Gintoki lowered the newspaper. "You're not exactly in a position to say that, coming from someone who lives in a dog kennel."
He picked his nose again and wiped it on the fluffy white thing resting under his feet. It turned out to be an enormous white dog, fast asleep on the floor. That explained where the half-meter tower in the corner had come from.
"Where did you even find a dog that size?"
Gintoki answered without much interest. "Found him on the street. Felt bad, so I took him in. Didn't expect him to keep growing and eat more than a person. I can barely afford to feed him anymore."
Hasegawa smiled. "Then just get rid of him, right?"
Gintoki went quiet.
Hasegawa knew what the man was thinking. He was just someone who struggled to put his feelings into words. He had already decided this dog was family, and he would keep caring for it even if it ruined him.
Hasegawa's expression settled into something serious. "Yorozuya. Are you still taking requests?"
Gintoki, who had been slouching lazily a moment ago, straightened up immediately and threw the newspaper aside. "Of course we are! My household is nearly starving! This stupid animal eats enough for twenty people a day!"
He pointed down at Sadaharu beneath his feet. The dog, apparently awake now, looked up with the most heartbreakingly pitiful expression imaginable.