Mafia? Hmm... Civilian Yamaguchi sees something he shouldn't, and, well, they can't exactly let him go after that, now can they? That does not, however, mean that they have to kill him. It'd be a waste of a pretty face, after all.
“Please. Please, I- I have the money! I swear! L- Look, I just need to get it. They won’t let me take more than three thousand out at a time, I’m getting as much as I ca-” Tadashi is walking home from his night classes in a familiar, quiet neighborhood when he hears those words, and he stops in his tracks. The person’s pleading is cut off by a strangled-sounding grunt, followed by wet coughing, and Tadashi stays stock-still where he stands. His knees feel weak as he turns his head this way and that, looking for the source of the sound, hoping it’s just some film students getting a late-night scene in for finals.
Of course, he has no such luck.
Tadashi has to crane his neck, but when he does he’s able to see the scene playing forth clear as day; around the corner of one of the houses on the block, two men have an older man pinned against the wall. The poor victim is sobbing, one of the thugs’ forearms pressed against his neck choking him while the other holds a gun to his head.
“We’re supposed to believe that? You’ve been saying that for three weeks, Take-chan.”
“At this point, boss says it doesn’t matter if what you’re saying is true or not,” The darker haired thug says. “We’re obligated to eliminate you for failure to pay.”
The older man, ‘Take-chan,’ sobs as the first man shoves him harder against the wall. “Please. Please, no, I’m so close to getting it paid off. Please!”
“We’re sorry,” The one with lighter, spiked hair shake his head; he cocks thte gun. “We don’t want to do this, Takeda, we don’t. But boss’ orders; we’re to eliminate you unless you give us the remaining ten thousand dollars of your debt tonight. Do you have the money?”
Tadashi should leave. He should leave right now. Before he really sees something he shouldn’t. He should turn and book it in the other direction, go back to the konbini a couple of blocks away and call an uber home.
He can’t even look away. Maybe that’s what’s worse. Tadashi could maybe feign innocence if he just looked away put in headphones and just walked away, but the scene in front of him is captivating and horrifying, and he can’t. So instead, he watches. He’s held involuntarily captive by the sight as Take pleads some more for his life, the two criminals making poor excuses as to why they can’t keep him alive, right up until everything comes to an abrupt stop.
The man holding Take to the wall says something, and then there’s a loud bang! as a gun goes off not even a moment later.
Take’s blood and brain matter splatters against brick.
Dogs bark in the distance. Tadashi’s ears ring as the shot echoes, still unmoving as lights in some of the nearby houses flicker on. He is, strangely, silent. Blinking, Tadashi watches the two as they carefully wipe their fingerprints off of the gun and position it in Take’s hand, before dropping his body and booking it out from the side of the home-
And barreling right into Tadashi.
“Shit, fuck,” The man with the gun curses, holding his nose. He’d bumped heads with him, the other just barely missing Tadashi. When they realize that they’d run into a person and not a stray tree, there’s even more cursing, and before Tadashi can register anything the butt of the gun slams into his head and everything goes black.
“This is bad. This is really bad.”
“You don’t think I already know that?”
“He saw everything. He saw everything and we just took him back to our apartment like an old drunk friend or something. How are we going to explain this one to the boss, huh?”
“Will you two stop arguing and think for just one second?” A third, unfamiliar, voice cuts in, interrupting the arguing and Tadashi wants to thank whoever it is. His head is swirling, and the yelling isn’t helping. He opens his eyes for just a second, but finds that he’s blindfolded, so he shuts them again. “I can’t believe you two. I have other business to attend to one time, and you fuck up a simple hit. How stupid do you have to be to do that?”
“Tsukki, you aren’t making this better!” One of the other voices whines. It’s almost impossible to identify it with the way he’s whining, but Tadashi suspects the person pinning the man to the wall is the one speaking. “Takeda lived in such a quiet neighborhood, with a bunch of old people. We didn’t think there would be anyone walking around so late at night!”
“Well, we were wrong about that, weren’t we? I told you we should’ve done it inside, Kuroo!”
“And risk getting our DNA all over the damn house? Are you insane?”
“Hey! Come on- Tsukki, tell him it wasn’t a bad idea-”
“It absolutely was, Bokuto. Not that Kuroo’s idea was any better.”
“Hey! You act like we’re the worst at out job.”
“I’m sorry, who’s the one who brought home a witness to a murder they just committed?”
There’s a huff of breath, and then a quiet, “...We are.”
“That’s what I thought. Now, what were you planning to do with our little problem? Or were you planning on letting me deal with it?”
“We were sort of hoping you would maybe have an idea...maybe...”
A sigh. The new voice sounds resigned as he says, “Well, I suppose we’re going to have to kill him.”
That catches Tadashi’s attention. He’d been trying to tune the three men out, focusing more on his head throbbing than their bickering, but those words immediately break him out of his distracted reverie. His head snaps up, even though he’s still blindfolded and can’t see, and he realizes belatedly that his mouth is gagged. A muffled “Kill him?” comes out at the same time as the two men who kidnapped him cry out,
“We can’t just kill an innocent person!”
“You’re the one who brought him here begging me for advice- this is my advice.” Tadashi can hear the bored tone in the other man’s voice, and he shudders at the cold way he talks about murdering a stranger.
“Yeah, but that can’t be the only option. A- Are we even sure he saw anything?”
“Yeah, maybe he didn’t! Maybe he’s blind!”
“I can’t believe you two are so stupid. Our job is going to have some casualties- that’s just how it is sometimes. If you won’t clean up your own mess, I can.” He speaks with a tone of finality, and then all of a sudden the blindfold is removed. Tadashi flinches at the sudden light, blinking wide eyes open to find he’s...in someone’s apartment. Just an apartment.
Three men stand in front of him; the first two, a man with messy black hair and lithe frame and a man with spikey hair and broad, muscular shoulders stand behind a tall blonde with thin, square glasses looking very annoyed with his colleagues. The blonde is a complete stranger to him, but the others he recognizes at the ones that kidnapped him in the first place. For a long moment, the four men stare at one another. Tadashi does his best not to look as intimidated as he feels, but it’s hard to do when he’s in the situation that he’s in. He’s about to just close his eyes and resign himself to his fate when he notices something.
The stranger seems to notice it too- he’s reaching into his pocket for something, a “this isn’t anything against you, you just saw something you weren’t supposed to,” halfway out of his mouth when he freezes.
“Bokuto,” He says, his voice low and calm. “Are you really popping a boner when we’re about to kill someone?”
The one with spiky hair immediately covers his lower half with a dinner plate from the nearby dining table. He frowns.
The dark haired man laughs raucously, hunching in on himself, and Tadashi’s wide eyes flick between the three men rapidly. The blonde one sighs; he pinches the bridge of his nose.
“You’re the worst. Do you know that?”
“H- Hey! What do you expect me to do when we have the guy tied up and gagged? You know I’m into bondage!”
“And it’s a fact I hate that I know. But really? This is the most inconvenient time-”
“Y’know, Bo has a point, Tsukki.”
“What are you implying, Kuroo?”
“I’m implying,” The dark haired one snaps, “That we don’t have to get rid of him. Not right away, anyway. We could...make use of him.”
Tadashi’s eyes widen at the same time as the blonde’s, and he watches a deep flush wash over the man’s pale skin.
“You guys are ridiculous, you know that?”
“That isn’t a ‘no,’ though, right?”
“...Fine. But I get to go first.”
