I smoke. I'm blind in one eye. I've been in and out of jail since my early teens. I can't move too fast without struggling for a breath of air. Yet people see me and fear me. Maybe it's because of my name. I'm never sure. If anything I think people should laugh at me rather then be scared of me. They just see the tattoo on the inside of my wrist and automatically shrink back. That or see my eyes not hidden behind a pair of Gucci sunglasses, and they see the scars I bare, and the fact that one of my eyes is white while the other is a dark brown. I'm pretty much helpless, but people fear me anyway.
I started in the game when I was about the same age as Toki, only years before Toki even knew what a yakuza was. I was fifteen. I had a chip on my shoulder, not a good student, and even though my home life wasn't too bad, I was determined to fuck it up. I signed on, wanting to be a yakuza for some ungodly reason. I guess because when I was younger, I thought it was the coolest thing. That if you were a big bad yakuza, people could fear you by just seeing you. It was the image I had in my head from the over romanticized version I've seen in movies, or heard on the news, the way they made the yakuza seem...it was something I wanted to be a part of too. And I lived in a city of yakuza...so hey, why not. I dropped out of school, and I joined with the 36 Moons. The then much younger oyabun, looked at me and laughed. I was small and thin, I had just then had gotten half way through puberty. I was pretty much laughable. The oyabun saw how I only wanted to be yakuza because I thought it would be cool. Much to his surprise when he slapped me across the face and told me to run home to my momma and my toys, I got right back up and flipped the bastard off, telling him to suck my dick before turning away and began to leave his office. As I got to the door, I heard him saying,
"Kid...get back here."
"Tachimine Aoki. I got a name. Use it."
I heard him laughing again as he said,
"Okay Tachimine Aoki....come back here."
I walked back to his desk as he said,
"Tell me one thing."
"Nani."
"Why do you wanna be a yakuza?"
"I just do."
"You got a lot potential."
"Domo."
"It takes a lot more then a mouth to be yakuza kid."
I tilted my head to the side as I said,
"I know that."
He laughed. I may have needed more then a mouth on me to be a yakuza, but for the time being, it was all I needed to get in.
I started small like all kids in the syndicate do. I even had a "big brother." In syndicates, big brothers are assigned to a new one coming up in the ranks. They're suppost to teach you shit and more or less show you the ropes. The guy I got all he taught me was how to bitch slap someone. When I was fifteen, he thought he could walk all over me and treat me like his little slave boy. When I was sixteen, he thought he could make me his bitch. And I wasn't having that. In a fight with him, I stabbed him in his stomach. He died a little while later. I sat in my oyabun's office as all the other around me had a go at me. I got the shit kicked out of me for killing my elder. When my oyabun came in, he scolded me for doing that. I then explained what the situation was and how the bastard treated me. My oyabun let it go and because he saw I took no one's bullshit, it's how I earned my syndicate name.
I was sixteen when I got my hands stained with blood.
That brought me up to higher ranks. My oyabun liked me. He thought I was good at killing. And with a cigarette in my mouth, a gun at my side, I started running out in the streets, killing people for my oyabun and getting paid well. Damn well for my services. I also fell into some trappings of being a killer. I begin to grow hungry for the money and the power it brought with it. It also got me into some trouble. When I was eighteen, I was fucking off when I shouldn't have been. I had just gotten out of jail a few months earlier and I was on probation. I was with a few of my fellow yakuza, Hide being one of them, getting lifted, getting a blow job, having a drink. It was my celebration for being released. The next thing I know, all hell breaks loose. I'm running through a drunken haze with my boys trying to zip up my pants as I take out my piece and start taking aim. I was too careless, too reckless, too young and naive to think I was capable of handling something like this when I just had a few years experience behind me and a tattoo on my wrist. I had just gotten out of jail for a minor crime and now I was shooting, taking aim and doing what? I didn’t know. I was too stoned and drunk to realize what was happening. As I went to duck behind a wall, during the riot, there was someone else there, someone trying to kill me. I come face to face with the gun and only because I moved my head and slam myself against the wall behind me did I save my life. I remember thinking I had gotten shot in the face and I died and that that was my life....
I woke up later, because I didn't die, in the building of the 36 Moons. I was dazed and confused, I had no clue what was going on, plus I had a bad hang over. When I woke up, first person I saw was Hide. He was there with me when everything was happening.
"Hey....we thought we lost you."
I blinked as I reached up to my face and felt cotton over one of my eyes. I sat up as Hide said,
"Calm down. It's just temporary. You took a gun shot blast to the face."
I laid back down feeling rather stupid. And for the first time, scared. I wouldn't dare say that in front of Hide though. I was too naive to think that my life was glamorous. It was then that I realized what a fucking idiot I had been. Having two good eyes open all the time and yet I still couldn't see what I was doing. As I laid there, blinded in one eye for what was suppost to be a temporary amount of time, I begin to see things a little more clearly. My head hurt and I felt really helpless without my other eye. Whenever someone came in to see me, I had to hear them because if they came up on my left side, I couldn't see them. The paranoia got to me so much that I couldn't even lay down anymore. I had to sit up with my back against the wall so I could see everyone coming in. I was too paranoid, plus I was out of work for the time being until my eye was healed.
During the time I waited for it to heal, I sat in the hospital. It got more serious then anyone expected. By the time I woke up again, Hide was standing next to me. He looked as if he something to say but couldn't find the right way to say it.
"Say it Hide."
He sighed as he ran his fingers through his hair and said,
"You're blind in that eye Aoki. You'll never see out of it again."
I got out of bed almost immediately after he said that. I tore the needles out of my arms as I went to the bathroom and tore off the bandages and gauze from my eye. I then slowly opened it and saw...nothing. Just darkness as if my eye never opened. With my other eye, I could see my now useless blind one was white. The pupil was been shot out and there was a scar with stitching over my eye where I was operated on. At first all I could do was stare at my new reflection. Then, the next thing I did was start using every curse word I knew as I bitched and screamed at everything. I was fucking useless.
I didn't want anyone seeing my now freakish quality so I started wearing sunglasses all the time. I continued working as a yakuza. My oyabun still kept me on because even with one eye, I was fucking good at my job. Since I only had one eye, I didn't need to try and aim anymore. My downfall was that I had to start listening better. I had to recognize people’s voices if they came up on my blind side. If I didn't know them, I had to act as if I could see them, otherwise give away my handicap. I went in and out of jail during this time, my oyabun kept springing me. And each time I came out, my reputation got more fierce. I had no idea why and what had happened to make my name so scary, yet when I walked somewhere in the dark depths of Tokyo, people inched their way away from me. When I was in my mid-twenties, my hair had grown so long and I had dyed it for no other reason then, I was bored and I braided it blonde. I became known even better for that damn braid, my reputation and my silence. I was stunned that anyone would fear me as much as they did. But because I couldn't see out of my left eye anymore, I got all the more cautious. I didn't trust people around me, I didn't let my guard down...I was too worried people might see this as my weakness.
Later I was put back in jail for money laundering. I was pissed off. I also cut off my hair, dyed it back and also, Hide was thrown in jail. By the time I got out, a new oyabun had taken the place of the 36 Moons. When I went in jail I didn't know of any other upstarts joining in. I was more then shocked to see the oyabun was not even of Japanese decent but of Chinese. He was however, an echo of my former oyabun. I remembered Toki slightly, he was still a kid when he joined and I went to jail. But he was older now and his best friend ran the syndicate.
He remembered my oyabun liking me, using me for what I was worth. My skill and my talent. And he used me for those same skills. More people were hired by the likes of Jia. Toki telling him which to keep, which to toss. Ghost, Mikkie Araya came our way. Judgment, Metsuki Taito, Vengeance, Gabriel Kishien the gaijin, Chaos, Makino Junpei, and Deception, Matso Aya. Everyone who had eyes, or in my case, an eye, could see Aya was fucking beautiful. He made women envious by just walking into a room. And in my silence, I could see how Toki chased him, as he chased everyone and wanted nothing more then to get off. It was funny how someone like me, could easily land Aya. I got him. Just like that, no questions asked, he went willingly to my place and oh so generously spread his legs for me. I couldn't ask for anything more.
I later made Toki jealous by him finding out. I didn't care though, what I did with Aya was more or less...just a need for release. Same thing with Aya. He didn't care much either. Still, I could understand why Toki would want to tap something as sweet looking as Aya. At any rate, during my years as a yakuza, I learned so much...I learned that my oyabun was right, it does take more then a mouth to be a yakuza. I learned it took me an eye to really see things around me. If I hadn't been so fucking careless to begin with, I may still have my eye. But I wasn't.
And I paid for it.
I don't regret what I did, and what I still do in my past, present and future. All I know is that now I see things through a better side and before I loose my other eye, I'll be damn well sure of what I'm doing.