Through a Leader’s Eyes

Uozumi

 

Author’s Notes:  Okay, I found out that there's interest in this fic, even if it's my ever-faithful Banana Fish fan, and enshi_sama, which just makes my day!  I own nothing.

 

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When I came through the window, every night I never thought about what Mom was going through.  She never said anything, and many nights what she was thinking and felt was not my chief concern.  I would come home anywhere between four and six, and just be slipping into my school clothes just right before she would consider opening my door and demanding that I wake.  On the few occasions that she did, she never caught on that I had changed into my school clothes from the ratty jeans on my floor.  She knew that I changed when I came home from school, so I deluded myself into thinking that she didn't know that those jeans had just recently been cast to the floor in favor of my school uniform.

 

Mostly the Chinese gang knew, and I think that it never really got out to the other gangs and allies in the end, that I went to school, let alone a private school.  I still remember when I met Shorter one spring in 1982.  I was dressed up in my junior high uniform, and looking back, I think it must have looked somewhat ridiculous to think that a small lithe boy in a uniform would approach a tough teenager with colored hair and talk about the networking of the streets.  I wonder if people had seen us and wondered what we were about.  Most likely, they worried for my sake, and feared that Shorter would kill me.  Shorter always gave everyone who didn't know him that impression, even though I was the deadlier than the two of us.

 

I can remember starting my days during 1985, especially that fall when I entered high school, and my uniform changed ever so slightly to reflect that I was in a different school.  I would start by either catch about two hours of sleep tops, or just going in my window, into my uniform, and straight downstairs.  I don't know why I never passed out from exhaustion, but I just kept going, and during weekends, I would sleep in, because that comforted Mom, and also replenished my strength for the coming night fights and week spent in darkness.

 

I would go down to breakfast, Dad usually just sitting down to his, an ever-weary expression on his face, but he would look proud of me.  Again, I never did think of how my deception would affect them, or if they knew and it was affecting them.  All I knew was Dad was at the table, Mom was bringing breakfast over, and soon I would walk to school.

 

That was true.  I did have a motorbike by thirteen, but that too wasn't something my parents knew.  I sometimes wished that I could use it going to and from school, but I knew better.  It would be easier to get it revoked and other bad things happen if I was caught on it.  At least, when I was on it out at night, after I had taken it from its safe harbor at Shorter's apartment, I could speed away without really bothering anyone.  In broad daylight, outrunning the cops would harder.  New York is always congested, but the daily congestion definitely outweighs the nightly congestion.

 

I would walk to school, and banish the thoughts of my gang from my mind.  I found that in keeping my double life, the more separate I made them, that I was able to pull them off effectively.  My voice was always slightly nasal, and I still sound like I know everything, which mostly now it seems I do.  Although, what set my two sides apart was the fact that I could curse; however, I felt as the gang leader, but when it came to being the son and student, I had to curb it.  I think that's why I cursed as much as I did.  I held it all in, and then let it flow once I got the chance.

 

I always went home directly after the last bell.  I didn't feel like participating in clubs or bothering to attend school functions.  When I lived in LA for a while before we moved to New York, I was like that even as a small child before I knew that I would be called into a gang.  So, luckily, I had a natural reason for coming home directly after school each day.

 

I'd do mundane things once I got home.  I would have a snack, and do my homework, always getting straight A's.  Sometimes I would sleep, but still I wouldn't let thoughts of my gang seep in, it was still time for me to be the son and student, and not the gang member.

 

Then Dad would come home, and we would gather as a family around our table.  Our dinners were somewhat silent, but it wasn't because we hated each other.  Sometimes, the measure of talking isn't the measure of how much you care.  I think that my parents taught me to respect others by not prying into them.  Usually when I demanded something, it was something that had to be said, like when I confronted Ash over Shorter's body that autumn of 1985.  I demanded what had happened and if he had truly killed Shorter.  That was a necessary question, not a question that would pry into his own personal affairs, like if I were to ask him what several were speculating about Eiji and him.  I never did find out the truth over those.  Shorter always wore that unreadable smile of his whenever I asked, and he told me nothing, but those few well-phrased thoughts that meant nothing if I wanted my question answered.

 

Shorter was my older brother I think.  It took him a bit to get used to me, but soon he had me in the number two position, he being in the number one spot.  I knew that I was deserving of the number two position, but it still made my mind swim, especially when I thought of it as I sat in my room working on homework, not a part of the gangs then.

 

He knew of my double life, and he would help me sneak out ever so often, especially if something was going down and I would have to leave earlier than usual.  He met my parents once in 1983 or '84, and told them that he was from the high school that I eventually went to.  He captured their complete trust I think, well, maybe not complete, but they didn't question when we disappeared off together, or I went to "spend the night" at his house, which was an excuse in the earlier days for a good reason why I had to be at a gang thing for most a weekend.

 

Naturally, when I took over the gang, it took some doing to be an effective leader without mixing it into my son and student life.  I started to just not sneak home until supper, and then sneak out directly after.  I also began to do my homework at school, and still managed to not let my grades slip, which kept everyone from getting suspicious.  I had told my parents that Shorter had died, and that he had left me his motorbike, which was a way that I successfully was able to finally use the bike in my transgressions when I turned sixteen, but until then I kept my bike safe at home, and did use Shorter's for gang business, eventually returning it to his sister after using it for a year and a half.  She seemed so sad, so I apologized, because it seemed like the right thing to do, but then she said things, and was really sweet, and I wondered if it wasn't fair how Shorter had been mixed up in the gangs, and if I was worrying my family like he had worried her.

 

I would start off from school after the last bell, and duck into an underground hangout, changing clothes in the bathroom, and putting my uniform in my pack, which I strapped down and locked to my bike.  I had enough pull that no one touched it, because I had a run in about someone trying to rob me of my school things, and that person didn't walk away intact.  You don't rob from me.  I don't steal from people, and people shouldn't steal from me.

 

I would stay in the underground place, which was oddly located down the street and around the alley from my school.  I live in a somewhat affluent island in New York near Chinatown, and just around this corner, an oasis in the middle of it all was this small underground hangout, which looked like a teenage pizza join from some other part of town.  No one ever paid it mind, let alone if some teenager was going into it, even if they wore a uniform of an influential school.

 

I would stay for an hour, thinking mostly, and making my transition from son and student to gang boss.  I would clutch my drink, never alcoholic since it would impair my thinking when put on the line, and just think.  I would remember everything up until I had to return home and go to school.  I never fell asleep down there, even though some days I really wished I could, but I had to think and I had to get into gang mode.  I couldn't let them down, for my gang depended on me, and I depended on it since really, in the end, they were my only friends.  We stuck together, and I think that had I been able to be enticed by one of my classmates coming into New York in 1981, I think that I wouldn't ever had been sitting in that smoky hideaway, thinking about how to place my people so that they stayed alive.

 

I thought about Ash when I sat there sometimes, and I hated to let my thoughts turn towards the past.  Ever since I fell into the Chinese gangs in LA, I prided myself in being a forward thinker, and always looking towards the present and future, not the past.  However, the older I get, the more I think in all three dimensions, especially the past, which I think is an improvement.  By thinking of that intense year when the Japanese men came to America and the war against Dino began, I have made fewer mistakes, and have grown and learned from some I would have made had I not been a part of that. 

 

I still can't fathom so many things about that drug of death, Banana Fish.  I remember all that I saw, and how so quickly all the players died off together.  One by one all of the people who were closest to the whole mess died, or left the country.  I might go abroad soon, and then what of my gang.  I've mulled it over so many times, and reflected over my past five years as gang leader, of still balancing between that and my son and student self.  I'm nineteen, in college now, and still frequent the small underground place in the alley.  No one knows of what it truly is, because most parents keep their children in this area from it, and now that I'm in college, I'm not confined to my uniform, so I have more freedom and it solidifies the idea that this small place is for people who aren't really of this area, but might live in it.

 

I met a boy just today who's about sixteen and from the high school on the other side of the area from mine.  He's not that sharp and smart, but he's quick.  He picks up what you try to teach and tell him, but he can't be my successor, and I can't leave for the branch of our local college until I figure out who will be the next leader.  I'm not sure what I'm looking for as leader, but I'm leaning towards Xing-Sui, but I'm still unsure.  I promised Mom that I would go to the branch of my university in one of a dozen countries next year after I turn twenty, so I must make my decision, but it can't be rushed.  If I do return to America, I want my gang intact, and not having gone through a civil war.

 

"Sing."

 

The voice breaks me from my thoughts, and I glance up, watching someone slip into the barstool to my right.  It's the boy from the school down the way.

 

"Siu-Lun," I nod back.

 

"How was your day?"

 

The boy is too bright eyed for this, but the reason that I let him begin to participate in our gang is that sometimes his eyes change, and when they change, they turn into something I'm looking for.  He has potential.  I don't want to break him, but I think that in the climate we now live with the Dino Empire broken, but the Li Empire is still going, and still has us underneath its finger.  I hate it, but I can't really break us free of the Li brothers without bloodshed, and now that the war has been over for a good four or so years, starting another is just not in my ideology.  I believe in something Shorter once told me when I was twelve and I was still learning how to make it in New York.  He said that the purpose of a gang isn't fighting.  The purpose is to bring a bunch of people together who are searching for something, and keep them safe.  He pointed out that a lot of people in the gang aren't like him and me, coming from loving families, or from a background in education either.  He said that he believed that he should keep his men alive, and sometimes force was required, but really we were part of a belonging place, something that everyone tries to find in their lives.

 

"It was normal," I respond, and watch as the man behind the bar fills up my glass again.  I really do like this kid, but he tends to disrupt my transition.  I will admit that I do wait for him, and I think that, if I could work him for a few more years, I could plausibly consider him to be next in line, but I don't have the kind of time it takes to prep him.  I did learn fast for Shorter, but I was already battle hardened, but this boy . . . sometimes I wonder what he's doing here.

 

"That's good," he nods, and then he pauses, clutching his glass so that his knuckles turn white and the tips of his fingers smash against it.  "Sing, can I ask you something?"

 

"What?"  I take a sip of my drink.  I have a college book before me, but I have enough of a reputation that I can actually do some studying in here without getting harassed.  When I was younger, I might have had to defend myself and keep from getting a book destroyed, but now that I'm in college, I command respect from even people outside my gang since this isn't a feat that most can accomplish, passing high school even daunting for some.

 

"Have you . . ." he pauses, then looks at me, his brown eyes searching mine, "Have you ever wanted to get revenge?"

 

It takes all of me not to drop my glass or choke on my drink.  Setting it down, I banish the flames from my mind, and nod, speaking calmly as though I can't see Shorter's body burning in my mind's eye, "Yes, I have."

 

Siu-Lun nods, thinking about my response, then inquire tentatively, "What did you do?"

 

I blink, and then adjust my position on my stool, deciding that suddenly I'm not thirsty anymore.

 

"I went after the person I wanted revenge against instantly."

 

He considers this, and then inquires, still watching his drink, "Then what happened?"

 

"I got my ass kicked."

 

He stares at me in shock for a moment, and I wonder exactly what he's doing here.  He's sixteen, yet he acts much younger, but perhaps this is how sixteen-year-olds who aren't jaded as I was act.

 

I wouldn't know.

 

"Why?"  I watch as he turns back to his drink.  "You plotting revenge against someone?"

 

"No, I've just been thinking," he replies quietly.

 

I nod, and then rise, "We have work to do," then I pause, gauging him in his uniform before folding my arms, "You need to change."

 

"Change?  Why?"

 

I sigh.  I was so much more self-sufficient, but perhaps, this is a case of someone falling in with the wrong crowd.  According to the news, in this year of 1990, "more and more good kids are going bad," and no one can "understand it," according to a recent report in one of our papers.

 

"Look, you're easy to trace if you help us dressed up in your school uniform.  It flags you, and tells others where to get at you if someone does decide to take out revenge against us," I use our recent topic as reinforcement of my point, which seems to work with this one.

 

"So, what can I do? Mom will be suspicious if I just show up in street clothes directly after school."

 

I pauses, and study him, then speak carefully, "Siu-Lun, do you have school friends?"

 

"What?" he goes on the defensive, which I take to mean that we might be his only source of viable friendship.

 

"I'm asking if when you go to school, you have one or more friends there."

 

He glowers at me, that look I think has potential coming to his features.  "No."

I nod, then begin feeling my brain start working as I plan things out. I wonder if this is how Shorter was thinking when he started helping me out of the house and such.  "All right then. How willing are you to participate in the gang?"

 

"You know that I'm ready to do anything."

 

"Yes, but you return home at seven for dinner, and then don't show up again until I meet you here at three," I note. "That's not a good way to be a part of a gang.  You need to be more involved.

 

"What kind of classes are you taking?"

 

"AP classes," he blinks, "I try really hard."

 

"How much do you study at night?"

 

"Not really, I just do my homework, and I only study for really hard subjects like Biology and Calculus."

 

I pause, and brood on the subject a moment, formulating a plan.  I didn't think that he was that smart.  He told me once that he got mostly B's, but to be in all AP classes . . . that makes no sense, unless he was referring to them as though they weren't AP, which would make sense.

 

"Do you think you could sneak out of your house and sneak back in?"

 

He stares at me for the longest moment, and that look I like is gone, replaced with one that says he had never though of sneaking out before.  This might take some doing, but I think I'll get through to him.

 

"How about this?  Have you ever considered the local college?"

 

He nods, "Yes, Mom says that it isn't good enough though."

 

I sigh, one of my advantages getting shot down.  At our college, one of the students can take a high school student in and show him or her the ropes, but if his Mom is against it, there's no way we're getting to get that excuse working.

 

I don't even know why I'm trying anyway.  I don't know what I see in this situation.  Perhaps I see a possible replacement, but I'd have to get him out there to see if he can possibly take over as leader, and I need to get the others to accept him.

 

I'm running out of time, and I need to figure this next-in-line thing before net fall.  I have less than a year, but I know I can find someone, but I want to be sure that they're the right person.

 

Sighing, I look to him, and start trying to formulate a plan.  I think that I've made my decision, but how to make it work might just take me those few months in America that I have left.

 

The End