“That’s not necessary,” Takashi said. “We might not always agree, but we’re brothers. My wife is dead. Both my boys are dead. I don’t have anyone else.”

“‘Brothers’?” Hachirō exclaimed. “It’s too late for that. I should have done this years ago. It would have prevented a lot of heartbreak.”

He drew closer, levelled the pistol and aimed it at Takashi’s forehead.

“Please, Oniisan,” Takashi begged him, using the affectionate honorific that he hadn’t spoken since they had been teenagers, running around the benighted streets of Sanya, before the yakuza and everything that flowed from it.

“Do you think I could ever forget what you did to my daughter? What you were going to do?”

“Did you think about what she did to me?”

Hachirō shook his head and drew closer. “It’s always been about you, hasn’t it? You’ll never change.”

He fired.

* * *

Sakura watched as Yamato played with the toys that Milton had brought back after his Tokyo trip three days earlier. Yamato had told him that his favourite toys were Transformers, and Milton had returned with toy robots with names like Ironhide, Barricade and Bonecrusher. They didn’t mean much to Sakura, but Yamato had been beside himself with happiness as Milton took them out of the bag bearing the famous logo of the Yamashiroya toy store.

Yamato had played with them ever since. He beamed with happiness now as he staged a battle between the Autobots and Decepticons; watching him filled her heart with a pure and simple joy that she had thought she would never feel again.

The last two weeks had been everything that she could have hoped for. Her father had located a small house in Odawara, a hundred miles to the southwest of Tokyo, and Milton had found the money to pay the rent for the first two months. They needed to be away from the city, he argued, at least until he was satisfied that Takashi was no longer a threat to them. She had no idea how Milton would be able to be sure about that, but she was happy to trust him.

Her attention was on Yamato and making sure that he felt happy and loved. Mother and son might not have been together for months, but it had made no difference to the strength of their relationship. The boy asked about Takashi and, less often, about Uncle Katsuro, but those questions became less and less frequent as the days wore on. Her father visited regularly, and she had been delighted to see his relationship with Yamato bud and then blossom. Hachirō was gruff and circumspect most of the time, but that hadn’t stopped him from lying on the floor next to the boy and joining in his battles.