The End of Kurosawa-gumi
POV: Rai Kurosawa & Anika (dual alternating)
RAI
They came for him at midnight.
Six men, all wearing the Kurosawa crest. Once, he'd trained them himself — taught them where to strike and when to smile. Now they came with blades drawn and loyalty rotted.
"Rai Kurosawa," the elder voice croaked, "you have failed the bloodline."
He stood barefoot in the rain-soaked courtyard, the legacy of his father echoing in his bones.
"No," Rai said coldly. "I've rewritten it."
Steel met silence.
One lunged.
Rai moved like shadow.
By the time the thunder cracked, three were already dead.
---
ANIKA
From the high balcony, Anika watched as blood soaked into stone — not her husband's this time, but those who dared to kill him.
Her fingers curled tighter around the rifle she had once sworn never to touch.
But this was no longer about oaths.
This was survival.
This was rebirth.
When one of the traitors reached Rai's blind side, she didn't scream.
She fired.
One shot. Precise.
Straight through the skull.
Rai didn't flinch.
He knew she was there.
He always did.
---
RAI
By dawn, the Kurosawa compound was no longer a palace.
It was a graveyard.
The elders lay sprawled, their secrets dying with them. Fires licked the shoji doors. Smoke kissed the sky like a funeral pyre.
Rai knelt at the center of it all — shirtless, wounded, but free.
Anika came to him barefoot through the ash.
"Is it done?" she asked.
He looked up at her, eyes rimmed with blood and memory.
"It is now," he whispered. "Kurosawa-gumi is dead."
A pause.
"And what are we?"
She looked at the flames.
Then down at her bloodstained hands.
And smiled.
"Whatever we choose to become."
They left behind the empire that night.
No more titles. No more clan.
Just her hand in his, calloused and warm.
And behind them, the ruins of a dynasty that ruled through fear.
Now, all that remained were two hearts — forged in fire, and stained with each other's sins.