Page 9 of The Dragon 1 (Tokyo Empire #1)

Chapter six

The Whole Beast

Kenji

I left my office with Reo on my left and Hiro on my right.

The rest of the Dragon’s Claws followed behind us. Each Claw had been personally sharpened by Hiro.

He’d been born and raised in the alleys of Nishinari, one of the most violent wards in Osaka, before my father dragged his mother and him to Tokyo. She’d been my father’s favorite prostitute turned live-in mistress.

Because of that, Hiro had grown up in the shadows of both power and neglect. My father always saw him as a mistake. His mother was too broken to love him properly.

But where most children cracked, Hiro sharpened. He learned to stab before he learned to write. To kill before he could kiss.

So the ones who walked behind us—the Dragon’s Claws—they were his. Hiro’s brothers by bloodless bond. They’d scraped life together in dark corners.

Kaede walked with eerie calm, platinum-blond hair tied into a low knot at the nape of his neck.

His face was too perfect like something sculpted for a museum display.

But the illusion stopped at his eyes—one real, one glass—both cold.

His hands could snap a wrist mid-conversation and never spill a drop of blood.

Kaede didn’t like mess.

He preferred his violence clean.

Daisuke drifted behind us, never too far from Hiro, but never fully seen either. His mohawk—a sharp black ridge cutting over his otherwise still silhouette—was the only loud thing about him. He moved like smoke—elusive—and when he struck, it was a brisk wind through dry leaves.

Sudden, quiet, and final.

Toma flanked the other side with swagger and threat. Both sides of his head were shaved, leaving a single unruly strip of bright purple hair running down the center like a wild flame.

Tattoos crawled up his throat and vanished beneath his collar—inked stories of pain and rage. He wore a grin too wide to be sane, like someone who’d bitten into something feral and liked the taste.

Toma didn’t care about subtlety.

He wanted to be seen.

He wanted to be feared.

Then there were the twins—Aki and Yuki. As always, their pace was in perfect sync and their black hair was slicked-back. They both had identical scars beneath their chins. Apparently, they’d been burned from a night long ago, when Hiro pulled them out of a house fire.

The twins rarely spoke, but when they did, it was usually in fragments, as if finishing each other’s thoughts. They fought the same way—mirrors reflecting the exact same violence.

The Claws didn’t just follow Hiro—they worshipped him. And because they gave their loyalty to Hiro. . .they belonged to me.

Next came the Dragon’s Fangs.

My elite monsters in tailored suits.

They joined us as we moved through the club, slipping from shadowed alcoves and velvet-draped corridors.

One by one, they fell into formation without a word.

I didn’t call for them because I never needed to.

They always remained waiting for me.

Kaoru appeared first, striding from one of the champagne lounges with two women still clinging to his lapels, both of them flushed and laughing as they kissed his cheeks and whispered goodbye.

He murmured something to make them giggle harder, then peeled himself away with a wink that could melt gold.

The moment he fell into step behind me, the charm drained from his face like a switch flipped off. Tall, slender, and heartbreak-handsome, Kaoru looked like he should be serenading someone under the moonlight.

Perhaps, it was the long pink hair.

But his custom Colt .45 rested snug beneath his jacket and his hands could dismantle a man the way a pianist broke silence.

Yoichi followed next, emerging from the high-roller suite upstairs and dragging a trail of cologne and cigarette smoke behind him.

He met our pace and ran his fingers over his smooth, bald head.

A rifle case dangled over one shoulder. His designer jacket was unbuttoned at the chest, revealing the silver wolf tooth charm that hung low around his neck.

Yoichi made violence look beautiful. He killed with flourish. Gambled with lives. And had a habit of quoting haikus while reloading a sniper rifle.

“A kill without beautiful words,” he once said. “Is just a death without meaning.”

Rin and Satoshi appeared next, stepping in sync from the private bathhouse wing.

Rin, as always, looked like royalty gone rogue—tall, clean-shaven, and dressed in all white. His hair fell to his waist but tonight it was braided in one long plait.

He had descended from a once-powerful Kyoto family and carried himself with the restraint of someone still bound by ritual.

Poison was his preferred weapon.

Silence his preferred mood. His signature moves were subtle deaths—a glass of wine, a brush of fingertips, a goodbye that came two days too late. He collected antique combs and never traveled without a tin of herbal breath mints, a detail none of us understood but all respected.

Satoshi was the counterpoint of Rin—ex-military, dishonorably discharged for something involving five bodies and zero witnesses. His presence was like a loaded gun in a church—too heavy, too loud, even in silence.

His jet-black hair was buzzed close at the sides but left slightly longer on top, always combed flat and neat as if he’d just left inspection.

But he had one soft spot: he only drank milk, even in blood-soaked rooms, and if anyone dared tease him for it, they bled for the joke.

One by one, they joined the formation, moving like a single organism built to hunt. These men didn’t just protect me—they carried pieces of my sins, my history, my blood-soaked promises.

Together with my Roar, Claws, and Fangs, I pushed through the double doors of Castle in the Sky , leaving behind its warm, perfumed glamour and stepping into the cold, electric breath of Tokyo’s night.

Outside, the world reacted the way it always did.

A ripple.

Then rupture.

People scattered.

Men with cameras disguised as tourists tripped over their own feet to get out of range. Working girls crossed the street without looking, ignoring red lights and almost getting clipped by passing cabs.

A man in a cheap suit dropped his cigarette and didn’t bother to pick it up, bolting toward the alley with his head down.

Even the predators fled when the Dragon stepped outside.

We didn’t speak as we moved through Kabukichō. Neon signs buzzed like electric gods.

Above, a love hotel sign flickered the word Paradise in kanji.

Girls leaned out of windows with faces painted like porcelain dolls.

Host boys smoked on balconies, eyeing us with detached curiosity that quickly morphed into fear.

The deeper we moved, the quieter the street became. Even the music spilling from the clubs lost its edge when we passed.

Together, we walked like a single beast, and the city recoiled with every step.

We reached one of my restaurants, the Last Cut .

A sushi spot with a narrow entrance and no sign. Just a single red lantern swinging above the door, casting a blood-hued glow across the stones.

Reo opened the door for me.

I moved forward.

Conversation died the second I stepped inside. Scents hit me—rice vinegar and raw tuna. Wasabi that clung to my sinuses like smoke.

We continued forward.

Chopsticks froze mid-air.

Chewing stopped.

A couple on a date—young, too pretty, too naive to be here—pushed back their seats without realizing it.

One old man bowed so low his forehead nearly touched his food.

Waitresses in silk kimonos hurried around us, their slippers whispering against the polished floor.

Behind the counter, the wakate —a junior sushi chef still in his first year—nervously nodded at me and appeared like he was very close to pissing himself.

His knife hovered mid-air over a slab of fresh mackerel, the cut trembling slightly.

He wasn’t the itamae —the head sushi chef.

That honor belonged to Yamada-san, the master of the house.

Meanwhile, beside the new wakate was a shokunin-in-training —barely fifteen. And he stood frozen with a lacquered tray of nigiri in one hand and his other clenched at his side.

Reo leaned in, voice low. “We may need to replace the wakate. He’s too nervous to work here.”

I watched the young chef’s throat bob as he swallowed, his eyes flicking toward us like he feared we might cut him instead of the fish.

“Give him time,” I murmured. “A little fear sharpens the blade.”

We pressed deeper into the restaurant and entered the kitchen.

Yamada-san spotted us.

“Kenchō,” he greeted me softly.

Only five people in this world had ever used that name with me. Yamada was one. My father another. The rest were buried deep in the ground.

“Yamada-san,” I returned the nod.

He was a relic—white headband tied tight; face carved with age. His knives were lined behind him, serving as a shrine.

The other chefs worked in rhythmic harmony. One sliced tuna belly so thin it curled under its own weight.

Another fanned eel over glowing rice.

Steam curled from wooden bowls.

Fish shimmered on chilled porcelain.

Yamada-san stepped aside and one of the younger shokunin—nervous, barely old enough to grow stubble—hurried to open a narrow door at the back of the kitchen.

We moved through and left that space.

Back here, the smell shifted. Soy gave way to cold air and rust. The temperature dropped several degrees. The passage was narrow, lined with crates of seaweed, ginger, and Styrofoam bins still crusted in melting ice.

Then came the metal door.

Unmarked.

Matte black.

I touched it.

Cool steel met my palm.

The door opened and we stepped into a different world.

The warehouse stretched long and wide. The walls were concrete, the floor waxed smooth. At one point it had stored seafood.

Now it held something else entirely.

The scents were a cocktail of gun oil, damp concrete, and the faint trace of chemicals. Rows and rows of sealed crates stretched across the warehouse like soldiers in formation. Labels in multiple languages—French, Russian, Arabic—marked the boxes.

Not a single one of them honest.