The Yakuza’s Mute Bride novel Chapter 32

Chapter 32

Chapter 32

(Still from Tadashi Point of View)

The day my grandfather died the clan demanded answers.

The press demanded a story.

The board demanded control.

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I gave them all what they wanted – the illusion of a man unbroken, Masayoshi Shun is not just a leader or a grandfather, he’s more than that for us the Masayoshi clan.

At night, when the incense faded and the last condolences turned to silence, the house felt like a carcass. Empty. Quiet in the

wrong way.

The kind of quiet that doesn’t rest – it lingers.

I didn’t sleep.

Didn’t eat.

Didn’t leave my room for the first three days.

But I listened.

Every morning, when the maids brought breakfast to the west wing, I could hear her faintly- the rustle of fabric, the scrape of porcelain.

Sometimes, if I stood close enough to the paper wall that separated us, I could hear the sound of her pen scratching over

paper.

That sound was the only thing that reminded me I hadn’t gone completely mad.

She was alive.

Here.

Too close, and yet already slipping away.

On the second day, Yukito came to me with a report.

The investigation into the explosion. The rival faction responsible. The men who would die for it.

He placed the folder on my desk and said, “It’s handled. Yamaguchi clán seems behind this.”

But his eyes said something else.

That he’d seen the same ghost haunting these halls.

That he knew what I refused to say aloud.

He hesitated before leaving.

“Tadashi,” he said quietly. “She’s asking to visit Shun-sama’s room again. What are you going to do with her?”

I didn’t look up.

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Chapter 32

“She need to leave.”

“She won’t rest until you tell her something.”

I did look up then.

“And what would you have me tell her?”

“That it wasn’t her fault. Or, she leave for her protection. Or maybe…. Tell her what you felt.”

My hand stilled over the page.

He knows….

–

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He said it as if it were easy as if words could undo the sight of my grandfather’s body, the smell of smoke, the ruin left behind, that I could bring her into my dark world.

I wanted to believe him.

I wanted to tell her she wasn’t to blame or that I felt something.

But the truth was more complicated than blame.

She wasn’t guilty – not of malice, not of betrayal.

But she was the reason the storm had found him and the clan going to be hard to accept it.

Not because she brought it – but because she made him open the doors again.

—

And that realization that kindness had been the weakness that killed him

was one I didn’t know how to forgive.

Not her.

Not myself.

I saw her again on the sixth night.

I didn’t plan to.

The corridors were dim- paper lanterns glowing low and gold. The scent of rain came through the half-open shoji, cool

and clean.

She was in the garden.

Alone.

The others had gone to rest. Even the guards had withdrawn to the outer wall.

She knelt by the pond, in the same place she used to sit with my grandfather. Her reflection shivered on the water’s surface, framed by falling rain.

She looked like a memory I wasn’t supposed to touch.

She didn’t hear me approach.

watching the soft fall of her hair, the delicate tremor of her hands as she set a

For a long moment, I simply stood there single chrysanthemum to float across the pond.

A gesture for the dead.

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Chapter 32

A goodbye.

–

And I understood then that she had already begun to leave me long before I found the strength to let her go.

I told Yukito the next morning.

“Seven days,” I said. “She already stays for seven days. After that, send her home.”

He didn’t question me at first. He only nodded, because that’s what loyalty looks like when it’s old enough to know grief.

But when he reached the door, he stopped.

“You could let her stay,” he said quietly. “There’s no rule against it, especially since you’re our leader now.”

I sighed…. He’s right.

But….

“There doesn’t need to be a rule,” I said. “There’s me… I don’t want to bring her into the chaos of our world.”

—

He sighed that slow exhale that meant he was choosing silence over argument.

“You’re doing this to protect her,” he said.

I didn’t answer.

Because if I said no, it would be a lie.

And if I said yes, we both know it would be the truth.

I watched her from a distance for the next few days – always from shadows, always unseen.

She was healing. Slowly.

The color had returned to her skin. The bruises had faded.

But there was a hollowness to her that hadn’t been there before.

Yuka fussed over her, Ai guarded her, Yukito made sure she ate.

–

a weight that even youth couldn’t hide.

And I the man who had brought all this upon her did nothing.

–

Every time I tried to go to her, I stopped at her door.

Hand lifted.

Fingers brushing the wood.

Never knocking.

Because what could I say?

–

I couldn’t tell her the truth that every decision I’d made since that night had been for her, not for the clan.

That I’d turned half the underworld upside down looking for the men who hurt her, not my grandfather.

That I couldn’t sleep because every time I closed my eyes, I saw her bleeding on that cold floor, whispering my name.

No.

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Chapter 32

I couldn’t say any of that.

So I said nothing.

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–

On the seventh morning, I stood by the window of my grandfather’s study the room that now belonged to me and watched her through the rain.

She was walking toward the car.

Yukito carried her bags.

Yuka hovered close. Ai stood a respectful distance behind.

Naomi paused at the gate.

Even from here, I could see her take one last look at the house – the roof tiles glistening wet, the garden still heavy with lilies.

And then she bowed.

A deep, perfect bow- one that was not obligation, but farewell.

The kind my grandfather would have approved of.

My chest ached so sharply I had to turn away.

When Yukito returned later, he found me still standing in the same place.

“You sure?” he said simply.

I nodded once.

“Did she wrote anything?”

He hesitated. “No…”

I didn’t answer.

“Do you want me to tell her anything when we reach London?”

“I don’t know.” My voice came quiet.

亭亭亭亭亭亭

After that, I couldn’t stay in the house.

The walls smelled too much like incense and her. So I went to the airport – I need to speak to her.

At least, for the last time.

Or that’s my plan.

Until I stupidly made a promise that I will come and take her.

Stupid me…

Why I say that? Why make her wait for me?

Because I know, if I didn;t say that, I am going to whispered the only truth that mattered.

Chapter 32

“That I loved her.”

The words sounded foreign in my mouth.

Unfamiliar.

Like they belonged to someone else.

Then I rose and walked back into the dark.

Because love, in my world, was never meant to stay.

It was only ever meant to hurt beautifully.

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10:44 Tue, Jan 6