When Mikoto disappeared, she'd abandoned everything from her life in Nagoya. She took the essentials, but left the apartment they shared otherwise untouched. There was no note and no way to contact her, though Tsuneo had an inkling that she'd returned to her family in Gifu Prefecture. For someone like Mikoto, who cherished her family, that made the most sense.
Shortly after her disappearance, Tsuneo and his brother enacted their takeover of the group. While Tsuneo had suggested they kill Ichiro in a way that could be staged as a suicide, Jiro insisted that they use Tsuneo's fire to do it. Perhaps in his mind, he thought they could kill Ichiro and dispose of the body in one fell swoop, but for Tsuneo, it just made things more convenient for himself.
Tsuneo disguised himself as someone familiar to gain access to Ichiro's room, then burned his eldest brother alive. To make it look like an accident, it was necessary to let the fire burn and spread, so he waited until the firefighters got to work to quench the flames. For the sake of their plan, he ended up destroying an entire wing of the sprawling Shishiba family estate.
In the end, Jiro reneged on his promise to make Tsuneo the second-in-command. The matriarch of the family was always in his ear, and for her, anyone but Tsuneo would be the better choice. While she had raised Ichiro to be the successor, Jiro was her golden child. Even into his adulthood, she spoiled him rotten. He listened to anything she said.
However, Tsuneo anticipated all of this. He always tried to be one step ahead of his enemies—of the people he felt owed him debts. All it took was an "anonymous" tip to the police to upend everything.
Jiro was arrested and tried for the murder of Ichiro. When CCTV footage was found of "Jiro" purchasing the canister of lighter fluid discovered amongst his belongings, it was pretty cut-and-dry for police. No matter how much Jiro maintained his innocence, testimony from others that asserted a motive aided in his conviction. In the end, he received the death penalty due to the especially heinous nature of the crime.
Of course, the matriarch was despondent throughout all of it. Her constitution was already weakened from losing one son, but when it came to light that he lost his life at the hands of her other son, she could barely hang on. The day Jiro received his death sentence, she had a heart attack in the courtroom and died.
It all worked out very cleanly for Tsuneo. If there were people within the organization who were not already on his side, they quickly fell in line when it became clear what he was capable of.
His first order of business in leading the Shishiba-gumi was to move away from their original structure of operating businesses that skirted the law. He maintained things like moneylending services and the illegal casinos as a means of keeping those income streams, but invested the money into starting legitimate businesses under a new corporation he founded—The Ambition Group.
When his company acquired the luxury hotel he'd worked at during the short time he'd failed to live an honest life beside Mikoto, Tsuneo was finally ready to bring her and their child back into his life.
It wasn't hard to track down the Suwazono family with his resources. He'd even managed to find out their child, a daughter, had been born three months prior.
After he arrived in Midoriko's hometown, it was her grandmother who answered the door to the family residence located on the grounds of the shrine complex. Her eyesight was bad, and she must have mistaken Tsuneo for someone else because she quickly ushered him inside the family home when he said he was there to see Mikoto.
While she led him through the house, she alternated between thanking him for coming and scolding him for being so late. He didn't understand what he was late for until they reached a room set up to hold the entire extended family for a meal. Seated at the center of the long, low table was a baby, propped up looking like a tiny ruler, wearing a green, asanoha-patterned kimono.
It was their daughter's 100th day okuizome, celebration, and he'd arrived in the middle of it by pure coincidence.
When he saw Mikoto, sitting next to their daughter, smiling as she brought food to the baby's mouth, he momentarily forgot how to breathe. Although she was just wearing a plain suit, she still looked beautiful beyond compare.
"Mikoto dear, we have another guest!" announced her grandmother cheerfully.
"Really? Who…?" Mikoto's smile faded as she turned her head and spotted him. The chopsticks she was holding clattered to the table when she dropped them.
"Mikoto, I–"
"What are you doing here?" Mikoto's voice was full of contempt as she got to her feet. Everyone in the room had gone quiet, looking between the two of them.
"Do I really have to answer that?" Tsuneo adjusted his glasses as he took in all the curious faces of her family members.
"Yes!" She shurried around the table, straight to him. "When ya show up unannounced like this, ya do!"
"I'm here to meet my daughter, Micchan."
A hush fell over the room, broken only when Mikoto slapped him hard enough to knock his glasses askew. "Don't you dare call me that! Ya don't have the right anymore!"
Before she could unleash more of her anger on him, one of her brothers restrained Mikoto while other family members got in between her and Tsuneo.
"Why only now?!" she shouted. Her hands, balled into fists at her sides, were shaking. "Why didn't ya come sooner? Ya weren't even there when Midoriko was born…"
So her name is Midoriko, huh? He watched the wide-eyed infant trying to grasp at some of the food on the tray sitting just out of reach. It was painful knowing that he wasn't there to even help name their child.
"I'm sorry," he said, bowing his head. "I wanted to come see you sooner, but I had things to take care of first."
"It's always something, huh?" she murmured, turning away from him. "Leave."
"Micch– Mikoto, I…" The words he'd been rehearsing and wanting to say for so long were stuck in his throat. Tsuneo got to his knees and pressed his nose to the floor, prostrating himself before her entire family as they whispered disapprovingly amongs themselves. "Please! Everything is settled now! I'm here to ask for your forgiveness—"
"Shut up!" she shouted. Baby Midoriko started to fuss while older family members swooped in to try soothing her.
"I'm here to ask you to marry me!" pleaded Tsuneo. The room went quiet save for the baby's whines. Then, he felt someone pull him up by the hair.
"Like hell I'd even allow it!" shouted Mikoto's father as he dragged Tsuneo out of the room by the hair.
"Mikoto, please! Just explain to them–!"
"I already did," she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. "They know everything! I'm lucky they took me back!"
"But it's fine now!" He pulled himself free from her father's grasp. "I…I bought the hotel!" Tsuneo crawled toward Mikoto on his hands and knees, desperate to make her understand. "I run a legitimate business now! I…"
"Ya didn't even contact me…"
"I just… I didn't know how–"
"Yet ya managed to find me all the same, huh? Ya knew where I lived and couldn't even write to me?" She wasn't even putting on a show of anger anymore, her raw sorrow was on full display as she tried desperately to wipe away her unending tears.
"I was trying to protect you…"
"And ya can continue doing that by staying out of our lives," said one of her brothers as he pulled Tsuneo to his feet to forcibly remove him. "Her family will take care of the rest."
"B-bullshit!" he shouted, yanking his arm away from her brother. "I'm family too!" He pointed to the now crying baby. "She's my daughter, too!"
"Ha!" A cruel smile cut through Mikoto's tears. "You're nothing to us. You're not even listed on Midoriko's birth registry."
In their time spent apart, she'd put up more than a wall between the two of them—she built an impenetrable fortress. Why couldn't she understand that he'd done everything for the sake of their budding family?
Mikoto's two older brothers grabbed Tsuneo by the arms to take him away, pulling him out of his daze. "L-let me go!" he grunted, struggling to break free. "I'm not done yet!"
He had to make her understand. If he let her go now, then what was the point of everything he'd done? What was the point of living?
"If ya leave quietly, we won't involve the police." Her brother tightened his grip around Tsuneo's arm. "I don't know how it is in Nagoya, but the locals here aren't under any obligation to treat ya nicely."
Now they were threatening him?! Maybe for them, humiliating him would be revenge enough for the shame he'd brought onto their family in the form of a child born to an unwed mother. But couldn't they see he was trying to rectify that?!
"I said…" Tsuneo elbowed one of her brothers to break free from his grasp, then used his free hand to push away the other brother. "Let me go!"
He'd only meant to use a little bit of magic. Just enough warmth to startle him so he'd let go. Instead, Mikoto's brother lit up like a match as Tsuneo's fire erupted on the same level as his frustration.
Her brother shrieked in pain as panic broke out amongst her family. They poured tea, soup, whatever liquid was at hand on him to no avail. Someone threw a fire blanket on him to pat him out, only for the blanket, along with the heroic family member, to also catch fire.
Hot, uncontrollable flames started to spread to the tatami mats and the paper screen walls. As Tsuneo looked for Mikoto amongst the chaos, he found her rushing to their daughter's side.
"YOU!" Mikoto's father grabbed Tsuneo by the neck and began strangling him. "YOU DID THIS!"
Tsuneo couldn't help but laugh. He did do this, didn't he? Just like all those times at the orphanage when he couldn't control his power. The old man had taught him to kill his emotions to temper the destruction, but wasn't it so much stronger when he gave in to them?
A dark thought crossed Tsuneo's mind. If Mikoto had no family to rely on, wouldn't she have no choice but to accept him?
As he pushed her father away, he intentionally released more flames. He was going to lay siege to her castle walls.
Tsuneo reveled in her family's screams as he burned more, trapping them within a cage of fire. But as he enclosed the room in fire, he realized Mikoto was gone.
The sound of their crying daughter gave away her escape route as she bolted down the hallway to the entrance. It seemed that she'd fled through a sliding door blocked by fire… But how?
"Mikoto! Wait!" He called out to her as he pursued across the grounds of the shrine complex.
"No! No!" She ran to the sanctuary, ducking inside and slamming the door shut behind her.
"Mikoto!" He stepped into the front worship hall of the sanctuary. The baby's cries were muffled but still gave away Mikoto's hiding spot inside the inner sanctuary. "Just come with me, and this will all be over!"
When he pushed open the door to the inner sanctuary, he was hit with a bottle of sake. Mikoto began hurling offerings left for the resident kami at him as he stepped into the small room.
"G-Get away from us, you demon!" she shrieked, holding the crying infant close while she cowered on the floor.
"Is that what you really think of me?" he mumbled under his breath, crouching down in front of her. He reached out to touch Midoriko's tiny hand, wondering how a demon could have made something so pure.
"I hate you!" sobbed Mikoto. "I'd rather die!"
Tsuneo withdrew his hand. Why did he think he could bring her to him by force? She tried to see the good in him, but he was truly always rotten to the core, wasn't he?
Well, if he really were a demon, then he might as well burn everything down. Maybe they could be together in the next life.
Tsuneo set fire to the sanctuary. The wooden structure went up in flames like a bonfire, but curiously, nothing seemed to burn around Mikoto.
He was genuinely shocked. He'd never considered the fact that his flames conjured through magic wouldn't work on a neutralizer like Mikoto. She picked up on this too and kicked him hard, sending him sprawling backwards.
Mikoto ran at full speed through the burning sanctuary, disappearing into the night with their child.
He stayed there until the structure of the building was threatening to collapse on top of him. By the time he stepped outside, there was no sign of Mikoto and their daughter, and the fire had begun to spread to other structures within the shrine complex. Emergency crews wouldn't arrive until well after Tsuneo had let the fire extinguish.