Ancient Revenge

By Pier Maria Colombo

In modern-day Japan, in the heart of the massive metropolis of Tokyo, Aoki Ekei grew up in the fold of the yakuza crime syndicate led by Yoshiro Sagara. The Sagaras, hailing from a long line tracing back to feudal Japan, hold onto their members—some literally owned by the crime family, like Aoki himself—with an iron fist of tradition and fear. To leave the yakuza means meeting a certain and violent death.

The obedient dog Hideo "Shinobu" Ekei, Aoki's father, along with his wife and Aoki's mother, planned to leave the crime syndicate. It was unavoidable that Aoki found them killed, along with his girlfriend, with himself narrowly avoiding the Sagaras' blades. With no recourse, Aoki flees to the countryside.

That is, until he met the ancient spirit of a samurai long ago betrayed and killed by the ancestor of the yakuza leader.

Follow Aoki Ekei in a story that blends past and present as he collides with a burning desire for revenge that crosses time, and learns the inevitable price of revenge: death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seagull Editions
• Release date: Oct 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223664277

Book preview

Chapter one: Death

Cherry blossoms lost

Violence springs violence

Ancient hate revived

There are images that after the eye sees them, they’re gone like flower petals in the wind. But there are some images that are carved into memory, terror the chisel, one’s own flesh engraved.

Aoki stared at the blood. Five liters. That’s how much blood a human body has. Once, he had placed five one-liter bottles next to each other and tried to imagine them red. He had accidentally spilled one of them on the ground. One liter of water was easy to drink, but it had made the living room’s floor all wet.

The living room floor was wet again. But it was also sticky, and the smell of iron was overwhelming Aoki’s senses. It wasn’t the first time he had seen blood. It wasn’t even the first time he had seen their blood. But he had never seen them dead before.

Them. In that frozen slice of time, he couldn’t bear to think their names.

It was a bright day outside. That was one of the first things he had seen, living with the yakuza family of the Sugaras: murders didn’t happen in the night, as most comics and movies would tell him. When your life was filled with violence and death, you dealt with it during the day as well as during the night.

The light reflected on the killer’s blade, which was drenched in their blood. Aoki felt like he should look up and see the killer’s face, memorize it, seek revenge. But the face didn’t matter. The killer was not this poor soul. The killer was sitting in a luxurious office, pretty women giggling with his jokes, while he decided on the life and death of people with nothing but a nod.

The killer was the head of the Sagara crime syndicate family, Yoshiro Sagara.

Aoki had to leave. The henchman who was standing over the corpses of... of Aoki’s parents—his mind recoiled at the naming of them—would soon turn back. And he’d see Aoki, and then proceed to kill him as well.

Of course, Aoki knew why his parents had been murdered. It was the same reason anyone in the Sagara family got murdered by the Sagaras’ henchmen. They wanted out. They had paid off their debts ten times over, and it was time to leave their violence-filled lives, change them for something finally peaceful. Instead, they had met eternal peace.

But Aoki had no more time to ponder. The killer started to turn towards him. Aoki was out the door, more silent than a cat, before the henchman had seen him.

Aoki rushed away, running through the compound. Then, he caught himself and slowed down. The Sagaras had no reason to advertise the fact that Aoki’s family, the Ekeis, was marked for death. So, someone seeing Aoki Ekei walking casually through the corridors and open pathways of the Sagara complex did not hint at this being anything other than just another day.

He checked his phone, dismissed a couple of advertising notifications. It was early afternoon, just after four o’clock. He had nothing on him, he had been returning from a grocery run—

The groceries. He had let them drop on the floor of his house when he saw the corpses of his father and his mother, the soft cloth bags making no sound as they settled on the wooden floor. The killer would definitely see them as he made to leave, and he’d know that Aoki had been there.

Aoki would need to leave this place forever. He tried to collect his thoughts. He’d need some cash, if he could get them before—

Get him, came a shout from behind. Aoki turned his head to see people rushing towards him, unsheathed katanas in their hands. If they had guns, he’d be dead by now. For a moment, he was thankful for the Sagaras’ tradition-steeped way of thinking. He broke into a run.

The complex was essentially a large, walled plot with smaller buildings of traditional Japanese architecture scattered among larger, more modern buildings. Aoki used to live in one such modern apartment building, which had been divided among the few families that lived in indentured servitude to the Sagaras. Covered corridors or stone-paved pathways connected each building to others.

Aoki took a turn and entered into one of the corridors, then rushed inside one of the buildings. There was a large room somewhere deeper in this building which Aoki knew was both unguarded—as it was nothing but a rarely used dining room—and had some items of historical value displayed for the occasional guests.

He blew past workers who were sweeping the floors, who pointedly ignored him. No reason to get tangled up in the lives of others. He knew everyone by name, even the people chasing him, but they’d sooner abandon him to his death than get themselves entrapped in his—soon-to-be-ended—life and bring that same fate upon themselves. None of them even dared to stop him as he stumbled inside the dining room he had been after.

Once inside, he removed his backpack and started shoving inside it random items from pedestals or hanging from the walls. A vase, an alabaster figurine, a black fan, a scroll, a mask, an incense burner—

He was out the other door just as the henchmen broke inside the room. But he knew the way they moved, he was trained as one of them himself. He knew how they’d pursue him. He took sharp turns, vaulted over low walls, and was jumping over the compound’s outer walls before they had caught up with him.

His backpack jingled as he rushed through the unpopulated streets. The locals knew better than to go out of their houses while the Sagaras solved their internal issues. If they saw nothing, they’d have nothing to report to the police when the latter would inevitably come asking, and if they said nothing to the law, the Sagaras wouldn’t be forced to include them in their list of issues to be solved.

As Aoki rushed through the streets, there were two thoughts in his head. Get away to escape the fate that befell his parents, and get to her. The Sagaras obviously knew that Aoki had someone in his life, they carefully vetoed every single person in the lives of their members. Kaede, his girlfriend, was in as much danger as he was. He’d go get her, then after they’d gone as far as the trains could get them, he’d sell what he had stolen from the Sagaras and try to live a peaceful life.

A peaceful life. That’s what he had always wanted. Nothing of what his parents had forced him into, what the Sagaras had forced him into. He never liked their rules, never wanted to enter the family business as Yoshiro Sagara liked to say.

Aoki stopped running after he was certain he’d lost the pursuing yakuza members. He avoided the subway station closest to the Sagara complex, and headed for a less-used one just a bit