After his fiasco in Madripoor, Jin had to lay low for a while. If anyone asked, he said things were too pressing to delegate to anyone else; the family business required Jin’s personal touch and no one else would do. In reality, Jin was laying low for his own safety. He’d pissed a lot of the wrong people off and had nearly lost his life (and a finger) for his actions. He was very lucky his uncle’s affection for him softened the harshness of his punishment.
As things stood, Jin was technically in hiding. He’d pissed off a lot of very dangerous people and Boss Shimura thought it was best to make sure Jin stayed off the radar. And while this seemed like a smart move, Jin realized what it was: he was being punished by being under house arrest.
Not literally house arrest, of course. Jin could travel the entirety of Tsushima, but could go no further than the island’s shores. He was allowed to participate in business, but only minor things like collection shakedowns. He was essentially a foot soldier again and he hated it. Often, he would take his car to Komoda Beach at night and sit out on the sand, staring into the ocean and sulking as he worked his way though a pack of cigarettes.
Things changed one morning when his uncle called him to the family offices to let him know that he would be put on a sort of probation. Jin had seriously broken Shimura’s trust by his actions in Madripoor, but he was a patriarch and had suffered enough humiliation. He would be allowed to leave Tsushima again, but only under one condition: Boss Shimura would be assigning a bodyguard to Jin and he was not to go anywhere without them.
Jin had been even angrier than when he was told he couldn’t leave the island. A bodyguard was nothing but a babysitter and Jin could handle himself. But he couldn’t argue with his uncle, so bodyguard it was.
He was brooding like a teenager when the guy showed up. He was a foreigner, someone his uncle purposefully sought out for this purpose. Jin had never heard of him, but there were still some contacts of his uncles that he didn’t know about.
“あなたは私の用心棒ですか?” he asked as the man walked in. And then he stopped. “待って、日本語も話せますか?”
