Sometimes the Meijin didn't even wait to unelect you until the next election rolled around. The newspapers were occasionally full of such things.

All in all it really wasn't so bad. Every month or so some faceless underling with exquisite manners and an even better suit would appear and make a few polite suggestions, and then his re-election fund would grow accordingly. Kishimoto had a wife with excellent taste who had decided that it was time for them to have the first of their two children, and he was not blind to how politically astute this would be. He wasn't particularly blind to how expensive it would be, either, and so the not-so-little extra that he made was quite welcome.

He was only a junior councilman, though, and so when a mysterious phone call lured him to his own darkened office at midnight one night, he was taken completely aback to find the younger Touya sitting on the front of his desk, all black cheongsam and long cigarette holder. He wasn't ranked anywhere near this high, and they both knew it.

He suspected that he was about to be made an offer he couldn't refuse. 

"Kishimoto-san," Touya breathed, a cloud of exhaled smoke briefly concealing half his face. "Shut the door." Lazily Touya untangled and recrossed his long bare legs, a flash of white like scissors in the blackness of Kishimoto's office, and Kishimoto briefly had the thought that he'd never change his desk blotter again. "Shut the door, Kishimoto-san," Touya Akira repeated, "and let's play some go, you and I."

Kishimoto hesitated for the space of three heartbeats. But, in the end, he shut the door, and cast them both into darkness.