#decided to post in case aoyama decides to upend the conan world some more with new plot ✨revelations✨ that render my old ficlets obsolete!

[imurasakaw]

Gin backstory drabble, 700 words.

•••••••

Gin was once an orphan taken in by a respected member of the Organization. And no, before you ask, this isn’t the story of a boy being adopted by his father’s killer. His family’s blood wasn’t on the Organization’s hands. At least, not at this point in our story. Whether or not they had been tracked down at a later point in this tale, whether or not Gin had personally packed lead into all of their brains—that will be a different story, one that won’t be told here.

Gin was born with pale, bloodless skin and colorless hair that glinted silver. Sickly, some might’ve said. Unnatural, others might’ve declared. “Just a small, pitiful thing,” was how his eventual-guardian had put it. Whether or not that contributed to his parents’ decision to leave him one night in a wintry field to never return, Gin hadn’t deigned to find out. His story had been but one amongst those of countless other orphans, the reasoning behind their parents’ abandonment varying and sundry and banal.

And as Gin liked to proclaim, he had no interest in either learning or remembering details about dead persons.

The Organization member—whose name he later too scoured clean from his mind—who had slowed down his car and picked up that near-frozen child wrapped in white and nearly blended with the snow, would go on to raise Gin within the Organization as his own. He was often away on his travels, dispatched to complete yet another commission whose details must not see the light of day. “Business trips,” he said. And when Gin grew older, old enough to understand basic instructions like “pour that jug of bleach here,” or “insert the firing pin into the slide here,” he would be allowed to accompany.

The man taught Gin the ins-and-outs of the trade, taught him how to handle any gun and how to kill a man with nary an effort.

But most of all, he instilled in Gin the importance of loyalty. A concept that even mutts on the street understood, yet one that Gin’s blood family didn’t.

“Those who are baser than dogs do not deserve to live a human’s life,” the man had edified, dispatching a traitor to the Organization’s cause with dispassionate efficiency. The traitor was, after all, nothing but a rat, and no pest exterminator lost any sleep over their work. Young Gin had responded to that lesson with one firm nod of adherence.

And like so, Gin grew up to be tall, strong, capable, a predator instead of waiting around to be the prey they expected him to be. Their Organization took note. The kingpin himself took note. Soon, Gin began working jobs of his own. Soon, he was earning enough to rival his guardian, a fact Gin knew the latter had not only once surreptitiously frowned at. At an age not yet considered adult in most countries of the world, Gin already had more kills under his name than the changes of seasons he'd experienced in his life. That Person commended Gin on his remarkable work, and personally gave him his new name. A rebirth, to overwrite the original beginning.

He was valued.

And unlike the rats he killed, he would never turn his back on that.

Loyalty. Perhaps that was why the man had picked up a strange child in the middle of a deserted rural field. Perhaps he hoped to nurture in his ward a loyalty forged of steel—towards himself, of course, should…complications arise in the future that would require a steadfast gun in his corner. His calculations didn’t factor in the potential that, by the time those circumstances arrived, his ward had re-sworn his fealty to the Organization where he found his calling and his belonging instead.

Wasn't that just how these things went.

So when that man revealed on the night of Gin’s eighteenth birthday, amidst their liquor-aided celebration of Gin having reached majority (in the country they were at that moment in), his plans to exit the Organization—it was with all that he had taught him that Gin put the bullet into the head of the man who had raised him.

Without loyalty, there was nothing, and the man who instilled that in him betrayed the very tenet of their creed.

And those baser than dogs did not deserve a human’s life.