The First Joint Mission: Protecting Haru

Lore & Background

In the world of *Sakamoto Days*, top-tier assassins operate in a shadowy hierarchy where reputations are currency and a single failed hit can ripple through entire criminal networks. Sakamoto once sat at the very top of that world, but he walked away so completely that even his former colleagues treat his name like a ghost story. His daily life—stocking shelves, helping regulars, and trying to keep his son Haru from sneaking into the stockroom to practice knife throws—is a deliberate, almost painful normalcy.

Haru, however, is not a passive bystander. He idolizes his father's past, collects information about assassins, and actively seeks out the dangerous world his father fled. This creates a constant low-grade tension: every ordinary errand is secretly a reconnaissance mission in Haru's mind, and every stranger who walks into the store could be a threat. The first joint mission crystallizes that tension into a single, urgent problem—someone has come to kill Haru specifically, and Sakamoto can no longer pretend he is just a clerk.

The allies who gather around the store—Gaki with his boundless energy and willingness to throw himself into danger, and the other former operatives who still respect Sakamoto's name—form an ad-hoc team that has never coordinated before. Their first real collaboration is clumsy, loud, and full of personality clashes, but it works. What matters is not the polish of their tactics but the fact that they chose to stand together for a child who is not even a professional. That choice becomes the emotional bedrock of the group's identity for the rest of the series.

In Their Own Story

The fluorescent hum of the convenience store was the only sound Haru heard as he counted the seconds between the door-chime and the footsteps in the aisle. Three. Two. One. The bell jingled again, but this time the footsteps didn't stop at the drinks. They stopped at the magazine rack, right behind him, and he felt the cold edge of something very sharp press against the small of his back.

He didn't turn. He didn't need to. He could smell the rain on the stranger's coat, the faint metallic tang of a blade that had been cleaned but not quite clean enough. His father's voice came from the register, calm as a Sunday morning, saying, "We're out of the good onigiri, sorry."

Then the lights went out.

Haru heard the crash of a display case, the wet thud of a body hitting the linoleum, and Gaki's unmistakable shriek of "YAAAAA!" as she came through the front window with both boots and a half-eaten melon pan. The stranger's grip on the knife slipped. Haru felt the cold edge slide off his skin and into the floor.

When the emergency lights flickered back on, his father was standing over the man, one hand still holding the register scanner, the other resting lightly on the stranger's throat. Not squeezing. Just… resting. Like a parent making sure a child is still breathing.

"You're done," Sakamoto said, and his voice was the one from the stories. The one Haru had been trying to hear his whole life.

Gaki, bleeding from a cut above her eyebrow and still chewing her melon pan, grinned. "So. Do we do this again tomorrow?"

Haru looked at his father's face in the flickering light and thought, for the first time, that maybe the apron wasn't the whole story.

Reader's Guide

The central conflict of this arc is deceptively simple: a professional killer has been sent to eliminate Haru Sakamoto, and the only people who can stop him are a retired assassin who refuses to fight, a group of former operatives who have never worked as a unit, and a small child who is more resourceful than anyone expects. The tension is not just physical—Sakamoto must confront the part of himself he buried, while Haru must decide whether to be a victim or a participant in his own survival.

The arc spans the early chapters of the series, roughly from the introduction of the convenience-store setting through the first full team engagement. It is the bridge between the domestic-comedy opening and the wider assassin-plot that unfolds in later volumes.

Key turning points include: the moment the threat becomes personal rather than abstract (the stranger targets Haru by name); Sakamoto's first visible reactivation of his combat instincts in front of his son; and the group's first successful (if chaotic) coordinated defense, which cements their bond as a functioning unit.

In terms of larger story threads, this arc plants the seed for Haru's active pursuit of assassin training, establishes Gaki as a recurring ally, and introduces the idea that Sakamoto's past colleagues and rivals are still watching him. The "protecting Haru" motif will echo through every subsequent arc, each time raising the stakes and forcing the group to evolve. It also subtly reveals that Haru's interest in assassination is not mere fantasy—he has been gathering intelligence, which sets up his later, more dangerous independence.

Did You Know?

• Sakamoto's convenience store is not just a setting; it functions as a narrative fortress. Every shelf, aisle, and display case becomes a tactical element during the first joint mission, turning a mundane retail space int
• Gaki's entrance in this arc is deliberately chaotic—she literally crashes through the store's front window mid-fight, establishing her reckless, high-energy personality that fans have come to associate with the series' c
• Haru's role in the defense is not passive. Even as a child, he demonstrates spatial awareness and quick thinking that hint at his later growth, suggesting his 'aspiring assassin' trait is innate rather than just inherite
• The arc's title emphasizes 'joint,' underscoring that this is the first time Sakamoto's scattered circle of former operatives operates as a single team. Every subsequent mission in the series builds on the trust (and bic