"STOP!"

"Hmm?"

Just as I downed the tenth "assassin" sent by Ares, the bulky-looking leader finally raised his voice. His expression was grim, teeth grinding together in chagrin—probably from the frustration of standing right there and still being unable to stop me from doing whatever I pleased.

Killing intent was oozing out of his body almost like a solid stream of haze. Suffocating. The kind that lesser men would’ve crumbled under.

However, he threw his dagger toward the ground, before kneeling and lowering his head.

"Please... Stop." He begged. "I can’t let more of my subordinates lose their lives. So please..."

I turned to glance at the others behind him, who were already out of breath just from chasing me around. We basically covered about a kilometer of distance in roughly a minute, after all.

It wouldn’t be weird if they fainted from overexertion, actually. Some of them looked halfway there already.

Still, although this is what I hoped for, seeing him kneel and beg for mercy makes me look like the villain here. For the record, I’m the victim, alright?

I didn’t ask them to assault my little flat at this godforsaken time of day, after all.

"Well, as long as you understand, then that’s fine."

I shrugged, throwing the sniper rifle away.

It already ran out of bullets, anyway.

"But..."

"Huh?"

The bulky man continued. "If our boss knew that we surrendered to the enemy, I’m sure we’re all going to die either way... As such, can I ask for a selfish request?"

Thinking of that Yoru guy’s behavior, and the injury I left him with, this guy’s words gained credibility. Not only that, I don’t think he’d stop until my head was served before him on a silver platter—probably with garnish to the side.

"Well, I’ll hear you out at least." I shrugged. "Agreeing to it is a different matter altogether."

"I understand." He nodded.

Then, after taking a deep breath—the slow, deliberate kind, as if gathering the very last of his nerves—he looked at me with sincere, unguarded eyes and asked.

"Can you take over Ares as the new boss?"

"No."

My answer came faster than a sneeze.

Well, just thinking of it, managing a gang is way too troublesome. And more than that...

"Even without me, you guys already have a better candidate, don’t you?" I said, crouching down to match the bulky man’s gaze.

I found it strange, after all.

I’d never heard of Yoru in the previous timeline. He never existed in my face-recognition dictionary, either. If he truly was the leader of Ares, then I should’ve seen his face somewhere, at least once.

But no. Not even a flicker.

Meaning...

"That Yoru isn’t your real boss right now, is he? A substitute? Acting leader?" I grinned. "Just let Yuzuha handle the cleanup and you’re all good."

"...!"

The man’s shoulders jumped at hearing the name I just dropped.

He must be wondering how I know it—maybe even reconsidering whether I was "truly" connected to Ares all along, rather than the simple phony they assumed me to be. Well, it’s a little late for that line of thinking, anyway.

"Still, that Yoru guy sounds like trouble." I shrugged. "You wouldn’t mind if I killed him, right?"

"T-That..."

To my surprise, even though that very boss was a threat to their lives now, the man still hesitated. Greatly, at that. I wonder why?

Did they need him alive for a handover of some kind? Or maybe there was something only he knew, and they couldn’t touch him until they’d made him sing?

Either way, it looked like I wouldn’t be squeezing anything useful out of them on that front.

But...

"Silence means yes." I stood up, dusting off my pants. "Don’t worry, I’ll do it cleanly. You guys just clean up the bodies afterwards. Dawn is coming soon, so you’d better hurry."

Saying that, I turned and walked away without looking back.

I was aware the man was trying to call out to me—to clarify something, or add some caveat I hadn’t heard yet—but I ignored it completely. Some secret? Some reason they needed him alive? Why should any of that be my problem?

He threatened me once, and took a beating for it. He’d surely try again. And by then, his target might not only be me anymore—but those around me, too. A risk I wouldn’t dare allow.

A few minutes’ walk and I arrived at my apartment complex.

At the foot of the staircase, a neat arrangement of chairs had been set up to block foot traffic from the surrounding area. And on them, two familiar figures sat waiting—rigid, blue-faced, and wearing expressions that didn’t suit either of their personalities.

One looked angry and irritated, clutching a freshly casted right arm with all the dignity he could muster—which wasn’t much. They apparently had doctors or mobile medics on standby to get him patched up that quickly.

The other was doing his very best impression of a man who simply did not exist.

Yoru and Mokuro. Sitting close to each other, a good number of guards posted around them, keeping careful watch.

But despite everything different about them, both shared the same shade of pale.

"Hey, brat." I called out, my voice easy and light.

Every set of eyes turned toward me at once.

Those guards snapped to attention with the kind of reflex only professional paranoia could produce, firearms raised and trained squarely in my direction—a silent warning that said come closer and find out.

I just smiled, and kept walking.

I’ve never been particularly good at taking hints.

"You...!"

When I got close enough that my footsteps echoed, he realized who I was. Yoru’s face cycled from pale to red so rapidly it was almost impressive—like watching a cuttlefish have an identity crisis.

"W-What are you waiting for?! That’s the bastard who broke my arm! Kill him...!!!"

And, as expected, he commanded his men directly.

He didn’t even stop to wonder how I’d gotten here, or where the bulky man and his entire force—sent specifically to deal with me—had gone.

This guy... He truly had no business being anyone’s leader.

I planted my foot hard against the pavement and stepped forward. The impact wasn’t dramatic. It didn’t need to be. Because riding that single step forward was a wall of killing intent—dense and cold—pouring out of me in a way that left no room for misinterpretation.

The guards holding their weapons on me trembled. A fine, involuntary trembling, like a wire strung too tight.

I let my gaze sweep across them slowly. One by one. Patient as anything.

Then I whispered.

"I warn you. Don’t shoot at me if you want to live. The only thing I want is that man’s life—nothing else. Shoot, and you’re dead."

"...!"

Every one of them faltered.

They weighed their options and found the math unfavorable. Their lives, after all, were considerably more precious to them than their boss’s. What a testament to Yoru’s leadership.

I resumed walking.

Two of them began to visibly panic as I drew closer.

"W-What are you doing?! SHOOT! Bastards, I’ll kill you if you don’t SHOOT!"

He yanked his pistol free and shoved the barrel toward the man closest to him—the one who looked like he ranked highest among the remaining guards.

The one probably responsible for the others.

But I didn’t let him finish aiming.

SNAP!

A small pebble, flicked with precision. A moment later, it caught his left wrist clean, and the gun clattered to the ground before he even registered the pain.

"Man, you really don’t learn..." I sighed, shaking my head with what I hoped was a sufficiently exasperated expression. "When I said no shooting, that included you. Though, honestly—whether you shoot or not, I’ll kill you either way."

"Hiih...!"

A shrill, undignified sound clawed its way out of his throat. He scrambled back, overbalanced, and crashed into his chair, toppling backwards with his casted arm flailing uselessly. He couldn’t even push himself upright.

He was completely and utterly finished. Mentally, at the very least.

Mokuro, on the other hand, had gone perfectly quiet on his side of things—executing the most committed performance of I am not here, I do not exist, I am simply a piece of ambient furniture that I had ever witnessed.

SNAP SNAP!

Naturally, I wasn’t going to let that performance go unrewarded.

Two more pebbles, sourced from my jacket pocket along the walk here. Both landed exactly where I intended—one for each knee. The impact was precise enough that his kneecaps either displaced outright or cracked along some unfortunate fault line.

Whether he’d walk normally after this, only time and a moderately talented orthopedic surgeon would be able to say.

"AAAAAGH!"

He folded over his knees with a sound that could generously be described as anguished.

Two grown men crying simultaneously isn’t exactly something that warms the heart, I’ll grant you that. But nothing else could really be done about it.

I stepped past the overturned furniture and crouched down in front of Yoru, who had pressed himself as far back as the chair would allow, his pupils blown wide and his teeth clicking together without pause.

The guards around him maintained their policy of pretending I didn’t exist.

Wisest thing they’d done all morning.

"You..." I began, voice low and conversational. "Came here, unprovoked, and dared to have me killed."

I reached out and hooked two fingers beneath his chin, tilting it up until his terrified eyes had no choice but to meet mine.

"That means you came prepared to be killed yourself, right? That’s the resolve one needs when they go reaching for another person’s life."

A resolve I’d long since made peace with, in a world far colder than this one. In a world where kill or be killed wasn’t a philosophy, but life itself.

But this world wasn’t the apocalypse.

At least, not yet.

Still.

I raised the kitchen knife and pressed it slowly against his chest, unhurried. So quiet and deliberate that Yoru didn’t register the sensation, or even the motion itself, until the moment it was already done.

A kitchen knife, buried clean through his chest. Through his heart.

His eyes drifted down to the handle protruding from beneath his collar, then back up to my face. Uncomprehending. Like a man who had only just realized, at the very last moment, that the world had never actually been playing by his rules.

Slowly, the light behind those eyes went out.

"..."

He was dead.

Quietly, just like that.

I glanced at the guards. None of them so much as looked at the body. The silence they maintained was the most professional thing about them.

"And as for you..."

I turned toward Mokuro, who had gone quieter than a held breath—face so drained of color it had graduated from pale to nearly translucent.

"You tried calling Ares to deal with me, didn’t you?" I tilted my head with a pleasant smile.

"N-No!"

He dropped instantly, knees hitting the concrete despite the damage already done to them—a testament to how thoroughly fear had overridden pain.

"I wasn’t, I swear! They forced me to give them information about you, Sir Kamishiro! It wasn’t my intention at all!"

"Not your intention? HAHAHAHA!"

I laughed. Genuinely.

"But if not for you, I would’ve been sleeping peacefully right now. Didn’t you ever stop to think you might have to pay for your part in all this?"

I rubbed my fingers together—slow and deliberate, a kind of universal language.

"I-I’ll give you a million! A million dollars! So please, Sir Kamishiro, please—let’s just call this water under the bridge...!"

I regarded him for a moment. Then let my expression soften into something warm and magnanimous. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

I clapped a hand onto his shoulder like an old friend.

"Two million, huh? Sounds fair for the price of a life and all that."

"..."

He didn’t argue.

He didn’t have nearly enough nerve left to argue.

He just pressed his lips together, dipped his head, and ground his forehead into the cold concrete without another word.

And just like that, my busy morning concluded with two million sitting comfortably in my future pocket.

What an absolute pushover.