Misaki kept calling.
Again.
And again.
And again.
For nearly ten minutes, Ukraine's phone rang unanswered while she paced across her room in a towel, water still cooling on her skin, panic rising hotter by the second. He was the only person she could think of who might reach Kro in time. She didn't have Kro's number. She didn't know her address. All she had was fear and Jerome's warning echoing in her head.
When Ukraine finally picked up, Misaki exploded.
"WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU?"
Ukraine jerked the phone away from his ear.
"Hey, I just got back from the gym. I left my pho—"
"I DON'T NEED TO HEAR IT!" she snapped. "Listen to me. A group of ruthless men are heading to Miss Kro's house to beat the shit out of her. Please call her and tell her to leave right now!"
Ukraine straightened instantly.
"Misaki, what are you ta—"
"My father sent men after our boss!" she shouted. "Didn't I tell you he'd do something like this? Come on! I don't have her number, I don't know where she lives, but you do! Please do something! I'm begging you!"
"Okay, okay. I will—"
"DO IT NOW GODAMN IT!"
The line went dead.
Ukraine stared at the screen for half a second, then immediately called Kro.
No answer.
He called again.
Still nothing.
Again.
And again.
The ringtone had begun to feel like mockery.
"Kro, where are you? Pick up the damn phone," he muttered, pacing now.
He called until his phone felt hot in his hand.
Nothing.
At last, frustrated beyond reason, he threw it onto the bed.
"She's freaking immortal anyway," he muttered bitterly. "She can handle that."
He turned toward the bathroom. He would shower. Cool off. Pretend he had done what he could.
But he only made it halfway there before he stopped.
Her voice came back to him with cruel clarity.
I don't know what you heard about me, but I'm not that strong and I'm not that weak either. The only thing you can do for me is care. Even a little.
Ukraine closed his eyes.
He tried to keep walking.
His own legs refused.
Something in his chest pulled hard in the opposite direction, a weight he could neither reason with nor ignore. He didn't even fully understand what he was doing by the time he turned, grabbed his keys, and left the room.
All the way to the car, one thought kept looping in his head.
"This is the craziest decision I've ever made."
And yet he drove.
...
Far-Bridge
Kro woke with a violent start.
The sensation was familiar.
Not a dream.
A warning.
Danger always reached her like that—through some buried animal instinct sharper than reason. Her eyes opened immediately, breath already measured, senses already awake.
She reached for her phone beside the lamp.
More than ten missed calls.
From Ukraine.
Her brows drew together.
That was strange.
Then she checked the time.
Late.
Too late for casual panic.
"Is he in danger?" she wondered.
For one brief second, she believed the calls might have something to do with him.
Then she heard it.
Footsteps.
Soft. Careful. Approaching.
Tiptoeing.
The truth settled instantly.
She was the one in danger.
Kro slipped from the bed without a sound.
There were three men in the house.
Two upstairs.
One downstairs.
All dressed in black.
One of the men whispered, "I think this is her room. Stay alert."
Kro stood in the darkness, listening.
The doorknob twisted.
A knife appeared first, then a shoulder, then the man himself, creeping into the room with murderous caution. The lights were off, the bed looked occupied enough at a glance, and he didn't realize until too late that there was no one in it.
A faint sound came from the bathroom.
He headed straight toward it.
The moment his head crossed the doorway, Kro struck.
Her hand connected with his face like a falling stone. The force dislocated his jaw instantly. He dropped without even having time to scream properly, collapsing unconscious onto the bathroom floor.
Kro moved fast.
She slipped back behind the bedroom door and waited.
When the second man noticed his partner hadn't returned, he came in after him. The instant he saw the body on the bathroom floor, his attention split—
And that was enough.
Kro drove her foot hard into his chest.
The impact launched him backward into the wall before he crumpled to the floor with a pained thud. He curled around his chest, arms wrapped desperately over what felt very much like broken ribs.
Kro exhaled once.
Then she heard something else.
A soft metallic jingle from downstairs.
The kitchen.
Her nightdress had torn at one side from the movement of the kick, but she had no time to care. She rolled her shoulders once, cracked her knuckles, and stretched her back.
"One more skeleton to crack," she muttered.
Then she headed downstairs.
The living room was dark, but it didn't take her long to sense where the last man was hiding.
Kitchen.
She reached into a decorative jar, took a marble, and positioned herself beside the doorway.
Then she tossed the marble toward the stairs.
The sound did exactly what she wanted.
The man burst from the kitchen with a gun in his hand, aiming toward the noise.
He never saw her.
Kro swept his feet out from under him so hard he spun once in the air and crashed flat onto his stomach. The gun slid from his hand. He groaned, stunned and furious.
Kro planted one foot onto the side of his face, forcing it into the floor.
Then she clapped twice.
The smart lights flicked on.
Now they could see each other.
"Who sent you?" she asked. "I won't ask twice."
The man grit his teeth.
"I WON'T TELL YOU A THING!"
Kro pressed harder.
"Well. This is going to hurt."
...
The first thing Ukraine heard when he reached the front door was a scream from inside.
Sharp.
Painful.
Human.
It froze his blood for half a second before panic shoved him forward. The door was unlocked. He hit it open and rushed in—
Only to stop dead.
Kro was sitting on a man's back, blood on her dress, her face, and dripping down the hammer currently in her hand. And it was not her blood.
For one stunned moment, both of them simply stared.
Then Kro set the hammer aside and rose to her feet.
She walked toward him in her torn nightdress, calm enough to terrify him all over again.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
Ukraine's voice came out unsteady.
"I… I called you. You never answered."
"What did you want to say?"
He gestured helplessly at the destroyed man on the floor.
"This. I wanted to warn you about this."
The sight of the attacker made his stomach churn. The man's knuckles were swollen, his ankles mangled, blood smeared across the floorboards. Everything in the room reeked of violence. Ukraine swallowed hard against sudden nausea.
"The police will be here any minute," he said, still staring around. Then he looked back at her. "But… are you alright?"
Kro's expression shifted only slightly.
"Why do you care?"
"What?"
"Why call my phone a hundred times, come to my house in the middle of the night, sweating, like I mattered?"
Ukraine shrugged, "Well-Maybe you do."
"Oh fuck off, Ukraine. One minute you care, the next you don't. You scream at my face. You stand a hundred feet away from me, how do you think that makes me feel?"
"You're intimidating,"
"Why?" Kro asked with quiet desperation for the truth, "If I make you so miserable, why haven't you quit?"
"Because you make it hard for me to do so!" He couldn't help but scream to her face again, "Why am I here? Why did I pull you back that day? Why do I always hope you ask to have dinner with me again? I don't fucking know, okay? All I know is that my heart wouldn't settle until I did,"
They were too focused on each other to notice the movement on the floor.
The man Kro had broken was still conscious.
Barely.
But conscious enough.
His hand crept toward the gun lying just out of sight. Rage burned through him more brightly than pain. He had been ordered to humiliate her, not kill her—but at that moment none of that mattered.
He wanted revenge.
His fingers found the grip.
He pulled the weapon up.
There was one bullet left.
He aimed it straight at Kro.
And fired.
BANG.
The gunshot exploded through the room.
Ukraine barely understood what had happened before Kro's body jerked.
The bullet struck beside her spine, deep and vicious. The force threw her off balance.
"No!" Ukraine shouted.
He lunged forward and caught her as she fell, taking both of them to the floor.
His arms wrapped around her instinctively. His body shook from the shock of it, from the sound of the shot still echoing in his skull, from the unbearable thought that he had gotten there only to watch her die anyway.
Kro, however, had entered a different kind of horror.
The bullet had hit a vital place.
Pain blazed through her.
But pain wasn't the true disaster.
Because in moments, her body would begin doing what it had always done.
The skin would mend.
The wound would close.
The bullet would force itself back out.
And there would be no blood.
No real blood at all.
Not from a woman whose heart had stopped long ago.
Not from a body that only imitated life.
Kro stiffened in Ukraine's arms.
This was worse than the attack.
Worse than Akeshi.
Worse than the bullet itself.
Because now, with Ukraine holding her and staring down at her in terror—
her secret was seconds away from revealing itself.
***