Seoul, South Korea — 1985. Jung-gu District.
The lights in the backroom flickered above the pool of blood.
Kairi stood in silence, her boots soaked in red.
A man knelt before her, gasping through the wire that had been pulled tight around his throat. One eye swollen shut, jaw hanging broken.
He had lied.
He said he knew where they were.
Her children.
Souta and Ryouma.
But he didn't.
And now, he'd never speak again.
With one final tug of the garrote, the man's body slumped forward.
Kairi's breathing didn't change. She wiped her gloves clean with the corner of his expensive suit jacket and stepped back as one of her lieutenants entered—Nam Jin-taek, slick-haired, twitchy, always trying too hard to impress her.
"No word?" she asked flatly, not looking at him.
Jin-taek swallowed hard. "None. We swept every district in Mapo, even checked the high-speed bus logs out of Seoul. No sign."
"Check again," she said, voice like smoke curling around a knife. "And find the girl who saw them leave the station. The vendor's daughter."
"She's gone, boss. Disappeared."
Kairi turned to face him.
The look she gave wasn't rage.
It was emptiness.
"You're not telling me what I asked. You're telling me excuses."
He bowed low. "죄송합니다… I—I'll double the street boys. I'll put pressure on the gangs in Gangnam. Somebody has to know where they—"
A gunshot rang out.
Quick. Precise.
Jin-taek collapsed before finishing his sentence, a clean hole drilled through his temple.
The room was silent again.
Kairi dropped the smoking pistol back into her coat.
"Anybody who fails me ends up like Jin-taek," she said without raising her voice. "If my children aren't found, none of you deserve to be found either."
The remaining crew stood frozen, like statues in a museum of dread.
Kairi stepped over the bodies. Her heels clicked across the tiles like a ticking clock.
Outside, the night air in Seoul was damp. Neon signs buzzed. A radio echoed from a nearby ramen stand playing "Yazawa Eikichi", a Japanese track illegally passed around backstreets. Foreign. Moody.
Her thoughts were quieter now. Focused.
She lit a cigarette.
Where would Katarina take them?
Somewhere rural. Off the grid. Somewhere she couldn't reach easily—yet.
She could still hear Ryouma's voice in her head. That sharp, accusatory scream. The look in Souta's eyes before she ran.
They hated her.
Good.
She stubbed out the cigarette against a rusting payphone.
Then, from her pocket, she pulled a photograph—creased, bloodstained, edges worn from being handled too much.
Ryouma. Souta. A younger version of herself. Smiling.
A time she couldn't get back. A time she had willingly murdered.
She kissed the photo, then lit it on fire and let it burn in her palm.
Back in Kamikawa.
Ryouma sat up in bed, heart pounding. Sweat clung to his back like static.
He didn't know why.
But he swore he could feel her.
Somewhere, across the country.
Waiting.