Capítulo 7
Since the discovery of an infiltrator at the base, all soldiers and instructors began investigating everyone who remained on the military grounds. Kura and Arold were in the showers after a long day of training. Arold was leaving the bathroom to let Itadaki in, while his brother was lost in thought, wondering who that mysterious person on the base could be—so much so that he didn't even notice someone had entered the bathroom.
— Yeah… looks like this won't be solved anytime soon.
He entered the shower. His first sight was someone's back. The person's head was obscured by steam, but their torso was visible. They appeared to have their right arm "attached" unnaturally to their body—so that their arms didn't look alike, as if each arm had come from a different person. Kura was startled and embarrassed, quickly leaving the bathroom while thinking:
"What the hell was that?! Who—or what—was that?"
He tried to see who it was, but the shower door suddenly swung open and slammed into his face, knocking him out for a few seconds and costing him the chance to identify the mysterious person. That only left him with more questions, like "Who was that?" and "Why are their arms so different?" He had no answers for now. So he just took his shower and headed to the dormitory, where he slept on the top bunk while his brother slept on the bottom.
The next day, after a long period of classes and training, Arold went to take a shower while the short one—Kura—went to lunch. He ate alone in the cafeteria: a big plate of rice, beans, a steak, farofa, and french fries. After finishing his meal, he left and went for a walk to reflect. He stood in silence for several seconds before deciding to head to the bathroom after having downed a large glass of lemon juice.
Once he entered one of the stalls, he began to feel like he was being watched. He activated his ability to sense the heartbeats and breathing of others and immediately detected someone else in the bathroom, just behind the stall door. He focused more deeply to sense the person's intent—it was hostile and murderous.
Suddenly, an attack was launched at Kura—it seemed like a beam shot from the eyes of the hostile entity. The young protagonist instinctively used his electricity as a "shield." He saw the enemy's attack evaporate and quickly realized:
"Evaporated? So it was a liquid?!"
Through the holes in the stall door, he could see that the person had that same strange arm. Realizing their assassination attempt had failed, the attacker punched a hole in the wall with brute force and fled through it, avoiding being seen by Kura.
After the incident, Kura examined the hole in the bathroom stall and noticed it was identical to the wounds found on the bodies of the previous murder victims. Some high-ranking officers arrived at the scene to investigate. Once everything was examined, Kura was removed from the area as a witness and interrogated about what he had seen:
— Well… I didn't get to see the killer's face, but I saw his right arm… I saw that someone who entered the shower after Arold a few days ago had their right arm unnaturally attached, and it was clearly different from the left. After the attack, I also noticed there was a mark on the arm, but I couldn't see clearly what it was.
The man conducting the interrogation was the same one who oversaw the military admission exams. He listened carefully while taking notes in a notebook he carried under his arm. Once he finished, he closed the notebook and tucked it into his pocket.
— Alright, we'll repair the bathroom and then question your brother to see if he knows who went into the shower after him… Now, dismissed. Go straight to class, you damn class-skipping brat!
Naturally, the boy was startled by the old man's words. "He knows I skip class?!" That pause only irritated the director more, who slammed a club on the table hard, snapping Kura out of his daze and making him bolt from the room toward class—completely shaken by everything that had just happened.
— Tsk… miserable brat. Kills a bishop and thinks that gives him permission to ditch class…
The old man lit a cigar and began to smoke. Once again, an eye watched everything unfold—it was the killer, observing the only failed assassination attempt so far.
— Damn Kura… he's really putting me in check. I need to get rid of him soon. Him and his brother.