The rain had returned by nightfall. It fell in a slow, steady rhythm, like a lullaby for the dead. Akito stood on the roof of the adjacent building, cloaked in the shadows between HVAC ducts and satellite dishes, watching the lights inside the hotel suite across the street. The building was one of the city's opulent towers glass and marble and polished chrome, its luxury muted beneath the curtain of water sliding down the windows.
He had breached the perimeter an hour ago. Silent entry. Cameras disabled, guards diverted. No alarms tripped. Every contingency accounted for. The target's schedule was confirmed arriving late, no entourage, no press, just two personal guards stationed at the suite entrance. Akito had timed it to the second.
He descended from the roof like a shadow falling from heaven. The service stairwell welcomed him with silence. No footsteps. No movement. Floor by floor, he slipped through the building's circulatory system until he reached the suite level. His breathing was even. His hands calm. His thoughts focused.
The two guards flanked the door standard private security, bulky men in suits, earpieces blinking with soft blue light. Akito observed them through the mirrored panel of the fire door across the hall. Their stance was casual, but disciplined. Not amateurs. Still predictable.
He moved.
A step, a flick of the wrist, a whisper of metal.
The first went down without sound, a knife slipping between ribs with surgical precision. The second turned, surprised, reaching for a weapon that never made it out of its holster. A brief struggle. A thud against the wall. Then stillness.
Akito dragged the bodies aside, cleaned the blade with a cloth, and crouched before the suite door. His gloves creaked softly as he adjusted his grip. He picked the lock manually no electronics. No risk of alerts. The latch gave with a soft click.
He entered the room like silence incarnate.
The interior was dark, save for the soft blue glow of city light bleeding through the blinds. The suite smelled of expensive perfume and too much money sterile, curated. Furniture sat in neat, unused arrangements. A glass of untouched whiskey stood on the table near the couch, catching the light like a jewel.
But something was off.
Akito felt it immediately. Not with his eyes, not yet but somewhere deeper. A gut-tightening wrongness. The room was too still. The air too tense. He moved forward, knife low, eyes scanning every corner.
The bedroom door was open.
Inside, instead of a sleeping man, he found a bed untouched. A jacket tossed over the chair. A briefcase on the dresser, unlatched. No movement.
Then... barely audible... a sound. A breath. The creak of wood. Not in the room.
The closet.
Akito moved to it with soundless steps, weapon ready. He paused, then slid the door open.
Two figures huddled inside.
Not the politician.
A woman... young, her features gaunt with fear, eyes wide and glistening. She clutched a child to her chest, holding him as if her body alone could shield him from the world. The boy looked no older than five, his hair a tangled mess, face streaked with tears but silent. Too silent. The silence of a child who'd learned not to cry because crying brought pain.
The woman met Akito's gaze.
There was no scream. No sudden movement. Just a tightening of her grip, as if to say, Take me, not him. And something else... recognition, perhaps. Not of him specifically, but of what he was. A harbinger. A man who arrived when all other hope had vanished.
Akito didn't move. He didn't speak. He simply stared.
This wasn't part of the plan. There was no mention of a sister. No mention of a child. The dossier had been detailed meticulous. Backgrounds, associates, safehouses, travel records. Nothing about this.
The woman's mouth moved. Words formed in silence. Pleading, not desperate but deliberate. Her focus was on the boy. She didn't beg for herself. Only for him.
Akito felt the shift in his hand the subtle weight of the knife, the coil of tension in his arm waiting for release. Years of training told him what to do. Eliminate all witnesses. Clean the scene. Exit before the window closed.
And yet… he didn't move.
He remembered the flames. The smoke. The hand reaching through it all.
He remembered the scream he hadn't saved. The guilt carved into his bones like scripture.
The knife lowered.
His breath caught, just for a moment.
He stepped back. Closed the closet door. Walked out of the room.
Each step was slow, measured, his senses on fire, as if expecting the world to punish him for hesitation. But the hotel remained quiet. No alarms. No voices. Only the steady heartbeat of rain against glass.
The guards were still slumped outside. Their eyes stared without seeing. Akito passed them without looking back.
He exited the hotel through a maintenance tunnel, his gear sealed tight in the satchel, not a trace left behind.
The city stretched out before him, vast and uncaring. Lights shimmered in puddles along the sidewalk. Traffic moved in slow, hypnotic rhythm, like blood flowing through distant arteries. Somewhere, music played faintly... tinny and off-key from a broken speaker above a closed corner shop.
He walked for hours. Not aimlessly, but without clear destination. Movement for the sake of it. For the need to stay ahead of thought.
Eventually, he found himself in a diner one of those forgotten places wedged between high-rise shadows and construction sites. Inside, the lights were too bright, the linoleum floor worn thin, the smell of coffee and fryer oil clinging to every surface like a second skin.
He took a booth near the window. A server glanced his way, but he waved her off. Ordered nothing but coffee.
The cup sat untouched in front of him, steam curling into the air like a question.
Around him, the world continued quiet conversation from a nearby booth, the soft clink of plates, the hum of neon. But Akito was somewhere else.
In the silence of that suite. In the woman's eyes. In the boy's silence.
The mission had been clear. The target had been profiled, judged, sentenced.
And he had failed. Or had he?
He wasn't sure anymore.
He stared at the coffee until the steam faded and the surface went still. His reflection stared back hollow, fragmented by the curvature of the liquid. Not the face he'd seen in mirrors years ago. Not even the one he remembered from last week. A different man. A man with blood on his hands and something close to doubt forming beneath the surface.
He reached into his coat and withdrew the mission file. The folder was slim, weatherproof, its contents precise. Photos, timestamps, background reports. A map with red lines. A name.
Daisuke Maruyama.
Akito studied it one last time. Then he rose, leaving the coffee behind, and stepped out into the night.
He found a small alley behind the diner, sheltered from the wind. There was a rusted metal barrel there, its interior scorched black from years of discarded sins.
He struck a match, the flame wavering, then catching. The file went in whole.
Paper curled. Ink dissolved. Faces burned.
The flames danced for a moment, consuming purpose and guilt in equal measure. Then they faded, leaving only ash and smoke.
Akito stood there for a long time, watching the embers glow and die.
Above him, the clouds rolled on, indifferent. Below, the city slept dreamless, restless.
And in the space between, a man began to wonder what it meant to choose mercy.