Tokyo, Japan Headquarters
The night hummed low with the sound of rain tapping against the glass. Inside the dimly lit command room, monitors flickered with grainy satellite feeds: silhouettes moving, lives at stake.
Takaeda leaned forward, elbows pressed against the steel table. His voice was calm but heavy, like he already knew the answer he wouldn't like.
"Are you sure Raiden will survive?"
Jisoo didn't look up from the screen. The glow washed over her face, sharp, unblinking.
"Well,"she murmured, fingers tapping the edge of the console, "I'm not sure."
Takaeda's jaw tightened. "Then what's the point of killing so many if your plan to eliminate Ghostblade fails?"
"That would be the case," Jisoo said, finally turning toward him, "if it fails."
A faint smile curved her lips,not of amusement, but calculation.
She clicked the screen: a live feed showing a hallway. A figure, Hwan, moved toward a door.
"Right now,"she continued, "Hwan has entered Raiden's room. But too bad for him… Raiden's already gone."
Takaeda's brow furrowed. "So he knew? That Ghostblade was after him?"
"Maybe," Jisoo replied, almost softly. "I've sent someone to make sure he lives."
He frowned deeper. "Who?"
She shut the monitor off with a quiet click.
"You'll know soon enough,"she said.
The room fell silent except for the rain.
And for a brief moment,Takaeda realized he wasn't sure anymore whose side Jisoo was really on.
Meanwhile | Huinnyeoul, South Korea
The rain had softened, but the world still felt heavy with it, the kind that seeps through wood and silence alike.
Raiden and the girl crouched behind the rusted hull of an overturned fishing boat near the edge of the pier. The sea whispered a few feet away, waves brushing the shore with slow, rhythmic calm that felt almost mocking compared to the thudding of their hearts.
Raiden's clothes were soaked through; his hood clung to his hair, and his hand never left the hilt of his knife. He wasn't breathing hard, soldiers didn't breathe hard, but there was a cold focus in his eyes, the kind that only came from people who'd survived ambushes before.
The girl, though… she looked shaken. Her fingers trembled as she squeezed the damp ends of her braid, eyes flicking toward the inn they'd fled minutes ago. The faint orange glow from its windows still flickered faintly through the mist.
"They're still there," she whispered.
Raiden didn't reply. His gaze was fixed on the glow, listening. He could almost feel the presence, that low hum in the air when danger lingered close.
After a long moment, she spoke again, quieter. "I wasn't spying on you. I was at the back, by the kitchen. That's when I heard them."
Raiden's eyes turned toward her, calm but sharp. "Who?"
"The man from the fish stall," she said, voice barely audible now. "And someone else. Someone… different."
Raiden didn't interrupt, though he knew the answer before she said it.
"He called him Ghostblade."
The name hung between them like a breath held too long.
Her voice broke slightly as she continued. "They were talking about you. The fish guy said you were staying in the inn. The other one said something like… 'It ends tonight.' And then… then I heard the sound of a blade." She swallowed. "That's when I ran. I don't know how I even made it out before they came up the stairs."
Raiden's grip tightened on the knife, the faintest reflection of light running along its edge. His voice came out low, steady. "And you thought following me would help?"
Her brows furrowed, half defiant, half scared. "Would you rather I let them find you in your sleep?"
He looked at her for a long moment, long enough for the tension to ease just slightly from her shoulders. Then he said, "You shouldn't have known my Room number"
There was a moment of silence between them.
Finally, he spoke. "You knew he was coming for me before you saw him, didn't you?"
Her expression didn't change. "Would you believe me if I said no?"
Raiden exhaled slowly, his breath fogging in the cold. "No."
Silence stretched between them — the kind that feels like it's listening.
Outside, thunder rumbled faintly across the horizon. The waves lapped closer now, as if trying to drown the silence between them.
After a while, she spoke again, softer this time. "I don't care who you are. I just… don't want to die and neither I want you to... atleast not for tonight."
Raiden's gaze drifted back toward the inn. He could still see the faint silhouettes moving behind the curtains, slow, deliberate, like hunters waiting for the tide to turn.
He finally exhaled. "You stay quiet. Don't move until I say."
The girl nodded quickly, clutching her knees to her chest. Raiden watched her for a moment, this strange, fearless girl who had somehow gotten herself caught in something far bigger than she could imagine.
Then, just before he turned his eyes back toward the fog, he muttered, almost to himself:
"Ghostblade… they really sent him here."
"Looks like things are going to get messy"
The rain thickened again, washing away the sound of everything else.It drowned the distant murmur of the inn, the sigh of the waves, and the echo of the name that had sealed their fate.
Raiden didn't move. He remained crouched, a statue in the storm, his gaze fixed on the nothingness ahead.
Outside their fragile shelter, the hunt continued. But for now, in the eye of the storm, there was only the sound of the rain, washing it all away.