New York. It's late at night, and Angel's Gift has just closed after a busy day.
Diluc stood behind the bar, carefully wiping a glass. The warm yellow light glinted off his scarlet hair.
Jingle—
The doorbell chimed softly. Damian pushed the door open and stepped inside.
"Have you finished your business?" Diluc asked without looking up, his hands moving with practiced ease.
Damian didn't answer right away. He scanned the room but didn't see Fischl. Frowning, he asked,
"Where's Little Amy? I haven't seen her."
Diluc hung the polished glass on the wine rack and replied calmly,
"She went to bed a long time ago."
Damian slid onto a barstool. "How's the situation with Todd Wagner?"
At that, Diluc paused—just for a heartbeat—before resuming his work.
"As you predicted," he said in a low, steady voice. "Death has struck. Aging electrical outlets sparked a short. A leaking toilet made the floor slick. Someone mixed chlorine bleach with toilet cleaner…"
He trailed off. "In short, every possible fatal hazard in that bathroom came to pass—all at once."
A chill ran down Damian's spine. He grimaced.
"Hearing you say that… this bathroom sounds like it was designed by Germans. Art students who flunked their college entrance exams would be seething with envy."
Diluc shot him a glare—the kind reserved for people who'd developed a habit of making hellish jokes. With a slow, exasperated shake of his head, he said,
"No. Everything looks like an accident. All the evidence points to coincidence."
He picked up another glass, held it to the light, and added casually,
"But I know it's not. That feeling… it's like fighting against some… will. Something extremely unnatural."
Damian tapped the bar, his expression caught somewhere between resignation and dark amusement—the kind that says, Good things never happen to me, but disasters? Always on time.
"It seems… this Grim Reaper isn't a person. It's closer to a rule-based entity. Physical methods won't work."
He looked up. "Maybe we need to fight magic… with magic?"
Diluc finally stopped what he was doing. Under the lamplight, his red eyes looked unusually deep.
"Tell me your thoughts."
Damian leaned forward. "From what I've gathered, Death operates like a mechanism with fixed protocols. Most crucially—the elimination order is sequential. You can't skip to target B unless A has already been dealt with. Only if A survives does the system move on."
Diluc understood instantly. "So… you're suggesting we uncover the exact elimination sequence—and then force a paradox in the rules?"
"Exactly." Damian nodded. "The simplest way? Randomly eliminate one of the seven survivors. That creates a gap in the list—breaks the chain."
"But," Diluc said, voice sharpening, "if the one we eliminate is Death's next target, we're not disrupting the plan—we're fulfilling it."
"Precisely," Damian admitted. "Which is why the safest approach is to first confirm the order—then engineer a controlled contradiction."
"For example," Diluc continued, "suppose A is the one who should've died but didn't, and B is next in line. We link their fates—if B dies, A dies immediately after. That creates a logical loop Death can't resolve."
Damian nodded eagerly—about to add something—
—but Diluc's expression turned grave.
"I disagree with this plan."
He set the glass down. His eyes burned with quiet intensity.
"First: we don't know what happens when you break Death's rules. Will it vanish? Or will it just… reset—like Flight 180? Pick a new batch of victims, engineer even worse accidents? If it's the latter, we haven't stopped Death—we've just signed more death warrants. That's not justice. It's complicity."
He paused, voice lowering further.
"Second: six of the seven survivors are high school students. The seventh is a teacher. None of them are monsters."
Even Carter Horton—the worst of the group—was no more than a schoolyard bully. The kind of kid who'd need bribes just to get slapped with a 15-day administrative detention.
Damian threw his hands up, wearing the face of a man who'd finally tasted the bitter sweetness of surrender. He muttered, slumping back in his seat:
"Well, I'm out of ideas. Fine. Let them die sooner rather than later—I've got nothing to do with them. At worst, I'll just abandon this worthless rough stone…"
If all else fails, let those seven unlucky bastards find a master themselves—
BOOM!
A clap of thunder split the sky, rattling the windows. Damian flinched mid-sentence.
After the echo faded, he cleared his throat and tried again—
"Let those seven stand outside his hideout, and if he refuses to—"
BOOM!
An even louder thunderclap drowned him out, shaking the glasses on the bar.
Undeterred, Damian opened his mouth a third time—
CRACK-BOOM!
The thunder was deafening now—violent enough to make the entire room tremble.
He sighed. "Gu Yi… you're ruthless."
With theatrical resignation, he mimed zipping his lips shut and shrugged.
Diluc watched, instantly grasping that the "expert" Damian had mentioned was somewhere out there—listening—and clearly not amused.
Just as Diluc opened his mouth to ask who this mysterious figure was, he felt something press into his right palm.
He looked down.
Resting in
his hand was a pair of simple reading glasses—the lenses catching the lamplight with a quiet gleam.
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