The night air was cool, carrying the scents of asphalt, damp foliage, and distant exhaust fumes. Jin walked slowly down the quiet street, the plastic bag with his meager dinner rustling faintly in his hand. Inside his head, contrary to custom, there wasn't cold analysis, but a light, unfamiliar turmoil.
He recalled the face of the girl from the kombini. Her big, frightened, yet curious eyes, the blush that flooded her cheeks, her desperate, almost childlike cry of "Please come again!". It was so... anime-like. So cliché it was almost amusing. But somewhere beneath the layer of cynicism, something else stirred. Something warm.
"Maybe... she liked me?"
The thought was so alien, so out of place in his new reality, that he involuntarily stumbled. He felt blood rush to his cheeks. A faint, barely noticeable blush he hadn't felt in what seemed like an eternity. For a moment, his thoughts flowed in a completely different, long-forgotten direction. Romance? Ordinary human relationships? Maybe in this life…
In that same instant, as if doused by a bucket of icy water, another feeling washed over him. Sharp, predatory, familiar. The sensation of being watched from behind. Of an approach.
His head cleared instantly. All the sentimental nonsense evaporated, giving way to cold vigilance. He didn't slow his pace, didn't change his gait, but his entire being grew taut, like a predator that had sensed prey. He carefully, almost imperceptibly, cut his eyes, glancing at the reflection in the dark shop window he was passing. Five shadows. They kept their distance, but moved in sync with him, trying not to attract attention. The kids from the store.
Jin looked straight ahead, and a predatory, anticipatory smile touched his lips. The warmth of embarrassment was replaced by an icy thrill. He was tired of inaction. Tired of training alone. And these idiots, it seemed, had decided to voluntarily offer themselves up as sparring partners. Well, it would be a sin to refuse such a generous gift.
A few minutes later, he turned into a narrow, poorly lit alley between two old buildings. He walked to the very end, until he hit a solid brick wall. A dead end. He turned slowly, the bag of ramen still hanging carelessly from his hand. Blocking the exit, the five were moving toward him. They were trying to look intimidating: confident faces, relaxed, "cool" gaits, hands in their pockets. A classic group attack on a lone target, meant to instill terror in the victim.
Jin turned to face the guy who was walking in front and was, obviously, the leader of this gang.
"Well, nothing new."
...
"Well, nothing new."
Shido froze. He stared at the strange blond, who was looking right back at him with a strange, almost pleased expression and a lazy smirk. The words, spoken in a calm voice devoid of fear, threw him off. He had expected anything: fear, pleading, an attempt to run. But not this.
He glanced at the others. He saw the same uncertain confusion on their faces. The plan was failing. They continued to approach, but a little slower now, less confidently.
Getting closer, Shido tried to understand where this guy got such confidence. He was literally standing with one hand in his pocket, waiting for them with a self-satisfied smirk. He didn't look scared. He looked bored.
"Does he have a weapon?" a thought flickered in Shido's mind. "Doesn't look like it, pockets aren't bulging. Maybe he's not alone? No, no one's around, and he's in a dead end. So why is he so confident?! Dammit, is he crazy?"
Stopping a few meters away, he gathered his courage, put on his most threatening expression, and looked up, shouting:
"Who the hell are y—"
And he froze. He drowned.
The strange blond's eyes. He looked into them and the words stuck in his throat. Violet. But it wasn't just the color. It was emptiness. A bottomless, cold, sucking abyss that held no fear, no anger, no life. Only an absolute, all-consuming indifference that contrasted with the slight smirk on his lips. Shido felt a cold sweat run down his back. This wasn't the gaze of a human. It was the gaze of a monster.
He watched the man slowly approach him. Watched his hand descend onto his shoulder. The palm was warm, but the touch... It was unbearably heavy. Shido turned pale. It felt as if a whole mountain had settled on his shoulder, not a teenager's hand. He couldn't move. Not from the physical pressure, but from the primal terror that paralyzed every muscle. He froze, afraid to even lift his head, let alone look this monster in the eyes.
Jin patted his shoulder twice. Amiably. But the gesture almost made Shido pass out.
One of his friends, a hefty guy named Takeda, noticed his leader's strange behavior. "Shido! You okay?!" he yelled and, without thinking, swung a metal pipe he always carried. He struck with all his might, aiming for the blond's head.
After that, everyone froze.
The unknown man smoothly, almost lazily, raised one hand and caught the blow in his palm. There was no sound of broken bones, no cry of pain. Just a dull, dry thud of metal on flesh. The blond didn't even flinch. Meanwhile, Takeda's hands, holding the pipe, went numb from the monstrous feedback, as if he had struck a granite cliff. His fingers unclenched, and the pipe fell to the asphalt with a clang.
Everyone watched this in shock. And they all flinched in unison at an indifferent huff from this monster. Ignoring the high schoolers surrounding him, he was examining his own hand, the one that had taken the blow, with great interest. Not a scratch on the skin.
"Hm. Doesn't even itch," he muttered to himself.
And then the madness began.
He vanished. Simply dissolved into the air. One second he was standing there, the next he was gone. Everyone frantically whipped their heads around.
CRASH!
The wall at the far end of the alley shuddered. There, in a cloud of brick dust, he stood. He had crashed into the wall. By accident? Or intentionally? The asphalt under his feet was covered in a web of deep cracks from a simple landing. The high schoolers literally couldn't understand what was happening.
He disappeared again. And reappeared, this time at the opposite wall. The movement was smoother this time, but the asphalt cracked under his feet again. He moved, and with every movement, every relocation, his motions became better, faster, more precise. It seemed he wasn't fighting them. He was training. He was calibrating his body, using this alley as a training ground, and them as dummies.
Simultaneously, he began to move around them. His silhouette became invisible. They couldn't see him. Only feel him. Gusts of wind that whipped their faces told them he was moving nearby. At first, it was a light breeze, then a sharp gust that made them stagger. The gusts became fiercer, faster, striking from all different directions. Right, left, above, below. The wind tore at their clothes, whipped their hair, knocked them off their feet. It was a demonic dance in which they were merely helpless leaves in a hurricane.
By the end of this insane performance, everyone was already sitting on the asphalt, unable to stand. They were shaking from fear and disorientation. They didn't understand what that was. They just knew they had encountered something that shouldn't exist.
Only the leader, Shido, still stood in the same spot where he'd been left. Frozen like a statue, paralyzed by that initial terror.
Jin stopped unexpectedly. The wind died. He appeared directly in front of the high school leader, as if he had been there all along. He looked over Shido's pale, cold-sweat-covered face and smirked.
"Ha, good for you."
He patted his shoulder twice again. Shido flinched, and the stupor broke. His knees buckled, and he collapsed onto the asphalt next to his friends. Jin, picking up his bag of groceries from the ground, walked out of the alley and ambled away into the night's darkness.