The woman didn't push. She stood in the hallway with her hands visible, gloved, her posture easy, and waited.
"Well," she said, her voice soft. Unhurried. "The draft in the hallway is freezing. This won't take long."
Kori looked at them both. The woman's soft voice, the man's careful distance. Both dangerous—the kind of dangerous that came from practice, from repetition, from years of knocking on doors and knowing exactly what might answer.
Behind him, Akane's breathing had gone shallow. He could hear it, could track her heartbeat through the thin walls of the apartment the way he could track everything now. The drip of the kitchen faucet. The creak of the building settling. The distant rumble of a train.
The woman waited. The man waited.
Kori stepped back.
The door opened wider.
They sat at the kitchen table—the woman across from Kori, the man against the wall where he could see both the door and the window. Akane moved toward the stove, her hands finding the kettle without looking. The familiar rhythm of hospitality.
"We'll be quick," the woman said. "No need for—"
Akane turned on the burner. The gas caught with a soft whomp. She filled the kettle, set it on the flame, and reached for the tea tin on the shelf above the stove.
Her back stayed turned.
The woman watched this happen. Her eyes followed Akane's hands—kettle, tea tin, the measured movements. She'd done this before.
"I'm Mori," she said, returning her attention to Kori. "That's Takeda. Shibuya Division." She didn't clarify which unit. Didn't need to. "You already know why we're here."
Kori said nothing.
"Three days ago. Sakura Street. Early morning." Mori's voice stayed conversational, almost pleasant. "The footage is interesting. Takeda's watched it four times."
The man against the wall inclined his head slightly.
The kettle began to warm, metal ticking as it expanded.
"The woman who was there—Tanaka, I think—she gave quite a statement. Very detailed. Very... impressed." Mori tilted her head. "She used the word 'beautiful.' Strange choice, given the circumstances."
Akane's hand paused on the tea tin. Just for a moment. Then she continued, measuring leaves into the ceramic pot.
"So," Mori said. "Here we are."
She let that sit. The kettle hissed, not yet boiling. Takeda shifted his weight—the only sound in the kitchen besides the water heating.
Kori looked at the woman across from him. The soft voice, the patient silences. She wasn't asking questions because she didn't need to. She was giving him space to fill.
"You want to know what I am," he said.
"I know what you are." Mori's eyes held his. "Fresh hybrid. Weapon-class, given the manifestation. Fusion happened that morning—the healing rate makes that obvious." She paused. "What I don't know is the rest. The details."
The kettle whistled. Akane lifted it from the flame, poured water into the pot, set it on the table with three cups she'd pulled from the cabinet.
Not the blue ceramic one. Never that one.
She stood against the counter, arms crossed, watching.
"Contract conditions," Mori said. "Those matter. Some are workable. Some aren't."
Kori reached for the tea pot. Poured three cups—one for Mori, one for himself, one that sat unclaimed on the table between them. Steam rose in thin curls.
"Two conditions," he said.
Mori's posture didn't change, but something in her attention sharpened. Beside the wall, Takeda's hands stayed loose.
"First: kill all devils."
Silence. The steam continued to rise. Akane's arms tightened across her chest.
Mori picked up her tea cup. Held it without drinking. "All of them?"
"All."
"No qualifiers. No exceptions."
"None."
She exchanged a glance with Takeda. When she turned back to Kori, her expression hadn't changed, but the quality of her attention had.
"And the second?"
"I can't speak its name."
"Can't?"
"Don't know it."
Mori studied him over the rim of her cup. Found nothing. Kori met her gaze without effort.
"A weapon devil that wants to stay anonymous," she said. "That's new." She took a sip of tea. Set the cup down. "What form?"
Kori thought about the blade. The obsidian curve of it. He thought about the black cat bleeding behind garbage bags, amber eyes and dry wit, the ancient thing that had poured itself into his spine and gone silent.
"The cat devil," he said.
Mori blinked. Takeda's mouth did something complicated—not quite a smile, quickly suppressed. The tension in the room didn't break, but it bent.
"Cat," Mori repeated.
"Black. Small." Kori picked up his tea. "Had opinions."
Against the counter, Akane made a sound. Not quite a laugh. She was looking at Kori with something new in her eyes—not recognition, but the shape of it. Eight years of silence, and now he was making jokes with Public Safety agents at her kitchen table.
Mori set down her cup. The moment passed, and her face settled back into something professional.
"We'll need to run verification," she said. "Medical screening, registration. Combat assessment, if classification warrants it." She paused. "Your sister did the same thing. Years ago."
Kori's hand stopped halfway to his cup.
"Kuroshi Hina. Knife Devil." Mori's voice hadn't changed—still quiet, still patient. "We offered her a position four times. She had other priorities."
The kitchen was very quiet. The tea cooled in its cups. Akane had gone still against the counter.
"She was something," Mori said. "Could've gone far, if she'd wanted. But she had someone waiting at home, so." A small shrug. "Choices."
Something moved behind Kori's ribs. He kept his face still.
"The report from that night mentioned you," Mori continued. "Just a footnote. Younger brother, present at the scene, uninjured." She turned her tea cup in a slow circle on the table. "Uninjured. That's an interesting word for it."
The tea had stopped steaming. Kori watched her gloved hands on the cup, the easy rotation, the complete lack of urgency.
"What she wanted," Mori said, "was to protect people. That's why she hunted in the first place. Did it well, too." The cup stopped turning. "Registration would let you do the same thing. Continue what she started."
Kori looked at his hands. The same hands that had cut himself in this kitchen three days ago. The same hands that had taken a devil apart in four seconds.
Hina's hands had been smaller. Always moving.
"Screening takes the day," he said. "Tests. Paperwork."
"Yes."
"And after?"
"Depends on classification." Mori picked up her cup again. "Could be anything. Assignment to a unit. Specialized training."
"And if I don't want any of that?"
Mori drank her tea. Set the cup down empty. The movement was unhurried, considered.
"Then we have a longer conversation," she said. "About responsibilities. About what happens when assets remain unaccounted for." She turned the empty cup between her palms. "Liabilities create casualties, Kuroshi-san. It's just math."
"You're the good guys?"
Takeda went still. Not moving away from the wall, not reaching for anything—just the sudden absence of motion, muscles locked into a coil that hadn't been visible a moment before.
The man who'd been furniture became something else entirely.
Mori smiled. The same warm smile from the hallway, the same soft voice.
"Of course we are," she said. "Public safety is our number one priority."
The words hung in the kitchen.
Kori looked at Akane—still pressed against the counter, arms wrapped around herself, watching him with eyes that didn't recognize what they were seeing. The stranger where he'd sat for eight years. The woman who'd fed him every night at seven and never asked about the nightmares and kept a blue ceramic cup in the cabinet that she never used.
The woman who would be a variable. An uncontrolled element. A liability, if he made this difficult.
Mori's smile hadn't wavered. Takeda hadn't moved. The third cup of tea sat on the table, untouched, going cold.
Kori stood.
"Let's go," he said.
Mori rose from her chair, smooth and unhurried. Takeda relaxed—the coil unwinding, the furniture returning. Whatever had been about to happen retreated back into potential.
"You'll need identification," Mori said. "We'll wait."
Kori walked to his closet. Pushed aside the curtain. The photograph of Hina watched him from the shelf—brown eyes, warm smile, the face of someone who'd made choices and lived with them until she couldn't anymore.
He picked up his wallet. Put it in his pocket.
When he came back to the kitchen, Akane was still standing in the same spot. Her mouth opened. Closed.
Kori didn't say he'd be back. She didn't ask.
The door closed behind them with a soft click.