The rain had changed its mind. What had begun as a deceptive, floating mist earlier in the day had hardened into a cold, biting drizzle that stung like fine needles against exposed skin. Each drop felt personal, deliberate, as though the sky itself had decided to punish anyone foolish enough to stand still for too long.
Kokujin stood motionless in the deepest shadows of the narrow alleyway that ran alongside the school's east gate. His dark hoodie was soaked through to the point that it no longer felt like clothing; it had become a leaden second skin, heavy and clammy, dragging at his shoulders with every shallow breath. Water dripped steadily from the brim of the hood, tracing cold paths down the sides of his face before disappearing into the collar. He had been there for hours—five hours and seventeen minutes, to be exact—a silent, predatory statue carved from patience and rage.
He had come prepared for a performance.
The plan had been simple, elegant in its cruelty. He would emerge from the darkness the moment Hiroki Mori appeared, walking Nao Kinomoto to the gate after their little Saturday date. Kokujin would step forward just enough to be seen—hood low, posture loose but threatening—and deliver the opening line he had rehearsed in his head a hundred times: something sharp, something that would force the golden boy to choose between walking away or proving there was steel in his blood. It was supposed to be psychological theatre. A test. A humiliation wrapped in the illusion of a hero-trap. Kokujin had pictured it perfectly: Hiroki hesitating, Nao clutching his arm, the moment when the prince would either shrink or swing.
But the street remained empty.
Only the rhythmic drip-drip-drip of water falling from a rusted gutter interrupted the silence. Every minute that crawled by felt like a fresh slap to his pride.
"That porcelain-faced bitch," he hissed, the words barely audible above the wind that funneled down the alley. His jaw ached from clenching so hard he could feel the muscles twitching under the skin. His molars ground together until he tasted metal.
He didn't know.
He didn't know that Nao Kinomoto had spent three and a half hours in her bedroom methodically claiming Hiroki Mori—body, mind, and future—in ways Kokujin could only guess at. He didn't know she had discarded the unspoken agreement they had maintained for months like a piece of cheap, crumpled paper the moment she laid eyes on Jessica Rabbit in the Mori hallway. All Kokujin knew was betrayal in its simplest, most humiliating form: Nao had ignored the script. She had chosen a real date instead of the staged encounter he had orchestrated. She had left him standing here, rotting in the rain, while she was most likely laughing behind those oversized designer sunglasses, already rewriting him out of her story.
His phone buzzed again—sharp, insistent, angry—in the front pocket of his hoodie. He didn't pull it out. He didn't need to look. He knew exactly who it was.
Aiysha. Imani. Maybe Makayla monitoring the feed. They had the GPS tracker embedded in the burner he carried. They could see his little red dot sitting stubbornly immobile in a filthy alley three kilometers from the Mori estate while their target had already returned home hours ago.
The humiliation burned hotter than the cold.
Ten minutes later, the black SUV materialized at the curb like a shark sliding through dark water. No headlights. No sound except the soft hiss of wet tires on asphalt. The rear passenger window descended with a muted electric whisper.
Imani's face appeared in the opening.
Her eyes were twin obsidian blades—cold, dissecting, devoid of mercy.
"Get in, Kokujin," she said.
Her voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. It carried the weight of a guillotine blade already halfway raised.
Kokujin didn't move for a long heartbeat. He stared at the rain making concentric circles in a nearby puddle, forcing his pulse to slow, forcing the fire in his chest back into something he could hide. If Aiysha discovered he had tried to run a private operation against the Mori boy—without clearance, without backup—she wouldn't just be disappointed. She would label him a liability. And in their family, liabilities were quietly, permanently removed from the board.
He exhaled through his nose, slow and controlled.
Then he crossed the five meters of rain-slick pavement and climbed into the back seat.
The warmth of the heater hit him like a slap. His soaked hoodie immediately began steaming, filling the cabin with the sour smell of wet cotton and suppressed fury. Aiysha sat in the front passenger seat, her silhouette rigid, regal, unmoving. She did not turn to look at him. That was worse than any glare.
"The target is back at the estate," Aiysha said quietly. Her voice was flat, unreadable—which was always the most dangerous register she used. "They spent the afternoon in Roppongi. Then three and a half hours at the Kinomoto residence. A sordid teenage tryst. It seems the girl is exactly what we suspected: a social climber with a physical hunger for the Mori name. At least we now know she has no connection to Lumumba. The day was a waste of resources."
A waste.
The word sliced through Kokujin like a razor. His fingernails dug into the leather upholstery until the material creaked under his grip.
No. It wasn't a waste.
It was a betrayal. A public humiliation delivered in private.
"Why were you at the school for four hours, Kokujin?" Alana asked from the seat beside him.
She was leaning back casually, but her eyes were narrowed, predatory. She had always been the one who noticed when he lied before he even opened his mouth.
"The GPS had you pinned in that alley the entire time," she continued. "You didn't answer the comms. Not once."
Kokujin forced himself to meet her gaze. He arranged his features into a mask of irritated boredom—the same expression he had practiced in the mirror a thousand times.
"I thought I saw a scout," he said. His voice came out steady, almost lazy. "Someone watching the perimeter. I didn't want to lead them back to you, so I waited until I was sure the shadow was just a shadow. I was doing my job."
"You should have reported it immediately," Imani snapped from the driver's seat. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. "You acted like a rogue."
"I'm in the car now, Imani. Drop it."
His voice cracked—just slightly—on the last word. Enough to show agitation. Not enough to show guilt.
Aiysha's eyes found his in the rearview mirror.
Obsidian. Ancient. Terrifyingly perceptive.
She said nothing.
The silence stretched until the only sounds were the soft ticking of the windshield wipers and the low rush of the heater. Sweat broke out along the back of Kokujin's neck despite the chill still clinging to his clothes. He could feel her reading him the way she had always read people—layer by layer, lie by lie, until only the raw truth remained.
Finally—after what felt like an eternity—she looked away.
"Don't let it happen again," she whispered.
The words were soft. Almost maternal.
They landed like a death sentence.
Later that night, in the sterile silence of his room on the forty-second floor of the Grand Imperial Hotel, Kokujin did not sleep.
He sat at the black glass desk, the only light coming from the cold blue glow of his laptop screen. It carved harsh, jagged shadows across his face, turning his cheekbones into blades and his eyes into hollow pits.
He was done waiting for permission.
Done waiting for Aiysha to decide when and how the Mori family would be approached.
Done pretending Nao Kinomoto could humiliate him and walk away untouched.
His fingers moved across the keys with the speed and precision Imani had drilled into him over years of late-night lessons. Digital footprints were never truly erased—they only grew fainter if you knew where to look.
He started with the obvious: Nao's public social media, her carefully curated Instagram grid of luxury lunches and designer outfits. Then her mother's high-society blog—endless posts about charity galas and "raising a perfect daughter." Then her father's business records—public filings, shareholder reports, discreet mentions of quiet donations to the right politicians.
He built the map.
Nao was smart. Very smart. But arrogance was her weakness, and arrogance always left trails.
She believed she was untouchable because her father was a "good man" who saw no evil in his princess. She believed her porcelain mask was flawless because no one had ever dared to crack it in public. She believed she could pivot from Kokujin to Hiroki Mori the moment a bigger prize appeared and no one would notice the switch.
She was wrong.
Kokujin realized something important as the hours ticked past midnight: he didn't need to kill her. He didn't need blood. He needed exposure. He needed to tear that perfect mask off in front of the exact audience she had spent her life trying to impress—the high-society circles, the influencers, the Mori family itself.
But there was something else.
As he cross-referenced the GPS logs from the afternoon—logs he had pulled from the family's private tracking system—he noticed the timing was too perfect. Two hours in Roppongi for appearances. Exactly three and a half hours at the Kinomoto residence. Not a minute more. Not a minute less.
A schedule.
A performance.
"She's a professional liar," Kokujin whispered to the empty room. A dark, twisted grin slowly spread across his face, splitting the blue light into something feral. "But I'm a professional hunter."
He wasn't just angry anymore.
He was obsessed.
He wanted to know—needed to know—exactly what had happened during those three and a half hours. Every detail. Every sound. Every surrender. And once he had it, he would use it like a blade to choke the life out of every social ambition Nao Kinomoto had ever nursed.
He didn't care anymore if Aiysha found out.
He didn't care if she decided he was too volatile, too dangerous to keep on the board.
He wanted to see Nao bleed—not with red, but with shame, with the collapse of everything she had so carefully built.
He closed the laptop with a soft click.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling window, the rain continued to fall in silver needles against the glass.
The fuse was lit.
And this time, Kokujin intended to watch it burn all the way to the end.