Chapter 16

There was no defense system there, but it held all the research materials Kitada Hiro had amassed in his lifetime.

If only he could get his hands on those materials...

Kitada Hiro kept his eyes fixed on Kamiki Yūhaku. The moment Yūhaku turned to look at Kitada's students, Kitada pulled a gun from behind his back and began firing without bothering to aim for vital points. The force of the shots sent Yūhaku flying, slamming him against the opposite wall.

"Go!" Kitada Hiro shouted. "Take the materials and get out of here!"

"But hasn't he already been shot?" One of the students didn't understand. "There's no way he's still alive after taking so many bullets."

"What do you know? Any of you!" Kitada Hiro roared. "He was the successful artificial ability user from back then. His ability...!"

"Is defense," Kamiki Yūhaku said. He raised his head, a smile in his red eyes. Blood ran down the wall, but he was smiling. As everyone stared at him in horror, he raised his gun and fired at the console beside him, and the crackle of electricity rang out.

Kitada Hiro stared at the white ability energy flowing over him, a hint of excitement in his eyes. "You can control your ability perfectly now?"

"I knew it, I knew it!" Kitada Hiro shouted. "Defense is the best offense. That's the most powerful ability!"

"Shut up."

Kamiki Yūhaku shot him in the arm. Kitada Hiro screamed and clutched his arm, his forehead covered in cold sweat, but he was still smiling.

"Are you taking revenge, Prototype Otsu No. 0? But let me tell you, you'll never be able to root out the experiments. That's great science, a great experiment." Kitada Hiro sneered. "So what if you kill me? Human desire is endless. There will always be another test subject, and no one can stop the desire for strength!"

Listening to Kitada Hiro, Kamiki Yūhaku suddenly laughed, as if he had heard a joke.

"Isn't it a little too funny to use all of humanity as an excuse?" Kamiki Yūhaku kept laughing, his laughter almost obscuring his real voice. "Human desire? The next test subject? I don't care about any of that!"

"Of course, I'm going to enjoy myself first."

Kamiki Yūhaku spread his arms, and the crow flew up from his shoulder.

"Let's all be buried here together. After all, uprooting someone's ambitions until there isn't even a trace left is my favorite thing to do."

At the Special Division for Unusual Powers, Ango Sakaguchi looked at the file in his hands. After a moment, he picked up the phone.

Only after Osamu Dazai answered did Ango Sakaguchi speak. "I may have... found him."

Ango Sakaguchi smoothed the creases in the old resignation letter with his fingers, a trace of uncertainty in his voice.

Kambe Kazuha, a genius surgeon trained by the government, had resigned as deputy director of Yokohama's largest hospital fifteen years ago. Despite everyone's repeated attempts to persuade him to stay, he had left and never returned, and his whereabouts remained unknown. He had been a doctor dispatched overseas back then, and had entered the French Concession after the explosion as an accompanying physician.

His resignation had also come right after that mission.

If all of that wasn't enough to show that he was the person who had saved Kamiki Yūhaku, there was another coincidence that Ango Sakaguchi couldn't ignore.

On the day Kambe Kazuha resigned, he had picked up a crow with a broken wing. That Crow had still been young enough to be learning to fly. Its feathers had not yet fully grown in when it fell and broke its wing, leaving it unable to fly again.

Ango Sakaguchi couldn't deceive himself.

That crow was probably the one Kamiki Yūhaku always kept by his side.

Chapter 16

The flames burned on, staining the autumn sky a brilliant red.

By the time Kamiki Yūhaku walked out of the fire, the sky had grown dim. The setting sun and the burning flames melded together. Kamiki Yūhaku spread his arms, and the crow descended from the sky onto his shoulder and began pecking wildly at his hair.

"Little Crow." Kamiki Yūhaku covered his hair. "I'm fine, really. Don't pull my hair."

The crow flapped its wings and cawed nonstop, refusing to listen like a sulking child.

Kamiki Yūhaku didn't mind and let the crow make his already untidy hair even messier.

"I'm really fine, Little Crow. I won't die." Kamiki Yūhaku reached up and stroked the crow's feathers, his voice genuinely gentle. "Using it is disgusting, but it's because I have this ability that I've been able to stay alive all this time, right?"

As if it really understood Kamiki Yūhaku, the crow stopped pecking at his hair. It stared into his eyes like a person, then flapped its wings and flew straight into the sky.

Kamiki Yūhaku watched the crow helplessly. "In human years, you're a middle-aged crow in your forties or fifties. Don't be so childish."

The crow cawed once, then turned and flew away.

Kamiki Yūhaku was a little surprised. This was the first time the crow had left him of its own accord. He hurried after it. "Wait, Little Crow!"

He ran after the crow and turned a corner. Looking at the empty street, Kamiki Yūhaku tilted his head, puzzled. Just then, he heard footsteps. He turned around, and the next moment saw Chūya Nakahara walking out of a nearby alley.

Kamiki Yūhaku looked at Chūya Nakahara, then gave him a gentle smile as bright as the sun.

"Oh? Mr. Nakahara, what a coincidence," Kamiki Yūhaku said with a smile. "I didn't expect to see you here."

Chūya Nakahara stared at him. A moment later, he sucked in a sharp breath and hurried over.

He grabbed Kamiki Yūhaku's arm and began tugging at his clothes.

"Hmm, isn't this a little too intimate?" Kamiki Yūhaku tilted his head and spoke in an innocent tone.

"Intimate, my ass!" Chūya Nakahara pulled his clothes open. "You're hurt this badly. Doesn't it hurt?!"

The moment the words left his mouth, Chūya Nakahara regretted them. Dead silence fell over the scene.

Damn it, did I mess up?

He should have known that Kamiki Yūhaku couldn't feel pain anymore and might not even realize he was injured, yet he had blurted out something like that. He had come here to have a proper talk with Kamiki Yūhaku, not to rub salt in his wounds.

"...Sorry." Chūya Nakahara managed to squeeze out an apology.

But Kamiki Yūhaku laughed. He looked at Chūya Nakahara gently before speaking. "It hurts a lot, so will you bandage me up?"

"But is that really all right? I attacked the Port Mafia not long ago."

"We'll talk about that later." Chūya Nakahara stiffly avoided the question and pulled Kamiki Yūhaku along. Worried that Yūhaku would run away like before, he held tightly to his wrist, ready to use his ability to hold him back at any moment.

But Kamiki Yūhaku unexpectedly didn't resist, calmly allowing him to take him to a nearby private clinic.

The doctor was a black-market physician from the underworld. The medical facilities weren't very good, but his skills were excellent. Chūya Nakahara had brought injured subordinates here before, and they had all recovered well.

Chūya Nakahara watched the doctor remove a bullet from Kamiki Yūhaku's body and then wrap the injured area in bandages. Kamiki Yūhaku calmly watched the doctor cut into him without even blinking, as though the doctor were cutting not his body, but a mere piece of meat.

That experience had completely changed Kamiki Yūhaku's life, pushing him further and further down a twisted path until, in the end, he no longer seemed human.

Finally unable to bear it, Chūya Nakahara turned and walked out of the clinic. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and put it in his mouth, then leaned against the wall outside the clinic and looked at the sky. His heart ached, and an indescribable feeling slid from his nose down into his chest, full of uncontrollable bitterness.

He had actually quit smoking long ago, but now he didn't know what to do and had no way to vent his emotions, so he could only hold a cigarette in his mouth, adding to his gloom.

Just then, Kamiki Yūhaku, his wounds now bandaged, was driven out of the clinic by the irritable doctor, startling Chūya Nakahara. The two watched the clinic door slam shut so hard that it even shook a tile loose from the roof. It hit the ground with a crack and shattered.

Chūya Nakahara stared at the tile in shock, then looked at Kamiki Yūhaku. "What did you do?"

"Nothing much, really." Kamiki Yūhaku looked utterly oblivious. "I just had a brief chat with the doctor about his love life when he was young."

Chūya Nakahara: ...

"The flowers he grows are nice. I like them," Kamiki Yūhaku added.

"And?"

"I tried to exchange that information for his flowers," Kamiki Yūhaku concluded. "It didn't work. What a shame."

Chūya Nakahara: ...

What exchange? That was obviously a threat!

"Forget it. I don't grow flowers anymore anyway," Kamiki Yūhaku murmured. Then he called out to That Crow in the dark. "Little Crow? Little Crow, where are you?"

"Come back, it's time for dinner. I'm all bandaged up now. I promise I won't get hurt next time, okay?"

Listening to him, Chūya Nakahara suddenly felt like laughing. He walked over to Kamiki Yūhaku. "You came with me just to get the bullet taken out and make your crow come back?"

"Is there a problem?" Kamiki Yūhaku gazed calmly at Chūya Nakahara.

In the moonlight, Kamiki Yūhaku's figure was indistinct, but Chūya Nakahara could see his face with surprising clarity. As always, he wore a faint smile, his gaze calm and gentle. Although he was looking at Chūya, it was as if he wasn't looking at anyone.

There was something too unusual about his gaze. Whether he looked at you or not, it gave him the appearance of being cut off from the world.

"No, there isn't." Chūya Nakahara crushed the cigarette in his hand. "You need to rest. Do you know you're covered in bandages?"

"It's fine." Kamiki Yūhaku's voice was light and airy. "Getting hurt means the strongest defense. One injury is enough to block all future injuries."

"Getting hurt is actually a safeguard."

Chūya Nakahara grabbed Kamiki Yūhaku, who was looking ahead and preparing to leave. "What are you even talking about? You don't really think that, do you?!"