Shirou and the Home Invader / Is Shirou Lying?

Isaka was utterly confused, his mind a jumbled mess, as if filled with lead. However, Isaka managed to regain his composure. He frowned, his face tense, and glared at Shirou as he picked up the newspaper beside him.

Because he discovered a life-or-death problem.

"You have a gun?" The newspaper reports mentioned several victims who were shot and killed.

Chapter 1171 Shirou and the Burglary Robbers

The girl was born into a happy, middle-class family with three younger siblings who were still in school.

As the parents were leaving, they stroked the girl's head and said this:

"You're the older sister, so you have to protect your younger siblings."

That very afternoon, four menacing-looking, seemingly mentally unstable thugs broke into the house. They were robbers who wanted to rob the house while the adults were away.

The girl and her younger siblings were caught and treated like small animals, pushed to the ground.

My younger siblings can't do anything but cry.

"Shut up! I'll kill you all!" the thug shouted angrily.

The girl hugged her younger siblings, trying to comfort them, but what could her frail little body do?

The thugs ransacked the house, smashing and ransacking everything, but they couldn't find anything valuable. They were furious, cursing and their eyes were red.

At that moment, one of the thugs suddenly thought of something, and walked up to the girl with a smile that was even more terrifying than the other menacing faces.

"Little sister, your parents must have taught you that there's a place in the house where you keep your valuables. If bad people come in, you should obediently hand over what's inside to them."

"I don't know, my parents didn't say anything," the girl said timidly, but she dared not back down, afraid that the assailant's gaze would shift from her to her younger siblings.

"Okay, let's play a game! The time limit is ten minutes. You find something valuable and bring it to us. If you can't do it, I'll kill one of your younger siblings when the time is up!"

"Hahaha! That's so cool!"

"Pay attention, bro!"

"No! Don't kill my younger siblings!"

The girl cried out for mercy, but her cries were drowned out by the jeers of the thugs' accomplices.

"Then hand over your valuables right now!!!" the thug roared angrily, shoving the girl toward the stairs.

With tears in her eyes, the girl was forced to find something valuable in the house, but at her age she didn't understand what was valuable and what wasn't. The girl dragged the heavy vase, desperately trying to get back to her younger siblings, but the vase was too heavy and caused her to fall down the stairs.

The girl was in so much pain that she couldn't even get up. Ten minutes had passed, and she watched helplessly as...

Based on the foresight, the police arrived 30 minutes later.

But the hero who brings miracles arrives; he doesn't wait until tragedy strikes to appear.

The moment the thug reached for the first child, a Black Shadow appeared, swiftly and decisively pulling the trigger on the thug's forehead, then laying him flat on the ground.

"You... you bastard! What did you do to my brother?"

The Black Shadow slowly turned his head, and at the same time, the barrel of his gun was pointed at these people.

"He... he has a gun!"

The thugs were no match for the man, and one by one they fell to the ground.

Thirty minutes later, the police arrived and found the living room in complete disarray, smashed and damaged, with four thugs lying quietly on the carpet, still holding the sticks they had used to vandalize the living room.

When the police questioned the children about what had happened.

"This world has heroes!"

"Heroes saved us!"

The girl held hands with her younger brother and sister, formed a circle, and jumped up happily.

At Isaka's house.

"You said you saved four children from that family?" Isaka pulled out a newspaper clipping.

The sign above reads, "Four unemployed youths were shot and killed by a mysterious person during a robbery."

The autopsy revealed that the four victims had taken large amounts of banned drugs and were in a state of mental abnormality at the time. They used knives, iron bars, and baseball bats to damage furniture. Fortunately, the four young children in the family only suffered minor injuries.

Is he a dark hero?! Or a terrifying assassin?

Isaka pointed to the newspaper clipping.

"If you committed these acts, then you've fired a gun. Why would you have a gun? Is your company involved in gun trafficking? As a self-defense tool?"

"I got it by chance at the very beginning, but I probably had some prior knowledge of it, because I understood the weapon's structure as soon as I picked it up. I knew how to disassemble and reassemble it, and how to maintain it," Shirou said.

"Maybe you've studied it?"

"Yes, because I don't have any memories of that time. I only have basic common sense," Shirou said honestly.

"No memory, but possesses common sense? You wouldn't happen to be a clone, an experimental subject of evil scientists in a secret society, would you?" Isaka's brow furrowed deeply.

"To be specific, there are some differences, but you can think of it that way. Now I can live alone and I even got a job as a salesman," Shirou said with a proud expression.

'While people who are self-reliant and work hard are certainly admirable, they're not like you!'

"Anyway, after that incident, I started to wonder if the messages I received from my fantasies were about something that would trigger certain events—events or people that would take lives? However, even though I thought about it, it was hard for me to believe. After all..."

"After all?"

"Doesn't this just turn into a comic book?"

"No, no, your suspected clone status is bizarre enough already. If I wrote what you just said into a novel, people would laugh at me." Isaka emphasized, "And right now you're telling me a story that's straight out of a manga."

Shirou continued:

"So, I've decided to go check out the address I saw in my imagination first."

Then...

Shirou then recounted how he obtained the gun: the other party was a three-story detached house, and he knocked on the door posing as a security company salesman.

The person who opened the door was a thin, middle-aged man with rather long hair. He didn't look like the type to have a proper job; perhaps he was one of those small groups whose parents made a fortune during the bubble economy.

Normally, when he's making a sales pitch, he'll leave before the other person shows any displeasure. But that day, he stubbornly kept changing the subject.

Perhaps he was too persistent; for a moment, the man's anger erupted like magma, his face contorted with rage, but he quickly suppressed it, adopting a Noh mask-like expression, and invited Shirou into the house.

"Oh, okay? Then let's come inside."

Although Shirou was surprised, he still went inside. The house seemed to have been designed by a famous real estate developer; the stairwell and spacious corridor gave it an impressive feel, and the carpet in the living room was very comfortable to walk on.

Then, the dark muzzle of a gun suddenly appeared in front of Shirou's eyes.

The real issue facing us is one concerning the soul.

Chapter 1172 Did Shirou Lie?

The man holding the gun was the owner of the house, a thin, middle-aged man who gripped it tightly and pointed it at Shirou. His nostrils were flared wide. His elderly parents, both over seventy years old, had recently passed away, and no one was there to take care of him anymore. So, he was thinking that after spending all the savings his parents had left him, he would probably end his own life.

Although the specific details are unclear, the middle-aged man obtained a gun. After acquiring it, he wanted to use it, and it is said that he was very distressed about it. At first, he would catch nearby cats, shoot them, and then throw them away on garbage day.

In short, he wanted to test the reaction of the creature that had been shot before deciding whether to use it on himself.

Shirou described it so vividly that the listeners felt as if they were there themselves.

"That person just wanted to shoot someone, anyone."

At first, he targeted animals like cats, but soon he wanted to shoot bullets into humans' stomachs.

Human rebelliousness and desires tend to escalate gradually; once one desire is satisfied, another will arise.

A man will instinctively yearn for weapons like firearms, and once he gets his hands on one, he'll want to use it, just like a child who has broken off a branch will want to swing it at the roadside flowers and grass.

The man dreamed of the moment he would shoot someone, so he decided to target an insurance company employee who was coming to his home soon.

He eagerly awaited that day, counting down the days like he was looking forward to Christmas, but to his surprise, a security company salesman showed up first, and he was incredibly annoying, so he decided to change his plans.

As long as I get a Christmas present, it doesn't matter if it's not from Santa Claus. As long as I can fire a gun, I don't care who I hit.

"At that time, I was fighting him to avoid being shot, like in those movies, right? When we were wrestling, the recoil caused the trigger to pull, and at first I thought I had been shot. I slowly stood up and carefully looked at my stomach and shoulder; there was no bleeding, and I didn't feel any pain. It was the man who couldn't stand up."

The young man recounted the events calmly, as if they hadn't happened to him.

"In short..." Isaka pointed his index finger at Shirou, "That was when you killed someone for the first time and got a gun."

"Um, teacher, would you like to take a look?" Shirou chuckled, neither confirming nor denying, and then pulled a black pistol from his briefcase.

"No, no, no!" Isaka waved his hands repeatedly. He didn't want to take something so dangerous. What if he left fingerprints and was wrongly accused?

Isaka rolled his eyes. He wasn't very good at dealing with mentally unstable teenagers, and at this moment he felt a sense of bewilderment, as if he regretted not having studied enough when he needed to use his knowledge.

Isaka faced the gun, unable to relax. After all, the young man hadn't just happened to ring his doorbell; could it be that he was hallucinating a scene of himself killing someone, about to pull out a gun and end it all on the spot?

Isaka lowered his head, his eyes unfocused. He didn't even know what he was supposed to be looking at; his eyes just swayed unconsciously from side to side across the newspaper.

"Hahaha! You little rascal!" Isaka shouted, laughing.

"What's wrong, teacher?" Shirou asked, looking at the startled man with a puzzled expression.

"You almost fooled me! Are you from some theater troupe? Or some prank show?"

"Teacher? Why did you say that?"

"Ha! Although I don't know if it was someone who instructed you, something they were hiding from you, or a mistake, I, Isaka, have already seen through everything!" Isaka grabbed a newspaper clipping with a date on it!

It's February 22, 2022!

"This is news from over a decade in the future! You little raccoon! Kim Tae-ma has already shown her face!"

"Haa..."

"Well, you admit defeat now! Your clumsy tricks couldn't possibly fool me! That gun of yours is just a prop, isn't it!" Isaka laughed as he grabbed the pistol from the table.

However, when he picked up the pistol, which he intended to hook with his fingers, he was surprised by its unexpected weight, almost causing him to stumble.

Could this be genuine?

"... Although your test hasn't gone that far yet, the date on the news is correct," Shirou said calmly, looking at Isaka.

"Eh... a test?" Isaka patted the weight of the pistol, looking at Shirou in surprise, unable to find any trace of a joke in it.

Just then, Shirou suddenly jumped. He seemed to have received some information, heard some sound, or felt something. In any case, Isaka didn't notice anything.

"They're here!"

"They're here? What's here? Is it another one of your suspicious hysterias?" Isaka asked.

Sometimes I wish it were true, but reality rarely does.

Bang!!!

From the outermost iron gate of the Isaka residence came a clattering sound as something heavy struck the gate, knocking it away and causing it to fall to the ground.

"What happened?"

"The villains are here!" Shirou said calmly.

"Evil... person? Do you mean the enemy?" Isaka asked in surprise, looking out the window.

Bang! Bang!

Outside stood a man dressed in a spiked vest that resembled that of a dystopian overlord. His head was adorned with a tall, wiry frizzy head dyed a striking gold, with the rest of his head shaved. He had no eyebrows, and his lips and nostrils were pierced with rings.

The man's hands transformed into a giant chainsaw on one side and a grappling hook for spinning heavy construction machinery on the other, making him resemble a destructive machine.

The man had already broken through the outermost iron gate and entered the Isaka family's green garden.

The man's eyes flashed red light, his gaze fixed on Isaka's location.

Isaka quickly crouched down from behind the curtains, looking in panic at the brown-skinned youth beside him, hoping to glean some courage from him, even if the other was an assassin.

"Master... Shirou-kun, did he just see me?! What do we do?"

"It's alright, Teacher Isaka. I came here to save you," Shirou said with a calm smile.

Shirou came here because... Isaka was being targeted. Although he hadn't actually made up his mind about whether to save him or not before coming here, he has now made his decision.

"Isaka! I've come to take your dog's life! For the future of our Enemy Alliance!"

"Hahaha! As long as I kill you all, I'll be the savior of all my enemies!"

The man with the Pheasant Head shouted with wild laughter.

His chainsaw pierced the Isaka family's door, cutting it open bit by bit; the wooden door offered no resistance whatsoever.

"Waaaaah!! My door! My house! Why are you trying to kill me?!" Isaka out, clutching his head in despair.