138 Akechi, Draw the Blade

To Reid, the young man had felt unusual at first glance.

It was an indescribable sense of incongruity.

The strangeness did not come from his ill-fitting attire—a Katana slung across his shoulder pressed a faint indentation into his black bulletproof jacket, subtle patterns shifting across its sheath. Though exquisitely dressed in combat gear, he did not resemble a fighter so much as a fragment of an old-era silhouette cut from an ukiyo-e painting.

Nor was it because of that overly refined face, with bone structure proportions that would cost at least fifty thousand Eurodollars in Night City to replicate—and require the exclusive connections of a black-market Ripperdoc.

What truly made Reid's pupils contract were the man's relaxed muscle lines and the utterly unguarded fingers hanging at his sides. On this battlefield shredded by crossfire, his body was completely at ease; even the folds around his shoulders and neck retained the natural curves of someone out for a stroll.

Militech bullets were drilling honeycomb-like holes into the concrete walls, while Arasaka Security agents returned fire with grenades. Amid the deafening gunfire and explosions, the young man stood beside the collapsing stairs of an abandoned building.

He stood on the ground floor of the abandoned building as leisurely as if he were in his own courtyard. Facing Reid, who had broken through two defensive lines in succession to reach him, he showed not the slightest panic, nor did he make the slightest move. He merely stood there and watched Reid calmly, as though admiring flowers in a garden.

An indescribable sense of unease rose within Reid.

He knew what he looked like—at his age and with his features, he could be considered decent and handsome, but he was nowhere near the kind of man one would call a pretty boy. Yet the