Moon sat at the metal desk in his room, a thin sheet of intelligence spread before him.
The paper was made of fire-resistant material, its tiny print packed with every detail on the target.
Matsumoto Masahiko, sixty-two, a veteran opposition lawmaker from the People's Livelihood Party, had held a safe seat in Kansai for twelve years.
He publicly championed local welfare issues and won reelection after reelection on promises to support small and midsize businesses. Behind the scenes, he had deep ties to several major Kansai construction firms, and his political donations consistently ranked among the party's top three.
He had one well-known hobby—collecting antique swords.
He owned more than twenty Japanese swords, mostly from the Edo period. According to the intelligence, at precisely three every afternoon on the fifteenth of each month, he went alone to his private villa in Setagaya and spent two hours personally maintaining the blades in an underground collection room.
The intelligence team concluded that Matsumoto would be alone in the collection room during that time, with all security personnel remaining aboveground. It was the best window for an assassination.
The report mentioned no scheduled meetings and listed no other visitors.
Night Abyss's intelligence team had compiled the report after half a month of surveillance. They had even noted the Nara deerskin cloth he used to wipe down his swords.
At 2:45 p.m., in the backyard of the private villa in Setagaya.
Moon lay along a thick branch amid the dense canopy of a camphor tree, like a hunter lurking in shadow.
His long black coat blended into the shade. A matte mask covered most of his face, leaving only his dark-blue eyes visible, as still as a bottomless sea.
Through the gaps in the leaves, he carefully counted the security guards patrolling below.
They