(づど)
After reading the email, Akai Shuichi could not help repeating in a low voice, "An occasional flash of inspiration, a surprising unauthorized action?"
As he pondered Uzo's wording, he realized that Uzo must already have known that "Okiya Subaru" had slipped into the Twin Towers just now—when the two of them had faced each other from afar across the blown-up Connecting Bridge at the broken edge of the 60th Floor, Akai Shuichi had still hopefully thought that, standing in the shadows, Uzo might not have seen his face clearly and had only noticed that there was someone there.
...But now, that possibility had been cleanly snuffed out.
—Either Uzo had exceptional eyesight.
Or he had long anticipated that "Okiya Subaru" would go into the building to join the excitement.
"Everything he has done and is about to do seems as though it will be seen through by him... He is truly an opponent I cannot ignore. Fortunately, judging from Uzo's wording, he may not have discovered the disguise yet. He merely thinks that Okiya Subaru's unusual behavior does not resemble that of an ordinary peripheral organization member."
Akai Shuichi closed his phone and handed it to Okiya Subaru.
Okiya Subaru slowly took it, wearing the complicated expression of someone accepting a death notice.
He quickly set the phone on the nearby table, studied Akai Shuichi's expression, and felt his scalp tingle. "You are not seriously planning to keep using this identity and remain his 'subordinate,' are you?"
...It felt like he would be summoned to some secluded place and riddled with bullets. No, given Uzo's style, perhaps he would be made to lie down in some square a bomb-crazed maniac had just passed through, then—Boom—blown up in an instant, without even scraps left behind.
Yet that really was what