Warm, carrying a salty dampness. They were Haku's tears, falling one by one onto the cold back of Mizuki Han's neck, where the chill radiating from his skin quickly froze them into tiny beads of ice.
What a nuisance.
That was the first thought to cross Mizuki Han's mind. He loathed such weakness, such meaningless emotional outpourings. In the worldview he had built, tears were the privilege of the weak, the wails of the defeated.
He wanted to scold her, tell her to shut up, crush this vulnerability completely with the coldest words he could muster.
But he couldn't make a sound.
His throat felt packed with gravel, and every breath brought a tearing pain. The brutal point-blank self-detonation had not only sacrificed his left arm; it had also driven the full force of the blast's recoil into his internal organs.
He could feel his lungs wheezing like a broken bellows, and several of his ribs seemed to be fractured. Every inch of his body was groaning under the strain.
Even more humiliating was the faint but unmistakable support behind him.
Haku's thin shoulders were pressed hard against his back. She wrapped her slender arms around his waist and tried with all her might to drag him off the cold floor. Her strength would have been negligible to an adult, but for Mizuki Han, who couldn't bring himself to move even a finger, it was the only thing keeping him from collapsing completely.
"Brother Han... get up... please, get up..."
The girl's sobs were stifled and desperate, her voice trembling in a way that grated on his nerves.
Mizuki Han didn't answer. For the first time, his heart, wrapped in absolute reason, felt such a clear sense of helplessness in his own body. He needed the help of the "burden" he saw her as to take this final step.
That realization hurt him more sharply than the agony of losing his arm.
"Shut up."
At last, he forced two hoarse syllables from deep in his throat. His voice was quiet, but the command in it left no room for argument.
Haku's sobs stopped at once. Like a startled little beast, she stiffened, but her arms tightened around him.
Mizuki Han wasted no more words. He focused every last bit of his strength on his right arm and legs, gritting his teeth until they creaked. He braced his right elbow against the floor and kicked with his legs. With Haku dragging him with all her strength, his broken body finally began to inch forward, awkwardly and slowly, toward the Energy Hub Control Console glowing a dim blue several dozen feet away.
That short distance now seemed as vast as a chasm between life and death.
A horrifying trail of dark red blood mixed with blue ice crystals marked the metal floor behind him.
It was the path of his burning life.
At last, he reached the console. The complicated instrument panel and densely packed wires blurred and warped in his vision, which was darkening in waves from blood loss. He found the reserved port: the final detonator terminal for all the Explosive Tags in Sector F.
He pulled out his last spool of detonator wire. Its other end was connected to the compact detonator in his hand.
All he had to do now was accurately insert the thin metal wire, barely thicker than a strand of hair, into the tiny port, no bigger than a pinprick.
A task that would normally have been absurdly simple had become impossible.
His right hand was trembling violently, beyond his control, from blood loss and pain. The fine wire quivered between his fingertips like a willow branch in a gale, impossible to line up with the target.
Once.
Twice.
The tip of the wire scraped past the edge of the port several times, throwing off tiny sparks.
Cold sweat beaded on Mizuki Han's forehead. His breathing grew more and more ragged, and his vision grew increasingly hazy.
[Warning: Countdown to toxic gas injection, 11 hours and 21 minutes remaining...]
The cold calculator in his mind continued to run. But his body was on the verge of giving out.
Just as he was about to give up from sheer exhaustion, a pair of small hands tentatively settled over his trembling right hand.
It was Haku.
At some point, she had knelt beside him. She wasn't crying anymore. Her little face, streaked with tears and grime, was set in a determination far beyond her years.
With her own small hands trembling all the while, she carefully cupped Mizuki Han's large hand, then gently pressed her cheek against the back of it.
"Brother Han... I... I'll help you..."
Her voice was as faint as a mosquito's buzz, yet her determination allowed no refusal.
With her body, her warmth, and her weight, she tried to counter the uncontrollable tremor rising from within him.
An unfamiliar sensation traveled from the soft warmth against the back of his hand to Mizuki Han's nerve endings.
It wasn't chakra, nor any kind of energy. It was simply the purest will of a fragile life.
Foolish.
Mizuki Han scoffed inwardly.
But... it worked.
With his tacit approval, Haku focused every bit of her attention. Her clear eyes fixed on the tiny port as if it were her whole world. With her help, Mizuki Han's trembling hand miraculously steadied, just a little.
Now!
A cold glint flashed in Mizuki Han's eyes, and every stray thought was wiped away. He poured the last of his strength into his fingertips and, in that brief moment of steadiness, guided the fine wire toward the tiny hole that held so many lives in its balance and thrust it in!
"Click."
The faint snap was almost too quiet to hear.
The wire slid securely into the port.
Beneath the console, a green indicator light marked "Connection Successful" slowly came on.
Then the blood-red LED on the detonator in Mizuki Han's hand lit up as well, beginning to blink slowly and rhythmically at a steady pace.
Once.
Again.
Like a devil in hell, beating out the countdown to destruction.
Success.
The web of death woven from countless Explosive Tags across the entire Anbu base had finally been completed.
All he had to do was press the button, and this impregnable underground fortress would collapse from within, layer by layer, amid a chain of explosions, until it became an iron tomb for everyone inside.
A wave of exhaustion crashed over him. Mizuki Han's taut nerves suddenly slackened, his vision went black, and his body toppled backward against his will.
"Brother Han!"
Haku cried out and threw her frail body behind him, cushioning his fall with herself.
Leaning against Haku, Mizuki Han gasped for breath. He looked at the red light flashing on the detonator in his hand. For the first time, his dim eyes held none of the cold calculation that treated everything as a chess piece.
He lowered his gaze to the girl holding him up with her own body.
She was still trembling, and her face was even paler than his. But her eyes were remarkably bright. The fear was gone, replaced by the relief of someone who had seen a plan succeed.
She was relieved that he had succeeded.
That realization put a tiny crack in Mizuki Han's frozen heart, so faint he didn't even notice it himself.
Perhaps... this tool was more "useful" than he had imagined.
For the first time, he felt a faint sense of regard for Haku that went beyond her "value as a tool."
"Go."
He summoned the strength to utter a single word.
Haku nodded firmly. Dragging him, embracing him, and supporting him, she struggled to get to her feet and staggered toward an abandoned escape shaft in a corner of Sector F.
It was the only safe spot in the entire demolition plan.
But just as they dragged their broken bodies around a corner in the passageway, they both stopped short.
A strange, faintly sweet smell, like rotting flower nectar, drifted toward them from ahead.
At the end of the passageway, pale yellow smoke poured with a hiss from the ventilation ducts covering the walls, thick enough to see.
As if it were alive, the smoke clung to the ground and slowly spread toward them, swallowing everything in its path.
Poison gas!
The final act of the Great Purge had begun!
Mizuki Han's pupils contracted sharply. He looked at the poisonous fog drawing closer, then at the only way to the escape shaft, already shrouded in smoke.
At last, his gaze fell on the detonator in his hand, its light flashing blood red.
There was no hesitation on his face. No struggle.
Only the familiar madness and resolve to drag everything into destruction.
He raised his hand and, with a bloodstained thumb, pressed down hard on the red detonator button without the slightest hesitation!
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