Daredevil and Daredevil

Daredevil?

Matt's keen hearing caught the word, and his expression changed.

"How did he know?"

At that moment, Matt felt as though he had stepped into an enormous trap.

He suspected that the man had deliberately appeared outside Hell Paradise to wait for him.

Who exactly was this man, and when had Matt given himself away?

What was his reason for approaching him?

Things that had seemed perfectly ordinary now looked premeditated as he recalled them.

At John's words, the bodyguard by the door gave him a long look, then turned, opened the door, and went inside.

John glanced back at Matt, a little surprised by how conflicted the lawyer seemed.

What was bothering him?

He had no idea that his mention of Daredevil had sent someone's mind racing.

Daredevil had been John's nickname at school.

Even now, Slytherin at Hogwarts still had stories about Daredevil eating young wizards who wandered around at night.

The matching names were pure coincidence.

He had only tossed it out to make casting a spell easier.

Although John knew a little about Marvel, he did not remember its more obscure characters at all.

While Matt was still worrying about some conspiracy, the bodyguard who had gone inside returned.

"You can come in," the bodyguard said.

"See? Easy," John told Matt.

Matt tightened his grip on his white cane and smiled. "Of course."

He was already prepared to fight at any moment.

John nodded and walked inside.

He could use Legilimency.

But Legilimency had a requirement.

Eye contact.

Asking John to make eye contact with a blind man...

So he could only vaguely sense Matt's unease.

He simply took it as nervousness about meeting Simon.

They walked through the door.

The first thing they saw was a group of men Simon had stationed there.

The men said nothing as the two entered, merely staring at them in oppressive silence.

John's expression remained unchanged, and Matt was blind.

They walked down the passage, and another door opened at the far end.

A beautiful office came into view.

Simon, the owner of the place, sat in a comfortable chair, wearing a floral shirt and puffing on a cigar.

"Daredevil?"

Simon looked to be in his forties, with a black beard and a sneer at the corner of his mouth.

His unsettling eyes swept over the two men.

With the white cane in Matt's hand, no one considered him a threat. Most of their attention fell on John.

"I have a question I need you to answer." Unconcerned, John walked up to Simon and stared into his eyes. "Why did you blow up my car?"

"Blow up your car?" Simon looked disdainful. "Who the hell are you? Why would I bother?"

He had no idea who John was. He had only let him in because the name Daredevil had made him think of the vigilante.

"Oh?" John feigned confusion. "That's not what the fried chicken guy said."

The fried chicken guy?

Simon's dismissive expression changed. He stared at John. "Who are you?"

"You don't even know who you're trying to kill?" John shook his head helplessly. His pupils gradually narrowed into vertical slits, and his voice sank. "My name is John Wick."

"Wick?"

At that surname, Simon's face changed drastically.

He reached toward a drawer, but a pencil pierced the back of his hand.

"You're misbehaving," John said casually. "I really don't like that."

"Tell me, where is the person you paid a million to?" John's shadow fell over Simon.

Those vertical pupils filled Simon with terror.

Cold sweat broke out all over him. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His fingers were rigid; even moving a fingertip was more than he could hope for.

Fear spread through his body.

"The Ten Rings!" Simon gave John the answer he needed.

The fear vanished. He gasped for breath and slumped in his chair.

John did not pull out the pencil. Instead, he adjusted his sleeves and smiled. "Tell me where those people are."

"I don't know... Aah!"

A second pencil plunged into his other hand. John leisurely took a fountain pen from the pen holder on the desk.

"You have one more chance." He smiled, looking like a devil in Simon's eyes.

Simon felt as though he were being tortured, with a hole in each hand.

John removed the pen's cap. His casual manner made Simon tremble all over.

He did not know why he was so terrified, but he knew that the fountain pen would pierce some part of his body just as the pencils had.

Driven by an overwhelming desire to survive, he confessed.

John dipped the fountain pen into the blood on the desk and wrote the address on the back of a sheet of paper.

"Thank you for your cooperation."

He capped the pen and returned it to the holder.

He stepped aside and gestured invitingly to Matt.

"Your turn."

"What?"

Matt was startled. He had been ready for a fight.

But John's swift, decisive actions had made all his preparations useless.

"Aren't you struggling with a case, Mr. Lawyer?" John asked meaningfully.

The Bliss Brand.

Matt understood what John meant.

He drew a deep breath. As a hero who roamed the night, he had never been in this position before.

This was the first time he had encountered something handed to him on a platter.

John even offered a friendly reminder. "Don't make too much noise, or the people outside will come in."

"No, no!" Simon shook his head frantically. He could not understand why his bodyguards had let these men in.

He had completely forgotten that he himself had wanted a look at this supposed Daredevil.

What he did not know was that the two Daredevils were not the same person.

Matt stopped advancing.

He was not the kind of hero who would readily kill someone.

"Let's go," Matt said.

"Maybe a little effort from you could spare one girl, or even a dozen, from harm." John stared at Matt. "Don't let your mercy hold you back."

Matt "looked" at John and asked, "What about you? Why don't you do it?"

"Because I prefer watching other people make choices," John said with a smile.

It was a little twisted pleasure of his.

Someone had once forced him to choose, too. He had later thrown that man into a cage.

"Don't kill me. I can pay you. Lots of money." Simon cried as he edged his right foot toward a button beneath the desk.

With both hands pinned down, he pressed the button with his right foot.

Beneath his seemingly pitiful sobs, viciousness showed through.

Anyone else would have missed the soft click as the button sank.

But of the three men in the room, two turned toward Simon at the same time.

Simon grinned savagely. "You two bastards can die here!"

The door burst open, followed immediately by a hail of bullets.

Without hesitation, Matt and John vaulted over the desk.

The men outside had finally realized they needed to rescue their boss.

John pulled the two pencils out of the desktop.

Simon was about to run when John caught his foot and dragged him back. Grabbing Simon's hair with one hand, he slammed his head into the floor.

The heavy blow killed Simon outright.

He wiped the pencils clean on Simon's clothes.

Unhurried, he said casually, "All right, Mr. Lawyer. Maybe I really do need you."

John meant he needed someone to handle a lawsuit.

Matt, however, was already convinced that John knew his identity.

Now that they were in danger, he could no longer afford to keep hiding it.

The sounds of bullets ricocheting off the walls painted a picture of the scene outside in his mind.

When the volley ended and the gunmen stopped firing, he moved.

Without hesitation, he darted out, his white cane lashing like a whip. One strike shattered both a gun and the bones of the hand holding it.

In the narrow corridor, the blind man was like a tiger among sheep, swiftly taking down the armed men with his formidable fighting skills.

John put away the wand he had drawn and shrugged. "All right, this lawyer's brave."

He walked outside. Of the seven or eight men in the corridor, only one remained standing.

Matt sprang onto the wall, kicked off, and knocked the man unconscious with a flying punch.

He panted heavily. Even with his extraordinary senses, Matt was still an ordinary man.

John offered an exaggerated, entirely insincere remark. "I guess lawyers are under a lot of pressure these days."

"Stop pretending!" Matt heard more footsteps outside. All traces of his earlier joking manner vanished, his voice turning serious. "You know who I am!"

"Who you are?"

"Daredevil!" Matt gripped his white cane tightly.

"Uh..." John thought for a moment. "Would it make you feel any better if I told you I meant Daredevil, not the vigilante?"

"It's all the same!" Matt was furious. Now his identity as Daredevil might be exposed, and dispensing justice at night would be the least of his worries.

Even Fudge would be dragged into it.

He pointed to his ears. "I heard everything. Ever since you showed up at Hell Paradise, you've been getting close to me, planning to use me!"

John ran through what he knew. Right, Daredevil had not appeared in the Avengers. He did not know him.

"All right, then what if I told you..." John looked at Matt sympathetically. "Daredevil was my nickname at school?"

"Your... nickname?"

Matt had been listening for John's heartbeat the entire time. Unfortunately, he had heard nothing.

But he seemed to detect a different meaning in John's tone.

"Then when you told him you were Daredevil..."

"Oh, we needed some excuse to get them to let us in," John said matter-of-factly. "See? It worked pretty well."

Matt fell silent.

If this was a misunderstanding, then he seemed to have just exposed his own identity.

Just then, the footsteps beyond the second door grew more numerous.

Simon's men had arrived.