The Scalpel

The screen went dark again, but every pixel of that blurred image seemed to retain a lingering heat, searing my retinas.

An old computer. Leather-bound books. A warm cup.

A deliberately chosen corner, steeped in age and physical substance. Completely at odds with the cold digital ghost he had presented before.

Vulnerability? A disguise? A trap? Or some kind of... weary sincerity?

There was no way to tell. But that was information in itself. He was trying to communicate, in this exceedingly oblique, even clumsy way. He was no longer relying solely on data and models. He had begun offering... imagery.

What did that mean? That the Shepherd's death had truly hurt him? That it had opened some kind of fissure within his system, forcing him to confront me more directly? Or that his personal... curiosity about me had already outweighed his reliance on rules and calculations?

Ryuk clicked his tongue impatiently in the corner, the smell of rotten apples spreading through the air. "One lousy photo? What's that supposed to be? An invitation to tea? The way humans express themselves is so coy it makes me sick."

I ignored him. My fingertips tapped slowly against the cold tabletop, as though knocking on an invisible door.

A response was necessary. But it could not be a direct response to that photograph. That would let him set the pace, trapping me in endless speculation about "authenticity" and "intent."

My response had to be sharper, had to reach beyond that, had to be more... indisputable.

I had to wrench his gaze away from that blurred corner and its attempt to conjure an atmosphere, dragging it back to the bloody tribunal of reality under my control.

I needed a target. That target's death had to be like a precise scalpel, not merely cutting away a piece of rotten flesh, but clearly pointing to a deeper structural problem intimately connected to his world. A judgment he could not explain away as an "accident" or an "internal purge," whose "meaning" he would have to confront.

A nexus... where "evil" and "the system" were seamlessly welded together.

My gaze turned cold and focused, like a sniper steadying his breathing behind a scope. Finance, technology, medicine, the judiciary... which nexus in which field best embodied both the utmost personal corruption and the utmost systemic indulgence?

I found it.

Dr. Black Thorne, chief ethics adviser to the Longevity Project. His public image was that of a refined, mild-mannered academic authority, a star of bioethics who had repeatedly championed "cautious optimism" about gene editing at major international conferences. But unverified leaked documents circulating on the deep web revealed exceedingly covert financial dealings between him and several biotech giants he supposedly "oversaw." He had also used his influence to systematically suppress multiple internal reports on the serious long-term risks of certain aggressive gene therapies, giving those treatments the green light and reaping astronomical profits. Wrapped carefully in academic prestige and ethical terminology, he was a high-level broker clearing the way for capital.

His death could not be a silent disappearance, nor a clamorous confession. It had to be a... public academic collapse. A performance in the very field he took the greatest pride in, tearing his beliefs and his crimes apart at once.

I walked over to the desk. The Death Note lay open without a sound. My pen touched down, steady as stone.

[Black Thorne]

Cause of death: ethical paradox. Time: two o'clock tomorrow afternoon, at the climax of his online keynote address at the Global Bioethics Summit. Cause of death: his brain will become trapped in the most fundamental logical paradox within the ethical framework he himself constructed-a variant of the trolley problem-triggering instantaneous physiological death of prefrontal function. Before dying, he must face the global livestream camera and admit, point by point and in the clearest academic language, the specific facts of his acceptance of financial benefits and suppression of risk reports. He must then derive, live, the conclusion that "current commercial applications of gene editing adhere to the principle of maximum profit, but categorically violate basic biosafety ethics." Finally, on the last page of his presentation, he must use blood-from a nosebleed or intracranial hemorrhage-to write down the key Swiss bank account numbers involved in all his financial dealings.

Location: global academic summit. Cause of death: logical paradox, physiological. Confession: academic language. Evidence: bank accounts.

Every detail precisely targeted his identity and his crimes.

This was no longer death. It was a carefully choreographed piece of... performance art aimed at an entire hypocritical system.

Mentor, I received that "invitation" from your blurred corner.

Now, take a look at my gift in return...

A scalpel.

The next day, at precisely two in the afternoon.

The online livestream of the Global Bioethics Summit reached an unprecedented peak in viewers. Dr. Thorne was in full flow, expounding on "the dynamic balance between technological development and ethical constraints."

"...Therefore, we must believe that, under rigorous regulation and transparent academic consensus, humanity is fully capable of steering the vessel of genetics toward a healthier future..."

His words abruptly caught in his throat.

His face turned deathly pale, his pupils contracting sharply, as though he had seen some horror that existed on the plane of thought.

"No..." he murmured, his voice carried across the world by the microphone. "The premise is wrong... the utility function cannot offset the fundamental risks... unless... unless profit becomes the sole ethical standard..."

He began to ramble, yet his terminology remained academically precise, as though he were conducting an agonizing exercise in live philosophical reasoning.

"...I took money from Gene Genesis... suppressed their long-term toxicity report on primates... and Creation Technology's, too... their off-target effect data was falsified..." He suddenly began confessing, yet his tone was as calm as if he were reading a paper aloud. "...The model shows that the expected net present value of the current rollout strategy is based on a seven-percent discount rate, but if we factor in the risk of irreversible contamination of the ecological chain..."

Splat!

A gush of blood suddenly poured from his nose, splashing onto the speech notes in front of him.

But he seemed entirely unaware of it. With a trembling hand, he picked up a pen, dipped it in his own blood, and rapidly wrote a long string of digits in the blank space on the final page of his presentation-a Swiss bank account.

As he finished the last digit, his body stiffened, and he toppled backward, rigid. His eyes remained wide open, staring at the ceiling, as though he were still contemplating the ethical paradox that had ultimately killed him.

The livestream was cut off amid screams.

But it was already too late.

The world erupted in uproar.

In my room, the screen was filled with explosive news reports in various languages and a frenzy of reposts of Dr. Thorne's final, bloodstained image.

Ryuk's eyes widened. He even forgot to bite into his rotten apple. "Wow... thinking himself to death? You humans... you really do find all sorts of ways to mess yourselves up..."

I waited.

Waited to see how the man who had just sent that vague invitation would respond to this precise and brutal scalpel.

This time, the response came astonishingly fast.

Almost within three minutes of the livestream being cut off.

The phone's screen lit up.

No image. No video request.

Only a single line of white, faintly trembling text, as though the typist's fingers were terribly unsteady.

[...The coffee has gone cold.]

The text remained for five seconds.

Then went dark.

I stared at the screen, black once more, for a long time.

The corners of my mouth slowly curled into a cold, almost twisted smile.

The coffee has gone cold.

Mentor.

So,

you really were sitting at that desk.

Watching the screen.

Drinking coffee.

Now,

it has gone cold.

Was it because my scalpel

was too fast,

too cold?