Bait and angling

"Too many openings?"

Ryuk's voice sounded like a rusty spring scraping, laden with undisguised mockery. He pulled out another rotten apple, this one greenish-black, its skin shriveled and giving off a thick, nauseatingly sweet stench of decay. Juice streamed down as he bit into it, but his scarlet eyes stayed fixed on me without blinking, as though he were observing a lab mouse behaving strangely.

"Leaving traces on purpose? Luring them in? Wow, is what humans call a 'battle of wits' just a contest to see who's stupider?" He cackled, his voice grating. "Do you have any idea what might be watching you? Your little head could burst open any second, you know."

I ignored his noise. My fingertips slowly stroked the cold casing of the burner phone.

Openings.

The security upgrade at the Hongfu Building. Red paint. The precise timing. What was the other party implying? That they had access to inside information, that they might even have been monitoring Zhang Hongfu before his death? Or were they simply bluffing, trying to unsettle me with that air of superiority?

"Quite a performance." That line deserved closer attention. Not "crime," not "massacre," but "performance." He saw this as a show. A show that needed an audience, perhaps even... commentary.

He was enjoying it.

And he was confident he could catch me out.

My heart beat steadily and forcefully. What coursed through my blood wasn't fear, but an almost searing calm. Yes, this was how it should be. A chess player needed an opponent; a god needed a skeptic. One-sided slaughter was too dull. His arrival had turned this purge into true... art.

But I needed to be sure. Sure of the limits of his abilities, sure of the resources behind him, sure whether he was a lone wolf or the leader of a pack of hunting dogs.

I needed more elaborate bait. Bait that could serve several purposes at once.

The mouse pointer moved across the screen in the dim room, its light illuminating my expressionless face. News sites, social media, anonymous forums... streams of information flowed past like filthy river water. I needed a target, one that would strike a chord with the public while hitting precisely at a sensitive point.

Found one.

Qian Hui. Chief quality officer at a major food company. Just that morning, an internal test report had been leaked anonymously, revealing that the production line for the company's bestselling children's formula had long been using severely mold-contaminated ingredients. The company knew, but had buried the report and continued selling the product. Public outrage had only just begun to build, yet the power of money was already swiftly suppressing it. Trending topics were removed, posts deleted, and discussion steered toward "a smear campaign by competitors."

Children. The most inviolable line of all.

Was I angry? A little. But mostly, I saw a cold opportunity. The perfect target. The harm to society was grave enough, the law was absent once again-at least for now-and... behind this company lay a tangled web of far-reaching connections. Going after him meant stirring up an enormous hornet's nest.

A hornet's nest often held more than one hornet that wanted you dead.

He was the one.

I opened the Death Note. A chill emanated from its faintly yellowed pages.

The pen hovered.

Qian Hui.

Cause of death: ...It needed a little theatricality. It needed to convey the fullest possible sense of "judgment," while leaving that observer enough "openings" to analyze.

[Cause of death: At precisely noon tomorrow, in the square outside the company's headquarters, he will publicly drink ten liters of milk prepared using the company's formula from the affected batch, then cut open his own abdomen with a utility knife. Before dying, he must loudly confess his specific crimes, including when the facts were concealed, the batches involved, and the names of those responsible for the internal decisions.]

As I wrote down those details, I felt a cold pleasure. Ryuk stopped chewing and tilted his enormous head, seemingly taking a flicker of interest in my "creativity."

"Cutting his belly open? And drinking milk? Wow, now that's a vivid image," he remarked, his tone giving no indication whether he was impressed or even more disgusted. "You're a little more... twisted than I thought. Interesting."

The next day, at eleven fifty in the morning.

The square outside the company's headquarters bustled with people, office workers hurrying back and forth. No one noticed a middle-aged man in a suit, his face as ashen as a corpse's, carrying an enormous, opaque silver insulated container as he walked stiffly toward the flagpole in the center of the square.

He stopped and mechanically opened the lid. The container was filled to the brim with milky-white liquid.

Precisely noon.

As though someone had flipped a switch, he abruptly hoisted the container and began frantically pouring its contents into his mouth! Milky liquid spilled from the corners of his lips, ran down his chin and neck, and soaked his expensive suit. Drinking caused him excruciating pain. His body convulsed violently, his eyes stretched so wide they seemed about to split, yet he could not stop.

Stunned by the horrifying scene, people around him stopped in their tracks. Some took out their phones to record.

"I am guilty!" He abruptly lowered the empty container, his voice hoarse and shrill as it pierced the noise of the square. "Last October! Batch TX-0782! The mold contamination in the ingredients was forty times the limit! I knew! I signed off on it! General manager Wang Dehai ordered it! Liu from the quality inspection department..."

His confession was clear and specific. Every name, every date struck the listeners' eardrums like a hammer.

Then, before countless terrified eyes and cameras, he suddenly pulled an office utility knife from his briefcase, tore open his shirt, and slashed viciously into his bloated abdomen!

Blood mixed with milk that had not yet been fully digested gushed out.

Screams tore through the midday sky.

Videos and reports spread like a virus, beyond the power of anyone to suppress. A towering wave of public fury ignited in an instant.

In my room, the screen filled with footage of the scene from every angle and comments refreshing at a frantic pace.

In the corner, Ryuk wasn't eating an apple for once. He merely watched the screen, letting out a low laugh like a leaky bellows.

I waited.

Sure enough, less than ten minutes later.

The burner phone rang again.

Still no number.

I picked it up and answered.

This time, the silence on the other end was shorter.

The electronic voice spoke, its pace seemingly a barely perceptible fraction faster.

"The third person on the list, Liu Jianming, is the deputy director of the city's Food and Drug Administration."

He paused for half a second, as though deliberately leaving that brief gap for me to absorb it.

"You've moved too many people's cheese, Judge."

"Careful,"

"Or that cheese will crush you."

The call ended.

I slowly lowered the phone, walked to the window, and lifted a corner of the curtain. Traffic streamed along the street below, no different from any ordinary day.

But he knew. He knew I had written down names from an internal list. He even knew the identity of the third person on it.

He wasn't guessing. He was confirming.

I slowly exhaled. White mist spread into a small, blurred patch on the cold windowpane.

The bait had been cast.

The fish had not only caught its scent, but bared a hint of its fangs.

The game had finally become interesting.