Ryuk the goofy husky

118 Jianguo Road. The gates of the Linhai City Public Security Bureau.

Sunlight glinted harshly off Kannazuki's yellow helmet. His electric scooter came to a steady stop outside the guard booth's security line.

Kannazuki planted one foot on the ground and lifted the plastic takeout bag. Four iced Americanos, condensation beading on the cups.

Chen Lei stood on the steps. He ground out his cigarette butt and walked down. The distance between them closed to one meter.

The armed police officer's gaze settled on Huang Tian. Inside the command center, dozens of pairs of eyes were fixed on the surveillance feed on the big screen.

The air froze.

Kannazuki raised his hand and held out the bag.

"Order ending in 7732. Your coffee."

His voice was steady, without the slightest tremor.

Chen Lei reached out to take the bag.

He deliberately pressed his fingers down, brushing his rough fingertips against the inside of Kannazuki's wrist.

His pulse.

Chen Lei was checking Kannazuki's heartbeat.

An ordinary person's heart would inevitably race under a criminal police captain's scrutiny and probing.

Kannazuki's pulse remained at seventy beats per minute.

Steady, strong, without the slightest fluctuation.

Something flickered in Chen Lei's eyes. He let go of Kannazuki's wrist and lifted the coffee.

"Coming all this way to deliver a few coffees can't earn you much."

Chen Lei stared at Kannazuki's eyes above his mask.

"The app assigns the orders. Just making a living."

Kannazuki sounded dull and wooden.

Chen Lei stepped closer and lowered his voice. "That order on the second basement level of the Golden Sand Building last night-was it an easy delivery?"

A direct probe. Chen Lei was trying to force Kannazuki into a slip.

Kannazuki did not step back. He looked into Chen Lei's bloodshot eyes.

"Anywhere's fine, as long as they pay the delivery fee.

Officer, please leave me a five-star review. They dock my pay if I'm late."

Kannazuki pointed at his phone screen.

Chen Lei stayed silent for two seconds. He took out his phone, scanned the code, and confirmed receipt.

"Take it slow out there. Linhai City hasn't been peaceful lately." Chen Lei put his phone away.

"Thanks for the warning."

Kannazuki mounted his electric scooter and twisted the throttle. The wheels turned, carrying him away from the bureau gates.

Chen Lei remained where he was, watching Huang Tian's retreating figure merge into traffic.

Two in the afternoon. Sunlight scorched the asphalt.

Kannazuki rode his electric scooter through three blocks, turning down four consecutive one-way streets without permanent surveillance cameras.

He checked his rearview mirror. No vehicles were following.

Chen Lei had not sent anyone to tail him at all costs. It was the right call from an exceptionally seasoned criminal police captain.

Without solid evidence, alerting an extremely dangerous serial killer would only cause the trail to go cold.

Kannazuki parked his electric scooter at the entrance to the alley below Building 3 of Happy Home.

Carrying his helmet, he walked up to the third floor.

He stopped outside his rented room. Kannazuki did not immediately reach for his keys.

He bent down, bringing his eyes level with the gap around the door. The strip of clear tape he had attached to the doorframe ten centimeters above the floor that morning was still intact.

The bit of pencil dust he had stuffed into the keyhole had not fallen out either.

No one had been inside.

He opened the door, entered, and locked it behind him. Kannazuki drew the blackout curtains, completely shutting out the afternoon sunlight. The room fell into darkness.

He stripped off his sweat-soaked yellow windbreaker and tossed it into a plastic basin.

He walked to the sink, turned on the tap, and splashed cold water onto his face.

Water dripped from his chin into the sink with soft pattering sounds.

Kannazuki raised his head and looked at himself in the mirror. His eyes betrayed nothing.

He began reviewing those ten seconds outside the bureau gates.

Chen Lei's deliberate touch when taking the coffee had been a pulse check.

When someone was extremely nervous, lying, or under immense pressure, their sympathetic nervous system became excited, and their heart rate inevitably soared.

It was an instinctive physiological response, beyond an ordinary person's control.

But Kannazuki was not an ordinary person. The most important thing he had learned during those years growing up in the orphanage was how to control his emotions.

He could not cry when beaten, could not complain when hungry, and had to endure being bullied.

By adjusting his breathing, he could forcibly lower his heart rate.

Chen Lei had found no tell in his pulse. But that did not mean he had abandoned his suspicions.

"The police have a very clear chain of reasoning now."

Kannazuki walked to the bed and sat down, clasping his hands over his knees. He murmured to himself, "They used big data to find the overlaps in my movements.

They found last night's purchase-and-delivery order at the Golden Sand Building.

They know I came into close contact with Lei Bao."

"But they have no evidence."

"Zhao Gang died of a heart attack.

Wang Hu died of a heart attack. Zhang Wei died of heart failure.

Sun Ming killed himself.

Lei Bao's windpipe was blocked by a foreign object."

"No murder weapon. No traces of poison.

In modern forensic reports, every one of these deaths is an accident or a sudden illness."

Kannazuki raised his right hand and looked at the lines on his palm.

"Chen Lei's only option now is to watch me around the clock.

Monitor my phone. Keep my home under surveillance.

He wants to see exactly how I kill people."

Continuing to purge the evildoers on his list under tight police surveillance would become exponentially more difficult.

Once he made contact with a target and that target subsequently died, the police would immediately arrest him and subject him to intense interrogation, even without direct evidence.

He had to break this deadlock.

He had to create a perfect alibi.

He had to let the police see with their own eyes that, at the exact moment the target died, he, Kannazuki, could not possibly have committed the crime.

"Having fun?"

A rough, hoarse voice, dripping with mockery, suddenly rang out in the cramped rented room.

Every muscle in Kannazuki's body instantly tensed.

He did not turn around immediately. His right hand shot beneath the mattress and closed around a sharpened three-edged military spike.

He was the only person in the room.

The door and windows were locked.

The voice had come from the ceiling.

Kannazuki tightened his grip on the spike, spun around, and looked up.

He saw a monster.

A humanoid creature floated in midair.

He stood over two meters tall, with extraordinarily long limbs.

A pair of enormous black feathered wings sprouted from his back.

His face was deathly pale. His bulging eyes were bloodshot, and his mouth stretched into an exaggerated curve, exposing a mouthful of uneven, pointed teeth.

He wore a tattered black leather outfit, with a thick iron chain hanging at his waist.

Kannazuki's pupils contracted sharply.

Until now, he had always believed the black notebook was some kind of high-tech device, or an unknown weapon from a higher-dimensional space.

He had even speculated that it was a gene-targeted killing tool developed by some financial conglomerate.

He had never considered anything supernatural.

But now, this god of death, something that existed only in anime and fantasy, had materialized before his eyes exactly as depicted.

Death Note. Ryuk, the goofy husky.

Kannazuki did not loosen his grip on the military spike.

He stared at the monster floating in midair. His breathing stopped for two seconds, then steadied again.

"You can see me." Ryuk flapped his black wings once and landed on Kannazuki's battered computer desk.

He crouched there, his enormous body occupying half the desktop. "Human, you're very interesting.

More interesting than most of the owners I've seen.

You actually had the nerve to walk right into the police's den and make a delivery."

Kannazuki said nothing. He was assessing the situation before him.

Gods of death existed.

Physical attacks would be useless.

The other party had not killed him immediately, which meant he was bound by some rule-or simply wanted to watch the show.