Flawless Logic

Kannazuki climbed onto his electric scooter and turned the key. The dashboard lit up.

He glanced at the left rearview mirror.

Fifty meters away, the old black Santana sat beneath the trees, its engine still running, faint white smoke drifting from its exhaust.

Kannazuki looked away and twisted the throttle with his right hand.

The scooter rolled smoothly over the speed bump at the exit of Happy Home and merged into the traffic on Changfeng Road.

Inside the Santana.

The veteran detective released the handbrake and lightly tapped the accelerator. The car eased out of its parking space.

"Keep fifty meters behind him."

The veteran detective watched the yellow-clad figure ahead, both hands gripping the steering wheel.

In the passenger seat, the young officer looked down at his police tablet.

On the screen, the red dot representing Kannazuki was moving north along Changfeng Road.

"Captain Chen, the target is moving." The young officer pressed the button on his radio.

"Copy. Stay on him.

Keep a low profile." Chen Lei's hoarse voice came through the speaker.

Three forty in the afternoon.

The sun beat down mercilessly on Linhai City, softening the asphalt.

Kannazuki maintained a steady thirty kilometers per hour on his scooter.

He neither overtook other vehicles nor cut into their lanes, and he stopped neatly behind the line at every red light.

A remarkably law-abiding delivery worker.

Was Ryuk's enormous body hanging upside down from the ceiling?

No, he was now floating above Kannazuki's head.

His black feathered wings spread wide, casting an enormous shadow invisible to ordinary people.

"Those two humans behind you are sticking pretty close." Ryuk grinned, exposing his pointed teeth, and gave a raspy laugh.

"Where are you planning to take them sightseeing?"

Kannazuki ignored him. Steering with one hand, he tapped his phone screen with the other.

The order was twelve kilometers away, bound for Times Square in the High-Tech District.

Half an hour later.

The scooter entered the outskirts of the High-Tech District.

The streets here were broad, lined on both sides with towering buildings clad in glass.

Kannazuki slowed and parked in a marked space by the road.

He pulled out the key and walked toward a trendy milk tea shop on the corner.

The Santana stopped around the corner at the intersection.

The veteran detective picked up his DSLR camera and aimed the lens at the milk tea shop's entrance.

Kannazuki took out his phone and showed the employee his order number.

The employee handed him a paper bag containing four cups of milk tea. Kannazuki took it, returned to his scooter, and placed it in the insulated box on the back.

"Pickup complete. Smooth movements, no unnecessary eye contact."

The veteran detective lowered the camera, his tone steady.

Kannazuki climbed back onto his scooter and rode into a pedestrian shopping street ahead.

The veteran detective pressed the accelerator to follow, then abruptly slammed on the brakes.

Two enormous stone bollards stood at the entrance ahead, with an iron chain strung between them.

Beside them stood a blue sign with white lettering: Pedestrian zone. No motor vehicles.

Kannazuki's scooter slipped through the gap between the bollards and quickly disappeared into the dense crowd.

"Fuck." The veteran detective swore and shoved open his door.

"Out! Follow on foot!"

The young officer grabbed the tablet and rushed out after him.

The two squeezed into the pedestrian street.

Young men and women were shopping all around them, and music from the stores blared deafeningly.

"Where is he?" The veteran detective scanned the crowd.

"Ahead! Three hundred meters away, still moving!" The young officer watched the red dot on the tablet.

They pushed through the crowd and sprinted forward. Sweat soaked their shirts almost immediately.

Kannazuki rode slowly along the pedestrian street's stone paving.

Every so often, he sounded his horn to warn the pedestrians ahead to move aside.

His gaze swept over a glass storefront on his right.

In its reflection, two men in plain clothes were weaving through the crowd, drenched in sweat, their eyes fixed on his yellow outdoor jacket.

The faintest smile curved Kannazuki's lips.

He parked his scooter beside the fountain in the center of Times Square.

He removed the key, opened the insulated box, and took out the paper bag of milk tea.

Turning, he headed toward the Global Center office building on the north side of the square.

"The target has left his scooter and entered Global Center," the young officer reported rapidly into his radio without slowing down.

They rushed to the fountain, glanced at Kannazuki's scooter, and immediately ran toward the office building's entrance.

The ground-floor lobby of Global Center. The air-conditioning was strong.

Delivery riders and office workers collecting packages crowded in front of the four elevators.

Kannazuki stood before the leftmost elevator.

Ding.

The elevator doors opened.

The crowd surged inside.

Kannazuki followed them into the car and stood in the farthest corner.

The veteran detective and the young officer rushed into the lobby. They spotted Kannazuki in the elevator at once.

Both hurried toward it.

The young officer had barely squeezed half his body through the doors when a shrill buzzer sounded.

The overload alarm.

Everyone in the elevator turned to look at the young officer, their expressions impatient and displeased.

Kannazuki stood in the corner with the milk tea in his hand, calmly watching the two men at the doors.

The veteran detective grabbed the young officer by the back of his collar and hauled him out.

"Sorry." The veteran detective nodded to the people inside.

The elevator doors slowly slid shut.

In the final second before the gap closed, the veteran detective caught sight of Kannazuki's utterly unruffled eyes.

"Check the tablet! What floor is he going to?" The veteran detective turned and rushed toward the emergency stairwell at the side of the lobby.

The young officer looked down at the screen. "The red dot stopped on the tenth floor!"

"Take the stairs!" The veteran detective pushed open the heavy fire door and raced upward, taking the steps three at a time.

The young officer followed close behind.

Their heavy footsteps and ragged breathing echoed through the stairwell.

Ten floors of vertical distance. For plainclothes officers who rarely underwent strenuous fitness training, it was sheer torture.

Inside the elevator.

The floor indicator kept changing.

4.

6.

8.

10.

Ding.

The elevator stopped. The doors opened.

Kannazuki stepped out with the paper bag.

The tenth floor housed an internet company's offices. A young woman wearing glasses sat at reception.

Kannazuki walked to the reception desk and placed the paper bag on its marble surface.

"Order ending in 3412. Your milk tea."

The woman looked up and checked the order number. "Leave it here, thanks."

Kannazuki took out his phone, photographed the paper bag, and tapped "Confirm delivery."

The system notification sounded: Order completed.

He slipped his phone back into his pocket.

He turned.

He did not head toward the elevators.

Instead, he walked straight toward the emergency stairwell at the end of the corridor.

He pushed open the green fire door marked "Emergency exit."

Beyond it lay an empty concrete stairwell.

Kannazuki descended two steps and sat down on the landing.

From his jacket's roomy pocket, he took out an unopened bottle of mineral water.

He unscrewed the cap.

He did not drink. Instead, he held the bottle with his wrist resting on his knee.

Ryuk descended through the ceiling and crouched on the stair railing.

"Heh heh heh heh." Ryuk looked down the stairs.

"They're coming. Their heartbeats are as loud as thunder."

Kannazuki gazed into the deep stairwell below.

Hurried footsteps were rapidly approaching from below, accompanied by labored breathing and the rustle of clothing.

The eighth floor.

The ninth floor.

The turn at the landing between the tenth and eleventh floors.

The veteran detective braced both hands on his knees and gasped for air. Sweat dripped from his chin onto the concrete.

The young officer leaned against the wall, his chest heaving, his face deathly pale.

"We're at ten." The veteran detective swallowed, straightened, and reached for the handle of the tenth-floor fire door.

He steadied his breathing, trying to make himself look more natural.

He pushed the door open.

The hinges scraped dryly.

The veteran detective and the young officer looked through the doorway into the corridor.

The corridor was empty.

Only the young woman at reception was there, her head lowered as she drank her milk tea.

The veteran detective's pupils contracted.

Where was he?

He whipped his head around toward the stairwell landing behind the door.

Kannazuki sat on the concrete steps.

His yellow jacket stood out sharply in the dim stairwell.

Holding the bottle of mineral water, he sat relaxed, watching the two sweat-drenched men with calm eyes.

The air froze in that instant.

The veteran detective's hand remained stiff on the door handle. The young officer abruptly held his breath.

The pursuers and the pursued.

The hunters and their prey.

In that instant, their roles were completely reversed.

Kannazuki did not stand. He raised the mineral water bottle and offered it to them.

"Climbing ten floors is tiring." Kannazuki's voice echoed through the empty stairwell without the slightest inflection. "Want some water, officers?"

The veteran detective's expression darkened at once.

He released the door handle and straightened, his gaze locked on Kannazuki's eyes.

"How did you know we were police?" The veteran detective did not take the water. His voice was cold and hard.

Kannazuki withdrew his hand and set the mineral water bottle on the step beside him.

"Linhai City is a very safe place.

Ordinary people don't sit outside a residential complex for two hours in a Santana with the engine running."

Kannazuki folded his hands over his knees. "Nor would they run the length of a pedestrian street and then climb ten flights of stairs in temperatures above thirty degrees just to chase a delivery worker."

He paused, looking at the veteran detective's calves, which trembled slightly from exhaustion.

"Most importantly, your eyes.

Only police officers would look at an ordinary citizen the way you look at a criminal."

The young officer stepped forward, his hand instinctively reaching toward his waist.

The veteran detective raised a hand to stop him.

"Kannazuki." The veteran detective called his name, his tone openly intimidating.

"Since you knew we were following you, you still dared to lead us in circles all over the city.

You've got some nerve."

"I wasn't going in circles."

Kannazuki took out his phone, opened his order history on the food delivery app, and turned the screen toward the two of them.

"I was working. A twelve-kilometer delivery, with a fee of fifteen yuan.

I just followed the route the system planned to deliver the food. You're the ones who couldn't keep up."

The veteran detective clenched his jaw as he looked at the clearly displayed delivery routes and completion times on the screen.

Flawless logic.

A perfectly closed loop of actions.

They had watched Kannazuki accept orders, pick up food, and deliver it. There had been no suspicious contact, no violations of any kind.