Public Execution

The streets were muddy after the rain, puddles reflecting the gray sky.

Outside Linhai City No. 1 Middle School, a crowd had packed together, bringing traffic to a standstill.

Several drivers honked impatiently.

White banners with black lettering stretched along both sides of the school gates: Give me back my son's life! Sun Ming is a murderer!

A middle-aged woman knelt in the standing water.

Her hair was disheveled, and she held a photograph of a boy in a death grip.

The boy in the photograph wore a school uniform. His smile was innocent, his eyes bright.

"Please, if anyone saw anything... please come forward and testify..." The woman shuffled forward two steps on her knees and kowtowed to the crowd.

Her forehead struck the asphalt hard. Bright streaks of blood seeped out, mingling with the muddy water.

Parents waiting to collect their children and passersby surrounded her. Some sighed, some shook their heads, and some filmed on their phones. No one stepped forward to help her up.

Kannazuki pulled up on his electric scooter at the edge of the crowd.

He glanced at his phone screen. He had fifteen minutes before his next delivery was overdue.

He lowered his helmet visor and quietly listened to the conversations around him.

"Lin Xiao, a first-year student, fell from the roof of the school building yesterday afternoon.

He died on the spot," a man in glasses said in a low voice.

"Didn't the police report say it was suicide?" the woman beside him asked.

"Suicide, my ass. The whole class knew Sun Ming had been bullying him for a year. He forced him to eat chalk, poured cold water into his bedding in the dead of winter, and even filmed it and posted the videos in their group chat."

"The police didn't do anything?"

"What could they do? Sun Ming's only fifteen, two months short of sixteen. Not old enough to be sentenced. His dad's the big boss of the Construction Group, with connections everywhere. They paid a little compensation, and the school made Sun Ming withdraw. That was that."

"That vicious at fifteen. Imagine what he'll be like when he grows up."

"That's the world we live in. If you've got money and power, even the law has to step aside.

Poor woman. A single mother, and he was her only son."

Kannazuki looked away. He twisted the throttle and steered his scooter around the crowd, kicking up a small splash of muddy water.

Fifteen. A minor. Exempt from criminal punishment.

Kannazuki silently repeated those words.

The law had limits and blind spots. But Shinigami did not.

He opened his delivery app. The system assigned him a purchase-and-deliver order.

Pickup location: Sakura Flavor, an upscale Japanese restaurant downtown.

Delivery location: Villa 8, Section A, Imperial View Bay.

Kannazuki glanced at the order notes: [Must arrive within half an hour. One minute late, and I'll keep filing complaints until your account gets banned.]

Recipient: Young Master Sun.

Kannazuki studied the surname and address. Section A of Imperial View Bay was where Linhai City's wealthiest residents lived.

The boss of the Construction Group lived there.

Kannazuki put on his Bluetooth earpiece and accepted the order.

Half an hour later. The entrance to the Imperial View Bay villa complex.

Carrying an insulated bag of Japanese food, Kannazuki was stopped outside the barrier gate.

The security guard wore a crisp uniform, with a rubber baton hanging at his waist. He looked Kannazuki up and down, inspecting his mud-spattered yellow delivery uniform.

"No delivery riders allowed inside. Leave it in the delivery locker."

The guard's tone was curt. He reached out to block the handlebars.

"The customer requested delivery to his door." Kannazuki took out his phone and showed him the order page.

The guard impatiently pressed the radio on his shoulder. "Villa 8, Section A, there's a delivery. Does the homeowner authorize entry?"

A piercing crackle came through the radio, followed by the breaking voice of a boy going through puberty. "Let him get his ass in here.

I paid for it. Why the hell should I go downstairs and get it myself?"

The guard frowned. "Young Master Sun, property management regulations say outside vehicles..."

"Fuck your regulations! You're just a gate guard. Why are you running your mouth? Want me to have my dad fire you tomorrow?"

The guard's face turned livid. He gritted his teeth, released the radio button, and raised the barrier. "Go in. Don't wander around. You couldn't afford to pay for any landscaping you damage."

Kannazuki ignored him and rode into the villa complex.

Expensive Buddhist pines lined both sides of the asphalt road.

Villa 8 in Section A was a detached villa with its own garden and outdoor pool.

Kannazuki parked in front of the ornate iron gate and rang the doorbell.

The video intercom lit up. There was no picture on the screen, only sound.

"It's here?" Sun Ming's voice came through.

"Your delivery," Kannazuki said to the camera.

"I'm not eating sashimi from this place anymore.

Take that pile of crap and leave it beside the trash cans at the back door."

Sun Ming chuckled over the intercom, his voice full of nasty mockery. "Remember, beside the trash cans. Don't dirty my tiles, you stinking delivery boy."

The intercom cut off.

Kannazuki looked at the dark screen. He wasn't angry.

A dead man wasn't worth getting angry over.

He carried the insulated bag around to the villa's back door.

The back entrance was a service passage with two enormous waste-sorting bins. They gave off the sour, rotten smell of food scraps.

Kannazuki walked over and carefully set the two-thousand-yuan Japanese meal beside the bins.

He raised a hand and touched the side of his helmet. A miniature dashcam was secured there with black electrical tape.

The lens angled upward.

Kannazuki stepped back twice, stood beside his scooter, and looked up at the villa's second floor.

The second floor had an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. The curtains were half open.

Splash!

A balloon filled with water dropped from above.

It struck the scooter's handlebars squarely. Water sprayed everywhere, soaking Kannazuki's trouser legs.

A boy in designer pajamas stood at the second-floor window.

Sun Ming.

He still held two water balloons. Leaning against the glass, he made faces at Kannazuki below and thrust up his middle finger.

"Broke-ass loser! Having fun?" Sun Ming shouted, doubling over with laughter.

His fifteen-year-old face was filled with pure, undisguised malice.

The malice of someone who had never faced punishment and had no respect for life.

Kannazuki stood where he was. He neither dodged nor shouted abuse.

He merely tilted his head up slightly and watched Sun Ming calmly.

The miniature camera on his helmet blinked with a faint red light.

Ten seconds.

Enough. Facial features captured.

Kannazuki took a rag from his storage compartment and wiped the water off the handlebars.

Seeing that Kannazuki wouldn't talk back, Sun Ming lost interest. He casually hurled the remaining two water balloons against the wall, then turned away from the window.

Kannazuki wiped away the water and tossed the rag into a trash bin. He got on his scooter and left Imperial View Bay the way he had come.

Two in the afternoon.

An abandoned alley in Linhai City's old district. Moss covered the walls.

Kannazuki parked his scooter and took off his helmet.

He took his newly purchased tablet from his backpack and connected it to the dashcam with a data cable.

The footage from earlier played on the screen.

Kannazuki pressed pause. The image froze on Sun Ming's arrogant face.

Narrow, triangular eyes and a mocking smile. That face stood in stark contrast to the innocent, smiling face in the photograph Lin Xiao's mother had held up.

Kannazuki unzipped his outdoor jacket and took the black Death Note from its inside pocket.

He opened it to the fifth page.

The tip of his rollerball pen hovered above the black paper.

Sun Ming. Under sixteen. Exempt from criminal punishment.

The image of that mother desperately kowtowing surfaced in Kannazuki's mind, followed by Sun Ming's raised middle finger.

The Minor Protection Law protected minors, not underage demons.

He put pen to paper.

[Sun Ming.]

Once he had written the name, Kannazuki did not pause.

He was testing the notebook's boundaries.

The test with Liu Qiang had established its physical limitations.

This time, he wanted to test the notebook's ability to orchestrate complex events in specific settings.

He had seen the news while making deliveries.

The boss of the Construction Group had booked a banquet hall at the Grand Hyatt, Linhai City's largest five-star hotel, for that evening to celebrate his company securing a new parcel of land.

All of Linhai City's prominent figures would be there. Senior police officials would probably attend as well.

If, at that gathering, this little demon who had escaped the law were to die in an extraordinarily dramatic, extraordinarily gruesome way...

It would be more than punishment for a bully. It would be a public execution of the privileged class that had shielded him.

Kannazuki stared at the "Cause of death" field.

The pen scratched softly across the paper.

[Cause of death: At eight o'clock sharp tonight, during his father's banquet, walk to the very center of the banquet hall.]

[Pick up the microphone and loudly recount every detail of his prolonged bullying of Lin Xiao and how he forced him to jump from the building.]

[After finishing his account, use a wineglass to cut open...]