At eleven that night, December 20, less than three hours after Popov died.
Kannazuki refreshed the trending page on an overseas social media platform.
The top hashtag wasn't an oligarch's name.
It wasn't a corporate scandal, or even "heart paralysis."
It was four letters.
#KIRA
Number one worldwide.
He scrolled down.
Second: #KozlovShareholdersMeeting
Third: #BelousovVideo
Fourth: #GrayWolfEmailLeak
Fifth: #KiraEndsTheWar
The fifth hashtag's popularity curve shot almost straight up. It had gone from zero to tens of millions of mentions in less than forty minutes.
Kannazuki clicked it and skimmed a few posts.
A blogger with three million followers had posted a passage.
No image, just text: "Today marks a turning point in human history.
Three men died on the same day, but before they died, they did something the living couldn't-tell the truth."
It had already been reposted more than eight hundred thousand times.
The replies below kept snowballing.
"The truth? They were forced to say it. But who cares? The truth is the truth."
"Kira isn't killing people. Kira is performing autopsies-on the living."
"My mom just called me, crying and asking whether Kira was real. She's sixty-two and never goes online."
Kannazuki closed the comments and switched to a video platform.
The clip of Kozlov being dragged away by security at the shareholders' meeting.
In six hours, its views had surged to 1.7 billion.
Belousov's twenty-seven-minute confession video had nine hundred million.
The compilation of Popov's email screenshots and the phone recording.
They had been edited into countless versions and circulated everywhere, with an estimated combined total of at least two billion views.
Three pieces of content, six hours, more than five billion views in total.
Ryuk floated down from the ceiling and leaned toward the screen to glance at the numbers.
"Five billion? How many humans are