“I didn’t know the late company president very well, but she really trusted you. Said you were a talented secretary, and she was so glad she hired you. Why did you do it?”
“N-no… I didn’t. She…” The secretary took a step back, utterly overwhelmed. “I was nothing more than a capable secretary to her. That was it. But for me…that wasn’t enough.”
All of a sudden, Fukuzawa heard a thud from the room next door. He turned around in surprise and violently threw the door open. The room was empty. The chair was on the floor, but its legs where the rope tied around were snapped off. All that was left was the chair itself—the assassin was gone.
“Get down!” Fukuzawa screamed out as he took another step farther into the room. Lowering his hips, he slid a leg across the floor, drawing an arc to turn his body before ramming his shoulder into the opened door. There was some resistance. The assassin, who was hiding behind the door, let out a suppressed groan. Fukuzawa then pulled the door while reaching for the hit man, but nobody was there. The hit man wasn’t on the floor, either. He had leaped into the air, almost touching the ceiling as he dodged Fukuzawa’s grasp. Still in midair, he kicked off the wall and got far away from the door before kicking off the ground and creating even more distance between them. With the sack still on his head and his arms tied behind his back, the assassin lowered his stance as if he were a wild animal. All he could use freely were his legs, yet he was able to evade Fukuzawa’s preemptive strike with no sight or hands. Fukuzawa unconsciously clenched his teeth.
“I don’t want to fight you,” said the assassin through the sack on his head. His voice was muffled; it was high for a man’s voice but low for a woman’s, and it projected well.
A boy.
Fukuzawa didn’t reply. Hardly even leaning forward, he kicked off the floor and closed the distance with a technique known as shukuchi—a bit of footwork that used the martial artist’s body weight to instantly bring them into range with their opponent. From an outsider’s perspective, though, it would probably have appeared as if Fukuzawa disappeared and teleported in front of his opponent.
After covering several yards in the blink of an eye, Fukuzawa reached around and grabbed the back of his opponent’s collar, but the assassin didn’t even try to resist. Instead of fighting it, he jumped backward with it, pulling Fukuzawa and himself near the wall. By the wall was a desk with a fountain pen, a notepad…and the assassin’s pistol. While being pushed, he reached back for his gun. That was his plan all along. However, it would be impossible for him to use it properly with his hands tied behind his back, Fukuzawa determined. He kept hold of the assassin’s collar and decided to slam him against the wall. The desk was knocked over, sending stationery all over the room. With his opponent against the wall, Fukuzawa pressed his elbow against the assassin’s chest, holding him in place like a thumbtack. The assassin’s hand holding the gun creaked and cracked as it was smashed between his back and the wall. There was almost nothing he could do with the pistol in this position.
“Drop the gun,” demanded Fukuzawa. “You may be my business rival, but you’re only guilty of trespassing as of now. You’d get off easy.”
“I don’t need forgiveness.” The hit man’s voice was close to a murmur, since his lungs were being crushed. “There is no forgiveness in this world. There is only retaliation—revenge against those who betray you.”
The assassin then lifted his feet off the ground. Even Fukuzawa wouldn’t be able to support the young man’s weight with only one arm. The assassin’s back slid against the wall to the floor before he suddenly twisted his body around completely, hips-first. He immediately fired his gun from behind his back. There were two shots.
“Guh…”
Fukuzawa turned around. Two bloody holes were carved in the secretary’s chest in the next room over. Blood gushed out of the wounds, dyeing his chest crimson. The assassin had shot the secretary—with his hands tied behind his back.
The secretary looked at Fukuzawa one last time, his expression twisted in agony, before drawing his last breath and collapsing. The hit man’s shots were unbelievably accurate. Despite not being able to see and having his hands tied, he was able to precisely hit his target. To top it all off, he paid no attention to Fukuzawa in spite of the fact that they were in the middle of battle.
“There is only retaliation—revenge against those who betray you.”
Fukuzawa faced the assassin, then slammed him against the floor. He kicked the gun into the corner of the room.
“You bastard…!”
He ripped off the sack covering the assassin’s face. He was young, with short hair that had a reddish tinge to it. The boy’s dark-brown eyes were frighteningly vacant, void of even a fragment of emotion. The young assassin didn’t say a word; he stared back at Fukuzawa.
Fukuzawa suddenly recalled a rumor he had heard about a young redheaded hit man who wielded two pistols and coldly killed his targets while never showing any emotion. His skill with a gun was supernatural, and he could fire from any position and still not miss. It was as if he could see the future. He was a living nightmare for people like Fukuzawa whose job was to protect others.
That young assassin’s name was something like…Oda.
Fukuzawa grabbed the assassin’s collar, then wrapped his other arm around the boy’s neck and put him in a rear naked choke, restricting the blood flow to his brain via the carotid arteries. If this kid was that assassin, then leaving him conscious in this room was no different from letting a cat play on the control panel to a nuclear bomb. The boy looked back at Fukuzawa with lifeless eyes—not the way one would expect a boy to look at the person choking them unconscious. Before long, the assassin quickly passed out without even showing any signs of resistance. He probably wasn’t interested in anything other than shooting the secretary. Only after making sure the assassin was unconscious could Fukuzawa finally let out a deep breath.
“So that’s the hit man?”
Fukuzawa turned around toward the voice coming from the other room. “Call an ambulance. And the police,” he ordered.
“Wouldn’t the police be enough? I mean, the secretary’s already dead. More importantly, I’m out of a job now, so could you help me out?”
Fukuzawa’s head was spinning. What was wrong with this kid? What just happened?
“Call an ambulance first!” Fukuzawa stood up and began to walk away.
“Hey, don’t just leave me here. What happened to taking me out to eat? You said it like I could go wherever I wanted and eat whatever as much as I wanted. That’s what you meant, right? You meant we could talk about my situation while we eat, right? Right?”
Fukuzawa somehow managed to keep his legs from giving out from underneath him.
“You—”
The young man with cropped hair beamed, radiating innocence and mirth.