Thud.
Behind Kurokawa,
the iron door of the solitary cell closed with a clang.
The cell he faced with his back to the small door was small.
No—cramped.
It felt as though he could hardly breathe.
He had been to prison a few times, but this was his first time in solitary.
The fluorescent light illuminating the cell was dim, and the air was damp, as if mold lingered within it.
The cot was thin, and the blanket was coarse.
‘Thanks to having such a great boss, I’m even getting this kind of special treatment.’
Kurokawa smiled bitterly.
There was a terror unique to a solitary cell.
The kind that made you want to give up everything the moment you stepped inside.
But Kurokawa was not afraid in the slightest.
He had not been caught after hiding away in cowardice, dragged there against his will.
This was the result of his own choice.
The result of a decision he had made himself.
That was why he felt no shame.
His inner self was full.
He was interrogated every day.
Sixteen hours a day.
Every day of his life was stripped naked on the table.
Even things Kurokawa himself could no longer remember were reconstructed through the investigators’ questions.
The people he had beaten back in school.
The women he had met and parted with.
The countless jobs he had carried out as a yakuza were being pieced together anew by the investigators.
If they had meant to humiliate Kurokawa, they had succeeded.
He was so ashamed that he wanted to die.
The questions circled around and always returned to the same point in the end.
“Why did you go to Tokyo Harbor?”
“I went to collect waste, as I do every week.”
“You went there carrying explosives.”
“I only went to collect waste.”
“Who ordered you to do it?”
“I’m only in the waste-disposal business.”
The investigator thrust a photograph toward him.
The scene of the incident was captured in the picture.
The moment of the explosion, debris scattered across the ground, black smoke.
It looked quite horrific in the photograph alone.
“This is what you did. Do you even realize how much damage Japan has suffered because of you?”
“I didn’t do this.”
Kurokawa looked the investigator straight in the face and spoke clearly.
The interrogation continued.
It kept repeating itself.
It repeated like an endless cycle until they heard the answer they wanted.
The interrogation grew harsher.
They did not let him sleep.
They kept the lights on all night,
and even removed the place where he could lie down, claiming construction was underway.
They reduced the amount of food as well.
He was hungry.
The water was cold.
It was difficult to wash.
His body was breaking down.
Even a man in his twenties would have found this difficult to endure.
Kurokawa was on the verge of turning sixty.
At this point, it was no different from a death sentence.
His hands trembled.
His lips split, and the skin beneath his eyes turned black.
Even so, his words did not change.
“I went there to dispose of waste.”
The more his body deteriorated, the clearer his mind became.
The worse things grew, the harder his spirit became.
The moment he made even a single mistake, it would be over.
The instant he slipped up, they would seize on it and keep driving him into a corner.
So instead of answering, he chose silence.
He said nothing.
The investigators treated Kurokawa more and more harshly.
Even so, he did not open his mouth.
A court-appointed lawyer was assigned to him.
With an innocent expression, he tried to coax Kurokawa with all sorts of words.
“You have to tell me something. I’m your lawyer. How am I supposed to defend you if I don’t know anything?”
“If you tell me what happened, I’ll take care of the rest.”
“I’m a fairly capable lawyer, you know.”
“If I get you acquitted, my value will go up, won’t it? That’s why I took the case.”
He spoke with an utterly guileless expression, but Kurokawa knew.
He knew those words were lies.
This court-appointed lawyer was in league with them as well.
Kurokawa chose silence with the lawyer too.
He was sleepy.
He wanted to lie down comfortably and sleep, even if only for an hour.
But the court-appointed lawyer would not let Kurokawa sleep.
He kept talking without pause, waiting for Kurokawa to let something slip.
He was deliberately preventing him from getting any rest.
Kurokawa forced open his drooping eyes and gazed into the distance.
He had not broken yet.
******
I came to a warehouse in Incheon.
I had heard Aoi was here, so I came to beat the answers out of him.
Aoi.
The agent who had come to kill Anna,
and the only one from Kagero whom I had left alive.
When I entered the warehouse, I heard a low groan amid the damp air.
“Uuuugh…”
I looked toward the sound.
A man was hanging upside down.
His hands were tied behind his back as he swayed precariously in the air.
I watched him for a moment,
then looked at the organization member standing beside me.
“What is this? Why did you hang him upside down?”
The man flinched.
“Pardon? No… You told us not to let him get comfortable… and to keep him alive, so…”
“Haah…”
I let out a deep sigh.
“Take him down.”
“Pardon?”
“I said take him down.”
The organization members hurriedly untied the rope, and Aoi came down as though he had fallen onto the floor.
The sound of Aoi gasping echoed through the warehouse.
The man did not look well.
There were no obvious wounds, but he looked to be in considerable pain.
“Hey. What are you doing, hanging a person up like this?”
“I’m sorry. Still, we set specific time limits so we wouldn’t overdo it.”
The organization member hurriedly made excuses.
“What are you talking about? Didn’t I tell you to keep him alive? Did I tell you to let him rest comfortably? I thought he was out on a picnic.”
“Pardon?”
“Are you going to keep doing your work halfheartedly?”
“No, sir.”
The organization member snapped to attention.
“Do I really have to explain something like this? What do you think ‘keep him alive’ means? It means carve him up only enough to keep him from dying. Cut off an arm or a leg, or if that won’t do, pull out his fingernails. You have to do something. You need to show some action. You need to show Aoi your resolve.”
“I’m sorry. I was inadequate.”
I looked into the organization member’s eyes.
“Can you do better?”
“Yes, I can.”
“How?”
“I’ll pull out his fingernails right away, then cut off his ankles.”
Unlike the organization member’s spirited voice, Aoi’s face grew paler and paler as he listened.
The men looked as though they might cut off Aoi’s eyelids at any moment.
He could not stop imagining it.
Imagining his eyelids disappearing.
He wouldn’t be able to close his eyes?
It was painful even to imagine.
His eyes already stung.
Anything but that.
Absolutely not.
Aoi shouted.
Aoi howled.
“I’ll talk. I’ll tell you everything.”
But the organization member’s words had only made me more interested.
“Keep that bastard quiet. Why does he keep interrupting while we’re talking? So what comes next?”
Another organization member covered Aoi’s mouth.
“In that state, I’ll drive thin wires into each joint of his fingers and connect them to electricity. I’ll gradually raise the voltage and test his willpower. Only enough to keep his heart from bursting.”
Clap, clap-clap.
“Ah~ Good. Excellent. If you could do this well, why were you being so passive before?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t think I properly understood what you wanted, sir.”
“Right. People can misunderstand each other sometimes. It feels good to clear up a misunderstanding like this. By the way, what was your name?”
“Han Seunghyeon.”
“Right. Let’s work well together from now on. You’ve got imagination. I like it.”
“I’ll work even harder from now on.”
Aoi trembled as he listened to our conversation.
It looked like he had even wet himself.
The floor was damp.
“I’ll talk. I’ll tell you everything. Please, just let me live. Sob… sob…”
Aoi was bawling.
He struggled against the hand covering his mouth and pleaded desperately.
Aoi imagined it.
Imagined his eyelids being cut away.
Imagined wires being driven into every joint of his fingers and electricity coursing through him.
Aoi was already terrified enough from imagining it alone.
It felt as though he could fully experience the pain just by picturing it.
He had no desire to make any of it a reality.
Before we even asked, he began answering.
“I was a member of Japan’s special forces. After my discharge, I joined Kagero. Kagero is an assassination organization made up of people like us. We handled the jobs Japan found troublesome in its place.”
“Is that all?”
“Kagero is mainly run by the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office, but there’s an organization that receives and manages its assignments. It’s called ‘Arata Consulting,’ and it’s in Tokyo. I can tell you where it is. I know all the intermediaries as well.”
“Anything else?”
Aoi continued talking after that.
Everything he knew, everything he had seen, everything he had heard.
When he was driven into a corner, things he would not normally have even thought of all came back to him.
Without hesitation, Aoi began telling us everything.
*****
I stopped in the Philippines and picked up the containers Dennis had prepared.
There were fewer of them now, but their destructive power was far greater.
I had removed all the miscellaneous materials and filled them with nothing but explosives.
There was no need to gift those bastards the good bombs I had painstakingly made.
I filled them with ammonium nitrate, diesel fuel, potassium chlorate, and more.
They were common materials that could be bought even in a market,
but if mixed properly, they produced a crude and powerful blast greater than any bomb.
Cheap, reliable, and cruel.
Weren’t they the bastards who turned even the culprit into a “gara”?
For people like them, a “gara”-made bomb was just right.
It didn’t need to be sophisticated.
It only needed to explode loudly and burn fiercely.
I stored the containers of explosives safely in my inventory and headed for Tokyo.
My destination was Arata Consulting.
They said it was a front company for the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office,
but nothing about its exterior suggested the presence of any intelligence agency.
It looked like just one of the countless companies occupying the buildings amid Tokyo’s forest of skyscrapers.
It was utterly ordinary.
Employees in suits, wearing ID cards around their necks.
People coming and going with cups of coffee.
They looked like nothing more than ordinary office workers.
Even I had tilted my head once in puzzlement.
But the seventeenth floor, where Arata Consulting was located, had a different atmosphere.
There were many cameras, and security was tight.
Entry required double authentication,
and security guards stood watch.
Taking the seventeenth floor head-on looked difficult.
I could do it if I had to, but why bother?
What would I do after forcing my way into Arata Consulting?
Data? Ledgers? Classified information?
I didn’t need any of it.
Why would I?
I only needed to obtain a single piece of information.
Who had ordered Anna’s death.
That was all I needed to know.
I had no intention of bringing these bastards before a court.
I simply hated the fact that they had laid a hand on one of my people.
There was no need to enter the seventeenth floor.
In fact, this would be easier.
The fact that several companies shared one building meant they had to operate collectively.
It was useful for hiding themselves, but if trouble arose somewhere else, they could not simply escape on their own.
If something happened to the building, the trouble would spread to Arata Consulting as well.
I put on work clothes and headed for the machine room in the basement.
It was like the nervous system connecting the entire building.
The offices were used separately,
but the electricity, gas, and ventilation systems were shared.
I naturally entered the machine room carrying a machine-inspection checklist.
No one suspected me.
No one stopped or questioned me.
Dozens of outside contractors came and went every day.
Wearing work clothes here, I was practically invisible.
I entered the machine room naturally and took out the materials I had prepared in my inventory.
It was nothing much.
Only smoke capsules.
I shorted the control panel’s circuitry, forcibly activating the fire alarm receiver.
Then I threw smoke capsules into each ventilation line.
There was no need to start an actual fire.
I only needed to sow confusion throughout the building.
Hiss.
Thick smoke poured upward through the passageways.
A moment later, the shriek of the emergency bell tore through the entire building.
Ring-ring-ring-ring-ring.
“Fire detected. Fire detected! Evacuate immediately according to the manual.”
“Fire detected. Fire detected! Evacuate immediately according to the manual.”
Announcements began playing over the speakers.
The smell of burning and the smoke made it seem as though a real fire had broken out.
The peaceful building instantly became an utter madhouse.
People began evacuating to escape the flames.
The same was true of Arata Consulting on the seventeenth floor.
Even if they were employees of the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office, they could not refuse to follow the manual.
The more thoroughly one lived a disguised life, the more faithfully one had to play the part.
I watched the people coming down from a corner of the stairs on the second floor.
Everyone’s attention was focused solely on reaching the exit.
At last, the target appeared.
He was the planning manager of Arata Consulting—the man Aoi had told me about.
He too was coming down from the seventeenth floor to evacuate.
I did not miss the moment when the evacuation line slowed as it bottlenecked.
I approached like a ghost.
I clamped a hand over the planning manager’s mouth and compressed his carotid artery with the other.
He collapsed without even managing to scream.
At that moment, the Obsidian Unit blocked the view in front of him.
Disguised as people evacuating, they hid us from everyone else’s eyes.
Everyone’s attention was fixed on the exit, but we remained cautious all the same.
Amid the hellish confusion, the planning manager vanished without anyone noticing.