Rin laid motionless on the bed, his body battered, trembling, and coated in cold sweat. His vision was blurry, his lips cracked, and every breath he took felt like a blade dragging across his lungs. He stared up at the mirrored ceiling—hating it, hating the reflection of himself, broken and helpless.
His inner voice was dim, but still there, still burning like an ember beneath the ashes.
'How much time has passed…?' he wondered, eyes half-lidded, body unresponsive. 'I've blacked out so many times. I don't even know what's real anymore. Every time I came to, I was still trapped with that monster. Still being humiliated. Still being tormented. I can't feel anything down there anymore… numb. Completely numb.'
His hands were limp by his side, one still loosely clenched as if clinging to the last shred of defiance left in him. He didn't cry—Rin never cried—but his eyes were hollow, sunken from dehydration, and heavy with exhaustion.
Across the room, Kai sat with one leg crossed over the other, lighting a cigar with infuriating ease. His body was relaxed—too relaxed. A smile played on his lips, a predator enjoying the aftermath of the hunt.
Then came the chuckle.
Low. Arrogant. Cruel.
Kai got up, walked over, and sat casually beside Rin's fragile frame. He exhaled a curl of smoke, tilting his head like he was examining art. Then, gently, almost mockingly, he brushed Rin's damp hair away from his face, tucking it behind his ear with two fingers.
"Alright, alright…" Kai said lightly, tone almost playful. "Should I start answering your questions now? I mean, it'd be such a shame for you to die without getting the full story. I'm not that inconsiderate, you know."
'Oh, go to hell.' Rin thought, though his lips couldn't form the words. He hated how soft Kai's tone was. Like this wasn't the aftermath of psychological warfare. Like Rin was some captive audience to a bedtime story.
"Let's begin with your target, 'Persephone,' shall we?" Kai continued, taking another drag of his cigar. "Hate to break it to you, baby... but 'Persephone' doesn't exist. It never has."
Rin's eyes cracked open wider, his pulse jolting like a punch to the chest.
'What the hell is he saying…?'
He croaked out, his voice rasped and low, "Don't bullshit me. How are you going to explain Scythe-9 then?"
Kai let out another laugh—infuriatingly theatrical—and waved his hand dismissively. "Scythe-9? I don't know where you got that cute little theory from, but it's pathetic to confuse it with 'Persephone.' Oh my god… You really are that naive."
'This bastard's mocking me… even now…' Rin thought, gritting his teeth, his jaw clenching though the rest of his body refused to move.
Kai leaned closer, the smoke from his cigar dancing near Rin's face.
"Scythe-9 is just another Russian missile. A dinosaur. Not even in production anymore. It's not even part of the same conversation. It would be insulting to 'Persephone' to compare the two."
'Simple? Bullshit. The naming pattern—the ballistic logs—all of it traced back to the Romanov manor... the files I found... the encryption with the Scythe label. I wasn't wrong. I couldn't have been wrong.'
Kai seemed to read the disbelief written all over Rin's bruised face and grinned wider, his voice smooth as poisoned honey.
"The development of 'Persephone' failed a long, long time ago. Way before you even got assigned this mission. Its design was garbage—over-ambitious, glitchy, dangerous. It was a complete failure. Money down the drain. Time wasted. But… that was the brilliance of it." He tapped the side of his temple. "The rumor was more useful than the weapon could ever be."
Rin's heart sank as he realized what Kai meant.
"A ghost project… used to stir the world into paranoia."
Kai nodded, reading Rin's expression again like a book. "Exactly. You get it now. Just the whispers of 'Persephone' were enough to send nations into a frenzy. Japan sent you. America sent their own little puppet. All because of a shadow. A name."
Rin's fists shook faintly on the sheets, nails digging into his palm.
'So that was it. This whole mission was a smokescreen. Every step I took… every clue I followed… was by design. His design. He used me. He used everything.'
Kai leaned down near his ear, whispering.
"You've been dancing to my tune since day one, sweetheart."
And Rin realized—he had.
From the moment Kai appeared as his "partner", every coincidence, every narrow escape, every dead-end, every near-death… wasn't coincidence at all. It was orchestration.
A game.
And he was the toy.
Kai let the silence settle like dust after a bomb. The room smelled of burnt tobacco and dried blood, the air heavy with tension that clung to the skin. Rin lay battered, breathing through his teeth, forcing oxygen into lungs that felt like they were giving up. But he wasn't giving Kai the satisfaction of seeing him broken — not completely.
Kai, always one for theatrics, stood by the open window now, the curtain flapping like a tattered flag in the wind. He took another slow drag from his cigar, the ember at the tip glowing like an eye watching Rin from the shadows.
Then he spoke — slowly, deliberately — like he was reciting scripture from a twisted bible.
"Do you know the story behind Persephone?" he asked, not turning to look at Rin. "The real one. Not the textbook version they tell kids to make them feel better about winter."
Rin didn't answer. He wasn't interested in fairy tales.
Kai continued anyway, pacing slightly, the smoke from his cigar swirling like black silk around him.
"She was the bringer of life and death. The goddess of blooming spring and the decay of winter. The flower that was ripped from the earth by Hades himself. Half the year, she walked under the sun, full of warmth and light. The other half... she ruled in the underworld, crowned in silence, draped in death." He looked over his shoulder now, lips curling. "Tell me... doesn't that sound like the perfect name for a weapon?"
'God, he's so full of himself.' Rin thought bitterly, wincing as he shifted slightly on the mattress. His body screamed at him, muscles torn, nerves raw, but his mind—his mind was sharpening through the haze.
Kai turned back toward him now, his voice lowering into that theatrical hush, like he was confessing a secret only the dead should hear.
"Persephone wasn't named by chance. That weapon… it wasn't just a missile. It was a paradox. Something at once divine and cursed. Beautiful enough to mesmerize, deadly enough to end the world. Like the goddess, it was stolen—dragged into the underworld of black markets, ghost generals, and collapsing governments."
He brought the cigar to his lips again, exhaling slowly as he walked closer to the bed. Smoke trailed from his nostrils as if he were the devil himself.
"To see it, truly see it..." he whispered, "was like staring into the eye of God—merciful and wrathful in the same breath. A blessing to some, damnation to the rest. Just like her."
Rin scoffed weakly, blood still dry on his lip.
"Why should I give a shit about your dramatic mythology lesson?" he muttered through gritted teeth, annoyance lacing his voice. "It's just a name slapped on a failed experiment. You're romanticizing garbage."
Kai's smile didn't falter — in fact, it widened.
"Ah, and there it is." He leaned down, his face inches from Rin's. "The pragmatist's curse. You're so obsessed with facts and outcomes, you miss the poetry right in front of you. That's what makes people like me dangerous. I see the story beneath the story."
'He's trying to pull me into another mental loop again…' Rin thought, glaring up at him. 'Twisting my perception until I start questioning what's real. He's done it before. He'll do it again if I let him.'
But Kai wasn't done. His tone shifted, becoming darker, slower — like a bedtime story laced with cyanide.
"Let me tell you a parable, Rin." He stood and began pacing again, gesturing with the cigar like a conductor's baton. "There was a king who feared death. So, he built a palace so tall, no god could reach him. But to fund it, he taxed his people, starved them, bled them dry. Then, one day, the people came with torches, and they burned it all down. And in the ashes... they found a garden. Flowers the king had never seen. Ones that only bloomed in destruction. Guess what they named that garden?"
He turned to Rin, expecting a reply.
Rin glared.
"Let me guess. Persephone?"
"Bingo." Kai grinned, tapping the ashes from his cigar onto the floor like they were nothing. "Because death, Rin... is not the end. It's the fertilizer for something new. That's what this was always about."
'He's unhinged. He's not just a killer—he believes in all this.' Rin thought, jaw clenching again. 'Every word, every riddle, every reference… it's all part of the mask. Or maybe the mask is the only real part of him.'
Kai leaned in close once more.
"You see destruction. I see evolution. You chase targets. I rewrite histories. You wanted to stop a war…" He traced a finger lightly along Rin's collarbone. "…but I was creating a new world order while you were still figuring out how to hold your damn gun."
Rin jerked his head away, breathing heavily through his nose. He wanted to rip Kai's tongue out for the way he spoke—like everything Rin endured was a piece of art in progress.
'This man doesn't have a conscience. He's not a genius. He's not enlightened. He's just someone who's convinced himself that evil is beautiful.'
Kai leaned back on the edge of the bed, one arm draped casually over his bent knee, cigar lazily perched between his fingers like a king too bored to care. He blew a slow stream of smoke into the ceiling, then turned his gaze to Rin — a bruised, bloodied mess of a man, but still with that same fire in his eyes, still glaring at him like he was going to rip his throat out if given even a sliver of strength.
"There's a character," Kai began, his tone soft, almost amused, like he was telling a bedtime story to a child who already knew how it ended. "One that shows up in a lot of old Russian folktales. Not as popular as Baba Yaga, but much older. Much stranger. His name was Koschei. Koschei the Deathless."
Rin blinked, blood crusting at the corners of his lashes. His head throbbed, his lungs burned, but something about the name tugged at him — a deep-rooted familiarity. He didn't speak, but Kai could see that flicker of recognition in his eyes.
Kai smiled. "You know him, don't you?"
Rin didn't answer.
"He couldn't be killed," Kai continued, exhaling smoke. "Not because he was immortal, but because his soul... his death... wasn't in his body. It was hidden. Nested inside layers upon layers of protection."
He stood up slowly and began pacing the room with a theatrical grace, like a villain on stage relishing the final act.
"His death was hidden in a needle. The needle in an egg. The egg in a duck. The duck in a hare. The hare locked in an iron chest. The chest buried beneath a tree. And the tree, of course, grew on an island that didn't exist on any map."
Kai chuckled, as if savoring the absurdity of it.
"And so long as no one could find and destroy that needle… Koschei could not die. You could torture him, stab him, starve him — but he'd always return. Always watching. Always waiting. An old man with bones like steel and eyes like hunger."
'What the hell is he getting at?' Rin thought, chest heaving. 'Why tell this story now? What game is he playing this time?'
But Kai's voice dipped lower, colder now. The smugness faded — replaced with something darker.
"That story," he said, "is more than a fairytale. It's the blueprint."
Rin's eyes narrowed.
"The blueprint for what?"
Kai turned to him with a slow grin.
"For how to survive this world. You don't place your weaknesses where people can reach them. You scatter them. Bury them. Mask them behind puppets, shadows, false names. You become your own myth." He tapped his chest lightly. "Like Koschei, I've lived under a dozen masks. Tsar Nochi. Kai. The helpful partner. The assassin. The traitor. The lover. The enemy. None of them were ever me — they were the hares and ducks."
He took a final drag of his cigar before stubbing it out in a cracked glass tray. "But you, Rin… you keep your soul in your chest. Out in the open, right behind those pretty ideals of yours. Justice. Duty. Loyalty. How quaint."
Rin's jaw clenched, rage bubbling beneath the fatigue. His body was weak, but his thoughts were slicing like knives.
"You're thinking I'm comparing myself to him," Kai said, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. "You're not wrong. But it's deeper than that."
He tapped his fingers against his temple.
"See, I don't want immortality. I want legacy. I want misdirection. I want the world chasing ducks and needles while I walk freely among them. And you?"
He looked down at Rin, his voice softening into something deceptively gentle.
"You were one of the hounds sniffing the trees. I watched you dig and dig, always thinking you were one step away from the truth. It was beautiful, really."
Rin gritted his teeth. The pain was background noise now, dulled by the flood of adrenaline and rage.
"You talk like you've already won," Rin said, voice strained but sharp. "But you're not some untouchable spirit in a fairy tale. You're flesh and blood. And you can still bleed."
Kai's smile didn't falter. If anything, it grew colder.
"Of course I can. That's the part you don't get. I want you to believe you're close. I want you to feel like the hero who's just a riddle away from the truth. That's what makes it fun."
He leaned in, cigar ember glowing like a devil's eye in the dark.
"Because the moment you think you've cracked it... I change the rules."
Rin's stomach twisted. There was no high ground with Kai. No stable ground at all. It was all illusion. Misdirection. Smoke and mirrors layered over a monster who wore a charming smile like armor.
'This man... no, this thing... isn't just a liar. He's a living trap. A riddle designed to destroy whoever dares try to solve it.'
He swallowed hard, chest aching. Still, his eyes burned with defiance.
Kai shifted languidly, his movements deliberate, like a predator circling its prey. With a slow, almost possessive grace, he rose and then draped himself over Rin's back, his chest pressing flush against the rigid line of Rin's spine. He exhaled, warm and deliberate, against the nape of Rin's neck before inhaling deeply—taking in Rin's scent, the sharp, clean pheromones that betrayed none of the tension thrumming beneath his skin.
Patience, Rin thought, his jaw tightening. Don't give him the reaction he wants.
But Kai was relentless. His tongue flicked out, tracing a slow, teasing line along Rin's cheek—a mockery of affection, a brand of ownership. Rin didn't flinch, though his fingers curled imperceptibly against his thigh.
Kai leaned in slowly, his breath warm against Rin's temple, voice a velvet murmur laced with something both tender and terrifying. Every word rolled off his tongue like a riddle carved in gold, gilded with poison. He wasn't just speaking — he was casting a spell.
"There's an empty castle," he began, tilting his head as if narrating a bedtime story, though his tone suggested anything but innocence. "A castle in the middle of a vast, endless land. You can't walk to it, you can't ride to it, and you sure as hell can't fly to it. It doesn't exist on any map... unless you're a fish, an insect... or something winged and otherworldly."
Rin listened in a stiff, guarded silence, chest still heaving, blood drying on his temple. Every syllable from Kai sounded like a riddle coated in poison. And yet, despite himself, Rin couldn't stop listening. He had to. Kai never rambled. Everything he said — every twisted metaphor — meant something.
"At the heart of that impossible castle," Kai continued, pacing slowly around the bed like a wolf circling prey, "is a tree. Very big. Very old. Ancient, actually. Its roots reach deep enough to choke the underworld itself. They say the tree's age is the same as Koschei's — that it grew the day he was born. That it never bloomed and never withered."
He paused to blow a thin stream of smoke that curled above Rin's face like a ghost. His eyes gleamed.
"To the south of the tree... there's a treasure room. Piles and piles of chests, stacked so high you can't see the ceiling. Most people only notice the ones that glitter, that tempt the eye. But there's one chest — just one — that's neither fuller nor emptier than the rest. No decoration. No lock. No shine. No one ever bothers to open it."
Kai crouched beside Rin, eyes sharp, predatory.
"But you, Rin... if you opened it — you might find Koschei's heart. Might. And if you do... then you hold his life in your hands. You could even become him yourself. Immortal. Untouchable. Forgotten by death."
Rin stared at him, heart pounding — not from fear, but fury tangled with confusion. Every fiber of his being screamed that this man was a monster, a liar, a manipulative bastard who wrapped his madness in mythology and made it sound like poetry.
'He always talks like this,' Rin thought bitterly, 'like he's telling a story to deflect from the horror he's created. But it's never just a story. It's always a message. Always a game. And the rules? They're rigged from the start.'
His lips parted, breath ragged. "What the hell are you trying to say?"
Kai smiled. A slow, soft, maddening curve of his lips — the kind of smile that said you already know.
"I'm saying," he whispered, "that power doesn't scream. It whispers. It hides in the most overlooked place. Just like Koschei's death. Just like the truth behind Persephone. Just like me."
Rin lay there, frozen. His body ached like it was carved from splintered glass, his lungs struggling to remember how to function — but his mind?
His mind was roaring.
'An unreachable castle. An old tree. A chest no one looks for. His death hidden like a myth... Is this just another parable or is he actually telling me something? Is he warning me? Or daring me?'
Rin grit his teeth.
'He always does this. Always speaks in riddles — half-truths dressed up like poetry. Just enough to make you think you understand him, but never enough to actually trust it.'
'But... if this is more than metaphor... if he really did hide something — his weakness, his truth, his heart — somewhere in this whole twisted operation... then maybe, just maybe, he can be taken down.'
Kai's lips were relentless.
They trailed down the side of Rin's neck—slow, wet, deliberate—each kiss a brand, each exhale a taunt. His teeth scraped over the sensitive skin just below Rin's ear, and Rin's entire body locked up, muscles coiling tight like a spring.
"Haven't you had enough?" Rin snarled, voice rough with barely leashed fury. "Get the fuck off me!"
Kai chuckled, low and dark, the sound vibrating against Rin's skin. His hips rolled forward in a slow, filthy grind, pressing his own hardening length against Rin's ass, ensuring Rin felt every inch of his arousal.
"Your words say no," Kai murmured, one hand sliding down Rin's stomach, fingers tracing the tense lines of his abdomen before wrapping around Rin's cock in a firm, knowing grip. "But your body?" He squeezed, just enough to make Rin's breath hitch. "Your body never lies."
Rin's jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached.
Fuck.
He was hard. Achingly so. And Kai knew it—reveled in it, the bastard.
"You—" Rin's protest died in his throat as Kai's other hand spread him open, fingers digging into the firm flesh of his ass, exposing him completely.
Then—
A hot, wet stripe right over his hole.
Rin jolted like he'd been struck, a sharp gasp tearing from his lips before he could stop it.
Where the fuck is he putting his tongue—?!
Kai didn't give him time to process. He laved at Rin's entrance with slow, obscene strokes, each flick of his tongue sending jolts of electricity straight up Rin's spine. His free hand kept working Rin's cock in lazy, teasing strokes, thumb swiping over the leaking tip just to hear Rin's breath stutter.
Rin's fingers twisted into the sheets, knuckles white. His head spun, blood roaring in his ears, his entire body caught between the urge to shove Kai away and the traitorous need to press back into that sinful mouth.
My head feels hot… I'm about to go crazy—
Kai hummed against him, the vibration making Rin's thighs tremble. Then, without warning, Kai's tongue pressed inside, just barely, just enough to make Rin's back arch off the bed.
"F-fuck—!"
It was too much. Not enough. Rin's vision blurred at the edges, his stomach tightening, heat coiling low and unbearable—
And then, with a choked groan, he came.
Hard.
Spilling over Kai's fingers, his own stomach, his thighs shaking with the force of it.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of Rin's ragged breathing and Kai's soft, amused exhale.
Then—
"Did you just come from me licking your asshole?" Kai drawled, lifting his hand to examine the sticky evidence coating his palm. His grin was all teeth, all triumph. "Pathetic."
Rin's face burned. Shame and fury warred in his chest, but before he could snap back, Kai leaned down, lips brushing the shell of his ear.
"But don't worry," he purred. "I'm far from done with you."