Sasaki's legs were lead. Each step felt like wading through water. He didn't know where he was going —only that stopping would let memories creep in: Rina's laugh, Aoi's smugness, the taste of iron in his mouth. Motion kept the past at bay.
Streetlamps woke one by one, their yellow halos trembling in the dusk. Passersby glanced at him the way people glance at accidents —brief, startled, then away. Their eyes flicked to his torn shirt, the dark spreading stains, the bruises opening like ugly blossoms. He would have avoided him too, he thought. He understood why.
Each breath was a knife. Ribs protested at every inhale; his tongue was a bitter pool of blood. He found a park bench at a bus stop and collapsed. The wooden slats were damp and cold, but they felt like a bed. Hunched forward, hands on knees, he let the city's noise wash over him.
The alley— the blows— the voice. The voice that had stepped out of the dark and promised him a second life. At first, its memory had been a blade through the fog; now it sat in him like an ember, warming, steady. It should have frightened him. It didn't.
Then, like a command threaded directly into his chest, it came again.
> "Sasaki."<
His head snapped up. The street looked the same— cars, late shoppers, a neon sign buzzing —yet the voice was unmistakable. Not around him. Inside him.
> "It's time."<
He straightened with a gasp, pain flashing bright across his ribs. "Time for what?"
> "Your first task."<
Something in him bristled —not with fear, but with the unfamiliar, hungry focus of a creature learning its limbs. "What do you want me to do?"
> "Go to the address I gave you."<
There was no paper, no phone in his hand. He should have been confused, but the location was already carved into his head: a building, a second-floor apartment.
"What's there?"
> "A girl. She is held against her will. You will save her."<
"Save her," he breathed, tasting the word as if it might anchor him.
> "Yes. And if anyone stands in your way, you may kill them."<
The casualness of the instruction chilled him more than the thought of blood. He had never killed anyone. He'd never wanted to. But the voice made killing sound like a tool— crude, immutable, necessary.
He rose, joints protesting. "Alright," he said, the decision a flat thing in his throat. "I'll go."
> "Move quickly."<
The voice faded; traffic and the rustle of evening returned. He walked until the world narrowed to a tunnel. Time blurred— minutes or hours— but pain sharpened him. The sky shifted from orange to bruised purple by the time he reached the address.
It was an ordinary building: red brick, flaking paint, three stories— easily forgettable. He paused across the street, watching a single dim bulb on the second floor. No sound. No life. The image of a girl trapped there knotted his gut.
He slipped into the alley and found a rusted back door. Unlocked. He pushed it and the hinges moaned.
The kitchen smelled of grease and stale smoke. A fridge hummed like a tired beast. He closed the door behind him and froze.
A man stood at the counter —broad-shouldered, unshaven, cigarette burned down to a nub. He didn't shout. He didn't search for a phone. His hand dove for a gun at his waistband.
Movement was instinct then: the man fired. The blast hit Sasaki's chest hard enough to spin the air from his lungs. Pain detonated. He crumpled against the wall, the world a white flash. Blood flooded his mouth.
The man advanced, calm, gun leveled at him. "Who the hell are you?" he growled.
Sasaki tried to answer; a thin cough and a red thread of sound were all he managed. Shadows curled at the corners of his vision.
Then, sharp and sure, the voice came.
> "Get up."<
He wanted to scream that he couldn't. He wanted to accept the cold. Instead, the voice pressed: "You can. Use my gift."<
Something —not will, not fear, not courage —rose in him. It felt like cold metal sliding into place, like a muscle remembering how to move. His hands tightened into fists as if pulled by wire.
> "Stand, Sasaki."<
He did.
The man's eyes widened at the sudden movement. Sasaki moved faster than pain should have allowed. He didn't think; he reacted. Fingers blurred around the barrel as he launched himself forward, driven by a force that felt both foreign and entirely his. The grip on the gun wrenched —metal screamed. The man howled as Sasaki slammed him against the counter, the sound of bone striking wood loud as thunder in the small room.
He didn't calculate. He acted. A shoulder twisted; the man's wrist snapped like a twig. The gun clattered free and skittered under the stove. The cigarette fell from slack lips. The attacker went limp in Sasaki's arms, a ragdoll surrendering to a sudden, merciless strength.
Sasaki stood over him, heartbeat hammering —not only from exertion but from a dawning, cold clarity. He could have ended it. He could have finished the man easily. The voice had given him the permission; his hands could have obeyed.
Instead, he shoved the body face-first into the sink and dragged a chair across the doorway, wedging it so the man could not follow. He moved with a terrible economy, every motion a negotiation between newfound power and the man he still was at core.
He had been broken and remade. And the world, in all its brutal and crooked darkness, would not treat him the same again.