"How did you know?"
Natsuki Subaru tilted his head slightly, looking at Kakeru Ryuen, who was paralyzed under the tree, his face covered in blood and sweat. There was no triumph in that gaze, only a kind of pure curiosity, as if observing the reaction of an experimental subject.
"Your thought patterns are too easy to predict. With the mole lost and a frontal conflict ineffective, the next step would naturally be to distract me while attacking the weaknesses you perceive—the Class D camp, and Airi Sakura, whom I showed interest in. It is the typical mindset of someone with a poverty of means."
His words were flat, yet like a cold scalpel, they peeled away Ryuen's supposedly ingenious plan layer by layer, revealing the simple, even crude, skeleton underneath.
Ryuen did not know how much time Subaru had paid to reach this step.
And life.
It wasn't hard for Subaru to guess Ryuen's plan, but to know the information more precisely, he had started over a few times.
"Poverty... of means?"
Ryuen spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva. Pain and humiliation filled his eyes with bloodshot veins, but that ruthlessness was still struggling.
"Natsuki Subaru! Don't think this is over! I lost this time, I admit it! But do you think it ends here? I'm telling you, it's not over! As long as I'm in this school, as long as you're on this island, no, as long as you're in this world! I, Kakeru Ryuen, will bite onto you to the death! You break my arm today, and tomorrow I'll find your weakness! You ruin my plan today, and one day I will return everything you inflicted on me, a hundredfold, a thousandfold!"
He almost roared it out, his voice deformed by pain and agitation, but the obsession and hatred within it were abnormally clear.
This was not a bluffing threat, but a declaration from the marrow, almost instinctual.
Even beaten to the ground, even in severe pain all over, the flame in his eyes belonging to a hunter and a dominator had not fully extinguished. Instead, fueled by failure, it burned even more twistedly and recklessly.
"I will cling to you like maggots on a bone! I will use the rules, use others, use everything that can be used! I will find what you care about, what you value, even if it's just a tiny bit! Then, I will destroy it completely right in front of your face!"
Ryuen stared dead at Subaru, as if wanting to carve this indifferent face into the depths of his soul.
"So what if I lost this exam? As long as I'm not expelled, as long as I can still move, this game... will never end! I will let you know what it tastes like to be targeted by a true 'madman'!"
He gasped for rough breaths, his chest heaving violently, yet a smile mixing pain and madness appeared on his face.
However, facing this hysterical declaration, the expression on Subaru's face slowly shifted from its previous flatness to a kind of... near-joyful, icy expectation.
"Not over?"
Subaru repeated the phrase, the arc of his mouth deepening slightly.
"Never ending? Targeted by a 'true madman'?"
He took a step forward, his shadow looming over Ryuen.
"Ryuen, do you know? The words you just said..."
Subaru's voice dropped low, carrying a strange magnetism.
"Compared to all your previous traps, all your sieges, all your calculations combined... they make me feel..."
He paused. In the depths of his deep grey eyes, that void which originally reflected no emotion seemed to be disturbed by a stone thrown into it, rippling with darkness.
"...Just a little bit interesting."
As soon as the words fell, Subaru moved without warning.
"But you, can you really practice what you preach?"
It wasn't the swift and efficient combat technique from before, but a simple, direct, even somewhat crude action—he swung his arm and slapped Ryuen heavily on the face!
Slap—!!
The crisp and loud sound of the slap exploded in the quiet forest clearing, even drowning out Ryuen's muffled groan.
The force of this slap was immense; Ryuen's head jerked violently to the side, his cheek swelling up at a speed visible to the naked eye, his ears ringing, and his mouth instantly filling with the rusty taste of blood.
Compared to a fist, the action of slapping was far more filled with the flavor of insult.
"Come on, Natsuki Subaru! Do you think you can completely defeat me like this!"
But even so, Ryuen's eyes remained full of fighting spirit. He spoke to Subaru through gritted teeth, even revealing a mocking smile.
Ryuen had just let out a roar when Subaru slapped him again, interrupting him.
"Natsuki Subaru! Laugh! Laugh! Laugh at the fact that you won now!"
Slap! Slap!
"I will keep clinging to you, keep clinging to you!"
Slap!
"You won this time, but what about next time!? The time after that! You can't win! Subaru, you can't win forever!"
Slap!
"You..."
"From start to finish, I never wanted to win."
Right at this moment, Ryuen froze completely.
What froze Ryuen's blood more than the physical pain was the expression that flashed through Subaru's eyes when he delivered that slap.
In that instant, brief enough to be almost non-existent, Ryuen saw it.
That wasn't anger, wasn't contempt, wasn't even mockery.
That was a patch of pure, bottomless darkness, as if it could swallow even light.
In the center of that darkness was a killing intent that was icy to the extreme, yet scorching to the point of distortion. That wasn't the ferocity of a street brawl, not the spite eager for revenge, but a kind of... non-human will that regarded life as dust and destruction as natural as breathing.
Just like when a person casually swats a noisy fly to death, there is no emotion in their eyes, only the most fundamental intent to "eliminate."
Ryuen once thought he had seen violence, seen ruthless characters.
But at this moment, what he saw in Subaru's eyes was something entirely different.
That was a kind of... indifference that overrode violence.
Indifference to life, indifference to pain, indifference to so-called "hatred" and "obsession."
His own declaration of "never resting until death" just now, in the other party's eyes, was probably like the hissing of an ant facing a boot about to stomp down: "I will remember you forever."
Absurd, laughable, and... insignificant.
"You have to hold the conviction to kill me."
Subaru retracted his hand, gently dusting off non-existent dust from his cuff with his fingertips, as if he had just done a trivial thing.
He looked at Ryuen's face, which had instantly lost focus with pupils dilated by fear, and continued speaking with a calm voice:
"Very good, Ryuen. Then hold onto that conviction, live on, become stronger, and then..."
He bent down slightly, leaning close to Ryuen's ear, and spoke word by word in a volume only the two of them could hear, like the whisper of a demon:
"Embrace the resolve that you will definitely be killed by me, and come find me."
"Use all your calculations, burn out your madness, bet everything you have."
"Then, let me see... if you really possess the courage to fear nothing."
Subaru suddenly reached out, his hands tightly clamping onto Ryuen's throat.
The immense pressure was like a vice, making it impossible for Ryuen to breathe at all.
His body trembled, trying with all his might to pry Subaru's hands open.
But he simply couldn't do it.
Subaru's stature wasn't tall, but the power in those hands was incomparably massive.
And that movement was as if he had pinned down the throats of countless people before.
Ryuen resisted with all his might, his legs kicking wildly on the ground, but he simply couldn't break free from Subaru.
His right-hand watch emitted a sharp piercing alarm; the school teachers would definitely rush over at the fastest speed.
Ryuen realized only then that Subaru wasn't joking.
That was truly going for the goal of killing him!
His lower body uncontrollably leaked filth, and his legs kicked even more violently, so much so that even his shoes fell off.
Soil flew, saliva splattered.
But Subaru did not let go.
In fact, only a few seconds had passed, but Ryuen's brain was already gradually losing consciousness due to lack of oxygen.
No matter how Ryuen acted as if he feared nothing, when true death was imminent, he was afraid after all.
His eyes were filled with fear, and even his body was trembling.
"What is this?"
Subaru's eyes were filled with disappointment.
"Your mouth says you fear nothing, but in the end, you are still afraid of death? Ryuen."
In Subaru's eyes, Ryuen's body no longer held any color.
Boring.
Snap.
Subaru snapped Ryuen's neck.
The other students present, who had been taken down by Subaru, watched all of this in disbelief.
Subaru...
Subaru, killed someone?
He really killed someone?!
This guy...
Has he gone mad!?
Everyone's eyes were filled with terror. They scattered and fled, trying their best to get away from this monster.
And Subaru's hands reached toward his own throat—
Return by Death.
Return to the present.
Subaru straightened up, looking down at Ryuen, who was completely frozen, his breathing almost stagnant.
The terrifying darkness in his eyes had receded, restoring the deep grey indifference, but the icy brand left by that glance just now had been deeply carved into Ryuen's soul.
"...Your 'color', when truly facing death 'itself'..."
He stood up, looking at Ryuen with a face full of disappointment.
"...Is just like you are now, leaving only meaningless, trembling grey-white."
Ryuen's pupils were quaking; he had no idea what had happened.
That death had not occurred.
But Ryuen could keenly feel Subaru's disappointment.
It was as if, in Subaru's eyes, he was just a meaningless existence.
Darkness, there was only darkness that seemed to shroud everything.
Just the gaze alone made Ryuen feel fear.
"I originally had a little expectation for you. Did I start doing too much?"
"No, when it comes down to it, even if we proceeded step by step, in the end, you remain an existence without color."
"Ryuen, I've lost interest in you."
Subaru patted the dust off his body, then turned around.
"Your leader is Ibuki, right? I already know."
"How is that possible..."
"Your plan cannot succeed because I have already set traps on the way. It's just a pit, but rest assured, it's not just you guys. Class A and Class B are the same. Those who fall in shouldn't die, but they will be heavily injured and forced to withdraw from the exam."
"You... what exactly did you do?!"
"I just wanted to verify certain things, and facts have proved that you are no different from the others."
After saying this sentence, Subaru's figure gradually disappeared behind the bushes.
In the clearing, only Ryuen, whose cheek burned with stinging pain but whose soul felt like it had fallen into an ice cave, and the barely conscious Albert and others remained.
Ryuen sat blankly under the tree. The swelling on his cheek and the severe pain in his body continued to transmit signals, but all of this seemed separated by a layer of thick glass.
In his mind, that final glance from Subaru played on repeat—that darkness icy to the extreme, those words spoken lightly yet heavy as a thousand tons.
"Embrace the resolve that you will definitely be killed by me..."
It turned out that his so-called "pestering endlessly" and "never ending until death," in the other party's eyes, barely even qualified as a "game."
What the other party expected was a "hunt" and "being hunted" in the true sense, with life on the line.
And he himself had just been roaring for that pitiful obsession with revenge...
A massive sense of disparity, mixed with the fear stemming from life's instinct brought by that glance, drowned Ryuen like a tidal wave.
The anger was still there, the unwillingness was still there, but a deeper, near-despairing chill was spreading from the deepest part of his heart.
The violence, calculation, and desire for domination he took pride in... appeared so childish and laughable in front of Subaru's non-human "indifference."
Would he continue to hate Subaru? Yes.
Would he give up on revenge? Probably not.
But something was already different.
He reached out with a trembling hand toward his own neck.
For some reason, he had a feeling that he had actually been killed once already.
The killing intent on Subaru just now was absolutely not fake.
A thought couldn't help but arise in his heart.
And that monster named Natsuki Subaru, what kind of abyss-like scenery was he gazing into?
The fighting spirit in Ryuen's heart had completely collapsed. He raised his hand and pressed the emergency button on his watch.
About ten minutes or so later, the Class C homeroom teacher, Kazuma Sakagami, arrived hurriedly at the clearing with several staff members. Seeing the mess before him—the unconscious Albert and others, and Ryuen sitting paralyzed on the ground, having lost his soul—his expression instantly became extremely ugly.
"Ryuen, what happened?!"
Kazuma Sakagami asked hurriedly.
Ryuen knew very well that if he said all this was Natsuki Subaru's doing, it would have no meaning.
There was no surveillance here, only GPS records, but that proved nothing at all.
"They accidentally fell down a slope, and then it turned out like this."
Kakeru Ryuen replied.
____
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