On the other side, hurried and chaotic footsteps came from behind the youth.
"Hey—"
Jitt, who had run until his hair was completely messed up, shouted toward the youth's back:
"Miss… where…?"
His face was full of anxiety, completely failing to notice the wound on the youth's arm that had dyed half his clothes red—or rather, he noticed it, but did not care at all.
"Say something!"
Seeing that the youth did not respond, Jitt raised his voice:
"How is Miss?! If something happens to Miss—"
The youth slowly turned around.
The moment his eyes met Jitt's, the unfinished words were forcibly choked back.
In Jitt's field of vision, what he saw was not the youth himself, but something terrifying—something that should never have appeared here.
"I'm here…"
Hearing Jitt's voice, Anida timidly pushed the door open and stepped out, hesitating as she spoke:
"I'm fine."
...
Inside the Bankro family's car, Kisho sat in the back seat. Anida sat beside him, looking at him with extreme caution, wanting to speak yet stopping herself.
Jitt, sitting opposite the two of them, stared at Kisho with a deep, probing gaze, as if silently evaluating what kind of… thing he really was.
After watching for quite a while without finding anything unusual, he finally broke the silence:
"Take off your coat. Let me see how serious your injury is."
He added:
"If it's serious, I'll have the doctor wait in your room."
"I'm fine."
When Noah was using this body, not only did he take care of that Emission-type Nen user, he also incidentally healed the wounds on his face and shoulder.
...The Transmutation-type Nen abilities he could use were far inferior to Noah's.
He had never even realized that the water condensed by his Nen also possessed healing effects.
But he could not explain why there was such a large patch of blood on his shoulder without any actual wound—after all, he could not expose the existence of "Nen abilities" to Anida.
He looked at Jitt and declined politely:
"It's just a minor injury. Even if I leave it alone, it'll 'heal very soon.'"
Jitt understood what he meant and did not press further.
Anida, however, objected:
"How could it be a minor injury?"
She frowned, her gaze falling on Kisho's shoulder:
"...So much blood..."
Seeing that she was about to cry, Kisho helplessly reached out and rubbed her head, then sighed:
"It's really just a minor injury. It's fine."
Seeing this, Jitt's face darkened, and he felt a strong urge to chop off Kisho's hand.
"I..."
Even after being patted on the head, Anida was still unhappy. She lowered her head:
"...If I hadn't shaken off the bodyguards, you wouldn't have gotten hurt."
Listening to Anida's self-blame, Jitt shot Kisho an irritated glare:
"This has nothing to do with Miss. It's just petty criminals coveting the master's property."
Anida remained silent, offering no response.
Kisho neither confirmed nor denied it. He shrugged indifferently, leaned back as if tired, and closed his eyes.
It was probably not just for "money."
After Noah came out, besides killing and healing, he also helped him discover someone.
When he saw that person, the hatred and fury in that person's eyes made them look like a demon that had crawled out of hell just to seek revenge.
He murmured inwardly:
"Could it be the person I'm thinking of?"
...
Late at night...
Because he was injured, Kisho was given the night off and no longer needed to stand guard.
He sat on the couch, eyes open, staring at the floor in front of him.
Before him, a person appeared silently.
No one knew how this person—who looked like someone with no Nen abilities at all—managed to pass through layers of guards to arrive here.
The visitor lowered her voice, suppressing her killing intent:
"Seeing me, you don't seem surprised at all."
"Yeah, because I already guessed someone would come looking for me tonight."
Kisho smiled:
"Although I didn't know who it would be before, now it seems... the one who eavesdropped on my conversation with Roy in the dormitory last time was also you, right?"
He slowly and clearly spoke the visitor's name:
"Miss Gelia."
Gelia: "..."
She took a breath and asked softly:
"I'm very curious. How did you discover me?"
"When I first met you, I was completely acting as an ordinary person with no Nen abilities. You didn't notice then—my Nen abilities shouldn't suddenly stop working."
"There was a bit of luck involved. That night, after I opened the door, I just happened to pick up your hair."
Gelia remained expressionless:
"That could also have been from the previous time Mr. Roy brought me to see you."
"Not a big problem. I don't care who it was."
Kisho said calmly:
"Because no matter who it was, they would come to find me tonight."
"After all, on the surface, I'm injured. If someone wanted to kill me, tonight would be the best opportunity."
"The mole Mr. Roy wants to catch should be you. And the news about assassinating someone from the Saro family was also leaked by you."
With every sentence Kisho spoke, Gelia's face darkened further.
Kisho looked at her and shrugged:
"...You hate me—or rather, you hate everyone from the Bankro family. Why?"
"Anida seems to like you quite a bit."
The moment she heard the name "Anida," the icy expression on Gelia's face softened slightly—though Kisho's next words made it turn cold again in an instant.
Kisho: "You might as well talk about yourself. You should also realize that you can't kill me."
Gelia: "..."
She casually pulled over a chair and sat down.
Since her plan had already failed, and she was well aware that she could not escape from the hands of this seemingly harmless yet actually ruthless little devil, she might as well speak frankly.
—She had a premonition that this boy who called himself "Noah" had absolutely no simple intentions either.
If there was even a slim chance, could he become one of her own?
"Do you need a reason to hate the Bankro family?" Gelia stared at Kisho and curved her lips into a smile tinged with bitterness and helplessness at her inability to change anything.
Her voice was very soft:
"Among the people here, aside from Anida, which one doesn't deserve to die?"
"Oh?"
Kisho rarely encountered such a like-minded "friend." He propped his chin up, looking like someone ready to watch drama, signaling her to continue.
"You should know about 'raw liquid,' right?"
As he wished, Gelia continued:
"These beasts sell this addictive substance while simultaneously using 'people' for related research..."
At this point, Gelia suddenly stopped, as if she could not continue any further.
Kisho did not interrupt her, quietly waiting.
After a moment of composure, she continued in an extremely calm voice:
"My former father... because he couldn't afford the drug money, sent my younger sister... to the research institute in exchange for that thing..."
She suddenly let out a laugh, her gaze passing through the wall toward Anida's bedroom:
"If my sister were still alive, she'd probably be about the same age as Anida."
Kisho clicked his tongue and said seriously:
"Your father was truly a piece of trash."
"It's 'former' father."
Gelia sneered:
"After I learned about it, I killed him."
Kisho responded with an "Oh."
"You've been to the research institute, so I want to ask you... have you seen those kinds of monsters?"
After speaking, Gelia seemed to realize that the boy in front of her might also be the kind of thing she was talking about. After hesitating for a moment, she awkwardly added:
"I don't know why your eyes are also like that, but those monsters have no rationality at all—only instinctive hunger for feeding."
Kisho: "..."
He frowned:
"No rationality?"
He was certain that even if Noah's eyes were exactly the same as those monsters—
Noah was absolutely not that kind of monster.
Although Noah never responded to him with words or looks, he definitely had rationality, and was even capable of perceiving all external stimuli.
He simply did not want to actively engage with or try anything, and did not even care how he himself was treated—
As if all past struggles and resistance had been futile, leaving him numb and unwilling to resist uselessly anymore.
But... without "Noah," "Kisho" would have died countless times already.
"Noah" would only step out of his own world for the sake of "Kisho," to face a human world he deeply loathed.
Kisho: "..."
He gently pressed his hand to his chest. At this moment, he felt an overwhelming sadness.
Because he suddenly realized that every time "Noah" appeared outside, what awaited him was still a human world that only brought him harm.