[reuploading till chapter 20]
The plane cut through the night sky with the smooth, indifferent steadiness of something that doesn't understand what it's carrying.
As the clock edged past ten, the cabin lights settled into their lowest amber setting. One by one, passengers surrendered to sleep — heads tilted against headrests, conversations fading, the whole pressurized world narrowing to the white noise of engines and shallow breathing.
Jotaro sat with his hat brim low, arms folded, breathing slow and even. Avdol rested with his hands crossed over his chest, posture disciplined even in sleep. Joseph, with the specific lack of self-consciousness of a man at peace with himself, had begun to snore.
Only Shintaro remained awake.
Not because he refused to sleep. Because he couldn't.
Thirty thousand Black Sperm were scattered throughout every accessible space in the cabin — lodged in overhead compartments, pressed flat between seatbacks, clinging to the undersides of the window frames. Every position covered. Every passenger accounted for.
And yet nothing.
No anomalous reaction. No fluctuation in intent. No trace of Stand presence anywhere in the aircraft.
Could it be, Shintaro thought, eyes drifting along the ceiling, that my interference changed things so completely that the assassin never even boarded?
The idea lasted less than a second before he dismissed it.
DIO's operatives didn't make mistakes that crude. Which left only two possibilities: either a Stand User who didn't appear in the original flow of events had taken the assignment — or the true user of Gray Fly was not the old man Shintaro had been watching.
But can someone genuinely disguise themselves that completely?
He turned the question over. Ordinary people couldn't see Stands — that much was established. But a Stand User would react. Even involuntarily. A flinch, a held breath, a millisecond of stiffness when thirty thousand grotesque crawling shadows moved past their seat. None of the passengers had shown any of that. None at all.
If this flight continued without incident, they would land in Cairo tomorrow morning.
And if they arrived having been tested by nothing —
He stopped that line of thought. He knew where it ended.
Perhaps he should act. Cause a delay. Nothing that hurt anyone — just something that bought time, created space for growth, ensured the team that arrived at DIO's door was the team that needed to be there.
The moment the thought formed, he was already moving. A small unit of Black Sperm peeled away from the cabin and flowed soundlessly toward the cockpit, slipping along the floor like liquid shadow.
Shintaro looked at the display panel above the aisle.
10:10 PM.
He set a limit for himself, internal and absolute.
If nothing happened by 10:45 — he would intervene.
The decision did nothing to settle his chest.
He looked sideways at the sleeping figures. Kakyoin's brow was slightly furrowed in sleep. Jotaro's hat hid everything. Avdol and Joseph breathed with the easy depth of men who had learned to take rest seriously.
If his actions were discovered, what would he say?
"I knew an assassin was supposed to come, but since they didn't show up, I decided to cause an incident just in case"?
Even framed as favorably as possible, it was indefensible.
The Black Sperm reached the cockpit door.
Thirty-five minutes remained.
The nervousness refused to stay hidden. His breathing went slightly shallow. His throat tightened. He swallowed more often than necessary. His fingers curled against the armrest and uncurled, curled and uncurled, in a rhythm that had nothing to do with calm.
Every one of these tells was visible to the man sitting beside him with his eyes closed.
"Shintaro."
Kakyoin's voice was barely audible — pitched precisely for the two of them and no further.
"Is something on your mind?"
Shintaro jolted, nearly rising from his seat before forcing himself back down. "Ah — no! Nothing like that," he replied, too fast, then added with a laugh that had too much effort in it, "Maybe just a little airsick. Yeah. Airsick."
Kakyoin made a quiet sound of acknowledgment and didn't press.
But he turned his body slightly. And his gaze swept, once, across the full length of the cabin — unhurried, comprehensive, landing nowhere for too long.
"I saw it."
The Black Sperm at the cockpit door reacted the instant the words reached the air, dissolving back into shadow in a fraction of a second. But not quite fast enough.
Kakyoin had caught a glimpse. Nothing more than a dark outline, the suggestion of movement where there should have been none.
Shintaro directed them toward the cockpit. Why?
He closed his eyes again, expression unchanged, but the thoughts moved quickly behind it.
He looked for the generous interpretation first. A safety check. Autonomous Stand behavior. Overcautious scouting.
If Shintaro had wanted to betray them, there had been no shortage of opportunities far easier than this. The Flesh Bud. The cell. The hospital.
And still —
The details accumulated. Small, precise things. From the car ride. From boarding. From now.
Something wasn't balanced.
The display panel changed.
10:25.
Twenty minutes left before Shintaro's self-imposed limit.
In the back of the cabin, a white-haired old man rose slowly from his seat, steadying himself on the armrests, and shuffled toward the rear restroom. The movement was unhurried, entirely ordinary.
In the same moment, Kakyoin opened his eyes and glanced back — apparently without purpose.
He saw it.
More than a dozen Black Sperm clung to the old man's collar and shoulders, riding him through the narrow gap of the restroom door as it clicked shut behind him.
Logic supplied the easy answer: thorough surveillance. Nothing more.
But the doubt that Kakyoin had been working to suppress had grown past the point of management.
Then Shintaro's voice came, quiet and even.
"Kakyoin."
Kakyoin's shoulders tightened — barely, for a fraction of a second.
"Don't worry about me," Shintaro said, a rueful thread in his laugh that didn't quite reach lightness. "I'm probably being overcautious. But I can't shake the feeling there's something hostile in this cabin — something that's just waiting."
He looked straight ahead at the darkened seats.
"If this flight lands cleanly, we'll be on Cairo soil tomorrow. DIO has known we were coming from the beginning. He's not the type to let that moment pass without an arrangement."
Kakyoin turned and met his gaze.
The logic was clean. Coherent. Almost identical to the concerns that had already been circling in Kakyoin's own mind. The suspicion he had been quietly building collapsed under the weight of its own reasonableness.
He exhaled slowly and shook his head — a faint, self-deprecating curve appearing at the corner of his lips.
"So you saw through my overthinking long ago," Kakyoin said. "You really are sharp."
"Ah —" Shintaro scratched his hair, his tone dropping a register. "Actually, I share vision with the Black Sperm. I saw your reaction quite clearly."
Kakyoin stilled.
"...I hadn't considered that," he said after a moment.
His fingertips moved. Emerald-green energy unfurled from them as Hierophant Green's tendrils slid soundlessly through the floor, branching outward along the ceiling and between the seat gaps with quiet precision.
"Let me help," Kakyoin said. "Hierophant Green is well suited for scouting."
"That would be a significant help," Shintaro nodded.
The green tentacles fanned out through the cabin — luminous, patient, thorough. A few Black Sperm, unable to resist the novelty of glowing handholds, climbed directly onto them, using the tentacles as slides and perches, dangling their short legs with the contentment of creatures that find everything interesting.
"This green guy feels interesting to ride."
"You were climbing on him last time we met too."
Their voices buzzed in Shintaro's head like gnats.
"Quiet," he snapped inwardly. "Everyone, settle down."
The murmur dropped immediately.
The tentacles of Hierophant Green trembled slightly under the unexpected passengers — then, rather than shaking them off, made a subtle adjustment of angle, allowing the small black figures to sit more steadily.
Shintaro watched the scene and felt something ease just slightly in his chest. He had spent years being the one who started the whisper chain in a quiet room. Now he was the one trying to hold the line.
The world had changed. He had, too, or was trying to.
Outside the oval windows, the night was total and absolute.
Somewhere in the dark ahead, something was waiting.
_____________________
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