It was a powerful blow, straight into the man's ribs, sending him flying a considerable distance backward. His large body only stopped when it crashed directly into a sedan on the opposite sidewalk, crushing the front door frame of the car into a mangled mess.
Almost immediately, the anti-theft alarm of that wrecked car began shrieking loudly. The noise echoed throughout the silent neighborhood, and several apartment units nearby turned on their lights and looked outside.
And only then did I realize that everything around me had returned to normal. The raindrops were falling to the ground again, and all those chaotic sounds had come back as well. It felt as if I had just woken up from a dream.
"Come on!" Suddenly, JJ ran over and grabbed my arm, dragging me toward a dark alley.
She looked incredibly healthy. The exhausted appearance from earlier had completely vanished, replaced by aggression and a hint of urgency. Her arm pulled me forward with surprising force—if I hadn't managed to keep up, I would have tripped over the steps and fallen.
It was a narrow alley with no lights. A few trash bins sat against the wall corners, giving off a foul odor from the rainwater soaking into them. In the darkness, I could vaguely make out several homeless people in tattered clothes, sitting with their backs against the iron fence of a parking lot. They were still fast asleep in their old blankets, paying no attention at all to the loud noises from earlier.
JJ rushed past them without hesitation. She didn't even notice the leg of one man stretched out across the ground—she simply stepped on it and kept running straight ahead. And by the time he jerked awake, the two of us had already vanished from sight.
Only after five minutes of sprinting did I begin to recover my senses enough to ask her:
"Hey! Did you kill that guy?" I spoke in a voice only loud enough for JJ to hear.
"No. No way." She shook her head, a bitter smile on her lips. "That much wouldn't even faze him. It only bought us a little more time."
"What?"
My eyes widened as I stared at JJ.
A moment ago, I had thought that was a killing blow, and that we were only running away after taking him down. But she didn't look like she was joking. If he could get back up after that attack, then he definitely wasn't human anymore… Though then again, the same could be said for someone who could throw out such a powerful strike while already covered in injuries.
"You're not human either, are you?"
For some reason, I blurted that out while the two of us were running for our lives together. But instead of looking irritated or offended, JJ simply brushed her rain-soaked hair back and gave me a bright smile.
"I don't know. What about you?"
"Biologically speaking? Yeah. I'm just an ordinary person."
"Is that so." She smirked. "You don't smell human at all."
That sentence from a girl I had only just met made my skin crawl. "Smell human"? I had never imagined I would hear something like that come out of someone else's mouth. But putting that aside, we had something more important to do right now—run from that man. I had no idea where he had come from, only that he wanted to kill an innocent person like me.
The stench of the alley made my head swim a little. But somehow, I was still able to keep up with the urgent pace of that crazy girl, and she kept weaving left and right nonstop.
The cold rain seeped through my clothes, making my chest go numb. My arms were nearly frozen, and it felt as though my whole body could collapse at any moment. JJ and I had been running for nearly ten straight minutes, and I had probably never run this much in my life. Yet she didn't look tired at all, even though her body had been seriously wounded before this.
And then, when we entered an alley covered in graffiti, JJ suddenly stopped. Her eyes stared ahead thoughtfully, while her mouth was panting hard.
I immediately took the chance to rest. We had definitely run a long way from that bus stop already. Even I no longer knew where in this city I was.
"Hah… hah… did we lose him…" I panted, putting a hand on JJ's shoulder. "We got away, right?"
She did not answer at once. A few seconds later, I got a shake of the head.
The answer was no.
A crow.
A crow was standing beside the puddle in front of us. It tilted its head, its black feathers soaked through by the rain.
What was it looking at? It did not answer me.
Rain. One raindrop fell right in front of my nose. Then another dropped into my eye. It stung.
"Caw." The black creature cried once, then flew up into the air. Its wings stirred ripples in the puddle before us. Its rain-soaked wings carried it to a utility pole above.
From within the darkness, a large figure stepped out, like a ghost.
It was the assassin.
The three of us said nothing at all. We only stared at one another. The flickering streetlight was the only thing shining into this dark alley, and it made the broad silhouette of that man cast a long shadow down the wall, as if it were about to swallow the two of us whole.
His face was cold as ice, his eyes red, burning with violent fury. He walked toward JJ, each step slow but heavy. The quiet of the night made everything feel even more strained. And just as JJ had said, there was not a single wound on his body, even after taking such a vicious blow.
"Did you really think you could run away?"
He spoke, and that pressure alone made me afraid to breathe too hard.
But JJ was different. She answered with a crooked smile on her lips. Her eyes opened wide, as though daring him.
"Listen, as long as I'm still breathing, there's no way I'm surrendering."
Bang.
A violent impact sent the raindrops gathered on the trash cans falling to the ground.
And with no warning at all, I only caught a flash of it, but it seemed that JJ had unleashed an incredibly fast roundhouse kick at the assassin. It was aimed straight at his stomach, but somehow it had been blocked by the thick muscle of his forearm.
"Well, well." She clicked her tongue and quickly pulled her leg back. "Looks like you've had some proper training too."
That kick just now had been extremely powerful. It left a deep imprint on the man's clothes and released a thin trail of smoke visible to the naked eye. No doubt about it—that had absolutely been a killing strike.
"That hurt." He sighed and brushed a hand over the spot. "Those last two blows can count as repaying my debt to you. I'll ask you one last time, JJ. Will you surrender and come back with me?"
"What is this? So it's family business?" For one second, I spoke too fast.
The consequences came immediately.
"I'm not talking to you." The assassin glared, the barrel of his silenced pistol once again aimed at my head. "If you behave, I'll let you spend the rest of your life in a vegetative state."
"Ah, no. In that case, I'd rather die than—"
Click.
He had chambered a round. This was obviously not a man who liked jokes, so from then on I chose silence.
"It's your choice, JJ. Violence or peace. I don't want to have to lay hands on someone who once helped me."
She sat perched on the lid of a trash can, carefree as ever, one hand rubbing at her chin.
"Tch, I finally made it outside… But since you were kind enough to offer me a choice…"
JJ raised one index finger and lightly drew it across her own throat.
"Go die."