The encounter with Yunki left Shitsubo raw, his silence bruised, his veins burning. He had not expected resistance—least of all from a girl who wielded light like a sword. Her words gnawed at him almost as much as the hunger did. Filth. She had not said it like an insult. She had said it like a fact, carved into stone.
He lingered in the skeleton of Osaka Tower, one of the city's once-proud skyscrapers that now lay gutted by Aggressor fire. From its broken heights, he watched the city shift. He had become both hunter and hunted. The Aggressors still avoided him, slipping away from his silence as if it was poison. But the survivors… they grew bolder in avoiding him too.
The stories spread faster now. Not just whispers in the dark, but declarations passed from camp to camp.
"The Silent Aggressor stalks the ruins. It wears a man's face."
"They say it feeds on envy. That's why you must never look at it too long. If you envy anything it has—strength, weapons, breath—it takes it from you."
"They say light hurts it. A girl with the sun in her hands drove it back."
The name traveled further than Shitsubo could. He had no voice to challenge it. And so the myth took root.
---
For days, he kept to the ruins alone. He tried to resist the hunger, rationing what little ordinary food remained, even though it crumbled to dust in his mouth. But the curse did not tolerate weakness. Hunger sharpened into agony, stabbing through his bones, dragging him into hallucinations where every shadow became a mouth, every breath another's envy.
On the fourth night, he gave in again.
It was quick. A group of three scavengers by a broken convenience store. They had found a stash of bottled water and were laughing, exhausted but relieved. He saw them. They saw him. And the envy bloomed like fire.
Before they could speak, his silence fell. Heavy, suffocating. Their laughter choked off into coughs, their eyes widening. Shitsubo stepped forward, trembling as the tendrils of hunger sank into their chests, pulling at their joy, their survival, their envy of his steadiness.
When it ended, they were alive. Alive, but emptied. Their water bottles lay forgotten in the dust. They stumbled away, hollow shells.
Shitsubo crouched where they had been, clutching his stomach, his veins glowing faintly in the dark. The silence purred around him, fed, satisfied for the moment.
And yet, the emptiness inside him deepened.
---
Yunki Adachi moved closer each day. Shitsubo didn't see her, but he felt her light. It carried through the city like a second sun, banishing shadows wherever she went. Survivors flocked to her, drawn by hope as much as by protection.
He heard them as he trailed along the edges of her gatherings.
"She gave us food. Real food."
"She says the Aggressors aren't gods. That we can fight them."
"She says that Silent Aggressor is worse than the invaders. At least the Aggressors kill quick."
Every word chipped at him. She was not just resisting his silence—she was rewriting it. Making him into the villain.
And still, when he saw her from a distance, standing in the glow of her own light, he felt the hunger clawing at his chest. She burned so bright. So untouchable. The envy she stirred in others was intoxicating, almost unbearable.
If he devoured her, he knew, the hunger would never starve again.
---
But Shitsubo was not the only one watching Yunki.
One night, as he stalked the outskirts of her growing camp, he saw them. An Aggressor patrol—not the mindless drones that roamed the ruins, but something larger, organized. A squad of armored beasts, their bodies crawling with stone plates, their movements too coordinated to be wild. At their center was a towering figure with limbs like pillars of granite and eyes glowing a dull, cruel green.
An Aggressor general.
Shitsubo froze in the shadows. The silence wrapped him, making him unseen. But even so, the general paused, its stone-plated head turning slightly, as if it could sense him beneath the silence.
The figure didn't strike. It turned away, leading its squad toward the subway where Yunki and her people were gathered.
Shitsubo's veins burned. He knew what the hunger wanted—let them fight, let her fall, and then take the envy of all who weep for her. But something else stirred in him too, something sharp and buried.
He thought of Genji. Of how his brother had led survivors with nothing but grit. Of how Shitsubo himself had become the story parents used to scare their children.
He clenched his fists. The silence trembled.
---
The Aggressors reached the subway at dawn. Their screeches echoed down the tunnels, sending survivors scrambling to arms. Yunki's light flared, driving back the first wave.
But the general did not falter. It stepped through her brilliance as though it was mist, its stone-hide glowing faintly. The survivors screamed.
And in the shadows above the tunnel mouth, Shitsubo stood.
The hunger snarled in his chest. Let it end her. Take the pieces.
But his body moved before his thoughts could stop it.
He dropped into the tunnel like a blade. His silence exploded outward, slamming against the Aggressors in a crushing wave. The drones staggered, shrieked, clawed at their own ears. Survivors gasped, clutching their heads.
Yunki spun toward him, light blazing.
"You—!"
But the general roared, cutting her off, stone fists hammering against the ground. The tunnel shook. Shitsubo's silence and Yunki's light collided, and for a heartbeat the entire subway was caught between shadow and brilliance.
The survivors could only watch.
---
Shitsubo faced the general in silence, his veins lit like molten cracks in stone. Yunki stood opposite him, radiance burning. They were enemies by nature, yet now the Aggressor loomed between them.
For the first time, neither spoke nor struck at each other.
For the first time, they stood against a greater hunger.
And in the ruined tunnels of Osaka, the myth of the Silent Aggressor shifted. Survivors who lived that morning would tell a new version of the story.
Not of a monster.
But of a monster who fought the monsters.