Aiko heard Kenji's shocked protest through the earpiece, but it was Kaito's reply that made the air in her lungs turn to ice. Burn the treaty. It wasn't just an order; it was a judgment. It was the sound of a pillar of the world cracking.
"Kaito, wait!" she spoke into the comms, her voice desperate. "What are you doing? What was in that backpack?"
There was a moment of static as Kaito moved, the sounds of the city street in the background. When he spoke, his voice was dangerously calm, stripped of all emotion. He was no longer hiding the ugly truth from her. He was showing her the world he truly lived in.
"The old treaties between the clans are built on one fundamental rule," he explained, his voice a low hum of controlled fury. "We do not create. We do not enslave. We do not traffic. The yokai are a part of our world, not our cattle. We may bind them to our service through pacts and offerings, but what the Kageyama have been doing is an abomination."
He paused. "That backpack contained proof. Ledgers, data drives, and ritual charms. They have been capturing lesser spirits—kappa, tsukumogami, even kodama from the city's parks—and selling them. Selling them to wealthy humans, power-hungry sorcerers, other clans outside the treaty. They're not just breaking the rules, Aiko. They're breaking the world."
Aiko sank onto the sofa, horrified. This was so much bigger than a turf war.
"By revealing this," Kaito continued, "I am not just retaliating. I am forcing a choice. Every other clan in Tokyo—the Inagawa, the Sumiyoshi, all of them—will have to react. They cannot ignore this. They will have to condemn the Kageyama, or be seen as their allies in this filth. I am burning their house down, and forcing everyone to watch."
He was done explaining. "I'll be back soon," he said, and the line went dead.
Aiko was left in the silence, her eyes fixed on the clock. One hour. She was counting down to a war. She turned on the television, the cheerful inanity of a late-night talk show a jarring contrast to the tension in the room. She watched the minutes tick by, each one a lifetime.
Then, at exactly 1:15 AM, it happened.
The talk show host froze mid-sentence. The screen dissolved into static, then went black. A second later, an image appeared. It was a page from a ledger, written in elegant, spidery script. Names. Dates. Amounts. Then another image: a grainy, night-vision video of a terrified, child-sized kappa cowering in a cage.
Aiko's laptop on the table lit up, the screen filling with the same information—files being dumped onto public forums, social media, and news sites. Her burner phone buzzed violently, a flood of news alerts all screaming the same thing: MAJOR HACKER ATTACK, BIZARRE DATA DUMP, OCCULT RUMORS.
On the television, the hijacked broadcast continued. It showed a list of prominent names—politicians, CEOs, celebrities—all listed as clients. It showed diagrams of binding rituals. It was the Kageyama clan's deepest, darkest secret, laid bare for the entire world to see.
Aiko switched the TV to a live feed of Shibuya Crossing. Every single one of the massive screens, which usually showed commercials and music videos, was now displaying the Kageyama's shame. The bright, bustling heart of Tokyo had become a monument to their crimes.
Kaito hadn't just thrown a rock. He had dropped a mountain into the still waters of the city's secret world. The ripples would be tidal waves.
Just as the sheer scale of it all was about to overwhelm her, the front door clicked open.
Kaito was back. He looked like he hadn't slept in a year, but his eyes burned with a cold, triumphant fire. He walked to the window, watching the chaos he had unleashed upon the city below.
Aiko looked at him, at this man who could bring the hidden world to its knees with a single command. She was terrified of him. She was in awe of him. And she was inextricably, terrifyingly tied to him.
He must have felt her gaze, because he turned from the window to look at her, his face illuminated by the flickering lights of the chaos on the television screen.
"They wanted a war," he said, his voice quiet but echoing with the weight of his actions. "Now they have one. And everyone will be forced to choose a side."