"I didn't think," Lulubel paused, her hand reaching for a bottle of disinfectant, "that I'd ever cross paths with you again, Shiroi Hitsuji."
Ren offered no reply. He had dyed his hair a deep, void-black and was wearing amber contacts, but Lulubel had dismantled his disguise with surgical precision.
"I almost didn't recognize you. The change is... radical. But once I popped those lenses out and saw the souvenirs you're carrying here..." Lulubel leaned in, her index finger tracing the jagged scar of an old stab wound on Ren's left ribs.
Ren turned his face away, but her gaze was a tether he couldn't break. He caught his reflection in a tarnished mirror on the wall—his exposed red retinas glowing with a predatory light. She must have stripped his contacts while he was unconscious.
Lulubel began organizing her surgical tools, her movements casual, almost rhythmic. "That wound," she gestured toward his freshly injured side, "reminds me of the night of your failed hit-and-run mission years ago. Everyone involved was certain you'd been bagged. But a few days later, you 'came home' with your ribs stitched up by a ghost."
She looked at him with a glimmer of clinical fascination. "I've always wondered who looked after you back then. And now, after treating this latest mess... I'm wondering about you. You're such a fascinating specimen."
Ren kept his words locked away. Internally, he was seething. Of all the people to find him, it had to be this mad scientist. He knew Lulubel well; she was the head of Higanbana's 'medical team'—a woman whose genius was matched only by her appetite for the macabre.
"Did you tell them?" Ren finally broke his silence. He ignored the talk of 'specimens' and cut straight to the bone.
"About the Shiroi Hitsuji?" Lulubel didn't look up from her tools. "I'm conflicted. They've been calling you 'Ren' this whole time. They really have no idea who they're nursing back to health, do they?"
"From now on, you call me that too," he commanded, his voice returning to its default sub-zero temperature.
Lulubel simply nodded. No 'why,' no hesitation. To her, the new name was just another layer of skin he was wearing for the hunt.
Ren's eyes narrowed as he pushed further. "What's your angle with CUBE?"
"After the Marble Kingdom went up in flames, Higanbana's status became... let's say, ambiguous. The members scattered like roaches in the light. I decided to take my private research off the grid," Lulubel said, a wide, unsettling smile splitting her face. "I needed a reliable network for the black-market materials. That's how I found Vera. She's my conduit to the dark web."
She tilted her head, her pigtails swaying with the movement. "By the way," she paused, her eyes calculating, "I expect proper compensation for keeping the secret of the Shiroi Hitsuji."
Ren grunted, the sharp pain in his ribs swallowed by the weight of the unspoken threat. "What do you want?"
"That black hair of yours. It's not just some cheap drug-store dye, is it?" She smiled thinly, waiting for the answer she already knew.
"You want a sample?" Ren guessed coldly.
Lulubel carefully checked the dosage of a cell-regeneration booster in a syringe before turning to him. "If I just wanted a sample, I would have taken it while you were out cold. I'm not a thief. The price for Shiroi Hitsuji's silence is much higher."
She stepped closer, plunging the needle into Ren's right arm—the one not bound by the sling. "Introduce me," she whispered. "The person who made your silver hair vanish... they must be magnificent. I want to meet them."
She was right. If it were a common dye, Ren's silver roots would have returned long ago. But a year after applying that specific vial, his hair grew black from the root, as if rewritten at the genetic level.
"I can't do that," Ren replied as she applied a plaster over the injection site.
Lulubel's gaze sharpened, locking onto his. "Don't tell me you..."
She didn't need him to finish the sentence. She knew exactly how the assassin in front of her operated. The room went silent. Thick. Suffocating.
"Such a waste," Lulubel murmured. "You've crushed a literal diamond."
Ren didn't respond.
"I've just given you a regeneration booster. Sleep. Let the chemistry do its job. While you're in this state, be a good patient and stay quiet." She offered a firm, professional smile that didn't reach her eyes before exiting. Moments later, the booster pulled Ren back into the darkness of sleep.
RICH CITY POLICE HEADQUARTERS | MARCH 2324
Inspector Laevatein sat hunched at her desk. She had formed the Special Investigation Unit for the Eye Tower Tragedy, and for three days, they had been clawing through the crime scene and buried files without sleep.
A Lieutenant stood before her, posture rigid, ready to reveal the team's findings.
"Walk me through it," Laevatein said, her voice dry. The dark circles under her eyes were a testament to a week of political pressure and dead ends.
The Lieutenant leaned over the desk. "We identified three anomalies the first team missed. Fact one: The bullets recovered from Baron Frey and former General Aslan are identical—custom-made for the General's personal sidearm. The gun was found in his hand. It supports the narrative of internal conflict and suicide."
"Suicide... the public will swallow that," Laevatein nodded, her face a mask of apathy.
"Not so fast, Inspector. Fact two: The CCTV footage from that day is gone. Not just in the Eye Tower, but every major street and building within a two-kilometer radius. Wiped clean." He looked frustrated. "The Frey family held the blueprints for AEGIS, with their servers in the God Hands Gallery. The footage seems to have deleted itself—self-purged by the AEGIS system."
Laevatein slammed her fist onto the desk, her jaw tightening. "AEGIS. That top-tier security suite they were selling to the city? This just got a lot uglier."
"And fact three," the Lieutenant continued, his voice dropping an octave. "We found a hidden guest book at the reception desk. There's one entry for the banquet that never happened: 'Daniel of Santino'."
He locked eyes with Laevatein. "Santino is the only non-family link we have left to the Eye Tower. We've already called them in. They're our next witnesses."
"Santino? That greasy mafia outfit that's built on bribes?" Laevatein sneered. She knew Santino wasn't a man you just 'arrested.' It was an open secret that every syndicate had a leash on the police force, and Santino had been buying those leashes for decades.
She had to choke back her rage. Moving against Santino meant challenging the very corrupt hierarchy she despised—a move she wasn't strong enough to make yet.
But she needed a lead, no matter how small. "Bring him in."
The Lieutenant nodded. With a sharp click, the door to the Inspector's office swung open.
A man stepped in, radiating a level of financial power that matched the dead victims. His suit was bespoke, cut to perfection. Erebos walked with a curated calm, treating the police station like a foyer rather than an interrogation room. He carried a sense of managed danger—a threat wrapped in luxury.
Erebos stood before Laevatein's desk. "Good morning, Inspector Laevatein. I am Erebos, representing Santino." A professional smile touched his lips, but his eyes remained ice-cold as they swept over the woman in front of him.