The Kiryuu household that evening was a study in quiet tension. The familiar warmth of the kitchen seemed to have leached away, replaced by a stillness that felt foreign to the space. Dr. Akihiko Kiryuu sat at the table, his reading glasses perched on his nose, but the medical journal before him remained untouched on the same page for twenty-three minutes. Saki Kiryuu moved between counter and sink with mechanical precision, washing dishes that were already clean, her usually animated features composed into a careful neutrality.
Rei sat between them, the epicenter of this atmospheric shift. His hands were folded on the table, fingers interlaced so tightly the knuckles showed white through the skin. The school had called an hour earlier. The principal's secretary, with a voice like filed steel, had informed them that Rei was suspended for three days for "willful destruction of school property."
The front door opened and closed. Haru's footsteps sounded in the hallway, then paused at the kitchen entrance. He took in the scene—his father's uncharacteristic stillness, his mother's forced busywork, his brother's hunched shoulders—and his easy smile faded. He didn't ask. He simply placed his bag against the wall and leaned in the doorway, his presence a silent question.
"Rei," Akihiko began, removing his glasses. His voice was calm, professional, the tone he used when discussing a difficult diagnosis. "The principal called. He says you broke a classroom window. Intentionally. To show off for your classmates."
Saki stopped pretending to wash dishes. She dried her hands on a towel and came to stand behind Rei, one hand coming to rest on his shoulder. The contact was warm, steadying, but Rei felt it as an additional weight.
"He said…" Rei's voice was a dry whisper. He cleared his throat. "He said I told some other students I wanted to prove how daring I was. That I picked up a chair and threw it through the window of the empty classroom on the second floor."
A flashback, brief and stark:
*Rei stood in Principal Watanabe's office. The man was balding, with the perpetually weary expression of someone who has spent too long negotiating between parental expectations and institutional inadequacy. He didn't meet Rei's eyes.*
*"Kiryuu, what happened in the yard today… it's messy. Kagen's father is on the school board. Chairman, in fact. The story that will be going home is that you broke a window in a fit of juvenile bravado. You will confirm this story to your parents."*
*"But he—"*
*"There is no 'he,'" Watanabe cut in, his voice dropping. "There was an altercation. You were both at fault. But Kagen Ushiro cannot be seen to have been… bested… by a first-year. The optics are impossible. His suspension would cause complications your family does not need. Do you understand?"*
*Rei had understood. He had seen the unspoken threat hanging in the air: a board chairman had long reach. A local doctor's reputation was a fragile thing, built on trust and community standing. It could be fractured with whispers, with inconvenient audits, with suddenly withdrawn referrals. Rei pictured his father's clinic empty, his mother's worried face, Haru's future clouded. The cost of truth was too high.*
*"Do you understand?" Watanabe repeated.*
*"Yes, sir."*
"And that's what happened?" Akihiko's question pulled him back to the present. His father's gaze was clinical, probing, as if searching for symptoms Rei was trying to hide.
Saki's hand tightened on his shoulder. "Rei, darling, you can tell us. Really."
The truth surged in his throat, a bitter tide. *Kagen Ushiro and his brother have been torturing me for weeks. They cornered me today. I fought back. I broke his nose and pulled off his wig. He was beating me and I just… snapped. But his father owns the school, and if I tell the truth, he'll destroy our family to protect his son's pride.*
He opened his mouth. The words trembled on his tongue.
Then he saw it: the imagined headline in the local paper. *"Dr. Kiryuu's Son Involved in Brutal Schoolyard Brawl."* The speculative looks at the clinic. The whispered conversations at the supermarket. His father's quiet pride in his work, crumbling to ash.
He closed his mouth. Swallowed the truth. It tasted like copper and cowardice.
"Yes," Rei whispered, staring at the grain of the wooden table. "That's what happened. I was… showing off. I'm sorry."
The silence stretched. Rei braced himself for the explosion—the shouting, the punishment, the disappointment that would slice deeper than any reprimand.
Akihiko sighed, a long, weary exhalation. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "At your age… well. The impulse to perform, to claim space… it's not uncommon." He sounded almost disappointed that it was so mundane. "Don't do it again, Rei. Windows are expensive, and your mother and I would prefer not to receive calls from the principal. Understood?"
Rei nodded, numb.
Saki bent and kissed the top of his head. "Go rest, sweetheart. You look pale."
They left for the clinic soon after, the echo of the front door closing sounding like a verdict. Rei climbed the stairs to his room, each step heavy with the guilt of his lie. He fell onto his bed, not to sleep, but to hide from the judgment of his own four walls.
He didn't hear Haru come in later. He only became aware of his brother's presence when the bed dipped beside him. Haru didn't speak. He just sat there, a solid, silent presence in the gathering dusk.
***
Dinner was a quiet affair. Rei picked at his food, the earlier nausea replaced by a hollow emptiness. Afterward, Haru jerked his head toward the living room. "PS5. I need to destroy you in *Fight of Legends* to feel better about my own day."
It was a lifeline. Rei grabbed it.
For an hour, they were just brothers. The glow of the screen illuminated their faces as digital warriors traded fantastical blows. Haru won, but not by as much as he usually did. Rei's focus was unnerving, his character moving with a desperate, precision aggression that was new.
During a loading screen, Haru spoke, his eyes on the television. "So. You threw a chair through a window."
"Yes." Rei's thumb hovered over the controller.
"Hmm." Haru selected his character. "See, the thing is, I know you. You calculate the aerodynamic properties of a pea before you flick it. You rehearse 'excuse me' before asking someone to pass the salt. The idea of you impulsively heaving furniture… it doesn't fit the data."
Rei's heart began a slow, heavy thump. "People change."
"Not that much." Haru's character landed a perfect combo on Rei's, but his voice remained casual. "You can tell me, Rei. Whatever it is. I'm your brother."
The concern in Haru's voice, so carefully veiled by nonchalance, was the final crack in the dam. Rei had borne the bullying, the humiliation, the principal's coercion. But he could not bear Haru's gentle, knowing doubt.
"It's nothing," Rei said, his voice thick. "Everything's fine at school."
Haru paused the game. The sudden silence was deafening. He turned to look at Rei fully. "I never said anything about school."
The misstep hung in the air. Rei froze, controller slipping in his suddenly slick hands.
"Rei." Haru's voice lost all its casual pretense. It was low, serious. "Look at me. Is everything okay? Is there something you want to tell me?"
The dam shattered.
A tear traced a hot path down Rei's cheek. Then another. He tried to speak, but only a choked sound emerged. He bowed his head, shoulders shaking with the force of silent sobs he'd been suppressing for months.
"Rei." Haru's hand was on his back, warm and steady. "Who is it?"
The story spilled out in a fractured, tear-soaked torrent. Kaito's paper balls and lunchtime taunts. The ruined bento. The whispered threats about Ayaka. The courtyard and Mr. Tanaka's slap. Ayaka's suspension. The trap by the equipment shed. Kagen's hands on him, his breath, his words. The wig. The animalistic rage. The fight. Jaws. The principal's office and the ordered lie. Every detail, every humiliation, every moment of fear, poured out into the safe darkness of the living room, illuminated only by the paused screen of a fighting game.
Haru listened. He did not interrupt. He did not tense. He simply listened, his hand never leaving Rei's back, his breathing slow and measured. When Rei finished, exhausted and empty, the room was silent for a full minute.
Then Haru stood up. "I'm going to buy a cold drink. I'll be fast."
His voice was flat. Completely devoid of emotion. It was more terrifying than any shout.
As soon as the front door closed behind him, Haru pulled out his phone. He scrolled, found a number, and pressed call. It rang twice.
"Haru?" Ayaka's voice was bright, touched with hopeful surprise. "Hi! I was just thinking about—"
"Why didn't you tell me?"
The ice in his voice froze her words mid-sentence.
"Haru? What's—"
"Rei. Bullied. Every day. Suspended. *You*. Suspended. Why was I the last person in this city to know my brother was being systematically broken, Ayaka?"
"Haru, I wanted to, but he made me promise not to tell you or your parents! He was terrified you'd get in trouble! He said you'd go after them and they'd have powerful parents and it would ruin your future, or they'd retaliate against the clinic, and he couldn't live with that! He made me swear!"
Her words came in a frantic rush, a mirror of Rei's own confession. Haru closed his eyes, seeing the logic of it—the twisted, self-sacrificing, *Rei* logic of it. It didn't douse the cold fury in his veins; it just directed it.
"You can fix your mistake," he said, his voice still that terrifying calm. "Find out where Kaito and his friends are right now."
A pause. He heard the tap of fingers on a screen. Ayaka, to her credit, didn't argue. "Kaito's Instagram. He posted a picture ten minutes ago. They're at the park near the school. The one with the old fountain."
"Thank you. If anything else happens to Rei, you call me immediately. No more secrets."
He hung up before she could reply.
***
The park was bathed in the sodium-orange glow of streetlights. Kaito and three other boys lounged on the low wall of the dry fountain, sharing a bag of chips and laughing too loudly. They were kings of their tiny, pathetic domain.
Haru walked toward them, his footsteps silent on the paved path. He wore a simple tracksuit, hands in his pockets.
"Hey," one of the boys nudged Kaito. "Who's the stiff?"
Kaito looked up, smirking. "Lost, old man? This is our spot."
Haru stopped a few feet away. "Kaito Ushiro?"
"Yeah? You wanna die or something? Who the fuck are you?" Kaito puffed out his chest, his friends snickering behind him.
"I'm the brother of the boy you've been using as your personal punching bag." Haru's voice was conversational. "The 'piece of shit.' The 'stain.' The one whose lunch you kick. The one you whisper filth about his friend to."
Recognition dawned in Kaito's eyes, followed by contempt. "Ohhh! *That* dei's brother! Come to apologize for him? Shoulda taught him some manners, big bro. He's a rude little—"
Haru moved.
There was no wind-up, no dramatic shout. His right leg snapped forward in a piston-like front kick that connected squarely with Kaito's sternum. The sound was a sickening *thump* of impact, followed by the whoosh of expelled air. Kaito flew backward off the wall, landing in a heap on the concrete, gasping like a fish on land.
The laughter died. For a second, the other three stared, stunned.
Then they moved, scrambling off the wall with angry shouts. One lunged, swinging a wild haymaker. Haru shifted his weight slightly, letting the fist pass harmlessly by his head, and drove a knee into the boy's exposed ribs. There was a crack. The boy screamed, folding in half.
An elbow came from the left. Haru ducked under it, came up inside the boy's guard, and slammed his forehead into the bridge of the boy's nose. Cartilage crunched. Blood fountained.
The last one tried to kick. Haru caught the ankle, twisted, and shoved. The boy fell hard, his shoulder dislocating with a wet pop.
It had taken less than ten seconds.
Haru walked over to Kaito, who was still trying to suck air into his paralyzed lungs. He crouched beside him. Kaito's eyes were wide with animal terror.
"Now," Haru said, his voice still that same, chilling calm. "You're going to understand the price of what you've been doing. Not with money. With pain."
The next five minutes were a clinical lesson in anatomy and agony. Haru worked with the cold precision of a surgeon, his movements economical, brutal, and devoid of rage. He was simply correcting a mistake. A dislocated finger here. A precise strike to a nerve cluster there. A knee driven into a thigh to bruise the muscle deeply. He spoke little, only asking the occasional quiet question: "Does it hurt here more? Or here?"
By the end, the four boys were a weeping, broken tableau on the concrete. Teeth littered the ground like spilled Chiclets. Arms and legs lay at unnatural angles. Sobs and whimpered apologies filled the air.
"We're sorry! We won't do it again! Please!"
Haru stood over Kaito, who was missing two front teeth, his left eye swollen shut. "Where is your brother right now?"
Kaito tried to shake his head, to be loyal, to be tough. Haru placed his foot gently on Kaito's dislocated finger.
"The arcade! The Neo-Tokyo Arcade on Main Street! He's there with his friends!"
Haru removed his foot. "If you ever look at my brother again, if you ever say his name, I will come back. And next time, I will use a hammer. Do you understand?"
The gurgled, desperate assent was all the answer he needed.
The Neo-Tokyo Arcade was a cacophony of digital noise and garish light. Haru didn't go in. He found what he needed in the alley beside it: a length of discarded iron rebar, cold and heavy in his hand. He leaned against the wall, shrouded in shadow, and waited.
Twenty minutes later, Kagen Ushiro emerged with two larger friends, their laughter loud and boisterous. Kagen's nose was bandaged, his walk slightly stiff. The wig, Haru noted, had been replaced with a price-looking hairpiece, but the insecurity was palpable in the way he held his head.
Haru stepped into the pool of light under the arcade's sign, the rebar held loosely at his side.
"Hey," he said.
They stopped. Kagen squinted. "Who the hell are you?"
"Some might call you fat," Haru mused, his voice cutting through the arcade's din. "But that's not quite right. You're more like… the back end of a bus. All noise and bulk, but nobody wants to be near you."
Recognition and fury dawned on Kagen's face. "You!"
His friends charged. They were bigger than Kaito's crew, older, meaner. It made no difference.
Haru didn't fight them. He dismantled them.
The rebar became a blur of punishing gray steel. It was not a weapon of finesse, but of overwhelming, brutal force. He broke blocking arms. Shattered kneecaps. Caved in ribs. The sound was a horrible orchestra of cracking bone and guttural cries. He moved with a terrifying efficiency, every swing calculated to maximize damage and end resistance.
In forty-five seconds, Kagen's friends were unconscious heaps on the pavement.
Kagen backed away, his bravado gone, replaced by primal fear. "My father will destroy you! He'll have you arrested! He'll ruin your family!"
Haru advanced. "You will go to your principal tomorrow. You will tell him there was a misunderstanding. You will make sure my brother's suspension is revoked. Ayaka Shinozaki's suspension will also be revoked. If either of their records bear a single blemish from this incident, I will find you. And I will not use a rebar next time."
He took a final step, looming over the cowering boy. "Do we have an understanding, *fatso*?"
Kagen, tears and snot mingling on his face, nodded frantically.
Haru dropped the bloody rebar. It clattered on the pavement, a final punctuation. He turned and walked away, his breathing only slightly elevated. At the corner store, he bought two cans of cold melon soda. One for himself. One for Rei.
***
"What the heck were you doing? You were gone for thirty minutes!" Rei said as Haru walked back into the living room, handing him a soda.
Haru popped his own can open, took a long swallow. "Punishing your bullies," he said, so quietly Rei almost didn't hear it.
"What? You say something? I can't hear you over the… are you making the cold drink there?" Rei joked weakly, gesturing at the can.
They looked at each other. And then, for the first time that day, Rei laughed. It was a shaky, watery sound, but it was real. Haru joined him, and for a moment, the darkness receded, pushed back by the simple, profound relief of brotherhood.
The next morning, Principal Watanabe himself called. His tone was obsequious, almost oily. A reconsideration had been made. A misunderstanding had been clarified. The suspension was rescinded, replaced with a verbal warning. Please forgive the inconvenience.
Rei returned to school with Ayaka. The whispers still followed him, but they were different now—tinged with fear, with curiosity, with a new, wary respect. Kaito and his friends were absent. When they returned days later, they wore casts and braces, and their eyes slid away from Rei as if he were the sun. Lunch was peaceful. The courtyard was just a courtyard.
"The day is going good," Rei said, biting into his tamagoyaki.
Ayaka smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. She was scanning the surroundings like a sentinel. "Good."
The peace shattered like the window Rei never broke.
Jaws—Kurobane—stood at the entrance to the courtyard. He didn't swagger; he simply occupied space, his presence bending the atmosphere around him. His eyes locked onto Rei.
"Hey. You. Rei."
Rei froze, a piece of egg halfway to his mouth.
"I hear your brother is strong," Jaws said, walking forward. Students scattered from his path like leaves before a plough. "He defeated Kagen. I want to fight him." A cold, intellectual curiosity glinted in his dark eyes. "And I know how to make that happen."
He was upon Rei before anyone could react. A fist, hard as seasoned oak, drove into Rei's stomach. The air exploded from his lungs in a sickening gasp. A backhand sent him sprawling, his lunch scattering again.
Ayaka was moving before Rei hit the ground. She didn't shout. She launched into a spinning hook kick that Jaws raised an arm to block. The impact sounded like a bat hitting a sack of grain. Jaws grunted, taking a step back, his expression shifting from boredom to sharp interest.
Ayaka flowed into a barrage of taekwondo techniques—speedy, precise, lethal. High kicks aimed at his head, low kicks at his knees, knife-hand strikes at his throat. She was a whirlwind of motion, her red hair a banner of defiance.
Jaws blocked, parried, absorbed. He wasn't as fast, but he was immovable, his defenses like a fortress wall. A grin, slow and predatory, spread across his face. "You're good," he muttered. "Really good."
The fight was a violent dance, drawing a wide circle of horrified spectators.
"WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!"
A new voice, sharp with authority, cut through the tension. A man stood at the courtyard archway—tall, with messy ash-blond hair and sharp green eyes behind thin-framed glasses. He wore a teacher's ID badge. His gaze swept the scene: Rei clutching his stomach on the ground, Ayaka poised to strike, Jaws standing with his fists raised.
"You," the teacher pointed at Jaws. "Creepy orange-haired kid. Bullying the skinny one. And you," his eyes softened slightly on Ayaka. "Cute red-haired girl. Why are you fighting? This isn't a dojo."
Jaws slowly lowered his hands, his eyes never leaving the new teacher.
"Apologize," the teacher said, his voice leaving no room for argument. "Now. Or your next suspension will be the least of your problems."
For a long moment,Jaws seemed to weigh the odds. He looked at the teacher, at Ayaka, at the gathering crowd. The calculus in his eyes was cold and complex. Finally, he turned his head slightly toward Rei.
"Sorry," he said, the word empty of any meaning. He looked back at the teacher, then at Ayaka, his gaze lingering. "I'll see you later." Then he walked away, the crowd parting for him once more.
The teacher—Kaien, according to his badge—helped Rei to his feet. "You two alright?"
They nodded, breathless.
Kaien's eyes rested on Ayaka, a strange, unrecognizable emotion flickering in their green depths. He murmured, so softly only she might have heard, "You've grown, Ayaka. And you are strong. I never imagined we'd meet here again… but I'm glad we have." Then, louder, "Get to class. Both of you."
He walked away, leaving Rei confused and Ayaka staring after him, her face pale.
"What… what was that?" Rei stammered. "What did my brother do?"
Ayaka, her eyes still on the retreating figure of Kaien, told him everything. Haru's cold fury. The park. The arcade. The deal with Kagen.
Rei's stomach churned with a new kind of sickness. "Why did you tell him?! I didn't want him involved!"
"Because what he did was right, Rei!" Ayaka shot back, her composure cracking. "And because you matter more than your fear! Promise me you won't tell Haru I told you. He'll be furious I broke your confidence again."
Rei, overwhelmed, nodded. "Okay."
That evening, Ayaka called Haru. She told him about Jaws, about the attack, about the new teacher's intervention.
The silence on the other end of the line was profound. Then, "I'll be there tomorrow."
Haru Kiryuu did not look like a student as he walked through the gates of Midoriyama High the next morning. He carried a lunch box—the flimsy excuse—but his posture, his gaze, the quiet intensity that radiated from him, marked him as something else entirely. He found Jaws at his locker, alone.
"You're the kid messing with my little brother yesterday."
Jaws turned. His eyes lit up with genuine, unsettling pleasure. "Haru Kiryuu." He said the name like a connoisseur savoring a fine wine. "Come. Fight me. Basement storage room. No interruptions."
They went. The room was large, dusty, filled with old gym mats and broken desks. Light filtered through high, grimy windows.
Haru dropped the lunch box and shrugged out of his jacket. He fell into a classic MMA stance: feet shoulder-width, hands up, weight balanced, every movement economical. He was a practitioner, a student of controlled violence.
Jaws simply stood. His stance was wide, low, arms slightly out. It was no formal style. It was the posture of a street brawler, a bar fighter, a predator. Wild, unpredictable, rooted in raw power.
They didn't speak again.
Haru moved first. A testing jab, lightning fast. Jaws jerked his head aside, the fist grazing his cheek. He responded with a wild, sweeping haymaker that Haru ducked under, driving a fist into Jaws's ribs. The impact was solid, but Jaws absorbed it with a grunt, countering with a knee that Haru deflected with his forearm.
The fight was not a contest. It was, at first, a dissection.
Haru was a maestro. He used the space, circling, cutting angles. He punished Jaws's wild aggression with clinical precision. A leg kick buckled Jaws's knee. A cross snapped his head back. An elbow opened a cut above his eye. When Jaws tried to grapple, Haru used his own momentum against him, sending him crashing into a stack of mats with a judo throw.
Blood smeared the dusty floor. It was mostly Jaws's. Haru's knuckles were split, a bruise was forming on his cheek from a glancing blow, but he dominated. He was faster, smarter, technically superior in every way.
He drove a knee into Jaws's liver. The big boy doubled over, gagging. A follow-up strike to the solar plexus drove the air from his lungs. As Jaws stumbled back, Haru grabbed his uniform shirt and tore it open, buttons flying.
Underneath, at just fifteen, Jaws was carved from marble. Dense, corded muscle layered over a powerful frame, the physique of a young demigod. Haru, despite himself, felt a flicker of professional appreciation.
This appreciation vanished as he saw the look in Jaws's eyes. The intellectual curiosity was gone. Replaced by something feral, humiliated, and incandescently angry.
Jaws dropped to one knee, blood dripping from his nose and mouth onto the dust. His breath came in ragged, wet gasps. The sound of his own blood hitting the floor was loud in the sudden stillness. A profound, hopeless thought echoed in his skull: Am I… going to lose? To some nobody's older brother?
Then something shifted. A vibration in the air. Jaws's breathing changed. It deepened, slowed. The pain in his eyes didn't fade, but it was subsumed by a colder, more ancient fire. He looked up at Haru, and his gaze was no longer entirely human.
Can't… lose," he rasped. "Beast senses… human form… release."
He rose.
The change wasn't physical, but atmospheric. He seemed to swell, not in size, but in presence. The wild stance became even more primal. He didn't roar. He exhaled, a cloud of vapor in the cool air.
When he attacked this time, it was different.
The speed was multiplied. The power was terrifying. Haru blocked a punch, and the force of it traveled up his arm and rattled his teeth. He tried to dodge a kick, but it grazed his side and felt like being hit by a car door. His own counters, which had been so effective, now seemed to bounce off Jaws's reinforced flesh. Blocks that had held now fractured under the onslaught. Haru's defensive shell was cracking.
Yet he did not retreat. He adapted. He fought back with a furious, desperate brilliance. An MMA artist against a waking beast. They traded blows in the center of the room, the impacts echoing like drumbeats. Blood flew—Haru's now, from a split lip, a gash on his brow. Jaws's nose was a ruined mess, one eye swelling shut.
How is he still matching me? Jaws thought, a sliver of disbelief piercing his bestial rage. At this stage, I should have pulverized him!
But Haru's will was iron. He fought not to kill, but to defeat. Jaws fought to annihilate. The difference was critical, and it was Haru's undoing. As the fight stretched, Haru's superior technique began to falter under the relentless, overwhelming brutality. His stamina, prodigious as it was, was being burned away by the sheer cost of surviving each of Jaws's attacks.
A hammer fist bypassed his guard, connecting with his collarbone. Haru heard the sickening snap. Agony, white and blinding, lanced through him. His stance broke. Jaws saw the opening and took it—a final, brutal hook to the jaw.
Haru Kiryuu's eyes rolled back. He collapsed to the dusty floor, unconscious, his body a map of cruel artistry.
Jaws stood over him, chest heaving, bloodied and triumphant. The beast slowly receded from his eyes, leaving behind the cold intellect, now mixed with a new, grudging respect… and urgent purpose.
The door to the storage room burst open.
"HEY! WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE?!"
Kaien, the new teacher, stood in the doorway, his green eyes wide at the carnage. The scene was horrific: Haru unconscious in a growing pool of blood, Jaws standing over him like a butcher, the room looking like an abattoir.
Jaws turned. The fury of the interrupted kill surged back. "You…!" He launched a spinning kick at Kaien's head, fueled by residual bestial strength.
Kaien didn't flinch. He raised his right elbow, intercepting the kick with a casual, almost bored precision. The impact sounded solid, but Kaien's arm didn't budge an inch. He looked at Jaws, his head tilting slightly.
What happened next wasn't a fight. It was a demonstration. Kaien moved with an eerie, effortless grace. He didn't trade blows; he negated them. A wrist lock here, a pressure point strike there, a subtle shift of weight that sent Jaws's own momentum crashing him into a wall. In three movements, Jaws was disarmed, unbalanced, and on his knees, Kaien's hand resting lightly on the back of his neck—a touch that promised instant, catastrophic violence.
"Enough," Kaien said, his voice devoid of all warmth.
Sirens wailed in the distance. The fight had been heard.
The aftermath was a blur of hospital white and murmured rumors.
Haru lay in a bed, his collarbone set and pinned, face a tapestry of bruises and bandages. Rei wept at his bedside, guilt a physical weight on his small frame. "I told you! I told you not to get involved!"
Ayaka stood beside him, her own eyes red-rimmed. "I'm going to kill him," she whispered, the promise chilling in its sincerity.
In a clean, minimalist apartment across town, Jaws held an ice pack to his face. He dialed a number encrypted beyond any standard trace.
It was answered on the first ring.
"Report."
"I think I found them," Jaws said, his voice distorted by his swollen lips. "They're in this school. The girl, Ayaka Shinozaki. Red hair. Taekwondo specialist of exceptional, unnatural skill for her age. And the new teacher. Calls himself Kaien. He overwhelmed me. In my released form."
A pause on the other end. "Are you certain?"
"The girl matches the description perfectly. The teacher… if someone can do what he did to me, he is the man you call the Legend. There's no other possibility."
A soft, satisfied chuckle came through the phone. "Very well, Kurobane. Excellent work."
The line went dead.
In a dark room elsewhere, a man with sharp features and silver-streaked hair—Kurotaka—lowered the phone. He stood before an older man shrouded in the room's deep shadows, the glow of a single monitor illuminating the elder's lined hands.
"You heard?" Kurotaka asked.
A dry, papery voice emanated from the shadows. "I heard. You know what must be done."
Kurotaka's lips curled into a smile that held no joy. "Yes," he said, his eyes glinting in the monitor's light. "I know exactly what must be done."
The game, it seemed, had just begun. And the Kiryuu family, seeking only peace, had found themselves at the very center of its opening move.