đź“Ť Noki Port | 5:00 PM
The ship wouldn't sail until morning.
The witch's tickets were tucked in Kiyoshi's inner pocket beside the sealed letter, and between now and dawn there was nothing to do but exist in a port city that had decided to exist as loudly as possible. The docks were a compressed chaos of goods from every corner of the country — crates stacked to head height, merchants arguing in three languages, the smell of salt and fish and something being cooked somewhere close enough to be cruel.
They wandered.
Kiyoshi smelled the restaurant before he saw it — a warm, layered smell that hit something deep and specific and made his chest tighten in a way that had nothing to do with hunger.
"Sakura." He stopped walking. "Look at that."
A seafood restaurant, open-fronted, the evening catch displayed in the window. Octopus. Crab. Things he hadn't seen since Tokyo.
"I miss my mother's cooking," he said. Not dramatically — just the plain fact of it, landing quietly. "That smell is reaching all the way out here."
"We get roasted fish," Sakura said. Her stomach made its own comment. "Come on."
They turned toward it.
The thief was fast.
One moment Kiyoshi's coin pouch was at his hip, the next it was gone and a figure was already twenty metres ahead, weaving through the crowd with the particular fluid motion of someone who did this for a living. He ran on rooftops when the street got thick, slipped through gaps that shouldn't have fit a person, changed direction without losing speed.
Sakura was faster.
She closed the distance in seconds — her fingers were close enough to brush his collar when a girl dropped from nowhere, landed on the thief's back with both knees, hit him three times with practiced efficiency, took the pouch from his hand, and tossed it to Kiyoshi in one smooth motion.
She straightened up and looked at them.
[ Eye of Wisdom — Active ]
[ Name: Saleen ]
[ Rank: E — Level 3 ]
[ Type: Thief ]
[ Skills: Night Vision (D), Run (E) ]
"You have to watch yourself around here," Saleen said.
Sakura's expression was doing something precise and controlled. "I was one second away from catching him. We didn't need the help."
"Sure," Saleen said pleasantly.
"You're a thief type," Kiyoshi said.
She tilted her head. "How'd you know that?"
"Instinct." He wasn't going to explain Eye of Wisdom to a stranger. "Good instinct."
She grinned — a quick, unguarded thing. "Yeah. My two sisters too — all three of us. We run a restaurant on the beach. Best sea dishes in Yavior, and I'm not being modest." She lifted the bag of supplies she'd been carrying when she'd appeared. "I was just here picking up stock. Come eat — sounds like you've been surviving on roasted fish."
Kiyoshi's stomach answered before he did.
đź“Ť The Beach Restaurant | Evening
The shop was wooden, carved along every beam and rafter with patterns that might have been decorative or might have been something older. Two floors — the second where the sisters lived, a balcony at the top that faced west. The beach stretched empty in both directions, the last of the daylight burning gold across the water. Saleen had mentioned people only came until three in the afternoon.
They were walking the shoreline when the men appeared.
Five to seven of them, rough and deliberate, the earlier thief standing among them pointing at Saleen. At the front, a man with a sword already out — easy posture, the kind that came from knowing he didn't need to try.
[ Eye of Wisdom — Active ]
[ Group: 3 Thieves (E Rank) ]
[ 1 Assassin — Hano (C Rank, Level 2) ]
[ 2 Tankers (E Rank) — shields, defensive build ]
"This is her," the thief said.
Hano looked at Saleen the way people look at things they've already decided the outcome for. "Kid. You touched my subordinate."
"And?" Saleen said.
"I'm Hano. Warisus Gang." He let the name sit. "You'll find out what that means."
Saleen drew her dagger and turned to Kiyoshi and Sakura. "Stay back. I'll end this."
The blade clashed. Saleen was quick — her Run skill made her a blur at close range — but Hano was C-rank and he wasn't hiding it. He moved with the lazy ease of someone who had already decided this wasn't a real fight. Every swing of his sword was deliberate understatement. Each block rattled through Saleen's small frame. She was taking damage and he was barely present.
"He's not using his full strength," Kiyoshi said quietly, close to Sakura's ear. "She can't win this. He's playing with her."
"I see it," Sakura said.
"We have to—"
"Wait." Her voice was calm but her eyes weren't moving from the fight. "I'll go in if she's in real danger."
Saleen went down.
She stayed there for a moment — breath ragged, arm shaking under her weight. Then she pushed herself up.
Hano watched this with something like amusement. "You're an insect. This is what an assassin's power looks like."
His sword swung at her neck.
Kiyoshi moved. Sakura's hand caught his arm. "Stop — they're here."
Two figures hit the beach at a run.
[ Eye of Wisdom — Active ]
[ Name: Daleen | Rank: E — Level 4 | Type: Thief ]
[ Skills: Night Vision (E), Invisibility (C) ]
[ Name: Galeen | Rank: E — Level 4 | Type: Thief ]
[ Skills: Night Vision (E), Flexibility (D) ]
"How dare you hurt our sister."
The fight that followed was fierce and one-sided. Daleen flickered in and out of visibility, Galeen moved like water around every swing — but Hano's strength didn't care about cleverness. His sword cracked Daleen's dagger from her grip and sent her sprawling. A kick dropped Galeen beside her. They lay in the sand, trying to rise, not managing it.
"Take the girls to headquarters," Hano said to his men. He glanced at Kiyoshi and Sakura, dismissive. "You two — run. Or you end up the same."
Saleen, from the ground: "Sakura, go. Please. Don't worry about us."
Kiyoshi looked at Hano. Something had gone very steady in his chest.
"Saleen," he said. "He's the one who should run."
Hano charged Sakura.
She wasn't there when his sword arrived.
[ Skill: Lightning Speed — Active ]
She reappeared behind him — one hand at his shoulder, dagger at his throat, her voice completely level.
"This is what an assassin's power looks like."
Hano went still.
His men turned to Kiyoshi.
[ Skill: Luck — Active ]
[ Duration: 10 minutes | MP Cost: 40 ]
His sword was already out. The first shield went down with a sound like a bell. The second man hit the sand. E-rank, he thought. So much easier than C-rank monsters.
Hano, dagger still at his throat: "Who are you. What rank."
"Come out," Sakura said — not to Hano, to the empty air to his left. "The one hiding."
A knife came from the dark. It struck Hano in the side. The metal dissolved to ash on contact — poison, fast and total. He dropped.
A folded letter landed in the sand where he'd stood.
This is what happens when you spoil the name of the Warisus Gang.
The remaining men ran. Kiyoshi watched them go and felt no particular urgency about it.
They reported the incident to the nearest guild post. Kiyoshi crouched beside the three sisters and pressed his hand to the worst of their injuries — light wounds, all of them, nothing that required more than a touch. The skill worked quietly.
He was aware, without looking, that Sakura was watching him. She didn't object to him using Healing Kiss in the field — not since the second week, when she'd understood the practical value of it. She had her rules about it. He had learned the shape of those rules without either of them discussing it directly.
"I felt him," Sakura said quietly, as they stood back up. "The one with the knife. B rank, maybe higher. Assassin — his presence was there and then it wasn't." She looked at the place the knife had come from. "He's gone."
"Food," Kiyoshi said. "Let's have dinner."
📍 The Beach Restaurant — Inside | Night
The shop glowed with magic crystals fitted into the walls and beams — warm amber light, not quite like electricity, but close enough that it made Kiyoshi's chest do the same thing the seafood smell had done. The table was full. The dinner the Leen sisters had made was the best thing he'd eaten since arriving in this world, and he was not being quiet about that.
Saleen, working through her food despite the bruises, looked at him across the table. "What ranks are you two, actually?"
"D," Kiyoshi said. "Sakura's B. She's assassin-type."
"And you?"
He glanced at Galeen, then Daleen. Then: "All-type."
The table went quiet.
Galeen set down her cup. "That's — that's not possible. No one has all-type."
"Apparently I do."
"Kiyoshi." Galeen's voice had changed — serious now, the warmth still there but underneath it something careful. "You cannot tell people that. Rare types — strong types especially — get conscripted. The nation's army doesn't ask. They take." She held his eyes. "Keep it a secret."
He nodded. He'd keep it.
Daleen leaned forward. "Before you do — try this. Close your eyes, look up, think about seeing in the dark. Then open them and look."
He did.
[ New Skill Acquired ]
[ Night Vision — Rank D ]
[ See clearly in complete darkness ]
[ MP Cost: 5 per minute ]
His eyes adjusted to something beyond adjusting — the dark corner of the room sharpened, details emerging from nothing. A cat sat in the shadows near the back wall, watching them.
"There's a cat," he said. "Back corner."
Daleen looked. "I can't see it."
"Use your skill," he said.
She did. Then she started laughing.
Beside him, Sakura blinked.
[ New Skill Acquired ]
[ Night Vision — Rank D ]
"Of course," Saleen said. "Assassins can learn that too. Normally takes months of practice." She looked at Sakura with something like respect. "You just got it listening to Galeen describe it."
Sakura said nothing. But she looked at the cat in the corner with her new eyes, and something in her expression was quiet and almost pleased.
Kiyoshi made the three of them promise not to tell anyone what they'd seen tonight.
They promised.
đź“Ť The Sisters' Room | Deep Night
He was asleep before the moon was fully up.
Sakura wasn't.
She lay on her side of the bed — Kiyoshi at one end, her at the other, the same arrangement that had become routine without either of them naming it — and looked at the window. The moon outside was full and unusually bright, its light falling across the floor in a clean white line. It looked content, somehow. Like it had found something.
Her mind drifted without her permission.
Ten years ago.
She had been eight. Her mother hadn't started her hospital stays yet — that came later, crept in slowly the way those things do. They had shared a room then, the two of them, and Sakura had been afraid of the dark in the specific way of children who don't know how to explain why.
Mom. Sleep with me every night until I die. I'm scared alone.
Her mother had laughed — a real laugh, the kind that came from being genuinely delighted by something. You'll have a husband one day. Handsome. Cool. He'll be the one sleeping beside you.
Then I promise, Sakura had said, with the absolute seriousness of eight years old. I'll only share my bed with you and him.
She looked at the ceiling now.
Kiyoshi's breathing was slow and even at the other end of the bed. Outside, the full moon held its brightness like it was proud of something.
I broke that promise, she thought.
She didn't move. Didn't say it out loud.
She looked at the moon for a long time, and eventually her eyes closed, and eventually she slept.
đź“Ť The Beach | Morning
Kiyoshi sat on the step outside with a cup of tea, watching the sunrise come in over the water.
Gold on the waves. The beach still empty. The shop beginning to stir behind him with the sounds of morning.
He held the cup with both hands and thought about nothing in particular, which was unusual for him, and noticed that Sakura had come to sit a step above him without announcing it, and that he didn't mind.
This is nice, he thought. Just that. No further.
They thanked the Leen sisters properly when the time came — Saleen waving them off with the kind of easy warmth that felt like she'd known them longer than one evening — and set off for the port with the morning still young and the ship waiting.
✦ CODEX — Chapter Nine ✦
World Archive: Entries Relevant to Chapter Nine
ENTRY 036 — ON THE LEEN SISTERS
Saleen — E rank, Level 3. Thief-type. Skills: Night Vision (D), Run (E).
Daleen — E rank, Level 4. Thief-type. Skills: Night Vision (E), Invisibility (C).
Galeen — E rank, Level 4. Thief-type. Skills: Night Vision (E), Flexibility (D).
All three are thief-type by birth classification — this is rare among siblings. They operate a restaurant on the beach outside Noki Port. No affiliations. No criminal record despite the type classification, which carries a social stigma in most of Yavior.
Thief-type does not mean a person steals. It is a system classification describing their natural skill set — speed, concealment, misdirection. What they do with it is their own choice.
ENTRY 037 — ON THE WARISUS GANG
Hano was C-rank, Level 2, confirmed deceased. Killed by a Warisus Gang member — their own — for conducting himself in a way that damaged the gang's reputation publicly.
The letter left with the knife was a message to witnesses as much as a punishment for Hano. The Warisus Gang polices its own image carefully.
The assassin who threw the knife: B-rank or above, presence confirmed by Sakura. Identity unknown. Departed immediately.
The gang itself is a criminal syndicate with reach across multiple cities. They were introduced in Chapter 3. This is the first direct encounter.