The man walked without urgency.
His steps landed evenly against the cracked pavement, shoes brushing dust that had settled there long before he arrived. At 1.78 meters tall, he didn't loom, but he didn't disappear either. The kind of build that came from use, not display—lean muscle, balanced, shoulders relaxed.
His hair fell in a wolf cut, jagged and uneven by design rather than neglect. Red spikes caught the light from passing streetlamps, not glowing, not dramatic—just unmistakable. His eyes matched it. Red, sharp, focused, but bored in a way that suggested the world rarely surprised him anymore.
The city around him was loud without being alive. Convenience stores hummed behind fogged glass. A bus coughed smoke at a corner and moved on. Apartment windows flickered with different colors of television light, each one broadcasting someone else's problem. Trash clung to gutters like it had given up trying to leave.
No one paid him attention. And if they did, they looked away quickly.
He liked it that way.
As he walked, a sound cut through the background noise—not loud enough to draw a crowd, but loud enough for him to hear. Voices, sharp and uneven, echoing between two buildings where sunlight never quite reached the ground.
He glanced sideways.
Between the narrow gap of concrete and shadow, a fight was already unfolding. Two men stood close, blocking the exit. Their clothes were cheap, their movements jittery, like animals that had learned violence as a language. One of them held a knife, the blade catching what little light filtered down.
Pinned between them was a student. Male. Too thin. Backpack half-slipped off one shoulder, hands shaking so badly he could barely keep them raised.
"If you don't pay the loan for Ohmi," the man with the knife said, voice low and practiced, "we won't stop here."
He leaned closer, the blade hovering near the student's throat.
"We'll kill you. Then we'll take your family apart. Slowly. One by one. Until you understand your place."
The student swallowed. Fear hollowed out his face, Desperation.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then the student moved.
He shoved forward, heart overriding thought, sprinting toward the opening between the men. The knife swung up instinctively, too fast, too close—aimed at the neck, careless and lethal.
The blade stopped.
A hand had closed around the attacker's wrist. Firm. Casual. Like grabbing a railing.
The red-haired man stood there now, having stepped in without sound, without warning. His grip didn't tremble. His expression didn't change. Red eyes met the thug's wide, confused stare.
The student stumbled past them, barely registering what had happened, breath tearing out of his lungs as he ran.
The knife wielder tried to pull back.
He couldn't.
The man's fingers tightened just enough to hurt—
"Careful," the red-haired man said calmly, his voice low and unhurried
The blade never finished its arc.
Two fingers closed around the flat of the knife with casual precision, stopping it less than a breath from the student's throat. There was no strain in the grip, no tremor—only certainty. The red-haired man stepped in close, close enough that the thug could smell him, could feel the heat of another body entering what should have been personal space.
The student didn't wait to understand. Survival made the decision for him. He stumbled backward, turned, and ran—feet slapping against wet concrete, breath tearing out of his chest. By the time his mind caught up with what had almost happened, he was already gone.
The alley was quiet again.
Too quiet.
The thug tried to pull back, confusion flickering across his face. He opened his mouth, maybe to curse, maybe to threaten, maybe to beg. The words never formed.
The red-haired man drew him closer instead, their foreheads nearly touching. His eyes opened fully then—red, sharp, alive with something that did not belong in a human stare.
"Ready or not," he said lightly, almost playfully, "here I go."
The punch came next.
One moment his arm was there, relaxed at his side, and the next it was already *through*—fist buried in flesh, bone parted as if it had never learned resistance. The sound was wrong.
The thug's body stiffened once, a reflex without meaning, and then collapsed inward around the intruding arm. No scream. No gasp. Death arrived before pain had time to introduce itself.
The red-haired man withdrew his hand.
Blood followed reluctantly, clinging for a second before gravity remembered its job. The body folded to the ground.
He looked down at the corpse with mild curiosity, as if checking whether the outcome matched expectation.
He wiped his hand against the dead man's jacket, slipped it casually back into his pocket, and continued walking. His pace never changed. His breathing never quickened. If anything, he seemed more relaxed than before—shoulders loose, spine straight, head tilted slightly upward as if enjoying the Day air.
The city absorbed the violence without comment.
A few blocks later, the buildings opened up. Concrete softened into space. Streetlights gave way to wider lamps, their glow warmer, less accusatory. Trees appeared—planted, trimmed, disciplined—and beyond them, a park stretched out like an intentional pause in the city's thought process.
Sound reached him before sight.
Shouts. Applause. Music distorted by cheap speakers. The low, rhythmic thump of something being struck again and again.
He turned his head.
At the center of one of the park's larger plazas, a crowd had gathered—circling a temporary structure made of steel railings and canvas. Lights hung overhead, harsh and white, casting long shadows that stretched and tangled across the stone ground. Inside the enclosure, two figures moved with violent purpose, fists snapping out, feet grinding against the floor.
A fighting event.
No uniforms. No strict rules. Just bodies testing limits for money, pride, or something more personal. Styles clashed openly—boxing bleeding into grappling, kicks stolen from traditions that had never agreed with each other.
The red-haired man stopped at the edge of the crowd.
He watched.
His eyes tracked movement with unsettling accuracy—not just punches and dodges, but weight shifts, hesitation, timing. He saw mistakes before they happened. Saw openings that went unused. Saw potential squandered in favor of spectacle.
A fighter went down inside the ring, ribs collapsing under a knee driven with just enough cruelty to be effective. The crowd roared. Money changed hands. Someone laughed too loudly.
The red-haired man smiled.
He hadn't been walking toward anything in particular. The city had been nothing more than a surface to move across. But now—standing there, hands still in his pockets, blood already drying where it didn't belong—he felt something like direction settle into place.
Chance, he decided, was just another word for timing.
He watched without being seen.
The crowd pressed forward as the previous fight ended—bodies leaning, voices overlapping, the collective attention snapping from violence to anticipation with practiced ease. Inside the ring, the winner raised his arms, chest heaving, blood running from a split lip. Someone shoved a microphone near his face. Someone else shouted a name that wasn't his.
A new pair stepped into the enclosure, and the announcer's voice—too loud, too rehearsed—rolled over the plaza.
"Next bout! In the blue corner—standing at one meter seventy-eight, weighing in at seventy-six kilograms—former regional champion, thirty-two wins, seven losses, fifteen by knockout—**Rafael 'Iron Elbow' Mendes!**"
A stocky man raised his arms, shoulders thick with scar tissue, shins wrapped tight. His stance was narrow, compact. Muay Thai. Every movement economical, trained for damage, not beauty.
"And in the red corner—one meter eighty-one, seventy-four kilograms—national circuit contender, twenty-eight wins, five losses, twelve by submission—**Kaito Shimizu!**"
The other fighter bowed once, sharply. Shotokan karate. Upright posture. Precise distance. Discipline carved into muscle memory.
It started, They circled.
The Muay Thai fighter tested with low kicks—sharp, efficient, aimed to dull mobility. The karate practitioner slid back just enough, countering with straight punches that snapped but rarely committed. It was clean. Controlled. Technically impressive.
The crowd loved it.
The red-haired man's smile faded.
He saw the pauses between motions. The hesitation before commitment. The way both men waited for permission—from training, from instinct, from fear—to truly move.
Too many thoughts.
No flow.
A knee landed. A counter punch answered. Sweat flew. Applause surged.
He turned his back.
He slipped through the edge of the crowd without resistance, the noise dulling behind him like a radio turned down mid-song. His footsteps found rhythm on the sidewalk, hands still buried in his pockets, posture loose, unbothered.
Three blocks later, he crossed a street without looking.
The light was green for traffic.
A car tore through the intersection at nearly ninety kilometers an hour.
There was no panic.
His leg snapped up and out.
The kick connected with the front of the car—The bumper, where force mattered most. The impact rang out like a metal bell struck by a god's hand. A shockwave rippled outward, rattling windows, knocking loose debris from a nearby sign.
The car stopped dead.
Rubber screamed. Glass spiderwebbed. The engine died in a choking gasp.
The red-haired man grinned wide, teeth flashing.
"This," he said to no one, voice light with delight, "is far more fun."
The driver's door flew open. A man in his forties stumbled out, eyes wild, hands shaking.
"Are you—are you okay?" he asked, disbelief swallowing fear whole. "I—I almost—"
The red-haired man walked past him without a glance.
Another engine roared.
A second car barreled forward, unable to stop in time.
He jumped.
Clean. Effortless.
He cleared the hood, twisted midair, and brought his heel down like a hammer. The kick crushed the front of the car into the asphalt. Metal folded inward. The rear lifted clear off the ground before slamming back down with a violent crash.
Traffic froze.
Silence followed—thick, stunned, unreal.
From down the street, sirens howled.
A nearby police station had heard everything.
Three officers approached cautiously, hands hovering near their holsters, eyes flicking between the wreckage and the man standing calmly in the middle of the road, back turned to the chaos he had created.
"Sir!" the first officer shouted. "Hands in the air! Now!"
The second officer fanned out to the side, radio already up, voice tight as he called in the situation. The third took cover behind a cruiser, weapon drawn but lowered, unsure whether aiming even made sense.
The red-haired man turned his head.
Slowly.
One of the officers froze.
Color drained from his face.
"There's no way…" he whispered, recognition slamming into him harder than any impact. His grip tightened, knuckles whitening around his gun. "That's—tha-that's **Akashi**."
His voice cracked as he finished the sentence.
"The man responsible for the killing spree."
The red-haired man's smile widened.
"Yep," he said lightly, already stepping forward,
"that's indeed me."
The distance between him and the first officer collapsed in a heartbeat.
The officer's training finally caught up to his fear. He drew and fired.
Two shots cracked the air.
Akashi tilted his head—just enough. The bullets tore past where his skull had been an instant earlier, splitting the space he had vacated. His leg came up in the same motion, a clean arc cutting through the air at an impossible angle. His foot struck the officer's gun *sideways*, close to the grip, Fragile point where force became leverage.
The pistol flew from the officer's hand, spinning, clattering across the asphalt.
Before the man could even process the loss of weight in his palm, the others opened fire.
Muzzle flashes bloomed.
Gunshots layered over one another, sharp and frantic, echoing between buildings. Civilians screamed somewhere far behind the police line. Shell casings rained onto the street.
Akashi moved.
*precise*.
Each bullet met motion: a flick of the wrist, a turn of the forearm, the smallest adjustments in angle and timing. Metal struck skin and *veered*, trajectories bending as if reality itself had been nudged aside. He sent them upward deliberately into the open sky.
Like tossing pebbles into a lake.
He walked forward as he did it.
Hands still in his pockets.
The second officer staggered back, disbelief cracking his composure. His finger stayed on the trigger, reflex screaming louder than reason. Akashi stopped just short of him, head tilted slightly, eyes bright with something close to amusement.
One of the bullets Akashi had deflected reached the apex of its arc.
It fell Straight down.
Akashi opened his hand, The bullet dropped into his palm, still warm.
He looked at it, curious.
"This has no effect to m—"
The officer fired point-blank.
The shot hit Akashi directly in the face.
There was a flash—sharp, violent—followed by a brittle *crack*. The bullet shattered on impact, fragments exploding outward like glass against stone. Shards cut the air, pinged harmlessly against pavement, bounced off car doors.
Akashi didn't flinch, Not even a bruise.
The officer's knees gave out.
Akashi sighed, disappointed—not in them, but in the interruption. He bent slightly at the knees.
And jumped.
Air screamed past him as he leapt, *rose*—higher and higher until the street below shrank into a pattern of lights and halted traffic. He landed on the edge of a nearby building with casual precision, boots kissing concrete forty meters above the ground as if gravity had merely suggested he stop there.
Wind tore at his coat, snapping the fabric like a banner. His red hair whipped backward, sharp strands cutting against the darkening sky. The city sprawled beneath him—grids of windows, glowing arteries of streets, the distant pulse of life utterly unaware of how fragile it truly was.
He looked down at the officers, tiny now.
"Don't worry," he called, voice carrying effortlessly through open air,
"You're way too weak to be worth killing."
Then he turned his back on them.
He stepped off the ledge, Them jumped using the side of the building
Each landing sent ripples through concrete, fine cracks spiderwebbing outward before sealing themselves under the weight of his departure. Rooftops blurred beneath his feet—glass towers reflecting fractured versions of him, old brick structures shedding dust as he passed, steel frames humming faintly in protest.
He didn't choose a direction at first
He let momentum decide.
The wind clawed at his clothes, threading itself through seams and folds, tugging fabric tight against his frame before tearing it loose again. The sky above him stretched wide and indifferent, clouds smearing into long, pale scars as he crossed beneath them.
Below, the city continued its rhythm—sirens, voices, engines restarting—never quite realizing how close it had come to being noticed.
Akashi landed on the edge of another rooftop and finally slowed.
The city stretched beneath him now in a quieter way. Fewer lights. More shadow. The wind here was colder, slipping under his collar, tugging at his sleeves as if trying—politely—to remind him that height still mattered.
He reached into his pocket.
This time, he pulled out a phone.
The screen lit his face faintly, pale blue against red hair and eyes that reflected nothing human when he wasn't trying. He opened a map application with a casual flick of his thumb, zooming out, then farther still.
There it was.
Even on a satellite image, it was unmistakable.
A colossal silhouette piercing the land, its presence distorting scale itself. Roads curved around it unnaturally, neighborhoods thinning as if pushed back by instinct alone. The tree.
Akashi hummed softly.
"So that's where you are…"
He pinched the screen, measured distance.
"Twenty-two kilometers," he murmured.
His gaze shifted slightly, noticing something else nearby. A block of gray geometry, too orderly to be accidental. Perimeter lines. Restricted markings.
An army base.
Akashi's grin widened—bright with uncomplicated interest, like a child spotting a detour that promised entertainment.
"Huh," he said.
"Let's make a stop there first."
He slipped the phone back into his pocket.
The wind surged again as he bent his knees, body aligning with motion before thought had time to interfere. For a brief instant, he stood perfectly still on the edge of the building, silhouetted against the night sky—an interruption in the city's shape rather than a part of it.
Then he jumped.