The matter was resolved—though the process had been far more complicated than expected.
That thief, Felicia, wouldn't be bothering him again.
As for the pawnshop owner? He'd gotten exactly the lesson he deserved.
On his way home, Joren weighed a simple decision: watch a marine documentary or finish the last few chapters of Ancient Ships Illustrated.
These quiet, mundane choices were, to him, the purest form of peace.
But fate, it seemed, wasn't done with him yet.
He stopped in the middle of the street.
Under a flickering streetlamp stood a lean man in a worn leather jacket, idly twirling a dagger between his fingers. What caught the eye wasn't the weapon—but the crimson bullseye tattooed on his forehead.
"Joren Joestar," the man said, tucking the blade away and flexing his wrist. "To be honest, this is the first time I've ever taken a job like this."
He tilted his head, studying Joren like a prize specimen. "The client's request is… unusual. They don't want you dead. No—they want your legs broken."
Flash Thompson? Joren thought. Really?
The assassin—Joren—frowned beneath the brim of his hat. What a forgetful, obsessive fool. Honestly, it was almost beneath anger.
He noticed Joren standing perfectly still and mistook his silence for fear.
A smirk curled Joren's lips, dripping with contempt. "Scared speechless, kid? Don't worry—my work is clean. You won't even feel it coming."
He plucked a handful of coins from his pocket.
In the next heartbeat, they became silver streaks slicing through the air with a sharp whistle—aimed precisely at Joren's knees and calves.
But no cry of pain followed.
Instead, each coin froze mid-flight—hovering just a meter from Joren's body—before dropping limply to the pavement with a series of crisp clinks.
His eyes widened. He stared at the coins, then at the empty space around Joren, then back at the boy himself.
"What…?"
The coins hadn't lost momentum. They'd been stopped—by something invisible, something impossible.
And Joren hadn't moved. Hands still in his pockets, posture unchanged, expression unreadable.
The hunter's smirk vanished. In its place bloomed the focused intensity of a predator who'd just realized his prey wasn't prey at all.
Something's wrong here.
This boy was not just some ordinary high school student.
The man pulled a deck of cards from inside his jacket.
This time, he wasn't careless at all.
He drew a single card, pinched it between thumb and forefinger, and locked his gaze on Joren's right thigh.
"Haaa!"
With a flick of his wrist, he hurled the card using a specialized technique—its edges spinning fast enough to slice the air with a sharp, blade-like whistle.
Faster. Smarter. Deadlier than his earlier coin toss.
And yet, the result was the same.
Just shy of a meter from Joren's body, the playing card struck an unseen barrier and ricocheted sideways with a sharp smack, embedding nearly half its length into the concrete wall.
The man's pupils contracted.
He began circling Joren slowly, eyes darting across every surface, every shadow, cataloging everything within reach.
Casually, he kicked a loose pebble toward Joren's lower back—it arced at a deceptive angle, meant to slip past any frontal defense.
Bang!
Mid-flight, the pebble disintegrated into fine powder.
Undeterred, he pulled an iron nail from his pocket and flicked it with his fingers. The nail bounced once off the pavement, curving in a low arc to bypass the front—only to be intercepted mid-turn and drop limply to the ground.
Bottle caps. Cigarette butts. Shards of broken glass.
For the next thirty seconds, the man weaponized everything around him—launching a rapid, dazzling barrage from every conceivable angle.
Every projectile met the same fate: cleanly deflected just outside an invisible sphere roughly one meter in radius.
Finally, he stopped. Standing diagonally across from Joren, his eyes burned with manic curiosity.
"I see…" he murmured, voice low and rasping. "Not a force field. Not magnetism, either. It's like… you've got an invisible bodyguard wrapped around you."
He licked his dry lips, a sickly excitement curling in his voice.
"Defense radius—about a meter. What a fascinating toy."
He chalked it up to some experimental tech—maybe a leak from Stark Industries or one of Hammer's failed R&D projects. As a top-tier assassin, he'd seen stranger things walk out of those labs.
Joren finally stirred. He lifted his head just slightly, and from beneath the brim of his hat, emerald eyes shot the man a cold, unimpressed glance.
Ugh… this guy won't shut up.
His endless analysis was more irritating than the attacks themselves.
Sensing the impatience in that stare, the man—Bullseye—grinned, revealing a jagged, unsettling smile.
"Alright, kid. Warm-up's over."
He cracked his neck with a slow, deliberate stretch.
"My hit rate's 100%. Not about to let some punk in a school uniform wreck that record."
"Now… let's see if your 'bodyguard' can handle this!"
No more trash. No more tricks.
He stomped hard on a rusted fire hydrant beside him. The impact jarred loose a heavy bolt from its housing—launching it straight for Joren's face!
But that was just the decoy.
The instant the bolt flew, Bullseye flipped his left hand. Three playing cards shot out in a tight triangular formation, cutting off every possible dodge to Joren's left.
Simultaneously, his right hand seized a chunk of concrete—half the size of a basketball—that he'd pre-positioned nearby. With a sudden burst of strength, he hurled it skyward in a high, arcing trajectory.
Three-pronged assault.
- The bolt: high-speed, straight-line strike to the front.
- The cards: locking down lateral evasion.
- The concrete: a brutal, gravity-fed hammer from above.
Three attacks. Three vectors. All calibrated to strike Joren—standing perfectly still—at the exact same instant.