Although the body was gone, it was easy to tell a story just based on the bloodstains Kyle could see.
It was torture, slow, merciless, and calculated…
Whoever had killed Nighttale did not come here to fight; he came here to enjoy the pleasure of meticulously tearing him down.
Kyle could envision everything in his mind's eye.
His eyes moved to a sprinkle of blood on the wall. Before his gaze, a shadowy figure was fighting Nighttale, the two of them battling through the room.
He could imagine the shadow holding Nighttale by the hair just before delivering a heavy blow to the jaw, causing blood to splash against the wall.
Kyle's eyes moved to the bloody edge of the table. He imagined the two fighters crashing into it, one pulling the other by the head.
He watched as the man slammed his temple into the table repeatedly, denting it, blood smearing all over the edge and ground.
Then his eyes moved to the pool of blood on the floor. It was lighter than normal—oxygen-filled blood coming from the lungs.
"He must have been stabbed right here…"
The cut was not random; it was planned—a stab to the lung to prolong his death, allowing him to suffer before he died.
The killer was meticulous in their evil.
"But who is it?"
Cyno was standing by the blood-soaked bed, doing his own investigation, while Kyle was on the other side of the room, trying to spot even the faintest details.
When he was done, he placed his hands on his waist, breathing out sharply as he lifted his gaze.
"I guess it's time to address the elephant in the room."
'They really thought they could hide it, didn't they?'
Cyno walked up to him and stared at the wall as well. "What are you looking at?"
"Notice anything strange about this wall? Or this room in general?"
He gave it some thought before answering. "The room is strangely better preserved than everywhere else. It's almost as if the fire didn't get here."
He paused for a moment before continuing.
"And the wall, there are signs that it has been..." He paused and stroked his chin. "Washed?"
Kyle nodded.
They had left the blood in the room as a decoy to hide what was probably the most important thing.
Whoever thought of it was worthy of praise. 'Hawks… is this your doing?'
Too bad… sniffing out blood was second nature to Kyle. When it came to blood, his senses were so advanced that he could even detect anomalies in blood and differentiate one from another.
He stepped out of the room for a moment and came back with a handful of ash.
Then Kyle began tracing the wall based on how much it smelled.
When he was done, he took a step back as he read the words one by one.
Failure!! Murderer!
Outcast! Icarus
Seven-Times-Three
"What do you think?" Kyle asked, his mind already going through multiple possibilities.
"It looks rough; there is no coordination between the words. It's almost as if whoever wrote it was mad."
Kyle shrugged. "You're probably not from this world, that's why you missed it. But there are a few correlations— Icarus and failure… but even with this, we have little to nothing."
"Whoever wrote it was not planning on the words being used together; they are meant to stand alone."
Kyle pointed to the first one.
~ Failure
"Nighttale could not have been working alone. He had a team, and his attacks were far too coordinated to be a single-man job."
"The last time I saw him was in his fight with the League. Since I arrived, they were forced to retreat. That must be the failure written here…"
He moved on to the next one.
~ Murderer
"I don't think we even need an explanation for that one."
~ Icarus
He was the man who flew too close to the sun only to plummet to his doom.
Icarus was a way of describing overachievers—people who chased dreams far greater than themselves.
This means Nighttale had a goal, and his killer wasn't too fond of that goal.
~ Outcast
This time, it was Cyno who spoke. "Outcast might mean rejection. If we follow your earlier postulation…"
Kyle raised a brow at the choice of words as Cyno continued.
"…he was kicked out for failing to take down the League."
Kyle smiled and nodded. In a strange sort of way, it looked like the murderer was not just writing random words that came to his mind.
But when they both looked at the last one, they paused, trying to figure out what it meant.
Seven times three.
A few minutes passed in complete silence. No matter the theories they came up with, they were unable to find out what those three words meant.
Kyle sighed, left the wall for the first time, and began pacing around the room to stretch his legs.
'Maybe it's just gibberish?'
'What can 7x3 even mean?'
Other words had made sense to some extent, but this was just a mere math problem.
He walked up to the words again and stared at them. There was a chance he had just written it to drive them crazy…
He tilted his head to the side like a chicken and then frowned.
"What am I even doing…?!"
Kyle froze, his eyes widening slightly.
"It can't be…"
Immediately, he ran to the wall and picked up the ash he had left on the ground.
"Have you figured something out?"
Kyle did not answer. Instead, he began writing out the words, but this time he did not write them in Japanese; he wrote them in English.
There was one basic puzzle-solving method he had tried before—taking the first letters of the words and trying to make sense of it.
When he tried it the first time, he was unable to come to a conclusion.
"But if I finish the equation…"
— Seven Times Three Equals Twenty-One
"When you take away the first letters of each word, you have STTETO."
Cyno stared at the wall, absorbing every single detail, while Kyle's brain was racing, rearranging the letters like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Kyle had already gotten a word from the letters, but there was one extra alphabet that made no sense.
"What do I do with the extra T?"
Kyle stroked his chin as he watched the wall, and then he began circling the T. But before he was even done, a small smile appeared on his face.
"The 'T' represents multiplication (times), which can also be used as an X!"
"I've gotten it!"
"X SET-TO!"
Cyno read the words over and over again, but no matter how many times he saw them, nothing was making sense to him.
Kyle looked at him over his shoulder. "Cyno, what does X represent?"
He promptly replied. "An unknown entity."
Kyle drew a straight line from the X down, labeling it as an unknown entity.
"That perfectly describes me, doesn't it?"
Kyle was known as the Midnight Vigilante because no one knew his face, no one knew his allegiance, and no one knew his goals.
He was a mystery, an unknown entity…
"You are the X." A small smile played on Cyno's lips.
As for Set-to—
Kyle smiled as he circled it, drawing a straight line below it. "Set-to, although rarely used, has a meaning that makes perfect sense in our situation."
He began writing as he spoke.
"Set-to means the beginning of a fight… and X being the unknown variable is referring to me, meaning…"
Kyle finished scribbling and took a step back, admiring his masterpiece. The words could be arranged to mean this…
— Midnight Vigilante, the war begins.
"It is a warning… addressed to me."
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A/N
Tsumi's Character art is on the discord. Link is on my profile :)