Kazuki wakes to pain.
Not the sharp kind.Not even the screaming kind.
The kind that tells you your body has already been broken, and everything after is just cruelty added on top.
A wet, bubbling breath escapes him. Something in his chest shifts wrong. His right eye is swollen shut; the left sees only concrete and boots.
Boots stained with his blood.
Someone laughs. Someone else spits on him. They don't ask questions. They don't demand information. They don't accuse him of anything.
They just hit himagainand againand againbecause they can.
Kazuki tries to lift his head. An arm swings down, a metal pipe crashing across his jaw. His vision flashes white. Teeth scatter on the floor like dropped dice.
He tastes metal and mud and humiliation.
His wife is only a few feet away, tied to a chair, shaking so hard the ropes scrape skin from her arms. She is trying not to cry. Trying to be brave. Trying not to make it worse.
Their daughter sits on her lap, tiny hands clamped over her ears, as if shutting out the sound will save her.
Kazuki tries to speak.He wants to say "It's okay."He wants to say "I'm here."He wants to say "I'll get you out."
What comes out is a gurgle drowned in blood.
The door opens.
The room, noisy and cruel and filled with awful men, goes still.
He enters like a shadow given human shape.
Ryouma Zakuro.The man Kazuki once worked for.The man he once admired.The man he once trusted.
Ryouma doesn't look angry.He looks disappointed, the way a parent might look at a child who broke something precious.
"I told you," he says, voice calm, even gentle."You dug too deep."
Kazuki forces his head up. His neck screams. His jaw hangs crooked.
Ryouma looks past him, at the girl on her mother's lap.
And then
He backhands her.
So hard her small body whips sideways and her skull hits the concrete floor with a crack.
Kazuki's entire soul tears open.
The sound he makes is not human.It is an animal watching its own heart be carved out.
He rips against the bindings. Flesh splits. Tendons strain. Bone grinds bone. He does not care. He pulls until something in his shoulder snaps and his arm goes limp.
But he is still not free.
Ryouma crouches, taking his time. Exhales cigarette smoke into Kazuki's one working eye.
"You were good at killing," he says. "But you were never smart."
Kazuki groans, blood bubbling down his chin.
Ryouma sighs.Takes out the gun.Levels it at Kazuki's wife first.
She meets Kazuki's eye.
She smiles.
A tiny, trembling smile meant to say I am sorry. I love you. Take care of her.
Bang.
Kazuki screams so loud his throat tears.His voice breaks into nothing.
His daughter crawls toward him, hands shaking violently.
"D…Daddy"
Bang.She falls face-first.Her little fingers stop just inches from his.
Kazuki cannot breathe.
Not because of his broken ribs.Not because of shock.Not because of blood.
Because his heart has stopped functioning as a human organ.
Ryouma turns away.
"Leave him. Let him watch."
They do.
Hours pass.
Or minutes.Or years.
Kazuki's mind fractures into sharp, glasslike pieces.He sits there drowning in the corpses of everything he ever loved.
Then something shifts.
A tiny click.
The rope on his left wrist loosens.Blood. Sweat. Something slick enough lets him slide a hand free.
Kazuki does not stand.He rises.Dragged upward by hatred so dense the air vibrates around him.
The first thug does not even see him coming.Kazuki grabs his throat and crushes it like wet clay.Another swings a pipe; Kazuki takes it to the face and keeps walking, bone showing through torn skin.
Some run.Some beg.Some fire guns wildly.
Kazuki is silent.
He kills them with broken hands.With shattered bones.With the last dregs of a father's love turned damned and monstrous.
When the last man gurgles on his own blood, through the chaos the mansion sets aflame.
Kazuki barely registers it.
Because he is already moving, limping, dragging his ruined body through Ryouma's mansion, recognizing hallways he once walked with respect.
He finds Ryouma at the top of a staircase, trying to flee.
Kazuki stabs him in the thigh with a broken shard of metal, forcing him down.Ryouma laughs through the pain.
"They were right… about you."
Ryouma staggers, one hand pressed to his thigh, the other reaching blindly for a fallen gun he will never touch. The room burns behind them, flames climbing the curtains, smoke swallowing the ceiling. The relentless heat turns every breath into a knife.
Kazuki does not flinch.
His body is ruined,ribs shattered, shoulder useless, blood slicking the floor beneath him,but his eyes remain cold, deadened.
Human in shape.But far past human in spirit.
Ryouma crawls, coughing blood, snarling through the pain.
"You monster… They were right about you…"
Kazuki steps forward without a word.
Ryouma scrambles backward, slipping in his own blood. His hand reaches for the wall, for anything, trembling, desperate. His voice cracks.
"Stay back."
Kazuki moves behind him with a speed that belies his injuries, a silent shadow slipping through flame.
Ryouma turns too late.
A knife flashes downward.
Kazuki slices through the back of Ryouma's leg, clean and precise, tendon severed.Ryouma collapses instantly with a guttural scream.
He grasps at Kazuki's pant leg, grabbing blindly, reaching for leverage.
Kazuki's blade answers.
Three fingers drop to the floor, severed before Ryouma even registers the pain.
His scream becomes a ragged, broken sob.
Kazuki does not pause.Does not breathe.Does not blink.
He steps behind Ryouma, grabs a fistful of his hair, pulling his head back. The boss's throat stretches tight, trembling.
"Kazuki, wait."
A single tear slips down Kazuki's cheek.
Not for Ryouma.Not for mercy.
For the life that was stolen from him.For the people burned out of his world long before the fire touched these walls.
His voice shakes once, only once.
"I'm coming, Aiko. Mika."
The knife draws across Ryouma's throat in one slow, controlled motion.Clean.Final.
Blood spills down Kazuki's hand.Ryouma's body falls forward, twitching once before going still.
Kazuki stands over him, chest rising and falling with shallow, broken breaths.The tear dries on his cheek.
The flames roar behind him, devouring the room, tasting the floorboards, reaching for the ceiling. Smoke fills his lungs. His knees weaken.
His body is done.His purpose finished.There is nothing left.
He turns toward the fire, looking into it like an open doorway.
A doorway home.
His knees buckle.He collapses beside Ryouma's corpse, the heat already burning through his clothes, blistering his skin.
Kazuki closes his eyes.
A second tear, the last tear his first life will ever give, slips down his cheek as fire wraps around him like a cruel embrace.
And then
The world disappears in flame.