Chapter Nine – Establishing the Temporary Alliance
"You know a lot of information."
Kanami said with great calm while placing his hand on the table comfortably.
His fingers rested on the cool, scarred wood, relaxed but poised. The gesture was meant to project ease, to suggest he was unfazed by the revelations. Inside, every nerve was a taut wire.
Tap. A single, light tap of his index finger.
"This is true. I know some interesting information about you, in addition to that organization you are searching for."
(Tokito) answered directly, and this information was not important, but that was for a clear purpose.
I wanted to appear as if I possessed a vast reservoir of secrets, and that revealing such "simple" things was trivial for me. It was a power play, establishing the depth of my supposed knowledge.
And thereby, (Tokito) conveys a message to me, Kanami, that he possesses a lot of information.
The subtext was clear: I have more. I know more. Don't test me.
Kanami hummed simply and quietly.
It was a soft, non-committal sound, a placeholder while his mind raced.
Hmm.
Then he said while asking:
"Very good. I admit you know something big regarding me. The name Specter alone tells me you possess a very large information base. This name, I have never allowed anyone to know before."
His voice was level, analytical, but the admission was a significant concession. He was acknowledging my breach of his security.
Of course, Kanami did not know that (Tokito) had known that from watching the manga in his previous life.
The irony was almost painful. The grand, terrifying secret that defined his life was, to me, just a plot point from a comic I'd read on my phone during lunch breaks.
Otherwise, blood would have been shed.
The thought was stark and true. If he knew my source was fictional, if he knew I was just a fraud with spoilers, that hidden knife would have found its way to my throat in an instant.
In the end, this information, which Kanami had always tried to hide, had been discovered in an unexpected way by a person who came from another world.
The universe had a sick sense of humor.
(Tokito) smiled coldly.
"Your information is very superficial and easy to obtain."
I said that, but in my heart, (Tokito) was very happy with Kanami's words.
A cold, sharp thrill of victory shot through me. His admission, his surprise, meant the bluff was holding. I was gaining the upper hand in this deal I wanted to make with the other party.
Thump-thump. My heart beat a faster, triumphant rhythm against my ribs.
A short silence lasted for less than a second before Kanami said in a direct tone:
"Since you know this secret identity that I was hiding, you know why I am pursuing the Phantom Organization, isn't that right?"
Kanami, after beginning to suspect that his opponent in front of him possessed some kind of mental ability that could make him know the secrets in the mind, decided to conduct a difficult test.
The question was a trap, layered. It tested the depth of my knowledge. Did I just know the what, or did I also know the why? The motivations were always more deeply buried than the facts.
Could the young man in front of him know the reasons for his pursuit of the Phantom Organization and why Kanami had been chasing this organization for a long time?
Kanami expected that (Tokito) would take a little time before answering.
He anticipated a pause, a flicker of the eyes, a moment of fabrication. It would be the tell that my knowledge had limits.
But the white-haired young man said with great calm and a sense of simplicity, as if stating the obvious:
"You want revenge for your parents, don't you? They died because of the Phantom Organization five years ago, when you were eleven. Since that time, you have been searching for anything related to this organization. In addition, you participate in all low-level activities and are known as an information dealer in the underworld of low-level organizations, isn't that right?"
The words came out in a steady, unemotional stream. I recited the backstory as I remembered it from the manga's tragic flashback chapter. The age, the timeframe, the motive, the method—all delivered with the detached certainty of someone reading from a file.
Kanami fell silent. He did not know what to say.
…
The silence in the small room became absolute, broken only by the low hum of the refrigerator. The air felt thick, charged.
Every word the stranger said was the truth.
The confirmation hit him like a physical blow. This wasn't guesswork. This wasn't deduced from patterns. This was intimate, painful knowledge.
My parents died five years ago.
The memory, usually kept in a locked, soundproofed room in his mind, burst open. The smell of smoke. The sound of crumbling plaster. The silence afterward.
I did everything to find that organization that killed them.
Years of lies, of infiltrating seedy bars, of trading favors with dangerous people, of building the Specter persona from the ground up.
I wanted revenge, even though my ability wasn't strong, even though I didn't possess sufficient talent.
The bitter core of his existence. The driving force behind every calculated risk, every forged smile, every hidden blade. Revenge against an enemy so vast and shadowy he could barely comprehend it.
I wanted revenge on those monsters who caused the destruction of my parents. All of that for revenge.
But at the same time…
A conflicting, older feeling stirred, one he'd buried under layers of cynicism and practicality.
Kanami had hidden all this information for a long time. It is impossible for any person to know this information.
He had been meticulous. He had no living relatives. He had fabricated his records. He operated only through proxies and dead drops as Specter.
If the young man in front of him had known this information, was that by using a specific ability?
The suspicion solidified. Telepathy? Psychometry? Some form of memory extraction? In a world of superpowers, it was terrifyingly plausible.
Or does this young man possess the ability to read memories?
The thought was a spike of pure dread. If that were true, then he was utterly transparent, a book already read and discarded.
Or is there a person who knows all my information and has told this young man this information?
The possibility of a traitor, of a leak from within the very criminal networks he used, was almost as bad.
But another question appeared in Kanami's head.
His analytical mind, trained by paranoia, began searching for motive.
What would any person benefit from revealing this information now?
What was the play? Blackmail? Recruitment into another organization? A trap set by the Phantom Organization itself?
Kanami was aware that the organization he was searching for was a terrifyingly large international organization.
They were a hydra with global reach, capable of atrocities on a massive scale. If they were behind this, he was already dead. They wouldn't play games in a D-Rank dorm room.
It is impossible for it to be trying to target him at this moment, because if it did, he would have died at any time, and none of their hunters would need a second to eliminate him.
The logic was cold comfort. The Phantom Organization dealt in assassinations and mass murders, not psychological tête-à-têtes with teenagers.
In the end, he was not strong or possessed great combat power.
He was a ghost in the machine, a data thief, not a soldier. He was beneath their notice.
With this quick conclusion, Kanami reached an understanding of one thing quickly.
The pieces clicked into place, forming a new, less apocalyptic picture.
The person in front of him must be alone and want something specific from Kanami.
He wasn't an agent of a larger power. He was an individual with an agenda. That made him dangerous in a different, more manageable way.
But at the same time, another question appeared, and the questions did not end in my mind, Kanami.
The whirlwind of analysis continued. Motive, means, opportunity.
Why does this white-haired young man want to use this information? And what are his conditions, for hell's sake?
All these thoughts were swirling in less than one second in Kanami's mind.
His brain was a supercomputer running threat-assessment protocols, social engineering algorithms, and emotional damage-control subroutines simultaneously.
And on the other side of the table, (Tokito) had raised his hand very quietly and said:
"That organization is very dangerous, and I am sure you know that. But with my help, I might be able to help you obtain the revenge you want."
I made the offer sound like a simple transaction, a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Kanami twitched unconsciously.
It was a tiny, full-body flinch, a shudder that ran from his shoulders down his spine. The word "revenge" spoken so casually, so promisingly, was a key turning in a lock he'd thought was rusted shut.
Jolt.
But that was clear to (Tokito), who seized the opportunity and continued:
"If you want revenge, all you have to do is join the organization I want to establish. This organization seeks to eliminate those villains who do not care about the lives of ordinary people, who are prepared to commit many brutal crimes, and at the same time, who can easily escape the law."
I was laying it on thick now, painting a picture of righteous vigilantes. A noble cause.
Every word (Tokito) was saying, he did not mean it from the foundation.
The internal contradiction was jarring. I was spinning a tale of justice while my only goal was selfish survival. I felt like a used-car salesman selling a lemon as a luxury vehicle.
But he needed to build a background for it.
I couldn't just say "join me so we can grind points and I can escape." That offered him nothing. He needed a reason, an ideology to buy into, or at least pretend to buy into.
It was the best background he could think of, which is the character of a person who wants to destroy those villains, a person who wants to search for criminals and achieve justice.
It played directly into his established trauma and his hidden, idealistic core. It was the perfect bait.
Since he could not use means that seemed demonic…
I had to be the "good" guy, or at least the "lesser evil" guy. A straightforward, heroic motivation was the safest cover.
In the end, he could not act as if he were the strong man all the time, because that would be exposed at any time.
My weakness was my greatest secret. I had to hide it behind a facade of mysterious knowledge, not physical prowess.
No matter what happens, he is still weak and may remain so for a long time.
The admission, even internal, was galling but true. My cloud power wasn't getting a combat upgrade. I had to win with brains, not brawn.
Therefore, he is in need of making the people who join him possess some kind of justice, some kind of fixed goal.
I needed allies who believed in the mission, or could convincingly pretend to, so they wouldn't question my lack of direct power or my ultimate, selfish goal.
By nature, (Tokito) was talking nonsense at this moment.
Searching for criminals and catching them and justice—all these things were not his problem.
My problem was the academy. My problem was the point system. My problem was the looming narrative apocalypse that would turn this campus into rubble.
They were the problem of the police and the heroes.
For him, he needed freedom, and that was through obtaining enough points to rise.
The calculus was simple and mercenary. Points were the currency of escape.
After obtaining those sufficient points, he will leave this academy and disappear.
I had already scoped out possibilities from the manga's world-building—remote towns, unregistered safe houses, places where a nobody could vanish.
He knows several secret locations he can go to after that, and no one will expose him.
A fantasy of quiet obscurity, far from heroes, villains, and mandatory death-missions.
But of course, that only if he possesses enough points to graduate, which is impossible to obtain alone.
The central, crushing obstacle. The reason for this entire charade.
Therefore, he created this story at this moment to show me, Kanami, that he is serious and that he wants to help him.
The altruism was a fiction, but the need for cooperation was brutally real.
At the same time, to gain his support in a deeper way than just coercion; there must be approval from Kanami himself.
I couldn't force him. I needed his willing participation, his skills applied actively, not under duress. A coerced ally was a liability waiting to stab you in the back.
---
"Capturing criminals…"
Kanami was astonished, quite simply.
The words left his lips as a soft, disbelieving whisper. He wasn't able to hide the astonishment on his face.
His calm mask finally cracked. His green eyes trembled, their usual sharp focus gone, replaced by a wide, stunned confusion.
He couldn't believe what he had heard.
He had just heard someone say that he was searching for villains to throw them in jail and wanted to form an organization and wanted to invite him to that organization.
The proposition was so alien, so diametrically opposed to the cutthroat, every-man-for-himself reality of the academy and the underworld he inhabited, that his brain short-circuited for a moment.
Kanami is not a person who is easy to deceive.
His life was built on detecting lies, on seeing the self-interest behind every offer. This should have set off every alarm bell.
But at this moment, he thought of his family who died.
The memory, freshly prodded, was raw and vivid. Not the abstract concept of "revenge," but the specific, lost faces of his mother and father.
His father and mother, who died and were killed by the Phantom Organization.
Their absence was a permanent cold space in his life.
At the same time, his original desire to be a hero and save people…
A younger, softer version of himself surfaced from the depths. A boy who, before the fire and the silence, had believed in capes and justice.
All these things came together to form his character.
He was a paradox: a vengeful ghost built atop the foundation of a broken hero.
Even if he pretends to be bad and wants revenge, he has always wanted to throw those criminals in jail, no, to eliminate them completely.
The admission was one he rarely made even to himself. The desire for pure, cleansing justice had never died; it had just been twisted and buried under layers of necessary ruthlessness.
But at the same time, he was losing hope in the heroes.
The academy's orientation, (Genos)'s cold speech, the blatantly rigged point system—it had all confirmed his worst suspicions. The official "heroes" were part of the problem, a self-serving system that protected the strong and fed the weak into the grinder.
And after joining this academy, he knew that its laws were ridiculous and disgusting.
The confirmation was in the dry text of the manual, in the arrogant faces of the legacy students, in the very architecture of the place.
In the end, it only rewarded those who possessed strength and exceptional abilities, while ordinary people would need years to obtain the strength to defend themselves, without even talking about helping others.
The system was designed to create an elite, not to protect the innocent. It was social Darwinism with a license.
All these things made Kanami feel disgusted with this academy and with the heroes.
A deep, simmering contempt had taken root. They were not the solution; they were a privileged part of the disease.
But now, he began to feel hope.
It was a fragile, tentative thing, like the first green shoot cracking through frozen earth. Not a big hope, but…
The words of this young man in front of him made him feel hope.
The sheer, audacious idealism of it, spoken with such cold certainty, was a spark in the cynical darkness of his worldview.
What if I joined him and we formed an organization and we eliminated those criminals? Isn't this a good idea?
The thought was seductive. Action. Purpose. Directly targeting the rot instead of navigating its corridors.
In addition, the person in front of him is certainly a person who possesses some kind of useful ability, since he knows such private information about his secret identity.
The logic was circular but compelling. Such deep knowledge implied power—informational power, if not physical.
So certainly, he also possesses more and deeper information about the Phantom Organization.
That was the real lure. The promise of a map through the labyrinth that had consumed his life.
And if I benefit from this person, I might be able to catch that organization.
The calculus of self-interest aligned with the spark of hope. This alliance could serve both his revenge and his survival.
Kanami reviewed the negatives and positives.
His mind, the supercomputer, ran the new scenario. Pros: Potential information on Phantom Org. A partner (however suspicious). A cover and purpose within the academy. A path to action. Cons: The white-haired boy was an unknown variable, potentially manipulative, possibly insane. The stated goal was naïve and dangerous. Trust was a monumental risk.
The analysis took less than a second.
And finally, he couldn't help but say after sighing:
Sigh…
"Fine. I agree to join your organization. But that is only to achieve its goal. And if I find that you are lying to me…"
Kanami did not care to seem nice at this moment.
The polite, bookish mask fell away completely. His green eyes turned hard and flinty.
Where he took out the dagger he was hiding and placed it on the table.
His left hand moved with a blur of practiced speed. One moment it was on his thigh, the next there was a soft shink of metal, and a sleek, black-bladed combat knife lay on the scarred wood between us.
Clack.
It was a statement, not a threat. A piece of punctuation.
He looked at (Tokito).
"…I will make you pay the price. Do you understand?"
He did not say that out loud. The words didn't even leave his mouth.
But one look at the dagger was enough to show the meaning of the words that did not need to be said.
His gaze, locked with mine, was as cold and sharp as the blade he had produced from nowhere. It promised pain, consequence, a reckoning.
With just his movement and the look in his eye, it was clear what he wanted to say.
The message was transmitted perfectly: this alliance was temporary, conditional, and fraught with mutual suspicion. Betrayal would be met with extreme prejudice.
(Tokito) had understood the meaning explicitly and nodded his head and said:
"Then our temporary alliance is established."
The words felt heavy, formal. I had my first recruit. A brilliant, dangerous, emotionally compromised thief with a hidden knife and a burning grudge.
The foundation of my escape plan was now laid, not on trust, but on a precarious balance of mutual need, manipulated trauma, and an unspoken promise of violence.
The door to my small, beige room felt less like a barrier and more like the lid of a box containing a very volatile reaction.
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End of Chapter.
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Author's Note:
Thank you for reading as(Tokito) successfully sells a lie wrapped in a just cause to a very dangerous believer. Your readership is the only stable element in this house of cards. ❤️ :)
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