026

You studied her face for a moment longer, savoring the subtle tightness of her smile now that the performance was beginning to fray.

Not fear. Not yet. Just discomfort.

That was good. It meant she still thought she had some control.

You gave a soft chuckle, just to tilt the dynamic again.

“Well then,” you said lightly, stepping back with a mock bow.

“I suppose if I ever find myself in need of such… gracious sponsorship, I’ll know where to turn.”

She hesitated, then drew a card from her clutch. A small, elegant slip with embossed gold and cursive font.

“Just in case,” she said, holding it out.

You took it between two fingers, careful not to brush skin. The card was warm from her touch.

“I don’t normally give this out,” she added.

“How generous.” You turned the card over once, then tucked it into your chest pocket with the jewel.

“Truly, the night is full of rare treasures.”

That seemed to please her. “I hope we meet again.”

“Oh,” you said, with that too gentle smile, “we will.”

She turned, heels clicking softly against marble as she disappeared down the corridor like a dream trying too hard to look effortless.

You stood there a moment longer.

Then you hummed. A slow, pleased note, low in your throat.

So that was her now. Suzuki Akari. The family’s “youngest”.

One year older than you, but always introduced as the baby of the house. So soft, so sweet, so beloved. So utterly rotten under all that velvet.

You remember now.

Not in flashes, not in fragments. No. In perfect, horrifying clarity.

Like film from your childhood rolling behind your eyes.

She used to visit your wing of the estate, that cold, dismal annex with no heating and cracked windows where the bastard was kept.

She was nine. You were eight. She wore lace and ribbons and cherry blossom perfume even then.

One day, she brought you a handkerchief, embroidered. Blue, expensive.

She smiled so innocently when she pressed it into your palm. “So you don’t look like a beggar,” she said with a giggle.

You thanked her. Then, three days later, you were dragged across stone floors and whipped because the handkerchief was stolen from a noble guest’s daughter.

She’d planted it.

Another time, she brought you cookies. “I made them myself!” she said, clasping her hands, wide eyed.

They tasted like salt and flour and something off.

When you paused after the second bite, she tilted her head and said, in the softest voice, “Do you not like my food? I tried so hard for you…”

And the servants. God, the servants. Their sneers grew sharper.

“Spoiled brat,” they’d mutter. “Ungrateful filth.”

So you smiled.

You licked your fingers clean, teeth flashing white, and said, “It’s delicious. You’re really kind, sister.”

You didn’t miss how her fingers twitched.

She never cooked for you again.

But oh, she visited. She cried to your father when her cat disappeared. Said you must have taken it.

Father didn’t ask questions. He didn’t need to. He called you, “devil,” and left bruises on your arms.

The cat returned a week later.

Her personal maid had found it. Locked in the girl’s own closet.

She didn’t apologize.

You didn’t expect her to.

Her heels clicked down the opposite hall, the sharp tap fading like echoes of a theatre long since abandoned.

You watched until she vanished behind the corner, slipping back into velvet and masks and carefully staged smiles.

Then, silence again.

Your fingers slipped the little slip of paper she’d pressed into your hand from your pocket, her number scrawled in careful, looping handwriting.

You stared at it for a long second, then chuckled. Low, quiet, dangerous.

She hadn’t recognized you.

Not really. Not the way it mattered.

But that brief glimmer, that flicker of unease behind her painted smile when your gaze darkened, that had been real.

You folded the paper and slid it back into your pocket, not out of sentiment, but because it was amusing.

Like a child's crayon drawing. Clumsy, pointless, but too absurd to throw away just yet.

A smile on your face, amused, before you head towards the security room again.

In a dark room humming with electricity and cold air, the only light came from the glow of several monitors, flickering with surveillance footage from across the enemy estate.

The man slumped unconscious in the corner chair hadn’t stirred once.

Unconscious, not dead. You weren’t done with him yet.

You leaned forward, tapping the keys with a calm precision, fingers ghosting across the console with a surgeon’s care.

Each camera feed was erased, overwritten, and stored somewhere else, buried under layers of encrypted folders no one would know to dig through.

Every trace of your infiltration was disappearing. But you didn’t just delete them, you studied them.

Every movement, every face, every whisper captured on silent footage was burned into your memory with the efficiency of a machine and the hunger of something far less human.

Click.

The final file disappeared.

You sat back, stretching slightly, then reached into your pocket and pulled out your phone.

With a few rapid swipes, you typed:

“Take care of everyone present.”

The reply was immediate.

“Boss’ orders?”

You smiled faintly, lips curving without warmth.

“No. But if you won’t, I will.”

A beat.

Then you added:

“Don’t kill the woman dressed in white. Knock her out.”

Another pause.

You imagined Chuuya narrowing his eyes, lips pursed, surrounded by glittering gowns and clinking champagne glasses. Surrounded by white silk and false faces.

“There are several women dressed in white. You want me to knock them all out?”

You chuckled under your breath, low and smooth, like water sliding over glass.

“Yes.”

A sigh of resignation you could almost hear through the screen.

“Understood.”

You tucked your phone away, laughter still curling in your throat.

Then, you slumped back in the chair, eyes drifting to the monitors, now blank, like mirrors without reflection.

It was funny.

You thought, when you were younger, that all of this began with curiosity. Just harmless, innocent curiosity.

Why did the servants hate you?

Why did your father call you devil when you hadn’t done anything yet?

Why did their voices always lower when you walked into a room?

Why did the walls of your room grow colder every year?

You had only wanted to understand.

But now… as you rose from the chair, hands slipping into the pockets of your tailored coat, as you walked through the dim corridors back toward the main ballroom, you realized it had never been just curiosity.

There had always been something else.

Something hot and sharp beneath your skin, something you hadn’t had the words for as a child.

Anger.

Not the kind that screamed. Not the kind that burned wild and bright.

No. Yours was different.

Yours festered in silence.

Smiled with blood on its teeth.

Wore pretty clothes and said “please” and “thank you” and “sister, you’re so kind,” even as it planned revenge so slow, so meticulous it didn’t need to be immediate.

It was the kind of anger that scared people. One that turns people inhumane, devilish.

You stopped in front of a tall window, the moonlight cutting in clean lines across the marble floor.

You looked at your reflection, blurred slightly in the pane, but still clear enough to see the face you wore now.

You tilted your head.

Dark eyes stared back.

Empty.

You tried smiling. The face in the window smiled back, charming, elegant.

The smile turned your eyes into something gentler, something more human.

But it was fake.

You let the smile drop, let your mouth settle into the stillness you wore when you didn’t need to perform.

Your eyes returned to what they were.

Blank.

Black.

Ah. That again.

You studied them.

Back then, when you first met Dazai, you’d thought his eyes were darker than yours.

Emptier. Like nothing could get in or out.

You remember it so clearly. How fascinated you’d been. How cold he felt, like a corpse that somehow moved and spoke.

But now… you chuckled, soft and thoughtful.

“How ironic.”

Because now, your eyes looked the same. And maybe they always had. Maybe you just hadn’t wanted to see it.

Maybe you had wanted to believe that you were different.

But you weren’t.

Not really.

You and Dazai, two black holes orbiting each other, never colliding, never breaking apart. Two voids in different forms.

“Maybe that’s why he follows me,” you murmured aloud, the glass fogging faintly from your breath.

“Maybe he thinks I’m the only one who won’t disappear when he looks too long.”

You chuckled again, this one drier.

“Or maybe he just wants to understand himself.”

The hallway was still.

Distantly, you heard the crash of glass, a muffled scream. Likely Chuuya’s handiwork.

You turned, continuing your walk toward the security room’s exit.

Your footfalls echoed, each step a quiet note in the symphony of chaos blooming behind the walls.

Your fingers brushed your chest pocket, feeling the hard edge of the stolen jewel and the business card from your sister.

Akari.

You remembered her face as she handed it to you.

How pathetic her performance was. How close it had come to making you forget.

But you never really forgot.

You just learned how to smile better.

You reached the ballroom doors, pausing for a moment to compose your expression again.

Smile.

Eyes soft.

Voice sweet.

The charming executive. The Port Mafia’s black diamond.

You pushed the doors open.

Time to play again.