The apartment door hung open, splintered down the middle. Police lights flashed in the hallway as officers stepped into the Amano home, the air thick with the metallic stench of blood.
Inspector Kuroda stopped in the doorway, jaw tightening.
"Damn… what kind of monster did this?"
The crime scene techs worked silently, their expressions pale. The living room looked like a slaughterhouse. Furniture overturned, walls smashed in, shards of broken glass embedded in every surface. Blood covered the floor in uneven, chaotic streaks.
And in the center of the room lay the bodies.
Or what was left of them.
The parents had been torn apart. Bones crushed. Skin shredded. Limbs twisted in directions that made several officers avert their eyes.
One rookie whispered, trembling, "This wasn't a fight… this was an execution."
Kuroda didn't disagree.
He stepped deeper into the room, careful not to step in the blood. "What do we know?"
A forensic specialist straightened, clipboard shaking slightly. "Victims are the parents: Riku Amano and Satomi Amano. Multiple fatal wounds. No weapon found. And… sir..."
He gestured at the walls.
"Those scratches… the spatter… the force required to do this… it doesn't match a human attacker."
Kuroda folded his arms. "Meaning?"
"Meaning this was done by a quirk," the tech whispered.
Before Kuroda could respond, a pro hero walked out of the hallway. Mirage Edge, a mid-tier detection hero, known for reconstructing crime scenes.
He looked unsettled.
Not terrified-just disturbed.
"What did your quirk pick up?" Kuroda asked.
Mirage Edge took a breath. "Fragments. Emotional impressions. Violent ones."
"Whose?"
"That's the thing," the hero muttered. "It's messy. Overlapping fear, anger, panic. The attacker's emotions are… unstable. Inconsistent. Hard to read."
Kuroda raised an eyebrow. "So… what are you saying?"
Mirage Edge studied the gouges in the wall, fingers tracing a deep cut near a cracked light switch.
"The killer wasn't calm or focused. It wasn't planned. But it wasn't self-defense either."He straightened."It was rage. A lot of rage."
Kuroda looked at the bodies again. "Enough rage to do… this?"
Mirage Edge didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
A young officer hurried over, holding a file in both hands.
"Inspector! We pulled records from the neighbors."
Kuroda flipped through them. Reports. Complaints. Noise. Screaming. Nothing officially filed.
"Domestic abuse," the officer whispered. "Years of it. The kid lived here. Hikaru Amano. Fourteen."
Mirage Edge crossed his arms. "So the parents were abusive…"
"And the kid finally snapped?" the rookie suggested.
Kuroda shut the file hard.
"Snapped? Look at this room. This isn't a snap. This is a massacre. This is someone who hated them enough to make sure no one could even identify the bodies."
The rookie swallowed. "But… sir… he's twelve."
Kuroda glared. "Don't be stupid. Quirks don't care about age."
Mirage Edge sighed. "We don't know what his quirk is yet. No registry. No doctor notes. Nothing. It might have manifested for the first time tonight."
The inspector nodded slowly. "Meaning he awakened… and immediately used it to butcher his parents."
"Possibly," the hero replied. "Or he just lost control."
But Kuroda already formed his conclusion.
"To hell with 'lost control.' Look at this room. No child panics and does… this. This is aggression. Intent. And if he awakened a quirk with this kind of destructive potential—"
He turned toward the smashed-open window.
"—then he's out there right now. Unstable. Angry. And dangerous."
Mirage Edge looked at him. "You think he's a threat?"
Kuroda didn't hesitate.
"No. I think he's a killer."
The officers worked silently, their fear building as they studied the carnage. Someone muttered:
"The kid didn't even take anything. He just ran."
"Like he didn't care."
"Like he'll do it again."
Kuroda raised his voice.
"Put out an emergency alert. Citywide. We have a violent quirk user on the run. Age doesn't matter-he's proven he can kill."
The rookie hesitated. "But sir… what if he needs help? What if he's scared?"
Kuroda's reply was ice-cold:
"A scared child doesn't tear two adults apart like animals. That's not fear."
He pointed at the bodies.
"That's cruelty."
In the corner, near Hikaru's room, a stuffed toy lay on the floor-its head ripped halfway off, old tears in the seams.
Mirage Edge picked it up.
"Maybe we're missing something," he murmured.
Kuroda snorted. "What? That he's actually a sweet boy who had a bad day?" He gestured at the blood-soaked floor. "No. We know what we're dealing with."
He headed for the door.
"Find the boy. Before he gets the chance to do it again."
In the silence that followed, Mirage Edge stood alone in the ruined room, staring at the destruction with a faint frown.
He didn't say it out loud.
But he felt it, faintly:
Something about this didn't feel like a killer.
It felt like something else.
Something the police had no idea how to understand.