The fire alarm was a pulse that erased all thought. The world had shrunk down to the sound and the ordered chaos of evacuation. Hikari leaped to his feet.
"We have to get out!" he shouted over the din.
He ignored the fallen thugs and focused on Nakamura, who was still standing, his gaze darting from the unconscious bodies to the clumsy boy who had supposedly caused it all. His athlete's mind, trained in discipline and cause-and-effect, couldn't process the scene. It was an impossible koan.
"Let's go!" insisted Hikari, grabbing a dazed Nakamura by the arm and practically dragging him toward the door.
Yui, who had remained frozen by the doorway, stepped aside to let them pass. They exited into the hallway just as the first students began filing down the stairs. They blended into the crowd.
Haruna watched from her post on the second floor. She saw the panicked expression on Hikari's face. She saw the way he walked, slightly uncoordinated again. She saw him explaining something to a teacher. But she had seen what lay beneath.
When the alarm ceased and a sense of artificial normality returned to the academy, they gathered on the rooftop, as was their custom.
Kenjiro was the first to speak. "It worked. The timing was perfect. They bought it."
"More than worked..." muttered Yui, hugging herself. "I was there. I saw it. It was..."
She ran out of words. The violence of the moment, however justified, had left her shaking.
Haruna had remained silent, her back to them, looking out at the city. When she finally turned, her eyes were fixed on Hikari.
"No... I don't want to hear how it worked. I want you to explain what I saw."
Kenjiro and Yui looked at her, surprised by the intensity of her tone, but they nodded all the same. They wanted to know what had happened.
"I saw your foot," Haruna continued, taking a step toward Hikari. "You didn't slip. You pivoted. The angle of your body when hitting the box... it wasn't to regain balance. It was to maximize the energy transferred to those balls. Every bounce, every collision... it wasn't chaos. It was... geometry."
She stopped a meter away from him. Her face was now a canvas of disbelief and an emotion that looked a lot like fear.
"I didn't take my eyes off you for a second, Hikari. When the alarm went off and you got scared, your face showed panic. But your eyes... your eyes were calm. They were calculating. I didn't see a clumsy boy falling down. I saw a predator taking down his prey with terrifying efficiency and then pretending to be one of the sheep."
"I asked you once, and I'll ask you again," Haruna said. "What are you?"
Hikari held her gaze. He knew the old answers wouldn't work anymore. "I inherited my father's way of thinking" would sound like a mockery after what she had witnessed. He owed her more than that.
"When the alarm went off..." Hikari began, "and I saw what they were going to do to Nakamura, it's true, I didn't think. There was no time. But what my parents taught me... wasn't just to see the anomalies. It was to react to them."
He looked at his own hands, as if they were alien to him. "My body... sometimes moves faster than my mind. In that moment, I didn't see three thugs. I saw a system of forces in a closed space. I saw vectors of movement, centers of gravity, low-friction surfaces. My body didn't execute a plan. It simply... solved the equation. It found the most efficient solution to neutralize the threat and protect the target."
It was a half-truth, but the closest to reality he dared to offer. He didn't speak of gifts, but of an almost inhuman reaction, an instinct honed to the level of a combat computer.
"That isn't instinct," Haruna replied, shaking her head. "That is... something else."
"Maybe," admitted Hikari. "But it's the only thing I know how to do. When the balance is broken so violently, my only response is to restore it in the fastest, most direct way possible."
Haruna studied him for a long while, looking for a lie, a crack in his explanation. She found none, only an abyss of unanswered questions. Finally, she exhaled. She didn't understand it, but a part of her knew he was on the same side.
"Alright," she said, taking a step back. "You solve equations. But know this: the next time you solve one like that, I want to be out of the exam room."
In Ishikawa Tower, Kaito stood before his father for the second time in two weeks. The report had been concise. Three of his strongest men, hospitalized. One with a severe concussion. The target, Nakamura, unharmed. The culprit, according to all witnesses, including Nakamura himself, was the Argentine exchange student, who slipped in a puddle of water while a fire alarm was ringing.
Mr. Ishikawa said nothing. He simply looked at the tablet displaying Hikari Akihiko's profile. A nondescript face. A spotless record. A history of clumsiness.
"Twice," the man said finally. "Twice this... accident has intervened directly in your affairs. Lightning can strike the same place twice, Kaito. But I don't believe in lightning. I believe in the people who direct it."
He slid the tablet across the desk. "Your method has failed. School-level intimidation is for children. You have proven incapable of handling this problem."
Kaito gritted his teeth but accepted the reprimand in silence.
"This is no longer your business," his father continued, picking up the phone from his desk. "It has ceased to be a question of discipline and has become a corporate security risk. When a system has a persistent bug that cannot be debugged, you don't keep trying to fix the code. You hire a specialist to remove the error from the motherboard. Permanently."
He pressed a number on the speed dial.
"Connect me with Mr. Tanaka," he said into the phone, and his choice of words was a cruel irony that Kaito didn't miss. "No, not that Tanaka. The other one. The one who handles... 'hostile takeovers.' We have a problem that requires his particular set of skills."
Kaito had remained motionless while his father finished the call. Mr. Ishikawa didn't turn around immediately. He remained with his back to him.
"What do you think of him, Kaito?" he asked finally. "This boy, Hikari Akihiko. Forget what the reports say. Forget the testimonies of your inept thugs. Tell me, what do you see?"
Kaito hesitated, searching for the right answer. "He is... cunning. He hides."
His father let out a short, dismissive laugh. "He uses others, yes. But he doesn't hide. He does the exact opposite. He displays himself. He displays himself as a clown, an idiot, a walking accident. And that, Kaito, is the most brilliant and simultaneously most insulting disguise of all."
He finally turned, coldness in his eyes.
"Luck does not have a motive, Kaito. Luck does not consistently benefit one side while decimating the other. An accident does not solve a differential equation. A stumble does not unearth a forgotten ordinance. A technical glitch does not expose a fraud with irrefutable digital proof. And certainly, a slip in a puddle does not neutralize three men trained in martial arts with the precision of a guided missile."
He walked slowly toward the desk and leaned against it.
"No. This isn't luck. This is a design. A design so perfect it masquerades as chaos. This boy isn't an idiot with luck. He is a professional pretending to be an idiot with luck. I don't know what his skills are, nor where he got them. And frankly, I don't care. What I do know is that he is the cause. He is the epicenter of all your problems."
"Father..."
"He is the culprit," he said, giving Kaito no vote in this conversation. "And you welcomed him. Your arrogance, your need to exercise power so crude and so loud, created the perfect vacuum for someone like him to act. You gave him a cause. You provoked him. And now, I have to clean up your mess."
Kaito felt a wave of anger and humiliation, but he suppressed it. He knew any protest would be futile.
"The Mr. Tanaka who is on his way," his father continued, "is a problem-resolution specialist. When a rival company becomes problematic, he ensures their key executives decide to take a permanent vacation. When a union becomes too loud, he ensures its leader has an unfortunate domestic accident. He isn't fooled by clown costumes."
"Are you going to...?"
"I am going to eliminate the error. This Hikari Akihiko is an unidentified hostile asset who is actively interfering with our operations and damaging our brand. He is an unacceptable risk. And unacceptable risks are neutralized. Permanently."
He approached Kaito and adjusted his tie, an almost paternal gesture that was terrifying in context.
"I will send a team to him. Professionals. People who don't miss, who don't trip in puddles of water. People who understand that accidents only happen when you want them to happen. They will take care of him quietly. It will be one of those sad stories on the news: a foreign exchange student who gets into trouble in the wrong neighborhood. A tragedy. And then, the system will return to its state of equilibrium."
He straightened the tie and patted his son on the shoulder.
"Your involvement in this matter is over. Go to your school. Keep playing at being king. But don't make any more noise. Don't provoke any more ghosts. The children's game is over, Kaito. Now the adults are playing."
Kaito turned and left the office, his own plans for revenge terminated... His father wasn't seeking to humiliate Hikari. He wasn't seeking to defeat him.
He was seeking to kill him.
And for the first time, Kaito Ishikawa felt true fear—not for himself, but for the quiet, smiling monster his father was about to unleash.