"Is the killer here?"
"It's possible that our target is also a Master," Amber remarked, sitting in the passenger seat of the luxury sports car. She watched Rohan Kishibe as he scanned the road through the windshield.
"If I had a choice, I'd prefer it if that guy wasn't a participant," Rohan replied, glancing at his watch.
If Yoshikage Kira was also a Master, it meant he had a Servant of his own. Regardless of what kind of Heroic Spirit he had summoned, any entity with supernatural abilities was going to be a massive headache to deal with. He had no desire to face someone of Amber's caliber or whatever entity Josuke had summoned if they were protecting a serial killer.
"It's almost 8:30. Why hasn't anyone else shown up yet?!"
The agreed meeting time was fast approaching, yet there was no sign of the others. Rohan's frustration was starting to boil over.
"Master, is that the boy you mentioned? Hayato Kawajiri?"
Amber looked through the window and compared the boy walking down the street to the photograph in her hand.
"Yes, that's him."
"I'm counting on you, Assassin. Stop time!"
"Understood."
A dull, grey filter instantly drained the color from the world. Amber then extended her influence to Rohan, granting him the freedom to act within the frozen air.
"Fine. Trying to question him normally would take too long. I'll just use [Heaven's Door] and read everything I need to know."
Rohan stepped out of the car and walked toward Hayato, who was frozen in mid-stride with his head bowed.
No matter how many times he experienced it, he always felt that [Time-Stop] was a terrifyingly unfair power. Especially when combined with [Heaven's Door], it allowed him to perform an "assassination" of information without leaving a single trace behind.
"Master, we only have ten minutes. Please don't exceed your limit."
"I know."
He wasn't referring to the duration of the stop itself, but rather the magical efficiency they could maintain for this specific activation.
"[Heaven's Door]!!"
His Stand emerged and struck Hayato, peeling the boy's face back like the cover of a book. The pages flickered frantically as Rohan began to scan the contents of Hayato's life.
[I discovered the secret my father was hiding.]
[Yesterday, I tried to threaten him. I told him not to hurt me or Mom.]
[Otherwise, I would tell everyone what he's been doing.]
The opening lines confirmed Rohan's suspicion that this boy was far more observant than he looked.
[I was killed by my father.]
Rohan's pupils constricted as he reached the next page. He stared in shock at the ink on the paper.
He continued reading, his heart hammering against his ribs.
[But for some reason, I was alive again when I woke up.]
[He said some weird word... Saber.]
[Then a guy with glowing red eyes appeared...]
[The moment our eyes met, I lost all memory of what happened next.]
[After that, I went and destroyed the videotapes I'd recorded of Dad killing someone.]
[Today, I have to go to school and act like everything is normal.]
By the time he reached the end of the entry, Rohan's worst fears had been realized.
"Kosaku Kawajiri... he really is Yoshikage Kira!"
"And he's a Master!"
He grit his teeth. It was the absolute worst-case scenario. Not only had he found their target on the first try, but the killer had also gained a Servant to protect him.
"And this kid... it seems he's being manipulated by a Servant."
"He doesn't even have his own free will!"
"What the hell is going on here?"
There were too many secrets. Rohan tried to dig deeper into the pages to find clues about the Servant's identity or abilities.
But no matter how far back he flipped, the information regarding the Servant's true nature remained frustratingly blank or distorted.
"The eyes... could it be?"
Recalling the mention of red eyes, Rohan felt an intuitive surge of realization.
"[Heaven's Door]!"
He grabbed his pen and quickly wrote several characters onto the boy's face.
[My consciousness and thoughts are normal and clear.]
Once the command was inscribed, he stepped back and signaled to Amber.
Watching from the car, Amber understood the signal and immediately released the time-stop.
"?!"
Hayato blinked, looking lost and confused for several seconds.
"Why am I standing here?"
He looked left and right, trying to piece together his surroundings.
"Just as I thought. You were being controlled by some kind of outside influence."
Hayato looked up and finally noticed the tall, fashionable man standing in front of him.
In that same instant, a wave of pure, absolute cold washed over the street. Both the boy and Rohan turned toward the source of the killing intent.
A man wearing a black cloak decorated with red clouds and a slashed headband stood in the middle of the road.
"You're the one...!"
Hayato reacted instantly, his face twisting with a mix of recognition and terror.
"So you're Yoshikage Kira's Servant?!" Rohan shouted, pointing a finger at the intruder.
"..."
The man didn't respond. He simply stared at them with a pair of cold, indifferent eyes.
Bright red eyes with strange, rotating patterns.
Rohan observed the strange pupils, his mind racing to analyze the threat.
'Assassin, stop time again! Now!'
He screamed the command in his mind, but several seconds passed without a response. A sense of impending doom began to spiral in his chest.
"It's already over."
Itachi Uchiha looked at Rohan and spoke in a low, hollow murmur. It didn't matter what kind of power the artist's Servant possessed; nothing could stop the Master's death now.
"Hey! Wake up!!"
Hayato desperately pulled at Rohan's trousers, but the artist stood perfectly still, his face frozen in a mindless, vacant stare. It was a mirror of the expression Hayato had worn just a day before.
'He's just like I was yesterday.'
'He's being controlled too!'
Thanks to the effect of [Heaven's Door], Hayato had been freed from Itachi's genjutsu.
"Kosaku Kawajiri... is..."
"Yoshi... kage... Kira..."
Rohan's voice was mechanical, like a record player stuck in a loop. Hayato stood there, paralyzed with fear.
Then, in the next second, a small, pink figure flickered within the reflection of Rohan's dull pupils.
[Killer Queen]!
BOOM!
Itachi Uchiha watched as Rohan's body was torn apart by the internal explosion. He remained unmoved.
By using a combination of his genjutsu and [Killer Queen]'s capabilities, they had created a perfect, inescapable trap.
Now that Rohan Kishibe had died, time would rewind by exactly one hour.
During that jump, Itachi would simply inform Yoshikage Kira of the outcome and have him maintain the loop until the third bomb, [Bites the Dust], was fully detonated.
Then Rohan Kishibe would be erased from existence permanently.
The world around them began to distort and dissolve as history attempted to rewrite itself. It was Itachi's first time experiencing a temporal reset of this magnitude.
Time Rewind.
"!"
But the scene that greeted Itachi's eyes was not what he had expected.
Instead of returning to the Kira household, he found himself standing at the end of the crosswalk just as Hayato was walking away.
He remembered this scene clearly. It had only happened a few minutes ago.
'This isn't right.'
Time had definitely rewound, but something was fundamentally wrong with the jump.
According to his Master, [Bites the Dust] was supposed to return them to exactly one hour in the past.
But this current moment was barely a few minutes back!
Over by the luxury car, Rohan Kishibe was slumped against the door, clutching his chest and drenched in a cold, oily sweat.
"That was far too close, Master."
"You were about to be turned into a cloud of smoke."
Wheeze... cough... gasp...
Rohan struggled to draw air into his lungs. He had just taken a trip to the literal edge of the grave.
He remembered seeing that Servant... and calling for Amber, only to be met with absolute silence.
Everything had gone quiet. The world had vanished. Then, the agonizing pain of his body being torn asunder had flooded his senses. He knew he had been killed.
But at the exact moment his contract was about to snap, Amber had forcibly rewound time to the moment just before he had stepped out of the car.
She had rewritten the fate of his death.
"That Servant... what the hell was that?!"
Rohan struggled to steady his breathing. He didn't dare step out of the car again.
If not for Amber's power to reverse the flow of time, he would be a dead man.
'And thanks to her... I still remember everything that happened before the reset.'
He looked at the reliable woman sitting beside him, a wave of profound relief washing over him.
He had almost reached the end of his story.
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]