Ayumi Yoshida watched the retreating figures of Kanjuro and Akemi Miyano. After hesitating for a moment, she plucked up the courage to jog after them. She was full of curiosity about this big brother who had helped but was also a bit scary, as well as that gentle and beautiful big sister.
"Big brother, big sister! Are you looking for something? I'm very familiar with the school; I can help you!" Ayumi looked up with her small face, trying her best to show her enthusiasm.
Akemi Miyano looked at Ayumi's innocent and cute appearance, her heart softening. She smiled and nodded: "Thank you, little one. We want to find an old cherry blossom tree from a long time ago; it should be behind the school."
Just then, a gentle voice came from nearby: "A cherry blossom tree? Are you talking about the one behind the Old School Building? However, because of the expansion a few years ago, that area has already been renovated~ oh."
Everyone turned around to see a young female teacher walking over, wearing a proper professional suit and possessing an intellectual and gentle temperament. She was beautiful and wore a pair of thin-framed glasses, which added a bit of a scholarly air. She was none other than the homeroom teacher of Class 1-B at Teitan Elementary School, Teacher Sumiko Kobayashi.
"Teacher Kobayashi!" Ayumi Yoshida immediately greeted her politely.
Teacher Kobayashi smiled and patted Ayumi's head, then turned her curious gaze toward Kanjuro and Akemi Miyano. "Hello, I am a teacher here, Sumiko Kobayashi. May I ask who you are..." The moment her gaze met Kanjuro's face, she paused imperceptibly, and a very faint emotion mixed with surprise and inquiry flashed quickly through her eyes.
Akemi Miyano quickly explained: "Hello, Teacher Kobayashi. We are students who graduated from here many years ago. We came back this time wanting to find a time capsule we buried under the cherry blossom tree back then." Her tone carried a hint of disappointment, "I didn't expect that place to have been renovated already..."
"A time capsule..." Teacher Kobayashi said thoughtfully, then gave a reassuring smile, "Don't worry. When the renovation happened, the school authorities placed great importance on these commemorative items. All the time capsules that could be found were properly kept and registered. If you remember the approximate location and the year it was buried, perhaps you can go to the Academic Affairs Office to check."
This news reignited Akemi Miyano's hope.
On the way to the Academic Affairs Office, Teacher Kobayashi naturally struck up a conversation with the two, but her gaze occasionally drifted toward Kanjuro, who had remained taciturn and cold.
"So you two were classmates; that's a rare fate. Looking at you, your relationship must be very good, right?" Teacher Kobayashi's tone was gentle, carrying the unique approachability of a teacher.
Akemi Miyano's face turned slightly red as she nodded and gave a soft response.
Teacher Kobayashi turned her gaze back to Kanjuro. This time, she looked more closely, her brow furrowing slightly as if she were trying hard to remember something. She hesitated for a moment but still asked: "This gentleman... if I may be so bold, have we... met somewhere before? I feel like you look familiar."
Hearing this, Kanjuro finally officially cast his gaze toward Teacher Kobayashi. His eyes remained flat, carrying a sort of condescending scrutiny, as if searching through irrelevant fragments of memory.
Teacher Kobayashi felt a bit nervous under his gaze, but she continued: "Especially... especially on a rainy day. When I was a child, probably shortly after I started first grade, it was raining very hard one day after school. I didn't have an umbrella and was crouching at the school gate, not knowing what to do... Later, a brother wearing an upperclassman's uniform gave me his umbrella and ran off into the rain himself..."
Her voice gradually took on a hint of hazy recollection, and her gaze drifted into the distance:
"That brother... seemed to look just like you. Although he was very young then, the outline of his features... especially his eyes, feels very similar. He didn't say anything, just stuffed the umbrella into my hands... I've remembered that incident until now."
After she finished, she smiled somewhat sheepishly: "Maybe I remembered it wrong; after all, so many years have passed."
Akemi Miyano looked at Teacher Kobayashi in surprise, then at Kanjuro. She hadn't expected that Kanjuro had such a "helpful" side when he was a child? This was truly a far cry from his current image.
Listening to Teacher Kobayashi's narrative, Kanjuro's face still showed no expression; he neither admitted nor denied it. To him, that was perhaps just a casual, long-forgotten moment in countless ordinary days, like brushing away a grain of dust. He didn't even remember what that little girl specifically looked like.
"Perhaps," he responded flatly with those two words and said no more.
However, this chance encounter and buried memory were like a stone thrown into a lake, creating ripples in Sumiko Kobayashi's heart. The image of the "upperclassman brother" who gave her warmth and help in the rain overlapped with the cold and mysterious man before her, giving her an indescribable curiosity and... a subtle trace of goodwill toward Kanjuro. She faintly felt that this man seemed to hide many stories.
Meanwhile, Ayumi Yoshida blinked her large eyes, looking at Teacher Kobayashi and then at Kanjuro, her small head full of question marks. She felt that this big brother seemed to be becoming more and more mysterious.
Akemi Miyano didn't notice the sudden change in Teacher Kobayashi and Ayumi's expressions. Still immersed in the filter of Kanjuro's "kind" childhood act, she said teasingly with a bit of pride and adoration: "I told you, Brother Kanjuro is the best person; he's been like this since he was little."
The name "Kanjuro" was like a thunderclap, striking hard into the hearts of Sumiko Kobayashi and Ayumi Yoshida!
The faces of the two turned pale in an instant, their pupils contracting violently due to extreme fear. That name... that name which had recently hung over all of Tokyo like a nightmare, equated with massacre, darkness, and demons—Kanjuro! Could it be... that this handsome, cold-tempered man before them was that monster?!
Ayumi was so scared her little face turned ashen. She subconsciously took a step back, tightly clutching Teacher Kobayashi's hem, her body shaking uncontrollably.
Seeing their terrified reactions, Kanjuro did not get angry. Instead, he let out a low laugh, reached out to wrap his arm around Akemi Miyano's waist, pulling her tighter into his embrace, and then lowered his head to plant a brief but possessive kiss on her lips as if no one else were there. He looked up, his gaze sweeping over Teacher Kobayashi and Ayumi, his tone carrying a hint of playful mockery, as if he were speaking of an insignificant trifle:
"See, Akemi, by saying that, you've gone and scared them off."
Only then did Akemi Miyano belatedly notice the looks of sheer terror on Teacher Kobayashi and Ayumi's faces. She froze for a moment, then immediately understood the reason. A trace of complex emotion flashed across her face, but it was quickly replaced by her defense of Kanjuro.
Teacher Kobayashi forcibly suppressed the storm in her heart and squeezed out a smile that looked worse than crying. She knelt down and said softly to Ayumi (though her voice trembled slightly): "Ayu... Ayumi, it's getting late. Why don't you go home first? Teacher... Teacher still has some things to do."
Ayumi looked at Kanjuro in terror, then at Teacher Kobayashi. In the end, her trust in her teacher and her inner fear won out. She nodded vigorously and, like a startled little rabbit, ran away without looking back.
Watching Ayumi disappear around the corner, Sumiko Kobayashi took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down. She couldn't panic! She had to find a way! While using her body to block part of Kanjuro's line of sight, she quietly reached for the phone in her pocket—she wanted to call the police! Even knowing it might be useless, this was almost the only instinctive reaction she could think of to oppose the demon!
Akemi Miyano saw Teacher Kobayashi's subtle movement of trying to pull out her phone. Her heart jumped into her throat, and she looked nervously at Kanjuro, her voice carrying a hint of helplessness: "Brother Kanjuro... what should we do?"
Kanjuro's eyes remained calm, even carrying a hint of knowing laughter, as if he had expected this scene long ago. He gently pushed Akemi out of his arms and took a step forward.
It was just this seemingly casual step that made Sumiko Kobayashi feel as if the surrounding air had solidified. The invisible pressure made her unable to move, and her hand, which had just touched her phone, froze in her pocket.
Kanjuro's gaze was like a cold scalpel, falling on Sumiko Kobayashi's face as she tried to stay calm. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried a chill that saw through everything:
"It seems our beloved Teacher Kobayashi... appears to want to do something disadvantageous to me."
"Are you thinking of... calling the police?"
These words were like a final judgment, shattering all of Sumiko Kobayashi's wishful thinking. Her body completely froze, her blood seemingly turning to ice instantly, and even her breathing stopped. She looked into Kanjuro's eyes, which were so deep they seemed bottomless; there was no anger in them, only a cat-and-mouse sort of playfulness and... absolute control.
Despair, like a cold tide, instantly submerged her. She realized that in front of this man, any resistance was futile. After Sumiko Kobayashi's mental defenses were completely crushed by Kanjuro's all-seeing gaze and words, her brief fear turned into a desperate anger. She knew she might not be spared, and her pent-up sense of justice and hatred for Kanjuro's crimes erupted like a volcano.
She suddenly looked up, her originally gentle face now filled with resolute hatred. Her voice was sharp and trembling with agitation as she pointed at Kanjuro and scolded him harshly:
"Kanjuro! You demon! Scum! Brute! You've killed so many people! Your hands are stained with the blood of the innocent! You trample on the law, manipulate people's hearts, and force the police of the entire country to bow their heads and surrender to you! Everything you do is intolerable by heaven!"
Her chest heaved violently, and her eyes burned with the painful fire of an idealist witnessing darkness swallow the light:
"When I was a child... my dream was to become a police officer! To uphold justice and protect the weak! I cannot tolerate it! I absolutely cannot tolerate your existence! Your actions are an insult to everyone who holds a heart of justice!"
...Facing Sumiko Kobayashi's hoarse accusations, Kanjuro merely raised an eyebrow. There was no anger on his face; instead, as if he had heard a naive statement, he sighed softly, appearing somewhat regretful.
However, before Kanjuro could speak, Akemi Miyano beside him took a step forward, blocking Kanjuro (though this action was meaningless in the face of Kanjuro's power, it symbolized her stance). Her face no longer held its previous gentleness, replaced instead by a cold calm after being completely assimilated by Kanjuro's philosophy.
"Teacher Kobayashi," Akemi's voice was clear and calm, carrying a pathetic sort of 'clarity,' "You say the police? Justice? Don't you think that kind of thinking is too naive?"
She looked directly into Sumiko Kobayashi's eyes, which were red with anger, and retorted word by word:
"The police are not all incarnations of justice, and there is no such thing as absolute justice in this world! What you believe in is nothing more than an illusory bubble. If you truly think so, it only makes people feel... ridiculous."
Her tone carried a hint of sarcasm as she continued to dismantle Sumiko Kobayashi's beliefs:
"If the police were really as selfless and powerful as you imagine, how could they easily sacrifice some people, or even bow their heads and surrender to Brother Kanjuro, for the sake of the so-called 'big picture,' to protect themselves, or for the interests of certain people in power?"
"Their so-called 'justice' is fragile in the face of greater power and threats. Their current submission is nothing more than because Brother Kanjuro has mastered a power that terrifies them, tearing apart their hypocritical masks and forcing them to reveal the cowardly nature of those in power!"
This twisted yet logically self-consistent defense was like a cold dagger, brutally stabbing into the idealistic heart of Sumiko Kobayashi. She opened her mouth, wanting to refute it, but found that in the face of the bloody reality, the ideals she once firmly believed in seemed so pale and powerless.
Kanjuro listened to Akemi Miyano's words, a truly pleased and satisfied smile appearing on his face. He reached out, gently pulled Akemi back to his side, and looked down at her, his eyes full of appreciation and possessiveness, his voice low and magnetic:
"As expected of my beloved Akemi... you truly understand me best."
This statement was both the highest affirmation of Akemi Miyano's loyalty and the final crushing blow to Sumiko Kobayashi's beliefs.
He looked at the female teacher before him, who once held dreams of justice, and in the despairing expression of her crumbling faith, he reveled in the ultimate pleasure of controlling the thoughts and destinies of others.
Sumiko Kobayashi stood rooted to the spot, her body swaying. All her anger and accusations were like waves hitting an invisible wall, rebounding and crushing her. She looked at Kanjuro and Akemi Miyano embracing, feeling as though she was witnessing justice being completely swallowed by darkness, and boundless despair tightly enveloped her.
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