The tea was cold.
A thin, translucent film had formed on the surface of the liquid. It looked like a cataract over a dead eye.
Jin sat in the high-backed leather chair in the student council office. The room was too quiet. The only sound was the rhythmic, clinical ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner. Each tick felt like a hammer hitting a nail into his temple.
Sona Sitri sat across from him. Her glasses reflected the dim light of the evening, masking her eyes. Rias Gremory stood by the window, her back to the room, her crimson hair a violent streak against the gray twilight outside.
On the low table between them lay a clear plastic evidence bag.
Inside were the scissors.
They were bent at an impossible angle. The metal was stained with a dark, brownish crust that had once been liquid and hot. Next to them was a photograph of the park. Two gray-robed bodies. The mud. The yellow umbrella.
"The police call it a freak occurrence." Sona said. Her voice was steady. Too steady. "They found no DNA that matches the local database. They found no fingerprints. The wounds were inconsistent with any known weapon. They looked like they were made by someone who didn't care about the tool, only the result."
Jin looked at the scissors.
He didn't recognize the bend in the metal. He didn't recognize the rust.
"I was at the store." Jin said.
His voice was a hollow rasp. It sounded like it belonged to someone else. Someone smaller. Someone weaker.
"We know." Rias said. She didn't turn around. Her voice was heavy with a strange, dark disappointment. "Tanaka-san said you went to the breakroom. He said you walked out ten minutes later. He said you looked like a man walking in a dream. You didn't answer him when he called your name."
Jin's left hand was in his pocket. He held the black stone. It was cold. Dead.
He searched his mind.
He found the breakroom. He found the cold metal of the lockers.
Then, the white static.
It was a wall. A towering, screaming barrier of noise that erased the world.
"Akeno found traces of your blood in the mud, Jin." Sona said. She leaned forward. The light caught her eyes. They were sharp. Merciless. "Not just human blood. There was a residue of an energy we cannot identify. It matches the frequency from the alleyway. It matches the void from the convenience store."
She pushed a second photograph toward him.
It was a close-up of the tall exorcist's chest. The wounds were precise. Brutal. They followed a pattern.
"You killed them, Jin." Sona said.
It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact.
Jin looked at his own hands. They were clean now. He had scrubbed them in the school restroom until the skin was raw and red. But he could still feel the phantom weight of the blood. He could still smell the iron.
"I don't remember." Jin whispered.
"That is not a defense." Rias turned around. Her face was a mask of cold intensity. "The Church is screaming for blood. Two of their men were slaughtered in our territory. They think we did it. They think the Gremory or the Sitri houses are starting a war."
She walked toward him. Every step was a physical pressure against his chest.
"If you didn't do it, tell me who did." Rias demanded. She stopped right in front of him. "Tell me there was someone else in that park. Tell me you found Asia and tried to save her from a third party."
Jin looked up at her.
He saw her blue-green eyes. He saw the desperation hidden behind the power. She wanted him to be innocent. She wanted the anomaly to be a tool she could control, not a monster she had to kill.
Jin opened his mouth.
He wanted to say no. He wanted to say he was a victim of the static.
But the words died in his throat.
If I don't remember... does it mean I didn't do it?
The question was a poison. It seeped into his bones. He saw the blood on his vest in the park. He saw the scissors in his hand.
"I was there." Jin said. "I had the scissors."
"Did you kill them?" Sona asked.
Jin felt a sudden, violent spasm at the base of his skull. The parasite woke up. It didn't hunger for bio-matter this time. It hungered for the truth to be known.
Log Entry: 19:42.Combat Protocol: Initialized.Targets: Hostile Exorcists.Outcome: Neutralized.Confirmed.
The word echoed in his mind like a thunderclap.
Confirmed.
Jin's breath hitched. A sharp, freezing needle of pain drove through his left optic nerve. He gripped the arms of the chair.
"Yes." Jin said.
The word was small. It was a confession and a death sentence.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Sona closed her eyes. She leaned back in her chair, a long, tired sigh escaping her lips. Rias didn't move. She stood over him, her shadow swallowing him whole.
"Why?" Rias asked. Her voice was barely a whisper.
"I don't know." Jin said. He felt a tear track through the grime on his cheek. He didn't feel sad. He felt broken. "I don't remember why. I don't remember how. I just... I woke up, and they were dead."
"You used the red eye." Sona said. She opened her eyes. They were clinical again. "The Uchiha power. Tanaka said you were bleeding from your eye. The survivors of that 'line' are supposed to be extinct, Jin. Or they never existed in this world at all. Where did you get it?"
Jin touched the stone in his pocket.
"I don't know."
"You're a liability, Jin." Sona said. She stood up. She looked at Rias. "The council cannot protect him. If the Church finds out a human with an unregistered, lethal power is walking through Kuoh, they will send a strike team. Not renegades. Professionals."
"He's mine." Rias said. The words were sharp. Final.
"He's no one's." Sona countered. "He doesn't even belong to himself. Look at him, Rias. He's a shell. The power is eating him."
Jin sat in the chair. He felt like a ghost. He listened to them talk about him as if he were a weapon on a table. A dangerous, malfunctioning weapon.
He looked at the bent scissors.
He realized something.
He didn't care about the Church. He didn't care about the Gremory house.
He cared about the hole.
The white static was growing. It was moving from the corners of his memory into the center of his day. He was losing more than his past. He was losing his "Now".
What if I do it again.
The thought was a cold hand around his heart.
What if I wake up tomorrow and Tanaka is dead. What if I wake up and Rias is gone.
He stood up.
His knees were shaking. He had to lean on the table.
"I have to go." Jin said.
"You aren't going anywhere." Sona said. She raised her hand. A circle of blue light began to form on the floor around his feet.
Jin looked at the blue light.
He felt the parasite growl.
Interference detected.Action: Counter.
"Don't." Jin said.
His voice changed. It wasn't the rasp of a tired boy. It was the flat, resonant tone of the thing that lived inside the static.
The air in the room turned freezing. The grandfather clock stopped. The glass of the window behind Rias began to frost over.
Sona's hand wavered. She saw his left eye.
The brown iris was gone. The crimson was back. The single black comma was spinning with a violent, chaotic speed.
"Jin, stop." Rias said. She reached out to grab his shoulder.
Jin moved.
He didn't strike. He didn't fight.
He stepped through the blue circle before the spell could lock. He moved with the impossible, fluid grace of a shadow.
He reached the door.
He stopped. He didn't turn around.
"I killed them." Jin said. He looked at his hand. "I don't know why. But I know I would do it again to stop the screaming in my head."
He pushed the door open.
He walked out into the empty hallway.
The school was dark. The evening classes had ended. The silence was absolute.
He walked toward the exit.
Every step felt like he was leaving a piece of himself behind. He forgot the color of Sona's tea. He forgot the exact words Rias had said.
The toll was being paid in real-time.
He reached the wrought-iron gates. He stepped out onto the street.
The rain began to fall. Small, hard drops that felt like gravel against his skin.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the black stone.
He looked at the word UCHIHA.
He didn't know who he was.
He didn't know if he was a good person.
But as he walked into the dark, he felt a strange, terrifying sense of belonging.
He was a monster.
And for the first time, he didn't have to pretend to be anything else.
He turned the corner toward his apartment.
A figure stood under a streetlamp.
She wore a blue hoodie. She held a massive, black iron sword.
Xenovia Quarta.
She didn't move. She didn't raise her weapon. She just watched him through the rain.
"The Church has issued a warrant." Xenovia said. Her voice was bored. "They don't call you an anomaly anymore, Jin."
Jin stopped. He looked at her with his red eye.
"What do they call me?"
Xenovia adjusted the weight of the sword on her shoulder.
"An extinction event."
Jin looked at his hands.
The blood was gone. But the hunger was just beginning.
He looked back at the girl.
"Then they should stay out of the rain."
He walked past her.
She didn't stop him.
She watched him disappear into the gray mist.
She looked at the ground where he had stood.
The water in the puddles was frozen solid.
In the shape of a fan.
If you stayed… thank you.If it stayed with you, leave a stone.