The day passed quickly.
Two days had elapsed since Kira planted Done Again.
Time flew. Before he knew it, the third day's dusk had arrived.
The setting sun hung at the edge of the mountains, the day's lingering heat not yet gone. The earth had baked until hairline cracks veined its surface. Evening wind swept through, sending golden waves rolling across kilometers of wheat fields, and the lush birch forests rustled along with them.
Kyoto Prefectural Jujutsu High School.
A courtyard.
Yoshinobu Gakuganji stared at the landscape below the mountain, his brow furrowed. In his hands was the latest intelligence report:
"Nanami Kira raided the Zenin Clan under cover of night. Killed Jinichi Zenin and Naoya Zenin. Also took a gazetteer from the archive—contents obscene."
The sheer volume of information in that single briefing was staggering.
Hoshino Ei wasn't the only one blindsided. Masamichi Yaga, Gakuganji—or rather, Chou Fei—had been knocked flat on his ass too.
What the hell was Nanami Kira trying to do?
It was like two professional boxers squaring off, and the opponent's opening move was a wild haymaker thrown with his eyes closed. Anyone would freeze up.
Having been burned badly by Kira before, Chou Fei was deeply suspicious. Every move the man made reeked of conspiracy. Behind the seemingly absurd behavior, there had to be some scheme lying in wait.
Yes. There must be a scheme. I just haven't seen it yet.
If you were to ask who in this world hated Nanami Kira the most, the answer was undoubtedly Chou Fei. And if you asked who feared him the most—also Chou Fei. After all, her original body had been blown to pieces, and the one surviving hand had somehow been refined into a sentient spirit. A feat utterly without precedent.
Gakuganji scratched his head furiously. This was far beyond anything he'd anticipated.
He couldn't sit still.
He decided to contact Hoshino Ei later. She was embedded undercover at Kira's side and should have better intelligence on him.
Surely my own hand wouldn't betray me.
As for the quality of his disguise, Chou Fei felt confident. During that last meeting with Kira and Gojo, he'd played them both like fiddles.
Kira still thought he'd spooked him with the Hasegawa Kaede gambit—tried to leverage it to sow division among the higher-ups.
That had all been an act. Every bit of it.
And Kira had swallowed it whole. When the time came, he'd use the "curse user possession" angle to frame him—a taste of his own medicine. Revenge for the Kyoto incident.
At this thought, Chou Fei's brow smoothed. The notion that he'd outwitted Nanami Kira, even once, put him in a fine mood.
It was a point of considerable pride.
Time to reach out to Hoshino Ei, he murmured.
His hand reached for the teacup on the table.
"That cup has already been touched by Killer Queen, Principal Gakuganji."
Chou Fei flinched so hard the tea sloshed over the rim.
He stared, rattled, at Nanami Kira strolling toward him from the far end of the corridor. His expression was calm, as always.
"K-Kira? Nanami Kira?"
He swallowed the spike of terror and forced himself to maintain the dignified composure of a seasoned elder:
"Kira-kun. How did you get in here?"
"Oh, last time Hasegawa Kaede breached the academy's barrier, I took the opportunity to leave myself a backdoor. Don't move, by the way. Don't let go of the cup. Nice and slow—otherwise I'll detonate the bomb."
Kira locked eyes with him and spoke in a tone of absolute sincerity.
"Kira-kun, what is the meaning of this?"
Chou Fei kept his face steady, eased the cup back onto the table—hand still wrapped around it—and broke into a cold sweat.
In the time it took to manage that, Kira had already closed the distance. He was sitting across from him now, on the other side of the pavilion bench.
"You can let go. I was bluffing. Killer Queen never touched the cup."
"I only just got here. When would I have had time to set a trap? Besides, that cup's one of your personal antiques—how could I have gotten to it?"
"You—!"
Chou Fei's face flushed crimson. He released the cup, cursed energy surging, and rose to call for backup.
"Don't move. Now you really can't. Because now you're within Killer Queen's range."
Kira leaned back against the stone bench, one finger tapping a slow rhythm against his knee. He watched Gakuganji with perfect calm.
The teacup bluff hadn't been a pointless prank. It had bought him the seconds he needed to close the distance without Chou Fei daring to act.
Before, escape might have been possible. Not anymore.
"What brings Kira-kun to see this old man?"
Chou Fei cursed inwardly, furious at having been outmaneuvered yet again.
Outwardly, he maintained the stately air of authority:
"Threatening a principal—do you hold nothing sacred?"
"Are you really a principal?"
Kira tilted his head, a serene smile on his lips.
"Or should I call you by your real name—Chou Fei of the Desire-Soul?"
This—this man!
A cold sweat erupted across his body.
Had Kira's performance at the previous meeting—the part where he'd appeared to fall for the act—been his act all along?
Had he known Chou Fei's identity the entire time, deliberately saying nothing, playing the long game?
Chou Fei couldn't help but recall something Kira had once said:
"You think you're an actor on a stage, convinced your brilliant performance has fooled the audience—even congratulating yourself for it. But the truth is, it was the audience's performance that fooled you."
He thought back to how he'd believed he'd deceived Nanami Kira, how he'd practically preened over it—and a flush of shame crept in. Like a child showing off card tricks to a magician.
I knew it. I knew it. His attack on the Zenin Clan was part of the plan too. Nanami Kira is that terrifying an adversary. Every move linked to the next.
"So you were the better actor all along. Indistinguishable from the real thing."
"You've been laughing at me this whole time, haven't you."
"I'm impressed, Kira-kun. Losing to you—I have no regrets."
"You've laid a plan where pulling one thread unravels everything, haven't you."
Chou Fei exhaled a long, slow sigh, an air of resigned acceptance settling over him.
Kira looked at Chou Fei's portrait of noble defeat and thought to himself:
Actually, you really did fool me last time. In the previous cycle... I don't have any acting talent. That was my genuine reaction.
You honestly had me completely bamboozled...
There is no grand plan where pulling one thread unravels everything...
But his face betrayed nothing. Calm. Composed.
As though every detail had been calculated from the start, he smiled faintly:
"Based on my analysis, you've already allied with the Special Grade Cursed Spirits."
"...Yes."
Chou Fei, wearing Gakuganji's body, gave a defeated nod.
"The cinema incident was your doing."
His pupils dilated slightly. He answered with silence.
"And if I had to guess, you were planning to frame me."
The sensation of having his scheme peeled apart layer by layer was far from pleasant. Chou Fei had believed it was a flawless plan—he'd never imagined Kira's intellect could be this monstrous, to have deduced all of this.
As if he'd literally come back from the future.
"Hoshino Ei. She's one of yours, isn't she?"
Chou Fei shot to his feet, composure shattered at last. His pupils constricted and dilated in rapid succession; his breathing turned ragged.
"Even that—was within your calculations, Kira?!"
"Yes."
"She isn't actually human, is she."
"Th-that's... no, that's impossible..."
"Nothing's impossible."
Kira sat upright without a shred of shame, his posture impeccable, his expression serene:
"Everything is within my calculations. Your so-called schemes? To me, they're nothing more than children playing house."
"The past—I see it clearly. I left my confusion behind long ago."
"The future—I understand it just as well. As though it were yesterday."
He was shameless. But he was confident.
Chou Fei was transfixed by those still-water eyes.
Pale blue irises, vast as a boundless ocean. The surface was without wave or ripple—but beneath that placid expanse, every surge, every towering swell lay concealed. He was nothing more than a small fish scheming within that sea, and no matter how seamless his plots, they were always encompassed by its unfathomable depths.
Nowhere to hide.