The Port Mafia Headquarters, 59th Floor—the office of a Mafia Executive.
One of the Port Mafia's Five Executives, Nishida Shibashi, was twenty-eight years old this year. He had held the position of Executive for three years. His name was relatively ordinary, but his Ability was anything but.
A textbook offensive Ability with devastating destructive power.
Its name was "Disastrous Overflowing Bubbles."
He possessed the power to pulverize anything he touched. He was an expert at erasing bodies and destroying evidence. Before joining the Port Mafia, he had once been classified by the government as a high-risk Ability user.
To avoid government supervision, he had thrown himself into the underworld, using his Ability to kill without leaving a trace and achieving considerable success.
Fine wine, luxurious mansions, sports cars—he lacked for nothing.
He could have continued living the comfortable life of a Port Mafia Executive.
The premise, however, was that he did not covet the Boss's position.
Today, inside the enviable Executive's office, a scene no less shocking than an earthquake was unfolding.
The seat behind the desk was empty.
Instead, Akiya Asou—someone who almost never stepped into an Executive's office—was sitting leisurely on the sofa.
With a face full of disgust, Nishida Shibashi closed the door.
Then, completely against his own will, he walked toward Akiya and dropped to one knee.
It was a kneeling salute reserved only for the Port Mafia Boss.
"Master."
That was Randou's mischievous sense of humor at work.
Thinking Akiya would enjoy it, Randou had specifically edited a master-servant command into the instructions.
Even though work prevented him from accompanying Akiya in person, Randou still wanted to indulge in a little private amusement with his lover.
Since he could not be there himself, he sent his humanoid Ability to keep Akiya company.
However, Nishida Shibashi had no idea of his true nature.
He genuinely believed he was still the Port Mafia Executive, Nishida Shibashi.
No man could dislike a lover who was this thoughtful.
Especially when that lover delivered your enemy directly into your hands and transformed him into a convenient tool—one that retained a complete personality, memories, and even an Ability.
This was the third tool at Akiya's disposal.
A completely obedient Ability user.
One who would never seek revenge.
One who would never cause trouble for him again.
Akiya Asou wanted to laugh.
Excitement was impossible to suppress completely from his expression, yet reason restrained it with equal force. On his ordinarily gentle and handsome face appeared a faint distortion, like a warped reflection beneath the surface of a restless sea. The smile lingering at the corners of his lips was chillingly cold.
And what was there to be so happy about...?
This was not an enemy he had defeated with his own hands.
He had contributed very little, and was he not fully aware of just how terrifyingly powerful Illuminations truly was?
The greater his satisfaction now...
The more it would eventually come back to consume him.
After silently counting three heartbeats, Akiya regained his composure.
"Nishida-kun, you may stand."
Nishida Shibashi had not yet fully accepted his fate.
His body stiffly obeyed as he rose to his feet. Every movement carried an unsettling sense of discord, as though his will were struggling against his body itself. His expression was ugly to behold, yet he could not release even the slightest trace of killing intent.
Because within the commands written into him, Randou had erased his murderous intent toward Akiya Asou.
Hatred remained.
Killing intent did not.
Randou would never allow him to inflict even psychological harm upon Akiya.
Or, to put it another way, this was a dangerous world where a person's killing intent could become so intense that it practically manifested itself, assaulting the senses of those around them.
Protected by Randou, Akiya understood this perfectly well.
Not that Nishida Shibashi's killing intent would have shaken his resolve so easily.
Still, ensuring that Nishida could not constantly leak murderous pressure prevented awkward situations where passersby might start wondering whether the Executive had suddenly lost his mind.
Nishida Shibashi wore the standard attire of the Port Mafia: a black suit, with the black overcoat that symbolized his rank as an Executive draped across his shoulders.
His posture was upright and imposing.
He stood slightly under one meter eighty—around one meter seventy-five, perfectly normal by Japanese standards, rather than the absurd spectacle found in sports manga where everyone seemed to be over one meter eighty.
As someone from the combat division, his limbs were well-proportioned and packed with explosive strength.
And when he stood completely straight and fixed his gaze upon someone, the pressure he exuded was undeniably formidable.
The man had the same black hair as Akiya Asou.
It was not particularly short. People who lived in the underworld often possessed a keen sense of style, and he wore part of it tied into a small braid. His eyes were a rusty reddish-brown.
At this moment, they were filled with unwillingness and rage.
Back then, Akiya had greatly envied the Port Mafia's Executives.
And even now, that had not changed much.
He still envied them.
The difference was that they no longer felt impossibly out of reach.
The Executive's office was literally beneath his feet. The Executive's chair sat empty nearby. If he wanted to sit in it, he could do so at any time.
"Just treat me the way you normally do."
The moment the words left his mouth, Akiya noticed the flaw in what he had said. Before a fist could come flying toward him, he calmly amended his statement.
"What I mean is, treat me the way an Executive would normally treat an ordinary subordinate. On the surface, you're still my superior. Behind the scenes, however, you're simply a bodyguard responsible for protecting me within the Port Mafia."
Nishida Shibashi held his breath.
He had come within a hair's breadth of throwing a punch.
Akiya glanced at the clenched fist.
After a moment, Nishida withdrew it and sneered.
"With power like this, why don't you just take control of the Port Mafia directly? Or are you too afraid to kill that old man?"
Akiya replied,
"First, let me correct you. The person controlling you is Randou."
Nishida frowned deeply and searched his memories.
"That Frenchman... I've barely ever seen him at Headquarters. He only joined the Port Mafia recently. I heard he's a spatial-type Ability user capable of restricting other people's movements, making him suitable for supporting combat personnel..."
The more he thought about it, the angrier he became.
"What a load of bullshit. Every bit of it was fake. The Port Mafia actually allowed someone like that inside without knowing a thing."
Akiya shook his head.
"I wouldn't call it fake."
"It's more accurate to say that none of you were capable of measuring Randou's true strength. Limited by your own perspective, you mistook a small fraction of his power for the entirety of it."
Akiya casually patted the leather sofa beneath him.
"This sofa is really comfortable."
Nishida's face turned ice-cold.
His sharp gaze locked onto Akiya as the man openly provoked him on what had once been his own turf.
"It looks like the workload isn't actually that heavy. As expected, the ones who truly have it rough are me and the lower-ranking members."
Asou Akiya walked over to the desk and began flipping through the executive's belongings. Judging from the wear on the desk and stationery, he quickly arrived at a conclusion.
"Looks like you spend quite a lot of time slacking off in your office while reading porn magazines."
Nishida Shibashi remained completely unfazed after the magazines were exposed. It was merely an adult's pastime. Fixing his gaze tightly on Aso Akiya, he asked,
"What exactly are you trying to do? Do you want to become an executive? You could have simply taken my seat directly. Instead, you're putting on this act in front of me. It's disgusting."
Asou Akiya understood the source of Nishida Shibashi's anger. He made no move to sit in the executive's chair. Instead, he perched casually on the edge of the desk, supporting himself with both hands against the tabletop.
His composure was enough to send chills down one's spine.
Compared to the coldness on his face, there was an even deeper chill hidden within his heart.
"I won't sit in your position, Nishida-kun."
"You don't dare?"
"A position is just a position. What is there to dare or not dare? Who would feel reverence toward an inanimate object?"
Asou Akiya's words were like a bucket of cold water poured directly onto Nishida Shibashi's fury.
That was true.
Who would be afraid of a seat he had once occupied?
That had only been his own self-important assumption.
While continuing to dance on the edge of Nishida Shibashi's nerves, Asou Akiya casually picked up a luxury fountain pen from the desk.
The nib, freshly filled with ink, gleamed with a sharpness that looked capable of piercing someone's eyeball.
Nishida Shibashi's eyelids twitched uncontrollably.
Was the retaliation finally coming?
Was Asou Akiya planning to slash open his face?
Or stab straight through his eye and listen to him scream?
As a man who had committed countless atrocities throughout his life, Executive Nishida had long been prepared for the day someone would seek revenge against him.
He simply had not expected that day to arrive so quickly.
Nor had he expected it to come before age and declining physical strength had finally caught up to him.
Akiya sighed.
"I just don't think I'm worthy of it yet."
A drop of ink fell from the pen's sharp nib.
It landed on the carpet.
"If all I wanted was to kill people, there wouldn't be anyone left alive in Yokohama," Asou Akiya said expressionlessly. "The trump cards I possess are beyond anything you can imagine. And as you can see, none of them are my own ability. They come from external forces. They come from someone else's love for me."
The rare coldness in Akiya's demeanor softened like a spring breeze, and genuine human emotion flickered within his eyes.
"Love isn't something that should be exploited."
"If love loses its purity and becomes contaminated by selfish motives, it will no longer be precious. And when that happens, what would it matter if I obtained the position of Boss? I'd just become an ordinary man abandoned by everyone around me."
Some of those words were meant for the man in front of him.
Others were meant to be conveyed to Randou.
He did not want Randou to misunderstand him, even in the slightest.
Akiya continued, "I won't reject Randou's protection, because I need it at this stage of my life. If I died, Randou would be heartbroken. But I cannot allow myself to become dependent on borrowed power—"
Nishida Shibashi's face darkened as he interrupted.
"You don't need to tell me any of this!"
It was nothing more than the victor's speech.
He refused to believe a single word of it. In the Port Mafia, where every person was suspicious, paranoid, and constantly on guard, how could something as completely pure as love possibly exist? It was unrealistic.
Akiya let out a sigh.
"You really are a Mafia executive to the core."
"Let me put it another way."
Aside from receiving that kneeling salute earlier, Akiya had not humiliated Nishida even once today. Looking directly into his eyes, he said:
"I've never had anyone to guide me. The teacher I intend to study under is still busy with work elsewhere and doesn't have time to look after me, so I've been left to grow on my own. And you know how it is—when something grows unchecked, it can easily grow crooked. Once you take the wrong path, you have to pay the price for it…"
"Right now, a Port Mafia executive is standing before me."
"There are many things I still don't understand. Then, Nishida-kun, teach me—teach me how to become a qualified Mafia executive."
Holding a fountain pen in his hand, Asou Akiya raised its tip toward his own face.
Rather than harming someone else, he chose to use the very same method with which the other man had humiliated him that day. Slowly, he wrote a line of tiny Japanese characters onto his cheek.
—どうぞよろしくお願いします.
"Please take care of me."
This was his resolve.
He did not believe he was worthy of sitting in the position of an executive, let alone that of a boss. It was not merely the humility ingrained deep within his nature—it was because he had genuinely recognized his own shortcomings.
Without Randou's protection, if he remained in a position like this, he would die faster than anyone else.
An unpolished jade can never become a valuable gem.
He was not a diamond of unyielding hardness. If he wished to shine upon the stage, then he had to actively seek growth and temper himself.
"You…"
Nishida Shibashi stared blankly at the words written on Akiya's face. Anyone unaware of the situation might have thought Nishida himself had written them there; even the handwriting bore a striking resemblance to his own.
An alarm bell rang in his mind—a rare sense of wariness he almost never felt toward someone without an Ability.
For the first time, he truly sensed something frightening.
Asou Akiya's methods might not be ruthless enough, but his heart was absolutely resolute.
At the very least, Nishida knew he could never do the same. He could never abandon power that was already within easy reach, refuse to indulge in it, sit behind a desk, and then ask a former enemy to teach him how to become a worse person.
Unable to oppose any of Akiya's orders, Nishida Shibashi took a deep breath and lowered his head.
"Yes, sir."
Half an hour later.
Asou Akiya stepped out of his office with an indifferent expression.
The Port Mafia members who saw where he had come from and noticed the writing on his face immediately began drawing their own conclusions. Secretly clicking their tongues, they assumed that he must have offended one of the executives.
Many of the organization's members who lacked strong combat abilities and possessed no Ability of their own could not help but feel a sense of sorrow and sympathy. For people like them, climbing into the upper ranks was never easy, and they were often looked down upon by Ability users.
"Analyst" Asou Akiya had earned so much money for the Port Mafia, yet even he had received no favorable treatment.
The underworld...
It truly was a world where Abilities reigned supreme, while ordinary people struggled just to survive.
By the time Nishida Shibashi learned of the rumors spreading outside, it was already too late.
When the hell had he bullied anyone?!
Damn it, scheming intellectual types were black-hearted beyond belief!
...
Crack—
The sound of bones breaking echoed through the room.
After hearing the rumors, Randou's face darkened with anger. He summoned Nishida Shibashi alone for questioning.
The long-haired young man wore fluffy earmuffs and clothing entirely unsuited to the season. His body was perpetually sensitive to the cold, and now, trembling slightly with fury, he pulled his scarf tighter around his neck.
Ordinarily, he was merely another member of the Port Mafia's combat squads. In his spare time, he moonlighted as a French poet.
What was anything but ordinary was the terrifying look in his eyes when he faced Nishida Shibashi.
The oppressive aura surrounding him was so overwhelming that it felt capable of distorting the very space around him.
Without saying a single unnecessary word, he ordered Nishida Shibashi to break his own bones.
After carrying out the inhuman act upon himself, Nishida Shibashi endured the agony and said in a miserable, disheveled state, "I didn't do it! That shameless bastard wrote those words on his own face!"
Randou said, "Why would Akiya do something like that for no reason?"
Nishida Shibashi repeated everything Asou Akiya had said. He dared not conceal a single detail. The defiance he had shown in front of Akiya was nowhere to be found now. His fear of this French Ability user only grew stronger with each passing day.
After listening to the entire account, Randou silently repeated the words:
"Love cannot be exploited."
The anger within him gradually subsided.
Not long after awakening his Ability, Randou had once been overjoyed by the thought that he would finally be able to protect Akiya.
Later, after witnessing firsthand within the Port Mafia the class divide that existed between Ability users and ordinary people, he realized that he might have been thinking too simply. He began to worry whether the power he now possessed would one day damage the relationship between them.
It had not.
The thing he feared never came to pass.
Their relationship was even better than it had been before.
Caught in the sweet misery of happiness, Randou said, "I've already told him that my power is his power. He can use it however he likes. Why would he think this way? With me helping him, wouldn't that be far more convenient than seeking you out...?"
Nishida Shibashi, who had become the target of love-struck complaints, answered bitterly, "I am an executive, after all."
A Port Mafia executive!
Did people think a position like that was something you could find lying around on every street corner?
Nishida Shibashi's defense carried little weight.
In Randou's eyes, learning things was a remarkably simple matter. He himself had been able to adapt rapidly to life within the Port Mafia. If that was the case, then Akiya would undoubtedly perform even better than he had.
"Since this is a decision Akiya made himself, I won't oppose it."
Randou's heart ached for Akiya, who possessed no Ability. Now that he knew there had been no actual mistreatment involved, he chose to support his lover's decision.
"Do everything in your power to help him. Once you've lost your usefulness, I will naturally grant you your 'freedom.'"
There was a trace of mockery in Randou's voice when he spoke the word freedom.
Nishida Shibashi either failed to notice it or understood that noticing it would make no difference. His life and death were controlled by others. When living under someone else's roof, one had no choice but to bow their head.
Suppressing his frustration, Nishida Shibashi said, "Understood!"
Randou released the restraints on him. A flash of golden light swept across the room, and Nishida Shibashi's appearance returned to normal.
Just as Nishida Shibashi was preparing to climb out through the restroom window and leave, Randou suddenly asked:
"Did he touch you?"
Nishida Shibashi nearly threw out his back from the shock. In a rough voice, he shouted, "No! I'm straight!"
Randou replied coldly, "What does your sexual orientation have to do with my question?"
Nishida Shibashi was on the verge of exploding from anger.
Standing before the sink, Randou calmly adjusted his appearance in the mirror. His fingertips brushed against his cheek, and his expression gradually became innocent and harmless.
Akiya had once explained the principles of healthy living to him.
Getting angry caused wrinkles.
"If he wants to touch you, you're not allowed to resist. Ah... although I've heard that struggling a little makes it more exciting?"
Reflected in the mirror, Randou's melancholy smile looked downright terrifying.
"Then struggle a little before agreeing. Just don't hurt Akiya. Akiya is far too fragile. Until he gains the ability to protect himself, you'll temporarily serve as his invisible bodyguard within the Port Mafia."
"To quote Akiya, 'After all, I'm not some kind of devil.'"
"..."
Under Randou's romantic and uninhibited philosophy, Nishida Shibashi felt as though his entire worldview had been shattered right alongside his bones.
He broke down.
Were those even something a human would say??
What kind of godforsaken Frenchman was this?!