Tokyo's night air carried a slight chill from the sea breeze, partly dissipating the smell of grilled meat and alcohol lingering on his clothes.
He strode down the quiet street leading back to his apartment complex with both hands shoved deep into his pockets. The drinking party had ended thirty minutes ago. After Mami ran away crying, it took Kibe and Kuribayashi a long time to recover their senses. They awkwardly drank a few more glasses, occasionally throwing him timid, probing glances, as if sharing a table with a stranger wearing their best friend's face.
He paid no mind to their psychological turmoil. He rejected their invitation for a second round of karaoke and made an excuse to leave early. That personality dissection earlier had drained his patience for useless social interactions.
"How refreshing." He muttered, tilting his head back to catch the cold wind.
Everything went exactly as he calculated. There was no pity and no compromise. He had crushed Nanami Mami's narcissistic ego into worthless fragments, shattering the illusion that she could continue manipulating Kazuya's life. To him, pulling weeds meant pulling them by the roots. Once he made a move, he had to ensure the opponent would never dare look him in the eye again.
He turned at an intersection where the flickering fluorescent lights of a 24 hour convenience store cast a long beam onto the sidewalk.
The moment he stepped through that beam of light, he stopped.
Standing next to the vending machine, lightly pressing a warm can of tea against her cheek, was an incredibly familiar figure. Twin braided hair, thick round glasses, and baggy, dull sweatpants. It was Ichinose Chizuru in her usual country girl disguise.
She seemed to have just returned from the supermarket, carrying a small plastic bag with a few boxes of instant food. Hearing footsteps, Chizuru turned her head. Their eyes met in the quiet space of the night street.
He clicked his tongue softly, intending to brush past her like a stranger. He had already drawn a clear boundary with her in the hospital hallway, and he had no intention of wasting more breath on someone who made a living selling amusement.
"Kazuya." Chizuru's voice rang out, stopping him in his tracks. The volume was not loud, but it carried a distinct tension and frustration.
He stopped and tilted his head slightly to look at her from the corner of his eye, his expression icy.
"What is it now? I remember paying all the bills in full. We have zero reason to stand here talking."
Chizuru tightened her grip on the tea can. She took a deep breath, stepped two paces closer to him, and stared resolutely through her lenses.
"Fifteen minutes ago, when I passed by the train station area, I saw Nanami." Chizuru said, her tone laced with interrogation. "She ran right past me. Her hair was a mess, she was crying so hard she could barely breathe, and she looked completely panicked and pathetic. And now, you are walking back from that direction with a perfectly calm face."
"So what?" He replied with two short words, as indifferent as if hearing about a stray cat crossing the street.
"So what?" Chizuru raised her voice slightly, indignation clear on her face. "What did you do to her? I know she was the one who broke up with you, and I know she might have said some nasty things. But pushing a girl to the point of a breakdown, crying miserably in public like that. Do you not think you are being too cruel? You two used to have happy times together after all!"
The surrounding atmosphere suddenly solidified. The temperature seemed to drop below freezing.
He did not answer right away. He turned his body completely to face Chizuru. His dark eyes slowly narrowed, emitting a killing intent even colder and sharper than at the hospital.
What the hell was he listening to? A moral lecture? From the most fake person in the world?
He burst into laughter. It was a dry, mocking chuckle full of contempt. The laugh shattered the night, making Chizuru's hair stand on end instinctively.
"Cruel?" He chewed on the word, the smile vanishing from his lips instantly, making way for a dark and terrifying expression. "Are you standing here using your half baked moral standards to judge me, Ichinose?"
"I am just stating the facts!" Chizuru took a step back in a defensive instinct but still tried to argue back. "You use your intelligence to trample on others. Your coldness is not strength, it is toxic!"
"Toxic?"
He took a step forward, narrowing the distance between them. His tall shadow cast down, enveloping Chizuru's small frame. He leaned in close to her tense face, spitting out every word with the venom of deep seated hatred suppressed from his past life.
"Listen closely, hypocrite." His voice hissed, deep and extremely lethal. "Do you know what is truly toxic? It is not me tearing off her mask with the truth. It is the way women like her, and maybe even you, use cheap tears to manipulate this world."
Chizuru froze. She had never seen eyes containing so much resentment, contempt, and darkness. It was not the temper tantrum of a dumped kid. It was a systemic hatred, a massive bleeding scar.
"You call me cruel for showing no mercy to a traitor? Let me open your eyes."
He raised a finger, pointing straight at Chizuru's chest, his voice as freezing as a scalpel.
"Have you ever witnessed a woman use fake fragility and a few hollow tears to slander, to destroy the entire career, honor, and life of a man? They laugh and talk with you, say sweet things, and act weak to be protected. Then the moment you turn your back, the moment you grant them the right to enter your world, they plunge a knife hilt deep into your spine. They trample on your sincerity for profit, then cry in front of the crowd, turning themselves into the victim and twisting the actual victim into a monster."
He was talking about his own social death in his past life. The slander, the betrayal, the audience turning their backs on him. Everything poured out through the most bitter words. His chest he heave, but his face maintained a horrifyingly extreme rationality.
"A woman's tears are the filthiest, most cowardly weapon nature ever created. Nanami Mami did not cry because she felt guilty. She cried because her perfect shell was stripped bare by me, because she could no longer manipulate me. And you, someone who knows absolutely nothing about her rotten nature, are standing here feeling sorry for that trash?"
Chizuru bit her lip tightly, hugging the plastic bag to her chest like a weak shield. She wanted to retort, to scream that not everyone was like that, that this world was not that dark. But the pressure from his words and his wounded eyes made her throat completely choke up.
He was not finished. He swept a disdainful gaze from Chizuru's head to her toes, dropping a cruel piece of sarcasm that stabbed straight into her profession.
"Actually, I am not surprised you are defending her. At the end of the day, you two are exactly the same. Both of you make a living on lies."
"What did you say!?" Chizuru snapped her head up, her pupils shrinking. Her pride was heavily insulted.
"Am I wrong?" He smirked, a highly condescending half smile appearing. "Mami uses innocence to leech off the arrogance of men. And you? You use your looks, use that corporate smile practiced thousands of times in front of the mirror to leech money from rich losers. You sell them an illusion of love, make them drown in fake affection, and when the timer runs out, you turn your back, walk away, count your cash, and secretly despise their pathetic state. You wear the title of an ideal girlfriend, but in reality, you are just a cold blooded acting machine, manipulating people's emotions for profit."
"Do not lump me in with that kind of person!" Chizuru raised her voice, her eyes turning red with anger and frustration. "You do not know why I do this job! You know nothing about my life!"
"And I have no desire to know."
He cut her off ruthlessly, severing all justifications. He took a step back, retracting the physical pressure, but the distance between them felt like it had been stretched out for ten thousand miles.
"Whether you do it for money, for debt, for a dream, or for whatever damn noble reason you have, the outcome remains unchanged. The nature of a lie is still a lie. Do not use a cloak of morality to cover it up."
He shoved his hands into his pockets and gave her one last look. It was cold, ruthless, and devoid of a single ounce of tolerance.
"Do not ever try to teach me how to be a human being, Ms. Ichinose. And stop meddling in other people's business. Your world and my world inherently have nothing in common. Just keep being your perfect money printing machine and stay away from me."
Saying that, he decisively turned around. The sound of his sneaker soles hitting the asphalt steadily echoed in the quiet night, abandoning Chizuru rooted to the spot next to the vending machine.
Chizuru stood in silence, letting the night wind blow her messy braided hair around. The hand holding the warm tea can trembled slightly.
She did not cry. Nor did she chase after him to argue. His insults regarding her profession were indeed painful, stabbing like a knife straight into the pride she always tried to protect. If others called her a call girl, she could ignore it. But his cruel, logical analysis that struck right at her psychology made her feel entirely stripped bare.
However, rising above her anger, what filled Chizuru's mind right now was a cognitive shock.
She watched his straight yet lonely back slowly disappear around the corner.
He just scolded her for being fake. But he himself was the one locking himself in a prison of skepticism and hatred. Behind that razor sharp tongue, behind that cruelly cold rationality, he was not a naturally cold blooded villain.
Chizuru recalled his eyes when he described betrayal. A shattered, dark, and desperate gaze.
An extremely traumatized person. She suddenly realized this awful man named Kinoshita Kazuya was essentially just a hedgehog. A hedgehog that had been stripped of its protective shell, trampled until it bled, so now it had to raise all its sharp quills, dip them in verbal venom, and bristle at the whole world. It was ready to pierce anyone who dared to step close, just to protect its soft, heavily scarred underbelly from getting hurt a second time.
He did not believe in women. He was disgusted by romance. He used cruelty to build an unbreakable fortress wall.
Chizuru didn't know much about Kazuya, but one thing she was certain of was that Mami couldn't possibly be the one to hurt him this much, no matter how terrible she might be.
But that was precisely what puzzled her most about him.
"Just how terrible were the things he went through?" Chizuru muttered, the faint sound carried away by the wind.
She looked down at the food bag in her hand, biting her lip slightly. Curiosity, mixed with a strange sense of pity, began sprouting in the young girl's mind.
Even though logic told her to stay away from this crazy, thorny guy, deep down, Chizuru knew the relationship between her and this bizarre neighbor could not end easily with just a few words of dismissal...