The Butcher's contrasting features made him more of a mystery, and mysteries always tread close to the supernatural. He had sharp eyes, held too much age for his youthful face, eyes shifting between an eerie stillness and an animal-like intensity when he focused. His movements were precise, dictated by unseen forces—something other than the strange knife. When he spoke, his voice held a low, gravelly, yet eerily calm tone, as if it were carrying the weight of a secret that shouldn't be heard.
"How pathetic are you?" He scolded his knife and waited, giving it a chance to reply.
He acted as if he were being scolded, even agreeing with the inanimate object at times.
"Oh, is that so?" He tried to borrow the current generation's dialect. "I agree… hush, that's too loud. Find her and I shall let you have the first stab. Yes, yes… and the rest too." He frowned at the knife. "Greedy much."
"He's planning to kill a girl… a little girl!" Klaire's lungs gave out, terrified to take another breath close to that monster.
For a moment, she forgot she was one amongst the streets who survived, her airhead schoolgirl persona taking over. She could hear her heart pounding its way up. "Have to keep moving." She ignored the little gremlins trying to divert her and stuck to the suspicion that kept her legs moving forward.
If only Klaire knew all the sacrifices one had to make to obtain a sliver of knowledge from the unknown. Fate is cruel to people when they switch priorities and choices on a whim.
Several strands holding Klaire's future snapped, an audible cling resounding in her ears for every step she took. After a couple of strides, the weight of fate turned stupefying her. Yet she kept moving forward through sheer willpower, her entire being following the glowing dot hovering over the stranger's gloves.
Klaire followed the stranger until dusk, missing classes, essential first impressions needed to get closer to the suspicious girl group, and a potential bond with the Terror family—all to chase a hunch that might lead to a hint from the past that could never be changed.
She kept asking herself if it was worth it, yet never stopped moving forward despite the million reasons she gave herself, or the divine intervention trying to stop her.
Little did she realize, the closer she got to the stranger, the farther she got from the reality of what could have been a normal life; a rare second chance provided by the Institute of Triple–S and Metelda. Maybe, deep down, Klaire did know.
Her entire body screamed, at moments shutting down in hopes of halting her pursuit, only for her will to focus its power on her legs, making her body stumble through, farther from what-ifs and closer to the desire for an answer to the unknown.
She vowed to find the truth, and her inner Kudo fixed on the one actual truth, hoping it would bring some peace to her parents, despite her hazy remembrance of the incident. If someone asked her to choose between a million second chances and the truth at this very moment… she would've picked the truth every time.
Lost in thought, in an inevitable curse of hope and a dooming fate, Klaire missed a convertible car breaking lanes. The hooting within the car felt familiar. Those same voices had scolded her to get out of the way during the day. "Bubbled boys," Klaire cursed under her breath, still absent-minded, yet somehow aware. "A day in the streets is enough to teach them some humility," she scolded under her breath.
Klaire lowered herself and stepped into the crowd, disappearing into the human traffic. Movies had taught her enough to steer clear of such show-offs. The rich folk driving the car wanted to impress their fellow cheerleaders on the bus, and as predicted by the movies, they broke traffic signals while howling at the hidden cops, knowing all too well that their parents could get them out of any trouble.
Klaire had lost a few mentees to such folks, and she didn't want to be the reason they steered the car her way. "Fuck!" Klaire cursed, frantically looking around.
Her focus slipped—no, it was dragged away by the Butcher's mysterious magic. And now, he was one amongst the crowd, blended in better than she ever could. Better than Quazy could. Gone from sight and her mind.
Only the sense of something amiss pulled Klaire back on track, and with Quazy's teachings, she grabbed onto the single anomaly on the Butcher's person, continuing the pursuit.
If the stranger's average height, already shortened by his hunched back, were stripped away, if the blood-slicked knife fused to his hand and the ragged, homeless drapery were erased, one thing would remain: The gloves.
At least, they did for Klaire; Not because they were pristine, nor because they bore glowing sigils or floating runes; those could be dismissed as supernatural excess. No. The gloves were disturbing for a subtler reason: they made the rest of him lie.
Whenever Klaire focused on them, the Butcher changed. His slouch straightened, the filth dissolved into deliberate neglect, and the shambling presence tightened into precision.
In his place stood a man impossibly sleek, groomed to an uncanny perfection, as though every flaw had been measured and removed rather than hidden. His posture carried intent. His stillness suggested patience honed into a weapon. And his eyes—sharp beyond Kudo's keenest focus—cut through the world with something almost foreign, as if they belonged to a thing that had learned how to wear a man, not become one.
The gloves did not disguise him; They revealed him. And that was their core: not protection, not ornamentation, but truth leaking through a lie. A single, unyielding constant in his body that the world itself refused to see correctly.
While Klaire multitasked between pity and pursuit, the Butcher solely concentrated on his goals, ignoring the runaway car aimed at him.
Klaire's legs moved with newfound vigor, dismissing every rational reason to stay hidden. She zoomed past pedestrians buried in their phones, the police who were supposed to protect them, and the impossible distance that shrank with every step. It was as if the space between them vanished while time slowed to a crawl, letting Klaire shove the stranger aside before almost landing on the Butcher's knife, which disappeared without a trace.
Klaire let out a deep sigh of relief, only to find herself in the stranger's place, en route to a collision.
The car, moving seventy miles an hour, broke into pieces on contact, sending showers of metal flying all over, while defying physics and keeping Klaire and her surrounding radius spotless.
Before fainting, Klaire heard a ghostly voice scolding her heroism, letting her know that he couldn't have been killed by any mortal means.
Two days later, Klaire woke up in a hospital, surrounded by lawyers who paid her hospital bill and sued her for insurance she could neglect if she signed some forms.
The teenagers behind the wheel were the sons of some wealthy businessman. He threw money at his lawyers, and they cleared his son's messes without leaving a record.
"Back to the usual kind," Klaire sighed.
She cared little for their bribes, signing the forms before they practiced their intimidation tactics on her.
Later that day, things came to light when Klaire searched for the truth—the stranger—and found that the supernatural had reared its head once again.
The car didn't hit her, but a nearby tree, breaking, not shattering into a shower of metal as she envisioned. And the stranger she had so heroically saved… died because of her panic. She pushed him away from a car that was nowhere close to them and onto the pavement, his head cracking open in an instant, resulting in his instant death.
The footage was too comical to be considered evidence. Klaire laughed like a madwoman, pointing and smacking the monitor that lied, until she was escorted out.
"Trauma?" Bossy considered.
"Reoccurring trauma." The cop slipped Klaire's old, restricted files to Bossy. "Has no one? So your son should be safe from any prosecution," he said, greedily reaching out for the envelope bulging with cash.
"I don't rely on luck, officer," said Bossy in a firm tone. "Never have. Never will." He glared at the group of lawyers, who hesitated, then nodded along.
"Consider it done, sir," the lead lawyer said.
"Like the last time?" Bossy's brows furrowed. "She finally gave us an opening. Miss it at your own peril."
"What can she do?" said the cop, holding back a snicker. "She has no backing, money, family, or viable skills."
"Yet it took you so long to find her file," Bossy scoffed. "And yet she attends Triple–S and sits in the same class as my psycho son." He looked at his son's shadow lurking in the corner. "To impress a nobody, he almost destroyed his future. The car repairs will be taken from his allowance, of course, and I shall make sure scum aren't in the same class." He used the restricted file to fan himself, handing the job to a lawyer he trusted least.
Someone should die for his headache. Why not the lawyer who was most expected to backstab him?
"You can't use that, sir," the cop lurched. "My career will be on the line. We all might go to jail."
"Don't lump me in with your intelligence." Bossy smacked the cop on the head with the file. "I've gotten this far because of my discreet nature. The damn street rats ignored my generous offer to take care of this girl; that is why I had to approach you…" Bossy gave up on finding an insult. "Don't take my meticulous planning as my weakness."
"What can an institute of learning do that a thug cannot?" the lead lawyer asked.
"Much more, my useless, costly suit," said Bossy. "Much more than your tiny brains can comprehend." He threw the file at him. "The scariest person is one who has nothing to lose and everything to gain from any confrontation. And Triple–S has a way of giving a person everything they desire."
"Saint, savior, success," the cop muttered.
"Exactly!" Bossy smirked. "We wait for the school to give her hope, then we steal it away. Did she sign the form?" he asked, and the lawyers began bobbing their heads in sync. "You're not completely useless, I see… Now all you have to do is live up to the money I waste on you…" He tapped his walking stick in annoyance, and they all scattered.
"Get ready to meet your parents, Klaire V-oleuse Sowle." Bossy sneered at Klaire's back as she left the hospital, while she turned back with a smirk, glaring through the tinted window that should've kept him hidden.
"Nice knowing you, Dad." A chill voice startled Bossy into dropping his cane.
He turned to find his son, his pale face decorated with droplets of blood, making Bossy slip and tumble onto the floor.
Bossy scrambled to find a grip but slipped on something wet and fell on his back. His eyes darted around, relaxing a bit as he saw the hallway was empty, with no witnesses or cameras, because he knew he didn't want to look down at the slippery liquid beneath him, soaking away his dignity.
He was almost relieved to find himself alone with Junior. Blood on his face was as normal as sunscreen, so that didn't scare him much.
"I'm glad you are here," he said in a raspy tone. His eyes slowly trailed down Junior's bloody clothes, where he was shocked to find a stranger's head beneath his feet, instead of the lawyer. "Who's he!?"
"Someone that the so-called normie sent for you," Junior said with a lazy shrug, not bothering to remove his bloody hands from his uniform's jacket pockets.
"He—h… gave you a toug-gh-h fight!?" Bossy stammered, unable to believe his own assessment.
"You were right!" Junior's words shocked him into a state of complete shock.
"The street is full of opponents as crazy as me." He snickered; evil, wanting. "Maybe even more so." He kicked the head into Bossy's lap and turned around, limping away. "I'm heading deeper. Nice knowing you." He lifted a broken wrist and waved. "Kill that lawyer yourself."
Bossy rushed to the security room, his son's concern terrifying him into a state where his dignity meant little.
He sat alone in the security room, the door sealed behind him with a hydraulic hiss that sounded far too final for his liking.
The monitors washed his face in cold blues and sickly greens; corridors, stairwells, hospital wings looping in obedient silence. He leaned forward, cane resting across his knees, fingers steepled as the footage rewound with a soft electronic whine.
"Play it again," he muttered to no one, while the moment arrived right on cue.
Klaire looked small, unremarkable at first glance, as she rose from her hospital bed.
Bossy's lips twitched. This was the part the technicians had assured him was clean. Untouched. Perfect.
She stood slowly, too slowly, like a thought deciding whether or not to become real. Then her head lifted, and she looked directly into the camera; Not past it, not through it, at it.
The glare hit with surgical precision; focused, deliberate, sharpened into something that made Bossy's spine stiffen. He'd seen defiance before, seen hatred, panic, bravado. This was none of those—
This was awareness. With more intensity than Junior ever had.
Bossy's grip tightened on his cane.
For a fraction of a second—just a fraction—the image stuttered. A hiccup in the frame rate. So subtle it would slip past anyone not hunting for it.
"Pause." He ordered, clicking the mouse himself.
The screen stopped. Klaire's eyes were mid-glare, pupils too centered, too steady. The timecode blinked in the corner.
He leaned closer, nose nearly brushing the glass. "Enhance."
The system complied. Pixel by pixel, her face sharpened, and with it, the lie.
The lighting was wrong.
The shadows fell a half-second late, clinging to her jaw like an afterthought. Her reflection in the glass behind her lagged, just barely, like it hadn't been invited to the exact moment. A composite. Layered. Cleanly done, not perfectly.
Bossy exhaled through his teeth while the footage resumed.
Klaire's glare softened into a smirk that did not belong in the room, the hospital, or the girl she was supposed to be. Then she turned and walked out of frame, the moment sealing itself like a coffin lid.
The loop ended, silence reclaiming the room.
Bossy sat back slowly, heart thudding with a rhythm he didn't like. Someone had touched his systems. Someone had rewritten reality in his house, on his cameras, under his nose.
Worse yet, whoever doctored the footage wanted him to see this part: the glare—the challenge.
Bossy's mouth curled, not into a smile, but into something brittle and sharp. "So," he murmured to the empty room, cane tapping once against the floor, "you knew I'd be watching."
The screens flickered ominously, erasing every trace of the footage while leaving an imprint of the middle finger flicking him off.
———<>||<>——— End of Chapter Sixty-Three. ———<>||<>———