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What awaits us at the end of this road?
Maybe… it's finally time to go home.
Wish us luck.
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Both of them were still breathing. Seto's eyes widened—he hadn't been injured at all. The other man, however, was visibly weakening as blood poured from the hole in the left side of his chest.
"I count my bullets every time I fire," Seto said calmly. "Looks like luck wasn't on your side."
Click. Oni pulled the trigger again, only to confirm his defeat.
"For a fifty-year-old man, I don't rely on luck," he muttered. "A demon with a heart, huh… heh. I've thought about it for a long time—how my life would end. I could've run away and started over, but instead I let hatred rot me from the inside. I hunted yakuza… even people who had nothing to do with it. In the end, all the lives I took cursed me to pay for it here, in the world of the living."
"I'm not yakuza anymore," Seto replied, standing as Oni sank to his knees. "Our era's over."
Oni looked up at Seto's eyes, eyes that were no longer filled with hatred.
"...good~ I'll take all that hatred with me. So you don't have to pass it on to anyone else. Let me be the first—and last—corpse you ever make."
He pulled something from his pocket: a USB dongle containing all the data from Yurei's brain chip.
"Take it… I don't know what you can do with it, but maybe your people will."
Seto accepted it, planning to pass the data to Dango, then stepped in front of Oni, who was kneeling and gasping for air. "Don't think I forgive you," he said. "That mask—aren't you suffocating under there? Ever think of taking it off?"
Blood streamed from the old man's eye socket beneath the mask. "No need. We shouldn't cling too tightly to reality—only to bring suffering," Oni chuckled weakly. "Maybe that girl actually has a point." He looked at the man who had finally freed him from years of torment.
"How fortunate… that you survived… this far… Hitorishi."
Seto let out a slow breath.
"..."
Thud! Oni collapsed face-first onto the ground. The mask slipped off, revealing a face grotesquely warped by severe burn scars.
"Return… to your home," Seto said one last time to the lifeless body.
Then he ran—he had to reach Seoki and Kurayami before the police arrived.
"Majima-san, come pick me up. I'll send you a safe location," Seto said.
"Got it. On my way," Majima replied.
"I see it now! It's the Cyber Wasp Virus! Born from Kurayami's accumulated traumatic memories that merged into the Yurei personality! Okay, okay—I've got the source code from Seto. Let me analyze it… Hmm! Yurei acts as both the medium and the remote controller for the spread. Right—if we stop the chip from functioning, the virus won't have a central command signal anymore. Like a hive without a queen—it collapses!"
Dango's voice echoed in Seoki's ear as he stood facing the girl possessed by the evil spirit.
Yurei, in Kurayami's body, sat on the edge of the balcony and looked at him.
"Even if you kill me, the virus will keep running. Only the girl named Kurayami—the sole admin—can shut it down. But why would I stop? My followers want a new world, and I'm just giving them what they wish for. No cost. No profit. Free from that damn capitalist system that exploits everyone."
"There has to be a virus embedded in that chip," Seoki said. "And we'll find a way to remove it."
"Heh. The virus you're talking about is like cancer," Yurei replied. "Hard to cure—chronic. The medicine just delays the pain, piling it up at the end until it finally explodes. I exist because this girl is weak. Too weak to face the outside world. A child grows up good or bad because of countless factors, right?" As she spoke, mist poured from Kurayami's mouth, forming Yurei's avatar.
"Kurayami is too weak to face the reality. That's why I had to take her place."
Seoki tried to reach the real Kurayami sleeping within.
"I remember when you were little, miss. You didn't even cry when a guitar string cut your finger. If you can hear me—Kurayami, the girl I know is stronger than she thinks."
"I am Kurayami's true face," Yurei snapped. "Anger. Hatred. I am everything. Her parents and siblings died one by one—nothing but pain waited at home. You think anyone could accept that? To hell with the yakuza. To hell with the whole world. The only thing that can heal us is the people down there." She extended her hand toward Seoki. "Come with me brother. Let's live together in a world without suffering. We won't have to feel hatred ever again."
"No, Kurayami-san…" Seoki clenched his teeth. "True happiness is being able to go home."
"—Hng!" Yurei's eyes widened.
"Go… home?" She recoiled, clutching her own face. "If that so....then be gone!"
She lunged at him, shards of glass hidden in her hand—then stumbled and fell, screaming,
"No! Don't hurt my brother!"
Kurayami's deeply buried consciousness restrained Yurei, stopping her from harming him.
"K-Kurayami! Don't interfere—ahh—!" Her voice trembled as emotions clashed within her subconscious. Then her neck jerked violently, as if her mind were seized again.
"Kurayami-san!"
Her inner voice cried out. "Brother… I want to go ho—ah—ahh! Ngh—!" Her eyes rolled back. Her body went rigid, paralyzed.
Now was the moment—the perfect chance to pull Kurayami out.
And then, like a voice from heaven, Dango spoke through the communicator.
"Alright, Seoki-chan, I've got the shutdown virus from Seto-kun. But there's a problem—I can't access Kurayami's chip directly. So I'm sending it to you through the glasses. Your job is to enter the digital world and upload it yourself. Because right now, you—"
"Because these glasses belong to Kurayami, right?" Seok said.
"Bingo! Yurei's spreading it fast—we're running out of time."
"Then… wish me luck, my friend."
Seoki put on the glasses and entered Yurei's world.
He felt his body plunging into a deep abyss—until something embraced him. Giant white hands carried him down into a shattered Tokyo, drifting in the void of space. Thousands of avatars appeared—people brought here, dancing in worship of Yurei's rebirth. Angelic voices sang classical hymns across a blood-colored Milky Way.
"Such a perfect world," Seoki said dryly.
"This is the rhythm of the night~ heh. Love this song," he muttered, staring at a black moon floating at the center.
"Dango, are you seeing what I'm seeing?"
But the voice that answered wasn't Dango's.
"I am." A young girl stood behind him.
When he turned, he saw Kurayami as a child, wearing a shrine maiden's outfit—the same one from the first avatar she had when she put on the glasses. Her eyes were unmistakably those of the gentle girl he knew.
"K-Kurayami…?" Seoki whispered.
"It's a long story," she smiled. "Let's kick my evil twin's butt first, then we'll talk."
"Sounds reasonable."
Yurei's pitch-black avatar emerged before them, blocking the moon.
Kurayami pointed at the black moon. "That thing is the transmitter. We have to destroy it. Dango sent you a weapon too, didn't he?"
Seoki looked down at his hands. Blue flames wrapped around a prayer-bead bracelet on his wrist.
"The virus killer acts as a weapon, heh? Looks slick. Let's shut down this fake-ass concert."