CW: Graphic violence, blood, trauma themes, medical trauma
Jin nodded sharply. Four men lifted the stretcher with practiced, synchronized care, transferring Kuro's broken weight into the waiting SUV. The doors slammed shut, sealing him inside with the sterile lights and beeping monitors.
Jin turned abruptly to Hikari. Rain plastered his hair to his forehead, his expression carved from stone. "You. Come." It wasn't an invitation. It was an order.
She flinched. "I... I should go home—"
His hand clamped down on her shoulder. Not roughly, but with an iron finality. "He called you 'kid.' He took a pipe to the skull for you. You will come." His eyes were furious, held no room for argument. "He might not wake up. If he does..." Jin's voice cracked, just once. "He'll ask for you."
Hikari looked past him to the SUV's tinted window, imagining Kuro inside—still, pale, tethered to machines. That terrifying peace followed him.
〖Death talked twice today...〗
Kuro's rasp echoed in her mind.
〖He gets neither of us.〗
Swallowing the lump in her throat, she nodded silently. Jin ushered her into the front passenger seat of the first SUV. As the engine roared to life, Hikari's gaze drifted to the back of the SUV.
From the outside, it appeared to be just another black vehicle, sleek and unassuming. But inside, it was a different story—a mobile ER disguised as a luxury SUV.
Her gaze fell onto his face, pale and hauntingly 'peaceful' beneath the mask, which fogged slightly with each labored breath, a silent testament to his struggle for air.
Hikari turned around and pressed her forehead against the cold glass, watching the alley—the blood, the shattered phone, the place where violence and an unexpected promise collided—vanish into the rain-swept night.
Beside her, Jin was on the phone, his tone brisk and commanding. "Cleanup at Burning Road 2, Alleyway. One corpse. Make it quick." He listened for a moment, his expression hardening. "I don't care how you do it—do it."
She ignored it.
The city blurred past, neon lights smearing like wet paint across her face as the lights from passing cars flickered. Hikari felt detached, as if she were watching a scene unfold from a distance. Her eyes drifted to the blurred shapes on either side, but the details eluded her.
〖Talk him out of me,〗She'd begged silently in that alley.
Now, hurtling toward an uncertain dawn, she realized: Kuro might need someone to talk death out of him.
The SUV swallowed the wet streets, tires hissing on asphalt slick with rain and neon reflections. Inside, chaos simmered beneath a veneer of control. Kuro lay strapped to a gurney bolted to the floor, surrounded by monitors casting an eerie, pulsing light. A nasal cannula fed him oxygen, its soft hiss merging with the rhythmic, too-slow beep... beep... beep of the heart monitor. One medic adjusted an IV line taped to Kuro's bruised forearm, fluid dripping into veins that seemed too fragile to hold life. Another kept pressure on the bandaged mess at his temple, gauze already blooming fresh crimson. The air reeked of antiseptic, blood, and the sharp tang of impending crisis.
Jin drove with lethal focus. His knuckles were white on the wheel, eyes constantly flicking between the rain-lashed windshield and the rearview mirror—watching the road, watching the decoy SUV ahead weave through traffic, and watching the horror show unfolding in the back. His jaw was clenched so tightly a muscle jumped in his cheek.
Hikari sat rigid in the passenger seat, pressed against the door as if trying to disappear. The seatbelt felt like a restraint. She couldn't look back. The sounds alone were enough: the frantic whispers of the medics ("BP dropping again..."), the wet rasp of Kuro's breathing amplified by the mask, the chillingly constant beep of the monitor. Each noise was a hammer blow against her already shattered composure. She stared straight ahead, seeing nothing but the blur of wet streets and flashing lights, her hands clenched in her lap, fingers digging into her palms.
The silence between them was thick, broken only by the medical drama and the drumming rain. It stretched, taut as a wire, until Jin's voice cut through it, low and rough with suppressed fury.
"He shouldn't have been there."
Hikari flinched, pressing herself deeper into the passenger seat.
〖Her? Who?〗 She didn't dare ask. Jin's rage was a live wire, sparking in the confined space.
Jin's eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, catching the ghostly pallor of Kuro's face beneath the oxygen mask. That same terrifying peace. It mirrored the hollow emptiness Jin had seen only once before—nine years ago, in a condemned building reeking of blood and cordite.
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