The morning air at the hospital was thick with unspoken truths. Naea turned to Takshi, her voice low and steady. "Inform Kenji's parents about what happened," she instructed, "but keep Grandma in the dark about the details for now. She can't handle any more shocks." Takshi nodded solemnly and moved away to handle the delicate task.
Meanwhile, at the Takahashi Mansion, Ryu prepared to leave after dropping off Yumi and the children. As he turned to go, Yumi's voice stopped him cold. "Ryu, wait."
She stepped toward him, her eyes searching his face. "Tell me... who shot Kenji?"
Ryu's response was a singular, chilling blade of a sentence. "Prosecutor Akira. It was Akira Mijutsi."
Yumi stood frozen, the world tilting beneath her feet. "Akira? In Tokyo? That's impossible... she was in Osaka just last night." She whispered the words more to herself than him, unable to reconcile the image of the woman who had shared dinner with them with someone capable of such cold-blooded retribution. Sensing her shock, Ryu noted that Naea had requested him back at the hospital.
"Listen to me," Yumi commanded, grabbing his arm. "Until someone explicitly asks you who did this, you are not to breathe a word of Akira's name. Do you understand?" Ryu gave a curt, mechanical nod and drove away, leaving Yumi haunted by the revelation.
Back at the hospital, Naea approached Grandma Takahashi. She put on a brave face, lying gently for the older woman's sake. "Kenji is stable now, Grandma. You and Takshi should go home and rest."
"Just one look at him," the grandmother pleaded, her eyes brimming with tears. Naea felt a sharp pang of guilt, but she stood firm. "He needs absolute rest right now. Please, go home. Yumi and the children are waiting. I'm here, I'll look after everything."
By then, Ryu had returned. "See? Ryu is back to take you," Naea said, signaling him. Grandma reached out, placing a trembling hand on Naea's head. "What about you, child? You've come all the way from Osaka without a wink of sleep."
Naea forced a relaxed smile. "I managed three or four hours of sleep on the way; it's enough for now." With a subtle nod to Ryu to take her away, she watched them leave. Takshi, seeing her strength, placed a gentle, supportive hand on her shoulder—a silent gesture of solidarity in the face of the storm.
Across the city, a darker orchestration was taking place. Macau had managed to get a numb, blood-stained Akira back to her apartment. Akira sat in a catatonic state, consumed not by the guilt of the shooting, but by the agonizing reality of what Naea had suffered. "Shower. Now," Macau commanded, seeing the red stains on Akira's skin.
While Akira was under the water, Macau made a call to a shadowed contact named Jo. "I need one of your men," she said, her voice a sharp professional clip. "Someone who will confess to the shooting with absolute confidence. I want the scene cleaned—no blood, no trace of the actual culprit. Bury the proof. I'm sending the location now."
"Sounds like a mess, Macau," Jo remarked over the line. "What about the payment?"
"Work first, payment second," Macau snapped. She moved with lightning speed, booking two 6:00 AM flights from Tokyo to Osaka. They had exactly one hour.
When Akira emerged, clean but hollowed out, Macau grabbed her shoulders. "You need to disappear, Akira. From Tokyo and Osaka. Things are going to get ugly."
"I want to go," Akira whispered, her voice a mere shadow. "I don't want my shadow to even fall on this place anymore."
Macau pulled her into a fierce embrace. "I'm sending you to Kyoto. I have an empty house there where no one will find you. We'll fly to Osaka at 6:00 AM, and from there, I'll get you to Kyoto. Start a new life, Akira."
"I want to be alone," Akira murmured.
"I know," Macau replied softly. "You can stay in my house alone and live your life. Just... live."
"Thank you, Macau," Akira said, her words finally breaking the dam of Macau's composure. Tears tracked down Macau's face as she held her friend, knowing that while the blood was washed away, the scars of this night would last forever.
The stage was set, and every piece of the puzzle moved exactly as Jo and Macau had choreographed. In a calculated move, Jo's men had targeted a man on the brink of despair—someone who had already given up on life. They planted airtight evidence at the scene, leading the police directly to him. Initially, the man put up a frantic defense, exactly as Jo had planned; a direct confession would have looked suspicious to seasoned detectives.
However, under the weight of the fabricated proof, the man finally "broke." He fed the authorities a perfectly tailored lie: he claimed Kenji had framed him with false allegations at work, leading to his termination and financial ruin. "I only went there to talk," he told the police, his voice trembling with a mix of fear and coached defiance. "But he wouldn't listen. He attacked me, and I had no choice but to fight back. I did what I had to do." With that, the police made the arrest. Case closed. To seal the deal, Jo had even manipulated the digital shadows, scrubbing Akira's call logs and replacing them with the suspect's. The trail to the Prosecutor was now cold.
While the underworld celebrated a clean job, the atmosphere at the hospital was suffocating with grief. Kenji's parents arrived like a whirlwind of devastation. Seeing her son in such a broken state, Mrs. Takahashi's sorrow quickly curdled into a white-hot rage, and she looked at Naea as if she were the cause of the catastrophe. She turned to Ryu, her voice sharp with desperation, demanding to know how this could have happened.
Ryu hesitated for a heartbeat, his gaze flickering toward Naea, who sat motionless with her forehead resting in her hand, the picture of silent exhaustion. "I don't know the full details," Ryu replied, sticking to the script. "Master only told me to wait near the abandoned building at the Oscar estate but to stay back. By the time I heard the gunshots and reached the scene, the attackers had already vanished." Mrs. Takahashi collapsed into tears at the news. Beside them, Naea remained a ghost—no breakfast, no lunch, just a hollow shell waiting by the bedside in the desperate hope that Kenji might open his eyes.
Across the city, Macau and Akira had touched down in Osaka. They moved with a frantic, silent efficiency, heading straight to Akira's apartment to pack. Though Macau was younger, her mind was currently operating with the lethal precision of a grandmaster. She had thought of everything—she had even snatched Kenji's phone from the scene of the crime.
As they fled toward the airport, one of Jo's operatives met them to swap out the car, the license plates, and the phones. Every digital and physical trace of Akira Mijutsi was being systematically erased. Macau was playing a high-stakes game of chess, and so far, she was ten moves ahead of the law.
By 2:00 PM, the media had caught wind of the tragedy. Reporters swarmed the hospital entrance just as the police arrived to deliver the "good news" to the Takahashi family: the killer had been caught. Kenji's father gave a solemn, weary nod, the weight of the day visible in his slumped shoulders. The family—Naea, Ryu, and the parents—all stood united in a single, agonizing hope: that Kenji Takahashi would wake up and bring the truth back with him.