Chapter 7
The young sniper set up his rifle, the sharp lines of his tense back on full display. His hands were clad in black, fingerless gloves, the exposed fingertips resting on the trigger, which he calmly squeezed.
A continuous stream of gunshots echoed in her ears. Fan An praised him again and again in her heart.
As expected of the five-star friendliness Mentor Scotch. Faced with my sudden request, he said, “I won’t help you, get that idea out of your head,” but his body honestly set up the rifle and began firing wildly at the hall below. A classic tsundere.
Mentor Scotch is probably a tsundere. New intel. Must write this down.
The gunfire gradually ceased. Hiromitsu Morofushi stared at the first-floor hall, a flicker of frustration in his eyes.
There was too much cover, limiting his field of vision. More importantly, he absolutely could not reveal his position. Under these restrictions, Hiromitsu had only managed to hit Gin’s shoulder.
Blood seeped from between the fingers clutching the wound. Gin gritted his teeth, his death-glare fixed on the indistinct shadow on the third floor. “We’re leaving!”
“The enemy is retreating.” Hiromitsu packed up his rifle, smoke still curling from the barrel.
He wiped the muzzle with the palm of his gloved hand, his gaze lowered to hide the probing look in his eyes.
Hiromitsu had realized it while he was firing: this rifle looked identical to the model he usually used, but its magazine was just for show. The bullets inside were endless.
Just like his own resurrection, it was incomprehensible, inexplicable.
He wasn’t the one who had brought about this miracle. Hiromitsu looked at the dark-haired, dark-eyed girl.
“Are you an ability-user?” he asked, trying his best to sound friendly. “Am I a product of your ability?”
As a Public Security officer, Hiromitsu knew a thing or two about Yokohama.
An’an, the novice ability-user, nodded.
Since she had decided to study under Mentor Scotch, and he was supposed to teach her everything he knew, she should offer her trust in return. Fan An explained her ability without hiding anything.
She described it this way and that, and as she spoke, Mentor Scotch’s expression went through a kaleidoscope of colors.
When Hiromitsu heard “[My Respected ■■ Mentor],” his face went blank for a moment. His mind conjured up many things it shouldn’t have. Thankfully, An’an quickly cleared up his confusion, telling him that this “■■” was not that “■■”. The true identity of “■■” was actually—
“Crime Mentor?” Hiromitsu shrieked internally, pointing at himself in disbelief. “Me?”
An’an: “Mhm, mhm.”
Of course it’s you. You’re the top-tier mentor I chose after careful consideration.
Hiromitsu covered his face with both hands and took a deep breath.
A person cannot… at least, they shouldn’t… My lifelong reputation…
Fame, both in life and after death, is all vanity. No need to care. He didn’t care one bit. He was not having a breakdown at all.
“I…” Hiromitsu trailed off, at a loss for words. Even if I’m not buried with my colleagues who died in the line of duty, I shouldn’t be buried in the distillery’s cemetery! My crimes don’t warrant this!
Wait, the distillery didn’t have a cemetery. The Organization’s employee turnover rate was so high that insurance companies wouldn’t even cover them. A graveyard plot was not part of the employee benefits package.
Heavens, what kind of sweatshop company did I join? Public Security agents really do sacrifice too much for the sake of justice!
Mentor Scotch retreated into a world of his own.
Why does Mentor look like a corporate drone who’s been hit with a massive blow? An’an was confused.
She put herself in his shoes and thought about it. Then, she understood.
A mere corporate slave, ground down by society his entire life, finally gets to leave this oxidized, decaying world and slumber in the embrace of death, living a peaceful life that only requires burial, not work.
Then one day, like an innocent carrot caught in the crossfire, he’s yanked up by his leaves.
“Wakey wakey, time for work,” a demon whispers.
“What’s that? You say you’re already six feet under? LOL. You think being buried means you can skip overtime? You’re going to get up and work this shift, even if you have to rise from the dead to do it!”
What a tyrannical, unreasonable world. Mentor Scotch couldn’t even collect his social security and insurance anymore—An’an didn’t have any herself, so she certainly wasn’t going to be paying her mentor a salary.
An’an: Sorry, I’m a freeloader.
Thinking about it this way, Mentor Scotch’s depression was entirely understandable. She had to be considerate.
“I only chose you because you were the only mentor with a five-star friendliness rating, Mentor Scotch.”
An’an said with a hint of regret, “If I had known you didn’t want to return to the mortal world, I could have gritted my teeth and studied under one of the other mentors.”
These things should always be consensual.
“Like Mentor Shimura Danzo, or Mentor Kibutsuji Muzan, or Mentor Mahito—Mentor Mahito looks a bit peculiar, but he seems quite friendly. Maybe he’s the healing type.”
With every name she mentioned, the corresponding mentor’s profile appeared in Hiromitsu’s mind.
[My Respected Crime Mentor] hadn’t been lying. It had very earnestly gathered all the crime mentors from various shows—the ones who caused havoc everywhere, were universally reviled, and whose crimes were unforgivable—for its host to choose from.
Every single choice made the Public Security officer’s vision go black.
“I’m not unwilling,” Hiromitsu said decisively.
“You already have me. Don’t go looking at anyone else, okay?”
He stared at An’an with eyes so soulful they could make a dog fall in love.
There was no technique involved, only the raw emotion of someone trying to save the world from fire and flood.
An’an was so taken aback she just nodded up and down.
Why so serious? Do crime mentors also have publication requirements for academic journals?
I hope it’s an easy topic to write about. If she has to write about “One Hundred and Eight Ways to Blow Up the Metropolitan Police Department” or “The Correlation Between Beika Town’s Crime Rate and a Death God Cult,” An’an will be in deep trouble.
Where would she even find the references? The police department’s internal network?
As she was thinking, Fan An heard hurried footsteps.
It was people from the film crew. They had heard the gunshots and were coming over.
Hiromitsu grabbed her forearm and said urgently, “I can’t be seen right now. Do you have a way to…”
He had a gut feeling she had a way to hide him.
The dark-haired girl grasped Hiromitsu’s hand in return and activated her ability.
The young man with the bass guitar case vanished in the blink of an eye. Director Matsuzaka rounded the corner, asking frantically, “I heard loud gunshots! What happened?”
“I don’t know.” An’an wouldn’t have said anything if the director hadn’t asked. But since he did, she feigned surprise. “Isn’t this the location you chose, Director Matsuzaka?”
Confronted head-on, Director Matsuzaka desperately tried to recall the client requirements he had given the info broker: Suburban, secluded location, eerie atmosphere, convenient for body disposal, multiple traces of criminal activity within the distillery…
With every requirement he recalled, his face grew another shade paler.
Director Matsuzaka: I knew Orihara Izaya was a professional, but he’s a little TOO professional!
Just handing over the former secret base of a criminal organization like that, is that really okay?
Orihara Izaya: Just tell me if it was worth the money or not.
It was more than worth it. Director Matsuzaka’s eyes glazed over.
He walked tremulously through the first-floor hall. The bullet holes in the floor tiles were clearly visible. The traces left by the hail of bullets were more terrifying the longer he looked. The entire crew couldn’t wait to get on the bus and return to the city.
Fan An walked beside Director Matsuzaka, her gaze sweeping over the spot where Gin and Vodka had stood.
No one in the crew knew that if it hadn’t been for that burst of gunfire, the bullets would not have pierced the hall floor, but their own skulls.
The moment Gin and Vodka discovered there were other people in the abandoned distillery, everyone would have died.
“All the footage shot today must be deleted,” she warned Director Matsuzaka. “Find a new location and reshoot. No one can ever know we were here.”
Gin hadn’t seen their faces. He would only try to find the mysterious sniper who had appeared.
He would never be able to find Hiromitsu Morofushi anywhere. An’an had hidden Scotch in her ability’s space—also known as the [Mentor Observation Room].
Freeloading had made An’an’s conscience uneasy, but now it was fine. Although she didn’t pay a salary or provide social security and insurance, she did provide housing. And these days, rent was the biggest expense.
An’an hadn’t even found a place for herself yet, but her mentor already had a place to live. She was Beika Town’s number one respecter of teachers and their teachings.
The news that all the footage had to be scrapped and reshot left Director Matsuzaka dispirited. He hastily arranged for a new venue and listlessly began filming again.
Fan An had the fewest lines and was, once again, the first actor in the crew to wrap up. She passed her scene smoothly in one take and left happily with her pay.
Watching the dark-haired girl depart, Director Matsuzaka continued filming the remaining scenes with the other actors.
The new location he found was also very faithful to the script. The props team had built an abandoned distillery set with a great sense of age and desolation. The main actors were all deeply in character, and the filming went well.
“Cut! That’s it for today.”
Since it was a small web drama with a limited budget, and it was his own passion project, Director Matsuzaka was also serving as the editor. The moment he returned to the hotel, he sat down at his computer to edit the footage.
“It’s going smoothly. I have enough for two episodes,” Director Matsuzaka said after a rough initial cut to see the effect.
He was well-versed in the art of retaining an audience. He had arranged for the script’s mini-climax to happen very early on: the scene where the evil spirit attacks from behind and strangles the second male lead.
This scene had been shot twice, and both were done in a single take.
The girl with long black hair falling to her chest appeared silently in the darkness, the tips of her shoes touching the second male lead’s heels. She looked up, her jet-black pupils staring into the camera, her lips a striking red, as if stained with blood.
The arm wrapped around the man’s neck looked fair and soft in the darkness, but its strength was astonishing. The pain and suffocation on the second male lead’s face were definitely not acting.
The prey beneath her arm gradually stopped moving. The dark-haired girl released her grip, letting him fall heavily to the ground. She grabbed the man’s legs and dragged him back to her lair.
Director Matsuzaka had been present for every frame of filming. He knew very well that the second male lead had been dragged away with bare hands.
Without any assistance whatsoever, Fan An had effortlessly completed the evil spirit’s hunt. She dragged a grown man a head taller than her as easily as if she were dragging a dead dog.
Director Matsuzaka watched this segment over and over again, unable to hide his admiration.
“She was truly born to do this,” he said, mesmerized.
As he watched, Director Matsuzaka rubbed his hands together and clicked on an untitled video file.
Fan An had told him to delete the footage shot at the abandoned distillery. Director Matsuzaka had deleted it right in front of her, but he had secretly kept a backup.
“Just as a memento,” Director Matsuzaka justified to himself. “It’s fine.”
They had already reshot it. He definitely wouldn’t cut the abandoned footage into the final product; the locations wouldn’t match.
Bzz, bzz, bzz. Director Matsuzaka’s phone vibrated. He answered the call. “Hello?”
“The trailer? Oh, oh, I’ll cut it right away. Don’t worry, I’ll definitely put all the best parts in, lure the audience in for the kill, hehehe.”
Trailers are short and punchy. Director Matsuzaka planned to cut together the part where the main group enters the abandoned distillery, startles the evil spirit, and the spirit starts killing, with the final shot lingering on the dark-haired girl’s jet-black eyes.
With a plan in mind, Director Matsuzaka was about to close the untitled file and get to work. His mouse hovered over the top-right corner, but he hesitated.
“I still like the first version better,” he murmured to himself, his heart conflicted.
Although the actors’ performances were no different, ever since he learned that the abandoned distillery was a real-life secret base for a criminal organization and that they had all nearly died there, Director Matsuzaka suddenly felt that the footage shot there had a much better atmosphere!
The set they built was ultimately fake. It wasn’t steeped in the true aura of evil. It wasn’t the art he was pursuing.
“I already listened to her and reshot at a new location,” Director Matsuzaka muttered. “It would be such a shame to delete it. If I just cut it into the trailer…”
It’s only a dozen seconds or so. It’ll be fine, right?
What are the chances a member of that criminal organization would happen to see it?
The more he thought about it, the more his heart itched like it was being scratched by a cat’s paw.
The mouse moved away from the top-right corner and dragged the progress bar.
A short while later, the compressed file began to upload.
A few seconds later, a video titled [First Look! Director Matsuzaka’s New Work “The Evil Spirit in the Pitch Black” Trailer!] was published on the website.