Chapter 11
Knock, knock.
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK! BANG, BANG, BANG!
The midnight knocking gradually escalated into a furious pounding, echoing again and again down the dark hallway.
Silence from behind the door. The sound seemed to be swallowed by a black hole, unable to reach the ears of the person inside.
Vodka stopped his now-aching hand, his wise eyes narrowing behind his sunglasses.
Under normal circumstances, a person wouldn’t sleep this soundly.
But this was Beika Town, the infamous City of Crime. One couldn’t use common sense here.
Vodka had extensive experience in door-to-door exterminations. Past experience told him that the target behind the door was likely in one of the following states: a living person in a near-death state after an overdose of sleeping pills, or a dead person in a near-living state, their blood staining the floor red.
“Bold of you to try and steal my kill,” Vodka’s face darkened, the aura of a high-ranking Black Organization member radiating from him.
This hit was a mission given to him by Gin-aniki. It was a sign of Aniki’s deep trust in him, and powerful proof that Vodka was more than just a driver!
Even if the target was already dead, he had to put a couple more bullets in them. Otherwise, how could he face Aniki and claim his overtime pay?
Vodka put his gun back in his coat and took out a small metal wire.
He squatted in front of the lock and fiddled with it. After a moment, the lock cylinder clicked, and the door was pushed open a crack by the wind.
Vodka pushed the door and entered.
Behind the door was a pitch-black darkness where you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. For a moment, Vodka had the illusion that he had gone blind.
Even so, his beloved sunglasses remained firmly welded to his face.
No amount of darkness could make Vodka take off his sunglasses. It was a matter of dignity. He and his sunglasses would live and die together.
Vodka fumbled his way forward in the dark. He felt along the wall for the light switch and flicked it on.
The filament in the lightbulb flickered twice, sparked, and then, after a brief, brilliant flash, died out completely.
At that moment, a text message from the apartment manager saying “Please pay your utility bills as soon as possible” was lost to the void due to Suspect An’s phone being out of credit.
Vodka cursed under his breath and turned on his phone’s flashlight.
He wasn’t afraid of alerting the target. The knocking had been so loud, yet there was no response from inside. The target was either no longer among the living, or…
“Hiding, are we?” A cruel smile formed on Vodka’s lips. He pulled out his gun. “A game of cat and mouse? Interesting.”
Vodka was a burly man, but a nimble one.
He leaped around the room, one moment squatting deep to check under the dining table, the next crawling on the floor to scan the gaps in the sofa. One second he was a monkey scooping the moon, yanking open the curtains; the next, a hungry wolf pouncing, pulling open the wardrobe. He stormed the bathroom and kitchen like a one-man army.
Nothing. There was no one anywhere. Was the target not home tonight?
Vodka slammed the wardrobe door shut. The wardrobe shook from the force. Suddenly, Vodka whipped his gun up.
He heard it! Something was moving across the floor!
It was fast, and it was hurtling towards the front door!
“Where do you think you’re going?!” Vodka roared, rushing towards the entrance.
His massive body blocked the entryway, but the sound didn’t retreat in the slightest. It crashed headfirst into Vodka’s legs.
“AGH!”
His toes were run over with crushing force. Physiological tears shot from the corners of Vodka’s eyes.
“IT HUUUURTS!”
Through his tear-and-snot-smeared sunglasses, Vodka finally realized: it wasn’t a person that had crashed into him, but an old suitcase.
A suitcase its owner had picked up from a second-hand market. After years of use, its wheels had become incredibly slippery.
The slightest vibration on the floor, and it became harder to catch than a pig at New Year’s.
Vodka’s violent opening and closing of the wardrobe had startled the suitcase. On this night when its master was away, it was on a rampage.
Vodka had followed Gin for so many years, through countless storms, but he had never imagined he would lose a fight to a suitcase.
This was no ordinary suitcase. It was heavy! Extremely heavy! Half of it was filled with clothes, and the other half was stuffed with the whetstones its owner had prepared for her beloved boning knife—carefully selected, mined from a quarry, both cumbersome and heavy.
The suitcase’s weight was comparable to a full-grown pig, and its speed and agility were on par with a wild boar rampaging through the mountains.
For all these years, the only one who could tame it was its master, a professional pig butcher of eighteen years.
Suitcase: Master’s not home tonight~ Come and play, big boy~ (wink) (rose) (blown kiss)
From behind the closed apartment door came a cacophony of bangs and crashes, accompanied by off-key screams of agony. The battle was fierce.
…
At 7 AM, Fan An, having worked all night, returned to her apartment.
Running around to twenty-seven crime scenes in one night had been exhausting. The girl yawned as she took out her key.
“Wait.” Hiromitsu Morofushi suddenly spoke up.
In the Mentor Observation Room, the cat-eyed young man’s brow was furrowed. “Be careful. The lock shows signs of being picked.”
“A break-in?” An’an’s sleepiness vanished. “Who could be so shameless as to rob a poor person’s home?”
“Good thing I listened to the experts and carried my valuables with me,” the dark-haired girl said, relieved, as she pulled out her beloved boning knife, kitchen knife, fruit knife, peeler, and nail clippers from her clothes.
All that was left in the apartment were her spare clothes, the whetstones, and an old suitcase.
An’an: You fiend! You won’t be getting your money’s worth from me! (smirk.jpg)
Fan An pulled the door open. A heavy, dark shadow lunged at her.
The girl, accustomed to this, kicked the side of the shadow, hooked her foot inward, and with a swift, precise motion, pressed down with her right hand.
The New Year’s pig—the old suitcase—was subdued in her hands.
“Why is my suitcase at the door?” Fan An wondered, confused. She pulled open the curtains, letting sunlight flood the room.
Hiromitsu gasped.
The apartment was a complete mess. Chairs were overturned, the dining table was on its side, as if a fierce struggle had taken place.
The outstanding police academy graduate was faced with a puzzle the likes of which he had never seen since joining the force. Judging by the scene, were there two robbers? Did they have a falling out over the loot and come to blows?
The problem was, what was there to even fight over in An’an’s impoverished home? The half-used bottle of cooking wine in the kitchen?
Thinking of the cooking wine, Hiromitsu remembered the person who had lent it to An’an.
Strange. Was Zero not home last night?
…
Amuro Tooru was not home.
The rich liquor swirled in the glass, ice cubes clinking. Bourbon took a nonchalant sip and gently placed the glass on the bar.
“How’s the new bartender’s skill?” Vermouth asked, resting her head on her hand, her red lips curved into a smile.
“Not bad,” Bourbon replied with a polite compliment, but showed no intention of taking a second sip.
Drinking on an empty stomach will lead to stomach ulcers sooner or later, the blond young man thought coldly. Besides, what I need right now isn’t alcohol, it’s an iced americano.
Although Bourbon only slept ninety minutes a day and was indeed a man of iron, that was no reason for the distillery to drag him in at two in the morning for an all-nighter.
Vermouth, who lived on American time while in Tokyo, looked perfectly composed. If everyone works overtime, it’s like no one is working overtime. This is the distillery’s normal working hours.
So what if the working hours are a bit ghoulish? It’s not like we’re a bunch of sunshine boys.
The two members of the intelligence team at least didn’t have to do fieldwork. After an unknown amount of time, Gin and Vodka arrived late.
This duo was truly the face of the distillery. The moment they arrived, they drew everyone’s attention. It was impossible to look away from them.
“Vodka, you…” Vermouth’s face showed surprise. “Did you get into a fight?”
The sunglasses-wearing burly man limped into the bar, the lower half of his face a mess of black and blue. Only his sunglasses remained firmly welded to his face.
Bourbon had a reasonable suspicion that the lenses of Vodka’s sunglasses were made of bulletproof glass.
“It… it wasn’t a person,” Vodka said evasively, glossing over the question.
He would absolutely not tell anyone but Aniki the truth!
Even telling Aniki the truth had exhausted all of Vodka’s courage. The look of utter contempt on Gin’s face after hearing the story had deeply wounded Vodka’s fragile heart.
Maybe he wasn’t cut out for the assassin business. Vodka longed for his comfort zone. He wanted to go back to driving.
The news of Vodka getting beaten up became the biggest story in the distillery today. The two intelligence operatives couldn’t take their eyes off him. The undercover Public Security officer had already drafted the opening of his report for the day: Shocking! Vodka suspected of falling out of favor with Gin!
Gin glanced expressionlessly at his incompetent underling and his useless colleagues. He really was the only one in the Black Organization who did any real work.
“Tonight, aside from a target that got away from Vodka, everyone else who needed to be silenced has been taken care of.”
Gin’s cold gaze fell on Vermouth and Bourbon. “And what about your work?”
Sensing the threat in Gin’s words, Bourbon’s expression remained unchanged. He spoke without a trace of fear. “You drag us in here and tell us to look at surveillance footage, but you won’t even say who you’re looking for.”
The blond young man said, displeased, “There’s a limit to how unreasonable you can be. Is this really an Organization mission? Or is it your personal business?”
“I agree,” Vermouth said lazily, pushing the laptop away. “Staying up all night is the enemy of my skin.”
It seemed these two had made no progress. Gin silently lit a cigarette, the irritation in his eyes hard to conceal.
He had told Bourbon and Vermouth to check the surveillance footage of the entire area surrounding the abandoned distillery.
“Who are you looking for, exactly?” Bourbon asked, his tone casual. “Are there any more specific clues?”
The last person who had made Gin go to such lengths was Akai Shuichi. The Black Organization’s Top Killer had always been this invested only when it came to undercover agents.
Gin bit down on his cigarette, the rising smoke obscuring the silver-haired man’s expression. Only his low voice could be heard. “A sniper.”
“A sniper?” Vermouth asked, intrigued. “Is there anything special about them?”
Another silence.
It wasn’t until the cigarette was crushed out in the glass, its red ember hissing into oblivion, that Gin finally spoke.
“That person’s marksmanship reminded me of an old acquaintance.”
Under his black trench coat, layers upon layers of bandages were wrapped around the silver-haired man’s shoulder. The pierced flesh beneath screamed with rage and astonishment.
Gin spoke the name with a force that seemed to want to crush it between his teeth:
“Scotch Whisky.”
The liquor in the glass sloshed violently, the melting ice cubes clashing together.
The cold liquid wet Bourbon’s fingertips. A searing pain followed the bone-chilling cold.
“Don’t joke around, Gin.”
The blond young man’s expression turned cold. “Everyone knows. Scotch died four years ago.”