* * *
“Hey, you bastard! You little shit, stop right there!!”
Is he insane?! Like I’d stop just because you yell!
Weaving through alleyways, Ben could barely suppress the curses trying to claw out of his throat.
He was too busy gasping for breath.
Well, to be fair, it wasn’t that he was holding back swearing—it was that he was too out of breath to even speak.
Without even time to catch a breath, Ben yanked his body around and darted down another alley.
“Gun! Don’t we have a gun?!”
“We do, but are you really gonna shoot it? This place doesn’t feel like our turf. The moment we fire, someone’s gonna call the cops, Boss!”
The only good thing was that for all the strain Ben felt, the guys chasing him were also struggling.
The so-called Boss was this round-bellied man waddling along, and his subordinate, while big and strong, was too busy looking after his superior to pick up speed.
Still, that was just one of the reasons Ben hadn’t been caught yet.
There were plenty of unresolved issues hanging over his head—Xenon being one of them.
But considering enough time had passed for Haimar to have already arrived, Ben figured that problem was probably handled by now.
“Shit… If I stall any longer, things are gonna get messy. Haven’t we heard from the others yet?”
“Nope. Looks like they haven’t found him. Shouldn’t we head over there and regroup?”
Taking advantage of their slowing pace, Ben ducked into the mouth of another alley and crouched down, carefully observing.
“Nah. If it comes to that, we’ll just grab that bastard, beat it out of him, figure out the location, and take care of it.
Even if we have to kill them all, we were told not to hand over the target for at least 24 hours.
From the state of that guy earlier, he probably couldn’t get far. They must’ve hidden him somewhere.”
…Okay, now that’s dangerous.
The order not to hand over the target for 24 hours, even if it meant killing everyone, was shocking.
Whoever gave that command must’ve known something would happen to Xenon.
But even knowing that, Ben didn’t have the luxury to do anything about it—not while he was running for his life.
Leaning against the wall, Ben looked up at the withered plane tree leaves dangling over the wall, unable to hide his exhaustion.
Come to think of it, his situation wasn’t all that different from those falling leaves.
Like them, he couldn’t just keep hanging on forever—sooner or later, he’d fall.
And once he got caught, death would be just around the corner.
Still… doing nothing and just sitting on his hands wasn’t his style.
A leaf eventually broke loose and tumbled to the street, joining the others scattered there.
The leaves skittered along the ground, and a heavy silence blanketed the air.
Crash—!
At nearly the same moment a stone scraped violently across the wall Ben had been leaning on, he sprang to his feet.
Had he followed his instincts and remained still, it wouldn’t have been the wall getting scratched up—it would’ve been him.
“You really thought I wouldn’t notice you eavesdropping, you rat bastard?!”
The chase resumed.
Ben took off again, kicking through the fallen leaves rustling in the wind.
They kept calling him a rat, and while it pissed him off, it wasn’t like the comparison was entirely wrong.
“At this point, it’s not like we can be picky about how we do it! If we don’t take care of this ourselves, she’ll kill us. Hey, get the water ready!”
The man chasing him reached for a water bottle—obviously to use his Esper abilities.
Even a toddler could figure that out.
Ben grimaced, remembering the time he got hit in the face by one of those water-made arrows.
He really, really didn’t want to go through that again.
The impact still felt fresh in his memory. Once had been more than enough.
“—–!”
Before he could even finish the thought, a water arrow—painstakingly shaped with
precision—whizzed past him and struck the wall, leaving a mark.
Then came another. And another.
The arrows multiplied before he could blink.
“That bastard’s always been annoying as hell! I was planning to beat you into pulp anyway, but now I’m gonna beat you twice as hard—then kill you!”
“Boss! You gotta watch your health!”
Dodging the arrows flying at him, Ben felt like he was in a slow-motion action movie.
A ridiculous thought to have in a situation like this, but the fact he could still think like that meant there was still one hope left in the back of his mind.
Just a little longer.
A trash can he’d used for cover got hit dead-on by a water arrow and crumpled.
He rolled across the ground, barely dodging another that grazed his hair.
‘Just a little more. He’ll come. I know he will. He has to.’
Launching himself up from the ground, Ben bit his lip hard.
It was a nervous habit, one he did when trying to stay calm—but no matter how much he told himself to keep it together, the anxiety was creeping in.
By the time the round-bellied man emptied an entire water bottle and twisted the cap off a second—
BOOM—!!
A thunderous crash, far louder than anything so far, rang through the air.
“What the hell was that?!”
All three of them—locked in a standoff on the narrow street—froze and turned their heads toward the sound.
The heavy impact had come from the far end of the alley behind Ben’s pursuers, near the corner where the road ended.
“Aaagh—!”
Thud.
Something flew out like a deflated balloon and landed flat on the pavement.
It was a man in a black suit, just like the pot-bellied one.
And following that—
A long, lean leg stepped into view.
The owner of that leg, who had clearly delivered the kick, slowly emerged from the alley, making his presence known.
…Ben had believed he’d come, but this kind of entrance?
Yeah, this wasn’t quite what he’d imagined.
Beneath the sunlight, the man revealed himself as a being both noble and violent at the peak of his existence.
The aura he exuded was fierce yet restrained, sharp and honed like the tip of a blade tempered to its extreme.
He was so razor-sharp, one might get cut just by touching him — enough to make not only Ben, but even other men tense up completely.
When their eyes met — those piercing, cold blue eyes — a chill of sweat formed on Ben’s back.
I-Is he mad?
He had no idea what kind of expression to put on in front of that face dripping with frost, so he simply pulled up the corners of his mouth in an awkward smile.
But somehow, that only seemed to make the man even more irritated.
Ben ended up breaking eye contact.
Why did it feel like he’d just fanned the flames of a house already on fire?
But… he has no reason to be mad, does he…?
“Holy crap, what happened to that guy? Boss, he got wrecked!”
No one could bring themselves to rush over and check on the man sprawled out on the ground, but the boss gritted his teeth, fury burning anew in his eyes at the sight of his subordinate’s injury.
“Who the hell is that punk, messing up our business?! Interfere, and you all go down with him!”
“Be my guest.”
Did that fat-bellied guy even realize he just signed his own death warrant with those words?
Ben, impressed in a different sense by the guy’s guts, quickly scanned the enemies — and just like before, the floating water arrows fired straight at Haimar.
“Guaaaah!!”
“Wh-What in the world is that, kid?!”
Unfortunately for them, the water arrows didn’t even graze Haimar’s clothes.
To be exact, they didn’t even get the chance to.
The arrows abruptly halted right in front of him — as if they had belonged to him from the start.
Their tips slowly rotated until they were pointed back toward the enemy men.
“Th-That’s mine… They were mine!”
Even the boss who’d launched the arrows looked visibly shaken.
He grit his teeth and strained to regain control, but it was like his powers had vanished — the arrows didn’t budge.
While he watched on in disbelief, Haimar, with the subtlest of movements, stirred the suspended arrows.
The faces of the two men turned pale in an instant.
The water molecules swirling through the air began to coalesce and separate again and again until they reformed into the shape of arrows.
Wherever Haimar’s hand passed, heat was sucked away, and the water began to freeze white.
A thin layer of frost formed, and the arrows, turning cold and transparent, transformed from liquid into solid — water no longer, but ice.
Soon, what emerged were solid ice arrows.
They cracked and split into several more, multiplying far beyond the original number.
Following the movement of Haimar’s hand, the arrows swirled through the air with terrifying precision.
Even from a distance, the display of power was unnerving.
Ben found himself staring blankly past the two men, straight at Haimar.
Then their eyes met again, and Haimar tilted his head slightly as he spoke.
“Come here.”
‘What am I, a dog? You think I’ll just come because you say so…?’
* * *
