Chapter 80: X-reveals... revealed
The folder slipped from my fingers and hit the floor.
I barely registered the sound.
My eyes stayed locked on the photograph, on the name printed beneath it, and on the thought that kept forming even as I tried to shut it down.
If this document was real...
If the person in that image was who I thought he was...
Then Kuro was X-Reveals.
And Ethan—
No.
I forced the thought back before it could fully form.
My hands moved before my mind caught up. I gathered the files, shoved them back into the safe, and closed it. The click of the lock sounded too loud in the silence of the room.
I didn’t think.
I just left.
Outside, the air felt colder than it should have.
I pulled my phone out immediately and dialed Ethan.
It rang.
Once.
Twice.
Come on... pick up.
Please.
A click.
My breath caught.
"Hello?" I said quickly.
Silence.
"...Hello?"
Nothing.
"Ethan? Can you hear me ?"
Then....
"Loud and clear."
My blood went cold.
That voice wasn’t Ethan’s.
I knew it immediately.i have listened to it enough times to know who it belongs to.
Kuro.
My grip tightened around the phone so hard it hurt.
"...Kuro?" My voice came out sharper than I intended. "What did you do to Ethan? Did you hurt him? "
A pause.
Then a faint shift in his tone.
"Hurt him?" he repeated, almost amused.
Silence stretched.
Then he exhaled like he’d just been told something mildly entertaining.
"So," he said slowly, "the old grunt finally told you everything."
A quiet laugh followed.
"Good."
My chest tightened.
"Kuro—"
"Hello again, Himari."
The way he said my name made everything in me go still.
Not fear or shock.
Recognition of something worse.
He sounded... relaxed.
Like he had been waiting for this exact moment.
"No more pretending," he continued softly. "That part was getting tiring."
My fingers tightened around the phone.
"Where is Ethan?"
A small pause.
Then his voice tilted, almost playful.
"Ethan," he repeated. "That’s all you care about, isn’t it?"
I didn’t answer.
He let out a low laugh.
"Ethan. Ethan. Ethan." He dragged the name out, like he was testing it in his mouth. "You’re more attached than I expected. More obsessed , and that is good for me ."
"Kuro," I said, sharper now. "Stop fucking around and tell me where he is."
For a moment, he didn’t respond.
Then, faintly in the background—
A voice.
"Kuro, you better get in here! Marcus is screwing around again!"
My entire body locked.
That voice.
Ethan.
Relief hit so fast it almost knocked the air out of me.
"Kuro!" I snapped. "What is going on?"
A brief shuffle on the other end.
Then Kuro returned, voice lighter again.
"Oh, don’t worry," he said. "Nothing...yet, Himari."
Yet.
That word did something to my stomach.
"Your boyfriend and I are just... having fun together."
"What does that mean?"
Another pause.
Then, quieter—
"We’ll talk properly when you’re back in Harrington."
My breath caught.
"Wait."
The word slipped out before I could stop it.
"Wait, Kuro—"
No answer.
"Kuro!"
Silence.
Then his voice returned, softer.
"The game has only just began ."
A beat.
"Enjoy Japan while you still can."
The line cut.
stood there staring at the phone.
Like if I stared long enough, it would ring again.
It didn’t.
My reflection flickered faintly on the screen.
Then—
"Fuck!"
The sound echoed down the corridor.
I gripped the phone tighter, resisting the urge to throw it.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Again.
Kuro was no longer hiding behind the bunny mask .. and I had just uncovered something that would shattered my world
My grandfather’s convoy returned through the gates about an hour later. I watched it from my bedroom window and made no move to go downstairs. Not yet. I needed to think before I spoke to him again and right now thinking was not going well.
One of the servants found me later that evening and told me Katsuro was in the family shrine.
I went.
The room was small and quiet. Candles along the altar. Wooden ihai tablets bearing the names of the people who had passed through this family and left it. My grandmother. My mother Maki’s name written in careful strokes on the pale wood.
My grandfather was lighting a fresh stick of incense when I entered. He bowed toward the altar and stepped aside without speaking. I lit my own stick and bowed and stood there for a moment while the smoke drifted up between us.
It was the most peaceful I had felt all day.
Afterward we walked the grounds together in the evening air, the garden lanterns already lit along the stone paths.
"How have you been?" he asked.
"You have people watching me," I said. "You probably know better than I do."
His expression didn’t change.
Which was basically an admission.
"I prefer the word protecting."
"Of course you do."
He chuckled.
The old man actually chuckled.
I watched him carefully.
Good.
No sign he knew about the safe.
No sign he knew I’d been snooping around his office.
I kept my face neutral.
Years of dealing with him had taught me that much.
"Whatever I do," he said after a while, "I do for your sake."
There it is, the speech, the one he gives to justify everything
We walked for a while without speaking. The garden at this hour was genuinely beautiful and I was tired enough that I let myself notice it instead of pushing past it.
"You look more like your mother every year," he said eventually.
I had heard that my whole life and it still caught me off guard every time. "You always say that."
"Because it is the truth." He glanced at my hair. "Though I still don’t understand the red hair ."
"I like it."
"It looked better black."
"I don’t know...it kinda gives me personality "...I said touching my hair
"No , you look ridiculous"
" Come now. That’s just rude ojiisan "
" I’m old I’m allowed to be rude"
We both laughed .I could tell from his face that he was contended.
We came to the far end of the path where the garden met the old stone wall and stood there for a moment.
"Ojiisan," I said.
He looked at me.
"I’m going back to Harrington tomorrow."
The contentment in his face dimmed. "Already."
"I have things to deal with."
"You just arrived."
"I know."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "You’ll come back."
It was not quite a question.
"I’ll come back," I said.
He looked at me the way he had looked at my mother in photographs Like he was trying to hold onto something he knew had its own direction and could not be redirected, only watched.
I leaned forward and kissed his cheek.
He frowned immediately and straightened his collar as though the gesture had disarranged something.
"Goodnight, Ojiisan."
"Goodnight, Himari."
I left him standing under the lantern light and walked back inside.
Sleep did not come.
I lay on my back staring at the ceiling while the house settled around me into its nighttime quiet and my thoughts refused to follow.
Kuro. The photograph. The death certificate with a face I had known for months attached to it. Felix in a hospital bed three floors up from a cafeteria where my grandfather had told me only part of the truth. Ethan’s voice in the background of a call that should never have happened.
Enjoy Japan while you still can.
Underneath all of it, something I had not let myself sit with fully until now.
Felix was alive.
Four years. Four years of carrying it. Every time someone said his name, every time I walked into a room and wondered if the person looking at me knew, every decision I had made in the years since built on the certainty of what I had done.
And he was alive.
It did not fix anything. I knew that. Nothing about this was fixed.
But for the first time in four years I was not carrying a death.
I turned onto my side and closed my eyes.
Tomorrow I would go back to Harrington.
And face kuro without a mask ...
( this is just the beginning, click next to find out more )
