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“What would you do for love?”
It’s the kind of question people ask over candlelight, fingers laced across linen napkins, pretending they wouldn’t burn down a building if it meant someone might look at them twice.
Chishiya? He killed for it. Technically. Probably. (He’s still working out the ethics. Give him a minute.)
Almost dawn now. The sky had begun its slow bleed into lavender and gold, like even the horizon was tired of pretending. The tide was low, dragging its fingernails across the sand like it, too, had blood to wash away.
Chishiya dragged Arisu’s body across that sand.
Not delicately.
His white shirt—expensive, tailored, absolutely ruined—clung to his frame like a wet bandage, stained from collar to hem in smears of deep, arterial red. Arisu’s blood. His blood. He wasn’t sure anymore. Somewhere between the knife and the fall and Niragi’s charming little tantrum with the gun, things had gotten messy .
There was blood in his mouth. Iron on his tongue. And not all of it was his.
He dropped Arisu near the waterline like a sack of soft, infuriating limbs. The waves crept in, kissed Arisu’s heels, and fled again.
Chishiya collapsed beside him. Breathing like he’d just outrun something he was still running toward.
He reached down, lifted Arisu’s head, and rested it in his lap. There was something morbidly intimate about the way his fingers carded through Arisu’s black hair—sticky, matted, still beautiful. Still his .
“You’re lucky you’re pretty,” he muttered, voice hoarse.
Arisu didn’t respond.
Which, all things considered, was an improvement.
Chishiya looked out at the ocean like it might tell him what to do next. Then down at Arisu again. His face was pale, slack, blood-slicked but somehow peaceful, like a corpse in a romance novel. Or a particularly emo album cover.
“You’re not allowed to die,” Chishiya said, softly. “Not before I do.”
His hand trembled in Arisu’s hair.
“No one gets to take you,” he added, a little louder. “You’re mine. I earned you.”
He wasn’t sure what he meant by that. But he meant it.
Somewhere behind him, gulls shrieked. Somewhere further, Niragi was probably still bleeding out and swearing dramatically. Chishiya had stopped paying attention.
It was just them now. A corpse that wasn’t dead, and a man who wasn’t living.
And love—whatever that meant—rotting sweetly in the sand between them.
“You look like shit,” a voice drawled from somewhere behind them.
Chishiya didn’t turn around.
Mostly because he already knew who it was.
Partly because he didn’t have the energy to deal with another gunshot wound today.
Niragi limped into view like the final boss of a soap opera. One side of his face was a Picasso painting of sliced skin, crusted blood, and bruised pride. His jacket was half-burnt, and he was dragging a metal pipe like a makeshift cane-slash-murder-weapon. His grin was too wide. His eyes were too wild.
God, he was annoying.
“Look at you,” Niragi sneered, gesturing with the pipe. “You’re having a romantic little beach date with a corpse. Should I give you two some privacy? Or maybe a shovel?”
Chishiya didn’t flinch. “You’re bleeding on my beach.”
“I’m bleeding because you stabbed me in the face, you prissy little ice cube.”
Chishiya gently adjusted Arisu’s head in his lap, like he was trying to tune out a particularly obnoxious radio station.
“He provoked me,” he said. “With his mouth.”
“You always liked his mouth.”
“Obviously. He talked less than you.”
Niragi’s nostrils flared. He pointed the pipe at Chishiya like it was an extension of his unresolved childhood trauma.
“You’re in love with him.”
Chishiya looked down at Arisu. A beat passed.
“Yeah,” he said.
“You killed him!”
A longer beat.
“Yeah,” he said again.
“You’re insane!” Niragi shouted.
“Have you met us?”
That gave Niragi pause. The pipe dipped slightly.
He looked at Arisu, limp and lovely, blood cooling in the sand. He looked at Chishiya, soaked and solemn, tender hands on the boy he broke. Then he looked at himself: ripped clothes, busted face, and a pipe he was too tired to swing.
A breeze rolled in off the sea.
For a second, all three of them were quiet.
“I wanted you, you know,” Niragi muttered.
“I know,” Chishiya replied.
“I wanted to kill you.”
“I know.”
“I still might.”
“Fair.”
The silence settled again.
Niragi sat down. Hard. Pipe clattering beside him. He looked ridiculous. Like a war criminal trying to meditate.
And then, voice hoarse, he asked—
“How the fuck did we end up here?”
Chishiya glanced down at Arisu.
Still not dead.
And maybe—just maybe— smiling .
Hours Earlier.
Or maybe minutes. Time gets weird when you're concussed and bleeding out of your mouth.
Arisu came to slowly—his skull pulsing like a faulty lightbulb, the back of his throat tasting like copper and regret. His arms were tied to a chair, wrists raw against the rope. Duct tape stretched across his mouth, crusted at the edges with his own blood.
He blinked. Once. Twice.
Niragi was pacing in front of him, black shirt, sweaty, face still sliced from Chishiya’s earlier “don’t touch me” gift. He looked like a fever dream born out of an MMA fight and a fashion magazine.
The room was dim, concrete, damp. A single hanging lightbulb swung overhead like it wanted to join in on the mood swings.
“Wakey, wakey, dumbass,” Niragi chirped, crouching in front of him with a grin that had too many teeth. “I figured I’d give you a little one-on-one time before I go break Chishiya’s legs.”
Arisu let out a muffled noise. Niragi smacked the duct tape lightly.
“Shh, shh, I’m talking.”
He stood up again, cracking his knuckles.
“You know I used to box, right?” he asked. “Real good at it. Scared the shit out of everyone in my neighborhood. No one dared touch me.” He smiled faintly, eyes distant. “Didn’t have to scream to be heard. Just had to break a nose. Once.”
He turned to Arisu, tilting his head.
“Do you know what it’s like to be loved by someone you own ?” Niragi asked. “I could’ve owned Chishiya. But you—”
He kicked the chair.
“ You ruined that.”
Arisu groaned. Not just from pain—annoyance, mostly. If he hadn’t been duct-taped, he would’ve said “This is pathetic.”
Niragi leaned in close, breath warm and acidic.
“I should kill you. Right now. I should bash your pretty face in until he can’t recognize it. Then I’ll make him watch while I turn your corpse into a reminder.”
He paused.
“But that would be too easy.”
He circled the chair like a shark, dragging his fingers across Arisu’s shoulders, smearing blood like war paint.
“No, I want him stuck ,” Niragi muttered. “With me. Can’t run if his legs are shattered, right? He won’t leave me. Not when I’m the only one left standing.”
He grinned again.
“And you? You get to sit here and think about it.”
He tapped Arisu’s forehead twice.
“Boxers have basements, you know,” Niragi added, conversational. “No one ever checks. Too much noise, too many rumors. But I keep things down there. Fun things. Memories. Mistakes. A whole museum of bad ideas.”
He tilted his head, like a curious kid at a terrarium.
“Think you’ll look good in a glass box?”
Arisu didn’t answer. But his eyes said Try it, bitch.
Niragi stepped back, rolling his shoulders.
“Let’s go break some legs.”
He walked toward the door.
And Arisu, still tied, still bleeding, still gagged—smiled.
Because he’d already started loosening the rope five minutes ago.
Because Chishiya wasn’t the only one who could fake death.
[INT. CHISHIYA'S APARTMENT – LATE NIGHT]
Clean. Minimal. White.
The kind of apartment that looked like no one lived in it—because no one
should
. Except there
he
was, seated calmly on his own goddamn couch like he wasn’t the main suspect in an active missing person case.
Chishiya had just walked in from a fourteen-hour hospital shift, still smelling faintly of antiseptic and trauma. Now he was nursing a rapidly melting ice pack and being glared at by Detective Ann Rizuna, who looked ten seconds away from waterboarding him with her own coffee.
Beside her, Usagi Yuzuha was doing a great impression of someone trying not to scream by clenching her jaw so hard it might snap.
“Let me get this straight,” Ann said, arms crossed, voice steady. “You left the hospital, came straight here, and have no idea where Ryouhei Arisu is?”
Chishiya blinked. “Correct.”
“He’s missing.”
“I heard.”
“People think you took him.”
He leaned back, stretching out on the couch like this was a group therapy session and not an interrogation. “I might have taken him. Eventually. If he asked nicely.”
Usagi made a noise between a growl and a scream. “You think this is funny? Arisu’s been gone for thirty hours, no calls, no signs, and the last person who saw him alive— was you .”
“And Niragi,” Chishiya offered. “Don’t forget him. He’s the more stabby one.”
Ann narrowed her eyes. “Funny you mention that. Both of you have flagged psych evals on file. Niragi’s a danger to society. You’re a—” she flipped through her tablet “—‘high-functioning antisocial with delusional detachment and narcissistic masking strategies.’”
“That’s wordy,” Chishiya said. “Sounds like a horoscope.”
“A psychopath,” Usagi snapped. “You're a psychopath .”
Chishiya smiled faintly. “A psychopath with a medical license. If that helps.”
“It doesn't .”
Ann tossed the tablet on the coffee table. “You think it’s normal for a trauma surgeon to have three separate missing persons linked to them in two years?”
“They weren’t my patients.”
“They were your friends .”
“Again, not my patients.”
There was a pause. Long, sharp.
“Do you know what I think?” Ann said, stepping closer. “I think you’re bored. I think you want to play. And I think Arisu was stupid enough to trust you.”
Chishiya looked down at his hands—blood-stained from earlier. Still faintly red under the nails. Arisu’s blood. His blood. Maybe Niragi’s. A fun little cocktail of bad choices.
He looked back up, dead calm.
“If I kidnapped him,” he said, “I wouldn’t be here.”
“You’d be where?”
Chishiya tilted his head.
“Finishing the job.”
One hand loose.
One chair leg cracked.
And oh look, someone left a pipe nearby.
[INT. BASEMENT – NIGHT]
The rope finally gave with a wet snap as Arisu yanked his wrist free, skin peeled and raw from friction. He didn’t stop to wince. Pain was fine. Pain was expected . Predictable, even.
But this—this was new.
He pulled the duct tape off with a hiss, spitting blood onto the concrete floor. His other wrist, still half-bound, was manageable. One leg twisted around a cracked chair leg. Another tug. A grunt.
Freedom .
He stood. Swayed. Caught himself.
The room reeked of rust and wet stone and… God, was that meat ?
He didn’t look. There were jars on the shelves. Tools. Hooks. Things that didn’t belong in a normal home unless your hobbies included torture and Pinterest.
His eyes found the pipe Niragi had dropped hours earlier.
Convenient.
He gripped it. Heavy. Cold. Comforting.
“Guess it’s your turn, Niragi.”
[INT. CHISHIYA’S APARTMENT – SIMULTANEOUSLY]
“I want his phone,” Ann said.
Chishiya held it out like a waiter offering a check.
“Passcode?” she demanded.
“Your birthday,” he said, smirking.
Ann glared.
He sighed and muttered, “1-2-2-9.”
She unlocked it.
No texts. No calls. No photos except one blurry image of a cat outside a ramen shop. No notes. No maps. Just a wallpaper of Arisu asleep on a train, lips slightly parted.
Usagi made a strangled noise. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I like trains,” Chishiya replied, dry.
Ann turned to him, her detective brain buzzing. “If you’re covering for Niragi—”
“I’d cover him with gasoline,” Chishiya said smoothly, “and a match. Does that count?”
“Enough.”
Ann threw his phone back on the table.
Usagi was already at the bookshelf, pulling open drawers. “He’s hiding something. I know it. He’s always hiding something.”
Chishiya stood up slowly, eyeing her.
“You’re in my house,” he said. “Which is adorable, because if you’d asked nicely, I could’ve told you—”
He walked over to the bookshelf, knelt, popped open the false baseboard.
Pulled out a small USB stick.
“—that Arisu sent me this two nights ago. Footage. Security cam. Basement stairs. He was investigating Niragi’s old neighborhood.”
Ann snatched it. “And you didn’t turn it in?”
“I didn’t trust you.”
“You trust him ?”
Chishiya paused. A flicker of something— guilt? amusement? fondness?
“No,” he said. “But I love him.”
[INT. BASEMENT STAIRS – NOW]
Niragi opened the door, pipe in hand, smiling like he just finished a snack and was still hungry.
He stepped in.
The lightbulb overhead flickered.
“Arisu,” he sang. “Did you miss me?”
Silence.
Then: a crunch. Behind him.
He turned just in time to see a chair leg shatter across his shoulder.
Arisu lunged —not a surgeon’s precision, but something darker, dirtier, trained by desperation and pure, feral survival. Niragi stumbled, dropped the pipe, reached for Arisu’s throat—
Too late.
One blow. Two. Three .
Arisu stood over him, panting, blood spray painting his shirt. Niragi groaned.
“I missed you,” Arisu said.
Then kicked him in the ribs.
“Missed this, too.”
[INT. CHISHIYA’S APARTMENT – MOMENTS LATER]
Ann’s phone buzzed. A video. From an unknown number.
Chishiya’s eyes flicked to it. “You should watch that.”
Ann opened it. Usagi leaned in.
It was live feed . Basement. Niragi. Tied to the same chair Arisu had been in.
Arisu, smiling. Bloody. Holding up a peace sign.
Then pointing directly at the camera.
Usagi reeled back. “What the—”
Chishiya smiled, slow and sharp. “Told you I didn’t kidnap him.”
Ann just stared.
“How the fuck ,” she breathed, “did we get into this mess?”
Chishiya folded his arms, looking proud and exhausted.
“Because,” he said, “you keep forgetting—he’s worse than both of us.”
[INT. POLICE CAR – LATE NIGHT]
Ann’s knuckles were white around the steering wheel as she shot Chishiya a glare that could melt glass. Her mind was on a warpath, and Chishiya’s deadpan sarcasm wasn’t helping.
“You’re not going to help us?” she asked, voice tight with barely-contained frustration.
Chishiya reclined in the back seat, hands cuffed, looking like the world’s most inconvenient passenger.
“Help you?” He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not even supposed to be here. If I helped, I’d probably give you all the wrong directions just for fun. Who wants to deal with Niragi’s whole mess, anyway?”
He glanced out the window, bored. “Look, I’m just saying. You’re wasting time. I could’ve told you where they were. But you wouldn’t listen.”
Ann shot him a look but kept her eyes on the road. She could feel the slow burn of rage settling under her skin.
“Not helping, Chishiya.”
“You asked,” he shrugged, unbothered. “Don’t shoot the messenger because you don’t like the message.”
“Is this how you get off?” Usagi cut in from the front, her voice strained but steady. “Messing with people? Or is this just you being a sociopath ?”
Chishiya chuckled, an almost pitying sound. “Sociopaths don’t have the patience for this ,” he said, tapping his cuffed hands on the seat. “What’s really fascinating is how you still think I’m the problem.”
Ann slammed the brakes as they pulled into Niragi’s neighborhood, tires screeching. Chishiya sat up, finally paying attention. The silence that fell between them was cold and thick.
Ann and Usagi both jumped out, scanning the area. Chishiya, however, stayed slouched in his seat, leaning his head back. He could think of at least five places Niragi might have taken Arisu. A small, abandoned factory. That warehouse near the docks. The old construction site just outside the city.
Niragi had a way of hiding in plain sight. Arisu would be somewhere twisted, somewhere clever, somewhere not too far from the madness.
But they weren’t going to find him here.
[INT. ARISU’S CAR – NIGHT]
Meanwhile, a few miles away, Arisu was driving like a man on a mission.
He wasn’t panicked. That would imply he cared .
No, he was calm—laser-focused—on the road, the wheel gripped tight in his hands, knuckles white. His head was still vibrating with the aftertaste of adrenaline, his shirt soaked in someone else’s blood.
He barely registered the streetlights passing in a blur, the steady hum of the engine under him. His thoughts? They were more like little snippets of chaotic calculations—where Niragi would go next, where Chishiya’s mind would be, how far he could get before anyone caught up with him.
The cold wind whipped through the cracked window, the speed of the car making it feel like time itself was speeding up.
Arisu glanced at the rearview mirror.
One minute ahead of them, maybe.
Maybe. Probably.
He didn’t care either way. He had enough tricks up his sleeve to disappear before anyone even blinked. This game wasn’t over yet.
And Niragi? He was going to love what Arisu had in store.
[INT. NIRAGI’S HOUSE – NIGHT]
The door to Niragi’s house was wide open when they arrived. Ann and Usagi stepped inside, weapons drawn, looking for a trace of life. It was eerily still, the only sound their footsteps echoing against the hardwood floors.
But nothing. No signs of a struggle. No Arisu. No Niragi. No anything.
Chishiya finally unbuckled his seatbelt, his expression bored as hell.
“Did I not tell you?” he muttered, a little too casually. “They’re not here.”
Ann didn’t even look back as she moved toward the stairs, heart pounding in her chest. "Where are they?"
“Like I said,” Chishiya’s voice followed her. “You’ll never find them here. But I know where they are. Want to go for a little hunt?”
Usagi turned to Chishiya, voice sharp. “This isn’t a game, Chishiya!”
He raised his hands, cuffed wrists up, still too calm.
“I told you, didn’t I? I can’t help you. But you might want to check out a little warehouse not far from here. A little ‘forgotten’ spot near the coast.”
Ann froze. A warehouse. The docks. She knew it. She had heard rumors, but she hadn’t been able to tie them to Niragi.
She didn’t say anything else. She just motioned for Usagi, and they were out the door, speeding toward their next destination, with Chishiya’s mocking voice trailing behind them.
[INT. ARISU’S CAR – NIGHT]
Arisu’s grip tightened on the wheel as he turned off the main road and headed toward the docks. He could feel the weight of the night pressing down on him. Niragi wasn’t the only one who liked to play games.
Arisu wasn’t going to let anyone ruin his .
[INT. WAREHOUSE – MAIN FLOOR – NIGHT]
It was like walking into a dream designed by a sadistic interior designer with a God complex.
Everything was color-coded.
The arena was a large open space with glossy black floors—mirrored and cracked in places, as if it had witnessed too many breakdowns and no cleanups.
Three corridors branched off from the central room. Overhead lights cast harsh, theatrical glows:
One hallway pulsed with red— violent, desperate, seductive .
One was pure white—
clinical, cold, intimate
.
And the last? Black as sin—
obsessive, brutal, territorial
.
“Choose your path,” the wall read in blood-red ink. “Winner Takes Chishiya.”
A projection played on the far wall: Chishiya, sitting in a chair, restrained but upright, dressed in spotless white, hands folded like a shrine offering. Behind him, a stage curtain. Beside him, a velvet chair—throne-like.
He didn’t look scared.
He looked bored .
A soft voice played over hidden speakers. Arisu’s voice.
“Every game needs stakes. Every player wants something. You want him? Prove it. ”
Ann looked ready to scream. “This isn’t a game. He’s manipulating you. Both of them.”
“I know,” Usagi muttered, voice tight. “But we’re already inside.”
Niragi’s laughter cut through the silence.
He stepped forward, blood crusted over the gash on his face like a badge of rage. Dressed in black—smeared eyeliner, bruised knuckles, that feral grin like he’d been waiting for this.
“Is this a dating show now?” he barked. “Because I’m about to win custody.”
He spat blood on the floor. “After I break every bone in your legs, Chishiya, I’ll finally know you’re not going anywhere.”
Chishiya’s face on the projection didn’t flinch.
Arisu’s voice hummed in again. “Rules are simple.”
“Red corridor: Arisu’s challenge. Black corridor: Niragi’s test. White corridor: Chishiya’s choice.”
“Survive all three. Then fight for him.”
The projection cut .
The lights flickered .
The timer began again:
00:29:56
And Chishiya, wherever he was, whispered to himself in a room of white walls and bleeding roses:
“I should’ve just stayed at the hospital.”
[ROUND ONE: THE RED CORRIDOR – ARISU’S GAME]
Ann and Usagi enter first. The red corridor is long, narrow, and disturbingly elegant . Crimson drapes line the walls, lit by flickering candle sconces. At the end: a glass room, and inside it—
Arisu .
Dressed in red. Shirt untucked. Barefoot. Smiling like the devil had just offered him tenure.
“Welcome,” he said, voice filtered through a speaker. “I call this one The Moral Guillotine .”
Usagi rolled her eyes. “Oh great. A theater kid.”
Arisu kept smiling.
“You’ll each be given a scenario. A hypothetical. A simple would you rather .” He stepped aside and gestured to two levers behind him—one white, one black. “Pull one, and I show you what it costs. Walk out, and I punish Chishiya instead.”
A pause.
“Just kidding. I punish him either way . But if you choose wrong, you also get me coming after you later. And I have knives.”
He turned to the camera.
“And an unresolved God complex.”
Ann rubbed her temples. “He’s a psychopath .”
Usagi nodded. “And we’re in his sandbox.”
[ROUND TWO: THE BLACK CORRIDOR – NIRAGI’S GAUNTLET]
Chishiya got shoved in this time. Cuffed. Ann refused to untie him. So he shuffled in, irritated.
The black corridor was… sweating . Literally. The walls pulsed with heat. There was boxing gear on the floor, some mannequin heads with Chishiya’s face crudely drawn on with Sharpie, and—
“Oh fantastic ,” Chishiya muttered.
—Niragi. Shirtless. Greased up. Holding a metal bat.
“You know,” Niragi said, pacing, “I didn’t plan on making this weird. But then I remembered how you stitched up my face and called it art.”
Chishiya deadpanned. “To be fair, you did ask for ‘a scar that looks hot in mirrors.’”
Niragi launched the bat—Chishiya ducked. Barely.
What followed was ten minutes of unhinged boxing metaphors, property destruction, and a lot of threatening statements about “owning your spine.” Chishiya only dodged half of it—he was handcuffed—but it didn't matter.
He kept laughing.
“Are you enjoying this?” Niragi snarled.
Chishiya’s lip was bleeding.
He nodded. “Immensely.”
[ROUND THREE: THE WHITE ROOM – CHISHIYA’S CHOICE]
He was finally alone.
The white corridor led to a padded chamber. Mirrors. Soft light. No cameras.
A note on the floor.
“Choose who wins you.”
Chishiya stared.
Two boxes.
One red.
One black.
A switch.
He picked neither.
He pulled a third switch from his own pocket.
[FINAL ROUND: MAIN STAGE – ALL PLAYERS]
The warehouse lights exploded into motion. Music played—warped classical. Maybe Beethoven, if Beethoven had a head injury.
The final room was a stage.
Chishiya sat at the center on the velvet throne.
Red spotlight on Arisu.
Black spotlight on Niragi.
Blue police lights from behind—Ann, Usagi, chaos.
The floor lit up. A countdown.
00:00:10
“Make your case,” Arisu whispered.
Niragi stepped forward, blood on his knuckles. “He’s mine. I’ve known him longer. Fought for him. Bled for him.”
Arisu cocked his head. “You hit him with a bat.”
“It’s called love , you virgin.”
Arisu shrugged. “I’m smarter. I understand him. He told me once his favorite food was silence.”
Chishiya: “Still true.”
Ann pulled her gun. “This ends now.”
The timer hit zero.
The lights died.
One scream.
One bang .
And when the emergency lights flicked on—
Chishiya was gone.
Only blood on the throne. A card.
“ Checkmate .”
The dust settled.
Usagi’s body, crumpled in a heap near the stage, a bullet wound to the head, her eyes open and staring into the void. A broken doll discarded by the game.
Ann was next. Her own lifeless figure sprawled near the exit, blood pooling around her as the dim light flickered. No one heard the shot. No one could’ve stopped it.
The only thing left standing was the sickly silence—and Arisu, drenched in red.
Niragi grinned. A smile that was barely human, the kind that only comes when you know the only other options are to break or die .
[MINUTES LATER – OUTSIDE THE WAREHOUSE]
The sirens never came. The authorities did nothing. Because when Chishiya threatened them over the phone, he hadn’t raised his voice—he’d just listed names. Names of children. Of wives. Of secret lovers and off-the-record bribes.
So they stayed away.
Bang.
[NOW – THE DOCKS]
They ran.
The sun hadn’t risen. The sky looked tired, like it had seen too much blood to bother turning blue.
Chishiya ran with his coat open, white stained to wine. Arisu behind him, barefoot, duct tape marks still on his cheeks. Niragi was it .
He jogged like a man enjoying recess.
Gun in one hand. Smile on his face.
“Let’s play tag ,” he sing-songed, voice hoarse. “Winner gets to keep Chishiya! Or kill him! Depends on my mood!”
Arisu glanced at Chishiya. “What’s the plan?”
Chishiya shrugged. “I never had one.”
“Oh cool,” Arisu said, breathless. “Just like old times.”
A bullet whizzed past them.
“Think fast!” Niragi cackled. “I’ve got twelve bullets and zero morals!”
They ran harder. Hearts thudding. Lungs burning.
And deep down, somewhere between pain and panic—
They were all kind of having fun.
[SOMEWHERE ALONG THE DOCK – BEHIND AN ABANDONED TRUCK]
They huddled. Arisu had a cut above his eye. Chishiya was reloading a gun that wasn’t supposed to be his. Blood stained everything.
“We should kill him,” Arisu whispered. “We should actually kill him this time.”
Chishiya raised a brow. “We tried that already. You cried halfway through.”
“You kissed me during the stabbing!”
“You bled on my shirt!”
“I— you —God I hate you,” Arisu hissed.
Chishiya smiled.
“Do you?”
Then: Niragi’s voice, echoing.
“I’m getting bored, boys. Let’s finish this with a bang or a kiss!”
[CUT TO: WIDE SHOT – THE DOCKS]
Three silhouettes.
One bleeding.
One laughing.
One already aiming.
Because it never mattered who was chasing who.
Not really.
They were always just three psychopaths in love with the idea of each other.
And in the end—
No one remembers who shot first . No one remembers why they screamed.
All they remember is the blood on the concrete…
…and the sound of Chishiya laughing.
[MINUTES LATER – ]
Tag.
A bullet in Arisu’s side. Not clean. Not fatal. But
loud
. And bloody. He fell hard onto the gravel, gasping like it was the first time he remembered pain had a name.
Niragi towered over him, gun still warm, grinning like a kid who’d just ripped the wings off a butterfly and called it art.
“Gotcha,” he whispered.
He crouched down, brushed Arisu’s hair back like a lover, like a god, like a demon on his lunch break. Then leaned in—tongue out—licked the trail of blood that had started crawling down Arisu’s neck.
“Sweet,” he murmured. “You always tasted like bad decisions and betrayal.”
Arisu tried to speak. The duct tape on his mouth wasn’t even there anymore, but somehow, it felt like it still was.
And then—
Slice .
A scream. Short. Wet.
Niragi staggered back, confused, until he looked down and realized his leg was leaking. Then his arm. Then something— someone —stabbed him in the calf, and he dropped to one knee like the end of a prayer.
And above him:
Chishiya .
Coat flared. Hands red. One knife still warm, the other lodged somewhere in Niragi’s thigh. He tilted his head. Smiled like a ghost who just solved a math problem.
Then slowly, mockingly, flipped Niragi off.
“Wrong move, boxer boy,” he said coolly. “You don’t lick what’s mine.”
He stepped over Niragi’s twitching body, grabbed Arisu by the wrist like a date who’d overslept the apocalypse, and started dragging him toward the beach.
Blood painted the sand like calligraphy. Arisu groaned—half-dead, half-turned on. Chishiya didn’t look back.
He just whispered, to no one in particular:
“I always hated sharing.”
Sirens. Sirens. Sirens.
Too late.
“What would you do for love? Die? Live? KilI? Pathetic.”
“Animals. Animals. Animals? You call us animals?”
“You don't understand what love will make you do, darling.”
[MONTHS LATER – TOKYO, EVENING]
The city murmured outside—low hum of traffic, neon reflected in windows, the occasional distant wail of a siren trying to outrun guilt.
Inside the hotel room: soft lamplight, clean sheets, and Arisu Ryouhei—new haircut, tailored charcoal suit, wire-rimmed glasses perched perfectly on the bridge of his nose like he paid taxes and never screamed during sex. Which, of course, was a lie.
He sat cross-legged on the bed, eating cereal from a porcelain bowl like it was dinner —because it was. The tie was undone. His collarbone peeked through his white shirt like a secret.
On the TV: the news.
“...authorities still searching for Niragi Suguru and Chishiya Shuntarō, both declared clinically unstable and wanted for questioning.
The warehouse massacre left detectives Ann Rizuna and Usagi Yuzuha dead at the scene.
Victim Arisu Ryouhei has been ruled out as a suspect.”
Arisu chewed slowly. Cornflakes. Almond milk. Boring. Peaceful. He hated it.
He glanced at his hand—at the silver ring, glinting under warm light. Engraved with the four suits of a deck. Hearts. Clubs. Spades. Diamonds.
He smiled faintly. Like someone remembering something sharp.
“Time for our honeymoon,” he murmured.
And just like that—
A knife kissed the skin of his neck .
Arisu sighed, dreamy, like someone had just opened a window in a burning room. He didn’t move. Not even when warm breath touched the shell of his ear.
A bite.
Sharp. Right on the earlobe . Teeth dragging slowly, almost reverently. Possessive.
“You always looked better covered in blood,” he whispered, voice silk-draped over glass.
Arisu chuckled. “I was hoping you'd say that.”
Behind him, he pressed closer, all lazy violence and subtle erection. Shirt unbuttoned, barefoot, alive. He smelled like hotel soap and murder.
“Did you miss me?” he asked, dragging the blade down Arisu’s collar.
Arisu tilted his head, letting the edge graze his skin.
“I bought the honeymoon suite,” he said, licking milk off his spoon. “I knew you'd find me.”
He smiled against his neck.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he said, voice low and lethal. “I never left.”
“You two are real fuckers, huh? Not without me, you're not.”
(end)