Dammit Rajan!

Kaito Sasaki never thought he would be the last hope of humanity.

He barely considered himself the last hope of his own friend group. The idea that he might hold the key to preventing the linguistic apocalypse was, frankly, offensive to logic.

And yet, here he was. Standing in the polished halls of the Technocratic Republic of India, a futuristic city that ran on QR codes, polite efficiency, and deeply judgmental public benches. All because he forgot to do his Spanish lesson.

The world was collapsing. Languages were breaking like expired glowsticks. AI had declared war on commas. And apparently, somewhere in the middle of that chaos, he had become important.

Kaito Sasaki.

Man. Myth. Alleged Owl Killer.

They’d been through deserts, weddings, bounty hunters, exploding trains, and a sentient parrot with the emotional range of a toaster. And now, sitting in a hyper-efficient Indian boardroom that smelled faintly of sandalwood and diplomatic failure, Kaito realized something:

This was the easy part.

Because the hard part was still ahead.

The hard part was admitting that this story might actually be about him.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The briefing room was quieter than usual.

Mostly because nobody had screamed in at least five minutes.

Kaito sat forward in his chair, fidgeting with a coaster shaped like the UN emblem. Across from him, Matthew Price—the only man who looked like he’d lost a custody battle with punctuation—stared back expectantly.

“So,” Price said, tired eyes locked on him. “You mentioned… a lead?”

“Right,” Kaito nodded. “We think there’s a guy. In America. Duolingo employee. Or ex-employee. Or employee who’s pretending not to be an employee. Either way, Hana thinks he might know something.”

“About Duo?”

“About everything,” Hana added. “The social media post. The tech infrastructure. The way this all started. My guess is, he saw the backend of something that wasn’t supposed to exist.”

For a moment, Price just blinked. Then he slowly took off his glasses and set them on the table like they were tired of being involved.

“So let me get this straight. There’s a man in the United States who might have the key to this global catastrophe…”

Kaito nodded cautiously. “Yeah.”

"And you, the central figures in said catastrophe, detoured through China, got someone married, and now came to India to speak with me?"

"To be honest, we didn't even knew you were here." Sato said.

“Then why,” Price said flatly, “are you in India?”

There was a long pause.

“…That’s actually a fair question,” Hana admitted.

“To be honest,” Kaito said, “we were just trying not to die.”

The parrot added, "All chaos."

“I believe that,” Price muttered.

He stood, walked to the edge of the room, and gestured toward a screen embedded in the wall. “All right. We’ll get you to America.”

Kaito blinked. “Just like that?”

Price didn’t even look back. “Frankly, I don’t have the resources or the mental stamina to argue. If there’s a chance this guy can help, we’re sending you.”

He tapped a few commands into the console. “We’ve got an airship prepped for diplomatic travel. Not fast. Not subtle. But it floats and hasn’t exploded in two weeks. That’s basically a five-star rating these days.”

Kaito opened his mouth to thank him, but Price held up a hand.

“Don’t get excited. You’re still the guy whose missed lesson may have doomed the human race.”

“Allegedly,” Kaito muttered.

“Right. Allegedly.” Price gave him a tired look. “I’ll inform Rajan. He’ll make sure you’re escorted to the launch terminal tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow?” Kaito repeated.

“That’s right. So get some rest,” Price said, already walking out. “And if you have any more world-saving revelations, please share them before the next continent.”

He vanished around the corner.

Sota turned to the others, wide-eyed. “We’re getting an airship!”

“We’re going to America,” Kaito whispered.

Hana crossed her arms. “And we’re doing it without any more side quests. Got it?”

Kaito nodded firmly.

And now that the meeting is over, I have a day to complete my other investigation.

Rajan.

Because let me tell you something. There are moments in a journalist’s career when you realize you’ve stumbled onto something big.

This was one of them.

Because I wasn’t just tailing a suspicious man through the sparkling marble streets of a techno-utopia.

I was unraveling a conspiracy.

He’s calm. Too calm. The kind of calm you only see in assassins, robot butlers, or people who have successfully unsubscribed from an email list on the first try.

He’d seen me once. And now? Now I was going to see him.

Not as the “Logistics Officer” or “UN Contact” or “Man With Flawless Hair,” but for who he really was:

An agent of Edgar Allan Poe.

First, I caught him at the library.

He walked in like he owned the Dewey Decimal System, went straight to a shelf, and pulled out a book titled:

“How to Erase a Witness Without Leaving a Plot Hole.”

I nearly fainted.

He flipped it open. Skimmed a few pages. Made a note in a leather-bound journal.

And then—he looked around.

Not casually. Directly. Like he was checking if anyone was watching.

I ducked behind a rack of cookbooks. The “Apocalypse-Proof Biryani” fell on my head.

When I peeked again, he was gone.

So I ran. Out of the library. Down the street.

And there he was again. Calm. Smiling. Feeding pigeons.

Except—he wasn’t feeding them bread.

He was feeding them tiny scrolls.

What kind of man hand-rolls messages for birds?

Suspicious ones. That’s who.

He moved on. So did I.

I followed him into a garden next—lined with glowing plants and fountain mist that smelled like lavender therapy. Rajan walked calmly to the center… and bowed to a statue of a typewriter.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “I needed the reminder.”

Of what?!

What reminder?! Who was he talking to? The plot?

I lost track of him after that. Just… poof.

He vanished.

I stumbled around the garden, muttering about literary unions and cursed metaphors, when suddenly—

“Looking for me?”

I froze.

Rajan stood behind me.

Of course he did.

No footsteps. No warning. Just manifested.

He held a cup of tea like it was part of his soul.

“You’ve been following me,” he said calmly.

“I haven’t been following you,” I said.

“You hid in a decorative shrub and whispered, ‘I’m onto you.’”

“That could’ve been anyone.”

He sipped his tea. “I started doing things just to mess with you, you know.”

“The book. The scrolls. The whispering to a statue.” He raised a brow. “You weren’t exactly subtle.”

I blinked. “So you were messing with me on purpose?!”

“Obviously.”

“Why?!”

He smiled, just slightly. "So...why is the press so interested in me?"

I hesitated.

Then took a deep breath.

And blurted it out.

"Let's stop playing these games, I know you know who I am."

Rajan blinked. "What?"

"And I know you were sent by Edgar Allan Poe!"

Silence.

Rajan didn’t react.

No gasp. No denial. Just a blank stare.

Then, he tilted his head. “The poet?”

“The Narrator Union Leader,” I hissed.

More silence.

Rajan looked at me like I had just declared war on sentence structure.

“That’s…” he said slowly, “a very creative theory.”

“It’s true!”

“Right.”

“I know what you are!”

“I’m glad someone does.”

Then he vanished down the path again.

Gone.

Like punctuation in the essay of a toddler.

And me?

I just stood there.

Bush-scented. Humiliated.

“Replaying his movements. Rationalizing his typewriter whispers. Anything to prove I wasn’t crazy."

Was he actually just messing with me?

And if he didn't know about Edgar, why the statue?

Then, like lightning, it hit me.

The trio.

The airship.

The UN guy had said it would leave at sundown. And judging by the lavender-colored sky overhead, it was sundown.

I sprinted. Full speed.

Tripped over a decorative koi pond. Got slapped by a peacock. Possibly insulted by a QR-coded cow.

Didn’t matter. I had to make it. Had to get on that ship.

Because this was it—my last chance to follow the story from the skies. My only ticket to stay embedded in whatever absurd, catastrophic nonsense came next.

I reached the launch pad.

Out of breath. Out of dignity. Covered in koi slime and ornamental flower petals.

Just in time to see it: The airship.

Lifting.

Rising.

Majestic. Like a luxury cruise liner had learned to fly after reading motivational quotes.

Kaito stood at the edge, waving. Hana stood next to him, already reviewing a battle plan. Sota was trying to explain to the parrot why a positive mindset is so important.

I waved both arms.

“WAIT!”

Nothing.

They didn’t see me.

I ran to the edge of the platform.

“KAITO! HANAAA! I’M STILL HERE! I’M—”

But it was too late. The airship was already vanishing in the sky.

And that was it.

I screamed into the sky—voice full of anguish, disbelief, and all the pent-up chaos I’d stored since Chapter One:

“DAMMIT RAJAN!”