Speak No Evil

Shino

"Mimoru! Watch out!" I shouted, but it was already too late.

By the swipe of a single tentacle, the boy lost his head, and the last thing I saw before the light in his eyes faded was a little shadow playing around.

Regardless, I had failed. Of course I did—I was an assassin. Assassins exist not to protect, but to kill. We were fighting evil with evil. My job had never been to protect somebody from evil but to take that person out before they could do more evil.

I got careless. I let a couple of rough days dictate my actions. I tried to be someone I wasn't, and that put even more blood on my hands.

Now, behind the boy who was alive no more, there stood the one who was at fault. If only I had noticed it earlier—no, there was no need to think about that. The one that had crept up on us was an iwamono. It was obvious that the one who speaks no evil would be silent; I just didn't pay enough attention.

Once again, it was my fault. Once again, I had tried to be human, and I was reminded that I have no place between them.

It mattered little. I was an assassin—a machine raised for killing. Just like so many other times before, I had to do but one thing, and it was the thing I was best at.

The human-looking white monster standing behind what was left of Mimoru had its abnormally big eyes wide open, staring at its next target with a desire to kill. From its back, four slim tentacles stretched; a single strike with one of those was enough to cut off a limb.

Its ears also stood out, and it had only one pair of hands; that's how I knew it was an iwamono. The covered area was the mouth. No, it would be fairer to say it was stuffed with what looked like a black apple, sealing the opening so that the monster would forever stay quiet.

With both the ability to see and speak, those creatures were often very troublesome. I knew I had to act quick, so before the boy's body fell to the ground, I struck with my knife. It was the only shot I had at keeping the fight short.

Unfortunately, this one was particularly strong. It had the power of Mizaru, and that meant it had the power to see through my moves.

Before my knife was even close, it leaned back, mocking me by showing that it was thinking a step ahead. The corners of its mouth turned up, and the next second, it jumped inside a building through a second-floor open window.

"That spells trouble," I said.

"Gotta find a way to get in—"

My worries were quickly answered, as the iwamono had, in fact, not attempted to get away. It had left a tentacle behind, and that tentacle grabbed onto my leg and dragged me into the apartment.

Once inside, it didn't take long to figure out what had happened.

A woman who had only recently lost her life stood in the corner of the room. In her hand, she had a knife—the same type of knife I carried around. I knew not who she was, but it was clear she was one of my colleagues.

What was more horrifying, however, was happening next to her.

Patting her head, the iwamono had tears flow down its face. Whatever that thing was as a human, it cared a lot for the woman it had killed.

Had she seduced it for the mission? Were they lovers on the run? A part of me hoped for the former to be true, yet another part of me expected the latter. It didn't matter. What's done is done; they couldn't turn time back.

In the dimly lit room, I took aim. A shadow running in my eye told me that my connection to the curse had been established. I had access to the powers of Kikazaru.

I threw my knife while the monster was still focused on its lover. The knife accelerated together with the sound waves and reached the iwamono in an instant.

The mute creature and ran to another room, my knife still lodged into its body. Weaponless, I first ran to my colleague.

"Akira Hinashi... You've fought well."

Those were my parting words towards my fallen sister. I read her name on her watch and etched it into my soul. I grabbed her knife, stood as tall as my stature would allow, and stepped out of the room.

The second I turned towards the hall, a white tentacle almost took my head clean off. I noticed then that the iwamono hadn't run to another room. It stayed in the hall cowering in fear.

One second it was on a killing spree, and the next one I saw it begging for its life—if that could be called begging and not being frozen in pure terror.

I've heard about people trying to study those creatures. Some were even infatuated with them, and those people said that some mono shed their identity only partly.

Me? I was disgusted by every single one of them. This country had one rule you had to absolutely follow. Was it that hard for them to do so? If they couldn't follow simple rules and ended up like this, then maybe calling them humans was wrong in the first place.

Humans have set rules in place—that's why we are different from other beasts. To not be able to follow the most basic ones—maybe the transformation was no curse, but the natural order of things.

With each step I took, the iwamono pushed back. My surroundings were now pitch black, but the monster knew better than to try to move. Iwazaru kept my hearing strong. I would have picked up on the slightest twitch if it tried something.

It was silent. It was dark. I spoke nothing. I had but one thing to do. Whatever that thing had been as a human, now it was just a struggling monster.

I crouched to its level and readied my knife. The air whispered to me from the right at that moment, and I raised the blade to that side. Then up, left, and up again. Four strikes for four tentacles. That had been the iwamono's final struggle. The fight was now truly over.

It was at the moment that everything lit up. It must have been another trick that drew on Mizaru's power, but light alone could do nothing to free that thing from me.

No, it wasn't an attack. It shone light on me, but it didn't do anything else. In fact, it started fading on its own.

Had it been my previous strike? I did not know. The monster started fading into nothingness unprovoked, and it used light to show that to me.

Its giant eyes that looked as if they would pop out were now closed. Its big pointy ears turned downwards, looking almost docile. Its mouth stayed open wide, and only its corners twitched up. That was the expression the iwamono had left behind. Soon after, it faded into thin dust.