An Assassin and Someone Special

Shino

I thought I had witnessed something special. I had never before heard of a monster leaving this world on its own accord.

"It must have been the wounds," I said to myself, but deep down, I knew that wasn't the case.

I stood crouched down there for a couple more seconds, my head filled with theories on what had actually happened, why, and if I should have been worried.

In the end, I shook my head as I remembered that I was only an assassin. I had to kill to protect the country. Nothing more, nothing less. There was no point in bothering to look for answers that didn't concern me.

"It decided to give up on doing evil, so it vanished. Simple as that~"

A man's voice resounded from behind me. It was unexpectedly high-pitched, but it was a man's nevertheless.

"Here," the voice continued. At that moment, I turned around and saw a cup flying my way. When I caught it and looked inside, I saw it again. That flower—I had forgotten about it mid-fight, but it had appeared again.

That moment, Mimoru's shy face popped up in my head. It reminded me of a naive ambition and of how I had lost my true self the last few days.

I took a deep breath and calmed down those thoughts. I was an assassin. I had no reason to remember the many who had died before my eyes.

"The rules say nothing about doing evil though," I responded to the unknown man who had entered via the window.

"There is no such thing as a Sezaru," I continued, but he laughed.

"Haha! Right, that would sound pretty weird."

I knew not what that man wanted from me. And the more I looked at him, I started to think he didn't know either. The light flowing in from the window made it hard for me to see his facial features, and before I could use any powers, he had already turned his back to me.

"Well, I just saw that flower and thought it might be a nice thing to give you."

"Oh? Are you one of my stalkers by chance?"

"It would be better to erase that joke from your head. Yeah, just like you do with all those names."

His tongue was sharp. He clearly knew more than he let on, but I didn't want to hear it. If anything, after just a couple of words exchanged, I hoped I would never see that man again.

"Regardless, keep that thing safe. Your friend's blood was all over it."

I looked at the flower, but it was clean. There was no sign of blood like the man said.

"Oh, by the way, that pretty lady... Such a shame... Her name?"

"Hinashi. Tanaka Hinashi."

"Haha, that's a weak lie! You could have done so much better!"

I didn't want to answer his taunts, so the silence continued for a while.

"Ah... Whatever. I've given you something to do. My job here is done. That boy really loved that plant. By the way, what was his name?"

I took a second before answering, the silence growing colder as the man waited for a name.

"I don't remember."

He let out a sigh.

"Yet that's not a lie, Mister Tanaka... and that's the most disturbing part."

He said that and jumped out the window, leaving just as abruptly as he had appeared.

Suddenly, I was all alone. The only one breathing in a foreign apartment.

No, that was also wrong; there was something else breathing in my hands.

*****

The Akira clan. "A killer," as some random foreigner once called me. A fitting name for a group of assassins who carry out dirty jobs within the metropolis called Tokyo.

A week had passed since that iwamono incident. I brought back news of Hinashii's failure, and I was told what her circumstances were. As expected, she had left the order of her own will and tried to run away with a cursed one who spoke of this country's—no, this world's—unfairness. Maybe she'd been herself drawn in by the man's grandiose ideals.

Hinashi, just like the rest of us Akiras, grew up in an orphanage, never getting to meet her true parents. The only person she'd ever gotten to call "Mother" was a caretaker who was tasked with turning us into killing machines.

Every mistake, every misstep, every good question would get punished. As years passed, Hinashi herself turned into a great assassin, only not the perfect one.

A perfect assassin had never existed in this world. Nobody managed to completely erase their feelings. I was the prime example of a "top of the line" assassin, yet even I myself made mistakes. Some happened not long ago, in fact.

"Still, that man knew..."

I spoke to myself within my helmet as I rode my bike. I liked riding the bike. It calmed me down.

Not only had that guy called me out on my lie about Hinashi's name, but he also called me by the same family name I used as a lie. It couldn't have been that he had thought of us as siblings, or it could have been something much more troublesome.

Whatever it was, I decided not to speak about that man to the order, not until I could gather some more information on him.

I had other things to focus on. My bike ride was for the sake of those things.

"I've gotten weak," I scolded myself. An assassin with feelings had a short life ahead of him. It wasn't that the order hunted us down. If anything, the Akira family cared little as long as we didn't hide or turn into monsters ourselves.

"Kill the mono before it appears. If you fail, kill it after." That was the only mission we had to trouble ourselves with. nothing more, nothing less. She had forgotten that, and fate caught up to her. I had forgotten too, and I was close to paying for it.

With everything that had happened, I got a couple of days off for myself. I took advantage of those days and did things that I liked. I slept and rode my bike.

Having hobbies had been prohibited during our childhood, and I had neither the time nor interest to start something else now.

After those days off, I put myself to work again. One target every day for starters. I completed small tasks to get myself back in the zone, readying myself for my actual mission.

I was riding back from that evening's target. If there was an emotion to speak of that I felt, it was confidence.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and erased two people from my memories. One was my latest target, the other one was Hinashi. I only kept Hinashi's name with me, for it was a hint at the danger that weird man posed.

I reached the door to my apartment, turned the key, and entered the hall.

"Welcome back!" a voice resounded from the other end of the hall.

I lied about not trying to get a new hobby. I was tasked with a flower, and I decided to look after it. No feelings, no hope. Just water and clean air was all I was going to give her. I heard that owning plants was good for one's health, so it was only going to make me more efficient.

That flower now stood on the other end of the hall, her long green hair on full display. She had her back turned at me, yet I could see from her posture that she was really excited to welcome me.

"I'm back," I answered, probing whether everything was fine with her.

"Welcome home!" she said again, her back still turned.

"Chigira, you have to look this way when..."

Only upon hearing my comment did the flower—no, the woman—turn around. Her face wore a blooming smile, and her eyes were full of anticipation. I had no idea what all that excitement was about, but I had no business worrying about it.

"Welcome home, Akira!" she said a third time.

I figured she wasn't used to human interaction. Not long ago, she was still a plant. I decided not to point out her failure. All I had to do was give her water and clean air.

*growl*

And now some food.