I should've known leaving you alone was a mistake

Seiji returned to his room with Hideaki and motioned for him to sit on the bed. Seiji took a seat at his desk, leaning back with a heavy sigh, his eyes steady on Hideaki.

Hideaki sat fidgeting nervously, his handcuffed hands gripping his knees. His gaze darted around the room, avoiding Seiji's piercing stare. The tension hung heavy between them, broken only by the sound of Seiji's measured breath,

"I should've known leaving you alone was a mistake," Seiji began, his voice cold but steady. "How many more lives will you take before you stop to think?" His disappointment was unmistakable. "Do you even realize what you just did out there? Do you understand how close we are to getting caught because of your madness?"

Hideaki's expression twisted, frustration bubbling beneath the surface. "What was I supposed to do instead!? They saw everything! I had to deal with them!" he snapped.

"There were other ways," Seiji replied flatly. "But it's easier for you to kill, isn't it? You don't stop to think of consequences. If someone connects those bodies to us, it's over. Do you even care what happens next?"

"Tch!" Hideaki hissed, his fists trembling, the metal from the cuffs was digging into his wrists, yet, he couldn't find the words to convey the chaos that began to form in his mind.

Seiji leaned forward, his tone sharpened. "You've completely lost control. Again. You're not in your right mind, and you know it. This isn't just some passing anger or stress - you're broken, Hideaki. Crazy."

Hideaki's head shot up, his eyes wild. "So what if I'm crazy? Maybe I like myself this way."

"Do you?" Seiji's voice was icy. "So, you enjoy losing control and acting like a complete maniac? If that's the case, then you've got a serious problem. You're so consumed by this... obsession, that you can't see how it's destroying you - and everything around you." He leaned forward, his tone sharpened with disappointment.

"Shut up!" Hideaki snapped "The only thing that it's destroying is human lifes! But I don't care about others!"

Seiji's gaze hardened."You don't care about others? Then tell me, why are you here? If that were true, you wouldn't be crawling back to me every time things spiral out of control."

"I'm not crawling to you! Tch! I kill people! It's my solution for everything you idiot!" Hideaki spated out loud "But you wouldn't understand!" his voice cracked, raising with desperation. "I just like doing it! I really like the image of blood! That scarlet-red hue... dropping from people's wounds like a stream..." He started drifting off. "This colour is so beautiful... And their faces, their screams-" His voice rose to a manic pitch, laughter spilling out. "Hehehe! It's fun! Hehehe! I love seeing them fear me! Seeing them in pain! Hehehehe!"

"Stop."

Seiji's command cut through Hideaki's hysteria like a blade.

"Your killing isn't a solution. It never was."

Hideaki flinched. His laughter faltered, his gaze flickering. "H-huh...?"

Seiji didn't let up. "You like killing so much? And what, you think you can keep doing this forever? That it won't come back to you? That you won't get caught again? That I'll just sit here and listen to you spew this garbage like it means something?"

He stood up, his presence looming. "Let me make something clear to you, Hideaki. You are a pathetic excuse for a person. You think you're powerful, but you're nothing but a mindless animal chasing blood like a starving beast. This isn't control. This is self-destruction." His voice was razor-sharp, cutting through whatever argument Hideaki was about to throw back.

Hideaki's jaw clenched. Suddenly, he jerked again in panic.

“NO!” he shouted. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD!" Hideaki looked up at him. There was something wild in his gaze, but also… broken. "I-I don't care! I won't stop. No matter what you say, I'll keep killing. And one day, I'll kill you too."

Seiji didn't flinch. "Then hurry up."

The words dropped like a hammer.

"Because I'm sick of hearing the same tired threats from a coward who can't even control himself."

Silence.

Hideaki stared at him, breath hitching. His fingers twitched, nails practically digging into his palm but his body remained frozen.

The manic energy that had been driving him a moment ago was gone, replaced with something else - something unspoken.

Seiji exhaled heavily.

"You don't deserve anyone's trust," he murmured quietly, though it sounded more like a statement than a reproach.

He was silent for a moment, then added under his breath:
"And I still don't know why I didn't throw you out."

Maintaining the illusion of calm, as if nothing had happened, he stood up and was about to go back to work.

Then, suddenly-

grrrrrrgggll~

The loud rumbling of Hideaki's stomach shattered the moment. He jolted, startled, his face turning red with embarrassment.

Seiji exhaled sharply, his patience thinning.

He glanced at his watch.

"It's almost dinner time. I probaby shouldn't make you anything to eat for what you did.. but honestly, I was getting a little hungry too. This evening has been... exhausting."

With that, he rose from his chair.

"Come to the kitchen. I'll make something quick."

He walked toward the door, then glanced back at Hideaki, who remained seated, still shaken.

"You coming? Or are you planning to starve yourself like an idiot too?"

"I-idiot..." Hideaki muttered quietly, cursing under his breath. Then he gazed back at Seiji showing his arms "Free me."

"I'll think about it."

[Police Investigation: The Bloody Alley Massacre]

Detective Nakamura stood frozen at the edge of the scene, his sharp eyes scanning the carnage. He had seen death before - stabbings, shootings, even arson cases - but this? This was something out of a nightmare.

The bodies were torn apart, intestines strewn across the pavement, organs were chaotically splayed out.

The stench of blood and death hung thick in the air.

Beside him, Officer Tanaka gagged, covering his mouth as he fought to steady himself. "This... this isn't human. Who the hell could do something like this?"

Nakamura didn't answer immediately. He forced himself to step closer, his shoes squelching against the wet, crimson-stained ground. He crouched near the first body, his expression tightening as he examined the jagged, clean cuts.

"No conventional weapon could have done this," he murmured.

Tanaka swallowed hard, regaining enough composure to contribute. "The forensic team's detecting residual traces of Magic Ability. They're calling in the specialists now."

Nakamura sighed, painfuly, as he was regretting not mnaging to come here sonner, when they got their first call.

"I insisted it was nothing important... that we will wait for Sekiguchi. Tanaka listened to me... And meanwhile... some sick lunatic has caused a real massacre here..." he whispered more to himself than to anyone.

By now, the SAAS had arrived on the scene. Their equipment pulsed faintly, scanning the air for residual traces of magical energy. One of them, a tall woman with a stern expression, approached Nakamura and Tanaka.

"It's confirmed," she said flatly, holding out a device with readings glowing on its surface. "This was Blood Control Magic Ability. The traces are faint now, but whoever did this is skilled. They were efficient and deliberate."

Nakamura's head snapped up at that. His jaw tightened, his eyes narrowing with grim recognition. There was only one name that came to his mind.

"Blood Control Magic Ability reminds me with only one person - Miyahara Hideaki." He murmured to himself.

Tanaka's face turned pale. "Nakamura.. Look at their forheads..."

"Idiot" , "Big Idiot" and "The Bigest Idiot" were craved on each's forhead.

Nakamura narrowed his eyes.

"Miyahara..." He grumbled angrily.

Kisaragi arrived at the scene a few minutes after the confirmation of the Magic Ability usage.

She walked slowly, silently, with her hands in the pockets of her coat, as if the smell of blood no longer affected her. She stopped next to Detective Nakamura.

She didn't speak right away either. Instead, her gaze slowly moved across the bodies.

"Three bodies. No, not bodies anymore. Fragments. Tissue. Scattered like..."

She didn't finish the thought.

She stepped forward.

Officer Tanaka backed away upon seeing her focus.

Kisaragi stood at the entrance of the alley.

The stench of death hit her like a wall – thick, sticky, forcing its way into her nose and lungs. Still, she didn't take a step back. Her eyes swept across the crime scene with a strange calmness that even the most seasoned officers lacked.

She took a few more steps forward, her boots squelching in the blood. Tanaka looked at her with disgust — and something else. Worry.

But she was in her own world.

She crouched down. Gloved fingers touched the asphalt. A red smear that looked like random blood caught her attention.

She hesitated, then closed her eyes. Her thoughts returned to previous scenes. What she had seen before; all brutally commited murders by Hideaki.

Then, she leaned over one of the victims — a woman in her thirties, eyes wide open, intestines laid out... carelessly. On her forhead showed carved kanji "Big Idiot"

She frowned. The cuts on uncovered parts of her body were clean, precise, like those of a surgeon. But it wasn't just about the cutting.

Her fingers reached for her notebook. She began sketching the body's position, marking the locations of the wounds, guts that were scattered aroud. And the kanji itself.

Moments later, Kisaragi leaned over another corpse.

She leaned in. The flashlight reflected off polished blood. The skin on the forehead had been carved as well. Letter by letter, deep, with an eerie precision.

"Idiot..." she whispered.

"You were right. He's stil out there. Somewhere around this district. When it happened, we were outside Sekiguchi's office. At the last moment... I decided to stop following him and come here... But... by the time it happened, it was too late..." Nakamura said grimly.

Kisaragi looked at him. Her eyes were sharp "Nakamura-san, do you know what it means?"

Nakamura shook his head.

She looked at another victim. Intestines pulled out and curled chaotically. Severed fingers tossed by the wall.

"Each time, he plays with blood like it's paint. With weapons like they're toys. With people like they're his dolls. And with their innards, as if trying to understand... or find something inside a human being. He acts like a child who never got what he wanted in life. An adult whose mind stopped maturing during adolescence. But what looks like chaos might be... the key to his fractured mind."

Nakamura frowned. "It's just slaughter."

"For you maybe. But for him? It's a statement."

'As if he wanted to say something. As if he wanted us... to understand what's eating him deep inside.'

She thought, then fully turned to him

"Remember what I said? His 'art' is how he vents pressure. During the attack, he falls into a trance. He carves, draws, arranges — all of it driven by inner chaos, not intent. And when it's over... he disappears. Like something burnt out. But now? I see a deeper meaning in it. So far he never made such connecting patterns on his victims. And now? One statement bigger than another. I see that maybe we don't know everything yet."

They fell silent. Behind them, the sounds of forensic work filled the air. Kisaragi kept taking notes. With each passing minute, she drifted further — not physically, but mentally. Threads connected in her mind. She recalled previous cases. Pixie. Earlier murders. Even scenes never included in official reports.

"All this is a recurring motif: closure, opening, bloody slaughter."

Tanaka glanced sideways. "Doesn't this make you sick?"

"It would, if it were just chaos," she replied quietly, as if speaking more to herself than to him. "But this isn't just chaos this time, Tanaka-san. I'm starting to understand it more and more... His actions are chaotic, driven by emotion, but beneath all this, is a hidden language."

"These signs," she pointed at the kanji "It's only comfirmation of my theory."

She knelt, studying the details of the cut. The lines were even, every motion deliberate. It didn't look like something done in a rage. This was planned.

"He did this first," she said calmly pointing at "Idiot" kanji. "He had to. Before anything else. Before the 'bigger idiots'. He knelt over him... and carved this like... like carving a pumpkin."

'And to think everyone sees only the carnage here.'

She couldn't look away. She slowly stood.

Detective Nakamura eyed her suspiciously.

"What are you doing?" he asked, noticing her focus.

"Kisaragi-san, don't go further. Not everything is secured yet." Tanaka added.

She didn't respond. She took two more steps and knelt again. Her heart was racing, as if she had understood something — not fully, but enough to feel that familiar tingle under her skin.

Her gaze drifted again over the organs scattered across the ground. The eyes of one of the victims lay several meters away, staring into emptiness.

She sat on her heels. People passed by, someone shouted into a radio, the techs worked — but for her, time had stopped.

"Such a childish yet horrifying treatment of innocent people... Such impulsivity... Such a rage... And all this, is mixed whit his 'art of blood'."

She smiled gently — and only for a moment. So quickly, no one noticed.

Then she stood. Turned to Nakamura.

"I'll do a scatter pattern analysis. It might reveal his movement vectors."

"He tore them apart," Nakamura growled. "He wasn't throwing rocks, Kisaragi. These are people. Not some goddamn physics models."

"What if he threw himself?"

He went silent. She stared him straight in the eyes.

"What if he's a victim too — but of something entirely different?"

"And what about Sekiguchi? Could he be involved in this?" Tanaka asked them.

Nakamura rubbed his chin, and then exhaled "I doubt it... By the time it happened, he was at work, and he couldn't just walk away from it so freely, to help plan the murder. And even if by some miracle, he was at home, he didn't have time to go there and go back so quickly. The whole place is few streets away from the apartment itself. I think it's just one big coincidence." Then he gazed again at the victims again "A bloodlusting coincidence..."