Moving Forward

I neglected to answer him. Instead, I merely stood there, silent and wary. Of all the people I could've run into today, it's him, and it's not even because I dislike or fear him. It's more so that he's... too hyper.

Sakuno suddenly ran over and threw his arm around my shoulder.

"I said, how's it going?!" he shouted with a massive grin.

Despite my obvious displeasure and attempts to release myself, his grip only strengthened.

"Let go of me, Sakuno," I grumbled.

"What, man? We haven't seen each other in months, and that's how you greet me? I'm hurt, you know. And here I was thinking we could finally catch up."

"I'm on a mission right now. Let. Go."

"Sheesh, fine, fine. Stuck-up prick."

"What did you just say?"

"Nothing, haha! Nothing at all."

He picked up a glass of wine on the table and took a sip. Looks like his avid thirst for wine still hasn't gone away.

"Ah!" he grinned. "Strawberry. Not bad."

"Where have you been?" I asked.

"Come on, now. Is there a need to interrogate-"

The moment we heard a faint knock, the two of us lifted our guns and pushed our backs against each other.

"It wasn't just me, right?" he asked.

My eyes looked to every corner shrouded in darkness. There was nothing. Since Sakuno also heard it, there's no doubting it. Someone or something made a knock.

A couple of seconds later, we heard it again. Sakuno and I turned to each other. I pointed at myself with my thumb before throwing out a gun sign, a signal that I was taking point. Sakuno nodded his head.

Together, we crept into the hallway behind the dancefloor. I reached my hand for the wall and knocked on it once. To my surprise, a knock answered back.

"Stragglers?" Sakuno whispered.

"Unlikely," I answered. "I made sure to check every corner."

"Clearly, you didn't since that guy from before almost got your ass."

"Shut up. I'll take point. Let's move."

Down the hall was a vault door. I moved closer to it while Sakuno watched my back. Again, I knocked on it, and another knock came back.

Sakuno walked over to the other side and lifted his pistol, ready to react to whatever was on the other side. We locked eyes and nodded our heads.

I holstered my pistol and grabbed onto the giant spindle. With a heavy push, it began to rotate. I kept twisting further and further to the left until the vault finally began to open.

Sakuno's eyes looked ready to kill, but the moment he caught a glimpse of what was inside, his hand lowered. After noticing the perturbed expression on his face, I peeked my head past the doors.

Scattered across the ground were a couple of young women in bondage. Their hands and ankles were tied together while their mouths were covered by a piece of tape.

"Hostages, huh?" Sakuno scoffed. "Looks like you took out a real societal menace, bud."

I didn't even realize that my fists were harshly clenched. After seeing this, I wish I had done more. He deserved much worse than the swift death that I granted him.

I knelt down next to one of the women and peeled off the tape as gently as possible.

"Oh!" she cried after taking a deep breath. "Thank you... Thank you so much!"

"Are any of you hurt?" I asked.

"N-no, I don't think so. That man... He said... He said was going to..."

I rested my hand on her shoulder.

"It's alright now. The one you're talking about is dead."

Sakuno helped me release all the girls from their bondages. They showered us with praise and joyful tears.

"If I may be so... 'inquisitive,' beautiful ladies, would you mind doing us a favor?" Sakuno asked with a bow. "The police are coming here now. If they ask who saved you, kindly tell them that you don't know, hm? It'll be a problem if they decide to look for us while we're out saving whoever else needs it."

"Yes, we'll do that," one of them said. "Thank you again."

"Heh, no problem! Now, if you don't mind, my friend and I needa bounce before they show up. Adios!"

Despite my protest, Sakuno forcefully pulled me by the arm until we escaped through the back door. Just in time, a collection of sirens could be heard coming from the nightclub entrance.

"Follow me," Sakuno said.

Reluctantly, I did as he asked. We made our way through the narrow alleyways, climbing up a ladder that rose to the top of a nearby hotel.

As Sakuno embraced the chilly winds of the night, he sat down at the edge of the building with a smile that told me to join him.

"Tokyo seems so peaceful nowadays," he chuckled as I sat down. "I remember back then, we had jobs coming in one right after the other. So many expired candles that needed to be snuffed. Now look at us. We even have time to chill and relax without Watcher calling us in for a new gig."

"Do you think that's a bad thing?" I asked.

"Hm... I guess it can go both ways. The streets are cleaner, people are safer, and all those evil folks are gone for good. That's great, but... I can't help but think about us. Widely feared and infamous in the underworld, the 'Agents of the Hunt.' What do we do once the world doesn't need us anymore?"

So even Sakuno has thought about this. I admit it's a relief that I'm not the only one, but it's still sad.

"The only thing we can do is move forward," I said. "If the world wants to move on, then what choice do we have but to follow it?"

"That's the shitty part, though. We're the same, you and I," Sakuno scoffed as he pointed at us both. "We grew up with the Hunt. Whatever life we had before, or what it could've been, doesn't exist anymore. We were trained to kill at the snap of a finger. Do you think people like us can adjust to the normal world? Do we... even have a right to?"

"I don't know about that. However, at the end of the day, we're just a pair of humans. We breathe the same air and bleed the same blood. We killed so that the common people wouldn't suffer, and it worked, didn't it? Like you said, we're not out there hunting all the time anymore. As much as it sucks for us, I'd call that mission accomplished."

"... Hah. I guess so. At least we're both still here, alive and well. Who knows. Maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe we'll find something else worthwhile to occupy our time."

We sat there for a moment to enjoy the scenery. A cold breeze beneath the night sky, the sound of traffic coming from below, and above all... company.

Sakuno is the only person I can sit in silence with and not feel a shred of awkwardness. We've known each other for more than a decade, and I can safely say that I wouldn't rather have anyone else watch my back. Not even Watcher himself.

"Son, you there?" Watcher suddenly said through the comms.

Speak of the devil. I reached for my earpiece and began speaking.

"The job is done, sir. Mitsuki is dead."

"Good, good. Well? Anything to say about this guy?"

"Nothing, sir."

"Tch... Come on, son. I suppose at the very least, he won't be giving nobody any trouble ever again. Ain't that right?"

"Agreed, sir. On a side note, Sakuno is here with me."

"Come again? Did you say Sakuno?"

"Yes, sir."

"Hand him the earpiece."

I pulled the earpiece from my ear and handed it over to Sakuno, who took it without question.

"What up, boss?" he grinned.

"WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN, KID?!"

Watcher's voice was so long that I heard it blasting through that tiny earpiece.

"Whoa, chill out, boss," Sakuno said nervously.

"Don't you fucking tell me to chill out. You disappear for months without saying a single word, then I find you butting in on an operation?! The hell were you doing, busting a nut in every corner of Tokyo?!"

"Eh?! I would never!"

Their constant back and forth went on for a while, but the sound of their voices eventually became lost with the downtown nightlife.

Sakuno's right. It has become a lot more peaceful than back then, enough for Watcher to mess around with us over the comms. He used to only call us for missions, and that was pretty much every hour of our waking moments. I'm glad he's gotten a lot more lax, but again, that leaves us.

That's right... In a world that has moved on without us, the only thing we can do is follow it.