A few hours later, Toji showed up at the address Kong sent him.
Same tight black shirt. Cheap casual jacket thrown over it. Same loose, arrogant walk, like the street belonged to him.
Hands in his pockets, he tilted his head back and looked up at the luxury hotel towering over some of the most expensive land in Shinjuku.
Gold-trimmed revolving doors. Valets in spotless uniforms. Money, everywhere you looked.
Toji's mouth hooked into a cold little smile.
"This guy has more cash than brains."
That settled it.
Whoever this client was, he looked ripe for the picking.
With the simple plan of if the terms suck, I'm walking, but not before I eat every expensive thing in the place, Toji strolled into the lobby like he belonged there. A gold-trimmed VIP elevator took him to the top floor, where a private reservation-only restaurant waited behind polished doors and quiet lighting.
At the front desk, a tailcoated server stopped him with a perfect customer-service smile. Too perfect.
"My sincerest apologies, sir. The gentleman who reserved the private room is still on the way. Minor traffic delay. Per hotel policy, and at the guest's request, we can't seat anyone until the reservation holder arrives in person. If you don't mind waiting in the lounge for a short while."
That polished smile irritated him on sight.
This is exactly the kind of rich-person protocol garbage Kong should be dealing with. Nothing annoyed Toji faster than being made to wait.
Still, he was already here. Walking out hungry would be stupid.
He was already planning revenge. The second he got seated, he was ordering the most absurdly expensive bottles on the list. Every last one. If this flashy idiot wasn't going to get fleeced, then what was even the point of the trip?
"Bathroom," Toji said, waving a hand. "Come get me when he gets here."
He turned and headed for the corridor without waiting for a reply.
The washroom door was heavy wood. He pushed it open and stepped inside.
Big room. Warm lighting. Faint smell of expensive imported incense. Quiet enough to feel staged.
Nothing looked wrong.
He walked to the marble sink and twisted the gold-plated faucet, about to splash some cold water on his face and wash off the irritation from losing money all afternoon.
Clear water rushed out with a soft hiss.
And then, from less than two meters behind him, a voice drifted over.
"You got here early too?"
Shiu Kong's voice. Exactly Shiu Kong's voice.
That same tired mid-low tone. Same rhythm. Same slight drop at the end.
Perfect.
Toji's hands stopped.
Every instinct in his body lit up at once.
He wasn't confused for long. He reached for the faucet, ready to shut it off and turn around.
Didn't you say the client only wanted to speak to me? he thought, already annoyed. So what are you doing here, you sneaky bastard? Trying to score the free meal too? Or planning to cut me out and take the job yourself?
But before he turned, his eyes caught the mirror over the basin.
His pupils shrank.
The person standing behind him, the one speaking in Kong's voice, was half-hidden where the hallway light gave way to shadow.
Wrong clothes. Wrong build. Wrong shoulders. Wrong way of standing.
That wasn't Shiu Kong. Not even close.
Who the hell...?
His instincts were already screaming at him to move.
But before he could.
Before he could even sort out why his ears were hearing one man while his eyes were seeing another.
The figure in the mirror moved his lips. And Kong's voice came out again.
Only now there was something else in it too. Something heavy. Something that pressed down on the body like a command hammered into steel.
"Don't move."
What!?
In the split second it took Toji to realize that voice sounded exactly like Shiu Kong, and to start processing how that made no sense at all, pure horror slammed into him.
Those two words had been completely ordinary. Nothing special about them.
But the instant they hit his ears, his body locked up.
The flesh he'd honed to the limit through Heavenly Restriction, that ridiculous monster body of his, froze like someone had driven steel spikes through every muscle all at once. An absolute force pressed down on him, cold and merciless, with no room to resist.
Every muscle went rigid. Even his blood felt frozen.
A jujutsu sorcerer!?
How?
I should've felt him. A shift in the air, a trace of danger, something. So how the hell did he get this close without setting off a single alarm in my head?
And that still wasn't the real killing move.
Less than half a second after that "Don't move," a soft click sounded in the restroom.
All the lights went out.
The room dropped into absolute darkness, and at the exact same moment his vision vanished, something else touched his skin.
Metal.
A thin edge, freezing cold, wickedly sharp, slid against the thick side of his neck and started to cut. Silent as a snake. Fast enough to make lightning look slow.
"HRAAAGH!"
Faced with death, the Sorcerer Killer's instincts exploded.
Toji roared like a beast, eyes bloodshot, and the monstrous strength packed into his body detonated in one violent burst. The binding force of Cursed Speech groaned under the strain, then started to crack apart from raw physical power alone.
He twisted his neck hard, forcing it sideways, barely slipping past the blade's path.
His muscles tore free.
Dodged it!
A savage flash of triumph went through him.
He only needed to get a little closer. That was all he needed. In the dark, he'd tear this sneaking rat apart with his bare hands.
Except he was wrong. Way too wrong.
The attack waiting for him was nastier than he'd imagined, and a lot more thorough.
In the gap between breaking the Cursed Speech and moving again, that tiny instant where his body had to reset itself first, space itself warped.
The feeling was sickening.
His movement froze. His thoughts froze. For that instant, even his existence seemed nailed in place by a second force, one completely different from the first. And this one was worse. Much worse. The kind of power brute strength couldn't bully its way through.
It felt like he'd been crushed flat and pinned inside a frame with no depth, no motion, no time.
For one twenty-fourth of a second, Toji Fushiguro became a specimen under glass.
Helpless.
Waiting to be cut apart.
And the blade, knocked a little off course when he'd broken the first restraint, didn't stop for even a moment.
It slashed again through the darkness in a clean, brutal arc.
Harder, faster and deadlier than before.
Then it bit into flesh.
Shhk.
The wet, ugly sound of meat splitting filled the dark.
There was no recovering from that.
His eyes stayed wide, fury and disbelief frozen inside them as the strike finished its work. His severed head fell into darkness along with the last shreds of his consciousness, taking all that rage and confusion down with it.