Shhhhhhh...
Water kept running from the faucet.
Right when the restroom lights had suddenly gone out, the odd little malfunction caught the attention of a hotel attendant walking down the corridor with a tray.
He stopped and looked toward the pitch-black restroom entrance at the end of the hall, frowning to himself.
"Huh? That's weird. Why'd the lights go out? Burned-out tube? I could've sworn some guest in black just went in there..."
He edged over to the doorway and leaned in, trying to see through the darkness.
If there really was a guest inside, leaving them stuck in the dark would be a terrible look.
"Sir? You still in there?"
He was already running through the proper apology in his head for what had looked, at a glance, like a very bad-tempered customer. Then his nose twitched.
Under the expensive air freshener in the restroom, another smell lingered.
Rust.
Sweet and metallic.
"...What is that smell?"
He muttered under his breath and reached along the wall until his fingers found the backup light switch.
Click.
The fluorescent tubes flickered twice, then came back on.
Bright light flooded the restroom.
The attendant swept his gaze across the room.
Nothing. There was nothing there.
The marble floor was spotless. Not even a splash of water ruined the shine. No one stood by the sinks.
Other than the faucet still running, and that faint rusty smell that hadn't completely faded, there was no sign anyone had ever been inside at all.
He shot one last uneasy look at the closed stall doors, then exhaled.
Walking over to turn off the faucet, he scratched the back of his head and muttered on his way out,
"Weird. I really thought somebody went in here. Must've imagined it. Maybe the motion sensor's messed up. Better tell engineering to check it tomorrow..."
---
At that same moment, hundreds of meters below the building.
Touma Hayase used that brief stretch of total darkness to move like a ghost. He slipped through the shadows in complete silence and landed on a concealed open-air platform beneath the hotel.
In an empty corner hidden by both the night and the building's shadow, he stood still with a blank expression.
At his feet, his own shadow twisted like something alive.
He crouched and slowly pulled a flip phone out of that black mass.
It was still warm. Still slick with fresh blood.
Toji Fushiguro's last possession.
The screen lit up.
Another incoming call from "Shiu Kong."
A follow-up.
Touma answered and raised the bloodstained phone to his ear.
Shiu Kong spoke right away, mild curiosity in his voice and no wasted words.
"Hey, what happened earlier? Why didn't you pick up? How'd it go? You sort things out with that mystery boss? Pay good enough?"
Touma's eyes didn't move.
They were flat and still. There wasn't even the slightest trace of emotion left from killing a living man moments earlier.
Voiceprint Analysis and Mimicry did the rest.
When he spoke, the voice coming out was a perfect copy of Toji Fushiguro's, lazy, arrogant, and annoyed in exactly the right way.
"Yeah, I met him. Guy's a pain in the ass, too many damn rules, but... he's loaded. Terms are set. Already got the deposit in cash."
Then, keeping that same rough Toji attitude, Touma added,
"I'll be tailing this superstitious bastard for a while, so unless you've got a job that'll make me stupid rich overnight, quit calling. I won't have time for you."
"Fine. Got it."
Shiu Kong didn't notice a thing.
To him, it just sounded like Toji had landed another big contract and was about to disappear for a while. He hung up without any suspicion.
And with that, the final piece clicked into place.
A perfect closed loop.
Everything had gone the way Touma predicted.
If Toji hadn't entered the restroom on his own, there had already been a backup plan waiting. Touma could've used Shiu Kong's voice, along with the slightest suggestion, to draw him out of the lounge and into that enclosed space.
But fortune was on his side tonight.
Toji's own dislike of trouble had guided him straight into the killing ground Touma prepared for him, and he'd done it willingly, with his guard down.
Touma knew exactly how terrifying Heavenly Restriction made a person's senses.
That was why he'd hidden in the restroom's shadows beforehand, pushing Natural and Thin Presence to their limit, wiping away his presence, his killing intent, even the beat of his own heart until there was almost nothing left to detect.
Enough to fool even Toji Fushiguro's animal instincts.
The moment Toji turned on the faucet, the copied voice of Shiu Kong scrambled the last bit of judgment he had left.
After that, the kill sequence left him no breathing room.
Cursed Speech locked him down for half a second.
When Toji shattered it by force, the tiny opening created by that reset was immediately filled by Projection Sorcery's spatial lock.
And in the darkness, backed by Cursed Energy and the violent release of Extreme Overload Control, the decapitation was completed.
But killing him was only the first part.
The moment the blade finished its work, Touma used the Ten Shadows Technique. His shadow opened like a bottomless mouth and swallowed everything: Toji's huge headless corpse, the spray of hot blood, even the droplets still hanging in the air.
All of it disappeared into the darkness before he left.
That was why the attendant found a restroom with no trace of violence.
A locked-room killing with nothing left behind.
As for anyone figuring out who he was, that was impossible.
The reservation at the top-floor restaurant had been real, but the man behind it had never been any overseas tycoon. Touma had gotten those details through his own channels long before tonight.
He'd already checked the timing. Already mapped the surveillance blind spots.
From beginning to end, he never entered the building through a normal route.
There wasn't a single frame anywhere in the hotel's security system that showed his face.
Neither the Windows observers nor the civilian police would ever connect him to this disappearance.
And that was only if anyone even treated it as a disappearance in the first place.
Toji was exactly the kind of man who could vanish without anyone finding it strange. He had no fixed schedule, no stable base, no predictable pattern. He drifted wherever he pleased.
Touma had killed Toji Fushiguro without hesitation, cutting out a dangerously unstable variable.
But for everything that came next, he still needed the name "Toji Fushiguro" to remain alive.
So he would bury himself under that infamous face.
Wearing the perfect skin of the Sorcerer Killer, a name terrifying enough to make curse users flinch while still staying under the radar of jujutsu's upper ranks, he would make quiet, natural contact with the fanatic cult known as the Star Religious Group.
And under that cover, he would look for the truth about that woman.