11:45 AM – The Waiting Game
Rei sat alone at a roadside café nestled between a bookstore and an old pachinko parlor, the kind of place locals passed daily but never truly noticed. A chipped wooden table wobbled slightly under his elbow. The sky hung in a dull overcast haze, muting the world in tones of grey and asphalt. Around him, life moved—couples chatted, buses hissed to a stop, spoons clinked against ceramic—but Rei was disconnected from it all.
His attention was laser-focused on the screen in front of him.
A small, blinking dot crawled across a digital map. He watched it move, frame by frame, heartbeat by heartbeat. The tracking chip he’d planted in Aizawa’s car earlier was working perfectly. Every turn the man took, every traffic light delay—it all played out in real time.
Rei wasn’t just watching. He was predicting.
He’ll avoid the expressways… can’t risk toll cams.
Heading west now… probably avoiding industrial zones.
The blinking dot veered again, sliding past the outskirts of Shinjuku, then finally broke free from Tokyo’s dense arteries altogether. The shift was significant. Roads narrowed. Dots on the map thinned. Signals weakened.
Then—suddenly—it stopped.
A static red pin replaced the motion.
Rei pinched to zoom in. A long-abandoned residential zone. Overgrown satellite imagery. No transit access. No Wi-Fi coverage. A dead zone on the edge of civilization.
Aizawa had reached his destination.
Rei leaned back slowly, the hard plastic chair creaking beneath him. He let the bitter black coffee coat his tongue as he absorbed the implications. An old house, deep in the trees. The perfect place to disappear someone—or something.
His fingers tapped twice on the edge of his phone, as if confirming an unspoken truth.
“A secluded hideout,” he murmured. “Out of sight. Out of mind.”
He finished the last sip of coffee, stood, and slid the phone into his pocket. His heartbeat remained steady. Not from lack of tension—but from perfect control.
The game had finally reached its final board.
---
12:30 PM – Arrival at the Target Location
The taxi ride stretched on like a drawn-out breath. The driver, a man in his late fifties with thinning hair and a distant stare, didn’t ask questions. Maybe it was the hoodie. Maybe it was the unblinking silence. Maybe it was something deeper—an animal instinct that told him not to poke the passenger in the back seat.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Rei kept his gaze fixed on the window, but his mind wasn’t taking in scenery. It was processing data.
Woods on both sides. No visible power lines—minimal infrastructure.
No street signs. No footpaths. No public utilities.
He scanned every detail: broken fences, moss-covered stone walls, a rusted vending machine half-buried in weeds. Nature had reclaimed the area. The very air felt heavier, more primal. The kind of place that had been left to rot—but still breathed secrets.
Rei adjusted his hoodie, pulling it lower over his brow. As the cab rolled onto a gravel path that hissed beneath the tires, the signal on his phone dropped to a single bar.
They were close.
The house revealed itself gradually—like a predator lurking in the trees. First a sagging roof, then a collapsed front step, then full exposure. The structure stood defiantly amidst the wilderness, old but not abandoned. The kind of place that didn’t welcome visitors. The kind of place you didn’t just find.
Rei memorized the terrain as the taxi slowed: thick tree lines at all angles, no driveways, no overhead cameras, no neighboring homes in sight. Wind stirred dry leaves across the dirt, whispering secrets that had long gone unheard.
As the cab finally came to a halt, Rei paid in exact change. No words were exchanged. The driver didn’t wait around.
Rei stepped out into the quiet.
Not the peaceful kind of quiet—the dangerous kind. The kind that felt deliberate. Engineered. Controlled.
He took one deep breath, letting the pine and dust fill his lungs, then started walking toward the house—not sneaking, not skulking, but walking.
12:40 PM – Assessing Security
Rei crouched behind the dense tree line, the undergrowth prickling against his legs as he observed the house from a low vantage point. He didn’t blink. Didn’t move. Every breath was controlled, shallow, precise—like a sniper waiting for wind to settle.
His gaze swept across the perimeter, parsing the scene in layers.
Five guards.
Each one was more than a body—they were patterns, obstacles, variables in a larger equation.
-
Guard #1 stood at the front entrance, leaning against a splintered wooden frame. A cigarette dangled from his lips, smoke curling lazily into the air. He exhaled slow and steady, the picture of boredom—but his eyes were active, sweeping back and forth with an automated rhythm. Every ten seconds. Not enough to be careless. Enough to suggest he didn’t expect trouble. His right hand never strayed far from his belt. Holstered sidearm, low draw position. Sloppy grip.
-
Guard #2 moved along the left side, patrolling in lazy arcs. His route was mechanical—ten steps, pause, pivot, scan. Repeat. Twenty-second loops. Rei noted the man’s shoulder tension. Too loose. Arrogance disguised as confidence. That kind of flaw got people killed.
-
Guard #3 prowled the rear corner, his stance tight and weapon raised in a half-ready position. Not casual. He swept with methodical precision, pausing at every angle for longer than necessary. Experienced. Possibly ex-special forces. He wasn’t just watching—he was waiting.
-
Guard #4 was perched on the rooftop, crouched behind a set of rusted panels. He clutched binoculars, not a rifle—so not a sniper. No rifle case nearby. No suppressor, no spotter gear. Just a spotter, or worse—someone pretending to be one. Poor close-combat posture. He wouldn’t last in a direct engagement.
-
Guard #5 was a flicker behind a curtain. Rei had only caught a glimpse—a silhouette moving past a second-floor window. No visible gear. No patterns. Unknown threat level. That made him dangerous.
The house’s design—an old post-war structure with narrow siding, multiple blind corners, and a collapsed shed on the east side—created overlapping fields of vision. There were no true blind spots.
But overlap meant delay. Delay in line of sight. Delay in reaction.
Rei mapped it all in his head. Calculated the rotations. The pivot points. The sync points. And there—at timestamp 12:49:17—it happened:
A micro-gap.
12:50 PM – The Distraction Tactic
Rei moved like a shadow, silent beneath the cover of branches. From his jacket, he retrieved a small black device—a speaker, unbranded and seamless, bought through encrypted messages and dead drops. It was shaped like a pocket flashlight, but far more dangerous.
The speaker could emulate the sound of unsuppressed gunfire at peak decibels. Echo modeling. Directional projection. High-end black market tech from the kind of sellers who didn’t offer refunds—or mercy.
He crept to a nearby streetlight pole, half-rusted and leaning. Attached it with magnetic clamps. Adjusted the angle so the sound would reverberate toward the trees behind the house.
Then he pulled out his phone.
A custom app. One button. No delay.
His thumb hovered.
He counted the rotations again.
3… 2… 1—
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Three sharp cracks ruptured the quiet forest air like a thunderclap. It wasn’t just loud—it was convincing. The speaker simulated muzzle echo, shell casing drop, even environmental bounce. It sounded like someone had fired a rifle from ten meters into the woods.
The response was immediate.
-
Guard #1 jolted, dropping his cigarette. His head whipped toward the sound. One hand went to his gun, the other to his earpiece. He barked into his comms—words Rei couldn’t hear, but didn’t need to.
-
Guard #2 broke formation, sprinting toward the sound with zero hesitation. His route took him straight into the trees, abandoning the left side completely.
-
Guard #3 hesitated. He wasn’t fooled easily. He moved slower, gun raised, scanning for a second shooter. Not reckless—but misdirected.
-
Guard #4 ducked behind the rooftop panel, binoculars discarded. He surveyed the treeline, tense, unfocused.
-
Guard #5 parted the curtain. His figure loomed in the window, attention fully drawn toward the woods.
Rei glanced at his watch.
12:50:34.
Every eye was off the front entrance.
Three seconds.
He moved.
.
---.