7:00 a.m.In a quiet house on the western side of the United Capital, the first rays of sunlight pierced through the clear glass, casting their glow upon a neatly arranged dining table—so pristine, it was as if chaos or sin had never once touched this home.

  Victor, with his usual calm demeanor and faint, unreadable smile, slowly brought a cup of coffee to his lips. Sitting across from him was Elly—a silent, elegant woman whose eyes always seemed to see through everything. Next to Elly sat Tom, a fifteen-year-old with a gaze sharp as a blade, while at the other end of the table was Helen, a sixteen-year-old girl whose face almost never betrayed any emotion in front of others.

  They had breakfast together in absolute silence—not out of animosity, but simply because everything that needed to be said had already been said the day before.

  Suddenly, Elly spoke coldly, her voice steady like she was reading out a verdict:

  — "I still can't believe it... that it took two members just to deal with twenty worthless thugs."

  The atmosphere paused for a beat. Tom’s eyes were blank as he replied, as though commenting on the weather:

  — "It was just a matter of pushing a button. Either way... escaping from the 10th floor in under three minutes isn’t easy. I’m not a fan of gambling."

  Victor and Helen remained silent, as usual. Neither of them—none of the four, really—ever liked getting involved in arguments between members unless absolutely necessary. They simply sat there, quietly chewing on slices of bread, as if the outside world had nothing to do with them.

  Outside the Central Hospital of the Allied Nations Union, the sky was still veiled in the faint haze of smoke from the explosion the night before.

  Police sirens wailed loudly. Dozens of civil servants, special forces units, and firefighters had cordoned off the scene. A yellow warning tape stretched across the main road, keeping the curious crowd at bay.

  The hospital's 10th floor, once a special treatment ward, was now nothing more than scorched rubble. The roof had collapsed entirely, leaving only a cracked concrete frame. The explosion had been so precisely calculated that only the 10th floor was destroyed, with no significant damage to the other floors—making the 9th floor now, ironically, the new “top floor.”

  A tense-looking police officer in a bulletproof vest approached Major General Martin, who had just finished reviewing a report, his face grim as he held a thick folder of documents.

  — "Report! We’ve confirmed 20 fatalities, all patients from the 10th floor. No serious injuries among any of the other individuals found. It appears the explosion was calculated to target only this area!"

  Martin took the report, flipping through the pages. Bolded text, structural diagrams, estimated explosive force data—everything pointed to one conclusion: the amount of explosive had been calibrated with terrifying precision, just enough to destroy the 10th floor and no more.

  A second officer rushed over, presenting another report:

  — "Here is the cross-check list: all 20 bodies have been identified—exactly 20 patients from the special care unit on the 10th floor. No one else."

  Martin said nothing. He walked away, heading toward a folding chair near the rescue team’s temporary shelter. He sat down, eyes fixed on the upper floors where the explosion had occurred—now a hollow, silent void.

  Tom’s words echoed in his mind.

  "If the law were truly just, then a child who kills should die just like an adult..."

  "The law wasn’t made to bring justice. It was made to maintain order..."

  Martin clenched the report in his hands. The numbers, the details—everything was correct. Flawlessly so—no loopholes.

  Finally, he whispered:

  — "He’s right."

  A long silence.

  Then he continued, voice soft as the wind:

  — "...But I am a man of the law. And I... must obey the law."

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Martin’s eyes turned toward the crowd of police officers and rescue workers, still searching through the debris.

  — "General Martin!"

  A voice cut through the Major General's thoughts. He turned, his eyes still clouded with contemplation, just as a young officer came running toward him, holding a tattered backpack—its canvas torn as if shredded by force.

  Martin stood up and stepped forward. The moment his eyes landed on the backpack, he recognized it instantly: the very same one he had assumed contained a bomb the night before—the one found at the hospital, carried in by Victor. At the time, Martin had thought himself clever for tossing it into the courtyard. But now… was it truly harmless?

  Dust and shattered brick fragments trickled out as the officer opened the bag, revealing an old, dented metal box, its frame warped by pressure. Martin didn’t wait for instructions. He opened it himself—and inside, there was no explosive, no biological weapon, no advanced tech. Only a single weathered leather-bound notebook, worn as if it had been held through hundreds of silent, solitary nights.

  He opened the notebook, and the first line sent a chill down his spine:

  — "Once upon a time… there was a boy named Two-Face."

  A beginning like a fairy tale—but Martin knew, no fairy tale ever started with such raw truth.

  — "He was born into a middle-class family—not rich, not poor. From the outside, everything seemed enough."

  His childhood, at first, was like any other: parents, family dinners, birthday gifts… Until he turned twelve.

  Martin flipped through the pages, each word peeling back a layer, each line a cut across the mask of someone once called a “child.” No—more accurately, a living experiment, shaped by warped expectations.

  — "That was when his parents showed their true selves: a burning ambition to turn their son into the ‘perfect product’—not out of love, but for glory. A craving to be revered as the creators of a genius."

  — "They started with absurd demands: perfect scores in every subject, public speaking like a politician, reasoning like a philosopher…"

  Martin felt his throat tighten when he reached the next passage:

  — "In middle school, he was forced to defeat a world chess grandmaster. By high school, he had to study quantum physics, college-level chemistry, and advanced calculus. And what if he failed? Beatings. Humiliation. Cold punishment, as if they were disciplining a faulty robot."

  He paused for several seconds, his eyes fixed on the next line—a line that read like a verdict:

  — "If two flawed machines demand to create perfection… then let that perfection be a mask to hide the truth of a broken soul."

  Martin went still.

  He closed his eyes. The world seemed to slow. Tom’s words from the day before echoed once again in his mind—about law, about justice, about the so-called “right to die” and the price of simply existing.

  And now, in his hands, he wasn’t holding evidence of a crime… but the confession of someone who had never once been allowed to live like a human being.

  He murmured under his breath:

  — "Two-Face…"

  His eyes no longer held the look of a seasoned officer. Now, they reflected something else—something deeply human. For the first time, he stood face to face with a truth he had been trained his whole life to reject:That not everyone is given the chance to choose between right and wrong.Some… are born only to learn how to survive.

  Martin turned to the next page. The slanted handwriting was hurried, almost frantic, yet each letter seemed carved by the mind of someone once shattered—and reforged through the cold steel of reason.

  — From that moment on, Two-Face lived two lives.

  By day, he went outside, greeted others, wore polite smiles, played the role of the ideal student, the model citizen, the perfect person. Everyone liked him. Everyone admired him.

  But when night fell, and he returned to that so-called “perfect family” home, the masks came off. And the real battle began: arguments. Screaming. Breaking things. Sometimes even violence.

  His parents called him an “ungrateful monster.” He called them “the broken engineers of a human life.” In that battleground, no one ever won—only the hatred grew, like cancer.

  Martin swallowed hard, almost hearing the echoes of overturned dinners, shattering dishes on tiled floors, venomous words no one dared put to paper—yet this boy had lived with them half his life.

  — He used the support of outsiders to repay those who treated him like an animal.

  Martin paused at that line. The pen stroke was heavier, as if the writer had clenched his hand and stabbed the ink into the page. A quiet declaration, bearing the weight of a shattered past.

  — Because of constant arguments with his parents, Two-Face’s vocabulary grew. He didn’t learn rhetoric from books—but from tears.

  Each word was a slash. Each reaction, a survival reflex. By the time he turned eighteen, his parents forced him out—like tossing a defective product off an assembly line.

  From then on, he sought a new life. A life no one taught him, no one allowed him to live.

  Martin exhaled, as if thumbing through the final pages of an unsolved case no one had dared to file. But what stopped him cold was the final sentence on the page—written alone, separated, trembling:

  — The perfect mask—made to deceive all machines, all eyes, and even… myself.

  He read it again.Then a third time.

  A long silence followed. Martin sat still before the ruins of the 10th floor, his hand clutching the notebook tightly. Around him, a full investigation team, rows of officers, spreadsheets of casualties, and legal briefings…

  But inside, every moral axis he had ever trusted began to tremble.