The Cursed Eye

by T L Brevis

  After listening to Kaito's explanation, he knew he must have been teaching him to be “prepared for anything” or something similar to that, and Hiroshi had overlooked that. Hiroshi swore to improve and to be able to pull off these complex maneuvers casually like Kaito was able to. Hiroshi needed to think more outside of the box. It would be a difficult process, but very necessary for success. It was pivotal if he even dreamed of taking on Owari directly.

  6 Months Later...

  “Alright Hiroshi, thank you for accompanying me to kill this latest criminal. We are beginning to at least put a dent in Owari’s forces,” said Kaito with a curt smile.

  The two once again relocated to another cheap Motel, like they had been doing very frequently, and would be doing for the foreseeable future.

  Kaito and Hiroshi had just finished yet another one of their missions to find and kill Owari’s hirees (all thus far being murderers and serial killers) and Hiroshi was as exhilarated as ever to get one step closer to being able to take on Owari and get his vengeance.

  He recalled the doubts he had when they had just started, when he followed Kaito to kill Kikumura. He realized now just how childish they were. After following Kaito to kill more and more of Owari’s employees, and being informed of all of their crimes, Hiroshi was certain now that there was no room for mercy. If he gave in to his mercy for Owari’s employees, how could he ever even dream of going after the main members of the organization itself? He would not be able to live with himself if he made that kind of mistake. He would not let his parents’ deaths be in vain without their deserved justice being enforced.

  “Hiroshi...” said Kaito, switching to an ominous tone. “I will allow you to create the strategy for this next mission. If it is complex and foolproof enough, I will allow you to completely handle the mission after that as well. Finding the killer, creating the arrangements, and finally being able to carry it out, and all I would do is simply tag along. This is quite a crucial steppingstone for you Hiroshi, and I hope you will not let me, and most importantly, yourself down.”

  Any normal person would be incredibly stressed by the sheer magnitude of this situation, but Hiroshi saw it as an opportunity, one that came at a pristine time. He could finally prove himself to Kaito, and as a result of that, would be able to handle more missions by himself, perhaps even without Kaito being involved at all, sooner than he had ever expected prior. Then, if he proved himself more and more after that, Kaito would trust him enough to go directly after Owari with him instead of just their hirees.

  This desire to break away was not because he disliked Kaito, on the contrary, he was Hiroshi's favorite person on the planet, but logically speaking, if Kaito trusted in his abilities enough to allow him to do missions on his own, Kaito could do missions on his own at the same time. That way, more criminals would be brought to justice and Kaito would finally allow Hiroshi to truly take on Owari with him.

  “I will definitely not let you, or myself, down,” said Hiroshi after he had taken a little under half a second to consider all of this.

  Kaito smiled in response, letting go of his serious expression and tone.

  “I am certainly relieved to hear that. I will forward you this criminal's files, Hiroshi. Yet again an Owari employee, so do take this seriously,” Kaito uttered, switching back to his usual solemn tone of voice.

  So, Hiroshi got to work immediately. The criminal's name was Ishido Yugoro. He had black hair, an average face with light brown eyes and was a serial killer who targeted children specifically on orders from Owari, much like a number of the killers he had encountered prior. On top of that, he was apparently wealthy and well respected in his community. What a disgusting man indeed?

  The process of discovering one's personal information by having to stare directly into their eyes, either in picture form or otherwise for two hours with the Noromi was what would naturally come first, and for the next two hours, Hiroshi did just that.

  When Hiroshi was finally finished with the taxing and extraordinarily dull process, he discovered Yugoro's address and that he lived in a mansion with his wife. This was all the information Hiroshi needed to know to begin his plot.

  ∞

  “Ring! Ring!” came the sound of the Yugoro residence’s doorbell.

  Mrs. Yugoro practically sprinted down the stairs and over to the front door, and after briefly checking her appearance in the mirror by the door, she promptly turned the knob and opened it a creak.

  “Hello ma'am, I am officer Tao Gekko from the local police station. I would like to inform you of a particular incident regarding this neighborhood that I would like to bring to your immediate attention,” said Kaito in the same official-sounding tone he had used when impersonating an officer previously.

  He had also managed to keep eye contact with the concerned looking Mrs. Yugoro for five seconds, as planned, while drawing out this sentence to its limits, making it exactly five seconds long, presumably on the dot if Kaito’s previous performances were any indicator.

  Kaito glanced at her for a split-second longer, then immediately left the premises.

  Mrs. Yugoro spent the next few hours before her husband returned from work to transfer all of her and her husband's valuables to various streets on high crime rate areas, and by the time she was finished, the couple had about 1/10 of their original belongings, in terms of monetary value.

  Mr. Yugoro returned from work just minutes after Mrs. Yugoro had finished her final drop off and returned to the mansion herself. When he entered the house, he was shocked at the sight he was greeted with from the moment he turned the lock on the door. Mrs. Yugoro went to greet him at the door with a similar shocked expression.

  “What on earth happened here!” demanded Mr. Yugoro.

  “I only just returned home a minute ago, as well, dear. I was out at a friend’s house the entire day. Oh my, we must have been robbed!”

  “What! How?! We're well-loved in the neighborhood! Who would do such a thing?!” demanded Mr. Yugoro.

  Just as he finished his short rant, a knock was heard at the door.

  Mrs. Yugoro went to answer it immediately. When she opened it, Hiroshi simply stood there with a blank look on his face. By this point, Mr. Yugoro had rushed behind his wife to see who it was as well.

  “Who the hell are you kid? We're busy, come back later if you're trying to sell us some cookies or something!” Mr. Yugoro exclaimed.

  “Mr. Yugoro, I was the one who robbed you,” said Hiroshi with a voice matching his blank expression well.

  “H-How dare you joke about something like this you brat! Didn't your parents ever teach you anything? And how did you even know we were robbed?! Did your lunatic older brother or someone put you up to this to distract us?! Did he rob u-”

  Just then, Mr. Yugoro's face suddenly went completely blank, a complete contrast to his furious expression from mere moments prior. Such a shocking change of demeanor should have been very sudden and jarring to the child Hiroshi who stood before him, but he was not fazed in the least and simply just stepped away from the premises. Neither of them followed him, but only shut the door behind him.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY:

  BREAKING NEWS:

  Millionaire Tycoons Mr. and Mrs. Yugoro were found dead in their own home, both hanging by nooses. Suicide is heavily implied. It is suspected that they committed suicide due to their substantial fortune being reported stolen the same day.

  Chapter 4

  “Decent work, Hiroshi,” Kaito said, lowering the morning newspaper.

  “Well, I suppose a promise is a promise. You can carry out the next mission completely by yourself. I will, however, give you a new goal to work towards all the same so you will not lose focus. If you carry out the next mission well, I will give you two more, and if you complete those well, you can conduct a mission to kill a corrupt politician.

  “He will be hosting a house party exactly ten weeks from now. It’s more than enough time for you t
o complete these four missions since, in all honesty, they are not all too complex. I will be tagging along on the politician mission, but you can basically use me as a pawn and tell me what to do with my Noromi if it happens to be part of your plan, unless of course, you drop the ball with that mission, or even fail to get there for the same reason only on the previous ones,” said Kaito in his usual tone.

  Hiroshi was not worried. He did not need to have a goal at all times to keep him from getting complacent. It was nice for him to be able to get such a reward for completing these missions though; and at that, a reward that would bring him closer to his ultimate goal.

  ∞

  “Welcome gentlemen to our latest Owari meeting. Excellent to see you all present,” said Mugen Ito curtly. The other men in the room nodded in recognition. “This week, we revisit the situation involving Kaito and the boy,” said Mugen Ito in an even more serious tone.

  “The pattern of our lower level hirees being killed has continued,” most of the men all developed a look of concern at these words.

  “Could Kaito really be switching his method of picking away at us? Or is he actually training his boy in that way?” asked Naoto Watanabe.

  “I refuse to accept that even that fool believes that method would affect us in the least. It seems he truly is training the boy’s mind in this way,” said Mugen Ito, his face and tone alike still dead serious despite his words.

  “I would think he’s been making progress on teaching the boy. I can’t lie, I'm actually quite intrigued to see where this goes,” said Shoji Tanaka.

  “He most likely is, however, we don't know how much of a prodigy this boy truly is as of yet. After all, Kaito could be the one expending all of the efforts in these murders,” said Mugen Ito.

  “It's safe to assume that the boy is capable though. After all, Noromi users are naturally gifted with high intelligence. Despite his young age, he cannot be overlooked,” said Naoto Watanabe.

  “True, and we ourselves have experienced the genius of young Noromi users. I'm sure you know that all too well, Naoto. The boy is absolutely a threat, especially if he gets older, even if exposed to the poor methods Kaito is making use of, even though admittedly, it might take longer because of them,” said Mugen Ito.

  “We should do everything in our power to prevent that. I am curious but not to that extent. I promised to leave you all in the most advantageous position I could,” said Shoji Tanaka.

  “That would be ideal, however, as much of an irrational man Kaito is, he is very well hidden. We barely have any intel on him, and we especially do not have any on the boy currently. As long as he picks off at our lower, and even medium ranks like before, we have no chance of picking up on any of it, especially with how inconsistent he always is, even if he leaves us the mocking clues he does,” said Naoto Watanabe.

  “Well, in any case, gentlemen, I think we should take our time with this, there is no rush to prevent this boy from aging. He is still very young, and we can afford to look at this situation calmly and bide our time, and as we agreed we would the previous time we spoke about these two, we shall wait for them to make a relatively major blunder at some point that we will be able to pick up on definitively. We still do have to prepare for our launch day, Kaito’s death can wait until we have at least completed the procedure halfway,” said Mugen Ito.

  “Agreed. There really is no rush here, and it would be better to wait for an opportunity to come to us instead of us clumsily and haphazardly rushing towards it,” said Toyo Takahashi.

  “Anyone opposed to us handling the situation in this way? I hate to ask a second time, but it seems some of our opinions have been altered,” asked Mugen Ito.

  “No,” everyone responded, Shoji Tanaka with an especially fussed and frustrated expression and tone when giving his own response.

  “Alright, then that concludes this segment of the meeting. Let us move on to other issues.”

  ∞

  The first murderer Hiroshi would have to kill out of three was named Sunada Juzaburo. He targeted young children mostly, once again on Owari’s orders. How vile?

  Hiroshi opened the folder without hesitation and laid eyes on the man. He had a serious expression on his face, and his neat black hair and sharp black eyes complemented that well. Hiroshi did not allow that to distract him in the slightest, however, and he began the process.

  As soon as he had finished, a sense of realization hit him and new information instantly flooded into his mind, as if he had always known it.

  The man had no spouse or children and lived in a high-rise apartment. Hiroshi could not take the same route as Kaito did with Kikumura. His goal was to impress him and blatant plagiarism of his previous work would certainly not accomplish that.

  Had Kaito attempted to give Hiroshi yet another test? This time testing his originality? Hiroshi smiled in the face of this challenge. He would show Kaito he truly could live up to his expectations.

  “Now, what should I do? I have all of my abilities available, but how should I use them?” thought Hiroshi, eyes fixated on the image of the man still displayed on his laptop before him, his thumb and index finger planted on his chin, with his elbows resting on the table hosting his laptop.

  “First, as per usual, I'll look at the list I made compiling possible suicide methods I could use to cover up criminal's deaths. Let's see, the methods I can use include drowning, suffocation, electrocution, firearm usage, poison, dehydration, starvation, and vehicular impact. I have not made use of these yet, so I have a plethora of options. These are more than enough methods for the next three assassinations and for that corrupt senator, but the trouble is which one to pick for Sunada Juzaburo,” thought Hiroshi with an indecisive expression.

  “Apartment buildings are risky. The reason we were able to carry out the Kikumura case so effectively was because Kaito knew how to disable the security cameras without a trace due to his knowledge of its model and how to disable those of that model.

  “I think I do have a decent solution to that problem though. I could pretend to be a student with a project to be a door to door salesman. I could make up a story about it, and tell Juzaburo about it with eye contact, long enough to use the control ability.

  “I will then wait for about twenty hours, to prevent myself from looking suspicious. The reason I will not do it right before twenty hours elapses, to stretch it out as long as possible, is because I don't want any investigator to discover the time limit in a worst-case scenario of them discovering the other specifics of my abilities.

  “I will also go to several homes on several floors so as to not look suspicious to the security, who will surely find it odd that I would only visit one random unit of a stranger, when my main goal should be to sell as much of my product as possible,” thought Hiroshi, now clicking off of Sunada Juzaburo’s photograph.

  “All I need now is either a salesman uniform or a school uniform and I can carry out this plan today.”

  ∞

  Directly after working out all of the kinks in his plan, Hiroshi stepped outside and leaned on one of the walls on the outside of the motel, rubbing his clothes completely against them on both sides until they appeared incredibly filthy. It was about 2 pm, the time when most school days would end, so Hiroshi thought the best move would be to go to a school and follow a group of students who would undoubtedly be walking home.

  At the first school he arrived at, Hiroshi immediately spotted a decent group of children, maybe a year or two older than him and he carefully trailed behind them, ensuring that he would not be seen.

  Hiroshi followed the first one who broke off from the group, and only one minute after which, he arrived at his home, a decent one story tall, average building.

  The boy entered his home after slipping a key into the doorknob. Hiroshi waited about twenty minutes, hiding behind a concrete wall nearby, then quickly paced over to the door and rang the bell. A woman who was presumably the boy's mother answered. The id
eal situation.

  “Oh hello, are you one of Akira's friends?” asked the boy's mother politely.

  “A-Actually no ma'am. M-my h-house c-caught on fire last week and I l-lost most of my things. I-I just ran out of the few school u-uniforms I had left, so I-I was hoping I could b-borrow one of your s-son's u-uniforms for tomorrow?” asked Hiroshi, trying to sound as nervous as he possibly could while staring at his shoes in apparent embarrassment.

  “Oh my goodness, you poor boy! I heard about that very fire on the news! I'm so sorry about what happened to you. Wait right here,” replied the boy’s mother, sounding very concerned.

  The woman returned not even a minute later with a stack of school uniforms in her right hand. “Here, you can take these, you do not have to return them either, keep them. I always try to help the community, and your situation is by far one of the worst, so you deserve these!” said the boy's mother cheerfully, but still had a look of sadness and pity in her eyes.