The Cursed Eye

by T L Brevis

  “This time, instead of using masks and uploading it to the deep web, I made them use no masks, and continuously look back at the camera, and ‘accidentally’ upload it, in plain view to their website.

  “As per my plan, there was a nation-wide uproar. Even though they were practically zombies at that point, I still wanted them to feel the embarrassment of being caught red-handed committing their disgusting crimes. Well, after that, I simply made them leave home and go to a random motel, much like the ones we stay at.

  “The staff were so disconnected from the world, they didn’t even know who the brothers were, so they checked in with no issues. I made the pair leave their doors unlocked, made them go to bed, and then I released my control over them. I wanted them to feel and suffer everything that was coming next,” Hiroshi paused in anticipation.

  “I made the two serial killers enter, force drugs down their throats until they were unconscious, and put them in the trunks of their cars. I made one serial killer take one brother each, take them back to their respective apartments, then torture them for the next twelve hours straight.

  “I won’t go into detail as to what exact horrors they experienced, but you can look at the news for what is left of their bodies and get a rough idea. I made the killers dump their bodies in a river, and drive back to their apartments, with a few minutes of the control ability to spare,” Hiroshi finally finished.

  Kaito frowned to himself lightly.

  Chapter 9

  “The Shotaro brothers now, huh?” said Shoji Tanaka.

  “Indeed. The greatest part is, the boy is unknowingly playing into our hands, and planting the same early seeds as us for our final operation to be a glorious success,” said Toyo Takahashi.

  “Yes he is. What a fool, Kaito being an even larger one for allowing it to happen. I wonder what his intentions might be. Well I, at the very least am not complaining about it as of yet,” said Mugen Ito.

  “Indeed, but Ito, as you said before, this is another Yabuto Sofu situation, with no major negative effects on us, in fact, more positive effects. It looks as though we only need one more now, and we can move towards the final stages of preparation,” said Toyo Takahashi.

  “At this rate, even the dense excuse for a law enforcement team will have their doubts, perhaps we won’t even need to get our hands dirty when it comes to those two,” said Sosa Suzuki in a dull tone.

  “It’s a shame. I saw such bright potential when we met, but to be this sloppy, and with the carelessness of the Yabuto Sofu escapade to look back upon as well, it seems Kaito’s training methods are failing quite badly. He had better change something quick, lest we will no longer see them as a threat,” said Naoto Watanabe.

  “Well, we do not have any more large deals on the horizon, so Kaito can snipe away all he wants at anyone, and it will not matter to us, in fact, choosing people like the Shotaro brothers is aiding us as you said Takahashi,” said Mugen Ito.

  “Well, in any case, yes, one more slip up on their side and it will no longer seem appropriate to even mention them in most meetings, let alone dedicate whole sections to them,” added Mugen Ito.

  ∞

  “Hiroshi, come and look at this. I hacked into this page and I think you will be quite interested by it,” said Kaito, sitting with his legs crossed on the couch of yet another motel, looking disappointed.

  Hiroshi came over from the chair across the couch Kaito was seated in immediately. He peered into Kaito’s laptop screen while still turning to get a full view. It was an announcement made on a website simply titled, “GovernmentOperations.8uy”. The announcement read as follows:

  “Ladies and gentlemen. As most of you are fully aware, a number of important figures in our community have died as of late. Just to name a few, Mr. and Mrs. Yugoro, Yabuto Sofu, and the Shotaro brothers. We are having our lead detectives look into this further, and we will keep you updated as soon as we uncover more. the only advice I can give currently is to keep alert and do not let your guards down. Thank you for reading.

  “I am disappointed, to say the least,” said Kaito in a tone very much reflecting his words.

  Hiroshi was shocked. He did not even factor in the police as being much of a threat. He did of course attempt to hide things from them in order to simply not get caught, but for them to actually pick up on these missions of his being suspicious? He was enraged with himself. He was careless enough for this to happen. How could he even dream of going against Owari like this? Did Owari know? If they did, they would not even consider him a threat any longer if even the regular police force could suspect him. He was dragging Kaito’s name through the mud simultaneously. He hated himself.

  “It seems I will have to be more careful in the future,” said Hiroshi, gritting his teeth as he uttered the obligatory phrase.

  “Yes, you will. Allow me to enlighten you on something, Hiroshi. The reason why I was disappointed was not because the police are getting suspicious and launching investigations. It was because you allowed them to in the first place. You see, my test back then, where I got you to guess my exact planning that went into killing that murderer. Well, the test never ended,” Kaito said.

  Hiroshi’s eyes grew wide when he considered those words. A sharp feeling of regret and disappointment engulfed his being.

  “You see, I tested your abilities far beyond that. I gave you missions that I picked specifically for this test. I wished to observe how you would react to them. I gave you many missions in quick succession to see how you would complete them. It was never about completing them all in time for the next batch. That was what I wanted you to believe, and sadly, you did.

  “It was about how thorough you were. You were supposed to make sure every single one was perfect, leaving absolutely no room for suspicion from your pursuers. You see, I myself intended for the authorities to catch on. I purposely made errors in the Kikumura mission for that very cause and that was where the suspicions began.

  “I continued to make more errors in the other missions during that six month period, not enough to get caught by any detectives, but enough to attract their attention every so often.

  “When you began to plan the missions entirely yourself, I had high hopes that you would realize the errors I made, and not make them yourself, but as I said before, I was ultimately disappointed. I saw firsthand that your strategies were riddled with holes and causes for suspicion but held my tongue. I hoped for you to figure out your blunders for yourself, but that never came to be.

  “Let me tell you the reasons for your failures. Unlike what you may think, it does not boil down to intelligence or experience. It boiled down to three things that I tested you on, and you failing horribly in all.

  “Firstly, time management. You gave yourself too little time on missions because you felt like rushing toward improvement, and later toward killing as many criminals as possible. You rarely gave yourself more than a week for each case, and even planned for them days before the week was up without making any amendments. In other words, your pride and sense of safety was your downfall in this area.

  “Secondly, personality traits. You were so busy trying to cover up how the cases looked on the outside, that you forgot to make them believable on the inside. Yes, you did take into account their personalities in the general public, but even then, only for one or two missions, but never how they appeared internally, to the people that mattered most to them. Therefore, you were easily discovered when the police simply conducted interviews on your victim’s family members.

  “Thirdly, your own rage. I purposely gave you missions on people like Hirai Ryushi, Yabuto Sofu, and the Shotaro brothers because of their crimes against children, your obvious weak spot after your mission on the first of those three, me discovering that also being a test. You responded with rage. For all of those cases, you wanted the culprits to die as quickly as possible, and for the Shotaro brothers in particular, wanting them to die painfully.

  “Besides the dra
wback of those missions being the most obviously fabricated, for the Shotaro mission, on top of that, you wasted three weeks of your life. A much greater cost than the police gaining more ground on this case ever will be.

  “For reference, besides the missions I flunked on purpose, I have been doing similar kinds of missions for years, with the same types of information. Not a single one of my missions was brought up, or ever even questioned by authorities throughout the years. Why? Because I always followed those three rules I laid out to you.”

  Hiroshi resented himself more than ever before. He had lost the respect and trust of his master; no it had never even been there in the first place. It was all a test that he had failed, no, not even noticed was there in the first place.

  While Hiroshi was still deep in thought, Kaito awakened him with his next action. Kaito took out an average chess set and placed it on the coffee table in front of the two. He set all of the pieces up in their rightful positions, placed his left hand under his chin, with his right on his lap, switched his gaze to the chessboard below then spoke.

  “Our kind of life is a game Hiroshi. Think of it as chess, for example. We make certain moves, some risky, some expertly calculated, and some, well, fatal mistakes. In this game we live in, we must not use our turns on the last option often, because if we do, we lose,” said Kaito slowly and dramatically, knocking the white chess pieces to the ground.

  Although this was cliché , it hit Hiroshi. Hard. The visual representation this very simple action granted, along with Kaito’s powerful words motivated him. He was going to play the game well from then on. He could not die. He could not afford to. He had been granted this extraordinary power to kill the others with it who were misusing it. He would not squander it.

  “I vow to improve, Kaito,” said Hiroshi in a very genuine tone, now standing and bowing before Kaito.

  “I believe you will. You have the potential, that much at least is undeniable.”

  Hiroshi could not even bring himself to smile in response. He simply returned to his room to reflect over the last few minutes. He could not allow his anger to take over from then on. He would take his time with every mission, ensuring its success. He would make sure no one would be able to bring them into question again. It would be difficult, and definitely would not happen on his first mission back, but eventually, he had to make sure no detective would ever even be able to question the events of one of his missions again. He had to catch up to Kaito, and getting to that point, where only Owari was his competition was a steppingstone towards that. If he could not, Owari and that boy would always be ahead of him.

  ∞

  “Oh my goodness, can you believe what's been happening recently? Mr. Yabuto Sofu was killed by a little boy, and even stranger, the Shotaro brothers were murdered by serial killers right after exposing themselves as pedophiles!”

  “I know right! I always thought the Shotaro brothers were good and honest men! They were starting to improve our lives and had good policy ideas too. You think you know someone. Also, I’ve never seen a kid murder case before, and for the kid to kill an adult, who is a senator no less is insane.”

  “Yea, what a crazy world we live in nowadays. I hope this streak of bad luck and weirdness ends soon though.”

  “I agree.”

  This was the type of conversation held by the average Japanese citizens at this point in time. The feeling of suspicion and paranoia were growing. The Shotaro brothers’ case made citizens not trust politicians as much, and the Yabuto Sofu case made people even more unnerved at how unexpected and dangerous the world could be.

  ∞

  “The police are onto me. They’re misguided for going against me though, however righteous they may pretend to be. Unless, they do not fully understand my motives. I won’t be able to outright tell them, then hope for them to agree with me. Everyone has a different sense of justice, so it is not certain they will agree at all, especially after being this far into the process of investigating me.

  “If I can hold them off and keep killing Owari’s henchmen, I will surely prove myself to Kaito further, so this is a positive for me. I must prove myself to him. I failed to even realize he was testing me. I'm a fool. That must change,” Hiroshi thought, now placing his chin on his palm with his fingers curled up, covering his mouth and part of his nose.

  “Now, how do I completely avert suspicion from myself? That’s it. The killing ability. Up until now, I have exclusively used the control ability, leading into killing or framing my targets, simply because it is much more versatile. However, if I switch to the killing ability, which forces people’s brains to shut down, the police will be thrown off the scent because of the completely different method.

  “Furthermore, I would not have to worry about planning the actions of my targets perfectly in order to match up with their personalities. I won’t overcome it, I will avoid it; the thing that has hindered me for so long, leading to the authorities getting this lead in the first place.

  “This might be what Kaito is looking for. He hasn’t given anything to me straight up until now, so why should I heed his latest advice? This could be another test. A test for me to find my own method and style. He did specifically go out of his way to tell me that specific method worked well for him. That is it. That is how I will impress him,” Hiroshi thought to himself while getting up from his seated position in a hurry.

  “But I'm still waiting for him to give me an actual mission. I deserve this. I’ve broken his trust after all,” a frown was growing on his face.

  Kaito had not given Hiroshi a mission since the authorities had been assigned the case, and had instead been killing criminals for him. He was purposely making the same errors as he did, along with carrying out missions weekly, as Hiroshi had also mistakenly done, all to ensure the police would not discover that Kaito could hack into their databases, which would cause them to lock down on their security. Kaito, as expected, and rightfully so, did not trust Hiroshi to do this.

  Hiroshi decided to think of methods until then. He would create plans to counter every single situation he could possibly encounter. That was all he could do. Perhaps with the pre-made plans, Hiroshi could overcome these challenges that faced him, especially the habit of not giving himself enough required time. If he already had a rough idea of every plan, he could hone in on the fine details for each case on top of that and seamlessly complete it. Hiroshi did not care for sleep, water, even food. He would sit there all day every day, coming up with thousands of counters to every mission Kaito could possibly thrust at him.

  Chapter 10

  “Hiroshi, it has been about six weeks now, and I feel that has been enough time for the authorities to not suspect anything is awry. If you execute these missions perfectly, and sparingly I might add, their operation would be shut down due to it not being needed.

  “I will send you five major criminals, all important figures, all involved with Owari, but depending on who comes up in the future, I may send you different criminals to replace the ones I am about to send, so please do only look into one case at any given time. Again, as per usual, I also sent you the details of their crimes as well.

  “I want you to spread out these criminals across the next year. This is your time to strike silently, but effectively. This is our time to law low after a major blow, much like I suspect Owari is doing. After you complete these five missions, I will check back on this page and inform you of any updates. If they truly do not suspect anything, you will have gained my trust,” said Kaito firmly, and solemnly.

  Hiroshi nodded graciously, ecstatic to finally be back in action. Five cases over a year. Quite necessary if he truly did want the police to not be able to progress further, and this was plenty of time to get it right. He had to prove himself to Kaito. It was pivotal to him, he wanted so badly for Kaito to trust him that it burned.

  There was much work ahead, but Hiroshi could see his goal coming to fruition. A world devoid of suffering for ch
ildren and other innocents, and most importantly, a world without Owari.

  ∞

  “Of course before anything else, I will have to look at this vile person’s face,” thought Hiroshi while clicking into the folder Kaito had sent him with his next few targets. Hiroshi clicked the first file out of the bunch titled, “Saisho Waru,” standing for the target’s name.

  Hiroshi opened the folder to find a PNG file, accompanied with a TXT file, as per usual. He quickly opened the TXT file and skimmed through the basics of Saisho Waru’s crimes and information Kaito was able to find about him, which was the same layout as always.

  Hiroshi found that Saisho Waru was not actually disgusting in ways he had seen prior, but in a quite nuanced one that still affected children. He was committing fraud by using his influence as The Health Minister to extract money from several hospitals. Large amounts at that, but spread over long periods, and overlapping each other so that Saisho Waru still got plenty at any given time period, but he took just enough so that the hospitals only assumed they were making a loss for those time periods due to errors on their behalf. These hospitals mainly included children’s hospitals, which infuriated Hiroshi to no end.