The Cursed Eye

by T L Brevis

  “This is disappointing though. I have not prepared anything for this scenario, I won’t even need to discover this person’s additional information to confirm that.”

  “Anyway, you’re free to do as you please for the next two hours Hakku. Although, I would prefer it if you would use that time to prevent Makoto from disturbing me. I do need to keep eye contact and he isn’t much of a help when I attempt that, to say the least,” said Hiroshi with a sigh.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t slack off while you put in this hard work for our mission. Makoto, you have twenty-two hours to fool around, please don’t use the other two to interfere with the mission,” said Hakku with an annoyed tone.

  “Alright, Alright, I’ll stop it from now on. I was just too bored the last time, I guess,” said Makoto with a smile.

  The next two hours for the trio were spent by Hiroshi staring at the picture of Naru Shuzo, Hakku staring at the doorway which Makoto had exited from, while occasionally glancing back at Hiroshi, and Makoto surprisingly in the other room watching psychology documentaries because he had most likely gotten bored of the idea of messing around with a still Hiroshi for two hours, which did seem like a one-time joy that would get stagnant if done a second time.

  “Five. Four. Three. Two. One,” counted Hiroshi mentally.

  He then got a rush of information through his brain. It was as if he had known it for years, like Naru Shuzo was his best friend that he knew everything important about. Hiroshi could never get used to that indescribable sensation and it was equally intriguing each time, both because of the information he learned and the concept of how his eyes could grant him such a power.

  “You’re about done now, right?” said Makoto walking in not even three seconds after Hiroshi had completed the two hours.

  “Hey-” Hakku tried to say before being cut off by Hiroshi.

  “Mhm,” answered Hiroshi

  “You weren't timing it, Hakku? Oh, and I'm the immature one,” said Makoto tauntingly.

  Hakku attempted to respond but swallowed his pride and decided to just focus on the mission at hand, although his annoyance was evident.

  “Anyway, what did you find out Hiroshi?” asked Hakku, turning to the younger boy as his previous annoyance dissolved.

  “There was no false information in the TXT file Kaito sent us and sure enough, his current place of residence is here in Japan. In the Qitsui Garden Hotel, also here in Tokyo.”

  ∞

  Naru Shuzo was seated in the lounge of the Qitsui Garden Hotel. He occasionally sipped his coffee, room temperature by that point, and overall, nothing in particular stood out about him compared to the other residents choosing to spend their evenings in the lounge.

  After a few more minutes, Naru Shuzo finished his coffee and walked at a regular pace to the hotel restaurant. He was seated shortly after due to the restaurant being quite averagely filled for a Monday night, at a little over 50% due to most guests presumably opting for room service instead.

  Naru Shuzo was seated a little to the right of the middle of the restaurant, due to his waiter’s recommendation that there was a better view at that location, which he was not incorrect about, as one could see the beautiful summer clouds quite clearly from that seat.

  Hiroshi, Makoto, and Hakku were already seated at a table located at the bottom right corner of the restaurant, quite closely to Naru Shuzo who was seated about two tables away from them.

  The trio had been joking around and laughing quite consistently during the previous ten minutes they had been there, at some points reaching rather absurd levels of obnoxious behavior which turned a fair share of heads toward them.

  Naru Shuzo paid no mind however, and soon after taking his seat, ordered his drink which arrived about a minute after. An ice-cold beer. He requested some additional time to mull over the menu before ordering his food and the waiter graciously obliged.

  As promised, Naru Shuzo flagged down the waiter after a few minutes elapsed while he was just coming out of the kitchen and moving across the restaurant to look for any new customers. The waiter hurried over and took out his notebook to jot down the order.

  “I’ll have the special, cooked medium-rare please, oh and also can I hav-” Naru Shuzo was cut off by Hiroshi.

  “Hey, waiter! You over there! We’re ready to order!” exclaimed Hiroshi, at a much higher volume than necessary to reach the waiter only a few meters away.

  “Oh yes sir, I will be with you in a moment,” the waiter responded while turning his head to look dead in Hiroshi’s eyes.

  Naru Shuzo followed suit, quite annoyed with his behavior and proceeded to give him a stern look. Hiroshi looked straight back into his eyes with a childishly mocking expression for no longer than a second.

  Despite the annoyance, Naru Shuzo finished his order and his waiter began to make his way over to Hiroshi’s table, but after only a few steps, he heard a loud thud behind him. He turned back and a look of shock and terror developed onto his face immediately.

  Naru Shuzo’s face had fallen to the table before him with his arms dangling at his sides lifelessly as his body followed suit with the forward and downward position his head was currently in.

  The waiter immediately sprinted back to the kitchen, dodging all of the tables in his path as the guests looked on, petrified at the events that had just occurred on that Monday evening, when they were only attempting to enjoy a meal.

  Hiroshi, Makoto, and Hakku had the same expression as the other guests on their faces. Another mission executed, now all Hiroshi had to do was simply sit back, and watch the rest of it unfold.

  BREAKING NEWS:

  Norwegian Royal Jewels found in the room of a man booked into The Qitsui Garden Hotel in Tokyo. Investigators found the man guilty, but he passed away shortly before the jewels were found. Police have given their statement as follows, “He was a coward. He gave himself a lethal injection, then went for a last meal. The hopeless criminal couldn’t even time that correctly though and died before his food even arrived.”

  ∞

  Hiroshi was glad. The police force, at least the ones who investigated this case, were none the wiser that he was involved. He still had work to do though. He had to be certain that he had shaken off all of the police after him, and he would do just that in the final missions.

  “What’s this feeling? It’s like a weird rush and sense of accomplishment,” said Hakku moments after shutting the hotel room door after himself, Makoto, and Hiroshi had entered through it.

  “That's the feeling of completing a mission. There’s no better feeling than bringing a criminal to justice, especially those involved with Owari,” responded Hiroshi.

  “Well it would be better if you held onto that for as long as possible. This is where the boring part comes in. Nothing to do for at least a month. We’ll probably have to wait 2-3 because we finished this mission so quickly after our one before this to kill you,” said Makoto.

  “Well sorry for not conveniently falling over and dying for you Makoto,” replied Hakku sarcastically.

  “You should be. Although, since you and Hiroshi don’t seem to care about having things out in the open, something’s been bugging me…” said Makoto, switching to a melancholic tone. “I didn’t even help at all in this last mission. I feel useless,” Makoto added after a few seconds.

  “Makoto, about that. I’ve realized something. Something you and I overlooked may be your biggest asset. All we’ve been focusing on was missions and how we could use our various strengths to complete them effectively. However, your greatest strength lies outside of missions. You can use your network of assassins to assassinate serial killers we would never have the time, nor luxury to go after due to our missions.

  You could clear up much of Japan this way. You take care of the killers on the streets; we take care of the major criminals and corrupt individuals in positions of power. This way, clearing up Japan isn’t just something we’ll have to rely on future
generations to accomplish, but something we can achieve and maintain in our own lifetimes. This could work out perfectly and we could truly play to our strengths this way in the most efficient fashion possible. Quite frankly, I am quite disappointed in myself that I did not come up with this sooner,” said Hiroshi, sounding confident and full of determination, then as disappointed as he made himself out to be for not realizing this possibility sooner.

  “You’re right. We were focusing too much on missions after all. Alright then, I’ll continue my own operation as soon as possible then,” said Makoto, his face lighting back up.

  “Alright, while I message the chat that operations will go back online starting tomorrow, tell me everything about the mission you two were conniving to complete. The only real part you told me about was to act as immature as possible, or as how you put it, ‘like how you usually are’ when we arrived at the restaurant, then act shocked when the man died and of course how we needed to stay in this new hotel tonight,” said Makoto.

  “Well alright. It was quite complex, but with a hacker like Hakku, the execution was made much easier compared to my other missions despite the extra steps, which was a huge help to us. Firstly, we were lucky enough that the hotel Naru Shuzo chose was quite average, in terms of luxury hotels in any case. As a result, their online security systems were quite simple to breach, with Hakku’s ability, anyway.

  “Hakku only took a few hours to complete that task, which would have taken up to several days to complete if it was a large and advanced hotel. After that, Hakku put our names down in the registry, which was how we got this room in the first place. The reason why we did not book a room normally was because ordinarily, an adult would have to register for us, something Kaito would not do as he refused to aid us in these final three missions.

  “Hakku listed himself as an adult, something that cannot be faked normally when booking because verification is required, but that was something Hakku bypassed when hacking into the systems and booking us in that way. The reason why we even booked into this hotel in the first place was because it would be suspicious to be staying at one hotel and eating at another. Far from incriminating evidence against us if it came to that, but we always play it safe as you know. We also ended up revoking our rooms at the other hotel tonight for the same reason.

  “We will return tomorrow, but if it comes to it and we are questioned, we will go with the alibi that we booked into this hotel because it was too late to return to our other one. A reasonable excuse because of the decent amount of distance between this hotel and the other one.

  “Anyway, after all of that was sorted, we formed our strategy to take out Naru Shuzo. A few hours before we arrived at the restaurant to execute the plan, I went downstairs and asked the waiter for the specials they were serving that night, of course dragging the question out and keeping eye contact with him the entire time. I used my control ability to make this waiter do a number of things. Firstly, I made him be the one to greet us and become our subsequent waiter from that point on. Later, I made him do the same for Naru Shuzo.

  “After that, I of course shouted over at him to ‘take our order’ while he was talking with Naru Shuzo. I made the waiter turn his head and as expected, even the cautious and presumably on-edge Naru Shuzo could not resist doing the same, it’s human nature after all.

  “The good thing about the killing ability is that a fraction of a second of eye contact is enough, and I got just that from Naru Shuzo. About a minute later, he was dead.

  “The next part of the plan was making the waiter call the police. When they arrived, as instructed, the waiter suggested that his room be searched for any drugs he could have overdosed on, or something of the sort.

  “The waiter then gave the excuse that his boss would need a full report on his death to send to the health board to ensure the starters they had offered him were not the cause. A perfect excuse that of course worked wonders. The authorities found the Norwegian Royal Jewels and they are currently being shipped back to the country in question as we speak.

  “Everything went perfectly according to plan. Now, when the police investigate this, even if they do find it suspicious, they will be forced to investigate the poison and of course, with no trace, they will have nothing to go on. It will be a mysterious death and they will have no evidence. They might even suspect some sort of disease, or a different perpetrator entirely.”

  “Good plan. If we’re unable to make a difference outwardly against them, we’ll be able to do it internally like this. Give them no reason to continue investigating, then after the hiatus, we will strike back harder. I like it. Waiting a few years to have less competition is much more effective than having our every mission possibly be under the police’s radar,” said Makoto.

  “Exactly mine and Kaito’s point,” replied Hiroshi.

  Chapter 17

  “Two and a half months have passed,” said Hiroshi to Makoto and Hakku while they were all still half-asleep in their newest motel’s kitchen, each just having taken their preferred energy substance from the fridge where they had placed them the day prior. Hiroshi’s drink of choice was sweetened coffee, Hakku’s was pure black coffee and Makoto’s was one of many popular energy drink brands he would rotate between each morning.

  “You’re right,” said Makoto in an especially fatigued tone.

  “I'm not surprised, I would expect you to be the most tired out of all of us. You were up all night corresponding with your hitmen again weren't you?” asked Hiroshi.

  “Yup, I got about fifty down so far. These guys are doing a really good job, and I have to work just as hard to make good plans for them,” replied Makoto in the same groggy tone.

  “You’ve really changed in the past two and a half months, huh?” asked Hakku after taking an especially long sip.

  “Yup. I just don’t have time to be myself nowadays I guess. How about you guys though? How come you’re tired too?” said Makoto

  “I’ve been improving my hacking skills and I've begun developing websites for companies, good companies though, don’t worry,” said Hakku.

  “Well, besides watching Hakku improve his hacking, I just do research on the previously mentioned topics. I want to talk about missions though, since we are going to be coming back to them any day now. Regarding the past few, I'm quite sure the police have taken notice but are just unable to take action. Especially with the political tensions of the last one. They are likely looking at every death of a major figure carefully, no matter the cause.

  “However, I'm not satisfied with that. For our next mission, I will ensure that they won’t even begin to question our involvement. I made a promise to myself some time back, before I even met you Makoto, that eventually I would get to that point and there is only one way to do it,” explained Hiroshi.

  “Come on, I think you’re being a bit too cautious now. They probably have no idea already,” said Hakku.

  “No, I have to be cautious, and I have to improve. That is why I have to go back outside my comfort zone and take a risk,” said Hiroshi.

  “You don’t mean?” asked Makoto.

  “Yes. I'm going to begin using the control ability to kill again. I’ve decided to try testing it after much deliberation. I just have to know if I can make use of it well. It’s the only way I can match the deaths up with the person's motivations and surroundings. I know I ceased my use of it precisely because I was making too many errors and because it was so incredibly difficult to get every mission right with it, but I know I will succeed no matter what this time. I must, that’s the only way I can move forward and be sure that I will be of help to Kaito against Owari,” said Hiroshi.

  “Two and a half months was plenty of time though. It’s time we return and make sure these investigators never suspect we did,” added Hiroshi after a pause.

  “Let’s start right away then, come on Hiroshi,” said Hakku, sounding just as motivated as he put down his finished-cup of coffee and began to rush
over to the room the three shared, with Hiroshi tailing close behind after putting down his own, only half-empty cup.

  They arrived at the room one after another and after tiptoeing over their own sleeping bags and passing the bed they had forced Makoto to take because of his efforts, they reached the small desk the room had to offer, Hiroshi’s laptop placed neatly in the center of it, turned off and folded.

  Hiroshi commenced the same routine of gently pressing the power button while opening the laptop and waiting expectantly for it to finally power on, and after the usual amount of time, although it felt longer with each repeat of the process, it did.

  Hiroshi rushed over to the same folder he had entered for the previous three missions, this time entering his next target’s file. He swiftly double-clicked on the PNG file inside before its preview even had a chance to load.

  Hiroshi was unphased. He was now prepared for anything. Anyone was capable of any crime in his eyes now, and this person was no exception. Their crimes and its severity were all that mattered now. It was a cheerful-looking girl with light brown eyes and jet-black hair, looking to be around 16 years old.