The Cursed Eye

by T L Brevis

  Hiroshi could just barely see Hakku’s eyes widen slightly at the sight of her, but not much, as Hiroshi had drilled into him that they could not underestimate anyone going forward, and Hakku had accepted that stance.

  “What about her crimes?” asked Hakku quickly composing himself.

  Hiroshi nodded in response, just enough for Hakku to be aware of it from his peripheral vision, then exited the PNG file and double-clicked on the TXT file including the girl’s basic information.

  Name: Ichigo Senokami

  Position: Unemployed

  Crimes: Murder of her wealthy family in order to inherit major funds to create a drug empire.

  Current Inhabited Country: Japan

  Disgusting. Even though she did not kill children directly, she was just as guilty as those who did. With all of the illegal substances she released into the streets, she no doubt ruined and would ruin countless lives, mostly those of teenagers. To make it worse, she even killed her own parents as well. Hiroshi was far from showing mercy as it was, but he would feel the same sense of accomplishment after killing this girl as he did with the horrible murderers he encountered previously.

  “I see. Well this should be a relatively compatible mission with my goal of fooling the police totally. I must do a good enough job that I will be sure I did without a shadow of a doubt,” said Hiroshi.

  “Yup. Here comes the dull part for the both of us though. Oh well, get these two hours over with and hopefully you will have already had a plan ready. Tell me if you need me to hack into anything for you as well,” said Hakku.

  Hiroshi would not have a plan ready. He had caught on by then that Kaito had been testing him. On top of all else, Kaito gave him these five missions to teach him one thing. Missions were unexpected and anything could happen, so pre-planning was not effective. Hiroshi felt like a fool for not realizing that fact sooner. He was enraged with himself. He would cast away all previous planning he would have relied on for this mission and go in completely blind, his mind not being blocked or held back by a previous, completely separate plan he had made for a fictional scenario.

  Hiroshi clicked off the TXT file and returning to the PNG file, He stared into the eyes of the innocent looking girl, knowing all too well what she was concealing from everyone.

  That thought plagued his mind for the next two hours. The thought that people around his age would use their talents to commit crimes and harm so many others. The very thought of doing so sickened Hiroshi to his core. How could people haphazardly ruin others and hold no regrets? Hiroshi needed to eradicate this criminal, no matter her age and prove to himself that he could outsmart the police in the process.

  He would ensure they would not get in his way any longer.

  He received the familiar, yet still unexpected sense of realization. In an instant, he knew all of the important information of someone whom he had never met and that feeling could never feel natural no matter how many times he experienced it.

  “She lives in a mansion not far from here alone. As stated in Kaito’s information, her parents are dead, we can assume by her doing, as Kaito stated as well, and she is 16 years of age,” said Hiroshi.

  “Got it. Give me that exact address and I'll pull up a satellite-captured image of it,” said Hakku.

  Hiroshi followed his instruction and Hakku efficiently did just that, and after a few minutes of ferocious typing and clicking, he found a clear image of the front of the monstrosity of a building this girl called home.

  Hiroshi could deduce a few things from this. There were no surrounding houses and there were about four bodyguards visible from the front of the estate. This was not like their other missions. They could not innocently approach the house and leave the girl dead, chalking it up to an accident. They had to be much more careful with their method, especially if they hoped to trick the police completely with this case.

  “I thought something like this might happen. We won’t be able to go to her home in person. We were bound to run into a drug lord sooner or later and we would never be able to simply waltz over to their front door and get the job done, so I thought we might be able to use some of Makoto’s private detectives to give us some information on her.

  This is bizarre though, and I’d hate to have to rely on the unknown, but I think Kaito thought that through when picking this mission. I can’t simply solve this with one of my ready-made strategies. That is what Kaito wants me to realize.”

  “Well that’s the only real lead we have, so don’t feel too bad about it, but yes you are right, you can’t just rely on your pre-made solutions. I think you should take each case one at a time and not worry so much about planning ahead,” said Hakku reassuringly.

  “Thanks. Alright, I suppose we should go talk to Makoto now then, I hope he isn’t that busy,” said Hiroshi.

  The pair stepped out of the room, again tip-toeing around their sleeping bags and walking back over to the kitchen where Makoto was still sipping on a drink, one of three cans now on the table in front of him, but this time with his head buried into his laptop, his typing speed rivalling even the likes of Hakku’s.

  “Makoto, could you help us out with a mission?” asked Hiroshi while picking up his half-finished cup of coffee from hours ago and sticking it into the kitchen’s microwave.

  “Sure, what’s up,” said Makoto, abandoning his dreary and serious expression for his usual light one, his tone accompanying it perfectly.

  “Well, we would like you to ask your private detectives if they know of a teenage female drug lord, probably under an alias. She also killed her parents to acquire the means to do so, if that information will be of use to finding her,” said Hiroshi, cutting straight to the point.

  “No problem. What happened Hiroshi, you got a crush?” said Makoto teasingly, returning completely to his usual self that Hiroshi and Hakku had not seen in quite some time.

  “Sure, let’s go with that,” replied Hiroshi in a similar tone. Usually, he would not entertain Makoto’s nonsense but he felt that he needed some extra encouragement to accompany his recent overwork. He was so dedicated to their cause that he had went through numerous arguments with his mother, along with several promises to his father to be able to stay with them for months past the summer’s end and Hiroshi wanted to express his gratitude in any way possible.

  “I knew it. Alright, I’ll send a message through right now. I hope at least one of them will know something,” replied Makoto while turning back to his laptop and typing just as swiftly as before.

  He pressed enter after a few seconds and after about a minute of silence and staring into the laptop screen after that, a new message popped up in the chat box.

  “Demon Child. That’s Demon Child. No one knows her real name, but she is famous in the underworld. She got famous because of her unheard of genius when it comes to the drug industry, along with her age and gender. It is also widely known that she killed her parents, but I have never heard of anyone saying that was how she acquired her wealth. Personality wise, she is a feisty one. She values loyalty and trust above all and chooses her candidates very carefully, she's notorious for it in fact. Apparently there is some sort of test or screening process for it. No one knows her true identity though. Shall I inform our private investigators to identify all wealthy orphans who could be candidates sir?” the person typed.

  “No, thank you for the information though. My allies I told you about will handle it from here, although I would like you to provide her website’s link if you have it. Naturally for this type of operation, one would be necessary nowadays?” Makoto typed back.

  “Yes. I shall send it to you now. Naturally it is a TOR url. Here it is: http://89h2jg022266oqcxt.onion/” he replied quickly.

  “There you go. I’ll send you the link through email Hiroshi. Naturally, you would need the TOR browser to access it if you don’t already have it installed,” said Makoto, turning his head along with his right shoulder around in order to face th
e two.

  “Got it,” replied Hakku.

  With that, the two returned to their bedroom, again Hiroshi tip-toed over their sleeping bags but this time, Hakku bent down over his and opened it. He rummaged around inside blindly for a few seconds, then pulled out his own laptop.

  “Alright. Forward Makoto’s email to mine and I'll do my best to try and hack into the website. Keep in mind, this is probably very advanced and it will take me awhile to get in, and even then, I wouldn’t get very far, and would probably only reach private chat rooms, future planned events, and things of that sort. Although, if I do find a key date when she will be going out in populated areas, that would be a great time to strike,” said Hakku.

  “Agreed. Take as much time as you need. We finished our missions quickly up until now. We still have a full seven months for these last two missions so we can afford to give them each our all,” said Hiroshi.

  Hiroshi picked his laptop up from the desk where Hakku placed his moments after, then Hiroshi placed his own laptop down on his sleeping bag and plugged his headphones he had kept inside his pocket into them. He was going to watch and read more about the current stock markets and major companies, something which he had recently began to do. He was beginning to think ahead, past the investigators after him.

  He theorized that Owari would surely have some sort of major influence in major companies, and he had to learn all about the top few hundred companies to have some useful information when taking on Owari. It was time consuming, but necessary. There was no harm done either way. If Hiroshi was not doing this, he would be sitting around all day watching Hakku and Makoto so what was the harm in it?

  If he studied every single bit of the information made available to the public, he would surely stand atop even most experts on the topic. He had the brain capacity and learning potential to do it, all that was left was the determination and time to put in.

  “Daintree, Orange, Ultrasoft, and so many more companies that I need to learn so much about. So, which ones do you have control over, huh, Owari?” thought Hiroshi with a smile creeping onto his face.

  ∞

  “Hiroshi, I have some information that might be big for us,” said Hakku, face still planted directly in front of his laptop screen and focus still high, despite the lack of his intense typing Hiroshi had gotten used to for the last few weeks.

  “Did you get deeper into her website?” Hiroshi asked excitedly, shooting his head up from his laptop.

  “Yup, and I found another chatroom, but this time it wasn't filled with completely useless information, mostly about drug formulas and production delays. This time, its big,” said Hakku.

  “What does it say?” asked Hiroshi, even more impatiently.

  “It’s about a meeting. One where she will personally be attending. With minimal security,” said Hakku with a smile.

  “This may be it. Tell me more, are there any more specifics? Location?” asked Hiroshi in a flurry.

  “Yes. Everything we need is here. It will be held at a dock not far from us where a shipment of drugs will come in. This particular importer has had a few issues with her in the past, such as her staff not showing up on time to pick up shipments, or deals being called off suddenly and for petty or irrelevant reasons.

  He brought all of this up, and after which told her to meet with only two bodyguards at the dock to test her willingness to continue their relationship. The supplier also expressed his concerns about him often times accompanying his crew on shipments to build a better relationship, but all the while, she did not meet face to face with him once.

  She ultimately agreed, and so they decided to meet at midnight with her newest shipment exactly a week from today,” said Hakku.

  “Got it. That was quite a lot of information to take in so could you send it all to me via email to ensure I do not miss any of it?” asked Hiroshi, calming himself down quite significantly as he realized the intense planning that was necessary to pull this off, and the significance of this mission in general. This was his opportunity to prove to Kaito and himself that he was above these investigators.

  Chapter 18

  Hiroshi, Hakku and Makoto carefully made their way through the dock, squeezing through tight spaces between crates, dodging major sources of light due to fear of possible exposure even if no one could have witnessed it, and most importantly moving swiftly and silently to reach their destination.

  They crept along the back of each crate before rushing over to the next about a meter away, either to their side or front, then repeating the process, occasionally reaching a particularly wide gap and having to quicken their pace to reach it. This had gone on for a good few minutes as they navigated through the massive dock which Hiroshi had studied meticulously for the past few weeks.

  After one final scurry across a particularly wide gap between crates, they had finally reached their destination, a corridor about five meters wide with towers of crates on either side, and much longer in length than width. This was presumably one of many meant for travel around the dock, but this particular corridor led to a front portion of the dock, cut off at the ends to form a rectangular open space, with the only side not being cut off by a wall being the edge of the dock where ocean stretched as far as the eye could see, most likely also one of many that were meant for cargo-loading, unloading and boarding ships.

  Multiple ships were visible, although barely, despite most of their color palettes being considerably light. Some were already in dock, but one was visibly far in the horizon, and even despite their distance from it, the three of them could tell that it was moving very slowly and cautiously toward them.

  They seemingly did a 180 on their stealthy behavior from seconds before once they entered the corridor, and took on their childish alter-egos. They began laughing and cracking fitting jokes, Makoto mostly handling that department, who Hiroshi admitted was carrying the other two quite considerably in this area of their plan.

  The three of them slowly walked through the corridor in large, obnoxious strides, backs turned to the front of the dock, and headed straight for a wall at the corridor’s end with another opening to their right. They were about ten meters from the right turn, when slow footsteps could be heard from the direction of that corner, sounding as cautious as their own were a minute prior. They pretended not to notice and carried on with their idle chat about the amount of crates that were in the dock and their supposed curiosity about the contents.

  A few seconds passed, and they were now about three meters from the turning and suddenly, two burly men jumped out at them, much too swiftly for their considerable sizes to presumably be able to handle, both with shaven heads and tanned skin, and furthermore were considerably taller than the average Japanese person, each standing at over six feet tall. Hiroshi could tell they were specially selected because of these traits, but it was mostly because of that mysterious loyalty test.

  They were dressed in fitted T-shirts and shorts and had cautious expressions plastered clear as day across their faces.

  The trio jumped back with small yelps of shock from each of them. Hiroshi was relieved that the two executed that portion of the plan so well.

  The five of them simply stared at each other, not moving a single muscle, waiting for the first of them to make a move, and someone did, but not one of the five. A familiar face stepped out from the right corner and stepped past the men to face the trio. The teenage girl. The reason they had even made the trip to this dock in the first place. Their latest target.

  She had a much more serious and sour expression on their face, similar to that of a child who had just lost their favorite toy and had been rejected by their parents when pleading for a replacement. She opened her lips, letting out an aura of superiority in the process. Hiroshi could tell she was definitely the type to commit the crimes she did. She was worlds apart from other girls of her age.

  Despite her relatively good looks, she did not desire fame as a public figure like most, rath
er infamy and power, which was much more dangerous. Ruthlessness in the celebrity world amounted to stepping on a few of your competition’s toes. Ruthlessness in the criminal world could result in mass murder. Her fate was sealed the moment she confirmed her personality to the wrong individual.

  “Who are you three? Why are you here this late?” she asked in a stern tone, alike an adult’s when disciplining children, despite her only being a handful of years older than Hiroshi and Makoto, and barely older than Hakku.

  “W-Well, we were looking for jobs,” Hiroshi said, while looking nervously at the two men, and his tone expressing that sentiment as well.

  This caught Ichigo Senokami’s interest and she narrowed her eyesight from loosely facing the three, to directly into Hiroshi’s eyes, quickly turning to a rich scarlet in contrast to the darkness that surrounded them, barring the few light sources shining meters away from them. Hiroshi responded by peering back into her own.