Chapter Text
"See you tomorrow, Suo-san !" Nirei said with a smile as he waved.
"Yeah. See you tomorrow" Suo waved back.
The brown-hair boy watched his friend leaving in the distance before looking up at the sky. It was a full moon and it’s light was a pretty contrast against the dark sky.
Suo smiled softly "How beautiful"
———
Hayato Suo always made sure to be the last of his friends to leave, always walking the others home, until he was alone with Nirei and watched him leave to make sure he didn't follow him. Because if his friends were to follow him, they would immediately notice that Suo lied about his address. And he couldn’t make that mistake.
As he was walking, the teen could feel eyes on him. That was strange. But he didn’t look around or change direction, not wanting to show that he knew he was being followed, and simply continued on his way.
He finally turned right in an alley and, not even a second later, someone swung a metal bar towards his head. Suo avoided the hit without difficulty and turned around to take a look at his attacker.
A man who was maybe in his twenties with black hair and a mask covering the lower part of his face. Suo couldn’t really care less about someone like him. If it wasn’t for the gun that was now in the man’s hands.
"What a drastic plan B !" Suo commented with false shock. The attacker raised his weapon but the Furin student moved to the left and threw a punch in the man’s face before he could fire.
"If you want to use a pistol, maybe make sure to know how to use one, no ?" The brown hair boy muttered as he looked at the man falling on the ground, knocked unconscious.
Hayato crouched down next to his assaulter and searched his pockets to see if he could find any important informations. The feeling he got earlier, when he felt eyes on him, he could swear it was something more dangerous than a simple man who couldn’t use a gun. It was really strange. Was it really just a bad feeling ? Or something more ? Of everything that had happened in his life, he knew perfectly well that when his instinct told him something like that, it was rarely wrong, even never.
And it was a strangely perfect timing, because at that moment a voice came from the end of the alley :
"So it’s truly you"
Hayato stood up and turned towards the voice. Still a man, but maybe in his thirties this time, with blond hair and brown eyes, and a bit taller. The Furin student analyzed him from top to bottom. The man was certainly armed, maybe a pistol and a few knives hidden under his dark jacket, and way too sure of himself judging by the way he carried himself.
"Do I know you ?" Suo asked.
"I don’t think so" The man answered with a grin "But I know you, Number 3"
Hayato tensed up a this code name and got in a combat position instinctively. The man in front of him pulled out a knife and got into position too, the grin not leaving his face.
"Didn’t think it was your kind of things to play high school gangs" The blond added "And you’re hiding your eye too ? You really didn’t want to be found, huh ?"
The teen’s eyes narrowed.
"Well that’s too bad" The man said, his grin finally leaving, and attacked.
The alley was a narrow one and Suo didn’t have a lot of space to dodge attacks. Especially since now, the man seemed more experienced than the previous one. Hayato stepped back and parried the blows with his hands, deflecting his opponent's attacks and thus preventing the knife blade from reaching him.
The man was fast, and the brown-haired boy adjusted to his speed. This wasn't anything new. Suo had already defeated opponents more powerful than this. But the thought made him frown.
How did this man know his assassin's code name ? A code name that was, in fact, his full identity. Because yes, Hayato Suo was an identity created from scratch to escape this life within the corrupt government. And now, this life seemed to be returning.
Frustrated that his opponent wasn't really paying attention to the fight the man brandished the knife at Suo's throat, but Suo dodged the blow by leaning back. It was unnerving. Number 3 was dodging and parrying attacks as if he were seeing them in slow motion.
"Who sent you ?" Hayato asked as if it was a normal night, which it wasn't, continuing to gracefully dodge the blond man's knife.
The man gritted his teeth and didn’t reply.
Suo couldn't get very far with his theories given the lack of answers. This man was surely sent by the government ; it was a certainty, how else could he know his code name ? But who in the government ? The president ? No, he wouldn't bother paying someone for that (debatable if he didn't want important information to leak). Hayato's former trainer ? A possibility like another-
The boy barely dodged an attack this time. He really needed to stop thinking during fights. But he also needing to know. So he stopped playing around and caught the man’s wrist and twisted it, making the taller man grunted in pain and let go of the knife, before grabbing him by the throat and slamming him against the wall.
To avoid any complications, Suo searched his opponent's jacket and stole his pistol, which he pressed against the man's chest. "You're going to answer now, mmh ?" The teen asked in disturbing calm. Him being smaller didn’t seem to be a problem.
With a gun pointed to his heart, the man couldn’t risk to move. He looked into Suo's eye and understood everything that was being said about this kid now, everything that was being said about number 3. He had been observing this student from afar for several days and had almost thought his employer had played a cruel joke on him. But the man was quite wrong.
That kid. Even wearing a stupid eye patch to hide his most recognizable characteristic of the time. Even though he no longer fought like he used to, seeking to knock out rather than kill quickly. Even though his smile concealed his cruelty. He was still the same. The same assassin for the government.
Number 3. One of the government's 10 elite assassins.
"Who sent you ?" Furin's student asked again.
The man almost gulped hard because he knew perfectly well that, for the moment, Number 3 wasn't using any torture to make him answer as he would have in the past.
If we forgot the gun pressed against his chest, of course.
"You're going to kill me, aren't you ?" The man asked, "Then you know very well that I'm not going to say anything."
Suo smiled. A smile that seemed simple but sent a shiver down the spine of the person looking at it, a smile that made someone understand that the slightest mistake could be fatal.
"That's true," admitted the teenager. "But you must also know very well that if you answer my questions, I can kill you quickly... But if you don’t…"
The man felt sweat forming on his forehead. He had already been tortured by his superiors, trained to say nothing even under the worst torture.
But this kid. Number 3. He wasn't prepared for this.
"...Then I could make it... So much worse, so much more painful and unbearable." Number 3 leaned slightly forward. "I could break your bones one by one, gouge out both your eyes, I could even tear them out ! I could also cut your skin with your own knife... carve the entire alphabet into your arm..."
"Stop !" The man begged. "Stop it, now, you stop. I understand, okay ?"
Suo looked at him with an unimpressed expression. Was that all it took to make him crack ? Mere threats ? Although Suo would surely have realized them. The man gave up far too easily for a trained assassin sent to kill him.
"Then speak," Suo ordered, increasing the pressure of the gun on the man's chest.
"One of my superiors... Goddamn it, he told me to kill you... That I shouldn't underestimate you-"
"And you did the exact opposite and blah blah blah." Hayato rolled his eyes, his gaze hardening. "Give me a name."
"Yagami Hiroshi"
Furin's student almost flinched at the name, almost, and the interrogated man didn’t notice it.
"Yagami… That bastard", Hayato thought.
It was him. Yagami. He was the one who found Hayato when he was just a child. He was the one who brought him into this world. Into the government. One of the people who did, anyway. Hiroshi Yagami simply handled the part about collecting lost children and bringing him in the group, the other adults did the rest.
Suo hadn't expected Yagami to be the one paying someone to kill him. Although the last time they saw each other, they were in a pretty critical situation. He and the old man were quite close. Were they really?
(If we consider "manipulating a child in a world of assassination, blood, and fighting, and making him believe everything he did was for a good cause" to be close, then yes, they were close.)
"Nothing else?" Hayato asked, wanting to escape these unwanted thoughts. "Am I the only person they want dead?"
The mere thought that the people from his old life, the people he grew up with and fought alongside, now wanted to kill him made his blood boil. He shook his head in his imagination. He had to stop thinking about it. For now, at least.
They wouldn't want to kill you if you hadn't betrayed them.
"Shut up" Suo said internally.
"No..." the man admitted to Suo. "They want to kill the other Numbers, the ones who left after you."
Hayato frowned. "What ?" he blurted out. "The ones who left after me ?"
The man seemed confused for several seconds before the surprise crossed his face. "You... didn't know ? Your departure caused a lot of change. Half the Numbers decided to follow in your footsteps."
"Half of them left too ?"
Hayato didn't know why he was surprised. If he had been manipulated, then the other elite assassins had been too. Obviously, he wasn't going to be the only one to betray the government.
What confused him most was that, given the reaction of the assassin sent to kill him, this was information the teenager shouldn't have been unaware of.
"Why were you sent to kill us ?" came from the mouth of the former assassin. When he said "you," he was referring to all the assassins sent to eliminate the Numbers.
The man hesitated to answer and Suo raised an eyebrow "Do you want to lose a finger ?" he asked harshly.
"They didn't want you Numbers to team up..." The man finally replied, "They..."
He sighed.
"They're trying to stop you from starting a revolution."
———
Hayato Suo was heading towards what they called "The Undercity". A sort of underground city (no way) where many criminals resided. Here, people sold illegal things, talked about illegal things, did illegal things—anything illegal.
Suo felt almost guilty being here, given that The Wind Breaker fought against these kinds of people. Actually, no, that wasn't true. Furin defended the people of Makochi and fought against those who sowed chaos within the city. If these things happened beneath the city, there was no reason for Furin to fight them. Right ? Hayato had the right not to feel guilty.
The boy had taken off his uniform and was keeping a low profile. He stayed close to the walls and avoided everyone's gaze as he walked. If assassins hired to kill him were nearby, he couldn't be noticed.
Some dealers recognized him but said nothing. Here, the residents didn't know each other unless it was necessary.
And yes, residents. If Suo hadn't shared his address with Furin, it was so his friends wouldn't know that he lived in The Undercity. Hayato couldn't live in a house or apartment like his friends' in Furin. If he'd made that mistake, the government would have found him much faster. Living in The Undercity was just a way to buy time.
Because the teenager, although he was having fun in Furin, knew that this life in Makochi was not going to last. His old life was bound to return, and it did. As a former member of the 10 elite assassins, he knew far too much. And he had to be eliminated for it.
Although all of this had happened, there was still a tiny part of him that hoped this life would last. That he could have friends like a normal kid. And yes, he hit people as he did as an assassin, but he didn't kill them. He protected people from Makochi instead of blindly following the orders of the adults in the government, thinking he was doing the right thing.
It was stupid to think that. Because he had just killed two people. He had just gone back to his old ways. Just like that, as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn't spent several months abstaining. Stopping himself from going too far during his fights against gang members, breaking their bones, snapping their necks, pulling out their teeth... Stop.
He'd gone back to his old assassin's ways. It was too late now. No more Furin. No more Nirei. No more Sakura. No more friends. He had just killed two men and hidden their bodies. He needed to leave, again.
The brown-hair teen moved like an expert through The Undercity, all the way to his home. A temporary home. Cold. Small. Suffocating. It was a small apartment among dozens of others. It was discreet. A good hiding place. No one would suspect that one of the Numbers was hiding here.
Once in front of the door, Suo turned around. He didn't feel like he was being watched, but it was simply a security measure, and he finally entered his building. He walked through the corridors in silence, as always. The residents of this building barely crossed paths, and when they did, they didn't speak to each other.
He finally stood in front of his door. The number 38 was written on it. And he went in. The kitchen was to the left of the entrance with the dining table to the right. At the far left was his double bed with neatly arranged clothes and at the far right was the sitting area which consisted of a small TV and a few things here and there to keep him occupied. And when he said "things to keep occupied", he was talking about his weapons: pistols, knives, and others.
He had to leave. Get answers.
A revolution ? Was the government really afraid of that ? It was true that Suo had compromising information on them, but he hadn't really thought about using it to revolt with the other Numbers until now.
"Well, to be fair, I didn't know that other Numbers were in the same situation as me."
The Furin's student, soon to be Furin's former student, put on a sweater under which he concealed a bulletproof vest. Now that he had been found, he had to be careful. He also took a gun and knives which he hid in the inside pockets of his clothes. He hadn't taken the men's weapons from earlier because he preferred to use his own, so he disposed of the two pistols, knives, and metal bar along with the bodies.
Hayato Suo had to disappear. He had only appeared for a few months as a high school student fighting for the good of his city. Now, he had to leave this life behind.
He left his apartment and didn't attract anyone's attention. Then, in silence, he departed from the Undercity and headed towards his next destination.
Suo left Makochi and set out to find the other Numbers who had betrayed the government.