There are two kinds of people in this world.
The first are those who struggle desperately to cover up some disgrace or mistake that could ruin their lives, only to trip over their own feet and fall.
The second are those who do not thrash about and instead choose what is called an "honorable death."
Taking your own life is extremely difficult. Even deciding to make the attempt brings a fear comparable to the terror of death itself.
Because my life had been a little less smooth than most people’s.
Most of the people I had come to know over the years belonged to the second group more than the first.
Maybe that was only natural, since extraordinary people lived extraordinary lives.
But by contrast, the people who had dragged my life into hell were far more often from the first group than the second.
Aside from the ones I had dealt with personally, the only person who had ever put a pistol to his own chin and pulled the trigger was Abbott.
That was what I had come to realize, and what had surprised me, while living this life of mine.
In Tokyo. In Tokyo, the capital of Japan, one of the most peaceful countries in the world.
Just how many extraordinary people would really choose an "honorable death" on their own, rather than thrash helplessly once their disgrace or wrongdoing came to light and a noose was tightened around their neck?
Sometimes, I found myself floundering in the gap and disconnect between my memories of my past life and the life I was living now.
I was aware that the worldview through which I observed, examined, and thought about things was a little skewed compared to ordinary people.
This was Tokyo, Japan, and this was the life of Kamiki Kaoru, who would have lived an ordinary life if I had never regained my memories.
A world of peaceful sheep. A perfectly ordinary world where suicides occurred in endless numbers every year, yet even more people went on living than did not.
Even the head of a massive criminal syndicate who had to go in for questioning by prosecutors, or the president of a major corporation, or a powerful politician, could not simply cut off their own life with their own hands in an "honorable" way.
Could a mere editor-in-chief of a major media company really overcome that fear?
Could he choose honor for himself, leaving behind a beloved daughter, a late-born son, and even his famous businesswoman wife?
I’m sorry to Sakurada Mina, but wasn’t that exactly why she had been so arrogant in the first place, because she knew just what an incredible man her father was?
I sympathize deeply with that strength of your father’s as well. Therefore, I offer my deepest regrets to both you and him.
"..."
Early Monday morning, with heavy snow piled high outside.
I drank the cocoa Ai had made for me while admiring the embarrassing, tear-jerking show of support for me, my wife, and the twins splashed across the front page and editorials of a major newspaper.
Across East and West, past and present, was it really inevitable that people only performed well when a knife was at their throat?
Originally, I had planned to begin the real operation after the new year started. But since things had turned out this way, I moved the schedule up. The effect was satisfying.
The matter of the holding company that managed the shares of executives at another major media conglomerate would soon be wrapped up as well.
After all, they were someone’s father and someone’s mother, and they were the sort of people who longed to stand above someone rather than beneath them. So carrying out the plan had actually been easier than drawing it up in the first place.
It was a typical family-run structure, with shares divided among relatives so they could consolidate and exercise control, but no matter how formal it looked, as long as it was a stock company, they still needed some kind of ground to stand on.
Thinking back on the year of steady hardship it had taken to crack and collapse that seemingly simple but absurd plan to undermine the holding company’s foundation...
"Kaoru."
"Ai."
"Mm—what are you thinking about? Your cocoa’s getting cold."
"Ah. Sorry. I was thinking about you."
"..."
After I gave a short laugh over my cocoa, Ai’s face turned bright red. Realizing she’d been had again, she clenched her fist and let out a squeak like a rabbit.
"Y-you idiot, Oru!!! You’re always like this!!"
"Hahaha! How am I supposed to hold back when you react so cutely?"
"Ngh...!"
When I soothed her by lightly kissing her flushed cheek along with an involuntary laugh, she blushed even harder, but thankfully seemed to calm down a little.
Ai was in a wheelchair because of the injury to her foot, and as she looked toward the TV, I folded the newspaper, set it aside on the table, lifted my left hand, and took hers while finishing my cocoa.
From the morning news onward, it was all about us. Even the twins’ YouTube video was being explained in detail by the anchor, who helpfully pointed it out on screen.
Ai’s fingers fidgeted nervously inside my hand.
I interlaced our fingers and said, "I’m here with you, Ai. Everything will be fine. Don’t worry."
"...Yeah. I know, Kaoru. Hehe—now... I’m feeling a little better, so first I need to apologize to the members. I ruined the concert because of me... and because of me, the team is..."
The starlight in her eyes trembled weakly with sorrow and self-reproach. The moment I saw that, I knew Ai had overheard President Ichigo and me talking outside.
There was no way Ai, whose hearing was just as sharp as her vision, could have missed it.
I should have been more careful. She had changed a lot, but she was still inexperienced, and I was worried she might buckle under the pressure and guilt.
For me, who had always lived with the sole resolve of protecting Ai’s smile and happiness, the matter with the members of B Komachi was something that depended entirely on Ai’s own will. All I could do was advise her.
I had thought about meeting the members separately, but like with Ichigo, it would clearly only be a stopgap measure. Still, I cautiously expected that it would at least be some kind of help compared to President Ichigo intervening directly.
I stroked her warm cheek to reassure her and smiled.
"If you explain and apologize with all your sincerity, they’ll understand and forgive you. They’re teammates who have spent a long time with you, after all. Even if things don’t go well, so that you won’t regret it later... let’s do everything we can."
"Mm...!"
After smiling back at Ai, who had regained her smile once more, I turned my attention to the citizen interviews playing on the TV.
The footage seemed to be from last night. They had really done a thorough job of surveying people of all ages and occupations—college students, office workers, housewives, students, and more. They even had graphs prepared. It was packed with effort.
I still couldn’t get used to this bizarre, obsessive persistence and strange sensibility that was so uniquely Japanese television.
Public opinion was generally not much different from what it had been online. Hiding the marriage had been a problem, but the main reaction was deep emotion and admiration that we had taken responsibility and cared for the adorable twins as parents.
Maybe the core fanbase would be different, but I was confident the light fans would probably feel the same way.
"Ah, I was such a huge fan that during exam season I used to set Ai’s photo as my wallpaper. I only went to one handshake event, though."
"Eh—really? What do you think about this whole thing?"
"It’s a total shock. But if Ai-chan is happy, then it’s OK."
At the interview of a college student who gave the camera a bright smile and a thumbs-up, Ai’s eyes went wide and she gasped.
"Heeey?! Waaaah!?"
"Haha. Wow, that’s a real fan."
He looked a little drunk, but from that expression and tone, it was safe to say he meant it. Ai seemed deeply moved too, her starlight eyes sparkling as she pointed at the TV and shouted, "Ah, that person! I remember his face!! He’s the one who said he was studying for exams! He was wearing a denim jacket and black pants. Wow—if I meet him this time, I’m going to thank him properly! Definitely!!"
"Good. I’ll thank him too, Ai."
"Yeah!!!"
After gently patting my wife’s head—she had excellent eyesight, hearing, and memory—I focused on the next news item.
"Police investigations have confirmed that the suspect who attacked Kamiki Kaoru had already stabbed and killed a man in his fifties who lived in the same apartment building before the attack."
"..."
When Ai, who had been bright and happy a moment ago, sank again, I picked up the remote and changed the channel.
There was no need to watch bad news if I didn’t have to.
When I switched to another terrestrial channel...
"【Kamiki Kaoru, CCTV footage of him subduing the attacker goes viral...】"
the screen showed a flashy headline and a host speaking with an excited expression while pointing at the footage.
...What? Why are they even airing something like that?
Ai glanced at me, frozen with the remote in my hand, then took it and raised the volume.
"Ah! This is incredible! He subdued the attacker in an instant, just like a scene from a movie. Here on "Morning Intro & Tokyo News," we’re bringing you, for the first time, CCTV footage obtained exclusively by our station. Let’s take a look at Kamiki Kaoru subduing the attacker!"
"Ai. How about changing the channel? This seems..."
"It’s fine."
Ai shook her head and stared at the TV with fierce starlight eyes. She wanted to see for herself exactly what had happened.
The image quality was neither good nor bad. The two CCTV feeds mounted on either side of the apartment building’s main entrance were being shown in a split-screen broadcast.
As I came out of the main entrance while answering the phone, a large man who had been hiding behind a pillar lunged at me.
The moment I let the phone slip from my hand and leaned back while grabbing the weapon, the footage caught it. Apparently they thought that part was too gruesome, because it had been covered with a gray mosaic blur.
"...Eek!"
Covering her mouth with both hands, Ai stared in shock and barely managed to suppress the scream that tried to force its way out, her eyes welling with tears.
This was exactly why I hadn’t wanted to show her.
The broadcast continued without a cut, showing me seizing the weapon to block the attack, then grabbing the attacker’s hand and arm, twisting him to disarm him, and striking a vital point to knock him unconscious in an instant.
Wasn’t this going to run afoul of broadcast standards? And after that, of course... I threw him with a shoulder throw, smashed the apartment entrance door, and that was the end of it.
Then came the scene of Rentarou and Yuno dashing out of the van and running toward me.
It was nothing special, just a video that would only leave viewers feeling grim.
With a bitter feeling, I lifted the last of my now-cold cocoa, drank it, set the cup down, and looked at Ai—
Her starlight eyes looked strange.
Like someone who had just seen a unicorn flying through the sky in real life. I was the one who ended up flustered by my wife’s expression, which was so astonished she couldn’t even close her mouth.
"Why?"
"Kaoru... h-how did you do that?"
"Do what?"
"That, that person, suddenly just, like, bam—grabbing the knife I can sort of understand, but... ah! Wait! Could it be! Your past-life memories!? The terrifying martial arts you learned there?!! Right?!"
"..."
"I’ve never seen it before! This is the first time I’ve ever seen Kaoru just, just, like, do that to a person, to a person, all, um, all scary like that!"
"Ai?"
"Wow. Amazing?! On the CCTV, it took exactly 2.6 seconds. In just 2.6 seconds, he subdued a huge man weighing over 100 kilograms like that—instantly! Master, what do you think?"
"Yes. I’ve trained, taught, and studied for twenty years, but I’ve never once seen an ordinary person perform such a clean sequence of movements, as if it were a highly trained combination of various martial arts."
A dignified man with a rather long introduction on his profile—"Tokyo chapter president of the Japan branch of the International Aikido Federation"—and a list of achievements behind him answered the anchor with a serious expression.
Likewise, a panelist who had once been a detective in the Metropolitan Police Department’s First Investigative Division spoke next, looking extremely shocked.
"To subdue a suspect like that without fearing the knife or hesitating? That’s almost impossible even for veteran detectives. I suspect he must have studied martial arts very deeply before debuting in the entertainment industry."
The anchor’s expression was almost the same as Ai’s as she sat beside me and stared at me now.
Faced with the questions, surprise, and intense shock in my wife’s starlight eyes, I realized the time had come for me to give the ordinary people an "explanation."
Sometimes, I found myself floundering in the gap and disconnect between my memories of my past life and the life I was living now.
I was aware that the worldview through which I observed, examined, and thought about things was a little skewed compared to ordinary people.
I was calm, because I had spent so long making people helpless with my bare hands that it had become second nature to me, but ordinary people were completely different.
Simply making a 100-kilogram brute like that was enough to become huge news, something that would make people doubt their own eyes and be unable to close their mouths.
"Um... th-that..."
"Yeah! I’m listening, Kaoru! Hurry up and explain!"
"...Right. In my past life, when I was an agent... I guess I was trained... or maybe my body just reacted automatically like this."
"...Heeey?!"
Ai covered her mouth with both hands and let her starlight eyes sparkle, and her reaction was so overwhelming that I let out an awkward laugh.
I want to get discharged already.
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