“Stop joking around, it’s disgusting.
Can you get the hell out of my sight right now?”
The commotion coming from the alley entrance caught Kiyotaka’s full attention.
Facing two ill-intentioned young men, the dark-haired girl with a tear mole at the corner of her eye not only had no intention of asking surrounding passersby for help, but she refused to compromise or show even the slightest bit of weakness.
She tightly gripped the handle of her schoolbag and mercilessly retorted with sharp words.
This uncompromising attitude obviously enraged the two men opposite her.
“Ha?
Stop acting so arrogant, you bitch!”
After just a few rounds of dialogue, the situation took a sharp turn toward physical conflict.
Kiyotaka stood a few steps away, his gaze resting calmly on the girl for two seconds.
Her purple eyes were filled with vigilance and anger, her brows tightly furrowed, and her other free hand was already quietly clenched into a fist at her side.
She had no intention of backing down whatsoever.
Kiyotaka’s gaze smoothly swept over her entire body, and he began making an objective assessment in his mind.
Judging from the calves exposed beneath the hem of her sailor uniform and her tense arms, her muscle lines differed from ordinary female students of the same age who lacked exercise.
In her daily life, she probably engaged in some sort of long-term, high-intensity physical activity.
As for the other two males, Male A on the left who had just spoken had a slightly muffled voice, with a slight slurring at the end.
His body exuded a distinct smell of alcohol, and his neurological responses were most likely affected.
Male B on the right had unconsciously moved to about a meter to the left of the girl.
This was a positioning attempt to form an encirclement, and they were ready to resort to force at any moment.
However, the standing postures of these two men were loose, their centers of gravity were floating, and their breathing frequencies were completely irregular.
It could be seen that neither of them had received any systematic combat training.
Judging from the girl’s current response attitude, she would most likely choose to fight back personally, facing two adult males alone.
However, in the face of an absolute gap in physique and strength, relying solely on those slightly formed muscle lines made the outcome of this choice less than optimistic.
After reaching a conclusion, Ayanokouji rubbed the corner of his eye.
This matter had no direct relation to his own goal.
So…
Should he intervene?
The moment this thought flashed through his mind, Kiyotaka’s feet were already moving.
He took steady strides and walked towards the direction of those three people.
…
“I told you not to be so fierce!”
Stung by the girl’s escalating and fierce words to the point of losing face, Male A could bear it no longer.
Cursing, he directly stretched out his rough, large hand and grabbed toward the girl’s slender wrist.
Gritting her teeth, the girl was preparing to dodge sideways and throw a punch.
However, Male A’s hand did not touch the target.
In mid-air, his wrist was intercepted and stopped by another hand.
That hand reached over from the side; the movement wasn’t very fast, but it was precise enough.
Kiyotaka’s thumb precisely pressed against the nerve node on the inner side of the opponent’s wrist joint, while his remaining four fingers gripped the bone gaps on the outer side.
The angle and strength were controlled with extreme precision.
If he continued to apply pressure, the opponent’s entire arm would instantly lose sensation due to intense pain and nerve reflex.
“Shiina, are you alright?”
Kiyotaka turned his head, locking eyes with the dark-haired girl’s slightly wide purple eyes in astonishment, and asked in a calm tone.
Male A, whose wrist was gripped, froze for a split second, and then his facial muscles twisted fiercely.
“…Pain!
Ouch, ouch, ouch.
Let go!
Who the fuck are you?!”
Male A shrieked and tried to break free, but that hand, which didn’t look particularly thick or strong, remained completely unbudged.
Male B on the side finally reacted at this moment.
Seeing his companion taking a hit, he cursed with a dirty word, and directly taking advantage of the alcohol, swung his fist and smashed it fiercely toward Ayanokouji’s side profile.
Ayanokouji didn’t look at him.
He simply released Male A’s wrist at the right moment, using his right foot as an axis to slightly shift his body sideways by half a step.
The fist carrying the sound of the wind missed, brushing past Kiyotaka’s ear.
At the moment when Male B’s center of gravity leaned forward due to missing the swing, Kiyotaka’s left hand smoothly rested on the opponent’s swung arm.
He didn’t use his own explosive force; he merely followed the momentum of the opponent’s rush, gently guiding with his fingertips at the opponent’s elbow.
This seemingly understated guide completely disrupted Male B’s balance.
Causing his entire body to stumble forward two large steps out of control, followed by a muffled groan.
“Bang!”
His knees slammed heavily into the metal guardrail by the roadside, making a dull sound, and his entire body collapsed miserably to the ground on his knees.
From Kiyotaka’s intervention to the two adult males—one wailing while clutching his wrist and the other kneeling on the ground unable to get up—the entire process happened so fast that it took less than three seconds.
There were no superfluous movements, nor any venting of mixed emotions; it was as clean and neat as clearing two blocking gravel stones from the road surface.
Holding his wrist that had just been released and was still faintly aching, Male A stared wide-eyed at the boy in front of him wearing a prestigious academy uniform.
Male B also managed to crawl up while supporting himself against the guardrail, the flippancy and arrogance from his pickup attempt completely gone from his face, leaving only nervous uncertainty toward the unknown.
Kiyotaka looked at them quietly.
There was still no expression on his face.
No anger, no mockery of them, not even the smugness of an ordinary person winning a fight.
He just looked at them like that, without saying a word.
In his rippleless light golden eyes, there was a chilling apathy that regarded people as “inanimate objects”.
Stared at by such a gaze, a chill involuntarily welled up deep inside the two men’s hearts.
They looked at each other, as if reaching some kind of tacit understanding.
Feeling it was uninteresting and knowing deeply they had kicked an iron plate, they could only curse and leave behind a cliché line like “You just wait and remember this”, then tucked their tails between their legs and quickly fled the alley entrance.
Crisis resolved.
The girl named Shiina Taki stood frozen in place, gradually relaxing her previous defensive posture.
Until the backs of those two boys disappeared at the end of the street, the shock in the depths of her eyes slowly receded.
Replacing it was an even more nervous and uncertain vigilance directed at the strange boy in front of her.
“…Who are you?”
Taki stepped back slightly and stared at him vigilantly.
The series of highly proficient movements just now, coupled with the opponent’s emotionless gaze, made her instinctively feel that the person in front of her was far more dangerous than those two punks just now.
Kiyotaka had already withdrawn his gaze, his expression no different from when he first intervened.
“Just someone passing by.” He gave an extremely perfunctory yet flawless answer.
Taki stared at him closely for a few seconds, obviously unsatisfied with this answer.
“Then how did you know my name just now?”
His line just then, “Shiina, are you alright”, was so natural that she almost thought the two of them actually knew each other.