"You have one week," he said. "In that time, stop the flow of information. I won't tell you how to do it — this is your exam, not mine." He paused a moment. "I'll say only one thing: don't rely on a single move."
That night I took the file to my room and bent over it for hours under the desk lamp. The pages weren't just a list of names; behind each one were small details that looked unimportant but actually told everything — who left which bar at what hour, who owed whom, who never shared his phone with anyone. Something Master Ren had never said openly but had taught through his behavior became clear in my head that night: if you want to know a person, you have to look not at their big decisions but at their ordinary habits.
Grimshov himself wasn't a brilliant man; he owed his power to two men far sharper than him. Toma and Vik — these were the real backbone of the gang, and from the outside both looked equally trustworthy. But when I read the lines a second time a detail caught my eye — an old meeting photograph; there was a strange distance in the way the two of them sat at the table. The more I looked into it, the more I learned that years ago both had given their hearts to the same woman, and that the woman had first chosen Toma and then left him and gone to Vik. Now both were in the same gang, standing on a wound that looked like friendship from the outside but had never closed. Apparently the mystery of how Grimshov hadn't been struck down lay here too.
There was one more thing in the file: the trail of money. Who earned how much, who was in debt, who sent money to their family. These lines, which at first glance looked like ordinary accounting records, actually drew a map of why people were there. For instance, the gang's youngest member, Doran, sent money to his mother regularly every month. Even that single line showed me that his loyalty to the gang came not from allegiance but from necessity.
I remembered a lesson Master Ren had taught me: no one consists of a single piece. Even the man who looks hardest has a weakness, someone he loves, a fear. And finding that weakness is a far more effective weapon than striking him.
I took a pen and listed my possible moves, trying to predict what each would produce — as if a chessboard stood before me and I hadn't yet played my first move. Two roads emerged before me. The first was to leak a tip-off directly to Grimshov saying "there's a traitor among you" — it was fast but crude, and because it came from a single source the chance of leaving a trace was high; besides, how Grimshov would react was uncertain. The other was to use that old, never-closed wound between Toma and Vik — the least risky, because no move would trace directly back to me; and at the same time it would very likely work, because I wasn't inventing anything new, only deepening a crack that already existed.
Until three o'clock I tested both scenarios over and over in my head, mapping out where each would lead. In the end I settled on the second — not only because it was the safest, but because it was the most elegant. Without touching anyone, without saying anything openly to anyone, it was enough simply to shine a light on a truth that was already standing there. I would push the first stone, and time would complete the rest.
At breakfast on Saturday morning, Master Ren noticed the rings under my eyes. "Didn't you sleep at all last night?"
"I was making a plan," I said, with a certain pride in my voice.
"Show me," he said, setting his cup aside.
I handed him my notes. He read the pages line by line, raising an eyebrow now and then. "Which of these two did you choose?" he asked finally.
"This one. I'll use the old tension between Toma and Vik. Least risk, highest probability — because I'm not putting anything new out there, I'm only making visible what already exists."
He looked at me for a long time. This answer seemed to make him both pleased and a notch uneasy, but I couldn't understand why at that moment.
"One more thing," he said, handing the file back to me. "On this task, pay attention not only to the result but to your own state. Observe yourself. This is a good opportunity to get to know yourself."
"Why is that so important?"
"Because as you advance on this road you'll need to know your own limit," he said, his voice serious. "Some people get drunk on this power and become steadily more merciless. You don't want to be that kind of person."
I locked that remark away in a corner of my mind; I couldn't have known then how many times I would come back to it in the months ahead.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
That morning the file was in my bag and there was a single plan in my head. It was the weekend; two days were entirely mine and I didn't have to explain them to anyone. For the first time, I felt that I was really building something beneath an ordinary day.
There was a rule: before you move a piece, you must see the whole board. So I spent both days of the weekend without touching anyone, only watching.
I sat on the stairs of the old building across from the bar with cheap food in my hand, dressed as an ordinary worker.
There was a fourth technique Master Ren had taught me, and he had taught it reluctantly. Mist Veil, he called it: it doesn't change your face, it only stops a face from being remembered. He'd said, I hope you never need this. On its own it was almost nothing — the man who looked at you would look away and, an hour later, be unable to say what you looked like.
On its own. So I didn't leave it on its own. I bought a workman's jacket two sizes too large in the market and a flat cap that sat wrong on my head, and I stopped shaving. I learned to walk with my weight on my right leg. On the second day I put a rag in my left boot so the limp would be real, because a fake limp is the first thing a careful man notices. The Veil covered the face; the rest I had to carry myself.
Don't hurry, I repeated. Just observe.
On Saturday I recorded their routines. Toma came in the afternoon, with two of his men, all of them noisy. Vik came later, alone, with that usual dull expression on his face. As they entered the bar they greeted each other with a short nod — a greeting that looked friendly but left a distance between them, just like the trace left by the old tension I'd read about in the file.
On Sunday I got a little closer, sitting in a small restaurant on the side street. At one point I saw Toma look at his phone and tense slightly; and I noticed Vik constantly turning his eyes to the door, behaving as if he were waiting for someone. They were small details, but each said something: these two men were not as comfortable around each other as they appeared.
That sentence Master Ren had said on Friday night was still in my ear: don't rely on a single move. So over those two days I didn't only watch Toma and Vik.
On Sunday evening I shaved, put on a clean shirt, took the rag out of my boot and walked into the bar as a country man newly arrived in the area, looking for work. I sat down directly at the noisiest table — Grimshov's table. Grimshov's weakness was that he loved delivering speeches to anyone who would listen to him.
So I listened, laughed, agreed a couple of times, and in passing planted the seed I meant to plant; he was too drunk at that moment to understand what I was planting, and I didn't want him to understand anyway. An hour later I got up; they didn't even ask my name. I told no one about it that night, and didn't even write it in my own notes — I only kept it in my mind, like two stones I keep in my pocket without knowing when I'll need them.
I also devoted part of the hours I spent around the bar to other, inconspicuous things — who worked with whom, to whom and through whose hand the gang sold the information it gathered, and where the chain that reached that buyer they called "the big organization" passed through.
On Monday, after classes ended, I went straight down to the 4th District and found Toma alone; Vik was busy with a job at the other end of the city that night. I went into the bar; the lights were dim, and the smell of smoke and cheap alcohol filled the air. I sat down beside him and ordered a drink like an ordinary customer — I didn't drink it, holding it was enough. I started a conversation, like two strangers with no purpose: the weather, football, ordinary things. At one point Toma talked about his own life, how exhaustingly hard he worked, how little his family understood him. Then, without letting him notice, I turned the subject in the direction I wanted.
"I heard something strange recently," I said, keeping my voice uninterested, looking at my glass, not at Toma. "About someone called Vik. Has anyone told you anything?"
His eyes narrowed and he set his glass down hard on the table. "What did you hear?" "I don't know exactly," I said, shrugging, as if it were of no importance at all. "Only, there was someone saying he's still seeing an old friend — a woman. An old girlfriend of his, apparently."
I watched the change on his face: his jaw tightened, his fingers clenched around the glass. I had found the nerve I was looking for.
"You don't know who she is, I suppose," he said, his voice cold but the tension beneath it obvious.
"No," I said, raising my hand, acting as if I didn't know. "I just remember hearing it, my friend — why did you get so angry? It's probably not important."
Then I went back to other conversation; among the small talk I mixed in a few truths criticizing the state, so the thing would be more flawless and more natural.
I WOULD BE VERY HAPPY IF YOU SUPPORT THIS NOVEL FROM MY PATREON
THERE IS A LINK IN THE DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK.
AND HERE IS THE LINK FOR THE NOVEL:
/collection/2355000?view=expanded
THANKS FOR YOUR HELP.