The moon was round tonight, just as round as the one Makoto had seen however many years ago.
With a heavy heart, he walked step by step toward that place he hated and yet knew so well.
He had spent many years there, suffered countless inhuman torments there, and once sealed away his true self completely because of it.
Only today, only after he killed that child who looked barely five or six years old, did he remember that his name was not “little bastard.” His name was Makoto.
And that girl, that brave girl who had stabbed the arrow into his abdomen.
“Please be safe.
I’m coming to save you now!” Years of malnutrition had left Makoto terribly thin.
He looked as if he were only skin wrapped around bone, every rib visible, as though one gust of wind could knock him over.
The night was bleak.
Wild grass swayed gently in the breeze.
A shaft of moonlight fell, illuminating Makoto and the path before him.
At last, he had returned.
He had crawled out of the dirt and come back here once more, carrying anger he could barely suppress.
“Come out!” Makoto stood before the door and spoke into the house.
His voice was not loud, but an echo seemed to roll through it.
Movement quickly came from inside.
After a burst of footsteps, the door opened.
“A ghost!” “Little bastard, you…
you…
you’re not dead!?” It was still that same couple.
For all these years, they had been responsible for abducting and training children before handing them over to the gang to make money.
How many crimes had they committed?
Makoto could not even imagine it.
But the dozens of children he had seen during the day each represented a family.
“Where are the children?” “In…
in the warehouse.
Why are you asking that?” Perhaps because they thought they had seen a ghost, the couple who had tormented Makoto for more than ten years answered with surprising honesty.
“I see…” Pfft!
A terrifying spray of blood erupted.
The man, around forty or fifty years old, bulged his eyes as his pupils filled with blood vessels.
The sight was indescribably horrifying.
Even more horrifying was the huge hole in his chest, pierced through at some unknown moment.
No one knew what had happened.
The couple before him had not seen Makoto move.
He stood right there, having apparently done nothing at all.
But the couple knew.
Makoto had done it.
He had killed her husband.
“Ahhhh!” “Murder!
Murder!” The female trafficker had a sharp, mean face.
When she saw that horrifying scene, terror twisted her features into something hideous, and piercing screams kept spilling from her mouth.
She turned and rushed back into the house, not daring to stay there for even a second.
But what use was that?
Bang.
A dull sound rang out.
The woman felt as if a car had slammed into her.
Her body flew away like a kite and smashed hard into the wall.
“Tell me how many people are in your gang and where they are.
Otherwise, die.” Makoto stepped into that ordinary house filled with malice.
His body was thin and bony, but in the woman’s eyes, he was more terrifying than a demon from hell.
“If I tell you, will you let me go?” A foul smell suddenly spread through the room.
She had been frightened out of her wits and lost control of herself on the spot.
Makoto walked all the way up to her before stopping.
His yellowed pupils were sharp as knives as he looked straight at her.
He repeated himself.
“Last chance.
Tell me who is in your gang and where your bases are.” Seeing him like that, how could the woman dare hide anything?
She hurriedly told Makoto everything she knew.
“That’s all?” “That’s all, really!
That’s everything I know!” “Then go die.” “You said you wouldn’t kill-” Bang!
Her begging stopped abruptly.
The sharp stink of blood filled the entire room.
“I only told you to say it again.
I never said I wouldn’t kill you.” Makoto ignored the brain matter and scraps of flesh stuck to his clothes.
He turned, intending to go to the warehouse and release the children.
But as soon as he remembered what he had done in the past, his steps stopped.
His gaze found a phone, and he called the police.
Only then did he disappear from the place completely, as if he had never been there at all.
Not long after, a series of murders occurred there.
The killer was extremely brutal.
Every person killed either had their head smashed open or their abdomen torn apart.
Every corpse was horrifying.
But after investigating, the police discovered that all of the victims were traffickers steeped in evil.
For a time, they did not know whether to thank this lawless butcher or hate him.
Naturally, Makoto was responsible.
After learning the traffickers’ bases, he struck with thunderous force and wiped out the entire trafficking ring.
He did not need anyone’s thanks, and he did not care about the police’s hatred.
By then, he had already boarded a boat and was drifting across the sea without a destination.
Exiling himself.
…..
Tokyo, 2005.
After five consecutive years of bull markets in the early 1990s, Japan’s stock market finally could not hold on and collapsed completely.
What followed was a real estate crash and a recession that would last two decades.
Countless people were displaced.
The birth rate plummeted.
Many elderly people past fifty had no choice but to go out and work for a living.
Those hardships continued until 2004.
At the end of that year, Japan’s economy began to climb out of its trough.
By 2005, the major commercial banks had all achieved their goal of eliminating more than half of their non-performing loans, resolving the bad-loan issue that had long plagued Japan’s economy.
By June, Japan’s economy was improving.
It had moved out of turbulence, corporate earnings were rising, employment was recovering, and every indicator was gradually climbing.
Of course, that was what Japan’s national news channel reported.
In Makoto’s eyes, the people living in Tokyo still bore frequent signs of death.
What were signs of death?
Makoto did not know either.
It was just that ever since awakening his Stand, he had discovered that in daily life, aside from humans, another unknown kind of being existed.
He could not see them, but he could sense them.
Especially after coming to Tokyo three years ago, in that depressed economic environment, he could sense large numbers of grotesque beings around him every day.
All these years, he had kept himself in exile.
He had never set foot on the soil of his hometown again, nor had he ever thought of looking for the parents of this life.
Relying on his talent, he quickly learned Japanese.
Although he rarely communicated with others, he could understand about eighty percent of what he heard.
At this moment, he was sitting on a street.
In front of him were small stalls displaying gold and silver jewelry.
Passersby saw them and stopped to look.
The jewelry was made so exquisitely that it looked almost real.
Occasionally someone asked the price.
Makoto would answer only once.
After that, either they paid and took the goods, or they got lost.
Most of the time, the customers simply got lost.
The people nearby mocked him, saying that with fake goods priced so high, he would never sell anything.
They did not know that all of the gold and silver jewelry had been taken by Makoto while cleaning up scumbags.
Every piece was genuine.