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ArabicAnime Crossover: Eating Evil in a Daily World — Chapter 52
Chapter 52: Criminal Investigation Bureau Chief, Yagami Soichiro
The Evil Spirit dissolved into a churning mass of thick, pitch-black mist. Without an ounce of hesitation, Yozora opened his mouth and inhaled, swallowing the concentrated malice whole.
“Mm, not bad.”
Yozora nodded contentedly, savoring the lingering chill in the air. His primary objective in coming to this location had been to devour this exact entity. It was a rather anticlimactic end, considering the creature was consumed before it could even launch a single counterattack, but the meal was highly nutritious.
In reality, this specific entity possessed a terrifying level of strength. Not only could it simultaneously hijack the motor functions and conscious thoughts of over twenty human hosts, but it could also perfectly mimic human behavior without leaving a single flaw in its disguise.
As for why an Evil Spirit would go to such elaborate lengths to orchestrate a terrorist attack? The underlying motive was brutally simple: to evolve.
If the situation had actually played out according to the creature’s grand design, the heavily armed Metropolitan Police Department tactical units would have stormed the teaching building, inevitably triggering the high-yield explosives wired throughout the structure. Hundreds of innocent kindergarteners, civilian school staff, and police officers would have been wiped out in a single devastating blast.
The sheer volume of terror, despair, and agonizing resentment generated by such a massive loss of life would be astronomical. As the sole supernatural predator occupying this territory, the Evil Spirit intended to engineer a man-made disaster, gorging itself on the resulting buffet of human souls and negative energy to force a massive leap in its own power.
Unfortunately for the creature, the mantis stalking the cicada remained completely blind to the oriole waiting behind it. Its master plan crumbled into dust, and it was unceremoniously reduced to a boxed lunch for Yozora.
Meanwhile, outside the barricaded gates of Kyoto Municipal Kindergarten.
The sharp crack of gunfire echoed from the main building. Yagami Soichiro’s expression hardened instantly. He grabbed his radio, barking orders for the Self-Defense Force and Metropolitan Police Department tactical units to initiate an immediate breach.
However, before the assault teams could even cross the courtyard, the heavy front doors swung open. A flood of terrified teachers and crying students, having somehow slipped away from their captors, poured out of the teaching building and ran frantically toward the police perimeter.
“Hold your fire! focus on the evacuation of the innocent!”
Caught between the tactical objective of neutralizing the armed targets and the moral essential of protecting the hostages, Yagami Soichiro, acting as the on-site commander, chose the latter without a fraction of a second of hesitation.
The rescued kindergarteners were all under six years old. Most were sobbing uncontrollably, completely incapable of forming coherent sentences. However, by pulling aside the adult school staff, Yagami Soichiro quickly extracted a fragmented but shocking picture of what had just transpired inside.
“Are you saying a single mysterious person did all of this?”
Yagami Soichiro listened to his subordinate relay the witness testimonies, his thick brows furrowing deeply into a grim, hardened scowl. One isolated individual had systematically slaughtered over twenty heavily armed, professionally trained kidnappers?
How was something like that even physically possible?
Yagami Soichiro stared at the silent teaching building looming in the distance. He ground his teeth together, his voice dropping into a low, commanding register.
“All units, fall back and maintain a safe perimeter. I am going in alone.”
The surrounding Metropolitan Police Department officers immediately broke their professional composure, their faces paling as they stepped forward to block his path.
“Sir, you can’t! Chief Yagami, there are active explosives rigged inside that building…”
Before the frantic officer could finish the warning, Yagami Soichiro raised a hand to cut him off. His expression was carved from stone, absolutely resolute.
“That is exactly why I am ordering the rest of you to retreat.”
Yagami Soichiro had already made his decision. He needed to see this unidentified vigilante with his own eyes. At the very least, he had to initiate a dialogue. Even if he only managed to extract a tiny fraction of intelligence regarding the intruder’s motives, it was a risk he had to take as the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Bureau.
As a veteran law enforcement officer with decades of experience handling high-profile cases, Yagami Soichiro had long since noticed the bizarre, underlying abnormalities plaguing Kyoto over the past month. The violent crime rate was spiking unnaturally, and the sheer scale and brutality of the offenses were becoming increasingly horrific.
An incident of this magnitude, where a massive syndicate of armed thugs openly hijacked an entire kindergarten in broad daylight, defied all conventional criminal logic. It was almost as if an unseen hand was actively manipulating these people, forcing them to commit suicidal, senseless atrocities.
Yagami Soichiro strongly suspected that this unidentified savior, who had bypassed their entire blockade and neutralized the threat in minutes, held the key to the truth behind the city’s descent into madness. He absolutely refused to let this lead slip through his fingers.
, given the sheer number of hostages involved in the initial hijacking, Yagami Soichiro could not shake the terrifying concern that a few straggling children might still be trapped inside the labyrinth of classrooms. The kidnappers’ bombs were still live, threatening to reduce the entire structure to rubble at any given second. To guarantee that every last civilian was safe, and to secure a face-to-face meeting with the anomaly inside, Yagami was more than willing to gamble his own life.
“Snipers, take your positions!” a tactical officer shouted into his shoulder-mounted walkie-talkie.
Acknowledging the command through their earpieces, the sharpshooters rapidly deployed across the rooftops of the surrounding high-rise buildings, locking their high-caliber scopes onto every conceivable exit of the Kyoto Municipal Kindergarten.
“Chief Yagami…”
“That is an order. No more words are needed.”
Yagami Soichiro clapped a heavy hand onto his subordinate’s shoulder, offering a brief, grounding squeeze.
“Do not worry about me.”
Meanwhile, miles away inside the quiet confines of the Sobu High School clubroom.
“The hostages have been rescued! I repeat, the hostages have been rescued!”
“We are getting live confirmation right now. All the hostages held within the kindergarten have been safely evacuated!”
The breathless voice of the frontline news anchor blared from the television screen. The camera feed panned across the chaotic street, broadcasting raw footage of small students sprinting out of the kindergarten gates. Parents who had been agonizing behind the yellow police tape for hours finally broke past the barricades, dropping to their knees to pull their crying children into desperate, crushing embraces.
Sitting in front of the screen, Yui Yuigahama and Yotsuya Miko simultaneously let out massive, shuddering breaths of relief.
“That is great… that is truly great,” Yui whispered, her voice cracking slightly.
Seeing Yui and Miko slump against their chairs, their eyes visibly sparkling with unshed tears, Rio Futaba maintained her usual calm exterior, though her analytical mind was spinning with deep suspicion.
No matter how empathetic a person was, this level of emotional whiplash was far too exaggerated. If one of them had a younger sibling or a close relative trapped inside the building, the tears would make perfect sense. But for two high school girls to experience such extreme, visceral panic over a random hostage situation that had absolutely nothing to do with them?
Something was wrong. Something was seriously wrong.
“Um… Futaba-san, we are going to head out first,” Miko said, hastily shoving her phone into her pocket. She reached over, lightly tugging on Yui’s uniform sleeve while shooting her a highly suggestive, urgent look.
Yui immediately caught the silent cue. Although the civilian hostages were safe, Yozora was still inside that building. The two girls possessed absolutely no combat abilities and could not offer any physical backup, but the least they could do was hurry to the designated door and wait for him to cross back over.
After the two girls practically sprinted out of the clubroom, Rio Futaba sat in silence. She slowly raised her coffee cup, taking a measured sip as her eyes drifted back to her phone screen. Displayed on the glass was a blurry, zoomed-in photograph of the unidentified vigilante, hastily snapped by a frontline reporter.
Futaba narrowed her eyes, her gaze locking onto the masked figure’s face.
“These eyes…” she murmured quietly to the empty room. “Why do they look a little familiar?”
On the other side of the city, deep inside the shadowy corridor of the teaching building at Kyoto Municipal Kindergarten.
Stepping heavily across the linoleum floor in a reinforced bulletproof vest, Yagami Soichiro rounded the corner. The moment he spotted Yozora casually strolling out of the children’s activity room, the veteran detective raised his service pistol, locking his aim center mass without a shred of hesitation.
“In the name of the Kyoto Metropolitan Police Department, I officially place you under arrest! Do not resist, or I will open fire!” Yagami’s voice boomed down the hallway, echoing with absolute authority.
Yozora paused. He slowly turned around to face the barrel of the gun. Beneath the surface of his pure black mask, his eyes curved into crescents, radiating a distinct, dry sense of amusement.
“Commander Yagami,” Yozora said.
Though Yozora’s mouth clearly moved beneath the fabric, the voice that echoed down the corridor was thoroughly unnatural. Modulated by Hachishaku’s supernatural influence, the tone was a bizarre, overlapping distortion that made it completely impossible to discern the speaker’s age or gender.
“Do you honestly think it is going to be useful to threaten me with a standard-issue pistol right now? I just finished dismantling over twenty heavily armed terrorists—some of whom were carrying semi-automatic rifles and military-grade heavy weapons—using nothing but my bare hands.”
The casual, mocking question felt like a physical blow. Yagami Soichiro’s heart sank heavily against his ribs.
The masked stranger’s logic was entirely flawless. A man capable of slaughtering an entire platoon of armed militants in close-quarters combat was not going to be intimidated by a single handgun. Yagami had no idea what kind of monstrous methods this person employed, but it was abundantly clear that pulling the trigger would likely achieve nothing.
A suffocating silence descended over the dimly lit corridor. The only sound left in the building was the rhythmic, sickening splatter of fresh blood dripping from Yozora’s dark gloves, pooling onto the pristine kindergarten floor.
Yagami Soichiro tightened his grip on the weapon. He ground his teeth together, refusing to break eye contact with the terrifying entity standing before him.
“Who exactly are you?”