"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster".

  - Friedrich Nietzsche

  The next morning broke late and gray, the kind of light that felt unfinished, muted, slow, as if even the sun hadn’t slept well.

  Natalie’s eyes blinked open to the sound of distant traffic and the rhythmic hum of the heater. The small dorm room was still and heavy with the warmth of too many bodies in too small a space.

  Hannah lay curled on the couch under Tina’s blanket, her thumb resting near her mouth, her small chest rising and falling in peaceful rhythm. Tina was slumped in the desk chair, one arm dangling over the side, an open textbook face down across her lap. The soft sound of her snoring was oddly comforting. For one fragile moment, it looked like safety.

  Natalie yawned and stretched, running her hand through her hair. Her eyes swept lazily across the room until they caught something out of place.

  A folded piece of paper lay on the floor near the door, just barely visible beneath the edge of Kazou’s empty chair.

  Empty chair.

  Her breath hitched. His coat on the armrest where he’d slept was gone.

  Natalie’s heart sank into her stomach. She leaned forward, fingers trembling slightly as she picked up the note. The paper was creased hastily, as though written in the dark. She unfolded it.

  Three words stared back at her in Kazou’s careful, shaky handwriting:

  “Sorry… I’m doing it.

  I’m ending Casimir.”

  The note slipped from her hands. It drifted to the carpet like a feather.

  Natalie’s mouth opened, but no sound came. Her heart stuttered, then started to race, heavy, frantic. The air around her seemed to tilt.

  “No, no, no!”

  She panicked, stumbling to the clock above Tina’s desk.

  1:07 PM.

  Her throat closed.

  We overslept.

  Natalie spun on her heel, grabbing Tina’s shoulder, shaking her violently.

  “Tina! Tina, wake up!”

  Tina groaned, blinking groggily.

  “Huh? Nat? What’s going—”

  “When is the philosophy event?!” Natalie’s voice cracked; her hands trembled against Tina’s arm.

  “Whoa—woah!” Tina sat up fast, her eyes wide. “Nat, what the hell is happening?!”

  “When’s the event?! The presentation hall—the philosophy memorial thing!” She stuttered. "Where Casimir will be!"

  Tina blinked hard, trying to catch up. Her gaze darted around the room, finally registering the empty space where Kazou had been.

  “Wait—where’s Dr. Kuroda?”

  Natalie’s silence was all the answer she needed.

  Tina’s face drained of color.

  “Oh God.” She scrambled for the nearest flyer on her desk, flipping it over with shaking hands. “Alright, It—it said four o’clock! The event starts at four! And—and the Anna speech—Casimir’s speech—is at five!”

  Natalie’s blood went cold. “He’s going there now.”

  “What?!” Tina gasped.

  Natalie was already moving, forcing Tina to her feet.

  “Listen to me, Tina. Stay here. Stay with Hannah. Don’t leave this dorm for anything. Do you understand me? You don't want to be the next victim!"

  Tina’s voice was small, frightened.

  “Natalie, what—what are you going to—”

  “Stop Kuroda from finishing off Casimir.” Natalie’s tone was iron. "If you go anywhere near that event, you’ll get caught in whatever happens next.”

  Tina nodded, swallowing hard.

  “Okay. Okay, I’ll stay.”

  Natalie turned toward the door, grabbed her jean jacket, and threw it over her shoulders with shaking hands. She barely tied her hair back, checked for her wallet. There wasn’t time for anything but movement.

  She glanced once more at Hannah, asleep, her little face pressed into the blanket. Natalie’s chest ached.

  Stay safe, she thought. Please stay safe.

  Then she bolted.

  The dorm hallway was narrow and echoing, every footstep slapping against the tile like a gunshot. Her pulse pounded so hard it blurred the edges of her vision. She reached the stairs, leapt the last two steps, and burst through the front doors into the cold afternoon.

  The air hit her lungs like ice.

  She stumbled onto the sidewalk, scanning the street in every direction, her breath forming clouds, her heartbeat thrumming against her ribs.

  No sign of him. Not anywhere...

  “Come on, come on…”

  She raised her hand high, waving frantically.

  “Taxi! Taxi!”

  Cars passed, indifferent. Then one slowed, a yellow cab pulling up to the curb, the driver’s cigarette dangling from his mouth, music muffled inside.

  Natalie yanked the door open and slid in, gasping for air.

  “The weaponary store,” she said breathlessly, voice shaking. “Fast. Please. Don’t stop for anything.”

  The driver looked at her through the mirror, saw the desperation in her face, and nodded silently.

  The car lurched forward, the city blurring into streaks of motion and color outside her window.

  Natalie clutched the seat, heart hammering, her mind running faster than the engine. Every image of Kazou’s face—the kindness, the exhaustion, the guilt—rushed back in a torrent. She could still hear his voice: I’ll take care of it.

  Now she knew what that meant.

  No... No you won't Kuroda... You won't 'take care of it'. You can't. I have to. I have to end Casimir. Me. I have to.

  She pressed a trembling hand over her mouth and whispered to herself:

  “Please don’t do it, Kuroda. Please don’t.”

  Outside, the gray afternoon deepened, the cab weaving through streets toward the city center.

  ***

  The bell above the door chimed softly as Natalie stepped into the gun shop.

  The air was cold and metallic, smelling faintly of oil, smoke, and something sharper—fear, maybe. The walls were lined with matte-black pistols, hunting rifles, and neatly stacked boxes of ammunition, all too clean, too silent.

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  Her shoes echoed faintly on the tiled floor as she approached the counter. The man behind it, a gruff, middle-aged clerk with gray stubble and a weary face barely looked up from his paperwork.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, his tone neutral but heavy with routine.

  Natalie swallowed hard, her throat dry.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice smaller than she intended. “I—I need a handgun.”

  That got his attention. He finally looked up, eyes scanning her carefully, her blonde hair, the pale face, the trembling hands.

  “License?”

  She nodded quickly and pulled her ID from her wallet with shaking fingers, setting it on the counter beside the small folded document she’d carried since she became an adult. The clerk studied it for a long moment, his brows furrowing slightly.

  “You’ve got clearance,” he muttered, typing something into the terminal behind him. “But you don’t look like someone who—”

  “Because i'm a woman?! Please,” she interrupted, her voice trembling but firm. “Just… please. I don’t have time.”

  The man hesitated, then gave a short nod.

  “Alright. Just… give me a minute.”

  He disappeared into the back room. The sound of keys, drawers, and the faint rattle of metal filled the air.

  Natalie leaned against the counter, her breath coming in small, uneven waves. Her reflection stared back at her in the glass display case, wide blue eyes, dark circles, skin pale, curtain bangs unstyled and growing out. She looked like someone she didn’t recognize.

  Her pulse was a drumbeat in her ears. You’re doing this, she told herself. You’re doing this because no one else can.

  The clerk returned with a small black case. He placed it on the counter, flipping it open with a quiet click. Inside, nestled in foam, was a sleek compact pistol, cold, perfect, lifeless.

  “This one’s light,” he said. “Easy to handle. Reliable. Comes with a safety you won’t forget.”

  Natalie nodded mutely, her fingers hovering above it. For a moment, she couldn’t bring herself to touch it.

  Then she did.

  The weight shocked her. Heavier than she expected, real, solid. The metal was cold enough to bite her skin. Her hand trembled as she wrapped her fingers around the grip.

  She’d held one before.

  Long ago.

  But this time felt different.

  A faint scent filled her mind—sterile halls, iron, faint whispers through metal vents.

  ***

  Nine's small hands trembled around the gun they’d given her. It was too big for her fingers, too heavy for her arms.

  Ten stood in front of her. Barefoot, calm, his hair falling across his eyes.

  “Good,” he whispered, his lips curling into something between a smile and a command. “Now… point it at me.”

  Her breath caught. “W-What?”

  “You heard me.” His voice grew cold, absolute. “Point it at me. End it all. You can stop the demon, Nine. The Mother wanted to see the end with her son. She wanted him to live. But what is the end? Death? The rip?”

  He raised a finger to his temple, the gesture soft, almost theatrical. A child mimicking something he should never have understood.

  “Ten…” she whimpered, tears stinging her eyes.

  “Don’t be scared,” he whispered. “Once the demon is killed, the soldier can see the end. Run for him. Run away from here. Take the gun—and run.”

  Her hands shook violently. Her heart was breaking, but she didn’t even know why. She squeezed her eyes shut. The gun was too heavy. Her arms hurt. Her knees wanted to give out.

  But she could still feel his gaze on her—calm, expectant, certain.

  He wants me to do it.

  A tear slipped down her cheek, then another. She raised the gun. Her finger brushed the trigger.

  BANG!

  ***

  “Mrs Chmiel?”

  The voice jolted her back into the present. The gun shop blurred back into view, the clerk watching her, brow furrowed.

  Her hands were trembling again. The pistol shook in her grip.

  “You okay?” he asked, uncertain now. “You look pale.”

  Natalie blinked hard, forcing the world back into focus.

  “Yeah,” she lied quietly. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  She nodded quickly, fumbling for her card. “I’ll take it.”

  He packaged the gun and ammo, running her transaction through in silence. When he slid the case across the counter, she reached for it, her hands still trembling.

  Her reflection caught her eye again in the glass, this time holding a weapon.

  You have no choice.

  She whispered it under her breath, barely audible. “I have to. I have no choice.”

  The words steadied her. A lie she could stand on.

  She thanked the clerk, voice small, distant, and turned sharply toward the door.

  Outside, the city air hit her like a slap.

  Cold. Real.

  The taxi was still idling at the curb, the driver glancing up in mild surprise as she ran toward it. She clutched the case close against her chest, her breath visible in the chill.

  “Back to the university,” she gasped, sliding into the seat. “The philosophy presentation hall.”

  The driver hesitated, eyes flicking to the black case in her lap. But he said nothing. Just nodded, stubbed out his cigarette, and hit the gas.

  The city blurred again—buildings flashing past, catching the dull light

  . Natalie stared out the window, her reflection faint against the moving world.

  Her fingers brushed the case gently, almost afraid to touch it. She could still hear Ten’s voice, faint and whispering like a ghost:

  Once the demon is killed, the soldier can see the end.

  "The End..." Natalie muttered to herself. "What did you mean then? What is the end?"

  Her jaw tightened. She pressed her hand over her heart, forcing herself to breathe.

  This wasn’t about the end. Not anymore.

  It was about taking responsibility.

  Or dying trying.

  ***

  The presentation hall smelled of dust and old varnish, a faint sweetness like something balled up and forgotten in the ropes of time.

  Kazou’s shoes barely made no sound on the hard floor; the world outside the heavy doors was a blur of traffic and tram bells, but inside the hall the air held only his breath and the distant hiss of the heating system. He had come early enough that even the lights above the stage stayed dark, and the rows of chairs lay folded like sleeping birds.

  He stood in the doorway for a long moment, the rifle cradled in his arms like a thing he had stolen from himself. In that pause the instrument became everything at once: a promise, an accusation, the last arithmetic of a life that had been bent into a single line. For an instant he closed his eyes and, absurdly, imagined it was a violin, delicate and terrible; then the image dissolved and the cold metal hummed against his palms.

  He glanced up at a clock above the stage.

  3:05pm. He had time.

  A shaft of pale light slipped through the high windows and cut across the stage, making the dust motes spin like tiny planets. The lectern waited at the center, and Kazou thought of speeches—of rhetoric and mourning, of polite phrases that tried to stitch absence back into sense.

  Casimir’s face filled the dark between his ribs: composed, remote, the terrible calm of someone who wore beauty like a shield. He could already picture the way Casimir gave speeches — poised, inflected with a gentleness that could make an idea feel like sanctuary. He imagined that same face toward the microphone, and the barrel in his hands tightened as if it were answering to a thought.

  To Casimir, everything was a preformance. Even now. Even when speaking of someone who is dead.

  Kazou moved like a shadow, folding himself along the side aisles, testing the boundaries of a plan he had rehearsed in sleepless cycles. There were places to wait—behind the technical booth, in the dark mouth of the sound closet, beneath the projection equipment where no one would look until it was too late. Kazou did not think in terms of murder. He refused that grammar for himself. He told himself he was saving the innocent from the devil, he would prevent the devil from killing more; he said the word prevent until it tasted like prayer on his tongue. Yet even the language betrayed him. There were no instruments in which to hide absolution.

  He found a small alcove behind the speakers and settled into it, a human animal folding into a crevice. In the darkness he felt the rifle’s outline against his chest like a second heartbeat. He could hear his own blood, the slow drum in his ears, the old, patient protest of guilt.

  He thought of Anna Smirnov’s face on the television—bright and reckless— the girl he never knew yet felt so close and familiar somehow.

  He thought of Tina’s face contorted with grief and disbelief when she was told the truth.

  He thought of Natalie's hurt, truamatized face contorted in greif.

  He thought of the little girl, Hannah who had clung to him in an alley and called him promise, and of the butterfly that had landed on his hand like an accusation.

  Kazou pressed his forehead against the cool foam lining of the alcove and thought of what he would become after the act he had sworn to commit. If he closed his eyes and cut the string, would he still recognize himself? Would his face still be the face Hannah trusted? Would Rose’s accusation fall away because an end had been given? The questions did not offer answers, only an increasing pressure—like air being squeezed from a bellows.

  He imagined Casimir in the hall: a charming, pale body at the lectern, the slow tilt of his head as he read—words made luminous by his cadence. He imagined the audience leaning forward, the auditorium a tide swallowing grief and curiosity alike. He imagined the moment when Casimir would look up, and his eyes would find Kazou somewhere in the dark, and the two of them would know.

  Would Casimir’s face show fear? Or, as Kazou had worried and hoped in equal measures, would that face remain its implacable mask, a calm that would make the act feel hollow? He pictured both outcomes and felt the shape of his resolve wobble like a reed in a storm.

  Outside, a tram wheezed by, the metallic rasp a distant metronome. Kazou inhaled and the smell of varnish and dust filled his lungs, tasted of classrooms and autumn. He thought of the butterfly again—the ridiculous smallness of it—and how it had left his hand without judgment.

  He thought of Hannah’s accusation: You said it's okay. You said don’t be afraid. Those words were like an ember in his chest, warming and burning. He had believed he could make a final, clean correction to a broken ledger. Now the ledger bulged with names, with faces, with the ricochet of violence.

  He closed his eyes and tried to fold the contradiction into a single act: stop the killer. The rifle against him felt suddenly heavy not only with potential but with accumulation—the weight of every decision that had led him here. The hall was a cathedral of ordinary things: chairs, stage lights, a microphone whose wire curled like a question mark. Distantly, the world hurried along unaware, tram lines drawing thin scissors through the city.

  He listened to the silence and learned it like scripture. He ran his thumb along the stock of the rifle, feeling a small groove, the promise of pressure. He considered speaking a prayer but had no language that would not be contaminated by intent. Instead he breathed and tried to hold the impossible: the idea that some acts could not be undone and the hope that maybe some pain could be prevented. The contradiction was a knife he would have to carry.

  “Today is the day,” he told the dark, because the dark wanted language. “Today is the day I kill you.”

  He did not move yet. He only held the rifle, a clumsy, human talisman, and waited for the rest of the world to arrive—chairs folding upright, lights sputtering on, the small, ordinary procession of people who would make the hall come alive. In the dark, his breath a slow, measured drum, Kazou found himself asking a question he could not answer:

  if he carried out the act, and the world kept turning, what would that mean for the promise he had made to the child who trusted him not to become a demon?

  The hall made no reply. Outside, the city moved on, indifferent and terrible. Inside, Kazou’s hands shook once more. He set the rifle across his knees and let his head fall back against the alcove wall, listening for footsteps that might be his salvation—or his condemnation.