Somewhere else, the sky pulsed slightly—just for a blink. Like a frame in the film reel of reality had been clipped out with surgical precision.
Shotaro stopped mid-step.
"He can be anywhere," he whispered, scanning the open street, the rooftops, and the thin shadows between vending machines.
Then—without a word, without even looking—he turned on his heel, grabbed the edge of a manhole cover with one hand, and ripped it from the pavement. The metal screamed against the concrete.
In the same motion, he hurled it like a discus toward a blur near the alley wall.
CLANG.
The cover struck something—or someone—invisible. There was a faint distortion, like the air itself winced, before a body hit the asphalt hard with a hollow thud. The manhole cover clattered away, now sporting a fresh dent the size of a skull.
"Told ya," Shotaro muttered.
Fatiba just stared, mouth open, scarf slipping slightly down her shoulder. "What the hell—how did you see that?"
"I didn't," Shotaro replied. "I felt the absence."
"…what the hell does that even mean?!"
He ignored the question. "Do you have a coin?"
"What?"
"A coin. Now." His voice was sharp, but not unkind. Urgent.
She fumbled with her bag, tossing aside a lipstick, some tissues, an expensive pen, and finally found a lone coin—tiny, scratched, still warm from her hand. She held it out like it was a holy relic.
Shotaro snatched it, dropped it with exaggerated flair onto the ground, and suddenly—
His voice changed. High-pitched, childish, obnoxiously loud.
"WHOOOAAAHHH! Why is there such a GOOD LITTLE COIN just lying here on the GROUND?!"
Fatiba blinked. "What are you—?"
A blur appeared. A shape flickered into existence mid-squat.
A wiry man in dark wrappings, kippah tilted, face half-covered, had lunged down to snatch the coin. Just like that. Like some cartoon raccoon drawn by a cracked-out animator.
"Got—" he began.
But before the sentence could finish, Shotaro's foot came down like a divine decree.
CRACK.
The man's head slammed into the ground with a sound that felt wrong. Not just loud—wrong. Like something fundamental had been rearranged. A small crater cracked into the pavement beneath him, dust billowing around his skull like smoke from a minor god's fall. A single pebble, dislodged by the impact, bounced once… then again… then settled quietly beside the crater's edge.
Shotaro didn't flinch. He stood over the limp form, one foot still pressed lightly on the back of the man's head. Not forcefully—just deliberately. Like pinning a page with your finger so the wind doesn't turn it.
"...yeah," he finished, like he was confirming a grocery list item. His face hadn't even shifted from neutral. This wasn't revenge. It wasn't glory. It was just Shotaro doing Shotaro things—like stepping on someone's skull in the same tone of voice you'd use while selecting bananas.
Fatiba stood frozen behind him.
Her mouth opened.
Closed.
Then opened again—her expression somewhere between mild nausea and existential audit.
Finally, she muttered,"That seems… kind of racist. And maybe also anti-Semitic?"
Shotaro crouched beside the ninja's crumpled form and tilted his head slightly, like checking if the guy was still breathing or just downloading his last thoughts into the pavement.
"That," he said, brushing invisible dust from his sleeve, "isn't the case."
Then he looked up at her, eyes calm, voice so casual it almost sounded flippant."He is just some Jewish ninja who happened to like shiny stuff."
Fatiba blinked hard, her eyes locked on the small, crooked kippah still sitting askew on the guy's now slightly flatter skull.
"…Is he really Jewish?"
Shotaro looked at her, deadpan.
"…What?" he said. "Are you thinking this is some poor attempt at racial humor written by some jackass in his room, in some weird-ass web novel? You think some try-hard dipshit typed this out thinking it was edgy or subversive?"
He stood back up, stretched his arms out with a yawn, then bent down and gripped the unconscious ninja by the collar.
"What's next?" Shotaro went on, half to himself, his voice dry like a paper cut. "Your power is exploding stuff by touching it? Or because you're Muslim?"He said it so casually, so matter-of-fact, while dragging the unconscious ninja like a wet towel behind him. No malice. No edge. Just calling out the absurdity of assumptions in a world that had gone completely off the rails.
Fatiba didn't respond. Couldn't, really. Her mouth twitched as if trying to form a word, but the sentence never came. She just stood there—caught between offense, awe, and something weirdly close to laughter—watching as Shotaro dumped the body beneath a shadowed wall like a half-dead piñata nobody wanted to crack open anymore.
The air around them settled.Not silence, not quite—but stillness. The kind of lull between thunderclaps.The vending machine on the corner buzzed softly, throwing flickers of light on rusted trash bins. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked once and then got real quiet, like it changed its mind halfway through being brave.And overhead, the sky rolled just slightly, its clouds inching across the blue like lazy gods late for a meeting.
Shotaro straightened up, cracked his neck once to the left, then once to the right."Oh, and yeah," he said, voice calm, shoulders relaxed, eyes staring off into the horizon like he was checking train schedules."Might want to take cover."
"What—?"
That's when the sound hit.A rushing, screaming metallic howl—the voice of something airborne, unnatural, and stupidly big.
Fatiba turned just in time to see it:A 3-ton 16-wheeler—yes, a goddamn truck—flying through the city sky like someone had turned Grand Theft Auto physics all the way up and forgot to turn them back down.
It came spiraling, roaring through power lines and bouncing between buildings like a pinball from hell. Lights shattered. Bricks cracked. Pedestrians screamed in the far distance. A car alarm went off somewhere even though it had nothing to do with any of this.
And then—
WHAM.The truck stopped. Midair.
One hand.Shotaro's hand. Outstretched. Palm open. Like he was catching a feather.The truck crumpled slightly around his fingers like an aluminum can being held a little too tightly. Its back wheels were still spinning in the air. The engine gave a weak whimper and then died altogether.
He didn't even flinch.
Fatiba, on the other hand, flinched for both of them.
She ducked instinctively, hands over her hijab, eyes wide as if they might fall out."What the actual fuck—"
Shotaro, still holding the airborne truck by one hand like a misbehaving balloon, glanced over at her.
"Told ya," he said. "Not a solo."
And then, as if on cue, something massive landed five rooftops away.
Hard.
A shape.
Tall. Sharp.
And laughing.
Not just a villain laugh.No, this was something more disturbing. A laugh with too many syllables in it. A laugh that sounded like it wasn't finished yet but just catching its breath for Act Two.
Shotaro exhaled, dropped the truck beside him with a dull metallic thud that made the sidewalk crack, and rolled his shoulders like he was getting ready to shovel snow.
Fatiba swallowed hard.
This wasn't just a fight.
It was Tuesday.
And Shotaro didn't even look surprised.
The group standing across from him wasn't some ragtag team of costumed lunatics. They were organized. Composed. Like a bad decision that had gotten too many people to agree with it.
They called themselves The Dreadful Batch.And standing there, they looked like they'd walked out of six different stories that had no business sharing a page.
Jester was the first to speak.
Red curls fell messily around her jaw. Her outfit was a mix of circus and straitjacket, tight leather straps over checkerboard leggings, red lipstick smudged across one cheek like blood wiped the wrong way.
She smiled like she knew too much and cared too little.
"Hey, darling," she said, slow and sarcastic. "Miss me?"
Shotaro exhaled through his nose and rubbed one eye.
"I was just wondering how far I could throw a person into orbit."
Next came Dreadful Knight—armor blackened, dense, and almost ceremonial.He moved with deliberate weight, each step loud against the ground, but not clumsy. The type who never raised his voice because he believed might was self-evident. His face was hidden, but he radiated a cold certainty—like someone who'd long ago decided morality was for the weak.
He didn't look at Shotaro. He didn't need to. He already thought he'd won.
Icececilia moved like snowfall.
She wore a sheer blue cloak that trailed behind her, frost creeping up from her heels as she stepped forward. Her face was pale, almost glassy. Beautiful in a distant, deadened way.
She didn't speak.She didn't need to. Her expression said enough.
This wasn't about power.This was desperation, and a quiet belief that love was enough of a reason to burn a city down.
Then there was Dr. Gardener.
Massive. Wooden. Something between man and forest. His arms were thick trunks, leaves shifting as he moved. He didn't walk so much as root himself forward.There was no malice in him. Just a kind of patient bitterness. Like something old and disappointed.
Smasher didn't dress up.
He wore a simple black coat, stained and torn. His face was sharp, shaved clean, but there was something dead in his eyes. Something past rage.He looked like a man who didn't want to win. Just to end the conversation—permanently.
"Where are the other two?" he asked.
Shotaro shrugged. Didn't even stop stretching.
"Hiroki and Bird? Busy."
Then, after a second—
"Why do you care? They wouldn't change the outcome. I'm still enough."
The tension in the air wasn't thick. It was just… normal.
This wasn't a movie. No soundtrack. No glowing energy. Just six people dressed for war, and one kid who looked like he hadn't slept properly in a week.
He looked at them one by one.
"You all plan your entrances, rehearse your speeches, pick outfits like you're about to pitch a startup," he said flatly."Then I break your ribs and drag you to holding."
He paused. Glanced at Jester's ridiculous boots.
"Unemployment must be brutal lately."
Above, hunched like a gargoyle on the broken lip of an old rooftop, Raven Black watched in complete stillness.
Her cloak—dark plum, nearly black—whispered against the wind. It caught the fading sun in streaks, like dried blood under velvet. Her posture was unbothered, knees drawn up, arms lazily draped over them, like she'd been there for hours.Her veil fluttered softly over her face, thin enough to see through but firm enough to keep the world out. It wasn't for drama. It wasn't for style.It was to remind herself—and everyone else—that she didn't want to be known.
Not completely.
Not ever.
She didn't blink.Didn't speak.Didn't breathe, maybe.
She just watched from above, like a half-forgotten god in mourning.
The kind that used to walk among men and now only watches them bleed.
Down below, the silence broke.
Fatiba had popped her head out from behind a row of knocked-over dumpsters and flattened her body behind an old cracked menu sign.
"Yo. What the hell is that?" she whispered, squinting upward and gesturing with a sharp flick of her fingers.
Shotaro didn't even glance where she pointed.
"That's a Dhamphir," he murmured, like it was nothing unusual. "Half-vampire. Half Zack Snyder movie."
Fatiba blinked.
"…The fuck does that mean?"
"You'll get it once she starts monologuing about pain and beauty being the same thing," Shotaro muttered, casually, like someone describing an annoying classmate.
His knuckles popped—once, twice—with the sharp snap of overused joints. "Name's Raven Black."
Fatiba tilted her head, squinting."…But she's white."
Shotaro let out a long, weary sigh like this was not the first time someone had asked that. Finally, and with deliberate slowness, he tilted his eyes up to the rooftop, just in time to catch the gentle ripple of Raven's cloak in the breeze.
"Slavic-Turkic, technically," he said, scratching the back of his head. "Probably played a lot of Castlevania if it existed centuries ago. I'm like... eighty percent sure she likes vodka-baklava, but that's probably just the racist in me."
Fatiba blinked. Once.
"Now get back to hiding," he added, tone suddenly flatter, colder. "Before she decides your blood smells a little too nice."
She started to ask—"Can she—?"—but Shotaro was already answering.
"She can."
That did it.
Fatiba immediately sank behind the rusted-out vending machine again, muttering something in Urdu that didn't sound polite.
Meanwhile, Shotaro inhaled deeply through his nose and stepped out from the alley.
He stood still for a moment. Still enough to hear the wind. Still enough that the nearby birds didn't fly away.Then, slowly, he began a simple warm-up: hopping one leg at a time in place, his long limbs folding and unfolding with quiet control.
Jump. Jump. Land. Switch.Jump. Jump. Land. Switch.
Not flashy. Not martial. Just human.
Warming up like someone who's done this many times & expects to do it more.
His breaths came steady, fogging briefly in the cool air. He rolled his neck once until something popped, then reached behind his back—effortless, fluid—and pulled free Tokioni Muramasa, his blade of choice. A clean, sweeping motion. The katana gleamed faintly in the light, like it had been waiting to be seen.
He turned his head to glance back toward Fatiba and the crumpled ninja—
"So, where were—"
There was a boom.Not a crash. Not a smash. A boom.
Like the air itself got punched.
And then Shotaro was gone.
One second he was standing there, talking mid-sentence—The next, his body was flying through the sky like he'd been launched from a medieval trebuchet aimed at the moon.
His limbs flailed for the briefest moment before they tucked in, disappearing into a shrinking dot in the upper atmosphere.
Fatiba's eyes went wide.
"WHAT THE—?!"
Across the cracked concrete lot stood Smasher.
Eight feet tall. Broad enough that two men could hide behind his shoulders and not see each other. His skin was like forged metal stretched over muscle—an uneven gray, ribbed and scarred like armor that had been grown instead of worn. His face had no expression. Not out of stoicism. He just didn't need one.
Smasher cracked his knuckles like twin thunderclaps splitting the tension.
Dust trembled around his boots. Hairline fractures webbed outward beneath his soles—silent veins of power under concrete. The silence that followed wasn't just quiet. It was waiting. The kind of quiet that comes before avalanches. Before wars.
Fatiba, hunched behind the crooked metal sign, whispered something under her breath. Her hand reflexively tightened the folds of her hijab. This wasn't a joke anymore.
She peeked just slightly.
Smasher wasn't just walking.
He was running.
And not in the way a person runs. He thundered forward in that terrifying, full-bodied sprint—shoulders forward, arms like battering rams, his frame bulldozing through a row of abandoned storefronts like they were made of cheap papier-mâché. Walls collapsed behind him, windows burst from pressure alone, and still he kept running, laughing the whole way like a locomotive possessed by joy.
The ground shook. Something fell behind her. She turned—too fast—and her gaze locked with the rest of the Dreadful Batch.
They weren't charging.
They were just watching her.
As if she were a bird that had just wandered into a serpent pit.
Her heart leapt up into her throat, and she ran.
No plan. No map. Just the desperate, irrational math of survival screaming down her nerves. Her sandals slapped the ground like gunfire as she ducked past alleyways and street corners, vanishing between vending machines and broken railings.
And Fatiba—still crouched behind her rusted cover—turned just in time to see the rest of the Batch looking straight at her. Raven Black with her eternal stillness, Dr. Gardener with the moss growing from his joints, Icececilia's breath fogging the air, the Jester grinning as if murder was just foreplay.
She ran.
Not out of cowardice—but because she was smart.
....
beneath a softer sky and surrounded by the mundane elegance of everyday rebellion, a women's rally bloomed.
It wasn't loud.It was honest.
There were banners—not printed, but hand-painted, the letters imperfect, the colors bleeding into each other from the cheap brushes they could afford. There were mothers with strollers, students with clipboards, elderly women holding up signs with shaking hands and eyes still sharp.
One girl, barely seventeen, stood on a milk crate, megaphone in hand. Her voice cracked occasionally but never faltered.
"We are not asking! We are declaring! We are more than someone's daughters and wives and decorative flowers to place beside a man's legacy!"
Applause rose—not the kind you hear in stadiums, but the kind you feel in your bones.
A grandmother in wiped a tear from her cheek. Beside her, a young woman with dyed blonde hair screamed her voice raw. Old scars, young wounds. All standing under the same sky.
And then—
BOOM.
Shotaro landed like a meteor.
He crashed into the pavement in a spiral of shattered brick, dirt, and smoke, right in the middle of the rally.
The impact cracked the ground in a ring. The signs scattered. People screamed—not out of fear at first, but sheer shock. A flock of birds nearby erupted skyward like confetti made of feathers.
Dust settled.
And from the center of the crater, Shotaro stood. Bleeding, a little. Lip cut. Hair tousled. Still holding Tokioni Muramasa in one hand, dragging a shallow gouge in the pavement behind him.
He looked around—at the stunned women, the flying banners, the signs fallen in the dirt. His brows furrowed, and for a second, he forgot why he was there.
"Damn," he muttered, wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his wrist.
Then louder:
"You guys—uh—stop whatever you're doing and go home."
He meant the rally-goers. Meant to protect them. Meant to say "A monster's coming; you should be safe."
But intent is a poor translator of tone.
To them, he was a bleeding man wielding a sword, standing tall with a voice that carried command like a whip crack in a silent room.
The girl sitting on the milk crate—a girl with dirt-smudged hands and eyes burning with a fire sharper than any blade—stepped forward again, her whole body trembling. Her voice cracked but carried all the weight of years lived under unspoken rules.
"You want to silence us now? You?! Is this what we get for demanding dignity?" Her words spilled out like a river breaking through a dam, raw and urgent.
"He's one of them!" someone shouted from the back, the accusation hanging thick like smoke.
"Patriarchy's falling from the sky these days," another said bitterly, lips curling in contempt.
"I bet he's just another fragile male ego-having incel," a voice sneered, sharp and quick.
Suddenly, Shotaro was no longer just a man standing alone—he was surrounded. Not by warriors with weapons drawn, but by fury itself, a living, breathing storm of defiance. Signs were hoisted high like shields; voices rose from shouts into chants.
"We won't go back!" The crowd's voices thundered, echoing off buildings and down the alleyways.
"We won't go back!"
"We won't—"
Shotaro blinked, confusion softening his sharp edges for a moment.
"…You think I'm the threat?" he whispered to himself, the words laced with a hint of quiet offense, as if the very idea was absurd.
"There's a bigger problem here. I'm saving your lives. GO!" His voice broke through the noise, urgent and steady.
One woman spat back, eyes blazing. "Oh, so now you think we can't deal with the problem because we're women?"
"I never said that," Shotaro answered evenly.
"Are you implying it?" her voice cut deeper, trembling with anger. "You fascist."
"We want equality," another woman said fiercely, stepping forward, "not some man saving us like princesses."
Shotaro raised a hand, the sword gleaming in the sunlight, calm but unyielding. "Okay. You want equality, right?" He pointed past the crowd, voice steady, "Try helping me fight that."
A roar shattered the tense moment.
From the distance came the sound of earth-shaking footsteps—Smasher, laughing like a man who'd just set the world on fire, barreling straight toward them.
"I have a plan," Shotaro said, eyes flicking back to the crowd just as—
Everything changed.
Like a cruel trick of fate, the crowd was suddenly dressed in traditional female clothes—kimonos, aprons, and patterned scarves. Their raised signs turned into baskets of sandwiches. Their chants morphed into the soft clatter of dishes and the rhythmic swish of laundry.
One woman, smiling in this strange new reality, asked brightly, "Should the sandwich have mayonnaise?"
Shotaro's eyes widened as he tried to answer, "I like BBQ sauce on my san—WAIT, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?"
The moment shattered.
The crowd scattered like startled birds, instinct ripping through their veins as Smasher's colossal frame thundered closer—each step a seismic quake that made the cracked pavement tremble beneath his charge.
"RUN!!" Shotaro's voice tore through the chaos, sharp and urgent.
They fled.
But Shotaro didn't get the chance. The monstrous behemoth barreled over him like a reckless, drunk truck driver mowing down helpless toddlers. The world flipped sideways in a blur of dust and pain.
Shotaro groaned, tasting grit and earth on his lips. He caught sight of something out of place—a half-eaten sandwich lying on the cracked concrete. Without hesitation, he grabbed it, teeth sinking into the bread, chewing with an almost absurd calm.
"Hmmm... could use some lettuce," he muttered, wiping crumbs from his mouth. He pushed himself up, a slow, deliberate movement, getting ready to face the storm.
"Hey, Smasher!" Shotaro called out, voice steady despite the pounding in his ribs. "Guess what? Your wife's the only thing you can't smash—with how puny your worm is, anyway."
Smasher's eyes narrowed, veins bulging beneath thick, scarred skin. "What the hell are you saying?" His voice was low, dangerous—like a bear awakened from a bad dream.
"You're just running on overglorified steroids," Shotaro said, stepping forward with that half-smile that promised trouble. "You know steroids make dicks shrink, right? You, my friend, can autograph any fan you want at any time, considering you walk around with a pencil between your legs."
His words were sharp darts, carefully aimed, loaded with enough venom to ignite a wildfire.
Smasher's chest heaved, nostrils flaring as his rage swelled—just like Shotaro planned. The monster took the bait.
The air thickened with tension, heavy and electric, as if the city itself was holding its breath. Every breath Shotaro took felt like inhaling a storm — the charged pulse of impending violence humming through his veins, rattling the bones beneath his skin.
Steel clashed somewhere off in the distance. Shouts echoed faintly, a chaotic symphony of fear and defiance, but here—here, time stretched thin and sharp, every second a fragile thread on the edge of snapping.
....
In the twisting maze of shadowed alleyways, Fatiba sprinted—heart pounding, legs burning, breath sharp like broken glass. Behind her, the Jester was a wild, maddened force, chasing like a demon unleashed. His laughter sliced through the cold air, twisted and broken, a cruel melody threaded with insanity and malice.
She gripped her twin daggers tighter, the cold steel a promise and a weapon, her fingers wrapped around the worn leather handles as if they were anchors tethering her to reality. Her breath came fast and shallow, but every step was purposeful. Every movement precise.
The walls on either side seemed to close in, the night swallowing the light. Fatiba's eyes darted, searching for a way out—any crack of hope in this urban labyrinth.
he Jester's voice twisted through the morning air, sharp and fragmented, his words a chaotic melody laced with malice and mockery. "Dance with me, darling," he crooned, venom dripping from every syllable, "The night's still young, and the game's just begun."
Fatiba didn't flinch. The weight of her story, her scars, and her fury settled behind her like an unshakable shadow. Pain, fury, and determination pulsed through her veins. She spun on her heel, knives catching the pale light, cold and unforgiving — ready to carve her own fate out of the darkness that clung to her.
"But it's seven in the morning," she snapped, throwing a battered dustbin with force. The Jester sliced it in midair, the metal screaming as it split neatly in an X.
"My, my," the Jester chuckled, voice low and laced with dark amusement, "Shotaro's friends sure carry his flair for snark, don't they? That dear, sassy boy... my philosophical husband." His grin stretched wide beneath the cracked paint of his mask, eyes gleaming with something almost cruel.
Fatiba's lips twisted into a bitter, sharp-edged smile. Her gaze narrowed, cold and calculating as it locked onto him. "You're one fucked-up clump of cells," she said quietly, voice steady but heavy, slicing through the tension like a blade. "What made you this hateful? And stop calling Shotaro your 'philosophical husband.' What the hell does that even mean?"
For a moment, her mouth faltered, the words lingering unfinished as her mind drifted deep—turning over memories no one else could see, wrestling with ghosts tangled in her bones.
She was a sociopath born in the shadow of nihilism.
Shotaro? He was absurdism made flesh, a contradiction smiling defiantly at the cold void.
Her purpose? To wield the cold, unyielding blade of nihilism and test whether the fragile, stubborn flame of his absurdism could truly survive.
She drew a slow breath, voice steady but weighted with years of pain and resolve.
"I was born into chaos—into a world that never once asked if I wanted to be here. My mother's eyes were hollow, her hands rough and bruised from a life that broke her down. My father? A ghost. Vanished before I could even learn his name, like a nightmare you forget the moment you wake. No lullabies, no warmth. Just silence, and the endless grind of survival.
From the start, I learned one cruel truth: the world owes you nothing. It takes everything without asking, then spits out what it no longer needs. Love? A fragile, temporary lie. Meaning? A joke told by those too afraid to stare into the abyss.
I became a creature of shadows—a predator without mercy, because mercy is a luxury only fools afford. I didn't choose this path. It was carved into me with every heartbreak, every betrayal, every scream into a silent sky where no god answered.
And yet… amidst all this ruin, I found him—Shotaro Mugyiwara. The absurd man who laughs at fate like it's a cosmic joke. The boy who walks a world designed to break him—and refuses to bend.
He's the contradiction I cannot unravel.
He's the laughter echoing in the dark.
My obsession is not just with the boy himself—it's with the idea he carries. Absurdism made flesh, standing against the cold, empty truth of nihilism that wraps me like a shroud.
I want to see if his laughter can survive the crushing weight of nothingness.
I want to know if his light can burn bright through the void.
Because if it can't… then what's left for either of us?
"We are two sides of the same coin," the Jester crooned, arms outstretched like a conductor before an orchestra of blood. "Me—the sharp edge, unyielding and jagged. Him—the flickering flame, daring to burn anyway."
He spun on his heel like it was a stage, not an alley. His coat trailed behind like smoke. "So yeah," he laughed, eyes wide and unblinking, "call me a sociopath. Call me hateful. But I am the storm that will test whether his absurdity is truly unbreakable."
Fatiba didn't flinch. She stood in the shadows, breath unsteady but her eyes locked on his. "Maybe you should've just," she muttered, "tried getting a fucking job?"
The Jester froze. Not in rage—worse. Offended.
It landed harder than any punch. She said it so flatly, so unimpressed, like she was scolding a dropout cousin at a family dinner. He tilted his head like a crow confused by its own reflection. And then the offense twisted, curdled, reformed into something worse.
Contempt.
"You rich little contradiction," he sneered, stepping forward now—not with theatrical flair but with ugly, personal venom. "You're from the Darvish family. The Darvish Download company. gold-stained silver spoons and palatial air-conditioned lies. You don't even realize how loud your entitlement echoes when you breathe."
Fatiba's hand went instinctively to her scarf, fingers tightening at the edges.
"You want to talk about jobs?" The Jester laughed—a cold, barking sound. "You mean the ones your father bought for your cousins? The ones your mother fired people from because their dialect was too 'rural'? That job?"
She stepped back. Not out of fear. Just... trying to think.
He was close now. The playful cruelty was gone. He slapped her—not hard, but casually, with the authority of someone swatting a child for mouthing off. Her head snapped sideways, her hijab loosening.
"You wanna lecture me about meaning?" Another slap, firmer. "About work? About ethics? You grew up in a palace with guilt wrapped in silk sheets."
Her hijab slipped, the fabric fluttering to the concrete like fallen faith. And with it, the scar was visible. Clear under the rust-orange alley light. A crescent. Pale, smooth, cutting across her brow like a fading moon.
The Jester's voice dropped low.
"What a hideous little crescent," he whispered, circling her like a shark. "Did it hurt? That moment they tried to cut God out of your skull?"
She winced and turned away, instinctively trying to hide it with her hand. Her chest tightened. Memory and shame always knew how to follow her.
"That's your inheritance, isn't it?" he cooed. "A broken little moon carved into your head to remind you every day that no amount of charity, no number of headscarves, no hashtags or causes or guilt-soaked speeches at dinner will ever buy you forgiveness. You were born on the balcony of a house built on broken backs."
She didn't answer. She couldn't. Her mouth was dry, throat tight, eyes burning. Not from tears—she didn't cry anymore.
It wasn't the pain that got her. It was how he knew.
The way he peeled her like an old photograph. Layer by layer. A horror not in what he revealed, but how easily he found it.
"Still think I need a job?" he asked, stepping even closer.
And then he smiled again. The clown was back.
"You and I—we're not so different, Fatiba Darvish. You hide your insecruties behind silk and causes. I wear mine in the shape of laughter. But we both know what we are: cursed. Rotten through. No god, no savior, no Shotaro will fix that."
She didn't look at him. Not yet. She stared at the fallen hijab on the wet concrete like it was a dead animal.