❝ YOU DISGUSTING FUCKER—– ❞ He nearly spits, an anger rising in him. Normally, many people WOULD HAVE SAID that Yoshikage Kira was a man of a simple, yet chilly, grace: he often kept quietly to himself, he’d arrive sharply at work ( in all manners of the word ), and what duties he had he did well. Never exceeding any standard, or hitting any low; just well. Always well. Most people thought of him the same, normal way as anyone else would have upon a glance. The only thing that really stood out, perhaps, were those colourful, designer suits he prided himself in. A man deemed humble too selfish to sort out his conjured façade from his narcissism.
I’M NORMAL. I’M NORMAL. I’M NORMAL, his mask says.
I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, he says as he let his knife plunge into her back sixty-seven times.
Blue eyes look over the agent, and Yoshikage feels himself grow only colder. More distant. His grasp fidgets, and for a moment, he thinks he’s lost the slightest bit of control over something he usually governed over. He’d never been caught, not for fifteen years. For fifteen years, things were calm, peaceful. Peaceful as the graves in which the women he’d SLAUGHTERED were.
THAT GAZE HE HAS IS NO LONGER HUMAN. HIS RAGE MORPHED INTO A DEADLY CALM. ONE BREATH, THEN TWO. NO MORE SHAKES.
❝ I’m in the middle of something important. I—I haven’t even begun to GUT HER yet. That’s all I got to so far was her back. I’m very particular about these sorts of things.
She’s a sad, sad girl now. That gun of yours is making her nervous, too. A shame, really. She was looking forward to our date. ❞ Kira’s serpentine voice slid out from his lips as casually, the way a forked tongue would. This wasn’t rehearsed, as things usually were. He was comfortable. He could admit things all too easily, naturally. ❝ —-Are you going to arrest me, Agent? ❞
Carnage wasn’t anything new to him.
Teachers at Quantico had two methods of operating: sugar-coat the damage. Give it a nice alluring sheen, warn the future agents, bypass it. Ignore it. Ignore the way it stains your eyes red, the way it splatters across the floor, the way it dances across the hall in a synchronized number.
They ignored it, or they shoved it down your throat. Imagine, you’re a student. In your twenties. You’re a kid. You’re barely walking straight, and thinking? It’s beyond you. But your teacher says you have to. Your mentor, he’s in charge of your whole damn career, he grabs you by the chin and brings you face to face with blood and guts and the whole nine yards.
It’s there. It’s real. It isn’t going away.
Cooper sided with the latter. He let his eyes lower, let himself see the girl, limp and glassy-eyed and she doesn’t look like she’s protesting, he thought. The words shuffled from his head down his neck to his mouth. He bit them back.
(Never drop your weapon, his colleagues would say. Never drop it. Cooper’s palm itched, desperate for the chaotic security of a trigger, the ominous weight of ammunition.)
❝ I am. Solid confession, ❞ he said. It was a moment ― a long moment, too long ― and Cooper wondered whether or not he was saturated with the girl’s blood (but was he ever otherwise?). ❝ You still have the option to come willingly. ❞
