I finally found her, sitting on a stone bench away from the flow of fans. She looked tiny, lost in the vastness of the hall. Her hands trembled slightly on her knees. As I approached, I felt as if I were looking at a pillar of salt ready to shatter.

  "Hey, Okiku. You alright?"

  She started and looked up. Instantly, she flashed that smile... that too-perfect, too-bright smile, the kind you wear to mask a crack.

  "Oh, Mr. Kenji! Yes, everything is fine. I just got a little... dizzy from the crowd. It's impressive, all these people, isn't it?" Her eyes shimmered with a sadness she couldn't quite extinguish, but she kept her head high.

  I knew she was lying. I felt it in my gut, the way you feel a storm coming. I could have pushed, asked her who she had been staring at with such dread just minutes before. But I thought back to the morning, to my hidden files, to my own feeling of being a fraud. Who was I to force a confession out of her?

  "Yeah, it's suffocating in here," I replied, feigning belief. "Let's head back. Training won't happen by itself if we stay here breathing in their luxury perfume."

  She seemed relieved that I didn't press her.

  "Yes... let's go home."

  The journey back was nothing like the way there. This morning, Okiku had been almost skipping, eyes sparkling at the idea of discovering the Association, asking me a thousand questions about the Heroes. Now, she walked beside me like a shadow, gaze empty, staring at the tips of her shoes.

  That excitement had curdled into a heavy, almost depressive melancholy. She didn't say another word.

  "We'll call it a day here," I said softly when we reached the main intersection.

  She looked up, snapping out of her trance.

  "Oh... yes. Thank you for today, Mr. Kenji."

  She attempted one last smile, but it was so fragile it seemed it might blow away with the slightest gust of wind. She turned into the alley leading to her friend's house. I watched her walk away, her small silhouette sinking into the gray of the city, before resuming my own path.

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  I had no desire to go home. Not yet.

  I began to wander through the noisy streets, hands shoved deep into my jacket pockets, collar turned up. Every billboard showing a Hero with a glittering smile made me want to gag. A searing frustration gnawed at my vitals.

  The Association erasing evidence, the "man in bandages" who officially doesn't exist, and Okiku carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders ever since she locked eyes with that guy in the white suit... It was all tangling in my head.

  I was just a second-rate cop in a city that didn't give a damn about justice anymore. I was punching at shadows while the "greats" played chess with our lives.

  "Dammit..." I grunted, kicking an empty can.

  If no one wanted to look for the truth, I'd have to dig it up myself, even if it cost me my skin. Deep down, that was the job my grandfather loved so much: never looking away, even when everyone else preferred to close their eyes.

  Lost in these looping thoughts, I walked without really knowing where I was going, eyes fixed on my worn-out shoes. My rage against this system of glass and steel still burned in my chest, and my steps carried me, almost despite myself, toward a massive overpass. Beneath it, the continuous roar of cars turned into a dull hum, an echo of the inner turmoil I was trying to stifle. The shadows were thick here, the air heavy with dust, and for the first time in a long while, I found myself breathing a little more slowly.

  In the distance, I spotted a motionless silhouette sitting on the edge of the concrete ledge, legs dangling into the void above the lower road. At first glance, I didn't pay it much mind.

  Just another poor soul the city spat out, I thought with a pang of pity. A homeless guy who found a quiet corner to flee the neon lights.

  I kept moving forward, my footsteps echoing against the concrete pillars. But the closer I got, the more an unnatural shiver ran down my spine. The air seemed to have dropped ten degrees in just a few meters. This wasn't the posture of a man broken by the streets. He was too straight. Too... vigilant.

  I stopped a few paces away. The harsh light of a flickering streetlight buzzed above us, finally revealing the details of his figure.

  Those weren't rags. They were strips of surgical cloth, wrapped with obsessive precision around his arms and torso.

  My blood turned to ice. It was him. The man who saved me.

  Suddenly, he slowly turned his head. He had no face, just that mask of bandages that offered only an abyssal blackness where his eyes should have been. Over them, a pair of black glasses, perfectly opaque, further heightened the impression of a total void. Yet, I felt his gaze land on me. It was a physical sensation, heavy, sinister, as if a frozen blade had just been pressed against my throat.

  He said nothing. He simply stared at me, as still as a gargoyle, radiating an aura so dark it seemed to suck the faint light from the tunnel. In that deathly silence, under that bridge forgotten by everyone, I knew one thing for certain: the Association wasn't the only one lying.