Chapter 43 : Consequences, Trust, and the Next Step

I awoke with a gentle jolt, not to an alarm, but to the faint hum of medical machinery around me. The room was sterile white, and the sharp, antiseptic smell filled the air. I was in a hospital—a hero-specialized hospital, judging by the advanced equipment. The memory of what happened crashed over me like a tidal wave: the confrontation in the warehouse, Ryukyu's roar, Akame's sword, and the searing pain of the dragon's fire. I had impulsively protected a killer from my own mentor. An act of betrayal in anyone's eyes.

I checked my body under the thin blanket. Strangely, the pain I should have been feeling from third-degree burns was almost non-existent. All that remained was an overwhelming exhaustion, as if every cell in my body had run a marathon. I pulled the blanket off my arm. My skin was smooth, new, without the slightest scar. And yet, under the fluorescent light, I could see it—incredibly faint patterns, like a shimmering silver web, etched just beneath the surface of my skin. It was the trace left by my forced regeneration, a secret map of the terrifying power that resided within me. I quickly covered it back up.

The door to my room opened, and Ryukyu entered. She was no longer in her dragon form, but the aura of her power still felt heavy in the room. Her usually calm face was now a storm of complex emotions: relief, confusion, and suppressed anger. She pulled a chair over and sat beside my bed, the silence between us feeling heavier than the pressure at the bottom of the ocean.

Outside, in the corridor, my friends were waiting anxiously. I could imagine their confusion. Uraraka, with her pure heart, must feel hurt and uncomprehending. Tsuyu, with her sharp logic, must be trying to find a rational reason for my completely irrational action. And Nejire… she must have a thousand new theories spinning in her head. My actions hadn't just endangered myself; they had created a fracture in the trust we had just begun to build as a team.

"The doctors are calling you a medical miracle," Ryukyu said finally, her voice flat. "Burns that should have kept you here for months healed in less than half a day. They have no explanation for it." She looked at me directly, her golden eyes seeming to see right into my soul. "Neither do I. Just like I have no explanation for why my most promising intern would jump in front of my attack to protect a cold-blooded killer."

She leaned forward. "So, you're going to give me an explanation now, Tatsumi-kun. No lies. No evasions. I want the truth. Why did you do it?"

I swallowed, my throat dry. I couldn't give her the real truth. It was an insanity. So, I had to give her a version of the truth she could accept, a lie woven from threads of honesty. "Because of the connection I felt," I said softly, my voice still hoarse. "When I sensed her, Ryukyu-san, I didn't just sense killing intent. Underneath all of that, I felt something else. I felt… sadness. A deep and cold despair. And a burden, a mission she was carrying out not because she wanted to, but because she felt she had to."

I met her eyes, trying to channel all the sincerity I could muster. "I didn't protect her because I agree with what she does. I protected her because I realized in that moment that she's not just a villain. She's a symptom. A weapon forged by someone else. If we had captured her that night, we would have only imprisoned the knife, while the hand that wields it remained free. I… I made a gamble. A strategic gamble. I believe that by letting her go, by showing her that not everyone wants to kill her, we may have planted a seed of doubt in her mission. And that gives us a chance to hunt the source, the organization that created her—Yozakura."

Ryukyu listened in silence, her expression unchanging. She was a veteran hero who had heard thousands of lies and excuses. She had to know I was hiding something. But my explanation, as crazy as it sounded, had its own logic. It was the kind of unconventional, long-term strategic thinking that fit the profile I had built in her eyes.

"You risked your life," she said quietly, "based on a hypothesis born from a supernatural 'feeling'." She let out a long sigh, a sound filled with weariness. "It was the most reckless, most irrational, and most inexcusable act ever committed by an intern under my supervision." She paused, and I braced myself for the worst. "And perhaps… one of the bravest."

She stood up. "I don't know if I believe you completely, Tatsumi-kun. But for now, I have no choice but to accept your explanation. Make no mistake, though. The trust between us has been damaged. You will pay for it." She turned. "Rest. Tomorrow, your training resumes. And this time, it will be much harder." With those cold words, she left me alone in my room.

In her hideout, Akame was tending to a minor wound she had sustained while escaping—a scratch on her arm from an exploding concrete fragment. The physical wound was nothing compared to the chaos in her mind. She kept replaying the scene. That boy. That dragon armor. And his absurd sacrifice. Why would someone who was his opponent jump in front of fire to protect her? It was an act driven by emotion, not logic. It was the kind of reckless act that… he would do. And then, the name. He had called her by her name. The name that should have been dead and buried.

Hope is a poison for an assassin. Hope makes you hesitate, makes you lower your guard. And Akame had frozen her heart off from hope long ago. But now, a crack had formed in that ice. The possibility, however small, that she wasn't alone in this world, that one of the most important bonds from her past life might have followed her, was a thought too powerful to ignore. Her mission to eliminate the corrupt now felt secondary. She had a new priority. She had to find that boy again. She had to confront him, alone. She had to know the truth, no matter how painful or dangerous that truth might be.

Two days later, I was allowed back at the agency. The atmosphere was awkward. Uraraka and Tsuyu greeted me with relief, but there was a distance between us now, an unspoken question hanging in the air. Nejire was the only one who acted normally, though her questions now had a sharper intensity.

My training with Ryukyu had indeed become much harder. She was no longer just training my control of the manifestation. She wanted to know my limits. "If you're going to commit reckless acts, you should at least be able to survive them," she said in Training Room Gamma. "Today, we're going to find out just how much punishment your body can take."

She put me through a series of drills designed to push me to my absolute limit. I had to dodge attacks while constantly manifesting and retracting different parts of the armor, a painful, draining dance. Then, she upped the intensity. She fired a training pellet faster than I could react, deliberately giving me a deep enough scratch on my arm.

"Heal," she commanded coldly.

I looked at the bleeding wound. I remembered the sensation in the hospital. I closed my eyes, focused my will, and channeled my dragon's energy into the wound. I could feel my skin knitting back together with a strange, itching heat. It was an exhausting process, and after the wound closed, I was panting and drenched in sweat.

"So, you can do that too," Ryukyu muttered, noting something on her tablet. "Active healing. At a great cost to your stamina. The more secrets you keep, Tatsumi-kun."

Meanwhile, the investigation into Yozakura continued, but I was deliberately kept out of the strategic planning. That was my punishment. I was only given low-level data analysis tasks. But the team, especially with help from Momo via video conference, managed to find a new lead. A private charity auction was being held by a suspected Yozakura shell company. The event would be attended by many wealthy and corrupt figures. It was a perfect hunting ground for Akame.

They brought the findings to Ryukyu. A new plan began to form, a plan to set a trap at the auction. Initially, I was not to be involved in the field operation. But I confronted Ryukyu privately.

"Ryukyu-san," I said. "I know I've broken your trust. But you need my 'radar' for this mission. You can't ambush her if she can sense you. But I… I can feel the direction she's coming from. Let me come. Station me anywhere, even outside the perimeter. But let me help you."

She looked at me for a long time, an internal struggle clear in her eyes. She hated her reliance on my unexplainable abilities, but she was also a pragmatic hero who knew she had to use every asset she had.

"Fine," she said finally, her voice firm. "You'll come. But this time, no exceptions. You will be right by my side at all times. You do not move without my order. You are my detector, and I am your shield. We do this together, or not at all."

I nodded, accepting her terms without hesitation. This was my chance to earn back her trust. The night of the auction, we prepared. I wore a formal black suit, with a hidden communicator in my ear. The team spread out, taking positions inside and around the lavish opera house where the event was being held. I stood on a private balcony overlooking the main hall, right beside Ryukyu, who was also in an elegant evening gown. The atmosphere was filled with classical music and the polite chatter of the city's elite, a deceptive facade for the tension pulsing underneath. My dragon's heart was calm, waiting, sensing the darkness beyond the glittering chandeliers.