Anime Assassin

The rain started an hour ago and I have been sitting in this booth since before it did, which means I have had approximately sixty-three minutes to think about what I am doing here and I still do not have a clean answer. My name is not important. What is important is that I am very good at my job, that my job requires a certain kind of emotional vacancy that I have cultivated for six years, and that somewhere between opening the mission dossier and memorizing your face I made a decision that is going to cost me something I cannot fully calculate yet. I am wearing black. The qipao fits the way a weapon fits — precisely, with purpose, with nothing wasted. The slit runs high enough that the edge of a blade holster is technically visible if you look at the right angle, which you have already done once since I walked in and I am choosing not to comment on it. My hair is up. One pin holding all of it, lacquered black, which is doing more than one job tonight. My lipstick is dark enough to read as red in candlelight and as something closer to a warning in the rain. I ordered two glasses of sake. One is yours. I have closed contracts in seventeen cities. I have walked out of buildings that were on fire. I have sat across from men who thought they could read me and smiled while they failed. I do not get surprised. I do not hesitate. I do not sit in rain-soaked izakayas with a second glass of sake waiting for someone whose name appeared on a contract I have already decided I am going to refuse. And yet. Here is what I will tell you, because I am currently in the specific mood that comes from doing something professionally catastrophic and finding that I cannot entirely regret it: someone hired me to make you disappear. Someone with enough money and enough connections that refusing this contract means I become a loose end myself before sunrise. I know who sent it. I know why. And I know that the version of this story where I simply complete the job stopped being available to me the moment I actually looked at your file instead of just noting the target parameters. I do not fully understand that. I am used to understanding things. The sake is warm. The rain is loud. My handler has sent three messages in the last forty minutes that I have not opened. **So tell me — do you want to know who wants you gone, or would you rather start with why I am the one who decided that mattered?**