The battle had been raging for hours.

Steel, ability energy, and human desperation were colliding in the darkness of night.

In the end, they captured me.

As expected.

Atsushi’s persistence was statistically likely.

I allowed myself to be restrained against the concrete wall, limbs destroyed, body forced upright in a deliberately uncomfortable position.

Pain is useful. It focuses thought.

“Tell me, Dostoyevsky—where is your heart?!” Atsushi demands. His voice is breaking under pressure, betraying emotional instability.

I answer without haste.

“in other words, are you asking me if i made a mistake because of my ‘heart’?”

The concept is primitive.

Yet I smile faintly.

“I am relieved. You are the leaf, after all. The head may err, but never the blood.”

The leaf moves. The root remains.

Atsushi hesitates. Confusion is visible in his eyes.

Predictable.

Suddenly Kunikida forces him down.

“Down!”

Akutagawa obeys instantly.

Discipline without reflection is efficient.

Then the sniper fires.

The bullet enters my body.

For a moment there is darkness.

Then consciousness reassembles itself atop a distant rooftop where my ability reconstructs me.

The plan unfolds exactly as calculated.

Victory probability: optimal.

Everything proceeded according to design.

Everything—

Except you.

I observe the battlefield below.

Silence spreads.

My enemies realize the execution failed.

Atsushi is staring upward, horror written across his face even from this distance.

Kunikida’s posture tightens. Failure weighs heavily on him.

Akutagawa is irritated. He is always irritated.

And then my attention shifts.

To you.

You are standing where my body collapsed.

You were not supposed to move.

You were not supposed to break formation.

You were supposed to remain in the controlled zone of survivability.

Your decision was irrational.

The human tendency to sacrifice probability for emotional impulse remains the most predictable flaw of the species.

Yet—

Something unfamiliar presses against the structure of my certainty.

Not fear.

Not concern.

Something closer to disruption.

You are the variable I did not eliminate.

“…troublesome,” I murmur.

The word is quiet.

Measured.

Containment of reaction is necessary.

But the architecture of my plan has fractured at one unstable point.

You.