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Prologue - Fomenting Nightmare

The soprano's beautiful voice was exhibiting her broad vocal range, varying between high and low notes that permeated gently throughout the vast theater.

Kenji Houbara was sitting in the dimly lit audience area, holding his breath while staring at the stage intently.

Dressed in seventeenth-century Scottish attire, the actors sang the prose-like lyrics in recitative style while walking back and forth across the stage.

The electronic screen on the side of the stage lit up suddenly to display what they were singing about. The tense atmosphere on stage was transmitted directly to the audience as though one could almost see taut wires.

Kenji was watching the opera called Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti.

Lucia Ashton and Edgardo di Ravenswood were in love and attempted to act as bridge of amity between the two feuding families. However, Lucia's elder brother hated the Ravenswood family and forged a breakup letter, thereby destroying the couple's relationship and forcing his sister to agree to be used for a political marriage with a rich noble.

Nevertheless, upon hearing that Lucia was suddenly and inexplicably about to marry someone else, Edgar appeared at the wedding in a mad fit of rage to denounce Lucia harshly.

The psychological blow drove Lucia insane.

After stabbing the groom to death, Lucia chose death in the end. Realizing the truth, Edgar followed her by committing suicide...

On the subject of classical operas, Kenji would recommend Mozart without a second thought but Donizetti—or rather, Lucia di Lammermoor—stood as the single exception.

Even though he had watched this play countless times and the plot was already branded in his brain, Kenji still reported to the opera house every time like this.

On further thought, it dawned upon Kenji that timeless operas passed down the ages were tragedies more often than not.

What looked like unyielding love on the surface could be sent on path towards destruction with only the slightest opening of jealousy and suspicion...

Kenji knew it would be impolite behavior, but he still looked around at the audience sitting beside and behind him, feeling very sorrowful inside.

New National Theater's one thousand and eight hundred seats were filled less than thirty percent, but looking at it a different way, this was actually very reasonable. With so many talented individuals lost forever to the Gastrea War ten years ago, this phenomenon was not limited to just the movie industry.

Suddenly sensing someone quietly take a seat behind him, Kenji found a sweet fragrance entering his nostrils.

Silently, Kenji felt surprised. The girl was probably a middle schooler. Her face was hidden beneath a straw hat while her flat chest was clad in a one-piece dress that seemed as sheer as a silk curtain. Most striking of all was the pink teddy bear held in her hand.

With so many empty seats around, why did she pick one next to him?

At this moment, the sound of the orchestra entered his ear with a series of low-register notes akin to forceful banging. The unsettling accompaniment brought forth Lucia's "Mad Scene" aria.

By the time Kenji noticed, it was already Act 3.

Having stabbed the groom to death in a frenzy, all covered in blood and at a loss, Lucia emerged from the right side of the stage to arrive at the wedding banquet and started to sing a terrifying aria filled with madness with the bloodstained blade still in her hand...

Kenji suddenly felt an impact on his chest as intense pain pierced his entire body.

As soon as he felt something disgusting surge from the depths of his stomach, he started to vomit blood violently.

Looking at his chest, he unbelievably found a knife embedded there.

He could not comprehend what had happened.

Turning his neck slowly, he saw that the knife was wielded by the girl in the straw hat who had been sitting next to him. The murder weapon had apparently been hidden beforehand in the teddy bear. Thrust horizontally, the knife had slid cleanly between Kenji's ribs, piercing the heart to destroy it.

"Wh... Wh..."

—Why?

Just as he wanted to ask, Kenji suddenly found his mouth covered as the girl drew her face near.

Holding an index finger to her lips to make a "shhh" sound, the girl was making a cute expression as though she were warning others to refrain from breaching audience etiquette.

As his consciousness faded away, Kenji could not even utter a groan and thus he lost his life with his head hung quietly in this manner.

The girl's gaze was fixated on the opera ahead. Meanwhile, she firmly held the hand of the man beside her, confirming the total disappearance of the pulse before she got up.

The performance on stage had reached the end of the third act. While listening to the orchestra's solemn performance, the girl left the theater.

The instant she stepped out of the air-conditioned theater, the girl was confronted with piercing sunlight and stuffy summer air. Under the hot air, the scorching asphalt seemed to waver in sight.

While operating her cellphone, the girl called a predetermined number.

"This is Hummingbird. Mission Accomplished. Awaiting further instructions, Nest."

Saya Takamura's early morning responsibilities started with rousing her husband and son from slumber.

Climbing the creaking stairs of oak, she entered in succession the adjoining rooms of her son's and husband's.

Shaking these experienced oversleepers once or twice would not be enough to rouse them from bed, so there was a trick to waking them up. Saya would pull off their blankets and leave the doors open then let them be. Then she went downstairs to make breakfast. Attracted by the aroma, her husband and son would rise from bed slowly like zombies. That was her technique.

Despite a lack of resemblance in facial appearance between father and son, one would exclaim "like father, like son" based on this habit of theirs.

Shredding cheese slices to make a cheese omelette, she spread the previous day's leftover mincemeat curry onto toast.

After watching the two finish their breakfast at a leisurely rate, she then sent her husband off to work with a packed lunch of salmon rice balls while seeing her son leave on the kindergarten school bus.

Next came the real battle.

Tying her apron behind her vigorously to muster morale, she checked the weather report while throwing the accumulated dirty clothing into the washing machine and pressing the start button, finally putting on rubber gloves.

She had already resolved herself today to take care of the stains between the bathroom tiles that she usually avoided, as well as cleaning the area around the toilet.

What she expected to be a tough mold-removal process turned out to go unexpectedly smoothly thanks to the use of high temperature for stain removal.

While spraying detergent and scrubbing the gaps between tiles forcefully, Saya felt incomparable joy surging in her heart.

She was taking care of her husband and son as a matter of fact, doing house chores as a matter of fact.

Right in front of her was a happy scene that she dared not imagine ten years ago.

Hearing the sound of the washing machine finishing its load, she stood up in the bathroom. Carrying the clean laundry in her arms, she pushed the sliding door open with her foot and came to the veranda.

The sky's color was beautiful beyond description while cumulus clouds drifted past noiselessly. The sun was giving off bright rays.

Just at this moment, she heard the faint sound of the doorbell from inside the house. Putting down the laundry basket hastily, Saya ran over to the front door while wiping her hands on her apron.

"CO—MING!"

Saya was rooted to the spot in surprise after opening the door.

Standing there was a man who gave off a particularly threatening presence. Standing over 190cm tall, he was dressed in a trenchcoat despite the summer weather, wearing a pair of round sunglasses with a short, neatly trimmed beard around his mouth.

Clearly not a pleasant customer.

"Umm..."

"Are you Saya Takamura?"

The man spoke in monotone while throwing numerous pieces of paper at Saya, which scattered on the ground.

Saya hastily put up a defensive stance, but upon further examination, those were simply dozens of printed photographs.

All of them depicted Saya. Only then did she realize she had been photographed in secret.

"——!"

The instant she realized what these photos implied, Saya reached into her apron's pocket to draw out a Glock pistol.

Then in the next second, Saya's back struck the wall violently behind her, accompanied by the sound of gunshot.

"Guh..."

The man had started holding a shotgun at some point, with hot white smoke drifting from its muzzle. For ease of concealment, this was a compact weapon made by shortening the barrel and the stock.

Saya pressed her hand against her abdomen. The anti-personnel shell had mercilessly torn her abdomen apart, resulting in a critical wound.

Saya's Glock fell on the ground. Looking up, she asked:

"Who on earth... are you?"

She was answered with a shotgun muzzle aimed at the center of her forehead.

Pressing the shotgun's trigger, the man followed up with a second shot.

Ignoring Saya who lay collapsed on the ground with a trail of blood along the wall, he concealed his shotgun in his coat and swiftly departed from the house.

As soon as he left the front door, neighbors were already poking their heads out one after another due to hearing the gunfire.

Only after making sure he was at a safe location did the man start operating his cellphone.

"This is Swordtail. Please respond, Nest. Mission accomplished, awaiting further instructions."

"By the way, speaking of yesterday's gathering, I can't believe those men suggested splitting the bill at the last minute when clearly they were more than ten years older than us. Totally unreasonable."

Gyahaha, kyahaha—laughter erupted from the others. Crude laughter was leaking out of the classroom's open window, resounding throughout the school.

There was a disgusting smell of perfume. Clearly a mistake in dosage, opting for excess rather than not enough—Yuuga Mitsugi suddenly realized what the first person who coined these words was trying to convey.

Things had become very troublesome—Yuuga was thinking in a corner of his mind but he soon shook his head and walked over to his seat.

"Hey."

"Huh?"

He looked back to see one of the top delinquent girls in the class. Despite wearing Nukagari High's second-year summer uniform, her attire was deliberately sloppy. Insisting she was born with such hair to the teacher, there was a layer dyed with blonde highlights. Putting on earrings whenever the bell rang for the end of class then taking them off when class started, she always acted nonchalantly in front of the teachers. This type of delinquent girl was truly troublesome.

Yuuga recalled her name was Yoshiko Kamuro. Whenever she spotted a girl in the same year group who rubbed her the wrong way, she would gather a group to surround the hapless victim and take her to a washroom for "punishment." How ludicrous it was for such a villainous girl to be called Yoshiko when "yoshi" meant "good."

"That's my spot."

"So what?"

Yoshiko's fat ass was sitting on Yuuga's desk, swaying her legs while she retorted to Yuuga.

"Could you please leave? I can't get my textbooks like this."

These words instantly froze the air in the classroom. Surrounding her, the boys and girls were looking over in their direction with eyes filled with hostility.

Yoshiko was also glaring silently at Yuuga when she suddenly moved her bottom halfway but did not do anything else. This appeared to be the greatest compromise she was willing to make.

Despite feeling quite troubled, Yuuga still took out the books and notes he needed for the next classroom. Since this was his own seat, saying thanks would be weird, so he left silently.

"You're dead meat, Mitsugi bro."

Yuuga arrived at his friend Shingo Kuromatsu's seat, only to find Kuromatsu waving in surprise to welcome him.

"What's wrong?"

"You're even asking me what's wrong...?"

Kuromatsu instantly made a surprised face but soon sighed in exasperation:

"Mitsugi bro, it's already been three months since you transferred here, so we're supposed to be friends, right? That's why I advised you to work hard to fit in at school. It's impossible for me to imagine what kind of life you led at Seishin High previously."

"..."

Then what was the correct response for the situation just now?

After all, Yuuga had tried hard to act like an ordinary student but people always found his behavior to be abnormal.

Even if Yuuga told this well-intentioned friend that he only enrolled at Seishin High in name only without actually attending a single day of school, it would probably be of no help.

Furthermore, the three months Yuuga had spent after transferring to this school were also for the sake of carrying out today's mission.

"Mitsugi bro, I hope you won't get mad at me for saying this, but sometimes I feel very distant from you. It's like you're an alien from another planet who's living among us..."

"That's really sharp of you."

"Huh?"

Yuuga smiled cheerfully at his wide-eyed friend.

"Just kidding."

Yuuga's cellphone rang.

It's here?

Yuuga shoved his biology textbook at Kuromatsu's chest.

"Sorry, Kuromatsu bro, but could you head over to next period's classroom first?"

"Eh? S-Sure thing..."

Before he could finish listening to Kuromatsu's answer, Yuuga turned around and left the classroom. Passing by many rows of classrooms to enter a staff washroom where there was no one else, he hung a wireless handsfree ear-mic on his ear and tapped his smartphone.

"Hey, Darkstalker here."

'Bad news. I just received information that the target has taken the bullet train one earlier than expected.'

Yuuga moved his brow lightly and looked at his watch.

"How many minutes ago did that happen?"

'Twenty-five minutes. There are less than five minutes before the train will pass by that point. Head over immediately to the appointed location.'

Yuuga understood without needing further explanation.

Rushing out of the washroom stall, Yuuga charged up the stairs next to the staff prep room, making swift turns by holding on to the handrails for support. Within the blink of an eye, he had already arrived at the locked door leading to the roof. Inserting the key he had obtained beforehand, he opened the iron door.

Despite a special note of "congenital frailty in health" on his transfer application, Yuuga had run almost fifty meters without any loss of breath or reddening in his cheeks.

The bell happened to ring for the start of class and students downstairs could be heard running frantically.

The door opened with the grating of the hinges as dazzling sunlight and a clear blue sky came into view.

Exiting the door and circling behind the water tank, Yuuga took out a long narrow attache case from the gap between the water tank and roof's guard rails. This also needed a key to unlock.

A rifle appeared at the same time as the fragrance of gun oil.

This was a DSR-1 sniper rifle manufactured by AMP Technical Services.

With the action and magazine located further back than ordinary guns, thereby shortening the gun's total length while maintaining a certain level of accuracy, this was a bull-pup bolt-action sniper rifle.

Using .338 Lapua Magnum bullets, the front of the barrel had the flash hider replaced by a silencer, thereby reducing the noise and muzzle flash generated by firing. A perfect specimen of functional beauty unencumbered by entrenched traditions in sniper rifle design.

It was probably time for class to start. Grandiose music was being played in the music room downstairs, producing bass notes that were enough to shake one's abdominal cavity. It was Ode to Joy set to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Yuuga checked the time. Two minutes remaining.

With fluid motions, Yuuga took up a prone sniping posture, aiming the muzzle at the bullet train railway passing through the undulating hilly landscape opposite the school building. Opening the flip-over cover on the optical scope, he folded out the bipod from the barrel jacket. Keeping the muzzle aimed at the railway, he extended the monopod from the shoulder stock to rest on the ground, resulting in three-point contact to further stabilize the gun.

Taking the box magazine from the spare magazine holder in front, he inserted it under the action and operated the bolt handle to chamber the first round. Putting his eye near the scope, he could see various readings such as wind speed and shooting angle.

The scope lens was Carl Zeiss AG's latest model from the year 2031, featuring ballistics calculating functions that presented all kinds of ballistics data within the field of view at a glance.

The target distance was 1200m. Calibration was already performed according to standard procedure.

'Thirty seconds left, it's coming!'

The voice on the line was unable to suppress the anxiety the speaker was trying to conceal. However, Yuuga's mind was as serene as a lake surface with only a mild breeze blowing.

The surrounding noise gradually grew smaller while his own heartbeat sounded especially loud.

Adjusting his breathing several times, he placed his finger on the trigger and released the safety.

—Then he released the power in his prosthetic eyes.

Geometric patterns appeared on both of Yuuga's eyes as the installed CPUs activated inside the eyeballs of black, then they started to turn.

His thought frequency was amplified several hundred fold, allowing the surrounding flow of time to become akin to slow motion in his field of vision.

Beethoven's symphony turned into meaningless low humming while the sun's brightness went down by two grades roughly.

The movement of all creation slowed down and even the eagle flying across the corner of his eye seemed so slow that it was about to stop.

On the right side of his view, the bullet train could be seen approaching sluggishly.

In the bullet train, which was originally supposed to pass by in a flash, even every passenger's teeth could be seen clearly.

According to prior reports, the target was meant to sit at a predetermined seat next to the twenty-fifth window counting from the front, but naturally, the seating had changed now that an earlier train was taken.

—Found him.

Next the twelfth window counting from the front, there was a slightly bald man with an expensive cigar in his mouth and an impatient expression on his face. Exactly the same as confirmed from photographs.

The prosthetic eyes' calculations finished, producing a formula for a guaranteed hit.

Yuuga narrowed his eyes and pulled the trigger with murderous intent from his entire body. The trigger spring gave an elastic sensation. He pulled the trigger all the way back in one breath.

Connected to the bolt action inside, the firing pin struck the primer at the bottom of the cartridge, firing the bullet.

A small explosion resulted inside the action, producing suppressed muzzle flash from the front of the silencer. At the same time, passing through the rifling inside the barrel, the Lapua Magnum bullet was spinning in a spiral manner as it tore through the atmosphere, advancing towards the target.

Yuuga could feel the heavy recoil transmit slowly to his shoulder.

Inside this world where everything was flowing slowly, only the bullet seemed exceptionally fast. Continued calculations predicted the bullet's momentum to enter the bullet train's window, breaking the glass, piercing the target's head from the side. Keeling over slowly, the target would collapse on the spot.

File:Black Bullet V5 Pg 25.png

Convinced that there was no need to watch any longer, Yuuga reduced his thinking speed and allowed the flow of time to return to normal.

Ode to Joy's melody instantly flooded his ears like an explosion while the lingering recoil stung his firing shoulder. The sun's brightness had also recovered before he knew it.

Watching the bullet train pass through the raised track with fierce speed, Yuuga stood up and stared out into the blue sky with his head cocked.

'Taken out?'

"I think so."

Already suppressed, the sound of the gunshot was cleverly covered up by Ode to Joy and the noise of the bullet train passing through.

Yuuga sighed:

"Well then, Nest. Mission accomplished, Darkstalker awaiting further instructions—"

"—J-Just now...? What was that?"

As though feeling an electric shock, Yuuga looked back to see a classmate standing there in shock with eyes of disbelief.

Yoshiko Kamuro.

As for why she would suddenly appear here, Yuuga looked behind her. The roof's iron door was ajar, instantly prompting him to understand.

Even when time did not allow for any hesitation, neglecting to lock the door was still quite shameful of him.

Skipping class, Yoshiko had discovered that the roof's door was unlocked and came up here, thinking she was lucky—She totally did not expect this move to cost her life.

"You saw it."

Yuuga said lightly and took a step towards Yoshiko, causing her to take a step back.

"Th-That thing looks like a gun, that's fucking cool."

She forced herself to bluff and smile. At least, were she able to suppress the shaking of her legs, it would look more convincing.

Yuuga walked over to her silently and Yoshiko kept backing away.

But soon she was cornered, forced against the metal railing.

"Are you a hitman?"

"No, I'm an avenger."

Yuuga shrugged and looked up into the sky.

"Regrettably, this project would be ruined if I let you live. I'm very sorry to say something like this to you whom I've known for three months here—Die."

Without any warning or preparatory motion, Yuuga performed a palm strike. The instant he hit her chest, a massive depression appeared along with the sound of the chest getting crushed.

This was an attack designed for wrecking the human body using anatomy calculations. Breaking the ribs through the chest muscles at the perfect angle of impact zero, those broken ribs were then used to pierce the heart, producing death on the spot.

During the circulation of blood of the heart's final and forceful beat, what was she thinking? Surely she must be unable to understand the meaning of the legs that were going limp against her own will as well as the fresh blood flowing out from the corner of her lips.

Picking up the collapsed body, Yuuga spoke to the ear-mic:

"Sorry, Nest, I'm placing an unplanned corpse in the storage cupboard in the staircase. Please retrieve it before the students on cleaning duty discover it after school."

"Why you bastard, every single time—"

Yuuga hung up without hearing the rest.

Laying down the girl who was gradually turning into a cold stiff corpse, Yuuga looked out at the scenery from the roof of Nukagari High.

The blowing summer breeze struck him in the face as Yuuga looked at his palms intently:

"Why am I a failure despite being so powerful? ——Professor."

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