Chapter 13: Jadeskin
The temperature inside the lecture hall had dropped significantly, chilled by the massive drafts of wind pushing through the ventilation corridors from the ongoing autumn storm outside.
I stood at the top of the tiered stairs, my fingers resting lightly against the leather strap of my student bag. My physical movements were slow, smooth, and deliberately standard. I didn’t change my stride to look aggressive, nor did I slouch to avoid the sudden tension filling the row below me. I simply walked down the concrete steps toward row four, seat B-12, behaving exactly like a student who wanted nothing more than to find his desk before the morning introductory lecture began.
But my absolute sensory control was mapping the physical dimensions of the hall with clinical precision. I could hear the rhythmic rustling of notebooks being opened, the low murmur of forty other classmates whispering about the heavy corporate security details stationed near the university gates, and the faint, regular scraping of leather against polished oak coming directly from my usual row.
Kaguya Hayashi remained completely motionless in the center of the row. Her midnight-black hair fell in sharp, straight lines over her shoulder blades, her pristine uniform blazer emphasizing her rigid, perfectly anchored posture. She didn’t look up as the other students filled the surrounding tiers. Her crimson eyes stayed locked on the empty desk space right next to her, her gloved hands resting flat on the wood.
"Hey, Ren," Haruto Kirishima mumbled from behind my shoulder, his voice low and thoroughly exhausted as he tried to squeeze past me into the narrow row. He was holding his plastic bag of convenience store bread, his eyes blinking sleepily as he looked at Kaguya’s back. "Isn’t that the girl from the traditional martial arts club? The one who sits by the archery range all afternoon? Why is she sitting in our department’s lecture hall?"
"She’s probably auditing the finance elective, Haruto," I replied calmly, my voice maintaining its steady, polite rhythm. "Go find a seat in the back row. The front slots are full today."
"Yeah, true," Haruto muttered, dusting a few crumbs off his lapel before turning around to trudge up the steps toward the rear of the theater, completely blind to the fact that his presence had been entirely deleted from Kaguya’s field of vision.
The original protagonist didn’t exist to her. To the shadow clan, Haruto was nothing more than a background fixture in a script that had already been violently torn to pieces.
I walked down the row, sliding my legs into the narrow legroom of seat B-12, sitting directly next to Kaguya.
The moment my coat area brushed against the edge of her desk, the air around us grew heavy, thick with the scent of cold mountain cedar and traditional iron ink. Kaguya didn’t break her posture, but her head slowly turned toward me, her straight bangs parting slightly to reveal the sharp, vibrant crimson of her pupils. Her gaze ran down the outline of my jaw, tracking the absolute stillness of my throat. My heart rate stayed locked at its flat sixty beats per minute, my breathing metered to simulate a perfectly normal civilian baseline.
"Your skin looks remarkably clear today, Kurogane-san," Kaguya whispered, her voice a quiet, melodic chime that barely carried past the edge of my notebook. She reached out, her right hand—still encased in the tight, dark leather of her clan’s glove—gently brushing against the back of my hand as it rested on the desk. "Like polished stone. Like jade that has been carved beneath the ice. My father always told me that the true masters of internal force do not possess the heavy, coarse muscle structure of ordinary soldiers. Their flesh adapts. It turns dense, flawless, and cold. Just like yours."
"I use a standard moisturizer from the pharmacy, Hayashi-san," I said, keeping my face completely expressionless as I opened my economics folder. "The autumn wind dries the skin out very easily."
"A regular student does not ignore the killing intent of twenty hidden operatives positioned on the roof of the humanities block," Kaguya murmured, her fingers lingering on my wrist, her thumb lightly pressing against the exact arterial point where my pulse should have been racing. It wasn’t. I was using my internal sensory control to suppress the vibration of my veins, making my wrist feel as still and solid as marble beneath her leather glove. "My scouts have been monitoring the corridors since dawn. Aria Shirayuki’s private security detail has already placed three tracking nodes inside the building’s central switchboard. They are waiting for you to leave this hall, Ren."
I didn’t answer her, my eyes remaining fixed on the whiteboard at the front of the room. My hidden, god-like physical power could easily shatter the desk between us, break through the structural pillars of the lecture hall, and allow me to exit the university campus before her scouts could even draw their steel. I could flatten her entire clan’s network with my bare hands. But using my true strength in broad daylight would only turn the university into an open slaughterhouse, and it would feed the very obsession I was trying to contain.
Bzzzt.
My phone in my blazer pocket vibrated with a sharp, heavy rhythm. I didn’t pull the device out, but my absolute sensory control caught the internal frequency of the vibration—Chloe Valentine was manually overriding the lecture hall’s local wireless network, turning every smartphone in the room into a silent recording device to monitor our conversation.
On my desk, the digital display of my electronic watch suddenly flickered, the numbers turning into a messy grid of decrypted symbols before settling into a single string of text: [ CHLOE: ARIA’S ENFORCEMENT TEAM JUST DEPLOYED TWO MORE TRANSPORT UNITS TO THE REAR LOT. THEY ARE RETRIEVING THE SECURITY FILES FOR ROW FOUR. LEAVE THE SEAT, REN. I AM CRASHING THE SECTOR BREAKER IN THREE MINUTES. ]
The entire campus infrastructure was tightening like a net, completely shifting away from the original slice-of-life romance plot I had drafted as Leo. The heroines were no longer waiting for a chosen savior to rescue them from corporate plots or assassin ambushes; they were actively using their wealth, their technology, and their syndicates to build a physical cage around me, sharing a single, synchronized thought of absolute possession.
"The professor is coming down the hallway, Hayashi-san," I said smoothly, my voice completely relaxed as I gently but firmly slid my wrist out from under her gloved hand, maintaining my polite student boundary without showing an ounce of supernatural force. "You should open your notebook if you’re planning to take notes on the winter ledger."
Kaguya’s lips curled into a quiet, chilling smile that carried a terrifying layer of dark devotion. She slowly retracted her hand, her crimson eyes remaining fixed on my profile as the older professor finally stepped through the lower entrance of the theater, clutching his heavy stack of lecture notes.
"I don’t need a notebook to memorize your traces, Ren Kurogane," Kaguya whispered as the lights in the hall dimmed for the projector slide. "The jadeskin cannot hide the wind forever. The hunt is already over, and you are exactly where you belong."
I sat in the dim light of the row, the screen at the front flashing to life as the lecture began, the master line of the narrative marching forward along its corrupted path toward the final Chapter.