The act of being normal was the most exhausting stealth mission I had ever undertaken. Every day at Bonyari Academy was a battle on a front I didn't understand. I wasn't fighting soldiers, but social expectations. I wasn't dodging bullets, but small talk. I wasn't securing objectives, but trying to remember not to analyze the cafeteria as a kill zone.
My reaction in the restaurant, or lack thereof, had made me an anomaly. Before, I was the "new, gloomy kid." Now I was the "new, gloomy, possibly psychopathic kid." Students gave me an even wider berth in the hallways. They whispered when I passed. It was a type of isolation I was familiar with, but the reasons were now far more dangerous. A weird teenager gets overlooked. A teenager who calmly eats during a shootout becomes a data point. And I knew there was a man in the world whose only job was to connect data points.
The pressure was constant. It was a cognitive dissonance that wore me down more than any military campaign. At night, in the small, sterile apartment Shadow Company had procured for me, I maintained encrypted communications with Graves. We discussed weapon shipments to our African base, fluctuations in the mercenary market, the growing network of L's intelligence closing in like a fishing net. I was a general and a CEO, moving pieces on a global board.
But during the day, I was Kenji Tanaka, and my most critical mission was to remember how to solve a quadratic equation.
I needed an escape. Not from school, but from the act.
The rooftop became my sanctuary. It was a logical space. High ground. A commanding view of the surrounding area. Two easily observable access points. It was a place where the Kage part of my brain could relax a bit. Up here, under the open sky, the noise of school life faded into a distant hum. Here, I could allow myself a vice I had acquired on the periphery of my other life, a habit picked up from watching men like Graves and Ghost deal with constant stress.
I pulled a cigarette from a crumpled pack and lit it. Smoke filled my lungs, a chemical poison that, paradoxically, calmed my nerves. It was a ritual. An anchor. A small, dirty piece of FOB Janus in the midst of Tokyo's tidiness. Leaning on the railing, I watched the city spread out below me. The weight of the world, of my two worlds, felt immense. Koko's warning. L's hunt. Graves's ambition. Ghost's silent disapproval. All of it swirled in my head. The smoke was a temporary veil.
"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!"
The voice was a whip. I turned, not with the alarm of a startled student, but with the calm of a sentry turning to an expected contact. My body didn't tense. My heart rate didn't falter.
Chitoge Kirisaki was there, standing by the rooftop door, hands on her hips, a look of righteous indignation on her face. She, too, seemed to have come here seeking refuge and stumbled upon an offense to her sensibilities.
Before I could formulate a response, she lunged at me. Her movements were quick, impulsive. With surprising speed, she snatched the cigarette from my fingers, threw it onto the concrete ground, and crushed it under her shoe with vengeful fury.
My first thought was purely tactical. Subject has violated personal space. Has performed hostile action (destruction of personal property). Threat level: Zero. The sheer audacity of the act surprised me more than the act itself. I had known men who would kill for far less.
"Are you deaf?!" she continued, her voice rising in volume. "Smoking is bad for your health! It's against school rules! Do you want to get expelled?! First you just sat there eating during a shootout like a mannequin, and now this! What is your problem?!"
She launched into a tirade. A torrent of words about responsibility, rules, lung health, and my apparent complete lack of common sense or self-preservation instinct.
And I stood there, silently observing her.
I felt no anger. I felt no need to defend myself. Instead, a strange sensation began to bubble up inside me. Here I was, a man who commanded a private army, who negotiated with generals and international arms dealers, who was being hunted by the world's most powerful spy agencies. A man whose mind was occupied with the logistics of surface-to-air missiles and countermeasures against satellite surveillance.
And in front of me, a blonde girl with a red bow was scolding me about a single cigarette as if it were the most heinous crime in human history.
The dissonance. The absolute, crushing absurdity of my situation.
The image of Graves discussing the per-ton price of depleted uranium ammunition overlaid with Chitoge lecturing me about the dangers of tar. The memory of L's cold stare in an Interpol dossier clashed with the passionate fury in Chitoge's eyes over a broken school rule.
It was too much. It was ridiculous. It was... unbearably funny.
A strange tremor shook my chest. It was a sound I hadn't made in either of my lives. A small, choked snort.
Chitoge stopped dead mid-sentence. "Are you... laughing at me?"
The corner of my lips twitched. The dam holding back months of inhuman tension and cosmic surrealism cracked. A snort turned into silent laughter. And that silent laughter blossomed into the unthinkable.
I smiled.
It wasn't Graves's smug grin or Koko's enigmatic smile. It wasn't a happy or joyful smile. It was a tired, wry smile, tinged with a deep sadness. It was the smile of a man who looks into the abyss, and the abyss tells him the universe's dumbest joke. It transformed my face. The Kage mask, the stoic, dead expression of a soldier, vanished, replaced by the face of a young man who had finally realized how utterly ridiculous his life was.
Chitoge froze. Her mouth, which had been spouting a torrent of reprimands, hung open. Her anger evaporated, replaced by utter confusion. The gloomy kid, the restaurant psychopath, the rooftop delinquent... he was gone. In his place was someone she didn't recognize. Someone... human.
I watched her struggle for words, her face reddening brightly.
I seized the silence, my smile fading into a softer, more relaxed expression. "You're right," I said, and my own voice surprised me. It lacked the flat, controlled tone of Kage. It sounded simply like... Kenji. "Smoking is a bad habit."
"Uh... y-you..." Chitoge stammered, completely losing her train of thought. "Y-yes! Of course I'm right! It's terrible! So... so don't do it again!" She had lost all her momentum, her fury deflated like a balloon.
I turned and leaned back against the railing, looking at the city. For the first time in months, I wasn't analyzing rooftops for sniper positions. I was just looking. The air felt lighter. The crack in my mask of impassivity had let some of the pressure out.
Chitoge remained there silently for a long minute, watching me, confusion swirling in her eyes. She no longer saw me as a simple problem to be solved or a delinquent to scold. I had become a puzzle.
Finally, I decided it was time to leave. I had broken my own rule about keeping a low profile in the most unexpected way. I straightened up and walked towards the rooftop door, giving her a simple nod as I passed.
I left her alone on the rooftop, standing amidst her own confused emotions. I had no idea that with a single smile, I had performed the most effective psychological warfare operation to date. I had changed my threat profile in her mind from "dangerous and predictable" to "utterly inscrutable."
As I walked down the stairs, I touched the spot on my face where the smile had been. It was a genuine reaction, a moment of humanity that had broken through layers of trauma, training, and dissociation.
And I realized something terrifying. My greatest weakness on this mission wasn't an enemy assassin or a world-famous detective. My greatest weakness, the biggest threat to my cover, was the small, persistent spark of humanity that refused to die. And that loud, blonde girl, somehow, had just fanned that very spark.