No witnesses.
No civilians.
Just me, this body, and my terminal inability to take a damn break.
“Easy job,” I grumble to the grave that still isn’t deep enough. “In the middle of nowhere. Quick in, quick out. Doesn’t even interfere with my flight. Genius move, Saint.”
I jam the shovel back down. The handle vibrates in my palms. My shoulders ache. The moon slides out from behind a drifting cloud, brighter now, throwing silver across the clearing…and straight across the corpse’s face.
His eyes catch the light.
Staring.
Silent.
Judgy.
I stop digging, sweat stinging my eyes as I glare back at him.
“What are you looking at, anyways?”
I grab another fistful of dirt and throw it out of the hole just to make a point.
He still doesn’t answer.
Which somehow annoys me even more.
I should’ve stayed my ass in the hotel.
One night. Just one night to relax before my flight to Hong Kong in two days. Then Singapore. Then Bali. A whole string of places where no one expects me to kill anyone, and I fully intended to keep it that way. But no—apparently I can’t be trusted alone with a hotel bathrobe anda minibar without sniffing out a contract and convincing myself it’s “just one quick job.”
I blame the renovations happening in my apartment. The noise. The dust. The lack of hot water. I’ve been cooped up for weeks, and I haven’t taken a real vacation in years. I travel constantly, but it’s always recon over ramen, assassinations between espresso shots, one neat little murder followed by a red-eye home. That is not vacation. That is homicide with extra steps.
So this time, I treated myself. Booked flights. Packed outfits that don’t double as tactical gear. And my first stop had to be Japan.
I lived here for years—back when the ink on my Guild initiation papers was still drying and I was the clueless little New Yorker dropped into a world that felt bigger, brighter, sharper. Everything about Japan cracked me open. The food. The language. The impossible quiet of rural nights. Even the discipline.
Especially the discipline.
Master Kenji—Takahashi Kenji, legend of the Guild—took me in when I was barely more than a street rat with a decent punch and terrible impulse control. His training was strict. Brutal. No distractions. No indulgences. No softness. For months, I wasn’t allowed off his property. Just drills, meditation, sparring, more drills. A life carved down to bone.
But as I proved myself, he let me explore farther. First the nearby villages. Then the small towns. Then the cities, neon and alive, teeming with people and noise and possibility. I fell in love with all of it.
It’s been too long since I came back.
I make a mental note—call Master Kenji. If he’s still here, he’d get a kick out of seeing me again. The old man always did have a soft spot for his most stubborn student. And I feel like an ungrateful brat for not visiting sooner.
A rush of a bullet train cuts through the night again, pulling me out of my wandering thoughts. The sound fades as the quiet settles back over the clearing, and with it comes the reminder that I’m not alone.
I look at the body.
Still sprawled where I dropped him. Still staring at the sky like he’s contemplating the moon. Still dead as the dirt I’m shoveling.
I study his face, squinting as if that might tell me what crime got him a slot on the Guild’s list. Embezzler? No—he has soft-office-hands. Maybe a smuggler. Or a trafficker. Or someone who pissed off the wrong executive in the wrong backroom.
I shake my head. None of it fits.
“Well, it doesn’t really matter now, does it?” I mutter.
