The Serpent Inside (A Karmagisa Fanfiction)

53: Awe

Nagisa chuckled as Miki ran into the city room. Silver-sensei had only given Nagisa one minute to hide, so Nagisa planned to give Miki four, since he was only planning to try to find the kid with about 25% of his skill level. The hardest part for Nagisa would be not defaulting to a lot of the tried-and-true methods for finding a top-level assassin, which would end up with Nagisa not learning all that much about how Miki knew to hide.

Miki was nervous as they sprinted into the city room, looking around to get their bearings. The area seemed to be set up like any random city block in Tokyo, with many larger skyscraper-style buildings, though not that tall. Each building appeared to have an interior, but Miki knew not to go inside. Even if the area was barren, a real city would have people inside and then they would be hiding from the people in the building and Nagisa. Plus, if they were found, Miki would be backed into a corner.

Instead, Miki used some of their webbing to jump up onto a building before pulling all the webbing back to themself. They couldn't bring the web back into their body, so Miki settled with tying it around their waist.

Sliding around to the back of the building, Miki picked a non-descript window with the interior curtains drawn in one of the darker shadows of the room--though not the darkest, that would be too obvious--to hide in. Their outfit was full black, and the white webbing was tucked under their shirt, so hopefully none of the colours would give them away.

Just as they pressed themselves into the window, they heard the door open and Nagisa came in. Miki had an idea of where Nagisa was for about half a second before realizing they no longer had any clue where the God of Death was.

A chill ran down their spine at the thought, knowing that Nagisa could be standing right next to them but they wouldn't have a clue.

Lost in thought, Miki jumped as Nagisa placed a hand on Miki's shoulder, a sadistic smile on his face.

"Found you." Nagisa smiled.

"Oh! Uh, yeah, you did." Miki stuttered out, pushing themself back into a more stable standing position. The two stood there for a second before Nagisa hopped down from the building, Miki following after.

Instead of leaving the cityscape, as Miki had expected, Nagisa went across the street and down to a fake cafe and walked in. Miki followed, mouth opening slightly in awe as they realized the cafe was fully functional.

"I keep a coffeemaker and some treats in here." Nagisa chuckled as he walked around the case and pulled out a few snacks while setting the coffeemaker to make him a drink. "Want anything?"

"Oh!" Miki jumped, startling out of looking around the room, "If you have any apple juice..."

Nagisa smiled and turned around to pull out a juice from a glass-doored fridge, chucking the bottle at Miki who expertly caught it.

After Nagisa's mocha was finished, he sat down at a table, motioning for Miki to do the same.

"You did a pretty good job, I'm impressed. I noticed you avoided the darkest shadows, knowing that would be the obvious place. Though there then is a sort of back and forth there, questioning if I would know you would do that, so the darkest shadows are better, then would I think that, so back to less dark, and the circle never ends. I had to hold back on finding you, but with the level of my knowledge I was limiting myself to you did pretty well. You do need some training though, but I know where to start now."

Miki's eyes filled with awe as he listened to Nagisa's speech.

This was the God of Death, a man who, with only a small fraction of his skill, found Miki in less than half a minute, and already knew all of Miki's thought process.

Miki wondered how easily they would have been found if Nagisa was actually trying.