Chapter 451: Black Valentine's Day of Fresh Blood!

The cold morning breeze seeped into Okada Masayoshi's slightly oversized coat, and the wound on his back brought a dull, throbbing pain with every breath, reminding him it had not yet healed.

He should not have been discharged. The attending physician's instructions still rang in his ears: rest, avoid strenuous movement, return for scheduled check-ups.

But he had come back, on this Black Valentine's Day night.

What drove him to leave that VIP ward filled with the smell of disinfectant and intangible pressure ahead of schedule, without even notifying the hospital, was not a romantic impulse, but a deeper, more professional unease.

When pursuing the Toshima Ward Phantom, he had risked his life to save a five-year-old girl (because there was another girl at the scene at the time, some reports said he saved two people, others focused on him blocking a knife to save one girl), and thus became a National Hero, covered in honor; amid the endless praise from the outside world, he also caught a whiff of a different scent.

The media storm was a bit too fierce, the airport stakeout a bit too precise, the news releases like pre-prepared, pre-polished manuscripts, swiftly launching a fierce attack on his wife, Okada Miki!

This caused the "National Hero's Cold-blooded Wife" meme to rapidly bring enormous pressure to his wife, Okada Miki, during this period.

Okada Masayoshi saw this with his own eyes, felt the pain in his heart, especially after Okada Miki tearfully complained to him that she was already "yu yu" (mentally breaking down), Okada Masayoshi realized that behind this media storm, there was most likely the shadow of one person.

His father, the Financial Services Agency Commissioner, Okada Masahide!

Okada Masayoshi knew his father too well; that so-called "concern" was absolutely not benevolent.

Father, do you have to deprive even this tiny bit of happiness of mine?

Father!!!!!!

Recalling Miki's collapse at the airport and her subsequent silence and disappearance, an ominous premonition, like cold vines, coiled around his heart.

He could not let Miki face the pressure his father might exert alone, especially at her most vulnerable moment. This concerned responsibility, and also a lingering, unwilling-to-admit attachment. He needed to go home and see.

This is a husband's responsibility, and a man's promise!

When he married Miki, he had promised to strive to guard her, protect her, cherish her, not hold her past against her, and that the two of them would face a new future hand in hand.

Regarding his wife always saying money was spent, to comfort her, Okada Masayoshi also said that once the bonus hit the account he would immediately hand over all of it, and happily announced he had gotten a pay grade raise! From now on he could hand over 550,000 yen a month!

Unexpectedly, Miki scolded her husband fiercely over this, saying he wouldn't promote from Superintendent properly, insisting on staying in the Special Mission Unit as his Police Inspector System Chief, simply incomprehensible.

This made Okada feel even more sorry toward his wife.

Miki, as my wife, has been under tremendous pressure all along, hasn't she.

Every one of us is just struggling to live!

Today was originally the check-up day; he absolutely could not go home and had informed Miki, but the attending physician in charge of the check-up suddenly had a surgery, and Okada's injuries had also entered a stable period, so Okada voluntarily proposed delaying one day, and the doctor agreed, but others didn't know, so he found an excuse and slipped out; others thought he went for the check-up and didn't mind.

In April, Tokyo's wind was still exceptionally cold; occasional late cold snaps meant Tokyo sometimes still got a snowfall in April; Okada Masayoshi returned alone to the apartment where he and his wife lived.

Due to having almost severed ties with his father, and Okada's Police Inspector salary having to be handed over entirely, the apartment the couple lived in was relatively modest, not high-end.

In the corridor he paused for a long time, thinking how to win his wife's forgiveness, when Okada ran into the neighbor, Mitada-san.

"Ah? Inspector Okada, you're back? That... while you weren't home, recently there was a... hmm... very spirited young guy who came looking for your wife two or three times... quite tall, dressed very fashionably, driving a bright yellow sports car, seemed... seemed like a male host?" Mitada-san was very surprised by Inspector Okada's return; she seemed hesitant to speak further.

"Male host?"

Okada Masayoshi felt it strange; why would a male host come to their home?

"Yeah." Mitada-san smiled awkwardly and hurriedly slipped away.

He used his key to gently open the apartment door, his movements even carrying a hint of deliberate care, wanting to give Miki, who might still be sulking or sunk in gloom, a... not quite a surprise, at least a signal of "I'm back," forcing a tired smile onto his face.

"Miki, I'm ba..."

The door opened halfway; a nauseatingly thick smell of blood, like a physical fist, slammed hard into his face! The smile froze instantly, shattered.

The living room scene rushed into view through the door crack, instantly draining all strength and thought from him.

The lighting was a ghastly white.

On the ordinary Wooden Clogs carpet lay large patches of sticky, dark red, still slowly spreading blood pools.

At the center of the blood pool was his wife in name, Okada Miki.

She lay supine in a twisted posture, her expensive silk pajamas soaked in blood, a gleaming fruit knife buried deep in her left chest, leaving only the cold handle. Her eyes were wide open, pupils dilated, frozen with final terror and incredulity, staring fixedly at the ceiling.

And in the hallway leading from the entrance to the living room, another man — a young, unfamiliar, fashionably dressed man also soaked in blood at this moment — lay face down, the back of his head a horrifying dent and bloodstains, beneath him likewise a glaring pool of red.

Dead silence. Only the heavy smell of blood screamed silently.

The rose in his hand fell to the ground.

Okada Masayoshi's mind went blank, as if struck by a sledgehammer. Enormous shock and incomprehensible horror seized him instantly. He seemed nailed to the doorway, unable to move, his vision filled only with that glaring red and Miki's hollow eyes. His heart pounded wildly in his chest, slamming against his unhealed wound, bringing tearing agony, yet far less than one ten-thousandth of what the scene before him brought.

"No... impossible..." A broken rasp escaped his throat; his body stumbled forward a step uncontrollably.

Just then, the hesitant words of Mitada-san from the corridor just now, like a devil's curse, exploded with incomparable clarity in his chaotic mind without warning.

He recognized who the dead man was!

It was the bartender friend from the nightclub bar Miki liked to frequent, Koizumi Ryosuke!

But why would he be in his own home???

While Okada Masayoshi's mind was in chaos, he saw several small boxes placed on the table.

Okamoto 001! Okamoto Wolf Thorn! Okamoto Screw Thread!

Okada Masayoshi's gaze was drawn like a magnet, nailing itself to the living room coffee table where several yellow Okamoto packages lay scattered; one had been torn open, its contents removed leaving only the wrapper, soaking at the edge of the blood pool spreading from beneath Miki, the bright plastic dyed a bizarre dark red.

Th-this doesn't seem to be my size...

Boom—!

Okada trembled all over; reason told him a fact he was absolutely unwilling to accept, but had to accept!

That strange man lying in the blood pool, the nightclub bartender Koizumi Ryosuke whom he had met once... was Miki's lover!

His wife really liked that bar, and said they were just good friends!

An enormous sense of betrayal, like a poison-tipped ice pick, viciously pierced his heart already numbed by shock! So outside the vortex of public opinion, there was deeper humiliation! So the person he rushed back to "protect" despite his unhealed wounds, had long since behind his back...

"Ugh ah—!" A groan suppressed to the extreme, mixed with agony, indignation, nausea, and utter collapse, squeezed from the depths of his throat. His vision darkened in waves, his body swayed, almost pitching into the blood pool.

Right at this moment of heart-rending, life-draining agony.

Wee-woo— wee-woo— wee-woo—!

Harsh, piercing, approaching from afar, the police siren, like a death god's summons, tore through the night sky outside the apartment with incomparable clarity!

Flashing red and blue light poured through the window, spinning wildly, eerily, dyeing the bloody hellscape of the living room with an ominous, suffocating play of light and shadow!

Police, are you here?

Why? The police are coming, I... what's going on? Exactly, what happened?

Okada Masayoshi's entire body trembled violently, as if struck by a high-voltage current!

He suddenly lifted his head, his eyes bloodshot and filled with terror as he looked toward the flashing emergency lights outside the window, then lowered his gaze to look at himself—he was standing right in the center of the murder scene, his feet in his wife's pool of blood, his hand... he subconsciously raised his hand, discovering that his fingertips were somehow already stained with sticky, dark red blood!

Only then did he realize that in his extreme shock, he had lost his rationality and, when he lunged forward to check, had already gotten his wife's blood on him.

Wait, wait!

In that case... motive (wife's infidelity + public opinion pressure)! Crime scene! Blood on his hands!

The police inspector with a prior record of "fleeing from guilt"!

All the "evidence" and logical chain, under the urging of the police sirens, instantly formed in his mind a cold, desperate, inescapable giant net!

"It wasn't me... I didn't do it!" he wanted to roar, but his throat felt constricted, and he could only emit hoarse gasps.

The immense injustice and fear flooded over him like a tsunami.

He knew that as soon as the police rushed in, seeing him standing here with blood on his hands, facing the corpses of his wife and her lover... even if he jumped into Tokyo Bay, he couldn't wash it clean! He would be nailed to the pillar of shame for murderers, eternally damned! Everything he had struggled for, his police badge, his honor, even his life... would all come to a complete end!

The instinct for survival erupted with its last strength in the depths of despair!

"Run!"

This thought exploded in his mind like a thunderclap!

He didn't even have time to glance once more at Miki's face, frozen in death with eyes unclosed, ignored the wound on his back tearing open again with violent movement, causing excruciating pain as if being ripped apart once more, and turned sharply!

With all his strength, like a wounded beast driven to desperation, he burst forth with astonishing speed, charging toward the direction opposite the apartment's main gate—toward the side door leading to the emergency fire escape!

In the very next second after he smashed open the fire escape door and his silhouette vanished into the dark stairwell.

Pat-pat-pat-pat~

Heavy footsteps, accompanied by the police's dignified shouts, clearly came from the direction of the apartment's front door!

"Police! Open the door, nearby residents reported you for noisy arguments and disturbances, open the door!"

"Anyone there? Open the door, we're the police!"

At the doorway, several officers from the nearby koban were knocking when they suddenly saw the emergency fire escape open in the distance of the apartment.

"What what???"

The police at the scene realized something was wrong, their faces changing abruptly.

And what Okada Masayoshi left behind for the police was only a silhouette disappearing into the darkness, stained with the victim's fresh blood, in a panicked and desperate state.

"Major incident occurred! Major incident occurred!"

"Suspect fleeing, requesting support!!!"

(Chapter End)