They both lunge, and the kid manages to stop the blade attack with just his hands. With a numb hand, the white-haired man realizes his nerves were struck by the blow. Taking advantage of the opening, Kei dodges and sets up a rapid counterattack. He lands a devastating punch squarely on his enemy's jaw. The hit is so strong that the mercenary staggers backward, completely dazed. Giving him no time to recover, the youth knocks him to the ground with another strike.
Down and hurting, the operative realizes those hits were not just raw power. He figures out that with every punch his nerves were being slowly shattered. The effect was just like belladonna's toxin, paralyzing his entire body. Radiating a dark aura, Kei stares down his fallen enemy, leaving him no chance to react.
The white-haired man asks what he is. The kid calls him slow, and a weirdo with a scent obsession.
Hearing that, the mercenary is stunned, because only one person ever called him that. With a smile, the kid asks if he finally gets it, and says it has been a long time. Terrified, the white-haired man refuses to believe it, calling it totally impossible.
The youth then calls him a coward for claiming he finished Nightshade, when he actually just showed up at the very end. He points out that the hitman only appeared to take him out when he was already fading. The enemy insists that Nightshade definitely met his end, and Kei confirms that he really did pass away. But with a wild look, he adds that somehow he came back.
Confused, the white-haired man asks what coming back is supposed to mean. He says it is pure nonsense, and that something like that could never happen.
At that moment the blade on the ground starts floating and returns to Kei's hand. The kid takes his weapon back with a serious, determined look. The mercenary asks if he is after revenge, but the youth says there is something else. Then he remembers the stuffed bunny of the little girl he tried to save. With a look full of anger, he says he needs to get something back from those scumbags.
And to reach that goal, he is going to burn the garden organization to the ground.
Shocked, the mercenary asks if he truly thinks he can tear down the whole syndicate. Even in defeat, he warns that there are other operatives in the garden just as skilled as he is. Before his end, he says that Kei will not be able to change anything on his own.
Showing no mercy, the kid delivers a decisive strike to his former organization partner. With the enemy taken down, he watches in silence as rose petals fall all around him. With a cold, resolute look, he tells the man to watch everything from the underworld.
In a meeting room, important silhouettes are discussing the situation. A blonde woman approaches the man seated on the throne. The blindfolded man reveals that one of his elite operatives has been neutralized. The woman beside him looks surprised and serious hearing that news.
Then the leader asks if she remembers a former member of their syndicate. He talks about the benefactor who saved her during the civil war in her country. With her eyes closed, the woman remembers, and the leader reveals that he himself got rid of that man.
The members of the meeting wonder whether the Japanese police or the United States were involved. Others question whether someone else managed to defeat an elite mercenary. The leader thinks about the situation with a stern expression. He taps his fingers on the armrest, annoyed by the trouble in his new territory. Then he concludes that an annoying weed is growing in his backyard.
He orders the blonde woman to notify the other Funeral Flowers. He sets a deadline of one month for the mission to be completed. His final order is to uproot the weed entirely, leaving absolutely no trace behind.
Amidst the flames, older memories. For as long as he can remember, he lived on the battlefield. Alone and abandoned, he never even knew his parents' faces. He was called a war orphan, a child with no family and no future.
But one day a mysterious man appeared before him and changed his destiny. With a weapon in hand, this man gave him two choices. Perish right there in the gutter, or become an operative and fight for his own survival in a cruel, merciless world. The boy barely understood the question, but he knew he had to pick. So, without hesitation, he took the gear and chose the second option, to survive.
The man's voice echoes in his mind, telling him not to hesitate, because if he does not strike, he falls. He remembers the intense training, hitting targets with lethal accuracy. His instructor would yell at him to keep moving and use his legs to dodge.
The garden organization was not just a mercenary syndicate. They called themselves protectors of global order, fighting for a noble and grand cause. The organization worked in the shadows, neutralizing threats all over the world. Their targets were dictators who rotted the world from the inside out, along with crime bosses, terrorists and other dangerous underworld figures.
They believed that the eliminations carried out by the Funeral Flowers prevented wars. That way, they claimed to save countless lives through necessary sacrifices for the greater good. The boy just did as he was told, acting like a machine carrying out their brand of justice. His life always ran like clockwork, until one mission changed absolutely everything. On that day it all started falling apart, and his life was never the same again.
After twenty years serving the garden, he disobeyed a direct order for the very first time. All of it was over a little girl who made him question his purpose and his loyalty.
He remembers being weakened by nerve gas, feeling his body shut down. Even on the verge of fading away, he hands the girl a package and tells her to run. With blurry vision, he begs her to change her name and start a new life far away. He wonders why he is doing something so foolish and risky.
Then the little girl tears a piece off her own dress and hands it to him with a resolute look. She says that no matter what he tells her, she is absolutely not leaving without him. With her eyes filled with tears, she asks how she could save him from his impending fate. At that moment, the man finally realizes what he needs to do to protect her. It was that girl's eyes that pulled him off his path and made him switch sides.
In an abandoned shack, he is slowly recovering. He is surrounded by several bottles of eye drops that were used to try to save him. He explains that the drops contain atropine sulfate, which could neutralize the nerve gas, but they only had twenty minutes, and that little girl managed to do the impossible all by herself. She gathered all those bottles to save her protector. And she did all that with pursuers everywhere, risking her own safety. She did not even think about herself, focused entirely on keeping him around.
While recovering, he tells the little girl to rest, since there was nobody nearby. Then he asks whether she regrets throwing away her own chance to escape. Confidently, she says she does not need that chance, because he will keep protecting her. But he reminds her that he is just a mercenary, not her family or her guardian.
The girl makes an annoyed face, and he thinks his old self would never have allowed that. Even so, he pats her head, and thinks there is nothing worse than owing a favor to a kid. So he promises to protect her until she is truly free. At the end of his days as an operative, he found himself doing something he never imagined.
With a bright smile the little girl accepts, and he makes his very first promise.
Suddenly a voice yells for her idiot brother to wake up right now. He takes a punch and falls out of bed, completely confused. He wakes up startled, and realizes it has been seventeen years since his defeat.