The Yandere Assassin Falls for Himself - Chapter 3

I had deliberately tipped Leviathan off about the paternal and maternal clans.

My most urgent task was to use him to destroy both families’ power. Once they were gone, I could replace Leviathan and live peacefully in this world.

The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind.

After my bath, I asked the housekeeper for a cup of black tea and settled into a wicker chair in the garden to bask in the sun.

The weather was perfect. A breeze stirred the locust tree above me, and my eyelids began to droop.

It had been a long time since I’d felt this safe.

As I drifted off, I dreamed again of what had happened five years ago.

It had been an ordinary morning. On a whim, I took my paints up to the attic and leaned against the roof to work.

Calling it painting was charitable. I was abusing the canvas.

After adding the final stroke, I set the brush on the balcony with great satisfaction and called for Uncle Wang to have the picture framed.

The housekeeper came at once. He studied the canvas for a long time before offering an admiring sigh. “What fine spirits you’re in this morning, sir, painting such a majestic rooster.”

I was silent for several seconds before telling him it was a yellow rose.

“Doesn’t it look like one?” I asked.

He studied the painting again. “…It does.”

The nod cost him dearly.

“Use the most expensive frame,” I said with a smile, bending to clean up the mess on the table. “You’ve been with me for five or six years now. I’ll raise your salary again.”

The housekeeper sighed. “Sir, my monthly salary has already gone from thirty thousand to a hundred thousand. You’re still young. You need to think about your future.”

“You’ll need savings if you want to marry someday…”

I gave an enormous yawn and headed downstairs. “Mm-hm. Of course. Absolutely.”

Usually, that kind of halfhearted response only made Uncle Wang lecture me longer.

That morning was different.

The balcony glass hummed. The instant I heard it shatter, I spun around.

Human reaction time generally falls somewhere between sixty and three hundred milliseconds.

By the time I turned, it was already too late.

The housekeeper swayed, then collapsed soundlessly onto the velvet carpet. Blood spread across the painting in his hand, spattering the yellow rose.

A bullet had gone straight through his temple.

It was the first time I had confronted the terror of death head-on. I couldn’t call the police. I couldn’t call an ambulance. I couldn’t send any kind of distress signal. I couldn’t even risk exposing my location.

I stood over his body, cold to the bone.

I buried the housekeeper who had watched over me throughout my youth in the garden. Red roses covered that patch of earth. It was the grave I had originally chosen for myself.

After a long investigation, I finally found the people behind the killing.

It was the paternal clan.

Neither clan would allow me to have anyone close to my heart. I was meant to be alone.

I woke in Leviathan’s bedroom.

At first, I was so weak I could barely move my limbs.

The lock clicked.

Leviathan stood outside with his arms folded. From a distance, he tipped his chin at me. “Awake?”

I shrank toward the edge of the bed in horror. “Are you an animal? You’d take advantage of someone while he was unconscious?”

Leviathan stared at me.

True to form, it took my younger self exactly zero seconds to understand what I meant.

A vein throbbed in his temple. “Can you get your mind out of the gutter for one minute? Do you look like someone I’ve slept with?”

I shot back, “As if you’d know what someone looks like after being slept with!”

He slammed the door and stormed away.

I raised a middle finger in its direction.

Fucking beast.

A while later, the door opened again. This time, it was the housekeeper carrying a bowl of congee.

My anger vanished at once. “Why is your master so vicious?”

I didn’t remember myself being like this at all.

The housekeeper answered solemnly, “He isn’t. He has a wonderful temper. It’s just that he’s chronically lazy, terrible with words, reckless, and generally behaves like a menace to society…”

I stared at him.

After reciting what felt like an entire dictionary of insults, he finally grew serious. “You fainted from dehydration in the garden yesterday. Sir carried you back himself. You’re frail, so it would be best if you stayed indoors for a while.”

Who was frail?

My entire understanding of myself was being rewritten.

“Sir has been in a poor mood lately,” the housekeeper continued, setting the congee in front of me. “He dislikes problems that require thought, and unfortunately, a great many of those have been waiting for him this month.”

I had no answer.

My younger self was such a pain in the ass.

It was hard to see yourself clearly from the inside. I couldn’t begin to guarantee what kind of disaster the younger me might create.

Fine. If I was going to let that idiot stumble around, I might as well fight the boss battle all over again myself.

Step one: find out roughly how much power the boss currently had.