Riley Ross

"You’re... going to kill him?"

Why is she asking me that?Was she not the one who told me to kill her family? She went so far as to hide in the bushes, even deleted the footage of me torturing Stephanie, just to make me trust her. So why? Why is she asking if she already knows what my answer will be—

"Yes."

Riley still held Tomoe’s younger stepbrother in his invisible grip, the boy now slightly raised off the ground, his legs kicking helplessly in the air.

"It... it hurts! P–Papa!" The boy gasped, clawing at his throat in a futile attempt to remove the unseen pressure around his neck. Panic overtook everything else—his pain, his confusion, his desperation—all of it condensed into a single, wordless plea for help.

But no help would come.

The boy’s fear, however, only reflected how much Riley wanted—needed to kill him there and then.

"Rob, you’ll be fine. Just keep quiet, okay?" Tomoe carefully approached Riley by the door, the robotic tone in her voice once again fading away, "Riley, he doesn’t deserve to suffer. I will make sure that he won’t say anything."

Tomoe stared at Riley, and it was obvious that her emotions were already showing, and that she was trying her best to stay composed. But after a few seconds, a sigh of relief escaped her lips as Rob’s feet finally touched the floor.

"It would seem you really do like him, Tomoe," Riley once again sighed as he gently placed his hand on the shoulder of the scared boy, "Then I suppose we should not let him suffer."

"Yes...." Tomoe let out a sigh of relief as she heard his words, "Then—"