The Destruction of the World by Fire by Shiden Kanzaki

glove and met Yuzuki’s attack. Yuzuki and Tina clashed, and the floor exploded. The spectators screamed as the ground shook with a tremor so severe it made even standing dangerous. Rentaro immediately covered his face, but pieces of the floor and shock waves hit his body, making him gasp for breath.
    After the intense ringing in his ears stopped, he opened his eyes a little and saw a thick cloud of dust swirling around.
Where was Tina? Where was Yuzuki?
Rentaro wiped his sweaty palms on his pants and held his breath as he watched the center of the explosion attentively. Finally, the dust settled, and the two girls were revealed. Rentaro was left spellbound by the sight that was before him.
    Tina was on the bottom, and her neck was held down by Yuzuki’s hand, ready to strike. If Yuzuki pushed just a little more, she could probably break Tina’s neck. However, the outcome of the match was determined by the almost cruel difference in their abilities.
    Layers of piano strings were wrapped around that hand ofYuzuki’s that pinned down Tina; she couldn’t move even a single finger. In addition, the piano strings were wrapped around both her arms and legs, and even her neck, until she was caught in her own threads and hung like a marionette. It was hard to describe the strange sight of a girl who had the Spider Factor inside her caught in a web of string.
    Tina had fixed the positions of the beginning and end of the string with her left hand and her teeth, and if she pulled the string with her teeth, then Yuzuki’s head would likely fall off in a second. Yuzuki was frozen like a statue with both eyes open wide. No, she was not even allowed to close her eyes. Just a few millimeters in front of her eyeballs were Tina’s fingers.
    Tina made a “scissors” shape with her freed right hand and placed them right at Yuzuki’s two eyeballs. Of course, if Tina pushed even a little with her fingers, there was no reason for Yuzuki’s eyeballs to remain unharmed.
    Not just Rentaro, but Tamaki and all the other spectators were spellbound. No one had considered that Tina would be able to win from behind, so their brains couldn’t process what had happened from the time the ground exploded to when the match was decided.
    Only Shenfield spun with joy at its master’s victory, and eventually retreated under the hem of Tina’s dress.
    Tina slowly removed her fingers from in front of Yuzuki’s eyes and released the strings. After watching them writhe on the ground like the cord of a vacuum cleaner as they rewound themselves, Tina finally stood up, removed the glove, and returned it to her pocket.
    While considering this show of force, Rentaro thought back on the many techniques Tina Sprout had shown him. The piano strings in her glove were definitely a weapon used for assassinations. He had seen it in an old film before: The target enters a bathroom stall, and the assassin drops the string from the stall next to it, wraps it around the target’s throat, and strangles the target using the basics of a shoulder throw. It was a cruel technique, but it was still more elegant than poking out someone’s eyeballs.



Rentaro could not help but feel the depth and darkness of the gap that stretched between him and Tina. Tina was clearly made of something different from the others in the Tendo CSA. Too, she was not limited to just the Tendo Martial Arts that Rentaro and Kisara studied; she could be said to have trained her mind in the spirit of everything and anything that could be called
martial arts
. She was probably the most extreme example of the Shaolin Kung Fu teaching that said, “Justice is helpless without power, and power without justice is violence.” Yet, no matter what part of martial arts one looked at, biting or poking out someone’s eyes fell under the category of evil and abusive.
    However, Tina the former assassin was probably never asked to do anything other than destroy a human body in the most efficient way possible.