Hiro In The Shadows

Hirohito Shimazu lived a quit life in Chiba. Eschewing the cramped space and high prices of nearby Tokyo, he invested in a four bedroom midrise in Oshkiri. Anyone who watched Hiro bike to and from the Gyotuko Station would assume that he worked for a tech company or some other office job. With his long hair and coltish gait he certainly did not look like someone who was the youngest decorated member of the Tokushusakusengun or had studied as a youth under Master Masaaki Hatsumi. Instead he looked like any other artistic twenty-something who wasted hours crawling Shimokita.

As he pulled his bike into his tiny driveway, Hiro waved at Katsuko Tanaka, his favorite neighbor Okaasan. He quickly locked the Basso to the rack and let himself inside his home. After setting his phone and keys down on the table by the door, he said the passwords set for his smart home that lit up the house, turned on his television, and started hot water brewing. It had been an insane few weeks. Trying to stop Kim Jong Un from detonating a nuke over the Sea of Japan hadn’t been a cakewalk for his team. All of his plans became more complicated once he discovered that the Americans were not only working on the case but were farther along. It then became a game of tailing them and silently aiding their mission.

North Korea was going to continue to be a problem and the Americans were not going to go away. Masahito…