Cardfight!! Vanguard: Generations Volume 3 [Alice Secret]

- Part 12

Kouji huffed, looking down on a grovelling Matsushita indifferently.

"Satisfied?"

As I asked that, Kouji looked over to me, then at his balled up fist, then at the open hole in the mesh fencing.

Seeing this, Matsushita spat out a dry chuckle.

"Ha... ha ha... even now, you're still thinking of throwing me off...? You're no different from me after all."

Kouji's eyes narrowed in disgust.

"Don't compare me to you... I'm nothing like the human garbage you are..."

"You're garbage for being tempted to do it... and I'm garbage for actually doing it... see, there's no difference."

Kouji continued to look down on Matsushita before clicking his tongue and turning his back on him.

"Takanori-san. I'm done here."

Kouji sighed, putting his hands in his pockets. Matsushita let out another dry chuckle, shaking his head.

"Are you sure?"

I asked as he began walking away. Kouji stopped next to me and nodded.

"...even after getting my revenge, I don't feel happy."

He looked up to the sky, closed his eyes, and let out a tense, deep breath.

"Somehow... I hate myself more than before."

Kouji opened his eyes, whispering that confession to me. He entered the stairwell, disappearing into the darkness.

In the end, revenge wasn't what he really wanted. It's what he thought he wanted.

That's fine, though. Things become easier for me if he's not in the picture.

I walked up to Matsushita and extended a hand.

"...don't pity me."

Matsushita slapped my hand away and got up from the floor by himself.

"That bruise looks nasty."

Only a couple minutes after Kouji had punched him, an unsightly purple bruise had bubbled up on Matsushita's face.

"I know. Hurts like hell too..."

Matsushita spat on the floor. A tinge of blood was mixed in with his saliva. The inside of his mouth must've been cut when he got punched.

It's scary how powerful Kouji's swing was. He must've put all of his pent-up feelings from the past two years into that.

He wrapped up all of his anger, frustration, and hatred into one concise blow, releasing everything he held inside by giving it to Matsushita, who received it with an overwhelming amount of force.

Matsushita stomped on his spit with his foot. Then, he looked at me with narrowed eyes.

"How did you find out?"

With a callous tone, he began interrogating me on how I found out about his past.

"Who knows."

"I know it wasn't Kouji who told you. There's no way he'd ever open up about that so easily. Same with Alice. If it wasn't those two, then who ratted us out?"

From the tone of his voice, I could tell he was planning to personally deal with the person responsible himself. Whether that meant a threat, violence, or some other kind of silencing, there was no way I was going to put Ginga in danger with a guy like him.