Cyberpunk: I didn't cheat.

Arasaka Tower, 85th floor, Rintaro's office.

There's no dust, no noise; even the speed of the airflow has been precisely calculated. Outside the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows, the neon lights of Night City are distorted and warped in the downpour, like a faulty circuit board.

Rintaro stood by the window, his back to the door. He wore a dark gray custom-made suit, and the Arasaka family crest brooch on his lapel gleamed with a metallic chill in the cold light.

"Enter."

The door slid open silently.

Sato, the squad leader of the security department, walked in with a steady gait, holding a data panel in his hand. His expression was calm, as if he were about to report a quarterly financial statement for the security squad, not the news of someone's death.

"Director." Sato stopped three meters in front of the desk, bowed slightly, and said in a steady voice, "Deputy Director Hayashi Jiro was found assassinated under the Sixth Street Bridge. His internal memory chip confirmed that he was executed by a high-caliber kinetic weapon, and his vital signs were zero."

Rintaro didn't turn around, but simply put down his whiskey glass, the ice cubes hitting the glass with a crisp sound.

"reason."

"Preliminary assessment indicates an ambush by professionally hired mercenaries. The attackers used a modified signal jammer, preventing the trauma team and the company from reacting. No biometric fingerprints were left at the scene."

"Loss assessment".

"Besides Lin Jiro himself, the vehicle server was brute-forced and dumped in Taiping Prefecture. The money chip was also hacked. The other party did not take the cash, but it cannot be ruled out that Lin Jiro leaked some company secrets."

Rintaro turned around, his face expressionless—no sadness, no anger, not even a hint of surprise. Hearing of his brother's death was as insignificant as hearing that some lowly cannon fodder had died downstairs at the company.

"Submit the data."

The holographic projection unfolded, and streams of blue light intertwined in the air to form a complex network. That was the trace of Lin Jiro's last movements before his death.

Rintaro walked to the projection and gently ran his fingers through the air, as if caressing a work of art.

"Sato, have you ever seen glass?"

"Yes, Director."

"When a nail is forcibly driven into glass, invisible cracks will appear around it." Rintaro's voice was deep and calm, carrying an oppressive sense of absolute rationality. "Foolish security personnel will only focus on Jiro's death and waste computing power trying to find out who the killer is, what his name is, and where he lives."

His finger stopped at the red dot where Lin Jiro's signal had disappeared.

"What we need to look at is the cracks, and follow those cracks to the center where they converge. That's where the problem first started. The cracks are in the affairs he's handling. He should have close ties with those Yakuza and give me data from there."

Sato quickly organized the data, and Rintaro's finger slid down the data stream at an astonishing speed.

"In the past two weeks, Jiro has been using only one external resource: the Tiger Claw Gang."

On the holographic map, the Kabuki district was instantly highlighted.

"Have the Yakuza report the locations of their recent attacks. Then you just need to find places with some similarities and filter them. Go and do it."

Sato noted on the data panel: "Should we immediately dispatch a special operations team to clean it up after finding it?"

"No rush."

Rintaro picked up the cup again.

"Raise the encryption level of all projects related to Jiro, and upgrade the security level of important projects by two levels. As for Jiro's private accounts and assets, handle them according to company rules. He didn't create value for the company while he was alive, so there's no need for him to occupy resources after he's dead."

"Understood, Director."

Sato turned and left, the door closing silently.

Looking at Rinjiro's wide-eyed expression in the death statistics, Rinjiro took a sip of whiskey.

"Jiro."

Rintaro swirled his glass again, raised it to his brother's eyes on the screen as if performing a silent farewell ceremony, and then drank it all in one gulp.

……

When Jotaro Seiho pushed open the heavy soundproof door, his expression was still so gloomy it could drip water. As the "artistic director" of the Tiger Claw Gang in the Kabuki district, he hated accidents more than anything, especially accidents like this that disrupted his filming plans.

"Damn it, I was only gone for two hours..."

He strode into the photography studio he called "the temple," muttering curses under his breath at his incompetent subordinates. He had imagined countless possibilities: equipment malfunction, unruly models, or some reckless cop coming to wreak havoc.

But to his utter surprise, he was met with a pile of minced meat and a pool of blood that had not yet dried.

His director was now lying on the ground like a melting wax figure. Several Tiger Claw Gang members' corpses were scattered around, some with twisted limbs, some with their heads blown open, the blood mixed with the pungent smell of strong acid fermenting into a strange sweet and fishy odor under the pink neon lights.

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"

"Which bastard did this?! He wrecked my place like this!"

He roared, his hands clenched into fists, his knuckles turning white from the force.

Anger surged within him like magma; he wished he could capture the intruder right now, skin him alive, and use him as new Mewtwo material.

This was his "Symphony of Pain" series, which he had been preparing for a long time, and now it's all ruined!

"Boss..."

One of the henchmen huddled in a corner, trembling as he pointed at the still-operating camera.

"That guy... I think he left the machine running when he left."

Jotaro's anger froze instantly.

He turned his head sharply to look at the high-definition camera mounted on the tripod. The red recording indicator light was still flashing, like a tireless eye, silently watching over this hellish scene.

In that instant, Jotaro's expression underwent an extremely strange change.

The anger receded like a tide, replaced by an almost morbid ecstasy. His pupils dilated, his breathing became rapid, and his mouth stretched uncontrollably into a wide grin.

"It's not off...it's not off..."

He lunged at the camera, his movements as gentle as if caressing a lover's face. With trembling hands, he pressed the playback button, projecting the image onto the enormous holographic screen.

The video begins to play.

There was no script, no rehearsals, and no fake performances.

On the screen, the man wearing the glowing cube mask descended from the sky. His movements were fluid and decisive. The Nine-Tailed Rifle spat fire, and the whistling sound of kinetic bullets tearing through the air was perfectly captured by the high-fidelity microphone.

In the scene, the unfortunate director struggles and screams in the strong acid; his extreme fear and despair are a million times more real than any professional actor.

"So beautiful..."

Jotaro muttered to himself, his eyes gleaming with fanaticism.

"This is art! This is true violent aesthetics! Look at the composition, look at the light and shadow, and the splattered blood... what a perfect parabola!"

He completely forgot the corpses on the ground, his dead men, and even the enemy who had ruined his territory.

In his eyes, this was not a crime scene at all; it was an unvarnished, raw and untamed documentary.

"Boss, this content..." the underling asked cautiously, "Is it still usable?"

"Use it? This is simply a masterpiece!"

Jotaro suddenly stood up and waved his arms excitedly.

"The previous scripts were too fake! Audiences were already tired of those fake screams. But this one... this one is real! It's death! It's pure carnage!"

He connected to a portable terminal on site, his fingers flying across the keyboard like a pianist playing a stirring piece of music.

"Here, brighten this shot to highlight the neon reflection on the mask. Here, amplify the gunshot; I want the audience to feel the thrill of their eardrums shattering. And this, the moment that Tiger Claw gang member is blasted away, slow it down."

As Jotaro edited the video, he hummed an off-key tune, his face beaming with the ecstasy of creating a great work.

"I've already thought of a name: 'The Execution Song of the Square Head: Act One'."