At least, it used to be.
His boxing stance, his footwork, the way his other hand instinctively guarded his chin when he punched—all of it showed he had received systematic boxing training.
His fist cut a short arc through the air, carrying a faint whisper of wind as it hurtled straight toward Hisaki’s face.
But Hisaki was faster.
Her upper body pivoted around her spine, leaning approximately 35 degrees to the right.
The angle was precise and unhurried—just enough for the fist to graze past the left side of her cheek.
The distance between his knuckles and her skin was less than 2 centimeters, so close that the airflow from the punch lifted a few stray strands of hair that hadn’t been properly tied back, fluttering them gently in the dim light.
Then her counterattack began from her left hand.
The shorter steel pipe in her left hand swept upward diagonally, carving a clean, sharp arc through the air.
The tip of the pipe struck the underside of the burly man’s extended right forearm—approximately 3 inches above the wrist joint, where the extensor muscles of the wrist and fingers converge, unprotected by bone, covered only by a thin layer of muscle and skin.
The sound of steel hitting flesh exploded in the confined space—a heavier, duller noise, like slapping a slab of raw meat onto a cutting board and having it bounce back.
The force forced his right arm to jerk upward by about 45 degrees due to inertia, his guard collapsing in an instant.
His shoulder leaned back, leaving the hollow beneath his collarbone completely exposed and undefended.
Then Hisaki took advantage of the reaction force.
The recoil from the left-hand pipe traveled up through her wrist. Instead of resisting, she channeled that energy through her waist and hips, transferring it to her right arm.
Her body sank slightly, feet spread apart, weight settled evenly between them. In the same instant, her right hand raised the 1.3-meter steel pipe high.
The rust and settled dust near the pipe’s tip quivered faintly in the dim light.
Then she brought it down with her full body weight—not brute force, but borrowed force, using the reaction from the left-hand strike and the momentum of her sinking center of gravity.
Down.
The pipe split the air with a fierce gust, the wind pressure at the tip issuing a low howl, sending loose paper scraps swirling in its wake.
A deep, resonant sound of metal striking bone erupted in the closed corner of the room.
It was heavier, louder, and more jarring than the left-handed hit.
Like someone slamming a sledgehammer into a piece of still-damp wood—except that damp wood encased a bone.
The sound of metal hitting the periosteum mixed with the resonance of the marrow cavity after the membrane ruptured, sending a unique, hair-raising wave through the ears of everyone present.
Then came a sharp crack—crack.
Not the pipe breaking. The bone.
The radius—the bone responsible for forearm rotation—snapped cleanly in two where the pipe met it.
Bone fragments shifted within the muscle tissue, the broken ends of the cortical bone grinding together, producing a second, finer, sharper splintering sound.
Then came the scream.
The burly man’s scream.
Not a suppressed grunt in his throat, not a gritted-teeth roar, but a scream forced from the deepest part of his lungs as pain breached the bottom line of his composure.
The sound sprayed from his open mouth, carrying fine droplets of saliva that scattered as tiny specks across the rusted steel surface.
His right arm hung limp like a puppet whose strings had been cut. His entire shoulder collapsed on that side.
The pain made him stagger backward two steps, tears streaming uncontrollably from his eyes. The smug expression from a minute ago had been torn into a shapeless mask of agony.
But Hisaki didn’t stop.
She couldn’t stop just because the opponent had lost combat capability.
Behind her stood her Rinna.
The more time their enemies had to think, the more they would realize—if they just seized Rinna first, Hisaki would be tied down by the fear of hitting the wrong target.
So she had to press the attack, leaving no room for breath or thought.
The moment the burly man cried out in pain and instinctively covered his broken arm with his left hand—a reflexive protection response humans can’t control when suffering extreme agony—Hisaki’s left hand was ready.
The short steel pipe in her left hand, without any pause, flipped half a turn from its recovery position, tracing a shorter, faster, more concealed arc than before.
It slipped through the gap between his right arm and his body, now left open.
Then the tip of the pipe struck the back of his head.
A sound.
Another dull sound.
This one was different from the two hard-hitting strikes before.
Not the crisp ring of a fracture, nor the muffled thud of metal on bone—but something blunter, heavier, like striking something wrapped in a blanket.
The pipe hit the thickest part of the skull—the occipital bone.
The impact penetrated the scalp, the cranial bone, the outermost fibrous layer of the subarachnoid space, and finally created a brief, intense pressure wave inside the cranium.
That pressure wave, centered on the impact point, radiated in all directions within the skull—toward the frontal lobe, the temporal lobe, the brainstem. Most critically, the vibration reached the reticular formation.
The reticular formation is the last biological line of defense for human consciousness. It filters sensory information and maintains the cerebral cortex’s alertness to the current environment.
When the pressure wave penetrated the reticular formation, all neural signals maintaining consciousness were interrupted. The brain was still working, but it could no longer sustain the state of being awake.
The man’s eyes rolled upward, revealing a large expanse of sclera—the white part of the eye—in their sockets.
His pupils twitched erratically, then fixed on a hollow, seeing nothing.
His body leaned backward like a building whose foundation had been removed.
His knees bent, his ankles twisted to the side, and then his entire frame crashed heavily onto the concrete floor, producing one final, weighty thud as he fell into a mess of cement dust and rust.
The air fell into a brief, oppressive silence.
Hisaki still didn’t stop.
She had no hesitation, no doubt, no thought of “that’s enough.”
In her precise calculations, a fallen enemy could still get up. Could still attack from behind while she turned to protect Rinna. Could still appear near Rinna again one day.
So she had to make sure this man could never threaten Rinna again.
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