Masked Rider, but kindhearted

"Ah, ah," Tendo Souji stood up, brushed the dust off his trouser legs, and walked towards the paulownia tree.

He jumped lightly, grabbed the branch of the tree with his right hand, then swung himself up with one-handed pull-ups, held the branch where the balloon was stuck with his left hand, grabbed the string at the end before the balloon flew into the sky, let go and jumped down.

"Here." Tiandao Zongsi handed it over.

The little boy who caught the balloon burst into laughter and said happily, "Thank you, Oni-san!"

The little boy's companions stared at the sand painting and exclaimed, "That crooked circle! That's where Uncle Shark swam past yesterday!"

"Do you understand?" Tendou Souji squatted down to his eye level and encouraged him to continue.

"Hey," the boy in the T-shirt rubbed his head sheepishly, as if he thought he was being complimented. "Because I live here, it looks familiar."

"Uncle Shark...what does that mean?" Tendou Souji continued to ask.

He currently knows: 1. The groom who turned into a spider monster's self-narration 2. Some clues from the Fuuto police and the detective agency.

All we know about Sudo Kirihiko is that he is a tall and handsome man in a suit. There is not even a photo of him, and we know nothing about the person behind him.

A newly appeared weirdo killed a family of three. He had investigated the scene - except that the food in the refrigerator was cleared out and the whole family was so clean that even the mice would starve to death, there were no other clues left.

Tendo Souji speculated that it was a monster related to gluttony, and the three people were not eaten...the monster should still have the rationality of a human being.

One possibility is a vendetta; another possibility is that the weirdo is a relative or friend of this family, whose memory was eroded and he killed them.

"Uncle Shark is Uncle Shark," the little boy said confidently, waving his hands up and down, imitating the way a shark swims in the air.

Although it's a bit abstract, it's understandable. The question is - is this shark-like guy the weirdo who appeared in the family murder case, or is he another new monster?

Tendou Souji touched the little boy's head and said, "You mean, he's swimming on the ground like this?"

The little boy said excitedly, "Yes, yes! 'Wulala,' it's swimming super fast!"

Probably understand.

"Sure enough, grandma is right, 'Children are the most precious treasures of mankind'"

Tendou Souji nodded to him and walked in the direction he remembered - he wanted to go back to that area and search it carefully again.

......

......

Dusk.

Tendou Souji walked along the street in wooden clogs, carefully observing the traces of the 'shark'.

Passing the bustling area with high-end shop windows, brand-name stores and backstreet izakayas, the scene changes when you reach this block.

The modern glass curtain wall gradually turned into a retro wooden frame with glass windows.

Small single-family houses and family-run convenience stores are crammed together, and the maple trees on the roadside have messy branches, looking like they have not been taken care of for a long time.

There are almost no electronic screens, only hand-painted posters for store advertising, and on the old street lamps there are graffiti of "Jinqing Girls' High School's Home Service" with markers.

The light grey concrete wall on the right side of the street was dyed orange by the sunlight, while the left side was already quite dark, as if it was divided into light and dark sides.

Under the neon sign that didn't even glow, the convenience store's blue roller shutter door was half open, and the sound of cargo boxes colliding was mixed with the shouts of the middle-aged store owner.

Asakawa, wearing a faded work jacket, hunched his back, and the loose cuffs slid to his elbows as he carried the things, revealing the bulging veins on his bony forearms.

When he loaded the last box of drinks onto the cart, he finally finished his work for the day.

"Asakawa, you look skinny, but you're incredibly strong," the middle-aged shop owner patted his shoulder in admiration, then pounded his waist. "My old bones are useless."

Asakawa smiled awkwardly, rubbing the corner of his clothes. He raised his hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and his eyes couldn't help but glance at the bento boxes on the shelf.

Seeing how anxious he was, the middle-aged shop owner walked to the discount area with a smile and brought him four discounted lunch boxes in one breath.

"You really don't want any wages? You do so much work for me... and you have to stutter. My wife even calls me stingy." The uncle smiled heartily and watched him wolf down his food.

Asakawa shook his head and didn't bother to say anything. He spread the four bento boxes flat on the counter, tore open all the packaging, opened his chopsticks, and swallowed them in big mouthfuls without chewing.

"Slow down, slow down, don't choke." The uncle smiled and opened the freezer to take out a bottle of salt soda, put it next to the lunch box and sighed.

"If you do physical work, you need to replenish salt. When I was young and working on construction sites, I also survived with a bottle of salty soda and a box of soy sauce mixed with rice."

"Thank you...thank you," Asakawa raised his head and drank half a bottle of water in one breath, trying hard to hold back the tears in his eyes.

The uncle didn't take it seriously. He leisurely sorted the shelves and said to Asakawa behind him, "If it's not enough, you can take it yourself. These bento boxes will be thrown away overnight anyway. Don't save me money."

The uncle went home to rest - this is a family-run convenience store, and the inner room of the convenience store is his house.

Only Asakawa was left here to help him look after the store while eating.

......

......

Chapter 12: The Shark of No Return (Part 1)

Only after the uncle closed the door did Asakawa's tears stop falling, making the already instant lunch box taste even worse.

But it didn't matter - he couldn't tell the difference between hunger and satisfaction anymore.

If he doesn't eat... he will do something irreparable.

In this body, even hunger has become a luxury.

With tears in his eyes, Asakawa swallowed one lunch box after another in big mouthfuls. The cheap sauce mixed with cold rice poured into his stomach, but his appetite was like a bottomless pit and he could never get full.

The desire to hunt and prey continued to rise in my heart.

Veins bulged on Asakawa's thin arms, and scales appeared uncontrollably.

"Uncle... No—Absolutely not!"

Asakawa took advantage of his last bit of sanity and rushed out of the convenience store.

His name is Shingo Asakawa, and he is a homeless man.

......

It's raining.

Asakawa Shingo stumbled into the alley, his back hitting the damp brick wall hard.

The dilapidated street lights above his head flickered on and off.

The scales on his body were spreading from his elbows to his shoulder blades, and his spine was making a teeth-grinding sound of dislocation.

He dug into the crack in the wall tightly, his nails curled up and scratched ten bloody marks on the cement.

"Mother......"

He murmured, trying to rely on his mother for strength to hold on, but painful memories came back like raindrops.

The orphanage is in a difficult situation, but everyone lives happily there.

A gentle woman hugging him and smiling in the cold winter.

A well-fed and warm life, a loving mother, and the ability to go to school and make lots of friends...

Happy times fly by.

At that time, he had just graduated and was still worried about finding a job. His mother raised him alone, and he also wanted to repay her with his own abilities.

But from that day on, everything changed.

That gentle, innocent and cheerful woman like a girl was deceived and defrauded of a large sum of money, but she endured it silently - in order to pay for her adopted son's education.

In the end, after incurring astronomical debts, she died quietly on a quiet night.

......

It was a rainy night similar to tonight.

On the day his mother died, Shingo Asakawa had not yet accepted the fact that she had committed suicide. He knelt on the side of the road and cried cowardly after sending away the police who had just investigated.

A man with neatly combed hair and a neatly tailored suit stood in the rain, his black umbrella held low, revealing only his porcelain-white chin.

"Want to gain the power for revenge?" The salesman who called himself Sudo Kirihiko looked down at him and whispered like a devil, "It can fulfill your wish." The blue memory held between his fingertips was like a man-eating shark.

......

Memories kept flashing through his mind, and the hatred and anger in Asakawa Shingo's heart were amplified by the toxins in Gaia's memory. His fingers gradually reached towards the memory in his pocket.

Just then, raindrops hit the iron roof at the entrance of the alley, making a continuous muffled sound.

The cold rain seeped down the dilapidated tin shed and into his neck, calming him down a little.

What's the use of revenge?

His mother left him after all...

That night, in the fraudster's home: a man humbly knelt and begged for mercy, a child's eyes were filled with fear, and a woman opened her arms to protect her daughter...

And myself transformed into a monster.

Shingo Asakawa dropped his hands weakly. He looked down at his hands and suddenly felt nauseous.

He remembered the sticky feeling of sharp teeth tearing through flesh, the little girl's intermittent sobs as she clutched the broken doll, and how his palm pierced the mother's heart.

"She is also a mother, and they... there are people waiting for them to come home..."

Asakawa Shingo whimpered in pain and repeatedly hit his head with his clenched fists.

His scaly right hand trembled as he pulled out [Shark Memory].

The azure memory glowed eerily in the rain, like the sneering grin of a deep-sea monster.

"Disappear!"

Shingo Asakawa roared and threw the memory into the distance. The memory flew over a pool of water like a skipping stone, but the splashing water condensed into a chain of water in the air.

The memory drew a graceful arc like a migrating shark, and the tip accurately pierced the interface on the side of his neck. Asakawa Shingo hurriedly grabbed its end to prevent it from completely merging in.

Asakawa Shingo's spine arched uncontrollably into a predatory posture, his fangs gradually pierced his lower lip, and the desire to hunt and kill everything in his heart was ignited again.

"It's like this again..."

Asakawa Shingo was desperate. He just wanted revenge, but he was controlled by this power and committed the crime of killing innocent people.

No matter how many times he threw it away, it would always come back. He felt like a complete monster...

In the past few days, pain and regret have always entangled him, making him suffocate as if he were falling into the deep sea.

Mom probably doesn't want him to become a monster... At least he should die as a human being...

Asakawa Shingo made up his mind completely.

He fell to his knees, grabbed a rusty steel pipe scattered on the ground and smashed it hard on the back of his head.

The dull sound of metal colliding with skull was drowned out by the sound of rain. Blood slid down cheekbones and diluted beside the body that was gradually getting cold in the heavy rain.

"Mom...I'm here to keep you company..."

In his narrow vision that was about to close, he saw the warm yellow light of the convenience store shining through the rain, and an uncle humming a little tune as he pulled down the rolling shutter.

Asakawa Shingo's mouth curled up slightly and he completely lost consciousness.

"Strange, where did that kid Asakawa go?"

......

......

As dusk deepened, raindrops began to hit the bluestone road.

After searching in vain, Tendou Souji strolled in the rain along the faded billboards and crooked maple trees, the sound of his wooden clogs barely audible amidst the raindrops.

Amid the sound of raindrops hitting the iron roof of the bicycle shed, a muffled sound was suddenly heard.

He followed the sound into a dark alley and saw a thin young man huddled against the wall, as quiet as a corpse.

The young man collapsed on the ground with his mouth open and eyes closed. In his limp hand, his fingers stubbornly grasped a blood-stained steel pipe, and a relieved smile played on his face.

Tendo Souji squatted down and reached out to feel his breath - he was still alive.

He originally thought that maybe someone else was armed and injured the person, and then put the weapon into the other person's hand...

But when he pried the man's fingers apart and pulled out the steel pipe, he found that there was a circle of handprints on the pipe that were forcibly made by gripping the pipe - this was obviously not something a normal person could do.

Suddenly, Tendo Souji caught a glimpse of the blue memory next to the man that was wet by the rain. His calm expression instantly became alert and he quickly drew his sword to defend himself.