Chapter 179

Torres grumbles that killing wears him down and disgusts him, moaning that blood reeks and that everyone in the trade is strange. When Sakamoto asks what drives him, Torres admits he only wants cash to feed a gambling habit. The questioning drags until Torres cuts it off, likening Sakamoto to a pestering child and dismissing hired killers as fools. Sakamoto counters that his wife considers gamblers the real fools, and Torres insists that only those who lose deserve the label.

Talk snaps into violence when Sakamoto boots Torres into a parked car. His foot gets pinned, and a sudden burst of sand launches him backward, eating through one of his reinforced slippers despite its aramid weave. Curious to measure Sakamoto rather than finish him, Torres erupts from the wreck with a sand blaster gripped in each hand. He grinds a hurled sign and a chunk of the street into powder, then hammers Sakamoto into an elevated monorail and slices its floor apart.

Spotting a boy clinging to a seat above the drop, Sakamoto pulls him to safety before he falls. Torres presses on, lecturing that Sakamoto leans far too heavily on luck. Sakamoto hooks a loose handle around Torres' ankle and drags him down, and the pair crash together onto another car. Beaten, Sakamoto limps off, replaying the taunt about luck and unsure what his opponent actually meant.

Torres reveals that his weapon of choice is compressed sand, ejected from a device in each hand with force enough to shred reinforced material and pulverize signs and pavement alike. He states plainly that he is testing Sakamoto, not trying to kill him. During the monorail collapse, Sakamoto saves a child from a deadly fall. The confrontation closes with Sakamoto defeated and left to puzzle over Torres' claim that he relies on luck.

The chapter takes its title from Torres, the assassin at its center, and belongs to the JAA Jail Arc collected in Volume 20. It ran in issue 39 of 2024, released on August 26, 2024, and spans nineteen pages. Aoi Sakamoto surfaces only through Sakamoto's line about her view of gamblers and does not physically appear.