Chapter 165

With Nagumo and Rion-Uzuki sidelined by their wounds, Sakamoto grabs a Third Exhibition Hall sign to keep fighting Takamura. The swordsman spins clear of Sakamoto's broad swing and lunges to stab, but Sakamoto rolls away and Takamura merely wrecks another support column. Noticing that Takamura resheathes his katana after each cut, Sakamoto pins the hilt with his foot to stop the draw, only for Takamura to grip the handle and fling the sheath off the blade, slicing at his head through a row of vending machines.

Sakamoto shifts his aim toward destroying the katana rather than the aged assassin, using an exhibit dagger and a pair of queue posts strung with barrier tape to press Takamura onto the defensive. He kicks the swordsman up through a ceiling into a cafe, and Takamura cuts back down through the new floor. When Takamura slashes for the head again, the damaged blade lets Sakamoto block with the flat of his gun. Sakamoto fires, but Takamura parries the rounds and uses them to hone his edge, then catches Sakamoto off guard with a diagonal cut that draws blood.

Nagumo intervenes, spraying a fire extinguisher to blind Takamura and warning Sakamoto to smother his killing intent, one of the cues Takamura tracks his prey by. Takamura reappears behind them, having sensed a trace of hostility, then wheels away toward a far larger surge. Echoing an earlier beat, Gaku brings an overhead strike down on Takamura, met by the sheathed katana with force enough to collapse the ground beneath him.

Sakamoto battles Takamura with makeshift tools like a hall sign, an exhibit dagger, and taped barrier posts, choosing to ruin the katana instead of the swordsman. Takamura sharpens his blade on Sakamoto's own gunfire and lands a bloody diagonal cut. Nagumo blinds Takamura with an extinguisher and advises masking hostility, the sense Takamura hunts by. Gaku then arrives, and his overhead blow against Takamura's sheath caves in the floor.

Titled Accessibility, this is the one hundred and sixty-fifth chapter of Sakamoto Days and part of the Assassin Exhibition of the Century Arc. It ran in the twenty-fourth 2024 issue on May 13, 2024, and covers nineteen pages within Volume 19. Nagumo, Uzuki, Takamura, and Sakamoto appear on the cover. The chapter highlights Takamura's habit of resheathing between strikes and his reliance on sensing hostility.