Chapter 168

From cover, Sakamoto watches the newly reshaped X as the battle burns out. Nagumo drops behind him, so he checks the man's pulse, judges that neither of them can keep fighting, and drags his rival away from the rubble. Turning over what he saw, he concludes that Uzuki summoned a fresh Takamura identity by mimicking the swordsman's final motions. Spotting Shin and Kashima sprinting toward him, relief hits him just before he loses consciousness.

Seven days later he stirs at Granny Miya's, listening to Lu Shaotang and Shin bicker over what to feed him. Shin lays out the escape: while he struggled to pull both older assassins from the collapse, Osaragi crashed through a wall gripping Amane, Seba materialized nearby, and the whole group slipped to safety, with other survivors scattering toward refuges such as the JCC.

The hunt has already begun. At the family store, Aoi and Hana coolly refuse to surrender Sakamoto's location to the assassins pressing them, and Aoi lights up at news that her husband is awake. A broadcast made for killers labels the trio special Class-A extermination marks and pins the museum's ruin on them, setting repairs above twenty billion yen. Lu Wutang, tucked in a corner, draws out the full account and hears that Uzuki cut down Takamura by wearing his persona. The elder dreads the grimmest reading of it: the enemy may now effectively wield Takamura himself.

Sakamoto and Nagumo, both spent, are pulled from the museum by Shin and shielded by Osaragi and Seba during the mass evacuation. A week of recovery passes at Granny Miya's. An assassin-world news program officially brands Sakamoto, Nagumo, and Uzuki special Class-A targets and principal culprits behind the Okutabi Art Museum disaster. Lu Wutang pieces together that stress forced Uzuki's mind to birth a Takamura persona, meaning the enemy camp has, in effect, gained Takamura. In a separate courtyard, Oki makes his debut, reuniting with a scolded Shishiba and Osaragi and swearing to correct the Order and the JAA in his absence.

Titled Museum Closed (Heikan), this is the one hundred sixty-eighth chapter of the series, closing out the Assassin Exhibition of the Century Arc. It ran in issue 27 of 2024 on June 3, 2024, and is collected in Volume 19. Oki debuts here. Amane, Seba, and Takamura appear only within Shin's recounted flashback of the escape.