The Ordinary Hour

Matsuda Kenji was an ordinary man. At least, that's what the world saw.

A slightly overweight, glasses-wearing convenience store owner, he spent his days restocking shelves, chatting with regulars, and preparing bento boxes for his nine-year-old daughter, Hana. The locals knew him as kind, quiet, and dependable-a man who had settled into the rhythms of a peaceful, unremarkable life.

But peace was an illusion.

A decade ago, Kenji was known by a different name: Timekeeper, the deadliest operative of Hourglass, a clandestine organization that manipulated global events from the shadows. His missions were executed with mechanical precision-every target eliminated within exactly one hour. No more. No less. Then he vanished, leaving behind a world of bloodshed to build something real: a family, a life free of violence.

That fragile normalcy shatters the night Takashi Ryusei stumbles into Kenji's convenience store, bleeding and desperate, clutching an object that should never have existed-The Minutehand, a device containing the identities of every Hourglass operative still in play.

Kenji knows what this means.

They will come for it.
They will come for the boy.
And if they learn who he really is...
They will come for him, too.

For ten years, he has pretended to be ordinary. But there are no ordinary hours left.

Because when the clock starts ticking, Timekeeper does not miss.