That night.
Seiji returned to his penthouse apartment.
Megumi had already prepared dinner. She stood by the door to greet him like a gentle wife.
It seemed she had fully accepted her new role.
However, in the middle of dinner, her phone on the table suddenly chimed... Line group chat notification.
She opened it instinctively, frowning.
[They're back! Those bastards are back again!]
[Same here! They even smashed my husband's memorial photo! I... I can't take this anymore…!]
[How could this happen? Weren't they all supposed to be gone?!]
The group chat was once again filled with panic and despair.
Megumi herself hadn't been threatened, but seeing what the others were going through filled her with unease.
She looked up at Seiji, unable to hold back her question.
"Fujiwara-sensei… why are those yakuza back again?"
She thought the matter had been completely settled.
Seiji set down his wine glass, meeting her confused gaze with a faint smile.
"No rush."
"Let the bullet spin three more times."
Megumi blinked, completely lost on what that meant.
Night fell over Tokyo.
Three board members of Daido Life Insurance Company were each out indulging in their own brand of luxury nightlife... unaware that the scythe of death was already hanging above their heads.
Ginza, 6-Chome.
Inside an ultra-exclusive private club closed to the public, the air was thick with the sweet scent of money and lust.
One of Daido's directors, Kosuke Tanaka, lounged on a velvet sofa with a woman on each arm.
Two scantily clad hostesses giggled as they peeled top-grade muscat grapes and fed them into his mouth one by one.
"Tanaka-sama, you're really amazing…" one of them purred in a syrupy tone.
"Hahaha!" Tanaka roared with drunken pride, his greasy hand roaming freely around her waist. "That's nothing! Once the company's 'asset optimization' plan is done, I'll take you both to Hawaii and rent out an entire island!"
By "asset optimization," he meant their scheme to dodge the massive insurance payouts from the plane crash.
To him, those families who lost loved ones were nothing more than numbers he could erase from a spreadsheet at will.
He had long forgotten about Seiji Fujiwara. To him, a young writer meant nothing in front of real capital and power.
At that moment, the private room door quietly opened.
A tall, handsome young man in a waiter's uniform stepped in, holding a silver ice bucket containing a bottle of Romanee-Conti.
"Tanaka-sama, your wine," the waiter said, his voice smooth and rich like a cello.
"Oh? I didn't order anything…" Tanaka muttered, squinting blearily.
"It's a complimentary gift for our most distinguished guest." The waiter smiled politely and bent forward to place the bucket on the table.
As he did, something thin and gleaming slid silently from his sleeve... a needle, fine as a hair, shimmering with a faint blue light.
Whip!
A flick of the wrist... barely noticeable.
The needle shot forward like lightning, piercing the back of Tanaka's neck.
"Ah…"
Tanaka only felt a small sting, like a mosquito bite. He reached up to scratch it, but a wave of paralysis surged through his spine, freezing him in place.
The world around him began to spin.
The hostesses' laughter grew distant.
He tried to scream, but no sound came out. The light in his eyes flickered like a dying candle, then went dark.
He slumped into the sofa, body twitching, white foam dribbling from his mouth.
"Tanaka-sama? What's wrong?!" the girls cried in terror.
But the "waiter" was already gone... vanished like a ghost into the shadowed hallway.
It was several minutes later that the girls' ear-splitting screams echoed through the club.
At the same time, on the Tokyo Expressway.
A scarlet Ferrari 488 tore through the night at over 200 kilometers per hour.
Behind the wheel sat Takeshi Sato, another Daido director. He was grinning as he spoke into his phone.
"Baby, give me ten more minutes! I just slipped out of some boring dinner meeting… tonight, I'll show you what a real man is!"
He hung up, smirking, and pressed down harder on the accelerator.
Behind him, a nondescript cargo truck followed at a steady distance.
In the driver's seat, a man in a baseball cap stared coldly at the red flash ahead, speaking calmly into his earpiece.
"Target locked. C3 section. Minimal traffic."
"Copy. Execute." came the icy response through his comm.
The man nodded and floored the gas.
"Vroom!"
In three seconds flat, the steel behemoth roared from 80 to 160 kilometers per hour.
Inside the Ferrari, Sato was still daydreaming about the night ahead... until blinding headlights flared in his rearview mirror, rushing toward him like twin suns.
He barely had time to react.
"Nani... ?!"
That was his last thought.
BOOOOM!!!
The explosion shook the highway.
Against sheer mass and momentum, the multi-million-yen supercar was as fragile as a soda can.
It was swallowed, crushed, and torn apart by the truck, bursting into a tumbling fireball that scraped a hundred meters of sparks across the road.
Panicked drivers slammed on brakes, triggering a chain collision.
The truck, mission complete, didn't even slow down. It smashed through the guardrail and plunged off the overpass into a construction site below... erupting in another massive explosion.
The driver, however, had already leapt out a second before impact, disappearing into the night.
Setagaya Ward, Tokyo.
In a heavily guarded mansion, Hiroshi Watanabe, the third Daido director, sat in his study speaking through a secure phone.
"...Don't worry. I've arranged a new channel for that batch of 'materials' from Southeast Asia. We'll split the profits the usual way. As for the police, our man on the inside has it covered..."
By "materials," he meant a new synthetic drug.
For years, he had used the insurance company's channels for money laundering and smuggling.
He didn't notice the two shadowy figures clinging silently outside his bulletproof window.
One of them placed a small circular device... like a stethoscope... against the glass.
"Resonator set. Countdown: three, two, one…"
A faint, unseen vibration rippled through the air.
The glass disintegrated from within, crumbling silently into powder.
The two figures slipped inside like phantoms.
"...What was that?" his partner asked over the phone, hearing a faint noise.
Watanabe looked up warily... nothing.
"It's nothing, probably my cat. Anyway, as I was saying... "
He didn't finish the sentence.
A gloved hand clamped over his mouth. A gleaming combat knife pressed against his throat.
His eyes bulged in terror.
He tried to struggle, but the arm holding him was like iron. The blade sliced through his skin, severing his windpipe.
"Gh… gh…"
The wet rasping of his dying breath carried clearly through the phone line.
"Hey! Watanabe! What's going on?! Hey!" his partner shouted.
Only silence answered.
He realized immediately... Watanabe was dead.
That night, Kyoto Prefectural Police and Tokyo Metropolitan Police were flooded with emergency calls.
A murder in a Ginza club!
A horrific crash on the expressway!
A brutal homicide in a Setagaya mansion!
When the reports were compiled, one chilling detail emerged...
All three victims were board members of Daido Life Insurance Company!
The police brass who knew the inside story immediately grasped the terrifying truth behind it all.
This was a continuation of yesterday's "Black Dragon Syndicate vanishing act"! A power struggle between that shadowy figure and Daido Life Insurance!
"Lock down all information! Officially, these were accidents and random murders!"
"All related case files are now classified top secret! No one is to investigate without authorization!"
Orders laced with fear came down swiftly from the highest levels.
Japan's so-called enforcers of order chose self-preservation, turning a blind eye to the storm raging beneath the surface.
The remaining seven Daido directors were terrified.
That very night, they barricaded themselves behind layers of bodyguards and called an emergency video conference.
"It... it was him! It has to be that Fujiwara Seiji!"
"That bastard! He doesn't play by the rules!"
"Three out of ten... he's warning us! We're next... we're next!"
"Quick! Contact the Toyokawa family! Only they can save us now!"
Fear turned these normally arrogant power brokers pale and trembling.
For the first time, they experienced the same terror they had inflicted on others.
But when they called the Toyokawa family's head steward, begging for protection through their tears, they received only a cold, merciless refusal:
"My apologies, gentlemen. The Toyokawa family no longer concerns itself with any matters related to Daido Life Insurance Company. That company was an unauthorized investment by Kiyoshi Kurakawa, a disowned member of our family. Its profits or losses have nothing to do with us."
The line went dead.
Those words were the final straw.
The remaining seven directors went ashen.
They had been abandoned.
They had no doubt that if they didn't surrender now, death would come for them next.
Compared to their lives, what did company shares, money, or status matter?
Without hesitation, they chose to surrender.
The next morning.
Megumi woke in her room.
She picked up her phone and instinctively checked the news.
Several bold headlines in red immediately caught her eye:
[Multiple violent incidents in Tokyo last night—three business elites dead under mysterious circumstances!]
[Victims confirmed as board members of Daido Life Insurance Company!]
[Police preliminarily rule accidents and homicide, but questions remain...]
Megumi's hands trembled as she held her phone.
She wasn't stupid.
She immediately connected this to what Seiji had said last night: "Let the bullet spin a few more times."
A chill ran from her feet straight to the top of her head.
She was afraid—afraid of the terrifying power this man wielded, power that seemed to belong to another world entirely.
But soon, that fear was replaced by something more complex.
She had assumed Seiji was only dealing with the thugs harassing ordinary people.
She never imagined his target had been the insurance company behind them all along.
A strange, indescribable feeling welled up in Megumi's heart.
She couldn't help but silently quip:
Fujiwara-sensei, don't you think you're making a bit too much noise...?
But this time, there was no resistance in her voice.
Whatever remaining hesitation she had about those shameful "development" sessions... it evaporated completely in the face of this overwhelming power.
Meanwhile.
Seiji slept until he woke naturally.
Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows onto his face.
He picked up the special phone on his nightstand. On the screen was a report from Aegis Security:
[Last night's "lottery" complete. Target response as predicted.]
A satisfied smile curved Seiji's lips.
He glanced at the news feed—wall-to-wall coverage of the three directors' deaths, accompanied by "leaked insider information" about their involvement in financial crimes and illegal dealings.
That, of course, was also Aegis's handiwork—shaping public opinion.
"Good," he murmured.
None of them had been clean.
Their deaths merely rid the world of a few particularly bloated parasites.
9 AM, Genesis Company, President's Office.
Seiji had just picked up the coffee his secretary prepared when a knock came at the door.
His personal attorney and Genesis Legal Director, Sakaguchi Ken, strode in with steady, purposeful steps.
His face bore a hint of barely concealed excitement and reverence.
"Sir," he bowed deeply, "the matter you entrusted to me has yielded results."
"Oh?" Seiji took a sip of coffee, his tone casual. "They surrendered?"
"Yes," Sakaguchi replied, his voice trembling slightly. "More completely than expected! The remaining seven Daido directors held an emergency meeting overnight. This morning, through intermediaries, they contacted me... offering to sell all their company shares to you at ten percent of market value."
"They only ask that you spare their lives."
Sakaguchi paused, then added, "Also, that sales department manager who came yesterday—Shigeru Suzuki—has been kneeling in the lobby downstairs since seven this morning. He insists on apologizing to you in person."
"Heh."
Seiji let out a soft laugh.
People in this world never cried until they saw the coffin.
"Sakaguchi," he set down his cup, tone flat, "handle the acquisition yourself. Get me full control of that company as quickly as possible."
"As for Suzuki," a cold glint flashed in his eyes, "dig up all his past dirty dealings and send them to the prosecutor's office. I don't want to see that man again."