After the great war, unemployment soared with terrifying speed.
Anyone with eyes could see that the Japanese government was truly panicking. The newspapers were constantly filled with reports—hawkish politicians assassinated one after another, major corporations declaring bankruptcy, assets frozen overnight. Internal turmoil and external pressure came crashing down at the same time, leaving no room to breathe. In an attempt to curb the runaway unemployment rate, the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications mobilized emergency fiscal funds and rushed out relief subsidies for the jobless.
Under these extraordinary circumstances, the issue of child labor quietly vanished. Minors were now permitted to work.
At the same time, juvenile crime began to rise—slowly at first, then unmistakably.
It became a new and urgent social problem.
The Japanese Special Abilities Division, which had once openly resented the Port Mafia for "protecting" Yokohama's civilians and collecting protection fees, took less than half a year to shift from hostility to deliberate blindness. In the end, it tacitly acknowledged the Port Mafia's authority over Yokohama's nights. The entire country was struggling just to survive, gritting its teeth in the hope of enduring one more brutal year.
Conversely, in this bleak postwar era, the Port Mafia—having successfully invested and profited repeatedly—became the largest "target" in Yokohama. It was not only foreign warlords who deliberately stirred up trouble; criminals, too, delighted in preying upon them, engaging in ruthless black-on-black violence.
Asou Akiya, who had acquired numerous health supplement patents, was abducted on his return trip after concluding a round of commercial negotiations.
He remained seated inside the car, unmoving, his limbs icy cold. Outside the window, gun barrels were aimed squarely at him.
They were standard handgun models—common, unremarkable, deadly.
"Get out. Now."
Asou Akiya instinctively glanced toward the bodyguards beside him.
Two bursts of blood blossomed in the air.
Two members of the combat unit were shot cleanly through the head, collapsing one after the other in slow motion. The driver in the front seat was frozen in terror, his face drained of all color.
Then, a single red dot slid onto Asou Akiya's forehead.
A long-range sniper.
Driven by money and willing to pay any price, the villains—bankrolled by foreign warlords—launched relentless attacks against local powers. Among all possible targets, the easiest prey were those who did not belong to the combat units, who possessed no supernatural abilities, and who served only in civilian or administrative roles.
Asou Akiya held a fairly respectable position within the organization, yet it was still not enough to warrant an ability-user bodyguard.
"Shit," he cursed inwardly, his nerves stretched taut with fear.
His movements should have been confidential.
Under the suffocating pressure of the sniper's aim, Asou Akiya pushed open the car door and stepped out, raising both hands high to signal that they should not fire lightly. He deliberately put on a frightened, timid expression as he walked toward the enemy, each step taken while desperately thinking through his options. When a scholar runs into soldiers, reason becomes useless—his life was far too valuable to gamble on a head-on confrontation. In situations like this, it was not godlike opponents that terrified him most, but enemies who were pigheaded and refused to think at all.
"I'm a business negotiator for the Port Mafia. I'm not skilled in combat—everyone who came with me can testify to that!"
The words proved effective, reducing the chance that an enemy's jittery finger might fire a shot out of sheer panic.
They searched him, confiscating his phone and sidearm, along with every small item meant for self-defense. Cold handcuffs snapped shut around his wrists. In the next instant, a coarse burlap sack was pulled over his head, plunging him into darkness.
The kidnappers burst out laughing. One of them said to his companions, "We got him. He's with the Port Mafia—doesn't look like a low-ranking grunt either. That was a business-class car he was riding in."
Immediately after, the man threatening him with a gun barked roughly, "Move!"
Asou Akiya was kicked hard from behind, stumbling several steps forward. He clenched his teeth and forced himself to keep walking, groping his way through the darkness.
Before leaving the car, he had already discreetly triggered the distress signal on the tracker embedded in his belt, alerting the Port Mafia. Until their reinforcements arrived, he had to endure whatever torture came his way and reveal nothing. Otherwise, when the rescue finally came, the first one they would deal with would be him—no amount of money he had earned for the Port Mafia would save him then.
A traitor had only one fate.
Death.
Asou Akiya tried to memorize the route, but quickly realized it was completely unfamiliar. In the end, he gave up in despair.
He was loaded into the kidnappers' vehicle and taken straight to their stronghold.
There were other people seated inside the car. The man closest to him reeked of sweat and body odor; he was fiddling with Asou Akiya's phone, forcing him to unlock it. Asou Akiya had the good habit of cleaning out his phone every day—what remained were all things that did not fear inspection—so he simply gave up the passcode. A skilled hacker could recover deleted message logs, and someone like that could certainly crack a password as well; Asou Akiya did not believe that this group of people, acting on a spur-of-the-moment plan, possessed that level of ability.
The man seemed particularly curious about the affairs of Port Mafia members and eagerly began browsing. When he opened the photo gallery, what appeared before his eyes were nothing more than pictures of Yokohama's scenery and shots of local food.
It looked no different from the phone of an ordinary person.
When they arrived at their destination, the kidnappers visibly relaxed. They tossed Asou Akiya onto a chair and locked him in place. Someone opened the document bag containing materials for business negotiations. Expecting to find something valuable, the kidnappers burst into laughter the moment they saw what was inside.
"Health supplements?"
"The Port Mafia runs this kind of business too? That's hilarious!"
"They're actually buying patent rights for some Indian-brand health supplements… what the hell, the licensing fees are this high?"
"The mafia sure has money. Wonder how much they'll be willing to pay to ransom him back. Heh heh—before that happens, you'd better spit out something more useful."
"Boss, didn't those foreigners want information on the Port Mafia's upper management? Let's ask him. If he won't talk, we beat it out of him… hey! Do you have photos and identity information on those people?"
Listening to these words through the burlap sack over his head, Asou Akiya remained completely silent, like a dull, lifeless statue. Only when they discovered the diamond ring on his finger—clearly of considerable value—and forcibly stripped it from him did his body tremble slightly. Even when he was beaten afterward, he showed not the slightest reaction of crying or begging for mercy.
His gaze grew cold and shadowed.
Empty your mind.
What followed was a long ordeal of suffering and waiting, until the stench of blood spread thickly through the air.
"Swish—!"
He blinked rapidly, doing his best to avoid the sudden glare. After a few seconds of blurred vision, he finally saw clearly who had pulled the hood from his head: a long-haired little girl. Twelve-year-old Ozaki Kōyō met his gaze, curiosity flickering in her rose-red eyes. Behind her floated a humanoid Ability in the form of a woman in a kimono—[Golden Demon].
"Boss sent me to save you. You're coming back with us."
After saying that, she lifted the lethal weapon in her hand and walked toward the other side, where there were still targets who were not yet dead—perfectly suitable for interrogation.
Asou Akiya stood up from the chair, and the delayed feedback of pain surged through his body. His attempt at self-hypnosis failed completely.
Clutching his aching abdomen, he sucked in a sharp breath. "Tch… could you hand me my phone?"
Ozaki Kōyō paused. [Golden Demon] drifted over to the man who had taken Asou Akiya's phone earlier, located a black handset, and hurled it in his direction.
Asou Akiya fumbled and barely caught it. His face was somewhat battered, bruises from the beating still visible. He paid no attention to the superficial injuries. Instead, he immediately dialed the Port Mafia boss's number. After a brief wait, he reported in a strictly professional tone, as if handling routine business:
"Boss, I've linked up with Miss Kōyō. Thank you to the organization for the rescue. I'll deliver the contract back right away. The final price we negotiated is slightly lower than projected. The formula is in my head and has not been leaked to anyone."
The Port Mafia boss, naturally, was a scum employer who squeezed every last drop of usefulness from his subordinates and had no interest in anything beyond that. With a single order issued, Asou Akiya was expected to return to work immediately, to make up for the time lost from his schedule.
Before leaving, Asou Akiya had already forced himself past the pain. He put his phone away and slowly walked over to one of the kidnappers who was still alive. Searching through pocket after pocket, he finally found his ring and slipped it back onto his ring finger.
And then—
Right in front of Ozaki Kōyō, he lifted his foot and brought it down viciously on the kidnapper's hand.
"AAAAAAAH—!!!"
Amid the heart-rending screams, every finger on both hands was utterly ruined.
That was not all. Asou Akiya extended his hand toward the combat-oriented members who had come with Ozaki Kōyō. His face was icy, and he did not say a single word. Intimidated by the chill radiating from him, one of the fighters instinctively drew a gun and handed it over. Asou Akiya chambered a round, aimed at the enemy, and fired seven shots in succession—only the final bullet granting him the mercy of death.
Ozaki Kōyō hurriedly exclaimed, "Hey!"
Asou Akiya replied coldly, "I'll take responsibility. The interrogation room isn't short of one more living prisoner."
If the cross was a priest's faith, then the ring was his spiritual pillar.
Whoever touched it would die.
Asou Akiya returned to the Port Mafia and spent a frenetic afternoon buried in work. By evening, he finally squeezed out enough time to visit the medical department.
Compared to two years ago, the medical wing had expanded significantly. Supplies were abundant now; it no longer treated only Port Mafia members, but also received well-connected partners and wealthy clients who paid extravagant sums to buy their lives.
A familiar surgeon personally came to examine him, directing the nurses as they applied medication, and joked, "Asou-kun, no matter how high you climb, you always end up paying the medical department a visit."
Asou Akiya was in so much pain he nearly rolled his eyes. He grabbed the female nurse's wrist and shifted her hand away from a sensitive spot. "Don't strip me randomly—I'm a married man!"
The nurse, clearly on familiar terms with him, replied calmly, "It's all superficial injuries. Whoever beat you up didn't go for the kill. Once we're done applying the medicine, it'll definitely hurt for the next few days. Tonight, you can play the pitiful card with your wife."
"That's impossible!" Asou Akiya shot back immediately.
The nurse looked puzzled.
Asou Akiya lowered his gaze to the ring on his ring finger, frowned, and asked the nurse for a bottle of disinfectant.
After carefully cleaning the ring, he said nonchalantly, "I'm planning to work overtime at headquarters tonight!"
The surgeon shot him a sidelong glance. He didn't comment on Asou Akiya wasting a hospital bed, but his thoughts drifted instead to that French man from before.
"So… you two still haven't broken up?"
"Shut up. Our relationship is perfectly fine! Even God couldn't tear us apart!"
—Rimbaud.
Today, I managed to survive again, stubbornly, without dying silently in some forgotten corner of the world.
Every day, I try to become just a little better than I was before.
In one of Yokohama's most tangled and lawless districts, people died every single day. From within that chaos, a French youth in a long coat and with flowing hair emerged unscathed. His melancholy, strikingly handsome face was, in a sense, terrifying in its own right. He was drawing closer and closer to the place where the informant he had tracked down was said to be, his footsteps soundless, until he finally stopped in front of a small general store.
He held his phone in his hand when a soft chime sounded.
A new message.
Rimbaud immediately opened it and was met with Akiya's pitiful reply about working overtime.
[Rimbaud, I'm working overtime tonight T_T.]
[Take care of yourself.]
After sending the reply, Rimbaud's expression softened for a brief moment, only to turn cold again in the blink of an eye.
Akiya didn't dare expose him to the Port Mafia's scrutiny, so Rimbaud had privately decided to seek out a foreign informant, hoping to ask whether there was any information at all about a Frenchman named "Arthur Rimbaud."
Based on the clues he had pieced together so far, his unease only deepened. He began to suspect that in the past he had been a Frenchman who had illegally slipped into the country during wartime—someone from a good family, with no need to risk his life for money, and with a certain level of combat experience. Facing ten or so street thugs barehanded would have been effortless for him. All signs pointed to the likelihood that he had once been a spy sent by some organization.
At this point, he suddenly found himself unable to take another step forward.
Because—
He had a premonition that the calm life he now lived would be shattered, and that his hands might one day be stained with blood.
The best way to conceal a secret was to kill the one who knew it. Whether the informant actually possessed any knowledge or not, from the moment the name "Arthur Rimbaud" was spoken, the most merciful outcome was to have that mouth sealed forever.
Could hands that had killed still hold a book of poetry, carefree, and write verses that Akiya loved?
His mind wavered, his thoughts drifting and unmoored.
"…Forget it."
Rimbaud's killing intent was like the stillness before a blizzard—oppressive to the extreme, heavy and crushing as it bore down on the hearts of others. He himself was unaware of just how terrifying he had become; the grocery store owner had already collapsed limply into a chair, paralyzed with fear.
He turned and walked away, carrying an indescribable melancholy with him, his figure as beautiful as poetry itself.
Next time, he would find a better way…
A better way…
One that would never let Akiya know.