Vol. 4 Chapter 5.2

Translated by SoundDestiny Edited by Kaepinned

Time went back a little further.

Today I stepped into an entertainment district for the first time.

However, the entertainment district was in a provincial city so it was not that big of a place.

There were a lot of bars catering to old men and there were many empty shops with their shutters still closed. There were no fashionable clubs either.

In the middle of such a shabby bar district, there was a line of pencil buildings with flashy signs of snacks and bars. On the first floor of an old building behind it, there was a commercial space without any signboards.

[TL:skinny skyscraper]

The shutters on the front of the building remained tightly closed. There were traces of a sign, but nothing was currently displayed, and the windows were covered with mirror stickers, so there was no view of what was inside.

The only thing that stood out was the bad character of the people who came in and out of the building, which was a so-called clan office. It was the branch office of the Kamishima clan, under the leadership of the clan leader’s only son, Ryuichi.

I turned to the back of the building with an unsuspecting look on my face.

Admittedly, I didn’t know what it looked like inside, but I already had the structure of the interior in my head.

Lili disappeared last night and scouted the interior for me.

Thanks to the floor plan she drew for me, I had a good idea of where everything was in the building.

I stepped into the alleyway at the back of the building and used 『Passthrough』 to the reception room at the back of the office.

I was not trying to do anything. My purpose at this point was to break in, that was all.

Once I had visited this place, I could always open the door here with 『Revisit』.

As soon as I had served my purpose, I used the 『Passthrough』to get out.

‘This should be all primed and ready to go ……. Shouldn’t it?’

I reminded myself again of this morning’s meeting to see if I had forgotten anything

×××

Lili was floating near the ceiling of the dining room.

Surrounding the table were the three favourites: me, Masaki, Tashiro-san and Kurosawa-san. In addition to that, Ryoko, dressed in a pantsuit, was standing right next to me.

“No way, I can’t believe he even touched Terashima-san……”

“Hahaha, the  Confinement King is a bad man!”

Tashiro-san laughed at Kurosawa-san, who looked at me with a frown.

“By the way, I have always wondered, what is this 『Confinement King』……?”

“After all this time!?”

Masaki-chan looked at Kurosawa-san twice, and Tashiro-san said, [The Confinement King is the Confinement King, of course] and with that the atmosphere became somewhat more agreeable.

I didn’t know if that was good enough, but, well, if that was good enough for Kurosawa-san, then let’s just go with it.

In the first place, I didn’t really understand the subtle feelings that girls had regarding this.

“By the way, Masaki. Is the stuff I asked you for yesterday ready?”

When I asked her that, Masaki-chan proudly stuck out her V-sign.

“Perfect – I’m good at crafts and handicrafts!”

“Ah……that’s right. Fumio, have you ever been to Masaki’s house?”

“Yeah, that one time when I was breaking in.”

“Breaking in……?”

Kurosawa made a questioning look.

“Well, okay. You must have seen the doorknob cover on the door of Masaki’s room, didn’t you? That was Masaki’s handiwork and all the doorknobs in the house have them. And they are very frilly ones. Sooner or later, all the doors in this place might have door knob covers.”

‘….. I’d like to refrain from that ever happening.’

After all, if people were about to be tortured and then taken to a room with a very cute door knob cover on it, they wouldn’t know what face to make.

“So, Ryoko, did you find out who kidnapped Kurosawa-san?”

“No……but if we investigate based on the characteristics of the kidnapping group that Misuzu-sama told us about earlier, we should be able to identify them in the near future.”

“Hmm, but…we can’t wait for that. For now, as planned, I’m going to have a gangster who seems to be trafficking in people take on the role of the criminal.”

“Uwaー……….”

“It’s like a food chain where the bad guys are preyed upon by the Confinement King which is worse than them……”

Kurosawa-san made a face of disbelief, and Tashiro-san nodded her head. Then, suddenly, Lili changed the subject.

“By the way, FumiFumi, one of the six people that Kurosawa-chan and you brought with you yesterday, would like to stay here, Devi. What should we do, Devi? It seems she has nowhere to go, Devi……”

“…… well, I have extra room and I don’t mind.”

“Then, you can meet with her later and decide what to do with her, Devi. If you don’t like her, you can treat her as an apprentice servant, Devi.”

“Apprentice servant…..”

The four girls who took the naked photos of Fujiwara-san were now apprenticed servants. However, contrary to the soft terminology of servant apprentices, Lili and Freesia had thoroughly trained them in Spartan techniques so that they could be useful to me. I didn’t know what kind of training they were talking about here, but it was, after all, the work of the devil. It must be something extraordinary.

As expected, I couldn’t treat an innocent girl like that, and in any case, it was not the time to be distracted by such things today.

From there we worked out the details of the plan.

Even though…… It was Lili and Ryoko who had made a detailed minute-by-minute plan beforehand, and all I had to do was figure it out and approve it.

×××

I moved to the front of the office again.

It was hot. Even though it was evening in early summer. Despite this, I was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a long black coat that smelled really bad and looked like a Chuunibyou. No wonder it was so hot.

I wiped the sweat from my forehead with my cuff and took my phone out of my pocket to check the time.

Two minutes before the raid.

Casually looking around, I saw a figure peering at me from the alleyway.

Probably Ryoko and the others. At five o’clock today, a gunman would be jumping into the Kamishima clan. I had her report such a tip to her superior.

It was a separate case that had nothing to do with the kidnapping case under Inspector Nakamura’s command. Ryoko said that she could bring in the police from her jurisdiction in this form.

I wondered if the police would act on such a fishy story, but apparently she was able to set things up well. I could feel quite a few eyes on me.

Then I took a deep breath.

It was time to go in.

The door to the office was locked.

The kitchen door by the office  was also locked. But that meant nothing to me.

Conscious that the police officers were watching me, I manifested a 『Door』 that had been transformed to look exactly like the door there. Then, when I entered the building by 『Passthrough』, I unlocked the original door.

Of course, this was for the detectives and police who were supposed to enter later.

I had a good grasp of the structure of the building. No, it was not so much the structure. The floor map was simple.

Right now, in front of me, there was a tsuitate that looked like a Japanese gold folding screen.

[TL: Credits to TinyTL:tsuitate is a form of single-panel portable partition traditionally used in Japan since at least the 6th century]

On the other side of it was a row of desks with the atmosphere of an office in a small or medium-sized company. The only difference between this and a normal office was the rarity of the people there.

It was originally a bookshop, then apparently used as an election office. And it was still nominally an election office, with its contents unchanged.

I thought it might be a black relationship between politicians and the underworld…… but the truth was that the person who was the nominee was unsuccessful in his election campaign and then, they forced a debt-ridden person to run the office in order to get the office. After all, not many landlords were willing to rent space to yakuza.

‘Well……I gotta do it when I gotta do it.’

I took another deep breath, kicked down the door stand in front of me and shouted.

“Get out of my way!　You idiot!”

Instantly, the men sitting at their desks on the other side of the slammed-down desk stood up in a flurry of activity.

Some were quick to reach for the wooden swords that were propped up. Others hung their hands on the desk drawers. As I expected, none of them suddenly brought out their pistols, but I was met with a terrifying stare.

There were fewer of them than I thought. One, two, three ……eight in all. But they all looked disgustingly scary.

However, the most powerful person was the all-black man at the back of the room with his legs propped up on the desk.

This guy was probably the boss.

The rest were chairs with all-backs, and a woman standing leaning on the back of one of them. She looked like a cabaret girl, but she, too, had a strong presence.

‘That’s her!…… Anna Kamishima!’

She was the one who caused Fujiwara-san to suffer horribly.

As I stared at the woman with a gut-wrenching sensation, the nearest young man with a punch perm reached for my chest.

“Where the fuck did you come in!　You little shit!”

“Don’t touch me with your filthy hands.”

“Wha?!”

I grabbed the wrist of his hand that was about to twist up my chest, and the next moment, the punch perm softly floated in the air and slammed into the wall.

“Shinjii!?”

“What!? What did you do!”

I didn’t do anything though. Torture just threw him away, but to them I was the one who did it.

“If you don’t want to eat my air throw, give her back to me quickly.”

The girlfriend here was, in a manner of speaking, an image of 『Rin Fukuda』. Of course, this was just an act.

Later, when I was taken into police custody for questioning, I was almost framed as Rin Fukuda’s kidnapper, and I was cornered, so I rushed into the anti-corporation office out of the blue – that was how I explained it to them.

However, Teruya’s sister, after acting as if she was seriously thinking about something, began to shower me with a blunt stare, as if she was judging me. And she twisted her cheeks with some kind of fun.

“Fuuh… So, because she was kidnapped, you ran into this place.”

“That’s right! I know it was you who kidnapped her.”

When I said this, she laughed gaily.

“Ahahahahaha, that’s nice. I thought there was something strange about Hikari-chan, but you’re quite a nice guy. I mean, it’s not like you’re a decent guy to come into the office by yourself for her…. Right, Junichi Kasuya-kun?”

“….pardon?”

There seemed to be some strange misunderstanding going on.

“Anyway! Give her back! Or else!”

I pulled a lighter from my pocket and rolled up my coat. Underneath was a large number of red tubes. A red cylinder with a fuse was wrapped around my stomach.

“I’m going to blow this place to hell with all of you!”

“Dy,dynamite?!”

“Where do you get dynamite……?”

“You idiots! It’s a bluff!”

The men’s faces scrunched up, and I bent over my chest to give myself more room to breathe.

“You can’t tell if I’m bluffing or not if I don’t light it!”

“What the hell is that!! What the hell are you thinking, asshole?”

At that moment, the shaved head shouted at the top of his lungs.

“Aa……”

Unfortunately, one of the red tubes broke off in the middle and rolled on the floor.

The shaved head, who had picked it up, shouted angrily.

“You bastard! That’s a toilet paper roll, right?  Don’t play with me!”

‘Hiー! Masaki-chan! It’s not glued on properly!’

The gang members all looked as if they were going to hit me at once, and I braced myself on the spur of the moment. In fact, since I was relying on Torture, there was no need for me to brace myself.

But at the very moment when the shaved-headed gang member was about to grab me.

“Wait!”

Teruya shouted. And then she leaned down to the man with the all black and whispered to him.

“Hey, Ryu-chan.. Don’t hurt that boy. He’s Hikari-chan’s favourite.. He has a lot of guts, so why don’t you tell him well and we’ll take care of him in the future?”

“Oh…… well, if it’s for the sake of my cute sister-in-law, I can tolerate a little mischief.”

Apparently, Teruya’s sister still thought I was Kasuya-kun.

But thanks to this, the gang members did not attack me, just surrounded me at a distance. I looked at the clock on the wall. The time was exactly five o’clock in the evening. It seemed that I had somehow managed to buy some time.

The next moment──

“Oi, don’t push me!”

“Even if you said that to me!”

The door at the back of the room opened with a resounding noise, and the girls tumbled in, falling over.

Teruya’s sister and the all-black guy widened their eyes.

“Who the hell are you people! Where the hell do you come from?”

“Hii!? It’s not like that!”

The man near the door shouted at the girls, and the next moment, the door of the office behind me opened with a loud noise.

“Don’t move! Police!”

In an instant, the air froze and the gang members stopped moving.

Turning their backs, they saw Detectives Inomoto and Ryoko. Behind them, a number of police officers, fully equipped, with transparent polycarbonate shields in their hands, stepped in one after another.

Detective Inomoto then raised one eyebrow in a grand gesture when he saw the girls in the back.

“When I stepped in on a tip that there was a yakuza conflict, an unexpectedly big fish was caught in the net. You guys! You’re all under arrest for kidnapping a minor!”

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