Zanki first took a sip of his wine just as his Filet Mignon arrived. Steve Jobs, meanwhile, only drank some juice since he was vegan right now, while Bill Gates had ordered wine but had not touched it yet. The contrast between the three of them was strangely fitting. Zanki looked indulgent, almost amused by the entire situation. Steve looked cold and restrained, like he was measuring every word before it was even spoken. Bill looked calmer on the surface, but there was a clear sharpness in his eyes that made it obvious he had not invited them here for small talk.
Then Zanki grinned, looking almost too relaxed for the kind of conversation they were about to have. The restaurant around them was quiet enough that even the clinking of cutlery from distant tables sounded unusually loud. It gave the whole scene a strange tension, as if the elegance of the place was trying to hide how ugly the topic was about to become.
"Now that both of you are this interested," Zanki said, lowering his voice slightly, "before I tell you two anything further, there is something I want to make sure of. Do you two hate Zaboru Renkonan personally?"
The question made the air at the table feel heavier almost immediately.
Bill Gates narrowed his eyes at that question. For a moment, he did not answer immediately. He looked down at the untouched wine in front of him, then back at Zanki, as if weighing how honest he wanted to be. Then he finally said, "I don't really hate him. But let's just say I dislike him. He rejected my offer to work for me multiple times, after all, and yes... that part is a little personal."
Steve Jobs did not even bother dressing it up. He simply said, "It doesn't matter. Whatever works, works for me." His tone was flat enough to make it sound less like anger and more like a decision he had already made before sitting down.
Zanki's grin widened a little after hearing those answers. As expected of true businessmen, he thought. Cruel, practical, and perfectly willing to separate personal dislike from useful opportunity. In a way, that was exactly what made this conversation possible. None of them needed passion. They only needed interest, motive, and enough cold logic to keep talking.
Zanki then said, "Okay then, I will talk..." His voice lowered as he glanced around the nearly empty hotel restaurant again. He had arranged things this way on purpose because the matter he was about to discuss was far too sensitive to be spoken carelessly. The place was quiet enough now that even the distant sounds of cutlery and low conversation felt strangely sharp.
Then Zanki leaned forward slightly and asked, "So... do you two know Zaboru's wife?"
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were silent for a moment. Bill answered first. "I've seen her multiple times, but I don't know her name." Steve, meanwhile, simply shook his head, making it clear that he knew even less.
Zanki smiled after hearing that. "Then you need to know this. Her name is Ayumi Renkonan now. But if you dig deeper, she was known as Ayumi Hamazawa before marrying Zaboru." He paused there deliberately, letting the older name settle into the air before continuing.
Then Zanki grinned, and this time there was something colder in it. "But... the important part is not just her name. The important part is that she carries a very big secret..."
Before all of this, Zanki had already been researching Zaboru for quite some time. One of the reasons he hated him so much was simple, yet deeply irritating to his pride: Zaboru was somehow the only person who could truly repel his Voice Persuasion ability. Throughout his life, Zanki had met intelligent people before, even strong-willed people who could resist him at first. Some of them held out for a while, and a few even impressed him with how stubborn they were. But over time, with enough repeated exposure, they always began to yield at least a little. In the end, his Voice Persuasion still worked on them one way or another. Even Steve Jobs, whose resistance was genuinely strong, had already shown that slight drift under Zanki's influence.
But Zaboru was different.
That alone had already made Zanki deeply curious, and curiosity eventually turned into resentment. So he started digging into Zaboru's life. The frustrating part was that Zaboru's background itself was actually very clear. Everyone knew where he came from, where he studied, how he built ZAGE, and how absurdly talented he was. There was no shadowy mystery around his public identity.
But when Zanki looked into Zaboru's wife, Ayumi, something felt strangely familiar. Her face reminded him of someone he had never truly forgotten.
Kyouko Tojo.
Also known in the underworld as Tatsumaki of Tojo.
The wife of Akira Hamazou, the man known as the Ashura of Hamazou.
Zanki would never forget Kyouko. She had been the woman he loved in his youth. Back then, he had truly believed there might be a future for them. But in the end, Kyouko chose Akira instead. A stronger man. A more dangerous man. A man whose presence overwhelmed others just by standing still who till this day Zanki could really swear if he fight Gorilla Akira will win easily.
Zanki had long since moved on from her in the ordinary sense, but some memories did not vanish completely. So when he saw Ayumi, that resemblance struck him immediately, and it was strong enough to force him to dig deeper. That was why the moment he saw Zaboru's wife, the resemblance struck him as almost uncanny. It was not just a vague similarity. It was enough to make him stop and look twice.
So he dug deeper.
As he investigated the Hamazou family line connected to Akira and Kyouko, the first names that surfaced were the two children already known in certain circles. The first was Akechi Hamazou, the man feared in the underworld as the Rashomon of Hamazou. The second was Asumi Hamazou, better known as the Red Mistress because of how she handled the red-light district. Those two names made sense. They were visible enough to people who knew where to look. They were the kind of names whispered by men who dealt in money, violence, protection, or pleasure, the kind of names that did not belong to the hidden side of a family but to the side meant to be seen and feared.
That was where Zanki found another useful path. His younger brother, Zenkichi Zagashira, also had major business ties in the red district, and Zenkichi knew Asumi very well. In fact, she was one of his ex-lovers, though to be fair, Asumi had never exactly been known as a woman with only one man in her life. Still, that past connection made Zenkichi a valuable source of information, and from him Zanki received something far more interesting than gossip. Zenkichi did not only know who Asumi was in public. He knew the mood around her, the kind of people she trusted, the kind of information that slipped out after too much alcohol, too much intimacy, or too much arrogance.
According to Zenkichi, Akira and Kyouko had one more daughter.
That single detail immediately made Zanki's attention sharpen.
The problem was that this third daughter had been carefully shielded. It was almost as if the family had gone out of its way to erase her from the visible side of the underworld. Unlike Akechi and Asumi, she was hidden, protected, and kept far away from the kind of attention that followed the Hamazou name. Most of that protection, from what Zanki gathered, came from her older brother Akechi himself. And that detail mattered. Men like Akechi did not waste effort protecting something unimportant. If he had personally worked to keep his sister out of view, then that alone meant she carried a different kind of value inside the family.
Once Zanki realized that, his suspicion grew much stronger. He dug even deeper and started tracing information outside the underworld itself. Eventually, he searched through records connected to Zaboru's school years, and there he found what he had been looking for: a girl named Ayumi Hamazou. That was the moment the investigation stopped feeling like a possibility and started feeling like confirmation.
People around the school apparently knew that she was rich, but almost no one understood what that really meant. They knew she came from money, but the Hamazou name itself remained hidden because the family had kept it buried well enough that only those in the underworld truly understood its weight. To ordinary students and teachers, she was just a wealthy girl from a privileged background there are rumours she Yakuza princess as well but it's just as far as rumour go. To someone who knew how to connect names, circles, and silences, she was something very different.
At that point, the pieces finally came together for Zanki.
Ayumi Renkonan, Zaboru's wife, was the third daughter of Akira and Kyouko Hamazou.
And once that truth became clear, the shape of the scandal he wanted to build around Zaboru became much sharper in his mind.
Zanki then began laying all of that out for Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in a calmer, more organized way, and both of them were visibly surprised by how deep the connection actually went. Bill Gates sat back slightly and thought, That's... quite a lot to take in. So Zaboru's wife is the daughter of a Yakuza boss? Even for him, that was not the kind of detail you heard casually over dinner and dismissed.
Zanki chuckled and gave a small shrug. "Basically, yes. Though to be more accurate, that part is from the past and from the bloodline. These days, they are not as openly active in the underworld as before. They have become much more legitimate on the surface. Right now, a lot of their influence runs under the name Aoshidan Security. It's a company under Akechi's name, and it already has quite a lot of power in Japan."
Steve Jobs frowned the moment he heard that name. "I know that company," he said. "They entered the U.S. recently too."
Zanki nodded. "Exactly. Wherever Zaboru needs stability, protection, or quiet influence, they tend to be there. That is what makes this useful." He leaned forward slightly and lowered his voice. "Because if we want to destroy Zaboru, the basic outline is actually simple. We tell the story. We shape it. We make the public see what we want them to see. A genius game developer married to the hidden daughter of a Yakuza family? That alone already sounds dangerous enough to ordinary people."
He tapped one finger lightly against the table and continued, "Of course, truth alone is not enough. Raw truth is often too dry. Too complicated. Too human. If we really want it to hit, then we exaggerate. We connect things that were never directly connected. We frame old facts like active threats. We make proximity look like collusion, family history look like criminal loyalty, and silence look like guilt. People do not need the full picture. They only need the most emotionally effective version of it."
Bill Gates stayed quiet, listening. Steve Jobs did too.
Zanki's grin widened a little. "That is the beauty of scandals. The best ones are not built from complete lies. Complete lies are fragile. They break too easily. A truly effective scandal is built on enough truth to feel believable, then expanded with exaggeration until it becomes impossible to ignore. And I happen to be very good at that."
Bill Gates sighed and gave a small chuckle. "Quite an effective weapon, yes," he said, "but let's refrain from using it for now."
Steve Jobs said nothing at first. He simply watched Bill for a moment, then glanced at Zanki. When Zanki finally asked, "Why?" Steve answered in Bill's place. "You want to wait for ZAGE's next console, ZEPS 4, don't you, Bill?"
Bill chuckled and nodded. "Exactly. If we hit now, the damage will be limited. But if we wait until ZEPS 4 is close enough, or worse, right when the hype is peaking, then it becomes something else entirely. It stops being just a scandal and becomes a disruption. Their Own Employee will shaken. Partners get nervous. Journalists become vultures. The audience stops looking at the console and starts looking at the man behind it."
Steve Jobs folded his hands and added coldly, "A product launch is when public attention is at its sharpest. If Zaboru falls at the wrong moment, then the shadow won't just cover him. It will cover ZEPS 4 too."
Bill's smile thinned slightly. "And once doubt touches the launch, every question around ZAGE becomes heavier. Every rumor grows faster. Every rival benefits."
Zanki grinned wider after hearing that. "Well, well... this is exactly why I enjoy talking to smart people. Yes, that's much better. Imagine ZEPS 4 reaching peak hype, then boom—a scandal around Zaboru. People wouldn't know where to look first. The excitement would turn into suspicion overnight. And once that happens, we can escalate from there."
Zanki grinned and said, "Imagine creating a line like this: 'ZAGE was built on the blood of innocent people who died by Yakuza hands.'" He said it almost casually, but the ugliness of the sentence made it hang in the air for a moment. It was blatant, manipulative, and clearly designed to provoke emotion before thought.
Neither Bill nor Steve objected immediately. Bill Gates gave a small chuckle and said, "Too corny. But if we need to escalate things that far, then yes, something in that direction could work." Steve Jobs remained silent, but his silence no longer felt like hesitation. It felt more like calculation. If anything, both men looked more thoughtful than before, as if they were already considering what the ideal timing would be, how far the narrative could be pushed, and what kind of public pressure would crack ZAGE most effectively.
The conversation that followed became uglier in a quieter way. They no longer sounded like executives discussing competition. They sounded like men testing how far they could bend truth before it became a weapon. One line led to another. One possibility led to a harsher one. The tone did not become louder, but it became colder, more deliberate, and far more dangerous than before.
And so the three of them continued discussing it, but now the tone had become even colder than before.
Meanwhile, what they did not know was that nearby the hotel, someone was standing so quietly that if a person passed right beside him, they would still fail to notice he had ever been there. His presence was that faint, that unnaturally small. Under the dim light, only his red eyes seemed to hold any real shape at all. He was Tanabe Goro, one of Akechi's subordinates, a man also known as "Kakashi."
Tanabe did not laugh loudly or react much at all. He only let a very small smile touch the corner of his mouth while the recorder hidden in his hand continued capturing every word from the conversation inside. As expected, Akechi-san was correct again, he thought quietly.
What Zanki did not know was that the moment he started digging deeper, Akechi had already become aware of it. Since then, Akechi had instructed Tanabe to keep an eye on him from time to time, never too openly, never enough to leave a trace. And now, after hearing everything tonight, Tanabe understood that Akechi's suspicion had been right.
He let out a faint breath, almost like a sigh. I almost feel sorry for you, Zanki, he thought. You're known as a shrewd man. A dangerous one, even. The kind of man who usually sees several moves ahead before anyone else even understands the board. But unfortunately for you, you picked a fight with Rashomon... and worse, you targeted the two people he protects most. His sister and his brother-in-law. That was your real mistake. Not the spying. Not the scheming. Not even the scandal. Your mistake was choosing the wrong people to place beneath his shadow.
This time, Tanabe's smile became even smaller, so slight that it almost vanished before it could fully form. Then he took one step backward into the darkness, and just like that, his presence disappeared completely, as if he had never been there in the first place.
To be continue
AN : Akechi is honestly one of my Favorite characters so i want him to shine lol and do any of you remember Tanabe?
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