After escaping the chaotic mess I left behind at the Zenin clan, I hurried back to our lodging in downtown Kyoto where the rest of the group was waiting.
'I bet they're all huddled together with serious faces, brainstorming a strategy for the Yakuza subjugation mission.'
Slide—!
"I'm ba—"
As I slid the door open and stepped inside, I froze mid-sentence, struck dumb by the unexpected sight before me.
"Oh! Hey, you're back? The food hasn't cooled down yet, so get over here and eat!"
Serious strategy meeting? My ass.
The wide table in the center of the room was a goddamn feast—takoyaki, yakisoba, okonomiyaki, yakitori—every kind of street food and delivery imaginable was spread out like a banquet. Gojo, Geto, and Shoko were already wielding their chopsticks, stuffing their faces until their cheeks were bulging.
"...."
As I stood there at the door, speechless at the sheer absurdity, Gojo felt my burning gaze and hurriedly wiped his mouth before shouting.
"Hey! Don't get the wrong idea. We bought all this while conducting natural undercover inquiries with the local merchants, okay? We definitely weren't just playing around!"
"...Yeah, yeah. Sure. I get it."
I let out a deep sigh, pulled out a chair, and sat in the remaining empty spot. As Gojo pushed a plate of takoyaki toward me, Shoko, sitting opposite me, took a swig of water and got to the point.
"Anyway, we spent the day scouting around the city, and this organization is… seriously weird."
"Weird? In what way?"
"They're different from the typical Yakuza thugs we know. Quite a few merchants actually said the night streets have become cleaner and better to live in. Protection fees have dropped significantly compared to the old days, and that business of forcing bars and restaurants to buy overpriced liquor? Completely gone."
I nodded at Shoko's report. It matched exactly what the uncle at my favorite bakery had told me earlier.
"Then it doesn't add up," Geto added seriously, poking at his yakisoba with his chopsticks. "They have over ten thousand members to feed. Running legitimate liquor sales and collecting reduced protection fees wouldn't even come close to covering their maintenance costs. I have no idea where they're pulling that massive amount of funding from."
"I heard something similar on my way to the main house." I wiped some sauce from the corner of my mouth. "The night streets have gone quiet, but the net cafes are apparently packed to an abnormal degree. It's so lucrative that local business owners are actually converting their shops into net cafes to rake in the cash."
At my intel, the eyes of the other three flashed in unison. Shoko slammed the table and stood up.
"Then the answer is obvious. Once we finish eating, we're all going to take a sweep through those suspicious net cafes, right?"
"I'm in."
"Obviously, we're going."
Geto and Gojo agreed readily. However, just as we were about to take action, a fundamental question flickered through my mind.
"Wait a second. Have any of you actually been to a net cafe in your lives?"
At my question, Satoru Gojo puffed out his chest with sheer confidence.
"Me? As the next head of the Gojo clan, I've received nothing but elite education since I was a kid. I've never set foot in such a dim, dingy place!"
'...Sigh.'
I palmed my forehead.
'I knew it. No wonder he couldn't even manage a simple Google search in the school computer lab when investigating Special Grade spirits and was digging through Yahoo Answers instead.'
Ignoring Gojo, who remained blissfully unaware of my pathetic gaze, Geto tentatively raised his hand.
"I, well… I've used some of the brighter ones a few times when I needed to look up research materials."
"I'm a total tech-illiterate~"
Even Shoko brightly declared her surrender.
In the end, I was the only one with any street smarts regarding the dark underbelly of modern society. I picked the last bit of meat off a yakitori skewer and stood up.
"Haaa, fine. I guess I'll have to lead the way. Try to keep up, you hicks."
I slung my baseball bag over my shoulder and laid out the plan.
"Net cafes come in different tiers. There are the clean ones where you just read manga and do light searches… and then there are the 'deep' spots. Soundproof booths, private showers, places where you can basically live. That's where the runaways and the lowlifes gather."
I grinned as I walked toward the door.
"If we want to dig up their cash flow and their hidden agenda, we have to hit the latter. Tonight, we're raiding the deep ones."
**
"Sorry. We're full."
"All seats are booked for today."
"The whole shop is reserved. No walk-ins. Move along."
"...."
Under the flashy neon lights of downtown Kyoto.
We specifically targeted the 'deep' net cafes with the worst reputations, but the response was identical everywhere.
Rejection. We were kicked back out into the cold night air without even crossing a single threshold.
Entering a dark alleyway, Suguru Geto folded his arms and rubbed his chin.
"Guys. No matter how you look at it, isn't this weird?"
"Seriously. Does it make sense to turn away normal customers during the hours when they should be busiest?"
Shoko also tilted her head in confusion.
I pointed toward the brightly lit net cafe sign at the mouth of the alley, specifically at the rough-looking men standing guard underneath it, and looked at Gojo.
"Hey, Hachiro. Are net cafe entrances usually guarded by hulking thugs with exposed tattoos?"
"Not in a million years."
I shook my head firmly at Gojo's question.
"This is blatantly abnormal. Especially right now. Midnight rates are a net cafe's golden hour because they can charge the most for long stays. Turning away paying customers during peak time? Whatever they're doing inside isn't web surfing; it's something they can't let the public see."
"Ugh, this is so annoying!"
Gojo Satoru ruffled his hair aggressively, his eyes flashing at my deduction.
"Instead of being frustrated out here, should I just perform a little 'show of force'?! If I just pulverize those thug guards and the sign along with them, we'll find out exactly what's going on inside!"
"Calm down, Satoru."
Geto firmly grabbed the shoulder of Gojo, who looked ready to vent Cursed Energy and level the entrance.
"If we start a major scene and cause a ruckus here, this 'Gokudo Flower' might get wind of it and tuck tail and run. It'll be a massive pain to find her if she goes into hiding to avoid sorcerers."
"Oh, come on! Then what do you want to do, Suguru? Just go back to the hotel like this?"
As Gojo complained, Geto's eyes grew cold and a smirk tugged at his lips.
"For now, we'll have to raid tomorrow's total mobilization site directly."
"Ah."
"No matter how much she hides behind net cafes like a rat, she has to appear at a massive assembly of ten thousand members where the core executives are gathered if she wants to maintain her influence. Unless she's willing to watch her organization dissolve, she won't abandon her subordinates and flee."
At Geto's logical plan, Gojo finally settled his agitation and nodded.
I put my hands in my pockets and added, "Right. According to the info from the 'Window,' they're holding the assembly tomorrow night around 11 PM at a large freight truck parking lot on the outskirts of Kyoto."
"A freight truck parking lot. A perfect place to round up and crush a horde of punks."
Shoko chuckled and stretched her arms.
In the end, without fully grasping what was happening behind the iron-clad doors of the net cafes, we had to return to our lodging empty-handed.
The next day, before raiding the assembly of ten thousand Yakuza.
Following Principal Gakuganji's instructions for cooperation, we gathered in the records room of Kyoto Jujutsu High, staring down at a thin file handed to us by a staff member.
It was the student profile of the fallen sorcerer who had devoured the Kansai underworld—the Gokudo Flower—a second-year student of the Kyoto branch.
[ Student Record ]
Name: Tsukishima Kanao
Gender: Female
Date of Birth: March 6, 1989
Background: Both parents from sorcerer families.
Innate Technique: Cursed Energy Exchange through Tools.
In the upper right corner of the document was an ID photo. It showed a quiet-looking student with neat, bobbed black hair, dressed immaculately in the modest Kyoto branch uniform.
"Oh. Looking at the photo, she's actually pretty cute, right?"
Satoru Gojo rested his chin on his hand and gave a light whistle. Geto, flipping through the papers, also tilted his head.
"Based on her appearance, she looks like a model student who'd spend all day stuck in a library. It's hard to imagine someone like this as a cold-blooded boss who unified the Yakuza. People really are full of surprises."
Then, the Kyoto High staff member who had guided us let out a heavy sigh and placed another photo, which had been tucked into the back of the folder, onto the table.
"And... this is the most recent photo of her, taken by a 'Window' while undercover."
The moment we saw the photo on the table, the eyes of all four of us widened simultaneously.
The neat black hair had been transformed into stark white. The woman, wearing a thin tank top, had her entire back and arms covered in terrifyingly vibrant Yakuza tattoos—the so-called Irezumi. Though it was only a shot of her back, the intimidating pressure she radiated was on a completely different level from the model student in the ID photo.
"Ugh, she's covered in tattoos. I'm not into it. She looks way too delinquent."
Gojo pulled back in disgust.
On the other hand, as I stared at that brutal silhouette, I unconsciously licked my lips.
"Wait? Actually, I'm kind of into this whole savage yankee aesthetic..."
Thwack—!!
"Gah!"
Before I could even finish my sentence, Shoko's fist mercilessly excavated my ribs.
"We didn't come here to rate someone's looks, did we? Have you guys already forgotten why we're in Kyoto?"
Shoko snapped at Gojo and me, her cold eyes darting between us. Intimidated by her murderous vibe, Gojo and Geto hurriedly looked away, feigning ignorance.
"R-Right, right! We came here for data research!"
"Exactly. We need to focus on the mission."
'These bastards... they're slipping away just because they didn't get hit.'
I grumbled internally while rubbing my throbbing side.
To fix the mood, I pointed my finger at the most important entry in the file.
"By the way, about this technique. 'Cursed Energy Exchange through Tools'? What exactly does that mean?"
Gojo replied nonchalantly to my question.
"Isn't it just one of those common types in the jujutsu world? Probably an ability to cram her own Cursed Energy into ordinary objects to create temporary Cursed Tools. You know, like swords or baseball bats."
"I guess..."
I nodded half-heartedly at Gojo's explanation, but I couldn't shake a nagging sense of cognitive dissonance.
'If it was just imbuing weapons with energy, they would have written it as "Imbuement" or "Enhancement." But they specifically used the word "Exchange." What exactly is being swapped for what?'
Furthermore, the business this girl was obsessing over lately wasn't bars or clubs; it was net cafes, packed with hundreds of computers.
Several ominous ideas flickered through my mind, but with nothing but the word "Exchange" to go on, no clear realization took hold.
Fearing I'd only cause confusion by speaking prematurely, I kept my mouth shut.
"Anyway, thanks for the info, Kyoto High. This has been a big help. We'll be on our way now."
Geto closed the file and bowed politely to the staff member.
We finished our greetings and left the office. It had taken only two weeks for that modest student from the record to fall and become the white-haired, tattooed Yakuza boss of Kyoto.
What the true goal of the 'Gokudo Flower' was, after swallowing the night of Kansai in such a short time… the only way to find out was to grab her by the collar tonight at the freight truck parking lot and drag the answer out of her.
========================
The website for reading paid chapters is available on my Patreon. The number of chapters on Patreon: 47
Link: patreon.com/UltraMagnus_T