Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens

Top of the Sixth Inning

The unsettling and unknown clown wrapped a rope around the captive Misaki"s limbs, restraining her. The rope he used was likely the same as the ones he used to hang the bodies. The clown took her and put her in a bright red RV parked in front of the bar. The outlandish vehicle was apparently his. Once the clown plopped Misaki into the pa.s.senger"s seat, he started the car and took off.

The vehicle was running for a while until it stopped, parking somewhere. After he had gotten out of the driver"s seat with Misaki in his hold, he moved to the back of the vehicle which served as a living s.p.a.ce. It was not that large, but it felt like one room rather than the interior of a car. The area was peculiar, somewhat distanced from the real place they were in. All four walls were decorated with diamond-patterned wallpaper, and the interior was a gothic style with black and purple as its primary color scheme. There was a long table with cabriole legs set up in the center area. A matching designer sofa was next to it, covered by a smooth black leather material with creepy-looking dolls and plush toys situated on top of it. Other furniture Misaki had never seen before was also there from a dresser and stool to a large, engraved golden mirror. Misaki felt like she had wandered into another country or world.

The clown first took off the rope on Misaki"s limbs. He then picked up Misaki with both hands and carefully placed her down onto the sofa.

I"m scared. Misaki could not help but bear fear towards this creepy clown in front of her. He had an unreadable expression, his mask that was his makeup making it uncertain whether he was smiling or crying. He had features that would unsettle anyone who saw him, let alone the crazed actions he made just previously, tampering with the bodies at that bar. He was a serial killer.

He may kill me too.

Misaki trembled, teeth chattering. She looked down at the ground. There were small sneakers on it. They could not be the man"s shoes. They looked like they belonged to an elementary school boy.

"……Whose shoes are these?"

When Misaki pointed to them in question, the clown answered her cheerfully. "Those shoes are a boy"s. He was here before you."

"A boy?"

This clown had previously kidnapped and taken someone here too then.

"Who was that child? Where is he?"

"He cried. He was annoying."

He did not communicate well.

"He wasn"t being a good boy, so we didn"t need him."

A chill ran up her spine.

The boy was not behaving, so the clown did not need him anymore.

Then………did he kill him?

Misaki did not have the courage to ask. Instead, she sniffed the area. There was no foul odor. There was no smell of blood or decomposition either. He did not seem to be hiding a body in the RV at least.

But Misaki could not let her guard down. She was unsure if and when she would be killed by him.

Jiro had told her if she ever got kidnapped by someone that she had to observe her situation.

Who had kidnapped her? What was their objective? Where was she at right now? And was there any means of escape?

She observed her surroundings to try and get a grasp on her situation. If the man"s objective was to take her life, then she had to get away if she could not kill him. Otherwise, she had to buy as much time as she could until help arrived. That was what Jiro had taught her.

First, she had to figure out his motive.

"……Why did you bring me here?" Misaki asked him, praying that he did not have the intention of killing her.

"Become that one"s friend."

The clown replied, grinning.

"That one?"

"Yeah, that one."

Misaki carefully examined the owner of this room. He seemed to be around twenty years old, but he was behaving like a child for some reason. He spoke like one too.

There"s something odd about this man.

He did not seem to have a normal mental state; he was unstable. Misaki a.s.sumed it would be better not to upset him and just fulfill his desires. If she did that, he would be satisfied and could possibly let her go.

This man had said just now that the boy "cried," and was "annoying." And because of that, he had done something to the boy.

Then as long as she did not cry, she would be okay. She just had to follow his instructions obediently.

"I got it." Misaki nodded. "I"ll be their friend."

The clown was appeased hearing her answer.

Just who was "that one" he had mentioned?

"Going to let you meet him now."

Just as she started wondering who it could be to herself, the clown had closed his eyes. The next moment, his limbs flopped down unceremoniously like a marionette with its strings cut. After a few moments, the clown opened his eyes and looked at Misaki in shock.

"Wh-who are you?"

The tone to his voice was different. It was the voice of a child.

Misaki noticed immediately something was wrong. It was like he was a different person. Or perhaps this was the real one.

Could it be a split personality?

If that was the case, then Misaki could comprehend the sudden change to his demeanor. He must have switched places with the other personality inside him.

The clown cowered in a corner of the room while sobbing like a child. He curled up into a ball and shook.

"Stop. It hurts." He held his head and began to scream. "Stop, dad!"

Misaki was taken aback seeing his state.

He"s the same, she thought.

He"s the same as me back then.

Even after she had been taken in by Jiro, she would occasionally relive her memories of being abused. She apparently had post-traumatic stress disorder. The most trivial things acted as a switch for her memories. In Misaki"s case, it was cigarettes. She would see her step-father on occasion because of them.

One day they were having lunch when she heard a small metallic click – a familiar sound to her. When she looked up at Jiro, she saw him with a cigarette in his mouth with a lighter in hand to light it. The moment she realized the sound was from the cap of the lighter opening, her mind forcefully cut over to her past, the memories pouring into her mind.

Her step-father was closing in on her, cigarette in his mouth. He was going to press the flame of the cigarette against her back-

"Misaki, it"s alright."

Hearing Jiro"s voice, Misaki returned to herself.

"Your dad isn"t here."

She seemed to have been screaming her step-father"s name unconsciously. She realized tears were streaming down her cheeks. Just by hearing the sound of a lighter had caused her to remember her abuse from her step-father. This had dawned on Jiro.

"……Cigarettes scare you, don"t they?"

Misaki remained silent. She gazed up at Jiro, closely examining his face. If she did not say she was okay, would he be displeased?

Before Misaki could reply, Jiro nodded in understanding. "Of course you would be. He had given you those scars with them."

Once he said that, he took the cigarette carton he just opened up and tossed it into the garbage.

"I was just thinking about quitting." Jiro smiled at the shocked Misaki. "This is a good opportunity."

Ever since that day, he had never smoked again.

The man trembling in front of her right now was the exact same as her four year-old self.

"You don"t have to be scared," Misaki quietly spoke to him as to not frighten him, just like Jiro did for her that day. "Your dad isn"t here."

When Misaki told him that, he seemed to have been relieved, falling unconscious shortly after. A few seconds later, the man instantly opened his eyes again before grinning at her.

"Did you become friends?"

His voice had changed. He came back, having changed places with his other personality.

"I tried, but he got scared. He went away almost immediately."

The clown"s shoulders slumped with a dejected expression. "That one is a scaredy-cat."

Misaki looked him over and noticed.

"You"re hurt." She was not able to tell before due to his red clothes, but he was bleeding on his arm. "I"ll patch you up."

"Ow, ow, ow."

Jiro seethed when the bandages were tightly fastened.

"Stop it, Saeki-chan. Be gentle with me." He glared at the man in white with a tearful voice.

Having escaped the bar Smokin" hot, Jiro rushed out of there in his car and dropped by Saeki"s clinic to have his shot wound attended to.

Once Saeki removed the bullet from his body and sewed the wound closed, he gave a sigh.

"I"m amazed you only got this hurt despite being surrounded by six yakuza men with guns." He said in a shocked tone.

"……I was fortunate."

Even for him, he considered to be very lucky to escape trouble. If it was not for that clown"s arrival, he would have been interrogated by them by now. He would have gotten more than the one gunshot wound. He truly was lucky. He sat up on the bed and exhaled once. He finally started to calm down from his hyper attentive state.

He suddenly recalled. He had gotten a call from Enokida earlier before he had went to the bar. What could have he wanted? Jiro took out his cell phone to call him.

The other immediately picked up. "h.e.l.lo, Enokidchan?"

"Ah, Jiro-san."

"What did you need to talk about earlier?"

"Talk about?"

Enokida raised his voice after a few moments of silence.

"Ah, that"s right. Apparently there"s a gang called the Mutagawa Group that was hunting down an avenger."

"……I wished you had told me sooner."

"Ah, were you already attacked by them then?" Enokida laughed.

"It was awful." Jiro shrugged. His wound throbbed.

"Well anyway, it doesn"t seem like the Mutagawa Group and the avengers don"t have any correlation with each other, so I a.s.sume someone who resented you must have tasked the Mutagawa Group to track you down."

"There are too many people who come to mind, so I can"t say who it could be."

"I bet."

It had to be someone with a grudge against him and had a connection to the yakuza. There were numerous people it could be from his past targets.

"That was all you wanted to talk to me about? You"re not hiding anything else, are you?"

"This is all the information I could tell you at the moment. I"ll look into the Mutagawa Group more, and I"ll let you know if I find anything else."

"Okay then. Thank you." Jiro hung up then.

Saeki waited for Jiro to finish talking before speaking to him. "You can rest here for the night."

Jiro glanced over to the blue sheets on the bed next to him and grimaced. "No way. You want me to sleep next to a corpse?"

"He was a fairly handsome guy," Saeki pulled back the sheets, revealing a young man.

"Oh my, he really is. I wish I could have met him when he was still alive." Jiro shook his head after cracking a joke. "But I"m sorry. I have to go home today."

He was worried about Misaki.

But the moment he stood up he staggered and collapsed onto the bed.

"Jiro-san, are you okay?" Saeki rushed over to him.

His awareness was faint. He was uncertain whether it was from the drugs or the blood loss, but he was unable to move his body like he wanted.

Jiro closed his eyes, overcome by an intense drowsiness.

Bottom of the Sixth Inning

"We"ve got a serious problem, Ishiharsan."

Ishihara got a call from Kase after he rested at his home when the date had changed.

Twice a day – once in the morning and once at night – he would have Kase give food they had purchased at the convenience store for the children they held up in the warehouse. It was just a simple errand of feeding them, but it also served as a time to check up on them.

Their usual meal time was delayed by a few hours because of the incident from the previous night. For Ishihara to get a notification from Kase that there was a "serious problem," that meant something had happened to one of their merchandise. Ishihara had an ill premonition. "What is it?"

When he questioned him in a low voice, Kase replied back, fl.u.s.tered "One of the kids is dead."

Ishihara"s mind went completely blank for a moment.

"……What did you say?" He asked again, scowling. "What happened?"

One is dead? How?

All of the children were put in cages. They should be sitting idle in them.

Yet why is one dead?

"It was anaphylaxie."

Kase answered to dispel Ishihara"s confusion, mentioning an unusual term.

"……What was that?"

"One of the kids had an allergy to crustacean and didn"t have a good reaction with the shrimp-filled onigiri he had that morning."

They died from shock due to an allergy. That was beyond Ishihara"s expectations.

"You dumb s.h.i.t!"

Ishihara cursed, slamming his fists on the table.

The deal was going to happen tomorrow. They could not back down and say they were down one kid now. What should I do? Ishihara braced his head in his hands. He got nervous and as his gaze wandered he spotted a newspaper left on the dining table. It was the morning paper from this morning. His attention was caught by the headline of the article, "an unknown child has been found." A boy had been abducted by someone and was found safe and taken to a shelter. The culprit was suspected of being a pedophile.

An idea popped into Ishihara"s head. If they kidnapped another child at this time, they could easily put the blame on this culprit.

"We"re going to get another one."

All they needed was the numbers. The method in obtaining it did not matter.

"Fortunately for us, it"s the Hojoya season. There are going to be a lot of kids loitering around."

Hojoya was f.u.kuoka"s autumn festival. People would be packed on the streets to shrines, and naturally there would be an abundance of children there as well.

"Let"s kidnap some tomorrow."

Securing a route for human trafficking was Sanjou"s ambition for many years now. He had been competing for patreons by selling just guns and drugs while struggling to pay enough to the government. But because of that, he still had room to make human trafficking plausible. The underground world in j.a.pan had considerably less in shares for human trafficking compared to foreign countries. Even so, j.a.panese children were in demand and could be sold for a high price. Hence, Sanjou waited for the right moment.

However, there were few outlets that would sell the children. Sanjou avoided any business with companies that had no successful results. Instead, he used his connections to make a deal with a human trafficker from overseas. Their demand was to provide them five children.

Four of the children Sanjou had obtained by threatening someone working in an orphanage who purchased drugs from the Mutagawa Group. But even with that method, he was only able to get four out of the five needed, and he was unable to find the last one. It was then that Ishihara had his son s.n.a.t.c.h a child for them. Now that they had the five children, they would smuggle them into Korea. In order for that to be possible, Sanjou required the a.s.sistance of Yamazaki"s transportation company.

"It seems you"re having your own fair of troubles."

When Sanjou met up with Kunio Yamazaki for his periodic report and told him about what had happened the night before at Smokin" hot, he had made a bitter expression.

Sanjou nodded while drinking his branded tea at the usual tea shop. "Yes, it was an utter disaster."

He did not expect six of his men to be killed that day. Yamazaki wanted to keep the number of people involved to a minimum, and that was Sanjou"s objective as well. Excluding Sanjou, there were only Ishihara and Kase who remained.

"So, did it affect the plan in any way?"

"We have the numbers needed for the merchandise. All we need to do now is to put them on a truck and send them off onto a boat. The remaining number of people should be able to carry out the operation."

Sanjou did not have any more hands available for the task. He had to have the two remaining members carry it out.

If they succeed in this trade, they would be able to establish trust. They would be able to make a business connection with the human trafficking syndicate. After that, they just had to keep providing more kids. And for that, Sanjou already had a plan devised.

Under the current laws established, as long as they had the specified requirements they would be allowed to run an establishment for orphan children to dwell at. They could take in children requiring protection and raise them in a normal home. As a type II social welfare service, they would be provided 200,000 yen by the country for office and operation expenses per child. If they managed to pa.s.s the conditions while keeping the Mutagawa Group hidden and were acknowledged by the munic.i.p.ality, they would be able to start a an orphanage and acquire a mult.i.tude of children with no relatives or family connections. Then they would smuggle the children put under their care out of the country with the help of the Yamazaki transportation service. That was Sanjou"s plan for the future.

His plan was proceeding smoothly. That was until the tragic incident occurred at Smokin" hot the other night.

"I just need one person." Sanjou spoke. "I"m thinking of hiring a new hitman."

"A hitman?"

"Yes, since our Carlos was killed, we would need a skilled hitman. A few men from the Noma Group were killed during a drug trade a few days ago. The exact same culprit behind that incident is targeting our group as well. If by chance he were to attack us during the trade, our plan would fall apart."

"I see," Yamazaki was understanding. "Then do as you need to."

He told him and left after paying his own check.

The trade would take place later tonight.