Dragon Raja 3; Chapter 103: Every Tortoise longs for its puddle (7)

Dragon Raja 3

“P-please… Please forgive this man. He hasn’t done anything in all the days he’s been here; he just reads manga, and he’s always polite to me! I… I didn’t expect this to happen. He really… really just sits here; please give him a chance!” Makoto pleaded, trembling as she bowed deeply.

Sakura shot her a cold look. She had expected this reaction and was just trying to scare Makoto a bit as a minor punishment. The family hotline wasn’t meant for cases like this.

“Even though the involved party has pleaded for leniency, we can’t just let it slide so easily.” Sakura threw the short blade onto the table. “Considering how young you are, cut off your finger as an apology. As for Ma, she will also be punished for exaggerating on the call.”

“Cut off a finger just for sitting in a toy store? If we add up all the things Lu Mingfei has done, he should have committed seppuku by now, right?” Caesar was surprised.

“Why would I need to commit seppuku?” Lu Mingfei was equally shocked.

“You’ve done a ton of otaku things and downloaded pirated manga.”

“If you don’t put fear into these small-time thugs, they won’t learn to respect the family. Someday, some of them will climb the ranks and become gang leaders. They will face the true, bloody, ruthless side of the underworld then. It’s better to instill fear early so that they learn not to abuse violence. It’s for their own good, like when your mother told you as a kid that doing bad things would get you arrested,” Sakura said softly, speaking in Chinese, which neither Makoto nor Shou understood.

Lu Mingfei looked at Sakura in amazement, only now sensing the warmth beneath her sharp demeanor. Ever since he learned that Yamata no Orochi was an underworld organization, Lu Mingfei had always felt a certain fear of Sakura—a woman trained in the ninja arts, always dressed inconspicuously in a black suit, wrapping herself tightly like a black, poisonous flower. But now, her words sounded like those of a caring elder sister, reminding him of how Nono had later ironed and given him that expensive suit. When Lu Mingfei hesitated to accept it, saying he wasn’t worthy of such fine clothes, Nono casually said, “Every boy will one day wear a valuable suit and do important things. It’s always good to practice early for that day.”

It seemed that even the strict rules of Yamata no Orochi had their gentle side.

“Sakura is really kind!” Lu Mingfei exclaimed, almost wanting to applaud.

To everyone’s surprise, a rare embarrassed expression crossed Sakura’s pale face. She quickly changed the subject. “I must ask the distinguished guests to cooperate—your expressions make it look like you’re watching a comedy.”

The Caesar team instantly adopted serious expressions, a dark aura rising from them like an evil dragon. Caesar cracked his knuckles with a cold smile, Chu Zihang’s eyes had the hunger of a wolf ready to devour, and Makoto started to regret her actions. Compared to these real gang members, Noda Shou was just a high schooler messing around on the streets. The most terrifying of all was Lu Mingfei… Although she couldn’t understand why this family officer spoke Chinese, his shifting gaze—from vacant, to deranged, to vicious—instilled a primal fear. He must be a neurotic beast.

Noda Shou stared at the greenish blade of the short knife. It was a weapon genuinely meant to take lives, unlike the toys that street thugs would twirl in their hands. Its vicious blood groove was designed to drain the enemy’s blood quickly, sapping their strength for a final struggle, and the slightly upturned blade was to prevent it from getting stuck in the bone when slashing into an enemy. This was Shou’s first time facing a true lethal weapon; he could feel the sinister aura it emitted. He realized just how childish he had been. No wonder the men in Kabukicho were reluctant to mention the family officers—if the men of Kabukicho were proud beasts, then the family officers were the emotionless reapers!

Sakura saw large beads of cold sweat falling from Shou’s temple while Makoto collapsed weakly into her chair, trembling with the tea tray in her arms. Sakura felt that the intimidation had already worked and was ready to call it off—after all, they were just two eighteen-year-old kids.

“It’s all my fault! It has nothing to do with Miss Makoto!” Shou suddenly raised his head, shouting. “I demanded the protection fee, and I did say that the rate would go up! Miss Makoto simply repeated my words! I am willing… to apologize to the family!”

Now it was the family officers’ turn to be surprised. The foreign mercenary Caesar and the cold-blooded swordsman Chu Zihang both instinctively looked toward Sakura. Shou knelt on the ground, took a white handkerchief from his pocket, and tightly wrapped it around the pinky finger of his left hand. He then slowly reached for the short knife on the table. Noda Shou, the future leader of the Noda Group, decided to use part of his body to apologize to the family. His brows were filled with determination and pain, his eyebrows furrowed, the muscles around his eyes twitched, and his lips were tightly pressed together.

“Hey, hey, think of something,” Lu Mingfei said in Chinese. “I think this kid is really serious—he’s going to cut his finger.”

But Sakura said nothing; she simply watched Shou’s every movement coldly. Finger-cutting was a highly ceremonial act in the underworld, and there were still a few things Shou had to do before cutting it off.

“I am voluntarily cutting my finger to apologize to the family. No one forced me; I know I broke the family’s rules and am willing to accept the punishment!” Shou said loudly, raising his head.

“Even if you cut off your finger, the mark of your mistake remains. From the family’s perspective, you’re still someone who has made a mistake,” Sakura said coldly. “Do you understand that?”

“I understand! A man who lives in this world making mistakes is nothing! What’s important is being able to take responsibility! Even if I lose my little finger, I can still grip a bat, and a man who can hold a bat can stand tall on the streets of Kabukicho!” Shou said resolutely.

“Standing tall on the streets of Kabukicho? It’s hard to say whether someone who’s made such a mistake can even become the third head of the Noda Group,” Sakura retorted.

Shou’s cheek muscles twitched. “A man who doesn’t dare to admit his mistakes is even less qualified to become the third head of the Noda Group!”

“So you’re saying Miss Makoto didn’t exaggerate, and it was you who threatened her with raising the protection fee?”

“It’s all my fault! Every word was spoken by me! The words spoken by a man are like iron—once said, they can’t be taken back!”

“Is this the so-called ‘yakuza culture’?” Lu Mingfei muttered in a low voice. “Why does it all sound like a plot straight out of a Hong Kong comic?”

“Strongman logic?” Caesar also spoke quietly.

“Yeah, like ‘Weakness is a sin,’ ‘Even if I die, my soul will stand on the battlefield,’ and ‘A man’s friendship is unbreakable,’ that kind of stuff.”

“I quite agree with the last one… it sounds pretty moving,” Caesar admitted.

At the bookshelves, Chisei could no longer bear listening to this. Letting a young underworld thug lecture about yakuza culture in front of the distinguished guests of the headquarters—how immature, it was so embarrassing that even he, as the head of the family, couldn’t hold his head high. Yamata no Orochi had been struggling for years with a problem: while the upper echelons of the family were composed of aristocratic-like individuals, the underworld’s lower ranks were filled with uneducated thugs and hot-blooded youths. They would dye their hair in wild colors and adhere to logic such as “a man stands tall and never kneels unless it’s to someone worth following.” Reasoning with them didn’t work; they could only use Confucian ideas of loyalty to govern them. Thus, during the annual year-end yakuza meetings, even Tachibana Masamune had to speak at length to the gang leaders about loyalty and “a man’s honor.” After each year’s meeting, Tachibana Masamune would drink tea and ponder, “I think I just lost some IQ points again…”

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