Dragon Raja 3; Chapter 188: Girl with Sandalwood Scent (20)

Dragon Raja 3

“Hey!” Caesar pushed open the locker door and poked his head out. “You don’t need to risk yourself. I have another plan!”

He had already thought of another idea—waiting at the far end of the changing room, hidden behind the row of lockers. When the bōsōzoku rushed in, they could topple the lockers like dominoes, knocking the gang members down. However, this could cause injuries or worse.

“Don’t worry! They’re not after me!” Makoto pushed Caesar’s head back into the locker. “I’m just an employee here. They won’t suspect anything.”

As she spoke, she quickly took off her shirt and jeans, grabbed a uniform from someone else’s locker, and began changing into it. Afraid of getting a nosebleed from seeing a girl in her underwear, Lu Mingfei dutifully turned around and stepped into another locker. Chu Zihang, meanwhile, placed a bench horizontally to block the way to the drainage pipe, preventing anyone from wandering over and discovering the hole in the wall. He immediately understood Makoto’s plan. The sound coming from the women’s changing room would make it clear that someone was inside, but that someone couldn’t be them or Monkey face. The only plausible person it could be was Makoto. Discovering a female employee in the women’s changing room wouldn’t raise any suspicions, so Makoto had to change into her uniform to establish her identity. If the bōsōzoku started searching the lockers, a direct confrontation would be inevitable.

He grabbed a few pieces of clothing from the locker to wipe up the urine left by Monkey face. When he looked up, Makoto was already dressed in her qipao uniform. It was the first time Chu Zihang had seen her in the outfit, and though he usually didn’t pay much attention to women’s beauty, he realized that Makoto was indeed quite pretty.

He quickly slipped into a locker, pulling a long dress from a service worker’s locker to use as cover.

The bōsōzoku were almost at the door. Caesar gripped his Beretta tightly, veins bulging on the back of his hand. He didn’t have much faith in Makoto’s plan. If it were him, he’d have searched the changing room thoroughly, opening each locker and poking them with a shotgun, which would expose them.

Suddenly, the locker door opened. Makoto, holding a few thousand-yen bills along with some loose change, likely tips from customers, hurriedly stuffed the money into Caesar’s jacket before closing the door again.

Even in this situation, she remembered that these down-and-out men were penniless.

Inside the dark locker, Caesar touched the small wad of cash over his heart and recalled the time he and Nono went to Las Vegas. Nono had insisted on going to a strip club for fun. When an exotic dancer leaned down and shook her chest in front of Caesar, Nono had stuffed money into the dancer’s hand, forcing Caesar to put it into her bra. Caesar chuckled wryly to himself. He never thought something similar would happen to him again, this time courtesy of Makoto.

The changing room door was suddenly kicked open. Makoto screamed, curling up in the corner, while seven or eight short-barreled shotguns pointed into the corners of the room. The boys posed like special forces, but all they found was a lone female employee, leaving them disappointed. One of the bōsōzoku grabbed Makoto by her hair, forcing her to lift her face. His expression changed to one of interest, but as he yanked her to her feet, his face turned dejected again. Wearing high heels, Makoto was a towering 1.8 meters tall, while the boy was only about 1.6 meters—he had to jump to get a good look at her face, a crushing blow to his confidence.

The boy was blissfully unaware that as he grabbed Makoto’s hair, two loaded Berettas were aimed at his back from the lockers behind him. He should have been grateful his mother made him short, sparing him from further mischief.

One of the bōsōzoku, shotgun in hand, kicked aside the bench Chu Zihang had placed in front of the drainage pipe! Makoto’s heart nearly stopped. But the gang member merely glanced at the hole in the wall before turning back to shake his head at his companion. To him, it was just a shabby women’s changing room with a hole in the wall and some pipes—he hadn’t realized it was an escape route.

Another boy kicked open a locker door. Inside were neatly arranged dresses and colorful underwear, along with a few pairs of women’s shoes. He grabbed a bra, hooked it over his head, and stuck out his tongue at his friends. They all burst into laughter.

The boy turned sharply, coolly chambered a round, and fired, blasting the clothes inside the locker into pieces. Fragments of pink, blue, and apple-green lingerie flew out in a cloud of smoke. He laughed wildly and reloaded to blast the locker next to it.

Unlike Monkey face, this boy wasn’t perverse, but he delighted in destruction. He was like a wild boar that had broken into a vineyard, gleefully intent on tearing down every grapevine in sight.

His companions joined in the “underwear destruction” game, taking turns firing their shotguns. Thin, colorful fabrics fluttered through the air.

Caesar was drenched in cold sweat. Things were spiraling out of control. These boys, though armed with modern weapons, had the brain capacity of gorillas. They didn’t suspect anyone was hiding in the lockers, which was a relief, but their attention had shifted entirely to the girls’ undergarments. In their pent-up frustration, blasting bras and panties with shotguns gave them a twisted sense of satisfaction. They were getting closer and closer to Caesar’s locker, and if they kept going, one of those buckshot rounds would eventually pierce through the door. Before that happened, Caesar would have to draw his weapon and fight back… and these idiots were just shooting to see what color underwear would fly out next. It was sheer chaos!

There were only three lockers left between them and Caesar, and they showed no signs of stopping. Caesar closed his eyes and used his Kamaitachi ability to lock onto the boys’ heartbeats. He had no choice now—he had to fight.

Amidst the gunfire, a cat’s wail suddenly echoed through the room.

“Oh! How disgusting! This is such bad luck!” The boy who fired the gun exclaimed, looking at the pool of blood where the little black kitten lay.

The kitten was less than a month old, curled up in a pink cage, probably a pet that one of the girls intended to take home, left in the locker until the end of her shift. The cluster of lead pellets had pierced through the locker door and lodged into the kitten’s body. It barely managed to open its one remaining eye, taking a final glance at the smoky world before its rapidly beating heart stopped. Makoto covered her eyes, unable to look. Blood flowed from every bullet wound on the kitten, and half of its skull had been shattered. It had once been a cute little black kitten with white paws, meant to be cuddled in its owner’s arms.

“Alright, alright! Let’s go! This isn’t the time to mess around!” The leader of the bōsōzoku spat harshly on the ground.

Each boy spat on the floor in turn, then roughly dragged Makoto out of the women’s changing room. Japanese people are highly superstitious about black cats, believing they bring bad luck, especially for these bōsōzoku, who lived a life of reckless driving and frequent traffic accidents. They paid special attention to omens—if a black cat crossed their path, they wouldn’t drive for a month. And if they accidentally ran over a black cat, the car would have to be burned, as black cats were believed to carry spirits. Killing one meant that the spirit would transfer to the car, and the car was cursed, bound to crash and kill its driver eventually.

Caesar exhaled a long breath. The kitten had died an innocent death, but its sacrifice had averted a bloodbath between humans. If a gunfight had broken out between Caesar’s group and the bōsōzoku, bloodshed would have been inevitable, and deaths quite possible.

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