A Yakuza's Circumstances (2)
Yuria's pitiful paycheck couldn't stretch to more than a handful of pieces of furniture, but Chise's bright insistence that cheap was perfectly fine meant they somehow managed to scrape together a passable clubroom all the same.
"Seniors! This is hardly the time to be sitting around!"
Yuria slammed her fist down on the wooden table they had gone to such trouble to acquire.
Chise yelped and immediately crouched to inspect the table legs.
"Thank goodness it's still in one piece..."
"It's not going to collapse from that! Even if it is cheap!"
"I-is that so?"
"Just what does Fujiwara-senpai think ordinary people are made of?"
A week had passed since the clubroom had been more or less furnished. Yuria had shown up every single day in hopes of scoring a free meal, and in that time the three of them had grown reasonably close.
The problem was that in that entire week, they had accomplished absolutely nothing.
Having served on the Public Morals Committee the year before, Yuria knew exactly how frantic this season was supposed to be. They needed to recruit members. They needed to run patrols and crackdowns so they wouldn't fall behind the second- and third-years, and they needed to rack up results.
"The second-years were already running a gate check at the front entrance first thing this morning, you know. And the third-years have been steadily patrolling their districts!"
Chise poured a stream of cocoa and set the cup in front of Noah, who was nodding off where she sat. The sweet smell snapped her awake at once. So cute... Chise thought, and dropped a single ice cube into the cup.
"Wh-what are you doing!"
"Hm?"
"Why would you put ice in cocoa! That's a crime!"
"Relax. I won't put any in Ichinose's. It's just that Noah can't handle hot things very well. Right?"
Noah, who had been sitting quietly until then, bristled.
"Me? I just like it warm. One ice cube makes the temperature perfect."
"Yes, yes."
"Anyway!"
Yuria raised her voice, the frustration plain in it.
"At this rate it's dereliction of duty!"
"You've been yapping since we sat down. Itchi, you wanna get hit?"
Noah lifted a fist, and Yuria reflexively shrank into herself. A nasty little smile spread across Noah's face.
"A scrap of toilet paper like you is so Itchi. Stand by the bathroom every time I wash my hands. I'll use you instead of tissue."
"A t-toilet paper holder... I want to be one too."
"Chise can be a candy stick."
"Okay! I like that."
These people are insane...
Yuria trembled. Noah, having finished her cake, unwrapped a piece of candy, popped it into her mouth, and spoke around it.
"Hey. How many people do we have to recruit?"
"There probably isn't a cap," Chise said.
"I mean the minimum," Noah answered, already on her phone.
"Hmm. Since we're under the student council, there shouldn't be a dissolution threshold... but I heard other clubs need at least five."
Noah thought it over for a moment. Would recruiting members actually make anything easier? She wasn't particularly unhappy with the way things were.
"Does that five include me?"
"Yep! The club president counts too."
"Then..."
Noah picked up a membership application from the desk, scribbled something on it, and held it up.
"That makes four, doesn't it?"
"Suzuki?"
"Suzuki... the one you lent a uniform to last time?"
"Ah, yeah. The maid at Noah's house."
The fact that the Minamoto were yakuza was not something civilians were supposed to know, so Chise papered over it with a plausible enough cover.
She turned to Noah.
"Didn't you say you didn't want Suzuki in?"
"I'm putting him in. Just the name."
That pervert was out of the question. The mere thought of sharing a room with someone who spent every waking hour trying to steal a look at her underwear was exhausting already.
"Itchi can go find the last one herself. That makes five. Good enough?"
"Ah."
Chise actually had a clever workaround for the membership problem as well, but going small and elite didn't sound so bad. She nodded.
"Okay!"
"No, no, no! That is absolutely not okay!"
Yuria was just starting to protest in a panic when Noah's phone buzzed. She checked the message and spoke as if it were nothing at all.
"I'll be right back."
"How did it go?"
"We've cleaned out three establishments, but the situation is... not easy."
It was the kind of dim, filthy place where street punks might duck in for a smoke. Suzuki was in the middle of his report. Noah's gaze dropped the instant she spotted the bandage wrapped around his thigh.
"Why?"
"The resistance is fiercer than expected."
"You hit a nest, of course they fight back. What I mean is, is that all the Minamoto are good for?"
"No, ma'am. The moment we locate them, we wipe them out. But they're organized in airtight cells, so finding them is proving... difficult."
"Be honest. Stop pretending you're tough."
"...Yamaguchi is armed with firearms. It isn't easy."
Noah let out a sigh.
"I was wondering where you'd gotten your ass kicked."
"...I have no excuse."
Suzuki looked thoroughly miserable.
"So? I don't get the feeling you called me here just to whine."
"No. I thought you ought to know."
He drew a few photographs from inside his jacket. Noah snatched them up with a blank face — and her eyebrow twitched.
"What's this?"
"Photographs from the last Yamaguchi den we swept."
"Huh..."
Three people were in the pictures. Herself, Chise, and Yuria, laughing together at a dessert shop.
"So I was the target."
"Yes."
The Minamoto protected the Fujiwara. Anyone who knew what the Minamoto truly were knew that as a matter of course, which was why the usual play, when you wanted to squeeze the Minamoto, was to go after the Fujiwara.
Not this time. A red circle had been drawn around her own face.
"When you find an enemy base, you contact me. I'll handle it myself."
"...I must refuse."
Suzuki refusing anything was a rare event. Noah looked at him with something like interest.
"Refusing even my orders. You've grown up, Coco."
"That, I cannot allow."
"If you're about to give me some tired line about it being dangerous, stop."
Suzuki bit his lip.
"It's dangerous."
"I told you not to. Idiot."
Noah looked thoroughly unimpressed.
The Minamoto kept a great many organizations under their banner, both to offload tedious work and to cultivate talent. Yamaguchi was one of them — a large syndicate responsible for Tokyo that had, over the years, swollen far past its proper size. They had gotten cocky more than once, and this time, apparently, they had gone so far as to raise the flag of open rebellion.
What a pain.
Honestly, she had no particular desire to get involved. But her people kept coming home beaten, and that grated on her nerves. Suzuki was one of the more capable ones, and even he had taken a wound like that. The others would be in far worse shape. And if they were fully armed — that wasn't yakuza. That was a terrorist cell.
"Compile everything you've gathered and send it to me."
Hunting terrorists was her specialty. Which was precisely why Noah intended to step in herself.
"...Please give me one more chance. Young Boss."
Suzuki caught the hem of her clothes as she turned to leave. When she looked back, his hair hid his face, but the darkness in him was plain enough.
...Did I hurt his pride?
Yakuza, she supposed. Thugs like these lived and died by their pride.
Noah delivered the verdict with a sour look.
"One week. If you haven't figured out why Yamaguchi is targeting me by then, I'm stepping in myself."
"Yes. Young Boss."
Suzuki bowed from the waist with crisp precision.
"Honestly, Noah. You acted like you weren't going to lift a finger."
Chise smiled shyly and slipped her arm through Noah's. Noah answered with a sour look of her own.
"This is Public Morals Committee work, isn't it?"
They were on patrol — not through the school, but outside it.
This is strictly committee business. Nothing more.
That was what Noah told herself. Her feet, however, were already carrying her toward the district where a Yamaguchi den had been.
"The seniors are finally doing something worthy of the Public Morals Committee. I'll even compliment you for it!"
Yuria fussed with the armband on her left arm for no particular reason and straightened her uniform. She was unmistakably thrilled about their first patrol.
"Oh? What's that."
...A newbie?
It was the yakuza who had introduced himself as a new recruit the last time she'd been through. Hayate, was it? Gatsby? She couldn't quite remember. In any case, the man in the suit was standing on someone and smoking a cigarette.
Pulling that garbage in the middle of a thoroughfare...
Noah's eye twitched. The Minamoto were not some gathering of street trash. Dark alley or not, he was doing something that conspicuous in a spot visible from the other side of the street?
You're dead.
Yakuza these days, honestly. What a comedown. Back when she was five, amateurs like that hadn't even existed...
She made a mental note to gather the new recruits when she got home and put them through a proper attitude adjustment.
"Ah. Noah. Miss Ichinose is gone."
"Huh?"
Yuria, who had been right there a second ago, had vanished. They found her soon enough — she was already standing in front of the yakuza.
"This is bad... he's with the Minamoto family, isn't he?"
"Yeah. A newbie they just brought in."
"Th-then this is a disaster. We have to catch up."
Noah and Chise broke into a run toward the crosswalk. The light caught them, and they had no choice but to stop.
And then...
"This light is taking forever."
"Right?"
The two of them waited a very long time for a passing pedestrian to press the button.
The Public Morals Committee held provisional investigative authority. It was a right granted as a matter of course, though in practice it was meant only as support.
If their competence was recognized, however, a given year's committee could be granted Autonomy Rights — the power to take on cases and make arrests on their own, without any need for police cooperation.
Earning that required a record of results, and even results were useless without political weight behind them.
Autonomy Rights were what Yuria wanted. Whether a committee had them or not was the difference between playing house and running a real field exercise, and the gap it made on a résumé was enormous.
Fortunately, with a Fujiwara on the roster, the power requirement was already met. All that remained was to pile up achievements and claim the rights themselves.
So Yuria had no intention of letting this chance — dropped into her lap by sheer luck — slip away.
"If you surrender quietly, there need not be any bloodshed."
Yuria leveled her taser with a face full of confidence. It was called a taser, but it was no different from a real pistol except for the ammunition. A shot to the head would kill. The licensing process was correspondingly brutal; at present, the shortest route to a permit was to pass the fitness screening, hold the proper certification, and be attached to the Public Morals Committee.
Not every committee member carried a taser. That Yuria did was proof of her skill, and she was proud of it.
"Easy, miss. I'm not a bad guy."
Kentaro, the Minamoto faction's newest recruit, raised his hands with a pained look. He had been gathering intelligence on Yamaguchi and had walked straight into a headache.
"A tired line. In broad daylight you've reduced a person to that state, and you still have excuses?"
"Nngh..."
The Public Morals Committee. She wasn't even police. He'd just scare her a little and send her packing.
"Hey. Get lost. Do you have any idea who I—"
"I thought you might say that."
A leisurely smile on her face, Yuria surged forward. She dropped her upper body low as she closed the distance and drove an elbow into his solar plexus.
"Ghk—!"
The instant his torso folded, she seized him by the collar and threw him over her shoulder.
A heavy crash.
She snorted, cuffed him, and allowed herself a small, satisfied sound.
"Kh...!"
The arm wrenched behind his back hurt less than his pride. A yakuza — beaten by a middle school girl!
Damn it. It's humiliating, but whatever. The dagger—
"Oh, Minamoto-senpai?"
"..."
At the familiar name, Kentaro's head came up like a wooden doll's.
Noah was standing there, looking down at him with naked disgust. A moment later the disgust curdled into the look one gives a piece of garbage, and a wild, murderous intent poured off her in waves. If he so much as acknowledged her, she was going to kill him. That much was certain.
"Itchi."
Expecting praise, Yuria answered brightly.
"Yes!"
With a trembling hand, Noah pointed at Kentaro.
"Do me a favor and execute this goddamn son of a bitch."
Shame was written all over her face; she looked like she had nowhere left to put it.
"...!"
If not for the handcuffs, Kentaro would have committed seppuku on the spot.