A Five-Hundred-Million-Dollar Cake
Noah looked at the third-rate thug she'd slammed into the wall, her gaze gone cold and flat.
She'd only thrown one of them, but the shockwave had dropped the rest of the punks anyway.
A world that's lost its mind.
There was no way an ordinary high school girl should have been able to send a grown man flying that far. Physically, it was impossible. But this was that kind of world.
The first time Noah had thought, This world is a little off, was around the age of six. At first she'd assumed she'd been reborn as some rich Japanese heiress. Instead she was a yakuza's daughter — and the heir who would inherit the whole organization, no less. Not having to worry about money wasn't so bad, she'd figured. The scale of it, though, was completely out of hand.
Japan was a democracy. Same as Korea. In the movies, sure, conglomerates steamrolled the law and yakuza types knocked off a few people like it was nothing. But Noah had been a working civil servant in her previous life, and she knew that no matter how much power you had, you couldn't just do that out in the open. Especially in 2022, the year she'd lived in — in Korea, "gangsters" were basically used-car salesmen, and in Japan the average yakuza was in his sixties. The whole yakuza thing had been a setting sun.
The year Noah had been born into was 2025. Even if yakuza still existed, they ought to have been a mom-and-pop operation at best.
"A pleasure to meet you, young lady!"
"What are you doing?"
"I'm sorry I'm late! As a token of apology, I'll cut off one of my pinkies right here—"
Mom-and-pop, her ass. There were truckloads of Japanese punks lining up to join the Minamoto. Politicians showered her father with every favor they could think of just to catch his eye once, and anyone who rubbed him the wrong way was dead by the next morning.
Even so, the Minamoto were the reasonable ones. If they were just movie-grade blood-soaked fiction made real, the Fujiwara were several leagues past fantasy. They held thirty percent of the world's wealth. This wasn't some conspiracy theory about the Rothschilds owning seventy percent of everything. It was the official word of the Fujiwara family head. In other words, they could kill a few people in the street and nothing would come of it.
Noah looked at the recruit offering to cut off his finger and spoke as if he were pathetic.
"If you're going to cut something, do it somewhere else. You're ruining my appetite."
"I-I'm sorry. I have no excuse! I'll take responsibility—"
"You're not the one who takes responsibility. Your superior does. Stop hiding and come out. Coco. I know you're there."
Noah stared at the van with those same salted, dead-fish eyes. A woman gave a little cough from the passenger seat and slipped out. She clapped as she watched the punks being loaded into drums.
"As always, such clean work. Truly, our little oyabun — the one who will lead the Minamoto someday."
Her name was Suzuki Kotone. Wearing a Japanese sword in broad daylight, she was one of the Minamoto's executives, and Noah's bodyguard, selected because she was a woman. Noah called her Coco, and there was a sad reason for that. Even in her previous life, Noah had never been much for studying. Remembering "Kotone" had been too much trouble, so she'd started calling her Coco, and the nickname had stuck ever since.
"They're not dead yet, so don't bury them."
"For the crime of attacking the young lady. I shall pulverize their limbs to pieces—"
Noah's face twisted.
"Can't you see we're going to eat dessert? Save that talk for when you're among yourselves."
"I've been rude. Please — punish me."
Suzuki dropped into a full dogeza. She lifted her gaze just a little, and her face went red.
"White again today, I see."
"..."
The Saints Academy uniform ran a little on the short side. Noah stared at her without a word, then raised a fist.
BANG!
"Let's go, Chise."
"Whoa, full of energy again today, Noah. Glad you're healthy."
Suzuki was planted upside down in the ground.
How do you even stick a person in like that...?
Chise saw it all the time, and it still amazed her every time.
"You really startled me back there!"
When the thugs had shown up, Chise had been worried about Noah. Worried she might kill them. Then the meticulously planned dessert date would be ruined, and Chise's whole scheme would fall apart.
"It's been a while, though. Things had gone quiet for a stretch."
The Fujiwara and the Minamoto. Both families were famous, so this kind of thing happened often. You'd think people would know better than to poke something that powerful, but moths weren't called moths for nothing. The two of them were always together, so a successful kidnapping would be an enormous payday — hence the chaos from every direction. If it was money they were after, that went without saying. Sometimes other countries even tried assassination. It had died down lately, but starting high school seemed to have kicked it off again. What a pain.
"Still, I feel safe! You'll protect me, right, Noah? Here, aah—"
Chise held out a spoonful of cake.
"I can eat by myself."
"You want the chocolate one, don't you?"
"No."
"Okay. Just a second."
Chise ate the bite she'd just scooped, then this time took up the chocolate and slipped it into Noah's mouth. Noah, contrary to her words, chewed and swallowed.
"It's edible."
"...It's that good?"
Chise was a little startled. For reference, "It's not great" was Noah-speak for "This is delicious." And now, It's edible? That was a Michelin seven-star compliment.
"It's all right."
"Great, Noah! Once we start school, this is a place we'll be coming to a lot."
I actually bought it, though.
Chise felt quietly proud. She'd already purchased the best dessert shop around Saints Academy. She'd hired a first-rate chef from England, the homeland of cake, and optimized the conditions so he only worked during the hours Noah would come. And to handle the finest ingredients, she'd bought up every scrap of land where the raw materials were sourced. Freshness was everything, so she'd moved it all by private jet. That was the secret behind a delicious cake.
The cost had been astronomical, and Chise didn't regret a cent. The tiny smile that had caught at the corner of Noah's mouth. That alone was enough. Chise was melting.
But she pulled herself together. The smile was wonderful, but today there was something important, wasn't there? A perfect plan that absolutely had to succeed.
"Noah. Want to try living in the dorms? Just the two of us!"
"Mm."
Success!
Chise barely held back a scream. Noah's secret: if you asked her for something right after she'd eaten something delicious, she would agree to anything. And she was fifty times cuter than usual.
"Chairman. This is the young lady's spending statement for this month."
Fujiwara Kamatari read the documents Chise's secretary had brought.
Subject: Miss Fujiwara Chise
Total Amount: $500,000,000 USD
"...Was it Miss Noah's birthday?"
"No, sir."
"Then?"
"She acquired a dessert shop in the vicinity of Saints Academy."
"That alone wouldn't account for this amount."
"She purchased a next-generation fighter jet and approximately twenty-five acres of land to ensure a smooth supply of ingredients."
"That's excessive luxury."
"What shall we do?"
The Fujiwara's home education was extremely strict. Unlike the Minamoto, where being strong was enough to qualify as family head, the Fujiwara moved the wealth of the entire world. A brilliant mind, of course — and you had to know how to spend money well. Using a fortune of five hundred million dollars for mere dessert was, by any measure, hard to call money well spent. In a case like this, they would normally freeze Chise's cards — but thanks to Noah sleeping at the Fujiwara mansion three hundred days out of three hundred sixty-five, he could guess where this had come from. Chise didn't eat dessert unless Noah was there.
"Sir?"
The secretary, however, would have a hard time guessing that.
"Money spent on the Minamoto isn't wasted even at a billion dollars, never mind five hundred million."
Kamatari spoke quietly, with a faint smile.
"I hope Miss Noah enjoyed it."
It was the same for Minamoto Genji. To Fujiwara Kamatari as well, Noah was like a daughter of his own.
Noah and Chise were that close. Over the course of a year, the time they'd spent stuck together had outstripped the time they'd spent apart, so sleeping at each other's houses wasn't unusual. Usually it was Noah who went to the Fujiwara mansion. True to a yakuza household, everywhere you went people were shouting "Oyabun!", "Little oyabun!", "Young lady!" and on and on. It was loud. Today, Chise had come to the Minamoto house.
"You didn't have to come all this way."
"No! I wanted to see Uncle Genji too. It's been a while."
Genji was a man without blood or tears. Even holding his gaze too long was something you staked your life on — but to Chise, he was just her best friend's dad. The syndicate members nearby flinched, their shoulders twitching.
"The oyabun will be pleased that Miss Fujiwara has come."
"Are you all right, Miss Suzuki?"
When Chise asked worriedly, Suzuki answered, bashful.
"I'm a little damp. It's been a while since the little oyabun treated me like that."
Noah looked at Suzuki the way one looks at industrial waste.
"Yeah, Coco should sleep outside tonight."
"It's ten below zero today."
"Then don't."
Suzuki sensed a threat to her life and stopped.
"May I take a sleeping bag?"
"A yakuza who can't even handle a little cold?"
"I'll sleep naked, then."
"Don't take anything off."
"Thank you for your mercy. I'll be going, then."
Noah didn't even look back. And Suzuki really did head outside.
Chise smiled awkwardly and thought, They're family in all but name, the Minamoto — but they really are a strange household.
"Still, making her sleep outside in this cold seems a bit much. Nocchan."
Chise clapped a hand over her mouth. How could she make a mistake like that? Noah utterly loathed anything attached to the end of her name.
"I'll have to clean the next room. We'd better sleep separately tonight."
Noah's tone was colder than ten below, and Chise answered faster than anyone.
"Yakuza are amazing! A street this cold probably feels like tatami to them, right? I think Miss Suzuki sleeping outside is a good thing. Th-the air is so fresh. I'm jealous."
I'm sorry, Miss Suzuki.
Fortunately, separate rooms had been averted.