Yokohama Electron 4
We were set to leave on Friday afternoon.
We’d agreed to meet at Gimpo Airport, where the private jet was waiting. Seon-woo and I arrived first.
“Feels like it’s been a while since we went abroad together.”
“Yeah, a really long while.”
Back in college, we’d even gone on trips to Europe together.
For him, that counted as “a while.” For me, it was “an exceptionally long while.” Ever since we’d opened a chicken restaurant together in the first life, one of us had always had to stay and mind the shop, so even vacations had become separate affairs.
We waited a little longer, and then two girls came running over, each dragging a suitcase behind her.
The girl with the petite frame and the topknot was my younger sister, Han Sena. Beside her was Jung Sojin, the friend with a ponytail, a cute face, and a surprisingly glamorous figure.
Sojin spotted me and bowed her head politely.
“Hello, Oppa.”
She really was cute.
“Hey, Sojin. Did you come straight from school?”
“Yes. I met up with Sena and came right over. Um, but is it really okay for me to come along? I already owed you from last time, so I feel bad……”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not like the plane or hotel costs anything extra.”
And if Sena weren’t coming, that’d be one thing, but once we’d decided to bring her, it was better if Sojin came too.
It wasn’t exactly reassuring to leave Sena on her own.
Sojin and Seon-woo were the only ones who hadn’t met before. The rest of us already knew each other.
The two exchanged introductions.
“I’m Sojin, Sena’s friend.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Miru’s friend, Kang Seon-woo.”
“Please speak casually.”
“Sure?”
Seon-woo wasn’t the type to pay much attention to whether someone was male or female. He treated everyone the same, as just another person.
Maybe that was why they quickly dropped the formalities and got along.
Sojin reached into her bag and held something out to me.
“P-please take this, Oppa.”
“What is it?”
“Chocolate.”
“Huh? Why chocolate?”
Sojin’s cheeks turned slightly red.
“I didn’t get to give you anything on Valentine’s Day. And after you helped me last time, I wanted to give you something, even if it’s late……”
For the record, I’d been in the United States at the time, locked in a dogfight with Enple and Guble.
So because of something that trivial, I’d just let a once-a-year Valentine’s Day event pass me by.
Sena puffed out her chest for no reason.
“Sojin made that herself. I tried it too, and it was seriously good.”
You’d think she’d helped make it the way she said it.
Sojin waved her hands in denial.
“I-it’s not that impressive.”
“Not impressive?”
Handmade chocolate!
That was the sort of fresh, earnest thing people only did when they were students.
Looking at this, I almost thought she really did have feelings for me…….
“Ah! Since you were coming with a friend, I made one extra.”
“Oh? Is it okay to accept something like this when we’ve just met?”
……No, apparently not.
Still, whatever the reason—loyalty, sentiment, anything—it didn’t matter. What mattered was that I’d received it.
Come to think of it, I’d never gotten Valentine’s chocolate from my little sister.
I asked Sena, “Do you feel anything when you see this kind of thing?”
“Nope. Nothing.”
Honestly, neither did I.
I hadn’t given her White Day candy, either, so I was guilty of the same thing.
Siblings didn’t usually exchange that sort of thing.
* * *
We boarded the private jet.
Sena and Sojin had flown on it before, but it was Seon-woo’s first time.
Maybe because of that, he looked around the cabin with wide eyes.
“Whoa. This is amazing.”
“If you want one, buy one too.”
“Huh? Where would I get the money for that?”
“Just buy it under the company name. Want me to get you one?”
After thinking about it for a moment, Seon-woo shook his head.
“Nah. It’s not like I’m going abroad that often.”
“We already have one under Continue Capital’s name too, so if you ever need it, just borrow it.”
Sena looked thrilled out of her mind.
“This is going to be fun! Where are we going first when we land?”
“……”
All she had in her head was play.
“Are you studying hard?”
I asked anyway, though I already knew she probably wasn’t.
But the answer that came back was completely unexpected.
“Of course. I’ve been studying English a lot lately. I’ve even been thinking about taking classes at an academy.”
“……Huh?”
For a second, I thought I’d misheard her.
“You’re studying English?”
“If I want to travel around the world later, I figured I should at least know some English. I’m working hard to become a global Sena.”
“……”
Unbelievable.
Still, studying because you personally feel the need to is the best way to learn.
Hearing that, it seemed like taking her on all those trips hadn’t been a waste after all.
“There’s a half-Korean transfer student at my school, and I take English classes with him. He’s my partner, so I’ve been studying hard with him.”
“So your skills have improved?”
Sena nodded confidently.
“Of course. I can handle simple everyday conversation now.”
“Nice.”
I’d have to test her sometime.
The more you used a language, the better it got.
I turned to Sojin. “Sena says you’re good at Japanese.”
“I’m not really good. I can just communicate.”
“How did you end up learning Japanese?”
“I was just interested, I guess. My older cousin also does Japanese translation work.”
“Translation? Books?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of books?”
“She’s done a lot of different things, but lately it’s been something called My Older Brother Hid My Younger Sister……”
“……”
What kind of title was that?
Seon-woo immediately caught on.
“Oh! Isn’t that a light novel?”
“A light novel?”
“Yeah, a light novel.”
“Ah.”
Since he worked in the game industry, he knew subculture stuff well.
Sena chimed in from the side, “Sojin’s really good at Japanese. She even went to those big summer and winter festivals in Japan.”
“Festivals?”
“It was a festival where club members got together and sold books. What was it again?”
For some reason, Sojin looked extremely flustered.
Wait. Don’t tell me……?
Seon-woo said, “Are you talking about Comiket and Winter Comiket?”
“W-well……”
It was Japan’s biggest doujin event, something anyone who knew the scene would recognize.
“And ever since middle school, she’s been reading weird manga too. What do you call it when guys kiss and hug each other?”
“Gay?”
“Not that.”
Seon-woo answered, “BL?”
“Right, that.”
Seon-woo asked quickly, “Are you a fujoshi?”
Originally, the word combined the characters for wife and woman, but here the first part carried a very different meaning.
Sojin waved her hands in panic.
“N-no! I don’t really watch that stuff these days.”
“If it’s ‘these days,’ that means you used to. And if you say you ‘don’t really watch it,’ that means you do watch it.”
“……”
Sojin lowered her head and said nothing at all.
Unbelievable.
My little sister’s friend was a fujoshi!
“How did you end up walking down that path?”
Sojin spoke in a tiny, defeated voice. “When I was little, my cousin kept making me watch this and that……”
Seon-woo nodded as if he understood perfectly.
“You got proselytized.”
“……Yes.”
Well, it was her taste. No reason not to respect it.
As we talked, Japan drew closer and closer.
For some reason, I started feeling uneasy.
It was because of what Chairman Samara had said.
There wasn’t really going to be a team from the Tokyo District Prosecutors Office Special Investigation Department waiting at Haneda Airport, was there?
Still, if I got arrested, that would create its own kind of buzz, so it wasn’t as if it would be a total loss. Continue Capital and PIF would probably launch a rescue campaign for me anyway.
* * *
The escape of Thierry Samara, former chairman of Kionos.
And the corruption scandal that followed.
The damage Japan suffered from those events was beyond calculation.
Chairman Saito Masaki of Kionos, along with the rest of the executive team, resigned one after another and ended up under prosecutorial investigation.
The shock spread into politics as well, with three members of the House of Representatives, including Sakamoto Takaya, coming under investigation.
The one trillion yen semiconductor support package the Japanese government had planned to roll out was brought to a complete halt, and Kionos plunged into severe financial distress because of its dispute with SPME, with its stock price collapsing by nearly 70 percent.
Experts described it as the end of the last golden window for Japanese semiconductors.
Among all the damage, the worst by far was suffered by the Japanese prosecutors.
It was the greatest humiliation in the history of Japanese prosecution.
Up until then, the Japanese prosecutors had stood as a symbol of fairness and justice.
Japanese citizens might not have trusted politicians, but they trusted the prosecutors. This incident, however, had turned them into a global laughingstock.
Japanese media did their best to frame the whole thing as entirely Chairman Samara’s fault, insisting the prosecutors and the government had done nothing wrong. But foreign outlets were merciless in their criticism of Japan’s judicial system.
The backlash was severe enough to damage investment in Japan itself.
Not only the lead prosecutor, Yoshine Kentaro, but everyone connected to the Tokyo District Prosecutors Office Special Investigation Department was dragged out and pushed aside, and even Tokyo District Chief Prosecutor Mano Toshiyuki, who had been seen as a likely future prosecutor general, was forced to resign.
The prosecutors’ rage was sky-high.
The newly appointed Tokyo District Chief Prosecutor, Hazuki Eida, immediately gave the order.
“Find everyone involved in Chairman Samara’s escape and indict them all!”
The Japanese prosecutors investigated the case thoroughly, indicted every related party, and requested extradition for the overseas accomplices as well.
The escape had been led by the internationally famous PMC Black Mongoose, the Cullen brothers, Ben and Oliver.
They claimed they had been hired by Chairman Samara’s family.
But no matter how hard anyone investigated, there was no connection at all between them and Samara’s family.
At that point, there was no choice but to suspect someone had linked them together. And conveniently, there was one person who fit that suspicion perfectly.
Han Miru.
The reason was obvious.
He had come to Japan as co-CEO of Continue Capital just days before the escape and met with Chairman Samara. And Continue Capital had made an enormous profit from shorting Kionos and buying put options.
In context, it was clear he had set the whole thing in motion to crush Kionos’s stock price.
The problem was that there wasn’t a shred of evidence to prove it. He had only gone to see Samara right before the escape and met with him.
After Samara fled, Miru had left Japan without a trace.
From that point on, the Japanese prosecutors marked Han Miru as a person of interest.
So the moment Haneda Airport received the request for landing clearance for the private jet and the passenger list, they were informed of his arrival.
The Japanese prosecutors, especially the top brass at the Tokyo District Prosecutors Office, were livid.
“After pulling off something like that, he still has the nerve to come back to Japan?”
“What an arrogant bastard!”
“Just how lightly does he think of Japan?”
“Arrest him immediately!”
But…….
Even if they wanted to arrest him, there was no charge.
Of course, they could arrest him anyway under the pretense of investigation and keep extending the detention period, holding him without trial for months if they wanted.
In fact, that was a tactic the Japanese prosecutors used often. If the target had been some nobody, they really would have done exactly that.
But Han Miru was the co-CEO of Continue Capital.
Arresting someone like that without any charges or evidence?
That alone would become a massive issue. If he were actually guilty, that would be one thing, but what if he wasn’t?
It would be an international disgrace.
“Then how about simply banning him from entering the country?”
Foreign entry clearance is a sovereign right of each nation.
If someone is judged to be a dangerous figure who could harm the country, you can absolutely stop them from entering.
But…….
“He says he’s coming in as a consortium representative for investment purposes.”
“So he wants to use the money he made crashing Kionos to buy Japanese companies?”
“He’s also tied up with Saudi capital. If we deny him entry without proper grounds, PIF’s future investment in Japan could shrink, or the capital could even start flowing out.”
In the end, the Japanese prosecutors had no choice but to watch Han Miru enter the country.
Hazuki Eida, the Tokyo District Chief Prosecutor, was incandescent with fury.
“So we’re supposed to just stand by and do nothing while the bastard who humiliated Japan and milked it dry walks free? Dammit!”
* * *
It had only taken two and a half hours to get from Gimpo Airport to Haneda Airport.
When I got off the jet, I found myself looking around for no real reason.
Sena tilted her head. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, it’s just……”
I’d been worried that the Tokyo District Prosecutors Office Special Investigation Department might be lying in wait at the airport the same way they had for Chairman Samara, but everything was quiet.
Had I worked myself up over nothing, just because I was the one who felt guilty?
“Hmm, well.”
The Japanese prosecutors weren’t exactly the sort of organization with that much free time, and there was no reason for them to care so much about me.
They wouldn’t stoop to the petty, filthy trick of arresting someone innocent just to hold them.
After a brief round of formalities, we stepped outside the airport, where a car sent by the hotel and a security vehicle were already waiting.
We got in.
“Take us to the hotel, please.”
“Certainly.”