The Orange-Haired Guardian
Jin Mija had used part of the inheritance from Taira Saburo along with the money she had saved to move from an apartment into a mansion.
In Japan, unlike Korea, apartments carried a somewhat shabby connotation as housing. In truth, what Koreans called an apartment was equivalent to a Japanese mansion, while a Japanese apartment referred to a multi-family dwelling made of lightweight steel frames or wood, usually only two to three stories high. The two-story houses shared by multiple families that often appeared in Japanese anime and dramas were exactly what the Japanese meant by apartment.
Up until now, I had lived in an apartment. That was because Jin Mija had been diligently saving every yen Taira Saburo sent each month along with her own earnings, instead of spending it on housing, in order to pay for my university tuition and my future marriage funds. The me before the possession had no idea about any of this and naturally assumed our shabby home meant we were poor, so I never bothered studying in the first place. By the time Mom realized this, I had just entered my third year of high school. She told me later how much she had regretted it.
After I joined the Taira Group’s talent development center, the money saved for my tuition became unnecessary. Then Taira Saburo died and left me an inheritance, so she used that money to move from the apartment into a mansion. Perhaps because of that, the new place didn’t really feel like home to me. After all, it wasn’t the house I had lived in since birth. I had only visited it about twice while living at the talent development center, since Mom had moved while I was away.
“Whoa~! You moved somewhere really nice!”
“This has to be the best neighborhood in Edogawa-gu, right?”
Kazuhiro and Kiyohira each commented as they got out of the car. Since this was their first time visiting a friend’s newly moved home after starting their working lives, they looked around with curious eyes. They seemed surprised that a neighborhood like this existed in Edogawa-gu.
Along with Adachi-ku and Katsushika-ku, Edogawa-gu was known as one of the three downtown commoner districts of Tokyo. It was a typical working-class area, but even here there were pockets of wealth. The mansion Jin Mija had moved into was located in exactly that upscale part of the district.
We each carried gifts as we headed up to the house. Jin Mija’s place was on the eighth floor. Since I had already received a key from Mom in advance, I didn’t ring the bell and simply unlocked the door. Inside, I found Jin Mija dressed up nicely, sitting on the sofa watching television. It looked like she had changed clothes early because our appointment time was approaching.
“Mom~!”
“Madam!”
“It’s been a while, Ryuta’s mother.”
“Oh, you’re here?”
When we all piled in at once, Jin Mija greeted us with a warm smile. She hugged Kiyohira and Kazuhiro one after another, then gave me a gentle pat on the back as she embraced me too.
“Happy birthday, Mom.”
“Here’s your gift, Madam!”
“I picked this out together with my girlfriend.”
As soon as I handed over my present, my two friends eagerly offered theirs as well. Kiyohira had apparently gone all-out with a quantity attack. He said he had swept up every piece of clothing from an American outlet that might suit Jin Mija. In the end, he had bought a full twenty outfits.
Kazuhiro had asked Kagawa Umi to help him choose a gift, and the two of them had picked out a luxury wallet. The color matched the luxury bag I had chosen, creating a coordinated set that I personally thought was quite nice.
“Thank you so much. You’ve all grown up so well, my boys.”
Her words were simple, but seeing the son she had raised and the friends she had looked after since middle school all grown up and bringing her gifts on her birthday seemed to move her deeply. The phrase “my boys” from Jin Mija also appeared to touch Kazuhiro and Kiyohira. After that, we spent a little while chatting and evaluating each other’s gifts before it was time to head out for our dinner reservation.
The restaurant I had reserved was a high-end Korean barbecue place called Haga, or Kawaka in the pure Japanese pronunciation. We were guided to our private room and took our seats. Jin Mija sat at the very back, Kazuhiro and Kiyohira took the sides, and I sat closest to the door.
We each ordered our favorite cuts. Mom chose sirloin, Kazuhiro went with beef tongue, and Kiyohira, claiming he had eaten a lot of beef while in America, ordered pork belly. I finished by ordering short ribs.
The meat soon arrived, and we watched the staff grill it for us. The employee handling the grill was a woman, and for some reason she felt strangely familiar. It was my first time seeing her, yet I had the odd sensation I had seen her somewhere before… Was this déjà vu?
We enjoyed the meat the waitress grilled for us. With three big guys at the table, we ended up ordering more meat several times. We ate while chatting happily. Kazuhiro tactlessly told Mom the story about my “rag man” incident, but she simply responded coolly with, “If you get a girl pregnant, take responsibility.” I suppose that meant since Taira Saburo had at least sent living expenses and taken some responsibility, I should do at least that much.
“For the after-meal, should we get doenjang jjigae? It’s been a while.”
“I want soon dubu jjigae! I’ve been dying for it the whole time I was in America.”
“I’ll have naengmyeon.”
“You guys go ahead. My stomach feels like it’s about to burst, so I’ll stop here.”
Jin Mija rubbed her belly and said she was done eating. The rest of us, still not quite full, each ordered our preferred dishes. After we placed the order and waited a short while, the door opened and a server came in.
But the server who entered now was not the same one who had been bringing our food. Both were sturdy men. They pretended to carry dishes, then suddenly pulled something from the pockets of their aprons and aimed it at us.
Fuck. It was a gun!
“Get down!”
My body reacted faster than I expected. I blocked the front of the table, spreading my arms wide to make myself as large a target as possible. In the urgent situation, the world seemed to slow down, and I saw another person step in front of me.
The one shielding me was the waitress who had been grilling our meat until now. She had somehow produced a handgun and began returning fire.
The waitress staggered as bullets struck her but kept firing until the end. The sensation of rounds that missed her slamming into my body, combined with the muzzle flashes and the overwhelming noise of gunfire, made it impossible to think straight. More than anything else, what kept me from losing my mind was the worry for Mom and my two friends behind me. No matter how well someone was shielding them, a stray bullet could still hit if they were unlucky.
When the gunfire finally died down, the two burly men had collapsed, and the waitress in front of me had fallen as well. A few bullets had struck me too, but regeneration had already begun, so I wasn’t too worried. I turned around.
Thankfully, all three of them had hidden under the table and survived without being hit. The sight of Kazuhiro and Kiyohira tightly hugging Mom from both sides to protect her moved me without me even realizing it. As soon as the shooting stopped, Jin Mija pushed the two boys away and rushed toward me, sobbing wildly.
“Son! Are you okay? Oh my god, look at all this blood…!”
“I’m fine. They all just grazed me. See? It’s clean now.”
I rolled up my clothes to show her the wounds. The injuries had already faded significantly. There was a lot of blood, but they didn’t look serious.
“More importantly…!”
After confirming that Mom and my friends were safe, I approached the fallen waitress. Surprisingly, she was still alive.
When I touched her body, I felt a bulletproof vest underneath. That was why she hadn’t taken any fatal shots to vital areas. However, bullets had struck her shoulder and arm, and she was losing a lot of blood.
“Call 119 right now!!”
I shouted at Kazuhiro while pressing hard on her wounded shoulder and arm. The waitress looked up at me and gave a faint smile.
“I won’t die, Junior…”
“What?”
Junior? At her words, I gently tugged at her black hair. Beneath the wig, Mimata Chieri’s orange hair was revealed. Looking closer, I saw that her face was heavily made up, and she was even wearing high-heeled shoes to change her height, all to keep me from recognizing her.
“Senior, why…?”
“It was the Chairman’s order. He told me to watch over you, Junior, and step in immediately if danger came…”
Just as I had suspected, Mimata Chieri really was something like a direct agent under Taira Danjo’s command. I kept talking to her to prevent her from losing consciousness, and soon the ambulance arrived to take her away. She wouldn’t die, right? After all, she was one of the Chairman’s personal agents. They wouldn’t just let her perish.
After the ambulance took Mimata Chieri away, the police soon arrived. But when the Taira Group lawyer who came with them exchanged a few words, the officers didn’t even question me. They simply cleaned up the bodies and left. The power of the Taira Group was truly immense. They didn’t even conduct a proper investigation.
“The Chairman will explain everything tomorrow at the main house. You must be in shock, so please rest for today.”
“Yes. Thank you for your help.”
I thanked the lawyer, then took Mom and my friends back home. Even on the way, I stayed alert with all my senses sharpened in case anyone was following us, but no one did.
“What the hell was that about?”
In the heavy atmosphere, Kazuhiro asked.
“I don’t know either. I have no idea what’s going on…”
Since I still didn’t know anything, that was all I could say. Surprisingly, Mom’s mental fortitude seemed strong. She looked fine on the outside. Kiyohira also appeared calm, perhaps thanks to his experience with martial arts. Only Kazuhiro looked a little uneasy.
“First, I need to find out what happened…”
I had been planning to ask Grandpa Taira Danjo, but now I would personally uncover exactly who was behind this incident.
“I’ll make sure something like this never happens again, so don’t worry.”
That’s right. I would kill the person who orchestrated this so that such a thing would never happen again.
The mansion is basically what Koreans call an apartment.