Tokyo: From Lawless Madpolice to Minister
Chapter 424 - 375: Wealth Moves the Heart, The First Major Case of the Year

Chapter 424: Chapter 375: Wealth Moves the Heart, The First Major Case of the Year

At 10 p.m. in a street-side restaurant.

Dongye Yuusei was wolfing down his food as he recounted his recent misfortunes; tears involuntarily streamed down his face when he became emotional, "Mr. Kitano, if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t even know where to have this meal."

"I didn’t expect such a powerful man as your uncle to also encounter misfortune. It’s truly heartbreaking. Mr. Dongye, please accept my condolences," Kitano Keiji sighed with sympathy, passing him a glass of water with a serious expression, "But Mr. Dongye, you’d better quit gambling and start doing something legitimate. Otherwise, I can’t help you much. Gambling is a bottomless pit!"

"I know, I know, I’ve truly come to a realization this time and will not gamble anymore," Dongye Yuusei caught the water glass and drank it in one gulp, wiping his mouth and seriously stating, "I’m planning to start a business."

"Start a business?" Kitano Keiji’s eyes lit up and he repeatedly expressed his approval, "That’s a good thing. As long as you have proper work, your vitality will return quickly. But Mr. Dongye, do you still have the capital to start a business?"

Dongye Yuusei pursed his lips, "I still have a few pieces of jewelry left by my mother before she passed. If I sell them, I should be able to gather up several hundred thousand US dollars. It’s just that I feel sorry for her. If she knows from the beyond what her unfilial son is doing, she will surely be very heartbroken."

As he spoke, tears flowed again. Ever since his family’s decline, he had become more and more prone to crying.

"You’re wrong to think that way, Mr. Dongye," Kitano Keiji offered a few tissues, encouraging him, "As long as you truly repent and use your aunt’s legacy to do proper business and help your own child, her spirit in heaven will surely be happy and comforted."

"Thank you for your comforting words, Mr. Kitano, I feel much better now," Dongye Yuusei said, wiping away his tears.

"I’m not very good at comforting others, but I’m just telling the plain truth," Kitano Keiji said with a naive smile and scratched his head. Then, he perked up and asked, "Speaking of which, Mr. Dongye, what kind of business are you planning to do? How about I help you out? I’m about to graduate anyway, and I’m having a headache looking for a job."

"That would be wonderful! I was afraid I couldn’t do it alone!" Dongye Yuusei immediately brightened up and began to envision the future, "When my father started his business, he didn’t even have as much capital as I do now. It was with the help of a few friends that he got started. As long as you and I put our efforts together, Mr. Kitano, we will surely succeed!"

"Hey! From now on, please take good care of me, Boss Dongye!" Kitano Keiji smiled and bowed deeply.

"What boss? We’re brothers!" Dongye Yuusei shook his head and seriously corrected, "You’re not my employee; you’re my partner!"

"Ah! Mr. Dongye, but... but I don’t have any capital to offer," Kitano Keiji said, somewhat embarrassed.

Dongye Yuusei pointed to the food on the table, stating with a determined tone, "This is your investment!"

A debt of gratitude for a meal must be repaid.

"Mr. Dongye..." Kitano Keiji was overwhelmed with gratitude, his lips quivering as if he wanted to say something but in the end, he did not speak and just bowed deeply, "Hey!"

Then he casually asked, "By the way, Mr. Dongye, didn’t you lose your house? Can you still get back those pieces of jewelry your mother left?"

As Dongye Yuusei was bending over his meal, his actions paused for a moment, his face showing a slight change, but he quickly went back to normal and lifted his head to say, "I already sneakily took them out when I was packing my things to leave, they’re hidden near my home. We can go get them after we finish eating."

"Hey!" Kitano Keiji nodded in response.

After the meal, Kitano Keiji paid the bill, and Dongye Yuusei led him to a spot near his home, fished out a heavy little bag from a flower bed by the side entrance, and upon opening it, it was full of various precious gold and silver jewelry.

Kitano Keiji’s throat moved as he swallowed his saliva.

"Good, it’s still here." Dongye Yuusei smiled with relief, quickly tied the bag, and turned to ask Kitano Keiji, "Where shall we go now?"

"The dorm is already closed at this hour, and you probably don’t want to go back there anyway. I still have a bit of money; let’s make do with a hotel," Kitano Keiji replied softly after a moment’s reflection.

Dongye Yuusei nodded, "Okay!"

They found a cheap hotel, got a twin room, and after a simple wash, they rested.

In the dead of night, the room was pitch black, and Kitano Keiji quietly rose from the bed on the right, tiptoed to Dongye Yuusei’s side, and, stifling his excitement and agitation, reached for the bag of jewelry in his arms.

As Dongye Yuusei’s sidekick, he had always seen him as his own meal ticket. With the meal ticket missing from school for a long time, he had already inquired from Dongye Yuusei’s fair-weather friends about what had happened and his recent status.

The reason he answered Dongye Yuusei’s call for help and met up with him was that he figured even a starving camel is bigger than a horse. Considering Dongye Yuusei’s rich family background, even if he truly became obsessed with gambling and lost everything, he could surely scrape together some money from elsewhere in the short term.

Kitano Keiji came for this money.

And indeed, it turned out to be the case.

Even though the Dongye family had gone bankrupt, he could take these pieces of jewelry and flee without fear of retaliation.

Jewelry worth hundreds of thousands of US dollars!

Enough for him to return to his hometown, build a house, and get married.

Damn it, these rich bastards could still pull out so much money even after going bankrupt, contemptible!

"Snap!"

Just then, his wrist was grabbed.

"Mr. Kitano, what are you trying to do?" Dongye Yuusei grabbed his wrist with one hand while sitting up and turned on the light in the room with the other hand.

The room was instantly as bright as day.

Dongye Yuusei looked at Kitano Keiji, his eyes filled with pain and disappointment. The recent turmoil had taught him that one must not lack caution. He had been suspicious of Kitano Keiji’s interest in these pieces of jewelry, but he had still held a glimmer of hope.

After all, the moment Kitano Keiji rode up to meet him on his motorcycle, he truly believed that Kitano would be a lifelong friend who would share both misfortune and wealth with him.

But he never expected.

This illusion was now easily shattered by the other party.

"Mr. Dongye, you... you were awake." Caught red-handed stealing, Kitano Keiji suddenly panicked, stammering his words.

Dongye Yuusei sneered coldly, "If I had been asleep, I would have woken up impoverished again. Kitano Keiji, it’s ridiculous how much I trusted you, treated you like a brother--I was too naive. You harbored ill intentions from the start, you bastard!"

"Idiot! Shut up!" Kitano Keiji’s complexion kept changing from pale to flushing, raging with embarrassed anger, he retorted, "Treat me like a brother? You mean like a dog! You strut around with your family’s dirty money, bossing me about, humiliating me, and now that you have no one else, you consider me a brother. You think I care?"

Dongye Yuusei, realizing he might have been a bit too harsh in the past, spoke with a flushed face, "But weren’t your tuition and living expenses paid by me? You ungrateful jerk! Get out! Disappear from my sight right now. I don’t ever want to see you again!"

"Go to hell!" Kitano Keiji suddenly lashed out with a kick, knocking Dongye Yuusei over, and then, without looking back, he grabbed the jewelry bag that had fallen onto the bed and fled.

"Ah! Stop right there!" Dongye Yuusei got up from the bed, grabbed the ashtray from the bedside table, and threw it out, hitting Kitano Keiji in the back of the head with a thud, causing him to stagger and fall then and there.

Kitano Keiji endured the pain in the back of his head and tried to get up to run away, reaching for the doorknob.

In a moment of desperation, Dongye Yuusei pounced on him and pinned him to the ground, then picked up the nearby ashtray and repeatedly struck him on the head with bloodthirsty frenzy.

"Bang!" "Bang!" "Bang!"

Once, twice, thrice...

Until Dongye Yuusei was too exhausted to continue, he stopped, gasping for breath, his long-suppressed negative emotions venting out. He looked at the bloody corpse before him with a look of horror, instinctively retreated, and fell to the floor, his face deathly pale, trembling violently.

"Ah! Mr. Kitano! Mr. Kitano! Kitano Keiji, wake up!" Dongye Yuusei pounced again, continuously shaking Kitano Keiji, but there was no response, so he cautiously reached out to check for his breath.

Once he confirmed that the man was truly dead, he collapsed again, feeling as if the world had come crashing down around him, he sat there, dazed, unable to come back to his senses for a long time.

He had never intended to kill the man!

Dongye Yuusei knew he was finished. There were security cameras inside and outside the hotel; he had no way to move the body. As soon as someone discovered Kitano Keiji’s death tomorrow, the murderer would naturally be pinpointed as him.

"Why did this happen? Why? How could it turn out this way... Whimper, whimper, whimper!"

Dongye Yuusei held his head, crying somewhat frantically, and after several minutes, his crying gradually ceased, his face transforming from panic and confusion to ferocity and rage.

"If I’m not given a way to live, then no one should."

In his eyes, the prime culprit for his downfall was that casino that had trapped him from the beginning with a honey trap.

Now with daybreak, he would inevitably become a fugitive in hiding, with no future or tomorrow to speak of, so he wanted revenge, he wanted to vent!

Even in death, he couldn’t die with regrets.

.........

At four in the morning, the bustling Tokyo had fallen into silence. Besides a few drunks and troublemakers, the streets were virtually empty.

With disheveled hair and an unshaven face, Dongye Yuusei rode an old motorcycle to the entrance of the casino he and Suzuki Yuki first entered; the facade bore the sign of a private club.

Although the door was tightly shut, with a sign hanging that read "Closed for three days for the New Year", and appeared empty, as a former regular, Dongye Yuusei knew all too well that this was just a front, and inside the secret gambling club, it must be bustling as usual.

He got off his bike with a cigarette in his mouth, used two large locks to lock the front and back doors from outside to prevent them from being opened, then took two plastic containers filled with gasoline from the motorcycle and doused the doors, before tossing his cigarette butt over.

Boom! A flame surged, and the fire spread rapidly, turning into a raging inferno, with the alcohol stored inside the club acting as fuel.

"Die, damn gamblers." Dongye Yuusei lit a cigarette, murmuring to himself.

Seeing the fire growing more intense, Dongye Yuusei mounted his motorcycle and sped off without looking back.

"Ah! Help! Help!"

"Someone come quick! Save us!"

Screams soon emanated from behind in the club.

But as the fire grew fiercer, the screams faded until they disappeared completely, leaving only a huge blaze coloring half of Tokyo’s night sky red.

By morning, the fire that had blazed all night was extinguished by the firefighters. Outside the scene, the police cordoned off an area, within which lay blackened bodies. Upon counting, a total of 54 people had died.

A large crowd of reporters and onlookers gathered outside the police line, shocked by the sight of so many bodies.

"Officer! Have you determined the cause of the fire? Is it possible that it was arson?"

"Some of the bodies are covered in charred chips; is this a secret casino? Could the fire be linked to Black Society violence?"

At the scene, Nakamura Shinichi’s expression was somber. He ignored questions from the reporters, knowing from the immediate review of last night’s security footage across the street that this was a deliberate act of arson.

people—a terrifying number of casualties.

This was a genuine major case to start the year.

Worse yet, he recognized the arsonist in the surveillance video: it was Dongye Yuusei, the poor guy who had been manipulated into ruination by Aoyama Xiu Xin’s planning, using a honey trap and this very casino.