Part 4

“You will game the stock trades with your little pocket change?” He laughed at her.

“You are deranged. This will never work, and when it doesn’t, we drown.”

Akari stood above him. Her claw swiftly cut Koji’s jugular, and he pushed her tongue into the wound to stop the bleeding. Her saliva released a Hemomem into his bloodstream. It carried information, a vision of her plan, and the vision grew like a building in Koji’s mind, tangible, solid, and logical. He felt Hemomem filling his body with strength and courage. His eyes bulged and he laughed frantically.

“I like it but for it to work I have to disclose confidential information.”

“Misleading confidential information, and only to your debtors, so they try to unload the debt as fast as they can. They’ll never know. At the end of the day, I will own Borei, and you, Sato-san, will be the CEO by the end of the day,” she whispered, then kissed his forehead, leaving a bloody imprint of her lips. Koji whinnied like some animal caught in a nightmare, and his hungry fingers reached for the keyboard. An impossible gamble at a level he would never have thought possible for a company man like him to take, a salaryman who had worked eighty hours a week for the past thirty years hiding in a sea of boardroom black suits. Here he was pulling global levers with the routine finance talks: calls and accounting sheets, numbers moving from negative toward nought, and then turning positive, while the creature in a bloodstained police uniform sat next to him, creating foreign accounts for digital currency and trading on the Nikkei from a few million into billion and finally trillions while she gnawed on popsicles. At three-thirty p.m., the exchange closed. They sat back, surrounded by candy wrappers, dried-out sushi trays, tea mugs, and a dead assistant. With rolled-up sleeves and armpit stains, he laughed. The phone rang.

The CEO’s office on the top floor had a wall of glass, and the CEO stood before it, looking out at the shivering reeds of the Zen garden. Behind the reeds sat a black helicopter. The broad, heavy door, adorned with golden dragons, opened, and Akari and Koji walked in. The board, dressed in black suits, surrounded them. The CEO turned and stepped in front of his desk. His fingers ran over the length of his name etched into a samurai dagger on his desk.

“Incredible,” he said. “Truly an astonishing feat of finance and gall. I’ve spent fifty years wearing this suit.” He pulled at the lapels of the light-grey suit. “And in those fifty years, I have never heard, contemplated, or even dreamed of what you two have done.” He looked at his watch. “And it’s only quarter to four.” He laughed, but the laugh died in his throat. “For fifty years, I played the game. I worked the hours.” He pointed at Koji. “Salarymen, yes?” Koji bowed. “I did the vile things my superiors asked of me. I did vile things that needed to be done. And I asked my charges to do vile things to others in my name. But this was no ordinary financial game.” He pointed at Akari. “This… this is not financial wizardry. This is some demonic obligation. And even that being so, I’m also ashamed I did not see the solution. For the past fifteen years, I have tried to hide the losses and keep Borei the golden calf of the country, and you brought it back from the brink in a day.” He looked back at Koji.

Koji bowed again. “This was her plan.” He pointed at Akari.

“Hers?” the CEO chuckled. “Just like that. An office girl in a dirty uniform outplayed the global finance system.” Their eyes met. Akari didn’t budge, bit into a lollipop and spat blood and a tooth on the floor in front of the CEO. “You are the demonic obligation, aren’t you?”
“You are boring everyone, old man,” she said. “Time to go,” she nodded at the helicopter.

“Yes. A true warrior knows when he’s lost. I agree, I must go. But let me go in the style of old.”

Akari nodded.

The CEO stripped off his suit jacket and knelt. He ripped his shirt open. The blade of the dagger came out singing. He took a deep breath and pushed the shiny blade into his lower belly. He pulled left, then right. He exhaled and drooled. Blood spilled onto the floor. He groaned and his body fell sideways into a fetal position. In the silence of the room, Akari leaped like a beast and buried her face in his abdomen, scavenging the blood loss. The quiet room filled with wet sounds of feeding and guttural gargles.

“All hail the new owner of Borei,” shouted Koji.

“Hail to the new master of Borei!” The men in black bowed to Akari.

The reeds outside bowed in the wind.