ryethenovel Chapter 220 Spirits
Chapter 220 Spirits
Shinjuku, Keio Plaza Hotel.
The twin towers, reaching a height of 170 meters, stand tall in the winter rain.
Forty-seventh floor. Top-tier executive lounge.
The heavy soundproof doors completely shut out the sounds of wind and rain from the outside. The entire room was carpeted with a five-centimeter-thick Persian handmade wool rug. Amber-colored lamplight and the rich aroma of aged cognac filled the air. The black and white keys of a jazz piano were gently struck by the musicians.
Inside the deep red leather booth by the window.
Matsuura, the president of Matsuura Construction, was sinking his massive frame into a soft sofa. His custom-made shirt was covered in deep wrinkles. His expensive sterling silver cufflinks were missing, and the sleeves were roughly pushed up to his elbows. His tie lay torn on the marble coffee table beside him.
Three empty Macallan whiskey bottles lay scattered on the table.
Matsuura held the fourth bottle of sake in his hand, held the bottle up to his chapped lips, and gulped it down. The pale golden liquid flowed down his chin, soaking the hem of his shirt.
"Two billion... Chiba Bank..." Matsuura uttered a gurgling sound from his throat.
His eyes were bloodshot, his gaze fixed on the dazzling cityscape outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. Among those glittering lights, seven were projects he had been building.
Thirty years as a bricklayer, climbing from the bottom of the Kansai region to the top of the port area. Then, a five-minute market downturn wiped out this vast empire in an instant.
He felt like a toad crawling and scurrying at the bottom of a swamp. This so-called financial system was utterly absurd and disgusting.
A slight commotion came from the double mahogany doors of the lounge.
Two men, dripping wet, attempted to enter the lounge.
The supervisor standing at the door immediately stepped forward, extending his white-gloved arm with a cold, hard smile on his face.
"Gentlemen, this is the executive floor area. Do you have a reservation?" The supervisor's gaze swept unabashedly over Katayama's bleeding right hand and Kudo's mud-stained shoes.
Katayama leaned against the doorframe, breathing weakly.
Kudo's fingers twitched helplessly inside his pocket.
"Let them in!"
A brutal roar abruptly ripped apart the elegant jazz music playing in the lounge.
Matsuura swayed his massive body as he stood up from the booth. He grabbed the pure black American Express Centurion card from the table, swung his arm in a half-circle in mid-air, and hurled it violently toward the door.
"Clatter".
The hard plastic card hit the marble floor tiles and slid to the foreman's toes.
"This lounge is all booked today!" Matsuura staggered forward and shoved aside the manager who was frozen in place.
He looked at Kudo, covered in mud, and Katayama, whose finger was broken. A morbid fanaticism blazed in his eyes.
"Come in! Enter!" Matsuura laughed loudly, his laughter harsh and grating. "Let me see what fresh scraps this meat grinder has spit out this time!"
He roughly grabbed Kudo's sleeve and dragged the two of them toward a booth by the window.
Kudo and Katayama slumped onto the leather sofa. The soft touch momentarily eased their extremely tense nerves.
Matsuura turned his head and loudly gave instructions to the waiter not far away.
"Bring me the liquor! Macallan! Ice! And some bandages to wrap this brat's hands!"
The waiter nervously brought over the tray.
Katayama picked up the gauze with his intact left hand, gritted his teeth, and haphazardly wrapped it around the several pale, broken bones. Blood quickly seeped through the white gauze, staining it a glaring dark red.
Matsuura grabbed a bottle of whiskey that had just been delivered. He didn't even use a glass; he held the bottle directly to his chapped lips and gulped it down. The pale golden liquid trickled down his chin, soaking the hem of his shirt.
"Drink! Drink it all!"
Matsuura slammed the bottle heavily onto the marble tabletop. The bottom of the glass bottle struck the table with a dull thud.
He grabbed two empty glasses, filled them with strong liquor, and roughly pushed them in front of the two men.
Kudo held the glass in both hands. Due to the extreme cold, his upper and lower teeth chattered uncontrollably. The rim of the glass clinked against his teeth, making a soft, clattering sound. The spicy liquid slid into his stomach, bringing a burning, stinging pain.
Katayama picked up his glass with one hand, tilted his head back, and drank it all in one gulp. The numbing effect of the alcohol brought back a sickly flush to his face.
Matsuura slumped back on the sofa. His bloodshot eyes were fixed on the dazzling cityscape outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.
"Two billion... those bastards from Chiba Bank..." Matsuura groaned, his throat gurgling.
He suddenly raised his thick arm and pointed to the flashing neon lights outside the window.
"See those cranes? There are seven construction sites there, all owned by Matsuura Construction! Thirty years as a bricklayer, climbing from the bottom of Kansai to the top of the port area. I've built so many buildings and drunk so much alcohol!"
Matsuura's features were contorted with extreme anger and despair.
"The market plunged in the last five minutes. The maintenance ratio was breached! The system forced liquidation! Five hundred million in cash was poured in, and there wasn't even a sound! Tomorrow morning, court seals will be plastered all over my door!"
Katayama leaned back in his leather chair. He looked at the nouveau riche who had gone mad, a hollow mockery playing on his lips.
"You're taking over, old man."
Katayama's voice was weak, yet it carried the condescending disdain of a finance whiz.
"The moment the market collapsed, implied volatility became absolutely abnormal. Market makers directly cut off the underlying interfaces. This is a physical liquidity crunch." Katayama tossed a metal lighter on the table with his left hand. "Your 500 million in cash didn't fill the bottom at all; it filled the profit pool of Wall Street market makers."
Matsuura froze.
He suddenly straightened up, his massive body leaning forward. He grabbed Katayama by the collar of his mud-stained baseball jacket and half-lifted him up.
"You brat! What do you know?!" Matsuura's eyes widened, spitting on Katayama's face. "You think you can understand this market just because you've read a few books? Who broke your finger?!"
"Hehehe... I only misappropriated five million..."
A suppressed sob interrupted Matsuura's roar.
Kudo covered his face with his hands. Muddy water mixed with tears spilled out between his fingers.
"I've been working overtime until 11 PM every day... I just wanted to buy a luxury apartment in the port area... Tomorrow morning at 9 AM, the trading company's audit department will discover that 5 million yen hole... It's all over..."
Upon hearing this number, Matsuura paused for a second.
He loosened Katayama's collar. Katayama slumped back onto the sofa, coughing violently.
"Five million?" Matsuura looked at Kudo as if he were an alien. Then, he tilted his head back and burst into an extremely shrill and absurd laugh.
"Hahahaha! Five million yen?!" Matsuura laughed until tears streamed down his face, slamming his fist on the marble tabletop. "I can earn more than that by opening a bottle of Romanée-Conti in a Ginza club! And you'd actually die for a mere five million?!"
Kudo's shoulders suddenly stopped shrugging.
He slowly raised his face, which was covered in mud and tears. The burning sensation of the alcohol, mixed with the humiliation of being looked down upon, caused a sickly flush to rise on his pale cheeks.
"So what if it's five million...?" Kudo's voice trembled. He grabbed the whiskey glass in front of him and splashed the remaining half-glass of liquor directly in his face. "I swindled my relatives' retirement money from the countryside! I'm not even worth a dog! You owe two billion... Ha, you think your jump will look better than mine?!"
Katayama leaned back on the sofa, watching this usually timid office worker suddenly go crazy. He clutched his stomach with his left hand, coughed violently, and then burst into laughter.
"Hahahahahahaha!!! We're all trash!!! Trash!! Trash...cough cough cough."
"Cough cough... He's right, old man." Katayama raised his right hand, which was wrapped in blood-soaked gauze, and waved it in the air. "Two billion corpses and five million corpses, if they were thrown onto an asphalt road, would create the same size crater. Even the Yakuza wouldn't bother to give them a second glance."
Matsuura's maniacal laughter abruptly stopped.
His bloodshot eyes were fixed on the two people in front of him. One was an employee covered in mud and weeping bitterly, and the other was a college student with a broken finger who was spouting theories.
The enormous class divide collapsed with a bang in this booth.
Thirty years of hard work and struggle, and on this rainy night, he found himself on the same path as these two. A sense of absurdity gripped him like a tangible chokehold.
"Oh shit……"
Matsuura let out a muffled curse. He grabbed the whiskey bottle from the table, brought it to his lips, and took another large gulp. The pale golden liquid trickled down his chin and into his open shirt collar.
"Bang."
The empty wine bottle was carelessly tossed onto the carpet with a dull thud.
"They're all the same! They're all remnants of tubes that have been removed!" Matsuura spread his thick arms, grabbed Kudo and Katayama by the neck, and forcibly pulled them towards him.
The strong smell of alcohol mixed with the stench of mud and blood permeated the air between the three men.
"Since we're all going to hell anyway..." Matsuura grinned, revealing teeth stained with alcohol, his eyes gleaming with a mad, utterly reckless abandonment of everything. "Let's go! I'll take you to the presidential suite on the rooftop!"
Kudo was being strangled and could hardly breathe. He struggled a couple of times, his leather shoes kicking wildly on the wool carpet.
"Let go... What are you doing there...?"
"Go drink the most expensive wine! Go order the most expensive woman!" Matsuura interrupted him roughly, swaying his massive body as he stood up and dragged the two of them off the sofa.
He pointed to the blurry sea of neon lights outside the floor-to-ceiling window.
"You penniless wretch who can't even afford a luxury apartment, and you virgin who's never even touched a woman's hand. Before you die, I'll show you what the top of Tokyo really feels like!"
Outside the window, the cold winter rain slanted and pounded against the huge glass curtain wall, winding into fine streaks of water.
The bass saxophone of jazz music echoed through the lounge.
It masked the sound of the three people's dragging, staggering footsteps on the wool carpet.