บท 6: Chapter 05 - The Irishman

"Is this the place?"

"Yes, Rory-san."

I nodded as we entered the establishment – a middling hair salon like any other one might find – and scanned the interior. As expected, most of its clientele seemed to be female, with a variety of hair stylists – male or female presenting – working diligently.

I frowned – it was not immediately apparent who was the person we were here for.

We were immediately waylaid, however, by the prompt appearance of the salon receptionist – a young, fairly attractive man who seemed like he was poured into his shirt. He rattled off a Japanese phrase at us – not that I could understand – and I simply turned to my associate and let him take the reins of the conversation while I continued observing the people within the salon.

Honestly, this was all very annoying, but business was business and until this situation was fixed, more important issues wouldn't be.

"Rory-san."

I turned back to my associate, who nodded at me with a telling look. "He's here?" I asked.

The man nodded and glanced over towards the far back of the salon, where a young man with light brown hair and a soul patch was working on an older woman.

"Him?" I asked, just to make sure.

He nodded.

I cocked my head to the side. He didn't seem like much. He was lean, certainly, and what I assumed passed for stylish in this socially backward country, but otherwise pretty unremarkable.

Still, there was no accounting for taste, and I nodded back at my associate. "Alright. Clear out the shop."

"We might need to wait for the clients to be done before we can proceed, Rory-san, or else there would be complaints."

He framed it as a possibility, but it was clear that he was urging me to follow along. I rolled my eyes, sighed, but nodded. "Alright."

The man bowed his head at me thankfully before pulling aside the receptionist and muttering something – something that clearly made the man blanche and nod fearfully. No prizes guessing what it was – he'd probably just been made aware of who we were and what the consequences would be to cross us.

While my associate worked his magic, I took a seat in the waiting area and picked up one of the many magazines strewn about the foot table, idly paging through them even though I couldn't read a lick of them. Asian lasses were admittedly quite fetching and exotic, but I couldn't quite get my head around the extreme fetishization of them I sometimes saw around the world. I was fond of freckled redheads myself – possibly a product of having grown up around so many fetching ones – but I wasn't about to make an entire culture out of that.

"It is done, Rory-san," my local associate informed me as he took the seat next to mine and mimicked me. "They will clear out as soon as they finish with their clients."

"And our little mouse?"

"He will be told to stay back and close shop. That will be our cue."

I nodded as I continued to page through the latest magazine I'd picked up. "No back exits? Nowhere he could run?"

"None, Rory-san."

That seemed like a fire hazard, but then many things about this place made my skin crawl anyway – what was a little building code recklessness compared to that?

"Alright."

I didn't need to coordinate the next phase of the plan or anything with him, as he was under orders not to get in my way and simply facilitate my actions. Honestly, his bosses would've probably preferred to get rid of the snivelling accountant that prompted this intervention, but I'd managed to convince them that a good, loyal accountant was worth the life of some nobody hair stylist.

The minutes passed with increasing tension as the other stylists seemed to realize something was wrong when, after each client was finished, the receptionist would practically materialize next to them and whisper something urgently – likely the order to get out as quickly as possible.

Smart lads.

Only when the target was finished and the receptionist practically flew over to him to give him his bogus orders did I begin to make my move. As the receptionist finished arguing with the stylist, likely over the perceived injustice of being forced to stay behind and do someone else's job, I nodded at the receptionist as he walked past me and paused a few feet away from the grumbling stylist until I heard the tell-tale sound of the door's bell jingling.

"Yuuya?" I asked, probably butchering the pronunciation.

The stylist flinched in surprise and turned to look at me, shock on his face. He rattled off something in Japanese and I sighed.

"I don't talk your language, boy," I informed him flatly.

The man continued to say something at me and I slightly turned at the sound of my associate coming up.

"What's he saying?" I asked.

"He says the salon is closed and we need to go," my handy-dandy translator informed me. "He says it in a very rude way, Rory-san."

I frowned in momentary confusion before remembering that the Japanese language had different words for different levels of politeness – just like in other languages, but on a much more exhaustive level. I nodded at him.

"I see."

Without warning, I lashed out with my fist and decked the stylist in the left cheek, flooring him. As the man cried out, my associate calmly turned around and walked back to the front to lower the industrial curtains. That way, no errant passerby would get a good look at whatever was going on in here.

"Let's try this again," I said with a grim smile as I towered over the wounded man. "Are you Yuuya?"

He blinked at me in confusion for a few moments before nodding fervently and tapping his own chest. "Yuuya! Yuuya!"

Well, that was good. That meant we hadn't cocked things up yet. I gestured over my local associate and gestured at the stylist. "Translate for me."

"Yes, Rory-san."

I squatted down to Yuuya's eye level and fixed him with an impassive stare. "Yuuya," I began, my associate providing fairly simultaneous translation, "My name's Rory, and I work for some very dangerous people who are quite cross with you right now."

The man's stare switched between me and my associate as he kept up with the translation and began sputtering.

"He says he has no idea what you're talking about, Rory-san."

"Fair enough," I granted before digging out my smartphone, turning it on, finding the right picture in the gallery, and turning the screen for him to look at it. "Look familiar?"

The complete loss of colour on his face told me it did.

"Yuna Okamoto," I supplied, seeing as how he seemed to refuse to acknowledge the fact that he had, in fact recognized the very explicit and clear picture of the young woman I'd shown him.

"Okamoto Yuna, Rory-san – we put our last names first," my associate reminded me calmly.

"Apologies," I told him before turning back to the stylist. "Are you going to tell me you don't remember her?"

The man shook his head quickly, sputtering what I could only fathom were blatant lies and denials.

"He says he's never—"

I didn't need him to finish, and once again my closed fist lashed out and rammed itself into his unbruised cheek. He again cried out in pain as he further slumped against the salon's back wall.

"—heard of her, Rory-san."

"I figured."

Both of us watched the man whimper and cover his aching cheeks with his hands, tears streaming down his face. I sighed and got up and turned away, motioning at my associate.

"Get him up."

"Yes, Rory-san."

Despite the stylist's protests and feeble attempts at resistance, my associate was easily able to get him onto his feet – being, after all – a good foot taller than the stylist and significantly more well-built. I turned towards his discarded toolkit at his workstation and pulled out one of the heavier-duty scissors there. I then turned towards them and kept up the grim smile.

"Let's try again, and this time – every lie you tell us, I cut off a finger, aye?"

I swear – the man metaphorically shat himself when my associate's translation ended, his eyes wide open and wild, staring in terror at the scissors. He could not nod fast enough, it seemed.

"Excellent," I said pleasantly before showing him the picture of the woman again. "Do you recognize this woman?"

A desperate nod.

"And did you, in fact, seduce her and sleep with her?"

Again, he nodded – though more reluctantly.

"Despite knowing that she was in a steady relationship?"

This time, he paused. He then asked something I glanced over at my associate behind him to ask him to translate.

"He asks if we're friends of the pencil-dick, Rory-san."

I nodded sagely. "Break his left wrist."

SNAP

The only reason someone didn't immediately hear the piercing shriek the stylist let out was because my associate had clamped a hand over his mouth just before breaking the stylist's wrist.

After he finished screaming his head off, I calmly raised his lowered chin with the pointy end of the scissors in my hand and stared him down. "Insulting others to avoid the question is unwise, lad. Now, are you going to answer my question?"

The man whimpered as he gave a brief nod.

"Good. So, I'll ask again: did you know the young woman was in a steady relationship when you seduced her?"

He nodded, defeated.

"This corroborates the chat history, Rory-san," my associate informed me. "My superiors have instructed me to allow you to continue if that were the case."

I nodded in thanks before turning back to Yuuya.

"You're probably wondering why this is happening, aye? If we're friends with her boyfriend?"

He nodded, still whimpering from the shattered wrist.

"We're not his friends – my associate here is his colleague, and I happen to be a client," I informed him. "The problem is – he found out about your little romp with his bird, and that's gotten in his head. Now, he can't do the work he's meant to be doing, and that's affected my business. And I can't have that."

I lashed out at him and grabbed him by the neck, squeezing tight as I let my anger finally show, the scissors clattering to the ground.

"Do you have any idea who your immature little fuckery just crossed?" hissed at him as he began to choke and sputter. "Whose business you're messing with, you cunt?!"

I let go of his neck and decked him again, then again, and again – each time, his head snapping to the other side like he was a wind gauge being hit by opposing breezes. Eventually, he passed out, and I stared at my associate.

"Put him in his chair, restrain him, and gag him."

"Yes, Rory-san."

I walked away from the two and pulled out a cigarette to calm my anger, lest the punishment fail to meet expectations. For what he'd done, for what he'd nearly cocked up, this philandering shit-for-brains needed to suffer.

As I puffed on my cigarette, I shrugged off my coat and then proceeded to roll up my sleeves. I'd never much liked the idea of getting blood on visible places of my clothes and the coat was far too expensive to be stained with muddy blood like this arsehole's.

By the time Yuuya woke up again, I was ready to proceed, staring down at him as I used the chair's arms to lean over him.

"I won't lie, lad – you're not going to live to see another day," I informed him matter-of-factly. "But you won't go easy. I'll make sure of it. By the time I'm through with you, they'll dedicate an entire Wiki page to how badly you died."

The stylist's mildly concussed gaze sharpened a little at my associate's translation and he began to weakly struggle against his binds and gag, to no avail. My associate did good work. Speaking of which, I turned to look at him. "You might want to take a seat and, I dunno, read something. This might take a while."

"Understood, Rory-san."

As my associate took up my offer and walked back to the waiting area, I turned back to my victim and grabbed his own tools from the workspace and wielded the largest scissor I could find in his kit, snipping it in front of his face with a vicious grin.

"Let's get started, shall we?"

"Daisuke?"

The young man who answered the door looked depressed and defeated, but otherwise nodded at my inquiry.

"My name's Rory," I introduced myself, tilting my cap in greeting. "I believe Sora might've mentioned me?"

A flash of recognition passed through the young man's eyes as he nodded and flushed red. "The overseas client!" he exclaimed in heavily accented English before bowing low. "I…I cannot apologize enough for my delay in processing your transaction, Rory-san!"

I smiled pleasantly at the young man – good manners were very important in our line of work. "That's quite alright," I told him genially. "Would you mind if I came in? I wanted to discuss some things with you about said transaction."

Daisuke obviously allowed me inside and was honestly a little annoying in how obsequious a host he attempted to be, offering me everything from a seat on the couch to a beverage. In the end, we just sat at his dining table. And then he bowed again and apologized for the delay.

I waved it off. "As I said, it's quite alright. Sora informed me you had some personal circumstances that made you a little unfocused," I said, taking out my phone and placing it on the table, face-down.

He nodded shyly, his face red with shame.

"The reason I'm here, Mr Daisuke, is that I intend on doing more business with Sora and the others. But before I can, I need to make sure such delays are not going to occur again."

"T-They will not, Rory-san!"

"I would like to believe you, lad, but when I first began this business arrangement with your bosses, I was told then that you were the best accounts manager in the business. And yet you dropped the ball. How can I be sure it won't happen again?"

The young man appeared somewhat distressed, and not for the first time, I wondered if he even knew what kind of people he worked for. I doubted it – no one who knowingly worked for the Yakuza would've taken the grave insult to his personal honor as passively as he had.

"I…"

Click!

The sound of the front door opening caught our attention, as did the subsequent female voice.

"Daisuke!" it called out playfully before rattling off a few Japanese phrases I couldn't make heads or tail of.

The girlfriend, I figured.

"Go. I'll be on the balcony having a smoke," I informed him, getting up from the table as quietly as I could and following through on my words as Daisuke practically ran to the front door hall to greet his girlfriend. And probably to lay down the law given my presence.

Out on the veranda, enjoying my smoke, I could hear the feverish, unintelligible gibberish of the two having a quick-fire discussion, but kept it out of mind. It didn't sound, from the sound of things, that they had even so much as had a fight about her cheating. Pathetic.

Still, fixing his personality wasn't my problem. I just needed business to go back to normal.

A knock on the veranda's glass door prompted me to turn around and I saw Daisuke motioning for me to come inside again, whereupon I was greeted with the sight of his girlfriend bowing demurely at me in greeting.

"Welcome, Rory-san," she said in equally accented English.

I eyed Daisuke and gestured at her with my lit cigarette. "Your girlfriend, lad?"

He nodded. "Okamoto Yuna," he introduced her.

I nodded before taking an idle puff of my cig and then blowing smoke gently. "Charmed," I said at length in response to her greeting. I then stared at Daisuke. "She can sit in if you want, but we do need to finish our conversation."

He nodded and the couple exchanged a few words before, apparently, it was decided that she would sit in on the conversation – I suppose, in his own way, the lad might've been trying to impress his girlfriend with the fact that he had business contacts with a foreigner.

Again, somewhat pathetic.

Still, from the intrigued look in her eyes as we sat down again at the dining table, she'd never seen a redheaded Irishman before in her life, so I was probably the most exotic person she'd ever met.

"As I was saying," I spoke up again to take charge of the conversation. "I need assurances that business will flow as per usual in the future."

The girlfriend stared at Daisuke quizzically, but it seemed to make him even more confident as he straightened his back and stared me down in return. "I can guarantee it, Rory-san."

I looked at him at length before deciding to drop the bomb.

"Then, are you saying the Yuuya problem is resolved?"

Both the lad and his bird across the table froze in their seats at the name – each for a very different reason, I imagined.

As both immediately thereafter began to fire questions in unintelligible Japanese at me, then each other, I stayed quiet and just watched impassively as their questions at me evolved into a full-out screaming match between them.

After hearing enough noise, I then flipped over my phone, unlocked it, accessed the relevant gallery, and played the video file therein.

It took a moment, but the pained whimpering and muffled screaming made them stop their own yelling.

Both of them came up to the phone and paled as they watched the video – with good reason. In it, Yuuya the stylist could be seen bleeding from a multitude of lacerations while some parts of his flesh appeared to have been gouged out or burned entirely. His face had been deliberately left recognizable for the purposes of positive identification, but the rest of him basically looked like he'd been put through a meat grinder.

The girl clamped her hands over her mouth and muffled a scream of horror while Daisuke was rooted to his spot, staring blankly at the video.

"That's him, isn't it?" I asked calmly.

As Daisuke nodded dumbly, the girl ran over to me and grabbed at my coat while on her knees, begging me something I couldn't understand linguistically, but which I imagined was an attempt to beg for his life.

"Keep watching," I simply told her.

Sure enough, a few minutes into the video, Yuuya died after I slit his throat with one of his own scissors.

Both of them were in obvious shock – so much so that they barely moved when I retrieved my phone and tucked it back into my coat. I finished my cigarette and put it out on the table.

"As I said, I need guarantees that business will no longer be delayed," I told them as though I hadn't just irrevocably changed their lives with a five-minute video. "Except, I couldn't trust that you'd fix the problem, lad. So I took matters into my own hands."

"You…you murdered someone, Rory-san!" the young man finally sputtered.

I fixed him with a stare. "Yes, I did. Quite easily, I might add."

"You…murderer!" the girl screamed at me – probably hoping her neighbors would hear her and call the cops. If so, she was shit out of luck.

I stood up, causing them to flinch, and straightened my coat. "Murderer?" I asked rhetorically.

Before either of them could react, I grabbed the girlfriend by the throat and bodily lifted her off the ground, her legs kicking wildly as my iron grip cut off her air circulation.

"I am that and more, lass," I informed her flatly. "And your little tryst nearly screwed me and my business."

"Rory-san!"

With my free hand, I pointed at him warningly. "You better wake up, lad. You don't just work for anyone. You work for people like me. And you're a lucky one, too, because our original plan was to kill all three of you!"

Daisuke reeled from the revelation while his girlfriend continued to claw at my hand feebly and her kicks grew weaker and weaker. Eventually, I just let go, allowing her to drop with a heavy thud onto the ground, whereupon she took a deep, gasping breath.

"Fortunately for you, though, good accountants willing to work for our kind of organizations are few and far between," I informed Daisuke coldly. "So I managed to get your bosses to let me handle this my way."

I glanced down at the girlfriend. "You won't find your body warmer's body anywhere. It's been disposed of permanently. And the coppers won't bother looking too deep into this – I guarantee that."

I then brought out a cigarette and lit up again. "Which leaves you two with a choice," I informed them. "Either you stop fucking around with our business, or you die. I don't rightly give a shite if you stick together or not, but if you—" I told the girl pointedly before gesturing at her boyfriend, "affect his work performance again with anything you do, believe me when I say that we will have you sold to the sickest, vilest brothel we can find in the arse-end of the world. You'll be begging us to kill you. Understood?"

The girl looked at me, terrified, and nodded fearfully. I then turned to Daisuke, who looked shell-shocked by everything happening.

"And you," I addressed him now. "The group's going to move you into one of their compounds in a few hours to keep you, and maybe her, under supervision. But if you let your work suffer again because of some cunt who can't keep her legs closed, the next time your Yakuza bosses want to kill you, I'll volunteer instead of saving your sorry arse. Got it?"

This time, it was the young man's turn to nod fearfully. I fixed them both with a stare, trying to discern how genuine their contrition was, before nodding in satisfaction.

"Good," I said. "And before either of you get any idea of the neighbors calling the coppers on me…well…let's just say you better hope they don't, for their sake."

Smiling as I saw the two of them fearfully glancing at each other, I put my cap back on before tilting it at both of them.

"Thank you for the hospitality. I hope this is the last time we meet."