Maohden Vol. 1 Read Online Free PDF Page B

wound the spring of a heart made from glass and paper, and this young man had stepped forth.
    Turning the corners without hesitation, Setsura came to an ornate, ebony door. Though he’d only been there once before in his life, his memory proved precise. He grasped the brass doorknob.
    He wasn’t greeted by an electric pulse strong enough to fell an elephant, or a spurt of mustard gas. The door silently opened to the left and right, revealing the large director’s office.
    The lavish furnishings, the leather sofa and marble table, didn’t seem at all fitting to a yakuza’s headquarters.
    Next to the window on the left was a large oak desk. Behind the desk was his host. The face beneath the shock of well-groomed blond hair sported an unusually hearty complexion. The build of his body suggested a sixtyish corporate president who was into sports and kendo.
    However, his countenance and the vigor suffusing it—as if all the fat in his body had been boiled down and his face extruded from the lye—was hardly that of a company man.
    Kanji Mitakara. The director of the Sanbo Group, that ruled over the northwest quadrant of Shinjuku. Their territory comprised the once quiet suburban neighborhoods and school zones from the Seibu Shinjuku line to Mejiro Boulevard, followed the cross streets to New Mejiro Boulevard, and traveled the length of Yamate Street, running through Kamiochiai, Nakaochiai and Shimo’ochiai.
    This old man—it was said he could freeze a tiger in its tracks with a single look—stood at the head of an organization of five hundred “associates,” dealing in narcotics, prostitution and illegal weapons, and taking in seven billion yen a year.
    He’d earned his livelihood in the black market for almost half a century without suffering so much as a scratch, his good luck and wariness making him a legend in Shinjuku. And now he threw the doors wide open and cast all precautions aside to greet this young man—just who was this Setsura Aki?
    Setsura closed the door behind him and gave the old man a long look. “You look pretty drugged up to me.”
    Kanji Mitakara nodded. His face was flushed, his intoxicated eyes moist. His pale lips moved, like a pair of willow leafs. “Yeah, I’m scared. Were you any other man in my line of business, hell, you could chew me up and spit me out and I’d die with a smile on my face.”
    Fear and fierceness filled his voice, and it wasn’t just the drugs. Setsura answered quietly, “And knowing that, you threw the first punch.”
    The voice emerged from the shadows drifting there in the darkness, devoid of human emotion, as if those crystal clear eyes existed only to take in all the melodrama of life and communicate only the cold hard facts to the cerebral cortex.
    “What about Shiragi and Kurusu?” Mitakara asked.
    “Skedaddled. But I know where.”
    A faint smile finally graced Mitakara’s mouth. “Skedaddled, eh? Since the day I met you, I haven’t thought about anything else. But them, they’re still young, they’ve still attachments to this world. I have to hope you’ll see them off one of these days.”
    “One of these days.”
    Mitakara flashed a broad, relieved smile. “Good to know. I’d really hate to take the trip by myself and leave them behind, no matter how much I may deserve it.”
    “So has Gento Roran returned?”
    “That he has. Where has he been these fifteen years? No matter who you ask, nobody knows. But one thing’s for certain—he wants your head on a platter. I told him the odds were against us pulling it off. He was going to have to settle things with you himself. And we wouldn’t meet again.”
    Mitakara suddenly stopped speaking. His eyes brimmed. His lips trembled. He seemed caught up in a rapturous state.
    “It is terrifying,” he said, the words leaking from the corners of his mouth all the weaker and euphoric. “Anybody who sees you fight regrets it, and now resents those who sleep soundly at night having not seen what