Chapter 4 – The Moment Our Eyes Met, I Realized It Was an Opening

◇《POV: ???》

Two weeks after the Kitaharu Town Mass Kidnapping Case.

Several men and women entered an underground facility built deep in the mountainous region of H Prefecture’s north.

───Minegi Workshop, Ltd.

This company, now in its eighty-fourth year since founding, has never run out of black rumors.

Power harassment, sexual harassment, moral harassment, parental harassment.

Every kind of harassment that exists in this world is said to have originated from this company.

And honestly, that tracks. Publicly, they’re supposedly a company that makes “weird chairs,” but the truth is different—this was a corrupt enterprise developing and manufacturing illegal cursed tools.

Cursed energy still has a lot about it that remains unexplained, but it’s been known since ancient times that it has a strong affinity with living creatures’ emotions.

Noticing that, the founder—Minegi Damyaridon Tarou—split off from his family business of smugglers, founded the company using his underworld connections,

and amassed a fortune by selling cursed tools that “interfere with other people’s minds” and cursed tools that “block mental interference” in the right balance.

Now then—this underground facility, basically Minegi Workshop’s true headquarters, gave off exactly the kind of dark atmosphere you’d expect from an evil organization.

Leading the group down the corridor was a red-haired young man with a rough-looking face.

Behind him, several women clustered together as they followed—like some kind of harem-hero party.

In stark contrast to the young man’s suit, the women were dressed in cute outfits with barely any fabric.

Damp bodies, flushed faces, and the faint scent of male.

……The guy in front is absolute trash.

In Japan, where monogamy is the norm, anyone who runs a legit harem like that has to be an unhinged, socially hopeless freak.

He’s probably the kind of scum who not only can’t cut a cake properly—he’d just shove the whole sliced cake into his own stomach.

Lower than an elementary schooler in terms of respecting other people—ah, crap, crap. I got carried away by anger and ended up letting my real thoughts about normies spill out again.

If I keep this up, the world’s going to find out that the “ace underworld journalist” is actually a vocabulary-poor, fresh-and-bouncy high school girl.

“That aside… that guy is so damn sexy.”

If you ignore his catastrophically rotten insides, he’s a handsome man with a muscular build and above-average height.

Yeah. I get why they fall for him.

“Ahh^~, I wanna latch onto that solid body~! Rub up against him, bathe in his pheromones head to toe—and then—!”

“Minegi Mounteeria Shirou-sama. One of the Four Heavenly Kings of dealers, Nokoma Nokomasero, has arrived.”

“……!”

This is not the time to be muttering to myself.

The handsome guy in question—Sero—was kneeling before someone.

Sitting there was the current president of Minegi Workshop, the target of this infiltration investigation.

The cheerful middle-aged-man vibe he sometimes showed on TV was nowhere to be found. A stylish older man radiating overwhelming pressure gazed quietly at Sero.

“You were the one who sold cursed tools to the Shogan bunch, weren’t you?”

“Yes. I sold them at ten times the asking price.”

Shogan is the name of the yakuza group that got wiped out the other day.

They weren’t exactly impressive as an organization, but apparently they’d been regaining momentum after bringing in a Grade Three curse sorcerer.

Then, in the middle of that, their organization collapsed because of someone, and it was reported that their sorcerer was found while in hiding and arrested.

“Tell me, Sero. What kind of buyer is ideal for a dealer?”

“A big spender with a tight mouth… someone you can keep a long-term relationship with, perhaps?”

“Close. But a tight mouth isn’t the important part.”

“Forgive my foolishness—are you saying it isn’t important that information doesn’t leak outside?”

“Sure. But if their mouth is tight, you just pry it open.”

“……”

“It sounds like they handed the cursed tools over to the police without even trying.”

I’ve confirmed this from multiple angles.

An illegal cursed tool with mental interference effects was recovered from the scene. The exact source hasn’t been made public, but to someone who knows what to look for, it’s obvious at a glance these are their cursed tools.

“Our credibility just hit rock bottom. How are you going to take responsibility for that?”

“H-Hii…!”

In fact, whether out of fear of a mass crackdown or not, some clients have already started moving to cut Minegi Workshop off entirely.

My infiltration this time was supposed to verify the truth behind rumors that leaked during that shift, but…

“This isn’t even ‘bingo’—if I expose this fact… heh-heh.”

The camera’s already rolling.

All I have to do now is get out safely and transmit the footage.

“Yep. My Unique Curse Technique really is the strongest.”

With a technique that makes perfect stealth possible, there’s no way they’ll notice my voice—let alone my presence, my figure, or my aura.

“Fine. Your people-handling is top-class. You’ll keep being useful to us.”

“……Yes, sir!”

Sero bowed low and stiffened on the floor.