Chapter 318 - An occupational disease

As they had planned, Yuta manages to enter the restaurant. He's on the second floor while Takeuchi Touya and the hostages are on the ground floor. 

The doors are sealed shut. If he even makes a small noise, he has no doubt that Takeuchi Touya will bomb the entire restaurant.

He wonders if he should follow his father's plans or just go ahead and kill Takeuchi Touya. 

The phone in his pocket vibrates. Yuta checks the message. 

[Men keep their promises.]

The message is from his father. Yuta exhales, exasperated. Does his father want to say that he won't be a man if he doesn't keep a promise? Did his father always keep promises? 

Yuta opens the back window and lets the mercenaries in. They are skilled at what they do. He watches five of them go to the door that leads to the first floor. Suddenly, Yuta is lifted by a mercenary.

"What are you doing?" Yuta stares at the man with the mask. "Put me down."

"Your father commanded us to take you out of here as soon as possible." The man replies, "He apologised for this inconvenience to you, but you are a child. He said that he would be a dead man if his wife finds out."

"..." Yuta pinches his lips together. That might be true. 

Kamiyama Kiyohira rubs his hands anxiously. His son, his brother, and his younger sister-in-law are inside. He hasn't heard from Rie either. Where could she be? He has called their home too. But she hasn't reached.

After thinking for a moment, he sends a message to his secretary. Maybe his wife still doesn't know about this. However, he should know where she is. 

***

When Ren arrives, he sees a huge crowd of police officers and journalists in front of the restaurant. The atmosphere is tense. He searches for Kamiyama Kiyohira, but that man is nowhere to be seen. 

Puzzled, he creases his forehead. Kamiyama Kiyohira isn't picking up the calls or replying to the messages either. Rie's phone is off. He can't even contact Yuta. 

"Where is everyone?" He runs his fingers through his hair. "I hope everyone is okay."

As if she's highlighted like a flamboyant light stick in the crowd, Ren pinpoints the woman with short hair, robotic expression, and fisted hands in the crowd. She is standing at the sidelines, away from the crowd. Next to her, he notices another man with spiky hair. 

A strange discomfort emerges in his c.h.e.s.t. Ren wonders if it's indigestion. Regardless, she's the only person he knows in the crowd. At other times, he would have ignored her. But her cousin is inside the restaurant. 

Ren makes his way through the crowd, toward her. As if she has sensed him staring at her, she turns her head toward him and then, blinks her eyes once. It lasts barely for a second. She looks away. Her dark eyes are fixed on the building.

He wonders if she is thinking about how many corpses she has to deal with today.

"Hello." He approaches her. She folds her arms, and ignores him. Ren is perturbed by her cold reaction again. What did he do this time? 

But the man next to her greets him back, "You visited Yamashina-san in the lab the other day."

"Yes, I did." Ren shakes the man's hand. "You are?"

"I am --" The man starts to say.

"Don't bother." Yamashina Chiyo says to the man, "Ignore him."

"..."

"..."

"I need to concentrate." Yamashina Chiyo looks at Ren. "Go away. I don't want to see your face."

Is she with another man? Is that why she wants him to go away? Ren grits his teeth. A few days ago, she was asking him to be her man. Now, she is shamelessly asking him to go away because she has someone else. 

She is so different from her cousin.

"What are you concentrating on?" Ren's tone is laced with venom. "The joy of performing autopsies on so many dead people? You must be having a day. Someone like you can't ever respect the living or the dead."

There is no change in her eyes. "Are you done?"

"Yes." Ren rushes away from them. He doesn't want to disturb her date. Besides, where the hell is Kiyohira and Rie? 

He receives a call from Kiyohira then.

"Dude, where have you been?" Ren yells at the phone. "I have been looking for you everywhere."

[I am at the nearby building. My people are inside the restaurant. It should be over soon.]

"What about Rie?" 

[She is…] There is a pause. [Yuta is here now. When Takeshi comes out, tell him that I will be back soon.]

This is odd. Ren sighs. Rie must be in trouble. "Find her and bring her home soon."

As soon as he ends the call and lowers his arm, he hears a voice. "Hello."

Ren turns around and sees the man who was with Yamashina Chiyo a while ago. He widens his eyes in surprise. "Hello."

"Why did you say that she doesn't respect the dead?" The man asks him with a puzzled look. "I am surprised to hear that."

"I…" Ren is fl.u.s.tered by this sudden question. "Around two years ago, my close friend died. She kept calling her a corpse, but my friend had a name. I found it offensive. To this date, she hasn't apologised. Do people lose their identity after they are dead? I find her inhuman and cold."

The man listens to him with an understanding look in his eyes. "You aren't wrong. At first, I used to think the same. Yamashina-san has… a different attitude, but it is wrong to say that she doesn't respect the dead."

Ren frowns. "I don't believe so."

"Among all the employees, no one can match her passion for finding the truth." The man tells him, "She says that the dead have a voice. If we don't find it out, nobody will ever know how they died. It is our job to find everything about the circ.u.mstances of their deaths. She received many death threats and pressure from the higher-ups to change the report, but she never yielded. It's true that she never uses their names. She isn't the only one. Even I use numbers and tags to identify the corpses, although I admit that Yamashina-san can be a difficult one. It's an occupational disease. There is no one better than her in this country. If we look at dead bodies as people, can we work normally? Can we tear them open and find the truth? It's impossible. We are also human."