Chapter 100: The Realm of Reality Manipulation

TL: LittlePeach

Right after infiltrating the prison, the first thing I did was dig out the phone I'd hidden in my underwear and text Sparrow No. 10.

I might be fine, but Sparrow No. 10 could well get his phone confiscated like the other agents who'd gone silent, so for the time being I intended to keep all contact to text.

-Communicate by text only from here on. Act at your own discretion, but make contact in an emergency. Share any lead on the missing agents immediately.

Not long after I hit send.

Ding.

The reply came back almost at once.

-Team leader, don't worry. My cellmates here are a lot friendlier than I expected, so I think I'll be just fine. As instructed, I'll quietly look for the Team 4 agents on my own.

Fortunately, it seemed Sparrow No. 10 hadn't been given an initiation beating the way I had.

Anyway.

"Fuck! You run into me outside, you're dead, you hear me?!"

Astonishingly, the moment morning roll call ended in this place, inmates were free to roam anywhere they liked in the facility.

Trailing after the inmates who'd left behind threats that weren't remotely frightening, I slipped out through the wide-open barred door and set off myself.

Swept along by the crowd pouring outside, I wandered around in a daze, but only for a moment.

"Unbelievable.... What the hell is this place?"

Honestly, all I could do was marvel.

The barred cellblock was a cellblock in name only, and this wide-open outdoor area was the real heart of the place.

"Hell of a setup."

It was nothing like the prison I'd pictured.

Shoddy low-ceilinged shacks stretched away in endless rows, and beneath the slate awnings, all manner of outside goods, cigarettes, liquor, porn magazines, homemade toilet paper, pagers, changed hands at a brisk clip.

There was a hair salon. A massage parlor, a karaoke room, a bar, even a casino.

After standing there smacking my lips a while, I wandered over to a juice stall nearby that had caught my eye.

"One mango juice, please."

"Seven dollar, seven dollar."

"Huh? That's awfully steep. What, is this a first-world country?"

"Can't sell cheaper. Fee is expensive."

"There's a fee?"

"Protection money for the zone."

"Ah."

The people running the shops and gambling dens out of these shacks weren't ordinary criminals to begin with, but people who, like me, had gotten themselves locked up on purpose, in their case to do business on the inside.

They kicked part of their earnings to the prison guards as bribes, and another part to the gang overlords who ran the area as turf fees.

Even these shanty-like shacks, I was told, had been built by the inmates themselves, hauling in every scrap of material on their own.

Was any of this permitted in a prison? Naturally, all of it was illegal from top to bottom.

It was just that it made money, so the prison guards didn't bother touching them.

Slurrrp.

"Mmm. Southeast Asian mangoes really are on another level."

"Mango means Southeast Asia, Southeast Asia means mango."

"Exactly. Thanks for this."

"Come again, come again. Next time, I give you something free."

"Thanks."

Sucking down the mango juice with its crushed ice, taking my time to survey the surroundings, I spotted a long walkway running along at the height of the shacks' second story.

Armed prison guards with automatic rifles moved along the railing here and there, scanning the area below.

Ten of them, at the very most.

And even those mostly had their rifles slung sloppily over a shoulder, too busy horsing around and joking with each other to do much of anything.

'If they told me to serve my sentence here, I could do it for life. There have to be people getting themselves a life sentence on purpose.'

That was my assessment of the place so far.

It felt less like a prison than a village-sized theme resort.

But a prison is still a prison.

"Hey, Asian. You the mouthy little shit who walked in today and gave one of our zone's family a nice little rubdown?"

Slurrrrrp.

Just as I was finishing off the mango juice, a menacing voice came at me out of nowhere from behind.

I turned to find a pack of men wearing scars and tattoos across their bodies like medals, glaring at me with murderous intent in their eyes.

"David, that's the bastard! That son of a bitch is the one who smashed up my face like this!"

A familiar face peeked out from the middle of the group.

One of the cellmates I'd pulped a little earlier was clutching his pulped nose and pleading his case.

He'd apparently rounded up all his friends for revenge.

"You asshole. Didn't I tell you that if I ran into you outside, you were dead?"

"Shhh. Don't cry, Hudson. Who did this awful thing to my pretty baby's face?"

"Hnngh, David...."

"Don't worry. Tonight I'll comfort you in bed."

"...."

Ugh.

Apparently they weren't just friends.

Two enormous men proceeded to carry on with a display of affection that was hard to watch with both eyes open.

That didn't last long.

"Kill that son of a bitch!"

Three slabs of muscle charged at me with no coordination whatsoever.

Did they figure I'd be an easy mark, next to all that bulk?

The result, of course, was a foregone conclusion.

Thud! Crack! Crunch!

In under ten seconds, the street had turned into a disaster area.

"Waaahhhh...."

"Ugh. Hnnkk...."

"Mommyyy...."

As shaggy-bearded grown men rolled on the ground bawling like toddlers, the criminals passing by stopped in their tracks, as though they'd never witnessed anything so remarkable.

Bets must have been laid in that brief window, because a few bills were changing hands busily among the onlookers.

"Pay up. Now."

"Dammit. Here, two dollars. Those bastards strut around like they're hot shit, and it turns out they're all fucking size and nothing else."

"Heh heh. Lucky start to my morning. Hey, buddy. You're a hell of a fighter, huh?"

Some man acted like he knew me and shot me a wink, so I returned the greeting with a nod.

"Whoo! Nice work!"

"Haven't seen that face before. New guy?"

And through all this, even the prison guards who were supposed to be controlling the situation perched on the second-floor railing and whistled at my technique, as if they'd been treated to a fine show.

I gave a light wave, acknowledging the cheers halfheartedly.

'What an absolute shitshow.'

And of course, that wasn't the end of it.

Before long the sun climbed to its peak, and around the time I was watching the heat haze shimmer up under the awnings.

"Boss. That's the son of a bitch."

"Tch. Looks scrawny as hell to me.... Hey. You the one who humiliated our zone's family?"

"...."

The guys I'd flattened started dragging in men stronger than themselves and offering them up to me.

Going by size alone, they looked like the type who did nothing in here but eat and lift.

Thud, thwack!

"Gurkh!"

Sadly, these ones too kissed the pavement after a few of my punches.

It was like a game of Tekken, a new character stepping up at the end of every round.

After a few rounds of bloodshed, my momentous first day inside came to a close.

"Didn't I say I'd fold you in half?"

"...."

That night, I wrapped up the day's schedule by pulping the cellmates who'd been eyeing my ass since the moment I arrived.

Having apparently run out of friends to bring, they kept their eyes on the floor whenever they passed me from then on.

Of course, that wasn't all.

"Hey. I hear you're quite the fighter."

I had new visitors.

Zone A.

That was the zone where the genuinely violent offenders were housed, and these were the contract killers there who went by the name Hound.

The stated purpose was to wring the neck of the new fish who'd been throwing his weight around since day one, but it was obvious someone had paid them to come.

That was the point at which I started to feel this thing snowballing.

Thwack, thud!

"They say your fists sting like hell. Let's go a round!"

And then the ones with the swollen black eyes turned around and brought their friends.

Every last one of them the sort who enjoyed a good brawl inside Zone A.

So many of them swarmed in day after day that a sizable crowd of spectators simply camped out in the yard in front of my cell and opened a Colosseum.

Crash, crunch!

"Die, you piece of shit!"

One day, one of the guys who'd lost big on a bet came all the way to my cell with a knife on him.

Whack, crunch!

I wrecked his fingers so he'd never be able to grip anything again.

"I'll show you the swordsmanship I honed beating stray dogs to death!"

One of them openly grabbed a club and came at me in broad daylight.

Most of them were either nursing a grudge over losing to me or sending contract hits after blowing their bets.

Crunch, snap!

"I've come to learn a thing or two from you."

Money changed hands, cheers went up.

And then, a few days into swinging my fists like that.

'...What the hell?'

That was around when I sensed something was off.

At some point, the inmates around me had started calling me the overlord of Zone A.

It began after I folded a two-meter giant in half on the spot, a man who'd been strutting around calling himself king of the zone.

'Something about this is....'

The guys who'd jumped me dropped their eyes and cleared out the second they saw me, and at some point the local merchants started paying protection money of their own accord, though I'd never asked for a cent.

The mango juice I'd paid for on my first day now appeared on my desk automatically every morning.

Slurrrrrp.

'This isn't what I had in mind.'

Thanks to all of it, I was able to keep a low profile, exactly as originally planned.

And all of that happened in exactly four days from the moment I entered this prison.

*****

Through all of it, Sparrow No. 10's reports kept coming in faithfully.

-Team leader. I searched the western zone a bit today. Still nothing on the agents. I'm thinking of staying here another two days or so, then crossing over to the north.

Around my second day inside, while I was involuntarily taking over Zone A in the east, he crossed into the northern zone and finally caught a thread on the agents.

-Team leader. I think I've turned up a lead in the north. A few Koreans came in several days ago, but nobody knows which cell they were moved to. I'll stay on this side a few more days and dig further.

I decided to leave the search for the two missing agents to Sparrow No. 10 for now and dig into a personal objective of my own.

I'd gone to all the trouble of getting inside New Bilibid Prison. Shouldn't I at least see how the Irobuchi-kai were getting along in here, show my face before I left?

"La-di-da."

For once I left Zone A behind and set out at a leisurely pace.

The whole trip took maybe five minutes on foot.

Inmates who recognized me flinched and scurried out of my path, and at last I arrived at the Irobuchi-kai's home base.

"Is this it?"

But now that I was standing in front of it, the place felt shabbier than I'd expected.

It was a crude shack knocked together from a few boards and draped in thick translucent plastic sheeting, looking quite literally like a greenhouse.

As I loitered near the entrance, a man who looked Japanese stepped forward, bristling with wariness.

"C-can I help you?"

I did some quick thinking.

Having settled on a simple persona, I put on my most courteous smile and greeted him in Japanese.

"A pleasure. I run a business outside the prison, and not long ago I happened to come across some Irobuchi-kai product."

"Ah, that...."

"The quality struck me as quite excellent, and I'd like to purchase in bulk. Might we speak privately about business?"

At my proposal, the man clamped his mouth shut and scanned the area quickly.

Any ordinary dealer would have lit up at the words "bulk purchase" and thrown his arms open in welcome.

"Ah, if you do this here, you're putting us in a difficult position."

"...?"

But what do you know?

The man didn't seem the least bit pleased by my offer.

Far from lighting up, he'd gone ashen and was busy stealing glances at everything around him.

"Hmm. This is rather perplexing. Might I speak with whoever manages this place?"

"Th-that would be me. I.... I'm the manager here."

"Ah, is that so? And your name is...."

"Yamamoto Shinichi."

"Hm? Mm. I see."

Yamamoto Shinichi.

The moment I heard the name, I arranged my face into a look of complete ignorance.

Another calculation was already running fast in the back of my head.

"As I understand it, the Irobuchi-kai's Southeast Asia branch chief also bore the name Yamamoto. What is your relation to him?"

"Ah, he was.... He was my uncle."

At the mention of Yamamoto Shigeharu, Shinichi's expression turned gloomy.

Word of his death in an unfortunate accident in Cambodia had evidently gone around the organization fast.

I bowed as politely and respectfully as I knew how.

"My condolences. When I heard that Yamamoto-san had met with an accident in Cambodia and passed on, it weighed on me terribly."

"Oh. You knew my uncle well?"

"Of course."

Seeing as I was the one who put a bullet through the bastard's heart.

Leaving that detail out, naturally, I wet my lips and prepared to lie through my teeth.

"Cambodia is precisely where I encountered Irobuchi-kai product. That's where Yamamoto-san and I formed a personal connection."

"Ah!"

In the Confucian cultural sphere, school ties, hometown ties, and blood ties remain undefeated.

The moment I flashed my closeness with his uncle, Shinichi's face went wistful.

The wariness in the expression he'd been aiming at me dropped away by a wide margin.

"I, I see. Rather than standing out here.... Won't you come inside for a moment? Let me at least offer you a cup of tea."

"Thank you."

Having unlatched his heart a crack, apparently, Shinichi led me to a building separate from the greenhouse.

Inside, a good number of Irobuchi-kai members were neatly packaging product, and deep at the back of the space I could see a proper office.

Since he'd already lowered his guard, I tossed out the question I'd been personally curious about.

"By the way, Shinichi-san. I don't quite follow this business about not being able to sell me product. Has someone stiffed you on payment recently?"

"Ah, no, it's not that...."

At that, Shinichi took on a troubled look and cautiously checked his surroundings.

"The truth is, everything we produce here is under contract for exclusive supply to another party."

"Is that so? And who might that be?"

"An organization called Samgor. They have a monopoly on nearly half the Southeast Asian distribution network, so there's nothing we can do."

Samgor.

With how often I'd been tangled up in drug-related operations lately, it was an organization I knew of myself, if only by hearsay.

A drug cartel of considerable scale, with the Southeast Asian narcotics market broadly in its grip.

To think the organization had a hook inside this prison too.

"One moment, please. I'll go prepare the tea."

While Shinichi was away, I let my mind run in another direction.

From the feel of things, within this prison's ecosystem the Irobuchi-kai were, astonishingly, nothing more than a subcontractor.

The real heavyweight was Samgor, the global distribution cartel scattering the drugs stamped out here across the entire world.

The way he groveled over that contract made it plain as day.

'There's been a bigger fish hiding underneath the Irobuchi-kai.'

There were endless ways I could smash the Irobuchi-kai this very minute.

But moving on them carelessly at this point didn't seem like a very good call.

One wrong step and there was a strong chance the far more valuable prey would spook and tuck its tail out of sight.

"It's hot. Please be careful."

"Thank you."

Before long Shinichi returned with brewed Japanese green tea and took the seat across from me.

As I raised the cup in a neat, well-mannered motion, he fixed his eyes on me and asked.

"By the way, might I ask how it was that you came to know my uncle?"

There was no trace of doubt about my closeness with the man.

It looked more like he was missing the warmth of someone who was no longer in this world and hoping to gather up even one more fragment of him.

Fortunately, in that brief interval I'd been working my brain hard and had just finished cooking up a suitable scenario.

Slurrrp.

"Shinichi-san, are you familiar with the Shanyuan Society?"

The stage was set. Now it was time to get my tongue moving.

"The Shanyuan Society.... I know of them. You mean the Triad organization?"

"That's the one. And first, I apologize for the deception. The truth is, I'm not a man who sells drugs on the outside. I'm a hitman with the Shanyuan Society."

"...I'm sorry?"

Startled by my unexpected explanation, Shinichi flinched and hunched his shoulders.

Calmly, I wet my lips and continued in a serious tone.

"Not long ago, Yamamoto-san came to the Shanyuan Society in secret. The job was to find the terrorist who blew the meth plant he'd set up in Cambodia clean off the map."

After the Coconut Warehouse, their production base in Cambodia, was destroyed, the Irobuchi-kai had relocated to a Shanyuan Society apartment for reasons of their own.

Invent a plausible enough story to fill that gap, and someone like the Shinichi in front of me would swallow it whole.

But somehow, upon hearing me out, Shinichi's eyes went wide and he started nodding along furiously.

"Ah! Th-that's right! Now that you mention it, that did happen!"

"...?"

"My uncle did contact me about that. He said he'd placed a contract with the Shanyuan Society...."

"...."

For my part, the reaction left me more bewildered than anything.

Yamamoto had actually, truly placed a contract with the Shanyuan Society.

It was a lie I'd made up on the spot.

'Why is this real?'

My bullshitting skills, having already surpassed the divine realm, might now have reached the realm of reality manipulation.

*****

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