Chapter 213 The Secret That Began with a Thank You

“!”

At that short, sharp vibration, Kaoru Hoshitani’s body went rigid.

He lunged for the coffee table almost instinctively, snatching up the black mobile phone.

No one knew this number except Chinatsu Ayase.

Kaoru Hoshitani’s heart began to race.

What could the young lady all the way in Tokyo possibly want at this hour?

Had Rika Kawasaki caught up with them?

Or was there some sudden new danger?

He swiped the screen open.

On the display was a neatly formatted, almost dryly mundane [Local Life Memo]:

[1. The cheapest prices in the area are at “Tamade Supermarket,” three blocks away. Bento boxes are half off after 8:30 PM.]

[2. Two intersections east of the apartment complex is an old drugstore that sells prescription medications without requiring a membership card.]

[3. If there’s an emergency, the hidden night clinic is at: Sapporo Minami Ward, XX Street, No. 14. They accept cash, no insurance card needed.]

[4. The nearest police patrol route passes by the street below the apartment building. Try to avoid going downstairs between 10 PM and 11 PM.]

[5. One more reminder: absolutely do not use your old mobile phone number to register for any local map navigation APP, and do not connect to public WIFI.]

At the very bottom of this long, practical list, only one brief line was attached:

[These are just backup survival information. You don’t need to reply to me. Get some rest.]

“…”

Kaoru Hoshitani stared blankly at the phone screen, at those lines of text so grounded in everyday life, yet so precisely hitting every survival pain point they currently faced.

That heart, which had been sinking in loneliness and self-loathing, suddenly felt as though a pair of invisible, gentle hands had caught it and held it steady.

Kaoru Hoshitani’s emotional reaction in that moment was complicated.

Rationality told him he couldn’t afford to become overly dependent on Chinatsu Ayase. After all, she was Rika Kawasaki’s younger sister, and Onee-san Aina had also vaguely expressed unease about this kind of “excessive thoughtfulness.”

But… this information was just too useful.

For fugitives like them, who didn’t even know where to buy cheap vegetables, this list from Chinatsu Ayase was nothing less than a life-saving map in the snow.

More importantly, there was the extreme restraint Chinatsu Ayase had shown.

She’d even added “You don’t need to reply to me” at the end.

She wasn’t asking for anything at all.

She hadn’t used her status as a “benefactor” to get closer to him, nor had she forced him into the moral dilemma of “should I reply or not.”

She had simply, quietly, placed the key to solving their problems in front of him.

Miss Chika… really is a genuinely wonderful person.

Kaoru Hoshitani’s eyes grew slightly warm. He bit his lip, his fingers hovering over the virtual keyboard on the screen for a long time.

He typed a line, then deleted it. Typed another line, but it felt too formal.

After hesitating for a full five minutes, he finally followed the most honest gratitude in his heart and typed a simple sentence:

[Thank you, Miss Chika.]

He tapped send.

This was the first time since fleeing that Kaoru Hoshitani had voluntarily responded to an outside “helper.”

For a drowning man isolated and helpless inside a chrysalis of information, that simple “thank you” represented a psychological defense silently opening an irreversible crack toward the one who had thrown him a life preserver.

……

At that very moment, at the entrance of a chain convenience store three blocks away from the apartment.

“I’m very sorry, Ms. Saita.”

The store manager pushed the crude temporary resume back across the counter toward Aina Saiten, his tone carrying a veiled refusal.

“Even though the education level you filled in is quite high, what we need is an employee who can work the night shift long-term. Also, you don’t have a local resident registration card, and you can’t provide a certificate of departure from your previous company… This really doesn’t meet our headquarters’ hiring regulations.”

“I don’t need a formal contract! Even if the hourly wage is slightly below minimum—”

Aina Saiten bowed urgently, pleading, “I really need this job!”

“I’m truly sorry. It’s the rules.”

The manager smiled apologetically and turned to walk back into the warehouse.

Aina Saiten stood at the convenience store entrance. The autumn wind blew past, making her shiver involuntarily.

This was already the fourth store she’d tried this morning.

The coldness of reality was more biting than the Hokkaido wind.

She was originally a top graduate from Toh-Dai’s Faculty of Economics, a promising deputy supervisor in the Financial Department of the Quansheng Group.

In the office towers of Tokyo, she’d handled capital flows worth tens of millions, even hundreds of millions.

But now, having shed that “social elite” exterior and become a fugitive who couldn’t even dare to casually show basic identification, she realized how difficult it was to find even the most menial job to scrape by in the lowest tier of this society.

At noon, she applied for a cashier position at a large supermarket.

“We don’t hire short-term workers with unclear backgrounds.”

In the afternoon, she finally managed to get a trial shift washing dishes in the kitchen of a small, out-of-the-way family restaurant.

But when the owner named a daily wage so insultingly low that it didn’t even meet Hokkaido’s legal minimum hourly rate, Aina Saiten’s heart went cold.

That little money… wouldn’t even cover next month’s rent for this apartment, let alone Akane’s medicine and our daily expenses.

As evening fell, a light drizzle began to drift from the sky.

Aina Saiten had no umbrella. She pulled her windbreaker collar over her head and walked listlessly into a cheap fresh food supermarket.

She avoided the fresh beef and sashimi, heading straight for the refrigerated section with yellow discount tags. She bought two boxes of near-expiration discounted bento and a slightly wilted bunch of greens.

While waiting in line to pay, Aina Saiten turned her head.

The supermarket’s floor-to-ceiling glass window reflected her current appearance: hair soaked by the rain, plastered to a pale, haggard face; the hem of her windbreaker splattered with mud; hands tightly clutching two plastic bags filled with discounted bento.

This was the first time Aina Saiten had so vividly, so cruelly realized the fall of her own status.

She was no longer that reliable senpai who had confidently promised, “I’ll give you a future.”

Right now, she was just an unemployed drifter in this unfamiliar northern city, not even knowing where tomorrow’s dinner money would come from.

If Akane saw me in this pathetic state…

What would he think?

Would he feel that running away with me was a terrible mistake?

A crushing wave of panic and self-loathing spread wildly through Aina Saiten’s heart…

……

Osaka, a penthouse suite in a high-end hotel.

“Slap.”

A cooperation contract was carelessly tossed onto the cold marble tabletop.

Rika Kawasaki had just finished a five-hour meeting with the branch company’s top executives.

She wearily loosened the collar of her silk shirt, running her fingers through her dazzling blonde hair, leaving it slightly disheveled.

Her tall, wild, powerfully built frame sank heavily into the sofa, and those aggressively oppressive gray eyes carried a trace of impatient coldness.

It was already late at night. The work was finally over. What was that disobedient little dog doing right now?

A dismissive, cold smile curled at the corner of Rika Kawasaki’s lips.

She picked up her personal phone and opened the Line chat window.

But the status displayed on the screen made her brow furrow slightly.

A full day had already passed since she’d sent that threatening “acceptance” command.

Not only had there been no reply, but not even the [Read] marker had appeared.

Rika Kawasaki wasn’t in a hurry. In fact, she found the victim’s futile struggles in a desperate situation quite amusing.

She could even picture Kaoru Hoshitani’s current state—red-eyed, trembling, humiliated. That restrained demeanor of wanting to bite but not daring to open his mouth always easily stirred the sadistic urge within her.

Rika Kawasaki let out a cold snort and directly dialed the number.

[Sorry, the number you have dialed is powered off or out of service…]

A mechanical, icy female voice came through the receiver.

Rika Kawasaki’s eyes darkened. Powered off?

She didn’t hesitate for a second. She immediately dialed Kurosawa, the head of her personal security team left in Tokyo:

“Kurosawa, take two men and go to his apartment right now. If that little dog won’t open the door, rip the lock off and hold him down on the sofa to take the call.”

“Yes, Missy.”

Forty-odd minutes later, her phone finally vibrated again.

Rika Kawasaki sat on the sofa, slowly rolling her neck: “What? Does he still dare to resist?”

“…Missy.”

Kurosawa’s voice on the other end carried an extreme edge of anxiety and cold sweat.

“The apartment… is empty.”

“Where did they go? What about that woman named Aina Saiten?” Rika Kawasaki’s voice turned icy.

“They’re both gone. And… the wardrobe is empty, the toiletries are missing too! There are no signs of struggle or forced entry. It seems… they packed their things and left on their own.”

“BANG—!”

An expensive glass water cup was hurled violently against the wall, shattering into pieces!

Rika Kawasaki shot up from the sofa, her chest heaving violently.

The previously composed, condescending mask was torn to shreds in an instant before those two words: “left on their own.”

Fled?!

That weak, useless waste who trembled at the mere sight of her dared to run away behind her back, taking that woman with him?!

A fury unlike anything before surged wildly through every limb of Rika Kawasaki’s body.

It wasn’t ordinary anger, nor some ridiculous jealousy.

It was the ultimate humiliation of an [absolute control chain being forcibly severed], a [territory being maliciously violated]!

Rika Kawasaki paced restlessly through the spacious suite like a predator provoked.

She recalled the sensation of Kaoru Hoshitani trembling beneath her—that possession already branded with her mark, his very soul clutched in her palm!

“Fine… Just fine.”

Rika Kawasaki laughed in rage, her tall frame radiating a suffocating bloodlust.

But after the initial explosion of anger, Rika Kawasaki’s terrifying instincts as someone accustomed to power began rapidly reorganizing the wreckage.

She felt something was off.

Kaoru Hoshitani was a complete coward. Without someone pushing him, he would never have had the nerve to plan a cross-city escape. Was that Aina Saiten’s doing?

No, impossible.

Rika Kawasaki walked coldly to the floor-to-ceiling window, looking down at the nightscape of Osaka.

How could that woman named Aina Saiten have cleaned up the traces of leaving the city, the phone tracking, and the escape route so thoroughly in just half a day?

Since Kurosawa said they left calmly and unhurriedly.

That meant someone had been quietly providing them with a protective umbrella.

Someone with the ability to cut off her surveillance network at this critical moment, with a motive to interfere with her “possessions,” and who could even covertly borrow Quansheng’s internal authority…

There was only one person in the Kawasaki family.

A name surfaced in Rika Kawasaki’s mind like a blade coated in poison.

—Chinatsu Ayase.