Chapter Text
Of all the places she had been hired to infiltrate, The Silk Lantern smelled the sweetest, looked the cleanest and felt the friendliest. It was something beyond all of this that told Chiyoh it was by far the most corrupt and dangerous establishment in all of Tokyo.
Well before she had made her introductions, it was clear people without cause to visit The Silk Lantern, had no idea what sort of trade it even was. The tourists assumed a tea house. To the tourists, everything with rice paper walls and tatami mats was a tea house. The expatriates were a little more hopeful. They guessed a pleasure house, the sort that catered to niche interests, as well as the usual ones. The locals were by far the most delicate in their phrasing. A games club , was the phrase frequently turned, which of course, meant a gambling club.
As Chiyoh discovered, The Silk Lantern was as much none of these things as it was all of them. It was anything it needed to be. And thus, there was only one description of the business that had ever been permitted within its walls.
A meeting place.
It seemed an appropriate axiom, given the task Chiyoh had been sent there to do. The task that occupied her entire attention, every waking moment. Arranging a meeting, between herself and two people who did not wish to be met. Nor known. Nor found.
Not by people like her, at least.
For, like the Lantern, Chiyoh also appeared beautiful and demure, humble and compassionate. And, like the Lantern, she could affect all of these things or none of them, to serve any end. Did it corrupt her? No. Corruption was an empty, clawing vessel, a spiral unto its own destruction. There was always purpose. Did it make her dangerous? Certainly.
Over her first evenings, she had made the right impression. Chiyoh had always been able to understand the difference between making the right impression, and a good impression, the latter being one that could set her new colleagues on edge, if she were too quick to match their skill. Instead, she made sure to set a poor copy of each task- straightening rosebuds, arranging sweet cakes on ceramic plates, folding towels. She came to learn there were as many private bathing rooms as those with any sort of table within the place, and these were by far the preferred venue for discussion.
What she didn’t yet know, was how and when her guests would arrive. The names they would use. The services they would require.
…And how she would get close to them.
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“How the fuck do you say this? Ari...gato?”
Holding a rumpled, spine-cracked Japanese guidebook his associate had so kindly provided, the bridge of his nose pinches together, squinting at the unfamiliar alphabet and its pronunciation.
“You’re supposed to say ‘ Arigatōgozaimashita . Try to say it faster with ease, they will like it if you pay respects to the elders, it’s their custom.”
The said associate responds, it amuses him to see Nigel, who is such a formidable individual in the realm of corrupted criminal empire along with his lifelong partner Darko, stutter at the foreign language. His usual confidence-exuding stance slouched by the mere booklet. “Ah, you’re gonna be fine, just don’t fucking get turned into a fucking kebab with one of those katanas. They’re fucking sharp. And don’t ever fucking go to the restaurants and ask for more side dishes, they’re gonna charge you extra.”
The flight is grueling fourteen-hour long. Without no translator, he waits for one of the few people who can actually speak decent English. One of the assistants who works at “ Shirukurantan .” Silk Lantern, at least that was close, ‘Shiruku-rantan?’ He mutters under his breath, his ears not having quite popped yet. As usual, the airplane food dismal, the first-class provided by the establishment simply horrendous. Even the fucking liqueur he quaffed down wasn’t enough to get him in quietude, the fitful sleep evades him despite feeling more than tipsy. Still not out of the lingering effects, his bleary eyes squint to register his name written in Japanese form. “ Naijeru-san .” The man calls out.
The sun barely peeps out of the horizon when he exits Narita International Airport and everything becomes a blurred abstract strokes of pigments, whirling and whizzing by as the little cars on the tiny fucking streets pass. “Why the fuck are we going on the wrong direction?” Still not out of his jetlag and drunkenness, he fails to register that it’s just like in England, where he had been multiple times before to layover and take few days’ excursion to be on his usual business trips.
As he had speculated, the establishment is effectively disguised as a tea house by the facade, it had been a gambling house full of addicts who lent money to continue to feed their addictions until they became bankrupt, or have to pay the debts with their worthless lives. He had seen too many of them and having killed many who had owed him money and double-dealing his ‘lifelong partners’ to sign irresistible contracts to rip them off of their lives as well as large sums of money, a cruel smirk flashes against the rolled open window. A lit cigarette poised between his lips, a hand caress over his few day old stubble.
Feeling like being plunged into an unfathomable pit of riches, his mission with this particular trip had been befriending one of the most prominent Japanese ringleader of drug trade, just like how he had been known in what he considers his ‘native’ country. The notoriety of his name expanded to outskirts of Bucharest as the gutter king. The self-made, relentless and ruthless. With the eyes of an apex predator who owned the most clandestine establishment in the sector 1.
Even looking up at the signs - he wouldn’t able to recognize Japanese Hiragana anyways. Registering rows of limousines already pulled in front of the traditional-looking house, he cocks his head, watching the Japanese man taking a bow to regard who looks like a lady in her fifties. Intriguing , he mutters. Pulling the duffel bag over his shoulders as the other man gets off to open the door for him.