Miko Iino's world spun upside down in an instant.
"Father... what... what are you saying?"
She looked at her father in disbelief.
The father she had held up as her standard from childhood, the man who in her heart represented "justice" and "ideals," how could he... how could he say something so grovelling, so utterly shameless?
And yet, her father at this moment did not even have the courage to turn his head and look at her.
He merely bent deep in his bow, like the lowliest of vassals awaiting his sovereign's judgment.
"Heh heh."
Seiji Fujiwara turned around with a soft laugh.
The dim lamplight outlined his face, handsome to the point of being unearthly. A faint smile lingered at the corners of his mouth.
Those deep eyes fell upon Miko Iino.
There was no desire in them, nor any contempt. Only a detached indifference that saw through everything.
As though her every horror, every flash of fury, every fracture in the faith about to collapse within her had been foreseen long ago.
"Miko Iino."
Seiji spoke.
Miko instinctively took a step back, clutching the "adolescent legal aid" proposal in her arms more tightly.
That thin folder was the only piece of driftwood she had left to grasp.
"I hear you're a person of considerable 'righteousness'?"
Seiji paid no mind to her tension. He simply paced over to the desk, picked up a document from it, and held it out.
"Take a look at this."
Miko hesitated, not daring to reach for it.
But Seiji merely held the document out steadily, without the slightest impatience. That calm was, in itself, a form of pressure that could not be resisted.
In the end, beneath her father's silent, hunched back, his spine bent nearly to breaking, Miko trembled as she reached out and took the document.
The cover bore a title that struck her like a slap. "Report on the Asset Acquisition and Pollution Remediation of the Shin-Nikka Factory in Chiba Prefecture."
The Shin-Nikka factory!
Miko knew that name well, of course.
It was a notoriously polluting enterprise!
For years, it had illegally discharged toxic wastewater, causing severe environmental degradation in surrounding areas and even sparking multiple class-action lawsuits from residents!
The Public Morals Committee she belonged to had even once organized students to take part in a public-interest protest against that factory!
Why was he showing her this?
Miko Iino pressed down the unease in her heart and opened the folder.
The first page was a financial analysis of the Shin-Nikka factory. In cold figures and professional terminology, it laid out in detail how the factory had evaded legal consequences through falsified accounts, bribery of officials, and asset transfers.
The contents were shocking, and they filled her with righteous indignation.
But when she turned to the second page, her pupils contracted sharply.
The title of the second page read, "Plan for Intervention Through Irregular Means."
It documented in detail how Seiji Fujiwara's team had used hacking techniques to steal Shin-Nikka's internal secrets; how they had deployed media to spread false news of its imminent bankruptcy, triggering a collapse in its stock price; how, through fabricated evidence, they had intimidated and bought off its senior executives, and finally, at a price so low it was outrageous, had forcibly "acquired" the entire factory.
Every step walked the gray edges of the law.
Every method was dripping with the filth and depravity she despised!
This was criminal!
"You... you people are..." She instinctively raised her head, ready to deliver a sharp rebuke.
But the words caught in her throat.
Because she had seen the third page of the document.
The title of the third page read, "Results of Pollution Remediation and Ecological Restoration."
Attached were photographs in stark before-and-after comparison.
The river that had once been stained black-brown, reeking of foul odor, was now crystal-clear, fish even visible swimming through its waters. The patch of earth where nothing had grown, eroded by chemical waste, had been laid over with fresh turf, and a small park had even been built on it for nearby residents to relax in.
At the end of the document was an environmental monitoring report issued by a third-party agency.
The report indicated that the soil and water quality in the area had, within just three months, recovered to and even exceeded the national Class A standard.
"You..." Miko's lips trembled violently.
Her worldview, her sense of justice, was being struck in this moment by an impact she had never known before.
The "means" she despised, illegal, dark, had ultimately led to a... bright "result."
How was she supposed to judge any of this?
Use her "procedural justice" to condemn this man as a criminal?
But what then of those rescued rivers and soils, those residents finally able to breathe fresh air, how were they to assess him?
Miko Iino's sense of justice, for the first time, wavered.
Seiji watched her face quietly, that expression mingling confusion, pain, and struggle, and the smile at the corner of his mouth deepened.
He spoke slowly, his voice not loud, yet falling like a heavy hammer, blow by blow, upon her faith about to shatter.
"True justice has never been procedure."
"It is result."
"And to create 'results' requires absolute power."
He reached out, drew the document back from her now-stiff hands, and tossed it casually aside.
"Your father understands this very well."
"And so..."
"He brought you here."
The words struck Miko like a thunderclap, blasting her awake from her chaotic thoughts!
She whipped her head around and looked at her father in disbelief.
How desperately she hoped her father would stand forth and refute this man!
But... no.
There was nothing.
Her father avoided his daughter's gaze, his eyes settling on Seiji Fujiwara.
In those eyes, there was no longer any hesitation or struggle. All that remained was a near-pathological fervor, the look of a man betting everything on a single throw!
He bowed deeply to Seiji.
"Mr. Fujiwara!" His voice was loud and firm. "You are right! Result is everything!"
"To create the greater 'results' that will belong to you, you need a sword of the keenest edge!"
He slowly straightened up, extended his hand, and pointed at his own daughter, drained of color and on the verge of collapse.
"My daughter, Miko!"
"She may be naive, she may be foolish! But the persistence in her heart for 'justice' is the purest, the most unshakable!"
"Please... you must make use of her!"
A roaring blank.
Miko Iino's mind, in that moment, went completely white.
The folder in her arms, the one that had carried all her ideals and hopes, dropped to the floor with a sharp clatter.
The documents inside scattered across the ground.
The white sheets of paper, like butterflies with their wings snapped, spread limply about her feet, feet that had lost all strength from despair.
...
...
The next day, at Shuchiin Academy.
The atmosphere in the Student Council Room was so oppressive it had nearly congealed.
Chika Fujiwara slammed a letter of resignation down hard on the desk, her delicate face filled with anger and incomprehension.
"What is this all about!"
"Without any warning, she pulls out of both the Student Council and the Public Morals Committee at the same time?!"
"And... and she's even applied for indefinite leave from school?!"
"Miko Iino, what on earth is she thinking?! What does she take the Student Council for? Comes and goes whenever she pleases?! It's absolutely irresponsible!"
She paced furiously back and forth across the room, her pink hair seemingly about to catch fire from its owner's rage.
Off to one side, Yu Ishigami shrank his neck down, not daring to make a sound.
Though he too found Iino's behavior this time bizarre, there was no way on earth he was about to poke at Secretary Fujiwara's temper at a moment like this.
He only muttered under his breath, "Could it be... something happened at home?"
"What could possibly have happened to make her drop everything like this?!" Chika Fujiwara grew angrier still. "Even if the sky was falling, she should at least come and tell us in person! What is this supposed to be?!"
Only Kobachi Osaragi sat quietly in the corner.
On her face there was no anger, only deep worry.
Others did not understand Miko. She understood her best. That girl who valued "responsibility" and "justice" more than her own life would absolutely, absolutely never do something so "irresponsible."
Unless... unless something had happened.
An ominous premonition settled over her heart like a dark cloud.
Over the next several days, Kobachi Osaragi exhausted every method she could think of trying to reach Miko Iino.
Phone calls always went straight to a powered-off number.
Messages always sank like stones into the sea.
She used what connections she had to ask around, but the answers she received were only the vague, evasive "family matters."
In the end, on the weekend, unable to bear the unease any longer, she went in person to Councilman Iino's residence in the city center.
The one who opened the door was an expressionless butler.
"Hello, I'm a friend of Miko's, Kobachi Osaragi. May I ask if Miko is home? I'm very worried about her." Kobachi Osaragi bowed politely, her tone earnest.
The butler looked her over, then said, "I am terribly sorry. The young lady is currently undergoing a very important closed-door study program personally arranged by the councilman. For the time being, she is not seeing any visitors."
"Closed-door study?" The excuse was clumsy to the point of absurdity. "Then may I speak with her? Just one sentence!"
"My apologies. No." The butler's manner was as resolute as a wall.
Kobachi Osaragi looked at the cold door that had been mercilessly closed in her face, and that ominous premonition in her heart grew stronger and stronger.
She knew. Something was wrong.
That companion who was always arguing with them, who was always holding her statute book with such a serious face, who, when everyone else had chosen to compromise, was the only one still willing to stand up and fight for what they called "justice"...
She was being forcibly evaporated out of their daily lives, by some vast power from the adult world that they were completely powerless to resist.
As if she had never existed at all.
In stark contrast to her "disappearance from the face of the earth" in social circles was the truly "rocket-like" ascent of Councilman Iino in Japan's political world.
Within just a few short weeks, miracles began happening to him one after another.
His greatest political rival was suddenly exposed by a long-buried corruption scandal.
Overnight, the man's reputation was destroyed and he was thrown in prison.
The legislative bills that Councilman Iino had long sought to push through, only to see them shelved by overwhelming resistance, suddenly received joint support from several heavyweight conglomerates and passed the Diet at lightning speed with an overwhelming majority.
Within his own faction, those elders who had once leaned on their seniority and treated him with disdain seemed to change their nature overnight. One after another, they declared their allegiance to him, voluntarily ceding the power they held into his hands.
Prestige. Power. Position.
In the span of a single month, Councilman Iino obtained everything he had spent the past ten years dreaming of.
He rose effortlessly, soaring upward, becoming the most blazingly sought-after political star in all of Nagatacho.
Everyone understood. Behind all of this stood one name.
Seiji Fujiwara.
It was that man's conglomerate that had, from behind the scenes, provided Councilman Iino with an endless stream of support.
It was that man's intelligence network that had so precisely dug up the dirt on all his political enemies. It was that man's will that had made those defiant, untamed conglomerate heads bow their proud heads in obedience.
Councilman Iino was no longer Councilman Iino.
He had become... Seiji Fujiwara's spokesman in Japan's political arena.
A blade of unmatched sharpness!
Whenever the dead of night came and Councilman Iino sat alone in his office, an office many times larger and far more luxurious than the one he had before...
Occasionally, he would think of his daughter.
He would think of the eyes that had once been so full of light, dimming bit by bit there before him. He would think of how she had been taken away by that man like a possession.
A pang would shoot through Councilman Iino's heart.
But when his eyes fell on the desk before him, on those documents that represented even greater power, when he felt that incomparable thrill of holding the fates of countless people in the palm of his hand... that faint pang would be swiftly drowned by a far more violent tide, by the surge named "ambition" and "fervor."
He would tell himself, in his heart, that all of it was worth it.
This was the necessary sacrifice for realizing a "greater justice."
[Read 90+ chapters ahead on Patreon: patreon.com/NiaXD]