At the Crossroads 3 - Seeker.

"Let Saffron handle it," said one of the men, in his forties and rather fat.

"Anyway, we don't really have a choice, since Kazamidori is out of the picture..." Said another man, a scar running across the right side of his face from bottom to top and passing on either side of his eye.

"What do you think?" Asked the first man, addressing a third person who had not yet spoken.

The third man, who had remained silent until then while slowly sipping a 50-year-old whiskey, placed his half-full glass on the black glass table separating him from the other two men.

"It's up to you to handle this..." He said as he set his cold, indifferent gaze on the other two men. "But more importantly, have we found one?"

The man with the scar answered with a shake of his head.

"That's your priority for now," the third man said. "We can't afford to lose Kazamidori."

There was a knock on the door of the richly decorated room with black patina furniture and marble tops of similar color with white veins running through them. The delicate and fine carvings were covered with gold or copper, when they were not entirely made of the metal in question.

However, not even the dark gray, upholstered bench seat could evaporate the sudden discomfort the first chubby man felt, when two men full of blood were suddenly thrown at his feet onto the pristine white marble serving as the floor.

"Ah!" He exclaimed, startled. "They scared me!"

Already, the second man, the one with the scar, had stood up, and put his foot on one of the two men, before rolling the latter to the side.

"So, these two have drooled?" He asked one of his subordinates who had dragged the two men to the ground.

"Mr. Abe! One of them got close to a reporter, and the other helped himself to the cash register!" Declared his subordinate, as if it were a theatrical line learned by heart since the time.

The man named Abe then gave a violent kick in the head of the person he was still holding under his feet until now, spraying blood on the white marble.

"The maintenance crew is really going to hate you, Mr. Abe," the first man remarked, having regained his composure.

Abe didn't answer, raising his stern gaze to his employees.

"You could have stopped him from going around telling the reporter anything," he said in a deep voice. "Because of your negligence, we're going to have to lose money by hiring a subcontractor..."

He then pulled out a pistol, and after calmly and silently attaching a silencer to it, shot the two men thrown to the ground in the head.

"We're also going to have to find two new employees, since you didn't manage them properly..." He reprimanded them.

His three subordinates quickly bowed forward, and with their heads very low - almost perpendicular to their bodies - asked for forgiveness.

Mr. Abe gave them one last look before returning to his seat.

"Clean this up and call Saffron," he ordered, putting his pistol away after removing the silencer.

His three subordinates complied, retrieving the limp, disarticulated bodies of the two dead men from the floor and dragging them out of the room.

Mr. Abe, still seated, then turned to the third man who had resumed drinking his beverage, before bowing forward in turn.

"I'm sorry, sir. My subordinates have failed to do their job again."

"You are quite tame today, Mr. Abe," the first man with the fat belly said.

Mr. Abe didn't have time to answer, because already the glass of whiskey came forcefully into contact with the glass table, making a sharp noise under the impact.

"Anyway, we'll have a great asset in our pocket before long," he said. "The election will be here soon, so everything must be perfect."

The other two men looked at him.

They had no room for error, then?

For the next hour, Emi was still spying on people entering and leaving the karaoke establishment, ready to capture with her camera the slightest person venturing in.

She couldn't risk exposing her face or being spotted, so she hid in the stairwell of an emergency exit situated outside of a building across the street. The perfect hiding place, where she could sit out of sight, and still accurately photograph the faces of people coming and going with her long-range lens.

In the two hours she had been in position, she must have taken no less than 200 different people's pictures, for almost twice as many shots. Many men accompanied by women younger than them, or by people who were probably their subordinates; in addition to the more classic clients like groups of schoolgirls, work colleagues, or tourists passing by. It was quite a busy place, for the beginning of the afternoon; even for a karaoke.

Emi was already getting ready to photograph the new people entering through the main door of the building, when her phone rang.

Momentarily unfocused, she pulled her phone out of her pocket, and after picking it up and positioning it between her ear and shoulder, continued taking pictures.

"I'm in the middle of a stakeout, sir." She replied hastily. "Can it wait?"

"No, not really..." Said he with a tone of voice more dull and calm than usual.

A strange thing, which finally caught the attention of the young woman.

"What's going on, sir? Did we get a complaint or a summons again?" She asked.

As long as she wasn't asked to drop the case she was currently following. Anything but that.

She knew her lead was solid, and she intended to see it through.

"No, it's not that..." He added, dragging on each word.

He was obviously having trouble telling her something, but what?

Was she being fired? Just like that? Without explanation?

"Sir, if it's to tell me not to come to work tomorrow, I-" she began before he cut her off in her sentence.

"Furusawa..." Said he with a tone of voice very serious.

This destabilized her completely, making her definitely abandon her surveillance and lower her camera lens.

"Furusawa, listen to me and keep calm, okay?" Asked the strangely strangled voice of Mr. Kuroba. "Your sister, she just had an accident..."