Day 16, September 2, 2015
Account Balance: ¥2,593,000.
Kabukicho, at dawn, the streets still shone as if it were daylight.
Aria pushed open the glass doors of a high-end hotel. The air of Kabukicho was thick with sweat, perfume, and the damp sting of disinfectant. She carried a steaming cup of convenience store coffee. One sip tasted bitter and burnt, yet she couldn't help but laugh.
The neon signs of nightclubs flickered out one by one. Gang underlings stuffed bags of cash into the trunks of cars, their motions practiced, efficient, like factory hands. A cleaning truck rolled slowly down the street, hoses blasting the pavement. Red wine, spilled hours earlier, thinned into pink streams that vanished into the drains. Tokyo's underground cash flow was exposed on the surface now, pulsing like veins, cold and alive.
She whispered inside her head:
Fifteen days left.
Better to sink completely into this place than wait for the market to strip away her last breath.
Her phone lit up. The account balance glared back at her. The profits from earlier trades were already swallowed; what remained were scattered, worthless fragments. Trading further was meaningless.
She remembered the words she once wrote "Don't die." "Ten million." they felt like jokes now.
"The market isn't salvation. It's a casino. I'm not a trader. I'm a chip."
The sentence pounded again and again in her mind.
At the corner, she caught sight of a group of hosts counting their stacks of bills, slapping each other's shoulders in excitement. Compared to that, the numbers on her trading screen felt pale and unreal.
She realized suddenly:
The money here was more real than the market.
Instead of wasting herself on hopeless trades, she could ride their flow of cash.
Ideas flared through her mind:
Play the information gap.
Stage a setup, pose as foreign capital.
Even orchestrate a false rally.
This was not an investment.
This was hunting.
Aria slid open WeChat and tapped the contact she had added a few weeks earlier—Liu. Back then, she and Rina had been out shopping when he scanned her code by chance. All she knew was that he handled currency exchange.
She typed a line.
"I heard you change money. I can wash it for you."
The reply came quickly, with a smiley face.
"Wash? You sure you're not just desperate from losing?"
Aria stared at the screen, her finger hovering for a few seconds before typing again.
"I know the tape. The cash you move shouldn't just be cash. Want to test it?"
This time, he did not reply right away. Ten minutes later, a location pin appeared.
"Tenze Club, VIP room. Give my name."
She slipped the phone back into her pocket. A chill ran through her, but she laughed anyway.
It was the first time she had ever offered to launder money, the first time she threw herself from the market into the flow of street cash.
Kabukicho, 10:11 p.m.
The VIP room door opened, and a wave of stale heat pressed in. Cheap perfume mixed with smoke. The light was low, angled deliberately toward the unopened champagne on the table, bubbles flickering against the glass. A few hosts lounged in the corner, their smiles rigid, their eyes sneaking toward the cash on the table like extras trained to stay in the frame.
Aria sat against the wall. Her posture looked relaxed, but her fingertips tapped lightly against her knee, steadying her pulse. On the table lay a blank contract, glossy paper still smelling of toner.
The man leaned back into the sofa, exhaling smoke before he spoke.
they speak in Chinese.
"Liu Zhihong." His voice was low, shifting easily between charm and warning. His eyes fixed on her as if weighing her.
"I know you," Aria said quickly. "Two years ago, you ran the Tenze Club. Changed the sign, not the man."
Her tone was flat, almost casual, though a faint smile hung at her lips. She was reminding herself that this was the battleground she had chosen.
Liu let out a short laugh, as if confirming her nerve. He spread a stack of bills across the table, the paper carrying the faint, damp smell of sweat.
"Three million yen. We need it cleaned. Two days. You play."
Aria flipped open the contract instead of answering. The pages were a mess of Chinese, English, and Japanese, layout crooked, punctuation inconsistent. At the footer was the name of a deregistered company, the red stamp so blurred it was barely legible. She let out a quiet laugh inside. Absurd enough to be a joke, which made it real.
"Operational freedom?" she asked.
"All yours. Condition is, forty-eight hours later, it comes out." Liu exhaled again, head tilted aside, letting the smoke linger in the light.
Aria raised her eyes, locked onto his.
"Two hundred thousand upfront, plus ten percent of the upside. If the market doesn't move, I still walk."
Liu's smile faded for a moment, his voice dropping lower.
"How dare you ask that?"
Her smile was thin as glass. "Because you won't find another account this clean, with someone who knows the tape and can run market cap management like me."
The air froze. Even the hosts' fake smiles faltered for a beat.
Liu leaned back, slowly lighting another cigarette. The flame lit half his face, carving the rest into shadow. He smiled again, this time softer, and his tone shifted.
"Don't talk so absolutely, sis. I've got plenty of people ready to work."
Aria stayed quiet, lifted her whiskey, swallowing against the beat of her heart. For the first time, she felt she was no longer just a chip on the market board, but already folded into the flow of cash on this street.
Liu watched her, smoke curling. His gaze was like a pawnshop clerk appraising a secondhand designer bag.
"But if you blow this three million, will your face still be there?"
She smiled, steady, her professional office smile cutting through.
"My face will be. My body too."
Liu snapped the ledger shut, the sound sharp as a stamp.
"That's enough."
He pushed the cash across the table. His tone lightened, almost warm.
"Someone like you is break-even here. Even if you fail, you'll fit in. You could work in our club. You'd be treated well."
He exhaled another stream of smoke, nodded once, and grinned.
"From now on, you're one of us. Do the work."