Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei finds a Freylian

The crow took a deep breath and took a step back. Then came the yaksha, and then the security personnel standing behind, one after another retreating, like the receding tide, slowly, reluctantly, inch by inch, clearing the space in the middle of the corridor.

Their eyes held anger, resentment, and humiliation, yet they stepped aside because they had no other choice.

Lu Mingfei gripped Yuan Zhisheng's neck and led him step by step toward the stairwell. Frilian followed behind him, ready to defend against any possible sneak attack.

As he entered the stairwell, Lu Mingfei glanced back.

The crow was still standing in the corridor, holding a short knife in his hand. Blood dripped from between his fingers, falling onto the carpet, mingling with the blood of Tachibana Masamune, Genjiro, and Lu Mingfei, making it impossible to tell whose it was.

He didn't catch up.

Lu Mingfei turned around and pushed open the fire door to the stairwell.

They walked for a long time.

When they reached the underground parking lot, Lu Mingfei's legs felt like cotton balls. He leaned Yuan Zhisheng against the wall and, supporting himself on his knees, gasped for breath.

The sound of a car engine came from afar—it was the pick-up vehicle they had arranged in advance, waiting for them in a corner of the parking lot. The headlights came on, and two white beams of light pierced through the dim parking lot, shining on them and casting long, long shadows onto the wall behind them, like two huge, tired, and battered ghosts.

Lu Mingfei straightened up, looked at the light, and his lips curled up slightly, revealing a smile that was more like a grimace.

“You may leave,” he said, “Yuan Zhisheng.”

Chapter 736 Call your boss out!

Meanwhile, on the other side of Takamagahara, as Lu Mingfei and Frilian were assassinating Tachibana Masamune...

Humpback whales have never wanted to escape this much in their lives.

He entered the industry at the age of nineteen, opened his own shop in Shinjuku at the age of twenty-two, and became the recognized "Whale King" of Shinjuku at the age of twenty-four, managing more than thirty male escorts, four floors, countless VIP rooms, and champagne towers on more than a dozen walls.

He is now 52 years old.

He'd seen a female CEO throw her Hermès Birkin bag into an ice bucket while drunk, a wealthy heiress folding cash into paper airplanes and throwing them all over the room, and a crazy woman calling the police because her gigolo wouldn't kiss her. Humpback Whale always believed that as long as the customer was willing to pay, he could handle any situation. He was the pillar of this street, a living fossil of the gigolo world, and the "Unbeatable Whale Master" in the eyes of countless younger men.

But today, he really couldn't handle this fat woman.

"Do you even know who I am?!" The fat woman's voice boomed so loudly that the champagne glasses on the third floor seemed to vibrate. She wore a leopard-print bodycon dress, her figure resembling a rhinoceros that had wandered into the city. Her foundation was so thick it could be bulletproof. At that moment, she pointed a carrot-thick finger at the tip of the humpback whale's nose. "I own seventeen shops in Ginza! I have a villa in Karuizawa! My husband is a member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly! You bunch of pretty boys who live off your looks, dare to offend me?"

All the male prostitutes stood in a row, bowing at a 90-degree angle, their foreheads almost touching their knees.

The humpback whale stood at the very front, his back bent lower than anyone else's. He was fifty-two years old and had been suffering from a herniated disc for three years. This posture was torture for him, but he was the person in charge of the store, and if he didn't bow his head, who would?

The fat woman's anger didn't start out of nowhere.

The incident dates back three hours. The fat woman and her three girlfriends booked the "Summer Moon Room" on the third floor, which is the most expensive private room in the restaurant. The room fee alone is 200,000 yen, not including drinks.

The fat woman's first words as she walked in were: "Bring me your two most popular top girls. I'm going to have a blast tonight."

The two most popular stars in the store are undoubtedly Basara King and Ukyo.

The humpback whale still doesn't understand where these two young people came from.

About a week ago, the bosses gave each other advance notice. The two men, covered in blood, entered the store on a dark and windy night. The bosses simply said, "Let them work," and then never paid any more attention to them.

Basara King has a face that could drive women crazy. When he smiles, the corners of his mouth turn up slightly, giving off a mischievous vibe that says, "I know what you're thinking, but I won't tell you."

Ukyo, on the other hand, has a different style, as refined as a nobleman who stepped out of a Heian period painting.

These two people just sit down in the private room, and without doing anything, the guests' credit card limits start to tremble.

They climbed to the top of the store's sales charts in just one week, pushing Humpback Whale's top star, whom they had personally cultivated for five years, down to third place.

The humpback whale had no objection to this; that's just how cruel the male escort industry is—newcomers replacing old ones is the norm.

The problem is that Basara King and Ukyo are completely out of his control. While other male escorts arrive at the club on time every day, put on makeup, change clothes, and memorize the customers' birthdays and preferences, these two come and go as they please. Being late or leaving early is commonplace, and sometimes they simply disappear for a whole day.

The humpback whale tried to talk to the bosses about the situation, but Su Enxi was curled up on the sofa eating potato chips and watching a variety show. Without even turning her head, she said, "Let them be."

Let them be.

Having spent thirty years navigating the treacherous waters of Shinjuku, this was the first time I'd ever heard a nightclub owner speak of his top male escort in such a tone. It wasn't indulgence; it was a sense of alienation, a feeling that "these two people are from a different world than us."

The humpback whale keenly sensed that Basara King and Ukyo working as male escorts at this shop was just like college students working part-time at a convenience store—they could leave at any time without any regrets.

But the guests were unaware of this. In the fat woman's eyes, Basara King and Ukyo were the most expensive items in the shop, services she had paid for that night. She had ordered them, so they were obligated to accompany her; it was the natural logic of the transaction.

At first, everything was normal. Basara King sat next to the fat woman, Ukyo took care of her three best friends, three bottles of champagne were opened, and the atmosphere was as lively as a New Year's celebration.

When the fat woman finished her third drink, she started placing her hand on Basara King's thigh. Basara King subtly moved five centimeters to the side. The fat woman placed her hand again, and he moved again. By the fourth time, Basara King was forced against the sofa armrest; any further movement would have pushed him to the floor.

The fat woman was unhappy.

"Why are you hiding? I paid for this!"

Basara King, still sporting his signature smirk, said in a nonchalant tone, "You paid me to drink with you, not to buy my legs."

This is a major taboo in the male escort industry. Real professional male escorts never draw a clear line between themselves and their customers; they never sell just alcohol, but rather a blurred line of ambiguity.

A customer spends hundreds of thousands of yen to open a bottle of champagne; they're not buying the alcohol, but the host's elusive gaze as he pours the drink, the fleeting sincerity in his comment, "Your earrings look beautiful today." Once you've taken the money, you can't discuss boundaries with your customers.

The fat woman exploded on the spot. She grabbed the champagne glass on the table and smashed it on the ground. Glass shards and golden liquor splashed all over the floor. Her girlfriends screamed and backed away, while Ukyo calmly used a tray to block the shards flying towards him.

"Call your boss out here!" the fat woman roared.

When the humpback whale was dragged from his fourth-floor bed, he was only wearing a bathrobe. As he fastened his belt, he ran up to the third floor. Halfway there, he heard the fat woman's furious roar pierce through three floors, loud enough to make all the dogs on the street start barking at once.

He pushed open the door to the Summer Moon Room and saw a scene of utter chaos: broken glass, an overturned ice bucket, ripped velvet curtains, and a fat woman sitting in the center of the sofa, arms crossed, her face ashen. Basara King leaned against the window, her expression indifferent. Ukyo sat in the corner, quietly folding a napkin into a paper crane.

The humpback whale took a deep breath and began to bow.

He bowed for a full twenty minutes.

The fat woman cursed for twenty minutes.

She berated Basara King for being ungrateful, called the club a shady operation, criticized humpback whales for not disciplining their staff, called male escorts parasites who live off women, and said all male escort clubs in Shinjuku should be burned down. Her vocabulary was astonishing, seamlessly switching between Edo-era slang and the latest internet slang, interspersed with at least three dialects.

The humpback whale remained motionless, bowing at a ninety-degree angle, sweat dripping from its forehead onto the carpet, leaving dark dots. Its back was beginning to groan, as if a small knife was sawing back and forth through its intervertebral discs.

All the male prostitutes stood in a row behind him and bowed together.

Chapter 737 Su Enxi: Hmm? Looking for me?

Some had just been woken from their sleep, their hair still disheveled; others had been entertaining clients until four in the morning, their eyes bloodshot. But not one of them looked up, not one of them uttered a sound.

This is the rule: when a customer gets angry, the Cowherd can only bow his head. Regardless of whether the customer is right or wrong, the Cowherd is always wrong.

But the fat woman was not appeased by their bowing. On the contrary, this silent submission excited her even more.

She kicked over the coffee table, sending the ice bucket flying and splashing ice and melted water all over the humpback whale's head and face.

Ice water flowed down his neck and into his bathrobe, and he shivered, but the angle at which he bent over did not change even slightly.

"I'm going to tear down this shop's sign!" the fat woman said, pointing at the back of the humpback whale's head. "Get out of Shinjuku! My husband can get the Metropolitan Police Department to check your business license with just one phone call! You just wait!"

The humpback whale's mind was racing.

The fat woman said her husband is a member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, which is most likely true. Host clubs in Shinjuku are most afraid of members of parliament, because they can pressure the Metropolitan Police Department, which can then inspect the establishments and find fault with everything. Fire safety, liquor licenses, noise control, and restrictions on minors—they can find fault with any of these aspects.

At best, the business will be ordered to suspend operations for rectification; at worst, its license will be revoked.

If a host club is forced to close, even for just one month, its customers will flow to competitors, and winning them back will be incredibly difficult. The business he built up over thirty years in Shinjuku could be destroyed tonight by the rage of a fat woman.

And all of this is Basara King's and Ukyo's fault. No, strictly speaking, it's all the fault of those two mysterious bosses.

The humpback whale mentally rewound the timeline.

A few weeks ago, those two women suddenly appeared in his life and bought the shop with an enormous sum of money that he still couldn't comprehend. They transferred money into his account, the amount so large that he thought his banking app was bugged. Then they moved into the office and never came out again.

Su Enxi spends her days in her pajamas, curled up on the sofa watching variety shows and eating potato chips, while Jiude Mai hangs upside down on the roof reading detective novels. The two of them have turned a luxurious office with a monthly rent of 800,000 yen into a college girls' dormitory.

The humpback whale once tentatively asked them why they bought a host club but didn't manage it at all.

Su Enxi's answer at the time was: "Because we need a base."

The humpback whale didn't dare ask what kind of hideout it was. He'd seen too many strange people; on this street, not asking about origins was a basic survival rule.

But tonight, when the fat woman's spittle landed on his head, the humpback whale began to seriously consider a question for the first time: Should he run away?

He wasn't running away from this private room, not running away from this building, but running away from this industry. Running away from Shinjuku, running away from Tokyo, running away to a place where nobody knows him. He's fifty-two years old, suffering from a herniated disc, stomach ulcers, and abnormal liver function. He relies on painkillers to stand and entertain clients until the early hours of the morning. He's saved enough money to buy a big house in Okinawa, spend his days watching sea fishing, and live out his remaining years in peace. Why is he here, bearing the wrath of a fat woman for two mysterious, unseen women and two unruly top male escorts?

Once the thought took hold, it couldn't be taken back. The humpback whale maintained his bowing posture, but his mind had already flown to Okinawa. He imagined himself sitting on the seawall, wearing a floral shirt and a straw hat, holding a fishing rod, with the azure Pacific Ocean in front of him. No fat women, no broken glass, no champagne tower at four in the morning, no perpetually booming stereos and perpetually fake smiles.

"I want to see your boss!" The fat woman's roar pulled him back to reality. "If you don't give me an explanation today, I'm not leaving!"

The humpback whale slowly straightened up. This movement caused his spine to crack and pop like a string of small firecrackers exploding inside his body. He looked at the fat woman's flushed face, at the hot breath coming from her nostrils, at the saliva piling up at the corners of her mouth, and suddenly felt that it was all utterly absurd.

"Please wait a moment," he said. "I'll go get the boss."

He turned and walked out of the Summer Moon Pavilion, down the corridor to the door where he had been delivering instant food every day for weeks. The corridor was dimly lit, and the walls were adorned with ukiyo-e erotic prints, depicting geishas with their pale necks arched like swans. The humpback whale reached the door, raised his hand, and hesitated for three seconds.

He recalled Basara King's indifferent expression as she leaned against the window, Ukyo's composure as he folded origami cranes, Su Enxi's nonchalant "Let them be" without turning her head, and the bizarre posture of Shude Mai hanging upside down on the roof reading a book.

These people were like intruders from another world, living a life in his shop that he couldn't comprehend at all. And he, the humpback whale, the whale king of Shinjuku, wasn't even a supporting character in their world; at best, he was just a backdrop providing the stage.

He knocked on the door.

A lazy voice came from inside: "Come in."

The humpback whale pushed open the door and saw Su Enxi sitting cross-legged on the sofa, an open bag of potato chips on her lap. A late-night comedy show was playing on TV, with waves of laughter coming from the cans. Mai Shude was still hanging from the ceiling, but the book had changed; it had gone from a detective novel to a comic book, with a big-eyed girl on the cover making a peace sign.

“Boss,” the humpback whale took a deep breath, “a customer from the summer months said she wants to see you. Her husband is a member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, and she said she wants us to close down.”

Su Enxi popped a potato chip into her mouth, crunched it a few times, then picked up the remote and pressed the pause button. The laughter from the variety show abruptly stopped, and the room suddenly became so quiet that you could hear the slight swaying of the Victoria's Secret lingerie hanging on the air conditioner vent.

She turned to look at the humpback whale, her face full of impatience as if she had been forcibly pulled from the exciting plot.

"A member of parliament?" she said. "What kind of member of parliament?"

“From the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly,” the humpback whale replied.

Su Enxi remained silent, then smiled.

“Mai,” she called out, looking up at the roof, “the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly.”

Mai Shude's eyes peeked out from above the comic book, and she coldly uttered a single word: "Oh."

Then she turned to a page of the comic.

The humpback whale stood there, icy water dripping from his bathrobe, his lower back aching slightly, the thought of the Okinawa beach growing clearer in his mind. He suddenly realized that perhaps tonight wasn't the worst night of his life, but perhaps it was the most important turning point in his life.

But he didn't turn around.

Because Su Enxi stood up from the sofa. Barefoot, she stepped over the women's clothes and shoes scattered on the floor, walked up to the humpback whale, and patted his shoulder. Her hand was small, but the force was surprisingly strong, making the humpback whale's shoulder slump.