300,000 yen was an amount Kiryu Kazusuke could just barely scrape together.
Pay?
Of course he could pay.
But how to pay, and how much to pay, was another matter.
According to the provisions of Japan’s Civil Code on compensation for torts, the principle for compensation for damaged property was restitution—the actual value of the item.
Though this piece of clothing had been newly bought, it had already been worn for a week and could be considered secondhand.
The depreciation rate for secondhand clothing was very high.
If they really went to court, even if the clothing was a total loss, compensation would only be calculated at seventy percent at most—around 100,000 yen.
As for compensation for emotional distress?
It could only be said that, in legal terms, for a dispute of this level, such compensation was practically negligible.
“Section chief?”
Kiryu Kazusuke tilted his head, looking at the section chief with a puzzled expression.
“Is a section chief very big?”
“Bigger than that extra-large beer I just drank?”
This was simply adding fuel to the fire.
Among the diners around them, some people could not help letting out little bursts of laughter.
“You!”
Yoshino Keiko felt as if her blood vessels were about to burst.
Talking about social status with a drunk was like playing the lute to a cow. Not only had she failed to recover her dignity, she had made herself look even more ridiculous.
“Call the police! Call the police right now!”
“I’m going to sue him for intentional assault, and for destruction of property too!”
“Make him pay!”
“Make him pay until he’s ruined!”
She turned to her subordinates, venting her fury indiscriminately.
The people around her looked at one another. Ordinarily, they obeyed the section chief’s every word, but now none of them dared actually make the call.
For a minor drunken scuffle like this, even if the police came, they would at most mediate, have him pay some money, and that would be the end of it.
It was nowhere near the standard for detention.
If it really blew up, and word spread that a section chief from the municipal office had thrown a fit in a yakiniku restaurant over a piece of clothing and a drunk, it would not sound good for the section chief’s reputation either.
And when that time came, she would still take it out on them, questioning why they had not stopped her back then.
“So noisy…”
Kiryu Kazusuke slowly reached into the inner pocket of his coat, took out his wallet, and pulled out two ten-thousand-yen bills.
“Here, take it…”
As his hand loosened, three bills printed with Fukuzawa Yukichi’s portrait fell onto the table.
Section Chief Yoshino froze.
What was this supposed to be?
Did he think he could dismiss her with 30,000 yen?
“Are you joking!”
“When the police get here, I’ll see whether you still have no money!”
She suddenly reached out, intending to grab Kiryu Kazusuke by the collar and shake him awake.
“N-no more…”
Kiryu Kazusuke shrank back, dodging her hand, then lowered his head and began rummaging through his wallet.
However.
Aside from the three bills he had just taken out and some coins, there were only a few supermarket point cards and a hospital cafeteria card in the wallet.
Sitting in the corner, Saionji Mina’s palms were drenched in sweat.
Call the police.
The section chief said she was going to call the police.
No matter how she looked at him, Doctor Kiryu did not seem like a wealthy person. If the police really came, and he was taken away because they could not agree on compensation…
Then he would be left with a record in this society.
For a resident doctor still in his internship period, having a police record, no matter how minor the circumstances, meant the premature end of his career as a physician.
The hospital would never tolerate such a blemish.
What should she do?
She bit her lip, her fingers nearly pinching the flesh of her thigh red, and finally made up her mind.
Just as Saionji Mina gathered her courage and was about to stand up to persuade the section chief—
“Ah, found it!”
Kiryu Kazusuke suddenly fished a business card out of his wallet.
“Didn’t bring enough money…”
“I-I’ll make a call and have someone bring it over…”
He waved it about in front of Section Chief Yoshino, hiccuping as he spoke in broken phrases, every inch a drunken scoundrel playing the rogue.
But Section Chief Yoshino stopped the motion of her hands, which had been about to shove him.
Someone would bring money?
Hearing those words, her anger subsided slightly.
As long as there was money, everything could be discussed.
Although this drunk did not look like someone with money, the way he acted so fearlessly—even daring to wipe her clothing with a rag—perhaps his family really did have some backing.
Could he be some family’s wastrel son?
“Fine.”
Section Chief Yoshino pinched her nose with two fingers and took a step back, disgusted by the smell of alcohol on him.
“Have your people bring the money over right now.”
She folded her arms and urged him, afraid this fat sheep at her lips would run away.
As long as she could get the money, buy herself a new coat, and still have a surplus of a hundred thousand or so, then getting this dirty would have been worth it.
The current economic situation was poor; bonuses had been cut by more than half, and the interest on her mortgage was rising like a vampire. If she could get an unexpected windfall, it would relieve her urgent need.
Her subordinates also let out a slight breath of relief.
If the matter could be resolved without calling the police, that would be best.
The diners around them had also stopped using their chopsticks, watching this farce with great interest.
In this stifling era, watching other people suffer misfortune was also a form of entertainment.
Kiryu Kazusuke narrowed his eyes.
He raised the business card in his hand, seeming to be trying hard to make out the writing on it.
The overhead light fell on the specially textured card, reflecting the warm sheen unique to high-grade washi paper. Along its edges, a faint glimmer of gold foil stamping could be seen.
“O-Ogawara…”
He mumbled the surname on it indistinctly, then hiccuped again.
“A-Assemblyman Ogawara…”
“Have his secretary bring the money…”
The business card in Kiryu Kazusuke’s hand was precisely the private business card Assemblyman Ogawara had previously handed out, out of courtesy, to all the doctors who had participated in his son’s surgery.
Of course, if he really made that call, he would probably have to leave Gunma University Hospital that very night.
But that did not prevent him from using it to borrow another’s authority.
These few words were like the head of Medusa from ancient Greek myth, possessing the power to petrify people in an instant.
Yoshino Keiko knew very well what that surname meant.
Having struggled for years within municipal administration, she naturally knew that Assemblyman Ogawara was an existence above the clouds.
So, she believed she must have misheard.
How could a young man wearing an ordinary hoodie and getting dead drunk in a cheap yakiniku restaurant possibly know such an important figure?
And he was even going to call the assemblyman’s secretary over to bring money?
It had to be a lie, right?
Drunken nonsense, right?
But what if—what if it was true?
If this drunk really had some connection to Assemblyman Ogawara, even if he merely knew one of his secretaries…
As long as the other party lifted a finger and made a call to the upper levels of the municipal office—“Section Chief Yoshino seems to have problems not only with her work style, but her private conduct is also rather questionable.”
With just that one sentence, there would not even be any need for an investigation. All those rotten things she had done—eating and drinking on public funds, falsifying accounts, bullying subordinates—would be dug up.
In this period of economic downturn, once she was fired, she would be beyond redemption.
The thirty-five-year mortgage on her shoulders, the apartment she had just renovated, and several overdrawn credit cards.
Once she lost her source of income…
At that time, at her age, with no other skills to speak of, where would she go to earn money?
Her only way out would probably be to go to a sex shop in Chiyoda Town and sell her no-longer-young body along with what little dignity she had left.
“Do you know what you’re saying?”
Section Chief Yoshino forcibly suppressed the ominous premonition rising in her heart and shouted angrily.