“Bastard!”
Imagawa Ori kicked viciously at the piled snow by the roadside, sending powdery flakes flying.
Ever since she had come back from making her phone call at the tobacco-and-grocery shop, her expression had turned ugly, her chest rising and falling violently.
Clearly, she was more than a little furious.
After hanging up the call from “Kagura Club,” she had immediately called the taxi dispatch center, hoping they could send a car over.
But the answer she received was an apology.
And so, at this moment, she vented every bit of the dissatisfaction in her heart on the accumulated snow.
“Looks like things aren’t going too smoothly?”
Beside her, Kiryu Kazusuke asked, both hands tucked into his pockets.
“What does it have to do with you! Why are you still here?”
Imagawa Ori glared at him fiercely, her tone hostile.
“I want to go home too, but I couldn’t get a cab.”
Kiryu Kazusuke turned a blind eye to her savage glare and spread his hands helplessly.
That was indeed the truth.
He had been standing by the roadside. Even if he hadn’t raised his hand, couldn’t a taxi at least stop and ask?
“Hmph.”
Imagawa Ori gave a cold snort and turned her head away, ignoring him.
Right now, her mind was filled with Nakamori Sachiko.
Every second that passed meant another Fukuzawa Yukichi drifting farther away from her.
Anxiety.
Irritation.
Those emotions rampaged wildly through her veins.
The snow was falling harder and harder.
What had just been scattered snowflakes had now become dense sheets of snow, wrapped in the wind like countless tiny blades, attacking all things in the world without discrimination.
Kiryu Kazusuke stood a few steps away and pulled his collar up, covering his chin.
“Damn it!”
As for Imagawa Ori’s outfit, in the damp, freezing air several degrees below zero, it provided hardly any protection against the cold.
She was already trembling uncontrollably in the frigid wind.
But she had no attention to spare for that.
She gritted her teeth, stepped forward in her thin-heeled high heels, disregarding the slick snow on the road, and walked straight down off the curb.
“Taxi! Taxi!”
Imagawa Ori suddenly shouted.
In the distance, a taxi with its vacancy light on was slowly approaching through the wind and snow.
She stretched out her arm and waved desperately.
You have to stop!
Please!
However, the car showed no intention of slowing down at all. It even pressed the accelerator.
In such terrible weather, coupled with the end of the year, taxi drivers held absolute power of choice.
They would rather take long-distance fares or pick up regular customers who had already made reservations than stop for someone casually waving by the roadside.
Legally, the Road Transportation Act stipulated that drivers could not refuse passengers, except with legitimate reasons.
Meaning: don’t take it seriously. That clause was toilet paper.
All a driver had to say was “I didn’t see her,” or “I forgot to turn off the roof light; I was out of service at the time,” and that became a legitimate reason.
Slowing down wasn’t the same as stopping. If the car never stopped, then even if you wrote down the license plate and filed a complaint, it would be useless.
“Stop! Stop the car!”
Imagawa Ori grew frantic and fumbled through her handbag for her wallet.
Her fingers had gone stiff from the cold and no longer obeyed her well, but she still managed to pull out a stack of bills.
They were all brand-new ten-thousand-yen notes, cash she had originally carried with her to give New Year’s money to juniors at the shop, or to deal with emergencies.
“I have money! I’ll pay!”
Imagawa Ori looked at the taxi that had already driven away and held the bills in her hand high above her head.
But… on a snowy night with visibility of less than ten meters, her action seemed both comical and desolate.
This woman really was willing to risk her life for money.
Kiryu Kazusuke sighed. In the end, he still couldn’t bear to watch anymore.
He stepped forward, grabbed Imagawa Ori’s arm—the one frozen red and still holding the bills aloft—and forcefully pulled her back onto the sidewalk.
“Stop wasting your strength, Imagawa-senpai.”
“In this weather, the bridge deck over the Tone River has definitely iced over. They won’t go.”
“And besides, this is a one-way street. Any cab willing to stop would have been intercepted by people at the intersection ahead long ago.”
“The tobacco shop up ahead can block the wind. Go hide there for a while.”
“We’ll talk after the snow lets up.”
“Otherwise, it won’t be long before you become hypothermic.”
This was Kiryu Kazusuke’s most rational judgment.
Although Imagawa Ori was wearing a sharply tailored dark gray wool coat that looked better than a single-layer garment, it had no padded lining at all for the sake of a slim fit.
And on her lower body, she wore slightly thicker velvet tights, but that little bit of fabric was simply incapable of retaining body heat.
In this knife-like cold wind and wet snow, such an outfit was fine as long as she did not stay out too long.
As long as she quickly found somewhere warm, she would recover soon enough.
But if she continued to stay in this extreme weather, continued standing by the roadside, that was courting death. It would not take long for hypothermia to set in.
“I don’t need you to manage me!”
But Imagawa Ori did not listen at all. She shook off his hand and stubbornly took another step toward the edge of the road.
“Do you know how important tonight is to me?”
“As long as I go, as long as I can make it in time, I can complete my goal half a year ahead of schedule!”
“And don’t lecture me in a doctor’s tone.”
“I’m a specialist physician. I know better than you where the limits of the human body are. This little bit of snow won’t kill anyone!”
As she spoke, she raised the bills in her hand again and waved them through the air.
In fact, in order to let passing cars see more clearly, she even took two steps toward the middle of the road, already stepping off the curb.
Kiryu Kazusuke watched her figure, then retreated back beside the streetlamp pole.
Good advice cannot dissuade a ghost bent on dying.
Since she had already had her reason blinded by money and her head muddled by anxiety, she would not listen no matter what he said now.
Then he would wait until her physiological mechanisms forcibly took over her brain. She would quiet down then.
When he had chosen the world line of the second fork, he had noticed that there was a hotel not far up ahead, only a few minutes away.
When the time came, he could take her there to warm back up.
In any case, he was dressed warmly enough, and on top of that, he had milked three physical constitution boosts from Saionji Mina. He could withstand this without any problem.
Another ten minutes passed.
The snow fell denser and denser, soon accumulating a thin layer of white frost on Imagawa Ori’s shoulders.
Several more cars passed by afterward.
But those taxi drivers were as if blind. Even with their “Vacant” signs lit, they stepped on the accelerator and roared past.
Finally, another vacant taxi approached.
The driver had clearly seen the woman by the roadside, her body covered in snow, and had also seen the tempting stack of bills waving in her hand.
The car’s speed slowed slightly.
Joy appeared on Imagawa Ori’s face, and the motion and range of her waving grew even larger.
She was like a drowning person seeing a life-saving straw in utter desperation, struggling desperately to grab hold of it.
The taxi slowly came to a stop by the roadside. The window lowered a crack, and a gust of warm air mixed with the smell of tobacco drifted out.
“Where to?”
The driver was a middle-aged man wearing white gloves. He did not open the door, but asked first.
In the service industry, this was very impolite behavior.
But Imagawa Ori no longer cared about such details and hurried forward.
“Chiyoda-machi!”
“To Ginza-dori in Chiyoda-machi. Hurry, I’m in a rush!”
Because it was too cold, her teeth were chattering, but that did not affect the speed of her speech. Moreover, her right hand had been trying the whole time to pull open the rear door.
Taxi rear doors were usually automatic, but at this moment, she was already too impatient to wait.
As long as she could get in the car now, there would still be time to make it to the shop.