Let’s get back to the story of Mr Koduki. “Remember Kanai?” he started.

“He was the swindler. It’s been five years. . . . since my second life had started. You’ve heard that I was a member of the investors group to buy out, haven’t you? It was perhaps a few month later after we completed the deal. I remember it’s the Saturday, as I was catching train after a little gym workout, I had met him at the train station. He was with this young man. Kanai introduced me him as Sasaki.

“We went into a coffee shop at the station and started chatting about the old stories, y’know, it’s those kind of remembering of several years earlier. It can’t be more than 30 minutes.” As he finish the sentence, he sunk into the chair lazily then sit up and smiled. His smile hasn’t changed. It was like old days. I felt a little warmness crept up. He, then, looked away a while and faced me as pulling himself together.

“I met Kanai a few times in that month. After a while, he called me at the acquired company. Showa was the kind of historic milestone that cannot live with own power anymore. We were busy to find new venture to rebuild it. That was why we felt like seeing him.
The whole thing had been setup way before he came to me though, I found that out much too late. He sure had brought the tasty deal.”

Well, if I tell the whole thing about this deal, we won’t be able to develop any further. So, let me cut the long story short. Anyway, Mr Koduki retired from Showa one year later and accepted to be the adviser to them. As soon he retired Kanai showed up in front of him, said Mr Koduki.

“Remember? Kanai can speak Chinese. He brought me completely different story. Well, I thought he was speaking Chinese. But the reality was that he was speaking Taiwanese learned by ear. This mistook information put me the hell, you know. . . .

“He started to tell me how easy it is to recruit Chinese students to Japanese colleges. I was retired and has nothing to do but having a little money for investment. I thought it could be nice to travel around Mainland China a while. So that I can feel like doing some business.”

Let me cut out the following conversation again. To cut it short, Mr. Koduki had traveled several cities with Kanai following six months. Yes, He had been paying for Kanai during this period.