Ryuichi Saionji.
The last and shrewdest survivor of the Saionji Family, a financial leviathan who had soaked in Wall Street for decades.
When he learned that his family had been uprooted in Japan by some young man, a towering rage for revenge ignited in his chest.
He mobilized the Saionji Family's secret overseas funds, joined forces with several top-tier hedge funds that likewise hated Seiji Fujiwara to the bone, and in an extremely short span of time amassed a colossal pool of capital exceeding one hundred billion US dollars.
There was only one objective.
To short the Fujiwara conglomerate on the financial markets, using the most complex derivatives and the highest-frequency algorithmic trading, to trigger a chain panic, and to strangle this rising commercial empire to death!
"Seiji Fujiwara... you may be a genius in technology."
Ryuichi Saionji sat in his luxurious top-floor office in Manhattan, watching the K-line charts on the screen jump frantically, a viper's cold smile on his face.
"But on the real hunting ground of finance, you're still nothing but a rookie!"
"Today, I'll make you pay the price for your arrogance and ignorance!"
At his command, a hundred billion dollars of capital became a torrent of cold data, like a prehistoric beast opening its bloody jaws and lunging viciously at the Fujiwara conglomerate.
...
Inside the trading room at Fujiwara conglomerate headquarters.
The atmosphere was as oppressive as a tomb.
Terror and despair were written across every trader's face.
On the screens before them, their company's stock price was plunging at a horrifying, near-vertical angle.
Countless astronomical sell orders surged in from every direction, instantly devouring all of their defenses.
"We can't hold them off, Boss! Their firepower is too overwhelming! Our capital pool... is almost exhausted!" the head of trading howled in despair into the emergency line.
At that moment, Seiji Fujiwara was just casually strolling down from the rooftop of Sobu High.
He listened to the wailing on the phone, not the slightest hint of panic on his face.
"What's there to panic about?"
He spat out only those words, lightly.
Then he walked into his exclusive, futuristic office and powered up the quantum computer linked to the "Invisible Eye" system.
He looked at the sea of red on the stock chart, and the smile at the corner of his mouth only deepened.
"Just in time."
I'll make you my new "toy", the first sacrifice for the test.
He extended his slender fingers and tapped a concise command into the holographic keyboard at lightning speed.
[Launching "Insight" mode.]
[Loading "Transformer" core architecture.]
[Target: Analyze and predict the core logic and next moves of all enemy high-frequency trading algorithms.]
[Execute!]
As he hit Enter, the "God's Brain" began running at a speed beyond human imagination.
On the screen, the entire torrent of global financial market data was sucked in, analyzed, dismantled, and reconstructed at a frenzied pace, like a galaxy being devoured.
Less than three seconds.
A "battlefield situation map" of disgraceful clarity, meticulously labeling enemy algorithm models, capital flows, and even precisely predicting their next attack plan, materialized before Seiji.
He looked at the map, an ice-cold smile on his face.
"At point XX, go full long, throw every yen we have in!"
"Thirty seconds later, at point XX, place a sky-high short order with ten times leverage!"
"Once their capital is fully committed, at point XX, reverse instantly and swallow all of their positions!"
"..."
"Do exactly as I say. Not a single step out of place."
...
...
New York, Wall Street.
In Ryuichi Saionji's office, the million-dollar champagne prepared for the victory celebration still lay quietly in its ice bucket.
But he would never get the chance to open it.
His eyes were bloodshot, like a gambler who had bet away his last chip, fixed on the screen before him.
The expression on his face shifted from certain victory, to confusion, to absolute terror, before finally freezing into ash-gray despair.
He felt that he wasn't fighting a "human" at all.
He was a barefisted primitive challenging a future deity who held a god's-eye view and piloted an interstellar warship.
Every attack, every maneuver, was anticipated by his opponent in an inconceivable, prophetic manner, then strangled in reverse with even greater ferocity!
That over one hundred billion dollars of colossal capital, in the face of his opponent's surgically precise, godlike operations, was devoured swiftly and mercilessly, like ice and snow in spring.
In the end, in the final minute before the NYSE closed.
The Fujiwara conglomerate's stock price, in an eerie straight line, shot from limit-down to limit-up...
His hundred billion dollars of capital, along with the several top-tier hedge funds backing him, were thoroughly, cleanly, and entirely... wiped out!
"Pffgh!"
Ryuichi Saionji could no longer withstand the staggering blow. A mouthful of fresh blood erupted from him, splattering across the cold screen.
He stared at the brilliant, searing red "+50%" on the display, his vision went black, and he collapsed straight backward.
...
Tokyo, Fujiwara conglomerate headquarters.
Seiji leaned back lazily in his office chair, looking at the long string of new "zeros" added to the company account, no trace of joy on his face.
To him, it was nothing more than a numbers game.
Once he had tallied the spoils, he tossed this financial storm that had shaken all of Wall Street out of his mind.
Seiji's gaze turned to another freshly acquired "trophy."
He picked up the phone and dialed Saki Kawasaki's number.
The line rang for a long time before it was finally picked up, the connection trembling.
From the other end came the hoarse voice of a girl, wary, furious, and afraid.
"...What do you want?"
"Kawasaki-san," Seiji laughed softly, his tone light, "the wind on the rooftop is cold, isn't it? I was worried you'd catch a cold."
"By way of compensation, I've already had someone pay all your younger siblings' tuition for the next three years. Oh, and their travel expenses to Kyoto, I've prepared those for you too."
The other end of the line fell into a deathlike silence.
"You... what exactly... do you want?" After a long while, Saki's trembling voice came through again.
"It's simple." Seiji's smile turned cold. "From today on, you belong to me."
"In return, your family will live a wealthy life."
"Of course, you can refuse."
"But I think you're a smart girl, and you should know how to choose. Right?"
The other end of the line fell into another long silence.
In the end, a faint reply, brimming with boundless humiliation but forced to bow to reality, came through the receiver.
"...Yes, I accept your terms."
"Good."
Seiji hung up the phone, satisfied.
Saki Kawasaki, that wild-edged "blade", has been thoroughly sheathed by me, in the most effective way possible.
...
...
Meanwhile, inside the Fujiwara villa, in the bedroom.
Yukino Yukinoshita finally stirred awake from her long faint.
She opened her eyes, looked at the harsh sunlight, and for an instant felt a daze, as though she had just woken from a long nightmare.
But the soreness in her body reminded her that all of it had been real.
What terrified her even more was the realization that...
Her "hatred" for that man seemed to be uncontrollably fading.
In its place was something far more complicated... a hidden "craving."
"This... what on earth is going on?"
Yukino forced down her panic, struggling to analyze the strange changes in herself.
This must be... the aftereffect of doing it too much, isn't it?
She thought it through coldly.
Just like Pavlov's Dog, under repeated, intense "stimulus" and "punishment", my body has developed a pathological, mistaken conditioned reflex.
That's right. This can be explained through behavioral psychology.
But what she didn't yet know was that this so-called "post-contract syndrome" was only the beginning.
As the dormant Snow Woman Bloodline within her gradually awakened under Seiji Fujiwara's "watering" and "development", the more thorough transformations of body and mind were only just beginning.
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