Reborn in Tokyo: From Heiress to Global Tycoon

Chapter 218 The Extreme Point of Fracture

"Ring ring ring ring—!"

The extremely shrill telephone ringing blared wildly throughout the spacious office.

Tokyo, Minato Ward.

The headquarters building of Matsuura Construction, the president's office.

The black landline on the desk tolled incessantly like a death knell.

Matsuura's eyes were bloodshot and his complexion was ashen, a result of prolonged sleep deprivation and extreme anxiety.

The phone rang for a while before he seemed to realize it was ringing. His thick right hand suddenly reached out and grabbed the incessantly ringing receiver.

"Hello! This is Matsuura!" His voice was terribly hoarse.

"President Matsuura. This is the Credit Department of Chiba Bank Headquarters."

On the other end of the phone, the loan officer's tone was completely flat.

"Regarding the seven construction projects in Hong Kong and related stock accounts pledged under your company's name. Due to recent market volatility, the net value of the collateral has fallen significantly below the warning threshold stipulated in the contract."

"According to Article 5 of the loan agreement, you are required to provide additional cash collateral of 2 billion yen to the designated escrow account within 24 hours."

Two billion. Cash.

Matsuura's pupils contracted sharply in an instant. His fingers, holding the receiver, twitched uncontrollably.

With the market having fallen for two consecutive weeks and all funds trapped in the stock market, he can't even withdraw 20 million in readily available cash, let alone 2 billion.

"You...you guys are kidding me!"

Matsuura abruptly stood up from the leather boss's chair, and due to the sudden movement, his thigh slammed into the heavy solid wood desk with a dull thud.

But he didn't have time to pay attention, shouting into the phone in his hand.

"Two billion?! The market has only corrected by two thousand points! The land I own is worth tens of billions! What did your bank say when they were begging me for loans?!"

"President Matsuura, the land price lacks immediate liquidity. This is the final assessment of the head office's risk control committee."

"If the funds do not arrive within 24 hours, we will directly apply to the court to freeze all of your construction project accounts and initiate bankruptcy liquidation proceedings."

"Wait! Wait!"

Matsuura's defenses completely collapsed. He softened his tone, even adopting a hint of pleading and groveling.

"Brother Yamada...we were drinking together at 'Lumiere' in Ginza last month. Could you talk to your superiors for me? Just give me three days...no, one day! The market is just undergoing a technical correction; it'll rebound soon. I can transfer the money out right away..."

"President Matsuura," the loan officer shattered his illusions, "this is the final notification from the Ministry of Justice. Please raise the funds as soon as possible."

"beep--"

The phone hangs up.

The dial tone echoed in the spacious office, each sound like a tap on Matsuura's nerves.

He held the receiver blankly.

Two seconds later.

"Damn it!!! A bunch of opportunistic vampires!!!"

Matsuura was like a wild beast driven to the brink of despair. He let out a desperate roar, and with a sudden burst of strength, slammed the telephone receiver in his right hand onto the table.

Plastic fragments were scattered everywhere.

His thick arms were wildly waving across the desk.

The heavy crystal ashtray, the mountain of engineering documents, and even the expensive business card holder were all roughly swept away by him.

"Bastard, bastard, bastard!!!"

"Bang! Crash!"

The ashtray shattered on the hard marble floor, breaking into countless sharp shards. Paper documents flew through the air like snowflakes, scattering all over the floor.

"President!"

The office door was flung open. The finance manager rushed in, his face filled with terror. He was clutching a thick financial ledger tightly in his arms. He froze in place, terrified by the mess on the floor and the frenzied Matsuura.

Matsuura, panting heavily, stared at the finance section chief with bloodshot eyes.

He strode over the shards of glass on the ground, rushed to the section chief, and grabbed him by the collar. The force was so great that he half-lifted the finance section chief up.

"How much money is left in the account!" Matsuura roared at the section chief's face, spitting on the man's glasses.

"President... there's only the project payments left in the accounts, which are supposed to be paid to the downstream building material suppliers tomorrow, about 500 million..." The section chief was trembling, his voice shaking.

"Transfer it out! Intercept all that payment!" Matsuura's face was contorted with rage, his hands gripping the section chief's collar tightly. "Immediately transfer it to Daiwa Securities' margin account! To secure those stock positions!"

The finance section chief's eyes widened in shock as he shook his head in terror.

"President! Absolutely not! That's our lifeline! Takahashi and the other suppliers have been pressing us for payment countless times. If we misappropriate these funds, construction will be completely halted tomorrow! They'll sue us, and the company's reputation will be ruined!"

"Reputation?!"

Matsuura roared loudly, the veins on his forehead bulging out one by one.

"If we can't fill this two billion hole, the bank will freeze the company tomorrow! Then we won't even have a construction site left, what's the point of worrying about reputation then!"

"Transfer the money! Transfer it now! Or I'll kill you right now!"

Matsuura suddenly released his grip and forcefully pushed the finance section chief against the door frame.

The finance manager lost his balance and crashed heavily into the door. The financial ledger he was clutching tightly slipped from his fingers.

The heavy ledger slammed onto the floor with a dull thud.

"Yes...yes."

The finance manager didn't dare to pick it up and scrambled out of the room.

Before closing the door, he took one last look at Matsuura, his eyes filled with resentment.

"Clatter".

……

Bunkyo District, Saionji Headquarters.

The archery range in the backyard was bitterly cold. The polished cypress wood floorboards felt chilling to the bone underfoot.

Saionji Satsuki wore a pure white archery uniform and black hakama trousers that reached her ankles. Her long hair was tied back with a plain wooden hairpin.

She stood barefoot in the shooting position, her feet slowly spreading apart and firmly planted on the floor.

He held a two-meter-long bow in his left hand, and wore a deerskin glove on his right hand, with three fingers resting on the bowstring.

His breathing was extremely slow.

Fujita Tsuyoshi, dressed in a sharp black suit, walked along the outer corridor toward the dojo.

As soon as he stepped into the shadows at the outer edge of the dojo, his steps froze in place.

Looking ahead, Satsuki used her arms to lift the bow and arrows steadily above her head. She was in the starting stance for the "fight".

Fujita immediately shut his lips, swallowing back the report that was about to come out.

He silently withdrew his right foot, which he had just stepped out. He leaned back slightly, preparing to retreat into the shadows of the outer corridor and wait quietly.

"explain."

The crisp, monosyllables echoed through the cold air.

Satsuki's gaze was fixed on the distant bullseye. With each even breath, her arms began to move extremely slowly to the sides.

Fujita Tsuyoshi immediately stopped retreating.

"Yes, please forgive my overstepping my bounds."

He bowed slightly, walked forward again, and stopped at a safe distance of three meters from the firing position.

"Young Miss".

"The Tokyo Stock Exchange has closed. This afternoon, the market fell below 37,600 points. The cumulative drop over two weeks has exceeded 2,000 points."

"Based on intelligence, the chain reaction of liquidity depletion has begun to emerge. The system has detected that more than 400 highly leveraged corporate accounts have fallen below the margin call threshold, and forced liquidation procedures have been triggered on a large scale."

Satsuki's left hand, gripping the longbow, remained as steady as a rock.

As the arm lowers, the bow arm undergoes a very slight deformation.

"Does the market's decline curve deviate from our model?"

"There's been an extremely slight deviation." Fujita looked at the briefing in his hand. "The market's resistance is stronger than expected, but after we drained the underlying liquidity, the downward trend has become completely solidified."

Memories of past lives are gradually becoming unreliable; now all information is of paramount importance.

"Have the profits from the overseas options account been calculated?"

"I just received an encrypted report from Mr. Frank in New York." Fujita turned a page of the briefing. "The market's gradual decline has triggered a surge in implied volatility (IV) in the options market. All the deep out-of-the-money put options that SA Investment placed in its Cayman Islands trust account have been activated."

"Our initial investment of two billion US dollars in option premiums has already yielded a paper profit exceeding..."

Even Fujita Tsuyoshi felt his mouth go dry when he saw that number.

"...US$18.5 billion. That's over 2.6 trillion yen."

"Moreover, as long as the market continues to decline every day, this profit figure will continue to expand by hundreds of millions of dollars every day."

US$18.5 billion.

Converted to Japanese yen, it exceeds 2.6 trillion yen.

If this wealth were all withdrawn as the highest denomination of $100 in cash, the banknotes, weighing over 180 tons, would be large enough to completely fill the cabins of two Boeing 747 heavy freighters.

If all of it were exchanged for Fukuzawa Yukichi banknotes in denominations of 10,000 yen, the more than 260 tons of banknotes would be enough to build a green paper mountain in the courtyard of the Saionji main family, taller than the main house.

This sum of money is enough to buy out nearly four century-old media giants of Columbia's scale. It's enough to carve ten more 500-meter-tall black skyscrapers out of the deep silt of Tokyo Bay. It's enough to forcibly buy out several top-ranked investment banks on Wall Street. It's enough to rival the total foreign exchange reserves of a medium-sized sovereign nation for the entire year.

This is finance. It's even perfectly legal.

Profits exceeding nine times the initial investment. No amount of manufacturing, arms smuggling, or underground trade can match the terrifying speed at which profits are made through financial leverage and national disasters.

This extremely large dollar position was quietly created in offshore accounts in just two weeks, amidst the continuous decline of the Japanese stock market.

Satsuki's left arm, which was holding the bow, deviated outward by half an inch uncontrollably.

"Buzz—"

The taut bamboo bow emitted an extremely faint tremor in the air. The previously even breathing became momentarily erratic.

Half a second later.

She closed her eyes, her chest rising and falling slightly, and took a deep breath of the cold air.

He applied force to his wrist again, correcting that half-inch physical offset.

When she opened her eyes again, a very slight smile appeared on her face.

Fujita saw the slight upturn of Satsuki's lips and knew that the young lady was definitely satisfied.

Satsuki steadily pulled the bowstring to her chest.

"Any unusual activity at the clearinghouse on Wall Street?"

"Not yet. Mr. Shimomura's 'Ghost' algorithm breaks down instructions into very small pieces, hiding them within the retail investors' trading flow."

"They'll find out soon enough."

Satsuki narrowed her eyes slightly.

"The financial giants on Wall Street are not stupid. They also smelled blood. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley's proprietary trading desks must be frantically building short positions to dump shares right now. In fact, you could say they are the main force that triggered the avalanche."

"When the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) discovers that a group of clandestine accounts from Asia are vying with them for this most lucrative piece of the pie, they will absolutely tear off the hypocritical mask of the free market immediately."

"They would directly modify the trading rules, or even forcibly freeze our offshore settlement channels under the pretext of national security, turning the table upside down."

She would never allow a cooked duck to fly away.

"Notify Frank."

Satsuki continued to exert force with her arm, pushing the bowstring little by little towards below her right ear.

"Immediately activate the highest level of legal firewall. Prepare the top ten lobbying firms and legal teams in Washington. If the SEC dares to issue a standard freeze order, overwhelm their administrative proceedings with countless hearings and transnational jurisdictional disputes."

"At the same time, since Wall Street is also dumping shares, this snowstorm will be the best shield to cover our safe retreat."

"Maintain silence and disable all aggressive trading orders. Rely on the 'Ghost' algorithm to refine profit-taking orders. Hide our profits within the massive trading noise generated by Wall Street."

"Break those scorching dollar profits into smaller amounts and convert them all into Swiss government bonds and physical gold."

"Understood. I'll take care of it immediately." Fujita bowed slightly and quietly withdrew.

"Crunch—"

With the final command given, the bamboo and wood composite bow arm let out a soft groan under the immense force of the pull.

The bowstring was stretched to its physical limit inside Satsuki's deerskin gloves, coming to a steady stop beside her cheek.

The perfect "fully drawn bow" state.

The faint sound of fibers being pulled could be heard in the quiet dojo. As the tension reached the limit of this body, several very light blue veins appeared on the back of her left hand, which was holding the bow.

"The more fully the leverage is pulled, the better."

Satsuki, under extreme tension, softly exhaled half a breath.

She released her right hand.

"The more complete the break, the more thorough it becomes."

"Bang!"

The bowstring snapped back, producing a muffled, penetrating sound.

Under the enormous reaction force, the two-meter-long bow rapidly flipped at the base of her loosely clenched left hand.

Her body arched, drawing a sharp semicircle in mid-air. The taut bowstring rested steadily on the outside of her left forearm.

The arrow transformed into a black afterimage, instantly tearing through the frigid air within the dojo.

"Yes."

Right in the bull's eye.