Volume 3 Hello, Eri Chapter 203: The Tortoise and His Warm Water Hole (Part 3)
"My family is an old family, but since the Edo period, the number of people with this surname has been decreasing, and it was once thought that there were no descendants. It was not until later that the elders of the family found my brother and me in the mountains, our bloodline was confirmed, and the seat of the family in the family was restored. I am called the head of the family name, but I am the only one in this family, so I feel like the tortoise named George." Yuan Zhisheng said, "It is in the Galapagos National Park. If I have the opportunity to travel around the world, I would like to see it."
"Didn't you just say you have a younger brother?" Lu Mingfei said.
"He's probably dead."
"...I'm sorry." Lu Mingfei had no choice but to shut up. She wished she could slap herself twice. She was really bringing up something that was not relevant. Yuan Zhisheng had already said that he was the only one in the Yuan family, so there must be something wrong with his younger brother who was not mentioned. Sake was harming people!
"With your status, you can travel around the world at any time, and you don't need to worry about money. Or do you not have time?" Caesar felt like an uncle when eating Japanese ramen. He liked to drink sake after eating noodles. He soon realized that with his eating habits, the bowl of noodles would soon be finished. He had no choice but to wave to the boss to give him some more fried tempura to delay the time for chatting.
"I have only seen two countries in my life. One is the United States, that was when I went to Kassel College for further studies, and the other is Japan, which is where I was born and raised. I really don't have much time. Practice, life, and work have already filled every day. The only free time might be to go to a hot spring or something." Yuan Zhisheng said softly, "To be honest, I once considered opening a ramen shop, but that would inevitably attract family members to patronize it. In the end, my dream became to sell sunscreen on a nude beach in France, so that I wouldn't come into contact with anyone I knew, and I would live on relief when I was unemployed."
"Young man, if you feel that life is difficult in the future, you can come and help me." The ramen chef who had been listening to the diners' chat suddenly interrupted with a kind smile on his face, "Although this is a small shop, my skills are unique. There must be someone to pass on my skills."
"Thanks, uncle." Yuan Zhisheng smiled and raised his glass.
"Oh, you're so polite. You can still call me uncle at my age!" The ramen master laughed. From his hearty face, one can see that he must have had a straightforward and fiery personality when he was young. It's just that time has passed and he has grown old, so he has lost that sharpness. But when he is happy, he is still as straightforward as a fiery man.
He poured himself a glass of wine and clinked glasses with Gen Chisei to show his goodwill to the young diner, served the last portion of fried tempura that Caesar had ordered, and began to pick up the plate and wipe it carefully, like a bartender with nothing to do in a bar.
"You've taken a big step by changing professions. The distance between the two professions is about the distance from Earth to Mars." Caesar filled his glass with wine and rejoined the topic. Fried food is a delicacy that no one in the human race would refuse. Even the picky mouth of the domineering nobleman would have to take a few more bites of the hot fried tempura.
"There's nothing strange about that. I, the family member, have to shoulder the burden of the future, but the real me just wants to eat and wait for death, find a place with a pleasant climate and spend every day watching the stars and the moon set outside the window."
"In China, we call this lying-down thinking," said Lu Mingfei.
"What is lying flat?" Yuan Zhisheng asked.
"It means that when young people enter society, they find that the channels for upward mobility have been blocked. They work very hard from 8am to 10pm but only get so little salary. They are scolded by their superiors every day. After work, they have to attend meetings and their phones keep ringing. They have no private space. They feel that life is boring and simply stop working hard. Living a life of eating and waiting to die is called lying flat." Lu Mingfei shook her head and explained Chinese buzzwords to Yuan Zhisheng, which made her feel a little smug, as if she was a famous teacher of some gangster boss. "The NEETs in Japan were almost the same as before, but the difference is that lying flat in our place basically means living a low-desire material life and not spending parents' money."
"Then I should be considered a Chinese who lives in seclusion. I have my own plans. If I lose my job one day, at least I have a place to go."
"Are you talking about your beautiful assistant?" Caesar raised his eyebrows and asked in a very dirty tone. Although he was devoted to Nono, he would care more about any beautiful woman. Yabuki Sakura was a rare tall type among Japanese girls. She was very unforgettable and exuded a sense of distance like a cold cherry blossom.
"She is just my assistant, not the kind of relationship you think. Given my life, my future wife might be a girl under another family head. Sakura's bloodline is not enough." Yuan Zhisheng shook his head.
"In other words, you are not rejecting her, right?" Caesar snapped his fingers. "If you don't do something, you will never know how it will develop. Since your dream is to live a life of idleness and wait for death abroad, why don't you jump on a plane and take your Sakura to France now?"
“Is this provoking me or encouraging me?”
"Both, because I look down on people who can only talk big. Who can't make bold statements? But the real heroes are never idiots who can only yell on the podium. Only those who can turn theory into reality are worthy of leaving their names in history!" Caesar raised his glass to Yuan Zhisheng, "Whether you are a bear or a hero in my eyes depends on what you say and do to me. The best moment in life is when you suddenly make a decision without thinking twice!"
Yuan Zhisheng stared at Caesar's eyes. He couldn't say he was angry nor was he aggressive. There seemed to be nothing in his pupils, but there was a hint of helplessness, which made people feel sad.
"Caesar, I have already looked up your information before you came to Japan. I know that you don't like your last name and the family it represents. The relationship between you can even be said to be one-sided hostility. The Gattuso family loves you deeply and is proud of you, but you sneer at them." Yuan Zhisheng said, "If according to what you said, as a hero, you should ruthlessly cut off the connection with the Gattuso family, no longer rely on any of their power, and live according to your own ideas. Why didn't you do it?"
Lu Mingfei thought to herself that Yuan Zhisheng was such a ruthless person. He directly threw the question back to Caesar and forced him to answer it using his own ideas. If Caesar couldn't answer it well, he would become the real bear who could only speak sweet words in her mouth !
"Leaving them only requires a decision, but the future still requires my own efforts." Caesar thought without any pause, "I have to admit that I still have a lot to learn. I spend a lot of family money, step on their faces and do whatever I want, and use what I get from them to prepare for my betrayal. What I want is not as simple as severing relations with them. Gattuso is my sworn enemy. I want to see their destruction, and this future must be done by myself."
This may be the biggest secret of Caesar Gattuso's life, but he easily told it to three people he didn't know in a small ramen stall in Tokyo. He never thought that the huge family was important to him. They didn't care about Caesar Gattuso, but the bloodline and talent of this name. If the same person appeared for the second and third time, then their kindness would continue to bloom on those people.
There is no love in the Gattuso family. They are like a group of locusts that are always driven by interests. They will destroy crops wherever there are crops, and never care about other people's thoughts. Caesar's mother Gullveig has never been treated well since the first day she came to this family. Although she is nominally the mistress of the Gattuso family, no one has ever respected her.
Young Caesar held his mother's hand countless times and looked at the dirty and contemptuous eyes of those people behind his back. He felt that this place was terrible. Even his father, who should have loved his mother deeply, had never expressed anything to her and never stopped his great ideal of conquering girls all over the world.
When Gullveig suffered torture in such a family and finally left, from that moment on, Caesar had put the Gattuso family on the opposite side of himself. The closest person to him in the world was only his mother, and it was Gattuso who took away his only love, so he wanted this family to pay with blood.
"This is reality, Caesar. Many things in the world cannot be left to chance as you say. We must respect the consequences and the price, just like you are bearing the humiliation now." Yuan Zhisheng finished his sake and turned back to lift the hanging cloth curtain. "This city was called Edo in the past. When it rains, I feel that Tokyo has become the original Edo again, with candlelight and fire shadows. At that time, it was the most fashionable city in Japan. Generals set up their offices here, Portuguese sold iron cannons at the port, and girls with blue letters on their shoulders walked the streets selling small Imported goods in iron boxes. At that time, samurai still had the right to wear swords, and they always walked in the middle of the street with their heads held high. If civilians blocked their way, the samurai would draw their swords and threaten to chop them. At night, the reformists were very active, and the shogunate officials were in a state of panic. The underworld in Edo City was formed at that time. The underworld was composed of declining samurai, craftsmen, dock workers and prostitutes. They made a living by relying on their skills. In order to avoid being bullied by others, they formed guilds. There are still many such guilds in Japan today. Farmers have agricultural associations, and fishermen have fishermen associations. "
"The eight family heads were once nobles, so they had their own surnames. But later they lost their property in the revolution, so they began to use their power to intervene in the underworld, collecting offerings from the gangs established by those poor people, and correspondingly providing them with protection. For this reason, the eight family heads in ancient times even fought with samurai and the late shogunate army, because they did not allow the lower-class civilians they exploited to form organizations that gathered together by force. In the eyes of those people, killing a few civilians was nothing. The identity of the eight families as the law enforcers of the underworld began to be established step by step from then on, and the history so far is not too long."
"Don't you think that this statement is a bit like whitewashing yourselves?" Lu Mingfei said, "The mafia is a derogatory term for the whole world. It is a rat crossing the street that everyone wants to beat."
"I believe you should know that Japan is a country that allows underworld organizations to register according to law. The earliest underworld gangs were the original guilds. They united and supported each other, and provided help to the best of their ability, so that these weak people could survive in that most chaotic era. It is already the new millennium, but the weak people struggling with tragic fate will never disappear. The government is unable to take care of every weak person, and some cannot even be helped from a legal perspective. They can only be condemned morally, but how can bad people care about face and reputation? Those humble, weak people who live in the dark, their world has no sunshine, they are the inferior people in society, and the law and the government cannot provide help. The only thing they can pray for is another group of people in the dark. Only black organizations can help them."
"You want to say that you are the leaders of the weak?" Caesar said, "I also feel like you are bragging about yourself and raising your own status, just like my father always said that he is not a stud, but a contributor of his excellent genes for the reproduction of mankind."
"We get paid to do things, and in many cases we are more reliable than the government, because we can do things that the government cannot do. We can go deep into the streets and alleys of Tokyo and lend a helping hand to every weak person who asks for help. I have no intention of describing myself as a noble person, but we are indeed the leaders of the underworld. You may think that when you mention the underworld, you are talking about the evil people who hold the power of life and death, who can easily take out a lot of cash and always enjoy enchanting women. But in places you can't see, families harmed by cults are falling apart, parents are divorced, children live on their grandmother's pension, and mothers give all the little money in the family to the leader. A daughter who is abused by her father may even be raped, but where can she go if she leaves this family? No one will give her food, no one will let her continue her studies, and the only thing she can do may be to sell herself to those uncles with unique fetishes while she is young."
Yuan Zhisheng said: "These people are also part of the underworld. They cannot integrate into the mainstream society, let alone be accepted. The Japanese government cannot force mediation. Those sitting in the administrative office are either good-for-nothings or people who have the will but not the power. Even if they want to do something, they still have to go through the trouble of approval and the disdain of their superiors. In the end, all they can do is to pay for the night, but the homeless people will still be homeless tomorrow, and they will go back to . That's why the family set up a foundation to provide protection for these people, set up a hotline to facilitate their help, and use an iron fist to maintain the operation of the dark society. In this society, everyone is used to speaking with violence, but the violence of the family is above them, and there are millions of people involved. If one day the family is gone, do you think that girl will be caught by someone and forced to sell herself? How many people do you think will become antisocial because of the injustice of fate, and suddenly wave swords at the people on the tram?"
