This is a story related to the yakuza.

Please understand in advance that because names have been altered and details obfuscated, there may be inconsistencies in the timeline.

Also, this is a collection of stories I gathered piece by piece over several years.

It's quite long, so read it as if it were a novel.

The protagonist of this story is a talkative old man, the kind you might find in any rural town.

Perhaps due to his tall build and sharply defined facial features, he was supposedly wildly popular with women back in his day.

This is the story of that old man's harrowing life.

From the 1980s through the 2000s, he acquired immense wealth.

Behind that wealth lay unbelievable events and a painful past.

Originally, he aspired to become a doctor or a biologist, at times tried to become a politician, and studied martial arts.

He was someone who desperately craved knowledge—he wanted to try everything and know everything.

On top of that, he possessed natural intelligence and an exceptional memory.

Consequently, his scope of knowledge was vast and varied.

One day, he caused a certain problem and caught the attention of the yakuza.

It all started over something simple.

He had made a move on the mistress of an underboss in a small clan.

Let's call that syndicate Clan A.

Once it was discovered, he was beaten ruthlessly every day, stripped of his money, and lost his home.

As a trained martial artist, he tried to fight back, but they had overwhelming numbers, and no matter his experience, he was no match for a group of professional street fighters.

For the next two years or so, he lived as a homeless man in Osaka and Tokyo.

Even while enduring the harsh life of homelessness, he was plotting his revenge against that small clan.

In the homeless community, factions and territories are fairly well defined.

His wealth of knowledge and smooth talking were more than enough to gain the favor of a man named Matsu-san, who sat at the top of the homeless scene in a certain district.

Matsu-san was homeless by choice.

A wealthy family, a great education, a glorious life paved for him by his parents—et cetera.

He had even married in his late twenties.

But despite his wealth, Matsu-san grew sick of his ordinary life; driven by a desire to learn and experience more, he abandoned everything to travel across Japan—naturally disowned by his parents.

He was fully capable of making a living on his own.

He had a prestigious degree and work experience at a major corporation.

Yet when he visited this area one day, seeing the homeless people living impoverished but seemingly happy lives, he decided to settle down among them.

That shared inclination to learn more and experience more might have been one reason Matsu-san took a liking to him.

For a homeless man, Matsu-san dressed remarkably well.

The reason was that he was on good terms with the yakuza.

If Matsu-san put out a call, the homeless in the district would move.

He dispatched large groups of homeless men to day-labor jobs and skimmed a cut off the wages paid by municipalities and companies.

What seemed like small earnings added up to a massive revenue stream thanks to the sheer number of people.

Let's call that mob Group Z.

The monthly money flowing into Group Z exceeded 5 million yen.

This couldn't have been achieved without Matsu-san's influence.

Group Z wanted someone to manage the homeless population; Matsu-san had the authority to keep them organized and enjoyed his wealthy homeless lifestyle.

It was a true win-win relationship.

As his friendship with Matsu-san deepened, he secured a direct line to the yakuza, just as he had hoped.

This was where his pitch began.

Being well-versed in medicine and biology was a huge asset to the yakuza.

Specifically, he could treat members wounded by gunshots and handle body disposal.

Bullet wounds would automatically get reported to the police if taken to a hospital, but if he treated them, they didn't have to worry about that.

As for body disposal, it came down to the knowledge he had accumulated over the years and what he picked up during his time on the streets.

Of course, studying medicine and biology doesn't teach you how to dispose of corpses.

His plan for revenge was as follows.

First, work as an exclusive doctor and body disposer for a clan larger than his enemy, but not too large.

Build a track record of trust, and then leverage the power and muscle gained there to get revenge on that initial clan.

Phase one was easily approved by the boss.

Major clans have dedicated black-market doctors or bribed hospitals, but Group Z lacked both.

They also lacked reliable channels for body disposal.

That was because they were only a mid-tier syndicate.

While the parent organization directly above Group Z owned hospitals and body disposal crews, using them cost far too much money.

Yet finding someone qualified was no easy task.

In short, he was a godsend for Group Z, which was strategically aiming to expand its influence.

From then on, while not an official made member, he came to wield considerable clout.

Registered as an executive of a shell company, he spent his days working frantically.

Treating injuries was one thing, but handling body disposal caused him immense mental anguish.

It went without saying that he felt intense guilt over the disposal process itself.

Sometimes, the corpses he carried would reportedly move.

Other times, he would hear groans.

Telling himself it was just his imagination and that the guy was dead, he pushed forward with his work.

He would load the corpse into a vehicle and drive for hours into the deep mountains.

Carrying a 110- to 220-pound corpse, he would dig a hole several feet deep and bury it.

Unable to bear the thought that it might be an acquaintance—or that guy who messed up—he couldn't bring himself to look at the bodies.

He buried them with his eyes closed.

He was strictly forbidden from dragging them.

To prevent blood or bodily fluids from leaking, he sealed them in bags and always carried them so no tracks were left.

Usually working alone, though sometimes disposing of up to four bodies at once, he carried hundreds of pounds across treacherous terrain in the mountains—an hour or two on foot from the car—making multiple trips to bury them.

On the way back, to make it look like no human had passed through, he scattered fallen leaves and branches to erase his footprints.

Gathering those leaves and branches was exhausting work in its own right.

It was all to prevent mountain stream fishermen or wild-herb foragers from thinking, "Someone walked through here, so there must be a fishing spot or wild herbs nearby."

Thanks to the repeated heavy labor, he said his physique bulked up considerably.

Precautions also had to be taken so stray dogs and bears wouldn't disturb the site.

I will omit the details on how that was done.

He reportedly received around one million yen a month serving as the body disposer and dedicated doctor for the clan's office.

On top of that, he got bonuses of 500,000 to two million yen per body, allowing him to live quite lavishly.

Stashes of cash for pocket money, luxury cars, and high-end watches were everyday occurrences.

Paying him that much still felt cheap to the clan compared to the absurd costs of relying on their parent syndicate.

Here, too, he used his inherent knowledge and charisma to win the favor of the boss and the underboss.

Thanks to that, lower-ranking grunts treated him virtually like an executive.

Even high-ranking officers respected him as a "useful guy."

Having secured such a comfortable life, he finally succeeded in taking his revenge on Clan A.

The catalyst was simple: he made contact with that mistress once again.

Using his wealth, he introduced her to the underboss of Group Z.

He already knew the underboss's taste in women.

Fortunately, she was a perfect match.

He promised her a massive financial reward if she pulled it off.

Blinded by the payout, she broke up with the underboss of Clan A and became the woman of Group Z's underboss.

Outraged, the underboss of Clan A picked a fight with Group Z, despite being nothing more than a tiny branch of a branch compared to them.

The outcome was brutal.

Clan A was disbanded, and its boss was sent to prison. The underboss was tortured and sold off to a pervert in another country.

The remaining officers and low-level grunts were rounded up and shipped off to fishing boats or forced labor overseas.

Because it was a tiny crew of barely ten men, the end came in an instant.

Wealthy and powerful, he barely cared about revenge against that clan anymore.

He had set off the fuse almost out of boredom.

For the next sixteen years or so, he continued to work exclusively for that syndicate.

Over time, both the workload and income decreased, but he still earned far more than ordinary office workers his age.

It happened one day during his thirteenth year.

The boss had retired, and the underboss had assumed the position of the new boss.

It was during this transition period that he received a body disposal job.

As usual, he loaded the body into his car and drove for hours deep into the mountains.

It was a single, lightweight body.

It probably weighed around 100 pounds.

Through the bag, he noticed soft contours.

It was likely a woman.

He had never once checked the faces of the deceased, but every corpse before this had definitely been a man.

This was the very first time he thought... "Is this a woman?"

Arriving deep in the mountains, he opened the trunk and heaved the body onto his shoulder.

The object that was supposed to be a corpse spoke.

"Help me..."

He couldn't believe his ears at the familiar voice.

"[Name]... help me..."

She spoke again.

Unable to contain himself, he opened the bag.

Lying inside was the underboss's mistress.

That is to say, the woman he had laid hands on years ago—the former mistress of Clan A's underboss, and current mistress of Group Z's boss.

Clutching a stab wound in her abdomen, her consciousness fading, she began to explain how she ended up like this.

Nearing forty and feeling lonely from being neglected by the boss, she had an affair with a man, which eventually reached the boss's ears.

The boss had no affection left for her—a veteran among his mistresses—but out of possessive jealousy over someone touching his property, he killed the man.

That was likely the body he had disposed of the previous week.

The boss grew disgusted by her mental breakdown caused by guilt and grief over the man, and ultimately tried to murder her.

She knew.

She knew that if she died, he would be the one to dispose of her.

If she could just play dead here, she would be sent to him.

If she could reach him, maybe she could be saved.

Hours later, just as expected, wrapped in a large heavy bag, she desperately endured the agony of her abdominal pain and blood loss.

He looked at the wound on her stomach.

...It was already too late.

Hours had passed since the stabbing, the blood loss was severe, and the blade had likely punctured her internal organs.

He had no suture thread here, no antiseptic, no blood bags.

It would be kinder to put her out of her misery.

He harbored no love for this woman with whom he had shared only a single night over a decade ago.

Yet, feeling responsible for dragging her into his scheme of revenge—and feeling guilty that it had led to this—he desperately wanted to save her.

He pulled out his personal first-aid kit.

If he could just administer emergency first aid... that was his desperate hope.

He lifted her clothing.

Her torso wasn't protected by an armor of muscle; from her thin stomach, her organs were spilling out.

It was a wound so severe he couldn't comprehend how she had survived those long hours.

He gently placed his hands around her neck and, with trembling hands, took her life.

That was when it started.

Whether from the guilt of killing her with his own hands or triggered by something else, he began seeing things that didn't belong in this world.

It was especially horrific at the mountain sites.

He had chosen mountain regions with little traffic that were unlikely to be developed in the future.

Three spots in S Prefecture, one in M Prefecture, three in T Prefecture, and one in A Prefecture.

Near the spots where he always buried the bodies: a man shot through the head, a man bleeding like a waterfall from his abdomen, a man whose fingernails and toenails had been ripped off, his face swollen purple...

"I didn't do it. I didn't do it."

As he chanted those words while burning incense, they would eventually vanish.

Even so, he kept doing the job.

He was still young enough that if he said "I quit," they would beat his body disposal know-how out of him and then bury him in the dirt.

He forced his screaming body and mind to keep working.

Winter of his sixteenth year.

He turned fifty.

Somehow he was certain: this would be his final job.

The corpse weighed roughly 165 pounds.

He walked up the snowy mountain trail, taking break after break.

Spirits with unbearable, gruesome appearances were wandering around as usual.

He was used to it by now; no matter how many ghosts appeared, he didn't flinch.

Using the large shovel strapped to his back, he cleared the snow first and began digging into the soil.

The earth at this time of year was frozen solid and difficult to dig.

It took him four full hours just to finish digging the hole.

He struck something that looked like ribs—god knows whose.

The shape remained beautifully preserved.

Both the structure and the bones themselves were slender.

Ah... it was her.

Normally, he used landmarks, so he had never once accidentally dug up a past corpse.

But due to exhaustion and the heavy snowfall, he must have dug right here.

That night when the gears first went off track, the day he met her again after gaining power, the day he buried her...

It all flashed through his mind like a passing life reel.

Sleeping next to her was the boss.

He knew it with total certainty without even checking.

The new boss—a so-called "economic yakuza"—had likely wanted to get rid of the current boss, whose mindset was outdated, as soon as possible.

The new boss already held more real influence anyway.

Yet the old boss, concerned about the syndicate's future, had clung to the top spot despite his powerlessness—or perhaps precisely because of it.

And so, his working life came to an end.

With the overhaul of the executive ranks, he seized the right moment to retire.

The wealth he had accumulated over the years exceeded one billion yen.

He moved to a rural area in Tohoku, built a small house, and spent his days peacefully fishing.

That fishing buddy of mine passed away last month.

That final day we went fishing—it was night fishing at a small fishing port.

I had felt an unsettling presence the entire time.

Whether that was something spiritual or a premonition of his death, I still don't know.

He turned around, stared fixedly at a single spot, and said:

"She's calling me."

Right after that, I distinctly heard a raspy voice whisper, "Come... come..."

No matter how safe Japan is, over 80,000 people go missing every year.

That neighbor who suddenly vanished, or that acquaintance who went radio silent after getting mixed up in the underworld... maybe they, too, were buried by someone like him.