Editing Mushi Uta:Volume 9 Chapter 1 (section)

== 1.07 Nanana Part 5 ==

The inside of the pleasure boat was engulfed in ominous silence.

At times explosions were heard from the outside. Apparently Kakkou was doing something.

Even the SEPB couldn’t do anything about this party. Thinking of the Round Table’s influence, they would never allow any of them to ruin their events.

“I will buy code 12843. My investment amount is…”

Nanana announced this from the round table placed at the center of the party hall. Folding her legs, she directed a challenging smile toward the middle-aged man seated on the other side.

Using her cellphone, the secretary conveyed Nanana’s orders to the outside. The boy wearing a formal suit, Pochi, watched everything around to protect her, not moving a muscle. A bit further away Shiika who was standing with Aijisupa clenched her fists and looked at Nanana.

The crowd stirred like small ripples. “Something’s happening in the appliances industry…” she heard voices mumbling.

“I’ll sell all of code 12113.”

The middle-aged man facing Nanana spoke calmly with his sharp chin raised. A brawny foreigner bodyguard stood from behind, and another one was sending orders to the outside.

The guests stirred again. “It’s the one he bought just now.” “Is he selling at a loss?” “No, Akasegawa’s action just now made him profit—” they whispered among themselves.

More than an hour passed since the game Nanana had been waiting for, a so-called blind horseracing.

“I’ll buy code 12391. The investment amount will be…”

“I will buy code 12092. The investment amount will be…”

“I’ll sell all of code 12764.”

“I’ll buy code 12228. The investment amount will be…”

While continuing to mechanically announce her moves, Nanana took a glimpse at the other Round Table members.

Unlike the guests who swooned at each and every blow of Nanana’s fight, the three members simply watched them calmly from a table. The black-suited men around them frequently checked used their cellphones to contact someone, whispering announcements to the members’ ears. They probably gave them details about the movements of the market.

“Yahah. Oh right, have you heard this pleasant rumor? They say that Munakata Kaiji’s missing. —I’ll buy code 12512. The investment amount will be…”

While spinning her stick, Nanana spoke. Now a different kind of stirring was born in everyone present.

The bearded man shrugged. He looked as if he knew this was a trap that meant to shake him.

“I’ll sell all of code 12661. —Oh? That is news to me. I have met Mr. Munakata. He is often a topic for conversation at the Round Table. A reliable businessman.”

Seeing the bearded man feign ignorance, Nanana felt anger welling up from inside her. The fact that the distant Round Table members also showed no agitation pissed her off.

All of them were sly foxes.

They thought Nanana knew nothing and so could calmly look down on her.

Thinking about it, it was the same when her grandfather had died and she’s succeeded him as the Akasegawa Foundation Chairman. Various relatives who were employees in the company approached Nanana, saying they wanted to help her now that she was bereaved.

And although Nanana yearned for the Kind Magician, she vanished.

The lonely Nanana accepted the adults snuggling up to her. She did what they said and gave them what they wanted.

And so, gradually, Nanana started losing everything around her.

“Yahah. No, you know about it very well. After all, Munakata’s disappearance made you a hefty profit.”

“There you go, badmouthing people again. We want you to say we were prescient. We have simply bought the stocks we had our eyes on since a long time ago. —Have you forgotten to call, little girl?”

“Hmph. I’ll buy code 16243. The investment amount will be…”

Everything reflected in Nanana’s eyes turned into the scraps of paper called money.

The numbers written in bankbooks and bonds all began to lower every time she’d looked. The housekeeper who took care of her for many years vanished at some point, and even her cute dog became someone else’s. Cars vanished from the garage, and she even lost her favorite bicycle.

Staying at her empty home was too lonely, so she began loitering around the company building. Doing so, she found that her grandfather’s seat at his office—the chair that was supposed to be hers—was occupied by an old and unfamiliar man.

Even at school, where she’d been pampered by the teachers until now, they suddenly grew cold. Apparently, her pay of donation to the school was overdue. Although she did it as a favor, perhaps it became a source of stress; the teachers all changed and started venting their anger on her.

“Is there something not to your liking? You seem to be sulking all of a sudden. And you take longer thinking. —I will buy code 16117. The investment amount will be…”

Moving the stage to the food industry, the man laughed.

Her loss in the previous stage was apparent. While the others guests around all grinned and watched Nanana, the Round Table members still remained calm.

Nanana incurred vast losses, and the bearded man profited. All of the crowd could surmise as such, and the expressions of the Round Table members served as proof.

“You’re just imagining it. Yahah. I’ll buy code 16721. The investment amount will be…”

“Oh, that’s impossible. Just the other day, their child company’s new product was a huge hit and the price was raised. You’ll never buy it with that amount.”

“…Shuddup. You can’t tell that.”

“Oh, how scary. Have you now become sober? I will buy code 16449. The investment amount will be…”

Even Nanana had a single friend. When the teachers all turned their cold shoulders to her, none of the other students had a positive impression of Nanana, but one classmate grew close to her.

Her friend, called Ikarino Kirai, had advised Nanana in the middle of her crisis.

''—I think you’d better forget about the Magician.

Since Nanana had waited for the Kind Magician like a form of escapism, one day Kirari said this to her.

It went without saying that Nanana had been shocked.

''—If you keep waiting for someone that may never come back, you’ll never grow stronger.

She couldn’t understand what that girl was saying this. Wasn’t she supposed to be her friend? She had lost her one and only grandfather, then everything that belonged to her, and she even lost her very first supporter—the Magician, right?

At that time Nanana had been cornered.

No.

Perhaps that was the moment when the girl called Akasegawa Nanana realized that the world surrounding her was just an illusion.

When she’d been on the brink of losing even her house, Nanana thought to herself.

The days she’d spent with the grandfather and Kind Magician who cherished her were far too naïve.

Sweet halcyon memories, just like crepe.

Nanana lost them, and in exchange gained vast money. If she could trade it for crepe, perhaps she could raise that much money and exchange it again for this sweetness.

Thinking like this—Nanana had changed.

“Enclosure…”

“Hmm? Have you said something? Oh, I haven’t taken my turn yet.”

“Just before Munakata vanished, he uttered this word as one of the things he’d been investigating. Enclosure is a term from the economic history of the west. It apparently designates a feudal lord enclosing the shared lands of normal peasants.”

“Oh, how knowledgeable you are. What about your call?”

There was no need for her to call.

Even in this new stage Nanana was in the red. On the other hand, the bearded man was a huge winner. Both the grins of the guests and the serenity of the Round Table members said it clearly.

Nanana, completely forgoing her drunkard act, looked around with a stupid face.

“Surround and isolate using money. That is the history of enclosure…”

“So you’re not making a call? Surrendering before you become bankrupt is a wise decision. Your only one today.”

Laughter echoed in the venue.

“I also investigated it. Several decades ago, even this country went through something that could be called an enclosure. There were signs of the members of the Round Table at the time having moved large amounts of money. And after they desperately gathered all these funds, they all vanished somewhere…”

The voices laughing at Nanana now turned agitated. Perhaps they were doubting her sanity.

“As if they were trying to desperately monopolize something. What had they become so obsessed about? I thought about that. Perhaps that was a kind of—‘omen’?”

Without minding it, Nanana kept mumbling.

“Enclosure, Bubble, Paradigm Shift… these events, just like the Magician said, were perhaps related to the thing that was born—so it hadn’t appeared all of a sudden around ten years ago… there was the omen called Enclosure. Meaning—the thing that should have been born, was indeed born.”

Did anyone in the party knew how big of a thing Nanana was saying? Other than the members of the Round Table, everyone looked at her with eyes full of pity.

All of them made fun of her.

Just like when Nanana had been about to lose everything and went on the counterattack.

“The history of enclosure amounted to nothing more than anxious duckies. And that became the origin of it all—the swan moving between them…”

Nanana apparently possessed her grandfather’s talent. The thing called money was meaningless to her, but she knew well how to increase or decrease it. —No, perhaps it was better to say that she learned by heart the nature of people who foolishly swarmed toward it.

It took no time at all to grow Nanana’s assets to how they were during her grandfather’s time.

She’d brought back her house, her housekeeper and her pet. She’d fired all of the employees who deceived her and had sent away all the teachers who treated her unreasonably to the countryside.

Even so—those sweet halcyon days never returned.

Since it took so long to get them back, would she get them with interest?

Nanana gradually gained more and more money.

But no matter how much time passed, she was never able to buy back her sweet crepe. She would trade away everything she owned to taste it even once, but it was no use.

She could get anything else she ever desired, but she could never regain that which she had eaten before.

“—I’ll buy the entirety of the following bank...”

Nanana mumbled.

The party hall became so quiet one could hear a pin drop in it.

What Nanana spoke was a brand name without a code. It was nothing more than a middling bank. But since it wasn’t in the country, no one would have acknowledged it. Since they did only business within the country until now, it was probably outside the monitoring eye of the Round Table as well.

Clatter. The table shook.

The bearded man’s eyes almost seemed to rip from how wide they were. He was so agitated that he apparently bumped his elbow against the table.

“There’s no way—”

Since he opened his mouth wide, his throat was probably parched. He tried to keep talking, but words didn’t form properly. Feigning calmness, he grabbed his glass with shaking hands and drank.

“There’s no way, you can buy that… it was growing until yesterday. There’s no way its prices would lower in these mere few hours—”

“Isn’t it your umbrella organization, though? Have you really not noticed the ‘omen’? You should at least be familiar with the names of businesses you loan from.”

Nanana tilted her head loosely. She narrowed one eye.

“The price indeed lowered. Because I worked hard on lowering it. All of the companies I bought on a loss here were loaning from this bank. If the price so foolishly swings like that, of course the market will doubt its finances from the bank… in the first place it’s just a temporary business for overseas mafia. Credit is of no importance there.”

The bearded man showed his true nature. With a vicious expression, he turned to look at the three Round Table members.

They have just received the reports from their underlings. They were probably checking the overseas market. Letting leak a huge sigh, they slowly shook their heads toward the bearded man.

“You haven’t even noticed my ‘enclosure’. After all, you are nothing more than a useful fool that can be bled dry.”

Shocked, the bearded man fell back to his chair.

“Now I am a major shareholder of your money. Even the money you’ve made before will now flow to the Akasegawa Foundation. —I’ll have you choose later if you want to become my dog or else present me with a certain someone who’s been missing. Yahaha.”

Laughing at the man who was groaning and unable to move, Nanana rose from her chair.

She made an elegant bow directed at the three Round Table members.

“How about it? Have you enjoyed our humble entertainment?”

Glancing outside, apparently the clamor at the mountainside was already settled. Kakkou probably concluded his mission as well.

“Oh dear me, would you look at that.”

Raising her face, Nanana made an exaggeratedly surprised expression.

“It appears that there is now a vacancy within the Round Table. Has someone gone bankrupt?”

After glancing around, Nanana spun her stick and pointed it at herself.

“By the way, I know a certain lady fit to work for the Round Table—so how about it?”

It still wasn’t enough.

From now on, Nanana would continue amassing money like trash.

Until she could one day buy back that sweet crepe—

The voice of Nanana, who narrowed one eye, echoed in the silent party hall.

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==Notes==
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