Although they had already taken their seats, Inuyama Heita was still looking around, seemingly searching for someone.
"Stop fidgeting." Qian Xiaoyi sat beside him, leaning back in his seat and idly turning his metal cigarette case over in his hands. He spoke as if to himself. "The person you're looking for isn't in the audience."
Inuyama Heita turned to him. "Do you know where she is?"
"You're being way too obvious. I already told you, we didn't come together. Face forward. Don't let anyone realize we know each other, or they might get suspicious." Qian Xiaoyi opened the case and put a cigarette between his lips, but didn't light it. "As for your question, the answer's simple. That guy keeps insisting this Lucky Mutual Aid Society is a legitimate organization. He's probably telling the truth. Now that he has supernatural means at his disposal, he has no reason to break the law. So he wouldn't use force to lock that girl up, especially since her mother's a fanatic. If she isn't in the audience, she should appear onstage. That's why the guy in the suit sent you here."
"I see," Inuyama Heita said quietly.
Just then, the gathering finally began. An elderly man who looked like a successful businessman walked onto the stage. Like Matsui, he wore a suit, and his full head of gray hair was combed back. He carried himself with such dignity that no one would have questioned it if he'd been introduced as a government minister. But he didn't act like a powerful, intimidating official. Instead, he walked to the center, picked up the microphone, and smiled warmly. "Everyone, it's been a while! How have you been? Still feeling LUCKY?"
"LUCKY!"
The members in the audience responded in unison, as excited as if they'd just seen an idol. Someone in the front row even reached out and shouted, "President Oiwa! President Oiwa! Shake my hand! Give me some luck!" Once he'd started, the people around him all reached out too, desperate not to be beaten to it.
"Hahaha! Looks like you're all as energetic as ever. That's a relief." President Oiwa laughed heartily. "You want a handshake? That's easy enough." With that, he went down into the audience and warmly shook hands with the members. Everyone who touched him looked flushed and full of energy. Seeing the people in front get to meet the president, those farther back weren't about to be left out. They stood up and tried to approach him too.
But President Oiwa had anticipated this. After briefly greeting the people in the audience, he returned to the stage. The security guards already stationed among the crowd calmed everyone else down and guided them back to their seats. There was no chaos, but the atmosphere had already come alive.
"Everyone will get a chance to shake my hand," President Oiwa said cheerfully. "But if we spend all our time on that, we'll end up keeping you from getting home in time for dinner."
"That's fine! We've already filled up on the free snacks!" someone called from the audience, prompting a burst of laughter throughout the hall.
In this peaceful, cheerful atmosphere, only two people seemed out of place. Qian Xiaoyi lounged in his seat, eyelids half lowered, the unlit cigarette between his lips as he studied President Oiwa onstage. The sudden bustle around him left Inuyama Heita feeling restless.
"Oiwa..." While President Oiwa was still exchanging greetings with the members, Inuyama Heita took out the flyer and read, "'President and founder of the Lucky Mutual Aid Society—Ooiwa Satoru, mentor for a lucky life. Leave your dreary life behind and welcome a colorful future...'"
Watching the crowd go wild at Ooiwa Satoru's appearance, he asked anxiously, "Come to think of it, how do they do it? How do they get so many people to believe in them? Don't these people realize that a handshake giving someone good luck makes no sense?"
"When people hit a low point, they always need something to believe in," Qian Xiaoyi replied listlessly. "As for why these people have become like this, just take a good look around."
Inuyama Heita looked over the excited members. At first, he didn't notice anything, but after a while, he realized they seemed to come from all sorts of backgrounds. There were plainly dressed middle-aged women, potbellied middle-aged men with receding hairlines, young men with ostentatious hairstyles who looked like hosts at a nightclub, pretty women wearing masks, middle-aged office workers with miserable expressions, and even flamboyant men in heavy makeup, with scruffy beards. Their backgrounds were worlds apart, but they shared one thing: many of them were on the margins of society. There were a few who looked like successful professionals, but most were ordinary people who hadn't achieved financial freedom. They all wore the devout expressions of pilgrims, staring fervently at President Oiwa onstage.
"Get it now?" Qian Xiaoyi said. "When people try to escape reality, they come up with excuses and blame all sorts of things for why they can't get ahead, just to comfort themselves. Religious people say it's all part of God's plan, that God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers, and so on. People who don't believe in God fall back on familiar excuses like an unfair society or a bad upbringing. There are even weird groups that blame every failure on jerking off... Ahem, I'm getting off track. Anyway, people like that are all much the same. They just want an excuse to dodge responsibility and huddle together for warmth. The world is too cold-hearted, and this place is their only refuge. Of course, these people who have nothing to offer are just there to fill out the crowd. They're like free players in a pay-to-win game, providing content and making the paying players look good. They might not stand out, but they're essential."
Seeing Qian Xiaoyi's gaze sweep back and forth across the area ahead, Inuyama Heita asked, "So... you're looking for their real targets?"
"Yeah." Qian Xiaoyi's gaze settled on a middle-aged male member up ahead, dressed in noticeably finer clothes. He answered casually, "Either someone with money to squeeze out of him, or someone whose social standing could lend the society credibility..."
President Oiwa kept droning on with empty words of encouragement. No one was born useless; the future was bright; they could reach the pinnacle of life, and so on. With the whole hall already fired up, he had the crowd eating out of his hand. No matter what he said, they listened with rapt attention. If he'd ended with a few lines of "Give me a round of applause if you understand," Qian Xiaoyi wouldn't have doubted for a second that he'd stumbled into some kind of pyramid scheme convention.
At last, after President Oiwa had spent ten minutes warming up the crowd, Matsui appeared, his clothes now free of cream. He took the microphone from President Oiwa and said with a smile, "Thank you to our respected president for his speech. Now it's time for the next stage. Let's hear from the brothers and sisters of our society."
Before you continue