Teacher and Disciple

"There was an explosion?!"

Hidehiko Kazama's face changed drastically after he picked up the call and heard the news from the other end.

"The generator room on the fourth basement level, the office areas from the first to fourth floors, and the servers and computer rooms on the fortieth floor have all exploded. A massive flash fire on the fortieth floor of Building A has started a blaze. We can no longer see the on-site surveillance footage."

On Juzo Megure's end of the call, Wataru Takagi and Hitoshi Shiratori, who were in the control room, provided a more detailed report.

The two watched the alarm-filled screens while evacuating the staff from the room and answering solemnly.

"What?! The group's key documents are all stored there. If that's the case, then..." Mio Tokiwa, whose emotions had only just settled somewhat, could no longer calm down at all.

"Now isn't the time to worry about documents." Juzo Megure frowned and grabbed Hidehiko Kazama, whose emotions were also spiraling wildly. "Mr. Kazama, you're the building's chief architect. What evacuation plans do you have for a fire emergency?"

As he said that, Juzo Megure's glance toward Mio Tokiwa carried a somewhat complicated undertone.

Tokyo had strict regulations limiting supertall buildings precisely because of situations like this. At nearly eighty stories high, even the best firefighting technology could hardly guarantee safety.

When no accident occurred, a towering skyscraper was naturally a visually breathtaking sight. But once something happened—like now—it became a cage hundreds of meters above the ground. No fire truck ladder could directly carry out a rescue, and even extinguishing a fire on the fortieth floor would be extraordinarily difficult...

Considering that the building's owner, Mio Tokiwa, had forced its construction through at any cost, even resorting to shady means, the irony was hard