"Two travelers gazed up at the night sky.
A demon descended upon the castle, and the king fled with the treasure.
The queen wept into the Holy Grail, begging forgiveness; the soldiers took their own lives with their swords, blood staining the fields..."
Staring at the faded type on the yellowed paper, Tangze silently folded it up and looked at the second sheet.
"So this was the commission the Karasuma family specifically sent out forty years ago." Professor Agasa leaned over beside him and studied it carefully for a while, unable to help sighing. "The wording was humble and cautious, and the reward offered was generous. No wonder so many people attended that banquet forty years ago..."
"This letter wasn't signed." Tangze's attention, however, was not on the contents. He stared at the end of the letter and said, "There's only a crow emblem. Is this the Karasuma family crest?"
"No, to be more precise, it was Mr. Renya Karasuma's personal insignia." Mamiya Kito shook his head. "It wouldn't be wrong to regard it as the Karasuma family crest, but Mr. Renya Karasuma left no descendants. After his death, his assets were managed by several capable subordinates from his conglomerates and professional managers, gradually splitting into several separate groups. I have to say, it was rather unfortunate. If the Karasuma family had an heir, even if he wasn't the richest person in Asia, becoming the wealthiest in the country would have been no problem at all."
There was no small amount of wistfulness in Mamiya Kito's voice when he said that.
As Tangze had said long ago, Japan placed greater importance on surnames than bloodlines when it came to family succession. In other words, the family structure itself mattered more than kinship.
Mamiya Kito himself was an example. His father,