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Toyogasaki Private High School, Service Club activity room.
From the moment Shizuka Hiratsuka mentioned Toshiro Hijikata, the atmosphere had fallen silent. Whether it was the Yukinoshita Family, the Sawamura Family, or the Natsukawa Family, they had all heard of the Kondo Group...
It was an organization that even violent groups like the X-gumi avoided. Though many family heads vaguely knew that the Kondo Group was connected to the Doma Family, they never spoke of it. They only warned their younger generations—never, ever make enemies of the Kondo Group.
Because of this, most prominent families even deliberately vilified the Kondo Group. Although ordinary people actually thought the Kondo Group was fairly decent, to those born into high society, the Kondo Group was absolutely something that could scare a child into silence.
It could not be helped. The Kondo Group showed no mercy in its dealings. Once, on an island not far from Japan, there had been a Slave Island. Though the people who operated it were not as powerful as the four great conglomerates, they still held considerable influence in high society—one of the reasons Sogo Doma so looked down on prestigious families.
But what did influence matter? The Kondo Group had wiped out that island simply because a woman who escaped had come begging for help. Of the families implicated, only infants had survived, and even they could only be sent to orphanages...
That had been a force that had existed since the anti-shogunate movement!
Yet it had fallen to the Kondo Group's force of arms over a single escaped slave woman. Even their children had been forced into orphanages. Just thinking about it sent chills down the spines of those "high-born prestigious families." What was worse, the Doma Family had put on an innocent expression of—We don't know