It was not until the next morning that Banjō arrived and rescued Louis. Apparently, he had asked the ghouls of Ward 6 for help finding him.
Without explaining much, Louis got into the back seat of the car and lay back, ready to sleep.
"Banjō, look into the Thousand-Leaf Tree for me. Find out where that ghoul organization is from..."
"The Thousand-Leaf Tree?" Banjō froze in the front passenger seat and turned around despite himself. "They're one of the outside factions invading Ward 6..."
"Hmm?" Louis opened his eyes again.
"And they seem to have joined forces with another outside faction to force Ito and the others into negotiations." Banjō paused, then added one last thing.
"It's happening today."
In the courtyard of a house far from the city center, three groups faced off in a tense standoff. Blood still stained the ground; clearly, a clash had already taken place.
"Ito... if you'd just share control of Ward 6 with us, none of this would have happened. Look at this mess... can't we sit down and talk things over?" A vicious-looking man shook the blood from his hand, then waved for his men to bring out three more chairs, acting as though he owned the place.
Around a dozen people stood behind him, all wearing black tiger masks.
The chairs were brought out and arranged facing three directions, roughly five meters apart.
"Have a seat... everyone." He gestured for them to make themselves comfortable, as if he were the master of the house.
But the more he behaved this way, the angrier Ito became. The reason was simple: this had been their former leader's home before the incident.
Although it had remained vacant, they had assigned people to maintain it. Today, however, these two invaders had seized it in