Tosu Hideo, forty-seven years old, was an office worker.
Although his parents had given him an impressive name, Tosu Hideo had been nothing but an ordinary man his entire life.
He had grown up uneventfully, gotten into an ordinary university without incident, and joined an ordinary company after graduation, working an ordinary job as a salesman.
But even someone as ordinary as Tosu Hideo had two-no, three-things he could be proud of.
The first two were that he had married an extraordinary wife, with whom he shared a happy, harmonious marriage, and had a daughter who made him proud.
The last one was rather insignificant.
Outside work, Tosu Hideo enjoyed reading and writing mystery novels, and he had uploaded more than fifty works to a fiction website.
Although the responses from readers of these mystery novels were also unremarkable, they were still a small source of pride for him.
"Why did I end up like this?"
Tosu Hideo lay in a large pit, his eyes blank. As the dirt fell, his body grew heavier and heavier.
"What did I expect after killing someone? And the young master of a Boryokudan group, at that. Was this retribution? As long as I can protect Hua Ling and her mother, I'm willing to die here."
On the verge of death, Tosu Hideo could not help recalling the afternoon he had met his daughter three days earlier.
His daughter, Karei Tosu, had become somewhat rebellious after starting high school. After entering university this year, she had simply moved out to live on her own.
Fortunately, Karei Tosu's university was also in Shizuoka Prefecture, not far from home, so they could see each other a few times each month.
Three days earlier had been just before Japan's traditional Golden Week holiday. Tosu Hideo had arranged