Chapter 826

Two "delivery" motorcycles, one in front and one behind, shot through the residential area's alleys and open spaces like two bolts of black lightning, flanking the escape route of the two men from both directions.

Godai Yusuke was responsible for intercepting from the front, Tsugawa Shouichi for applying pressure from the side, forcing the two men to change their escape direction and driving them into a narrower, more controllable area.

But these two men were smarter than expected. They did not continue running along the route Godai Yusuke had anticipated; instead, they suddenly emerged from the middle of the drainage ditch and rushed in another direction—toward a major road, at the end of which stood a huge blue-and-white building. Sam's Members Store.

The blue sign of that building glittered in the afternoon sunlight, symbolizing some kind of sacred presence.

The huge parking lot was empty, with only a few cars scattered about—today being a weekday, 2 p. m., not the peak time when housewives come for domestic goods.

The blue-and-white building resembled a slumbering giant beast, quietly crouched in the outskirts of Saitama Prefecture, with only two or three customers slowly wandering in at the entrance.

"Sam's Supermarket?"

Godai Yusuke and Tsugawa Shouichi exchanged a glance.

The two men had arrived at the supermarket about forty seconds before Godai Yusuke and Tsugawa Shouichi.

When they burst out from the edge of the parking lot, their steps had shifted from reckless, all-out sprinting to deliberately controlled fast walking—this was premeditated; they consciously lowered their presence when approaching public places.

One of them pulled a card from his pocket, swiped it at the entrance card reader with a "beep," and the turnstile opened. The two slipped in one after the other, their figures vanishing between the shelves.

Godai Yusuke's motorcycle screeched to a halt at the parking lot entrance, its tires dragging two black marks across the ground.

He took off his helmet, hung it on the delivery box, and strode toward the entrance; Tsugawa Shouichi followed closely, his sky-blue helmet tucked under his arm, the SF Express logo on his delivery jacket looking somewhat ridiculous in the sunlight.

A security guard in a dark blue uniform stood at the entrance, in his fifties, pot-bellied, with a conspicuous black mole on his chin. He was idly scrolling on his phone when his peripheral vision caught two people in delivery uniforms walking toward him; he immediately shoved his phone into his pocket, sucked in his gut, and struck a pose saying, "This area is under my jurisdiction."

"Stop right there, stop right there, stop right there." The guard extended his arm, barring the entrance like a highway barrier: "No delivery personnel allowed. Leave it at the door, call the member to come pick it up."

Godai Yusuke pulled out his police handbook from his pocket, snapped it open—on the black cover, the gilt characters "Metropolitan Police Department" flashed in the sunlight: "Police. We are pursuing two suspects who just went in, wearing dark work jackets. Please let us in."

The guard glanced down at the handbook, then back up at Godai Yusuke's delivery jacket, his mouth twitching as he revealed an expression somewhere between contempt and impatience.

Delivery worker? Public security police?

"Metropolitan Police Department?" He emphasized the three characters heavily, as if confirming a joke: "Get it straight—this is Saitama Prefecture. How does the Metropolitan Police have jurisdiction here? Besides, how do you prove this ID is genuine? Fake IDs sell for a few dozen yuan online these days." "Can't you dress like real cops? Damn it, you proxy-shopping punks pull this stunt all the time—today you're AC repairmen, tomorrow firefighters, the day after that cops?"

Godai Yusuke's brows knotted into a lump. He pressed a finger against the handbook's cover, his knuckles whitening, but his voice remained steady: "You can call the Saitama Prefecture Police Headquarters to verify. My badge number is"

"I don't have time to call you." The guard cut him off, his tone laced with the arrogance of a small-time figure suddenly wielding a bit of power: "We're conducting normal business here—a members-only store. No membership card, no entry. Not even police can disrupt the business environment, right? If you want to get in, either show a membership card, or have your superior contact our person in charge, or—alternatively—produce a search warrant."

He crossed his arms, slightly lifting his chin, the black mole glinting in the sunlight like a nail driven into Godai Yusuke's field of vision.

Sam's is Sam's!

If you haven't heard people say it, buy iPhones with your phone, Teslas for the tram, and go to Sam's for the supermarket!

Tsugawa Shouichi stood to the side, head tilted, watching the guard, his teeth itching—he himself was not skilled in this kind of interpersonal negotiation, usually leaving it to Hikawa Makoto, Hojo Toru, or Inspector Ozawa to handle personally.

"We don't have a search warrant," Tsugawa Shouichi said, his voice not loud, but each word carrying a strange, oppressive weight: "But behind us lies the weight of seven human lives. Are you sure you want us to wait here?"

"Shouichi!" Godai Yusuke immediately spoke up to stop him.

Keep a low profile, don't cause panic!

They wanted to force their way in, but the other side had already become alert, and several nearby guards had noticeably moved closer.

Seeing these two delivery workers' firm attitude, as if they wanted to fight, the guard's Adam's apple bobbed up and down, but his feet didn't move—he seemed to be weighing whether his pay grade warranted really getting into a fight.

Hmm, American corporations pay in US dollars—though take-home pay is only $2,100 out of $2,400 a month, when converted to yen (about 280,000 yen), it's already a decent salary in Saitama Prefecture.

He opened his mouth, about to say something, when a voice came from behind him.

"Make way."

Uesugi Muneyuki had arrived somehow, at some point.

The hem of his trench coat swayed lightly against his legs, his wool sweater still dotted with grass stains, his hair blown into disarray by the wind—but that aura of "this person does not belong to ordinary people" had enveloped the entire entrance area from the moment he took his first step.

The guard's gaze shifted from Godai Yusuke to him; his expression changed from arrogance to confusion, then from confusion to a stiffness resembling someone struck by lightning.

"Uesugi?! Is it Dr. Uesugi Muneyuki…… Yes, it really is Uesugi Muneyuki, the real thing!" The guard's mouth fell open.

"I need to go in." Uesugi Muneyuki said.

The guard's lips twitched, as if trying to repeat "search warrant" or "membership card," but his brain had clearly already refused to execute those orders.

His gaze moved from Uesugi Muneyuki's face to Godai Yusuke's face, then back to Uesugi Muneyuki's face, his Adam's apple bobbing again, after which his eyes became firm and clear.

"Please!" The guard stepped aside to clear the path, immediately pulling out his employee card from his pocket: "sirthisway!" The three of them walked into Sam's Members Store.

Inside the store, it was eerily empty, not like a warehouse-style supermarket at all.

The massive shelves stood like gray hills, neatly arranged on both sides of the wide aisles, light pouring down from the high ceiling and casting large bright patches on the open floor.

In the distance, a few scattered customers pushed huge shopping carts, moving slowly between the shelves like ants threading through a canyon. The air was filled with the smell of roasted chicken and pizza, coming from the simple meal area near the exit, but at that moment those scents aroused no appetite, only making the vast space feel even more vast.

The three of them did not split up.

Godai Yusuke walked in front, his steps steady, his gaze sweeping across each shelf like radar. Tsugawa Shouichi walked on the flank, his head slightly tilted, his ears like antennas picking up every faint sound.

Where did they escape to?

"The cold storage." Uesugi Muneyuki said in a low voice, so low only the two beside him could hear: "In this location. The rear area, near the receiving zone. If they wanted to evade our search, they wouldn't hide among the shelves—too easy to find. The cold storage is the only option. Low temperature, large space—once the door shuts, nothing outside is visible."

Hironaka Mariko said those guys were in the cold storage.

Godai Yusuke nodded, adjusted his direction, and headed deeper into the store. Passing through the household goods section, the food section, the beverage section—merchandise on the shelves shifted from bed sheets to potato chips, from chips to cola, from cola to frozen pizza.

The air temperature began to drop—not a sudden plunge, but a slow, gradual seepage of chill into the marrow.

The freezers in the frozen section emitted a low, buzzing hum; white cold air spilled from the open freezers, forming a thin, drifting mist on the floor.

The cold storage door was a thick, silver metal door, with a round handle and a small observation window.

The door wasn't shut tight, leaving a gap of about five centimeters, from which white cold air seeped out like a snake, writhing along the ground and spreading outward.

Godai Yusuke placed his hand on the door handle, glanced at Tsugawa Shouichi, who nodded in return, then Godai Yusuke yanked the door open. Uesugi Muneyuki followed closely behind.

Inside the cold storage stood five people.

Not two, but five.

Those two—namely, the two men in dark work jackets—stood in front, each gripping a short knife, the blades flashing cold light under the white lighting of the cold storage.

Behind them stood three other men, all in their thirties or forties, dressed in ordinary civilian clothes—work pants, hoodies, jackets—like five random laborers pulled from any construction site in Tokyo.

But their gaze was off—this was not the look of ordinary people; it was a unified, focused stare, as if their eyes had been coalesced by some shared force.

Two of them also drew short swords, the third had no sword but gripped an ice pick in his hand, its tip shining like a star under the light. Five people.

Five weapons.

As for Uesugi Muneyuki's side, there were no batons, no guns, no handcuffs, nothing that could be called a "weapon"—only one wearing a delivery worker's jacket, one in a cartoon rice ball jacket, one in a wrinkled wool sweater and a grass-stained trench coat.

The white cold air inside the cold storage poured down from the vents in the ceiling, forming a slow-moving, semi-transparent curtain between the five people and the three brothers.

Everyone's breath turned into white mist in the air, rapidly condensing, dissipating, then condensing again.

Uesugi Muneyuki did not move. He stood at the cold storage doorway, his gaze sweeping across the five people's faces one by one, as if examining five corpses awaiting autopsy in a morgue.

His right hand was in his trench coat pocket, his fingers brushing his Apple phone—no signal; the cold storage's metal walls shielded all electromagnetic waves like a Faraday cage.

Damn it, Huawei doesn't block Apple!

The people outside didn't know what was happening inside.

Godai Yusuke took a step forward, positioning himself between Uesugi Muneyuki and the five people.

His body turned slightly sideways, left hand forward, right hand back, a standard unarmed defensive posture. His eyes swept over the five people, finally locking onto the wrist of the knife-wielding man in front—not looking at the knife, but at the wrist, because the wrist's movement determines the blade's path.

Tsugawa Shouichi took position on the other side, forming an angle with Godai Yusuke, sandwiching the five people in between.

That smile appeared again on his face—not the previous frenzy, childish excitement, but a quieter, deeper expression, as if saying, "Finally, I've waited for this moment."

Opposite us are five people; we have only two and a half—Uesugi Chief counts only as half, he seems to have practiced a bit of karate……but it doesn't matter anyway.

For Sho, this isn't important.

Inside the cold storage, silence lasted a few seconds, then the knife-wielding man opposite gripped his blade tight, let out a strange cry, and stepped forward directly, while the four behind him almost simultaneously began to move!

"Ahhhhh!"

Five against three, the advantage is mine!