Chapter 832

"I first met my teacher three months after I was scammed. My money was gone, my job was gone, and every day I thought about how to die. Three days later, someone arranged to meet me at a coffee shop in Shinjuku, saying she had heard about my situation, and there was only one person in the coffee shop—a woman."

"She was the 'teacher.' She sat across from me, wearing a white shirt, her hair loose over her shoulders, speaking in a very gentle voice. After I finished telling her my story, she said: 'You are not a failure; you are a warrior betrayed by this society.'"

Tanabe lowered his head, fell silent for a few seconds, then raised his head, his eyes flashing with light.

"That was the first time in three years that someone had said to me, 'You are not a failure.' Not 'You need psychological counseling,' not 'Why didn't you report to the police,' not 'How could you have been so stupid back then.' She said I was a warrior. She said the women who scammed me were enemies, and the women who flaunted their happiness on social media were also enemies. She said enemies won't spare you just because you don't resist; you must fight."

"She united us and taught us how to act."

"She said we are not criminals; we are warriors. We fight for her, for all men who have been hurt by women. She gave us a goal, making us feel we are not worthless."

"For the first time, we felt we were not acting alone; we had an organization, comrades, a 'family,' and this feeling was not bad."

"After your first operation," Uesugi Muneyuki's voice carried a hint of amusement: "How did it feel?"

Tadabe Kemi's eyes lit up.

It was regret, not fear, not madness, but a pure, heartfelt joy, like a child's delight upon successfully riding a bicycle for the first time.

"Refreshing." He said, a single word, then laughed: "The first time, I stabbed that woman three times. She screamed loudly, I panicked a bit, but the teacher in the earpiece said, 'Don't stop, continue.' So I continued. After stabbing her, I stood there, covered in blood, my heart racing as if it would burst, but... but I felt alive. For over a decade in Tokyo, I had been like a walking corpse—going to work, getting off work, eating, sleeping, being scammed by women, trampled by society—I had never felt alive. That night, I killed a person, and for the first time, I felt alive." Uesugi Muneyuki nodded.

Killing is addictive.

The renowned late Qing premier, strategist, scholar, literary figure, barbering expert, Chang Gong's most admired minister, transmitter of ancestral family letters, conqueror of the Malthusian trap, god-chosen of terror and abuse, ender of the heavenly father and heavenly brother in paradise, initiator of the Westernization Movement, domestically self-produced wave doll, Viceroy of Liangjiang, Viceroy of Governance, Grand Tutor, Grand Scholar of the Wuying Hall, First-Class Marquis of Valor and Courage Zeng Wenzheng Gong once said: "Those who should be killed but are not fill pits and valleys."

In his early years, Zeng Wenzheng Gong was so upright as to border on pathology, but later he was compelled to organize militia training and experienced this pleasure. Perhaps at first, they acted out of revenge and resentment, but later they had already begun to become addicted.

"How much money do you take from each operation?" Date Nagamune asked.

Tadabe laughed: "Money? Money is the least important. Each payout is roughly several ten-thousands to over ten thousand yen; selling the jewelry yields a few hundred thousand. The teacher said this money is merely a 'byproduct'; the real gain is not money."

"What is it then?"

"It's pleasure." Tadabe's eyes narrowed like a sunbathing kitten: "You don't know how good that feeling feels. You walk into a house you never dared imagine, five times the size of your 1LDK rental, the living room sofa worth more than three months of your salary, the refrigerator stocked with imported beer you wouldn't dare buy at the convenience store."

"Those women—she wears genuine silk pajamas, diamond rings on her fingers, the coffee table displays her brand-name bag just bought from Ginza. Everything she has is what you dream of but can never obtain. Then you smash it all, press her to the ground, hear her cry, hear her beg for mercy. Do you know that feeling? You see in her eyes that she finally realizes—you and she are equal. No, you are stronger. Because you hold her life and death in your hands."

He paused, licked his lips, as if savoring some delicacy.

"Killing is addictive. The first time I vomited, and couldn't sleep for three days afterward. The second time I got used to it. The third time I began to enjoy it. The fourth time... the fourth time I found on that woman's phone a photo of her and her daughter smiling happily, and I felt nauseous. I stabbed her daughter's heart through. At that moment I (). Not metaphorical—I actually ()." Uesugi Muneyuki and others..."

Uesugi Muneyuki and others..."

That night, the Special Mission Division members were all preoccupied, and even Uesugi Muneyuki lost his focus.

But there was good news: through fixed contact methods and encrypted equipment, the police quickly traced this mysterious woman's devices and IP address via public security channels, and from the IP, they quickly identified her social media accounts and identity.

The next day at noon, everyone was eating bento in the Special Investigation Headquarters when Okada Masayoshi pushed the door open, holding a laptop, its screen showing a screenshot of a social media page. His expression was one Uesugi Muneyuki rarely saw—not anger, not anxiety, but a calm, almost cold, resolute certainty, as if finally placing the last puzzle piece onto the desktop.

"Found it." Okada Masayoshi placed the laptop on the desk, turning the screen toward Uesugi Muneyuki.

The screen showed an Instagram account.

The username was "megumi_love_life".

Registration time was over three years ago.

The profile picture was a white rose, and the bio read: "Women's ally. Teach you how to seize happiness."

The account owner is "Megumi," a woman appearing in her thirties, not strikingly beautiful but very approachable, with refined makeup and elegant attire; in her photos, she is always in upscale restaurants, luxury hotels, or stylish bookstores.

Every one of her posts conveys the same message: women deserve better lives, women should not suffer in unhappy marriages, women have the right to pursue whatever they want.

She posted a top-pinned post with over fifty thousand likes: "Many people ask me, what is a 'female mentor'? My answer is: I am not teaching you to scam men; I am teaching you to protect yourself. In this world, too many women suffer in marriage, lose in relationships, waste time on men. What I want to do is help every woman stand up and reclaim what is hers. This is not deception; this is justice." The comment section below was filled with uniform praise and support.

"Megumi teacher said it so well!"

"Finally someone spoke women's true voice!"

"Request a course! Request a tutorial! I also want to become an independent, self-reliant woman like the teacher!"

"Our domestically self-produced wave doll and Ueno Chizuko!"

But Okada Masayoshi had Uesugi Muneyuki look not at these.

He opened Megumi's "close friends" circle—a content area visible only to paying members, with a monthly fee of 19,800 yen. The content inside is completely different from the public page's "women's independence" and "self-growth."

The first post in the close friends circle screenshot is a chat log screenshot.

Megumi said in the teaching group to a student: "You can't directly say 'Give me money'; that's fraud. You must make him feel that giving you money is his idea. For example, say 'I want to save money with you to buy a house,' and he will feel this is your shared future, that his spending is natural. Once you have the money, when to buy the house is your business; he has no say."

The second post is a voice-to-text transcript: "Remember, absolutely do not write an IOU. Once you write an IOU, it becomes a loan relationship, and legally you can't escape. You must make him feel it's a 'voluntary gift.' Giving gifts on Valentine's Day is voluntary, right? Birthday gifts are voluntary, right? As long as you make him feel each time he gives you money is an expression of love, he gives happily, you receive peacefully. Even if you break up later, he cannot say you scammed him, because he willingly gave."

"Don't worry, police won't accept it—I know Japanese police; this bunch of useless people only say it's a 'civil dispute,' and even if you hire a lawyer, do they still have money to hire one?"

The third post is a photo showing a stack of thick envelopes, captioned: "Today's results. Three new students, each paid 200,000 yen in tuition. They will soon recoup this money tenfold or a hundredfold. Women must learn to use men's money—this is heaven's gift to women."

Uesugi Muneyuki flipped through those screenshots page by page, his expression unchanged.

Is this that mysterious woman?

He suddenly understood.

He had been wondering how this mysterious woman found this group of deceived, desperate men.

Excellent, I finally understand everything.

One fish, three eats.

This is that mysterious woman's "one fish, three eats."

The first eat: she targets men eager to marry.

She runs classes, teaching Japanese women how to exploit information asymmetry and emotional needs in the dating market to legally—or at least hardly prosecutable—extract money from men.

Following her methods, these women screen targets on dating apps, use carefully crafted talk to build emotional connections, under seemingly reasonable and hard-to-define-as-fraud pretenses like "joint savings," "family changes," "future planning," to repeatedly extract money from men desperate for marriage.

Each transaction skirts the legal red line, each hard to classify as fraud—because the money is mostly "voluntary gifts," and the excuses are mostly "civil disputes."

Police can't handle it, law can't touch it, and the deceived men can only swallow their bitterness, rotting in silence.

The second eat: she targets men who, after being scammed, have nowhere to turn.

When these men hit rock bottom—losing jobs, savings, trust in society, and reason to live—she appears before them as a "savior."

She contacts these scammed men through women who succeeded in "million withdrawals," giving them a new goal, an outlet for venting hatred: "Those happy women, those flaunting online that they married well, live well, and own everything without effort—what right do they have? Isn't their wealth just the pile of money they scammed from you?"

She feeds them these words like feeding starving beasts.

They weren't born killers, but they had enough to let the flames purify everything—I am the king of the power train!

The third eat, eating those "happy housewives."

Matsumoto Yumi, Takahashi Mi, and even more women they planned to strike but hadn't yet—those who shared exquisite lives on social media, flaunted their husbands' incomes, and inadvertently revealed "I'm doing better than you"—these housewives are the endpoint of this hatred chain.

The first eat's prey is men, the second eat's prey is those men, the third eat's prey is the lives of those women.

And she sits at the very top of the chain, eating three times.

【She's simply a genius.】Arimura Hana couldn't help but say: 【I want to take her as my disciple!】

【You'll have your chance.】Uesugi Muneyuki curled his lip.

【But before that, I need to figure out why they've already committed seven or eight cases, and we only found out now!】