Villain: Your Heroines Were Delicious - Chapter 234 - 22

Chapter 234: Chapter 22

The Sunrise Hotel stood as a monument to the Kageyama Corporation’s absolute dominance over the skyline of the 24th District.

It was a massive and tall architecture, a monolith of black glass and reinforced steel that seemed to pulse with the golden light of the city’s elite.

As the revolving glass doors hissed open, the cold, pressurized air of the lobby swallowed the evening heat.

Seijirou led Touka inside, his stride confident and rhythmic.

The counter lady, dressed in a sharp, charcoal-grey suit, immediately stood up and offered a deep, respectful bow.

“Welcome back, Seijirou-sama,” she said, her voice a practiced melody of professional hospitality. “Lady Hakari is waiting for you in the upper sanctum. She has cleared the floor for your arrival.”

Seijirou offered a curt nod, his hand still firmly clasped around Touka’s.

He could feel her palm trembling against his, a fine, frantic vibration that spoke of her mounting dread.

Touka looked small amidst the sprawling marble and the towering art installations of the lobby.

“S-Seijirou-kun,” she whispered, her voice hitching as he pulled her toward the private elevator bank. “W-Won’t your mother get mad? It’s already night… we’re hours late for the original summons. I—I should have just skipped that lesson.”

Seijirou chuckled, the sound low and soothing as the elevator doors slid shut with a silent, expensive thud.

He squeezed her hand, his thumb tracing a reassuring circle over her knuckles. “Don’t worry, Touka. Just relax. My mother values results over punctuality when the situation warrants it. Besides, you were with me. She can’t be too hard on you without going through me first.”

Touka was still fidgeting in nervousness, her eyes darting toward the floor indicator as it climbed rapidly toward the clouds.

Finally, the doors of the elevator opened with a soft, melodic chime.

They had reached the highest floor of the building, a place where the air felt thinner and the city below looked like a sprawling circuit board.

Seijirou led her down a wide, carpeted hallway toward the penthouse before he took out a card key from his pocket—a sleek, black piece of plastic with the Kageyama crest embossed in silver—and scanned it.

The scanner on the doorknob glowed green, and the heavy door swung open.

And as they stepped inside, they saw Kageyama Hakari walking out of the master bathroom.

She was wearing a white, plush shower robe, her hair tied up in a towel, but even in her relaxed state, she radiated an aura of absolute authority that made the room feel smaller.

Hakari stopped and stared at them, her eyes sharp and devoid of any emotions before she put a hand on her hip and slowly glanced at the minimalist clock mounted above the door, then turned her gaze back to Seijirou.

“Arriving five minutes early for a meeting that should have happened at noon at the latest,” she said, her voice a cool, dangerous silk. “You certainly have the nerve, Kageyama Seijirou.”

“U-Um, Aunt Hakari!” Touka blurted out, her voice high and frantic as she stepped forward, her face flushing crimson. “I-It wasn’t Seijirou-kun’s fault at all! He was only late because of me! I had an incident at the Learning Center and I—”

“Come on, Mom,” Seijirou interrupted, his voice calm as he patted Touka’s shoulder, gently cutting off her panicked explanation.

Touka looked up and stared at him worriedly, but he just gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

He looked his mother in the eye, undeterred by the glare that would have sent most executives to their knees. “What do you need Touka for? You wouldn’t have called her here on a Saturday just to lecture her about her schedule.”

Hakari stared at him for a long moment, trying to intimidate him with the glare that was once his nightmare… nothing.

Realizing that her “motherly intimidation” tactics didn’t have the same effect they did when he was ten years old, she let out a long, weary sigh and shook her head, causing the towel shifted slightly on her head.

“It’s not me who wants her, specifically,” Hakari said, walking toward the miniature bar and pouring herself a glass of chilled whisky. “Someone within the subsidiary network informed me that Fujiwara Touka was embezzling company funds.”

“What!?” Touka’s eyes widened in a look of pure, unadulterated shock and fear as ber heart felt like it had stopped. “I—I didn’t! I would never!”

She turned toward Seijirou, her eyes welling with tears, her expression one of frantic begging. “S-Seijirou-kun, I swear, I really didn’t! I—I love the company, I love the work, I would never do something so… so disgusting!”

Seijirou didn’t even blink and juste gave her a firm, steady nod. “Yeah, I know. Don’t worry, Touka. I trust you. My mother wouldn’t be bringing you here if she thought you were a common thief; she’d have sent a retrieval team.”

Touka stared at him for a moment, his absolute confidence acting like a sedative on her frayed nerves.

She took a deep breath, clutching her skirt, and turned back toward Hakari. “A-Auntie, I really, really didn’t do that. I could never do that, I swear, please believe me…”

Hakari shook her head, her expression unreadable. “Whether I believe it or not is another matter, Fujiwara. In the corporate world, perception is as dangerous as reality. Someone did report you, and as the head of the Kageyama Corporation, it is my job to ensure to solve these little problems and deal with it.”

She took out a sleek, brushed-aluminum remote and pointed it at the massive wall-mounted TV.

The screen lit up instantly, showing a high-definition video call with a middle-aged woman with sharp, angular features and a perpetual scowl appeared on the screen, her background showing a cluttered executive office.

Touka’s eyes widened as she recognized the face. “That’s… Miss Saki.”

“You remember,” Hakari spoke, her voice projecting across the room. “She is the CEO of a branch subsidiary we own, a logistics and procurement firm where I sent you last month to assist as an interim accountant. It was a test of your practical application.”

Touka nodded, her posture stiffening, but at that moment, the timid, tearful girl was beginning to recede, replaced by the hyper-focused engineer-accountant that Seijirou admired. “I recognize her. I handled their Q3 audits.”

Hakari turned toward the screen. “Miss Saki, Fujiwara Touka is here. You may repeat the report you sent to my office. If she cannot explain the discrepancies herself, then I will deal with her appropriately.”

The woman on the screen, Miss Saki, nodded sharply, her eyes narrowing as she looked at Touka through the camera. “First off, I want to ask you directly, Fujiwara Touka-san. During your stay in my company, you unilaterally rejected a 50 million yen contract from the Maruyama Group. A deal that was essentially guaranteed income. Why? Why did you sabotage our growth?”

At this moment, Touka’s timidness seemed to vanish entirely.

The stutter was gone, replaced by a cold, analytical focus, and her spine straightened, her eyes took on a sharp, intelligent glint.

“I was the acting head of the accounting department,” Touka said, her voice steady. “Is it not the duty of an accountant to reject deals that are detrimental to the company’s long-term health?”

Miss Saki gritted her teeth, her face reddening on the screen. “Since when did a bratty little accountant run the sales department?! Know your place! You are there to count the money we bring in, not to decide who we do business with!”

“Miss Saki,” Touka said, her tone as sharp as a Ki blade. “Do you even know the total invoice income of your company for this fiscal year? Do you have the running tally in your head right now?”

“I don’t give a damn about the tally! Only an idiot turns down 50 million yen! Do you realize we were counting on that deal to cover the quarterly bonuses and the staff salaries?! You’ve put my employees’ livelihoods at risk!”

“At that time,” Touka said, her voice dropping into a rhythmic, rapid-fire delivery of facts, “your exact invoice income was 451,850,183 yen.”

“Great! Wonderful!” Miss Saki shouted. “And with that 50 million yen deal, we would have finally broken through the 500 million mark! We would have been a top-tier performer in the district!”

“That is exactly why it was a terrible deal!” Touka argued, her hands moving as if she were manipulating an invisible holographic ledger. “The company is currently registered under the ’Small and Medium Enterprise’ tax bracket for the 24th District. Because your revenue stayed below the 500 million threshold, your Value Added Tax (VAT) and small business levy are currently only 1 percent of gross income.”

Silence permeated the room.

Even Seijirou leaned back, impressed by the sudden shift in Touka’s aura.

Touka continued, her voice gaining momentum. “If we had taken that 50 million yen deal, your revenue would have jumped to over 500 million yen. That would have triggered an automatic reclassification by the National Tax Agency into ’Standard Taxpayer’ status. Your tax rate would have immediately jumped from 1 percent to 13 percent!”

Miss Saki looked stunned on the screen, her mouth hanging open.

“All of your supplies,” Touka pointed out, “come from small-time local vendors and independent contractors in the District. They don’t provide official tax-deductible receipts for our input VAT. Meaning, that extra 12 percent tax jump wouldn’t be offset by anything! It would come straight out of the company’s net income! For every million yen we made, we would have lost 120,000 yen in pure tax burden!”

Touka stepped closer to the screen, her eyes burning with the fire of a true mathematician. “By taking that 50 million yen deal, you wouldn’t have gained a profit. You would have effectively caused a net loss of over 15 million yen across the entire year’s revenue once the new tax bracket applied retroactively. I didn’t ’sabotage’ your growth, Miss Saki. I saved you, and you should be thanking me.”

The penthouse was silent, save for the hum of the air conditioning.

Hakari took a slow sip of her whiskey, a small, nearly imperceptible smile of satisfaction touching her lips as she watched the CEO on the screen struggle to find a response.

“You…you!” Miss Saki finally sputtered, though her voice lacked conviction. “How could it be that simple!?”

“It’s basic mathematics, Miss Saki. And math is always simple,” Touka said coldly. “It’s people who are complicated. Just like you.”