Reborn in Tokyo: From Heiress to Global Tycoon

Chapter 15 Golden Week

Tuesday, April 1985, 9.

After the typhoon completely passed through Tokyo, the sky was a near-transparent blue. Sunlight poured unhindered onto the glass facades of the Marunouchi financial district, refracting a blinding white light.

The light was so bright that it even gave people a dizzying sensation.

In the office of Saionji Industrial Co., Ltd., the blinds were half-drawn.

A beam of light slanted into the room, illuminating every detail of the dust particles floating in the air.

Shuichi Saionji sat behind the large mahogany desk. Today he wore a brand-new dark blue striped shirt, his tie was perfectly tied, his chin was stubbled, and he looked radiant, like a king about to be crowned.

Only his hands, resting on the table and rhythmically tapping the edge, betrayed his inner turmoil.

There are three telephones on the table.

One was connected to Credit Suisse in Zurich, another to the trading room of Mitsui Bank, and the third was an inside line.

Directly opposite him, on the market data terminal flashing green light, the numbers remained frozen at Friday afternoon's closing price:

USD/JPY 240.85

This is the last memory before the storm.

Last Monday, while Tokyo residents were on holiday to pay respects to their ancestors, London and New York on the other side of the world had become slaughterhouses. The US dollar, like a bull with its throat slit, bled profusely under the frenzied selling by European traders.

The over-the-counter market is in chaos. Some are bidding 235, some are bidding 230, and some are even offering the incredibly low price of 225 in a panic.

But all of that is "illusory".

The actual trial will not take place until 9:00 AM Tokyo time.

As the world's first Asian financial center to open, Tokyo's market pricing will determine the direction of the global economy this week and even this year.

"Fifteen minutes left."

Xiu raised his wrist and glanced at the Patek Philippe.

His voice was soft, but it echoed in the quiet office.

"Father, your coffee has gone cold."

Satsuki sat on the sofa, holding a thick English original book—"The Wealth of Nations." She wasn't wearing her school uniform today; instead, she wore a white lace dress, and her hair was tied up with a dark blue ribbon, making her look like an exquisite porcelain doll.

She put down her book, walked to the table, took away the cup of black coffee that had gone cold, and replaced it with a cup of freshly brewed Darjeeling tea.

The porcelain cup touched the saucer, making a crisp "ding" sound.

Shuichi's eyelid twitched.

He picked up his black tea and took a sip. The scalding liquid flowed down his throat, relieving the spasms in his stomach caused by excessive tension.

"Satsuki," Shuichi put down his cup, his gaze still fixed on the screen, "what time do you think the meeting will be today?"

"Under 230."

Satsuki answered without hesitation. She walked to the window, put her hands behind her back, and looked down at the cars that scurried about like ants.

"The Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Japan (BOJ) already made their statements yesterday. Now that they've signed the agreement, they need to show sincerity. The BOJ will definitely intervene and dump shares at the opening today. That's the will of the national team; no one dares to catch a falling knife."

Shuichi took a deep breath.

230.

If it really opens at 230, it means that he will have a profit margin of 10 yen the moment the market opens.

How much is that?

Prior to that, the Saionji family had mortgaged all the assets they could, plus leverage of twenty times provided by Switzerland, bringing their total holdings to hundreds of millions of dollars.

For every yen that falls, that's hundreds of millions of yen in net profit.

If it drops by 10 yen...

Shuichi felt a tingling sensation in his fingertips. It was a sign of an adrenaline rush.

"8:55."

The phone suddenly rang.

He is the branch manager of Mitsui Bank in Yoshino (Yoshino Ayako's father).

Xiu Yi answered the phone and pressed the speakerphone button.

"Mr. Saionji!" Yoshino's voice sounded both excited and terrified, with the background noise of the trading floor and ringing phones. "The off-exchange quotes have collapsed! Just now, some Toyota-affiliated funds from Nagoya tried to buy at 232, but Goldman Sachs' sell orders completely overwhelmed them! Now all buy orders have been withdrawn, and no one dares to place any orders!"

"I know," Shuichi said calmly. "Where's my order?"

"They're all here! They're all here!" Yoshino said repeatedly. "Your short position that you liquidated on Friday afternoon is now the best-positioned position in the market! If you close it now..."

"Who told you to close your position?"

Shuichi coldly interrupted him.

"Take this. No matter what happens, do not touch a single dollar without my permission."

"Yes! Yes!"

hang up the phone.

Shuichi lit another cigarette.

Amidst the swirling smoke, the second hand ticked away.

8 points.

8 points.

The air in the office seemed to freeze. Even the sound of the air conditioner seemed to have disappeared.

Xiu held his breath, staring intently at the green screen.

57 seconds. 58 seconds. 59 seconds.

9:00:00

There was no earth-shattering noise.

The numbers on the screen only flickered once.

The figure of 240.10 for USD/JPY has disappeared.

Instead, there was a shocking gap.

USD/JPY 229.50

It instantly dropped below 230!

The opening price is 10 yen lower!

"boom--"

Even through the thick soundproof glass, Shuichi could almost hear the desperate wails erupting from the Otemachi Trading Center, several kilometers away.

But this is only the beginning.

The number didn't stop. It was like a boulder rolling off a cliff, plummeting madly with the kinetic energy to destroy everything.

229.00

228.40

227.10

There were no buyers.

The entire market is flooded with sell orders. Exporters are selling, speculators are selling, and even retail investors who were just trying to buy at the bottom are now cutting their losses.

At the very front of all the sell orders was an invisible yet immense force—the Bank of Japan.

They are using the printed yen to dump dollars on the market at any cost. They are fulfilling their promises to the United States, but in doing so, they are also strangling their own export industries.

Shuichi stared at the wildly fluctuating number.

His account value is skyrocketing at a rate of tens of millions of yen per second.

Just a minute ago, he was a fallen aristocrat worrying about a loan of several hundred million yen.

One minute later, he already had enough cash flow to buy half of Maru.

"Ha ha……"

Shuichi suddenly chuckled.

The sound was dry and hoarse, like an old, worn-out bellows.

"Ha ha ha ha……"

The laughter grew louder and wilder. He suddenly smashed the cigarette butt in his hand into the ashtray, sparks flying everywhere.

"Did you see that, Satsuki! Did you see that?!"

Xiu Yi pointed at the screen, his fingers trembling violently, his face filled with an almost ferocious ecstasy.

"It's fallen! It's really fallen! Those so-called economists, those bankers who only know how to look at financial statements, are all idiots! They're all blind!"

He stood up and paced back and forth in the office, his steps unsteady as if he were walking on clouds.

"That idiot Kenshiro still wants to rush orders? What orders?! The money I earn in one minute is enough for his crappy factory to run for a hundred years!"

He picked up the calculator on the table and his fingers flew across the keys, trying to calculate an exact number. But after a few clicks, he impatiently tossed the calculator aside.

It's impossible to calculate.

It's impossible to calculate. The leverage effect makes wealth growth an abstract concept.

"Is this what plundering is...?"

Shuichi stopped in his tracks, bracing his hands on the table as he gasped for breath. His eyes were frighteningly red as he stared at the still-falling curve on the screen.

"Is this... what it feels like to be a hunter?"

This pleasure is a hundred times more intense than any fine wine or any woman. It is the pleasure of taking control of one's destiny and trampling on common sense.

In contrast to her father's outburst, Satsuki remained quietly standing by the window.

She didn't even glance back at the crazed screen.

Her gaze pierced through the glass and landed on the lush pine forest in the outer gardens of the Imperial Palace in the distance.

It was quiet there, the surface of the moat calm and still. A few egrets skimmed across the water, leaving ripples in their wake.

"Father."

Satsuki's voice was soft, yet it was like a clear spring that pierced through Shuichi's boiling mind.

"You've lost your composure."

Xiu Yi was startled.

He looked up at his daughter.

Satsuki turned around, her back to the sunlight. Her face was somewhat blurred in the backlight, but her eyes were strikingly bright.

"This is nothing."

Satsuki picked up her teacup and gently blew on the tea leaves floating on the surface.

"The current decline is simply due to panic. Those holding dollars are terrified and are stampeding."

She walked to the desk, stretched out her fair finger, and tapped the number 225.80.

"After a few days, once the panic subsides, exporters will feel that 'it's about time' and want to buy at the bottom. At that time, the exchange rate will rebound."

Xiu Yi calmed down a bit: "Shouldn't we close our positions before the rebound?"

"No."

Satsuki shook her head.

"We have to wait."

"Wait for the second wave. Wait for the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan to join forces and pull the sword of interest rates out of the water."

"When Uncle Kenshiro's factory really can't pay wages, when the Okura family's construction site really stops work, when those company presidents who still think they can get through this will line up and go to the rooftop one by one."

She put down her teacup, walked over to Shuichi, and straightened his tie, which had become slightly crooked from his earlier excitement.

His movements were gentle, yet he uttered the most cold-blooded words.

"Father, we are not gamblers. We are corpse collectors."

"Don't cut the body before it's completely cold. It'll be too hot to handle."

"We're going to eat them all, skin and all, don't you think?"

Satsuki smiled and looked up at Shuichi, like a girl talking to her father about her dolls.

Shuichi looked at his daughter, who was so close to him.

In that instant, he felt that his earlier ecstasy was somewhat ridiculous.

A forty-year-old man was not as composed as a twelve-year-old child.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

When I opened my eyes again, the bloodshot eyes were still there, but the frantic agitation had disappeared.

"you're right."

Shuichi sat back down in his chair and picked up the phone.

"Take over from Credit Suisse."

The call connected. Frank on the other end was clearly excited as well, speaking at a machine-gun-like pace.

"Mr. Saionji! My God! You're a genius! Our profits have now exceeded..."

"Shut up, Frank."

Shuichi's voice was as cold as ice.

"I don't care how much I'm making now. I only care about one thing."

"Even if the exchange rate rebounds, do not close your position. Use your current unrealized profits as new margin and hold on to them tightly."

"Also," Xiu paused, glancing at Satsuki standing beside him, "keep an eye on the US stock market for me. If any tech stocks have been unfairly punished and fallen due to this currency fluctuation, give me a list."

hang up the phone.

Shuichi took out a box of expensive Cuban cigars from the drawer.

This was a cigarette he had treasured for a long time and couldn't bear to smoke.

He cut open the cigar and lit it.

The rich aroma of tobacco filled the office.

"Satsuki," Shuichi exhaled a puff of blue smoke, leaning back in his chair, "what do you think Kenshiro is doing right now?"

Satsuki walked to the floor-to-ceiling window and looked down at the still-flowing river of cars.

"He's probably making a phone call to the bank."

She said softly.

"Or... to cry in that warehouse filled with garden shovels."

……

at the same time.

Osaka. Saionji Heavy Industries.

The door to the factory manager's office was tightly closed.

Kenjiro slumped to the ground, the receiver in his hand hanging in mid-air, emitting a busy tone.

Just now, he called Mitsui Bank, Sumitomo Bank, and even Credit Union, which he usually doesn't even glance at.

No one answered.

Or rather, no one was willing to answer his calls.

All the bank's finance department heads were busy in meetings, busy calculating how much their dollar assets had shrunk, and busy compiling a "high-risk list" for export companies like his.

Outside the window, the factory machines were still roaring.

Those were injection molding machines and stamping presses running at full speed to meet deadlines. Every roar meant another batch of expensive imported raw materials had been consumed, producing a product that could have made a profit yesterday but was destined to lose money today.

"Stop..."

Kenjiro's lips trembled; he wanted to shout, but no sound came out.

If work stops now, it's a breach of contract. The 300% compensation would bankrupt him.

If we continue production, we'll lose money on every unit sold. The exchange rate has already fallen below 230, and judging by the current trend, it won't hold at 220 either.

Either way, it's certain death.

He had reached the point of utter despair.

The office door was suddenly pushed open.

The American representative, Smith, burst in, waving a fax paper in his hand.

"Mr. Kenjirou!" Smith wasn't discouraged by the falling exchange rate; instead, his face was serious. "I just received a message from headquarters. Given the drastic exchange rate fluctuations, we require you to provide an additional performance bond! Otherwise, we have the right to question your ability to deliver!"

"Deposit?"

Kenjiro raised his head, his eyes unfocused.

"Where would I get any money now...?"

Smith sneered and slammed the fax paper on the table.

"That's your problem. The contract clearly states that if the seller's financial situation deteriorates, the buyer has the right to demand a guarantee."

He glanced around the luxuriously decorated office, his gaze finally settling on Kenjiro's gold watch.

"If you don't have cash, collateral will do."

Kenjiro looked at the tall American and suddenly felt that the man's face had become distorted, like a man-eating demon.

He remembered Satsuki's innocent words from that day in Osaka.

"If we make money, can we earn three times that amount?"

No.

It's not about making three times the profit.

It's a three-fold compensation.

They might even risk their lives.

Kenjiro grabbed the ashtray from the table and hurled it at the damned American.

"Get out! All of you, get out!"

"Bang!"

The ashtray smashed against the wall and shattered into pieces.

Just like the bright future that Saionji branched out of the family.

……

Tokyo. Saionji Industrial Co., Ltd.

The sun was still shining brightly.

Satsuki stood by the window, watching a lost butterfly crash into the glass and then stumble away.

The first domino has fallen.

She silently drew an X in her mind.

The next few months will be the most chaotic, painful, and frantic months in Japan's postwar economic history.

Countless people will go bankrupt, and countless people will lose their jobs.

But countless skyscrapers will also rise from the ground, and countless champagnes will be opened in the night in Ginza.

The illusion of bubbles is so dazzling and so varied.

It was the best of times and the worst of times.

For the Saionji family, who held a large amount of short positions in US dollars...

This is the Golden Age.