TBITW Chapter 12

Chapter 12 – The Faint One

Main Story 1, Chapter 4, Part 2

Novel Title: 獣はかくして交わる (The Beasts Intertwine This Way)

Author：沙野 風結子 (Fuyuko Sano)

Illustrator：小山田 あみ (Oyamada Ami)

Translator: K (@kin0monogatari)

Protagonists: 鹿倉 陣也 (Kagura Jinya -MC) & ゼロ (Zero -ML)

*Please read at knoxt.space, the original site of translation. TQ*

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That night, they somehow parted ways without any physical intimacy.

As Kagura walked along the Meguro River toward the station, he felt a simmering sense of frustration deep within him.

―――I wasn’t expecting that kind of thing, anyway…

Despite the physical frustration, his spirits were high.

He’d secured a major stepping stone toward his goal of exposing and dismantling the Eastern Alliance’s human trafficking operation.

And he’d learned that Zero, too, had been moving toward the same goal of bringing down the Eastern Alliance.

He exhaled his heated breath into the cold night air and looked up.

The stars, dimmed by the lights from the city, were beginning to fade.

***

Kagura was summoned by Section Chief Takizaki, and about forty detectives from the Organized Crime Division’s Second Unit took their seats in the conference room.

“Last week, there was a gathering of skill-training management organisations from all around the Kanto region, and a petition that came out of it has been passed on to us. It’s right there in front of you.”

Kagura glanced over the ten or so copied pages of the petition and couldn’t help but make a bitter face.

“It’s been a problem for years, but the number of foreign technical trainees who go missing from their training sites continues to increase. Especially over the past year or two, as you can see from the figures, the situation has become terrible. According to these management organisations, there are groups out there deceiving and abducting trainees, and they’re asking us to crack down on them.”

The official name for these foreign trainee management organisations is “Non-Profit Organisations Managing Technical Trainees’ Training Activities.” About 2,600 of these organisations are authorised by the Organization for Technical Intern Training nationwide.

The scale of these organisations varies, with some large ones dispatching trainees across Japan, effectively contradicting their supposed ‘non-profit’ status.

Each organisation receives around 300,000 yen per trainee from the host companies. Some even receive kickbacks from organisations in each trainee’s home country, essentially making easy profits.

And ultimately, all these various costs end up as debts the trainees have to bear.

Recently, the media has taken an interest in the ‘dark side of the technical internship system’, often focusing on the poor working conditions. But in reality, the management organisations themselves are often riddled with corruption.

“No wonder they’d run away when their management organisation is useless,” Sanae muttered quietly from beside him.

“But the place they run off to might be an even worse hell,” Kagura replied in a voice not low enough to avoid attracting attention. This caused Section Chief Takizaki and their colleagues to look over at him.

“Well, that’s true enough,” Takizaki said with a shrug.

Kagura asked, “So, which organisations are taking these trainees away?”

“There are two names the management organisations provided: the Eastern Alliance and Enwu.”

The mention of Enwu stirred a buzz of whispers in the conference room.

“Enwu? That Enwu?”

“So they really exist?”

“Or maybe it’s just a name some organisation is using as cover.”

Takizaki cleared his throat, and the murmurs died down.

“We still don’t have any information on Enwu’s membership, nationality, or scale. However, multiple management organisations mentioned Enwu by name this time.”

Takizaki wrote on the whiteboard: EN/U

“It seems a note with this written on it was found in the room of a missing Vietnamese trainee. At the very least, it’s highly likely someone posing as ‘Enwu’ has been contacting the trainees.”

Whether it’s the Eastern Alliance or Enwu, the result is the same.

They lure trainees into fleeing with sweet words. They then exploit the fact that they can’t seek help from anyone, forcing them into harsher labour, involving them in crimes, or even making them victims of human trafficking.

“By the way, the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare is on edge lately about the media’s criticism of the technical internship program. Don’t go leaking unnecessary details.”

Aizawa, who had a network of contacts among freelance writers, responded, “I’ll stick to relevant details,” and Takizaki didn’t scold him for it.

Takizaki likely understood both how skillfully Aizawa leveraged his writer contacts and that this case wasn’t a simple matter of good and evil.

Not everything needs to be exposed, nor should everything be concealed.

This will inevitably become an issue that no one in Japan can continue to ignore.

So, it’s necessary to plant seeds of awareness through the media.

As Kagura sat at his desk, working on paperwork before leaving for the day, he paused. He stared at the back of a piece of paper destined for disposal.

“Here’s your coffee, Kagura-san.”

Sanae placed a cup on his desk, having brewed one for himself as well.

He peeked at the paper Kagura was looking at and noticed the letters ‘EN/U’.

“Since we don’t know the members’ nationalities, the entire Organized Crime Division has been tasked with investigating the existence of Enwu. I wonder how that’ll go.”

“If they’re actually exploiting the trainees, that means it exists. And if it exists, then we can eventually expose it, even if it takes time.”

“It’s depressing, isn’t it? The weak keep getting exploited, here and there.”

Sanae sighed and then noticed something next to ‘EN/U’ on the page. He leaned closer to get a better look at it. It was actually this part that Kagura had been staring at earlier.

“What’s this?”

Six dots arranged by a ballpoint pen: three on the top edge, two on the bottom in a squashed trapezoid shape rotated ninety degrees counterclockwise. There was an extra dot beside the lowest dot on the top edge.

It was the same symbol as on Zero’s smartphone lock screen image.

“It looks familiar, but I can’t remember from where exactly.”

“Hmmm… what could it be?”

Sanae stared at it intently for a while, then suddenly exclaimed, “Ah!”

“Isn’t this the ‘Death Omen Star’?”

“What?”

“It’s that dot over here,” Sanae said, pointing to the extra dot with a dramatic tone.

“‘You must be able to see it―――the Death Omen Star!’”

“That’s a line I’ve heard before.”

“What’s with that lukewarm reaction? It’s a famous line from a martial arts manga set in a post-apocalyptic world! Seeing this Death Omen Star is basically a death flag.”

Annoyed at Kagura’s indifference, Sanae took a ballpoint pen and added two more dots connected by lines, starting from the top right dot of the sideways trapezoid.

The Big Dipper appeared.

“See, there’s no mistake. This takes me back. My parents have the whole  manga collection at home, still there even now.”

Ignoring Sanae as he animatedly launched into a summary of the manga, Kagura picked up the paper and carefully examined the completed shape.

This must be the answer.

That image was likely a photo of the night sky, with the stars on it.

―――Does Zero have some kind of attachment to the Big Dipper?

But if so, then why did he only use the handle portion of the image?

It was hard to believe that someone like Zero would be emotionally attached to the ‘Death Omen Star’ like some kind of fan, as Sanae was.

Sanae, still excited, pointed at the ‘Death Omen Star’ and explained, “This star, Alcor, is hard to see. They say it was used to test soldiers’ eyesight in ancient Arabia. If they could see it, they’d be recruited, which is why it was considered a death omen.”

“That’s pretty ominous.”

“Oh, but in Japan, they also say that if you can no longer see this star, you’ll die. It’s probably because eyesight weakens with age, so older people have trouble seeing it.”

So if you can still see it, your time of death is far off.

If it’s a kind of superstition, then it’s somewhat understandable. People who deal with danger often have their own little rituals.

“The same thing can take on opposite meanings depending on the time and situation. It’s deep, isn’t it?”

Kagura slapped Sanae on the rear as he stood with his arms crossed, nodding.

“Stop daydreaming and finish sorting those files.”

“Ouch! That’s harassment!”

“More like power harassment.”

“Well, either way, it’s still wrong,” Sanae muttered, taking his seat at the desk across from him to finish his work.

After giving him a smack, Kagura pulled out his smartphone and looked up ‘Alcor’.

It seemed to have several origins, but each meaning left him feeling a slight chill.

‘The faint one’, ‘the forgotten one’, ‘the rejected one’.

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*Translator’s Note: Take note that in the story, EN/U is the written form, while Enwu is the spoken form. -K

*P/S: Thanks to SH for the donation!

*GLOSSARY: 

I’ll try my best to explain the ‘Death Star Omen’ reference here. It originates from the manga series ‘Hokuto Renkitōza’. The Shichōsei (死兆星), or ‘Death Omen Star’, is a tiny star situated beside the Hokuto Shichi Sei (Big Dipper). In the Hokuto Renkitōza lexicon, it symbolizes that anyone who can see it is destined to die within a year. It also appears luminously over the Hokuto master who will fall when two masters clash. This star is equated with Alcor—also referred to as Hosei (輔星) or Sōsei (蒼星). In Japanese folklore, Alcor is called the ‘lifespan star’ (jumyōboshi, 寿命星) because being unable to see it supposedly foretold death by year’s end. The one Kagura searched on the internet probably related to the Alcor meaning from Arab culture; Al-Qur (meaning ‘the faint one’). Ancient Arabs used it as a vision test for soldiers—those who could see Alcor beside bright Mizar were thought to have sharp eyesight. Mizar is one of the seven stars from the Big Dipper—specifically, the second-to-last star in the ‘handle’ of the Big Dipper. Alcor sits very close to Mizar, appearing like a faint ‘companion star’ (sometimes called the ‘rider’ to Mizar’s ‘horse’).

Next update: 2025.09.15

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☝🏻Big Dipper