Beastars: A Steep Fall From Light

Chapter 18: A Small Chance of Success

Louis felt lightheaded. His skull seemed to ring as the room started to spin. He just sat back, resting on the wall of shelves. He looked at the files again. The conglomerate didn't deal in donated organs or child adoptions. So why were there files listing them. At first Louis thought Nakamochi's claims were fake, but now the files seemed to support what he had told him. The chairman's world had flipped upside down, this didn't make any sense. And yet it seemed to explain a lot.

"Who else knows about this?" Louis asked.

"All the board members know," the oryx responded. "That's it. You were the only member who wasn't aware."

"So only the board knows about this?" the deer asked.

"Well the board and, as it would appear, one other person."

"Razor?" Louis asked.

Nakamochi nodded, pulling out the letter he received that morning. Louis took it and read it over.

"So he has his own copies of these files?"

Nakamochi nodded.

"Your father entrusted me to continue in his work of safely splitting the company from the Back Alley and erasing it's shadowy past," the CEO explained. "I've broken a promise by telling you about it, but I had no other idea of where to turn. I didn't think we'd have to deal with this issue when the Back Alley was torn down. We're backed into a corner and I thought you would have some idea how to go about handling this."

"Ogma didn't want me knowing about this?"

"He thought if you didn't know," Nakamochi continued. "The yakuza couldn't hurt you or the company. If this somehow got out, you would have deniability. But now that you know-"

"Did we do any of these kinds of dealings while I was president?" Louis asked.

Nakamochi clenched his teeth, and looked down at his shoes as he shuffled them on the ground.

"Your silence is very reassuring," Louis said with sarcastic sternness.

"Our records state that the fake business used to funnel money from the Back Alley into our account has been used since the place was torn down," the oryx said.

"So we are to assume the bodies in the center of the city were the remains of slaughtered individuals sold at some kind of splinter of the Back Alley?" Louis asked.

Nakamochi bit his tongue.

"How much do you know about this?" the chairman demanded.

His frenemy gave him a look that led the chairman down a rabbit hole. Louis gave a heaving sigh, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes.

"That's why I was trying to push for mergers with carnivore run companies," the businessman said. "Just a few minor changes to the files and we had a possible scapegoat."

Louis flashed him a look.

"You really are a slimy, greasy bastard aren't you?" Louis accused. "Anything to keep the company safe."

"That is my job as CEO," the oryx said plainly. "The world we live in-"

"Don't lecture me on the complexities of this world," Louis snapped. "I know perfectly well the issues. I'm more concerned with the fact that you were perfectly fine with throwing innocents under the bus to protect yourself."

"And the company," Nakamochi snapped back.

Louis pulled his legs in and wrapped his arms around his knees, resting his head on them. His antlers suddenly felt very heavy. A skeleton had fallen from Ogma's closet, and now his son had to deal with it. This probably explained his father's past enigmatic behaviors, though it still left a lot unanswered. Even dead, Ogma continued to complicate his relationship with his adopted son.