Poison City [PAUSED]

Chapter 4

Tokyo still had the parts that it had 25 years ago, when everyone who could started flooding in to Japan, especially Tokyo and other major cities. So every city, where foreigners came, was now separated to three major parts:

First was the New World, which was in the city centre, where everything is obnoxiously expensive and elitist. Both foreigners and Japanese people, who were extremely rich, lived, worked and schooled their children there.

Second was the Middle Ground, a place where upper mid and lower high class of foreigners and Japanese people lived.

Finally, there was the Poison City. Only lower mid, and every other class beneath, lived there. This part was inhabited exclusively by Japanese people, as lower than upper mid class of foreigners couldn't afford to come to Japan.

The Hayashi family wasn't poor, but the most crime and threats to the whole Tokyo were in the Poison City and with Daido being at the head of interrogation group of CSC, they had to live there. Which was also how Daido was financially able to send both of his daughters to university in the Middle Ground.

Middle Ground had almost everything available in shops that the New World had, but just not as expensive. Right now, Fumiko needed all of the books she could find about the Great Pandemic, and she knew she wasn't going to get them in the Poison City. Because it was Saturday, she also knew she wouldn't be able to use her school's library, and for a girl from Poison City to be able to enter the New World public library was something unheard of. Fumiko usually told herself that that is because nobody from the Poison City would be interested enough in reading to even try going to the New World just to get to the library. However, lately there was a new thought spreading in her mind. What if there was something in those libraries that they didn't want people from the Poison City to find out about.

"Asami-chan, please take me to the library! Or a book store!" Fumiko pleaded her eldest sister.

Asami was working as a journalist at the Middle Ground Daily, and she had a membership at the best library and archive in the whole Middle Ground to help her with all of the research that she was doing for the news company. Her job was to do a lot of background story checks, so the access to archive was necessary.

"You have a bookstore five minutes from here, what do you need me for?" Asami asked her in somewhat pissed voice. After all, she was working on the story that had to be completed and on her boss's desk first thing Monday morning.

"But Asami-chan, I can't get the books I need in a bookstore at the Poison City!"

"Well, why didn't you think about that when you were coming home from school?" She asked in a dismissive manner.

"And how am I supposed to do that? I leave the house at six and get back at nine! I don't have any time to go to bookstore, and besides I need this for my lab report, which is also due first thing Monday morning."

Asumi finally looked up from her tablet, "I am really sorry sis, but I am afraid you will have to ask Nara-chan for help. With her university pass she can get you in whichever library you want in the Middle Ground."

Nara who was silently reading from her textbook, looked up. "Did you just say my name?"

Fumiko put on her best smile and puppy eyes. "Nara-chan, could you please take your little sister to the library?"

"Why? I have stuff to do." She turned her head to go back to reading.

"But Nara-chan, you are studying from a text book, you can do that in the library as well. I can't invent books in here!"