Reborn in Tokyo: From Heiress to Global Tycoon

Chapter 288 Saionji Maki

(Thanks to "Huang Mian, one of the Three Generals of Bikini Bottom" for the great author certification! Thanks to "Bento who delivers bento boxes" for the extra chapter update! And thank you to everyone for your recent donations! Two chapters today~)

Saionji Real Estate, Bunkyo District Office.

The third basement level houses the old accounts and archives room.

The dim incandescent bulbs emitted a yellowish glow, barely illuminating the rows of gray sheet metal storage shelves that stood against the walls. These shelves reached the ceiling and were piled high with corrugated cardboard boxes labeled with the year of manufacture.

Maki Saionji sat at a slightly cramped plywood desk.

She is twenty-four years old this year. She comes from a collateral branch of the Saionji family.

Large, black-rimmed glasses with blue light blocking were perched on her nose, and her eyes behind the lenses were rapidly scanning a quarterly project settlement sheet laid out on the table. Her right hand held a sharpened red and blue pencil, while her left hand rested on the edge of the ledger.

As a digital genius who passed the dual certification exams for Certified Public Accountant and Actuary in Japan at the young age of 24, Maki's brain maintained a high degree of accuracy and efficiency when dealing with these complex cross-accounts.

Lines of figures involving depreciation of building materials, amortization of labor hours, and tax deductions slid across her retina. She didn't even need to use the electronic calculator next to her; she could perform the double-entry bookkeeping calculations directly in her mind.

"rustle."

The red tip of the red and blue pencils traced across the paper, marking the deviation rate to two decimal places next to the unit prices of the two material purchases.

Although this place is remote and cramped, the good thing is that there are no interpersonal relationships to deal with, and you don't have to scheme against your colleagues.

Maki, on the contrary, felt that it would be more relaxing here, at least she only needed to deal with data.

Just then, the dull thud of a handcart wheel rolling over the concrete floor came from outside the corridor.

Two female administrative staff members from the branch office pushed a small metal cart full of discarded reports into the archives room.

The two parked the cart in the open space by the door, carrying heavy cardboard boxes while rubbing their sore shoulders and chatting in hushed tones.

"It's so heavy... my shoulders are about to break." The short-haired female employee shoved a cardboard box heavily into the bottom metal shelf, straightened up, and gasped for breath. "Yesterday, just before the end of the workday, headquarters suddenly issued an urgent notice demanding that all the branch office's accounting records from the past two years be transferred up for a re-audit. Everyone had to work overtime all night to verify the data. You had no idea what the president's face looked like this morning when he saw the fax—it was absolutely awful..."

The female employee with the ponytail picked up another stack of reports and sighed in agreement.

"Who says otherwise? I heard from a friend who works in the retail department that there's a huge mess at S-Food too. Didn't Kitakuniya just announce a 50 yen price increase a while ago? Last night, headquarters actually issued an emergency document demanding the immediate withdrawal of the price increase order! I heard that Managing Director Yasuhide was even urgently summoned back to the headquarters for questioning."

The short-haired female employee wiped the sweat from her forehead and moved closer.

"They suddenly ordered a thorough audit of the accounts here, and then their core executives were suddenly summoned for questioning. Is there even a need to guess? It's obvious that S-Food employees were caught red-handed embezzling funds! This time, the higher-ups are really cracking down hard; they're probably going to take them all down."

She spoke with an air of seriousness.

"Didn't you see how terrified our president and section chief were today? They usually sign off on drinks at ryotei so readily, but this morning even their several thousand yen entertainment expenses were turned back. Nobody dares to mess with them at this critical juncture."

"Oh? Really? I was wondering why I've been like this lately..."

The two seemed to have finished moving the documents, and they pushed the cart away, their conversation fading into the distance.

The sound of wheels grinding gradually faded away deep into the corridor.

Maki put down the red and blue pencils in her hand and placed them on the table.

She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and rested for a while.

As a member of the Saionji family, even as a marginalized figure relegated to this basement, she knew perfectly well that someone could bypass the boards of directors of all the subsidiaries, simultaneously issuing audit orders to the real estate sector and forcibly withdrawing price increases from the retail sector…

Such a multi-industry undertaking could only be executed by the eldest daughter, who actually held power, within the entire Saionji family.

That young lady is a legendary figure.

According to the elders in the family, everyone held a very consistent feeling towards that young lady—awe.

In just a few years, she led her family to transcend social classes, amass a fortune, and return to or even surpass the peak of their history. People revered her as if she were a god. At the same time, she was decisive in her actions, clear in her rewards and punishments, and often involved billions of dollars. She even held the power of life and death over her family members, so people feared her like a tiger.

But in Maki's eyes, who was on the fringes of society, her awe of Satsuki was mixed with a fervent sense of identification.

Those ordinary mortals simply cannot comprehend the young lady's thoughts. With their pitiful intelligence, they would probably never understand how...perfect the young lady is.

Just you wait and see, I'm the one who understands the young lady the most.

Maki reached for a blank sheet of draft paper and began to deduce the data based on the incomplete data on her desk.

The lower-level employees believed this was a "corruption crackdown" charade.

This kind of vulgar logic simply cannot hold true when calculating the rate of return on capital.

Managing Director Kang Xiu oversees the entire supply chain of Kitakuniya. If he were to take kickbacks outside the logistics chain to build a slush fund, the amount would at most hover around a few hundred million yen. However, the internal audit launched by headquarters, which covers all branches of the entire group, will cost far more than several billion yen just for the work stoppages, inventory checks, hiring external auditors, and accounting personnel costs.

That young lady considers the rate of return on capital in every decision she makes; she would never undertake a restructuring that would result in a negative return.

Maki crossed out the word "corruption" on the paper with the tip of her pen.

Write down "fifty yen".

Kang Xiu's real mistake must have been the price increase order that was urgently withdrawn.

Maki looked up, her gaze falling on the mountain of file boxes piled up beside her. That area contained the branch office's "Intention Forms for Acquisition and Leasing of Stores in Core Business Districts" for the next quarter.

In the past two weeks, the headquarters has frequently issued instructions to the real estate branch, requiring them to conduct detailed valuation and default risk assessments of prime locations around several traditional restaurant chains and large supermarkets in the Kanto region.

Retail prices are retreating, while commercial real estate is expanding against the trend.

Maki's gaze shifted back and forth between these two sets of cross-industry clues. She picked up the red and blue pencil again and tried to directly substitute the inflation variable of the restaurant industry into the rental income formula for real estate.

The pen tip drew two intersecting parabolas on the draft paper.

One line represents inflation and supply chain costs amid the turmoil in the Middle East.

The other indicator represents the rental default rate for commercial real estate.

The result of the deduction clearly emerges at the intersection of the two lines.

Amid inflation triggered by the Middle East situation, traditional restaurant chains are facing severe pressure from rising costs of imported beef and agricultural products. If Kitakuniya follows suit and raises its prices by 50 yen, the market will reach a new price equilibrium, allowing these chains to continue to pass on the increased costs to consumers and barely survive.

However, if Kitakuniya insists on maintaining the original price, this artificially created price difference will have a terrifying siphon effect during a period of inflation when consumers are extremely sensitive to prices. Customer traffic in other stores will face a precipitous drop.

Without the cash flow from customers, traditional stores simply cannot withstand the high rents and labor costs in prime commercial areas. Within three months at most, they will face widespread cash flow disruptions.

If competitors are unable to pay their rents and are forced to go bankrupt and vacate their properties, those prime commercial locations they occupied will become non-performing assets that banks are eager to sell.

At this point, Saionji Real Estate, which had already prepared sufficient cash and made advance valuations, was able to acquire all these prime locations at a very low discount.

Maki's breathing became rapid. The derivation formulas on the paper made her fingertips tingle slightly.

She understood.

That fifty yen figure far exceeds the profit calculations for a single restaurant in the food and beverage industry. That young lady is using price suppression at the retail level to deliberately deplete her competitors' cash flow, ultimately reaping the rewards through mergers and acquisitions in commercial real estate!

This is yet another deadly situation.

Kang Xiu's self-righteous 50-yen price increase provided a lifeline to his competitors who should have been driven to ruin. He delayed their bankruptcy and lease termination, directly disrupting the group's grand closed loop in real estate mergers and acquisitions.

Once this was understood, the sudden "strict audit" notice issued by headquarters became reasonable. It was to prevent short-sighted actions by other departments from hindering this macro-strategy that spanned multiple industries.

so perfect.

The moment the formula was derived, an indescribable physiological pleasure surged up Maki's spine.

She was obsessed with this feeling.

Since being relegated to this dark and gloomy archive room, using the incomplete low-level reports at hand to reverse-engineer the young lady's grand plan has become Maki's only spiritual solace in this tedious hell.

Last April, S-Mart took out front pages in newspapers to announce that it would "pay the 3% sales tax for customers." To the average person, this was a charitable concession by the company. However, Maki, by comparing the price difference in S-Farm's supply chain with the coin production capacity data of the Mint, saw through this commercial weapon aimed at destroying the checkout efficiency of Daiei Supermarket and causing a siphoning of customer traffic.

Six months ago, Saionji Real Estate suddenly and aggressively sold off a large number of peripheral plots of land. The branch executives assumed that the Odaiba infrastructure project had caused a break in the cash flow. However, Maki, by collecting population structure maps and analyzing the Bank of Japan's official interest rate trends, sensed in advance the bloody danger of the Ministry of Finance cutting off real estate credit.

In the eyes of her family elders, Satsuki is a ruthless and terrifying dictator.

But in Maki's eyes, this meticulously planned scheme, which maximized capital efficiency and used business principles as weapons, was so perfect that it was terrifying.

She held an almost fanatical reverence for this pure rationality.

Just as Maki was reveling in the pleasure of this intellectual resonance that transcended class and space, and one-sided with that supreme brain,

"Bang."

The already flimsy wooden door to the archives was violently pushed open. The door slammed heavily against the metal cabinet behind it with a loud bang.

Takagi, the finance manager of the branch office, strode into the room.

He held a thick, messy stack of bad debt reports from related companies and slammed it onto Maki's desk.

"Organize these accounts and file them by year." Section Chief Takagi tossed down the documents and turned to leave, but before leaving, he glanced back at Maki and said, "Just file them. Put away your self-righteous calculations and mind your own business."

The section chief left the archives room after uttering this cold, harsh warning.