“The agreement is simple. If the two of you go to where she’s being held, she’ll be freed.”

The unusual partnership of police inspector Ichiro and yakuza lieutenant Shiro (who have been pretending to be lovers to track down the perpetrators of the Tetra Building explosion) is about to be tested to the limit. Just as they’re close to finding out what really happened, they come up against Satoshi Yamada, the ruthless founder of the Shio crime family. Yamada has taken the last two witnesses/suspects hostage in his remote house in the country. It’s time for some decisive action and Superintendent Taguchi takes Ichiro and Shiro to beg politician Takashige Azuma to help them – because it’s Azuma’s missing daughter who is one of the hostages.

But Yamada seems to hold all the cards. Any move Ichiro and Shiro make is likely to end in their deaths before they can reach the hostages. While the slow hours tick by, the hostages Yukiko Azuma and Masashi Ozu (the prime minister’s son) recall the events twenty years ago when they (and the other two, now dead) were carefree students at Toei University middle school. They remember the arrival of a foreign student in their class whom they befriended – and the dangerous skills he taught them by accessing the dark web. Yukiko bitterly regrets everything that led up to the Tetra Building explosion – and even though we now understand how it came about, her dull dead eyes as she sits hunched up in a corner of the locked room where Yamada’s holding them reflect her thoughts. In exchange for that day, I got this. A life of being eaten away from the inside. One I can never be free from. Someone… someone save me.

Little does she know that help is at hand: Shiro and Ichiro are outside and about to mount a rescue attempt. The distraction? The arrival at the front entrance of Yukiko’s father. And keeping constant watch on the house from afar are Rion and the superintendent, giving as much help as they can to Shiro and Ichiro while Azuma attempts to stall for time. But Yamada is a crafty and experienced opponent. Just as they infiltrate the building and it looks as if they might have a chance, he appears. There’s worse to come when they find they’re locked in with no means of escape.

There are plenty of revelations in this volume – which makes it an exciting and satisfying read if you’ve been following Ichiro and Shiro’s investigation since Volume 1. This also means that to avoid spoilers, I can’t divulge very much about what happens! No country is ever named as being the origin of the terrorist activities under investigation: it’s still referred to as ‘B’ throughout. Maybe a made-up name would have been more convincing as ‘B’ always feels a little like a placeholder that the mangaka never went back to fix, although this is a minor gripe.

With so much at stake – and their own lives in mortal danger from the smiling, remorseless Yamada – Ichiro experiences a life-changing moment of elucidation about his feelings for his yakuza partner. Yoshie Kaoruhara pulls off a very impressive and nerve-racking piece of storytelling in these chapters, both through the way the action is conveyed in the images – and also through the different characters’ eyes. The viewpoint switches from Yukiko’s agonized self-loathing and her father’s risky attempt to let Taguchi’s team know about the layout of Yamada’s house, to Shiro and Ichiro’s growing alarm as they move to infiltrate the building and protect the hostages from the experienced and heartless criminal who’s holding them.

The translation for Kodansha is again by Kevin Steinbach with lettering by Dietrich Premier and both combine to make this a tense, pacy read. As in all the other volumes, there are short bonus comics, including two very cute chibi sequences ‘A Mark’, between chapters to lighten the tension a little. The next volume (#8) is due out in September, with #9 following in November; the ongoing series is up to thirteen volumes in Japan.

If you’ve been following the building tensions in the Tetra Building saga, you won’t want to miss this thrilling volume which really delivers. And the excitement is far from over – just as well it’s not too long to wait to read Volume 8 to find out what happens next!

Our review copy from Kodansha was provided by Diamond Book Distributors.