The Crimson Lotus (紅蓮会, Guren-kai) is a criminal organization featured in The Kaito Files, a Lost Judgment story expansion.
Overview[]
Crimson Lotus has a flat structure with no hierarchy where all members, including seniors, refer to each other casually. According to one of its leading members, Shusuke Kenmochi, the gang's members are as much friends as they are criminal conspirators. The gang also, unlike the yakuza, seemingly respects any members' efforts to leave and become civilians.
History[]
Background[]
Crimson Lotus was originally a college event club called Rhizome, founded by Shusuke Kenmochi. It did not perform well in terms of generating profit until Kyoya Sadamoto, a business admin major at the same college who had started a business, became a shadow consultant for them. Thanks to Sadamoto's skill in finance, Rhizome became much more profitable, and expanded its services to illegal activities. Crimson Lotus would be properly established after the members graduated.
After graduation, the Rhizome members would hold a yearly reunion at Hotel Grande Blu Marino in Isezaki Ijincho. Sadamoto, who was still not officially considered a member, would hire Crimson Lotus to deal with any of his business's enemies by using a dummy company to fund them through illegal wire transfers. They performed any dirty requests Sadamoto tasked them with.
As Sadamoto's business began facing a slump, a lucrative land deal Kenmochi was pursuing, which was opposed by the very wealthy Natsume family, provided an opportunity. He married their eldest daughter, Mikiko, then had Kenmochi burn down the Natsumes' property while they were sedated from spiked wine he gifted them. This caused Sadamoto to inherit their vast fortune and save his business. In order to cover-up his true intentions with the Crimson Lotus, Sadamoto lied to the gang's members, telling them that he only intended to burn the Natsume home for insurance money and that their deaths were an accident.
Mikiko was unaware of the truth until she looked through Sadamoto's inbox one day, and to hide the truth, Sadamoto ordered Crimson Lotus to kill her and frame her death as a suicide. Unfortunately for him, she survived the attempt on her life, though with amnesia because of the head injuries she sustained. She was found in critical condition by Yasutaka Shirakaba, a doctor who lived near the place where she was attacked, and he nursed her back to health himself after she asked that he not take her to a hospital. For the next two years, Mikiko would live as the Doctor's guest until she recovered her memory, whereupon she began plotting her revenge against her husband.
The Kaito Files: 2022[]
Mikiko is sighted in Kamurocho, so Sadamoto moves to kill the Crimson Lotus founding members before she is able to tell them the truth and have them turn against him. In addition to providing a cover story that would incriminate Mikiko instead of him, this also gave Sadamoto an opportunity to cut the ties that would otherwise ruin his reputation as a successful businessman.
Despite secretly plotting to wipe out the Crimson Lotus, Sadamoto also decides to use them to also try to kill his wife once again. He sends Kenmochi and his right-hand man, Nishio, along with a small battalion of the gang's thugs to interrogate Dr. Shirakaba in his home about his wife's supposed death. However, the Crimson Lotus thugs are all beaten back by Masaharu Kaito, Mikiko's old lover, who'd been hired to track her down by her son, Jun Sadamoto.
Sadamoto succeeds in killing four leading members of the gang ahead of the reunion. One of them, Ashizaki, was the head of a security firm with records of Sadamoto's illegal wire transfers. The offices were set ablaze to destroy evidence, but Kaito is able to recover a burnt hard drive and decrypt it with the help of Makoto Tsukumo, finding evidence of Sadamoto's financial ties to Crimson Lotus.
Kenmochi would make another attempt to capture Mikiko after he realized that she and the Bato Detective Agency's Shiro Senda were tailing him. Kenmochi lured Mikiko and Senda into a trap at a hotel in Kamurocho, where he and some of his thugs attacked them and took them captive. However, Kenmochi was foiled by Kaito once again, since he too had been tailing the Crimson Lotus leader.
At the gang's annual reunion, Sadamoto poisons the wine that the remaining founders were to drink, and arranges the scene to incriminate Mikiko. The last Crimson Lotus members are killed, but Kenmochi, who learned the truth of the Natsume arson, strangles Sadamoto to death before succumbing to the poison. Mikiko is able to avoid being arrested and the Crimson Lotus ceases to exist.
Notable Members[]
- Shusuke Kenmochi - Senior Member/De facto Leader
- Kyoya Sadamoto - Behind the scenes financial backer
- Nishio - Junior Member
- Ashizaki - Former Senior Member
- Nishimura - Former Senior Member