May 24, 2025
Okay, orphans who are on the street are typically street-smart and they don't break into apartments to steal, especially not without casing it first. Breaking into an apartment requires not just lock-picking skills but also the tools, which are hard to come by. Finding a bundle of cash inside an apartment doesn't make sense because no one really keeps cash like that in their house and if you're breaking in to steal it, then that means you already know the cash is there, which means premeditation. If you don't know there's going to be cash and you break in without a plan (at the very least, what to grab) then it doesn't explain how she finds the cash. Street urchins usually beg, run scams, pick-pocket, shop-lift, or prostitute themselves to get by. Shoes are also really easy to come by in modern times, even for orphans who ran away from their orphanage. Breaking into an apartment without shoes doesn't make any sense.
Why the yakuza would randomly be aware of a break-in at Sakai's apartment is weird, as is their presence. Protection racquets aren't the same thing as gaining private security, protection racquets is just a fancy way of saying extortion (pay us or bad things will happen to you, hence the 'protection'). So why are they there? Their numbers and coordination is not typical of the yakuza. Their actions are also really atypical of the yakuza. Snatch and grabs are very high-risk operations. If you piss off the yakuza, most times they will either kick your ass or kill you on the spot. Grabbing kids is also really fucked up, even by yakuza standards.
The primary sources of income for the usual yakuza come from dealing drugs, gambling, loan-sharking, prostitution, and real-estate transactions. The prostitutes the yakuza press into service are usually either foreign-trafficked or indentured domestic, not random girls the yakuza find on the street. There are also different kinds of sex work, such as health-supplement service, soapland, or pornography.
Yakuza headquarters are typically commercial units, in particular real estate offices, not apartment complexes. Yakuza might moonlight as slumlords but they won't base their operation there because of zoning laws. Yeah. The yakuza actually care about following laws like that. If they get raided by the cops (very likely) and they're found operating a business inside a residential area, that's grounds for fines, search and seizure, and maybe even arrests. There are also a lot more eyes moving around a residential unit, which criminals typically want to avoid. Yakuza would have multiple money laundering fronts, including rental units, but they won't base their operation in a residential area. Besides, commercial real estate is so much cheaper and cost efficient.
Yakuza with a bad rep, especially against civilians, usually don't last long. The yakuza operate as a business - they value stability and profit. Violence is only a last resort. Needlessly violent yakuza groups will get arrested by the cops or ostracized/eliminated from other yakuza groups, which are often self-policing because they don't want the fuzz to come down on them.
Presenting a random disheveled orphan to your boss isn't a present; no one would be happy with this. That's just gross. A pretty girl might be offered as a gift but she'd be cleaned-up before the presentation. Dirty orphans are stigmatized because they're probably carrying around venereal diseases, which make them poor gifts. They might get pimped out, but you wouldn't present this to a boss, let alone bring them into their office/place of business. If they have time to kidnap a kid, they have time to keep that kid locked up inside a closet or the boot of a car.
I would recommend researching the yakuza because right now, these guys are coming across as cartoonishly evil and inept. Like, these guys are amateurs. Where's the organized part of organized crime?