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Old men in formal black suits sat around the table, wearing serious expressions. Shinzo Abe scanned the room, looking each one in the eye.
“We are agreed, then.” His tone was grim, suggesting he took little pleasure in this conclusion. “Inoue-san?”
A bald man with a goatee nodded. “The evidence is incontrovertible. Within 3 generations, Japan will cease to exist.”
“We have run out of options,” said Abe. “I’m sorry. Abenomics has failed. I have failed.” He bowed formally to the room.
“Skip the theatrics, Abe,” said a voice from the corner of the room. It was an old man with a huge spider tattoo taking up one side of his face, a true rarity in Japanese boardrooms. “If apologies could solve this problem, we wouldn’t be here.”
Many in the room murmured their assent, though clearly reluctant to be on the same page as this man.
“Instead, tell us about this Final Option. This is the card you’ve been saving for last, so it ought to be pretty good, right?”
Uncharacteristically, Abe shook his head. “I don’t think we can call it good. Some of you know of my contacts in… unconventional organizations. I have been trying to guide them in a way that is positive for Japan, so that we could coexist. Well, one of them has a… ritual.”
The tattooed man snorted. “Hmph. A mere ritual will fix Japan? So we are reduced to fortune-tellers peddling shady rituals?”
“I normally wouldn’t bother,” countered Abe, “but this group, they have showed me some incredible things in the past. Things that science tells me should not work. They… worked.”
The old men grumbled, but they gathered around Abe. They listened, in the end, to power.
They would always listen to power.