A yakuza-connected loan shark who preys on desperate people with astronomically high interest rates—basically the kind of guy who ruins lives for a living. When one of his borrowers, Furuhata, vanishes without paying back, Endō tracks down Kaiji, who'd foolishly cosigned the debt. Knowing there's no way Kaiji could ever scrape together that kind of money through normal means, Endō dangles what sounds like a lifeline: a spot on the gambling ship Espoir, where he can theoretically work off his debt and maybe actually make something for himself. It's predatory as hell, but it's also the entire reason the story gets going.
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