Ren Haruki (レン ハルキ R-en Ha-ru-ki)

Ren Haruki grew up in the narrow back‑streets south of Kamurocho’s Theater Square during the restless mid‑1990s. An only child bouncing from school to school, he clashed with teachers, prefects, and classmates alike, until one substitute homeroom instructor, a grease‑stained maverick who rode a battered Kawasaki, taught him that engines could be as honest as a heartbeat. The man was flawed a lecher and a gambler, but he spoke of fairness on the open road, and the lesson embedded itself in Ren deeper than any lecture on obedience.   By fourteen, Ren had put classroom corridors behind him and slipped into the midnight lanes of Yokohama’s industrial coast. The Koi Fangs, a fledgling biker circle, adopted him first as a tire‑runner and soon as an apprentice mechanic. Ren’s quick hands and keener ears could read carburetors the way others read sheet music; under his direction the gang’s 400 cc motos began to outsprint rival crews across Kanagawa’s illegal track loops.   It was Ren who pushed the Koi Fangs to embrace four wheels. In 2008, he sourced scrap S‑chassis Nissans and ancient rotary Mazdas, coaxing life from their rusted blocks and guiding his crew into the JDM street‑racing scene. Victories multiplied, stakes escalated, and competitors answered with sabotage. Frames were bent, fuel lines sliced, and one rival even torched a garage. Reluctantly, Ren helped militarize the Fangs, relocating their first hidden workshop to an abandoned warehouse on Yokohama Port’s Pier C.   Through the 2010s Ren became a legend behind the wheel of a pearl‑white, wide‑bodied 1984 Ferrari 288 GTO, an outlaw thoroughbred stripped for torque and tuned for Japan’s expressway loops. With that machine he banked pink slips and favors alike, culminating in 2018 when he brokered the “Koi Backs,” a loose confederation meant to civilize the underground circuits and keep reckless bloodletting at bay.   The dream soured fast. Greed followed scale; race purses fattened, side‑bets turned predatory, and illicit cargo began moving in the slipstream. By 2021 the Wada Group, a shadow brokerage with hands in politics and ports, quietly swallowed ten of the fifteen Koi Back factions. Ren’s protests met cold smiles and heavier envelopes. When he refused to launder parts for them, Wada inspectors raided Pier C, seizing frames and arresting half his crew. The hammer fell, and Ren Haruki vanished into the smoke of his burning workshop, vowing that whatever rose from those ashes would never again be corporate prey.