The lot itself was so overgrown with weeds that you could scarcely even see the ground. If you ventured a bit further in, though, you could see a spot where a clearing had been made in the overgrowth, which was presumably where the body had lain. No, forget presumably. It must have been the exact spot where Akito fell over due to alcohol poisoning and met his end. I imagined what his last moments must have been like—his heart stopping, all the color draining from his skin—and the thought gave me chills.
I found myself wondering for a moment if I should go buy something to leave as an offering for him too but rejected that notion as soon as I thought it up. That would be akin to accepting his death, and I had no intention of doing anything of the sort. As such, I decided it would be a bad omen to do so, not to mention a waste of my time. What I needed to focus on now was gathering more information on the night of April 1st. I left the empty lot behind.
I spent about another hour roaming around the island but ultimately wasn’t able to gather anything of value. And no wonder, considering I hadn’t tried to ask any of the people I’d passed on the street about it. Could you really blame me? I mean, imagine a random stranger out in public approaches you, trying to ask if you knew their location from four nights ago—anyone would think they were a crazy person. So instead I putzed around the island for a little while, trying in vain to devise a way of investigating this that didn’t involve cold-calling total strangers, but ultimately failing and giving up. I sat down on the seawall and gazed out over the ocean as I contemplated what to do next. The evening sky was already painted in streaks of deep vermilion.
“Well, let’s see. If today’s the 5th…then that means I’ve only got three Rollbacks left before I reach April 1st again, right?”
This meant I only had two more days to gather information before I’d have to relive the night of Akito’s death, and I needed to make them count. I listlessly watched the sun sink down below the horizon, trying to think of how to make the best use of the time remaining to me—when all of a sudden, I had a thought.
“…Hang on a second.”
Granted, it had nothing to do with preventing Akito’s death, but it was an interesting prospect nonetheless—a way to take advantage of the Rollback phenomenon that seemed so obvious, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner. If I was moving back into the past, then I could bring all sorts of information back with me—I could even “predict” the future, in a sense. And what might I be able to use that information for?
Well, I could make a whole lot of money, for one thing.
It was one of the first answers most people would give when you asked them what they’d do if they had the chance to go back in time. They’d bet all their money on horse races or buy a ton of a valuable stock before the company ever made it big. There were plenty of high-stakes gambling opportunities like that. The only problem was, I had no idea how to go about buying stocks or placing bets. There was really only one realistically lucrative option for a kid my age: the lottery.
I did know how to play the lottery, at least, since I’d bought a couple of tickets before. The Rollback would make it simple as pie for me to hit the jackpot: all I had to do was look up the most recent winning numbers now, then place a bet using those same numbers after another Rollback or two. Bingo, instant piles of riches.
…Holy crap. This might actually work.
I gulped down a mouthful of saliva. The thought alone was enough to make my heart race. I decided to check the different lotteries that were available on my phone, just for reference. I needed to find one where the sales cutoff date and the date when the winning numbers were announced fell within the Rollback period, or else the strategy wouldn’t work. Luckily, I found one that announced the winning numbers today—and it looked like the cutoff date was only three days ago, just within range. It was one where all you had to do was pick five different numbers, and if you got them all right you’d win a payout of three million yen. That was enough to buy a pretty nice car, and certainly enough for a student like me to live off of for a few years. I scrolled down the page eagerly to find the winning digits. I just had to memorize five little numbers, and then I could secure a small fortune for myself. It was more money than I could really even visualize; my hands shook as I read the numbers aloud to myself several times, trying as hard as I could to commit them to memory. Then I stopped.
Should I really be doing this?
Feelings of shame and guilt began to bubble up inside of me. I knew deep down that what I was thinking about doing wasn’t ethical. Sure, it would be an easy way to get rich quick—but was it even appropriate for me to think about my own personal gain right now, when Akito’s life was on the line? Something told me it wasn’t. Unless…maybe that was a matter of moral perspective. After all, I never asked to get dragged into this crazy supernatural phenomenon. I might as well try to get something out of it…right?