My name is Shinobu Iijima. I’m eighteen years old, and in my third year of high school, I lived in a fancy apartment building near the train station. It made my classmates suspect I was some sort of rich kid, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. My foster father was the one who just happened to be super rich.
Allow me to prove it: my sole hobby was playing a social game called La Vita Online, and I’d busted my way through to the endgame having barely spent any money.
I didn’t get any allowance to speak of, and it had been decided that when I go off to college, I’d have to pay for it myself, without any help or scholarship recommendations. Sure, I was in no way living life on easy mode, but I always reminded myself that there were people out there who had it harder than me. I made “stay positive and work diligently” my motto, doing my best to get through high school every single day. Because of that, I got into college through recommendations and snagged a part-time job thanks to an acquaintance. In my case, at least, hard work paid off.
If I started saving now, I’d probably be able to move out with my little sister eventually.
And when it came to La Vita Online, I’d been persistent with doing tons of event quests, so I managed to climb my way up to top player status among those of us who were mostly free-to-play. For reference, the money I did spend on it, I scraped together by skipping out on lunch sometimes.
All I can really say is that at the end of the day, social games always come down to either how much money or how much time you put into it—just don’t ask me how much I played it. Though, that also means I’d never really be able to compete with the people who could put both in, naturally. Even so, the fact that the game was so balanced that us free-to-play players could compete with whale players in the same ring with enough time indicated that the developers were really competent.
Anyway, enough about that. The day my scholarship application for college went through, my foster father said some absurd things to me.
“You know how your real dad died in an accident?” he asked from the living room. He was a man in his late forties with middle-aged pudge.
“Yes, what about it?” I treaded carefully.
He shrugged at me and sighed softly. “Your mom also died young, so you two had nowhere to go. Your dad sought me out to take you two in since I was his only friend. That’s what happened, right?”
“Yes.” I was a bit exasperated. “Dad was drowning in debt, and you took us in without asking for anything in return. We’re grateful, Mr. Ayumu.”
Yeah, the truth is, we were genuinely thankful for that. Even though he was weirdly antagonistic and often said mean things to me.
If my dad had any money from life insurance, that would’ve become our child support funds. But there wasn’t any, so our foster father had been using his own money to raise us. I mean, he was living on a huge piece of land in the best area in the city, and he owned the entirety of it. He didn’t have to work at all, making billions of yen per year from the parts of the land he rented out. A normal person in his position wouldn’t take in their friend’s children.
“Yeah, about that. I became the recipient of your dad’s life insurance money. It was about fifty million yen, I think.”
“Uh... What?”
My head went into a frenzy as soon as his words hit my ears. The reason I’d accepted not getting any allowance was because I thought he hadn’t received anything in return for taking us in.
“If that’s the case, then isn’t it a little weird that you don’t give us allowances?”
“No, of course not. This is my revenge, you see.”
I paused, confused. “Revenge?”
“You know, your mom was actually my first love.”
“Er, wait, wait. I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
“Just listen. I’d always loved her, ever since we were in elementary school. But she never paid attention to me. You know how bad boys tend to get popular around middle school?”
“I guess?”
“Right? But once you become an adult, you start to understand the power that money holds. I figured she’d eventually come to realize how much power I had, and that’s when I’d make her mine. So I pretended to be her goody-goody childhood friend and didn’t get too close for a while.”
That sure is, uh...an awful thought process he had there. I understood pretty damn well why mom didn’t choose him.
“What are you getting at?”
“I think I was about twenty-three years old when I heard she was going to get married. You get it, don’t you?”
“Get what, exactly?”
“Fourteen years. Fourteen freaking years I loved her. And then your father barged in out of nowhere and swiped her from under my nose!”
He slammed his fist into the table as he yelled, glaring at me intensely.
Okay, I gotta be honest. I didn’t have a single clue what this guy was going on about. Up until now, I had just thought of him as some weird rich guy. But with this, it started to dawn on me that he wasn’t just weird—he might’ve actually been insane.
“And then Shoko died twelve years after she got married?! She obviously got sick because she had to live in such poor conditions! Your dad is the one who killed her, and you know it! This wouldn’t have happened if I had been the one to give her a comfortable life!”
This is bad.
He’s actually insane. I have been living with a complete monster for the past four years.
“So I vowed to get revenge. Your dad was so stubborn that he didn’t have any friends, which made it easy to get close with him and claim the sole spot as his best buddy. I took control of his bank accounts, and suppressed his little construction company all the while.”
“Excuse me, what?! You ‘took control of’ and ‘suppressed’ what now?!”
“Gradually, your dad started to lose clients and sank deeper and deeper. As the final nail in the coffin, I did one last thing to his bank accounts, and forced him to take out loans. And, just as I’d planned, he got pushed so far into the corner that he turned to the shady ends of the business world for money. Expensive loan sharks, that is.”
“So... Wait a second...”
“Most people think he fell, but the truth is he committed suicide. He had one last request for me before he died: ‘Raise my children with the insurance money.’ Begged me with tears in his eyes.”
A deafening silence filled the room before he continued.
“I thought he’d try to declare bankruptcy, but to think he’d turn to suicide for money! Gave me a good laugh, that’s for sure.”
“You bastard! A human being took his own life!”
“Ha ha. Your rudeness, and that expression full of despair and rage... You look just like him. Let me ask you this, Shinobu. Why do you think I kept you and your sister around?” he spewed, a sickening grin twisted on his face.