21 / 04 / 2019 - Daito, Osaka Prefecture, Japan.
8:00 PM, the Dining Room.
Having finally returned to the apartment after an exhausting day, Akane had spent a straight thirty minutes melting into a hot bath. Only after being invigorated did he finally come down for dinner.
"Wow. These prawn dumplings are incredible. Did you make them yourself, Nee-chan?"
Holding his chopsticks in his right hand, Akane lifted his head and shifted his gaze slightly to the right.
His aunt, Risha, was sitting there in an oversized white sweater, her usually braided hair let loose and falling straight down her shoulders.
Though Akane's face remained plain and somewhat perfunctory, his compliment was entirely genuine. The dumplings were juicy, soft, perfectly chewy, and piping hot — conveniently bite-sized and simply flawless.
"Yes, of course," Risha replied, her voice practically dripping with smugness. "Who else could it possibly be?"
Hearing the rare praise from her nephew, Risha's face filled with a triumphant, flaunting pride.
But then, out of the corner of his eye, Akane caught the darkening, pouty expression of his little sister, Irina, sitting to the side.
'Ah, right. Irina helped too…' Pulling his gaze back, Akane let out a knowing, flat "Ohhh…" under his breath. He fiddled with a dumpling on his plate for a moment before casually executing his next tactical move.
"Anyway, what a wonderful day. Delicious food, an eventful afternoon… Imagining it, it would be even more delicious if there was actual money sitting on the tray too, right?"
Clack.
The rhythmic sound of chopsticks instantly died out. The air in the dining room completely stagnated.
The silence lasted for only a brief second before everyone slowly resumed eating, but Akane had already lifted his head to inspect the aftermath.
Sweeping his gaze across the table, he saw Ayato lowering his head, shoulders trembling in his black shirt as he tried to suppress a laugh. Next to him, a pair of sky-blue eyes stole an occasional glance at Akane before quickly looking away.
It was Irina. Wearing a matching oversized white sweater, her long hair smoothed straight down to her waist, she pointedly averted her sky-blue eyes from him when their gazes locked.
She feigned total ignorance of the conversation, but her chewing pace slowed down significantly, her cheeks puffing out like a disgruntled hamster.
And finally, Akane's crimson-ashen gaze landed on his aunt. Risha-nee-chan remained perfectly calm, maintaining a serene, unbothered smile.
"Oh? Are you planning on eating paper currency for dinner, Akane-kun?"
At her smooth, bell-like rebuke, Akane went silent. Keeping his eyes locked onto hers, he deliberately stabbed a piece of dumpling with his chopsticks and shoved it into his mouth with menacing intensity.
Risha completely ignored the intimidation tactic, not even glancing at it. Closing her eyes, she didn't even stop chewing, her mouth full as she focused entirely on her own plate.
"Why, of course," Akane replied, staring blankly into space as he chewed. "Nee-chan, perchance are you finally willing to grant me that financial opportunity?"
Let's see who backs down first in this war of attrition.
"Why, of course too…" Risha finally shifted her narrow, grayish-blue eyes back to him, a chopstick still resting between her lips. "Only if you eat the cash right in front of me, this very second."
Visible sparks practically flew between their gazes. Akane stared flatly; Risha narrowed her eyes into dangerous slits.
Out of the corner of his eye, Akane could see the twins watching the standoff with absolute fascination.
A few minutes passed, each unforgiving on their own stance, until finally —
In the end, facing an immovable wall in the great financial holder of this household, Akane was the one to back down first.
He let out a heavy sigh and pulled back his gaze as his head hung low, staring at the bowl, unable to stop himself from swearing inwardly.
'Damn it…'
"Haahhh… That money probably wouldn't even dent my debt across seven lifetimes, and you clearly have no immediate use for it anyway. Just spare me… a tiny bit of spare change, please, Nee-chan? Tee-hee!"
Retorting helplessly — backing down was merely a tactical retreat in his everlasting battle to secure capital.
How could he, a penniless boy, ever surrender his financial future so easily? He had nothing to lose anyway.
Also, he had stared down a fragment of a malevolent deity in Khtonres without blinking; a stingy aunt was a piece of cake.
Then lifting his head back and inhaling a breath, unleashing a forbidden weapon he hadn't used since the Heian era, Akane looked back at her, tilted his head, clasped his hands, closed one eye, and stuck his tongue out slightly at the corner of his lips.
Risha's eyes trembled slightly at the sheer, uncharacteristic absurdity of the sight. Irina, on the other hand, straight-up lost it — covering her mouth with both hands, her eyes filling with tears.
"Hahahahahaha! Aka-nii, you are so pathetic!"
'Ignore the humiliation, Akane.'
He reminded himself that these little brats would eventually pay the price. However, a second burst of laughter suddenly spilled out right next to Irina. It was his twin, Ayato, who had finally cracked.
Hence, it also changed Akane's mind in an instant. Forget about money; if Auntie weren't here, he'd throw hands with Ayato first.
'I'll sweep you all into a trash heap later…'
Let's see if his Kendo textbooks were right. These three clearly hadn't tasted the structural impact of a bamboo sword to their body yet. Malice flashed briefly in his eyes, and just as his smiling lips began to feel sore —
"You are way past the age to be acting cute, Akane-kun. Just give up," Risha said.
She dropped her chopsticks and clapped her hands together in a ceremonial gesture, signalling she was finished with her portion.
Then, pushing her plate aside, she rested her elbows on the table and cupped her face in her hands. Looking at him with a knowing smile, she shattered his facade.
Understanding that it hadn't worked, Akane instantly dropped the cute act, returning to his default deadpan self with a sharp click of his tongue.
The tactic had failed. Worse, she was now questioning his motives.
"And let me guess," Risha continued, her smile widening.
"Weeks ago, you needed money to 'invest in high-potential future stocks.' Then, a few days ago, it was to 'build a foundational super-laboratory.' Yesterday, you claimed it was an entry fee for a specialised course at Tsinghua University."
She leaned in closer, her narrow eyes locked onto his flat expression.
"So, what is your excuse tonight, huh? Do you need a loan to construct a planetary armaments manufactory? Huhhhhh???"
Questioned so directly, Akane simply rolled his eyes. He resumed eating, quietly finishing the last three dumplings in his bowl without changing his expression.
"This and that… everything fails. It's just so hard to secure capital these days, huh? Sob… sob…"
He faked a dry sob for dramatic effect, his expression remaining entirely perfunctory even as he forced his shoulders to tremble.
Still, his downcast eyes were clearly visible; it should be enough to pass as a display of sincerity, right? Whatever. Today's hustle wasn't working out.
"Of course it fails. It's because you are fundamentally dishonest, Akane-kun."
Risha pulled her hands back from the table and leaned against the frame of her chair, crossing her arms.
Caught out of the corner of his eye, her expression looked complex — rather, a bit sad.
At this, instinctively, Akane's chewing slowed down.
His gaze flicked over to the other side of the table. Ayato and Irina silently exchanged a brief, knowing glance before picking up their empty plates and slipping off their chairs simultaneously.
Watching their quiet departure with a strange light in his eyes, Akane munched on the final dumpling of his portion.
Was he supposed to feel ashamed of this? What was the correct emotional response here?
It was the deeply uncomfortable feeling of being entirely naked and understood.
They saw him as a reckless adrenaline junkie, a person with a dangerously high adventurous spirit who would willingly risk his life just to crawl inside a narrow, collapsing cave.
He was getting a bit too specific with the analogy here, but the sentiment remained.
Everyone at the table understood what their aunt meant. Akane understood it too. And yet —
'Even if I understand it, how can I possibly afford to back down from this?'
Akane fell silent, remaining unresponsive as he stared blankly at the leftover broth pooling on his plate.
Perhaps his aunt was still awaiting a real answer at this moment. Perhaps not.
'Unfortunately, today seems to be a different kind of day…'
Whether it was him or his aunt who had finally forced the issue of his motives, they both harboured their own silent thoughts.
But in the end, Akane knew he was the one on the short end of the stick. He was the one being unreasonable.
Risha-nee-chan didn't pressure him or demand explanations; she had even gifted him his expensive Kendo gear today without him ever asking for it.
All in all, she was incredibly generous. He was the one asking too much, constantly pushing boundaries and betraying her expectations — or perhaps, her silent pleas.
"If I am entirely true with you," Akane spoke up, his voice casual and unbothered, "will you actually support me?"
This time, he wasn't asking for money. Though he desperately needed capital, he still had his own hidden savings.
Even if pushed into a tight, desperate corner, he could always liquidate a few rare assets from his dimensional inventory. This question was purely for himself.
Lifting his head, he locked eyes with her. The usually goofy, dramatic aunt looked genuinely sorrowful, and he was the sole cause of that sadness.
Did a guardian's duty of protection extend even to managing their own emotional well-being? Pondering the question, he supposed it had to.
"It depends entirely on what you want to do, Akane-kun," Risha said softly. "I don't want you being reckless, prioritising dangerous impulses over rational action."
What an absolute irony. Was his path really impulsive? Was it driven by emotion? Truly, he was the one who had lost that human, emotional part of himself.
He chose this dangerous path rationally and willingly. Believing that time was not on his side, he desperately needed progression. So be it.
"Is that so…"
Shaking his head, he set his chopsticks down across his plate and clasped his hands together. He stared into the empty space in front of him, toward the chairs his siblings had just vacated.
Honestly, due to the massive information gap between them, fabricating a believable lie would be effortless.
He could easily adjust the parameters of his story, weaving a plausible narrative that she would swallow without suspicion. Fabricating a half-truth wasn't hard at all.
'But…'
At the very last second, as his lips parted, the smooth lie died in his throat.
"…"
"I'm accepting a contract," Akane confessed, his voice dropping to a steady, even register. "An on-site investigation regarding a string of mass strange deaths that recently occurred in Osaka."
He paused, tapping his fingers rhythmically against the tabletop. He stared down as he recounted the classified information he had scraped from the forum.
"For now, I don't actually have an immediate need for money. I have a firearm sitting idle anyway… and there's no noticeable, immediate danger. The victims bore absolutely no external traces of trauma. Often, their time of death occurred while they were fast asleep."
Narrowing his eyes at the smooth brown wood of the table, he lost himself in the calculations of the incident. The sheer incomprehensibility of the case truly befitted the term 'supernatural strangeness.'
Still, knowing his current biological limitations, Akane felt his involvement might even be redundant.
His current arsenal and capabilities were strictly limited to physical, external combat. A strange death caused by abstract magic, hidden curses, or something beyond was entirely out of his current league.
'In the end, I'm still far too weak…'
Even if he was confident in his close-quarters optimisation, he fell woefully short in terms of esoteric knowledge and investigative depth. At the thought, his chest felt a fraction heavier.
"The money was just meant to be a failsafe in case something unexpected happens," he added with a faint, amused shrug, leaning back and letting his body slide lazily down the chair.
"So… if you can't provide it, it's really not a problem at all. All in all, I just wanted you to know that everything is fine, okay? So —"
Ding!
The sharp digital chime snapped him out of his monologue. Akane closed his eyes for a brief moment in pure annoyance before snapping them open.
He reached into his pocket to pull out his phone, thoroughly irritated by whoever dared to interrupt his fiercely independent speech.
'Just who the hell…'
"Ah?…"
His eyes widened slightly. He had forgotten one crucial variable.
Lifting his head, his gaze locked onto his aunt. Risha was currently holding a digital tablet she had pulled from who-knows-where, having just finished operating the screen.
She had already put on a pair of slender reading glasses. Meeting his thoroughly confused, frozen gaze, she stuck her tongue out cheekily and let out a bright, victorious chuckle.
Before Akane could even unfreeze, a bright camera shutter flashed from the tablet's lens.
Click!
"Look at that. You just have to be honest, Akane-kun," Risha giggled, entirely unbothered. "Just like you told me that day — you have me, and you have your siblings. So…"
She spun the tablet around, flipping the screen directly toward his face and tapping it with a manicured finger. Akane's brain finally forced itself to resume processing data.
His plain, perfunctory facade gradually twisted into sheer annoyance, then shifted into total helplessness, before finally settling into a trembling, exasperated smile. He shook his head.
Displayed prominently on the screen was a crystal-clear photo of him. He looked sharp and handsome as always, but his plain face was illuminated by the harsh dining room light, looking exactly like a perfunctory, wide-eyed statue caught entirely off guard.
Beneath the photo was a completed banking confirmation page.
"Hah… seriously. Thank you, Nee-chan."
Finally letting out a long, exhausted breath, he managed to muster a genuine expression of gratitude. He truly didn't understand the math behind human relationships.
Could a brief moment of vulnerability and truth really hold that much impact over her? Was she willingly putting her own financial security at risk just to validate his dangerous pursuits? He didn't know.
He honestly thought his family members must have a few screws loose in their heads. Or at least, that was his assessment a few minutes ago. But now… perhaps he understood the value of it a little better.
Letting out one final sigh, he looked down at his still-glowing phone. The bright screen displayed a push notification for a direct wire transfer.
'Rich. Incredibly rich… You could have just done that from the start, old woman. But then again… isn't this amount a bit too absurd?'
The amount was $10,000 transferred to his account.