After returning to the apartment building, Suo Suto first walked into the kitchen, put the ingredients he had bought into the refrigerator, and boiled a kettle of hot water.
Then he entered the bedroom and opened the wardrobe.
The wardrobe was filled with clothes provided by the [Identity Card].
Although none of them were branded goods, they were all brand-new and clean.
Suto wasn’t picky about these things.
He casually took out a set of pajamas and walked into the bathroom.
This apartment building was old, but the hot water came surprisingly fast.
After taking a comfortable hot shower, Suto walked into the kitchen while drying his hair with a towel.
The water in the kettle had already boiled, and white steam was rising from the spout.
Suto took two cups, poured half a cup of hot water into one of them, stored it in his inventory, then poured the instant coffee he had just bought tonight into the other cup.
Carrying the coffee back to the bedroom, Suto sat down at the desk, took out his phone, and started searching for nearby gold and jewelry stores.
There were quite a few results.
Among them, a shop called “Miss Mira’s Jewelry Store” had glowing reviews.
“Then I’ll go with this one.”
Suto noted down the store’s phone number, planning to call once it opened tomorrow and ask whether they could custom-make commemorative coins.
He wanted to test whether the system would accept imitation coins.
Although there was a high chance he couldn’t exploit it that easily, he still had to try.
Suto took a sip of coffee, then held his phone and started scrolling through current news.
The more information he gathered, the better he could understand this unfamiliar world.
“As expected, Totsuki Academy exists… Food Wars…”
“Tennis league… Seigaku, huh…”
“And there’s even a mahjong league… Kiyosumi High…”
Suto saw traces of many anime characters in the trending news.
Aside from those, there were probably also some anime he had never watched.
Suto put down his phone and felt that although this world’s situation was a little complicated, its main tone still seemed to be youth romance and daily-life anime.
“There doesn’t seem to be any supernatural power… No, wait.
The Seto Family’s mermaids count as yokai, right?”
Suto searched for information on “Seto Fisheries” with his phone.
What entered his sight was a photo of a rough-looking man with a broad build and an obvious cross-shaped scar on the side of his face.
His name was written beneath the photo—Seto Gozaburo.
“The name and appearance both match, so he should be that boss of the Seto Group.
In that case, nonhuman creatures do exist in this world.”
Suto looked at the man on the screen and lowered his head in thought.
“Since there are mermaids, maybe there are also monsters like werewolves and vampires… If I can kill them, the coins they drop should be worth more than a snake’s, right?”
“But with my current strength, trying to do something like that is way too difficult.”
“I should start practicing with ordinary chickens, ducks, and fish first.”
Suto pushed aside the unrealistic fantasies in his mind, raised his cup, and took another sip of coffee.
The coffee had already cooled a little.
Suto put down the cup, took out the cup of hot water he had previously stored in his inventory, and found that it was still giving off scalding steam.
It had been poured from the kettle at the same time as the coffee, so normally, it should have cooled at the same rate.
But it hadn’t.
It should be because of the inventory.
It seemed to “lock” the state of any item stored inside it, and when the item was taken back out, it would still be in the same state as when it had been put in.
To further confirm this idea, Suto stored the cup of hot water back into his inventory, planning to check it again tomorrow morning.
Suto continued scrolling through the news until midnight.
Only then did the stimulating effect of the coffee gradually fade.
Feeling a trace of sleepiness, he took the empty coffee cup to the kitchen and rinsed it before returning to bed.
The next morning, the alarm set on his phone rang on time.
Suto got up, washed, changed into Toyogasaki’s school uniform, took out the bread and milk he had bought last night from the refrigerator, and left for school.
While going downstairs, Suto ran into one of his neighbors.
She was a silver-haired older beauty with delicate features and an indifferent expression.
She seemed to have just returned from a night shift.
Her steps up the stairs looked a little tired, and she was carrying a plastic bag with several cans of beer and a few cups of instant noodles inside.
The memories given by the system did not leave a deep impression of her.
He only knew her name—Yukino Mifuyu.
“Good morning, Yukino-san.”
Yukino Mifuyu glanced at him, nodded, and replied in a flat voice, “Morning.”
The two passed each other on the stairs.
Suto felt a chill run through his body, as if he had just brushed past a giant block of ice.
He turned back and glanced at Yukino Mifuyu.
From behind and from below, the older beauty’s figure looked especially wonderful, like a ripe and luscious fruit.
But Suto’s attention was not on her body.
It was on the bag she was carrying.
The surface of those beer cans had turned faintly white, clearly covered in a thin layer of frost.
With the current weather, beer bought from a convenience store shouldn’t be able to maintain that kind of icy state for so long…
Suto only took one glance before calmly withdrawing his gaze.
After going downstairs, he directly left the apartment building.
Upstairs, Yukino Mifuyu stood beside the corridor railing, expressionlessly watching Suto’s departing back before turning around and returning to her room.
At the subway platform, Suto was still thinking about that scene from earlier.
That Yukino Mifuyu-san did not seem to be an ordinary person.
However, considering that he lived in the dangerous land of Beika Town, Suto did not dare investigate too deeply.
If he offended her, his beautiful neighbor might come knocking on his door in the middle of the night.
It was also possible that Yukino Mifuyu was a character from some anime series, just one he had never watched.
The subway arrived, and Suto squeezed in together with a large crowd of office workers and students.
The carriage was as packed as a can of sardines.
Although there was air conditioning inside, the air still felt stuffy and murky.
Suto wasn’t surprised by this.
After all, Tokyo’s subway was one of the busiest urban rail systems in the world.
It wasn’t as if he had never squeezed onto the subway or bus at his hometown in his previous life.
After finally exiting the station, Suto straightened his wrinkled uniform and felt that he really should buy a bicycle.
After leaving the station, on the last stretch of road toward school, Suto saw many boys and girls wearing the same uniform as him.
They walked together in twos and threes, chatting and laughing.
On both sides of the road, blooming cherry blossoms drifted down with the wind.
Suto couldn’t help falling into a slight daze.
Only now did he finally feel the reality that he had become ten years younger.
Back when he was working, he had sometimes wondered what it would be like if he could go back to high school and work harder.
But after thinking about it, he still had to continue facing reality.
Now, he had truly returned to a high school campus once again.
Although it was a foreign country in another world, that didn’t really matter.
“This is nice.”
Suto lowered his head and saw an ant crawling by his foot.
Coming out to search for food so early in the morning.
How hardworking.
Suto raised his foot and mercilessly sent it to paradise.
“No money dropped.
That’s kind of disappointing.”
…
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