IGTL Chapter 57

Chapter 57 – Please Borrow Responsibly (1)

“There’s no way in hell I’m lending you money!”

Seriously, why the hell was I supposed to lend a million yen to a guy with no realistic way of paying it back?

There was not a single sen, not a single yen, I was willing to lend to a guy who fell for a Ponzi scheme, borrowed money from a consumer finance lender, and quit his job. No freaking way.

When I refused, Kudo clung to me.

“C-Come on, don’t say that. We’re friends, right!?”

“…Kudo. You and me, friends? …Since when were you under that illusion?”

Kudo’s face stiffened at those famously overused words.

“W-What…?”

No, not “W-What…?” I mean, yeah, I’d baited you into saying it, but still. You really rolled with it. Impressive.

Anyway, now that you understood we weren’t friends, please disappear from in front of me. I’m begging you.

“…Takahashi. I understand that you don’t want to think of me as your friend. …However, that is nonsense.”

“Huh?”

W-What…?

He hit me with “W-What…?” and then followed it up with “However, that is nonsense.”

No, wait, what? What was that even supposed to mean? I seriously had no idea.

How was I even supposed to react to that?

Kudo planted both elbows on the table and laced his fingers in front of his mouth, striking the classic Gendo pose before continuing.

“…Friendship is something that happens before you even realize it. And friends are people who help each other. Am I wrong?”

I responded to that while looking at my smartphone screen.

“…Apparently, a friend is someone you spend time with, share goals or actions with, and regularly interact with on close terms. In other words, you and I are not friends.”

“What are you talking about? You and I are both unemployed. Birds of a feather. In that sense, we’re basically friends, aren’t we?”

“……………”

Was this guy picking a fight?

At the very least, it was not the kind of thing someone who wanted a loan should be saying.

More importantly, I’d told him I was unemployed too, so how had he even come to the conclusion that borrowing money from me was a good idea?

Well, I wasn’t lending him anything anyway.

I picked up the bill slip on the table and slowly stood.

“…Where do you think you’re going?”

“To pay, obviously?”

At that, Kudo grabbed the sleeve of my clothes.

Clinging to me, tears welling in his eyes, he pleaded:

“T-Takahashiguuun! You’re all I’ve got! Lend me a million yeeen! At this rate, my parents are gonna disown meeeee!”

“Let go, damn it! And where do you think we are!? This is Saizeriya! You’re bothering the other customers! Stop shouting and stop clinging to me!”

“D-Don’t say thaaat! Two million, just two million is fine! If you worked at a listed company, you’ve gotta have that much in savings, right!?”

“The amount went up, you idiot! And why the hell would I lend money to someone with no way of paying it back!? If anything, just go get disowned already! Take one good look at reality!”

“N-Nooooo!”

I shook Kudo off and headed for the register.

The stares had been painful for a while now.

I needed to get out of here fast…

There wasn’t a staff member at the register, so I used the intercom to call someone over.

“Thank you for waiting. Your total comes to 1,000 yen.”

“Right. Ah, I don’t need the receipt.”

I placed a single 1,000-yen bill on the tray and started to leave Saizeriya.

“W-Wait for meeeee! Lend me money…! Lend me some moneeeeeey!”

“Enough already, you persistent bastard. If it’s money you want, you already borrowed some from a consumer finance lender. Go work hard and pay it back!”

“N-Nooooo!”

Borrowing money in order to repay borrowed money made no damn sense.

All that did was change the creditor.

Wait a second… did he actually think that, unlike a consumer finance lender, he could just stiff me and get away with it?

…Hm? Hold on. If I used that…

Come to think of it, I’d never tried using that in the real world before.

I turned toward Kudo, who was desperately clinging to me, and gave him a faint smile.

“…I changed my mind. For now, let’s get out of here. Take me to your place. Depending on the situation, I might lend you the money.”

“R-Really!?”

Kudo lit up with joy.

Too bad for him. I wasn’t that soft.

I’d lend him the money, sure, but I’d make damn sure he paid it back. With interest, naturally.

Well, if the experiment failed, I’d lose the money, but it had originally come from a lottery windfall anyway. And if things came to that, I could just use “Rare Drop Rate +500%” again and make it back right away. At Mizuho Bank, the place that had become my personal piggy bank…

“Y-yeah, of course! I’ll take you there right now!”

“Alright. Lead the way.”

With Kudo guiding me, we headed to his apartment.

We took the train from Shimbashi Station, transferred to the Seibu Ikebukuro Line at Ikebukuro Station, and then rode out to Fujimidai Station, where Kudo’s apartment building was located.

After an hour of switching trains, we finally arrived at a station near our destination.

Seriously, it was far as hell!?

Why had this guy been at Shimbashi Station so early in the morning?

I genuinely did not get it.

Apparently, Kudo’s apartment building was straight along the tracks from Fujimidai Station toward Nerima-Takanodai Station. We stopped at a convenience store on the way, where I withdrew some money and put it into Item Storage.

Then, following Kudo along the tracks, I found a clean three-story apartment building.

“This is it. Well, come on in.”

“O-oh…”

A-An apartment with an auto-lock entrance…!?

T-This guy…

He had been living way better than I had up until recently!

We unlocked the entrance and went inside.

“…Uh, about how much is the rent here, anyway?”

“Hm? It’s 70,000 yen. One room with a kitchen.”

“Seventy thousand!?”

That was crazy expensive…

My place was only 40,000 yen…

At the very least, it did not feel like the kind of place an unemployed guy drowning in debt should be living in.

When Kudo stopped in front of a door, he inserted a strangely shaped key and opened it.

“Well, no point standing around out here. Come on in.”

“O-Okay…”

Still feeling deeply unconvinced, I stepped into the room.

Then I stepped on something with a crunch.

“Hm? What’s this…?”

I moved my foot and reached down for the paper on the floor.

The words “Demand for Payment” were written on it.

Apparently, Kudo was already two months behind on rent.

This guy was a disaster.

His landlord had to be having a rough time.

Japanese law really did lean too far toward protecting tenants…

Even if rent went unpaid, I’d heard that landlords generally needed about three months of arrears before they could even bring a case, and unless the “relationship of trust between landlord and tenant had broken down,” judges wouldn’t side with the landlord. Japanese law was insane.

Meanwhile, in other countries, the rights of the party doing the renting out were properly established…

Get it together, Japan.

Well, whatever. That didn’t matter right now…

As I stood there holding the demand notice, Kudo snatched it out of my hand, crumpled it up, and tossed it into the trash.

“My bad, my bad! The landlord here’s just petty. I was only two months behind on rent, and he goes and sends crap like that. Anyway, come on in. I’ll get some tea ready, so just sit wherever.”

“…Yeah.”

This guy was hopeless. Something had to be done…

Not just for the landlord, either.

He was the kind of harmful human being who would just keep creating more and more victims if left alone.

While Kudo got the tea ready, I took the paid item “Contract” out of Item Storage. Borrowing the table, I wrote in every clause I could think of.

“My bad, my bad. I’m out of tea leaves. Hm? What’re you doing?”

Kudo set a glass of tap water on the table and looked at me suspiciously.

“I’m lending you a lot of money. Of course we need an IOU.”

Having written in every clause I could think of, I smiled.

“If I remember right, the amount you borrowed from the consumer finance lender was two million yen, right?”

“Y-Yeah, that’s right… Wait, seriously?? You’re really gonna lend me two million yen!?”

Kudo’s voice rose in delight.

But I wasn’t soft enough to lend that kind of money for free.

“Yeah, of course. We’re friends, right? That said, I’m lending you the huge sum of two million yen. You’re signing this contract first.”

“Seriously!? I will, I will! If signing this gets me two million yen, I’ll sign any conditions you want!”

“Then sign here. And don’t forget your seal.”

“Got it!”

With that, Kudo started checking the clauses written into the contract.

Of all the things I wrote in it, the two most important additions beyond the standard clauses used in a monetary loan agreement were these:

First, the loan amount of two million yen was to be used strictly for one purpose only: debt repayment.

And second, the most important clause of all, the penalty if he failed to follow that condition.

“H-Hey. What’s this last part about a ‘penalty’…?”

“‘Penalty’? Oh, that’s just a sort of safety net to make sure you don’t use the money for anything other than paying off your debt.”

“A-A safety net? You mean the part that says, if I break the promise, I have to stop causing trouble for the people around me, work honestly, and if I have debt, make repayment efforts using roughly ten percent of my salary?”

“Yeah, exactly. Either way, this money is only going toward paying back your consumer finance debt. If you don’t put it toward that, maybe some scary guys might come to collect, and you don’t want that either, right?”

“Y-Yeah… That’s true.”

Muttering that, Kudo signed the contract with a strained smile.

“Alright. Contract concluded.”

Making sure Kudo didn’t see, I put the original copy into Item Storage, then set the two-million-yen cash bundle and the duplicate copy on the table.

“Then use this two million yen to repay the consumer finance lender. I wrote it in the contract too, but don’t use it for anything other than debt repayment. If you do, then what happens next…”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it! I got it! I won’t use this two million yen for anything but paying off my debt! Thanks!”

“You don’t need to thank me. You’re paying back every bit of that two million yen anyway.”

“Okay, okay! I’m gonna run over and pay back the consumer lender right now!”

“I see. Then I’ll be going. Just to be safe, I’m saying it one more time: do not use that money for anything other than paying off your debt.”

“Yeah, I got it!”

Leaving behind the rare specimen of a man who kissed a stack of cash, I stepped out of the room and, after making sure nobody was around, took the “Stealth Cloak” out of Item Storage and decided to stake out the apartment building until Kudo came back out.

“That was fast!? He’s out already?”

Two minutes into my stakeout in front of Kudo’s apartment building, waiting to see whether the paid item “Contract” would work in this world too, Kudo emerged outside wearing a very happy expression and carrying a backpack.