IGTL Chapter 43

Chapter 43 – Cashing In 180 Million Yen in Scratch Tickets! Time to Visit Mizuho Bank!

“Fwaaah… Man, I slept way too much. This is…”

It was already 10:00 a.m.

Hotel curtains had ridiculously good blackout lining. At home, I normally woke up with the morning sun, but if I closed the curtains and fell asleep in a hotel, the sunlight never came in, so I inevitably overslept.

Scratching my head as I sat up, I noticed the breakfast voucher on the table.

“Ah… Crap…”

The voucher was only valid from 7:00 to 10:00. I had wasted it.

Maybe because I’d had a highball before bed, my stomach hurt. Skipping breakfast wasn’t going to kill me, but I still felt like I’d taken a loss for no reason.

“…All right. I’ll hit the bath and wake up.”

Muttering that, I grabbed a bath towel and a change of clothes and headed for the open-air bath.

“Haaah… I’m alive again…”

An open-air bath while everyone else was busy working. It felt absurdly luxurious.

After soaking and easing the day-to-day fatigue out of my body, I sweated it out in the sauna, rinsed off in the shower, and went back to my room.

Still… it was a weird feeling.

Back when I worked at the company, waking up at 6:00 a.m, going in at 8:00 a.m, and getting home at 10:00 p.m. was normal. And now I’d quit and was living in a hotel, doing whatever I pleased.

“Oh, right…”

Today was the day I cashed in the 180 million yen scratch ticket winnings.

I’d never made a bank appointment in my life, so it had completely slipped my mind.

If I remembered right, my appointment was at 1:00 p.m. today.

What was wrong with me? How did I forget a day this important?

I pulled the scratch tickets out of Item Storage and couldn’t help grinning.

“So starting today, I’m a millionaire, huh…”

The winnings were 180 million yen.

A voucher for money that would’ve taken me about thirty-six years of work to earn, and I was holding it in my hands right now.

For now, I’d better keep it safely tucked away in Item Storage so I don’t lose it.

I stored the scratch tickets again, ate a light lunch, and headed to Mizuho Bank to cash them in.

“Still… I’m nervous…”

What if someone saw me cashing in a winning scratch ticket?

…No. Thinking about that didn’t help.

I pulled the scratch tickets and my printed appointment slip out of Item Storage, gripped them tight so I wouldn’t lose them, and walked through Mizuho Bank’s automatic doors.

“Sir, have you made an appointment?”

As soon as I entered, a bank employee stopped me.

But that was well within expectations.

“Yes. I’m Takahashi. I have an appointment at 1:00 p.m.”

“Mr. Takahashi, yes. Please let me confirm your appointment slip… Thank you. Here is your number ticket. Please have a seat and wait.”

When I handed over the appointment slip I’d been clutching, the banker smiled and printed me a numbered ticket.

“Thank you.”

I took the ticket and sat on the sofa. A few seconds later, a “Ping-pong” sound chimed.

It looked like my turn was already up.

So making an appointment really did matter.

Holding the scratch ticket in one hand, I leaned toward the counter so no one else could hear and quietly said, “I had a high-value win…” Then I handed it over.

“Understood. Please wait a moment. Please take this with you.”

With that dry, businesslike tone only bank employees could pull off, they gave me a receipt slip.

I took it and went back to the sofa. Before long, someone called, “Mr. Takahashi,” and I was led into a reception room.

A fancy sofa, a table, a cup of green tea, and tasteful decorations all around.

This was the first time in my life I’d ever been shown into a room like this.

My brain practically vibrated from nerves.

I sipped the tea, trying to calm myself down, when I heard a knock. I stood up without thinking, and two bank employees entered.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Hasegawa from Mizuho Bank’s Lottery Department. This is Nagase, our Deputy Branch Manager.”

“Ah, yes. Nice to meet you.”

I had no idea what I was supposed to say, so I just went with that. The deputy branch manager murmured, “Please, have a seat.”

Once I sat, the deputy branch manager spoke again.

“Mr. Takahashi, congratulations on your win. We will need to verify the winning ticket and match it to the sales location, so we apologize, but could you please wait about one week before receiving the payout?”

Huh?

That was how it worked?

I’d assumed I’d get the money immediately.

Apparently, if the win was one million yen or more, the verification process took about a week.

Well, yeah. It was a high-value win.

I got it. Kind of.

When I nodded and said, “Understood,” the Lottery Department employee spoke next.

“Mr. Takahashi, do you have identification with you?”

“Yes, I do.”

I pulled my driver’s license out of the card holder in my backpack and placed it on the table along with my seal.

“Thank you. We’ll take these for a moment.”

They took my license to the copier. After copying both sides, they returned it with a “Thank you very much.”

“Mr. Takahashi, this will be the deposit receipt for the lottery ticket. Please sign and stamp here.”

“Yes.”

I took the receipt, signed it, and then the Lottery Department employee smiled and continued.

“In one week, please bring this deposit receipt to our bank. In exchange, we will provide a high-value winning certificate and your winnings. At the time of delivery, will you be taking the 180 million yen home with you? If you have an account with our bank, we can deposit it as well. What would you prefer?”

A sudden two-choice prompt: take it home or deposit it.

That was already decided.

Of course it was deposit, no contest.

There was no way I was brave enough to carry 180 million yen home…

Well, maybe I could, since I had Item Storage.

But I couldn’t exactly accept the cash at the bank and casually shove it into Item Storage on the spot, either.

“Please deposit it into my account.”

I picked the adult option and went with a deposit.

“Understood. Then we will deposit it into your account. Do you have your passbook or card with you right now?”

“Ah, yes. I do.”

I took out my bank card and handed it over. The employee printed it.

“Thank you. That completes the procedure. For your payout date, would 9:00 a.m. one week from today work for you?”

“Yes, that time is fine.”

“Then we will schedule your appointment. That concludes the process, but do you have any questions?”

“No, nothing in particular.”

Realizing it was over, I stood up, and they escorted me all the way outside.

After giving a small bow and leaving Mizuho Bank, I finally let out a long sigh.

“Phew…”

Man, I had no idea.

I never would’ve guessed that once you won more than a million yen, verification alone took a whole week…

I’d been thinking I was a millionaire starting today, so it felt like someone had yanked the ladder out from under me.

Like I’d been watching a mirage.

Like someone had told me, “Shatter ‘Kyoka Suigetsu*.’” (T/N: Bleach reference)

Like I’d been under perfect hypnosis.

Well, I’d definitely get 180 million yen in a week. I’d save the excitement for then.

Still… 180 million yen.

What should I even use it for?

But I’d heard the average lifetime earnings for a male college graduate was around 300 million, so I was still a little short…

“Maybe I should buy two or three more… No, maybe ten more lottery tickets…”

My thought process was officially that of a hopeless adult.

But I had a winning angle.

Why had I hit a massive jackpot at pachinko that day?

Why had I managed to win six first prizes on scratch tickets, each worth 30 million yen?

Lottery tickets I’d never won no matter how much I wished for it.

Well, as Mizuho Bank’s last shred of conscience, I’d at least won 300 yen, but still, six first prizes all at once made me think this:

Wait… am I going to die?

Did I burn through all my “virtue” in the Buddhist sense?

But I followed the Shinto faith. The “sure, why not” kind of faith. And I was alive.

If you told me misfortune had been coming at me, I couldn’t exactly deny it, but still, I was alive.

Honestly, the day after I pulled off that insane 180 million yen luck, I fully expected to get hit by a car and die, or catch some disease and drop dead immediately.

But no matter how long I waited, the signs never showed up.

Stock investing, something I tried because a friend recommended it.

I’d invested 500,000 yen, and until recently I’d been down 250,000.

Normally that wasn’t funny at all, but that was just the result of me trying to make easy profit without working.

And yet, for some reason I didn’t understand, the price had shot up. Now I was up 250,000.

That was when I noticed something after looking at the chart.

Wait… wasn’t this because I used “Rare Drop Rate +500%”?

Because that day, nothing else happened.

Nothing else could explain it!!

So I…

Before buying lottery tickets, inside a park restroom, I pulled “Rare Drop Rate +500%” out of Item Storage and used it.

It was 2:00 p.m. now.

For the next 24 hours, the effect of “Rare Drop Rate +500%” should keep running.

I immediately accessed the lottery site on my smartphone and bought a lotto with the same numbers I’d picked on my own.

The lotto carryover was 3.2 billion yen.

I bought lotto with the same number set.

I bought six entries. Since the maximum lotto prize was 500 million yen, if I hit the jackpot, up to 3 billion yen was supposed to be deposited into my account.

This was going to work. That was what I thought.

Still, the results announcement was the day after tomorrow.

Until then, I had to make sure I didn’t let “Rare Drop Rate +500%” lapse.

That should tell me everything.

Whether “Rare Drop Rate +500%” had actually turned me into a millionaire, or not.

I had no clue why a rare drop effect would apply to lottery tickets, but some kind of power beyond human understanding was probably at work.

If, by some miracle, I really did win, I felt like I could finally be nicer to AAAA and Kyle, who lived in the world of DW.

Grinning like an idiot, I finished buying lotto, and to squeeze every last drop of value out of “Rare Drop Rate +500%”, I kept buying lottery tickets online, smiling the whole time.