IGTL Chapter 49

Chapter 49 – They Threw Me into Jail (1)

“Uhh, where is this? How did this happen?”

“It should be obvious. Touching a young lady’s shoulder out of nowhere is i-indecent!”

“Hehh. Ahh, so that’s how it is…”

I was currently in jail inside the Central Kingdom.

The one who’d called me indecent was a receptionist who worked at the Adventurers’ Guild in this country. Apparently, her name was Kanna.

I sexually harassed her…

Kanna got mad. Kanna wasn’t about to forgive me. Kanna had me thrown into jail.

That was probably the gist of it.

And just like that, I got tossed into jail.

The guards all took Receptionist Kanna’s word for it too and treated me like a full-blown criminal.

“Hey. So you touched Kanna-chan’s shoulder, huh?!”

“…Death penalty. Got any last words?”

“Uheheheh… What’d Kanna-chan’s shoulder feel like? Nice and soft? Man, I’m jealous. Gheheheheh…”

Other than the gross one at the end, they all laid into me.

“Hey, pervert… Here. Scraps. Be grateful you’re even getting food in jail.”

I looked over at the slop they’d shoved onto the ground through the bars.

Mixed in with it were things no human being should have been eating.

Something alive was wriggling around in there.

After the guard left, I had Salamander burn it all to ash, then stared up at the ceiling.

“So touching her shoulder through the Mob-Fenrir Suit still counted as sexual harassment, huh…”

It felt like I’d gotten stung by a hornet out of nowhere.

Well, granted, I was the one who’d kept whacking the nest.

I pulled the paid item “Substitute Doll” out of Item Storage, then logged out of DW.

After logging out and returning to my room at Candeo Hotel, I filled the electric kettle with water and brought it to a boil, poured it into a cup of Seafood Noodles, set disposable chopsticks on top, and let out a sigh.

“…How the hell did it end up like this?”

Something was off.

All I did was put a hand on the receptionist’s shoulder to comfort her.

And that was sexual harassment?

The line for sexual harassment was seriously hard to figure out.

If it counted as sexual harassment the moment the other person decided they didn’t like it, then shouldn’t I have been able to sue that receptionist too for the way she came right up in my face?

I mean, she grabbed the tail on my Mob-Fenrir Suit…

Three minutes later, I slurped up the now-perfectly-softened Seafood Noodles.

The rich, full-bodied broth was seriously amazing. That cloudy, creamy soup had all the seafood flavor packed into it.

Seafood Noodles were delicious.

They were delicious, but…

Now I was getting pissed off.

Not at the Seafood Noodles, obviously.

At that receptionist.

Why the hell did I have to get thrown into jail just because I put a hand on her shoulder?

No matter how I looked at it, that was insane.

I put a hand on her shoulder and spoke to comfort her.

Where exactly was the sexual harassment in that?

There wasn’t any, was there??

Or was I the weird one here??

She was allowed to grab my tail, but putting a hand on her shoulder got me hauled off?

Or was this one of those things where if a handsome guy tapped your shoulder it was fine, but if an ugly guy did it, he got sent to jail?

Wasn’t that messed up??

If that was allowed, then I wanted to sue the receptionist for assault for grabbing my tail and yanking on it!?

If you were the weaker one, did that mean you could do whatever you wanted to the stronger one!?

Ahh, this was pissing me off…

After finishing my Seafood Noodles with the proper respect they deserved, I gently placed the empty cup into the trash, grabbed a bath towel, and headed for the open-air bath closest to the night sky, the Sky Spa.

“Haaah…”

It was weird. Once I was soaking in the open-air bath, I could temporarily forget all the crap that had just happened.

“Maybe I should seriously stop logging into DW for a while…”

Judging from the way that receptionist was trying to drag me in to meet the Vice Guildmaster, it was almost definitely about the Advanced Recovery Potion.

But there was no way I was selling it at the dirt-cheap price he wanted, 100,000 Col per bottle.

Especially not after I got treated like a criminal.

Yeah, that settled it. I made up my mind right then and there.

For the time being, I was absolutely not logging into DW.

For a while, I was going to live in the real world.

At the very least, until things cooled down, I was definitely not going back.

Having made that vow in my heart, I got out of the open-air bath and stretched out on one of the lounge chairs nearby.

All right. Tomorrow I’d go to the aquarium.

I’d go by myself to Sumida Aquarium in the Skytree.

I’d calm my heart with some fish therapy.

Once I’d decided that, I got up from the lounge chair, hit the sauna one last time, washed up, and returned to my room.

The next day.

“All right, I really came after all…”

I’d left the Substitute Doll behind and walked out of jail just like that, but was the DW side of things going to be okay?

Eh, whatever.

Sumida Aquarium was located on the fifth and sixth floors of Tokyo Skytree Town.

Admission was 2,300 yen for adults. With the phrase “Get closer, love them more” as its keyword, the aquarium’s biggest appeal was being able to encounter the creatures up close rather than only through acrylic barriers.

At one of the largest open indoor tanks in Japan, you could watch penguins and fur seals from close enough to feel their breathing, and there were sofas and chairs placed near the tank too, so you could relax while you watched.

As I walked through the aquarium and watched the fish swimming freely through the tanks, I felt strangely soothed.

After passing through the entrance hall and climbing the stairs to the sixth floor, an enchanting jellyfish world spread out before me, one that made you feel the rhythm of life itself.

The space, filled with countless jellyfish drifting through tanks of all shapes and sizes, felt incredibly dreamlike, and the slowly shifting lighting made it stand out even more.

After watching the jellyfish for a while, I moved on to the next floor.

The next area I visited was the one with the garden eel tank.

That floor displayed around three hundred eels across three varieties: spotted garden eels, splendid garden eels, and white-spotted garden eels, and the setup let you view them from all three hundred and sixty degrees.

Yeah. How should I put this…

So this was what people meant by creepy-cute.

The first time I saw them, my honest reaction was just, Wow, those are gross, but the longer I stared at the tank, the cuter they started to look.

Yeah. Going to the aquarium by myself wasn’t bad at all.

What really stood out was how good it was at letting you enjoy something out of the ordinary in a quiet space.

When I looked down toward the lower floor, there was the open indoor tank.

Magellanic penguins and fur seals were swimming around inside it, while visitors pointed their smartphones at the penguins.

On my way down to the fifth floor, I passed through the slope and reached the fur seal tunnel, where I could see fur seals swimming overhead.

This was seriously amazing.

Just spacing out while watching the Magellanic penguins and fur seals somehow made me feel calm.

It was almost enough to make getting fired from my company, getting shaken down by high schoolers, and getting tossed into jail in a game world feel like a lie.

Come to think of it, I remembered reading somewhere about a study that found watching fish swim in aquarium tanks lowered blood pressure and heart rate.

Apparently, the more fish there were, the stronger the effect became.

Thinking about that, it made sense that hospitals had aquariums in their waiting rooms.

Apparently jellyfish were said to have a healing effect too, one that helped regulate the autonomic nervous system.

After sitting there for a full hour watching the penguins and fur seals, I finally left the aquarium.

It had healed me way more than I expected.

Going to the aquarium alone once in a while was actually pretty nice.

I took the train to Shimbashi Station, grabbed a light meal, then headed back toward the Candeo Hotel where I was staying.

Partway there, someone called out to me from behind.

“Huh? Takahashi, is that you?”

“Hm?”

I turned around at the familiar voice and found my former boss from Amazing Corporation, Director Sato, standing there.

“Huh? Director Sato, what were you doing here? It’s a weekday, right? Was work okay? Or did someone like Director Ishida send you to drag me back or something?”

It was my first time seeing him dressed that casually.

Just to be safe, I stayed on guard as I asked, but Director Sato shook his head.

“I quit Amazing Corporation. That company was done for. The president only cared about his own executive compensation, and Director Ishida only had room in his head for sucking up to him. As of today, I was officially unemployed.”

“What!? Even you quit that company, Director Sato?!”

Seriously?

Wasn’t a listed company getting abandoned by its accounting director a pretty huge red flag?

“Yeah. More importantly, were you doing okay, Takahashi? While I was away on business, I heard you all got fired, and I was worried.”

“Huh? Other people got fired too?”

“Yeah. Yamamoto and Kobayashi from Accounting too.”

“Y-Yamamoto and Kobayashi too?!”

Putting me aside, to fire those two after they’d supported Accounting for ten years…

Director Ishida was something else.

Amazing Corporation’s Accounting Department had barely been running with four full-time employees and two contract employees.

Now all four full-timers were gone. What the hell were they planning to do about monthly closing and financial reporting?

“Well, Yamamoto and Kobayashi would be fine. They both had certified tax accountant licenses, and they were still in their thirties. They’d be able to transfer to somewhere better than Amazing Corporation.”

“True. Those two would probably be fine.”

Amazing Corporation’s Accounting Department had been a very close-knit workplace.

The atmosphere in that department was comfortable enough that it wouldn’t have been an exaggeration to say that was the only reason we managed to endure the brutal workload.

“…But what about you, Director Sato?”

Even if he’d been the accounting director of a listed company, finding another job in your fifties wasn’t easy.

And he had a wife and daughter to support too..

“Actually, I’d been getting scouted for quite a while by a company run by an acquaintance of mine, No Problem Co., Ltd. I was supposed to start there next month.”

“I see…”

No Problem Co., Ltd.

That was one hell of a company name…

Were they really going to be okay?

Now I was weirdly worried.

“…By the way, Director Sato. You liked lottery tickets pretty well, didn’t you?”

“Hm? Well, I wouldn’t say I disliked them…”

“Then hang on a second.”

Making sure Director Sato couldn’t see, I selected “Rare Drop Rate +500%” from Item Storage and used it.

Then I bought ten Scratch tickets from a nearby lottery booth, tucked them into an envelope together with ten thousand yen from Item Storage, and handed it to Director Sato.

“This was a retirement gift. Please take it.”

I’d known Director Sato for a long time.

Back when I worked at Amazing Corporation, he protected us a lot from the president and Director Ishida. Maybe that was why his hair had turned pure white.

Knowing Director Sato, he probably hadn’t even taken severance from the company, and if that was the case, doing at least this much should’ve been fine.

“No, I’ll just accept the thought.”

“No, no. It really was just a little token.”

Giving someone Scratch tickets as a retirement gift was admittedly kind of weird, but there were definitely winning tickets in this batch.

I really wanted him to take them.

Maybe he finally gave in to the force of my insistence, because in the end, Director Sato accepted the retirement gift.

“Well then, take care of yourself too, Director Sato!”

“Yeah. You too, Takahashi. Good luck with the job hunt. And thanks for the retirement gift.”

After parting ways with Director Sato, I headed alone toward the Candeo Hotel.