IGTL Chapter 69

Chapter 69 – Dear Shithead Brother, Get Your Ass to Work. No, Seriously.  ④

After my shithead brother signed the receipt, Fukuda Miki, who claimed to be my shithead brother’s future bride, picked up the pen and voiced a question.

“…Um, Kakeru. Do I have to sign this receipt too?”

What was this woman saying at this point?

“Yes. This receipt proves that you received the wedding gift. I don’t think it would happen, but if I hand over the wedding gift and you later say you never received it, that would be a problem…”

When I said that while looking at my shithead brother, he averted his gaze.

“…I see. Fine, then.”

After muttering that, Fukuda Miki signed without properly checking the contents of the receipt.

“Will this do?”

“Yes. Thank you very much.”

Still…

Even if it was only a receipt, signing without properly checking the contents was the height of carelessness.

You’ll get tricked like that, you know?

By me…

I took the receipt and checked the signature. Written there was not “Fukuda Miki,” but “Fukida Shiki.”

“…”

This woman was trying something petty…

Well, fine. What mattered for the paid item “Contract” was that the person herself signed the “Contract” directly. Whether it was a fake name or not, as long as the person herself signed it directly, there was no problem.

Without mentioning that it was a fake name, I smiled, handed the duplicate receipt to my shithead brother, and stored the original in Item Storage.

“…I have indeed received the receipt. Now then, Brother, Ms. Miki. Congratulations on your marriage.”

When I said that and handed over the envelope containing one million yen, my shithead brother joyfully accepted it.

“Ooh, thanks! This helps!”

“Yes, thank you very much. We will use this for the wedding funds.”

As if.

You have no intention of marrying my shithead brother…

There was no way a surname like Fukida existed. Who the hell was Fukida Shiki!?

…Well, fine. This settled it.

“Yes, please make sure that money goes toward the wedding funds. Now then, I’ll be going…”

“Yeah, you absolutely have to come to our wedding.”

“Yes, once the date is decided, we’ll contact you first.”

“Yes. I look forward to it.”

After saying that and closing the room door behind me, I smiled.

Just as planned…

The two of them accepted the one million yen wedding gift and began singing with giddy expressions still plastered across their faces.

This time, the conditions for activating the penalties I had set separately for the two of them on the receipt, written in letters two millimeters per character, were extremely simple.

The first was Fukuda Miki attempting to run off with the one million yen wedding gift she received from me.

If she said, “We aren’t getting married, so I’ll return it,” that penalty would not apply.

…Well, I thought that would be impossible.

After all, even if it was only a receipt, she was a woman who wrote a fake name that anyone could recognize as one.

With this, she seemed one hundred percent likely to run off with it.

Well, I wouldn’t let her escape, though…

And as for my shithead brother, that went without saying.

His habit of borrowing money had reached the level of an illness.

Even if my shithead brother was diagnosed with debt addiction, I would not be surprised in the slightest.

He was a human being who could not understand something so obvious anyone should know: if you borrow money, you have to pay it back.

Unless he was forced into shackles by the paid item “Contract,” he would never be cured.

That was why I had set up a penalty targeting my shithead brother personally.

The condition for activating that penalty was, very simply, “falling asleep.”

I knew it was an absurd condition, but from my parents’ and my perspective, we had already given him more than enough chances to reform.

Even after giving him this much time, he had been unable to change. It would probably be impossible to rehabilitate him through normal methods anymore. That was why I had decided from the start to bind him with a Contract.

Making the activation condition “falling asleep” was an act of mercy.

I wanted him to spend his final day enjoying himself with his girlfriend.

From the moment he woke up after sleeping, his rehabilitation life would begin. Like Kudo, my shithead brother’s scumbag friend, I planned to have him work seriously. The difference from Kudo was that this would continue for his entire life…

Thanks to my shithead brother, my parents’ retirement had run aground, and several years’ worth of savings vanished in an instant. To let my shithead brother taste that feeling too, I would have him completely repay all of his debts, including the ones we had repaid for him, with interest.

Incidentally, after he finished paying off the debt, I planned to have him take care of our parents in their old age as-is.

He could taste the hardship of being the one doing the supporting, just as he had made our parents do for him.

After our parents died, he could live however he wanted. At the very least, until then, I would place him under the Contract’s management.

By the way, if that woman tried to run off with the wedding gift, I planned to have her live the same kind of life as my shithead brother.

Marriage to a man she did not even want to marry. How much she would lament and suffer. While I was at it, if she thought my shithead brother had a high income, she was dead wrong. He was unemployed. She could enjoy a delightful sham marriage and then get a gray divorce.

I would force her to stay married to my shithead brother until around the age of seventy, but I would not care how she lived after that.

She was a shitty woman who tried to deceive my shithead brother and steal money from him. She probably thought fraud was the fault of the one who got fooled, right?

Too bad. It wasn’t the fooled side that was at fault. It was the side doing the fooling!

Obviously!

My shithead brother would become a decent human being from the moment he fell asleep and woke up in the morning.

The shitty woman would become a decent human being from the moment the Contract judged that she had run off with the wedding gift.

I’ll guide you.

I will.

Onto the path that leads to becoming decent human beings.

I would guarantee them the bare minimum standard of living. However, I would ignore everything else entirely.

Work hard.

With your lives on the line.

My shithead brother would compensate for every loss caused by repeating years in university, being expelled, and refusing to come back to our family home out of rebellion.

Still, I wasn’t a demon.

“Enjoy today to the fullest… Your final day to freely savor life…”

Muttering that, I pressed the elevator button and smiled.

◇◆◇

“Man, that was fun!”

“Yes. Then let’s go deposit that wedding gift into the joint account.”

“Yeah, sounds good.”

After enjoying karaoke at Karaoke Kan for about an hour and heading outside, I decided to go to Mizuho Bank while hugging Yoichi’s arm.

Linking arms. If doing only that was enough to get me the one million yen wedding gift, it was a small price to pay. Besides, I planned to break up with this man as soon as the money was deposited.

“Miki-chan. Did you have fun today?”

“Yes, today was very fun. As expected of you, Yoichi.”

Today would be the last day I had to have this idiotic kind of conversation.

“Then I’ll deposit the wedding gift.”

After arriving at Mizuho Bank, I received the wedding gift from Yoichi and deposited it straight into the joint account.

“Ufufu, with this, we’ve saved up the wedding funds. Next month, let’s go tour wedding venues together♪”

“Yeah, let’s. Man, so I’m finally getting married. Ahahaha!”

“I’m looking forward to marrying you too, Yoichi.”

“Man, this is embarrassing!”

Man, seriously, this was embarrassing…

Because I did not want to marry you…

His annual income of ten million yen was appealing, but a domineering man like this was just…

No matter how high his income was, he was unfit as a marriage partner.

He had nothing but pride, was selfish, and could not understand another person’s feelings.

A man like that could never understand how I felt.

“Well then, I’ll be going…”

I said that and tried to part ways with Yoichi.

At that instant, a warning sound rang through my head.

Beep! Beep!

“Huh?”

“Hm? What’s wrong?”

“N-No, it’s nothing…”

What was going on?

Yoichi couldn’t hear this sound?

As I grimaced at the warning sound that showed no sign of stopping, a window like something from a game opened in my field of vision, and text appeared.

“Player Name: Fukida Shiki has violated the contract terms. A penalty will now be imposed on Player Name: Fukida Shiki.”

H-Haaah!? Wh-Who the hell was that!?

And what the hell was going on!?

Before I knew it, I had taken Yoichi’s hand.

“Huh?”

My inner voice and Yoichi’s voice overlapped.

Wh-Why was I taking Yoichi’s hand…?

I tried to let go, but my body would no longer move freely.

I wanted to say, “Let go of my hand,” but the words would not come out properly.

Instead, the words that came out were the exact opposite of what I was currently thinking.

“…Yoichi, why don’t we go choose an engagement ring now?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, we’re getting married, aren’t we? We’re getting married next month, so there isn’t much time left, and I think we need to arrange a meeting between both families too.”

Wh-What was I saying?

Things I had not even thought were pouring smoothly out of my mouth.

Then Yoichi made a bitter expression.

“Ah, the truth is, this is really hard to say, but I’m unemployed, you know? So, as for the engagement ring…”

H-Haaah?

Y-You were at a matchmaking party for men earning over ten million yen a year, weren’t you? What in the world did that mean…?

Actually, why were you confessing that now?

Even though I wanted to make a dumbfounded expression, I could not form my face properly.

“…Miki, will you still marry me even though I’m like this?”

N-No, absolutely not!

This was a complete mud boat. Who would marry someone like you…

However, the next words that came from my mouth were the exact opposite.

“Yes, of course. I was drawn to your honest heart, Yoichi. Engagement rings and wedding rings can be cheap rings sold online for about five hundred yen each. It seems like we can hold a wedding cheaply these days, and the gift money should cover enough. I don’t mind a modest wedding. Also, I didn’t tell you this, but I have quite a lot in savings, so I can support you even if you’re unemployed.”

I-I don’t want to use the savings I painstakingly built by deceiving stupid men to support a freeloader!

Stop, my mouth!

Don’t say anything else!

Then, overcome with emotion, Yoichi took my hands in both of his.

“Miki. To think you cared about me that much…”

No, I felt absolutely nothing for you except that you were an easy mark!

“…Yoichi.”

At least work!

After this, I ended up moving forward in earnest toward my engagement with Yoichi.