The Reincarnation of a Commoner Couple - Episode 8

“Keep the change.”

I handed the taxi driver two ten-thousand yen bills and tried to act cool. I’ve always wanted to do that at least once.

Seeing the driver smile and bow repeatedly in thanks made me feel pretty good.

“Now then, where’s Azusa?”

I looked around, but there was no sign of Azusa.

She said she’d be right there, so I figured she’d arrive before me…

Oh? I got a message.

Hmm? She’s at that rundown karaoke place we used to go to in high school?

“Ah, that place.”

The place looks like it’s about to collapse, but all the equipment inside is brand new. Probably because of the awful exterior, it hardly gets any customers.

Azusa and I used to go there a lot in high school, treating it like our secret spot. There probably aren’t even any security cameras, so we can relax in a private room and spread out our money to talk.

By the way, we live in Chiba Prefecture, which is practically Tokyo.

People around here insist they’re city folks. Not that Chiba’s a bad place or anything.

Oh, and yeah—I say I’m a city boy too.

Carrying a bag that weighs over 3 kilograms, I hurry to the karaoke place.

Thanks to my physical ability being at 40, it doesn’t feel too heavy. If I hit 100, I could probably become an Olympic athlete no problem.

“Excuse me, I think my friend already arrived…”

“Room 12.”

When I entered the karaoke place, I told the old guy at the front desk, who was reading a newspaper, that my friend should already be there. He told me the room number right away.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Looks like you made a profit, huh?”

“You bet I did.”

I placed the bag on the table in the room with a loud thump.

When I unzipped it, bundles of cash were stuffed inside messily.

“What do you think?”

“Wow! Just wow!”

Azusa’s eyes immediately turned into dollar signs.

I get it. I felt the same way—grinning like a creep.

“It’s about 36 million yen. Even split, that’s 18 million each.”

“Kyaa~! Amazing!”

Right? I did my best. Really.

Even though I was sweating bullets thinking I’d get caught, I pulled through.

It’s okay to praise me, you know?

While I was sitting there with a smug look on my face, Azusa gave me a kiss on the cheek.

Whoa. That felt kind of fresh. Maybe because we’ve got young bodies again?
Even though we used to do stuff like this all the time before we died, it still makes me happy.

“Anyway, let’s hurry up and invest it in our status boards. Carrying this much cash around is seriously scary.”

“Yeah. It’ll take a bit of time, but let’s split it up.”

We spent about 30 minutes dividing the money evenly.

After that, we each had 18 million, plus about 100,000 yen in leftover bills.

I’m planning to use those leftovers as my war funds next week.

“I’ll be fine with just about 20,000 yen for now. Middle schoolers don’t really spend that much. So I’ll give the rest to you, Keita.”

That means I’ll be starting next week with about 180,000 yen in funds.

Next week is the Oaks, right? I need to start studying for it when I get home.

“So, what are we investing in?”

“What are you talking about? Obviously, academics.”

“Oh, really?”

“We don’t know exactly how useful academic stats are yet, but it’s got to be academics. If we invest in that now, we might be able to just listen in class without needing to study later. We’d have more time after school to do other things, and we’ve got the high school entrance exam coming up. Investing in academics is the only logical choice.”

Huh. When she puts it like that, it actually makes sense.

I was thinking about investing in horse racing, hitting trifectas every time and living the high life.

I mean, wouldn’t making a ton of money be better?

“That’s what I thought too, but…”

“Today’s haul is more than enough. If we keep making too much money, we’ll attract attention from the staff. They might even start suspecting match-fixing or something.”

“Hmmm.”

Yeah, cashing in those 450 tickets today was probably too much.

I guess we should try to stay under the radar.

“Alright then, let’s go with academics.”

I touched the status board… and wow! The money slid in so smoothly!

Azusa and I started loading our cash into the status boards.

“Oh, it shows your remaining balance. If we noticed that before dividing the money, it would’ve been way easier.”

“Seriously.”

At the bottom of the status board, the remaining balance is displayed.

I confirmed I had 18 million yen and began bumping up my academic stat.

“I raised it to 50 for now.”

“I just lost 7 million yen in one go…”

Even back when I was a trader, I moved money in amounts like this, but…

It still kind of hits you hard in the heart.

“So we’ve got 11 million left. What now? Should we keep pumping it into academics?”

“No. Let’s see if it actually works first. I brought the math textbooks for grades 7 and 8.”

Talk about prepared. What a woman. She’s amazing.

So we started reading right away.

Before this, I’d been studying after school and managing somehow, but now…

“This is on a whole different level.”

“Way more than I expected. Even I’m surprised.”

Everything just flows into my head.

It makes me wonder why I couldn’t understand this stuff before—it’s so simple now.

This is seriously insane. And I’m only at 50?

If I hit 100, maybe there wouldn’t be a single problem I couldn’t solve.

“This is starting to feel kind of scary.”

“Why? If you’ve got something useful, use it. The whole situation is bizarre anyway—might as well enjoy it, right?”

She’s strong. Am I just overthinking it?

We’re already enjoying the benefits, so it’s too late to start second-guessing now.

Yeah, yeah. I don’t know who made this possible, but I’m grateful—
So I’ll just go wild and enjoy myself.