Chapter 0 - Prologue — Money And Love

Life is a game.

 

 

A friend of mine who is addicted to RPG games on the screen was looking into the distance and saying,「It’s the only pastime I can escape reality.」It’s a waste of time.

How can there be a RPG game of the highest quality called life, and yet we can only get entertainment from a man-made story?

 

 

Because even if you save a lot of money, gain experience, become stronger, and gain status and honor in a game, it is still just a small game. It was fictional world. In the end, we have to go on and face the main game of life.

If we abandon reality, we inevitably cannot proceed with other games. Because if you die, that’s really game over.

 

 

In any case, I would like to develop various skills in the real world and rise to the top.

I want someone else to know and recognize my existence.

I thought so, and it was around the time I entered middle school that I began the RPG game called life in earnest.

 

 

However, I was not interested in making money. While it may be a future investment to have a better understanding of languages, IT knowledge, economics and business from middle school, it’s not something I particularly want, nor do I desire a particularly good life. There was no desire to be respected or envied by anyone.

 

 

My parents divorced when I was very young. It was because of my mother’s infidelity. As it was, my mother remarried her unfaithful lover, and my father, who was financially stable, took me in and lived with me.

My father was rarely home. He seemed to be very busy at work, and we hardly ever had a conversation. Money was always placed randomly on the living room table to pay for meals. School lunches were served through elementary and middle school, but students had to buy their evening meal and breakfast.

My mother came to see me once in a while, but the frequency of her visits decreased as soon as she had a child from her second marriage. Now, once a year, I just get a one-line email wishing me happy birthday.

 

 

My father would buy me anything I wanted. Games, books, clothes, musical instruments.

The top floor of a luxury apartment building. I picture my father overlooking the city with a glass of wine in his hand. I rubbed my sleepy eyes and just watched his back. His back was far away.

I looked for similarities with my father. We don’t look alike. I don’t know what he likes and dislikes about food. He doesn’t even know what interests me. I wanted a connection between myself and my father. I wanted proof that I was his child.

 

I once summoned up the courage to speak to my father on his day off.

 

 

「Papa, I want to play cards with you.」

 

「I’m sorry, but I’m still tired from work. The game I bought you should have a mini-game of cards attached to it, so you can try it.」

 

 

I turned my back on my father with a depressed look on my face. It was sad.

I didn’t just want to play cards. I wanted to spend time with my father. That was it. Not that I wanted much. I just wanted to spend the same time together and laugh. I wanted to feel a connection.

 

 

However, he never took me seriously. Being an only child, I had no one to talk to and spent my days hugging my stuffed animals and sleeping. I had a life where I could get anything I wanted, but games and books didn’t satisfy me.

It was as if my father was a「stranger」who lived in the house with me and bought me everything.

By the time I entered middle school, I was able to separate these things. I had already realized that it was futile to expect anything from my father.

 

 

My father, who had been assigned overseas since I graduated from middle school, asked if I would come with him. I refused. I had no reason to leave Japan. By that time, I had already understood that I would not gain anything by following my father.

The room on the top floor of the apartment was too large for me, so I rented a smaller room close to the girls’ school where I was enrolled and will live alone from spring.

My father sends money to my account every month so that I can live a money-free life. With or without my father, my life will never be the same.

 

 

With no housekeeper, I was able to do all the housework, but I could not bring myself to cook. If I had one or two memories of eating a meal I had made with my family, maybe I would have tried to cook at home myself, but eating a meal was like a task of survival for me. I was not particularly attached to food, so I would buy food at supermarkets and convenience stores as I saw fit.

 

 

Money does not fulfill me.

 

 

I wanted my father to love me. I wanted my mother to love me. I wanted to be embraced. I could only watch with my fingers crossed as the other families spent their time getting along. I want someone to like me, love me, and approve of me.

Such a desire for self-approval has resulted in bad habits.

 

 

It was for my opponent to fall for me.

 

 

I started playing the game in middle school. It was a game in which I would decide on a target, make contact with it, and try to turn the other person’s favor towards me. The game is clear when I know the favor has been turned my way. There is no beyond that. Because I felt nothing when I tried to make love to someone I didn’t like. So I just move on to a new stage.

 

 

It all started with a confession from a male friend who I was good friends with. I was happy that he chose me. I was just happy that he wanted to be special to me. Later on, I began to want more of this「specialness」and have turned numerous men on to it.

 

 

The more difficult stages, such as making an opponent who’s not interested in me fall for me, were more exciting. It took a long time, but I made sure I got it done. I will never forget the feeling of satisfaction I get when I see the clearing.

 

 

As a person of small stature, with a double-layered nose, and a natural beauty that everyone around me admired, it was honestly easy for me to win at least one of them.

Just staring into my eyes with a smile on my face is usually enough to make them fall. If that doesn’t work, I can casually touch their body. The next thing I know, I can feel the heat in their eyes as they look at me.

 

 

I have played a number of men for a handful of years. I spend my days just satisfying my own need for approval by taking advantage of their favors. Of course, there were often resentments. When I was in the eighth grade, I was almost stabbed in the face with a mechanical pencil by an enraged boy, and I covered it up with my hand desperately and suffered a wound on my wrist. A lot of blood flowed.

Since I was not stabbed with a sharp object, the wound was gouged, and even after being stitched up at the hospital, the long, thin, painful scar did not disappear over time.

The boy was forced to leave school. I do not know where he is now.

 

 

Since then, I have been wearing a black wristband on my right hand to hide the scar. I was aware that I was toying with their goodwill, so I was hungry for this wound to be no help. I have nothing against boys. But I could not stop playing this lousy game.

 

 

When the school called and my father, unhappy at being called away from work, learned about the scars on my wrist and how they had become etched on my body, he forced me to go to an all-girls school for high school.

It was probably because he thought I would get into trouble if I got involved with a man. He said that he has good connections and I can be admitted to the school without having to take any particular examinations. It is a well-known school, an integrated middle and high school. They say that there are few students with bad behavior and the school environment is peaceful.

 

 

I was not very keen on going to an all-girls school. I didn’t have a target to satisfy my temporary needs. The game I am playing is the same as with food: right after you eat it, you are satisfied. But gradually, I crave and seek it out, just like I get hungry. I hated the fact that I could not find food and had to stay hungry all the time, and most of all, I was not good at girls.

I had flirted with a lot of guys in middle school, and the girls hated me as a「player.」Girls in my class avoided me. It was a vicious cycle where the boys would come over to care for me when I was alone, which further antagonized the girls.

I wondered if I would be able to do well at an all-girls school. I felt uneasy.

 

 

When I objected to going to an all-girls school, my father would not listen.

I had no choice but to accept that this was my destiny. I don’t know what I will be like in the future in an environment without men. I may have to spend my days at school and my nights out on the street. I wonder what my father would think seeing me like that. As long as I don’t cause any trouble, I guess he doesn’t care what happens to me, but that makes me even sadder. Maybe somewhere I still wished to be loved by my father.

 

 

I put my sleeves on my uniform in front of the mirror.

A cute, fluttering navy blue sailor uniform with a red tie.

If it were a co-ed school, I’m sure the boys would be in awe of my uniform.

The bangs are done well, and the hair is curled inward to complete the look.

 

 

I finished my breakfast with some bread I bought at random and put my hand on the front door.

 

 

My name is Shimizu Mirai, and I will be in Class 1–A.

Today is the entrance ceremony at Misono Girls’ Academy.