Chapter 154.

Chapter 154. Convincing Irene. (6/6)

It was 11:45 PM. We’d made it right on time.

“Is it all done?” Alicia asked nervously.

“Yeah, I trimmed the video down and sent her just the part where you ambushed your mother for now. Let the full-length video finish uploading overnight to my online drive and I’ll send the link to it over to the Owner in the morning.”

“Phew. I was worried about us missing the deadline because of how long the video was. So you did it like that.”

“Yeah. The Owner seems to be fuming after losing though. She might give us a rough time at work.”

“That’s fine. As long as I can help my mother out. Even if she can’t completely quit one job, she can at least change to part-time at one of them.”

“She’ll be quitting one job.”

“What? How? With just me working part-time that shouldn’t be possible.”

“It is though. I proved it to your mother which is one of several contributing reasons that led to her caving so easily.”

I opened up the spreadsheet on my phone and showed it to Alicia.

“This is the biggest reason she’d agree. It is beneficial to everyone that she agrees to this. The tax bill for the household is cut by over half. Everyone can also save a good sum of money too.”

“What? How? I’ll be giving all the money I earn to my mother.”

“Your mother would not have accepted you working if you would be left with nothing for yourself. Don’t be so naive to think your mother would permit that sort of arrangement. You will only contribute half of your paycheck to the household, $600 to be exact. You will have $580 to yourself.”

“What! That much! But how is that possible?”

“Because of this column right here.” I pointed to Rosa’s column.

“Hah! What the heck is this! Is this number right?”

“Yeah, it is.” She had the exact same reaction as her mother. It was quite funny to see it.

“As such, Rosa has agreed to match your contribution since she too will be working. The money she gets from her parents will be for university.” I explained everything I’d explained to Irene.

“I see… if Rosa wants to do that… it is her money. I don’t have much say in it.” After she heard the full explanation she seemed to accept it. She’d been a bit reluctant for her family to accept Rosa’s money but as I explained everything in detail she understood it really was in the better interest of everyone to accept it. This way everybody could save money for their own futures. Nobody would have to sacrifice themself.

“But… you’re really fine with giving up half of your savings every month to my mother?”

“Of course. Even if I do this, I’m still saving a good chunk of change compared to the way I was losing money every month when living alone. It would be unfair if your mother was left without any savings of her own and couldn’t buy a single thing for herself to enjoy her own life.”

“Ran…”

She suddenly called my name.

“What is it?”

“You’re… really… amazing. You effortlessly solved everything like it’s not even a big deal. It feels like I don’t even need to worry about anything if you’re here. All the problems I have just disappear in a flash. Difficult, year-long problems, it’s like you simply snap your fingers, and everything is all solved.”

“Ran, are you... really younger than me?” She asked me doubtfully.

“Why is it that both mother and daughter ask me the exact same thing on the same day?”

Her eyebrows shot up when I retorted and she asked, “My mother asked you the same thing?”

“Yeah. But I’m just a brat in high school. There is no question that I’m a year younger than you.”

“That just crushes my self-confidence.”

“Why? We’ve just been through different experiences in life.” I gave her a casual shrug and continued, “People grow at different rates depending on the environment they’re raised in. Working is the perfect opportunity for you to grow up and mature, Alicia. From here on out, you’ll finally be given the chance to develop.”

“Your mother won’t hold your hand m and baby you anymore. Thus, you shouldn’t let such matters get to you. You’re fine, take it one step at a time. You don’t need to rush headfirst into university. You can take things slow and find what sort of path you want to walk in life. You’re not under the same sort of suffocating pressure to perform in school the way you were before. You can take a step back, relax, and breathe. You now have the chance to look at the world around you properly and take it all in. Your mother also has the freedom to live as she desires as well.”

“You don’t need to compare yourself to others. So don’t compare yourself to me either. We’re two different people who live life completely opposite to one another. There are countless things that you can do that I can never even dream of being able to do.”

“There are things I can do that you can’t?”

“Yes. Everyone has things they’re good and bad at. You’ve only seen the things I might be a bit good at. But there are many things I’m awful at. In fact, there are more things I’m bad at than there are things I’m good at.”

“You mean like dancing.”

My body stiffened up.

“Y-Yeah. Can you please not bring that one up?”

“Do you have a complex over it or something?”

“No comment.”

“Hahaha! It’s true that I’m at least better than you in that area. I feel like I regained a bit of my self-confidence. Thanks.”

“Y-Yeah. Sure. No problem I guess.”

“I’ll teach you how to dance in the future. The next time there’s a school dance I’ll drag you to the school’s roof together with Rosa to teach you, it’ll be just the three of us.”

“Thanks for telling me in advance. I’ll be sure to run away early in the morning and hide somewhere you can’t find me.”

“Then we’ll just wait until you get back home and drag you there late into the night if we have to. Oh, wait, we’ll actually be with you at work anyway, you won’t be able to escape regardless.”

“Please spare me.”

“I won’t~,” she said in an overly enthusiastic manner with a wide smile on her face.

“Haaaah. I’m going to sleep now. I’m pretty tired.”

When I walked past her and headed up the stairs I was stopped by her arms which she wrapped around me from behind.

“Thank you. You’re always helping me.”

“Well, you are my girlfriend.”

“Heheh, yeah. One day I’ll help you. I don’t think I’ll be able to ever repay you for everything, but I’ll do my best. I’ll at least make you smile one day. That’s the first thing I want to do. It’s a small goal, but it’s better than nothing. I don’t even know how to begin repaying you.”

“Oh? Why not sell your soul to me then?”

“Sell my soul to you? What do you mean? How would I sell my souls to you?”

“Well, just think of it as being something that surpasses simple marriage. All you’d need to do is sign a simple contract. Would you be interested in signing it?” There was something bothering me that I wanted to verify.

“Uh… is it something bad?”

“Not at all. Did you know, if you sell your soul to a devil, once you reach adulthood, you’ll stop aging in that devil's eyes? You’ll always appear the same to them no matter how old you get.”

“What? That sounds like a fishy scam~”

“Haha, is it really though? Would you… like to try it?”

“Is this some sort of weird occult stuff you saw online?”

“No. I just made it up on the spot.”

“Haha, what the heck? But if you say selling my soul to you is enough to repay you, sure, I don’t mind.” She thoughtlessly agreed, thinking of it as nothing more than a joke.

“Alright, let me write it up really quickly then.”

I took a seat in the living room and wrote one up with her by my side. When I finished I handed it over to her and told her, “Just sign right here on the dotted line.”

She didn’t even read it and obediently obliged.

The second the name Alicia Sorayuki was written out on the dotted line, my eyes opened wide in shock.

Again.

I clutched at my chest in pain. My heart momentarily stopped before it throbbed violently. There was the same burning sensation coming from my heart and finally a sour taste at the back of my mouth.

What the hell?

If it had only happened once, I could laugh it off the way I’d done so before and treat it like a mere coincidence. But now that it happened again in the exact same fashion, there was no way it was nothing.

“Ran, are you okay? You look a bit pale. You’re also sweating.”

“Sorry, it’s nothing. It was all the fried eggs I ate earlier today acting up on me.” I used the exact same excuse as before.

“You did eat a lot… you shouldn’t do that again. It’s not good for your health.”

“Yeah. You’re right. I should definitely avoid doing that again in the future. It seems it puts a lot of stress on my body.”

If confirmed what I’d wanted to.

Whatever happened, it seemed to be correlated to having them sign their soul away to me in written form.

“By the way, did you even read what you just signed? What if I put in some sort of crazy condition that would hurt you?”

“I believe you wouldn’t ever hurt me. If you really wanted to hurt me, you’d have already done so. You’ve had so many opportunities to do so before this but haven’t.”

“Well, you can keep that contract. You can consider the equivalent of a wedding ring for a devil.”

“W-W-Wedding ring! What are you talking about?”

“Well, if you’d read it, you’d understand that you’ve sold your soul to me and with it given me all your trust, your everything. In exchange, what you receive in return is my life. Should I ever betray your trust, my life is forfeit. You may kill me however you please should you so desire it.”

“What! Are you crazy? Why would you go and write up such an insane contract?”

“Just consider it as receiving my trust in return. It means I’m willing to trust you with my life.”

Her face lit up and an embarrassed squiggly smile crept onto her face.

“Are you stupid? You’re actually an idiot, right? Nobody’s going to want to claim your life.” She stood up flustered, then ran upstairs into her room as she said that.

I couldn’t help but find the way she ran away adorable. However… putting her reaction aside, what was with my own body’s reaction after she signed it?

It couldn’t be something outrageous like her soul really became mine. I don’t even believe in nonsense like souls. 

But if that was the truth… then… didn’t that make me look like I really was some sort of devil?

Devils don’t actually exist though. That’s absolute nonsense. Nothing more than occultist rubbish.

Despite thinking that, I recalled something from my past.

My mother had told me strange things often happened around me when I was born. She was also someone who believed in things like ghosts and devils because she said she had personally experienced such bizarre phenomena.

However, I’d never believed in such things. I’d always written such matters off and explained it away with science and logic. Such things were a matter of psychology. When someone is put under psychological pressure, the brain acts in strange and peculiar ways. 

The perfect example of this was an experiment that had been conducted where a person was blindfolded. They were told they were going to be cut. All the person conducting the experiment did was brush the knife over their skin, but the test subject’s brain was convinced they were truly being cut. 

They were put into a position where they were certain they would be subjected to torture and their brain reacted accordingly. They screamed out in pain as if they had truly been severely wounded. It even left behind red marks on their body. The brain had been so convinced that the body was deceived into reacting when there was no actual physical harm done.

Ghosts or apparitions could be explained away as the same phenomenon. If your brain thinks something exists, it will see it. However… the opposite was also true. If your brain strongly believed something did not exist, you’d never see it even if whatever it was, was right in front of your eyes. That was because your brain would subconsciously filter it out on its own.

Thus, if I were to model it as a circuit phenomenon. Consciousness or human awareness could be best described as a spectrum across all frequencies. Certain phenomena thus fell under certain frequencies. Our conscious thoughts or beliefs could act as low pass, bandpass, or high pass filters across a certain range of frequencies.

In that case… I suppose it was possible that paranormal phenomena may exist after all. But… things like souls and devils? I still found it very hard to believe in those sorts of things.

With what just happened though… I couldn’t completely rule anything out. I lacked too much information. Sadly, I didn’t know where to seek such knowledge out. I could search online, but there was no way to verify the information easily. Peer review work on the occult? Hah! Like that exists. I lacked experience in this strange niche area. I also didn’t know anyone who took the occult seriously.

The only thing I could do right now was sleep on it and slowly think things over. I could only try to slowly peel back one layer at a time in regards to this unexpected mystery I stumbled across.

A devil…

If I were one, it might even make sense.

I returned to my room with such strange thoughts on my mind. When I opened up the door to my room I was met with an unexpected sight.

Irene was fast asleep on my bed. She had one of my t-shirts on. She didn’t have any pants on, she was bare-legged and her silk panties were in full view. My t-shirt had ridden up her body and revealed her abdominal region beneath it. With shut eyes, her right hand tugged on the collar and held it close to her nose.

Her head was on the new pillow I’d brought back from the hotel. It seems she dozed off shortly after she tried it out. She looked quite comfortable so I didn’t dare wake her.

I stepped inside the room and locked it behind me. I joined her on the bed then pulled the sheet to cover us both while I simultaneously wrapped my arms around her and claimed the other half of the hotel pillow for myself.

Shortly after that, I fell asleep to the scent of her fragrant hair directly beneath my nose.