Chapter 0001: Waking Up

‘What the fuck?’

That was the first thought that ‘Kazuya’ had after waking up.

He woke up with his head lying on the table with his cheek sticking to it due to the spilled juice of the instant noodles.

‘Why am I eating while sitting on the floor?’

His head was throbbing as if he was about to die but he just chalked it up to his hangover.

He had a habit of getting hammered at parties even though he went to a scant few. He would proceed to wake up the next day with a killer headache and make himself some lemon water.

He got up feeling uncomfortable and lost his senses and went to the kitchen to find lemons.

Somehow he knew where everything was as if he’d been here before.

He made his remedy and took a seat on the bean bag while drinking it and tried to get the headache to go down a little.

He was unsuccessful and ended up falling asleep again.

An hour later he finally woke up and looked at the time on the clock. It was 1 am.

‘The fuck?! I missed the entire day?’ He would’ve panicked but there was no point in that since the day was already over.

‘Whatever. Guess I’ll watch some youtube.’

Finally back to his senses her looked around his dorm room and remembered that he was at a friend’s place.

Looking around he saw a single room with a futon lying in the corner. Behind that futon, there was a bookshelf filled with all kinds of random books. Some related to college stuff, some random fiction.

The beanbag he was lying on was beside the futon and bookshelf.

There was a small table with a low height that was made to study on while sitting on the floor.

‘Why are there no chairs?’

The TV was a nice 40-inch flat screen and was placed in front of the bed.

The kitchen was connected to the room and there was another door that presumably led to the bathroom.

‘It’s not bad for a college dorm but where are all the damn chairs? And why the fuck is everything in Japanese!?”

Still not comprehending his situation he checked the mirror and what he was was horrifying for him.

“That’s not me!” He touched the reflection in the mirror and his memories started coming back to him.

‘I got alcohol poisoning, my friends brought me to the hospital but it was too late.’

“Fuck!” He ran his hands through his orange-brown messy hair.

‘I used to be so handsome. This guy looks like he just got cucked.’ He lamented the loss of his old life but nothing beyond that.

‘Not like I had much going for me.’ He was a top scorer but was an orphan who’d lost his parents in a plane crash a few months ago.

He’d been losing himself to alcoholism and it finally caught up to him.

He was in his final year of college, majoring in Computer Science.

The last night was the launch party for the company that he’d founded with two of his friends going public.

‘I missed the IPO…’ He didn’t regret it that much but it stung a little to have missed the thing he’d worked so hard for as the CTO.

“I isekai’d, huh?” He looked in the mirror and noticed his face, moving on from memories.

He’d watched a few anime to know about the concept but wasn’t familiar with too much of that stuff. He had an actual social life and real friends so he didn’t drown himself in any media, let alone anime.

Though he did love playing games a lot.

‘Wait a second.’ He touched his hair again.

‘This is a fucking dye! Who the hell dyes their hair orange-brown.’ He was flabbergasted at what kind of fucked up dude he took over.

‘Dye it pink, or green if you want to look tacky. Pussy.’ He already disdained the original.

‘All right, let’s take a step back. I have to recall my memories.’

He spent the next few minutes meditating to recall all the memories that he got from the original.

There was no remnant soul so there were only some important and recent memories that he could get.

This guy had a loving family with his parents and a nice grandma who pampered him a lot.

His grandma was virtually the head of the family after his grandpa passed and her only wish was to see Kazuya with a girlfriend before she passed.

He had an allowance of a million Yen for each year which was neither too much nor too little.

He lived frugally and had a good amount of money saved up. Especially, since he usually begged his parents monthly for some extra cash.

He was in the first year of college and had been dating Mami for about a month and like any college student, he was on top of the world.

But it all came crashing down when she broke up with him by saying that she was with someone else now. ‘Brutal.’

He’d been through a bad breakup and the last memory he had was of choking on some noodles.

“Kazuya Kinoshita… What a loser. I guess I shouldn’t expect much from someone who dyed his hair orange-brown.”

‘Didn’t even have the decency to go completely brown.’

-Ding-

He looked at his phone and saw a notification from an app called Diamond.

-Your date with your rental girlfriend Chizuru Mizuhara has been confirmed.-

He blinked his eyes a few times and re-read the notification a few times.

‘Is prostitution legal in this world?’

He couldn’t be blamed for the misunderstanding. The name of the app combined with the current situation of the person whose body he took over was more than enough proof.

Sad horny people make the worst decisions.

He opened the app and read through it to finally understand the concept.

“I don’t know if this is worse than if he just got a prostitute,”

The worst part was that he couldn’t even cancel since the girl had already accepted. He’d be charged for the hour anyway if he canceled now.

‘Might as well go out with this girl. She seems cute.’ Looking at the girl’s image, he thought.

‘What course is this guy majoring in?’ Kazuya had the thought when looked to open his laptop.

‘Business Studies. Not bad. I could make my own company and this time I’ll do it myself.’

[The host has a goal in life.]

[Conditions for the System to be activated met.]

Kazuya saw the text covering a tiny part of his vision before they disappeared and was confused at what was happening.

’System? Does everyone in this world have one? Or is it just me?’ He had a bit of an idea about this ‘system’ but wasn’t too sure.

Being confused as hell, he decided to search for some stuff on the internet and only ran into some fictional novels.

There was no mention of a system at least on the surface.

Reading a few parts of the novels he understood the concept of a system, which was like some kind of cheat.

He thought, ’Status?’

{ <Status>

Name: Kazuya Kinoshita

(All stats for an average adult human are 10)

Physique: 7

Mind: 12

<Skills>

…

<Inventory>

…

<Quests>

[Main Quest: Entrepreneur(!)]

}

‘It’s a pretty minimalistic one, to say the least. And I even have an inventory!’

He looked over the inventory and saw that it was similar to a game’s inventory. There were boxes for him to store what the system would consider items.

It had 25 boxes which limited his options but he didn’t mind.

‘I might be able to stack similar items

Next, he focused on the main quest that was flashing with an exclamation mark.

[Main Quest: Entrepreneur(!)

Start your own business and make it public. Launch that IPO!

Reward: Inventory Slots: +25]

‘Seems useful enough. I’ll have to explore more of the system tomorrow though. I need to look for as much information as I can about this guy.’

Kazuya went through all kinds of different materials to find out information about himself.

He didn’t want people to think that he was feeling amnesiac.

He went through all of his past chats, cringing at the stuff he’d talked about to Mami.

‘No wonder she dumped you.’

He looked through his past photos and all to find out things about him.

After doing as much research as he could about the Kazuya, he thought about what he was going to do the next day.

‘Or today, at this point.’ He thinks looking at the clock that says 5 AM.

It was Saturday tomorrow so he planned to go out in the morning to look for a gym that he could join.

He wanted to increase his physique level just to see how much it affected his strength.

Then he was going to look for some sort of martial art to learn.

Lastly, he’s going to put his previous life’s skills to use and start freelancing. He was a genius coder with mastery in many different fields so he was going to make some side cash by freelancing.

He also had to go shopping. He wasn’t going to wear the shabby shit that Kazuya had, even if it wasn’t an actual date, he had to make himself look presentable.

He looked googled some nearby gyms and martial arts dojos and marked a few that he was going to visit tomorrow.

He wasn’t going to get a personal trainer at the gym since he had enough knowledge about working out by himself.

He was a model person until his parents’ incident in his previous life. He could do that and better in this one too without a problem.

After hyping himself up for a while he decided to take a little nap before he had to leave.

‘…’

Turns out it’s not that easy to sleep with so much stuff on your mind.

He kept thinking about how fucked up it is to end up in his current situation but also kinda cool.

Overthinking unnecessary things he finally fell asleep after a while.

=====================

Legend:

‘Thought’

“Speech”

-Phone notifications/chats-

[System]