Chapter 0004: Meeting Again

When Kazuya woke up, it was six in the morning. His classes started at 9 so he showered and got ready for the gym.

He only did some light workouts since he wasn’t planning on limping to college as if he’d been run over by a truck.

After about an hour and a half of some light workouts, he left the place and got ready for college.

On the way to college, he remembered that he’d gotten a few dings from his system during the weekend but was occupied and ignored them.

‘Thankfully the system is inconspicuous. The notifications don’t distract me when I’m doing something.’

His eyes lost focus as if he was staring at something in the air.

Looking at the still same status panel he focused on the Quests tab.

{<Quests>

[Main Quest: Entrepreneur]

[Side Quest: No lonely bitches here (!)]

[Side Quest: Get that girl (!)]

[Side Quest: Income source (!)]

[Daily Quest: Shape up (!)]

[Daily Quest: Learn to defend (!)]

}

‘Damn, talk about a whole lot of quests, I hope it’s not one of those systems that force the user to complete all the quests.’

He focused on his daily quests.

The Shape up and Learn to defend quests were easy enough. He just had to spend an hour each day working out and learning martial arts.

Each day that he completes both quests his physique would increase by 0.1 unit until he reached 15 units. It would slow down after that.

[Side Quest: No lonely bitches here

You don’t want to spend another chance to live your life alone again, do you? Find a real partner to go through thick and thin with you.

Objective: Get a real girlfriend.

Reward: Happiness (Do you need anything else?), Mind +5]

‘Sassy fucker. Then again it’s eerily similar to how I self-talk while monologuing. The ‘real’ in the quest objective stings though.’

[Side Quest: Get that girl

You met a cute Tsundere who’s a perfect girlfriend in any situation. At least when she’s acting as one. If you like her, then go get her.

Objective: Get Chizuru Ichinose to agree to be your girlfriend.

Rewards: Specialized Entertainment Industry Knowledge (Includes basics of related trade skills.)]

‘Ichinose, huh…? Guess that’s her real name. Anyway, as useful as the reward is, I doubt I’ll be meeting her again. Thankfully there’s no penalty. It would be disgusting to have to rent her again just to woo her. Though if I run into her…’

[Side Quest: Income source

You’ve started freelancing to make money. Get some clients to accept your work and make that money to fund your business.

Objective: Complete the projects for 50 clients.

Reward: Specialised Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Knowledge]

‘Now this is a useful one. I’ve already dabbled with ML and AI, I’ll be able to make my life much easier with that knowledge. I might even be able to make my own Jarvis. 50 clients are going to be easy. Depending on what kind of projects I take, I’ll be done with them within 4 months.’

During the time he was internally monologuing about the quests, the train came to the station close to his college so he got off.

He ran into Kibe and Kuri, his virgin friends, at the campus who were also going to class.

“Yo, Kazuchiun.” Kibe waves at him.

“What’s up, Kibe?” Kazuya felt weird at how Japanese, a language that he’d never learned was flowing through him so naturally.

“How’re you doing Kuri?” Kuri was more of a socially awkward dude and didn’t take the initiative to talk easily so he greeted the guy.

Some meaningless small talk later Kazuya noticed someone walking in front of him.

It was a girl with double braids, wearing nerdy glasses and unappealing jeans with a sweater and she’d dropped a few of her papers on the ground while looking at him in shock.

‘Chizuru? She’s in my college? Nice I guess.’ He still recognized her even though she was pretty much disguised.

He walked ahead intending to help with the fallen papers and say hi but she panicked a little and walked away to the side, leaving those papers there.

“What’s up Kazuya, you know her?” Kibe gives him a suggestive look.

“Not really. Guess I mistook her for someone else.” He evades the question since he doesn’t know if she wants anyone to find out about the rental thing.

“Boo.”

He bends down and picks up those papers, intending to give them to her later.

“What’re you gonna do with those papers?”

“I’ll hand them to her if I see her. It’s a good conversation starter, don’t you think?”

“Good on you, my man. You’re already moving on from Mami.”

“Yeah… Mami.”

“Sorry about mentioning her-“

“It’s fine, dude. I’ve moved on. We were together for a month. There’s only so much that you can care about someone after a month, you know.”

“Damn dude, you seem different.”

“I do, huh? I guess I decided to change some things.” He smiles happily thinking about his current life.

“See you guys later.”

They separate to go to their classes and leave Kazuya alone to go to his lecture room.

Suddenly, a blur of black grabs him by his t-shirt and pulls him into a file storage room.

He’s surprised at the sudden situation when the black blur pushes him to a shelf and points at him, “Don’t you tell anyone.”

“Please don’t rape me.” That’s the first thing he says to the fair-skinned beauty that’s pointing at him.

“W-What?” She’s startled at the accusation.

“What else? You forcefully pull me into the file cabinet and push me toward a wall. What is this if not rape?”

“Cut it out, Kazuya.” Chizuru’s entire momentum is deflated by Kazuya’s bad joke.

He smiles cheekily, “How are you Mizuhara? I haven’t seen you since our date.”

“I’m fine. We need to talk.” She sighs and calmly tells him.

“You don’t want me to tell anyone about the rental thing ‘cause it’s not something that people consider ‘respectable’. I know. Why do you think my two friends have no idea about you?”

“Good. Under no circumstances can you tell anyone about me. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Promise me.”

“Geez, so many demands. How about I make one of my own?”

“What is it?” She is annoyed at Kazuya for not accepting her words instantly.

Seeing her ‘perfect girlfriend’ mask having utterly disappeared, Kazuya realizes that she’s a pretty interesting girl even without the mask.

“Go out with me.” Kazuya is as straightforward as it gets.

“What?” She still hasn’t processed his words.

“Go out with me. Be my girlfriend.”

“No. Impossible. I’m utterly busy as it is. I don’t have time to waste on that stuff.” She isn’t really mad at him for taking advantage of the situation since she discerned enough about him at the date to know that he isn’t this kind of guy.

“Fine. Can’t blame me for shooting my shot.”

“I promise. No one will find out. At least from my side.” He gives her a reassuring smile.

“Sigh. It’s like all of my efforts to keep the date spots away from the college were utterly meaningless.”

“It’s not your fault. I also set it to be far away since I didn’t want to run into anyone from college.”

“Just… Don’t let anyone know. I care about my job and don’t want people to talk behind my back.”

“Here’s your papers. You left them there when you ran away from me.”

“I didn’t run away. I avoided you. It’s different.”

“You seemed pretty panicky to me. I’m gonna say you ran away.”

“Shut it.” She puts her hand over Kazuya’s mouth and shut’s up herself.

There is the sound of some people walking by the room.

When they’re finally away she removes her hand from his mouth.

“You know, it already seems like we’re a couple.” Kazuya pointed out just to fuck with her.

Her face is a blushing mess as she says, “I’m leaving.”

Just as she turns around to walk away, Kazuya holds on to her arm, “Hey!”

“What now?” She’s cranky, to say the least, but even that’s cute to Kazuya.

“One date…”

“Hmm?”

“One date. Go out with me on a date. An actual one. I won’t bother you if you don’t want to go out after that.”

“Kazuya…” She wants to refuse but Kazuya’s earnest look makes her hesitate. It’s not that she didn’t enjoy their date, but she hadn’t ever been on a real date before that wasn’t a rental and was hesitant.

He waits patiently for her to answer. Not wanting to pressure her by repeatedly asking and seeming like a whiney bitch.

“…Fine. But one date. That’s it. Don’t expect anything more. I don’t have the time to do this kind of stuff regularly. Do you understand?”

“It’s fine. I just wanted to see you on a date where you don’t wear that mask.”

“Whatever.” She looks away from him.

“Friday. Dinner and a movie, okay?”

“Can we make it Saturday? I have to go meet my grandmother.”

“Saturday works for me.”

Kazuya hands her his phone and says, “Give me your number, and I’ll text you the details later.”

She narrows her eyes at him like a cat, “You just want my number.”

“No duh. How am I gonna contact you without your number?”

She doesn’t say anything and saves her number on his phone.

‘Chizuru Ichinose.’ He reads the name she saved her contact with and smiles.

‘At least she told me her real name this time.’