Escape is Shameful But Useful

The kitchen was once again filled with harmonious laughter.

Ichijō Mirai's satisfaction level rises as he stops teasing his two 'aunt' and 'uncle' in a mischievous manner and happily joins the warmth of the family, "Let's talk about what you know about me."

Normal family, normal elders, Ichijō Mirai is not very good at dealing with, but as a criminal to face the victim of his own coercion, he is quite skillful, and a little bit of 'actually can coerce the victim as a family member, look at it, it's so strange, and then look at it again, it's so strange' a sense of novelty.

He looked at the two Ishida's who looked as if they were being watched by a viper, his tone was gentle and reasonable, "A normal family would have talked about this, right?"

"After the nephews have been here for a few days, and have barely settled in, and are getting along better with the family, they talk about their first impressions of each other, compliment each other, and add some warm lubricant to the relationship."

This body looks exactly like Ichijō Mirai's original appearance, only without the intentional destruction.

Without any further clues, he favored the latter between the coincidence that the body's original owner simply looked like him and happened to be a suspected criminal, and the fact that the body's original owner was himself in a parallel world.

Humans know themselves, and carnivores know carnivores even better, and so far, Ichijō Mirai thinks that the original owner of this body is a true carnivore.

So the question is, why would a carnivore disguise itself in the nest of two herbivores?

Ichijō Mirai hadn't yet dove into a magpie's nest and pretended to be a magpie, he was going to listen to what the two Ishida's have to say and speculate on the benefits of doing so, "Tell me the story of how I chose you out of a crowd, auntie, uncle."

'Can you tell me again the story of how I was chosen from a bunch of puppies?'

He rated his junior's attitude: five stars out of five, full of admiration and respect, a poor nephew who had been helped by his blood relatives in a time of great distress.

The two Ishida's clearly felt differently, and they looked at each other hesitantly for a few moments.

In the end, Ishida Eiko, as Ichijō Mirai had called her, and still as an aunt, engaged in the intimate conversation of a family dinner, saying in a broken voice: "Uh, you've been here for two or three days now, so you're getting used to Japan's climate and air, aren't you, Mirai?"

"I remember the day you contacted me a year ago, Auntie was really surprised and happy, I really didn't expect your mother to keep a child."

She showed a look of reminiscence, the awe is still retained, the kind of sharp fear faded a little, "I received your letter at that time was still shocked."

"You were particularly pleased with our lack of children and the location of the store, and you enclosed a hundred thousand dollars."

"Your aunt and I were able to buy the dessert store and make it our home at last, thanks to the hundred thousand dollars you gave us."

Ichijō Mirai nods: Oh, no wonder he's still a bit attentive despite his awe, and the dinner is so solemn and sumptuous, and he waits for him to move his chopsticks before he dares to take them, so it's because of the first contact...

Huh? One hundred thousand dollars?

Compared to Ichijō Mirai, Mr. Ishida is more like the theoretical 'nephew of a family member who was generously helped in a time of crisis', obviously more respectful, but also remembering to ask, and trying to soften his tone into that of an elder, "Eiko and I lost money at the time, and were almost desperate, thanks to you."

"And for a year now," Ishida Eiko chimed in, "you've supported us with letters on and off, and recommended the layout and facilities of the sweet store from a young person's point of view."

"And-"

She paused and ran a hand through her hair before organizing the words that fit, "When you first came here, you helped your aunt and uncle drive away the guy who came to the store to extort money."

"That guy and his friends were hit by a car that day, leaving five dead bodies on the street," Mr. Ishida hesitated and said bluntly, "the next day, several people they knew were hit by cars."

"But, but thanks to their bad luck, the matter was completely resolved. At least no one came to 'ask for blessings' today."

He finally acted like an elder, like an elder who did something wrong and still insisted that he was absolutely right, "It's all because of their bad luck."

"All of us who run stores have some faith, you're a blessing to us."

Ichijō Mirai: "…"

He took the initiative to translate.

① the first contact, 'he' simply and efficiently used 100,000 dollars to smash at 'aunt's' and 'uncle's' faces. 

② the first time they met, 'he' simply dealt with the guy who dared to blackmail his 'aunt' and 'uncle', let them lie in rows on the street, and got the evaluation of 'bad luck' that the corpse would be so angry that it would swindle if he didn't pay attention to it.

...No wonder he didn't move his chopsticks, these two Ishida's didn't dare to move theirs.

He's paid so much for this family, he should be the first to eat!

"You didn't give up on us, it's just a small debt, it doesn't matter if you get found," Ishida Eiko said, watching Ichijō Mirai's face, "you'll be able to pay it back."

She reassured Ichijō Mirai, "There's no way a big company can come looking for you, didn't you say you'd figured out a way to pay the company back without paying yourself?"

Huh?

'Not paying back the money yourself, but paying back the company'...?

Intellectually, Ichijō Mirai knew that given his character, he was mostly talking about robbing a bank or something like that, but he twitched his eyebrows, and without moving, he made his tone a bit more gentle, showing praise to Ishida Eiko, "Auntie cares about me a lot."

"I didn't realize Auntie remembered such trivial little things," he said slowly, "I like to hear it."

Ishida Eiko breathed an unmistakable sigh of relief at the rather obvious, though not directly expressed, praise, and immediately sniffed at him and went into detail about the 'trivialities'.

"As I recall, you said you came to Japan because it was far enough away from the company, and you didn't come in a straight line, you took a number of diversions before flying in, saying that the company wouldn't be able to track you."

"But," she said, "the morning after you arrived, I opened the door to find huge boxes with game pods in them."

Which means that the game company had tracked it down, and it was pretty big.

"You didn't pay much attention to it at that time, I heard you mean that you seem to have made a plan from the beginning, either you succeed in escaping from the tracking from now on the sea is wide enough for fish to leap, the sky is high enough for birds to fly, or you don't succeed in escaping, then you will find a way to find a way to find a way to find a way to find a way to find a way not to repay the money, but to repay the money of the game company."

"You seem to be very reluctant to enter the game, saying that too much realism makes you feel creepy, and you feel that you can't tell whether the world is real or fake, whether it's a game or a manga or some kind of literature."

Ishida Eiko paused for a few more moments, becoming more cautious, "So after signing for the pod, you went out for a while, and when you came back, you took an unmarked bottle of medicine."

That bottle of medicine is now on the nightstand, and according to the 'suicide note', it's a bottle of sleeping pills.

Ichijō Mirai, calmly nodding his head, gestured for Ishida Eiko to continue.

"You said that you had found a way," Ishida Eiko said in a more careful tone, "for us to leave you alone, only to wake you up at 8:58 this morning to remind you to enter the game and participate in the beta test, and to remind you that you owed money that needed to be paid back."

"You also said, I hope we can properly fulfill the duties of elders, and also said that at most one month you will finish repaying the debt and intend to leave, we only need to regularly keep in touch with you, and then slowly disconnect can be."

As she spoke, she looked at Ichijō Mirai secretly, as if she was about to say something, "Did that bottle of medicine affect, uh, the brain?"

Ichijō Mirai's behavior was obvious: amnesia.

After realizing that the two Ishida's were just two innocent magpies, he didn't bother to disguise them, and since it was hard to gather information quickly without revealing something, he just glossed over it.

Therefore, Ishida Eiko's hesitation to speak seems to be asking: Will that bottle of medicine damage your brain and cause memory loss?

Or: Did you lose all your memory because you didn't want to play the game?

And even more so: is it shameful but useful to run away from the game, and let your amnesiac self take over because you don't want to play the game too much?

Ichijō Mirai: "..."

That's not it.

Escaping is shameful but useful. Please, the other me!