Three coins right off the bat. How generous.
"Don't worry. I'll keep my mouth shut, I swear on my reputation."
Amamiya Natsuki pocketed the coins with satisfaction.
The Vengeful Spirit Boy trembled with rage, bloodshot veins showing at the corners of his eyes.
You'd extort even a Vengeful Spirit? You humans have no reputation to speak of!
Amamiya Natsuki stood up. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the Vengeful Spirit Girl in the distance parting her hair to sneak a look at him, her face clearly full of schadenfreude.
You're a broke loser with only one coin to your name. How dare you laugh at someone else!
Apparently, humans weren't the only ones who enjoyed watching others suffer. Vengeful Spirits were the same: when another Vengeful Spirit was unlucky, they could barely contain their glee.
When the Vengeful Spirit Girl noticed Amamiya Natsuki looking her way, she hurriedly let her hair fall back into place and sat with her head lowered.
Amamiya Natsuki didn't bully her any further and continued looking for his next target.
One trick was all you needed.
His bluff worked like a charm. The Pig-head Head Chef was a godsend, and as Amamiya Natsuki went around demanding hush money, not a single Vengeful Spirit Student dared refuse.
"What's going on with those three players?"
"They're actually asking Vengeful Spirits for money?"
"Could they be borrowing it?"
"Idiot. Vengeful Spirits aren't philanthropists. Why would they lend money to humans? They must have found a hidden way out."
"..."
The other players in the cafeteria were stunned, staring over with their jaws hanging open.
Unfair!
They'd had to trade blood just to get food. Why did those three players have it so easy?
One player was tempted to copy them and demand hush money the same way. But he couldn't say the Pig-head Butcher's real name, and the enraged Vengeful Spirits quickly tore him to pieces. His body turned into mist and dissipated throughout the cafeteria.
Seeing that, the others quickly came to their senses.
Meanwhile.
"Amamiya-classmate, save me, save me, save me!"
Fujiwara Chika's cry for help suddenly reached his ears.
Amamiya Natsuki followed the sound and saw that she and Shinomiya Kaguya had been grabbed by the wrist by a Female vengeful spirit. They were in grave danger.
"I didn't secretly throw away any food. I'm not afraid even if the Head Chef comes out." The Female vengeful spirit had a pale face and pitch-black eyes, her expression utterly blank. Her voice was cold and eerie. "You actually tried to extort me. I'm going to eat you."
You had to be careful when demanding hush money. It was like making a deal with a tiger—these evil spirits were no pushovers, and one wrong move could turn you into an unlucky loser.
Clearly, Shinomiya Kaguya and Fujiwara Chika had drawn the short straw.
"Smack."
Amamiya Natsuki strode over and flipped the plate in his hand, scattering the food across the table.
The Female vengeful spirit looked up at him, bewildered.
"You've wasted food now." Amamiya Natsuki calmly pointed at the food on the table.
Fujiwara Chika's eyes widened at his words, and she blurted out:
"Hey, hey, hey! That's framing someone—the thirty-sixth stratagem!"
Kaguya-chan with Tears in Her Eyes
"Now we have proof." Amamiya Natsuki pointed at the table. "This is the food you wasted."
"You're framing me! You're the one who spilled the food!"
The Vengeful Spirit Girl couldn't help but protest.
"Please don't joke around." Amamiya Natsuki put on a serious face. "We're just weak, pitiful, helpless humans. How would we dare flip your plate? Who do you think the Head Chef would believe?"
"Shameless!"
The black-eyed Vengeful Spirit Girl trembled with rage, on the verge of tears.
What was wrong with this world?
When extortion didn't work, he'd just framed her to get her in trouble. This boy was even scarier than a Vengeful Spirit!
Humans only stayed angry for three seconds. If they didn't explode within that time, they wouldn't go berserk.
Vengeful Spirits were probably the same.
Although the Vengeful Spirit Girl was trembling with rage, she hadn't gone berserk. Clearly, she'd already lost her nerve.
In that case...
"Let go of my friends first."
Amamiya Natsuki pried the Vengeful Spirit Girl's pale, icy fingers apart, pulled Shinomiya Kaguya and Fujiwara Chika behind him, then held out his right hand. "Hush money. Pay up."
"..."
The Vengeful Spirit Girl clenched her fists, black smoke billowing from her body like a volcano on the verge of erupting. She trembled for a long while, but finally swallowed her anger and handed over the hush money.
"She looks like she's about to cry," Fujiwara Chika whispered. "Are we being a little mean?"
"We are being pretty mean." Amamiya Natsuki's voice turned somber as he rolled up his sleeves. "She only gave me one coin for hush money. What does she take me for? I can't let this go."
"No!" Fujiwara Chika hurriedly grabbed Amamiya's arm and dragged him away. "Come on, let's go!"
"..."
The cafeteria wasn't full.
Aside from a few unlucky players, there were also more than a dozen students from the Vengeful Spirit school. Amamiya Natsuki soon realized that the Vengeful Spirit Students were genuinely poor.
Some of them had only one coin, and even the wealthiest had no more than three or four. It was enough to make anyone want to cry.
"That's enough."
The three soon met up in front of the serving window.
"We don't have much time," Amamiya Natsuki said. "Let's finish the meal as quickly as possible."
Shinomiya Kaguya remained cool and composed, her voice steady. "We have ten minutes left."
"Hey, Amamiya-classmate, what do you want to eat?"
Fujiwara Chika asked curiously.
"To be honest, I don't want any of it." Amamiya Natsuki picked up a bone coin and casually tossed it into the air before catching it with a smack. "Heads... I'll have the borscht, then."
"Wait, both sides of these coins look exactly the same," Fujiwara Chika couldn't help pointing out. "There's no heads or tails, right?"
"Watson, you've spotted the blind spot."
"I'm not Watson. Call me Sherlock Holmes."
"..."
Amamiya Natsuki calmly handed over a coin. "Mr. Head Chef, one serving of borscht, please."
"Coming right up."
The Pig-head Butcher took the coin and soon handed him a serving of borscht. The ingredients were unclear, black mist drifted across its surface, and it occasionally gathered into the shape of a black skull.
"Mr. Head Chef." Fujiwara Chika raised her right hand, her voice bright and clear. "I'd like a serving of borscht too. One winter when I was in elementary school, I caught a cold and couldn't stop coughing. Mom made me some herbal medicine, and it looked a lot like this borscht."
Hey, hey. Herbal medicine might taste awful, but it didn't have weird skulls floating over it!
Money changed hands, and the food was served.
The Pig-head Butcher only cared about the coins and didn't give a damn that the three of them were human. He soon handed over another serving of borscht.
"Kaguya-chan, what are you having?" Fujiwara Chika asked.
"I..."
Shinomiya Kaguya parted her pink lips, a rare note of hesitation on her face. Honestly, both dishes looked absolutely terrible—not even the guard dogs kept by the Shinomiya family would eat them.
Unfortunately, she had no choice.
"I'll have a serving of borscht." Shinomiya Kaguya took a quiet breath and maintained her cool, composed expression.
At least she could follow Fujiwara's example, close her eyes, and gulp it down.
With their food in hand, the three sat down in a corner.
"Let's eat."
Fujiwara Chika put her hands together and spoke softly, her face scrunched up in distress. "I already had tamagoyaki and omurice before I left this morning, then drank two glasses of milk and snuck a bag of baumkuchen. If I eat again now, will I get fat?"
She was worried about getting fat? Her thought process really was different from an ordinary person's!
"Don't worry." Shinomiya Kaguya glanced at her coldly. "You eat more snacks during class than that. Even if it turns into fat, it'll only go to your chest."
Fujiwara Chika covered her chest, sounding troubled. "Then I hope it goes to my arms and thighs. My chest feels so heavy, I can't even squat down to tie my shoes anymore."
Crack.
The chopsticks in Shinomiya Kaguya's hand almost snapped.
Amamiya Natsuki ignored their whispered conversation and looked down at the borscht in front of him. After staring at it for a few seconds, a line of text slowly appeared.
[Unidentified-ingredient borscht, no toxic side effects. Safe to eat; replenishes stamina. Inhaling too much of the mist will cause hallucinations. Please keep your mind clear while drinking.]
"So it really is safe to eat."
Amamiya Natsuki relaxed.
The unlucky players had already gotten their food, and some had even eaten most of it. They were still up and moving around, with no sign of dropping dead, so he finally put his mind at ease. Amamiya Natsuki picked up his bowl and took a small sip of the borscht.
It was bland and tasteless, like plain water.
Despite the mist rising from it, it didn't feel warm at all.
"If only it were spicier and hotter..."
Amamiya Natsuki thought unconsciously.
"Hm?"
When he took his second sip, Amamiya Natsuki couldn't help raising an eyebrow.
The borscht had suddenly become spicy and hot.
What was going on?
Amamiya Natsuki quickly figured it out. This must have been the so-called "hallucination" he'd read about.
In essence, it was still just an ordinary bowl of borscht, but it created hallucinations based on what people thought. No wonder everyone in the cafeteria—Vengeful Spirit Students and unlucky players alike—ate as if they were choking down bitter medicine. If they thought the borscht tasted terrible, it would only seem worse and worse.
"Ugh, it's so bitter! So, so bitter!"
Fujiwara Chika's voice rang in his ears.
Amamiya Natsuki looked up and saw the pink-haired girl sticking out her pink tongue and fanning herself with her right hand.
"Did you drink it all in one go?" Amamiya Natsuki asked in shock.
"Mom used to say that you had to drink herbal medicine all at once." Fujiwara Chika lifted her chin at his words. "If you sip it slowly, it just gets more and more awful. So I held my nose and drank it all in one go."
She'd actually stumbled on the right way to handle it. For a fool who'd made it this far, her Luck Value really must have been higher than most people's.
Amamiya Natsuki suddenly noticed that something was wrong with Shinomiya Kaguya.
The cold, long-haired girl had her teeth clenched on her lower lip and wasn't saying a word. Her right hand was frozen in midair, and her wine-red eyes were misty. Clear droplets shimmered within them, and one look told him they were about to spill over.
Before you continue