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That said, she and Asakusa Toru weren't childhood friends who had reunited after a long separation or anything like that.

She had first met Asakusa Toru a year ago.

More precisely, it had been that summer after she finished her second year of middle school.

Ichinose Honami came from a single-parent family. She lived with her mother and her younger sister, who was two years her junior.

Their family was quite poor, but her mother still did her best to meet their needs.

Honami and her sister were both very well-behaved and considerate, doing their best to suppress their desires for all sorts of things. They kept their material wants in check and held back their hopes, never pursuing anything unnecessary. Whether it was new clothes or going out for fun, they turned down anything that cost money.

Things would get better.

But suppressing everything wasn't right. Neither was burying everything deep in their hearts.

Her mother understood that, which was why she asked what her younger daughter wanted around the time her birthday was coming up.

Even if it was only for her birthday, their mother wanted them to be happy.

So her sister wished for a hair clip.

It wasn't pretty—in fact, by Honami's standards, it was a little ugly—but it was the same hair clip worn by her sister's favorite idol at the time, Hoshino Ai.

Because it was the same one her idol wore, it was heavily marked up.

But it wasn't particularly attractive, so even people who liked it rarely chose to buy it, given the price. It wasn't so popular that it was impossible to find.

Once the target was set, their mother began pushing herself to the limit.

The hair clip cost a little over ten thousand yen, which wasn't an especially large sum, but wasn't a small one either.

For Ichinose Honami's family, though, it was an amount that would take a long time to save up.

Her mother could only try to get the money by pushing herself.

And so her mother collapsed.

She lay in a hospital bed, apologizing to her younger daughter again and again.

Their mother was the one who should have been taken care of. She was the patient, and yet she was the one apologizing.

Her daughter was the one who should have understood. She was the one who should have accepted the apology, and yet she was the one who refused to.

Her pent-up feelings finally became too much to bear, and her sister was utterly disappointed when the promise she'd looked forward to wasn't kept.

So she lashed out, showing an ugliness she'd never revealed before.

But surely none of it was anyone's fault.

It wasn't the fault of their hardworking mother, nor was it the fault of her disappointed sister.

If anyone had done something wrong, perhaps it was simply that they didn't have any money.

...Ah, if only they had money.

That was what Honami had thought back then.

If they had money, her mother wouldn't have had to push herself. If they had money, her sister could have gotten the gift she wanted. If they had money, this never would have happened.

"If only I had money." A young man standing beside her outside the hospital gave a quiet sigh, as though he'd spoken her thoughts aloud.

...That was how she first met Asakusa Toru.

"Whether I remember or not? That's a strange question." Asakusa Toru sighed at Ichinose Honami's sudden question. "If you're asking whether I still remember the name 'Ichinose Honami,' then I can tell you: yes, I do."

"But if you're hoping to do something more... then all I can do is repeat myself."

"What happened last year was just me 'indulging myself.' You don't need to dwell on it or feel any burden because of it."

He thought he'd already made himself perfectly clear.

But on second thought, perhaps this was simply who Ichinose Honami was.

"Even if you say that..." Ichinose Honami tried to say something more, but just then the bell rang, and the teacher walked in.

She had no choice but to return to her seat.

"...What a pain." Asakusa Toru glanced at Ichinose Honami as she returned to her seat and shook his head.

As mentioned before, he hadn't been surprised that he would enroll at Advanced Nurturing High School.

That wasn't only because the school's advertisements were everywhere. More than that, he'd actually come into contact with a first-year student who would be enrolling that year.

Ichinose Honami was one of them.

If he remembered right, it had happened last year.

As he recalled it, he'd met Ichinose Honami outside a hospital.

At the time, he'd been a little anxious.

He understood the trends of the times and knew clearly enough how the future would probably unfold, yet he still couldn't turn his advantage into wealth and status.

Thanks to light novels, he'd achieved a certain degree of financial freedom and didn't need to worry too much about making ends meet. But compared with the track records of other people who'd transmigrated, his was nothing to write home about.

Forget lying in the laps of beauties and wielding power over the world—he had to think twice even before doing something just to indulge himself.

He'd met Ichinose Honami outside a hospital.

He hadn't been there because he was sick.

He'd gone to the hospital to pay.

He'd gone to cover the medical expenses for a group of people who'd been in a car accident and, against all odds, survived.

He'd gone to do something just to indulge himself.

"..."

If someone had asked him what his goal in life was before he transmigrated, Asakusa Toru would probably have answered without hesitation: "financial freedom."

Money was important. You couldn't get anywhere without it, and with enough money, you could do anything.

Even after transmigrating, he hadn't really changed his mind about that.

But when he realized that this world wasn't the one he'd lived in before, but a crossover world packed with characters from all sorts of series, his thinking suddenly changed.

Financial freedom alone was too boring.

If he'd transmigrated, he should do things he couldn't have done before.

For example, trying to save girls he'd once been unable to reach through a screen; trying to thrash idiots he'd once been unable to hit through a screen; trying to change things that had seemed impossible to change in the stories.

He'd do it just to indulge himself.

To do that, he needed money—a lot of money.

He had no special powers or talents. The only ability an ordinary person like him could rely on was the "power of money."

If ten thousand wasn't enough, then a hundred thousand. If a hundred thousand wasn't enough, then a million. If a million wasn't enough, then ten million.

There had to be some amount that could sway people.

Of course, that wasn't to say that money was needed for everything.

Saving a silver-haired girl who'd slipped and fallen off a cliff in the mountains during summer, for instance, didn't cost much. All he lacked was an absolutely perfect opportunity.

Only by reaching the right place at the right time could you prevent an accident that was bound to happen.

Honestly, that was harder than simply spending money.

But situations like that were rare, and it was difficult for things to line up by chance.

Most of the time, Asakusa Toru could only spend money.

Sometimes he accidentally went too far while beating up human scum and had to pay compensation. Sometimes he needed money to spread the word about the vile deeds of certain scumbags.

But, as expected, the place that needed money most was the hospital.

When it came to suffering, the word "illness" surely took up the biggest share.

Congenital diseases, acquired illnesses, psychological afflictions, incurable conditions.

There were far too many sick people for Asakusa Toru to save them all by himself.

So he'd never even considered helping every patient.

He only helped people he knew and happened to encounter.

For example, a girl who'd suffered a cerebral infarction and lost her ability to speak, left to spend the rest of her life in a hospital bed; a girl left paralyzed all over after an accident, able only to lie in bed; and a good person injured in a tunnel collapse, who'd lost consciousness when their injuries worsened just as the rescue team finally arrived.

There were men as well as women, but since anime seemed to prefer saddling beautiful girls with hardship, the number of girls among them was unexpectedly high.

Just as Asakusa Toru himself had said, in the end, it was nothing more than self-indulgence.

There wasn't much difference between saving others and beating people up. The fundamental purpose of pursuing money was to satisfy himself.

That was exactly why, the moment he got the diary, he threw his money-making plans aside completely and decisively agreed to three years of closed-door education.

The "power of money" definitely couldn't compare to "superpowers." Never mind that the amount he could earn was nowhere near enough to count as the power of money; even if it were, it couldn't hold a candle to a cheat ability.

Let's put aside the question of money versus superpowers and get back to the point.

Last year, he'd been worried about money.

"If only I had money." Those were the words that had slipped out of his mouth back then.

If he had money, he wouldn't have had to support people so stingily. If he had money, he could have swept into the hospital and told them to use the best of everything, that money was no object.

If only he had money.

Even though his bank account still held over a million yen, that was the thought that had truly filled Asakusa Toru's mind at the time.

Light novels brought in money too slowly.

Once again, he had to recognize that clearly.

If he could play the stock market, if he could trade crypto, if he could master the financial markets, then perhaps he wouldn't have to feel so anxious about money.

In fact, if he'd dared to bet all his assets on the key moments he remembered and waited for the wave to carry him upward, that might have worked even better.

But the truth was that in this tangled world, he couldn't use anything from the past as a reference. Even his past understanding of things could be off.

The few major conglomerates that stood above Japan weren't just background elements in a story.

If he tried to use his advantage in information to muscle his way in for a bite of the meat, or even just a sip of the soup, he'd only be swept out coldly.

That son-in-law who'd married into the Toyokawa Group was the best example.

The thought of betting everything in hopes of getting rich overnight, only to be swept out like a stray dog, was something he couldn't accept.

...He was saying too much about irrelevant things.

Anyway, in that state of mind, the person Asakusa Toru had met outside the hospital was Ichinose Honami.

He'd known almost at a glance what kind of state the girl was in.

So he spoke.

"You need money." It wasn't a question. It was a statement.

"Huh?"

"Not much, but still an amount that's hard for you to get your hands on." Ichinose Honami froze, but Asakusa Toru didn't wait for her to get her thoughts in order. He simply continued, "As luck would have it, I happen to be looking for ways to spend money."

"So, how about a deal?"

"Sell me one day of your time," he said.

Only then did Ichinose Honami understand what he meant. She was just about to refuse instinctively when—

A stack of Fukuzawa Yukichis, radiating the aura of immense wealth, appeared in front of her.

"..." She couldn't breathe.

One, ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand... Each Fukuzawa Yukichi was worth ten thousand yen. So this whole stack came to... No, no, however much money he had was his business. It had nothing to do with her.