Chapter 5: Planning
September 24, Konoha Year 37.
Akaseki finally finished deconstructing the seventh segment of the Immersion scenario...
After the fourth segment, the plot of "Immersion" had grown increasingly difficult to understand, slowing Akaseki's deconstruction. On average, it took him three days to fully deconstruct the memories of a ten-hour segment.
There was no helping it. During the first three years, Hong Yan might have been a loser, but he genuinely had no money and no power to change his circumstances. So even if some of his behavior was downright vile and filled Akaseki with contempt, he could still understand it—losers were like that, after all. This was hardly Akaseki's first time experiencing Immersion from a loser's perspective...
The problem was that, after the fourth year began, the guy actually inherited a substantial fortune from his uncle. Things rapidly took a turn for the worse!
Over the next three years, Hong Yan began squandering his inheritance and stopped working altogether, making his thoughts increasingly unfathomable.
He spent huge sums supporting Su Yan every day, yet still felt empty and lonely, and even began hallucinating...
In just one year, he squandered nearly half his inheritance. Never mind that he never once considered buying Lin Xianxian's freedom—even when he was supporting Su Yan, wasn't the pleasure quarter taking a hefty cut? Why didn't he just give the money to Su Yan directly?
More importantly...
With war still raging across the land, was there really no better use for those three thousand ryo?
Everything leading up to this had established that Hong Yan was deeply affected by the turmoil of war... yet now, he seemed not to care about it at all!
Akaseki was gradually losing the ability to understand him...
And yet the emotions were undeniably real!
That forced him to