Could the Plagiarist Route Work?

During morning classes, Shoichi Kano was still turning over ideas for making money.

The allowance his father normally sent was enough to cover his everyday expenses. But now he had a Special Grade Cursed Spirit at home playing house with him under a Binding Vow. Since she wanted to experience human life, he naturally had to give her a share of the allowance to buy everyday necessities.

That meant the money was clearly no longer enough. What had once lasted a month might now only last half a month.

The fastest way Shoichi Kano could think of to make money was to accept jobs exorcising cursed spirits on the black market. But that would obviously upset Miss Slit-Mouthed Woman, so he could only shelve that plan for now.

What other options did I have?

"Hey, Kano," Junko Hayasaka said, coming over to talk to him on the way to the cafeteria. "Have you read that really popular light novel, A Certain Magical Index? The battles between psychic powers and magic are just incredible!"

"I'm thinking we should hold an Index reading group at the next Kendo Club meeting!"

Shoichi Kano's eyes lit up. Light novels? Right! I could be a plagiarist! I didn't know much about Japanese light novels, but I'd read plenty of Chinese webnovels by authors like X Family's Third Young Master, Heavenly X Potato, and White Sugar Elbow!

It was only early 2006, anyway. They probably hadn't even debuted yet! Wouldn't it be great if I just borrowed their ideas?

The thought of royalties pouring in like a river made Shoichi Kano start swallowing hungrily.

Junko Hayasaka had no idea what was wrong with him. She immediately backed away, afraid his apparent bout of Down syndrome might be contagious.

"Thank you, Junko!" Kano appeared in front of Junko Hayasaka in a flash, his expression solemn. "Seriously, thank you so much!"

"What are you thanking me for?" Junko Hayasaka looked utterly baffled. "And... you were really fast just now!"

How could he not have been? Shoichi Kano had unconsciously poured cursed energy into his legs. To an ordinary person, his movement was practically indistinguishable from teleportation.

"Uh, listen," Shoichi Kano said, breaking into a run toward the classroom. "I'll skip lunch for now. Hayasaka, grab me a couple of buns if you have time! I just remembered something urgent!"

Those classic webnovels came readily to Shoichi Kano, who had been from Huaxia in his previous life, so he found an empty exercise book and started writing. Even if he couldn't create something original, surely he could stitch things together!

And so, he dug out the negative-emotion system from a certain Elbow's "XX, Spare Me!" and stitched it together with the worldbuilding of classic webnovels like "X Luo" and "Dragon X." The result was a protagonist who could grow stronger simply by offending people and extracting their negative emotions.

"Third stage of Dou Qi," "Don't look down on a young man just because he's poor," "Fortunes change with the passing decades," "Cassell College"... he stitched all those elements together, producing three golden opening chapters packed with showing off and putting people in their place!

He became so engrossed in writing that he failed to notice anything amiss when Ms. Kanroji, his Japanese language teacher, walked up beside him.

The young teacher, whose voice was as soft as a lamb's, took the notebook from his hands and skimmed a few pages with a smile. "It looks like you really enjoy writing fiction, Kano. But you shouldn't be writing this during class. Save it for afterward!"

With that, she returned the notebook to Shoichi Kano.

Kano breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment, he had thought his grand venture would die before it even began.

Fortunately, that little interruption from Ms. Kanroji soon passed.

He was also a little puzzled as to why he hadn't seen his best buddy, Hiroshi Yamakawa, today.

Shoichi Kano tried asking the other students as well. He was neither the most nor the least popular person in class, just one of the inconspicuous people somewhere in the middle, so some classmates were still willing to answer his questions.

Unfortunately, he learned nothing useful from them. Someone said Hiroshi Yamakawa had looked unwell just before school ended yesterday, and his lips had been a little purple. Perhaps he was sick.

Luckily, Japanese class was followed by Mr. Tanaka's math class. Mr. Tanaka was also the homeroom teacher for their first-year Class A, so he would probably know more.

Sure enough, Mr. Tanaka told him, "Hiroshi Yamakawa called in sick this morning. He said his heart felt uncomfortable, so he went to the hospital."

Then Mr. Tanaka smiled at Shoichi Kano. "I hear the two of you are good friends. You can visit him at the University of Tokyo Affiliated Hospital after school. He should be there."

"Thank you, sir." Shoichi Kano bowed slightly, his manners impeccable!

When school ended, Miss Slit-Mouthed Woman came to pick him up just as she had yesterday. Only, her outfit...

Her long black hair fell smoothly like a waterfall, covering her left eye. Below it was a white disposable medical mask. A blue-and-white striped scarf was tied around her neck, and she wore a white dress shirt beneath a navy women's suit vest, with a matching fitted uniform skirt, white patterned stockings, and pointed white heels with red soles.

The outfit left only her hands exposed, but the tight fabric showed off every curve of her figure, leaving Shoichi Kano staring.

Fortunately, the utility pole behind her was covered in little advertisements. To everyone else, Shoichi Kano merely looked engrossed in a sale flyer rather than like a lunatic staring blankly into thin air.

After about fifteen seconds, he finally realized it. Wasn't this fucking outfit from the first lewd drawing of the Slit-Mouthed Woman I'd done in that little notebook?!

She had looked through his notebook again!

"Isn't this the wrong way?" After they had walked a little farther, the Slit-Mouthed Woman noticed something was off and casually asked.

Shoichi Kano held her hand with one hand and pressed his phone to his ear with the other, pretending to make a call. "Uh... a classmate of mine isn't feeling well. I thought I'd visit him at the University of Tokyo Affiliated Hospital first."

When Shoichi Kano reached the reception desk, a few polite words with the nurse handling patient inquiries were enough to learn which room Hiroshi Yamakawa was in.

The Slit-Mouthed Woman, meanwhile, felt that the hospital was filled with the scent of death. She found it rather pleasant.

"Let's go," Shoichi Kano said in a mosquito-soft voice, gently tugging the cuff of her dress shirt.

Only then did the Slit-Mouthed Woman snap out of her reverie and follow closely behind him.

"Sir! Sir, you have to hang on!" The two of them were still strolling down the corridor when a group of medical staff rushed past, pushing a wheeled hospital bed toward the operating room.

The man lying on the bed was almost entirely covered in blood, as though he had just been rescued from a car crash. Although the medical staff had given him extensive emergency treatment, it did little to conceal his blood-soaked, wretched state.

"That... that woman..." As the bed passed beside Shoichi Kano, the man lying on it struggled to raise his hand and point at the Slit-Mouthed Woman next to Kano. Then, as though he had exhausted every last ounce of strength, his arm crashed heavily onto the bed and would not rise again.

"The patient's hallucinating!" The staff pushing the bed looked anxious. They had glanced in the direction he was pointing, but there was no woman there. "Faster! Hurry!"

People on the verge of death could see cursed spirits...

Shoichi Kano finally felt the full weight of that rule.

Hiroshi Yamakawa's room wasn't hard to find. The chubby boy lay there with a face as white as paper and lips an unhealthy bluish-purple. His parents were both at his side, their faces filled with unease.

"Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Yamakawa." Shoichi Kano placed a few small gifts on the bedside table, then took the notes he had made in class out of his schoolbag. "I'm Hiroshi's classmate, Shoichi Kano. I heard he was sick, so I came to visit."

Never visit someone empty-handed. That was a social courtesy Kano had learned in China in his previous life.

Hiroshi Yamakawa's parents had never met Kano. They had only heard their son mention him, so they knew very little about him. But Kano's polite manner, neither servile nor overbearing, made a good impression on them today, and they repeatedly praised him as a good boy.

The conversation soon shifted to Hiroshi Yamakawa's condition.

"He started complaining that his heart felt uncomfortable when he came home from school yesterday afternoon," Hiroshi Yamakawa's mother, Michiko, explained. "We gave him some medicine, but it didn't help, so we had to bring him to the hospital."

Hiroshi Yamakawa's father, Takeo, added, "But the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong either. They ran a lot of tests, but none of them showed any illness. Still, Hiroshi really is feeling unwell."

"So there's nothing else the doctors can do. They're planning to keep him in the hospital for observation for a while."

Takeo Yamakawa continued rambling about something, but Shoichi Kano didn't register a single word.

Because the moment he channeled cursed energy into his eyes and opened up his vision, he saw the source of the problem!

A large amount of unfamiliar purple cursed energy was wrapped around the chubby boy. Like tentacles, it pierced his chest, drawing something out and sending it somewhere else. This was the real reason Hiroshi Yamakawa's heart felt uncomfortable.

That raised a question:

Should I help him?