Some time later, in a luxury apartment building in Beika Town.
Lin Xinyi found the place using the home address listed on "his" driver's license.
If everything went smoothly, this would be his home from now on.
"Looks like 'my' financial situation is even better than I imagined."
Standing in the apartment hallway and looking through the window at the towering Tokyo Tower in the distance, Lin Xinyi could already guess how outrageous the property prices here must be.
He soon found the door number for "his own home" according to the address and walked down the hallway to the door.
He slowly inserted the key and cautiously turned it.
Click. After a crisp sound, the door opened.
"Phew... good. The address matches the documents."
Lin Xinyi let out a small sigh of relief.
Pushing open the door, he cautiously checked the entryway first.
"There's only one pair of men's slippers on the floor."
"The several pairs on the shoe rack are all men's slippers too. They're covered in dust, so they're probably spares."
"Looks like 'I' usually lived alone, and no outsiders had come over recently."
He was afraid that "his own" home might still contain a father, mother, or girlfriend.
If there really were, he had no idea how he was supposed to face those theoretical family members.
After confirming there was no sign of a second resident, Lin Xinyi relaxed considerably once more.
He finally stepped into "his own" home without worry.
The apartment was spacious, and its decor was quite upscale.
Aside from being somewhat filthy and messy due to the original owner's slovenliness, this expensive apartment was more than satisfactory.
"Now, I should carefully investigate information about 'myself.'"
As if investigating a crime scene, Lin Xinyi began carefully searching the apartment for every clue that could help him understand "his own" identity.
The first thing he found was the suicide note left behind by the original owner.
The note sat conspicuously on the bedside table, and its contents were horrifyingly simple:
"I have fallen into the abyss."
"Only death can free me."
It had neither beginning nor end, making it impossible to understand why he had killed himself.
Still, Lin Xinyi tried his best to glean something useful from those two short lines:
"The note doesn't mention any family or friends, nor does it leave them a single word."
"Was it because he knew that no one important to him would ever see this note?"
"Looks like his family and friends weren't around, and his social circle was very small."
That was clearly a tragedy for the original owner.
But it was a good thing for Lin Xinyi.
For an impostor with none of the original owner's memories, the smaller the original owner's social circle, the better.
"But, 'I have fallen into the abyss'?"
"What exactly happened to him?"
"The tone doesn't sound like romantic troubles. Could it have been a problem at work?"
"Or had this guy gotten involved in something illegal or criminal?"
Lin Xinyi vaguely sensed trouble and hurried his search.
When he casually pulled open the drawer of the bedside table holding the suicide note, what lay inside made his heart sink. "This is a Beretta M92F!"
Lin Xinyi stared in astonishment at the black handgun he had just taken from the bedside table.
Beside it was a box of golden bullets, gleaming with the distinctive luster of metal in the sunlight.
"If I remember correctly, Japan is also a country with strict gun control, right?"
"This guy actually kept a handgun and bullets at home?"
"Could he have been some kind of criminal?"
His scalp began to tingle.
But before long, the item beside the handgun made him breathe a huge sigh of relief.
It was a firearms license issued by the Japanese government, proving that the original owner legally possessed the weapon.
"Thank goodness, this gun is legal."
"I hope he was just an ordinary gun enthusiast."
Lin Xinyi temporarily suppressed his doubts and continued rummaging through the cluttered drawer.
Soon, he found something even more important:
It was a badge-style work ID.
It bore Lin Xinyi's ID photo, along with extremely important employment information:
"Name: Lin Xinyi"
"Position: Security Director"
"Yao Bio-Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd."
Clearly, the original owner worked for a biopharmaceutical company.
The work ID also listed the pharmaceutical company's specific address.
"Security Director... what kind of position is that?"
"Do pharmaceutical companies even have positions like that?"
Lin Xinyi had entered the police system immediately after graduation and had never worked for a company.
As an outsider, he assumed that a Security Director was probably some high-ranking position responsible for supervising workplace safety.
And it even had the word "Director" in the title. He had to be management, no matter what.
Looking at it that way, the original owner should have been doing quite well in his career, and most likely had someone backing him up—otherwise, in a society like Japan, where seniority mattered even more, a twenty-four-year-old probably could not have become a manager.
If Lin Xinyi could successfully inherit the original owner's job, he could save himself a great deal of effort.
"But biopharmaceuticals?"
"That has absolutely nothing to do with my field."
Lin Xinyi's head began to ache.
Although forensic medicine and biopharmaceuticals both contained the word "medicine," they were essentially entirely different fields.
He had studied neither biology nor pharmacology, so there was no way he could do this kind of work.
And Security Director sounded like a technical position. Without a certain degree of professional knowledge, he would probably find it difficult to bluff his way through.
"Forget it. I should just resign."
"I probably can't earn this salary."
"Besides, I probably won't need to rely on a salary to get rich."
Lin Xinyi casually tossed the work ID aside and began making calculations in his mind.
The original owner lived in a luxury apartment, so he probably had a substantial amount in savings as well.
All he had to do was sell the apartment, withdraw the savings, and fly straight back to his homeland.
After all, this was more than twenty years ago.
As long as one had money to invest, even pigs could fly.
Working a regular job was out of the question. He could only barely maintain his life by speculating in real estate and stocks.
Lin Xinyi dreamed of getting rich after his rebirth while continuing to rummage through the drawer.
Soon, he found another extremely important item.
It was a Shibishi Bank passbook.
"+892,300.00"
"Gasp... this guy actually had a monthly after-tax income of... 890,000 yen?"
An ordinary six-digit number, printed on a passbook in richly scented ink, could possess a magical power capable of making one happy.
But that joy did not last long, because he immediately saw a string of large minus signs after the plus sign.
They were individual expenditures, and every one of them was enough to make Lin Xinyi, who had lived a frugal life, feel his heart pound.
The original owner lived extravagantly and spent money with shocking abandon.
It was as if he treated every day as the last day of his life.
Lin Xinyi frowned deeply as he flipped through the thin passbook page by page.
And when he reached the final page—
A chilling wind swept through the room, coldness surged over him, and even the sunlight outside the window seemed to dim.
Something utterly terrifying had happened:
"Balance: 8,899.00."
"..."
"Damn it!"
A rare expression of wanting to curse appeared on Lin Xinyi's face.
He lived in an apartment fit for the new generation, earned as much as the old generation, yet did not have enough left in his account for even one Fukuzawa Yukichi.
How could he possibly have the confidence to resign and return home now? How was he supposed to get rich?
Selling the apartment for cash? That was probably impossible too.
Because while flipping through the passbook, Lin Xinyi had already noticed that "he" made one enormous fixed payment on the same date every month.
If he was right, that fixed payment was most likely rent.
In other words, the luxury apartment he currently lived in was probably rented rather than owned.
Not only could he not sell the apartment and run, he had to find a way to scrape together next month's rent as soon as possible.
And the most terrifying thing was—
Lin Xinyi had previously found a Shibishi Bank credit card in "his own" wallet.
Considering the original owner's spending habits, along with this credit card that allowed large loans and advance consumption—
His actual account balance was probably even more horrifying than what the passbook showed.
"Damn it..."
"Don't tell me I have to pay off his credit card too?"
"If that's the case, then wouldn't I have no choice but to..."
Lin Xinyi felt his scalp tingle.
After a long silence, he stiffly picked up the work ID he had discarded like garbage.
"I can only work."
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