Chapter 23: The Truth Revealed by Oil

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Translator: Soafp

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I don't know where this place is.

All I know is that it's just me and Sugawara-senpai facing each other.

But her face had changed so drastically that she was almost unrecognizable.

“Senpai… those burns—”

Her once smooth features had melted and warped like red-black wax dripping down, forming grotesque ridges and hollows. From the torn flesh, one of her lips had curled back, exposing her pale gums in a horrifying sight. She had lost her eyelids, and her eyes, unable to close, reflected a lifeless, unfocused glare, wet with exudate.

“Fukagawa-kun… how am I supposed to live from now on? With a face like this?”

“L-Live…? Just like you've been doing—”

“Just like I've been doing? If I show this face, I'll be fired from every job. Everyone else, the teachers—they all look at me differently now.”

“If it's the cost of reconstructive surgery, I can cover part of it. That way, you could get back to how you were. I'm sure of it.”

Sugawara-senpai shouted with a voice I'd never heard from her before.

“EVEN A DUMB PERSON LIKE ME UNDERSTANDS! I KNOW I CAN NEVER GO BACK TO HOW I WAS!!”

Thick streams of tears ran down her burnt, distorted cheeks.

“My grades are bad, I'm bad at sports, clumsy, weird personality, no money, no social skills—everything about me is terrible! The only thing I could call a strength was my face!! And now… now—!!”

As I listened to Sugawara-senpai sobbing, collapsing to the ground, I couldn't find the words to comfort her.

“What's the point of living like this? It's a living hell…”

Even if classmates ignored her, if she lived on one meal a day, gave up her phone and hobbies, the despair wouldn't have reached this point. Because she still had hope that a little effort might make things better. But these burns had shattered all her hard work. Even the thread-thin hope she had was cruelly cut away.

(That's why she tried to kill herself.)

She could only see a future full of pain. She felt her worth had been completely erased. She believed that closing her eyes forever was the only path to peace.

(Still… I have to do something.)

I'm the only one who can understand Sugawara-senpai's pain. I'm the only one who can prevent her from taking her life.

I will create a reason for her to live.

“Senpai… please, tell me how this happened.”

“…It's because of debt collectors.”

“Debt collectors?”

“There was someone who lent my father a huge sum. But even after years, he hadn't been repaid, so out of resentment, he broke into our house at night, poured gasoline, and set it on fire. Some of it splashed onto my face…”

Surviving alone was a miracle. Not that she could feel that way herself.

At the same time, it finally made sense why Sugawara-senpai, despite working three part-time jobs, hadn't been able to eat properly.

“You were in trouble with money because of debt, huh?”

“…Yes. Every month, I earn hard and give almost everything to my father to pay off the debt. But he… he spent it all on gambling.”

“Gambling…”

“He said it was business debt. But it wasn't—it was gambling debt. Even the debt collectors were deceived by him.”

Sugawara-senpai had been repaying, thinking she was helping, but in reality, she was just funding her father's gambling.

“Do you know what's laughable? The day the debt collectors set the fire, my father wasn't home. I was alone. He was out gambling… so he was unharmed.”

“…Do you hate your father?”

“Of course I do. He isn’t a father. I should've run away and lived on my own! No… a person like that should've been stabbed with a knife!!”

In her eyes burned deep anger. Perhaps, if she had killed herself, she might have even killed her father first before jumping.

I knelt on one knee and gently placed my hand on her shoulder.

“Senpai…I'll save you somehow.”

“…Really?”

“Yes. Trust me.”

“Can I… really trust you?”

“Yes.”

I already knew this was a “nightmare.”

“I can see the future.”

---

I jolted awake.

I roughly wiped away the tears that had fallen without noticing and kicked the bed to stand. I rushed to my desk to open my notebook before the memory faded.

(This nightmare has solved most of my questions.)

Sugawara-senpai's father had a severe gambling addiction, which she hadn't known about. The creditor, angry at not being repaid, tried to kill him by setting the house on fire, but the only victim ended up being her. In the aftermath, she learned that all the money she had earned had gone to her father's gambling.

(She suffered irreparable physical and mental wounds.)

If I were in her place, I would have been left only with despair. All my efforts rendered meaningless, the future closing in darkness. Staying sane would have been almost impossible.

(Judging from the summer uniform, this was before September.)

I considered the possibility that my involvement somehow caused the arson, but it seemed unlikely. Whether I were there or not, the creditor's resentment wouldn't change. If anything, being closer to Sugawara-senpai allowed me to hear the truth directly, even if only in a dream.

(From the flow, it seems she attempted suicide after the burns.)

Avoiding suicide resulted in the arson incident—this possibility couldn't be ruled out. However, it makes more sense to interpret the arson as a trigger for the suicide. My “nightmares” don't necessarily follow chronological order.

(The question now is how to prevent the arson.)

In this nightmare, I heard her story after the fact. Unlike with Nodoka Komori, it's hard to know exactly when it will happen. Reporting the future event to the police would be useless—they wouldn't act.

(The best solution is to not be home before the fire—but how?)

Even if I told Sugawara-senpai about my precognition, she wouldn't believe me. Unlike with Nodoka, this isn't just two days of commuting together. Asking her to spend months with me every night is impossible.

(I guess I'll have to lure her with money.)

I couldn't say, “Don't go home, the house will burn, here's money.” I needed a plausible reason she could accept.

I pondered, arms crossed, when suddenly—

Ping—

A notification from my phone. Just a message from the stock app about scheduled server maintenance. Nothing important.

(Ah… that's it.)

There's some risk. It's not guaranteed she'll accept. But it's worth a try.

I hurried to get ready for school.

---

During lunch, I bought the usual meal ticket and headed straight to Class 2-4. I handed Sugawara-senpai ten thousand yen and quickly pulled her to the emergency stairs.

I started casually, trying to act normal. Small talk about part-time jobs, the manga I lent her, today's set meal—slowly, she was warming up, joking occasionally, though still a little cold.

“Um… senpai, if I introduced a job with good conditions, would you take it?”

“Job? That's sudden. Well… it depends on the work. Pay comes first, but I won't do something I can't, or anything illegal.”

“Not at all. Here's the pay for starters.”

I opened the calculator app and showed her the numbers. Sugawara-senpai stared at the screen, mouth half open.

“W-what… you'd pay this much? That's more than all my part-time jobs combined… more than double…”

All her jobs were minimum wage or slightly higher, and as a high schooler, there's a cap to how much she could earn. This amount was equivalent to a new employee's salary.

“And meals are included—dinner and breakfast.”

“That's very tempting… but are you sure it's legal work I can handle?”

“Yes. It's work you can definitely do. Legally, you won't break any laws.”

I might risk breaking rules myself, but she wouldn't report me anywhere. That's what I trusted.

“But wait… if dinner and breakfast are included, that means you'd work overnight and come back in the morning?”

“Yes, that's right. But it's not a shady place. Office work. Just that, because of the time difference with the US, the shifts are at night.”

“The US? Hmm… high schoolers can legally work overnight?”

“That's… okay if you keep it quiet.”

I grinned.

“Because I want to hire you, senpai.”

“…Huh? You, want to hire me?”

“Yes. You've been curious about where my money comes from, right?”

This time, I opened the stock app and showed my portfolio. The funds were displayed clearly.

“Y-yo… all this is your money? This isn't fake, right?”

“Yes. It's all stocks I manage. Mostly US stocks, so they move at night in Japan. But I want to sleep during that time. Staying up all night is unhealthy.”

Well, I wasn't really staying up all night. The key was convincing Sugawara-senpai—lies were fine if they served that purpose.

“I want you to come here five nights a week—and monitor the US stock market at night for me.”