Tokyo: Love Begins with Controlling the Rich Girl

Hoshino Yuuki paused, turning around expressionlessly.

Shimada Sho looked at her, remained silent for two seconds, and said, "You don't need to see me off anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"It means I can handle it myself."

Shimada Sho waved the plastic bag in his hand, "I'll take this. You won't need to trouble Aunt Shimahana anymore."

Hoshino Yuuki turned around and looked at Shimada Sho seriously for the first time.

Under the dim corridor lights, her useless brother stood at the door.

He was carrying a plastic bag and a baseball bat, and his expression was unusually calm.

There was none of the previous humility, none of that suffocating sense of inadequacy.

It was as if he was truly confident he could handle everything.

Hoshino Yuuki was unable to adapt to this change for a while.

But her words still carried a barb: "How will you handle this? By robbing people with the baseball bat in your hand?"

"More or less," Shimada Sho replied seriously.

Hoshino Yuuki choked for a moment.

She stared at Shimada Sho for several seconds, then scoffed and walked away without looking back.

The footsteps faded into the distance in the stairwell, eventually disappearing around the corner of the stairs.

Shimada Sho carried the plastic bag back into the house and closed the door.

The previous composure vanished, replaced by bitterness.

"I don't have any money."

He put his things on the dilapidated dining table and plopped back down on the tatami mat.

I am a transmigrator, after all. I can't just starve to death, can I?

The little help my stepmother gave me wasn't even enough to pay the interest.

Moreover, given the scale of the original owner's debts, it's likely that the stepmother would be powerless to help.

Rely on yourself?

His current body has no education, no skills, and no decent job would hire him.

Go to work?

With an hourly wage of 1,000 yen, working eight hours a day, and working non-stop for a month, one could only earn a little over 200,000 yen. It would take almost a year to pay off a debt of 2 million yen.

Those gangsters wouldn't give him a year at all.

Therefore, the only way out is still that system.

"We still need you, young lady!"

Shimada Sho opened the system panel and glanced at the cooldown time.

Eleven hours left.

……

Silent all night.

The next day, Shimada Sho was woken up by his cell phone alarm.

He opened his eyes and glanced at the time: seven in the morning.

[Remaining cooldown time: 3 hours]

"It's still early."

He got up to wash up and heated up the bento box that Hoshino Yuzuki had sent him the night before, and ate it for breakfast.

The taste was so-so, but it filled my stomach.

After finishing his meal, Shimada Sho changed into his school uniform, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and headed out the door.

The original owner was a second-year high school student who transferred to Tokyo a month ago with her stepmother and enrolled in Tokyo Municipal High School in Shinjuku Ward.

An ordinary public school.

He has below-average grades, a timid personality, and a very low profile.

Only recently, due to gangsters blocking the school gate, some bad rumors have started to circulate.

Shimada Sho went downstairs, got on his old bicycle that had been sold many times, and rode towards the school along the route he remembered.

This was his first time attending school in many years, and he was in a foreign country.

It felt strange, but Shimada Sho wasn't opposed to it.

Anyway, now that there's a system in place, going to school is just a formality.

Incidentally, he can also observe whether there are any suitable "roles" to bind to.

Although the system says that you have to wait until the first character's development progress reaches 50% before you can unlock a new slot, it's never a bad thing to look for one in advance.

Shinjuku Ward Higashi High School.

The school buildings are quite old; the exterior walls of the teaching buildings are covered with ivy, and the plastic track on the playground is badly worn.

Shimada Sho walked into the classroom as the school bell rang.

His seat was by the window, a standard protagonist's seat in anime.

Outside the window, the warm sunlight shone on the playground.

Looking outwards, you can see a large, dense forest.

It is said that the forest is over a hundred years old and miraculously survived even the Tokyo bombings.

Shimada Sho sat down, looked out the window, and felt a rare sense of youthful exhilaration.

The first period is a self-study period, without teacher supervision.

The students in the class all seemed very self-disciplined and were engrossed in their studies.

But if you observe more closely, you'll find that they all have their own little tricks.

The boys would occasionally exchange glances, or unfold comics under their desks and reveal lewd smiles.

Some girls secretly put on makeup by hiding behind their textbooks with mirrors and foundation, while others passed notes in private.

"He came today, that mysterious transfer student."

"It's said that he has connections with the Tokyo underworld, and some people have seen him with tattooed men."

"This is really bad... This transfer student, I heard, has some hot upperclassmen who have their eyes on him."

"-_-?"

"You don't know about the rumors between Shimada-kun and the blonde sassy upperclassman? That's the plot of a super exciting younger man/older woman reverse seduction novel!"

……

Shimada Sho was unaware of the rumors surrounding him; he was observing his classmate.

His gaze swept over the girls at the front of the classroom.

Find a suitable target to bind to.

Chapter Five: He, whose younger sister was working

Unfortunately, after looking around, Shimada found very few things that caught his eye.

Many of them have very ordinary looks, and even those who are presentable are heavily made up.

"Isn't it said that Japan is full of JK (high school girl) beauties? Why are they all so ordinary?"

Shimada Sho couldn't help but feel somewhat disappointed.

Although he wasn't picky about the system tasks, the system name at least had the prefix "perfect".

Even if you don't have all-round development in morality, intelligence, physical fitness, aesthetics and labor, and your assets are comparable to Yukine Kamishiro, at least you should be decent-looking, right?

"With all these items in this condition, it's unlikely they'll meet the system's entry standards... Hmm?"

Shimada Sho's surveying gaze suddenly fixed on the right front.

That was the third row from the front in the middle of the classroom.

There was a girl sitting there, looking down at a book.

She had long black hair, and a pair of glasses perched on her delicate nose. She calmly flipped through the papers, then raised her hand to adjust the frame of her glasses, her fair fingers moving like dancing sprites.

The morning sunlight streamed in through the window, falling precisely on the ends of her jet-black hair. A few stray strands were illuminated almost transparently, revealing her fair cheeks and long eyelashes beneath.

Incidentally, it also made the silver-white designer watch on her wrist shine even brighter.

Due to the angle, Shimada Sho couldn't see her exact appearance, but just this watch was enough to dispel all his worries.

"Not all of them are unqualified. This one is quite good, a competition-level female character!"

Shimada Sho's heart warmed instantly.

Seeing that his classmates were all engrossed in their own work, he took the opportunity to nudge the boy in front of him.

"Hey, Takada."

The boy in the front row turned around.

His name is Kenta Takada, and he is the only person the original owner could be considered familiar with at this school.

My seat was right in front of Shimada Sho, and I would occasionally lend him my homework to copy, or we would chat about comics during breaks.

We're called friends, but we're really just ordinary classmates.

But at this moment, Shimada Sho needs information.

"What's wrong, Shimada?" Kenta Takada seemed to be secretly eating something; his cheeks were bulging when he turned around.

Shimada Sho gestured to his right front with his lip, "Do you know who that girl is?"

"Huh?" Kenta Takada glanced in the direction he was pointing, then looked at Sho Shimada as if he'd seen a ghost. "You, you actually gossip about girls?!"

Shimada Sho's sudden questioning completely shattered Takada Kenta's preconceived notions.

In his eyes, Shimada Sho was the kind of insecure man who wouldn't utter a sound even after being hit three times.

When she first came to the class, she would even resist the boys' attempts to approach her.

He noticed Shimada Sho's inferiority complex and sensitivity, and initiated the conversation out of goodwill.

Now, Shimada is actually asking about girls.

Kenta Takada was taken aback. He swallowed the food in his mouth and then asked in an exaggerated tone, "Shimada-kun, you're not longing for romance, are you?"

"Just take it as that." Shimada Sho didn't want to offer any further explanation.

Kenta Takada shook his head. "Then I suggest you find someone else."

"why?"

Kenta Takada sighed, "You're so poor you can't even afford food. If you add Yuki Ayase, who's even poorer than you, to the mix, we'll probably hear news tomorrow about students starving to death in classrooms."

"Huh?" Shimada Sho thought he had misheard.

He glanced down at the cheap bread in his hand, then looked up at the figure sitting quietly behind the desk reading a book.

The luxury watch on her fair wrist seemed like an accessory that was meant to be there.

Others might not recognize that watch, but he certainly did.

The Longines "Docone" collection will have an initial price of no less than 300,000 yen!

In his past life, when he was on the streets, Shimada Sho saw too many people wearing fake watches to show off, and he also saw what kind of temperament people who really wore good watches had.

Without a doubt, this watch is genuine.

Then the problem is coming.

How did a high school girl who can afford to wear an expensive watch to school become associated with the word "poverty"?

Shimada Sho's curiosity was immediately piqued.