Chapter 4
The investment contest sponsored by the Ratzinger Institute of Economics.
It is an investment contest held in virtual space, where the securities market prepared in the virtual space is almost indistinguishable from the actual market. There are companies, financial results, dividends, and sometimes unexpected accidents, mergers, or bankruptcies. The only things linked to reality are the foreign exchange market, the interbank interest rate market, various energy markets, and the lunar time axis.
The contest is held over half a year, with approximately 20,000 participants at any given time—and a total of 100,000 people—receiving a hypothetical ten million Mool to trade for only sixty days at their preferred timing.
Participation qualification adopts an invitation system given only to those sequentially selected by the Institute of Economics or sponsoring securities companies. Therefore, among those invited in the very early stages, there are many who have already finished trading and whose results are finalized.
Investment results are published and updated in real-time. The current first place is a participant with the handle name “Mr. Troche,” with over forty-five million Mool on the nineteenth day of trading.
Since the institute’s guide states that several big-shot professional investors are participating for fun, speculation was flowing on the SNS prepared for the contest that Mr. Troche was a big-shot fund manager or someone from the proprietary trading department of an investment bank.
It was right around the time I finished gathering that much information at the morning breakfast table, absentmindedly eating the ham and eggs Lisa made, that I spilled coffee on my knee.
“I don’t even feel like warning you. Did you burn yourself?”
“…Yeah.”
I wiped it off haphazardly with the cloth handed to me, and even begrudging the time to return the cloth to the table, I kept looking at the terminal.
“Hal!”
“Gah!”
Lisa’s loud voice finally brought me back to my senses.
“Is the burn okay?”
Lisa is looking at me with a smile.
While my heart pounded so hard I could tell without putting my hand to my chest, I finally realized I was still holding the cloth and handed it to Lisa.
“So, the burn?”
“Huh? Oh, it’s fine…”
“Whatever you do, do it after you eat.”
Clack clack clack, the sound of hitting tableware brought me back to reality from the screen that had drawn my gaze yet again. Since time spent arguing was also precious, I shoveled the rest into my cheeks and spoke through the gaps.
“Goffohan…”
“…Good grief.”
Lisa spoke as if exasperated, and in the corner of my vision, I could just barely see her clearing away the dishes I had finished eating.
The investment contest is aligned with the lunar time axis and opens for the same amount of time as the Lunar Securities Exchange. In other words, if I devote my whole heart and soul to this contest, I will have no time to conduct real trading.
However, since my assets are 70,000 Mool and the first prize for this contest is 200,000 Mool, I feel it pays more to focus on this. And more importantly, there was the fact that the winner and top placers would receive headhunting offers from Schrödinger Street.
Rather than dragging out losses in real trading that isn’t going well, it was clearly a better policy to immerse myself in a contest where I could trade with imaginary money and receive massive returns.
Besides, looking around the dedicated SNS, it seems that although the stocks traded within the contest are fictional companies, their price movements and behavior are almost the same as actual stocks. The authenticity is uncertain, but some idle and kind person had uploaded a correspondence table between the fictional stocks in the contest and real stocks.
Indeed, looking at the graphs plotting the price movements, they seem strikingly similar. For the time being, I downloaded that table and saved it. Then, trying to grope for my coffee cup without taking my eyes off the screen for a moment, the back of my hand was slapped.
“That’s enough.”
Scolded by Lisa, I picked up the coffee cup, shrugged my neck as if hiding, and sipped.
“Good grief… Ah, right. Hagana.”
I was about to return immediately to the terminal, but I got snagged hard by the mention of Hagana at the end.
In my head, which had been full of the investment contest, the events of yesterday revived.
“I won’t be here today because I’m helping with a university lecture. Make sure to eat lunch properly, okay?”
“…”
Since no reply was heard, I glanced sideways to see Hagana with her usual sullen face, looking away and munching on bread.
“Your answer?”
Lisa’s smile. Hagana’s mouth chewing the bread stopped, and she turned to look at Lisa as if she hated it.
Apparently, whether or not to eat lunch is something worth rebelling against Lisa over.
That said, if I’m immersed in trading, I also don’t have time to be eating lunch. Hagana is seemingly absorbed in proofs of mathematical theorems or whatever, so I understand well not wanting to be disturbed.
However, whether Lisa allows it is another problem entirely.
“I’ll make lunch beforehand. Eat it properly. Okay. Your answer?”
“…”
Hagana didn’t answer, and then, as if giving in to Lisa’s smile, she finally said just one word.
“Why… just me.”
She doesn’t even look at me, but I can understand well enough that she’s implicitly referring to me.
Lisa, of course, understands immediately too.
“Just because Hal doesn’t eat, that doesn’t become a reason for you not to eat.”
“…”
Hagana, who did such forceful haggling at the clothing store, is like a child in front of Lisa.
Thinking such things, I was surfing the sea of the net mostly absentmindedly, but I suddenly noticed Lisa turning toward me.
“But, Hal will eat too, of course, right?”
Until now, she never disturbed me when I was immersed in trading, but for some reason, she says such a thing only today.
When I looked at Lisa, I was met with her usual smile.
It’s a nasty smile.
“…Will there be an additional charge?”
When I threw the question out of desperation, Lisa sighed with an exasperated face.
“I won’t do that. You’re in your growth period, so eat properly every day. You won’t grow taller.”
“Shut up…”
I’m not that short compared to others my age, but if anything, I’m on the smaller side.
When I replied with a groan, Lisa turned to Hagana this time and whispered something in her ear.
Then, Hagana flinched as if some important secret had been guessed.
And she looked down, pursing her lips tightly.
“Is that okay?”
Asked by Lisa, Hagana seemed to struggle for a while, but eventually shook her head as if yielding.
What on earth did she say? I thought, but since it was blatantly obvious where Hagana’s gaze was directed when she looked up slightly, I guessed it immediately. Or rather, after looking painfully at Lisa’s, she was looking at her own chest. It seemed she was worried about being small.
Well, Lisa certainly has quite a bit, I thought, trying to look that way, when I realized Lisa was looking at me.
“Hm?”
“Ah, whoa… W-What?”
“What? You’re panicking…”
Lisa tilted her head slightly, cleared her throat lightly, and said:
“So, with that said, both of you eat lunch properly. However, I won’t allow you to take it to your room and eat lazily. Eat it properly, right here. Understood?”
With those words from Lisa, I understood the reason why she was persistently telling us to eat lunch only today. While saying time will solve things and whatnot, she’s still meddling big time after all.
When I looked at Lisa with something resembling exasperation and mental fatigue, Lisa winked back at me.
Indeed, Hagana shouldn’t have looked at me properly even once since I came into the living room.
Besides, if we could make up quickly, the possibility of borrowing Hagana’s power would emerge.
I should learn from the brilliant investors who boast that for the sake of making money, they would even team up with their parents’ killer.
I looked back at Lisa and shrugged my shoulders lightly.
“Well then, that’s that.”
Lisa clapped her hands and started cleaning up.
While looking at the terminal, I stole a glance at Hagana in the corner of my vision.
Hagana remained sullen as usual, munching on bread as if I didn’t exist.
There were no particularly heavy restrictions on the investment methods for the contest. It seemed no different from an ordinary stock market.
In addition to normal buying and selling, you could utilize “buying on margin”—taking on debt to buy stock—and “short selling”—borrowing stock to sell it off. Complex transactions like futures, index trading, and options were unavailable, but since I don’t really dabble in those normally anyway, it’s no problem.
There was no limit to the number of trades per day, and the commission fee was 0.1% of the transaction amount for every trade.
The only special rule was that participants could only trade for sixty days from the start of their trading period. Furthermore, when the sixtieth day arrived, it didn’t mean all positions were automatically settled to calculate the result; rather, at that point, you simply lost the ability to execute any further trades. If you didn’t finish buying and selling everything by the sixtieth day, the stocks you bought would remain as they were, continuing to fluctuate in value.
In other words, among those who started trading right after the contest opened and had already finished their sixty days, there were likely some who were making a killing due to subsequent market fluctuations, and others who were suffering massive losses.
This was probably a concession to those who specialized in trading on a slightly longer time axis, rather than an investment style like mine that involved frequently buying and selling many times within a single day.
However, I have to be careful here, I thought. If I carelessly left myself holding some strange stock, I wouldn’t be able to do anything even if it crashed afterward. Conversely, even if I didn’t catch up to the top profits by the sixtieth day, I could hold onto a promising stock and hope for it to rise later.
That said, in my case, if things continued as they were, the investment contest would likely end the moment my sixty days of trading were up, so I didn’t view this as a personal problem.
I merely intended to be careful in order to utilize the situations of others.
Also, after fishing through information published on the contest’s dedicated SNS, it appeared that the virtual exchange had good days and bad days, just like the real one. There were days when the board went down across the board, and days when it went up.
Looking at the flow since the contest began, the atmosphere felt like a gentle bull market overall.
Looking at the SNS, the majority investment style seemed to be: wait for a moment when the overall market condition looked good to start investing, trade fully for sixty days, and then bet everything on a stock that looked likely to rise at the very end, praying for appreciation.
For guys who thought, “The longer I can trade, the bigger the profit,” that was probably the correct method. For a human like me who could literally only interact with the market for sixty days, this point seemed disadvantageous, but there was also the advantage of being able to observe the surroundings before acting.
Particularly because this was a virtual exchange, unlike real trading, you couldn’t tell how things worked in the opening game.
Right now, some of the leisurely and kind-hearted participants were gathering various data and publishing it.
According to them, those called in during the opening phase were mostly the long-term investment style types, and as the contest moved into the second half, it seemed that people with active trading styles were being called up.
Since I am the epitome of that style, I suppose I was called up only when the remaining time became barely sufficient.
Besides, truthfully, I don’t care much about the “atmosphere” of the market.
It’s definitely a problem when nothing moves at all, but otherwise, I don’t care if it goes up or down.
If the atmosphere is such that the whole market is dropping, I find things that have dropped too far, pick them up cheap, and sell them either within that day or the next day when everyone has cooled down. If the whole market is rising, I just ride the wave.
Though there are countless trading methods in the world, I conducted my trading with that simple strategy as my axis.
Up until now, I had made profit like an idiot doing that.
So, I would just do the same this time.
…Is what I told myself to act tough, but because I’m calm, I can see the reality.
“…There’s no way it’ll go that smoothly…”
I muttered that to myself alone in front of the terminal.
Once I started trading, the sixty days would begin, no questions asked. I didn’t have much time to hesitate, yet I hesitated and couldn’t press the transaction start button.
If this contest represented reality fairly accurately, then doing the same thing would likely result in the same outcome.
There was no guarantee the contest would be held again, and even if it was, I didn’t know if I would be called next time. If that were the case, the chance to be headhunted by Schrödinger Street along with the prize money might disappear forever.
Thinking that, I couldn’t make a careless move.
So, grinding my teeth, I watched the virtual market start moving at the same time as the real market.
“But, what am I going to do at this late hour?”
I groaned, sitting cross-legged in my usual fixed position.
“Even if you say a new method…”
There was the matter with Hagana, but I didn’t know if I could get her cooperation, and it was doubtful whether Hagana even had that ability in the first place.
What I had to consider was, in the end, whether I could manage something with my own power.
However, staring at the ceiling and recalling the investment methods I had seen and heard so far, it didn’t look like I could hope for any new discoveries now. Still, to organize my thoughts, I opened a text editor and began to type.
Stock trading investment methods can be broadly divided into three categories.
The first is an investment method based on the extremely obvious fact that since stock is ownership of a company, the stock of companies doing well will rise, and the stock of companies doing poorly will fall. You investigate financial statements that detail a company’s performance, or research the products that company makes to invest. In the sense that you are betting on the foundation of the company, this investment method is called “Fundamentals.”
The second attempts to gain profit solely from stock price movements, without caring about fundamentals. Specifically, a plot of stock prices on a graph is called a “chart,” and there is a method of trading by following the movements of that chart. You analyze the charts of countless past stocks and predict things like, “When it takes this shape, the price tends to rise,” or “When it takes this shape, a crash is waiting.” As the name implies, it is called “Chart Analysis” or Technical Analysis.
The third is an investment method that defiantly claims that since stock price movements are random, humans cannot predict them. It asserts that sweating to investigate corporate performance, or analyzing charts with bloodshot eyes all night to choose a stock with perfection, is all useless. Scholars who believe in this theory brandish statistical results stating that even if you let a monkey throw darts at a piece of paper with company names written on it and buy the stocks it hits by chance, the investment results don’t change much from other methods. Since they claim stock price movements are random, they are called “Random Walkers.”
In my case, it was a mix of the best parts of those three.
I watch company information carefully, predict from the trajectory of stock price movements, and since I still don’t know what the stock price will do, I rely on my gut instinct to trade in the end.
At first, it went fearfully well, and I even thought I might be a genius.
However, there were countless times when something I bought with absolute confidence went down, or something I frantically let go of because I thought it was dangerous went up endlessly.
Since I was making a profit overall, I thought my investment method was correct, but when the overall movement becomes sluggish, a fundamental doubt rears its head.
Is what I’m doing actually correct?
Is mixing the best parts of three investment methods actually meaningless, and would it have been better to master just one?
My worry and hesitation were, in short, that.
That is why, when I heard Hagana had a talent for mathematics, I felt the possibility of a fourth investment method.
Predicting the future using mathematics is common in physics.
For example, if you go to see the operation page of the orbital elevator, there is a forecast of where, when, and how much of the debris flying around the Earth will hit the orbital elevator, displaying the time required for operation and the danger level. What the Space Agency predicts is the Earth orbit of debris larger than the tip of a thumb; if anything too large has a possibility of collision, they smash it with a laser or make it fall to Earth. So far, not a single major accident or mistake has occurred.
They can grasp the number of thumb-sized debris moving at tens of kilometers per second in satellite orbit—numbering in the tens of thousands—and predict their movements perfectly.
If they can use such advanced calculation methods, there is no way they can’t predict stock price movements.
The people who hold such beliefs are called Quantitative Analysts, or “Quants.”
If Hagana’s talent is outstanding, and if I can imitate the investment methods of Quants, which normally require going to graduate school to learn…
I think that, but maybe it really was just a pipe dream.
Both in the sense of Hagana being able to understand those things, and in the sense of Hagana cooperating with me.
It was after I had used up the whole morning intently reading pages considering whether there were any clever loopholes in virtual trading.
Remembering Lisa’s instructions, I stood up and found a wrapped sandwich placed on the table.
“I’ll go to the bathroom first…”
I poured the remaining coffee from the maker into a cup, set it in the microwave, and headed for the toilet.
Ten Mool a day with three meals included is definitely cheap.
After finishing my business and washing my hands, I went out into the living room thinking “good grief,” and my feet stopped dead.
At exactly the same time, Hagana was just entering the living room.
“…”
“…”
Surprised by each other’s presence, we averted our eyes and pretended not to see each other.
However, Hagana sat at the table first, and I let out a groan of “Ugh” in the back of my throat.
While thinking that I wasn’t hung up on yesterday’s events, a sense of aversion had somehow been constructed.
For the time being, I took the long way to the microwave and picked up the heated coffee cup.
Right nearby, Hagana was eating a sandwich in silence, but she wouldn’t even glance at me.
Besides, I heard from Lisa that the forceful haggling at the clothing store yesterday was apparently Hagana’s way of saying thanks, but I can’t help but think that if anything, Hagana is the one who should be apologizing.
And yet, from Hagana’s silent atmosphere, I can clearly feel anger.
Are you saying it’s my fault for not guessing? I want to ask. Hagana really has a princess temperament; maybe she can’t communicate properly.
I shrugged lightly, sipped my coffee, and walked toward the table to take a sandwich to the window to eat.
It was at that moment I noticed Lisa’s terminal placed unnaturally on the sink; it was powered on, and the pinhole camera for video calls was aimed squarely at the table.
She goes that far…?
I was inwardly exasperated, but I honestly had to bow my head to her meddlesomeness.
Besides, taking a deep breath and thinking calmly, continuing a relationship like this while living under one roof was depressing.
Since it was a small space, we would run into each other often—at the toilet, the bath, or for some small thing—and waiting out the awkward silence every time would be a hassle.
I believe I am not at fault, and that Hagana is the one in the wrong, but I decided that this was the place to show my magnanimity as a man.
Coffee cup in hand, I sat at the table. I was positioned diagonally from Hagana’s seat, the theoretically farthest location. The sandwiches were politely piled on a single plate, placed in the center of the table. I took one and bit into it. As expected of Lisa’s homemade cooking, the ingredients were very mature. It had tuna, vegetables, and beans, with only a token amount of low-fat meat sandwiched in.
Before Hagana could eat half with her small mouth, I finished my first one.
Licking my fingers and drinking some coffee, I reached for the second one.
It was at that timing that I spoke to Hagana.
“Are you fine without a drink?”
I intended to choose something harmless, but Hagana didn’t even raise her gaze.
“Shall I pour you some coffee?”
I spoke again, but Hagana showed not a fragment of a reaction.
It was a refreshing level of ignoring.
Even though I walked over to meet her halfway, she seemed to have absolutely no intention of conceding.
While thinking, Why do I have to be the one to humble myself? since I had already spoken, I decided to go all in.
“Hey.”
When I said it with a slightly changed tone of voice, Hagana reacted sensitively.
Even if she was ignoring me, she couldn’t close her ears.
Hagana’s hand stopped eating, and I connected my words there.
“I heard about yesterday from Lisa.”
“…”
Hagana didn’t reply and didn’t raise her gaze.
“It was meant to be thanks, right?”
To my question, Hagana still didn’t reply.
However, she did resume eating the sandwich. Moreover, the speed was faster than before.
“How should I put it… I didn’t know, so I said what I thought… It’s not like I wasn’t grateful that you haggled for me or anything…”
Why am I stuck making excuses like this? I thought, but I intended to choose the best possible words to break the deadlock.
However.
“Shut up.”
Hagana spat out a single phrase.
“…”
I was mostly dumbfounded and stared intently at Hagana.
Hagana was staring fixedly at the table, as if she had found insults written about her on it.
Then, after a while, she started eating the sandwich again.
The speed was even faster than before.
It was obvious she was angry.
“…No…”
While taken aback, I felt something like a massive premonition.
A few moments from now, blood will rush to my head. I muttered in my chest like a weather forecast.
That’s how unreasonable Hagana’s behavior was.
“I don’t get it.”
“I said shut up.”
Whoosh. I felt the hair around my temples stand on end.
“Hah? What do you mean ‘shut up’? I got kicked by you out of nowhere, and I’m still being humble here, so what is that?”
Hagana wouldn’t try to raise her gaze.
Her hand eating the sandwich had, as expected, stopped.
I took a deep breath to suppress the urge to throw the coffee cup in my hand.
But my anger wouldn’t subside either.
Glaring at Hagana, I said:
“Originally speaking, isn’t it your fault for haggling in such a crazy way?”
According to Lisa’s defense, it was the result of Hagana trying her absolute best in her own way, but if anything was forgiven as long as there was no ill intent, there would be no hardship in the world.
However, Hagana ate the rest of the sandwich without replying, then stood up from the chair.
Then, looking at me with eyes of anger and contempt, she said this:
“You don’t even work.”
At those words, I forgot my anger for an instant and asked back.
“Huh?”
“Did you steal money from your Mommy when you ran away from home? Is that why you act like a rich kid?”
I can tell Hagana’s words contain far too clear a poison.
But the words were so unexpected that I couldn’t even get angry.
“Without even working, surfing the net every day… and then, and then, just because you paid the interest, who do you think you are?”
Taken aback, I stared back at Hagana.
Without even working?
“We are living with all our might. We are different from someone like you who was born on the Moon.”
That is the one phrase I least want to hear from Earth immigrants.
Hagana’s words came out in rapid succession.
“Lisa is too kind. I don’t understand why she harbors a guy like you.”
And she tried to say something further, but her emotions seemed to run ahead, leaving her unable to speak. Hagana frowned painfully, turned away, and abruptly left the table.
“Ah, hey wait—”
I instinctively tried to stop her, but Hagana isn’t the type to look back.
Just like at the clothing store, Hagana left the living room without looking back even once.
Shortly after, there was the sound of the room door slamming shut. Once again, I was left behind on the spot, stunned.
However, the difference from the clothing store was that it wasn’t a situation where I had absolutely no clue what had happened.
Hagana thinks she was bought with money to come to the Moon, and ended up saddled with debt even at the place she ran away to. On top of that, she lamented that even if she taught the children to study with her math ability, she couldn’t solve their realistic problems.
From Hagana’s perspective, I, who stayed in the church all day glued to a terminal and refused the part-time job introduced by Lisa, must have looked like a piece of trash who ran away from home just to play around. That would be the very model of an idiot born and raised on the Moon, whose brain had gone soft due to low gravity.
Now that I understood that, I could somewhat understand Hagana’s harshness toward me.
The anger was long gone.
However, that didn’t mean the problem was solved.
For instance, was I going to knock on her door now and plead through the door that it was a misunderstanding? Was I going to say, “Actually, I’m making a killing in stock investment, I’m not playing on the net, please don’t misunderstand”?
Even if I said that, I didn’t think Hagana would smoothly open the door and say, “Is that so? I’m sorry.” Even if I were in Hagana’s position, I think it would probably be impossible.
Everything is timing. You cannot undo what has happened. I have learned that many times in stock trading.
I scratched my head and sighed.
I leaned my body limply against the backrest, then looked toward the terminal on the sink.
I don’t think she’s spying from somewhere, and maybe she just left the power on without actually recording anything. Considering Lisa’s personality, it fits better to think of it as a threat mixed with a bit of playfulness.
Still, I looked toward that camera and stuck out my lower lip.
“What am I supposed to do now?”
Naturally, no reply came from the terminal.
I sighed once more and looked up at the ceiling.
Because of what happened with Hagana, and because I ultimately couldn’t find a clever method, I was aimlessly gazing at the trading of the contest’s virtual exchange.
I wasn’t actually trading, but while watching the movements of the stocks, I tried simulating what would happen if I bought here. It was a strange sensation, like it was going well but also not.
However, I somewhat understood the cause. As expected, it was about Hagana.
However, it wasn’t about being hated by Hagana or misunderstood by her, or anything like that.
The one thing Hagana said was taking effect more gradually and deeply than I thought.
“We are living with all our might. We are different from someone like you who was born on the Moon.”
The guys in my hometown village were all people who had come from difficult places on Earth. Being born on the Moon, I still didn’t really understand the hardships of the Moon. However, those who came from Earth knew the hardships of Earth, and they also knew the hardships of the Moon.
Above all, what if this investment of mine doesn’t go well and I reach a dead end?
I might surely, pathetically, return to my parents’ home.
But many of those from Earth don’t have a home to return to.
Those from Earth have a different level of desperation. A different resolve. Those born on the Moon don’t have that.
If that point is poked, I can’t say anything back. Even if I’m called a spoiled, dreamy child, there’s nothing I can do.
Guys who kept their feet on the ground and struggled to come to the Moon. Guys who abandoned a painful hometown and came to a new frontier. Or otherwise, guys who were caught up in the unreasonable systems of the world and brought here.
In terms of knowing the harshness of the world, I haven’t experienced things like Hagana, nor am I an adult like Lisa. Even though I earned as much as 70,000 Mool, from the perspective of someone working seriously, it isn’t an amount that can’t be saved, nor is it an amount one can live on for a lifetime.
Rather, if trading doesn’t go well as is, I will become a typical Moon-born dropout with no academic background, no money, and no knowledge of hardships on Earth.
Being told that to my face by Hagana, I had lost confidence in what I had been doing.
Generally speaking, just because my own way didn’t work, thinking of borrowing the power of Hagana, who apparently can do math—maybe I was crazy to harbor such an easy idea in the first place.
If the world went that well, no one would be struggling.
I happened to succeed in stock trading at first, so maybe I just thought the world was surprisingly sweet and everyone just didn’t know it.
A sheltered rich boy.
I couldn’t help but see myself in that unbearable figure.
“…”
My eyes had long since stopped tracking the trading stocks on the investment contest, and what was happening there didn’t enter my head either. Worried, lost, suffering, I was sprawled out on the floor.
And what floated into my mind was that sensation of being hugged when I was called to Lisa’s room.
Lisa is a kind and wise adult.
What if I consulted Lisa? Would she tell me the correct answer?
I was thinking such a pathetic thing almost seriously.
Where did that beast-like motivation from right after I left home go?
Was I just one of the mediocre, sheltered masses after all?
Was I not the kind of person to dream such a grandiose dream as leaving footprints in a place no one has ever reached, where not a single person has stood?
I was thinking, almost on the verge of crying.
I knew that the more I thought, the more anxious I would become, but I couldn’t stop.
So, if a strange sound hadn’t come from afar, I might have truly drowned in the vortex of anxiety.
“…?”
Opening my eyes and looking toward the door, I heard the sound again after a pause. Clack-clack, a sound like wood being struck.
With that, I realized it was a visitor.
“…”
However, even knowing it was a visitor, I stayed lying on the floor the whole time.
The third sound rang without much interval. Somehow, it felt impatient.
Speaking of visitors, Chris came the other day. Apparently, he helps with the family delivery business during the school lunch break without even eating. If it is Chris, it would be pitiful to make him waste time.
Since I didn’t think Hagana would answer even if the intercom kept ringing, I stood up and left the room.
The intercom rang a fourth time, and then a fifth time in succession.
If it’s Chris, maybe he’s holding in a trip to the toilet.
Thinking that, I rubbed my eyes just in case, then opened the church door.
It was truly only good luck that my fist didn’t fly out instinctively at that moment.
“…Is Miss Lisa here?”
There was a gloomy gaze that seemed to say it would hold a grudge until the end of time for making him ring the intercom five times before finally coming out.
It’s the loan shark, Toyama.
However, the lack of intensity in that gloominess might be because fatigue was visible.
“What do you want?”
“Hmm… Miss Lisa is here today, right?”
Toyama doesn’t answer my question, but returns a question.
I got irritated for a second, but I realized myself that it was an emotion close to taking it out on him.
“She’s not here.”
“Not here?”
“She said something about going to the university or whatever, and went out.”
“…Ah, helping with a lecture, huh.”
Toyama nods as if immediately understanding.
Apparently, he knows more about Lisa than I do.
“I see. But if it’s helping with a university lecture, she’ll be back past noon, right? Could you let me wait a bit?”
Saying that, he tried to slip past my side and enter the chapel, so I reflexively grabbed his shoulder. The difference in strength is evident.
I completely thought Toyama would flinch at that, but Toyama stared at me intently and said in a rather sad tone:
“It’s important business.”
“Guh.”
Before I knew it, I had released my hand from Toyama’s shoulder.
Some incomprehensible intensity—or rather, something clearly not found in a child was there.
“Sorry about that.”
Moreover, he bows his head lightly.
I couldn’t say anything anymore and mumbled “Ah” or “Yeah.”
“May I come in?”
Asked like this in such a situation, I have no choice but to let him through.
“But.”
“Hmm?”
“That Hagana girl, she’s in a mood bad enough to kill.”
When I said it with a serious face, Toyama laughed wearily.
He shook his shoulders for a bit, laughing voicelessly, then cleared his throat mixed with a sigh.
“I’ll be careful. But, you understand the logic of things, don’t you, sonny?”
He probably wants to say, “Protect me if Hagana attacks.”
I pride myself on being fair in that regard. However, just having that acknowledged makes me happy.
It’s just as Lisa said.
I looked away to hide my embarrassment.
“Come in.”
“Excuse me.”
I let Toyama into the chapel and closed the door.
Facing the crucified bearded man straight from the entrance, Toyama took off his hat, clasped both hands, and bowed his head lightly.
Important business that requires praying to God?
I thought that as I guided Toyama.
I wanted to serve Toyama some coffee and retreat to my room.
However, thinking that wouldn’t really do, I ended up sitting in the seat diagonal to Toyama, gazing idly at the market conditions.
I generally understand the stocks listed on the real exchange, but naturally, I don’t know the ones in the investment contest at all. Even if I couldn’t concentrate much, I could at least look around to see what kind of stocks there were, and it would be a study. Just as I started looking through them in order of popularity and began to think that, as rumored on the net, these weren’t fictional stocks but actually based on real ones…
“Is it some kind of game?”
Toyama crossed the border and spoke to me.
“…Something like that.”
“Hmm. Is that so.”
Slurp. He sipped his coffee and looked into the distance as if uninterested.
However, despite that demeanor, he spoke to me again.
“Is it interesting?”
Don’t ask weird things, I thought, raising my face a little.
“So-so.”
“I see.”
“What is it?”
“No, nothing really. I just thought if it’s interesting, there’s nothing better than that.”
I shrugged and returned my gaze to the screen.
“You look like you’re having a hard time every day.”
At my words, Toyama stretched his neck a little.
However, instead of getting angry, he laughed raspy-ly.
“It’s not hard, but it’s just this face, you see. I often get misunderstood like that.”
I said it myself, but my smile stiffened.
“You have a good face, sonny. You’ll probably benefit from it in various ways in the future.”
For a compliment, it’s too direct.
When I pulled my chin back slightly and looked at Toyama, he was laughing lightly.
“You might think it’s a lie, but such things happen. I don’t mean you’re a handsome man or anything, but it’s about the first impression.”
Unsure if I was being praised or not, I looked blank, and Toyama laughed low.
“In short, like ‘this guy seems capable’ or ‘this guy seems useless.’ It’s one of the few things I’ve gained from being a loan shark.”
“…So what about you?”
“Me? Well, I’d probably be classified as a useless guy.”
He said it while stroking his chin again.
Skin that sagged even though he wasn’t fat, and eyes that looked exhausted.
When he laughed, uneven teeth like a zombie in a horror movie were visible.
“But tenacity is my selling point. Things don’t go well on a large scale, but I can find a place to live reasonably well anywhere. Well, like a rat.”
“Haha…”
At the self-evaluation that fit too perfectly, I let out a dry laugh.
“In that respect, Miss Lisa is solid despite her youth. That kind of thing is a natural gift. It’s not something you can get just by training.”
Solid.
Indeed, if one were to describe Lisa, that single word would suffice.
“Then, what about Hagana?”
My interest was piqued, so I tried asking that. Toyama made a bitter face for a moment, perhaps remembering the commotion here at the mention of Hagana’s name, but after groaning “Hmm,” he answered me.
“That girl, well, I don’t really know… No, it’s true. I can see she looks smart, but that’s all. Should I say she’s withdrawn into her own shell? She’s like a chick that hasn’t hatched from the egg yet.”
“…What’s that?”
“Hmm. I can’t express it well, but… when you’re a loan shark on the Moon, sometimes you run into that type. That type is, well… common among those whose talents were bought with money from Earth.”
My expression stiffened for an instant, but Toyama was just reaching for his cup to sip coffee. He shouldn’t have seen it, I told myself.
However, if I dug into the “those bought with money” part, it would cause unnecessary suspicion. Even if I’m annoyed with Hagana, I have enough discretion to know that Hagana’s circumstances aren’t something to be recklessly revealed to others.
While I feigned indifference on the surface, Toyama continued talking while stroking his chin.
“Being a loan shark is, in the end, an exchange of trust rather than an exchange of money. Do you understand?”
Being asked “Do you understand?”, it’s frustrating to answer that I don’t.
But since I really don’t understand, I shook my head despite the frustration.
“Haha. You have promise after all. Even dealing with a human like me, being able to properly say you don’t know what you don’t know is an asset in itself.”
“…”
Being praised by this guy doesn’t make me happy.
I want to say that, but being praised still makes me happy.
“So, I’ve been a loan shark ever since graduating from university on Earth. It’s been twenty years of judging whether the other party can return the money. What I learned from that is, of course, the other party’s financial situation, but at the root, it’s their character. Even without money, a good-natured guy will definitely make money and come to return it. Conversely, a guy with a rotten nature will absolutely never return it, no matter how much money he has. But, there is one more type of person you must not lend money to: people like that girl.”
Toyama sipped his coffee again. For a shady loan shark who looked like he had thin luck, his words carried a lot of weight. As Toyama said himself, there was a strange persuasiveness gained precisely because nothing had gone well in his life.
“How should I put it… she’s dilute.”
“…Dilute?”
“Right. It’s not that she doesn’t have emotions, but it feels like her roots aren’t firmly planted somewhere. She might take self-destructive actions triggered by trivial things, or make decisions so desperate you wonder why. At first, I thought maybe she had a personality with too strong a sense of responsibility… but I realized that wasn’t it.”
Toyama cut his words once and looked a little into the distance.
“She probably thinks she has no value. She’s probably never thought of herself as something precious. You must not lend money to guys like that. No matter how smart they are.”
“…Is that… so?”
“Yeah. Guys who think they have no value believe that all good fortune that happens to them is a deception. They can only accept the bad things that happen to them as reality. The act of lending money is done to solve some problem of the other party with that money. But those guys fundamentally believe that there is no way their own problems can be solved. It’s like sprinkling water on a desert.”
Listening to it, it wasn’t a pleasant story.
Toyama, the one speaking, wasn’t talking happily either.
“That girl has that smell. But above all, she’s young, and she met someone like Miss Lisa. She’s lucky. If she’s lucky, she can go from an egg to a chick. If she becomes a chick, she can chirp peep-peep. If she can raise her voice, she can get the surroundings to take an interest. And if she gets the surroundings to take an interest, she can realize her own value.”
I was startled by the word “interest.”
It was exactly what Lisa had said.
“In that respect, you, sonny, don’t seem to be afraid of most things; rather, you’re the type to grab others by the head and make them look your way. You won’t have any trouble.”
Since Toyama directed a somewhat teasing smile at me, I reflexively got annoyed.
That said, I don’t think badly of Toyama anymore.
“Besides, in terms of having something to protect, that girl is starting to break her shell little by little. I certainly didn’t imagine getting hit with a vase, but… whenever I come here to collect interest, she really bares her hostility. That girl, she’s a runaway, isn’t she?”
Asked abruptly, I couldn’t even hide my expression.
Toyama looked at me with gentle eyes and shrugged lightly.
“Even if she met with something terrible at home or somewhere and ran away, the people on the lunar surface aren’t kind to strangers. In the midst of that, the first person to protect her was probably Miss Lisa. Naturally, she’d throw herself in like a god or Buddha. Sonny.”
“…W-What.”
“No, it’s a bit strange for me, who was attacked by that girl, to say this, but you gotta protect a girl like that. With those types, it’s not the person themselves that’s bad. Mostly, it’s that the environment they grew up in was bad.”
They say she came from a gray country where there are many rocks and only sharp, needle-like coniferous forests stand out.
Winters are long, summers are short, and occasionally when the sky clears, it becomes so blue you could accept being told God made it.
I really don’t think Hagana has led a happy life. Besides, until we entered that clothing store, I felt like Hagana was very close to me. Lisa said that forceful haggling was the result of Hagana trying her best in her own way.
Even though I didn’t know that, I rejected Hagana’s clumsy sincerity with a single kick. Not only that, I even advanced the interest payment for Lisa’s debt, which Hagana desperately wanted to protect.
Hagana might have been grateful in her own way for that, but more importantly, I might have taken away Hagana’s standing.
Hagana knows her own powerlessness. Into that situation, I suddenly appeared and effortlessly became Lisa’s strength.
Even if Hagana is hopelessly angry at me, it might be inevitable.
“Besides, isn’t she a cute girl? Well, in terms of bad-mouthing or cuteness, she has something to rival my own daughter.”
I don’t know if the words added at the end were a joke or not.
However, thinking they were words worth listening to, I forced a laugh through my nose.
“No, I talked a little too long. There aren’t many guys who listen to my stories.”
Toyama smiled embarrassedly and drank his coffee.
Thinking that smile looked pointlessly cool, I started to say, “That’s not true.”
However, the reason those words didn’t come out was that I heard the sound of a door opening and closing from the corridor leading to the chapel.
“Oh, is Miss Lisa back?”
Toyama put down the coffee cup he was holding and said.
Shortly after, Lisa came into the living room, blinking her eyes in surprise that Toyama was there.
“Oh, was today the repayment day already?”
“No, I have something else to discuss today. Do you have a moment?”
Standing up, Toyama is quite a bit shorter than Lisa, partly because of his stoop.
His appearance truly looks like small fry, but just as he said himself, I felt a kind of persistence to hang on no matter what.
Thinking that this is also one form of having one’s feet on the ground, this Toyama also starts to look like a respectable adult.
“Yes, I don’t mind, but… did Hal do anything rude?”
Thinking such things, Lisa said that abruptly.
Toyama turned his gaze to me along with Lisa, laughed lightly, and turned back to Lisa.
“We had a pleasant conversation.”
“Oh my.”
Lisa seemed genuinely surprised, but I was a little hurt by that reaction.
What on earth am I thought to be?
“But, yes, okay. I understand. The discussion… is about the debt, right?”
“If I brought up the cultivation method of lilies, you’d conversely be taken aback, wouldn’t you?”
Lisa smiled a little sadly at Toyama’s joke and nodded.
A loan shark and the person who borrowed that money are like destined partners fated to duel.
“Then, it’s cramped, but let’s go to my room.”
“That would be helpful.”
Toyama follows Lisa’s lead.
As I was watching them, Lisa suddenly stopped and turned back toward me.
“Hal.”
“…What?”
“Keep an eye on Hagana for a bit, okay?”
It was a deliberate way of saying it, but certainly, if she found out Toyama had come and was discussing debt in Lisa’s room, there’s no telling how angry she’d get.
However, given the earlier exchange, there’s no guarantee I’ll function as a watchman.
I wanted to say that, but since there was no way I could, I just nodded vaguely.
Or maybe, it was just a little consideration for me.
Shortly after, the two of them, Lisa and Toyama, went up to the second floor. Left behind on the spot, I returned to the task of sequentially viewing stocks alone in the strangely quiet living room. My eyes followed the numbers, but nothing entered my head. There were too many things to consider for my low-capacity brain to track.
After that, it wasn’t until the sun went down and the programmatic night arrived that Toyama seemed to have left.
I say “seemed to” because Lisa came down to the first floor alone.
Probably, to avoid bumping into Hagana, he must have left through the third-floor door.
And I understood from the expression of Lisa returning to the living room that it was a discussion that required that much precaution.
With an expressionless face I had never seen before, Lisa poured water into a cup and stared at it for a while. The air was so heavy I couldn’t even call out to her.
Lisa downed half the water in the cup in one go and sighed slightly.
Wiping her mouth a bit roughly, she raised her face, which had been looking down, and she was the usual Lisa again.
“Let’s have dinner.”
However, there was tension and fatigue somewhere in those words.
What was Toyama’s story? I can’t think it was a good story.
Still, Lisa’s behavior had a softness as if she had never even met Toyama. Lisa is an adult. I felt that strongly. So I couldn’t ask, and could only nod.
Also, the terminal on the sink was indeed Lisa’s prank-cum-threat. I don’t know if that was lucky or not. What I do know is that Hagana, whom I met at dinner, ignored me even more than in the morning. And that my sense of being the worst only increased.
My investment is about to run aground.
There are many problems.
Where should I start solving them? I thought in bed that night.
