Ishida Eiko's fear is somewhat obvious.
It's not like she's facing a relative who just defected to her and is in a state of parasitism, it's like she's facing a knife-wielding robber with an instinctive fear.
This fear causes her to be a bit stiff with anger, speak with nervousness, and even push Ichijō Mirai into the game pod with what looks like a big grin but is actually caution.
...But considering the debt of '30 million US dollars', Ichijō Mirai felt that this aunt's reaction was normal.
If one day, one of his relatives came to him and said, "I owe 30 million U.S. dollars."
Ichijō Mirai would absolutely just shut the door.
He stepped into his bedroom, picked up the quilt from the floor and placed it on the desk chair, and found a box on the desk.
The color of the box is the same as the egg-shaped game cabin. It is silvery white and very thin. There is a stack of paper inside. There is a [Respectfully] on the first page of the homepage, which looks very polite.
It was a printed notice.
The notice politely informs that we have finished estimating the damage and confirming the final amount to be 30 million dollars, and we hope that Ichijō Mirai can return the money within one year, and if he doesn't return it within one year, he will put on a high-interest rate and use some harmless and non-illegal means of collecting the money.
Polite, but not very polite.
Ichijō Mirai: "?"
Those who owed money were big men, and wasn't it horrible that he owed thirty million dollars with two empty hands, how did the debtor speak to him in such a raw tone?
Saddened, he decided not to pay and ran away!
Ichijō Mirai continued down the page and saw the reason for the debt: as a scientific researcher, Ichijō Mirai fudged the data, which caused the company to over-raise the realism of the game pods that were not needed in the progress of developing the game pods, adding hundreds of millions of dollars to the expense, and internalizing the game two years later than predicted.
Oh, no wonder they owe 30 million dollars and haven't had any police officers at their door, so it's not a crime, it's... a former staff member of the game's officials?
Ichijō Mirai: "??"
He quickly flipped through the iteration of the paper, quickly identified a termination contract.
The contract was formulaic, but the position appeared: a general researcher with a salary of one hundred thousand dollars a year.
And head of the research department.
Ichijō Mirai: "???"
I'm sorry this body is in its mid-twenties at most, how did it become a minister, and even if it became a minister it actually succeeded in counterfeiting, is your company a pig?
This is not the point, the point is that the annual salary of a minister of scientific research is only 100,000?
Ichijō Mirai politely swallowed back his question and said the answer, "Yes."
He returned to the notice, scanned the following words, and found the reason why the tone of the notice was so stiffly unafraid of running away from the Moncler outlet store: at the time of entry, the company had recorded in detail all kinds of information about this body, such as fingerprints and teeth marks DNA, and had also collected family information.
This information to a certain extent ensures that even if the debtor moncler outlet store directly runs away, the police experts can speculate on the route, mode of transportation, and destination of the run, and even more can be directly wanted for arrest.
Ichijō Mirai: "Oh."
He scanned the polite and threatening words with little fluctuation in his expression, "It's not often that a criminal absconds cleanly and the police don't know anything about it, is it?"
Knowing was knowing, not catching was not catching.
A few paragraphs further down in the threat are the credentials of the game company's belief that Ichijō Mirai is capable of repaying the thirty million dollars within a year.
The notice explains that this is an episodic game characterized by an overwhelming degree of realism, that the plot is incredibly important, and that it is now in internal testing, with only a few rigorously vetted internal testers, of which Ichijō Mirai is one.
This is the first round of internal testing.
Once you do well in the first round of internal testing and get as many plot clues as you can, you can resell them through official channels to people in the second, third, or even public beta testing, and if selling them once isn't enough, you can sell them several more times.
And: "In the game, there are two types of in-game currency that players obtain, one for 'funds' gained from completing quests, and one for..."
Ichijō Mirai stared at the black and white letters on the printout and slowly read out the key information, "The virtual currency used by NPCs."
Like the box of two million yen in the car.
"In the former case, the exchange with real dollars is 1:10, and one hundred funds is one thousand dollars. The latter, and the reality of the exchange for 10:1, to the Japanese yen as an example, the game of two million yen is the reality of two hundred thousand yen."
The game's official meaning is obvious, and Ichijō Mirai automatically translates: no money? Sell intel. Didn't get information? You can always rob a few more banks to pay off your debts!
Successful translation, Ichijō Mirai: "Oh, I don't know."
If you work hard enough, paying it off is indeed a matter of minutes.
"The pattern is low," he said in awe, withdrawing a decision to run, "so it turns out that the official holds the simple notion that 'hard work will definitely get you money', that's pretty smart."
Except, "This example..."
'Funds one hundred' and 'two million yen' pointed too clearly to two separate incomes that Ichijō Mirai had earned in the game.
He automatically translates: the official is encouraging players to generate the idea of robbing banks.
"It seems that the official preference is for players to go the Black route," Ichijō Mirai surmised in a serious voice, "I can't help but respect the official opinion."
He scanned down the page a few times, and saw a harmless line that could be simply ignored: [Please do not let this give you the inappropriate idea of robbing a bank outright, the offense will cause your game character's wanted level to rise].
Wanted by the police is just that, robbing money, there's always a little harmless consequence, and Ichijō Mirai accepts it perfectly.
Ignoring the official tendency to approve of intelligence gathering and disapprove of outright bank robberies, he looked down the list and saw a message, "Included with the repayment notification, there is a bracelet linked to the game that allows you to see in real-time the amount you owe?"
The bracelet was at the very bottom of the box, not much different from a normal sports bracelet, not even the display, when you put it on, the four corners of the screen were actually time-power heart rate steps.
In the center is a string of numbers: 29, 997, 629.2.
There are zero and whole.
The string of numbers represented one more piece of information: the two incoming payments Ichijō Mirai had made in the game had been automatically converted to real currency and automatically returned to the game company.
"...I knew the example when prompting for the conversion rate was intentional."
Ichijō Mirai put down the paper and organized the papers, rearranging them into the silver-white box and pushing it to the innermost part of his desk to prevent it from falling.
When he was about to close it, he paused, and instead of withdrawing his hand, he went to open the window.
He was rather apprehensive.
What did it mean that this was a strange world and had holographic gaming pods that only appeared in sci-fi movies? It meant that the technology in this world was high.
More than that, it meant that the police in this world had a higher level of equipment.
And Ichijō Mirai doesn't understand that.
A fugitive who doesn't understand the level of the police has only one consequence: he goes to jail.
Not wanting to go back to prison for the moment, Ichijō Mirai held his breath, propped himself up on his desk, and looked out the open window:
The traffic was heavy.
Outside the window, each passing car dragged its clumsy body past dowdy residential buildings with three or four floors at most, huffing and puffing its way through the dusty streets and stopping at even dustier stoplights.
The pedestrians walk through the light, and a few are on the phone, holding cell phones about the size of their hands, but so thick they're practically mini-slates, to their ears.
...Huh?