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Akashi Asuto had no idea that, within a few seconds, Akashi Kana had begun to doubt her own worth.
After everything had been packed up…
The next morning,
A removal van arrived at their house. After working with the movers to load the luggage into the truck, Asuto followed the vehicle to Kana’s rental property.
Rather than an apartment, Kana had rented an old-fashioned standalone Japanese-style residence.
The owner of the old house was an elderly woman. Since her husband’s death, she had rented out all the rooms except for the one she personally lived in to nearby students and office workers, partly for income and partly to make the house feel more lively.
At the time, aside from Asuto and Kana, three other tenants were living in the old house.
Although there were quite a few people, their daily lives generally didn’t interfere with each other’s.
This was because the old Japanese-style house was genuinely huge.
The overall layout formed a three-sided rectangle. The east and west sides were the shorter sides of the rectangle, each containing two rooms. The north side formed the long edge of the rectangle and contained a large communal living room and three spacious rooms.
Asuto and Kana lived on the eastern side. Even the nearest tenant was separated from them by a straight-line distance of nearly five or six meters.
More importantly… the rent here was ridiculously cheap.
Asuto’s room was the outermost room on the east side. Although it was the smallest room in the house, it still measured over twenty square meters, not including the shared space.
Originally, it had been used as a storage room. However, after renovations, it had almost all the necessary appliances and bathroom facilities.
And because of its corner location, the room had large windows on both the eastern and southern walls, giving it excellent natural lighting overall.
In this area of Miyagi Prefecture, renting a similar room elsewhere would usually cost around 80,000 to 100,000 yen per month.
However, the monthly rent for this room was only 35,000 yen, less than half the market price.
If the old landlady hadn’t been extremely strict about selecting tenants, and if she hadn’t refused to use real estate agencies to advertise the place publicly, there would never have been an empty room left for Asuto.
The moving truck stopped at the front gate of the courtyard, and the movers helped Asuto carry his belongings into the room.
After everything was organized, Asuto met the landlady and the other three tenants in the main living room.
She was an elderly woman with black-and-white hair and a slightly plump figure, but she always smiled cheerfully.
The tenant living closest to Kana’s room was a female university student named Horiguchi Tomoko.
She was above average looking, but with makeup she could definitely be considered beautiful. She had an outgoing personality and, the moment Kana returned, pulled her into her ample embrace.
“My, Kana, is this your little brother? He’s really handsome!”
“Sister Horiguchi, loosen up a little… I can’t breathe.”
· · · · · ·
The other two tenants living on the western side were Kudo Koichi and Koyanagi Mizuki.
Kudo Koichi was also a high school student, like Asuto. He was quiet and reserved, and had barely spoken since Asuto arrived.
As for Koyanagi Mizuki, she was a white-collar worker who had just graduated and started working this year. She currently worked at an advertising design company. Since she had been renting the same place throughout her four years at university, and her workplace was still nearby after graduation, she hadn’t bothered moving elsewhere.
When she saw Asuto, Mizuki greeted him briefly before immediately returning to her laptop. Judging by the situation, she seemed to be working overtime.
Overall…
Although this first meeting with the other tenants couldn’t really be described as especially warm, it was at least pleasant enough.
Thinking about it, that made sense.
After all, these were tenants personally selected and screened by the landlady. Setting personality aside, their manners and level of education were definitely not poor.
And technically speaking, Asuto himself was currently still in the landlady’s probationary observation period.
If he displayed any behavior that caused trouble for the other tenants or the landlady within the next one to three months, there was a high chance he would need to find another place to live.
However, that possibility was very small.
After all, Kana had mentioned that the landlady was relatively tolerant of students. Unless someone’s character was truly terrible, passing the observation period usually wasn’t a problem.
This was also why most of the tenants were either students or people who had been renting there since their student days.
The purpose of gathering all the tenants together this time was simply to give Asuto and the others the opportunity to get to know each other.
Once everyone had become a little more familiar with each other, it was time for lunch.
There were two dining options.
One option was to prepare your own meals, either by cooking or eating out.
The other option was to pay the landlady an extra 30,000 yen for three meals a day.
Basically, all the tenants chose the second option.
Because 30,000 yen was genuinely cheap. It was practically just the cost of the ingredients. If they ate out for every meal, they would definitely spend far more than that in a month.
However, paying for three meals didn’t mean you could simply hand over the money and ignore everything else.
The tenants here all had enough common sense to understand that. Aside from people not returning at noon or being unable to wake up in the morning, the usual arrangement was for the landlady to cook dinner at night while everyone else helped out after school or work. Together, they would prepare dinner and the next day’s lunch boxes at the same time.
Speaking of which…
Kana hadn’t actually known how to cook before. The meal she made during the last summer holiday was probably just the little knowledge she had picked up while helping out over the past few months.
After lunch, Asuto washed the dishes with the others, then returned to his room and took out the laptop he had brought with him.
He resumed his work as a writer.
Writing novels.
This was the money-making method that Asuto had recently come up with.
As it happened, Asuto had also spent some time writing web novels in his previous life. However, after realizing that writing novels was basically a dead end, he had turned his attention back to work.
Asuto was therefore very self-aware. He knew that if he tried to publish a novel based purely on his writing skills, he would most likely fail miserably.
Therefore, if he wanted to publish a novel, he would have to rely on creativity.
After thinking it over repeatedly, Asuto finally decided to ‘borrow’ inspiration from a novel that wouldn’t be published for several years: Cautious Hero: The Hero Is Overpowered but Overly Cautious.
The reason he called it “borrowing inspiration” was mainly because he couldn’t remember the entire original story word for word. He could only rely on the rough plot and core concepts, then slowly fill in the prose himself.
Asuto wasn’t expecting this novel to become some explosive bestseller anyway.
As long as it earned him a little money to pay for food, he would already be satisfied.
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(End of Chapter)
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