Tokyo, 1991: Starting as a bank clerk.

"...I have no job."

Her voice lowered, but quickly rose again.

"But it's not that I won't pay it back. I can pay it back slowly, every month..."

"Without income, there is no ability to repay loans."

Kiryu Yaya interrupted her directly.

"If you don't have the ability to repay, a legitimate bank won't approve a loan for you. This isn't targeting you specifically; it's just the bank's policy."

"But……"

"And aren't you in your ronin phase right now?"

Yuki Matsushita shut her mouth.

Kiryu Yaya glanced at the tutoring materials on her lap.

"You've graduated high school and you're still attending cram schools to prepare for exams?"

Yuki Matsushita bit her lip, but did not deny it.

"Didn't pass the exam last year?"

"...The school I applied to did not meet the requirements."

Which one?

"...Kwansei Gakuin University."

Kiryu Yaya nodded and did not ask any further questions.

Kwansei Gakuin University.

A famous private university in Western Japan.

The deviation value is not low.

It's not surprising that a wanderer who was "exiled" from Tokyo to Osaka would want to get into that school.

What's really strange is...

An eighteen-year-old was living a life of wandering, with no income, owing three million euros, and still living in Shiroyogi.

The tuition at Yoyogi cram school is not cheap.

A full year of courses would cost at least five or six hundred thousand euros.

This money probably also came partly from consumer finance and credit cards.

Kiryu Yaya went through all of this in his mind, but didn't say it aloud.

Yuki Matsushita was silent for a few seconds, as if she was reorganizing her thoughts.

Then, she suddenly changed her tone.

It was no longer the kind of probing as before.

Instead, it's more direct and straightforward, as if it's about something very ordinary.

"Then lend me 100,000?"

Kiryu Yaya looked at her.

"One hundred thousand euros."

Yuki Matsushita repeated it.

"Not much, is it? For you."

"What will it be used for?"

"Pay off this month's installments."

She spoke frankly and without any pretense.

"It's the consumer finance department. If we don't pay it back soon, they'll call our home. What if Grandma finds out..."

She didn't continue.

But the meaning is already quite clear.

Kiryu Yaya did not answer immediately.

He put his hands in his pockets, leaned against the cement wall of the alley, and looked at her.

Why should I lend it to you?

Yuki Matsushita had clearly thought this through long ago.

She tilted her head slightly, tucking the stray hairs that fell across her cheek behind her ear, revealing her small pearl earrings.

"I can go on a date with you."

she says.

"Am I pretty?"

Chapter 35 Impossible, Absolutely Impossible

Yuki Matsushita was indeed good-looking; even by today's standards, she was a beauty.

Moreover, she is young, in the prime of her youth, and even has some JK (high school girl) attributes.

For those young male chefs, it's simply irresistible.

Kiryu Yaya's eyebrows twitched.

"The price for a date, 100,000?"

"I never said it once."

Yuki Matsushita turned her face away, as if looking at the flickering streetlight at the end of the alley.

"Well... lend me 100,000, and I'll go on a date with you. If you think once isn't enough, then twice. Or you can ask me to do something else..."

"Matsushita-kun."

Kiryu Yaya generally dislikes lecturing people, but thinking of how Mrs. Matsushita usually took care of him, he felt a pang of conscience and interrupted her.

"You're only eighteen years old. You'd better think carefully about what you're saying before you tell me these things."

Yuki Matsushita's lips moved slightly, and her voice was a little lower than before.

"I know what I'm talking about."

No, you don't know.

Kiryu Yaya straightened up, moved away from the wall, and took a step forward.

The distance between the two people has been reduced to less than a meter.

Yuki Matsushita subconsciously took half a step back, bumping into the glass door behind her with a muffled thud.

"You're willing to go on a date with me today for 100,000 euros."

Kiryu Yaya looked down at her.

What about tomorrow?

"And the day after tomorrow?"

"When you're being harassed by debt collectors to the point of desperation, you won't even know what you'll say next."

Yuki Matsushita's lips trembled slightly.

But she still looked directly at him without looking away.

Kiryu Yaya continued:

"You don't think of yourself as a child anymore."

"But everything you're doing now is proving that you're not yet capable of handling your situation."

The alley was quiet for a few seconds.

In the distance, there was the faint sound of a tram passing by, as if it were coming from a very deep tunnel.

Yuki Matsushita took a deep breath.

Her voice finally trembled slightly.

"Then what do you suggest I do?"

Her eyes were slightly red, but she stubbornly refused to cry.

"I owe three million."

"I have to pay back over 100,000 yuan every month."

"I can only earn 50,000 yuan a month working."

"I haven't paid this month's interest yet, and I'm two months behind on my tutoring fees. Yoyogi's teacher said that if I don't pay soon, classes will be suspended."

Her voice grew softer and softer, but her speech became faster and faster.