A Late Bloomer's Powerful Restart ~My Second Life Starts at a Prestigious School Where the Gender Ratio Is Totally Off, and for Some Reason, All These Talented Girls Get Attached to Me...!?~ - Chapter 38: Searching for New Investment Targets

Chapter 38: Searching for New Investment Targets

Around the time the uproar from my Yashima family bloodline being revealed finally died down.

I felt like the way people looked at me had changed just a little since then.

I had already been getting attention because of being with Sasa all the time, but this was a different kind of curious gaze.

“Hey, haven’t the girls been acting kinda weird lately?”

In the classroom during lunch break.

As we usually did, the usual group kept chatting after eating, when Kotetsu suddenly muttered that.

“Ever since they found out about Taiki’s background, their attitudes have clearly changed.”

“Man, you’re getting all this attention from girls—I’m so jealous, you jerk.”

He was still going on about it… That said, yeah, girls had definitely started talking to me more often than before.

But it wasn’t enough to take seriously. Sadly, no one had confessed to me or anything.

“Maybe it’s just because they thought I was a commoner before, so now I’m a novelty? Probably.”

I brushed it off casually.

The shift in the girls’ vibe wasn’t only because of me.

After Riko apologized to Amane, the Nanamiya faction changed a lot.

What used to be a strict hierarchy had turned into more of a friendly, relaxed group.

As a result of the reconciliation, those two stayed in the same faction.

Knowing my true identity seemed to have made Riko behave much more quietly too.

“By the way, Ousei, you suddenly left yesterday after school… What was that about?”

I suddenly remembered how strange Ousei had acted the previous afternoon and asked him.

He made a guilty face and, for some reason, glanced toward Kotetsu.

“Uh… well, I’d rather you not spread this around, but actually, a girl confessed to me.”

“Wha—!!”

Kotetsu’s mouth fell open in shock and he froze.

I see. Asking about that in the middle of this kind of talk must have been especially hard to answer.

Bad timing was all I could say.

“So wait, Ousei, you bastard… You ditched us and got yourself a girlfriend!?”

“Wait, wait… I turned her down.”

“Huh!? Why the hell would you do that…?”

Kotetsu looked like he couldn’t accept it. His face screamed that he couldn’t understand as someone desperate for a girlfriend.

But he had no choice but to turn her down.

By the way, I already knew the reason ahead of time.

“I have a fiancée.”

“I—I didn’t ask… Seriously?”

“Sorry, I wasn’t hiding it on purpose… It’s just family stuff, and I don’t really want to make it public.”

Family stuff… Once he said that, Kotetsu had no choice but to shut up.

After all, pretty much every student in this academy had at least some kind of family circumstances like that.

“Hold on. Taiki… Don’t tell me you have one too? A fiancée?”

“Relax… I don’t have anything like that at all.”

He was probably asking because of the Yashima family, but things had been close to a complete cutoff for me originally.

Maybe my cousin Kuya had one, but considering how my uncle below him was still single, who knew.

“Taiki… The world is so unfair.”

“Don’t lump me in with you like that.”

“You traitor!”

How starved for girls was he…? Kotetsu was probably half-joking.

Then I noticed Ousei looked a little troubled.

He was the serious type in situations like this.

“Ousei’s parents run Tateakawa Science, and people have that high of expectations for it. You check the stock price? It’s growing fast.”

“Stock price…? What’s that, like selling tree stumps?”

This guy was hopeless… Maybe even dumber than I thought.

No, maybe he just didn’t know. Normal for high school boys sometimes.

“Put simply, it’s how the market values a company. They don’t teach it in school, but not knowing will cost you in the future.”

I tried to explain it simply, but Kotetsu just stared blankly like his soul had left his body.

His athletic skills were amazing… How did he even get into Teimon Academy?

Thinking of a similar case, I remembered Tsukimi when she first enrolled.

Thanks to Kurumi’s teaching, she could now study at the same level as the other students… Maybe as a friend, I should tutor Kotetsu too.

“Taiki, you know a lot about our company. Kinda makes me happy.”

“Yeah… Well, sort of.”

After all, I was a major shareholder in Tateakawa Science.

I had high hopes for it, and I definitely didn’t want its growth to stop.

Especially since I bought the stock right before the board meeting for the mid-term plan, so it was clean—no insider trading issues.

Well, even if something went wrong, Grandpa would apparently handle it.

That aside, thinking about the financial crisis that would start in America soon, I needed to start spreading out my investments.

(Investing in companies that will grow in the future is easy… but that feels boring.)

If I was going to do it, I should invest in companies that could help Yashima Electronics.

I had future knowledge and a deep understanding of technology.

Maybe I could create things that never existed in the original future.

(Come to think of it, there was that register system the fashion brand ‘Cleart’—run by Amane’s parents—introduced.)

That system would appear about a year from now… An innovative technology that reads tags and instantly recognizes and checks out all items at once.

In my previous life, I mistakenly thought it used Rimona technology.

People in general got it wrong too, but that tech wasn’t developed by ‘Cleart.’

The company that first created it went bankrupt in the financial crisis and sold the patents overseas. After twists and turns, it eventually got adopted by ‘Cleart’ too.

If I became a shareholder in the company that developed it now, it might benefit Yashima Electronics.

At the very least, I could hope for a more cost-reduced version of the system.

Just imagining it got me excited.

“This is getting interesting.”

“…Sometimes Taiki makes a face like a villain.”

…How rude.

I regretted letting it show on my face, but I wasn’t some loudmouthed shareholder.

I wanted to say I was just serious about business, but I couldn’t put it into words, and that itch was annoying.

Maybe that was a bad habit.

(…?)

It was right then.

I felt a light weight settle on my right shoulder. When I looked to the side, Sasa’s face was staring straight at me.

“Hmm~ Do I really look that bad…?”

The weight came from her placing both hands on my shoulders.

And speaking of which, her face was really close.