Vol 2 Chapter 11【Vol 2 – Lies and Truth】

Ha. Ha. Ha.

What was he even worried about?

He had the Binoculars.

Right — the 【X-Ray Binoculars】. An item built specifically for seeing through things. And with “binoculars” right there in the name, zoom had to be standard equipment.

By this point, Akamine Miyuki was already stepping into the elevator.

【Use Binoculars?】

No use limit on this one. He activated them without a second thought. Nothing seemed to change at first. Come to think of it, the description had said something about blinking…

He tried one blink. Nothing. He tried two in quick succession — and suddenly, distant things snapped close. Huh. Nice. He blinked three times. The zoom pushed further. The elevator panel came through sharp and clear. Curiosity got the better of him.

Four blinks — the panel surged forward like it was right in front of his face.

Alright. Five! Blink, blink, blink, blink, blink —

Ugh — his eye was going to cramp.

Nothing changed anyway. Three zoom levels were apparently the ceiling. That was still plenty. He paced back and forth in front of the building entrance like someone waiting, watching the panel from the corner of his eye. The elevator climbed and stopped on the fifth floor.

He drifted away from the building and found the door that opened on five. Mission accomplished.

Then he almost faceplanted on the sidewalk. He’d moved while the 【Binoculars】 were still active — depth perception completely shot because of the zoom. How do you turn this thing off?

He tried pulling up the 【GAME SYSTEM】, but the window wouldn’t load while the item was running. Maybe blinking again?

Three blinks — zoom stepped down. Then one more single blink, which had done nothing the first time. This time, though:

【Deactivate Binoculars?】

He tapped it before the message could change its mind. The 【GAME SYSTEM】 reappeared in the corner of his vision. Distance snapped back to normal.

If he hadn’t figured that out before moving, he would’ve eaten concrete. Genuinely irritating.

Anyway — when to make his move?

He could stake out the building and wait for her to leave. But unlike with Sakurai Ami, where he could surveil from his own apartment, hanging around out here indefinitely would be rough. And a waste of time he couldn’t afford.

He was living on borrowed time. Every hour counted.

Which meant forced entry. He just couldn’t let her see his face.

Simple enough: 【SAVE】 here, go in, knock her out with the 【Sleep Spray】, search the place, walk out, then 【LOAD】. She’d wake up with no memory of any of it.

【Save?】

He tapped immediately and walked to the entrance.

【Use Master Key?】

He slipped inside as naturally as he could manage, rode the elevator up to five, and rang the bell for unit 504.

“Who is it?”

A voice — too quiet to make out clearly through the door. He pushed his own voice into something unrecognizable.

“Delivery!”

She opened the door. Chain still on. Of course. Reasonable instinct.

【Use Sleep Spray?】

He activated it the moment she appeared in the gap. She went down. He swapped items immediately.

【Use Master Key?】

There we go.

He nodded to himself, tapped the prompt, and pushed the door open. No security cameras in the hallway — lucky. Though now that he thought about it — would cameras even pick him up? That was genuinely unclear.

It went back to the Sakurai Ami incident. He’d fully expected the police to come knocking after that, and they never had. Sakurai’s building had cameras at the entrance and in the elevator — more than enough for him to show up as a person of interest. But nothing. This suggested the 【GAME SYSTEM】 was covering his tracks for him. Specifically, actions taken in pursuit of a conquest left no evidence behind. The same system that would force a police response to something like sexual assault apparently also ran interference on legitimate conquest activity—a double-edged sword.

Protection and enforcement, living in the same box.

— And if this parallel world runs on the game system, it could be pulling the police’s strings directly.

He could probably afford to act a little more boldly. Probably. He wasn’t certain enough to test it.

Either way, he was inside now. And he’d be 【LOADING】 afterward, so none of this technically mattered.

He made a point of not touching her. The last thing he needed was enforcement kicking in over something stupid.

The apartment gave him almost nothing to work with right away. Not a single personal photo anywhere — the whole space felt sterile. The kitchen was the same. The tabletop is completely bare. With Sakurai Ami, the overdue debt notices on the table had basically handed him the conquest on a plate. This was the opposite of that.

The kitchen was immaculate—no obvious anomalies. At least there didn’t seem to be a body hidden anywhere.

Three rooms total. The first one he entered was wall-to-wall clothing — an entire walk-in closet. Dresses, bags, jewelry arranged like a boutique display. All of it looked like it was designed. For a twenty-three-year-old living alone, this was excessive.

The bedroom was next. A single bed, a vanity. High-end cosmetics, but otherwise unremarkable. The last room had a desk with cardboard boxes stacked behind it — it looked like storage. Sparse compared to the rest of the apartment.

The desk surface was as bare as the table. Not even a book. He tried the drawers — all empty, until the last one. A single diary sat alone inside.

He pulled it out and sat on the desk. A diary tucked away in an otherwise empty desk. That had to mean something.

It was from her high school years. The contents were anything but ordinary. Anguish ran through every page — and the further back he read, the more intense it got.

————————

I want to die.

Why do they do this to me?

They dumped water on me in the bathroom.

I had no change of clothes. I just cried.

The teacher scolded me for skipping class.

It’s so unfair. I hate them.

What did I ever do to deserve this?

She said if I don’t bring the money by tomorrow, she’ll sell me to some guy.

I’m so scared of her.

————————

The last entry. Tucked between those final pages was the only photograph he’d found in the entire apartment — Akamine Miyuki as a teenager, posed with a group of girls who looked like friends. Except her expression didn’t match. Terrified was closer to the word.

Still — someone who’d written like that was living pretty well now. Alone, by choice, in a high-end apartment. Maybe she’d run from the pain and build distance between herself and it. But then she was running social parties with a list of men under her thumb. Had what happened to her — what was hinted at in that last entry — pushed her toward this? Changed who she was entirely?

Questions without answers. He’d seen everything there was to see. He put the diary back, closed the drawer, and returned to the living room.

The bag on the table caught his eye. Right — she’d taken something from those high schoolers and put it in there. He unzipped it to check.

Cash. Bundled in rubber bands, all ten-thousand-yen notes—serious money.

This woman made less and less sense by the minute. Her wallet was in there, too. He flipped it open — no cash inside, but a driver’s license was buried under a thick stack of business cards. So many cards they’d crept over the license itself. Buy a card holder.

He pulled one out. Social party related, just as expected.

Join our party. Inquiries: 080-1111-2222

Two lines. That was the whole card. But right now, those two lines were exactly what he needed most. The wallet held plenty more cards besides — this was solid intel. No cash inside to trigger the enforcement. He slipped it into his pocket without a second thought.

He left the bundled cash untouched. Money had no role in what he needed. And unlike an empty wallet, walking off with a wad of bills felt like exactly the kind of thing that would set off whatever mechanism had stopped him from touching Sakurai Ami. He was here for the conquest. That was all.

He’d gotten everything he could. He selected 【LOAD】.

White light.

Then — damn.

The business card. The wallet.

He jammed his hand into his pocket.

Both were there.

Huh. Items purchased through the game system reset on 【LOAD】 — but apparently, things he’d physically picked up and pocketed carried through. So 【LOAD】 returned him to the past while preserving his current physical state? Like some kind of forward-into-past continuity loop?

Complicated mechanics. Didn’t matter. He had the card.

Time to go home, analyze what he’d gathered, and call the number.

The approach route was confirmed — the party membership line. One step closer to Akamine Miyuki’s conquest. The actual condition was still a mystery, but the social party was the thread to pull. The game had said so directly.

He made his way back to the commercial district and found a bus stop. While he waited, he noticed a woman sitting near the back of the shelter, staring at nothing. Rough-looking clothes — not dirty exactly, not homeless, just somehow worn down. But something about her still caught the light. Young — early twenties at most, probably. A hood pulled up hid most of her face, and she was huddled enough that her figure was hard to read. The clothes were doing their best to obscure whatever was underneath. Get her in something decent, and she might actually be striking. Hard to tell in this light.

He had Akamine Miyuki’s conquest just getting started, though. No bandwidth for distractions. He looked away.

She noticed.

She stood up from the ground and came toward him.

She seemed to want to say something, but she kept hesitating.

“Um… mister.”

He was about to turn away when she finally spoke. And the first word out of her mouth was ” Mister.

His Charm was 22. That was rough. But still.

He shot back before he’d thought about it.

“Mister? Who are you calling, mister?”

She flinched. His tone had scared her — she pulled in on herself like he might swing at her. The image was so small and rabbit-like that the irritation drained out of him almost immediately. But even so, her eyes stayed guarded.

“Fine, whatever. What do you want?”

The bluntness slipped out on its own. After a while, formality felt absurd. Not like he’d ever see her again.

“You were looking at me just now, weren’t you?”

Looking at someone was a crime now? Old memories of being treated badly by women surfaced uninvited. His guard went up.

“Would you like to sleep with me? I’ll give you a good price.”

Then that came out of nowhere.

He didn’t even think — he activated the Scouter on pure reflex.

(Name unknown) Age: 19 Boyfriend: Unavailable at current level Occupation: Unavailable at current level Conquest Difficulty: A Address: Unavailable at current level Phone number: Unavailable at current level Conquest Info: Unavailable at current level Affinity: Unavailable at current level

Conquest Difficulty A?

He stared at the readout. She’d walked up and propositioned him — and her conquest rating was sky-high. Worse, everything except her age and difficulty was locked out—every single field.