Tokyo: Who would still fall in love after being spoiled?

Chapter 134: Plush Yellow Duck and Half-Body Plush Bear

The so-called festival is nothing more than changing into a yukata when you go shopping, buying some snacks that you usually want to eat and can also buy in the commercial street, and playing various small games like supermarket promotional activities.

There are also the school's annual cultural festival and founder's festival, which are generally pretty much the same.

He went shopping with this idea in mind, so naturally he couldn't be too enthusiastic about the festival.

They bought a bowl of fried noodles on the way and ate it while walking. Every time Asakura and Xiaozhu found a stall they liked, they would find a nearby bench to sit down and rest, staring at the people passing by in a daze.

Daydreaming is not a waste of time for a painter. At least for him, who does not have a unique talent, every scene and object has its own observation value.

Including the commercial streets with flashing neon lights and pedestrians during the festival.

Including the stray cat Wuyun Taxue who was being fed by the yukata girl in the dark corner - there was no collar on the cat's neck, and its paws had actually turned gray. Even after being fed, its paws remained in a state of force. Regardless of whether it was a stray cat or not, at least it did not know the yukata girl.

It also includes Takeda, who is throwing darts at the game booth - wait, why is she here?

Judging from the crowd's reactions, his aim seemed quite good. He watched until the end, witnessing Takeda win first prize and return home with a stuffed bear half his body.

He sat in the shadows until Takeda disappeared into the crowd without being noticed.

Ah-yi also went to throw darts, and Asuai shouted "Come on" from the side, and finally he received a box of cigarettes and candy as a consolation prize.

Tamura won a stuffed yellow duck and gave it to Suzuka.

Another couple came behind, and the man hit the target and took away the other half of the stuffed bear.

The woman originally held a white cat in her arms, but when she left, she changed it to a bear. She put the cat on the man's head, and the cat scratched the man's hair into a mess.

He has such a good temper. If it were him, he would at least throw the cat to the ground immediately.

"What are you looking at?" Asakura and Nagisa came back with a goldfish in their hands, holding a cup of water tied with a rope, and the little goldfish was swimming back and forth in the cup.

"The first prize over there is a half-bear, two in total, and they were taken away one after another in just ten minutes."

Before he finished speaking, the boss brought out two more stuffed bears from somewhere.

"Would you like to try it too, Inoue-senpai?"

“The stuffed bear is too big.”

"Let the store ship it."

"want to?"

"Nagisa wants it." This was said by Asakura.

"Xiao Zhu, do you want some?" He looked at Xiao Zhu who was still eating apple candy.

"After all, it's the first prize...it must be difficult to get it." Xiao Zhu didn't look like what she wanted.

"It's worth a try. The second prize is a plush yellow duck, which looks good too." He left himself a way out. Even if he had to go, he only needed to take one shot. Regardless of whether he hit the target or not, he would have a suitable reason to give up.

His only experience was spearing fish in streams with sharpened branches, which he used more like a spear, holding onto the target until it was pierced. Darts, on the other hand, were projectiles that needed to be released from the hand to hit the target, a significant difference. Therefore, he wasn't entirely confident he'd win first prize.

“Well, how many points do I need to get the second prize…” Xiao Zhu began to consider the possibilities realistically, and her heart was shaken.

"Then, it's up to Senior Inoue." Asakura gave him a faint smile and pushed him towards the dart stall.

The full score is 100, and the second prize only requires 80 points, while the first prize requires 95 points, a total of ten darts.

He gave up two runs in his first at-bat.

The second shot was thrown again near the location of the first shot.

If his goal was first prize, he had undoubtedly reached the edge of the cliff.

Nagisa watched intently from the side, while Asakura looked off to a different spot on the street. Both were exceptionally quiet, unlike Asuka, who was shouting and disrupting the game.

Although he got full marks on the third shot, he no longer had any hope of winning the first prize and just threw the dart according to his general feel.

He was like a corporate slave working on orders, throwing all the darts at a certain frequency and waiting for the settlement.

"And finally—" the boss announced the score after the final shot hit the bull's eye. "Ninety-two points! Ah—damn it, just one point short—so, young man, will you continue the challenge for the sake of the two beautiful girls beside you?"

Every time this person spoke a word, he gritted his teeth, his facial features squeezed together, as if he was trying to swallow a breath with difficulty, as if he was really thinking about him.

"No."

"Only three points! Really just a little bit—just a little bit—would you mind trying again?"

"Please give me the second prize first."

"Ah—what a pity—then, please keep it—"

Xiao Zhu successfully got the little yellow duck, but kept his attention focused on him as he took it with both hands.

"How amazing..." She exclaimed as she walked deeper into the street.

“It’s only second prize.”

"That's not it..." Nagisa shook her head, mimicking his tone. "'No.' or 'Please give me the second prize first.' Nagisa definitely wouldn't be able to say that."

"Want first prize?"

"Yeah—and the atmosphere around here. Quite a few people are watching, the boss is encouraging me, and there are two friends with me..."

"I care about my image." "Well... almost."

They followed the crowd to the street along the river, trying to find a suitable place to stay, waiting for the fireworks that could start at any time to rise into the night sky.

"It's basically just worrying about the unknown consequences." Before he spoke, he glanced at Asakura, not giving any instructions. "I'm worried about whether my friends will be disappointed if I give up, what my boss will think, what strangers will say about me."

"Um……"

"For example," he said, gazing at the lights of a lantern boat passing by on the Sumida River, he passed the time chatting, "take what Asakura-san might be going through."

"Why me?" Asakura had been listening and finally couldn't help but speak.

"You're the first thing I thought of."

"Ah...did you really think of me first?"

"Suppose you encounter a competitor who plagiarizes 'Wrong Love' and the first volume sells well." He ignored Asakura's teasing and proceeded at his own pace. "By then, 'Wrong Love' has already published its third volume. You report it to the editor, hoping to have them stop publishing. The editor first asks you to coordinate with them..."

"Do we have to talk to the other party?" Asakura frowned and interrupted him.

"Anyway, let's assume this: you promised the editor, and he apologized to you privately and promised to pay you 100,000 yen as compensation and never do it again. I hope you will allow him to continue serializing the novel.

"He also said that he really needed this novel because he had previously incurred a lot of debt to pay for his father's medical treatment. In the end, the disease was not cured, and his father had passed away. Life was very stressful for him."

He paused here and asked the two people including Asakura.

"What will you decide?"

"Ah, that's a bit pitiful..." Xiao Zhu thought about his assumptions and felt sympathy. She said softly, "Because he had to go into debt to treat his father's illness, but he didn't..."

Asakura said nothing.

"But his father is dead now, before he copied and published it."

"But……"

"Then, if he plagiarized and published the book before his father died and got the money, would he have the opportunity to change his father to a better hospital, receive better treatment, and have a better chance of recovery?" He interrupted Xiao Zhu's thoughts and asked back.

"In other words," Asakura stared at his face, as if searching for something special and unique, "the logic of 'plagiarizing and publishing for my father' doesn't hold water."

"Eh..." Xiao Zhu couldn't help but be stunned.

"I should say..." He shook his head. "The logic behind it was, 'If my deceased father hadn't spent so much money, I wouldn't have been burdened with foreign debt and resorted to plagiarizing and publishing to make money.'"

"Now that you put it that way, Xiao Zhu suddenly doesn't feel pitiful anymore... a little... annoying..." Xiao Zhu lowered her head.

"How much are the royalties for the first volume of 'Wrong Love'?"

"Senior Inoue knows this, right?" Asakura smiled at him, not wanting to mention the specific income in front of Nagisa.

"At least far more than 100,000 yen." He had no choice but to continue the conversation himself. "Assuming you publish four volumes of light novels a year, based on the average salary of a Tokyo employee, you'd have to earn at least a million yen in royalties per volume to be on par with most other jobs."

"Oh, that is to say..." Xiao Zhu listened carefully and suddenly understood.

"One hundred thousand yen is far from enough to make up for the losses. And—" He stopped talking halfway, hoping Asakura would continue the topic.

"He even mentioned 100,000 yen as a negotiation condition instead of making a sincere apology from the beginning." Asakura did not disappoint his expectations.

"That... well... that's troublesome..." Nagisa was frightened by their analysis again.

"So, back to the point, if you encounter this kind of thing, what are you going to do?"

Asakura looked at him with a look that said, "You already know my answer." and said nothing.

Xiao Zhu was faced with a difficult decision that was a bit heavy for her as she was still in junior high school.

In fact, a considerable number of people, even if they are over 40 years old, will still hesitate and be unable to make a clear decision when faced with such problems.

The biggest difficulty before making a decision is not weighing the pros and cons, but realizing what the biggest factor affecting your decision is, and then considering whether to put this factor on the scale.

in other words--

The root of the problem isn't whether the person who plagiarized me deserves to be forgiven. It's whether I will face retaliation later if I still choose not to leave them a way out after communicating with them.

That is what he just mentioned as the 'unknown consequences'.

Asakura had been fully aware of this from the start, which was why she interrupted him mid-hypothesis. From the moment she decided not to communicate with him, she had already estimated the weight of the "unknown consequences" and taken appropriate precautions.

"Xiaozhu...I don't know what to do..."

"Then, what if the plagiarism incident is replaced by bullying?" He watched Suzuka and his group struggling to squeeze towards the river bank, further forcing Nagisa to make a choice before the fireworks took off.

"Well……"

It is precisely because most people care about unknown consequences and the "possible" retaliation of unknown severity that they become entangled and deeply troubled when they are unfairly violated. They set the weight of unknown consequences to the heaviest based on the worst-case scenario and choose to give in after careful consideration.

Even though they are victims, they still have to change themselves for the sake of this world, in order to adapt to the environment and continue to survive...

"How terrifying..." Nagisa finally gave up answering, "I hope Asakura-nee doesn't encounter this kind of thing..."

At the same time, the fireworks of the Sumida River Festival also rose on time.

With a 'bang' sound, the entire night sky suddenly lit up.

(End of this chapter)