Chapter 50: If You Had to Put It in Japanese, It’s Charity
The interview had been scheduled for six in the evening on a weekday.
For an ordinary company, that was around the time employees would either be clocking out or barely making it to the end of the workday. These days, though, plenty of businesses had adopted flexible working hours, so perhaps it wasn’t all that unusual.
Of course, whether that held true for whatever organization was behind the Light Jobs was another matter entirely. That was well outside the limits of my knowledge.
“Dress code: Casual attire. No formal wear.”
The interview location itself had been specified in unusual detail.
Not some chain café near the university, but an independent coffee shop a little ways away.
From the reviews, it seemed to be the sort of establishment that charged more than average while serving genuinely excellent food and drinks. A place that cared less about maximizing profits and more about cultivating taste, atmosphere, and a certain aesthetic experience.
To put it bluntly, it was the kind of café that looked like a rich person’s hobby project.
The fact that they had specifically said casual clothes instead of simply saying dress however you like was probably intentional.
They were likely judging lifestyle and character.
The kind of casual clothes a person chose to wear revealed quite a lot—personality, attitude toward the interview, even their financial situation.
And considering that Aoba-senpai’s role seemed to be recruiting—well, human trafficking sounded too harsh—rather, securing impoverished university students, it was reasonable to assume they were deliberately targeting people who weren’t particularly wealthy.
As long as I didn’t show up looking like some flashy nouveau riche playboy, I probably wouldn’t have any problems.
Before going any further, it was worth organizing everything I currently knew about the Light Jobs.
Because I intended to dismantle the entire system.
First of all, these jobs were nowhere to be found in normal job listings.
As far as I knew, the only route into the organization at this university was through a personal connection to Aoba-senpai, who would then personally guide candidates to an interview.
Their defining features were simple:
High pay.
And easy, legal work.
At first glance, the job descriptions sounded exactly like scams or underground criminal gigs—the kind of thing that screamed illegal operation from every angle.
Yet the actual work turned out to be completely legitimate.
Mostly.
The surveillance job for My First Errand had admittedly been a little questionable.
But aside from that, assignments included things like cleaning activities, conversational visits to lonely residents, neighborhood patrols, and other tasks that almost anyone could perform.
And somehow those jobs paid twenty thousand yen a day.
There was nothing about it that didn’t seem suspicious.
Yet when I had worked at the residential child-care facility the other day, I had signed a proper contract and received my payment through entirely legitimate channels.
Naturally, I had investigated the company involved afterward.
I had looked into it myself.
I had also had Meiko investigate.
Both investigations reached the same conclusion.
The company was real.
A genuine, existing corporation.
Which led to an obvious question.
What exactly was the purpose of the Light Jobs?
According to Aoba-senpai, the ideal candidates were people who met the following conditions:
“They’re short on money, they have family, relatives, friends, or lovers they care deeply about, they can follow confidentiality rules properly, and they don’t have criminal records related to bank accounts, phone contracts, or anything like that…”
Taken at face value, that sounded less like recruitment and more like a search for disposable foot soldiers for organized crime.
Yet reality contradicted that impression.
The interview process clearly involved evaluating a candidate’s character.
I could tell as much from what Meiko had uncovered about Aoba-senpai himself.
At first glance, he seemed like an ordinary university student.
Other than his appearance, anyway.
But his relationship with the Light Jobs apparently stretched back quite a long time.
The truth was—
Aoba-senpai had repeated a year.
Originally, he had been an exemplary student with excellent grades.
Then, during his second year, trouble struck his family.
His financial stability vanished.
Forced to pay for university tuition himself, he packed his schedule with part-time jobs.
His studies suffered.
Eventually, he failed required courses.
And that failure cost him a year.
After learning that he would be held back, Aoba-senpai reportedly became a completely different person.
He cut off contact with people.
Stopped coming to campus.
Quit the jobs that had consumed his life.
People around him genuinely worried that he might break under the pressure.
Then, after some time had passed, he suddenly returned.
His personality had changed somewhat.
He now carried himself with a faint air of laziness and mild delinquency.
Yet despite that transformation, he returned to university as though nothing had happened.
The timing strongly suggested that this was when he became involved with the Light Jobs.
Though Aoba-senpai had become something of a mild troublemaker in appearance, professors still thought highly of him.
His rebelliousness was mostly cosmetic.
He wasn’t causing actual problems.
Academically, too, he had recovered to nearly the same level he had maintained before his financial difficulties.
And that, I believed, was where the real purpose of the Light Jobs was hidden.
In other words—
The organization identified talented students who had fallen into hardship, extended a helping hand at exactly the right moment, earned their gratitude, and secured valuable human resources for the future.
That was the system.
At least, that was my theory.
But…
“………”
Even if that was their goal…
The method seemed absurdly inefficient.
And expensive.
Not only that, but the jobs themselves looked so suspicious that they were undoubtedly driving away many of the very people they were trying to recruit.
If anything, because they specifically targeted decent, sensible people, those candidates were naturally terrified when offered jobs that paid far beyond market rates.
So they ran.
Which, in turn, likely explained why the organization always seemed short on manpower.
That was the contradiction I couldn’t ignore.
A mismatch between supply and demand.
A disconnect between ideals and execution.
Something about it irritated me.
It felt wasteful.
Frustrating.
Because if it were me—
I could do it better.
If the goal was to recruit talent, why hide everything?
Why not simply be honest from the beginning?
“We’re helping you because we want to earn your goodwill and potentially recruit you in the future. Interested?”
Any truly capable person would at least consider the offer seriously.
I couldn’t understand the value of concealing their identity.
And if that secrecy was actively hurting them, then it needed to be corrected.
The entire Light Job system needed to be rebuilt from the ground up.
And I could do it.
Minimize expenses.
Maximize returns.
Gather talent more efficiently.
Match people to roles more effectively.
Normalize compensation so it stopped looking like an obvious scam.
Eliminate the very reason candidates fled in the first place.
I could provide that solution.
Naturally, I would expect compensation in return.
But this wasn’t part-time work.
This was business.
A part-time job demanded commitment and loyalty.
Business was different.
Business didn’t scare me.
So let’s approach this rationally, shall we, mysterious mastermind known as X?
Granted, this line of thinking might have strayed slightly outside the bounds of a normal university life.
But if it was business, that was unavoidable.
Characters with public faces and hidden faces were common enough in light novels.
So even if my hidden side was a little unusual…
That was still within the margin of error.
That was how I felt.
Which was precisely why I had come to this interview.
First, I would establish a connection with someone above Aoba-senpai.
Then I would climb higher.
And higher.
Until I reached the person who had conceived the entire Light Job system.
Because this system wasn’t normal.
And I was going to make it normal.
Holding onto that conviction, I opened the email containing the interview details one more time.
I only intended to double-check the dress code.
The meeting time.
A few miscellaneous notes.
That was all.
And then the hallucination appeared.
──────
“Light Job Operating Company”
Purpose: Charity
Philosophy:
“I don’t need money anymore, so go spend a ton of it.”
Profit:
None in particular
(Though if one had to name something, tax deductions.)
Talent recruitment?
What’s that? Never heard of it. Sounds scary…
Details:
A group of wealthy people with more money than they knew what to do with started the organization for one simple reason:
They wanted to shove money into the hands of struggling but fundamentally good young people and then sit back and enjoy watching those youths either find salvation or become utterly confused by the experience.
Trusted associates search for young people in difficult circumstances.
Interviews are conducted to evaluate their character and situation.
If the interviewers conclude, “Yeah, I’d like to help this person,” then that individual becomes a recipient.
A silent Super Chat.
No strings attached.
They aren’t looking for new business opportunities.
They aren’t expecting repayment.
If anything, it’s comparable to older adults who can no longer eat mountains of fried food or barbecue themselves, so they take satisfaction in watching younger people enjoy it instead.
If one had to force it into Japanese social terminology:
It’s charity.
Founder: Kirishiro Retsuya
──────
“…?…………………………..”
“……………………………………….??”
“……………………….??…………………………..”
“Fuuuuuuuh…”
I closed my eyes.
Then I rubbed the corners of my eyes vigorously.
Eye strain really did arrive from the most unexpected directions.
As someone who constantly suffered from hallucinations, I had spent the last several months reading an absurd amount of information about eye health.
Part of me had hoped that taking better care of my eyes might somehow make the hallucinations disappear.
So far, that hope had produced exactly zero results.
Even so.
My vision was perfect.
Twenty-twenty in both eyes.
Yet despite that, I found myself doubting what I had just seen.
No.
What was that?
Fear gripped me.
Actual fear.
I, Kirishiro Gouto—the same person who hadn’t even blinked when his own parents cast him out—
Was afraid.
Forgetting, if only briefly, my self-image as an ordinary university student.
Rejecting the information before my eyes.
Trying not to process it.
And then, suddenly, a memory surfaced.
Back in high school, one of my subordinates had once talked excitedly about a tabletop role-playing game inspired by mythology.
A TRPG.
He had spoken innocently, almost cheerfully.
There were dangers in that game, he said, that could be avoided simply by remaining ignorant.
The more knowledge you possessed…
The more you understood…
The closer you moved toward madness.
Understanding was the act of dismantling the unknown.
But there was no guarantee that a human being could endure what lay beneath once the unknown had been taken apart.
That was why I was afraid to open my eyes.
Even though I knew it was only a hallucination.
Even though I knew I was the only one who could see it.
I was terrified by the possibility that the founder of the Light Jobs—
An organization operating according to motives I couldn’t comprehend—
Might be my father.
The terror of understanding something that should have remained beyond understanding.
It was right there.
“Right. That’s why I’ll open my eyes one more time.”
I spoke aloud, as though negotiating with reality itself.
“There won’t be anything there.”
“The darkness behind the Light Jobs doesn’t exist.”
“You understand that, don’t you, hallucination?”
With that prayer in my heart, I opened my eyes.
The email remained displayed on my phone exactly as before.
And the hallucination…
──────
“Light Jobs”
Founder:
Kirishiro Retsuya
──────
Maybe I should just not go to the interview.