Chapter 38: Flea Market Goods

“For now, I’ve prepared about this much—what do you think?”

“……”

Early the next morning, we headed back to the royal castle and were guided to Rain’s room. Once we were alone like yesterday, Rain showed us the contents of the magic bag he’d prepared, and literally mountains of various items spilled out.

In addition to the goods we’d told him had sold well at the flea market, there were also other items Rain had selected that seemed likely to sell in Japan. Apparently he’d gathered all this in just one day.

“This is plenty. Actually, I probably couldn’t sell all of this by myself…”

“You really gathered this much in just one day…”

“And a magic bag with this much capacity must be quite expensive…”

Not just me, but Yuuka and Aoi were also somewhat dumbfounded.

By the way, magic bags vary in price depending on their capacity, and the one I’d borrowed from Yuuka held less than half of this. I had no idea how much it cost…

“Great. Better to have too much than too little. Let me know anytime if you run out.”

“…I think we’ll be fine for a while. So, I’ll sell these at a Japanese flea market, and use that money to buy and send you manga, right?”

The goods to sell at the flea market—the source of funds for purchasing manga and other items—would be prepared by Rain. We would also keep part of the proceeds as my sales commission.

Not having to go through the trouble of procuring goods ourselves was something to be grateful for.

“Yeah. I’m sorry to put so much burden on you, Kakeru-kun. I thought about it carefully all day yesterday, but it seems there’s really no other way to get Japanese money right now besides selling at flea markets. Not having any ID is the biggest hurdle…”

“That’s exactly the problem. That’s the biggest issue with reincarnation…”

“Since I died in an accident, I’m definitely registered as deceased, so any bank accounts I had would have been closed.”

As expected, not having a family register or ID was tough. In practice, without them, I was treated like an undocumented immigrant. I supposed I could earn money through criminal activity, but that was out of the question.

Even if I got caught, I could use Return to Japan to escape, but I couldn’t afford to become a wanted criminal.

“For now, let’s do our best at the flea market until we find a better way.”

Asking Yuuka’s family or my own family for help would be a last resort.

When I checked with Rain, it seemed physical books were preferable to e-books, so there was no need to borrow a credit card and purchase online. I’d told him that e-books were widespread now and most manga could be downloaded online immediately, but he apparently preferred the paper versions he was used to.

I tended to buy physical copies too, more often than not. Yuuka and Aoi apparently purchased e-books more frequently, so I could sense a bit of generational difference there. For manga that was already out of print and impossible to obtain, I’d have to ask Yuuka’s parents to order them in bulk—sorry about that.

“Sorry, but I’m counting on you. If you find a better method or anything I can help with, please tell me!”

“Yeah, I’ll ask if something comes up.”

Since there’s a limit to how much one person can earn at a flea market, I wanted to find some better method.

After all, gathering everything on Rain’s manga wish list would cost hundreds of thousands of yen, and he also wanted new manga that was currently being published. Furthermore, to watch anime, we’d need at least a portable DVD or BD player, plus a power source for electricity.

No, wait—he said he wanted to play games in the future too, so maybe we should buy a monitor. Either way, we’d need quite a lot of Japanese money. If only there were a way to earn larger sums. For now, I would do my best at the flea market.

“I managed to earn about 20,000 yen worth. But compared to weekends, there were definitely far fewer customers…”

After returning from the royal castle to our inn, I participated in a small-scale flea market that I’d reserved the day before—one that didn’t require ID. However, flea markets that don’t require ID and allow same-day reservations are very small-scale, and since today was a weekday, there were hardly any customers.

Despite having received so many goods from Rain, setting prices low, and doing my best to attract customers, sales only amounted to a little over 20,000 yen. It hurt that there wasn’t a customer who bought in bulk first thing in the morning like last time, and selling at flea markets seemed unstable and heavily dependent on luck. Going forward, it might be better to focus on weekends when there are more customers.

That said, this should be enough to buy some new manga. This much should last until next weekend… No, given that person’s passion for manga, he might finish reading it all in one or two days. Well, I’ll ask him to hold out until next weekend.

With this, what we could do in the royal capital was finished for now. The inn was extremely comfortable, but Aoi seemed a bit out of place there. And while the food was delicious with its high-end ingredients, having that all the time made me crave normal meals too. I suppose it’s about time to head back to Berlia.