Post-Epilogue Chapter 21: It’s the Small Things in Life

Life's busy.

That was pretty lame, as far as truisms go, but not inaccurate. My life, in particular, never got a quarter of a smidgen of an iota less busy, despite the scenario ending and us flying by the seat of our pants without any narrative influence forcing things to progress along a twist plot.

In retrospect, I might've even preferred those times. Sure, there was always some new nonsense and crisis lurking just around the corner, but things were predictable in their unpredictability. Did that make sense? What I was trying to get at is that, while the developments were deadly dangerous at best and kooky at worst, they were something to focus on and keep me 'locked in', so to speak. In contrast, these days my biggest concerns were endless meetings and my girlfriends' magical girl plot that's been steadily ballooning out of proportion (and maybe control). That, and graduation exams, though I wasn't stressing nearly as much over those as some.

Between these concerns, it was even more important to keep up my work-life balance than before, and after spending the whole winter break dividing my time between the girls and my families, plural, it was high time I got a proper break for myself. Hence why I was in front of the familiar arcade near the main street.

"Ah, it's been so long!" a certain hyperactive Celestial girl exclaimed on my left, her mouth set in a delighted grin, only for it to give way to a contemplative frown when she glanced to her left in turn. "Seriously, when was the last time we hung out like this? Just the three of us?"

Josh responded with an off-the-cuff, "Been a while," while browsing the innards of his wallet, like a diviner trying to predict today's expenses. He eventually looked up and said, "Leo's got two girlfriends to keep happy, and last year was crazy, so…"

"Yeah, right," his girlfriend nodded with a faint grimace, but then her expression shifted on a dime again when she pointed at the doors of the arcade. "All the more time to make up for! Come on, guys, let's get ready to rumble!"

I uttered a suitably enthused, "Sure, sure," which clearly wasn't quite up to her standards, but before she could get a word in, I also pointed out, "Only until seven, right?"

"Yeah," Josh agreed offhandedly, his attention back on his wallet again. "We promised to get back home by then."

"Hey! Don't talk about leaving already! We haven't even arrived yet!"

This was a weekday, after school and clubs. That meant two things: we were still wearing our uniforms, and more importantly, it was a bit after four in the afternoon. Angie had tennis practice, and Josh asked me to help out with the equipment again. Once we were done with that, the childhood friend couple invited me to hang out, like in the 'good old times'. Mind you, those were mostly from before the start of the scenario, and thus my amnesia, when we apparently hung out in the arcades almost every day. I couldn't remember them, but I'd visited this place a couple of times already, so I wasn't against the idea.

They were also right in that it's been quite a while since we had the opportunity to hang out like this, just the three of us, but with the rest of the gang busy elsewhere, it was a rare chance for some quality friendship time, or somesuch.

"What's the plan?" I asked, and after some clearly theatrical sighs, Josh turned to face me.

"Depends on if you're going to finance us or not."

That made me raise a brow and blurt out, "Why would I need to?"

The childhood friend duo gave me a classic 'Is this guy serious?' kind of look, and Angie pointed at me, saying, "It's because you're loaded, and we're not? Duh?"

"What the heck are you talking about?" My question only earned me another round of skeptical stares, much to my rising annoyance. "You're Deus," I started, pointing at Angie.

"Not right now. She's sleeping," she said, magnificently missing the point.

"No, I mean, you are Deus, the head of the Elysium. You just have to ask for it, and Jaakobah will hand you a briefcase of unmarked hundred Jen bills with non-sequential serial numbers, probably in less than twenty-four hours."

"That would be a gross misuse of authority, and…" Angie started, only to then squint at me and ask, "How do you even know that?"

Ignoring her, I turned to Josh next.

"And you! I finally managed to push through a motion to acknowledge the 'Herald of the Emperor' as an official position within the New Noble Alliance last November! You should've already received your first stipend."

"Ah, that?" The guy scratched the back of his neck, looking a tad embarrassed. "You see, Mom and Dad just really don't get this whole Abyssal and whatever business…"

"Not that we were trying really hard to explain," Angie chimed in on the side. "It's waaay too complicated and tiresome."

Her boyfriend nodded along and crossed his arms with a soft grunt.

"Yeah. All they understand is that I'm getting money from somewhere for some complicated reason, so it's going into a savings account, and I can't touch it until I graduate."

"Dude. That's your money."

"Yeah, well, do you want to argue with my parents?"

I had a snappy comeback on the tip of my tongue, but… did I ever meet with Josh's parents? I mean, it's a trope that the protagonist's parents are always off-screen, but I swear, I never got to see them, not even while Far Glancing at the guy, so he might as well be living alone. However, before I could point out any of this, Angie grabbed our arms and started dragging us towards the arcade.

"Stop arguing, slowpokes! We only have a couple of hours; stop wasting it!"

"Well, I wouldn't…" I started, but quickly gave up with a shallow sigh and a quiet, "Never mind."

Angie hummed in satisfaction, only to then turn on her heel as soon as we were inside the building and ask, "By the way, how are the Abyssals sending Josh Jens? I thought that was a whole hubbub, or something?"

"Ah, yeah." Now that she reminded me, I lightly rubbed my forehead and explained as we walked, "The Abyss has its own currency, which obviously isn't worth anything out here. The aristocracy apparently used precious metals, gems, and the like to exchange for money when they came outside, so they don't have any cash reserves. Right now, all transactions are done through the Draconic Federation acting as a middleman."

"Right. The Abyss's economy needs to be fixed up once we're in charge, huh?" Angie mused aloud, while Josh let out a soft huff.

"Considering how Leo took control, it might already be a done deal by the time we're out of college."

"Don't even joke about that," I snapped, maybe a bit too hard, so I softened it with, "I've been trying to get out of charge for months now. Don't jinx it."

"Well, you're not doing a very good job at that." Angie poked me by, well, literally poking my side. She let out a giggle when I sent her a flat gaze, then added, "Keep at it, pal! Who knows? Once you’re ‘out of charge’, maybe we can hang out more?"

"It would be a nice change of pace," Josh surmised, then pointed at the large machine at the back of the establishment. "Do you wanna give the mega-gacha a try?"

Looking over, there really was a fairly unfamiliar machine back there. It was taking up as much space as two claw machines, sporting a transparent plastic tank at the top filled with colourful balls. It kind of reminded me of an old-timey gumball dispenser, but instead of chewing gum, this one was filled with basketball-sized spheres, each one holding a mystery box inside.

"Oh, oh! Let's try it!" Angie urged us forward with an excited glint in her eyes. "Last time I've only got a keychain, but we've got our lucky charm this time around, so we're guaranteed to get something cool out of it!"

"Lucky charm?" Josh asked back while letting himself be pushed towards the machine, and her girlfriend beamed at me.

"Yeah! Leo's here!"

"Since when am I lucky?" I blurted out, but she didn't relent.

"Come on, you know what I mean! Good things always happen when you're around!"

"Do they?" Josh asked again, and this time the Celestial girl was getting impatient.

"You'll see!" she declared, then pointed at the receptacle on the front of the device. "Twenty Jens a pop! Who's starting?"

Now, that made me look at the machine skeptically again.

"Twenty? For one pull?"

"It has really cool prizes," Angie insisted, and after a while, Josh took the lead.

"Fine. I have a twenty bill on me, but Leo's paying for everything else."

After unilaterally deciding that, he stepped up the machine. There was an employee standing by, and after expressing his intent to use it, she helped him slot the paper money into the device and turn the large crank. The lights on the machines started flashing, along with a bit-crushed carnival song, and the balls inside the tank got stirred by some kind of mechanism for a while. While we were waiting for that to finish, Angie sidled up to me and tugged on my sleeve.

"Yes?"

"So… The Abyss really has a hard time integrating into the outside economy, huh?"

She must've been referring back to our previous exchange, and after some deliberation, I tentatively nodded.

"Yeah. They're fairly good on the agricultural and fishing front, but the service sector is practically non-existent, while their industry is lagging by a solid century. It was fine enough for domestic production, but there's not much of a market for Victorian-era clothing and cathode ray tube televisions on the outside anymore."

In fact, I was already impressed that they even managed to have a home-grown electronics sector, even though it was already a bit outdated by the start-of-the-scenario standards, let alone the current ones, after the Simulacrum force-marched itself into the information age (mostly thanks to my unconscious influence, but I digress).

"Yes, yes, but listen!" Angie continued to insist, pulling on my sleeve with extra vigour. "I've read aaall the economic books already, and I have an idea!"

This… did not bode well, but I was willing to listen, if nothing else.

Meanwhile, Josh's prize landed in the tray at the bottom, and the employee was helping him open it up. The balls were apparently sealed pretty tight, probably to make sure they wouldn't open during the stirring. Anyhow, the moment I nodded, Angie launched into a speech.

"So, the problem is that the Abyss doesn't have proper money, right? The kind you can use on the market, not just the… You know?" She rose to her tiptoes to whisper, "The World of Mystics?" When I nodded, she got down and continued with, "They want to get new stuff in to modernize and all, but they don't have the money for that, and would have to use up their gold reserves to get started, right?"

"In a nutshell," I answered offhandedly while watching Josh unpack the box inside the ball.

"In other words, the problem is that the Abyss doesn't have enough export goods! If we fix that, everything falls into place."

Meanwhile, Josh returned to us with a huge penguin plushie in hand.

"Well, it could've been better, but it could’ve been worse," he noted while showing off his acquisition. "Do you want it?"

"Do I ever?!" his girlfriend blurted out and snatched the toy from him. "Ah! So fluffy!"

While she was busy with that, I stepped up and handed a bill to the employee, then turned the crank. I thought Angie forgot what she wanted to say, but then she joined me by the tray of the machine and continued like we weren't interrupted at all.

"So, here's my idea. The Abyss's climate can be adjusted, like the Elysium's, right? That means it can be fine-tuned to any kind of cash crop we could want!"

In the meantime, the machine stopped flashing, and a big red-and-green ball landed in front of me. I gestured at the employee, and she helped me peel off the tape sealing the two halves together, while Angie continued in a low voice.

"I've heard that there's this sickness that's ruining banana plantations. Some kind of fungus, or something. So, hear me out… what if we get a whole lot of healthy banana plants in there, wait for the prices to rise as the other plantations get infected, and then corner the market! Then we can export them to the outside, and use the trade profits to buy better farming equipment and modernize to grow even more bananas to sell!"

I stopped unpacking and sent yet another deadpan gaze at her, but she didn't seem to get the message.

"Angie? Could you please stop trying to turn everything into a banana republic? Quite literally, in this case?"

"Boo! I tell you, it could work!"

"What could work?" Josh asked as he re-entered the conversation. "I think I missed the first half of the discussion."

"I just told Leo about my amazing banana-idea, but he just brushed me off!"

"Oh, that." Josh let out a soft sigh. "I told you it would happen."

"Boo!"

While all that was going on, I opened up the box inside the ball, which had… another box. Which I opened as well, revealing… an even smaller box.

"Somebody's having a laugh at my expense," I grumbled as I opened the last container, holding a pair of cheap-ish earrings in a tiny box. They were shaped like tiny five-petalled flowers, with a white gem in the middle and red gems in the petals. There was also a big, flashy 'Magnetic!' slogan on the side of the box, so maybe they weren't a proper piercings but clip-ons? Either way, I wasn't sure these were worth twenty Jens.

"Oh, that's cute!" Angie declared, his previous peevishness already gone, as her bad moods usually tended to do.

"Not feeling very lucky about it, though," I noted a tad sourly, so she patted me on the back.

"Come on, pal! You're our lucky charm! The important part is that we should be lucky! Speaking of which…" She stopped to dramatically roll up her sleeves, and then fished out twenty yens from her pockets, mostly in small denominations and change. "My turn!"

The employee accepted the money, and while they were busy with that, it was Josh's turn to sidle up to me and ask, "Did she give you the whole sales pitch on the banana-plantation thing?"

"Only the footnotes version."

The guy slouched his shoulders and told me, "Yeah, I had to listen to the whole thing the other day. She's really attached to the idea."

"Well, it's not a bad one," I admitted, much to my friend's shock and surprise.

"It isn't?"

"I mean, not the whole 'banana plantation' and 'gaming the fruit market' parts, but she's not wrong per se. We talked about this with the Elysium too, but the Abyss also needs to modernise, and it's going to be much harder."

Josh nodded along.

"Right. Because in Elysium, you and Deus are treated as gods, so you can just push through any reform you want, but in the Abyss, the Noble Houses are all independent, and since Ollie is still a little kid, the position of the Emperor cannot be properly leveraged to enact sweeping economic and policy changes."

"… Wow. Look at you, with all the lingo. We might just make a politician out of you yet."

My friend rolled his eyes and jabbed me in the side with his elbow.

"Oh, shut it. Who do you think has to study all those books with her to keep up her motivation?" He shook his head and amended, "No, actually. I've been studying as well, it's just that… I don't think I'm cut out for this kind of stuff."

"You can never know unless you give it a try," I told him with a shrug. "There's a saying that the world is always in a crappy state because all the politicians get to where they are by being power-hungry, selfish jerks, while all the nice and selfless people who could make the world better just aren't cut out for rising in the ranks. Since you're already stuck at the top of those ranks, you might as well try to do your best and make the Abyss a little better."

"So you're saying I'm a nice, selfless guy, huh?" he asked back with a smirk, and I shrugged again.

"Nah. I'm just saying you're not a power-hungry, selfish a-hole."

"Ouch. That's a low bar to clear…"

Meanwhile, Angie got her prize, and I could see her expression wilt in real time when she opened the first box and found another one inside. She repeated the process one more time, and just as I was about to decide on whether I should cheer her up or tell her 'See, I told you so,' she suddenly let out an excited squee.

"Yaaay! Jackpot!"

Startled, Josh rushed over to her side with a "What? What?" and his girlfriend pushed a white box into his face.

"Look at this! It's a wireless earbuds! Wireless!"

The image on the box was, just as she said, that of a pair of black earbuds, with 'No wires!' written at its bottom in large letters, stylised to look like thunderbolts.

"Wow, that's fancy," Josh noted as he took a closer look at the box.

"It's not just fancy, it's awesome!" she proclaimed with a toothy grin that showed off even her molars, and she then hugged the box to her chest like it was her baby. "This is so cool! I wanted one of these for Christmas, but by the time I got my gift money, they were already out of stock!" She then showed it to me next, saying, "Look, Leo! It's completely wireless, and it uses Greenfang to connect to your phone, and it has a seven-hour battery life! Isn't this cool!? It's like we're living in the future!"

There wasn't much to argue about that. As I'd mentioned before, while the pace of technological leapfrogging slowed considerably compared to my first few months in the Simulacrum, when we went from blocky dumb-phones and CRTs to touch screens and Super Mareo Bash Siblings in full 3D, things were still progressing, albeit a bit less hectically. Case in point: Dragonflame Records had almost completely phased out CDs in favour of our streaming platform, mobile internet was everywhere, and by the looks of it, wireless headphones were now hitting the market.

"You see, Leo? I told you! You're our lucky rabbit's foot!" Angie declared while jumping around excitedly, like a little kid on Christmas morning, which was… maybe a bit too accurate?

However, she soon froze when Josh spoke up, saying, "Question: Is it even compatible with your phone?"

Angie stopped celebrating and stared at the box in her hands, then at Josh, and finally at me.

"Leo?"

"Yes?"

"So, about that thing, with Mister Arpachshad and the suitcase of non-serialized money and stuff? Were you serious about that?"

Wanting to buy a new phone for their new headphones was about as classic a 'putting the cart before the horse' as a situation could get, but I just couldn't get mad at her.

"Maybe. Let's ask him later."

"… If you're pranking me and I get scolded, I'm gonna be real mad at you, you know?" she told me with a not-at-all daunting glare, but when I met her gaze, she quickly dropped the act, got her grin back, and she turned on her heel to point at the booth at the other end of the arcade. "Allrighty! Let's celebrate our supreme luck by shooting some zombies!"

She rushed ahead, followed by Josh, saying, "Leo's paying! No takebacks!"

I stifled a chuckle and followed after the two. Yeah, being silly like that suited them better than all this talk about economics and banana republics and whatnot, and as for luck…

"What am I going to do with this?" I grumbled as I looked at my 'prize' again.

It didn't really suit either Judy's or Elly's style, and even if I gave it to one of them, then I would've needed to get something of roughly equal value to the other, because fairness was important, and at that point, I might as well just get them proper jewellery. In the end, I sighed and pocketed it.

"Oh, well. I'm sure I'll figure out something," I whispered and followed after the childhood friend couple.

Now was the time to play. I'll be busy in the evening, so I might as well just enjoy the moment while it lasted.