Novel "Let's Do a Job!" ①

What is an 'otsutome'...

According to books, it is generally defined as "a polite expression for 'work' (tsutome)."
However, this four-character word has various "usages," covering both good and evil, inside and out.

For example, in Buddhist terminology, morning and evening religious services are referred to as "otsutome." On the other hand, the duration of imprisonment or a prison sentence is also called "otsutome."

Also, specially discounted items are displayed as "otsutome-hin," the mandatory sexual acts between a long-married couple are called "otsutome," and in the Edo period, the fee for a courtesan was expressed as "otsutome."

And one more thing. When thieves among themselves go to commit a theft, it is called
"Theftotsutome"
...

"Let's Do a Job!"

1 Yoshino Yuasa

Two months had passed since I became a third-year student at Koyo-kan University. It was the time of year when everyone around me was starting to move in earnest toward job hunting, and between lectures or in the cafeteria at lunchtime, I could hear talk about internships and specific strategies for gaining an advantage.

Even to Yoshino, who didn't engage in any particular social activities, greedy students would occasionally approach her seeking information, but it had become customary for them to leave looking disappointed once she told them she hoped to go on to graduate school.

Yoshino kept her inconspicuous brown long hair neatly tied back, wore glasses that made her look quite serious, and dressed in blouses or sweaters paired with long skirts or pants, committing herself to an appearance that looked as plain as possible.

The surroundings were overflowing with men and women in flashy clothes who seemed to be trying to enjoy their remaining youth without anyone knowing why they had come to university, but Yoshino kept her distance from such people, spending her free time between lectures reading in the library or in her car.

Koyo-kan University is not what you would call a "well-known" university. To be blunt, with Yoshino's grades, she could have easily gotten into a higher-ranked national university. The reason Yoshino chose this university was
because it had a substantial wealth of history and archaeology resources. The faculty for the early period of Japanese history, which Yoshino never tired of, was excellent. In particular, she was impressed by the papers of Yae Watanabe, an associate professor of humanities, and she had determined that there was no better university than this one for studying from the Jomon to the Yayoi period.

After enrolling, she found that her assessment had been correct, and Yoshino became obsessed with her studies. She finished almost all of the liberal arts courses required for the first and second years in just one year, and spent more than half of her second year immersed in her beloved history through specialized courses. Naturally, there was no other student besides Yoshino who took such conspicuous actions, and she must have appeared to the faculty as a "motivated person."

However, there was one other person who had managed to do the same thing. Chie Uesugi. There was something that clicked the moment she saw the name, and Yoshino immediately began an investigation.

When the name and the person first matched up, she shook her head many times, wondering if the information she had gathered was wrong. That was how much of a gap there was between Uesugi's academic attitude and her appearance.

She couldn't be even 160 cm tall. Since she was wearing platform sneakers, it was hard to tell exactly, but she still gave a petite and delicate impression. She had a short bob of black hair with green highlights, and even that black hair sometimes looked entirely green depending on how the light hit it. Combined with her hairstyle, there were times when she looked like an elementary school student from behind, but when you walked around to the front, her appearance changed completely.

The first thing that caught your eye was the large number of piercings in her ears. She also had them in her nose and lips. Her makeup was also garish. Her face was painted stark white, but only the area around her eyes was pitch black, and she wore colored contact lenses that made her look pale. Her rock band T-shirt, which was short enough to show her navel, and her distressed denim shorts were studded everywhere.

No one would think that this was a "motivated person" who had walked the same path as Yoshino. Rather, it was a stretch to think of her as anything other than an "aggressive eccentric." It clearly looked like a stance of rejecting contact with the outside world.

Yoshino's curiosity was swelling up. Uesugi was the first person other than a university lecturer that she had wanted to communicate with of her own volition. However, if she rushed things here, she would ruin it. First, she had to observe the other person carefully. Behind her glasses, Yoshino's eyes sharpened. Of course, no one would have noticed that.

Uesugi seemed to live alone in an apartment near the university. Judging by the rank of the place, one could tell he had been raised in a financially wealthy family. Given his appearance, he probably couldn't hold down a proper part-time job, so it was certain that he relied entirely on an allowance for his living expenses. Of course, if Yoshino's hunch was correct, his home environment was likely perfect for his studies.

He walked to university, but on his days off, she could see him heading out on a motorcycle. Based on his usual appearance, she had thought he might ride a naked neo-classic bike, but what he actually rode was a customized D-Tracker. The place he headed to was a manga cafe, and it seemed he was using it as a customer rather than working there.

Other than that, he rarely went out shopping. When he did stop by a convenience store, all he bought were cartons of cigarettes and car or motorcycle magazines; there was no sign of him buying food or drinks. He didn't use the university cafeteria either, and he spent his free time endlessly in the smoking area. In any case, she had never seen him eat or drink anything. He was also thorough about not talking to people; even on the rare occasion someone spoke to him, he would just turn up the volume of the music leaking from his earphones and decide to ignore them completely.

The more she learned, the more interested she became. Unusually for Yoshino, she became more concerned with Uesugi's movements than her own lectures, to the point where she even skipped her own classes to sneak into lectures that Uesugi was taking, even though she didn't need to take them herself.

After about ten days of continuing her observations like this, Yoshino finally decided to speak to him. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say that her interest had grown to the point where she couldn't keep it under control unless she spoke to him. In any case, the first contact was crucial. With ordinary methods, she would likely just be brushed off like everyone else. She had to come up with a strategy to prevent that from happening.

Yoshino's mouth twisted. It was like a devil's smile.


2 Chie Uesugi

Recently, there had been a strange presence flickering about. Both on and off campus, she could feel a gaze fixedly watching her. Of course, she pretended not to notice, but the feeling of being followed by someone clung to her everywhere. Strangely, it wasn't the gaze of condemnation or sexual curiosity that she usually felt. They were just watching her intently. It felt as if she were a herbivore being targeted by a carnivore.

At one point, she identified the owner of that gaze. While hiding behind her bangs, she was able to see her through the glass. Surprisingly, it was a plain, inconspicuous, honor-student type of female student. That day, as soon as she returned to her room, she hacked into the university server and identified the student.
Yoshino Yuasa. A third-year student like herself, and in the same major.

"Huh, she's 172 cm, that's huge. Oh... wow! Nice body..."

Chie muttered to herself, which had become a habit, while scrolling through the information. She had received an A+ in history and humanities, and Japanese history. Her other grades were also consistently good.

Upon further investigation, she noticed that Yuasa, like herself, had finished her liberal arts curriculum in almost one year.

"…I see… so that's it…"

She felt like she understood why she was being followed. Someone who looked insane at first glance must have had doubts about how she was completing her studies in the same program as her. She was used to being looked at with "those eyes." Most likely, some professor had let something slip about Chie. Once she knew that, there was no need to be particularly vigilant.

Chie closed the window and enlarged another one. It looked like some kind of program, with green text and symbols densely packed onto a pitch-black screen. Chie scrolled through the program as it was, occasionally making corrections to the text and symbols. The frequency was by no means high, but there were large-scale changes, such as swapping blocks of code or replacing sequences with completely different ones.

"Still as stubborn as ever. You have to have flexible thinking sometimes..."

The program Chie was tinkering with was a new driver for an X-ray CT scanner developed at her father's laboratory. She was researching whether this device, which was mainly used for mineral analysis, could be repurposed to read characters in ancient documents non-destructively.
Chie reviewed the program from the beginning, and after about an hour, satisfied with the result, she closed the screen and lay down on her bed. If she used her brain this much, she should be able to sleep today without hearing the sound of her brain spinning.

As expected, while enduring a slight dizzy spell, she closed her eyes and Chie fell asleep immediately.

"Let's Do Our Duty!" (1)
End.

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