Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“So, why are the two of us here?” Asked Yuuka. “And why did we need our school bags?”

I stood in front of a white board in the classroom near my office, leaning against it. “Right. This is Remedial Treasury 000.”

“I don’t understand,” said Serika. “I’m doing just fine in math.”

“Same, I am extremely good at math. You know that Sensei. I help you balance Schale’s books.”

“That’s correct, this is more about the fact that both of you are bad at identifying scams and fraud… Really bad at it.”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” said Serika.

“You just lost 10,000 yen last week to something called PonziCoin… And this after we discussed what a Ponzi scheme was, after the whole Ponzi Petroleum fiasco.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t explain why I’m here, Sensei,” said Yuuka.

“Yuuka, you lost almost 2 million yen building a machine to see the future…”

“I did make it back,” said Yuuka crossing her arms. “With profit.”

“That was dumb luck and we both know that… Also, before that misadventure, the investments you were making were a total failure.”

She wouldn’t make eye contact with me. “Sometimes an investment doesn’t pan out-“

“Yuuka, you invested in some first year’s cryptocurrency exchange...” I pointed at Serika, “Which was for the previous iteration of the PonziCoin she fell for… Which was also named PonziCoin!”

“Look, the cryptocurrency space is… Complicated, Sensei,” said Yuuka. “You still struggle with push-button start and touchscreens on cars. Crypto is way out of your skill set.”

I crossed my arms. “Someone much smarter than me gave me some wise advice; you shouldn’t invest in stuff you don’t understand.”

“I understand it.”

“Okay, explain it to me,” I said.

Yuuka said nothing.

I sighed, this wasn’t going well. “Look, I’m not judging either of you. Sometimes you get tricked. It happens to everyone. Happened to me. It’s likely happened to your classmates too. However, both of you are also entrusted with your school’s funds, and have fallen for a lot of scams lately… Including some you should be able to identify as scams.”

I clapped my hands, regaining their attention. “So, we’re going to go over how to not fall for scams.”

They both stared at me.

“Look, think of it this way, you two get an entire week with me. I cleared my entire schedule to spend time with you two going over this.”

Lesson 1: MLMs - Garages Full of Junk.

“We'll start with multilevel marketing. It's a type of product sales, where you completely forego selling your products in retail stores and websites, and instead sell your products directly to the consumer. Typically using word of mouth or ads bought by you, along with door-to-door sales or arranging events to gather people where they can buy your product.”

I brought up a slide with scans of the flyer Serika had found advertising a scheme selling germanium bracelets.

“Serika fell for one of these a while back, germanium bracelets that were claimed to improve your aura and improve your luck. It does not. There was the added penalty that Germanium is also ever so slightly radioactive.”

“Oh yeah, Kivotos Fire sent Asa to talk to us about it in a special… Well wasn’t much of an assembly,” said Serika.

“She had to give that talk to nearly every school,” I said. “Apparently it’s a known problem.”

Yuuka nodded. “When she came to Millennium to give the talk, she was about 5 minutes into it before she realized that some bracelet giving off like a millisievert of radiation was the least hazardous radioactive thing in the school. Credit to her, she managed to improvise a more relevant speech on the fly.”

Serika held up her hand. “I’m still not sure I understand how it’s a scam… Okay, well I understand why the bracelets specifically were a scam, but you make it sound like the business model was the scam.”

“Correct. Typically the scam aspect of it, is that the company that sold you on this ‘opportunity’ has completely overstated the actual money making potential. Recall that the flyer said you’d become a boss babe billionaire?”

Serika nodded.

“That just isn’t going to happen, the only people who really have the chance to become rich off the operation are those at the top of the operation. Even that’s questionable from what I’ve learned.”

“You on the other hand are almost certainly going to be losing money on the process, both the selling to people, and recruiting people under you. Most likely you’ll be unable to sign up enough people below you and unable to find customers to buy your products.”

“Even if you do recruit folks, at a low level inside the organization, those recruits won’t generate enough returns for you to not be losing money when you factor in the time and expenses of recruiting people. Same thing will apply to your sales to customers, losing money when you factor in the time and expenses of getting those sales. Also the products you’re selling tend to be overpriced and of either poor quality or low demand by the public.”

“Can you elaborate a little on that?” Asked Serika. “The part ‘when you factor in time and effort’.”

I thought for a moment, then walked over to the dry erase board and started to draw a simple diagram.

“Let’s say you pay 1,000 yen for six widgets to sell, I think that's about 165 yen per widget. You sell each widget for 350 Yen. You then spend 3 hours a day over the next week selling those widgets.” I pulled out a calculator, and ran a few numbers. “Okay, so that’s 21 hours across the week for 2100 yen. Now, subtract out the 1,000 you spent to get the widgets to sell, you’re left with…”

Serika and Yuuka stared at me.

“That wasn’t rhetorical.”

“Oh, 1,100 yen as profit,” said Yuuka. “Which divided against the 21 hours spent selling… Is 52 yen an hour? That’s terrible.”

I pointed at Serika. “So that’s the issue. You did make money, however it is such little money relative to effort needed that it’s not worth it. At all,” I explained. “And that’s assuming you actually sold them all. If you only sold half, then you barely broke even. This leads us to the next issue… What’s more likely to happen is that you end up with boxes upon boxes of product you can’t sell, as you get into a graveyard spin where you keep buying merchandise to stay part of the company, which often will demand you must buy a minimum amount every so often. Meanwhile, you’re unable to move said product, and this cycle continues until you run out of money.”

“Boxes of product?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Typically a seller tends to end up with stock they can’t sell, so they just store it somewhere, like a garage or attic. Often hoping to eventually sell it.”

Serika started to twiddle her thumbs, while looking away. “Okay, um… Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad.”

“Okay, so I signed on to this business opportunity like six months ago, selling makeup…”

End of Day 1.

Chapter Text

The next morning I walked into the mess room to get my mug and make a cup of coffee before the day’s lesson. Serika and Yuuka were sat at a table with mugs, studying something. I poured cup of coffee, and walked over to the table. It was a calendar.

“I wouldn’t mind taking Noa, treat her to a few nice days at the beach…” Yuuka blushed a little.

“Score some brownie points,” giggled Serika.

“Cuddle in bed,” said Yuuka. “Oh, this will be fun. Vacation away from Millennium would be nice. There’s been so much going on lately, and without Rio…”

“Planning a vacation?” I asked, pulling out a chair. “Where to?”

“Oh, this place,” said Serika, pulling a pamphlet out of her school bag.

I quickly flipped through it. It was a timeshare. A beach house out near Yatoura Village.

“So, when you say this place,” I asked, pointing at the pamphlet.

“Well, yesterday I was going to a meeting after our class,” said Serika.

“And I decided to join her, since I didn’t have anything planned, and her thing sounded interesting,” said Yuuka.

“And, we were sitting in this conference room at that hotel by the railway station, and I realized, this is a multilevel marketing scam,” said Serika. “And I looked at Yuuka…”

“And I was like, ‘this is the mathematically impossible sales scam,” said Yuuka. “We should leave. And we did.”

“We did it. We saw a scam and realized it then left,” said Serika.

“Okay, good. That’s real good. That’s what you should do…” I said, cautiously. How did a timeshare fit into this?

“While we were walking out, someone said they were having a talk about vacations,” said Serika, “They invited us in, since they had just got started.”

I nodded. There it was.

“How long were you two in this talk?”

“Like 35 minutes,” said Serika.

I put my head down on the table for a moment.

Yuuka held up a hand. “Now hang on, I’m aware that timeshares are a scam, but this is different. It’s not a timeshare, it’s a vacation club, it’s a system that uses points-“

I groaned. “Which one of you signed it?”

“We both did, since we split it,” said Yuuka.

I stood up. “Where’s the paperwork, now.”

Yuuka dug the paperwork out of her bag and handed it to me. I stood up and walked out of the room, dialing Aoi on my phone. “Hey, I need a favor. I’m going to have Miho bring a contract over. It’s a timeshare thing. Figure out how the hell you get out of it. They signed it yesterday evening.”

“Okay. Why did you fall for that? Timeshares-”

“I didn’t… If you can’t find a way out, call Kanna and have her go have a chat with them.”

“Understood.”

Lesson 2: This is a Pyramid Scheme.

Yuuka held her hand up. “Wait, isn’t this just an MLM?”

“Yes and no,” I said, leaning against the dry erase board. “Lot of overlap, and something that is calling itself an MLM can turn out to actually be a pyramid scheme. However, they are not technically interchangeable.”

“Typically the way a pyramid scheme works is that you are tasked with recruiting people and selling products to those people to sell. Those people you recruited and sell to, then recruit their own underlings who they sell their stuff, that they bought from you.”

“Whole thing falls apart because by the eleventh level you exceed the population of Kivotos. So to be clear, this scheme would only ‘work’ if you got every single person in Kivotos involved. That’s not happening.” I showed a slide that had a pyramid which showed how many people needed to participate at each level, rapidly increasing with each level.

“The distinction is how you, a distributor, are supposed to make your money. If you make the bulk of your money selling to the public, people who have no connection to the company you work for... Then it’s not actually pyramid scheme. Keep in mind the issues from an MLM, but it’s not a true pyramid scheme. Some would say the distinction is academic.”

“However, if you make the bulk of your money selling to the distributors below you, to people in your own organization, it’s a pyramid scheme.”

“Okay, we’re going to use an example that Serika inadvertently fell for,” I explained. I brought up a slide that showed parts of the promotional document Serika had been given by them, An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Preparing Your Business for the Renewable Petroleum Future.

“So, Serika fell for a pyramid Scheme, where she was supposed to make money buying new, more efficient fuel pumps and storage tanks for refueling facilities for Ponzi Petroleum.”

“So, the issue was that there was no customer market, because even in the original Ponzi Petroleum scam, it was supposed to be regular oil and petrol once it was ‘extracted’ from the sea. There was no need for special petrol pumps or storage tanks.”

“When someone observed Serika reading a flyer for the Ponzi Petroleum, they approached her about a better business opportunity, selling it to her as an opportunity to ‘sell shovels’.”

“How do shovels fit into this?” Asked Yuuka. “I thought the product was fuel pumps and tanks.”

“It’s an old saying; in a highly speculative market for a resource, gold, silver, petroleum, coal. The money isn’t actually in the resource. It’s selling to those chasing the resource. Everyone needs a pickaxe. Everyone needs food. And they will pay for those things. You could go out into the goldfields for years, and never find anything. However guy selling you the pickaxe still got paid.”

Yuuka wrote in her notebook. “That’s very interesting, Sensei.”

I decided not to remark on her noting this observation and tapped the dry erase board.

“So this person sucked Serika in with a well-crafted tail of selling shovels, and became her distributor. Serika buys pumps and tanks from her with the objective of selling them to someone else. However, Serika can’t find anyone to buy her pumps or tanks. Had things gone according to the plan, Serika would have recruited someone below her, then sell her pumps and tanks to this new person below her, and so the cycle continues. However the Ponzi Petroleum scam was revealed, which obviously devastated this one as well before she could really try to convince anyone aside from the Foreclosure Task Force, who all refused to buy in.”

I turned off the projector and drew on the dry erase board. I tapped at the bottom of a 5 layer pyramid, with little stickmen forming each layer. “So, as you see, Serika was here, at the bottom of this pyramid.”

“So the distinction is that, unlike a MLM, you make money selling your merchandise to the people below you, in the company. The people you recruited into the company. Most if not all of the sales are to other people in your organization, and the way it works tends to funnel the money up to the top of the pyramid.”

“It turns out the top of the pyramid was a tank supplier.”

End of Day 2.

That evening, I sat in the Schale workroom, reviewing some letters from various schools. I needed to schedule a visit to Red Winter. I grabbed a pencil and made a few notes. I sipped a cup of tea, and placed the letter in a box marked ‘Read’.

“Hello Sensei.”

I looked up and smiled. Ichika waved as she walked through the door, trailed by a Justice Task Force member with long black hair and bright green eyes. She had a school bag along with two gym bags. Ichika stopped and motioned at Funabori. “As promised, one very cute streamer who specializes in financial analysis.”

She blushed. “I think you’re over selling me a little bit, senpai.”

Ichika laughed. “Nonsense. Sensei and I learn so much from your streams, and you are taking financial classes at Trinity. My stocks are up 5% thanks to your advice.”

Ichika walked back to the door, with a wave. “I’m going to grab a snack from the mess room and be on my way. Take good care of her!”

I waved back, then focused on my new helper. “Welcome to Schale, Funabori. Here’s the issue… As I’m sure everyone knows, I’m kinda new... So I look at these company names and they mean nothing to me.” I thought for a moment, trying to come up with a name I saw when I glanced over the financial documents from either Abydos or Millennium. “Enteron. Means nothing to me. It’s an energy company. I think?”

Funabori slowly nodded. “It… It was one.”

I stared at her. Oh, that’s not good. I picked up three cardboard banker boxes. “These are their investment portfolios, one of these is Abydos, the other two are Millennium’s. They authorized me to view them and to let someone else look at them. I want you to look over them, and then tell me about them.”

“Wow… This will be interesting,” said Funabori.

I carried the boxes over to a door. “I’ll have you set up in this meeting room. Give you some privacy and space to look over things. Also put a calculator and some notepads and stuff on the table.”

I set the boxes down on the table near the office supplies. “I hope this should be obvious, but do not live stream this. This stuff is highly confidential.”

Funabori nodded. “Obviously, knowing the positions of a school like Millennium could wreak havoc on the markets.” She set her school bag on the table and picked up the pocket calculator. “Um, you can keep this, sensei. My phone is a better calculator than this.”

I took it from her and put it in my shirt pocket.

“Do you have an adding machine, that would actually be useful.”

“An adding machine? Isn’t that just a calculator?”

Funabori shook her head. “It’s a special calculator, has a paper that comes out of the top with your calculations.”

“I’ll see if Aoi can lend us one… Wait is it used with finance?”

Funabori nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s its entire purpose. Book keeping.”

“I’ll be honest, I was a railway man, not a finance man. Not know for my maths ability. Let me see if Yuuka has one.” I pulled out my phone and sent Yuuka a message. “Did Ichika grab a keycard for your dorm room?”

She shook her head.

I offered a hand for one of the gym bags. “Let’s go get you a room and drop these off. If I recall, you haven’t done a shift with Schale.”

“Between school, Justice Task Force and streaming, I have a pretty busy schedule. Does sound fun from what Senpai tells us about it.”

“Did Ichika give you the quick tour, or did she bring you straight to me?”

“Brought me straight to you.”

I sighed. “Let’s go find your senpai, and have her give you the quick tour, you’ll be here a few days so you need to know where to find food and such. She’ll still be in the mess room, she always has cinnamon rolls when she’s here. They take a few minutes to warm up. I’d do it but I’m already swamped with work.”

My phone buzzed. I checked it. “Oh, apparently there’s one in the supply closet.” It buzzed several times very quickly. I scrolled the messages as we waited at the lift.

“… She’s now extremely mad.”

Chapter Text

The lift doors opened. I yawned as I walked down the hallway to the workroom and opened the door. I needed to get some more paperwork before today’s lesson. I was two large tote bins of mail piled up already. Somehow. Funabori sat on the floor in the meeting room in her Trinity gym uniform, reviewing some documents. I grabbed a few letters from the bin and ripped one open as I walked over to the door.

“How is it?” I asked.

“Early, I can’t tell you anything yet.” She picked up a mug with the United Postal Academy seal and took a big sip. “Also Senpai was right, those cinnamon rolls are really good.”

“That they are,” I said as I skimmed the letter from the General Student Council thanking me for assisting in an issue during the Halo Games. I switched to the next one, invoice. Moved on to the next one. Another invoice.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it. Wanted to get some paperwork done, but two invoices in and I want to just go take a nap.”

“Well, I’ve been up since five, so I have you beat on the ‘who gets to go back to sleep’ fight,” she said, patting a decent sized stack of papers.

I smirked as I opened the next envelope. Third invoice.

“Yeah, I’m going to go build that model train kit I got the other day,” I said as I put the invoice back in the envelope.

Funabori chuckled as I walked away.

Lesson 3: This is a Ponzi Scheme.

“Didn’t you explain this to us yesterday?” Asked Yuuka.

“No, that was a pyramid scheme. They have some overlap, but are not the same. In a Ponzi scheme, you are being convinced to invest your money into doing a thing, usually an investment that will make good returns, usually better than normal. Often they claim to have a business or trading strategy on the stock market that makes them wild returns, often with zero or near zero risk.”

“The reality behind the scenes is that it’s all nonsense, and the person in charge is just using the new money coming in to pay existing investors who want their money, and usually pocketing some or most of the money. It’s a rob Peter to pay Paul situation. Ideally the person in charge tries to convince existing investors to just reinvest their money for a bigger return, which helps hide what’s really going on.”

“The notable difference compared to a pyramid scheme, is that all you have to do is provide money, there’s really no further steps for you. You aren’t working to make money, the person or company you give the money is supposedly doing all the work for you. You are not an employee of the company who is scamming you. Often the business or thing that’s supposedly making the money doesn’t even exist. It’s all a lie.”

I turned on the projector. “Let’s use Ponzi Petroleum.”

Serika sighed. “Could we not? Again.”

“Sorry, but it’s an easy one to use.”

I brought up a slide that showed parts of the promotional document Serika had been given by them, An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Promoting Your Renewable Petroleum Farm Business.

“No wait, didn’t we discuss this exact one yesterday?” Asked Yuuka. “I recognize that pamphlet. You showed us this one already.”

“No, that was a similar pamphlet, same green and white color scheme, same font, similar name. There were two scams going on at once, the one we discussed yesterday, the pyramid scheme, was piggybacking off this scam,” I explained. “This is about the Ponzi scheme. The bigger, original scheme.”

“So, PP Exploration G.K., operated by Hirasawa Akira was behind Ponzi Petroleum. He presented that his company had discovered a brand new, renewable petroleum source. This new source, Ponzi Petroleum, was located off in the sea, taking advantage of…” I consulted my notes. “An ever renewing source of crude oil which is created by natural processes in the deep sea environment where plankton break down into petroleum products in the dark, high pressure environment, with up to 250,000 m³ of new crude oil created per day.”

I advanced the slide to show a photograph of an oil drilling platform, in the middle of the sea.

“The documentation claimed that production platform, Sedco 706 was drilling this field, with tankers arriving at the refinery on the outskirts of the DU, where the oil was processed into other petroleum products like petrol and heating oil. None of this was true. Sedco 706 is of the wrong type for the location, the refinery and port had no records of the tankers, the science was complete trash.”

“Investors were encouraged to invest and would see quarterly returns of 25%. An investigation carried out by Valkyrie’s Financial Fraud Team found that-“

Serika slammed her hands down on her desk as she stood up. “Hold it! Valkyrie has a Financial Fraud Team? How are we drowning in scams if that’s the case? How?!”

“Because it’s one person…” I said. “Occasionally gets to bring in a part timer if she finds something really big… But yeah it’s a person.”

Serika just sat down and placed her head in her hands.

“Moving on, her investigation revealed that money being paid in by new investors was used to payoff the returns of prior investors, and that Hirasawa was skimming money off the top, buying a kinda nice car…”

“Kinda nice?” Asked Serika. “What’s that supposed to mean? A kinda nice car?”

“It was a two year old 4 door saloon… A 190E? Blanking on the maker, but they make those cargo vans everyone uses. Also had a penthouse on the like 15^th tallest building in the D.U. Shiratori Ward.”

“Kinda unimpressive to be honest,” said Yuuka.

I nodded. “Yeah, wasn’t exactly an award winning Ponzi scheme.”

Serika seemed to be thinking about something before she asked, “So, Sensei… what are some warning signs something is a Ponzi scheme?”

I smiled. “Good question. Some examples are high returns with zero risk, high returns virtually always mean some risk. It’s a tradeoff, great payday, however bigger chance of it not paying off. Anyone claiming otherwise is lying.”

“Returns that are overly consistent in a way that doesn’t reflect the actual market. Reality is that stuff tends to follow the market, do well when the market does well, and do poor when the market is down. If something is doing well, or is extremely consistent, no matter what the market does, that’s odd.”

“You can’t receive payments easily, or you’re always pressured to reinvest anything you would take out, sometimes in exchange for the promise of an even better return. Ponzi schemes tend to fall apart if lots of people want their money at once, as there’s nothing to pay back investors except other investors. As result, a rush to withdraw your funds will collapse it.”

“Complex or secret strategies, for example relying on a ‘black-box’ like an AI. Or they can’t really explain how they make their money. Run, don’t walk, if they can’t explain how they make their money.”

Serika smiled. “Okay, good. I had an investment I’ve been doing for a little while, but it doesn’t have those warning signs.”

I felt a sudden chill. “What is the investment, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“It’s an arbitrage opportunity, where I invest money in this investment firm, North by Northwest Investments. They take my money, and buy Interschool Relay Coupons in Gehenna and Red Winter, where they’re cheap. They take them to Trinity and Millennium where they’re worth more, and cash them in, the difference is profit,” said Serika. “But I understand how they make their money, it’s not some secret they refuse to tell me, and not a Ponzi scheme.”

I rubbed my chin. “Interschool Relay Coupons… Is this a postage thing?”

Serika nodded. “Yeah, you can exchange them for stamps in a respective academy’s post offices. Great for when you have like a penpal in one school, you can pay for postage and stuff but don’t have to send money.”

Yuuka nodded. “Yeah, I remember those, we used them in elementary school, I exchanged letters with a girl from Highlander.”

Serika pointed. “I wrote someone in Millennium. I think she’s at the fire academy now.”

“Wait here,” I said. I walked across the hallway to the office and checked the schedule. I took the lift down to the ground and walked across the street to a warehouse Schale used to store supplies. I walked among the warehouse shelving racks, loaded with mundane items like cases of printer paper and pens, to more interesting items like ammunition of various types and forms and components for firearms. Miho was supposed to be collecting a shipment of ammunition for Abydos. I glanced down the aisles as I walked before stopping, half way down was Miho, from United Postal Academy. She glanced down at me and waved, before looking back at a clipboard. Her long dark brown hair was held back by a red hairband.

“How’s it going?”

“Same as always, should be done in another hour or so.”

I nodded as I picked up a box of 9mm ammunition for Ayane’s handgun, then set it back in the light blue tote bin. “Good, good. That mean you have a few minutes for some questions?”

She smiled. “Of course I do.”

“Interschool Relay Coupons? Why are you asking about them?” Asked Miho as I held open the door to Schale.

“Kind of long story. But what exactly are they?”

“They were a slip of paper you could buy at any school’s post office, and it was worth one postage stamp. You could enclose one with a letter, and the recipient could redeem the IRC and would get a stamp in return to respond to you. Helps with penpals, cultural exchange and increasing understanding between schools. That sorta thing. Pretty sure everyone used one when they were in elementary school, exchange letters with another school. It’s a mandatory thing, I think.”

“You said ‘were’ and ‘was’…” I asked as we boarded the lift and pressed a button.

She shut her eyes and nodded. “Yeah, they’re a thing of the past. Postal Academy had responsibility for administering the IRC system, printing them, and so on. Massive pain. So about… five years ago now? Yeah, five years ago we phased them out in favor of the Kivotos Unified Stamp. Great arrangement for everyone, as they never had to worry about the stamps and that now. You could just enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope, or a couple stamps and your friend was taken care of.”

The lift dinged and the doors opened. I motioned for Miho to go first as she continued talking. “No special postage, no IRCs, no returned letters because the wrong school’s stamp. Another great moment of United Postal Academy making things more efficient.”

She stopped and looked at me. “What I don’t get is why you’re even talking about them. The IRCs have been gone for a few years now. Last batch of them expired two years ago. It’s almost an anachronism to hear you mention them.”

I grabbed the bridge of my nose as we continued down the hallway. “In other words. You can’t buy them new today?”

Miho shook her head. “Nope. Haven’t for… five years? Yeah, five years. Can’t even exchange them for postage now either, that cutoff date was two years ago.”

I opened the classroom door, and let Miho in. “Final question, were you ever able to exchange the IRCs for money?”

Miho shook her head. “No cash value. You could only exchange them for postage worth one first class letter.”

Serika and Yuuka glanced at each other, then Miho.

“So, is she in trouble too?” Asked Serika.

“I didn’t know you were in charge of finances over at UPA,” said Yuuka.

I shook my head, and leaned against the whiteboard. “Serika, Interschool Relay Coupons were discontinued years ago. Post offices haven’t exchanged IRCs for postage in about two years, and you were never able to exchange them for money, only postage.”

She stared at me for a moment as what I said sunk in.

“No- Hang on. Let me look up the documents on my phone,” said Serika. “I’ve seen returns, Sensei… Small returns right now, but I’ve reinvested to increase my money. I got in early, so the investments haven’t been as big. I’ve seen the IRCs. They’re real.”

“Serika, it’s the truth. IRCs haven’t been sold in years,” said Miho. “Whatever it is, it’s a scam.”

“No! This was a real investment opportunity. It’s arbitrage. You buy the IRCs somewhere cheap, like Red Winter, and return them for cash in a school like Trinity or Millennium. Profit. This is a real investment strategy,” said Serika.

“Serika. I work in the post office. We have not sold IRCs in years. You could never exchange IRCs for cash. You were scammed.”

Serika tapped on her phone, and the projector on the whiteboard changed to a document from her phone. “Here. Look at these returns!” It was a financial statement detailing out her investment, projected earnings. “You just deliver letters, how would you know what you can buy at the counter at the post office?”

Miho crossed her arms. “Serika, are you really going with the ‘does the postal school student know what they offer at the post office’? Also, I don’t just deliver letters, I’m part of the Unified Commission on Inter-School Postal Delivery. We were the ones who voted to recommend discontinuing them in the first place!” Miho pulled out her phone. “Look for yourself.” She replaced Serika’s document with a poster from United Postal Academy. “We posted these in the post offices ages ago.”

Interschool Relay Coupon – THE END

Interschool Relay Coupons are being discontinued in favor of the NEW Kivotos Unified Postage.

Every school using the SAME postage.

A stamp bought in Red Winter is as good as gold in Hyakkiyako or Gehenna.

Date of last IRC sale…

“Wha- I’ve never seen this poster before!” Shouted Serika.

Miho rubbed the back of her head, seeming to consider something before she glanced at me. “To be honest, I’m fairly sure we wound down most of the Abydos postal operations. The counter’s been closed for years. Before my senpai’s time. Replaced with one of those self-service kiosks.”

Her expression changed to more nervous. “It’s possible this poster never was actually distributed and posted in their post office like it should have been.”

I sighed, “Please check if it was. If it wasn’t suggest a process to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Miho nodded. “Yes, Sensei.”

I heard the clicking of a phone being typed on and glanced towards the sound. Yuuka franticly typed away on her phone. She was concerned about something.

“Everything okay Yuuka?”

She ignored me.

“Yuuka?”

She just stared at her phone for a moment, before setting it down and putting her head down on her desk.

“We also have an investment with North By Northwest Investments… We have a 10,000,000 yen investment with them. It’s supposed to mature in Q4 and return us 60 million. It was...”

“Based on what?” Shouted Miho. “God, what is wrong with you two? How could you have fallen for an IRC Ponzi scheme today? How is that even possible!?”

Yuuka stood up. “I was not told that’s what the investment was, but the returns were good. It seemed alright!”

I crossed my arms. “Miho, Take it easy. You work in a post office.”

She stared directly at me. “The hell’s that supposed-“

I held a hand up. “Hold on, hold on. You’re familiar with all these scams, right? IRC Ponzi schemes, reshipping scams, bogus delivery messages.”

She gave a curt nod. “Right. They teach us about them at the academy. Whole semester on it: 090 – Postal Fraud, Scams, and You.”

“Exactly. Keep in mind you have a much greater understanding of the postal system and scams related to the postal system than most people. That’s good, it helps you know when your customers are being ripped off, so you can try to help them. That’s what I’m doing. I’m trying to teach them about this stuff. I suspected something was off, but needed confirmation. Thank you for providing that.”

She smiled and relaxed. “Glad I could help.”

“That was all I needed, I’d never heard of the IRCs until Serika mentioned them, I had a hunch about them. Thanks for getting me up to speed on them. Make sure to grab a snack from the mess room before you head back to the warehouse. You earned a break.”

She bowed. “Right, thank you, Sensei.” She glanced at Yuuka and Serika and nodded her head before leaving.

I rubbed my face. “Okay, I want one of you to try and arrange a meeting with whoever is running this scam. I’ll call Valkyrie… Actually, let me grab Miho. Bet she’ll want in on this.”

I heard hurried footsteps in the hallway. “You bet I do!” Miho appeared at the doorway. “I’ll go grab my shotgun and some friends. Let’s go get us a scammer!”

End of Day 3.

Chapter Text

“Sensei?”

I jerked awake, almost knocking a pile of papers off my desk. I must have dozed off again. I looked at the computer monitor. 03:54 on Thursday.

“Um, sorry for waking you, Sensei.”

I rubbed my face and glanced towards the voice. “It’s fine-“

Funabori looked pale. I stood up and pushed my chair towards her. “Sit. Sit. Let me go get a first aid box. Should I call Kivotos Fire?”

“It- It’s not that… I uh, finished looking over things.”

“Oh?”

She stared at me with dark, blank eyes.

“Oh…” I took a deep breath. This was not good. “Okay, why don’t we grab something to drink, then we’ll go over it. I need to drink something and wake up.”

The two of us stood in the meeting room, paperwork spread out over the table. Funabori finished what was left of her hot cocoa, then set the mug down.

“One thing of note, is both of them have are invested with a company called North By Northwest Investments. They were raided yesterday by United Postal and Valkyrie for being a Ponzi scheme selling IRCs of all things, so I suspect-“

“Yeah, those are total losses,” I said. “We’re aware of those.”

She looked at me for a moment, then smiled. “Ah, I thought I saw you in the video from the raid.”

She picked up a notepad. “Let’s start with Abydos. It’s… Less complicated.”

“Serika has a small but reasonably diverse portfolio, which is good. However, she enabled options…”

Funabori looked at me and shook her head. “Never enable options. It’s the fastest way to just destroy your finances. Setting the cash on fire would take longer.”

I chuckled.

Funabori stared at me. “No. It would actually take longer to physically burn the money.”

“Oh great.”

“Thankfully she’s barely worked with said options, so she hasn’t set too much money on fire. Only around 75,000 yen.”

“Seventy-five thousand!”

“Trust me, that’s not that bad when you’re screwing around with options. I’ve seen six and seven digit losses before. Honestly, here’s the thing I’m more terrified by… It’s the crypto holdings. She bought 500,000,000 of EnteronCoin.”

“Oh, so it wasn’t an energy company?”

Funabori rubbed her face for a moment. “Well, it was. So, the original Enteron Corporation was a fairly large energy company. Started in natural gas, had an electric generation unit. Collapsed in bankruptcy after it was revealed that the books were being super cooked.”

“Wait, if it’s dead, how does she own shares of it?”

“So it’s back. Sorta. About a year ago, someone bought the old trademark and put it back into use as a parody or something…” Explained Funabori. “Then they did a meme coin. Also, to be clear, that’s what she owns. She owns a cryptocurrency, she does not own shares of the company.”

I groaned and rested my face in my hands. “You’re telling me that Abydos’ books has 500,000,000 of a meme coin? How much did she spend buying that?”

“According to the balance sheets, about 250 million yen, about .5 yen per coin. Unfortunately, Enteron Coin crashed about a day after her purchase, and is now trading for around .0052 and nobody trades it. It was a rugpull.”

“I hate that I understand what you just said,” I said.

“Hey, the streams are paying off,” said Funabori with a grin. Then she glanced down at the paperwork on the table, the grin vanishing. “In theory the holdings are now worth about 2.6 million yen… But she’s never getting that. You need someone to want to buy them and there’s no demand for this.” She showed me a tablet. “I can’t even see the recent activity, because there just isn’t any in the past 30 days. This is the thing nobody really talks about with cryptocurrency, particularly these dumb meme coins. It has absolutely no value if nobody’s willing to buy it. It’s not like she can scrap this or repurpose them.”

I sighed. “Ayane is going to kill her.”

“I can’t even began to understand why she would do this. While there are some other crypto holdings, they are far, far smaller; and are reasonable crypto projects, like Bytecoin, Iridium or Anchor.”

“Anchor, that’s the one that’s supposed to be 1 for 1 with the yen, but it’s actually a fraud, right?”

Funabori nodded. “To be technical about it, Valkyrie’s Financial Fraud Team never fully proved it to be a fraud, and Anchor agreed to a settlement.”

We exchanged a look.

“Personally, I wouldn’t buy it,” said Funabori. “That said, currently it’s better than freaking Enteron Coin. That was always going to be a scam. May as well have called it Ponzi Coin…” Funabori looked at me. “That said, they aren’t dumb enou-“

“Nope. They totally are,” I said, cutting her off.

Funabori looked at me for a moment, then looked back at her notepad. “Eh… Well, on the plus side: What small investments they have are fairly diverse. Two ETFs, couple index funds. Shares in Highlander’s Abydos operations. Some shares in Nephthys Group. Few shares in a couple tech firms that are preforming fine. Nothing spectacular, but considering Abydos’ finances and debts… It’s pretty good. Serika also has the current maturity schedules for Abydos’ debts. It’s actually really well put together. Enteron didn’t have those, somehow,” she said. “Let’s move on to Millennium’s investments.”

“As expected, Yuuka’s financial documentation is immaculate. Investments are mostly fine. Some choices that I wouldn’t recommend anyone make, much less an institutional investor like Millennium.”

 “Such as?”

“My main concern: Too concentrated in tech. The portfolio is roughly 90 percent tech sector stocks and investments. An aggressive strategy can be fine; but it is high risk for potential high reward. Questionable choice for an institutional investor. If tech stocks suffer a protracted downturn, it’ll hose Millennium. Hope there isn’t a down turn in tech. Pray there isn’t a down turn in tech. She should start to unwind some positions, particularly those that are riskier and take the proceeds and diversify their holdings to protect themselves.”

She picked up the empty mug, holding it. “Tech is in a massive bubble. It’s not sustainable. It will pop one day. Rough part is that likely there isn’t anywhere to hide when that bubble pops, but better to at least not be in the bubble sector when it goes.”

“The actual thing I’m worried about is that she’s buying MacroStrategy. They do enterprise business intelligence software. I’ve used it. It sucks. It’s why that division is losing like 68 million yen a quarter.” She pulled out her phone and tapped on it. “However, right now the stock is worth 68,120 yen.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah. They keep buying Bytecoin. Somehow, everyone collectively lost their freaking minds, and have made MacroStrategy like 4 times the value of the Bytecoin they’re holding.” She shrugged. “No, I don’t understand it. It’s the stupidest thing to buy. At that point just buy Bytecoin, you can do that.”

“Okay, you two have a guest instructor today,” I said as I walked into the classroom.

“Kanna?”

“Nope, good guess, but that would have made more sense for the last three lessons.”

Lesson 4: How to Not Lose Your Shirt while Investing

“It’s Funabori Mitsuki from Trinity General School.” I motioned at the door as she walked in. She smiled at waved at Serika and Yuuka.

“Isn’t she a first year?” Asked Yuuka. “We’re getting instructed by a first year?”

“She understands investing far better than I do. Or either of you, honestly.”

“Sensei!” protested Yuuka.

“You wouldn’t be questioning Sensei, would you?” I asked.

Yuuka crossed her arms and pouted.

I smirked. “Give her a chance. Funabori here is quite knowledgeable on this topic. She actually studies it at Trinity, and gives presentations in her free time. You two may have even seen her online before.”

“I think Noa might have showed me a clip or two of hers,” said Yuuka.

Serika shook her head. “Never heard of her.”

I turned the lights on after she finished her presentation, reviewing how to consider and mitigate risk, evaluate investments. Regretted that she wasn’t my instructed on the topic when I was in school.

“So, Sensei had me look over your investments and books and I have a few questions,” said Funabori, “Serika, I need to know: Why on earth did you buy 500,000,000 EnteronCoin?”

“Wait, what?” Asked Yuuka, nearly knocking her coffee cup off the desk.

Serika looked around, her cat ears going flat. “I attended a presentation on the Enteron Pear.”

“The what?” I asked.

“The Enteron Pear. It’s a micro-nuclear reactor for powering residential and small scale commercial applications. It’s the future of electricity. In home and small commercial electricity production today. In school electricity production within 3 years.”

“You attended a presentation?” Asked Yuuka. “On the Enteron Pear?”

Serika nodded. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

“One moment,” said Funabori. She pulled out her phone and tapped on it a few times, appearing to watch something. She tapped the screen then looked up at Serika, then down at her phone, then back at Serika. She slowly looked at me and motioned to get closer. I looked over her shoulder at her phone, as she pointed at spot in a crowd shot.

“Oh, I recognize those cat ears anywhere.”

Serika’s cat ears bolted up. “What are you two looking at!”

Funabori rubbed the back of her head. “Um… You sitting in a presentation for a parody.”

Serika stared at us. “I- I what!?”

“Enteron is a parody. You somehow stumbled into them filming a parody of one of those tech events where they show off a product. This isn’t a real product.”

Serika stared.

“This is almost impressive,” I said. “It’s not even like they’re trying to scam you here.”

“It’s not! Shut up!” Shouted Serika.

“Eh, that coin was absolutely a rug pull,” said Funabori. She put her phone away. “And they did that ‘event’ to put the name in front of people’s faces and build hype.”

“I just don’t understand how you fell for that,” said Yuuka. “It’s Enteron.”

Funabori crossed her arms. “Well, when Enteron went bankrupt, she wouldn’t have even been born. While it was a big deal at the time, its relevance obviously faded with time. Nobody really talks about it anymore. I’ve mentioned it like twice, mostly to point out how absurd the tech sector’s valuation is now.”

Serika pulled out her phone. “I should probably sell that EnteronCoin. If there’s no Pear, then there’s no power generation and the ROI is going to be-“

She slowly looked up from her phone. “It’s worth only 2 million yen?” Her eyes started to water. I walked over and knelt down next to Serika and rubbed her back. “It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Funabori, gently kicking the floor. “It rug pulled a few days after you bought in. You appear to be the largest holder now.”

“I’ll admit, I a tad worried you didn’t notice that the idea of a small nuclear power plant in a house was kinda far-fetched,” I said as I continued to gently rub her back.

Yuuka crossed her arms. “To her defense, small, self-contained atomic power sources do exist, radioisotope thermoelectric generators. There’s a research laboratory in Millennium that works with them. We have a couple in use in Kivotos for various things. Mostly out near the Ruins.”

She glanced at Serika. “You need to research tech and the firms developing it before you invest. Some of them are just nonsense. We run into that constantly in Millennium.”

“Yeah, about that,” said Funabori. “Yuuka, why are you buying MacroStrategy?”

“It has had good, consistent returns.”

“Yuuka, their software division, the thing they’re supposed to be, has lost money for over a decade. It was a joke of a company formed to piggyback of Macrosoft name. Investors are idiots and will buy companies that sound like companies that are doing well. Honestly, it’s a borderline Ponzi scheme.”

“What?”

Funabori nodded. “The CEO thinks they can become a 25 trillion yen company by capturing 1% of the fixed income market of Kivotos, which is 5 trillion yen, and then leverage that into 25 trillion yen. All by borrowing money and using that borrowed money to buy ByteCoin. That’s the entire business plan. Buy and hold ByteCoin, using loans.”

Yuuka looked off for a moment, then stood up. “I… Need to make a quick phone call.”

End of Day 4.

Chapter Text

I stopped in my office the next morning. Minori, Hare and Kotama were working in the one corner, in an area blocked off with traffic cones. Some of the network wiring was outdated, so they were starting to replace it. They all glanced at me when I entered and waved.

“Everything you needed in the loading area?” I asked.

Minori nodded. “Exactly as requested. We should have this done by tonight.”

“Good, I’ll be sure to join you for dinner, maybe help out if you need it. S&T was my specialty, once upon a time.”

The three of them looked towards my desk.

I glanced at it, and the piles of mail awaiting me. I rubbed my face and walked out of the office and over to the classroom. I sipped my mug of tea as I walked into the room. “Okay, let’s get this going.”

“Morning to you too, Sensei,” said Yuuka. Serika poured some coffee out of a vacuum flask.

“Sorry, I just got reminded of the piles of letters awaiting my attention.”

Lesson 5: The Slow Death - Embezzlement.

Serika raised her hand. “I’m not sure how this relates to me.”

“Yeah, honestly this is more directed at Yuuka than you, but you should pay attention. There’s opportunities to learn here, so you don’t get into the situations that Yuuka has been in.”

“That feels a little a little pointed, Sensei,” said Yuuka.

I crossed my arms and leaned against the white board. “Okay, there was the time Koyuki nearly bankrupted Millennium by printing-“

“Bogus bonds,” said Yuuka. “Bogus.”

“They were bogus, but were considered valid by other schools. So Millennium was in the deep end there. Then there was why that happened…”

Yuuka looked away.

“Right, President Rio embezzling money to construct Fortress City Eridu,” I continued. “Then there was the time the Game Development Department formed a company, bought a building, hired about 2,000 employees, mistreated them, blew all the money on themselves and a movie, the movie bombed-“

“They made a movie?” Asked Serika.

I looked Yuuka. “So, here’s the thing. I know they released a movie. Have you actually seen it? Is it really a full length, 90 minute film?”

She nodded. “Regrettably. Also it’s 145 minutes. I wish it was 90. I might have given it one star if it was 90.”

“I’ve tried watching it eight times now, and have fallen asleep every time within like 10 minutes. Even at like noon, well rested. I’ve given up. Now I use it when I have trouble sleeping. Anyway, movie flopped, they ended up in bankruptcy, needed you to sell off what assets didn’t get carted off by the staff to get them out of the massive hole of debt they somehow managed to dig.”

“Yuuka, I want to make sure you do understand that you are a good accountant. You managed to salvage situations that should have sunk your school. That’s good, being able to respond to bad situations correctly and mitigate the harm is a great skill to have. That said, clearly there are process concerns, as this did happen at least twice, and wasn’t instantly caught either time.”

“I’m not very tech savvy, and even I know there’s more that could be done to prevent this sort of thing from happening. I spend more than 7,000 yen at the hobby shop, you get a message on your phone, and the ability to reject the transaction. And this is just my bank card at a hobby shop.”

Serika leaned over. “How much was he spending on model trains?”

“Way too much,” said Yuuka.

“Back on topic. I’m happy to talk model railways after class today. So basic things like two factor authentication, requiring more than one person to sign off on high value invoices and contracts. Having multiple people involved in keeping or reviewing the books.”

“Having an independent auditor to occasionally look at the books, separate from Seminar and just ask basic questions. What are these expenses? Where is this equipment? Who is this student who requested and received this equipment?”

“Technology security is another large part of it. Koyuki was able to gain access to internal systems that allowed her to print bonds in Seminar’s name. Thankfully, Koyuki was very reckless about it. What if someone with more impulse control gained access and was more careful about the number of bonds created? That person could slowly bleed Millennium dry, with limited recourse once discovered.”

“The basic things: Changing passwords on critical systems, like student record servers, to something other than the default password.”

“…That was such a mess-” Yuuka looked up, staring at me. “Wait, Sensei, do you know who leaked the student records?”

I half shrugged. Crossing Veritas was not my idea of a good time.

“Sensei, tell me who did it!”

“Anyways, moving on. In short, basic cybersecurity pays dividends.”

“Carefully reading contracts to ensure there are not clauses or sections unfavorable to your organization or you personally.”

Yuuka looked away.

 “Another key defense: communication. If you call the company on this invoice, do they answer? Do they say the correct company name? If there’s an invoice saying that Engineering got a new 3D printer worth 100,000 yen, do they have it? If you ask someone in Engineering about it, do they seem utterly confused by the idea that they got this equipment?”

“That doesn’t work, Sensei,” said Yuuka. “The problem is that if I go ask a club about equipment they bought, they get all anxious and act like they didn’t buy it.”

Serika pondered this for a moment and looked at Yuuka, confused.

“Is that because they shouldn’t have bought the equipment?” I asked.

Yuuka nodded. “Usually.”

“Okay, so this brings us back to the broader issue here: How are they doing that?”

“Usually misallocating club funds or making requests for one thing, and buying something else with the approved funds,” said Yuuka. “It’s not a serious problem, we plan for it in the budget. We obviously don’t tell them that, but we make sure their misuse of funds isn’t really going to create a real hassle. The Koyuki Bond Incident was an outlier.”

Serika and I exchanged a perplexed look, then I sighed.

“It’s not a new practice,” said Yuuka. “It’s always been that way. It’s also how we plan for the unexpected mishaps, like when we had to gut and rebuild Ogata and Nozaki Dormitories after the chemical fires a few years back.”

“Yuuka, ‘that’s how we’ve always done it’ is a terrible justification to continue doing something a particular way. Back in the day-“

Serika held up her hand. “Sensei, are you about to go on another weird tangent about this railway you worked for, that’s only sorta related to what we’re discussing?”

I hesitated. “Am I really that predictable?”

They both nodded.

I thought about it more and realized the example was straying from the topic, even if it did attack ‘that’s how we always did it’ method. I thought a little harder to come up with a more relatable example. I snapped my fingers.

“Right,” I pulled out my phone and held it up. “I didn’t always have this mobile telephone. In fact I didn’t have one before I arrived here. It’s quite amazing. It lets me contact anyone at any time, take photos and send them, look up directions and interesting facts or watch videos of cute kittens and Highlander’s freight operations. If I’d adopted the stance of refusing to use it because that was how I always did things, so I didn’t need it; then I would have missed out on so much. Have missed out on connecting and helping all of you.”

Yuuka looked around the room. “Is that a piano?”

It took me a moment to notice the piano music too. I glanced up and realized it was the speakers in the ceiling of the classroom. Must have been Kotama. It was a nice tune, a melancholy one; but I did like it. I’d need to ask her the name later.

“Yuuka, I know it can be scary to try new things, however it’s important to do that. It’s how we grow and become better. Who cares if your senpai came up with that plaster as a solution? So what? Come up with a better one. It’s how anything gets better, you have to be brave and try new things.”

“Much trouble as Engineering Department causes, that’s how we move forward: someone trying something new… That said, they could stand to spend a few more minutes in the planning and workshopping stage.”

“I don’t have a lot of solutions. Millennium’s a complex school with many moving, semi-interconnected parts. At the end of the day, that’s what gives us an incredible institution, insistent on pushing the envelope.”

“There’s something else to consider: One day you won’t be the treasurer. I’m sure those who follow you will be bright, talented students, but that doesn’t mean they can pull off the same herculean feats of accounting and finance to prevent the school from suffering. Further, there’s no guarantee that you’ll always succeed. Markets go into recession, events are poorly timed. Sometimes you just get unlucky.”

“It’s important to not rely on your ability to outwit things. Eventually it catches up to you.”

Serika started to raise her hand.

“Bandage, like you find in a first aid box.”

The hand went down.

Yuuka crossed her arms, contemplating what I had said.

End of Day 5.

Chapter Text

I leaned against the wall in the classroom, Monday morning.

“Sensei, I thought we were done with the remedial classes?” Asked Serika as she entered the room, followed by Yuuka.

I stood up. “Correct, you were. Take a seat, take a seat. We’ll discuss why I called you two back for one more lesson. I pull out a little remote and revealed a presentation slide on the whiteboard at the front of the classroom.

Lesson 0: Gambling is NOT A STRATEGY.

They both shot out of their seats. “Now hang on-” Shouted Serika.

“I feel this accusation is a bit unjust here, Sensei,” said Yuuka.

“Yeah!” Shouted Serika.

I advanced the slide, to a screenshot from a poker tournament, with two familiar people sat next to each other, at a poker table.

“Okay, so pro tip time: Serika, I recognize your cat ears a mile away. The sunglasses didn’t help. Realistically, you cannot hide your identity from me.”

“Yuuka, you pulled your hair into a ponytail, and wore a medical mask… But left your ID card on.”

I advanced a slide to show a zoomed in image of the ID badge hanging from her black jacket, with her name very readable along with the photo of her. “They film this in 4K, apparently.”

“What lousy luck,” said Serika. “To think Sensei was watching the tournament we were in.”

“I wasn’t even watching it, because I think watching poker is dull as watching paint dry. I got a call from Kanna, of all people.”

“Kanna?” Asked Yuuka. “Valkyrie Kanna?”

“Correct. Guess she likes watching poker on telly… Yeah, I didn’t know either.”

“Okay… We can explain,” said Yuuka.

“Hang on, why isn’t Shiroko here?!” Asked Serika. “If you were watching it, you saw her-“

“Try to steal the prize money. Yeah, I have another meeting planned with Shiroko as to why she can’t just hold up any location with more than 10,000 yen on hand. It’s different issue than you two.”

They both stared at me.

“Unless you two would like to join Shiroko in her class? Plenty of room.” I gestured at the classroom we were in, large enough for 35 students.

They both shook their heads.

“Good, let’s continue. So, as tempting as it may be to try and solve money problems by just putting it all on black and doubling your money, this actually doesn’t work in reality, as you two hopefully started to notice the other day.”

Yuuka raised her hand, “Sensei, may I barrow that dry erase marker?”

I held it out and she took it and walked over to the board, writing out a formula, that I didn’t recognize. It was this moment that I realized I was out of my depth. I was arguing statistics and odds with the human calculator.

Around lunch time I found myself in a small sitting area in the convenience store on the ground floor of Schale. Yuuka had done circles around me. I needed some time away to think about my next step. I heard the sliding doors open and someone enter.

“Oh, hello Sensei.”

I glanced up to see Minori standing next to me. I recalled that she needed to finish repairing a few walls from the work last week.

“You okay? I think you’re the first person I’ve seen sit in this little sitting area. Why aren’t you up in the mess room?”

“Uh yeah, just needed some time away from Yuuka and Serika to think.”

“Remedial class going badly?”

“You ever try to win a math argument with Yuuka?”

“The human calculator?”

“The one and only. I was not ready for her to start pulling out all these formulas.”

“What’s today’s lesson on?”

“Gambling, poker specifically.”

Minori smiled. “Oh, yeah we play cards when we’re taking breaks at work or the strike lines. Fun way to pass time.”

“Oh? What do you bet when you play?”

“Depends: playing chips, pencils, scraps of paper. Pudding and Schale shifts if it’s really high stakes.” Minori looked around and leaned closer. “Occasionally we put a few yen on the table.”

“A few?”

“Like five, or ten thousand yen… Not often. It usually only happens if someone manages to get their hands on liq…” She started laughing, and backed away. “Um… Never mind that part.” I made a note to have another chat with Shigure.

Minori smiled. “Is it really that big a deal? Thought everyone plays card games to pass time.”

“Oh, that’s the problem, they’re trying to use it as a means to reinforce their school budgets, not pass time.”

The smile vanished. “Wait, they’re what!?”

After lunch I tried to change the line of discussion away from odds and towards results. “Okay, how much did you win for the Millennium coffers then?” She had seemed to avoid mentioning this number earlier.

Yuuka looked away, and then down at her notebook.

“Well?”

“Well, Millennium didn’t lose any money-“

“Yuuka.”

“I sorta lost 380,000 yen… But I covered it.”

“Yes, but you personally, just lost 380,000 yen. Yuuka, that’s not okay.”

“I’ll take a look at my investments… I can sort it out.”

Serika pulled tore off a piece of paper, and scribbled something on it. “Shiroko will take care of you.” I walked over and took the paper and pocketed it.

“We’re in class, no passing notes… Or conspiring to commit crimes.”

I returned to the white board when it occurred to me. I turned and looked at both of them. “Serika, Yuuka, had either of you won. What exactly was your plan for getting the money into your school’s budget?”

“I just add the money in,” said Yuuka. Serika nodded.

I rested my head in my hands. “You can’t just put your casino winnings- Wait. How are the two of you playing in televised poker tournaments for actual money?”

“Not sure I understand what you mean,” said Serika.

“You two are in high school. You can’t just gamble... Right?”

They stared at me.

“Oh great, am I the crazy one this time?”

End.