Chapter 114 – The More You Drive, the More Roads You Know
"I hope there's nothing wrong with this one…"
Hikigaya Hachiman took out the cookies given by Iroha Isshiki and studied them under the lamp for a while. Then, he brought them close to his nose and gave them a sniff.
The cookies looked normal in color and emitted a pleasant aroma, with no strange scent to be detected.
Looks like Isshiki's cooking skills aren't half bad?
After confirming the cookies had no issues, Hachiman cautiously took a small bite.
Hmm, he wouldn't say they were delicious, but they weren't bad either.
Just… very average in taste.
He popped the rest into his mouth and finished them off in a few bites. Letting out a long sigh, he found himself laughing at how overly cautious he'd been.
Not everyone's a culinary disaster like Yuigahama Yui. Seems he'd been traumatized a bit too much lately by her.
After finishing the cookies, Hachiman was about to throw the gift box away when he unexpectedly discovered a few bills bearing Fukuzawa Yukichi's portrait inside, along with a note.
"This is all the pocket money I've saved up. If it's still not enough, please come find me tomorrow, senpai QAQ. I'll find a way to work and pay you back."
"Who said you had to pay me back by working?!"
Reading Isshiki's note, Hachiman finally understood why she had emphasized not to throw the gift box away.
So that's why she hid the money in the box—she probably figured if she handed it to him directly, he wouldn't accept it.
He took out his wallet and carefully put away the money Isshiki had given him, then stood up and went downstairs to prepare dinner.
Using whatever ingredients were left in the fridge, he made some simple fried rice to fill his stomach. After that, he returned to his room and started reviewing his schoolwork.
That afternoon, Hiratsuka-sensei had handed out the results from last week's mock exams.
As expected, Hachiman's liberal arts scores were still firmly holding the third position in the grade. Pretty solid.
However, when it came to the sciences, "abysmal" wasn't even enough to describe it.
He'd already been near the bottom, but this time he'd even let a few others surpass him.
No wonder the science teacher had looked at him this morning like he wanted to eat him alive.
"…As much as I hate it, I should at least try to get my grades up to an average level."
Letting out a sigh, Hachiman took out his first-year science textbooks and began relearning everything from the beginning.
Maybe it was thanks to his spiritual powers making his brain more agile, or perhaps his science level had always just been stuck at the third-year middle school level.
Either way, despite stumbling a bit, he managed to understand quite a lot of the material.
Fully immersed in his studies, time flew by—it was already past 8 PM.
His parents had come home after finishing overtime work.
After asking about Komachi's whereabouts and confirming that Hachiman would be going to pick her up, the couple handed him ¥30,000 for the round-trip taxi fare, said a few words of caution, and promptly went to bed.
"Tough day at work, huh?"
Staring at the now-dark master bedroom, Hachiman quietly muttered to himself.
Usually, when Komachi was out late, even if they didn't go pick her up themselves, at least one of them would wait up on the couch. But today, they just went to bed like it was nothing…
Will he also end up like them when he grows up?
Working late every night, so exhausted that he won't even have the energy to talk to family when he gets home?
Imagining such a future for himself, Hachiman suddenly felt a little uneasy.
He decided to stop overthinking it. Leaving the house, he hailed a taxi at the roadside and headed for the address Komachi had left for him.
"Kid, this address is in Tokyo, you know."
The taxi driver glanced at him through the rearview mirror, giving him a friendly reminder.
Taxi fares were expensive to begin with—going all the way from Chiba to Tokyo was no small cost.
Even if it was only the outskirts of Tokyo, that kind of fare clearly wasn't something a student could afford on his own.
"No problem, don't worry, mister."
Noticing the driver's concern, Hachiman casually pulled out the large bills Isshiki and his parents had given him and waved them a bit.
"Well, in that case, sit tight."
Adjusting his glasses and confirming that Hachiman could indeed afford the fare, the driver stepped on the gas. The taxi drifted smoothly onto the street.
"Come to think of it, I don't get many customers at night in Tokyo lately."
Soon, they were on the highway.
The endless road ahead was nearly deserted—their car the only one in sight. The driver, sensing the eerie emptiness, started chatting to ease the atmosphere.
"Everyone's sleeping at night. Not getting customers is normal, right?"
"Haha, that's what a good kid like you would think."
The driver chuckled at Hachiman's response, realizing he was one of those who actually went home on time.
With a meaningful smile, he added:
"You know, most of my earnings come from driving at night."
"Alright, let's not go there…"
Seeing the lecherous grin on the driver's face, Hachiman immediately caught the underlying implication and promptly shut down the questionable topic.
"…But yeah, fewer people are going out at night these days."
The driver straightened up, turning the conversation back to a more normal tone.
"Why's that?"
If the people he mentioned earlier were a certain special crowd, then this shift affected the general public as well.
"Probably because more people have died recently?"
After a moment's thought, the driver linked it to several recent incidents in Tokyo.
"Eh? A lot of people died in Tokyo recently?"
Hearing how casually the driver mentioned death, Hachiman found it a little unbelievable.
"Well, it started half a month ago with a gang war. Regular folks got caught up in it—dozens dead, I heard."
"Then last week, there was an accident during military transport of hazardous materials. A whole convoy supposedly vanished in the explosion."
"And just two days ago, a chain-reaction crash happened on the expressway. More people dead."
The driver clicked his tongue as he listed each event.
Any one of those would've been a major headline under normal circumstances, but all three had happened in just two weeks.
No wonder the government was suppressing the news—to avoid public panic.
"Uncle, how do you know all this?"
Patiently listening to the story, Hachiman found the incidents intriguing, but what piqued his curiosity more was how the driver even had access to this kind of information.
Especially since the government was actively covering everything up.
"The more you drive, the more you hear, kid."