Chapter 76: 76 and JK

More than a month has passed since school started; where else could Jia Ji, an otherworlder, go during his free time besides class?

With no money, no home, no friends, and even a forged identity, after class he seemed to have only one option: wandering the streets, sleeping under the open sky.

Like those middle-aged unemployed uncles, he lived under bridges, gathered newspapers for warmth, drank cheap beer, and became one of society’s rejects.

“Yuki, please, please—”

Determined never to become a wage slave, Jia Ji immediately begged the omnipotent Nagato Great Deity, the first person he met in this world.

Yuki slowly turned her head horizontally toward him.

“…………”

Then, taking three seconds to lower her gaze two centimeters, and another three seconds to lift it back up, she seemed to be pondering whether all otherworlders were as shamelessly bold as him.

“Your house is pretty big, and you’ve got spare rooms—could you…?” Jia Ji rubbed his hands like a fly, showing not a trace of embarrassment; why search elsewhere when the solution was right in front of him?

One leads to two, and now, at this crucial moment, was the perfect time to deploy his greatest skill—living off others’ wealth!

The man with the whitest face among the Four Northern Brothers thus shamelessly moved into the home of high school girl Nagato Yuki.

If her true age were known—only three years old—this cohabitation would land him in jail for child endangerment, but fortunately, both were aliens who didn’t care about such things.

What was it like?

“Amazing!”

Jia Ji woke up every day on a two-thousand-yen pillow, threw off the thin white blanket, washed up in the bathroom, put on his freshly refreshed school uniform, wrote down a line to boost his coolness, then timed his arrival perfectly to stand before Yuki.

He extended his hand toward Nagato Yuki, who had clearly spent the entire night reading novels without closing her eyes; the expressionless girl stared at him for three seconds through her glasses with golden eyes tinged with annoyance, then pulled out a banknote from her cute frog-mouth wallet to give him his daily meal money.

Sometimes Jia Ji wondered if the money inside that frog-mouth wallet was truly endless.

Though he could instantly gain a bank account with as many zeros as he wanted if he simply asked, Jia Ji would never do such a boring thing.

Spending your own money and spending someone else’s money every day felt completely different.

Even as an alien, Yuki’s body still had limits; she needed to consume human food to replenish energy, and her appetite was terrifyingly insatiable—a bottomless pit—plus Jia Ji, another voracious eater; together, they consumed half a shelf of convenience store food each day.

“Did you live like this before?”

Yuki’s homemade canned curry rice was made by dumping a five-serving can directly into a pot.

Jia Ji couldn’t stand it—he snatched the spatula away, revealed his newly drawn Master Chef badge, and cooked a pot of curry that looked ordinary on the surface but rivaled Sanae’s bread, Akiko’s jam, and Kaname’s juice in lethality.

Seeing the girl’s troubled expression, Jia Ji, unwilling to give up, seized back control of the kitchen, determined to master the Northern Chef Way with brutal intensity.

From then on, Room 708, which had maintained a tranquil, plant-like atmosphere for three years, underwent a radical transformation.

It gained numerous decorative items beyond necessities, and a dedicated bookshelf that gained several new books every day.

Half were classic detective novels like *The Greek Coffin Mystery* by Ellery Queen and sci-fi like *Endymion* by Dan Simmons; the other half were the hottest shonen manga of the moment.

Of course, all these books were bought by Jia Ji with money he stole from Yuki’s wallet, picked up from bookstores along their daily walk home—he had keenly noticed the faintest hint of joy in her eyes when she saw the bookshelf grow, perhaps as much as a few millimeters.

He never pointed it out, preserving this unspoken understanding, and as the bills she gave him grew larger, he began to feel like the master of the house.

Jia Ji, who once leapt up the stairs with incredible agility to bypass the lock and shout for Yuki to open the door, now received from her a room key, offered willingly.

In the blink of an eye, over a month had passed.

Since returning, Jia Ji maintained a daily routine: read *Fuma Renya* for a while, train for a while, read *Kin Rouren * for a while, train for a while.

Occasionally, he interrupted the girl as she focused intently on her book, until her glasses began to gleam with cold light.

Until today, an expected guest arrived at the house.

The annoying spiky-haired idiot, unusually well-behaved, leaned back on the newly bought sofa, legs crossed, acting like the host, and casually tossed a teacup to the visitor.

“Make yourself at home. The teapot’s over there—help yourself if you’re thirsty.”

“Cohabitation?!”

“So why the hell are you living with Nagato?!” Asu, fumbling to catch the cup, forgot to drink, his face filled with suspicion.

Jia Ji was clearly the kind of guy who, after marriage, would reveal his true self: drunk every day, unemployed, telling his hardworking wife, “I’m spending your earnings on pachinko—go get another job!”

Nagato, snap out of it! Don’t let this guy fool you!

“Asu, don’t slander someone’s reputation without proof!”

“Wha…?” He hadn’t realized he’d spoken his thoughts aloud.

“You’ve got too much imagination!”

Jia Ji shifted into a more comfortable position, glanced at the windowless room where two spacetime travelers lay, offered no further explanation, and left the complicated details to Yuki, who claimed, “My language communication skills are poor.”

After Yuki’s signature two-line-per-sentence explanations, Asu was thoroughly confused about what club he’d joined and who exactly surrounded him.

“In short, Haruhi is athletic, Yuki is business-oriented… me? I already said—I’m an otherworlder.”

Facing Asu, whose face showed nothing but whose mind screamed in protest, Jia Ji reached into his pocket and pulled out a massive shotgun that logically couldn’t fit there, tossing it onto the floor before him.

“Ara nika (Want a shot)?”

Asu dropped his teacup, stunned as if seeing Santa Claus riding a moose or the Lake Biwa monster appear before him; he opened his mouth, shut his eyes, and stammered helplessly.

“H-how…?”

“So that’s why Asu is such a loser.”

With a malicious grin, an aura of staggering energy surged from Jia Ji, shattering the boy’s last fragile delusion.

(End of Chapter)