“What kind of haircut are you looking for, young man?”

“Buzz it all off. Make me bald,” Genno Ayumu said after a brief moment of thought.

Ayumu thought it over. If he wanted his hair to look normal again, he’d first have to dye it black, then cut it short. Unfortunately, his hair seemed to have been dyed not long ago. Even if he only got a crew cut, the roots would still be yellow. That would make him look even more like a delinquent. From what he remembered, haircuts in Japan weren’t cheap. So he figured he might as well shave it all off and be done with it.

“Young man, are you from Housen High?”

“Why would you say that?”

Ayumu was baffled. He had no idea why the barber would ask that.

“You said you wanted a shaved head, right? Most of the people who come here for that are Housen High students. Housen is a famous delinquent school, on par with Suzuran. Pretty much all their students are bald, so outsiders call it the ‘Monk High School.’ If you’re not from Housen, I’d advise against shaving it all off. Housen and Suzuran have always been at each other’s throats. If you run into Suzuran students on the street and they mistake you for a Housen delinquent, it won’t end well,” the barber explained earnestly.

Ayumu hadn’t expected that just wanting a shaved head would come with this much baggage. According to Sakuragi Nozomu, he had beaten some Suzuran boss named Takiya Genji a few days ago, so he probably didn’t need to be afraid. But right now, Ayumu wanted nothing more to do with delinquents. Better to avoid trouble than invite it. Since going bald might get him mistaken for a Housen student, he might as well spend a little more, dye it back to black properly, and get a normal cut.

“Then forget the shaved head, boss. Just trim it a bit shorter and dye it black.”

Following Ayumu’s request, the barber shaved the hair on both sides and the back almost clean, then lightly tidied up the bangs in front. This kind of haircut was pretty common among young people in China, but to this Japanese barber, it probably felt rather fresh. As he worked, the man kept praising Ayumu’s taste and saying how stylish it was.

After dyeing it black, Ayumu looked at the final result and was a little stunned himself. He hadn’t expected that with his current face and this clean, slightly Chinese-style haircut, he’d actually look surprisingly handsome.

Handsome or not, paying the bill still made his heart ache a little. It cost 8,000 yen in total, about 480 RMB. After that, he didn’t have much money left on him.

Even so, Ayumu still planned to stop by the mall and buy some groceries. He still wasn’t used to Japanese food, and he had promised Mizuno Hina that he’d bring her a bento tomorrow. No matter how he looked at it, he was going to have to spend some money.

Ayumu had long heard that “vegetables and fruit in Japan are insanely expensive,” but only when he saw the price tags in person did he truly go speechless.

One napa cabbage: 199 yen, about 12 RMB.

One daikon: 199 yen.

Four cucumbers: 199 yen.

One box of green peppers: 250 yen...

Meat wasn’t cheap either. In Japan, meat was cut into fixed portions by weight, then packed into plastic-wrapped trays. Pork was still manageable, around 1,000 yen per kilogram. But Japanese beef was outrageously expensive, starting at 1,500 yen and going up to 6,000 yen per kilogram. As for the legendary Japanese Kobe A5 wagyu, even the cheapest was at least 4,500 yen per kilogram, about 270 RMB, with no clear upper limit.

Ayumu picked up a tray of Kobe wagyu priced at 5,500 yen. He could clearly see the marbling in the meat. Other than looking a bit prettier than ordinary beef, he genuinely couldn’t understand why it sold for so much.

Ayumu wasn’t a gourmet, and his pockets were tight, so naturally he had no interest in fancy stuff like that. He just picked the cheap options. Besides, Chinese cuisine was broad and profound. Even scraps and trimmings could be turned into something delicious, let alone with the variety of vegetables he had bought.

As long as it was on sale or discounted, Ayumu snapped up almost every kind of vegetable he saw. Before he knew it, he had already bought quite a lot, and now he was starting to worry whether he had enough money left.

That thought suddenly led him to another question.

Where had all the money on him even come from?

By a rough estimate, he had 15,000 yen on him before the haircut. There was no way Genno Eina had given him that much. Even when the old Ayumu “snatched” money from her, it was never much at one time. If it hadn’t been taken from his own mother... then it couldn’t have been extorted from a classmate, could it?

The moment that thought appeared, it instantly took over his whole mind. The more he thought about it, the more it felt like the truth. By the end, he was almost starting to remember what the victim he had shaken down looked like.

“Didn’t you already take enough time off the past two days? And now you’ve got the nerve to doze off during work? What, do you want to go home and keep resting forever?”

Just as Ayumu was about to remember who that victim was, a harsh scolding voice cut him off.

He turned toward the sound. He didn’t recognize the person doing the scolding, but the one being scolded was his bargain-bin mother, Genno Eina.

It looked like his mother worked at this mall. She had probably just nodded off for a moment during work and happened to get caught by her supervisor. On top of that, Eina had taken leave the past two days to care for him in the hospital, which had clearly made the supervisor unhappy. Still, her dozing off was understandable. During those two days at the hospital, she had barely slept at all.

And yet, as Ayumu watched Eina lower her head again and again, apologizing in such a humble way, he didn’t suddenly flare up with rage or feel the urge to rush over and teach that supervisor a lesson.

It wasn’t because the person inside him wasn’t the original owner, or because he felt no attachment to Genno Eina. Compared to the original Ayumu, who had been extremely cold toward her, the current Ayumu had already accepted her as his mother in his heart.

It was simply because he knew he wasn’t some overpowered protagonist from a novel. He had no cheat ability, no golden finger, and no money. Right now, the family’s only source of income was the job Eina was barely holding onto. Even if Ayumu successfully got the Chinese tutoring job tomorrow, that alone still wouldn’t be enough to support the daily lives of two people.

If he acted on impulse and went over to confront that supervisor, it would do nothing except satisfy him for a moment. After that, they would still need to eat. Life would still have to go on. And the Genno family might lose its only source of income over something like this.

Ayumu wasn’t just some simple high schooler, either. He had long passed the age of hot-blooded impulsiveness. In his previous life, he had spent years struggling through society. He understood very well that life was hard. No one could just quit because of a single scolding from their boss.

So when he saw Genno Eina bowing and apologizing again and again, what he felt more than anger was heartache and unwillingness.

That’s right. Ayumu was deeply unwilling.

He had finally been given a mother again, only to stand there and watch her suffer humiliation because of life, because of him, while he could do nothing.

In the end, all he could do was turn this into motivation, and keep reminding himself of one thing:

He had to work hard.