Book 1
Chapter 5: Bribes, Scrolls, and Lunch Money
Kokoro Mone Academy was, in the grand scheme of things, an exercise in architectural overcompensation
Its main building, a sprawling jade and gold monstrosity, seemed to defy gravity with sheer, unadulterated arrogance, its rooftops piercing the clouds like an impatient dragon's teeth.
Students, clad in impeccably tailored uniforms, glided through its marble halls, their auras humming with meticulously cultivated Mone.
This was the empire's elite, where power was currency, and Ken Hanzori was about to redefine both.
He stood at the entrance, already causing a minor traffic jam of startled upperclassmen.
Beside him, Narutama, looking like a misplaced scarecrow in his new stiff uniform, clutched a worn wooden sword.
The air hummed with disciplined Mone, while Ken's hummed with the joyful abandon of a toddler in a candy store.
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The Art of the Accidental Bribe
Their first class was "Basic Mone Manipulation," taught by Professor Himura, a man whose patience was as thin as his remaining wisps of hair.
He peered over his spectacles at the new students, his gaze lingering on Ken.
"And you, Hanzori-dono. Your placement test results were… unusual. A perfect score, despite not attempting a single question. Explain."
Ken grinned, ever oblivious.
"Oh, that! I just thought about how much I really wanted to be here. And then my card hummed in my pocket, and poof! Here I am."
He patted his uniform where the card resided, a subtle warmth emanating from it.
"Probably just good vibes, Professor. Or maybe I accidentally transferred some... appreciation?"
The "appreciation" was Ken's subtle attempt at bribing his way into a good spot. His ATM whirred silently. Professor Himura's desk, a sturdy piece of dark, enchanted oak, suddenly shimmered.
Before the professor's astonished eyes, it began to change, twisting and expanding. The grain of the wood smoothed into an impossibly polished surface, the dark hue shifting to a brilliant, blinding gold.
Within seconds, Professor Himura's functional, respectable desk had transformed into a towering, solid gold statue of Ken Hanzori, five-year-old Ken specifically, cherubic and blinking innocently, complete with tiny, golden training dagger.
The classroom erupted. Some students gasped, others whispered, "Mone mastery!" A few immediately pulled out their own cards, hoping to replicate the absurd display.
A noble's son slammed his Platinum card on his desk. Nothing.
A merchant's daughter whispered bribes to hers. A single bronze coin clattered out.
Ken's ATM pulsed smugly. Professor Himura, speechless, slowly ran a hand over the solid gold cheek of his new desk, a vein twitching violently in his temple.
"Remarkable," he choked out, his voice hoarse. "Truly… a unique approach to… materialization." He quickly marked Ken down for "Exceptional Practical Application."
Narutama buried his face in his hands, a low groan escaping him. "This was going to be a long year", he thought.
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The Saga of the Misread Scrolls
While Ken sailed through classes on waves of accidental Mone and bewildered adoration, Narutama clung to survival with the desperation of a drowning man clinging to a particularly sturdy piece of seaweed.
He'd purchased a stack of cheap, supposedly "ancient cheat scrolls" from a shady merchant near the Academy gates.
The problem? They were written in a dialect so archaic even the dusty library monks squinted at them.
In "Aura Blending and Stealth," Narutama, attempting a "Shadow Step" from a scroll labeled 'Hiding from Your Debts' (which he'd misread as 'Invisible Ninja Feats').
Instead, he performed a flawless, balletic interpretive dance involving a feather boa that seemed to materialize from thin air. The boa dissolved mid-twirl, but Narutama's footwork stayed perfect.
For one breath, he moved like the shadow itself. Then he tripped. But that breath… that was his. The instructor, a stern woman rumored to have trained actual shadows, stared in bewildered silence before giving him a B- for "Unconventional Expressive Movement."
During "Basic Healing Arts," following a scroll he thought was titled 'Mending Wounds with Inner Peace' (actually 'How to Make a Really Good Pot of Tea') he managed to brew an overwhelmingly potent, glowing mystical-tea infusion.
It had no healing properties whatsoever, but it put the entire class (and the instructor) to sleep for three blissful hours. He earned an A for "Innovative Tranquilizer Deployment."
Other students watched this spectacle with a mixture of confusion and grudging respect.
"He's just lucky," scoffed a girl named Hikari, whose family owned the empire's largest chain of enchanted blacksmiths. She spent hours honing her flame control.
Ken accidentally incinerated a practice dummy just by wishing it would stop humming.
"It's the Hanzori luck!" insisted a boy named Kaito, already trying to discreetly drop his family's business card near Ken's feet.
"If you stick with him, good fortune rubs off!" Students began to subtly maneuver themselves into Ken's orbit, hoping for a spontaneous gold nugget to appear or an assignment to magically complete itself.
Narutama, meanwhile, remained steadfastly unfashionable and un-Mone-enhanced, attracting only bewildered stares or pitying glances.
"The Rich Idiot and the Tryhard" was the nickname that stuck, whispered in the halls, carved onto desks, and sung (badly) by bored students during lunch breaks.
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The Ledger of Looming Lunacy
One particularly sweltering afternoon, during a mandatory "Communal Bath and Aura Cleansing" session, a tradition Ken found needlessly moist.
He was scrubbing vigorously at his earlobe, pondering the existential mystery of why bathwater always went cold so fast.
His personal ATM card, which he always kept in a magically sealed, waterproof pocket, decided that now was the perfect moment to throw a digital tantrum.
Instead of its usual "??? UNREGISTERED TIER" shimmer, the small screen on the card began to flicker wildly. The numbers twisted into illegible glyphs, then briefly coalesced into stark, ominous red text that flashed: LOAN DUE: [REDACTED]
The message vanished as quickly as it appeared, replaced by a chaotic scramble of binary code, then the usual inscrutable question marks.
Ken, dripping wet, peered at it.
"Huh," he muttered, frowning. He tapped the card. "Stupid thing. Always getting a bad aura down here. I need to realign with feng shui. Must be the enchanted plumbing messing with the signal."
He blew on it, then shook it vigorously.
"Come on, reboot, you glorified brick. I need to know how much lunch money I have."
He pressed a small button on its side, the kind usually reserved for checking account balances, and watched as the "???" returned, stable once more.
He shrugged, completely dismissing the bizarre message as a minor technical glitch.
After all, his balance never changed, so why worry?
Meanwhile, a few feet away, Narutama caught a red flicker on Ken's card.
"Your thing's broken," he muttered.
Ken shook it. "Nah, just buffering."
The screen cleared.
Narutama's Bronze card tingled, like it was being watched. He was meticulously scrubbing his one gi, humming an off-key tune when he glanced over at Ken, who was now attempting to use his card to make soap bubbles pop in a specific pattern.
Narutama shook his head.
"Some people have too much of everything," he thought, even problems they don't know they have.
He squeezed his gi, watching the murky bathwater swirl around his feet. His skill, his ambition, that was his only currency.
It had to be enough.
Ken, oblivious to the simmering cosmic debt, continued to poke at his card, convinced it was just being temperamental. While on the other hand, Narutama's Bronze card pulsing as Ken sleeps later that night.
The universe, it seemed, was preparing for a very expensive bill, and the ATM, hungry for power, was just starting to show the first subtle signs of its growing appetite for other people's power.