Warnings: None


Lucky Child

Chapter 08:

"A Head for Business"


In exchange for stealing the life of their daughter, I decided to make Keiko's parents rich. Or at least better-off than they were before I came along.

However, much like Rome wasn't built in day, neither is a ramen restaurant empire.

First I had to figure out that their business was even struggling. That alone took years—mainly because I was a kid, and therefore not privy to certain aspects of their trade. "Too young to understand" and all that general kid-underestimating-stuff, blah blah blah. That was frustrating as heck. As I got older, however, they let me learn more and more about the restaurant, and that's when I realized they weren't...well…

My parents just weren't great business-people.

I mean, they weren't awful, but they hadn't negotiated very good financing, they didn't capitalize on promotion opportunities, and they spent money on forms of advertisement that didn't suit their business. Stuff that could be fixed, if only someone could nudge them in the right direction.

At first I thought they were oblivious to how these things drained their finances. When I tried to ask, subtly, they just smiled and told me not to worry. They didn't seem concerned at all.

Then, by chance, I heard them talking in low voices at night about the bills piling up. About things they needed to cut, to keep the business afloat.

About whether or not they could pay for certain things in their daughter's future.

"College is expensive, you know," my mother murmured.

Her voice cracked when she said it.

Turns out, I didn't want to make them rich. I wanted them to be stable. I wanted them to save money where they could, and run a better business as a result, so they could stop stressing and relax. Maybe, if I was clever enough, the happy consequences of wealth would follow after.

Some of those happy consequences could benefit me, specifically. But I tried not to think about that. Made me feel selfish, y'know?

Anyway.

First thing's first: Once I decided I wanted to help the business, I snuck into my dad's office and dug into his books, to see what precisely needed nudging.

One of the first things I noticed was that my parents sank a chunk of change each month into a series of billboards and signs around town, purportedly to advertise their shop. Signage isn't a bad idea for a small business, but some of the signs were in neighborhoods I suspected didn't actually draw in customers. Too far away, not much foot traffic, all that jazz. When asked, my parents couldn't say how much of their customer-base had come around thanks to these signs, nor could they tell me which specific signs were actually responsible for drawing in customers.

Rule Number One for Amassing Wealth: Don't waste money on useless bullshit.

If you don't know a form of advertisement is working, don't spend your money on it.

What this meant was that I needed a private phone line.

OK, that sounds unconnected to the signage problems, but hear me out.

To save my parents money, and to draw in more customers, I had to convince my parents that I deserved to have a private phone line. They made me save my allowance for the phone itself, but my grades were basically perfect, so eventually they caved and opened up that line for me.

That's where Yusuke the Vandal came in.

He loved my plan. Thought it was the coolest plan ever, actually. He stole cans of spray-paint from a local tagging gang and helped me cut a stencil in cardboard. Then we went to a select number of my parents' billboards in the dead on night, dressed in black, and replaced the ramen shop's usual phone number with the number for my new phone line.

Yusuke loved the clandestine nature of it all. He was also impressed with me.

"How did you know how to make a stencil? How to hold a can right?" Yusuke asked as we blocked out the old number and replaced it with the new one. He'd tried holding one of the rattle-cans at a bad angle and was surprised when I corrected him. "These numbers look super clean. If we'd free-handed them, it would look terrible." He eyed me suspiciously. "You aren't secretly a graffiti artist, are you?"

"In a past life, yeah."

"Ha! Yeah, right, you big liar. You're no tagger."

Little did he know that, for the first time in our shared life, I'd just told him the honest truth about myself. About my past, when I wasn't nearly as clean-cut as Yukimura Keiko.

Shame he didn't realize it.

In any case: I had my expected results within weeks of my midnight jaunt with Yusuke.

Turns out, only some of the billboards generated calls for take-out. I could tell because only one phone in the Yukimura house was getting calls for delivery: the new phone number I'd put on the billboards I'd suspected were most useful. I monitored calls for two weeks before presenting my findings to my parents. I created a comprehensive presentation for them on a tri-fold board, with colorful graphics and a suggested course of action as we moved forward in our advertisement reformation attempts. Pulled out all the stops. It was like being back in a corporate boardroom again. One that smelled like ramen and felt like home, but a boardroom nonetheless.

My parents were less impressed than I thought they'd be.

"Oh my, Keiko!" my mother said, hand on her cheek. "That's why you wanted a phone line?"

"We thought you were finally making friends!" my father chimed in.

"I wanted to be helpful," I said. I reiterated a few points, highlighting how much money we'd save if we ditched the useless signage and relocated our efforts to other areas of town. "We could see a 30% increase in take-out call volume in less than two months, which would result in a percentage revenue increase of almost—"

"Keiko."

I looked away from my numbers, graphs, charts, data, SWOT analysis. My parents sat in solemn silence at the table. The shop was closed for the night, chatter of patrons faded into evening's quiet. Dad still wore his cooking hat, white cloth folded into crisp, broth-stained lines.

"You don't need to be worrying yourself with things like this," my father said. He took off his hat and placed it on the table. "Don't get me wrong. It's helpful. We'll save a lot of money, not paying for that signage."

"But you need to be focused on school," my mother said. Her smile was as kind as it was pleading. "And on making friends."

I twisted the cap on the pen in my hands. I'd been using it to point at parts of my presentation. The cap slid and clicked with every twist. Click, slide, click, slide, click. But the sounds and sensations weren't comforting, as they had been in my past life, when I was an anxious fidgeter.

Keiko didn't need to fidget. She was much more composed than the old me.

"I have friends," I said. "Yusuke and I are friends. And my grades are perfect."

My parents exchanged a Look.

"You should make friends with some girls your age," Okasan said. "You know how much we love Yusuke. But it's important you make many friends." She tried smiling again. "Have a little fun."

"You're always so serious," my father chimed in. "Yusuke's a good influence in his own way, getting you to lighten up, but—"

"—but you want me making more friends than just him. Some girls your age, maybe."

"But I'm good at this," I said. I gestured at the charts for emphasis. "I can help."

"Yes, you can," my mother said. "But that doesn't mean you need to."

I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to say. I anticipated they'd be skeptical of my business analysis, since it was coming from the mouth of an elementary schooler in pigtails, but for them to reject me outright? That I hadn't counted on. I mean, they had no idea I had a Bachelor's degree in business, that my past father had been a small business lender intimately involved in the local restaurant industry, that I'd spent years working for a marketing firm, that I had more business experience than anyone my apparent age had any right—

Mom reached out and slipped her hand into mind. Her fingers were hot, melting into my cold ones like a summer breeze.

"We don't want you worrying, Keiko," she said. "You're young. It's not your place to worry about this business."

She was wrong, though. I'd seen the ledgers, the bills, the accounts. At this rate, my parents wouldn't have much saved for retirement, let alone enough to take a nice vacation sometime. And they deserved that, dammit. Why wouldn't they let me help them get what they deserved?

"Look—I understand what you're saying," I said. I squeezed my mother's hand, trying to look and sound sincere. "You want me to be a kid and not worry, because you love me. But I love you, too, and that means I want to help." Her eyed popped wide. I blundered on, practically babbling. "What's the harm in letting me help, so long as I make friends and get good grades? So long as helping doesn't interfere with my schoolwork, I don't see the harm."

My parents exchanged another Look.

"You have to admit my strategies would be helpful," I pressed. "I know I'm young and you're skeptical of my competency—"

"Oh, honey, you're eleven and you use words like 'competency,'" Mom said. "It's not that I—"

"—but I think I'm onto something. And I think you should listen to me, even if I'm young and inexperienced."

My mother looked uncertain all of a sudden. She glanced at my dad, imploring, but he was too busy staring at the poster over my shoulder to notice. He wandered close, one hand on his chin, the other fisted on his hip. Then he looked sheepishly at my mother.

"You have to admit, our Keiko really has a head for business."

Mom gasped, appalled. "Takeshi!"

"I call it like I see it, woman! Our Keiko has a real knack for this." He squared his shoulders and looked Mom dead in the eye. "Here's what I say. So long as she keeps her end of the bargain, gets good grades and makes…oh, at least two more friends, I don't see why we shouldn't let her make suggestions about the ramen shop." His eyes slid my way, warm. "This business will be hers, one day, after all. It's high time she learns how it works."

Pride and certainty radiated from him like heat from a flame. I tried not to think about whether or not I was obligated to run his business. I tried not to feel guilty for not wanting to honor that obligation. My old dad had told me a million times how easy it was for restaurants to fail. He'd financed dozens of them, after all, and watched many of them go out of business. Did I want to devote my life to a job so uncertain? To one I didn't feel passionately about?

My new parents had given me so many gifts in life: unstoppable kindness, unconditional love, and unwavering support.

Was I supposed to sacrifice my dreams because I felt guilty for stealing the life of the Yukimura's daughter? The daughter who, by all rights, was supposed to have been given those precious gifts instead of me?

Was I really supposed to let guilt kill my dreams?

In that moment, looking at my new, beloved father, I wasn't sure.

Luckily, I didn't have to decide right then. I didn't have to decide for a long time. What a lucky child I was, to be able to shove my conflicted emotions into a hidden recess of my brain, to be pondered another day.

In the meantime, I'd focus on making my stolen parents successful—and that's exactly what I did.

By the time the summer before the 8th grade arrived, my parents had purchased three pop-up ramen stands and a truck to haul them with. Not long later, they entered talks to start a second location.

And not long after that, they discussed taking a vacation—the first they'd take since opening the restaurant shortly after I was born.

To my satisfaction, they looked blissfully happy (not to mention sunburned) in the photos they took in Maui.

What I could do for them wasn't much. Monetary gains didn't make up for what I'd taken from them. Money is a poor replacement for the life of your child.

But I was glad I could begin to repay a fraction of the gifts they'd given me, all the same.


NOTES:

I really can't see myself not trying to improve the Yukimura's business, if I was reborn as Keiko. The business degree and my father's influence would be too hard to ignore. Perhaps I couldn't contribute as much as I did in this chapter, but…anyway.

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