All of a sudden the clock winds back two weeks, shifting the focus to a completely different and bizarre side of things.
Joshu was badgering his father, begging to borrow some cash. He absolutely needed to purchase the official signature fragrance of his favourite pop idol, Nami Reena. And he did not stop there. He demanded extra money to secure a limited edition photograph, a paper fan, and an idol wristband to complete the set.
Fed up with the freeloading, Norisuke suggested that instead of constantly begging for handouts, Joshu should finally man up and get a real job working for his older brother. Joshu completely tuned his father out, ignoring the lecture and simply asking for money until Norisuke finally gave in.
Later that day, Joshu was standing in the chaotic crowd at the idol meet, staring at the merchandise table, utterly paralysed by indecision. While he was distracted, a rude young man cut directly in front of him and arrogantly ordered a massive amount of items. Joshu aggressively yelled at the man to get to the back of the line.
But as the man walked away with his haul, Joshu noticed something left behind on the counter. The guy's wallet.
Seizing the moment, Joshu snatched it and cancelled his own order before bolting into a nearby bathroom, before the victim could even realise what had happened. Safe inside a stall, Joshu inspected his prize, pulling out about twenty-odd dollars' worth of notes and a single credit card.
Then he got a clever idea. He easily deduced that since this guy was a hardcore Nami Reena fan, his card's PIN had to be connected to her somehow. He took the card to a nearby ATM and guessed the code, typing in numbers based on the syllables of Nami's name. To his absolute shock, the machine chimed, and a stack of cash was dispensed.
Stoked with how he had managed to snag five hundred thousand yen, around three thousand US dollars, he hurriedly left the area. Once he was far enough away, he snapped the credit card in half, tossed it in the trash, and justified the theft by blaming it on the guy's sheer stupidity.
Riding high on his stolen fortune, Joshu decided to blow the cash on an incredibly expensive luxury watch, a titanium alloy piece he had had his eye on.
But just as he was about to finalise the purchase, the store owner spotted a microscopic scratch on the watch's glass. Out of pure professionalism, he refused to sell a defective item to Joshu, promising to order a brand new replacement in ten days if he was willing to wait. The owner handed Joshu a full refund on the spot.
But as Joshu looked down at the cash, a cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck.
He rushed back to the bathroom stall he had used earlier to recount the money. And when he finished, his jaw dropped. He had been given his full five hundred thousand yen back, plus an extra ten thousand yen, which had somehow been mixed into the stack.
Shrugging off the eerie coincidence, Joshu decided to celebrate his insane luck by hitting the cinema to watch the latest pirate movie. He blew a massive chunk of his cash buying out multiple rows of empty seats, just so he could sit there completely isolated in the dead centre of the theatre. After the film ended, he entered his ticket stub into the theatre lottery and miraculously won a rare pirate captain action figure. Instantly, a hardcore collector spotted it and offered a mind-blowing thirty thousand yen for the toy.
Later that night, he visited a high-end cabaret to live like a king. During his meal, he spotted a stray hair in his food and called over the waiter, apologising for the inconvenience. Mysteriously, instead of an apology in return, the terrified waiter informed him that the entire meal was completely free, and that the establishment actually wanted to give him extra cash as compensation for the trouble.
Enamoured with the power of money, Joshu found it incredibly eerie that no matter how hard he tried to spend it, more of it just kept coming back to him. Fully intoxicated by his fortune, he started aggressively throwing breadcrumbs at a group of women until one landed directly in a girl's cleavage. Acting like a man of the world, he used the bizarre icebreaker to invite the ladies over to his VIP table, waving off the ones he was not interested in.
Later that night, though, as he went to leave, he read his receipt. A massive bill for five hundred and forty thousand yen. Joshu just scoffed, saying it should not really matter, since he had already paid the amount in full. Elaborating that they were not trying to rip him off, the man suddenly turned angry and asked Joshu where he had got this cash.
Refusing to answer where his own money had come from, Joshu said he could just go home and get more if that was what they wanted.
Raging out, the bar patron told Joshu that he had known about the Milagro Man for a long time. This really confused Joshu, since he did not have a clue what the man was on about. He desperately explained that he had absolutely no idea who or what the Milagro Man was.
But the man, who turned out to be the owner role-playing a poor drunk, refused to take any chances. He violently shoved Joshu's five hundred and forty thousand yen back into his hand and asked his boys to grab the black bag at the back of the restaurant. Sweat pouring off him, the owner just wanted to make sure that Joshu was the only one to see hell. He then told his guys to take him down in the elevator and beat him so that he would never return to the establishment.
The thugs violently forced Joshu into an elevator, but Joshu summoned Nut King Call, unfastening the screws in their hands and locking their faces together to make an easy escape.
Sprinting into the night, Joshu ducked into an alleyway near a row of vending machines, his heart pounding as the bizarre reality of the situation set in.
That shop, too. They had also given him the money back and never taken any. On top of that, he could tell that his backpack was heavier. He took it off, removed the black bags the thugs had forced into it, and examined the contents. Inside was what felt like an uncountable amount of physical cash.
Knowing that it was not just the money in his bag that had confused him, Joshu remembered the owner's warnings about the Milagro Man, and a wave of genuine panic went through him.
Trying to calm his racing thoughts, he tried to dismiss it as a fluke and dropped a few coins into a vending machine to buy a drink. But as the machine rattled, Joshu looked down at the coin slot in sheer terror. The change spitting back out at him was significantly more than the money he had originally put in.
After trying a few more vending machines, Joshu stared at the excess change in utter bewilderment. Every single machine he had visited had given him back more than he had deposited.