Inventing Divinity: My Isekai Tale of Magic, Machines, and Madness

A Not So Happy New Year

This story follows a high school senior by the name of Hideaki Watanabe. He wasn't particularly a very interesting student. He gets good grades, but nothing exceptional. He loves math and science but hates history. Hide is determined by the fact that he has never and will never use what he learns in history ever. As for friends, there isn't a very clear boundary by which you could determine one as his friend or not. It's far easier to say he has three or so close friends, and the rest are all close acquaintances. Besides his academics he doesn't have much of a life outside of school, that is assuming he has much of a life in school to begin with, which is also a false assumption since he doesn't participate in any extracurriculars and has never studied, not once. Outside of school, Hide mainly watches MeTube and popular animes. Very rarely, he also starts up projects, but usually shuts them down soon after due to a lack of motivation.

Today was a special day though, not only did Hide turn eighteen just a week ago, but it is also New Years Eve, so he plans to turn it all around this next year and start fresh. After all, New Year, New You, as they say.

"What should I do, what should I dooo"

He grumbles to himself, sitting in his office chair, switching between messaging apps to see if anyone he knows is online, only to be met with the fact that everyone is, in fact, not online.

"Ughh, it's not like I need people to be around and hang out with to make my New Year special, I can just treat myself! Let's see what we've got herree..."

Hide flips up his phone case to find out how many stray bills are floating about the inside, waiting for him to steal and spend.

"Oh man! It really is my lucky day! 1000.. 1200.. 1400 yen.. and the tip of an old fortune cookie fortune! I'll have to get another one later..."

Putting the cash into his pocket, he closes up his phone case and shoves that along with the crumpled funds just to end up pulling it back out again to check the time. Being just about seventeen minutes until the new year, he pops his head into the living room to see his parents asleep on the couch watching the New Years celebration broadcast.

Hide quietly slithers to the front door, unlatching it and shutting it on the way out, certain that his departure will most likely go unnoticed. Quickly, he walks to the nearby convenience store only a few streets down. Despite the quiet nature of the New Years Eve night, some commotion can be heard coming from the corner store.

As Hide arrives, he can see a man dressed in sleeping attire looking quite frustrated and in distress, but this is not very uncommon since Hide doesn't live in the wealthiest of towns. He easily walks past the man into the store and up to the counter.

"Excuse me... Do you have any lottery tickets..."

The exhausted clerk looks slowly to Hide blinking as if he were a frog, before sighing.

"Majormillions or Supersphere?"

"Do you have any scratchers..."

The clerk gives a slight squint before turning to the back and reaching behind the counter, placing a ticket onto the counter.

"That's 600 yen... will that be all?"

Responding with only a nod, Hide reaches into his pocket and pulls out the 1000 yen bill. After the transaction, he grabs a 10 yen coin from the "take a penny, leave a penny" tray and begins scratching the ticket. After not even a minute, he finishes, his fingers black with scratcher dust.

"Wait.. I think I won!"

Rushing to the counter, he thrusts the ticket to the clerk and asks him to verify. Wide-eyed and stunned, the man looks over the ticket mumbling under his breath.