CH 7 : pettiness to rule them all
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Knowing someone is a scammer and exposing them is one thing and quite difficult to do without certain evidence but luckily that tough road was not what I was going for.

My idea was to take the easier route and just join her in scamming fools out of their money. I thought now that our initial stolen gold was on the brink of emptiness it was about time that we figured out some way to start making some money. To be frank, Anabelle looked like a big smarty ass to me but it quickly became clear to me that her brain doesn't work in that sense. She's more of a combative type rather than a low born underhanded thinker like me. 

In the previous world, my family wasn't that well off. Father worked as a shoe cleaner and mother was working hard in this high class society as a cleaner. Though both of them worked their asses off and came back every night with pain in their backs, they still didn't complain about anything and did their best to get me and my sweet sister educated. Even though they tried their best to hide the hardship from us, children are sometimes rather perceptive than the adults give them credit for.

 Every once in a while I massaged my mother's legs and back when her condition got a bit worse and every single one of those times just simple animosity grew inside me. The spark was a single but simple question that every time made my heart heavy. "Even though mother and father worked so damn worked then why were they not compensated enough for it?"

Both of them were doing back-breaking work but still somehow were living in way worse conditions than those people who just sit on chairs all day, those who just shoot some random trashy videos and get paid handsomely for it. Those assholes weren't even meters close to the hard work my parents did.

Though later I understood that getting mad at someone else's fortune rather than the actual problem of the system was nothing but pettiness from me, but the child me didn't yet understand those complex topics. The little me started having hatred for those more fortunate than us, those who worked less than my parents and lived significantly better lives.

This eerie and dark feeling that grew inside me every day led me to learn some underhanded tricks in order to fool or rather scam those above me.

Various initial scams that I tried to pull off one way or another ended up backfiring, resulting in various unpleasant memories of beating and bruises, and my reputation in high school was also close to the bottom of the barrel.

During college, I moved to another city and started working at the local library while staying with my uncle and aunt. It was the first year when I pulled off a scam successfully, nothing backfired, it went on for my entire duration of college and I earned a significant amount of money from it.

The trick was simple, it was to exploit those college students that were depressed and having a very rough time with their lives. I noticed that one without much hope and lots of desperation will cling to any sort of hope or anything that further solidified their depressing views on various subjects. A prime example of that was me, just like how I listened and agreed to anything that agreed with my view that my parent's misery was because of those a little more fortunate than us. I remember searching, looking everywhere for a place or a person, or a group that agreed and reinforced that petty worldview of mine. 

Thus I knew this shit was something that could be exploited. Though more accurately I WANTED to exploit those people. Now that I was away from that petty mindset of blaming the individual, a more depressing mindset set its root in my brain. Even if I work hard, work honestly, work like a model citizen where was that going to get me? After all my own parents were like that and they were living miserably, the relatives I was living with followed that ideology and they were also poor. Even those that worked at offices, were spending more than half their lives being modern day slaves to those above them, and that was not the life I wanted for myself or my sister.

Thus the goal of becoming a scammer came into the picture, I just had to bear with all the self-deprecating thoughts that swirled inside me while I exploited others and that would be it.

With these things going on in my mind, I started laying the groundwork to become an "internet guru".

I wrote three books

  1. Beat Depression TODAY!
  2. Broken heart?
  3. 21st-century influencer

Online I fabricated myself as some sort of genius who knew the solution to every student's problems. 

Desperate and depressed students most of the time just needed someone to talk to, thus I become that someone. I went to some of the college hostels, talked to those students for free, let them dump their entire trauma on me, and softly but very subtly guided them to the solution of fixing their issue. 

"There's is this great author whose book I read and it greatly helped me, if you have time you could try giving it a small whiff, I mean you have to do something, can't stay like this forever"

Every time a little modification to that boilerplate and 2 out of 10 got trapped.

As initial book sails came, it kickstarted the brand. Those depressed were of course still depressed, but that book gave them that initial moral, that initial boost to go achieve something but of course they always fell back down. The books and the various courses became similar to a drug to them. Every time I take this drug, hope rises inside me, and motivation rises inside me, even though it eventually comes down but it still got it up, right? And that was the key, you don't want these people to actually get out of depression, you want them trapped in this ever-going cycle of hope -> despair -> hope -> despair -> hope.

Doing exactly this, exploiting a bunch of vulnerable people, I made a significant amount of money. With that money, I helped my little sister get a better education at the high school, got my parents off their back-breaking work, and moved them to a new house. For them, I was working at this big MNC that I interviewed for and they were none the wiser. The only one to know of my scummy life was my sister, she was the only one from whom I couldn't hide anything from.

As expected, she wasn't happy with the way I was doing things, though she didn't tell me to stop she also didn't help me with it. I still remember her angry puffed face, crying and slapping my cheeks super hard as she declared her goal in life

"I will study hard then make so much money that big sister wouldn't have to continue doing evil things like these, and then I, myself will support her for the rest of our lives"

The very next day I graduated from college and came here.

[I wonder what she's doing now]

I ask myself, as I reach my destination, the fifth alley from the end of the housing district, and a cute black cat sleeping like a princess in front.

*ding**dong*

After pressing the bell a few seconds pass and the door in front creaks open. A face pops out from behind, the person making sure the body remains hidden behind the creaky door.

[Yes? How may I help you, young lady] a voice filled with fragrance and overflowing sweetness. A soft but little squeaky voice added further cuteness to her overly decorated face. Her face was not at all filled to the brim with makeup, on the contrary, there was almost no trace of it on her fair skin. Her charm was instead brought to light with various adornments. Necklaces, earrings, and numerous piercings on eyebrows, lips, and ears were all in unison and perfect harmony, every single piece of jewelry following a common theme of "sugary" and "fluffiness".

The little cake with a strange smile attached to her necklace, various shades of pink coated over her piercings, a few forming a heart below her left eye and some forming a star below her right eye. The puffy and curly faded pink hair swept back with small braids in the front and a tiny ponytail flowing along with the hair at the back which reached the floor.

[hello? young lady, is something the matter?]

How cute such a cute and fluffy looking person be a piece of shit like me?

That question shook my insides as I stepped forward and shook her hands

[Well yes, something is in fact the matter sweetheart, you see my poor tummy is kinda..]

I point to my stomach, making a pained expression. After a brief deliberation, she shakes her head in an accepting manner and props me to come inside.

[Thanks for helping sweetheart]

 Now it was time to join this ball of fluffiness in her "medical treatment" 

 

 

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