Bad Luck of Summer Vacation
Summer vacation starts from July 20th. Unfortunately, whenever I ran into Devil, I was blackmailed and with the higher interest, the amount claimed increased with surprising speed. In fact, it increased from 11,500yen plus 4,900yen up to 30,000yen! And on one day, I ran into him near Octopus Park. And it was the beginning of the bad luck. He was accompanied by several sidekicks. So I was surrounded by them and cornered near the ‘Octopus slide’. I really was trapped.
Then Devil told me to pay the amount claimed by the next day or I would be beaten to ‘half to death’ and he hit me three times in the face and kicked me in the stomach once, and said, “This is for some of the interest!” And he told me to bring 30,000 yen to the ‘Octopus slide’ until 3:00pm the next day, then, hit me badly in the face once again. And after that, he said he would account the last punch as part of the interest and permitted me to postpone the payment for two days since he was going on a short trip. Anyhow, I'd been forced to bring 30,000 yen at 3:00pm in 3 days in time. His accident had nothing to do with me! He hijacked my bike and…
Then after making sure that Doc was at home with the walky-talky he’d invented, I went to his laboratory to ask for help. There he was doing an experiment with a light source, several mirrors and a detector on a small pool of Mercury.
“I was reproducing the famous Michelson-Morley experiment. We can detect the wind of aether and…”
“Hey Doc, lend me 30,000 yen!”
“What a stupid… Oh I see. You’re still blackmailed by the bully.”
“You see?”
“Precisely!”
“So lend me…”
“Don’t be so stupid. Settle it yourself!”
“Oh. But…”
“Well, I guess it must be difficult since the guy is strong and followed around by several sidekicks.”
“How do you know?”
“I can see it easily while I look at your swollen lip and dirty shirt.”
“Ah.”
“But I know there might be a way."
"Way?"
"Though you need to make some efforts.”
“What kind of efforts?”
“To be a master of Karate that will make you strong.”
“Be a master of Karate? But there are only three days!”
“First of all, go to a Karate dojo right now and enter.”
“It’s too late. There are only three days!”
“Go there anyhow. I will pay the tuition for at least one month. Well, an old friend of mine, I call him Dr. Gestalt, has opened a Karate dojo.”
“Dr. Gestalt?”
“I arbitrarily call him so. But I don’t know his name.”
“You don’t know his name! He is your old friend, isn’t he?”
“He is an old friend of mine for fifty years. And there must be no problem about that.”
“Well, OK. He is still your old friend though you don’t know his name.”
“I guess the practice is over right now. So you can go there and just do the procedures for entrance. Well I will show you the way and call him in advance.”
Doc had pushed me into it and I went there as though I were manipulated. I found the way to the Dojo using the disorderly map that Doc drew for me. Then I met Dr. Gestalt, talked with him for a while and did the procedures to enroll at his Dojo.
Dr. Gestalt was a bizarre person who seemed as though he would get along with someone like Doc. But he informed me that the practice would be closed for a while since he would be in the Himalayas till the end of August and the practice would begin in early September.
Unbelievable! I was forced to bring Devil 30,000 yen at 3:00pm in 3 days of time!
