After school, Aoyama Apartments.
From a distance, Sato spotted a figure standing beside the apartment building's outer wall, seemingly putting something up.
"That looks like... the landlady?"
Walking beside him, Nishimiya Shouko looked at the figure uncertainly.
"It's her. She's probably putting up a rental advertisement."
Sato guessed as they headed toward the apartment entrance together.
"Hello, Mrs. Yoshida."
The two greeted her politely.
Mrs. Yoshida was the owner of the apartment building. She was already in her sixties, and many strands of silver had appeared in her hair.
"Oh, Nohara and Nishimiya."
Mrs. Yoshida glanced at them and quickly called out their names with a smile.
Her memory was clearly excellent. Although they rarely met and had only seen each other a few times when paying rent, she still remembered them clearly.
Sato glanced at the flyer posted on the wall and immediately looked surprised.
It wasn't a rental advertisement.
It was a property sale advertisement.
And not just any property...
The entire apartment building was for sale?!
Nishimiya Shouko noticed it as well and couldn't help asking,
"Mrs. Yoshida, you're selling Aoyama Apartments?!"
Mrs. Yoshida didn't answer immediately. Instead, she looked at Shouko in surprise and hesitated.
"I remember that you..."
"My illness is cured!"
Nishimiya Shouko said somewhat embarrassedly.
"I-Is that so?"
But I remember it being congenital. How could it suddenly be cured? The world really is impossible to understand...
A congenital condition was less an illness and more a physical defect.
After mulling it over briefly, Mrs. Yoshida returned to the original topic.
She looked at Aoyama Apartments, and then at the cherry blossom trees by the corner of the wall, with a trace of reluctance and nostalgia before letting out a long sigh.
"Kentaro's company ran into difficulties this year. Cash flow has become tight, so I wanted to help him."
Mrs. Yoshida looked deeply worried.
Her husband had passed away from heart disease several years ago. Yoshida Kentaro was their only son. After graduating from university, he had started his own business and, after many years of hard work, had achieved considerable success. He was now the president of a medium-sized company.
"I see."
Nishimiya Shouko nodded in understanding.
Then she noticed Sato staring intently at the flyer. Feeling curious, she called out to him.
"Sato?"
"Hm?"
Sato turned around, smiled at her, then looked back at Mrs. Yoshida.
"Mrs. Yoshida, isn't this price a little low?"
He pointed at the advertisement on the wall.
The listed price was six hundred million yen.
Six hundred million yen for an entire apartment building!
Although Aoyama Apartments was an older building, its facilities and equipment were still in good condition.
The building had four floors, with six units on each floor, making a total of twenty-four apartments.
At seventy thousand yen per month per unit, that amounted to over 1.6 million yen in monthly rent.
Although several units were vacant, the monthly rental income still exceeded 1.3 to 1.4 million yen.
That meant annual rental income of roughly 17 million yen.
In reality, the rent was somewhat low.
The units at Aoyama Apartments were all suites with relatively large floor plans. Even charging one hundred thousand yen per month wouldn't be considered expensive.
At that rate, the building's annual rental income could exceed 20 million yen.
For a property like this, six hundred million yen really wasn't very much. The actual market value should probably be twenty to thirty percent higher.
Mrs. Yoshida smiled helplessly.
"Because I need the money urgently, I lowered the price."
Sato stood there thinking for a moment.
Then, as if he had made up his mind, he said:
"Mrs. Yoshida, I have an idea. Could we discuss it?"
"Eh?!" ×2
...
Aoyama Apartments, Room 302.
Mrs. Yoshida didn't actually live at Aoyama Apartments. She lived with her son in a luxury apartment in the city center, so she didn't keep a room here.
"Ever since my husband passed away, I haven't lived here for many years."
Mrs. Yoshida took a sip of the tea Sato had prepared and looked at him with a complicated expression.
"You're... not joking with me, are you?"
A high school student saying he wanted to buy an apartment building for six hundred million yen sounded unbelievable no matter how one looked at it.
"Of course not."
Sato smiled.
He absolutely had the financial means.
To date, his light novels had sold more than eighteen million copies.
At a retail price of 660 yen per volume and a royalty rate of fifteen percent, he had earned around 1.8 billion yen over the past two years.
Adding income from manga and anime adaptation rights brought the total to over 2 billion yen.
Of course, that was before taxes.
After taxes, he still had roughly 1.2 billion yen in hand.
It sounded like a lot.
Well, it really was a lot.
But as one of the people standing at the pinnacle of the light novel industry, those earnings weren't particularly shocking.
Converted into RMB, it amounted to only a little over one hundred million yuan, less than two hundred million. There were quite a few authors in both Japan and China who had reached that level of income.
Especially manga artists in Japan. They were the true money-makers.
Light novel authors still ranked behind them.
"I'm completely serious, Mrs. Yoshida."
Sato's expression remained calm, a faint smile on his face.
Although some of his money had been invested into his company, he still had plenty of liquid assets available.
Buying Aoyama Apartments now was absolutely a profitable deal.
There was still a large amount of open land around the building.
If it were demolished and rebuilt, it might even be possible to construct another apartment building on the site.
Even if he stopped writing light novels in the future, he could still live comfortably as a landlord.
What an incredibly leisurely life that would be.
"However, there are still a few details I'm uncertain about."
"Does this six hundred million yen include ownership of the land beneath the building?"
Seeing how serious Sato was, Mrs. Yoshida gradually became serious as well.
She nodded.
"Of course. The land is included in the sale as well..."
"..."