Reset Life with Infinite Talents - Chapter 33

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Infinite Talent Reset Life Episode 33

 

 

“Eat slowly. You’ll get indigestion.”

“Mmph mmph (No way).”

One shouldn’t underestimate the Digestive Ability of the Boy who used to compete for food with the Wolf Brothers.

Johann had been consuming over 1.5 pounds (680g) of meat daily. That was on days when hunting failed – when he hunted large animals like deer or pumas, he easily ate three times that amount.

Moreover, for wolves, meals meant survival, growth, and accumulation of strength. Since his digestive system had adapted accordingly, getting indigestion was impossible.

‘I need to get over there quickly!’

The problem was that the Lobster was too delicious.

Seeing Johann looking somewhat urgent, Larry also speeds up his eating.

“Done! You finished eating too, right? Give it here!”

‘What on earth has caught his attention?’

What could possibly excite The Child this much?

This was the first time he’d seen such urgency since meeting him in the Forest.

Larry follows Johann’s tugging at his sleeve. And soon he understands.

‘This was all it was?’

A Market Stall with Paintings, Accessories, Stamp Books and such scattered about on display.

‘Huh?’

As Larry narrows his brow upon discovering something, Johann looks at the Woman smoking a Cigarette.

Up close, even his vision becomes fixed. With his mind growing more confused, he stares intently at the Woman’s face.

‘It’s not a mole.’

It’s a piercing mark.

‘Just how many did she have? And why is she wearing such thick Clothes?’

Perhaps due to Johann’s persistent gaze.

The Woman looks up from her Mobile Phone, glances at Johann, and tilts her head slightly. A face that somehow seems familiar.

Then, seeing Johann’s eyes, she clicks her tongue.

At that sound, the Asian Man who was likewise searching for something on his Mobile Phone looks up.

Now his gaze becomes fixed on him. The man grimaces at the indifferent stare boring into him.

“What? Got a problem? Huh?”

“Hey, watch your language with my son.”

“What did you say?!”

“Stop it, John. Listen, kid. If you’re buying something, buy it quick. If not, get lost.”

“…No. Just a moment.”

‘I don’t understand.’

He doesn’t understand why he’s drawn to these people.

‘Why am I drawn to people like this who keep looking around nervously as if they’re being chased…’

But that’s that, and this is this.

“How much is this Painting?”

“Are your eyes crooked?! It’s written right there! Five hundred dollars!”

“Hey!”

As Larry grimaces and rolls up his sleeves, the Asian Man hesitates.

“Whatever! We only do fixed prices! If you’re not buying at that price, get lost!”

Larry laughs incredulously at the Price Tags carelessly placed in front of the displayed items, made from torn notebook paper.

Even the cheapest Ring was two hundred dollars. Prices that didn’t fit the Flea Market at all, where items usually didn’t exceed ten dollars, and even expensive ones rarely went over a hundred dollars.

“Just waiting to catch one sucker. Crazy bastards.”

“This son of a bitch really…!”

Just as the finally exploding man tries to charge forward, Johann grabs Larry’s sleeve.

“Larry, wait a moment.”

The Woman also stops the man called John. People’s attention was starting to gather due to the commotion.

“Larry.”

“How about we buy from somewhere else instead of here?”

There was also a street with booths displaying antique items.

However, Johann shook his head and spoke with an earnest voice.

“I like the things here… The planning team will be formed soon, right? I thought it would be nice to have Paintings to hang in the Office.”

“…You really like what’s displayed here that much?”

“Yes. The other things too.”

He wanted to buy all the items displayed at this Booth.

“What? Everything?”

“…Would that not be okay?”

“Ugh.”

He wanted to firmly say no. But that resolve crumbles at Johann’s tugging hand on his sleeve.

‘Tsk.’

Larry speaks as if spitting toward the two people who are starting to look expectant as if he’d never been angry.

“I’d like to kick your asses and throw you out, but since my son wants them, I have no choice. We’ll buy everything here.”

“Hahaha! You should have said you were customers! Great! All together…”

“18,200 dollars.”

The total sum of about 40 items.

All three people’s gazes turn toward Johann who said those words.

“…I’ll write you a Check.”

“Whatever, anything!”

Larry took out his Checkbook, wrote the amount and handed it over, and the two people stared blankly at the approximately 20,000 dollar Check in their hands before quickly putting it in their pockets.

“Then, we’ll…”

Larry extends his hand.

“If you have more items like these, sell them to me. My son seems to like them.”

“No, there’s nothing more! Ah, I’ll throw in these Bags as service! Well then!”

The two people turn around, practically shoving two large Antique Travel Bags at them.

“Excuse me, wait a moment.”

“What now!”

“…Never mind. Thank you. I’ll use them well.”

Seeing the distorted faces of the man and woman, the attraction suddenly disappears.

“Hmph!”

The two people quickly disappeared into the crowd, and Johann stared intently at their retreating backs.

‘Goodbye.’

Again, words that came to mind for unknown reasons.

Johann felt as if something had snapped inside his chest.

 

* * *

 

Tap tap tap!

“John! Stop, stop!”

The breathless Woman calls out to stop the Asian Man.

“Huff! Huff! …Pfft!”

At the laughter escaping between rough breaths, the Woman also momentarily forgets the lung-tearing pain and bursts into laughter.

“Hohohohohoho!”

“Puhahahahahat!”

They finally got rid of those burdens.

Part of the items they’d found in Grandfather’s crumbling Villa inheritance in the Rocky Mountains.

Part of the inheritance they’d been happy about, thinking they were authentic pieces.

But they weren’t. When they took them to a Pawn Shop they knew for Appraisal, they were told that except for a few pieces, all the rest were fakes.

Still, they said it was quite a quality fake, and after that they traveled across America, opening booths at flea markets like this whenever they ran out of money, selling off their inheritance bit by bit.

And finally today, they were able to sell off all the remaining fakes.

“That idiot is probably happy right now thinking he bought the real thing at a cheap price, right?”

“What’s the point of saying that. You saw how he was talking like an actor earlier.”

The widened eyes, the deliberate provocation, and even the way he acted like he was doing them a favor by buying everything.

It was exactly the same behavior as all the idiots who had bought those fakes from them so far.

“Hehe. W-with this money…”

John suddenly grabs his trembling hands and licks his lips that are starting to dry out.

“We’ll do that when we get there. It’s too expensive here.”

“…Right. I-I have to endure until then. L-let’s hurry and go.”

“Oh, John. But doesn’t that kid from earlier look familiar?”

“…No?”

Though he said that, John was also thinking that the face looked somewhat familiar.

“If that kid had grown up properly, he’d be exactly that age…”

“Forget it. Why think about that burden who thankfully died on his own?”

“True.”

Their child, whose face they can’t even remember now. By now he would have been swallowed by the Rocky Mountains without even bone fragments remaining.

Snorting with derision and cleanly erasing him from their minds, the two quickened their pace.

Before Johann and Larry could realize they were fakes and come chasing after them.

 

* * *

 

“All done…”

Larry, who had put all the paintings and accessories into a vintage travel bag, even purchasing bags and large cloths woven with colorful thread from surrounding booths to carefully wrap them, lets out a heavy breath.

People passing by look at him with disdain, as if thinking ‘I’m seeing another fool like this today.’

Johann, crouching beside him, looks at Larry.

“Why go to such lengths?”

“Yeah.”

Johann himself knew that all the purchased items were authentic, but that was a fact that only a considerable expert could know.

When Johann expressed his doubt, Larry speaks with a serious expression.

“There was a painting that looked authentic. A painting by an artist named Ralph Blakelock. So I thought there might be other authentic pieces among the other items.”

Ralph Albert Blakelock, an American Romantic painter also called the American Van Gogh.

Johann’s request aside, it was because there was an Indian painting that appeared to be Ralph Albert Blakelock’s work that he bought all the items from the market stall.

‘He recognized that?’

Ralph Blakelock paintings, about which there’s a joke that America probably has the most forgeries.

As numerous as the forgeries are, many are crude, but there are also many works so similar to the originals that even professional appraisers can’t distinguish them.

“Well. I rebelled a bit when I was young.”

Parents who wanted him to inherit the family business.

So out of rebelliousness, he chose art history as his college major, something completely unrelated to the family business, and thus acquired some knowledge about antique art.

‘I know.’

He also knows that Larry fought a lot with Ada at the time. What friend wouldn’t try to stop someone who suddenly wanted to major in art history with such uncertain prospects.

‘But Larry didn’t attend classes well.’

So he thought Larry wouldn’t know.

“Larry rebelled too?”

“A lot.”

‘And Johann, you’ll do it someday too…’

Adolescence. Thinking about that approaching time already makes him feel gloomy.

“Anyway, Ralph Blakelock’s paintings are somewhat special.”

Ralph Blakelock, who dropped out of college with the sole desire to travel the world, then traveled and created numerous works.

He mainly painted in tonalism, one of America’s painting trends, dominated by brown and light blue tones, and was famous for painting the same picture multiple times due to severe mental illness.

“For example, after painting a tree and then painting a bird, he’d paint a tree over it again. Then if he didn’t like it, he’d scrape it off and paint again.”

This created a messy texture in the paintings, which could be called Ralph Blakelock’s signature that doesn’t appear in forgeries.

‘Correct.’

“Oh!”

“Ahem!”

When Johann claps, Larry’s shoulders puff up with pride.

“How much do you think that painting is worth, Larry?”

“Hmm. At least $50,000?”

If it’s a Ralph Blakelock painting, it would be worth about that much.

“Wow!”

From one painting, he earned half of what he receives annually as an exclusive model. The roughly $20,000 he just paid became nothing more than $20,000.

“If, just if the rest of the items are also authentic…”

Conservatively estimated, roughly $300,000.

“We’d have to get an appraisal for the exact amount, but it would be about that much.”

‘Not quite.’

Among the paintings, there’s a work by Manet, the master of French art, Édouard Manet.

That value alone is at least $1 million.

Even knowing this fact, Johann pretended not to know and showed a surprised reaction like a young child.

“My goodness. We really found Picasso?! We should definitely visit all flea markets from now on!”

“Haha!”

Such a childlike thought.

But it was also an appealing idea.

“You have to train on weekends, would that be possible?”

“It’s fine. Weekend training is only on Saturdays.”

Johann and Larry headed to the parking lot. Since these were items that couldn’t be damaged further, they wanted to store them in the car first and then continue looking around.

It was lunchtime, so Larry was looking at the entrance crowd that had grown larger than in the morning and was about to warn Johann when it happened.

“Excuse me.”

Larry quickly hides Johann behind him as three people suddenly block their path.

Two large, tattoo-covered, skinhead Hispanic men and a middle-aged man in a suit.

“What’s this about?”

“Oh, sorry if we startled you. It’s just that we wanted to ask if you’ve seen these two people.”

The eyes of Johann and Larry waver as they see the man and woman in the photo the middle-aged man holds out.

The middle-aged man’s gaze darkens.

“You have seen them.”

“May I ask why you’re looking for them?”

“…They ran away without repaying borrowed money, so we’re searching for them. And it’s an enormous sum.”

An amount that, if used carefully, would mean never having to worry about money for a lifetime.

And that was already three years ago.

“Since they were the blood relatives of someone quite reputable in the province where I lived, I lent it without collateral… Well, this is quite something.”

John’s Grandfather, who despite being Asian had achieved tremendous wealth.

He had generously given to help those in need during his lifetime, and the middle-aged man was one of those who had received his help.

So even when John appeared in his hometown after several years, he readily lent the large sum, only to be betrayed like this.

And those two had blown it all on drugs and gambling.

‘If I can’t find these bastards, I at least need to recover that man’s inheritance.’

These idiots who had been fooled by some bastard’s scheme, carrying things around carelessly and selling them bit by bit at flea markets or pawn shops, thinking they were all fakes.

In the past three years, he had recovered over 60 pieces.

‘It was drugs after all.’

Johann furrows his brow at the man’s explanation.

LA, where temperatures are relatively mild even in winter. Yet those two people were hunched over and shivering as if they were in the northern region, wearing thick padding.

Add to that their pale complexion, the cold sweat that kept flowing, the strange smell of sweat, and their neurotic reactions.

All of this was the typical appearance of a drug addict.

“But why are you going around collecting the artworks?”

If it was just about taking items in place of loaned money, that would be understandable, but the fact that they were even collecting things that had been sold to flea markets and pawn shops was puzzling.

“….”

The Middle-aged Man looks at Johann.

Their appearance was threatening enough to intimidate most adult men. Yet this kid looked at them calmly, as if he wasn’t scared of them at all.

‘Why is that.’

Suddenly he thinks of that person.

Now that he thinks about it, there’s quite a resemblance in appearance.

“I don’t think people who don’t know the value should possess that person’s inheritance.”

So he plans to collect them all and create a museum.

Johann nodded.

‘He’ll create it after selling everything he needs to sell.’

If that wasn’t his intention, he wouldn’t have loaned the money in the first place.

The fact that he readily loaned such a large sum must have been with that person’s inheritance in mind from the beginning.

‘People who do money lending would lend without thinking of a way to collect it back?’

Even a dog wouldn’t believe that.

But….

“I saw it at Booth 498.”

Larry looks at Johann with a surprised face.

“Th, thank you.”

The Middle-aged Man, who had been turning around while snapping his fingers at his subordinates, suddenly looks at Johann.

“If you need money later, contact me at this number.”

The Middle-aged Man hurriedly left, and Johann watched him quietly before crumpling up the business card and throwing it in a nearby trash can.

‘Could they be my biological parents.’

The two who didn’t recognize him.

But if they weren’t his biological father and mother, he wouldn’t have felt so drawn to them, nor would the word goodbye have come to mind.

He could know for certain if he searched their records, but he didn’t want to.

‘Drugs and gambling.’

He could try to interpret the drugs positively somehow, like they started from the shock of losing him, but not gambling.

It meant they were that kind of people from the beginning.

He couldn’t let himself be held back by such addicts.

It would be better to think of it as just a passing incident.

‘Now Larry is my guardian!’

Johann grabbed Larry’s arm tightly.

“Let’s hurry up and go, Larry!”

There were many things to buy.

“Oh, okay. Yeah.”

Larry, who had been looking at Johann’s face, which seemed different from usual, moved his steps with curiosity.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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