章節 18: Scamming the Elderly
"Ugh, ready for another day of hard work?" Takeyama said once she caught her breath.
"Are you?" Jugram asked with a raised brow.
"Yeah, yeah. It's boring, but this will look very good on my applications." She shrugged.
"Applying to a Hero School?" Jugram asked casually.
"Yep, I want to be the BIGGEST hero," she said, bursting into a fit of laughter at her own joke.
"Alright," Jugram said slowly, an idea forming, "It's very mature of you to have such body positivity at our age, Takeyama. I could learn a thing or two from you."
"Huh?" she asked, not understanding what he meant.
"To be such a BIG hero, you must have a quirk to do with eating, no?" Jugram said.
Finally, the meaning behind Jugram's words hit the girl all at once. She physically stumbled as if struck. For such a vain girl and frankly attractive, the idea that she could ever be fat was so foreign to her that she hadn't even considered that's what he could be insinuating. Once she saw the truth, she detonated like a bomb.
"WWHHHAAAATTTTT?!?!?!?!" she roared.
"My my, there's been a misunderstanding." Jugram hummed cheerily as the girl raged, "That reaction, though. I simply made an honest mistake."
"My QUiRk is GIGANTification," she said, trying to keep her voice calm, but her anger poked through at points, raising her voice.
"Ahh, my bad. Do you hate fat people, then?" Jugram asked, adopting a straight face and serious tone.
"Wha..what? Of course, I don-" she stammered, totally wrong-footed.
"I mean that reaction," Jugram said, gesturing around the few people who had turned to look at her outburst. "Plump people are people, too. No need to tear into them like that."
"What are you even talking about?" she asked, but Jugram had already moved ahead into the building.
Thoroughly confused by the interaction, all Yu could do was rush forward to follow Jugram into the building. She glared at the boy all the while, purposely choosing to turn her head away and ignore him as she made a point of walking by him. In the end, all it did was elicit a chuckle from him and annoy her further.
Maybe Gran Torino has rubbed off on me as well, Jugram considered as he checked into the work station and changed his clothes.
He and the few other volunteers mostly cleaned the floors and rooms. Patient interaction wasn't necessarily part of their work, but management and the doctors encouraged younger volunteers like Jugram to interact with the old folks. After all, living in a care facility was lonely, so they were encouraged to try and be there for the old folks.
Of course, Jugram wasn't there for the hours of community service to boost his High School and College applications. He was there to get some quirks. That's why he spent the past two months in the facility daily, cleaning the floors and room. He made sure to interact with the patients as much as possible, building rapport. He hadn't made any moves yet since it wouldn't do to be too hasty.
He had already learned that lesson in the hospital when he was younger. Back then he had still ended up getting Threat Detection by chance, but that situation could have gone horrible if that woman revealed that he had tried to get her quirk. If the news leaked, then he would undoubtedly be on AFO's radar. So he took it slow, cleaning the floors and making friends.
It also helped that the care facility was evidently run by someone suffering from OCD. All the patients were separated into separate floors and wings of the building depending on their possible threat level and amount of mental or physical degradation. It wasn't actually called 'Threat Level' outright, but that's what it essentially was.
While ranking old people based on threat level seemed funny at face value, it was taken very seriously, especially in a superpowered society. It wasn't uncommon for a bout of confusion to end with accidental quirk activations as the patients lost track of time and space. Most of the time, that was harmless, but patients with more dangerous quirks could do serious harm if left unchecked.
Usually, Jugram wouldn't have been allowed anywhere besides the safe and mentally sound patient area. Still, through his dedication and perfect work ethic, he convinced his manager to allow him to clean the areas of the facility housing patients suffering from mental degradation, the primary cases being memory loss.
He still wasn't allowed near the dangerous patients at the end of the hall, housed in specialized rooms, but he didn't mind. His objective was to collect quirks from people suffering from memory loss disorders. Jugram figured their frequent confusion would make it easier to get them to sign their quirks away with his Awakened Exchange.
You can't tell on somebody you can't remember, after all.
However, the memory loss could have gone both ways, making it annoying for him to determine if it was with investing time into trying to get a quirk or not. Thankfully, the OCD director was there to help him inadvertently again.
Every door had laminated paper attached to the outside. It had general information like the patient's name, age, and threat level. It was nothing too personal, nor would it constitute any privacy violations. Yet, the golden piece of information on that piece of paper was the patient's quirk and a quick, one-sentence description.
Jugram took his time cleaning the hallways, quickly and discretely reading all of the labels on the doors as he made his rounds. Over the past two months working here, he had scoped out five or six quirks that he wanted. Two main quirks he wanted from the lot were in the mental degradation section of the hospital, which is why he pushed to clean there two weeks ago.
After scoping out the area and gauging the time it took the workers to complete their rounds in this section, he could finally execute his plan after two weeks. Everything was in place. The awakening was already transferred to Exchange, and the papers he had hidden under his shirt softly crinkled as he moved, but not loud enough to draw anyone's attention.
So, as he cleaned a section of the floor, Jugram casually looked around and then entered the door on his left, about midway down the hallway.
- - - - -
Name: Mura Noboru
Age: 89
Level of Care Needed: Moderate to Low
Quirk: Amplify
Description: Amplify allows the user to affect output and efficiency. It's commonly used to make machines and vehicles run better.
- - - - -
Despite the barebones description, Jugram was particularly drawn to the quirk because he thought it could increase the output and efficiency of all the quirks he had gathered. It wasn't clear from the description exactly, but it was a good quirk regardless. It could be easily sold if it proved not to be as valuable as he initially expected, but he had high hopes for Amplify.
With these thoughts in mind, he removed the papers he had stored while he entered. The room was the average size of a hospital room but was decorated more like a living room area, with a bed and television at the far end of the room. With a quick scan of the room, he located the old man lying on his bed, awake and alert but staring at Jugram in confusion.
"Who are you, young man?" the old man asked.
"Hello, Mr. Noboru." Jugram greeted warmly, "How are you today?"
"Fine," the old man said, still confused. "You didn't answer who you are. Do I need to call-"
"I'm Jugram van Hohenheim. I'm a volunteer student at this care home. We discussed you signing off some papers for my community service hours earlier." Jugram said patiently.
"Community service hours?" the man asked.
"I'm trying to become an Electrician and get into trade school. I want to have the best chances I can." Jugram said.
The old man's face lit up as he spoke. It was as if Jugram had just told a child that they would get all-you-can-eat ice cream.
"I was an electrician, you know. People underestimate how vital we are to society," the old man said suddenly, much more amicably.
"I know!" Jugram said, rushing forward 'excitedly'. "That's what I always tell my father, but he said I should become a doctor. He would only accept it if I got a scholarship for trade school. That's why I need these community service hours."
"What can I do to help?" the man asked energetically.
"Just sign your name here. I just need a signature for my school to know I've done it." Jugram said, placing a pan and the papers before the old man.
Jugram tapped the signature location, which he had placed at the bottom of the most unassuming-looking document. It even had a bunch of numbers and hours written boldly on the front in case the old man scanned the document a bit.
"There's also more details on the back if you want to look," Jugram said quickly before the man could sign.
Through testing, he had found that he needed to offer the signer the chance to read his terms explicitly for the trade to activate when signed. He was just banking on the old man to not care and sign without turning the paper over. If he did, he would see in explicit wording that his quirk would be stripped from him after 12 hours, along with the quirk storage and his experience using the quirk.
All it would take to expose the scam was to turn over the paper, but the old man didn't. He signed it with a smile, and the binding took effect. Jugram smiled widely and accepted the paper, talking to the man for a few more minutes before taking his leave.
I shouldn't do too many people per day since if it gets out that people from this place are losing their quirks, Torino will blow a gasket. It could also draw some unwanted attention. One more for today, then I'll wait a few more weeks before getting more. Slow and steady wins the race. Jugram reminded himself.
With that, he set off down the hall toward his second target of the day.
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