Chapter 15 [YS: Twin brother]

I sat quietly off to the side of the living room, listening intently as Georgie dealt with the local realtor over the telephone.

"Hello, I am Georgie Cooper calling regarding the house on the street," he began smoothly. He quickly explained the exact purpose of his call, and the realtor sounded genuinely interested. That was a very good start.

"That front yard is a complete mess, sir," Georgie stated with a surprising amount of professional confidence. "It will have to be cut twice just to get through the overgrowth. It will definitely need edging. The hedges and bushes require serious trimming, and the major weeds need to be knocked down completely. Is there a pool out back?"

A brief pause followed as the realtor spoke.

"Cleaning supplies and chemicals?" Georgie repeated. "Yes, we will clean the pool as well."

Another pause.

"Good. You know that when you open the front door, you will get a face full of foul, stale air. The whole interior has to be thoroughly dusted, vacuumed, and water needs to be run through all the dry pipes. There is definitely going to be some need for miscellaneous deep cleaning."

"Like what?" Georgie echoed the realtor's skeptical question. "Stains in the sink, the toilet, and the bathtub. There might even be some mildew growing on any remaining curtains and shower walls. The place will need to air out for a good bit. We will also have to wash all the dirty windows."

The man on the other end must have asked for a quote.

"I am not going to come up with the initial price. You would just laugh at me," Georgie deflected smoothly.

After a moment, Georgie raised his eyebrows and threw out an absurd price just to anchor the negotiation. "Okay, a thousand dollars."

Georgie knew perfectly well that a thousand was a completely ridiculous figure for the job. We were realistically shooting for two hundred and fifty dollars.

Of course, he was not going to suggest his actual goal as a starting point in negotiations. That was basic salesmanship. The realtor predictably scoffed and came back with a lowball offer of a hundred and fifty.

"All right. How about two hundred and twenty five?" Georgie countered seamlessly. "You said you need it done in a rush."

I could hear the faint sound of the realtor hemming and hawing through the receiver, clearly hesitating without making an immediate counter offer.

Georgie sensed the weakness and pushed forward. "All right, two hundred and ten dollars. We will start tomorrow and have it completely finished by Friday evening. You will be able to show the clean house this coming weekend. For another fifty dollars a week after that, we will stop by every single Friday and get it perfectly ready to show to your buyers."

"All right. We will see you there," the realtor finally conceded.

Georgie hung up the heavy receiver and sat back against the sofa with a massive, triumphant smile plastered across his face.

I looked up from my notepad and asked, "So, what exactly did he say?"

"Two hundred and ten dollars to mow, trim, edge, deep clean, and get the entire house into a showable condition," Georgie announced proudly.

"It will be two to three tough afternoons of manual labor, but we are going to have to bust our asses to get it done." Georgie was genuinely happy to work hard and earn his own money. I could see the excitement shining in his eyes.

I sat there and quickly estimated the overhead costs in my head. I figured that we could easily get the vast majority of the heavy equipment directly from our own garage.

We already had a reliable lawn mower, a weed whacker, and a vacuum cleaner that Mom would let us borrow if we asked nicely.

However, we could not just steal all of the household cleaning supplies without mom noticing. We would definitely have to take a quick trip to the store and spend roughly fifty to sixty dollars on heavy duty bleach, glass cleaners, scrub brushes, and other miscellaneous items to do the job properly.

Even after subtracting those necessary material expenses from our total payout, we would still be looking at a very solid net profit of around one hundred and fifty dollars. I ran the mental calculations through my mind, and the math looked incredibly promising for just two days of work.

---

A few normal days quickly passed by just like this, blending into a highly productive, rhythmic routine. My alarm would go off long before the sun even started to rise, prompting me to wake up, eat a light protein filled breakfast, and head straight out the door. I maintained my rigorous morning running and calisthenics workout schedule without a single day of failure, constantly pushing my physical stamina to its absolute limits.

Once my morning workout was completely finished, I would quickly shower and get dressed for the regular school day. Most mornings, I still managed to catch a quiet, peaceful ride in the truck with Dad, which I always deeply appreciated.

Once I arrived on the high school campus, I sat through my boring freshman classes effortlessly while reading other books that were too advanced for anyone else to understand.

I always found small pockets of time to casually hang out and talk with Helen or Kevin between periods. Most of the time, they were the ones actively seeking me out, and I genuinely started enjoying their company.

Right after the busy lunch period concluded, I would immediately retreat to the quiet sanctuary of the school library to read advanced college textbooks. Helen frequently joined me there, and I helped her with math from time to time.

She did not really need much help, just a few smart pointers here and there to grasp the harder concepts.

Finally, once football practice was officially over, Georgie and I would meet up by the parking lot to work on the house for a few grueling hours before the sun went down. We decided to start the curb number painting job next week.

During that busy week, I also finally took all of my mandatory grade skipping exams in the principal's office. Because of my eidetic memory and enhanced processing speed, I was completely done with the heavy packets of questions quite quickly.

Principal Peterson collected the papers and told me I would have to wait for about a week to hear the official news.

Despite the required waiting period, I already knew that I completely aced every single one of those so called complex state tests. Sheldon also sat right beside me during the advancement exams, taking his own set of advanced placement tests.

He ridiculously treated the entire academic assessment like it was a fierce, high stakes race to see exactly who could finish the test packet first.

Despite his frantic scribbling, he still managed to fall behind my rapid pace every single time. It was most likely not because his brain was actually slower than mine, but simply because his physical handwriting speed was slower.

My developed teenage motor skills gave me an advantage over his tiny nine year old hands during the long essay portions.

Naturally, I made sure to mock him about his slow writing speed, treating it as my sacred duty as his older sibling. I never miss a prime opportunity to annoy him nowadays. He is a surprisingly vengeful kid, but it is just too much fun to intentionally make him mad.

He acted like a snitch about our business venture last week, and I still remember that betrayal clearly.

---

In Texas, people are completely obsessed with football. Everyone watches it religiously. Personally, I really was not interested in the sport at all.

Today was Friday, and the whole family was sitting around in the living room watching a tense football game. Dad leaned forward on the very edge of his recliner, his knuckles turning white around a cold bottle of Lone Star beer, his eyes glued to the bulky television.

Suddenly, everyone exclaimed in frustration because of a missed opportunity to score.

"Fourth down, they gotta punt," Dad said, shaking his head.

"They gotta," Georgie agreed instantly.

"I do not care what they do, just cover the damn spread," Meemaw muttered from the couch.

"Mom, are you betting again?" Mom asked Meemaw with a sharp glare. Yeah, she probably was. That was exactly why she was so deeply interested in the game's final score.

"Statistically, always punting on fourth down makes absolutely no logical sense," Sheldon announced loudly while reading his textbook. I was also quietly reading, but I had claimed a comfortable spot on the couch early.

I made him sit on the carpeted floor. He grumbled about the seating arrangement but complied anyway. Mom scolded me a little bit for that, but not too much.

"Statistically, you are a complete dumbass," Georgie snapped at Sheldon, highly annoyed by the unwanted interruption.

Sheldon then launched into a highly detailed explanation regarding the exact statistical probabilities of what the offensive team should actually do in this specific scenario. He rattled off a long sequence of historical completion percentages and yardage statistics without even looking up from his reading material. Everyone in the room paused to listen to his breakdown, including myself.

I could easily follow his logic. It became obvious that Sheldon had memorized the outcome of every single football game we had ever watched on this television. He used that vast historical data to instantly calculate the absolute most efficient play.

I knew I could easily do the exact same calculations if I just had access to enough data. I got the eidetic memory very recently so i don't remember everything clearly about the past games.

"The math clearly dictates they should absolutely never punt on fourth down and just go for it every single time," Sheldon concluded matter-of-factly, immediately returning his attention back to his thick textbook.

Everyone in the living room was left completely speechless, especially Dad, considering he was an actual high school football coach hearing a nine year old dismantle his entire playbook.

I decided to step in and offer a counterpoint to his rigid logic. "You are completely right about the raw mathematics, Sheldon," I began, leaning forward on the sofa.

"But you are entirely ignoring the human factor that raw statistics simply cannot account for on the field. These are actual human athletes, not perfectly programmed robots running a strict simulation."

"When a team goes for it on fourth down and tragically fails, the sudden shift in morale is devastating," I explained calmly to the room.

"The opposing team gains a massive psychological advantage from that defensive stop. That sudden spike in human emotion and adrenaline drastically alters the mathematical probabilities of the very next play, throwing your clean statistics completely out the window."

"Yes, I suppose that psychological variance is a distinct possibility," Sheldon conceded reluctantly, refusing to look up from his reading.

However, this entire conversation regarding statistics and sports outcomes did plant a rather lucrative idea in my head. With my newly enhanced memory and rapid calculation skills, I could easily turn to sports gambling to make a massive fortune.

Of course, gambling was something that Mom would absolutely never allow under her strict religious roof. I would also have to dedicate a massive amount of time to researching team statistics and injury reports.

Furthermore, the local bookies would undoubtedly get highly suspicious if a teenager kept winning massive payouts week after week. They might even ban me entirely or cause physical trouble.

I clearly remember reading about those exact dangers that other math gamblers faced from my previous life, so I decided to shelf the gambling idea until I am at least sixteen and have a proper vehicle and a computer. It is going to be a tedious task to do all the calculations and simulations by hand.

For now, it was honestly much more fulfilling to earn my own money through physical labor and actual business ventures. The steady growth just felt much more organic and rewarding.

Besides, I already knew that our family would eventually become quite wealthy in the distant future anyway. I knew certain lucrative historical events, and I knew for a fact that Georgie would eventually become a highly successful multimillionaire with his tire chain.

Because of that absolute certainty, I was in no massive hurry to earn millions of dollars overnight.

Anyways, tomorrow was finally the homecoming date and dance with Helen. I was feeling pretty excited about the whole event. I went to sleep that night thinking about all the good things that were currently happening in my life.

___________

AN: So we have decided on the Mechanic as his next gacha.

I know it is easy for him to earn money by gambling and playing any card games but that's boring. And also remember that most people would are geniuses are not that wealthy.

Business is the way to become a billionaire.

And please tell me if the story gets a bit too slow or fast?