18d • Miscellaneous Posting
A Divine Message
Thanks to a client of mine who used to run ultramarathons, I took part in an ultramarathon a month ago.
The race was 300 kilometers over four days, including mountain trails.
At 2 a.m. on the third day, I was running through the mountains, almost passing out from exhaustion.
I thought, “I could die if it meant I could sleep.”
At that very moment, there was suddenly a blinding flash of light, and I could vaguely see the figure of a woman.
Then I heard her voice.
“Hi, Taisei. I’ll tell you something good. If you dig under the pine tree in your garden, you’ll find a huge fortune. But you need to quit this race right now and go straight home. A flood will come in two days and wash everything away.”
Then she disappeared.
I wondered if I should follow her advice, but I decided to keep running. Still, I called my wife and told her what had happened. I also called the local government office and warned them about the flood.
When I got home four days later, my neighborhood was safe, although there was some mud and debris. The local authorities seemed to have done a good job preventing serious damage from the flood.
The fortune under the pine tree turned out to be shares in a company that had recently gone public in the U.S. They were worth about $10 million.
I thought the stock would keep going up, so I didn’t sell it all.
I became a hero who had saved my neighborhood, and I was rich as well.
Still, I was a little worried because I hadn’t followed the woman’s instructions.
But I thought she must be very busy. If she had to take care of people all over the world, she probably didn’t have much time to bother with me.
So I went back to my peaceful life.
Then, the other day, one of my staff members said,
“Boss, the National Tax Agency is calling you.”
I thought it was strange. A call from a local tax office would make sense, but directly from the National Tax Agency?
Still wondering about that, I picked up the phone.
“Hello, Mr. Koshida. We received information from someone who says she gave you assets worth $10 million. You haven’t filed a gift tax return, have you?”
The moment I heard that, I thought,
“She got me.”
Still, I thought, “Well, even after paying the tax, I’ll have about half of it left. I guess that’s okay.”
But that afternoon, the stock price crashed.
The shares that had been worth $10 million were suddenly worth only $1 million.
The AI bubble had burst.
But my gift tax was calculated based on the value of the shares when I received them.
As a result, I was left with a tax bill far greater than the value of the shares I still owned, something I might have to spend many years paying off.
I learned one thing from this incident.
Apparently, God’s work is divided among many gods.
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A Divine Message
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