VOLUME 2

Chapter 1: Part 2

It seemed that I had somehow made it back home, and when I opened my eyes, I had been set in the entranceway next to the chainsaw.

My bag had been thrown off to the side, and the bento box and textbooks that were inside were in disarray. And then, it seemed that I had been thrown along with it? Listlessly getting myself to my feet, I stretched my body.

Nnnnn… alright, I guess I should put my bag in my room.

I felt really sluggish as I went up the stairs. Did sunlight seriously make me this weak? Zombies really had it tough.

I entered my room, and fished my textbooks out from my book bag.

… I’ll study later. I can’t study like I am now. Changing out of my uniform, I took out my favorite bento box, and tossed my bag in the direction of my desk.

Haruna had never failed in her cooking. Everyone had their own tastes, but somehow Haruna could make food that would please anyone and everyone.

And, she had gone through the trouble to make this for me, so I should take this opportunity to eat what she made.

Today’s menu was… umm… hijiki (1)… and that’s it.

Only hijiki?! You could’ve made it into konyaku or mixed in some veggies at least! This is the first time I’ve seen a meal consisting of hijiki and only hijiki. With all this blackness staring at me, I’ve really lost my will to eat… well, I’ll still eat it though.

Geez… even though she wears polka-dotted panties or striped panties or panties of many other patterns, why the h.e.l.l did she make this meal so monochromatic…?

Dammit… as I expected, it’s delicious too. Even though I’m not a big fan of hijiki… but still, I didn’t need a whole bento box’s worth of hijiki.

Right. Let’s go protest to the person herself. Today I had no more school. The room I saw right after leaving mine was Haruna’s room, and today she should be in there.

I’ll study after this.

Taking the hijiki-covered bento box with me, I violently opened the door to Haruna’s room.

“Haruna!”

… Huh?

n.o.body was in Haruna’s room. Apart from mealtimes and when she’s thinking up some underhanded scheme, she usually shut herself up in her room… so that means, she’s scheming something?

Or she could be watching television with Yuu and Sera.

Taking the bento box with me, I popped into the living room, where I found Sera and Yuu looking almost like housewives, both engrossed in a TV drama.

Yuu, wearing her usual armor even though she was indoors, didn’t even look in my direction, but with a pen in her gauntleted hand, tapped the desk twice. When I looked at the desk, I saw a memo pad that was different from the usual detachable memos she used.

She probably had bought a new memo pad.

Welcome home.

I saw her words and was surprised.

It’s just that, in the month we’ve been living together, this was the first time she’s said that to me. And seeing her greeting, I felt happy.

It’s just as if… yeah…

–

It’s just as if we were a family.

–

Unconsciously, a smile broke through across my face. Greetings like that were things to be treasured.

Kneeling on the ground, Yuu looked up at me. Her eyelids that never blinked, slowly descended over her eyes. And then, they opened again, and her blue eyes gazed at me.

She was probably waiting for a response.

“I’m home. Have you seen Haruna?”

I sat down cross-legged and set the bento box on the table, throwing my brightest smile at Yuu. But with a speed that had always escaped my comprehension, Yuu turned away from me.

Huh? Why?

“If you’re looking for Haruna, she’s gone out.”

The ponytailed beauty sitting across from me gave me a light response. When she gave a glance in my direction, she had her curved index finger placed quite attractively on her lips.

“Where did she go?”

“I do not know.” Cough. Sera cleared her throat. “When I got back, she was already-“ cough cough. She seemed to be coughing in order to deliberately hide something.

This girl… what was she trying to hide?

“Yuu didn’t hear anything either? Well, I’m at a loss then. If I can’t talk to her when I want to talk to her, then I’m going to forget what I wanted to say in the first place.”

Her silver hair reflected the light in the room… hm? It almost feels like she’s turned even farther away from me.

I’ve heard nothing. = “Nnn~, I don’t nyowww~~.”

Yuu wrote on her memo pad with her back turned towards me. I felt lonely, so I translated her words into a much cuter version in my head.

She was now tapping on the desk, probably because she thought I had not read the memo yet. Why exactly was she facing away from me?

Oh. Maybe, that time when I called home the third time… maybe at that point, Haruna had already left somewhere, and Yuu had been the one who answered the phone?

And Sera had been trying to send me the bento box. Now the fact that the phone rang so long before anyone picked up, and the fact that the phone call got cut off without the other side saying anything all made sense.

Why the h.e.l.l would you pick up a phone if you couldn’t talk? Yuu could be an idiot sometimes too.

I shook my head from side to side in resignation.

“That idiot, where the h.e.l.l did she disappear off to? Geez-“

It was probably because we were gossiping about her, but right then I heard the front door open, the sound of someone ascending the steps, and then the sound of someone coming down the steps.

“Ayumu’s back, isn’t he?! That idiot! Hentai!”

That was the first thing she said upon coming into the living room.

I leaned back and turned just my head towards her, and there I saw Haruna, wearing a short plaid-patterned skirt.

Her wearing a skirt was unusual. Was it a school uniform or something?

But she came here at just the right time. I showed Haruna the hijiki-filled bento box and called out to her.

“Haruna-“

“As I thought! You went into my room, didn’t you?!”

Ahh, now that I think about it, I had forgotten to shut the door.

Haruna looked down at me, and froze.

In a slightly teasing way, I spoke.

“Haruna, I can sort of see your panties.”

If I said that, Haruna would start blus.h.i.+ng, and like always would squeal like a seal, but…

“Ahah hahaha, ahahahaha!”

What the h.e.l.l was she laughing at? She clutched her chest and her ahoge jumped back and forth.

“What the h.e.l.l… that face… that’s terrible! Nyaha hahahaha!”

“Face?”

“Go look in a mirror! Oh G.o.d… hahahahaha!”

“By the way, that was not me. That hedgehog of a man did it.”

I a.s.sume he was trying to make us laugh.

Mirror… hedgehog of a man… laugh.

There could only be one thing those keywords suggested.

This was probably also the reason Yuu wouldn’t look at me, and why Sera was coughing and trying to hide something from me!

I hurried to a bathroom, and looked in a mirror.

On my face, I saw some terribly low-quality scribbling, the kind you’d find in a junior high school textbook. On my forehead was written the kanji for “nothing,” and there were red pen marks coming from the corner of my mouth, as if I was spitting up blood. Around my eyes and all over my temple, there had been scribbled things that looked like they belonged on a Kabuki (3) actor.

On my cheek there was a speech bubble drawn with “No, don’t be absurd!” written in it.

Didn’t you normally write the kanji for “meat” on the forehead? (4)

Using the was.h.i.+ng foam Sera had bought, which allegedly was made from the same stuff they made charcoal with and could wash all the dirtiness from your pores, I washed my face.

I was going to definitely smack Orito tomorrow. No, that wasn’t enough. After I tortured him, I was going to pulverize that thing mercilessly, and then boil that thing in an iron pot. (5) His gla.s.ses, that is!

Feeling refreshed, I returned to the living room, when I saw that Sera was eating my bento box that had been filled with nothing but hijiki. My mouth hung open, and I was left slightly stunned.

To think this dignified being would steal my food…

“Sera, that was mine.”

“Don’t worry about it. I like hijiki.”

Ah, I see. That’s good then. It wasn’t like I could get the box back, so I sat cross-legged down on the floor with a towel draped across my neck. Even I thought I looked like an old man or something.

“Hey hey, is it good?”

Haruna seemed to really want an opinion. Well, no, she wanted to be praised. She rested her head in her hands, gazing at Sera with a happy smile while her ahoge waved back and forth.

“… In its own way.”

Sera was uncooperative. She was probably jealous of how good Haruna was at cooking. She admitted Haruna’s skills, but didn’t want to praise her for them.

“In its own way… and what?”

Haruna seemed unsatisfied with just that answer. Sera was honestly saying that she thought it was delicious, but Haruna seemed dead-set on getting her to say it outright.

“The gloomy necromancer can have some too. Just go ahead.”

Huh? It wasn’t mine?

Is it really alright? = “It’s not oniichan’s?”

Haruna angrily glared at me.

“Just go ahead.” Her words dripped with annoyance.

Why is she looking at me like that? Was she that angry that I had gone into her room?

“Hey, Haruna, where did you go off to exactly?”

“School.”

“…… Huh?”

“What are you so confused about? I’m a student.”

“No no… which school did you go to?”

“Which… obviously Matelis Magical Academy, right?”

Normally, Haruna never wore skirts. It seemed that this plaid-patterned skirt was something the magical academy had a.s.signed. Hmm… she looks good in a skirt, doesn’t she? She should wear skirts more often. I tried to lift her skirt up, but she punched me. It wasn’t a special skill or anything. She just simply hit me with her fist. It was a superficial attack.

“I’ve never seen you as the type of person who diligently went to cla.s.s.”

Maybe she was moved by how hard I had studied, and got motivated to go to cla.s.s herself…

“I stopped in cla.s.s for no more than two seconds… seriously, what’s so fun about going to cla.s.s?”

Nope, I was wrong.

“So, what did you go to do then?”

“I was just called over for a meeting. They told me that Megalo are appearing in large quant.i.ties in this region. I would have hunted them all down anyways though, so it’s not like they had to call me into a meeting.”

Megalo appearing in large quant.i.ties. Dai-sensei had said something similar. She was talking about this region?

… Wait, she was talking about this region?! Give me a break, dammit.

“I see. And also, it seems that you can return to Virie now?”

That’s good, that’s good. But before I could continue, Haruna gave me an angry look.

“… No, I can’t! Just give me back my magical energy already!”

At her words, Yuu gave a start.

Haruna seemed to still be under the impression that I had stolen her magical energy. However, I had deduced that the one who really had stolen her energy was Yuu.

Haruna, I want some snacks = “Hey hey, Yuu is hungryyy~~.”

So Yuu wanted to change the subject.

“Should I make some then?”

With some hijiki still remaining in her mouth, Sera made that proposal. She might have bad manners, but her expression showed absolutely no slack. But… her suggestion was implicitly, unanimously vetoed. We really didn’t even need to say it out loud.

“Why… isn’t anyone saying anything?”

“I guess there’s no helping it then. What do you want to eat?”

Having been ignored not only by me and Yuu, but even by Haruna, Sera was shocked.

Christian Bale (6) = “Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm….”

That’s quite an extravagant actor to be picking for a snack. I really couldn’t translate that noun to a cute version in my head. The Yuu translator in my brain was completely confused.

She’s trying to tell us what kind of snack she wants, right? No matter how much I thought about it, I had no idea what she was trying to say.

But…

“Cream puff?” Haruna made that suggestion, and Yuu nodded.

What the h.e.l.l, are you a pro cryptographer or something?

“OK. But we seem to be out of granulated sugar. Alright, I’ll put in an order for ingredients, so just wait a second… Ayumu, your cell phone.”

“Here you go.” I pa.s.sed her my cell phone, but also…

“Hey, exactly where do you always get your ingredients from?”

It was a question I had always had on my mind.

“Are you an idiot? I get supplied with them.”

It seemed that it had been decided that she would get supplied with food. Looking at me as if I were an idiot, her ahoge seemed to droop.

Well, it’s true that Haruna had come to this world to exterminate monsters, so it makes sense that she would be provisioned with the necessary materials to do so.

And the reason her food was so strangely delicious might have been because she wasn’t using ingredients from this world.

“Although, it doesn’t seem quite worth it if you’re exterminating Megalo and they’re just paying you in hijiki.”

“Huh? What the h.e.l.l? You have a job because you need to eat, right? What do you need other than that? What would satisfy you then? Would you be satisfied if you hit the Pajero in a game of darts (7)?”

“Probably more than hijiki, at least.”

“But Ayumu, this hijiki is really quite good. Probably, even better than that Pajero…”

Sera put on a serious expression and audibly swallowed.

“You, you have no idea what a Pajero is, do you?”

A black singer.

… Where the h.e.l.l did the “pa” go off to? (8)

TRANSLATOR’S NOTES

(1) A type of black-ish seaweed.

(2) A jelly food product. Sometimes made into noodles. Supposedly healthy.

(3) Type of traditional j.a.panese drama. The makeup is very distinctive.

(4) Apparently this is a thing. It might have originated from Kinnik.u.man, whose main character had this kanji written on his forehead.

(5) This segment is much less awkward sounding in the j.a.panese, as j.a.panese doesn’t really frequently use gender-specific p.r.o.nouns like “his” or “her.”

(6) He may be batman, but he should be very, very afraid.

(7) A car, made by Mitsubis.h.i.+. For a long time, this used to be the grand prize in a darts contest.

(8) This was a reference to Jero, an enka singer.