“Uh, Mistress? That’s not a lizard.”

“Indeed she is not. Ahem… Lady Azusa, I would very much prefer it if you would not refer to her as a lizard again.”

Huh? That’s weird—why are Flatorte and Laika acting so put off?

“That’s a young blue dragon, Mistress. It’s no weak little lizard!”

Well, that explains it! I guess it just makes sense that there’d be blue dragon babies around here!

“S-sorry! That was rude of us, huh…? A dragon! Who knew…?” I awkwardly muttered.

And who knew little dragons basically just look like lizards? Oh wait—now that I look at it, it’s got a pair of tiny wings, doesn’t it? That must be how you tell them apart.

“She’s the daughter of one of our neighbors,” Flatorte’s mother explained, sliding smoothly into the conversation. “Her family decided to go out wandering and left her with us to take care of.”

“I could see leaving your kid with a neighbor if there’s an emergency, or if you want to go on a trip for a day or two, but to go out wandering around at random? Seriously…?” I skeptically replied. Blue dragons really did seem to have a totally different set of values than most people.

“This is perfect timing, though,” Flatorte’s dad said with a satisfied nod. “We’d just been thinking about going out to find some folks to test our strength against when she got left with us. Now we can go scouring the back alleyways where all the punks hang out and get into some street fights after all!”

Huh? What in the world are they talking about?

“You’ll watch over her for two or three days, won’t you, Flatorte? You can just feed her whatever—I’m sure she’ll be fine. She’ll probably go to sleep on her own when she needs to, too,” said Flatorte’s mom.

O-oh, no. I see what’s happening here…

Their daughter came home for a visit, and now they’re leaving someone else’s kid in her care!

What kind of homecoming is that?! I can’t even count how many social rules they’re breaking right now…

“Wait, wait… Flatorte just came home for the first time in ages, you two! Are you really leaving on a trip without even spending time with her…?” I asked. The situation was developing in such a bizarre direction, it felt like I had to do something to stop it.

“Oh, gotcha,” said Flatorte. “You guys are going on a trip, huh? In that case, things have been really peaceful and boring in the north lately, so I’d go south if I were you! There’s always a buncha nasty thugs hanging out behind the bars down that way—it’ll be just right for you.”

Why are you giving them travel advice, Flatorte?!

“Umm, Flatorte?” I whispered. “Are you okay with this? Like, really?”

“I got to see them already, so why not?” Flatorte replied. “When you want to fight someone, you go out to find an opponent! That’s the blue dragon way. We all do it.”

In other words, finding a fight is a hundred times more important to them than spending time with us?

“If Flatorte says it’s okay for her parents to go, I don’t think there’s much we can do about it anymore, Big Sis,” Rosalie pointed out.

She was right, and I knew it. If this was how things worked in blue dragon society, then a bunch of outsiders like us had no right to barge in and complain about how it didn’t line up with our values. There was, however, one very good reason why I couldn’t back down that easily.

“I’m guessing you’ve never taken care of a little kid before, right, Flatorte?” I asked.

“Never!” Flatorte replied without missing a beat.

I couldn’t tell if she was planning on bringing the baby dragon back to the house in the highlands, or if she was going to take care of it at her family home, but regardless, I couldn’t let her go it alone. There was no way I was risking her messing up and getting the kid hurt—that would be a disaster! Considering everyone involved was a blue dragon, her parents would probably be satisfied with a simple apology if she got hurt…but still, her life was in Flatorte’s hands, and I felt a certain responsibility to be as careful as possible. Flatorte’s responsibility was our responsibility, after all—this was a problem our whole family had to cope with.

“Hey, Flatorte? Where were you thinking of taking care of the kid?” I asked.

“Here, of course,” Flatorte replied. “We wouldn’t know when Ma and Pa came home if we’re not here to see them, right? And think of what the kid’s parents would say if they came back to pick her up and the house was empty!”

Oh, yeah. Makes sense. It also struck me that the climate in the blue dragons’ village was very different from the highlands. Bringing the baby dragon to a climate zone it wasn’t used to would run the risk of making her sick.

“Okay, then. I guess we’ll be sticking around here to babysit for a few days. Sounds like a plan!” I said. With all of us around to help, we’d be able to deal with any problem that came our way!

“You really don’t have to bother, though. I could take care of her for a few days on my own, no problem,” said Flatorte. The look on her face told me she thought I was blowing this whole thing out of proportion, but I knew that when a kid’s safety was on the line, you always had to assume the worst-case scenario would come to pass. “You think so, too, don’t you? I, the great Flatorte, could take care of you just fine, right?” Flatorte asked the baby dragon, who her dad was still holding.

The baby dragon nodded at her.

What, really?! She’s on Flatorte’s side?!

“Actually, wait. How old is she, anyway?” I asked. It was really hard for me to judge a dragon’s age when they were in full dragon form.

“About thirty or so, probably,” said Flatorte.

“Ahh, her thirties, huh? That’s right around the time when you really start feeling your age, stamina-wise… But naaah, probably not in this case.”

All of us were either incredibly long-lived or already dead. Who even knew how old thirty was in dragon years? The fact that she was constantly in dragon form led me to believe she was probably pretty young—maybe the human equivalent of three or so? Though then again, if she couldn’t talk, she might be even younger than that.

“Okay, we’re off, then!” said Flatorte’s dad. “We’ll be back in two or three days. Don’t worry—this isn’t going to be one of those trips that ends up lasting upwards of half a year in the end, I promise!”

You’d think that would be a given, but since we were dealing with blue dragons, leaving home for a year on a whim was very believable. I appreciated the reassurance. They were very obviously raring to hit the road, and they already seemed to have a big travel bag put together for the trip.

I guess there really is such a thing as being too carefree…

Before Flatorte’s parents left, however, there was one more thing I had to ask them. I could get all the general information about blue dragon kids I needed from Flatorte, but there was one thing only her parents—the ones to whom the child had been entrusted—would know.

“Before you go, what’s the kid’s name?” I asked. Somehow, we’d gone through that whole conversation without her name having ever come up. At this rate, I wouldn’t know what to call her.

“Oh, her name? What was it, again?” muttered Flatorte’s dad.

“Come to think of it, we never asked,” noted her mom.

That settles it: There’s no such thing as a responsible blue dragon! Her parents should’ve mentioned her name, at the absolute least! Do your jobs, people, please! You wouldn’t leave a pet with a friend without telling them what its name is, for crying out loud!

Flatorte’s parents gave us one last wave, and with that, they were off. On the one hand, the fact they liked to travel together implied they were a happy couple, but on the other hand, their relationship seemed to be operating on a level I couldn’t really comprehend. If someone had told me they’d gotten a divorce over irreconcilable differences in their outlooks on combat the very next day, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash.

With Flatorte’s parents out of the picture, it was all up to us to take care of the baby dragon.

“What’s done is done—we’ll just have to make the best of it now,” I said. “First things first, what’re we going to do about dinner? I guess we’ll have to cook something here?”

Flatorte’s family home turned out to be surprisingly accommodating, as far as houses went, and their kitchen was fully stocked with seasonings and tableware. The house wasn’t normally occupied by so many people, so I figured we’d have to go out shopping for ingredients, but that was probably all we would need to do.

“I will handle the shopping, Lady Azusa. I’ll have to do so shortly, as well—the village’s stores are likely to close early,” said Laika. That saved me a lot of trouble.

“Right… Blue dragons don’t exactly work long hours, do they?” I agreed.

Laika could fly out to a store farther away, in theory, but that would mean her trip would take way longer. Better to just get it done now.

“Madam Teacher? I actually have to work tomorrow,” Halkara said, raising her hand to get my attention.

Oh, right. I almost forgot one of us has a day job.

“I have a proposal, Miss Halkara,” said Laika. “Tomorrow, I shall wake up earlier than usual and carry you to your factory. Then, you can find an inn in Nascúte from which you’ll be able to commute to work on your own for the next several days. Does that sound agreeable to you?”

“Yes! That should work just fine,” said Halkara. “Nascúte’s too far away from here for you to make the trip there and back twice a day, so that makes sense.”

The blue dragons lived close enough to the red dragons to harass them on the regular, and the red dragons lived in the same province as the house in the highlands. Getting home from the blue dragons’ village in a single flight was totally doable, but two round trips in a day would be a huge hassle. If commuting from the house in the highlands to Nascúte was like Halkara catching a ride to the local station, then commuting from the blue dragons’ village would be like taking a cross-country trip on a bullet train.

“I know this isn’t exactly convenient for you, Halkara, but desperate times, desperate measures, and all that,” I said.

“Oh, it’s perfectly fine!” Halkara happily replied. “There are plenty of restaurants in Nascúte, and new ones are opening up all the time for me to try. Hee-hee-hee-hee!”

That settled the question of how Halkara would deal with her work. Now all we had to do was hunker down and survive a few days in the village.

As to what the baby dragon of the hour was doing through that whole exchange…

“Ooh, now that’s how a blue dragon eats! You’ve got a healthy appetite, all right!”

…Flatorte had served her a helping of edible slimes, which she was wolfing down enthusiastically.

I guess having a healthy appetite’s better than the alternative, in any case…

Flatorte and I ended up cooking dinner that evening, with Flatorte playing the role of chef this time around.

“So, Flatorte—what did you eat as a kid?” I asked. She was the only one of us who’d have any clue what blue dragon children’s diets were like.

“Just normal stuff, really,” said Flatorte. It was always sort of hard to get her to acknowledge the weirder aspects of blue dragon society. “I mean, I’ll eat pretty much anything, right? Most dragons are like that—we’re not super picky. We like meat more than vegetables, I guess, but that doesn’t mean we won’t eat veggies, too.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you, but we’re cooking for a little kid this time. I’d like to make something blue dragon kids would like.”

What if I serve a dish with a bunch of veggies in it and she doesn’t eat it at all? That definitely wouldn’t be good for her!

“Hmm. I’d say just make something a human kid would like. Blue dragons tend to live in places that aren’t great for growing crops, so we don’t have many signature foods or anything.”

“Now that you mention it…”

Flatorte had cooked plenty of meals for us at the house in the highlands, but I couldn’t remember her ever having served a dish I wasn’t already familiar with. Laika was the same way—if she’d ever served us any local red dragon cuisine, I certainly couldn’t remember it. Dragons’ dietary habits were distinct in the sense that they ate a ridiculous amount of food, but the actual food itself was surprisingly ordinary, apparently. Well, that, or this was just a factor of the red dragons living in the same region as us in the highlands. Maybe their regional specialties were just the same as ours.

Anyway, if I was supposed to make something a kid would like, then hamburger steaks—or patty grills, as they apparently called them in this world—seemed like an obvious choice. Hamburger steaks were convenient in that I could make them bigger or smaller to match the appetites of each member of the family. Laika also said she’d buy more bread than usual, so we wouldn’t have to worry about running out of food… Though that was all assuming the dragon child would actually eat our cooking at all. I was still a little worried we’d go too heavy on the vegetables somewhere and she would refuse to even touch the dish.

Maybe some potage on the side would be nice? I thought to myself. Most races seemed to prefer meat over vegetables, aside from the odd exception like elves, and while eating a balanced diet would be best from a nutritional perspective, I was okay with the idea of serving nothing but meat if it meant our charge would actually eat everything.

We weren’t quite finished cooking yet, but I decided to pause for a moment and check in on the baby dragon.

We headed back to the room we’d had our chat with Flatorte’s parents in, where we found the baby dragon flying around in circles.

“It flies so slowly, doesn’t it? ” said Falfa.

“This is a valuable opportunity to observe a juvenile dragon. Chances like this are few and far between,” noted Shalsha.

The twins both seemed to be enjoying watching the little dragon do its thing, and for the time being, I didn’t see any signs of trouble. I had to wonder if they had a certain understanding with the dragon, since all of them were kids…though, on the other hand, it sort of felt like Falfa and Shalsha were thinking of the dragon as more of a pet than a peer.

“Hmm? Wait, where’s Sandra?” I asked.

“I think she’s outside, Mommy!” Falfa replied.

Stepping outside, I found Sandra right away. She was right out front, digging at the ground with a shovel.

“Uh, Sandra? What’re you doing…?” I asked. She’s not planning on starting a vegetable garden or something, is she?

“Oh, Azusa. Are you done cooking? In that case, give me a hand. The ground’s frozen, and I can’t work my way into the dirt at all. The soil around here’s got a terrible attitude.”

I guess the blue dragons’ village isn’t very well suited to Sandra’s lifestyle, then. I was starting to appreciate how remarkable it was that the house in the highlands was a more or less comfortable environment for all of us.

Rosalie was outside with Sandra, by the way. She looked really bored, which was a little worrying, and I decided to check up on her, too.

“I figure the cold probably isn’t a problem for ghosts, but it looks like something else might be wrong…?” I prompted.

“Well, sort of. There just aren’t any other ghosts around here at all, Big Sis! Normally in a town this big, there’d be at least one or two people with enough regrets to turn into malevolent spirits, but I can’t even find one!”

Huh? Does cold weather make it harder for spirits to come into being or something?

“I know what’s going on here,” Rosalie continued. “Blue dragons are just so self-centered and free-spirited, they don’t have what it takes to end up as ghosts! They all do whatever they want to when they’re alive and die satisfied!”

“When you put it that way, I guess blue dragons probably wouldn’t hold grudges that’d last postmortem,” I admitted.

“Ugh… I thought I’d be able to get by if I at least had someone to talk to, but there’s no one here at all. Guess I’ll go kill some time by watching the li’l dragon,” Rosalie grumbled.

I felt a little sorry for her, but I personally had no problems with the part of their culture that led to a lack of ghosts in their settlements.

Oh, and as a side note, as soon as Laika got back from her shopping trip, she borrowed a vacant room in the house to rest in. I could tell she was exhausted just by looking at her.

“You went shopping in the village, right, Laika? I’m surprised you’re that tired, considering you didn’t have to fly for a long time or anything,” I noted.

“Yes, well, whenever I happened to make eye contact with an employee at the store I went to, they would challenge me to a contest of strength…,” Laika explained. “I told them over and over I was shopping and couldn’t humor them at this time, but it very much wore on my nerves.”

“Just what sort of store did you go to?!”

“I was also told I could get meat for half price if I defeated the store’s manager, but I decided saving time was more important than saving money in this particular instance and declined. There’s something fundamentally wrong with this region, honestly.”

“You’re not wrong about that…”

“Then when I stepped outside, I found my fellow shoppers had started fighting it out in an impromptu tournament… I firmly believe you could travel the whole world and never find another grocery as perilous as that one.”

This sounds like a store straight out of the apocalypse…

“There are few things more tiresome than being challenged to combat when you’ve no interest in fighting,” Laika sighed. “This is a lesson I’ll have to apply to my own behavior in the future. The next time I go shopping, I’ll be sure to go at a time when I’m mentally prepared to defeat the store’s manager and fight to my heart’s content.”

I was glad to see Laika seemed to have regained a little of her usual motivation over the course of her story. It felt like all of us were trying to navigate an encounter with a foreign culture, and I wanted to focus on the upsides of that experience, if we could.

As for the most important aspect of the day’s activities—the food we’d made—the little dragon dug right in without a fuss. She didn’t assume a humanoid form, even while eating, instead shoving her face right into the food and scarfing it down. I decided to give her a pass on manners this time, considering how weird it would look for a dragon her size to eat with a fork and knife.

“She’s really going for it, huh?” said Falfa.

“Eating is a child’s primary occupation. Shalsha believes she is fulfilling her role admirably,” Shalsha added. She and her sister were both captivated by the sight of the dragon eating.

“Phew! That’s one big ol’ weight off my shoulders,” I muttered. We’d cleared the first hurdle of our babysitting adventure, and I could finally pause to breathe a little. “I have no idea what I would’ve done if she hadn’t eaten my cooking. I mean, how am I supposed to know what she likes?”

Flatorte’s parents hadn’t told us anything about the baby dragon’s eating habits, and most likely, her parents hadn’t told them anything about what to feed her, either. None of the blue dragons involved in the equation had any interest in communicating that sort of thing, leaving me with no way to figure it out.

“I told you, didn’t I? Dragons will eat pretty much everything,” Flatorte commented. She’d been awfully casual about the situation from start to finish, and in the end, it seemed she’d actually had the right idea. Leave it to a blue dragon to know blue dragons best.

“Okay, then—in that case, we’ll make whatever Falfa and Shalsha want to eat tomorrow. That should work out just fine, right?” I asked.

“I can handle the cooking tomorrow, Lady Azusa,” said Laika. “Being that we’re both dragons, I imagine she’ll be satisfied if I simply cook a sufficient quantity of meat for her.”

Honestly? I could totally see that working. She’s still a dragon, after all, kid or not.

“I was planning on just making a salad for myself before I left for the factory…but she might not enjoy those kinds of foods very much,” Halkara said. Frankly, she was probably right to worry about that.

“Most likely, yeah,” I agreed. “Don’t worry about all that and just enjoy those new restaurants you mentioned, okay? This is already a hassle for you, after all.”

“Ha-ha-ha! When you put it that way, this is a hassle for absolutely all of us! ”

There wasn’t anything mean-spirited about Halkara’s tone, and I had to admit it: She really did have a point. This was the only option we’d had, though. Leaving Flatorte to deal with the baby dragon on her own just felt wrong somehow, so I was ready to see the next few days of dragonsitting through.

For the time being, watching over the baby dragon hadn’t been a particularly intense job. It seemed dragons’ generally sturdy nature meant they were a lot easier to take care of than a child from one of the more fragile races, like humans or elves. That, I figured, probably explained why Flatorte’s parents had been so haphazard about the task.

No sooner had that thought crossed my mind, however, than I realized there was still one big, unresolved problem we had to tackle.

“Anyway, seems the baby dragon’s not very shy or anything, so I think we’ll be totally okay taking care of her,” Flatorte said with a yawn.

“There! What you just said! That’s the problem!” I shouted, shooting to my feet before I knew it.

“What’s the problem, Mistress? Is being shy the secret to drawing out your true power or something? If so, then that’s one power I, the great Flatorte, will never understand.”

“No, no, that’s not it at all,” I said with a wave of my hand.

“We still don’t know her name! We’ve all just been calling her ‘the baby dragon’ this whole time!”

We didn’t have anything else to call her, seeing as her actual name was still a mystery. Not only did nobody in my family have any idea what her name was, Flatorte’s parents had been clueless, too. Not even the baby dragon herself could say her name, meaning we had literally no leads at all. It’d be one thing if she could write her name, at least, but considering she couldn’t talk, that seemed like a serious stretch.

“I really don’t like the idea of calling her ‘the baby dragon’ all the time,” I explained. “It’s just such a cold, loveless thing to call someone! I was thinking we should give her a nickname or something. Wouldn’t that be better?”

I couldn’t imagine that calling a human kid “the baby human” for days on end would be good for their development, and for all I knew, we were putting the dragon through exactly that same sort of situation.

“I understand what you’re trying to say, Lady Azusa, but I’m also quite certain that she does have a proper name. Would disregarding that and referring to her as something entirely unrelated not carry downsides as well?” Laika pointed out. As usual, she was absolutely right—but that didn’t mean I was going to go down without a fight!

“Nicknames don’t always have something to do with your real name! Sometimes they’re totally different!” I asserted.

“Oh, that’s true! Like how some people call Canhein the phantom thief ‘the Afterwarner,’” Halkara unhelpfully added.

“That’s an insult, not a nickname,” I sighed. “Though I guess people do pick up nickname-like titles thanks to their work pretty often, when you put it that way…”

Needless to say, the little dragon hadn’t done anything bad enough to merit that sort of name. I wanted to give her a more pleasant nickname than that.

“Hey! What’s your name, kid?” Flatorte asked the little dragon directly.

From a certain perspective, it was actually a pretty rational step to take…but the dragon just cocked her head at Flatorte and didn’t say a word. It seemed she wasn’t just quiet—she really couldn’t talk yet. My assumption that she was quite young in human terms seemed to have been correct.

“Don’t you understand me? I’m asking what your name is!” Flatorte repeated. “You get to pick one for yourself! Just say something! Doesn’t matter what!”

You know, when she puts it that way, not many people get the chance to pick their own names. It’s not like we’re born already knowing a language, so choosing one yourself isn’t practical—you can’t just go around calling all the kids “kid” until they can speak well enough to choose a name.

Flatorte was really looming over the little dragon at that point, which seemed to freak it out a little. It let out a small “Graaaw!” at her.

“Oh, okay. Graaaw? Got it! Your name’s Graaaw from now on!”

That was a growl, not a name! Obviously!

“Wait, no! That is not how we’re doing this! Let’s try actually thinking about this a little before we settle on a name!” I shouted. If that’s how we picked names, then all the cats in the world would be named stuff like “Meow” or “Hiss”!

“I, the great Flatorte, think it’s a pretty weird name, too. She picked it out for herself, though. Nothing we can do about it. Now all that’s left is for her to do her best to live up to it.”

“No, no—that was a growl, not a name!”

“Okay, but if she can’t talk, then what else are we supposed to do?”

Truth be told, I didn’t have an answer for that. What were we supposed to do, indeed?

“Hmm… Hey, Shalsha, are there any bits of historical trivia about naming you know that might help us out here?” I asked.

“In some regions, newborn children are given names by their village’s elders,” Shalsha explained. “However, Shalsha hypothesizes that no such tradition exists here. The social construct of village elders itself is very unlikely to arise in a community populated entirely by members of a long-lived race.”

When she put it that way, the whole reason why village elders were respected was because they’d lived long enough to know about all sorts of things that the rest of the villagers hadn’t been around for. When lifespans were long across the board and almost everyone had personally experienced everything that happened a century ago, the concept just didn’t apply.

“Dragons don’t have any special naming customs,” Flatorte explained. “If someone higher up in the pecking order names a kid, that’s good enough for everyone.”

I guess that means we need someone high up on the social ladder, then?

“That means that if this were Flatta, Mommy could give her a name,” said Falfa.

“Precisely,” Shalsha agreed. “She is, after all, the village of Flatta’s de facto elder.”

“I’d really prefer it if people didn’t start calling me an elder, actually,” I weakly protested. Still, that idea felt like it had some potential. “This is the blue dragons’ village, and the most senior blue dragon in this house would be…well, Flatorte by default, I guess. All right, then!” I said. I’d finally settled on a plan. “You’ll have to give her a name, Flatorte!”

“Huh?! But I’ve never had to think up a name for someone before…,” Flatorte replied. For once, she actually seemed rather hesitant. You’d think she’d just gotten a complicated math problem from Falfa or something.

“It’s not like you’re giving her a real, permanent name,” I said. “Just something for us to use for the next few days. You don’t have to overthink it.”

“In that case, why don’t you name her, Mistress?”

“That would be because Lady Azusa is, regrettably, not the ideal person to consult when it comes to names…”

Wait, why’d Laika shoot that idea down?!

“Was it how I gave Wizly her name because she’s a wizard slime…? Or was it one of the other times I named something that’s setting you off…?”

“I’m afraid all I can say is ‘no comment,’” Laika replied before clamping her lips tightly shut.

I guess I was thinking of suggesting we call her Coldrag, since she’s a cold dragon, so maybe Laika has a point…

“I’ve gotta name her, huh? A name… Hmmm…,” Flatorte muttered to herself.

While she hemmed and hawed, the baby dragon had gotten up and fluttered away from the dining room table. She was still too young to leave unsupervised, so I followed along after her, and Flatorte ended up following me in turn.

The baby dragon made her way into the kitchen, where she helped herself to the leftover edible slimes.

“She really likes her sweets, huh? I guess most kids do—I’ve sure never met anyone who liked bitter foods when they were little, anyway,” I observed. If I’d known all this would happen, I would’ve brought way more edible slimes with me.

Just then, a loud clapping noise rang out. Flatorte had slapped a fist into her hand.

“Mistress! Didn’t your edible slimes have some sort of other name back in the beginning?”

Another name? I’d more or less named them off the cuff—we hadn’t had a brainstorming session for the product. Oh! But before we named them at all, I might’ve called them the traditional name they were called back in my old world!

“Do you mean ‘manju’?” I asked.

“That’s it! I’ve decided—I’m naming her Manju!” said Flatorte.

“Manju, huh? I mean, I guess it kinda sounds like a name,” I muttered. Naming a kid after a sweet didn’t seem like the worst idea in the world. Definitely better than a type of pickle or something.

“I thought we might as well name her after something she likes, but ‘edible slime’ would be a really weird name for a kid. Manju sounds just right!” Flatorte explained.

Yeah, okay, I see the logic. When you put it that way, it almost sounds nice.

I gave the little dragon a pat on the head.

“All right—for now, your name’s Manju!”

“Graaaw!”

I didn’t speak baby dragon roar, but I was content to interpret that as the dragon’s way of saying she was all right with her new name. It wasn’t the most spirited roar I’d ever heard, but it’s not like every “yes” has to be an enthusiastic one. At least she didn’t seem to hate it.

And so, the baby dragon was temporarily named Manju.

The next obstacle we faced was giving Manju a bath. I was afraid she’d get upset and use her cold breath, so Flatorte and I went in to help her wash up on our own.

“All right, let’s get you all cleaned up! Scrub, scrub!” I said as I gave Manju a good wash with a rather coarse cloth. She seemed to be enjoying the sensation, so it looked like I wouldn’t be having any problems after all. “Really, though—the more I look at her, the more she just looks like a lizard to me…”

The biggest reason why I couldn’t help but see Manju as a lizard, most likely, was that she didn’t talk. Her nonverbal nature made it really hard to think of her as a child and not a pet.

“She’s nothing like a measly little lizard, Mistress! She’s a mighty blue dragon,” Flatorte said, jumping in to correct me.

“Yeah, I know, but it’s not like I get many chances to see baby dragons, so I can’t help but fall back on old assumptions…,” I admitted. Maybe I’ll internalize the distinction while we’re taking care of her. “Anyway, she’s all washed now, so I think we’ll soak in the tub for a bit. Do you mind, Flatorte?” I asked. Flatorte had gotten into the tub first and was still currently occupying it.

“I’m a short baths person, so I’ll just get out now,” Flatorte said. She climbed out right away, as promised.

Blue dragons weren’t fans of heat, so Flatorte had always kept her baths on the shorter side of things. I got the sense she only took them at all for hygiene’s sake.

“Oh, but on second thought, you taking Manju into the bath might not go super well, so I’ll do that before I leave,” Flatorte added.

“It might not go well? You mean, she might throw a tantrum?” I asked.

Instead of answering me, Flatorte plucked Manju from my arms and plopped her down into the tub.

“Fraaaaaah!”

Manju let out a very long, oddly enthusiastic sigh.

“Okay, Mistress—now put your hand into the water,” said Flatorte.

I dipped a hand into the tub.

“Gah, that’s freezing! The whole bath’s gone cold!” I yelped as I pulled my hand right back out. It felt like one of those pools people dove into after sweating it out in a sauna.

“She cooled it off because she didn’t like the heat,” Flatorte explained. “She’s still a kid, so she didn’t freeze the water solid, but she brought it down to a temperature that was comfortable for her.”

“Makes sense… I guess I’ll have to heat it back up for me, though. Maybe I’ll have Manju take her baths in a washtub starting tomorrow…”

Bathing hadn’t gone perfectly, but a little trouble aside, we cleaned ourselves up without any major incident.

Bedtime arrived, and I wrapped Manju up in a blanket to sleep in. Flatorte claimed that we could just set her down wherever and she’d fall asleep on her own, but I wasn’t about to be so cavalier with a child who’d been entrusted to me. I made sure to put Manju to bed in the same room that Flatorte and I were sleeping in, just in case something happened overnight, and asked Rosalie—who didn’t have to sleep—to keep an eye on her as well. My preparations were flawless.

“Grauuu… Grauuu…”

Before I knew it, Manju was snoring away. It finally felt like I could relax for a time. We’d made it through the first day somehow, and I was pretty sure we’d be able to keep it up for the next few days in the same manner without too much trouble.

On the second day of our dragonsitting adventure, Halkara set out for Nascúte to get back to work. I woke up a little before she and Laika flew off to say good-bye, then headed back inside to have breakfast with everyone else. Once that was over, it was finally time for the second day to begin in earnest…but surprisingly, I found there wasn’t really anything for me to do.

If I was working at a preschool or kindergarten, this is probably the part where I’d teach the kids some sort of lesson, but I had no clue what a blue dragon would even have to learn at this age. I was also in no position to teach her anything physical, not sharing her draconic anatomy.

In the end, Manju ended up flying in circles around the room after she finished her breakfast.

“Do you think we should take her outside to play?” I asked. “Then again, if she gets lost…”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” Flatorte said, casually waving off my concerns.

I wasn’t quite that ready to take it easy. Blue dragons took a lot of things for granted that I just couldn’t bring myself to accept quite yet, in fact. Some of the things they thought were perfectly normal were crazy enough to make my blood run cold.

“Are you saying there’s no way she’d ever get lost, Flatorte?” I asked.

“No,” Flatorte replied. “I mean even if she does get lost, it’s totally safe for a blue dragon to spend a few days wandering around a snowy mountain. She’d find her way back eventually.”

“Nope! That is not on the table!”

Sure, she’d probably be fine since she’s a dragon, but I refuse to let a kid I’m supposed to be taking care of wander out into the wilderness!

“I got lost after going out into the mountains when I was a kid, too. I spent a few days wandering around in a daze before I found my way back. It was a good experience, in the end.”

I was positive now: Blue dragons were physically sturdy enough to get away with living like lunatics. If a human went through such an experience in their childhood, they’d have enough trauma to last a lifetime. The look of horror on Rosalie’s face—Rosalie was listening in, by the way—was proof enough of that.

“That’s ridiculous,” Rosalie muttered. “Just thinking of a flesh and blood body going through that is giving me chills…”

See? It’s horrifying enough to scare a ghost half to death!

“Just imagine if you ended up all on your own in a place like that and ran into the ghost of someone who died on the mountainside! That’d be so much trouble for someone who’s still alive… A ghost like me could make friends with them, though…”

Why is a ghost imagining what it’d be like for a living person? This is way more complicated than it has to be!

If this was just how life was for dragons, I figured dying in an untimely accident wasn’t something they had to worry about. I still didn’t want to take risks, though, and started thinking about something we could do to keep Manju entertained around the house…but before I could come up with any ideas, I realized a few of my family members were much more prepared than I was. The kids had already found something to occupy themselves with.

The girls had set up a few chairs in a row and hung an impromptu blackboard up on the wall, which Falfa was standing in front of.

“Okay, everyone! Falfa will start by teaching you a very simple equation. Listen carefully!”

Shalsha and Sandra were seated in the chairs, while Manju was hovering in the air nearby.

Oh, I get it! Falfa’s teaching a math lesson!

“You too, Manju! You have to study hard if you want to be a well-rounded and educated adult. Falfa will make sure the lessons are easy to understand!” said Falfa.

“To learn is to furnish yourself with the weapons needed to overcome any obstacle. Study well while you can,” Shalsha agreed with a nod.

I was deeply impressed with their initiative to do something genuinely good for Manju, and this time, I was pretty sure that wasn’t just my parental bias talking. It felt like the whole family was pitching in to take care of this little dragon. I would’ve given them a standing ovation on the spot if it weren’t for the fact that my applause would’ve disrupted their lesson.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before we ran into trouble.

“So, there are two apples over here, and three apples here,” Falfa said, pausing to draw the apples on the blackboard…and before she could finish, Manju started fluttering her way to the next room over!

I can relate to not wanting to study, Manju, but I hope you realize you’re giving Falfa and Shalsha a hard time by wandering off…

Shalsha seemed to have anticipated Manju’s departure and reached out to hold her in place before the dragon could get too far away. “It’s too soon to give up on your studies,” she said. “You may be bored at first, but the more you learn, the more fun you’ll start to have. The true joys of an academic field are always found beyond its entryway. It never pays to be picky with scholastic pursuits.”

Oh? Somebody’s sure sounding like an older sister!

Things didn’t go quite according to Shalsha’s plan, though. Manju just kept flapping around the room…dragging Shalsha along with her!

“Ugh… Shalsha underestimated a dragon’s strength. To think even their children have this much power,” Shalsha groaned as she slowly scraped her way across the floor.

Manju, meanwhile, had started growling. Most likely, she was protesting Shalsha’s attempt to stop her.

“Oh, honestly—what are you doing? You animals can’t sit still to save your lives, I swear,” Sandra grumbled before grabbing onto Shalsha’s legs.

I had a feeling I knew what was about to happen next…and sure enough, Sandra was soon getting dragged across the ground as well.

“Hey!” Sandra yelped. “This is a totally unreasonable use of force! What if I was rooted?! You would’ve torn my whole root system to pieces!”

“So then, if the red slimes’s speed of travel is fifty percent higher than the blue slimes, how many minutes will it take for them to catch up?”

This isn’t the time to be carrying on with your lesson, Falfa!

Shalsha ended up teaching a lesson on grammar next, and Sandra gave a lecture on how to tell the difference between friendly and nasty plants, but Manju lost interest and wandered away from both of them in no time at all… I got to see her dragging my daughters around the room several times that morning alone.

Flatorte and I ended up watching their whole attempted school day together.

“I guess not every student’s excited about every lesson, huh…? I’m getting the feeling Manju isn’t really interested in learning at all,” I said to Flatorte. She was our resident expert when it came to blue dragons, so I thought she might have some insight into what had gone wrong.

“Blue dragons only ever do stuff we’re interested in! It’s impossible to force us to do something we don’t want to.”

It turned out I hadn’t needed Flatorte’s explanation after all. I already knew perfectly well blue dragons were raised to be as wild and free as possible.

All that said, the girls seemed to have learned something from the time they’d spent getting dragged around the room. I took some time to do a bit of cleaning, then decided to check up on them before lunch…

“Oh, wooow! This is the perfect height! Falfa’s having so much fun!”

…and found Falfa clinging to Manju’s legs while Manju flapped her wings, fluttering in the air just high enough to suspend Falfa above the ground.

Oh, huh. I guess if Manju flies high enough so she’s not getting dragged, it’s more like a game than anything else…

Shalsha and Sandra were standing nearby, one in front of the other. My best guess was they were waiting for their turns.

“If you’re going to fly around indoors, just be careful not to run into anything,” I called out to them.

“Okaaay! Falfa’ll fly super safely!” Falfa shouted back.

If the girls were satisfied and Manju didn’t mind, then I didn’t see any reason to put a stop to their game. Teaching Manju hadn’t worked out in the end, but when it came to being her playmate, the girls were close enough to her age to be a perfect choice.

…Though actually, I guess they might not be very close to her age at all. Maybe they’re close to her age in a mental sense? That doesn’t feel quite right either. They look close to her age, maybe? No, that doesn’t work—I have no clue how to tell how old a dragon is by sight.

The one thing I could say for sure was that the girls had taken on a looking-after-Manju shift. Considering how abruptly we’d been thrust into this dragonsitting business, I was impressed by how well it seemed we were coping with it as a family.

Of course, it’s always right when things seem to be going well that everything ends up falling apart…

Eventually, Laika arrived back at the blue dragon village from her trip to drop off Halkara. She’d gotten back just in time for lunch, so I went over to tell my daughters we were about to eat.

“Lunchtime, girls! Come on over!” I called out as I stepped into the room they’d been playing in…and found it completely deserted. “Huh? That’s weird. Where’d they go…?”

Just then, Rosalie happened to phase her way through a wall from the next room over. I tried asking her if she’d seen my daughters or Manju recently.

“Now that you mention it, I think I saw them heading outside just a little while ago. They were saying something about flying higher,” Rosalie explained.

They went outside? I hope they’re flying around somewhere nearby, at least…

I had a slight, nagging feeling trouble was brewing, but I tried not to let it get to me and went outside to search for everyone. It didn’t take long for me to run into Falfa and Shalsha, both of whom looked weirdly worried.

“It’s lunchtime, you two,” I said as I stepped up to them. “Where are Sandra and Manju? Can you go tell them to come back?”

In an instant, Falfa and Shalsha grew teary-eyed.

“They’re not coming back, Mommy,” Falfa explained. “We waited and waited, but they’re still gone… Maybe we shouldn’t have taken Manju outside…?”

“We wanted to go search for them, but Shalsha doesn’t know anything about this village or where to start…”

It turned out that bad feeling I’d had had been completely justified. Manju was a kid, sure, but she was a blue dragon kid. She could probably fly a long way, if she gave it her all.

For the time being, I gave Falfa and Shalsha a pat on their backs. “No need to cry, you two,” I said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I’ll go get everyone else to help search—can you tell us what direction they flew off in?”

Falfa and Shalsha nodded in agreement.

I got the whole family together, and Falfa and Shalsha told us about the route they’d flown when Manju carried them around. Of course, it seemed safe to say that if Manju and Sandra had taken one of those same routes, they wouldn’t have run into any trouble and would’ve returned ages ago. Falfa and Shalsha had more or less just flown a lap around the village, but Sandra had apparently said she wanted to go somewhere with less snow and ice, which was probably where the problem began.

“Perhaps Manju tried to fulfill Sandra’s request by taking her somewhere far away…?” Laika speculated as she studied a map of the surrounding region. She seemed to have a rather solid grasp of the local terrain, which made sense, seeing as she was a dragon and all.

“I just wish we could narrow down the area they might be in,” I muttered.

Is going out to search at random our only option? Maybe we should start by looking around near the village? No, it’d be way more efficient to go around and ask the local blue dragons to let us know if they happen to see the kids. Also, our highest priority right now should be checking everywhere that might be dangerous for them to wander into. Their safety’s more important than anything, after all.

“I think I probably know where they are, Mistress,” Flatorte said in an unusually serious tone of voice.

“R-really?!” I exclaimed. Considering that Flatorte used to live here, it seemed reasonable enough to think she’d be able to guess. The look on her face, however, told me there was probably a little more than just her local knowledge supporting her idea.

“I gave her a name, and even if it’s not her real one, that still means I have to find her. I’ll bring her back for sure!”

I guess this is Flatorte’s way of feeling responsible for Manju?

“All right,” I said. “I’ll go, too. You can carry me, right?”

“Will do, Mistress! Let’s go find them!” Flatorte agreed with a nod.

“Umm, excuse me—I shall help search as well!” Laika chimed in.

“No. Stay behind and eat. You’re in charge of watching the house. Make sure you’ve got a full stomach, just in case!” Flatorte replied. Somewhat surprisingly, she clearly wasn’t teasing or belittling Laika this time. “You don’t know this area, so even if you go out to search, the most you’ll be able to cover is the village and its surroundings. If that’s where they are, then they’re safe, so it won’t matter if we take a little extra time finding them. If we need more people to help search we’ll come back and ask for you. Trust me.”

Laika seemed a little overwhelmed by Flatorte’s intensity, but eventually, she nodded and said “V-very well, then.”

Yeah, it’ll definitely be best to have someone at the house. If Falfa, Shalsha, and Rosalie are the only ones left here, then they’d be in huge trouble if a dragon got it into their head to launch an attack on us or something.

“’Course, I’m sure this will all turn out to be way more stupid than whatever you all are imagining! I, the great Flatorte, will solve this problem in no time flat!”

Flatorte took on her dragon form, I climbed atop her, and we began our search. Well, I say our search, but really, Flatorte was doing all the work—I was more or less just along for the ride. I couldn’t even give her directions, since I wasn’t the one who thought she knew where the kids might have gone.

“There are a few spots where blue dragon kids tend to go,” Flatorte explained. “Manju probably knows all about them, so I was thinking we’d start by checking them one by one. I’m betting we’ll find them before too long.”

“Thanks. I’m so glad you were here to help,” I replied.

“Well, I’m the one who told my parents I could take care of Manju in the first place…and that means it’s my fault Sandra ended up flying out to who-knows-where, too.”

Oh—so Sandra’s the one who Flatorte actually feels responsible for? I guess she did tell us all about how a blue dragon kid getting a little lost wasn’t that big of a deal, come to think of it.

“Ahh, man—I bet you’re thinking I’m acting really uncaring toward Manju, aren’t you, Mistress? For the record, it’s not like that! Blue dragons are just really, really tough, that’s all!” Flatorte clarified. I’d fallen silent for a moment, and apparently that made her feel the need to explain herself.

“I know exactly how tough you are, believe me… Guess I’ll just write this off as a difference in values,” I replied.

Neither of us were being irrational, and I could understand her point perfectly well. It was just kind of hard to swallow when she put it into words.

“We ended up reaching the same conclusion in the end, so no point worrying about it. We’ll find the kids together!” I said.

“All right!” replied Flatorte.

Flatorte flew us out of the village and into a region that struck me as exactly what you’d picture when you heard the words “snow-swept mountainscape.” Every patch of mountainous terrain looked more or less the same as the next, but when we got a little closer to the ground, I started picking up dark valleys, frozen lakes, and other slightly distinct landmarks.

I figured those were the sort of places where blue dragon kids went on excursions. Kids were easy to entertain, after all—a nondescript lakeside could be tons of fun when you were little enough. I had a feeling Flatorte was leading us on the right track…or at least, I did at first, but we checked site after site without finding any sign of them.

“They’re not here, and they didn’t land here and go somewhere else, either. They would’ve left tracks in the snow if they had,” Flatorte said as she circled the basin we were currently checking.

“That’s all the likely places you could think of, right? Maybe they went somewhere really, really far away? That’d explain why they couldn’t find their way back,” I suggested. I didn’t think Manju would have a great grasp of the local geography in a broad sense, so of course she would get lost.

“Hmm. I mean, maybe, but I think Sandra would’ve started whining before they got too far. Manju’s not as big as me, so riding her for a long time would be tough.”

Flatorte had a point. Sandra would’ve known going too far from the village would be a bad idea as well. But then the question remained: Why couldn’t we find them?

“Maybe Sandra asked her to take her somewhere far away for some reason…?” I mused.

No, that doesn’t make sense. Sandra’s not nearly that reckless.

“Ahh!” Flatorte suddenly shouted. “Mistress, that’s it!”

“Huh? What’s it?”

“Manju didn’t take her somewhere the blue dragon kids like to play! She took her to somewhere Sandra asked to go! That’s why all the places I took us to were dead ends!”

“Is there actually a place around here that would fit Sandra’s request, though?”

“There is! There’s a place without any snow or ice, and with plenty of dirt!”

Flatorte spun around midair, carrying us back in the direction of the village…but veered off again before we got there and flew toward a particular mountainside, and on its slope I could just barely make out some sort of black something.

As we approached the mountainside and I got a better view, I realized I was looking at the entrance to a cave. It was small, and its ceiling was so low we’d have to stoop to get very far in, but that was exactly why the ice and snow didn’t seem to find their way very far in either.

I climbed off Flatorte’s back, and we made our way into the cave. The ceiling of the entrance was quite low, as it turned out, and the further in I got, the more expansive the cave grew. Light must have been filtering in through some fissure in the ceiling, as well, since it wasn’t pitch-black inside.

As I proceeded into the cave, I noticed somebody’s presence up ahead of me. I definitely wasn’t the only one in here…and before long, I ran right into Sandra and Manju!

“There you are! We finally found you!” I exclaimed.

“Oh? If it isn’t Azusa and Flatorte. Is it time for lunch?” Sandra asked as she gave me a blank stare.

She hadn’t been crying, and she didn’t look particularly worried, either. The same went for Manju—I couldn’t even begin to decipher her expression. I’d been really worried about the two of them, so it was a little hard to deal with how calm they were being…but on the other hand, the cave wasn’t too far from the village. This distance probably hadn’t seemed like a big adventure to Sandra at all.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” I asked.

“It’s less cold in this cave, and there’s no snow on the ground, either. The only downside’s that there isn’t enough light here for me to photosynthesize,” Sandra explained as she kicked at the ground.

“I guess Manju found you exactly what you were looking for, huh?” I said.

Manju let out a little “Graaaw!” in response.

Just then, Flatorte stepped up to the rest of us.

“All right, Manju,” Flatorte said, “looks like you need to learn to think a little harder about how your actions affect other people!”

I very nearly cracked up on the spot. Even Flatorte could act like a responsible adult when she was dealing with a literal child.

“What’s so funny, Mistress?” asked Flatorte.

“N-nothing! Why do you ask?” I frantically replied. Apparently, I hadn’t done as good of a job of hiding my amusement as I’d thought. She’d outdone herself this time, so I didn’t want to be rude. “Thanks, Flatorte.”

I wanted to let everyone know Manju and Sandra were safe as soon as possible, so I had them ride with me on Flatorte for the return trip. Everyone was relieved to see them safe and sound, though in terms of time, the whole search had only taken thirty minutes. In the end, it turned out Flatorte had been right, and we really had been making too big a deal out of the whole incident.

Anyway, it seemed relief was just as potent a spice as hunger. I ate a lot more for lunch than I usually would have, and the rest of my family followed my example.

“I think we’ll have to go out on another shopping trip at this rate. We might not have enough food left for dinner,” I said after we were done.

“Lady Azusa…would you be willing to handle the shopping today?” asked Laika.

“Sure. No problem,” I quickly agreed. She’d already done the round trip to and from home to carry Halkara to work, after all.

I headed out on my shopping trip and instantly regretted agreeing to go.

“Step right up, step right up! We’ve got fresh vegetables for sale at prices you can’t pass up! Oh—you’re the Witch of the Highlands, aren’t you? I remember the last time you came to visit! How ’bout we see which of us is stronger, eh?”

“…No thank you. I’m just here to do some shopping today.”

Right. I almost forgot you can’t throw a stone in this town without hitting a blue dragon who’s itching for a fight.

“You can check out right over here, Miss Witch of the Highlands! And while we’re at it, would you care for a fight? I’ll give you a discount if you win!”

“…I’ll pass. Also, do you make that offer to everyone? How’re you going to keep your business afloat when you’re old and frail?”

“Oh, when that happens, I’ll just close up shop and train until I’m strong again. Hah-hah-hah-hah!”

Not exactly a born businessperson, are you?!

I knew every culture had its quirks, but blue dragon society was a cut above the rest, no matter how you looked at it…

Manju didn’t end up causing any more trouble over the course of our stay, and Flatorte’s parents made good on their word and came home three days after they left.

“I start losing my edge if I don’t get out there and clobber someone every once in a while! Boy, did I get some good fights in this time!”

“Fighting is the key to good health and a good figure! Thank you so much for watching over the kid while we were gone!”

If I were this casual about getting into random fights all the time, would my daughters end up growing up to be like Flatorte…?

“Anyway, seeing as you’re around, Azusa, how about a quick fight?”

“Just one round, before you go home again?”

“No thank you!” I shouted.

You two just got back from a fight tour, didn’t you?! What are you, a couple of battle-hungry Super Somethings…? But, well, all’s well that ends well, I guess.

If dragonsitting Manju had been our mission, then we’d cleared it with flying colors. It hadn’t all gone perfectly according to plan, but now that it was time to say our good-byes, I was a bit sad to part with the little dragon. I wasn’t the only one, either—my daughters were especially sad to leave. They’d only known Manju for a few days, but they were already fast friends with her and waved vigorously as we went on our way. Manju, for her part, had seemed to really enjoy spending time with my daughters and taking them on rides through the sky, though she hadn’t appreciated their attempted study sessions nearly as much.

Flatorte, meanwhile, just told her, “Grow up to be a big, strong blue dragon, Manju!” It felt like she’d turned into a strange mixture of older sister and guardian for the little dragon. Manju seemed to listen to her words with rapt attention, staring at Flatorte all the while.

Guess I’d better say my good-byes before we leave, too, huh?

It was my turn to step up to Manju. After the past few days with her, I could tell a baby blue dragon from a lizard with ease. I reached out to give her head a pat.

“We’ll come back sometime to play, Manju,” I said.

“Okay. I’ll be waiting.”

“Sounds good! I’m glad to hear it.”

“Come back soon, okay?”

“We will, I promise. You can always come visit us, too, you know? We live in the province of Nanterre, and… Wait. Huh…? Wait, wait, wait.”

Something is very wrong here.

“Mistress! Manju’s talking!”

I genuinely couldn’t put my finger on what was strange until Flatorte pointed it out, but she was right! Manju was speaking out loud!

“Hold up, what?! If you could talk all this time, then why’d you wait until the very end to pipe up?!”

“My mouth was swollen inside, so I didn’t want to talk much. It’s all better now, though.”

Manju’s voice was quiet and subdued. I couldn’t blame her for not talking before, if that was what she’d been going through…though deep down, I wasn’t completely convinced just yet.

“You could have at least told us your name, right…? We’ve been calling you ‘Manju’ this whole time, for crying out loud!”

If we’d known her real name, we could’ve just called her that from the start!

Manju let out an energetic little “Grawr!”

“I like being Manju when I’m with all of you!”

Well, that’s a nice way to look at it, I guess. Apparently, she’d decided she liked being called Manju enough that she didn’t want to bother telling us her real name.

“All right, then! I guess you’re Manju for good, as far as we’re concerned!” I said as I picked Manju up and held her over my head.

The next thing I knew, my feet had left the ground. Manju had flapped her wings and lifted me up into the air. I guess this is how it feels to have her fly you around!

“Thanks, Manju,” I said.

“You’re heavier than the kids,” Manju replied.

…Hmm? She threw that out so casually, I almost missed how rude it was!

“Hey! I’m not heavy! And I’m definitely not fat!”

“You’re heavy compared to the kids.”

“I mean, yes, that makes sense, but you didn’t have to call me heavy! Some things are better left unsaid!”

It seemed we’d made a trade: Manju had started talking, and all it cost was my dignity.

SANDRA GREW A FLOWER

We never bothered locking the house in the highland’s doors at nighttime, for a number of good reasons.

First and foremost: Nobody would bother coming all the way out into the highlands to rob us. There weren’t any other buildings nearby, and if someone we didn’t know tried to approach the house, they’d be obvious long before they arrived.

There was no good reason for pedestrians to make their way out to our neighborhood, so from a burglar’s perspective, it might’ve been unlikely anyone would witness the crime. On the other hand, if we did happen to catch a burglar mid-robbery, the terrain would make it very hard for them to make a clean getaway. No matter how fast they ran, Flatorte or Laika could catch up in dragon form and would almost assuredly apprehend them.

Then there was our resident ghost, Rosalie. She tended to float around the house while everyone else was asleep, and she would probably notice if a burglar tried to break in. She could even peek into rooms through their floors or ceilings, so no matter how quiet and sneaky a burglar was, there was still a chance she’d catch them if they were unlucky.

All of that’s why burglars never tried to break into our house. It hadn’t happened so much as once. I guess we did have the phantom thief Canhein pay us a few visits…but she was a whole different can of worms, and didn’t really count.

Those were all just reasons why we didn’t have a burglar problem, though. There was one other reason we didn’t lock our doors, one that had nothing to do with larceny at all: the fact Sandra lived outside in the garden.

Generally speaking, Sandra spent her nights outside. Apparently, being outside felt more natural than being indoors for a plant. That said, she did like wandering into the house every once in a while. Sometimes the wind was too strong for her to stay outside, and sometimes she didn’t have a real reason and just decided to come in on a whim. That was just the sort of relationship she had with houses.

Anyway, the point was that if we locked our doors at night, Sandra wouldn’t be able to get inside on her own anymore. She could always knock on the door to wake someone up and have them open it, but if coming in meant inconveniencing someone every single time, I was worried Sandra would feel bad and eventually stop coming inside at all.

And so, we’d settled on our policy of leaving the doors unlocked. Considering everyone spent the nights in their own rooms, which all had locks of their own, I figured that even in a worst-case scenario, it wouldn’t be a big issue. We’d never had a burglar try to break in, after all—not even when Nintan had given us a ton of unmistakably valuable offerings to store here.

In short, there was nothing strange whatsoever about Sandra wandering into the house in the middle of the night.

I opened up the door and stepped into the living room, where I found Sandra. “I guess you’re staying inside today, huh?” I commented. I’d just gotten out of the bath and decided I was in the mood for a drink, but I was soon distracted by the fact Sandra looked a little out of sorts. Her complexion seemed almost sickly.

“Yes, I am… I have a headache, for some reason, so I’m sitting still for now,” Sandra explained.

I guess that’s why she’s holding her head, then.

“Huh? Do you know what’s causing it? Like…are you sick or something?” I asked.

Plants were living beings, so I assumed they had their own sorts of illnesses. The one problem was that I couldn’t even begin to imagine what sort of sickness would afflict a plant that could get up and move around like a mandragora.

“Hmm. I don’t think so,” Sandra replied. “It feels more like I’m just under the weather today, not really sick.”

I wanted to respect her judgment, but I also knew it could be very hard to tell when you’d caught something. A little caution probably wouldn’t hurt.

“Do you think you might feel that way because you haven’t had enough time to photosynthesize lately? Or maybe you’ve lost your appetite for sunlight?” I asked. Photosynthesis was a plant’s equivalent to eating, after all, and when people skipped meals, they tended to lose the energy to move around as well. Sometimes losing your appetite entirely was a sign you were suffering from something, too—like heat exhaustion, for instance.

But Sandra shook her head. “It’s nothing like that,” she said. “In fact, I’ve felt the need to photosynthesize way more than usual lately.”

“Huh. So your appetite’s actually bigger than usual? Hmm… Have your leaves withered, or anything like that?”

If she’d lost leaves recently, then she might have been getting less energy from the sun, even if she spent more time photosynthesizing. I figured the human equivalent would be how our appetites grew if we ate way less for a brief period of time.

But, once again, Sandra shook her head.

“What could it be, then…? You didn’t hit your head recently or anything, did you?” I asked. I knew I’d moved on to explanations that only really made sense for a human, but it still felt worth asking.

“No, I haven’t,” said Sandra. “How would I even hit my head when I spend all my time planted in the dirt?”

So we really have no leads at all? That’s kind of unsettling.

“Well, considering how long I’ve lived so far, I’m sure I won’t drop dead after just a day or two of this. I’ll wait it out for now,” Sandra said as she plopped down into a chair.

“I guess you would have a lot more energy than a normal plant…but be sure to tell me if anything changes, okay?” I said.

“Don’t worry. I’m not the type to say nothing’s wrong if it’s not true,” Sandra replied.

I didn’t know the first thing about mandragora sicknesses, so that was the best I could do for the time being. I just had to hope my worries were groundless. I asked Rosalie to keep an eye on Sandra overnight just in case, then headed off to bed.

The next morning, I woke up a little earlier than I usually would. My worries about Sandra had kept me from falling into a deep sleep, which probably explained why I woke up early, too.

I headed right into the dining room to check up on Sandra, but when I arrived, I found she wasn’t there anymore. Rosalie, however, drifted in through a wall just a moment later.

“Morning, Big Sis! Sandra went out into the garden right around sunrise,” Rosalie explained.

“Morning, Rosalie. I guess that means her headache wasn’t that terrible, hopefully?”

At the very least, it meant she wasn’t in so much pain she couldn’t move at all. That said, I wouldn’t be reassured until I’d checked in with her and heard she was feeling better straight from the horse’s mouth. That’s just how it goes when you have a daughter.

I opened up the front door and stepped outside, greeted by the brisk, refreshing morning air, and found Sandra was indeed out in the garden. She was holding a little mirror, probably examining her own appearance. She was a girl, after all.

“Morning, Sandra! Are you feeling better?” I asked…but as I called out to her, it struck me that something was ever-so-slightly off. The person standing in front of me was definitely Sandra, and whatever I was picking up on didn’t seem to be that grave, but there was something about her that was different.

What is it? What am I missing here?

“Oh, good morning, Azusa! I’ve figured out what was causing my headache last night. It turns out it really was temporary and nothing to worry about at all!” said Sandra, her expression bright and cheerful. It looked like her headache really was gone, and I could stop worrying about her health.

“That’s good to hear,” I said. “Wait, though—you figured out what was causing it? How so?”

I certainly didn’t think that a helpful expert had come along and taught Sandra about atmospheric changes or whatever. How could she be that sure she knew exactly what the cause was?

“It was this. See?” Sandra said as she pointed at her head, which was decorated with a blue flower.

“Oh, that’s pretty,” I said. “Did you make it yourself?”

Every once in a while, Falfa and Shalsha would make little hair decorations like that out of flowers. The climate in the highlands wasn’t super well suited for growing a wide variety of flowers, but there were a few small, pretty varieties that bloomed from time to time.

“I wouldn’t say I made it,” said Sandra. “I’d say I birthed it, if anything.”

Huh? She birthed it? What’s that mean? And now that I think about it, I don’t remember seeing many blue flowers in the highlands. There are a few around, but that one doesn’t look like any of the ones I know, and I haven’t seen any like it in the woods either.

“Where did you find it, anyway?” I asked.

“I don’t think you’re following what I’m saying. I found it right here, obviously! You could search all over the highlands for hours and never find another flower like it.”

Hm? Wait, does this mean…?

“My flower bloomed! I bet you’ve never seen a flower that says ‘mandragora’ quite like this one, right?”

“Is that what’s going on here?!”

I mean, she is a plant! I guess it just makes sense she could grow a flower! Is this something I should be congratulating her for? I have no idea what the social script is for blooming.

“Good for you! It’s a really nice flower,” I ended up saying. This was all new to me, and even I could tell my attempt at praise had ended up a little stilted.

“Isn’t it?! I can’t wait to show it off to everyone over breakfast!” Sandra said with her head held high and an extremely proud look on her face. The way she was acting, you’d think this was her once-in-a-lifetime moment in the spotlight.

Around the time everyone was gathering for breakfast, Sandra strode into the house. One look at her new blue flower, and the family started piling on the praise.

“Oh, what a lovely flower! Congratulations!” said Laika.

“The half-bloomed look is very stylish, too! That’s one impressive flower—and elves have high standards!” Halkara added. She and Laika even threw in a round of applause, for good measure. Meanwhile, Falfa and Shalsha were oohing and ahhing in the background over how incredible it was.

“Yeah, no ghost would mind getting that flower left on their grave. Not bad at all,” noted Rosalie.

“I’m not offering it to anyone! That would be a total waste!” Sandra snapped back.

I guess plants wouldn’t be very happy about some random person picking them to use as an offering, huh…? It’s not like the flower would get anything out of the deal…

“Blue really is the coolest color—and that, of course, means blue dragons are the coolest of their kind!” Flatorte declared.

“You’re just looking for an excuse to talk up your species!” Sandra jabbed. I had to side with her on that one.

All in all, Sandra’s blue flower got rave reviews from our family members…but I was still just a little apprehensive. It’s not that I didn’t think it was pretty or anything like that. It really was beautiful, as far as flowers went—and I wasn’t disappointed that it wasn’t yellow or whatever. It took me a while to put my finger on it…but finally, it hit me.

Oh, I get it. That’s what’s been bothering me…

I didn’t want to rain on Sandra’s parade, but I also couldn’t let the question go unasked, and I was the only one who could address it.

“Hey, Sandra? I have just one quick little question…,” I said.

Sandra took one look at my face and instantly seemed to figure out that my question wasn’t going to be a fun one. She was obviously pretty unhappy about me ruining the festive atmosphere. I got how she felt, really…but I just couldn’t pretend not to see it!

“About your flower…it’s gonna wilt eventually, won’t it?”

“Of course it will!” Sandra snapped. “All flowers wilt! Why wouldn’t it? What’s with this double standard? Do you think, ‘Oh, it’s going to die eventually. That’s so sad,’ every time you see an animal? Or are you just power tripping because you know you’re an immortal witch?!”

Whoops. That sure upset her, all right. But that wasn’t even the point of my question, really!

“No, no, that’s not what I meant! I’m not saying I feel sorry for you because it’ll wilt eventually—that’s totally fine! I’m just worried if you’ll be all right afterward?! Your actual body’s not going to wilt along with it or anything, right…?”

My other family members already seemed to have caught on to what I was getting at: I was afraid her bloom might be a sign her lifespan was nearing its end. Once that possibility occurred to me, I couldn’t just ignore it.

“Huh? Of course I won’t wilt,” Sandra instantly replied, as if she had no clue why I’d bother asking something so stupid.

Oops. Have I been worrying for no reason?

At that point, Falfa trotted out of the dining room. She seemed to be heading for her bedroom, and a moment later, she emerged again carrying a rather thick book with her.

“This is what normal mandragoras look like, right, Mommy?” Falfa asked as she showed me a section of the book. It was all about the medicinal applications of mandragoras—in other words, about their roots. That was the part of the plant that was supposed to be shaped like a human and would kill you if you heard it scream.

“Oh, yeah. Those are them, all right,” I said.

“Well, I’m that part, too, aren’t I? So, of course I wouldn’t wilt,” Sandra said as she pointed at herself.

“O-oh, right! That makes sense!”

She looked so much like a normal human I’d never really internalized the connection, but when it came down to it, Sandra really was mostly made up of a mandragora’s root system. It would make no sense for a root like that to wither just because its flower wilted.

“Mandragoras are basically a type of bulb, and they survive just fine even if their leaves or flowers die off. That means Sandra should be just fine, too!” said Falfa.

“Falfa’s right. My flower will wilt eventually, but that doesn’t mean I’ll wilt along with it. How could I have lived this long if I died that easily?”

Oh, thank goodness. I guess this won’t be a problem after all.

“It makes sense when you put it that way, but honestly, I was worried!” I said. “This is such a relief!”

I was incredibly glad I’d decided to come out and ask. Who even knows how long I would’ve fretted over it if I hadn’t? I would’ve had to bring it up eventually, one way or another.

“Oh, and while we have that book on hand, does it say anything about how long a mandragora’s flower typically stays in bloom?” Sandra asked Falfa.

Oh, good question! Sandra had been acting like this was her first flower, so it made sense she wouldn’t know how long it would last. I knew some types of plants only bloomed once over the course of multiple decades—it wasn’t like she got a new one every spring or summer.

“Hmm,” Falfa said as she studied her book. “It says it’ll last about two weeks.”

“Two weeks? I guess that sounds about right,” I said. That was about as long as my usual winter or spring vacations from school, back in Japan, which made intuitive sense somehow. It just seemed fitting that Sandra’s flower would last a similar length of time.

“Blooming really is wonderful! It’s like a rush!” Sandra energetically declared.

Once she’d finished showing everyone her flower, Sandra headed back outside. According to her, she needed to get plenty of photosynthesis in to keep her flower healthy and beautiful. That basically meant her daily routine hadn’t changed at all, but her flower seemed to have boosted her motivation to go about her usual tasks, at least.

Of course, photosynthesis wasn’t active like bodybuilding, so I wasn’t sure how much motivation played into the equation in the first place. Animals kept breathing whether they were motivated or not, and I was under the impression that photosynthesis happened pretty much automatically as long as you sat in the sunlight.

Actually, when I really think about it, plants get energy just from sitting around under the sun. Isn’t that kind of cheating? Most of them can’t move, sure, but that doesn’t apply to Sandra at all!

I was coming to appreciate that Sandra might really have been the chosen mandragora.

Sandra spent quite some time bathing in the sunlight, but when I decided to go into Flatta to get some shopping done, she said she’d come along with me. I knew right away that she was hoping to show her flower off to the townsfolk, but I decided not to call her out on it. Falfa and Shalsha decided to come along as well—or, really, Sandra asked them to.

And so I went into Flatta to run errands with my three daughters at my side.

Sandra marched through the city streets with Falfa and Shalsha flanking her, one on each side.

Oh, I get it. She invited those two along because she wanted them to escort her like this, I thought as I glanced back at them.

Every once in a while, Sandra would stop to talk with one of the townsfolk, saying something to the tune of, Look, I’ve grown a flower! Isn’t it pretty? Naturally, they would always reply, It really is beautiful! or something to that effect. She did it while we were in the store, too, and I got the chance to peek at her expression. Long story short, her face had “Getting complimented by everyone is the best!” written all over it. She was even smirking a little.

She’s so easy to read, honestly!

If Laika had sprouted a flower, she probably would have said something like Flaunting it in front of the townsfolk would only advertise my own self-centeredness, so I shall refrain, but Sandra was still a kid, mentally speaking. She wasn’t thinking along those lines at all. When she had the chance to get positive attention, she’d drink it up.

Then again, that wasn’t really a bad thing. She wasn’t causing trouble for anyone, as long as she didn’t go overboard—though if she did take it too far, she ran the risk of driving people away from her…

Eventually, some of the townspeople started striking up conversations with me.

“I see your daughter’s grown an adorable little flower, Miss Witch of the Highlands!”

“That must be a sign of how lovely of a job you’ve been doing raising her, I’m sure!”

“Sandra’s even cuter today than usual, isn’t she?!”

Before I knew it, I was grinning.

“Oh, you think so? Thanks, everyone! Ha-ha-ha, no, seriously, I appreciate it! She really is the cutest, isn’t she? Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

It’s pretty nice, watching my daughter get showered with praise!

Yep! I can live with this! All right—we’ve got two weeks before that flower wilts, so we might as well make the most of it!

Sandra was all smiles for the whole rest of the day. She’d lived a long enough life that, in my opinion, she’d earned this little extra moment of happiness.

The next day, however, things took a turn.

A little after noon, Sandra plodded inside with a dejected look on her face. She was also waving her hands around her head, as if she was warding something away from her.

“Phew… I think I’ll stay in here and rest,” Sandra muttered.

“That’s totally fine with me, but from what? Has all that photosynthesis worn you out?” I asked.

I figured she would need more nutrients than usual to keep her flower healthy, which I assumed meant she’d get tired easier as well. That said, you’d also think she’d have to spend more time outside in the sun. Being inside didn’t necessarily mean Sandra was taking a break. She usually only wandered in after the sun had set.

“No, it’s not that. Photosynthesizing doesn’t tire me out at all,” Sandra said with a shake of her head. “I think it’s my flower’s fault… I’ve been getting a lot of undesired attention.”

Undesired attention…? As in, people have been hitting on her?

The words “undesired attention” immediately summoned to mind an image of weird dudes trying to pick her up. That was strange, though—she looked way too young to get that sort of attention. Maybe some of the local boys from Flatta or Nascúte had started insisting she play with them? If that was what was going on, then I knew telling them to keep their filthy hands off my daughter would be immature of me, so I was totally prepared to tell them they could go out and play in the nearby fields.

“I’ve had so many bugs swarming around me to get at my flower’s pollen! They’re such a hassle…”

“Oh! That sort of attention!”

I guess that’s more or less what flowers are for, isn’t it? It’s not like they’re just a fashion accessory! In fact, pollination’s probably the more important purpose of the two, from a certain perspective.

“It’s all totally pointless, since there aren’t any other mandragoras growing around here. That means all the bugs are nothing more than a nuisance. I wish they’d leave me alone…,” Sandra moaned.

“I guess that is a pretty big downside, when you put it that way,” I agreed. There really didn’t seem to be much of an upside, at least for her.

“Maybe I should wear a hat until my flower wilts?”

“But that would spoil the fun of having one, wouldn’t it…?”

“It’s fine. It’s not like the bugs are going to tell me how pretty my flower is, are they? I have no interest in showing it to anyone who won’t at least take the time to tell me how nice it looks.”

Apparently, Sandra thought anyone who wanted to get at her flower should have to pay her a toll in compliments first.

“I get where you’re coming from, but honestly, it feels a little stingy of you,” I said.

“Oh, come on! It’s my flower, isn’t it?” Sandra said before heaving a sigh. “Ugh. And here I thought these two weeks would be full of nothing but compliments.”

Even beautiful flowers, it seemed, had their downsides. Life was never quite that easy in the end.

Unfortunately for Sandra, her flower was apparently quite a rare and precious variety. It wasn’t long before an even bigger bug showed up to make a pass at it.

“Hello again! It’s me, Nosonia, representative of the Nosonia Project!”

Two days later, Nosonia—a demon with butterfly-like wings—fluttered her way to our home. She was a type of demon called a crawler, specifically, and I’d apparently saved her life without realizing it when she was a larva. I didn’t even remember the incident, and I certainly didn’t think she owed me anything. But her gratitude wouldn’t let her take no for an answer, and she’d made a bunch of outfits and stuff for me as her way of paying me back.

“Hey. It’s been a while. When did we even see each other last? The time you set up a stall for the Dance Festival, I think?” I replied. Demons tended to be very adaptable on the whole, which probably explained why I ran into them so often despite living in the human territories.

“Yes, well, I’ve come today to ask you for permission regarding a certain matter,” said Nosonia.

Oh boy. I think I know where this is going. No way it’s a coincidence she showed up right after Sandra’s flower bloomed.

“If at all possible, I would like to procure some of the nectar from Miss Sandra’s flower. Humanoid mandragora nectar is an extraordinarily rare substance!”

Called it!

“I mean…if you want to procure her nectar, you’re going to have to ask Sandra herself,” I replied. “I don’t even know why you’re talking with me about this, honestly.”

“Oh, I just thought it was important to ask permission from her guardian before I made the formal request,” Nosonia explained.

Huh. That’s pretty reasonable, actually. I guess I should be grateful she’s trying to do this properly instead of stealing the nectar, or whatever. At least this leaves us room to negotiate.

“Actually, where did you hear about her flower? Not even Beelzebub’s shown up to see it yet,” I asked. I’d never gotten a good grasp on how this sort of information made its way to the demon realm.

“Oh, I caught wind of it through my connections in the crawler industry! I happen to be the vice president of the Vanzeld Castle Town Crawler Association.”

Is this like how there’s a specific association in Tokyo for people from Okayama? I guess organizations like that crop up no matter what world you live in…

“Some crawlers make trips into the human world from time to time, you see. There are always stories flowing into the Association from all sorts of places!” Nosonia continued.

“Demons really are casual about traveling around, aren’t they…? Anyway, we should go see what Sandra thinks about all this.”

No point talking about it until we’ve heard her opinion, after all.

Nosonia and I headed into the garden where Sandra would most likely be found. She was there, as expected—but surprisingly, we walked in on her doing some sort of strange dance. I thought it was a dance, anyway, until I realized she was just flailing around to drive the bugs away.

“Agggh! Now bees are coming after me! Would you horrible things just stay away?!”

There really were quite a few bees buzzing around the garden that day. Sandra’s flower must have drawn them in.

“Maybe a hat’s a good idea after all, at least when there are bees around?” I suggested.

“Hats don’t help! They just keep coming! They must all know about my flower already!” Sandra shouted back.

I guess the beehive has its own information network? Looks like people don’t have a monopoly on spreading information—the natural world has it down pat, too.

“Well, this probably isn’t the best timing, but you have a visitor,” I said.

“They’ll have to wait! I have my hands full driving these stupid parasites away from my flower’s nectar!”

I was starting to think negotiations had broken down before they’d even started. Nosonia was firmly on the parasites’ side, after all…

“It’s good to see you again, Miss Sandra! I’m Nosonia, from the demon realm, and I’ve come in the hopes of partaking of the delectable nectar from the very rare flower you’ve grown!”

“Leave.”

Sandra rejected the request with a single word.

Yeah, fair enough. She’s after the exact same thing all those pesky bees are, after all. Nosonia had been pretty brazen about her request, too. Maybe that was her merchant side showing itself?

Nosonia paused to catch a bee that was flying nearby, closing her hands around it. A normal butterfly or moth could never pull off a move like that, but crawlers were another matter entirely.

“Oh, nice catch!” I said. “Isn’t it going to sting you, though?”

“Oh, getting stung by a bee from the human lands hurts less than realizing I made a rounding error! I’ll be just fine. Hmm… I see, I see! So that’s the sort of bee we’re dealing with. All right—I know just the thing,” Nosonia said as she peered into her impromptu hand-cage, studying the creature she’d captured. She knew an awful lot about insects.

“Allow me to propose a deal, Miss Sandra. I’m willing to make you a hat scented with an aroma that will drive this species of bee away from you. In exchange, all I ask for is a small sample of your nectar.”

Oh, so that’s her game.

Nosonia was a true professional when it came to clothing and textiles. Sandra hadn’t paid anything for her nectar, but she would still get a custom hat—it wasn’t a bad deal at all. Of course, I’d never sprouted a flower from my head, and I had no clue what getting nectar harvested would be like, so I didn’t have a very clear idea of just how much Sandra would be opposed to the experience. She’d have to make the call for herself, in the end.

“Oh, really?” said Sandra. “Give me a few minutes to think about it.”

Sandra lapsed into thought, nodding and muttering to herself as she walked away. My best guess was that she was pacing around the house in the highlands, and it wasn’t long before she emerged from the opposite side of the building, proving me right.

“I’ll take your deal. A cute flower wilts in just a couple weeks, but a cute hat could last me a very long time. The hat just makes sense!”

“Thank you very much!” exclaimed Nosonia. “I’ll make you the loveliest hat you’ve ever seen!”

Just like that, the deal was sealed. Sandra and Nosonia exchanged a firm handshake.

I was glad to see it had all gone smoothly in the end, but I did have one slight, lingering doubt.

Isn’t it kind of sad for a person—or plant, I guess—to treat a flower they grew as lower priority than a hat…?

“Well, there you have it, Miss Azusa! May I borrow one of your empty rooms to put the hat together in?” Nosonia asked.

Considering the flower’s not going to be around for much longer, I guess it’d defeat the purpose if the hat didn’t get to her until a month from now.

“Sure, that’s fine,” I replied. I decided to introduce her to Mimi the mimic, while I was at it. It’d be a disaster if she accidentally went into Mimi’s room and got bitten, after all.

I showed Mimi to Nosonia, who cooed over the “cute little mimic.” I had to assume either she was just being polite, or demons had a very different standard for cuteness than I did…

Nosonia moved into one of our empty rooms and got to work on the hat right away. Sandra ended up hanging out with her in the room as well, giving input on exactly what sort of hat she wanted all throughout the process. Nobody would be happy if Nosonia’s final product wasn’t to Sandra’s liking, so it made a certain amount of sense to have her make requests in real time, but it also meant there would be an awful lot of pressure on Nosonia to perform well. I just had to hope a pro like her would be up to the challenge.

“I’m sure it must be way worse for little plants that stake their whole lives on a single bloom, but growing a flower sure is tough, isn’t it?” I muttered as I sipped a cup of afternoon tea at the dining table.

Falfa, Shalsha, and Flatorte were all sitting with me. We were enjoying some sweets Nosonia had brought with her as a gift—pieces of fried dough that reminded me a lot of sata andagi, an Okinawan treat similar to a donut.

“They’re sticking in my throat… I’m drying up…,” Flatorte moaned as she munched away.

“That’s only natural,” Shalsha said to me, ignoring Flatorte entirely. “One of the reasons why humanoid mandragoras rarely bloom is reportedly that their flowers serve very little practical purpose. One might say getting to see one at all is a very valuable experience for us,” she explained. She was holding a piece of fried dough in her hand, but was so preoccupied with her lecture that she couldn’t quite find the right moment to eat it. “Moreover—and Shalsha should clarify this fact was recorded in a historical chronicle rather than the works of a botanist—humanoid mandragoras have been widely sought after since ancient times. An eye-catching flower would be counterproductive to evading pursuit.”

“Good point! It’d just mean more enemies to deal with!” I exclaimed. The bees were at least a little useful for normal mandragoras, since they served as pollinators, but any humans a flower drew would be predators.

“Furthermore, Shalsha hypothesizes that the stress of living in hiding from humans would mean humanoid mandragoras only very rarely find environments in which they can settle well enough to grow a flower at all,” Shalsha added.

“Right? Falfa was thinking the same thing!” Falfa chimed in. “There’s no way Sandra would’ve had the time to grow a flower when she was running around day after day!”

My daughters’ explanation brought a sudden thought to my mind.

“Wait—does that mean this house is a place where Sandra can feel safe and at peace?”

Falfa and Shalsha both nodded at the same time.

In that case, that flower is a sign Sandra thinks this house is a nice place to live!

To be honest, none of us had ever been totally sure if the house in the highlands was a good environment for Sandra or not. We’d done our best to make it a nice place for her to live, of course, but the question of whether it was the right decision for her to live here had been open for a while.

“It’s not like it’s been dragging me down, or anything, but this still feels like a weight off my shoulders,” I commented. I felt that way in part because I was her foster mother, of course, but more importantly, I wanted her to be able to live in comfort and safety.

“You’re such a good mommy, Mommy! ”

“Shalsha is confident Sandra enjoys her life here as well.”

Yep! Nothing beats a compliment from my daughters!

The day passed, and dinnertime was rapidly approaching. Seeing as Nosonia would be around for the meal, I’d decided to put off cooking until a little later than usual so we could all eat together after Halkara got home for the evening. Halkara had arrived home aboard Laika just a little while ago, and I was thinking I should tell Nosonia it was almost time for dinner when she wandered into the dining room before I had the chance.

“Hey! I hope your work’s going well. Is Sandra still in the room?” I asked. Sandra didn’t eat, so she skipped our meals fairly regularly.

“No, she’ll be here soon,” Nosonia replied. “I think she wants to take this chance to show off to everyone.”

Sandra arrived in the dining room soon enough, and she did so wearing her new hat, plus a distinctly stylish outfit to accompany it.

“So, what do you think? Do I look nice? We didn’t stop at the hat—I had her coordinate a whole outfit for me from top to bottom!” Sandra proudly declared.

“You look wonderful! It suits you incredibly well!” said Laika.

“It really is trendy! You look so fashionable, I’d like to feature you in an ad for Halkara Pharmaceuticals!” Halkara added. She and Laika even threw in a polite round of applause, which Falfa, Shalsha, and I joined in just a moment later.

Her new look really was breathtakingly fashionable. Speaking as her mother, however, I now had a whole different concern weighing on my mind that I decided to ask Nosonia about.

“So, umm, about those clothes—they’re probably pretty expensive, right?” I commented. “There’s no way a little nectar could cover the cost of an outfit like that, so I can pay whatever the difference is. How did you even put all of that together in a single afternoon?”

“Oh, everything but the hat was off the shelf,” Nosonia explained. “I happened to have a few sets of child-sized clothing with me, and I coordinated from what I had. I thought as long as she was putting on a little fashion show, it’d be a shame not to go all the way!”

“I guess that makes sense. I’ll still pay for it, though.”

Nosonia insisted that she would give the clothes to Sandra as a present, but at times like these, I felt it was my responsibility as her parent to foot the bill.

Halkara backed me up as well. In her words: “That’s right! It’s only fair for you to be compensated for your products!” Being a company president herself, I figured she put a lot of weight on the value of labor. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch, after all. I’d be beside myself with worry waiting for the other shoe to drop…”

“You’re making it sound like she’s trying to extort us!” I shouted.

“Regardless, if you have the money to pay at times like these, it’s important to do it!” Halkara insisted.

I was in agreement there. I made a mental note to work a little harder than usual at my slime slaying to make up the difference.

“Anyway, why not just think of it as the price you have to pay to make Sandra smile, Madam Teacher?” Halkara suggested.

“Ooh, now there’s an idea!”

Sandra had already been delighted when her flower bloomed, and now she seemed happier than ever. Fashion really did have a way of lifting people’s spirits, and I had a feeling her smile was also contributing to her sense of confidence. Not in the sense that it was making her arrogant, of course—just that it would help her be proud of the person she was.

That might also have been why she seemed so much less prickly toward people than she’d been when we first met her…though on the other hand, she’d already mellowed out a lot before her flower sprouted. Thinking back, she’d acted pretty hostile toward the rest of our family back when she first joined us. She’d even growled at the rest of us a few times.

Most likely, that aggression had been her way of coping with her many anxieties. Nowadays, though, Sandra’s tough front had been replaced with a happy, spirited smile. Her flower had bloomed, and her smile had bloomed right along with it.

Oh, geez, I think I’m tearing up a little! Getting a new set of clothes probably isn’t going to be a major turning point in her life or anything, but it’s still so nice to see!

“Huh? Hey, Big Sis, your soul’s trembling—in a good way, I mean. Did something happen?” asked Rosalie. She saw through my moment of profound emotion right away. This was a tough family to keep secrets in.

“I was just a little moved by how happy Sandra looks, that’s all,” I explained.

Sandra, of course, heard her name and turned to look at me. “That’s weird,” she said. “Why are you acting even more emotional about this than I am?”

“Well, why not? Of course I’m happy about something nice happening to you!” I replied.

“Right, sure. Just don’t cry out all your water reserves,” Sandra commented. “This really is a nice hat, though! It suits me even better than my flower,” she added as she examined herself in the handheld mirror she was carrying.

I really couldn’t remember ever having seen her this happy before…but then, the next thing I knew, a conflicted expression flashed across her face.

“Seeing as I have such a pretty hat, I guess I can retire this flower before it wilts.”

Oh, I see. Sandra hadn’t considered her blue flower to be much more than a fashion accessory. Now that she had a hat to fill that role, she didn’t have any particular need for her flower anymore. It would wilt in another two weeks or so anyway, so it was a good thing she’d found a replacement.

None of that, however, changed the fact that her flower was precious in its own right. It was basically proof she’d been enjoying her life in the house in the highlands.

Pressing or drying it to keep it around forever feels like it’d be sort of wrong, though… That’d mean cutting it off her, for one thing. But how else could we preserve it…?

“Oh! I know!” I shouted.

“Eeek!” Sandra yelped. “Honestly, Azusa, don’t surprise me like that! Where did that even come from?”

“Sorry, sorry. I just had a really great idea,” I explained. “Well, it’s great in theory, anyway. I guess we won’t know how good it is for sure until we try it and see how it goes.”

In the worst case, after all, my plan could result in something really unsettling. There was a real chance the person I was planning on asking for help would tell me she could only make unsettling things, which would ruin everything before we even started.

“What in the world are you talking about?” asked Sandra. “This isn’t me not getting it because I’m a plant—not even animals would be able to follow your explanation this time!”

“Okay, then, I’ll put it as simply as I can,” I said. “I think we should have someone draw a portrait of you!”

Sandra’s flower would only stick around for so long, which meant we had a firm time limit to work under. As such, I headed to Momma Yufufu’s place the very next day to try to get in contact with the person I wanted to enlist to help us. That ended up going off without a hitch, and she arrived at the house in the highlands on time without issue.

“Hello. I am Curalina the Jellyfish Spirit, and I have dedicated my life to capturing the meaninglessness of this world in illustrated form. Jellyfish-fish-fish-fish-fish…”

Curalina gave a much more proper self-introduction than I’d come to expect from her, greeting us with a polite bow. My best guess was that she was way more enthusiastic than usual since she knew we wanted to commission her to make a painting.

“So, starting today, Curalina the jellyfish spirit artist will be painting our whole family together,” I explained. This was my idea, so it came down to me to fill everyone in. “I figured the best way to preserve Sandra’s flower would be to have it included in a painting! That way it’ll last forever, even after it wilts!”

“Forever is an overstatement. Ten thousand years from now, every painting that exists today will be nothing more than dust. All is transient; all impermanent. Jellyfish-fish-fish-fish-fish.”

“Why is the actual painter the one disagreeing with me about this?!” This is the part where you’re supposed to give a speech about art’s timelessness or something! “Sure, you’re a spirit and you’ve been around for six or seven centuries or whatever, so maybe you would know, but if you just took a little more care to preserve your paintings they’d last for a really long time!”

“Perhaps. In that case, I’ll make a painting that will last for jelly-in-fi-fi-fi-finity, at least in spirit. Jellyfish-fish-fish.”

If you have to force your jellyfish stutter shtick that badly, then don’t bother doing it at all.

The fact our resident artist was highly motivated was a good thing, anyway. I hoped that meant she’d deliver a nice painting…but then Laika raised a nervous hand.

“Umm… I hate to cast doubt on this endeavor, but I feel like the last time Curalina painted us, the products were rather distressing… Her style would be well suited for an exhibit, to be sure, but I’m not convinced it would be appropriate for a family portrait… Are you certain this is a good idea…?”

Curalina really had painted my family members once before. She’d painted us each individually that time rather than all of us as a group, and every one of those paintings had turned out looking deeply cursed. I’d heard the “Witch of the Highlands’s House” series had drawn high praise in the art world, but if this painting was anything like those, it wouldn’t make for a great memento or display piece, even if it might sell for a high price at a gallery.

I could tell that was exactly what Laika was concerned about. Most artists would be able to adjust their style to suit the needs of any given project, but Curalina didn’t seem to have that flexibility.

“It’ll probably be fine,” Curalina said with a yawn.

I would’ve hoped she’d at least leave her reassurances unhedged, but considering what she was like, I figured that was the best we were going to get. I knew if I asked, she’d probably say something like, You can never say what’s going to happen in the future for sure, or something to justify herself.

“This painting will capture a treasured family memory. I wouldn’t make it creepy on purpose. Debasing your own work like that just proves you’re not jellyfi-fi-fi-fit to be an artist…,” Curalina said.

“In that case, I withdraw my objection,” Laika conceded.

“Art has almost no value on its own, frankly, but there are some in this mortal coil who assign it value arbitrarily, and they, too, are valid. Perhaps it is art’s very lack of intrinsic value that makes it valuable to them. Jellyfish-fish-fish-fish.”

“And now you’re back to saying our family portrait has no value! You should’ve quit while you were ahead!” I shouted. Not even I could stay quiet after that one. If that wasn’t debasing her own work, then what was?!

“Challenging yourself to work under a theme you’re not really into is one of the many spices of life. I consider this a fairly favorable commission. Jellyfish-fish-fish-fish…”

“Again, quit while you’re ahead!”

One way or another, Curalina painting our family portrait was set in stone. We’d just have to do our best not to think too deeply about her personal beliefs while she was working on it…

Needless to say, if Curalina was going to paint our family portrait, all of us would have to participate in the process. The whole family gathered up to model for her in much the same way people would get together to take a group picture. In fact, since this world didn’t have cameras, this was more or less the closest thing to a group picture that existed.

Seeing as we didn’t exactly do this often, everyone got dressed up in nice outfits to match Sandra’s. The portrait wouldn’t look right if she was the only one not wearing her everyday clothing, after all.

“To start, since Sandra is meant to be the focal point, we’ll have her sit in the central chair. Sandra, please lift your chin slightly to keep your flower clearly visible. Next, Falfa and Shalsha, please take your places on either side of her.”

Curalina gave us clear and effective directions, putting each of us exactly where she wanted us. In that sense, at least, she really acted like a professional.

“Azusa, please stand behind Sandra. Laika and Flatorte, please stand on either side of her, and Halkara and Rosalie on either side of them.”

At that point, Curalina seemed to be struck by an idea. She raised a hand to her mouth, pausing to consider her options. If she’d had a moment of professional inspiration, I figured it’d be best to go with the option she’d come up with.

“I could also draw Rosalie into a corner, portrait-in-portrait style. Would you prefer that?”

That’s the thing they do in yearbooks when someone can’t make it to class photo day!

“No thanks! Just do it normally! Let’s not make this any more eccentric than it has to be!” The goal of this portrait isn’t to make people laugh, thanks!

“Understood,” said Curalina. “However, since Rosalie is a spirit, I’m afraid including her in the same space as the rest of you will inevitably result in the painting taking on an eerie tinge… Jellyfish-fish-fish-fish…”

“Fair enough!”

We were already asking an artist specialized in unsettling paintings to draw a heartwarming portrait. Asking her to draw a heartwarming portrait featuring a literal ghost might have been too much of an ask… Plus, putting a ghost in a family portrait was a weird ask no matter who was doing the painting, which complicated the situation more than ever.

“And that’s not even the half of it. There’s also the mimic to consider. Jellyfish-fish-fish-fish…”

Was it just me, or was that last Jellyfish-fish-fish-fish a little strained?

Needless to say, Mimi the mimic was present for the portrait as well. It was a member of our family, too, after all.

“When the mimic opens its mouth next to Rosalie, it becomes extra ominous. The whole image makes one think of a dungeon.”

“I guess it would, yeah.” I sighed. It turned out drawing us as a happy family was a much taller order than I’d realized.

“It’s all right, everyone!” Rosalie declared. “I can just turn down the ghost aura and put on a friendlier look instead! I can look like, uh…like a guardian spirit! That should do the trick!”

I’ve never seen a guardian spirit, so I have no clue what those even look like, but I guess I can just trust Rosalie on that one.

“I will do what I can to avoid portraying any malevolence in your presence, but please do what you can to ensure you do not express such malevolence, either. Jellyfish-fish-fish-fish,” said Curalina.

Okay, but is there anyone out there who would do that on purpose…?

“Azusa, a hint of malevolence is creeping into your expression. Please keep your expression pure and untainted. Jellyfish-fish-fish.”

And I immediately get called out!

“What, seriously?! That can’t be right! I was smiling and everything!” I protested.

“Falfa and Shalsha’s expressions are perfectly pure. Please try to emulate them.”

“You can do it, Mommy! Falfa knows you can!”

“Shalsha is well aware your motherly spirit is as pure as could be on the inside.”

“I know you’re trying to back me up, but you’re making it sound like I look malevolent most of the time!”

I mean, sure, anyone would look impure compared to Falfa and Shalsha, but you’re better off not making that sort of comparison. And honestly, it’d be kind of freaky if I was as innocent as those two!

I still had my doubts, but I did my best to be a good model and hold my pose as consistently as possible. The others did as well, although Sandra—the star of the show—and Flatorte fidgeted every once in a while, earning themselves a scolding from Curalina. Sandra was a kid, so she wasn’t great at staying still, while Flatorte was just a naturally restless person.

“It would be so easy for me to stay still if I could just plant myself,” Sandra noted.

“That would make the painting weird again, so nope!” I said.

“The whole point of me taking this form is to let me move around, and now you’re telling me to not move in it? Animals are so complicated.”

I see your point, but please just put up with it for now.

“Standing still really is tiring, huh? I bet this would be easier if I, the great Flatorte, just froze all of us in place with my cold breath.”

“That’s the most violent solution you could’ve possibly proposed!” I complained.

“If you were frozen, it would be impossible for you to maintain natural expressions,” said Curalina, shooting the idea down from a different angle. “Moreover, you, Flatorte, are the one having difficulties staying still. Unless your breath would freeze you as well, it would serve no purpose.”

“I can’t help it! Blue dragons are all about moving around!”

“Hmm? It seems you stay still more consistently when you’re speaking. Please continue to talk for as long as you can.”

Little issues kept cropping up here and there, but by and large, Curalina’s painting progressed at a steady pace.

Three days later, Curalina told us she’d reached a stage where we no longer needed to line up and pose for her.

“I can finish the remainder of the painting on my own. That said, there may be times when I need to check in with you regarding certain details, so it would be best if I was able to do my work somewhere nearby,” she explained.

“In that case, feel free to use one of the empty rooms,” I offered. I didn’t want to compromise on anything that could help make the painting turn out as well as possible.

Ten days later, at long last, we gathered up to see the finished painting. Our family was depicted in perfectly satisfying detail, and the beautiful flower on Sandra’s head was as eye-catching as could be.

“Oh, how nice. It looks even better than the real flower did, doesn’t it?” Sandra said with a smile, arms crossed as she studied the painting.

Her blue flower was no longer present on her head. It had been far more than two weeks since it first bloomed, and it had long since served its purpose. Sandra’s lively attitude, however, had outlived it—she was still just as upbeat as she’d been that first day. In a sense, the flower had taught us all just how well she was doing these days.

Our family didn’t have any entrance or graduation ceremonies to participate in, so it was kind of hard to pick days that were worth commemorating. I was glad we’d gotten such a perfect chance to have a family portrait drawn.

Laika, by the way, didn’t seem moved by the finished painting so much as intrigued. She was observing it like a visitor in an art museum, leaning in close to study the painting’s finest details.

“I really appreciate you drawing all of us so well,” I said to Curalina, who was standing behind and watching as we took in her work. “Thank you, Curalina. It’s a wonderful painting!”

Curalina, however, was acting a little strange. She was shivering so much, you’d think it was freezing in our house…

“I didn’t know painting a happy portrait would provoke such an awful physical reaction in me… Jellyfish-fish-fish! Jellyfish-fish-fish!”

“Just how much do you hate happy paintings?!”

“L-look at it this way… It proves just how uplifting that work really is… Ugggh! Ugggh!”

“I get the logic, but it’s really hard to be glad about that when the woman who painted it is having a breakdown in the background!”

“I need pain… Oh, I know—I can have the mimic bite me to neutralize the happiness… Jellyfish-fish-fish-fishhhaaaugh!”

In the end, Curalina really did stop by Mimi’s room to get a few chomps before finally heading home…

I ATTENDED A TRAINING CAMP WITH THE DEMON KING

“Ahhh…”

That makes…what, ten sighs in a row? I thought to myself. I wasn’t the one sighing this time, though. Fortunately, I wasn’t feeling particularly pensive or anxious at all at this particular moment. The sighs were, in fact, coming from Pecora.

For some reason, Pecora had been heaving one long, meaningful sigh after another today. I wasn’t totally sure if she was doing it on purpose or not, but one way or another, it was unusual for her.

Pecora had called me out for a tea party that day, and we’d met up at a table in Vanzeld Castle’s courtyard. I didn’t know whether she’d set it up specifically for the day’s event or it had been there the whole time, but in any case, a tea set and a spread of sweets had been waiting for me when I arrived.

The tea and sweets were delicious, and the aesthetic of the party was quite elegant, but the garden itself featured quite a few vividly colored, conspicuously poisonous plants that kind of spoiled the effect. That’s not even starting on the plants that probably ate people. If you set the greenery aside, though, Pecora couldn’t have picked a more appropriate setting for a tea party like this.

The conversation, on the other hand, didn’t have any of the lively energy you want for a tea party.

“So, how’s work been for you lately?” I asked.

“Oh, the usual. It’s been fine,” Pecora replied.

“How’s the weather been in the demon realm?”

“The usual. It’s been fine.”

“…How’re your tax yields? Going up?”

“The usual. It’s been fine.”

Every topic I tried to bring up died almost instantly. I’m not going to claim I was a master conversationalist who could pull anyone into a spirited back-and-forth, but it’s pretty fair to say that Pecora wasn’t holding up her side of the exchange.

Hmm… Spirited conversation is an essential component of any tea party, but at this rate, the food’s going to be the only redeeming factor…

The sweets were good, don’t get me wrong, but if we weren’t even going to talk, I would’ve preferred to just eat on my own. As things stood, it felt more like I was distracting Pecora from focusing on her food than anything else. That said, I couldn’t exactly come out and ask if something was on her mind. That was not an option I was about to take under any circumstances!

My best guess was that Pecora’s whole goal was to get me to ask what was wrong. If I took the bait, she might ask me to do something for her, and it’d be much harder to turn her down than if I’d just kept my mouth shut. I suspected she knew that perfectly well and was aiming for it—in fact, that was the only explanation that made sense. There was no way she’d heave that many pointed sighs without a plan, after all…

Pecora was plotting something. I knew that for a fact, and that meant all I could do was pretend to be totally oblivious. She could only fool me so many times before I started picking up on her tricks!

“Ahhh…”

Ah! There’s sigh number eleven. I’m not going to call her out, though. Sometimes you just have days when you end up sighing a lot, especially when you live for as long as she has. I’m not about to start questioning it!

“Wow, this cake sure is good, huh?” I said. I was dead set on pretending I hadn’t noticed anything. All the experience I’d built up over my lifetime was telling me this was the way to go! “The sponge is nice and moist, isn’t it? You can really tell whoever baked it didn’t cut any corners!”

“Ahhh… Ahhh…”

Two sighs in a row! That’s territory we haven’t explored yet!

“Oh! That makes thirteen sighs, doesn’t it?”

“You were counting?!”

I couldn’t stop myself. I had to say something. I still hadn’t technically asked her anything concrete, though, so I decided I was still safe.

“The number thirteen is considered lucky in demon society,” Pecora explained. “That’s why I thought I might as well count until I hit thirteen, at least.”

“It’s an unlucky number in my mind, but I guess that’s just a difference in cultures at work,” I replied. Then again, I also remembered the thirteen superstitions in my own world being a mostly European thing, so from a Japanese perspective it wasn’t anything to worry about regardless. Per my local superstitions, the fact that it was an odd number meant it was lucky, if anything. It just went to show how arbitrary assigning luck to certain numbers really was.

“And now that I’ve sighed my lucky thirteenth sigh, I’ve decided to come out and ask my beloved Elder Sister for advice,” Pecora continued.

Gah! She’s bringing it up herself now, and telling her not to ask for advice after that would be a huge jerk move! I can’t get out of this one!

“If I may be frank, I was hoping you would ask me why I was sighing so much. It looks like you thought something was suspicious and decided to avoid doing so, though.”

“And I’m pretty sure I was right!”

“Please try harder to play the elder sister role at times like these!” Pecora said with a sulky pout.

I knew devoting myself that thoroughly to her whims would end terribly in the long run, so I decided to ignore her critique. She had plenty of servants who could solve all her problems in my place.

“The truth is… Ahhh.”

Ah! There’s another sigh.

“I’ve been thinking it’s about time for me to take a break,” Pecora said, a rather troubled expression settling over her face.

A break? That doesn’t sound like a little trip over a three-day weekend. So then…she wants to step back from her post as the demon king?!

This really was important! No wonder she’d want advice! And it was a subject she couldn’t casually ask her subordinates about, either! If rumors of the demon king stepping down started spreading, it could cause huge shock waves throughout demon society. Her status was so high that even just asking for advice had serious political implications. I understood exactly why she’d decided to come to me with this now.

“Are you really that tired of being the demon king, Pecora…?” I asked.

Pecora gave me a blank stare that told me she didn’t understand my question.

“No? I don’t have any particular complaints about my work. Ruling is as fun and interesting as can be!”

Huh? Okay, maybe I was jumping the gun with that worry after all.

It would make no sense for her to lay this much groundwork to ask for advice only to lie to me about the advice she wanted, so it seemed safe to say the problem wasn’t as major as retirement after all.

What is she talking about, then? What else does she do that she might want a break from…?

An answer came to me with surprising ease.

She’s talking about how she uses magic streaming to act like a whatever-tuber!

I knew some people made enough revenue from their streams to turn it into their main occupation, but in Pecora’s case, it was definitely just a side gig to her work as the demon king. In that sense, she could stop doing her magic streams whenever she felt like it. Maybe, then, the problem was she wanted to keep doing them if she could, but had found herself so busy that she just couldn’t keep both careers up at the same time? If that was the case, then I didn’t have any perfect solutions ready for her, but I also didn’t see anything wrong with at least hearing her worries out.

“Oh—you mean you want to take a break from your magic streams, right?” I said. “Is it because you’re too busy with work? Or is there some other problem you’re dealing with?”

Once again, Pecora looked perplexed.

“No, I fully intend to continue my magic streaming activities. My subscriber count’s still growing steadily, too.”

“Oh. Okay… So then, what do you want to take a break from?”

Does she have some other sort of hobby? Maybe something more mundane, like visiting local bakeries?

Pecora gave me a very serious look.

“In short: I’m talking about my work as an idol!”

“Oh, right! I forgot you even did that!”

“Yes, that’s right! I’m seriously considering taking a break from my idol activities!” Pecora declared at several times the volume she usually spoke. There was absolutely no doubt she was very serious about the prospect.

As far as I was concerned, though…

Frankly, I couldn’t care less!

I couldn’t help it—I just couldn’t. I wasn’t about to say she hadn’t taken her work as an idol seriously, but the fact of the matter was she’d only done idol stuff on a very irregular basis from the start. She wasn’t exactly going on twice-a-year concert tours throughout the demon lands or anything, at least as far as I knew. If she was, I would’ve heard about her idol career way more than I actually did. If she wanted to extend the already lengthy gaps between her events a little, then what could be the harm?

Looking back, I remembered seeing Pecora do her idol thing during the demons’ music festival. They’d invited Kuku, who’d just taken her music in a brand-new direction, and we’d come along for the ride. Pecora’s idol performance had been the event’s final act, and she’d dragged Beelzebub in to perform with her partway through, seemingly mostly to mess with her.

The performance hadn’t been bad at all, at least from a total amateur’s perspective like mine, but if she only did that sort of act at the music festival, that probably meant she only had one show to deal with a year. That didn’t strike me as an unreasonable pace at all, and if her work as the demon king was keeping her too busy, I didn’t see any reason why she couldn’t just perform every other year instead.

“Ah! You’re thinking if I only perform at the music festival then this isn’t worth worrying about at all, aren’t you, Elder Sister? It’s written all over your face!” Pecora said, pouting. She’d gotten awfully good at reading my mind.

“Okay, but it’s true, isn’t it? Not that I’m not willing to hear you out, though—feel free to complain as much as you want. It’s not like there’s anything else I can do to help,” I said before pausing to take another bite of cake.

“But you’re wrong, Elder Sister! You’re looking on my work as an idol far too lightly! Every time I put on a performance, I have to repeat it in ten separate venues!”

“All right, that’s a way bigger tour than I thought it was!”

“Quite! My goal is to portray myself as an affable, approachable demon king, after all. That’s why I started my magic streams as well.”

I mean, I’m sure that would earn you some fans here and there, but would it really help much with your overall public image?

“My plan was to go on tour again this year. As I was rehearsing my act, however, I found myself running into a terribly difficult wall to overcome…,” Pecora said.

“What kind of a wall?” I asked. “You mean you couldn’t do the dances right? Or you started losing your voice or something?”

Those were the only troubles I could think of offhand that might afflict an idol. I still wasn’t sure Pecora was the exact sort of idol I was familiar with, but she was something close, at the very least.

“Not at all, Elder Sister. The problem is far more fundamental than those.”

More fundamental than singing and dancing? What else could it be?

“I’ve realized my performances have lost the shine they used to have!”

“That’s so abstract, I don’t even know what you’re trying to tell me!”

“Well, you know what they say: An idol who doesn’t shine on stage can never give her fans the courage they need!”

“Do they say that? Because it doesn’t help me understand what you’re getting at!”

This description’s abstract from start to finish! I don’t think she really needs super specific advice anyway, though, so I guess I’ll just stick to listening for now.

“I’ve had challenges with my singing and dancing before now, but I always shined in spite of them. Now, though, I feel like I’ve lost that essential sparkle!” Pecora insisted.

I guess we’re assuming she definitely did shine at some point in the past, then…

“At this rate, I won’t be able to share my strength with all my fans—with all the Pecorists!”

“Of course you’d have a cutesy nickname for your fanbase!”

She might be more of a classic idol than I’ve been giving her credit for!

“So, uh… Do you have any ideas what might have made you lose your shine…?” I asked, prompting her to continue. If we could just pin down the reason, we might be able to find a solution.

“I have a guess,” said Pecora. “I believe it’s because I’ve lost the beginner’s spirit that drove me forward when I started my career. I can’t think of any other reasons.”

“Your ‘beginner’s spirit’?” I repeated. I didn’t really get it.

“Many a long year has passed since I first began my idol activities,” said Pecora.

“Huh? You’ve been at it for that long…?”

I guess considering how long demons live, she could easily have been doing it for twenty or thirty years already. Most humans wouldn’t be able to stay active as an idol for thirty years, that’s for sure.

“I’ve come to suspect that over the course of those many years, I’ve lost much of the passion that drove me back when I debuted. I’m far better at singing and dancing than I was in those early days…but it feels like I’ve lost something precious in exchange,” said Pecora. I was starting to understand how hard a problem this would be to solve.

“I guess when you keep at something for that long, it loses the exciting freshness it had when you first started?” I said. Actually, if your chosen art form still feels new and fresh after that much time, that would be a problem in its own right.

“Without my beginner’s spirit, my singing has lost the edge of nervousness that it used to have. I can’t shine like this! ‘Endless Darkness’ just doesn’t have the same shine it did when I sang it in my early days!”

It’s kind of hard to get a handle on your explanation when you’re talking about a song called “Endless Darkness” shining!

“I know for a fact my Pecorists will never be satisfied unless I can reclaim my shine. As such, I believe my only choice is to go on hiatus for the time being,” Pecora concluded.

Judging by her tone, I was pretty confident she wasn’t just messing with me. If she’d really been working as an idol for that long, and her fans had stuck with her all throughout her career, they could probably tell her enthusiasm was the real deal. They must have felt a certain something from her a random celebrity doing idol work for fun would lack.

“I think I get it,” I said. “You really might have to go on hiatus, then. You can start back up once you’re confident you can shine again like you used to. I’m sure your fans will be happy to wait a century or two.”

“I was only planning on taking three years off before getting back in the game, actually.”

“That’s a pretty quick turnaround you’ve got planned!”

Is a three-year hiatus really worth this much serious consideration, considering how demons perceive time…? Even human singers took breaks that long all the time in my old world!

“My hiatus is already set in stone, but before I go on break, I wanted to finish things off with one last performance for the ages,” Pecora said with an excited grin. Apparently, she’d had the answer to her conundrum figured out from the start.

“Makes sense,” I said. “It’s nice to go out on a positive note.”

“Exactly! And so, to make sure I can be at my absolute best at all times, I’ve scheduled a training camp!”

“A training camp…? You’re really going all-in on this, aren’t you? Seems like a good idea to me—better to be uncompromising if this is your last hurrah for a few years.”

Pecora took a sip of her tea. That, I figured, was probably the end of that conversation. I could only hope that I’d done my duty as an elder sister to her satisfaction.

“And while we’re on the subject, there was one thing I was hoping to ask of you,” said Pecora.

Hmm? Why’s it feel like this conversation just took a turn?

“Would you mind participating in my training camp alongside me, Elder Sister?”

“But why, though?!”

It was the loudest shout I’d made all day.

“How does that make any sense?! I’m not a singer, or a dancer, or anything—why would I even need to go to a training camp?!” I protested.

I didn’t have any skills I wanted to improve or develop at a camp at all. At the absolute least, I had no reason at all to go through an intensive singing course. I would’ve much rather used that time to pick the herbs I needed to make medicines—in other words, to do my actual work as a witch.

“Indeed, this wouldn’t be a helpful experience for you at all. A training camp like mine won’t grant you any new knowledge about medicinal herbs, after all,” said Pecora.

Ah! She actually admitted it!

“However, I’ve realized going through a training camp with my beloved elder sister might grant me a chance to discover a whole new sort of shine for myself! Please play along!”

“What sort of logic is that?!”

In spite of everything, I was still certain Pecora was deadly serious about all of this. After all, if this was one of her usual schemes, she would’ve set it up in a way that made it outright impossible for me to refuse. The fact that she was coming at me with an upfront, genuine request made her sincerity clear, and she wasn’t smiling in that confident way that told me she was pulling a fast one on me, either.

Hmm… I’d feel pretty bad about turning her down without a good reason…

“How long is this camp going to last?” I asked. “If we’re talking ten days or two weeks or whatever, I’d really rather not.”

“The camp is scheduled to take place over five days and four nights! I have my work as the demon king keeping me busy, so I couldn’t afford to have it last for too terribly long.”

I guess I can live with that. And now that I think about it, it’d be weird to turn down a five-day camp. I said ten was what I couldn’t live with.

I gave Pecora a listless nod. “All right,” I said. “If you want me at your camp, I guess I’ll be there…”

“Wonderful! Thank you so much, Elder Sister! I knew you’d come running the moment you learned your little sister was in trouble!” Pecora said, her face lighting up with glee. That felt genuine, too—she was really moved, not just dropping an act she’d been putting on.

“I don’t think it counts as me coming running if you ask for my help in advance,” I commented. “Anyway, I’ll come to the camp and all, but if you decide to put yourself through some sort of hellish training regimen, you can count me out. I’ll be there, but I’m not promising I’ll actually participate.”

“That’s more than enough! Having you by my side is all I need to shine like never before!”

“It’s starting to feel like you’re just seeing how many times you can talk about shining in one conversation…”

And so, I ended up promising to make an appearance at an idol—or whatever you wanted to call it—training camp.

It’s always the straightforward requests that are the hardest to turn down…

A few days later, I headed into the demon territories once again. I met up with Pecora at Vanzeld Castle, and the two of us mounted up on wyverns to fly side by side to the site of her training camp.

“So, where is this camp happening, anyway?” I asked. The usual idea behind camps like this was to put yourself somewhere secluded and remote where there was nothing to do other than focus on your work, as far as I understood it.

“Oh, it’s not too far from Vanzeld Castle,” Pecora replied. “We’re going to the Orcturn Wastelands. They’re less than an hour away by wyvern.”

“The Orcturn Wastelands? That’s a pretty weird name, huh?”

“Legend has it that when the orcs first came to the region, they found it was so barren it was completely uninhabitable, so they turned right around and left again.”

Well, sounds like it’s remote, all right!

Our wyverns flew along, and soon enough, we found ourselves in a vast wasteland with barely even a scant scattering of trees to be seen. Deep within the wasteland was a cliff that looked like it was twenty or thirty meters tall, at the bottom of which stood a single building. They couldn’t have picked a more suitable site for a secluded training facility.

We arrived at our destination without issue, and Pecora went right to her room to get changed before meeting me out in the front lobby.

“Oh, wow! You really are going all-in on your training, aren’t you?” I commented.

Pecora’s outfit made that clear. It was nothing like her usual clothes, which were more or less what you’d expect from a demon king. Now she was wearing a plain shirt that wasn’t stylish at all, plus a pair of perfectly plain shorts. I’d never seen her dressed like that before—it was kind of a refreshing look for her, honestly.

“I am!” Pecora replied. “I decided to dress like this to put me in the right mindset to keep working! Now then—I know we only just got here, but I’d like to get started on my training!”

“What’s up first? Singing? Dancing?” I asked. Those were the only two options that came to mind—well, that and maybe doing a recording session, which was technically possible since Pondeli had invented the functional equivalent of CDs recently. It wasn’t too hard to imagine Pecora recording an album of her own.

“To start, I’ll be going on an hour-long run in the wasteland!”

Huh? She’s just running…?

I mean, I guess stamina’s probably pretty important for idols. Doing a solo concert means dancing around on a stage for hours on end, which isn’t something you can pull off if you don’t have the constitution for it.

The thing is, I was pretty sure Pecora already had stamina to spare. She was the demon king, for crying out loud! Maybe idols needed a different sort of stamina most people wouldn’t have or something?

“An idol’s body is her livelihood, after all!” Pecora explained. “Would you like to jog along with me, Elder Sister?”

“Sure, why not? It’ll be a good chance to look around this place a little,” I agreed. I would’ve been bored if I sat around in my room the whole time, so getting a taste for her regimen with a little exercise seemed like a decent alternative.

“All right, then—let’s go!”

Just like that, Pecora was off. As it turned out, she really was going out for a perfectly normal run. Nothing was weird about the process at all. She just ran on and on through the featureless, monotonous terrain of the wasteland—that’s all. Then again, it wasn’t like she was doing this for entertainment’s sake, so maybe the featurelessness was a feature in its own right?

Pecora was keeping a much higher pace than most people would be able to and was working up quite a sweat. She didn’t slow down for a moment, though, and I ended up dropping out partway through when I started getting tired. I decided to take it easy at the lodge while Pecora finished up her run—my job here was to watch over her while she did her work, not to do every bit of it alongside her. In fact, if I stuck too close to her, I wouldn’t be able to watch over her properly at all! Keeping my distance was important if I wanted to keep an eye on her.

I ended up waiting outside the training building with a bottle of juice I’d set in a bucket of ice water to chill. Eventually, Pecora arrived back as well, absolutely dripping with sweat.

“Whew… I-I’m back…”

“Nice hustle, Pecora. Here—it’s juice. You should take it easy for a little, too. Breaks are important, after all.”

“Thank you very much, Elder Sister…”

I passed Pecora the bottle, and she popped out the cork-like stopper and chugged its contents without even bothering to pour it out into a glass. Apparently, even demon kings drank straight from the bottle sometimes. That sort of behavior would be unthinkable for Pecora under normal circumstances, and I was unable to tear my gaze away from her.

“Ahh, that hit the spot!” said Pecora. “Hmm? Is something the matter, Elder Sister?”

“No, not really. I was just thinking there are times when even you don’t bother minding your manners,” I replied.

“Of course! In fact, I decided to come out to a quiet place like this for my camp precisely because it would let me break out of my shell!”

I see. I guess it’d be hard to act like that if she was surrounded by demons who all knew she was the demon king. Even if she wanted to break out of her shell, the people around her would make it impossible. I guess going to all the trouble to do a training camp like this might be worthwhile for her after all.

“Okay, Pecora, what’s on the schedule after your run?” I asked. If she was going to do vocal training next, I was hoping I’d be able to watch.

“Next up on the training menu: meditation!”

“M-meditation?”

That’s what she said, right? Not mediation, or harmonization, or something?

“That’s right!” said Pecora. “I’ve brought in an eminent priest known for their depth of contemplation from a demon temple, and we’ll be practicing meditation in one of the empty rooms.”

“An expert at contemplation is teaching you meditation…? This is getting kinda confusing.”

“It’s important give my body time to recover after a run like that, after all! If I want to shine my brightest, I have to train myself physically and mentally!” Pecora enthusiastically explained.

There’s a lot to a training camp, huh?

The meditation session ended up consisting of us simply sitting in chairs and closing our eyes. That, I figured, would be pretty easy even for someone who was tired out…but the moment the thought crossed my mind, I felt something lightly smack my shoulder. It was the priest, who had turned out to be a one-eyed demon.

“You were just thinking this would be easy, weren’t you?” said the priest. “I could tell you think little of meditation. You must have discipline!”

Called out in an instant! “U-understood! Sorry!” I yelped.

“Enthusiasm and vigor are not necessary to meditation, but it is also far more than simply sitting in a chair. Heed my words, and do better!” the priest said, whacking me on the shoulder again. The priest’s bludgeoning instrument of choice was a club-like wooden stick, by the way—definitely not something an ordinary human would want to use for this. If someone less tough than me or Pecora got hit with it, it could’ve done some real damage.

Then again, Pecora’s taking this so seriously, I doubt she’s gonna get hit at all…or so I thought, but in the end, she got hit way more than even I did.

“You must quell your spirit, Your Majesty! You cannot force your way through meditation with enthusiasm alone!”

“Ugh… This is quite challenging, isn’t it?” Pecora grumbled.

Oh, I think I see. Sitting still and calming your mind was the exact opposite of what an idol was usually supposed to do. I’d assumed idols would be good at this sort of thing since their jobs required so much intense concentration, but apparently, it wasn’t so simple. Then again, I guess she wouldn’t need intensive training if this was something that came naturally to her. Hopefully she’ll make the most of it.

Personally speaking, I found the meditation quite nice. I didn’t mind going through this every once in a while. I knew plenty of people who proselytized various religions, from Goodly Godly Godness to Misjantie the pine spirit, but if any of them told me they were leading a meditation session my first impulse would be to not trust them. In fact, I had the distinct feeling I had fewer idle, worldly thoughts holding me back from meditating than any of them did.

Anyway, Pecora seemed to recover her stamina over the course of the session. By the time we were finished, she didn’t look nearly as exhausted as she had after her run.

“Okay, what’s next?” I asked. “Is it finally time for you to sing?”

“Next, I’ll be going cliff scaling!”

“Oh, right. I guess that would be the logical next step… No, it’s not!”

Of all the exercises to make sound like a casual, everyday sort of deal!

“Well, I can’t not scale the cliff after coming all the way out to this training lodge! In the old days, every idol worth her salt would’ve scaled at least one cliff single-handedly!”

“That sounds totally insane, but considering we’re talking about demon idols, I guess I can’t really argue!”

I had to admit: There really was a convenient, downright precipitous cliffside towering right in front of us when we stepped out from the training lodge. I would’ve believed the building was constructed specifically for the sake of climbing it, in fact.

“I’ll be climbing this cliff with my bare hands,” said Pecora. “Flying is banned, of course! Seeing as you’re here, would you like to climb as well, Elder Sister?”

“…I’ll pass, thanks.”

The way I saw it, climbing a sheer cliff wasn’t something you did just because you happened to be in the area. It’s not like falling off it would hurt me, but that wasn’t the problem to begin with. Knowing that it would be safe didn’t make me any more interested in giving it a try.

“Well then, I’ll just climb on my own! It’s time to shine onward and upward!”

Pecora started slowly but surely scaling the cliffside, taking her time to find stable footholds and steadily work her way upward. I stayed behind on the ground, watching her all the while.

“It’s not that I think her effort is a bad thing, but it really does feel like she’s focusing all that energy in the wrong direction,” I muttered to myself.

Unfortunately, Pecora’s sincerity made it awkward to call out all the ways in which her training was weird. She had absolute confidence that what she was doing would help her, and for all I knew, that sort of idealism was exactly what an idol like her needed.

Still, though… This really is weird, right…?

“Quite so. She’s going about this in entirely the wrong way.”

A voice rang out from behind me, and I spun around to find myself face-to-face with a woman I knew quite well.

“Fatla! When did you get here?!” I exclaimed.

“Lower your voice, please,” said Fatla. “Her Majesty is unaware that I’ve followed her here. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep my presence a secret.”

That made sense. She would’ve come out to say hello sooner if she wasn’t hiding, presumably.

“Lady Beelzebub ordered me to keep an eye on her,” Fatla explained. “I was getting some work done in one of the lodge’s empty rooms until just a moment ago. Her Majesty hasn’t bothered to check into every single unoccupied chamber, so it hasn’t been difficult to remain unnoticed.”

“Makes sense, I guess.”

Beelzebub was probably worried about Pecora—why else would she have sent a chaperone to keep watch over her? I was more curious about the part where Fatla had said very clearly that Pecora was training in the wrong way, though.

“So, do you think Pecora’s acting strange right now?” I asked.

“I certainly won’t criticize her for taking something seriously for once. That being said, the approach she’s chosen is questionable—and being the eminent figure she is, only a very small number of people are able to point that fact out to her in so many words,” Fatla said as her gaze followed Pecora up the cliffside. “If you believe her methods are unquestionably mistaken, then perhaps you’d be willing to tell her so? I believe she would be far more inclined to listen if the advice came from you, rather than me or Lady Beelzebub.”

“I mean, sure, I guess. How should I break it to her, though…?”

“That, I’ll leave to you to decide. I doubt the advice would reach her if it wasn’t delivered in your own words, after all. She’s so used to our scolding that she’s likely to dismiss it out of hand,” Fatla replied. “Well then—I’ll be returning to my work now,” she added, then made her way back toward the building.

I guess now I’ve got an assignment to work on over this training camp, too.

“So, how should I do this…? If I just tell her something’s weird about how she’s training, then she’ll definitely ask me what I mean by weird, and then I’ll be stuck.”

I didn’t have a firm and clear explanation for what exactly the problem was, so at this point, there wasn’t much I could tell her. I had broad, general feelings about her methods, but I just couldn’t figure out how to put them into words, and until I worked that out, talking to her would be a dead end.

I guess I’ll just keep watching over her, for now. If I can’t come up with a concrete way to explain the problem, then I’ll take that as a sign it wasn’t a huge problem in the first place.

Meanwhile, while I was brooding, Pecora had nearly made it to the top of the cliffside. The demon king had proven herself yet again—her basic physical abilities were incredibly polished, which made her an excellent climber on top of all her other skills. It pretty much went without saying she didn’t break her “no flying” rule, either, and she soon reached the top without ever putting her wings to work. I could tell she was shouting something down at me—most likely I did it! or something along those lines—so I shouted “Good job!” back up at her.

Cliff climbing ended up being the last exercise on Pecora’s schedule that day—she’d reserved the after-dinner period for free time. I’d been in free-time mode all day, of course, so that didn’t make much of a difference to me.

Normally when Pecora had free time in my vicinity, she’d use it to act as clingy as possible, but this time, she brought out a notebook and started scribbling away instead. I asked what she was writing, and she explained that she was brainstorming lyrics for her songs.

“Idol work really is tough, huh?” I commented. I wasn’t just saying it, either—it seemed like there was an endless series of tasks for Pecora to get done. I’d always thought as long as you could sing and dance, you’d have the job more or less covered, but apparently, that was shallow of me to assume.

“This is just another task I need to get done if I want to make the Pecorists happy!”

I was impressed by her dedication to putting her fans first. I really was…but at the same time, something about it was bothering me a little. I just couldn’t figure out what. It wasn’t like ignoring her fans could possibly be a better option, after all.

Just what is it that’s bothering me so much, then?

That evening, I was surprised once again when Pecora didn’t try to sneak her way into my bed. She minded her manners and fell asleep under her own covers instead. She was behaving so well, it was actually starting to scare me a little.

In a weird sort of way, watching Pecora act so well-mannered was making me feel wistful. Could it be I’ve started looking forward to her being a bit of a nuisance sometimes…? That can’t possibly be right, can it? That’s the first step along the road to hell!

Worrying about Pecora was one thing, but indulging her was another. I knew I had to be very careful not to cross that line without realizing it…

On the second day of Pecora’s training camp, she once again devoted herself single-mindedly to her exercises. The third day played out in much the same way—Pecora went for a run and climbed up the cliff all over again.

For my part, I ended up waiting at the bottom of the cliffside with a chilled bottle of juice to pass her when she returned. I’d fallen firmly into the role of her manager.

“Thank you very much, Elder Sister… I’ve gotten much better at finding good handholds on the cliffside recently!” said Pecora.

“I guess that’s better than if you were getting worse at it, but does that sort of improvement actually help you at all…?” I wondered out loud.

“Okay, it’s time for meditation next! And then, running!”

That’s when it hit me. I finally realized what had been bothering me the whole time. The nagging feeling that something was wrong finally opened up into a clear picture of the problem.

“I really got whacked around during yesterday’s session, so I’ll have to step it up today!” said Pecora.

All right—I’ve gotta put a stop to this.

“I think you should call off the meditation today, Pecora,” I said.

“Huh?” Pecora grunted. “I’d understand calling off my run if I was too tired for it, but I can’t see any reason why I’d have trouble with my meditation session.”

“There’s no point. Even if you go, you’ll just get hit with a stick the whole time. That won’t accomplish anything. You don’t understand the most important thing you should be working toward right now.”

Pecora looked bewildered. She didn’t seem to have any clue why I would say something like that to her. “But Elder Sister, I came here because I needed to step up my idol training routine! It’s not like I’ve been running from my responsibilities! And sure, my training regimen is hard, but it’s not nearly tough enough to make me hurt myself! Why in the world would I call it off?!”

Right? This is exactly why it took me so long to figure out the answer. It would’ve been even harder for Pecora herself to notice, most likely.

“Pecora, you haven’t been smiling at all since you started this training camp.”

I took hold of Pecora’s shoulders with both hands. “If you’re not smiling, then you’re nothing like your usual self!” I asserted.

“Oh… Oooh!” Pecora yelped with surprise. It seemed my words had helped her realize something—she hadn’t noticed her own lack of a smile at all until now.

“The usual Pecora, well…she gets up to a lot of mischief, sure, but she always seems to enjoy every minute of her schemes. That’s why everyone else enjoys being around you, too. But right now, I think you’re lacking that essential element.”

If her problem had been a lack of skill, then the only choice would’ve been to practice and polish her technique until she improved. That would’ve been a problem she’d have to put the work in to overcome…but a lack of skill wasn’t the issue Pecora was facing.

“I don’t think taking your work seriously means you’re not allowed to have any fun while you do it. That sounds obvious when you put it into words, but I get the feeling you’ve been a little mixed up about it these past few days, haven’t you?” I continued.

Pecora paused, then reached up and gave her cheeks a slap with both hands. “All right—let’s do this,” she very quietly muttered to herself. It looked like she’d successfully switched over into a new mindset.

“Thank you so much for your advice, Elder Sister!” Pecora said with a grin as big as any I’d ever seen on her.

“Oh, but for what it’s worth, I don’t know if my opinion actually means much—you’ll have to decide on that for yourself,” I added. “I’m just an amateur, after all. I’m not even one of your hardcore fans.”

“No, no, it was very helpful. I see now I had lost sight of the bigger picture. I focused all of my attention on forcing myself to shine through training, never considering the alternatives,” said Pecora. Her words were still a little stiff, but I could tell by the look on her face that she’d gone back to her usual self. “And now that I’ve found a new mindset, I think it’s time for me to go to my meditation session! ”

Pecora skipped her way into the meditation chamber. This time, she didn’t get smacked by the priest’s stick even once…or, well, I’d love to say that’s how it went. That would’ve been a really nice way to wrap up the story, but she actually ended up getting smacked all over the place.

“You mustn’t hum while meditating, Your Majesty! You’re far too relaxed!”

Yeah, fair enough. That’d get you whacked for sure. It’s downright rude by any standard.

“Tee-hee! I just came up with a great melody, and I couldn’t help myself! ” said Pecora. From the look of things, she wasn’t planning on abandoning her worldly thoughts at all. She kept that attitude up, too, and her meditation time ended without her ever taking it too terribly seriously.

“So, you were planning on running next, right, Pecora? What are you thinking now?”

“I’m canceling the run. It’s exhausting, so I don’t want to!”

You don’t want to tire yourself out? Now that’s a reason I can get behind. It suits my principles perfectly!

“Sounds good to me! Taking it easy is the way to go,” I said. I knew none of her fans would want to watch their idol work herself until she fell to pieces either.

“And besides, practicing my singing would be way more worthwhile than going running in the first place! ”

Yep! It sure would be…is what I almost said, but I just couldn’t help myself from going a bit further.

“In that case, maybe you should’ve filled your training schedule with actually worthwhile exercises from the start!”

I knew there was something wrong with this training camp on a fundamental level… She really should’ve been training her singing and stuff—the actual basics of being an idol! It’s not like Pecora didn’t have plenty of stamina in the first place! All that exercise was pointless!

Just then, I heard a third set of footsteps approaching us.

“I see you’ve had a breakthrough, Your Highness,” Fatla said as she stepped into sight.

Huh? Wait, wasn’t she supposed to be hiding?

“Oh, Fatla! I didn’t realize you were staying with us,” said Pecora. “That must mean Miss Beelzebub ordered you here, I take it?”

“Essentially, yes,” Fatla said, spilling the beans without hesitation. “And of course, my presence being discovered will put my superior in an inconvenient position.”

A devilish smirk came across Pecora’s face. “Oh, I see! In that case, I suppose Miss Beelzebub is due for a little punishment, isn’t she?”

Oof. You should’ve sent someone a little more obedient on this mission, Beelzebub. Now there’s no way you’re getting out of being messed with—and it’s going to be rough this time.

“You’re still supposed to have one day left in your training camp schedule, right? Are you gonna stick it out?” I asked.

“Of course!” said Pecora. “As for what I’ll be doing today—I think we should have a pajama party, Elder Sister!”

“…Huh?”

This conversation just took one heck of a turn!

“I had a feeling it might come to this, so I brought pajamas for us just in case!” Pecora continued.

“Riiight. So, just out of curiosity, can I opt out of—”

“Nope! ” Pecora said as she latched onto my arm.

Fatla, by the way, had distanced herself from the two of us while I wasn’t paying attention to her. “This is out of my jurisdiction, so I’ll excuse myself,” she called back to me.

We’ve got a runner!

It was nice that Pecora had gone back to her usual self, but I was also quickly remembering how much of a hassle dealing with the usual Pecora could be…

Pecora’s new mindset had resolved all of her worries in one fell swoop. The event itself, however, was still to come. She had to get through her concert before I could say she’d really overcome her difficulties.

On the day of the concert, I made my way with my family to the large, coliseum-like venue it was scheduled to take place in. Pecora had personally invited us, so we were given seats that let us see the stage with perfect clarity—specifically, seats in a VIP room.

To use the terminology of my past life, Pecora was putting on a show in a dome-style concert hall. The place was packed, which was no surprise, seeing as the featured singer was both an idol and the local head of state…though when I put it into words like that, it struck me just how strange it was for a head of state to moonlight as a performer.

“Falfa’s so excited to hear Miss Pecora sing! ” Falfa exclaimed.

“Shalsha is aware that historically, politicians have hosted festivities of this nature in order to distract their citizens from pressing issues of national concern. Could that be the case this time as well?” Shalsha mused. Her perspective was a lot more skeptical than her sister’s, but I was confident Pecora wasn’t going for anything that crafty this time. There was no way she’d have worried so much about shining on stage if all of this was just politics for her.

Sandra, by the way, must have either been worn out by the trip to the venue or didn’t have much interest in the concert to begin with, and she had fallen asleep before it even started. Most of the time only people who were really into the performer would bother showing up at a concert like this, but since we’d been invited as a family, we were a bit of an exception to that rule.

Oh, and Sandra wasn’t the only one of us who’d passed out like a little kid. Halkara had gotten completely wasted on booze from the concession stand and was down for the count, leaving Laika to look after her.

“Ugggh… I didn’t pace myself,” Halkara moaned.

“You never do. You have an exceptionally poor understanding of your limits… Please lie down for the time being,” said Laika, who seemed appalled by Halkara’s antics.

“I thought since we had a private room, nobody would mind even if I did drink myself under the table,” replied Halkara.

Actually, I mind you getting drunk no matter where we are. I guess I should’ve expected this from the family members who don’t have any interest in the actual concert, though.

“Hey, Flatorte—are there any minstrels who put on shows like Pecora’s?” I asked. Flatorte was the most knowledgeable of all of us when it came to music, so I thought she might be able to satisfy my curiosity.

“No, Mistress, this is something completely different,” said Flatorte. Her expression looked a little stiff, and she crossed her arms as well. “There are all sorts of minstrels in the world, but they all have one thing in common: They play instruments. The lute is an old standby, of course, but there are minstrels who play all sorts of other instruments as well. The demon king’s performance doesn’t involve one, though—none of the performers on stage play any instruments at all. That’s why she doesn’t count as a minstrel.”

“Oh, okay… I guess that makes sense.”

I guess calling her a minstrel would be like calling a single person with a pair of castanets a rock band, or calling someone with a recorder an orchestra? It’d be straining some definitions, that’s for sure.

“Or at least, that’s how people used to see it,” Flatorte added.

“Huh…? You weren’t finished?”

Don’t tell me I’ve triggered a really, really long explanation…?

“You know Big Sis Flatorte’s a minstrel supremacist, right? That was a pretty touchy question to ask her…,” said Rosalie. She knew a thing or two about minstrels, too, though she wasn’t nearly as well-versed as Flatorte. Anyway, I had clearly stepped on a conversational land mine.

“Hmph—that’s not true at all, Rosalie!” Flatorte grumbled. “Yes, there was a time when everyone firmly believed performers who only sang couldn’t be counted as minstrels—but a hundred and fifty years ago, a movement sprang up claiming the voice is an instrument in its own right! Nowadays performances like that are thought of as being in the idol-style subset of the performance subgenre of minstrelsy. In other words, nobody would complain about them calling themselves minstrels!”

Is it just me, or have I sparked a full-blown debate over the definition of minstrels?

“Even I, the great Flatorte, once thought minstrel events should be for true minstrels, and performers who couldn’t play an instrument at all had no place in them. Nowadays, though, I’ve realized that I was being a musical extremist! Plus, letting performance-style minstrels into the fold means people who only like performance-style acts will come to events and learn about other types of minstrels as a result! It benefits the whole industry in the end!”

I knew for a fact nobody would understand my take regarding Flatorte’s argument, so I muttered it internally instead of saying it out loud: You’re just describing rock fans who got conflicted about idols putting on performances at rock festivals now, aren’t you? I didn’t know all that much about rock or idols, but weirdly enough, I did know about that particular social conflict. Must’ve read an article about it or something…

At long last, it was time for the concert to begin. The stage was lit up with magical spotlights, and Pecora leapt into view wearing a flashy but adorable costume.

“Hello, Pecorists, one and all! Let’s make this a night to remember!”

Pecora spoke into a magic item that was more or less just a microphone, so we could hear her clearly all the way from our private box seats. We could also hear the roaring, raucous cheers of the rest of the audience—though they were so loud, it might be better to say we could feel them rather than hear them. It was like an aural earthquake.

“Okay, it’s time for my first song: ‘A Blood-Red Fall from Grace’!”

Do all of her songs’ names really have to be so freaky? I wondered. Nobody in her audience seemed to be scared, though, and the concert hall was once again smothered in their cheers. Demons were pumping their fists and singing along with wild abandon. It struck me that seeing this many demons act so unified was probably a rare and valuable experience.

After ‘A Blood-Red Fall from Grace,’ Pecora sang ‘I’ll Subjugate You ,’ ‘Perk Your Guts Up,’ and ‘You and Me, Idolatry’—one demonically-titled song after another. The songs themselves, in contrast, sounded overwhelmingly bright and cheery.

Anyway, I hadn’t seen very many of Pecora’s concerts, so I didn’t have a good point of comparison…

…but it seemed to me she was doing an incredible job of working her audience into a frenzy.

At the very least, the idea she wasn’t shining enough to keep working as an idol felt downright absurd now that I was seeing her in action.

Even Flatorte, who hadn’t acted very interested in the event, had started swaying in time to the music. She just couldn’t help herself from paying attention when music was concerned, and even though idol stuff wasn’t in her specific wheelhouse, she probably still knew a lot more about it than I did.

Falfa and Shalsha were singing along to the music. Most of Pecora’s songs had simple, easy-to-understand choruses, so it was simple for them to pick up the tunes as they went along. Sandra had woken up before I knew it as well, and she was bobbing up and down as she gazed down at the stage. Even Halkara, who hadn’t seemed to be in any condition to listen to music, was getting into the performance—though that, unfortunately, was all it took to push her past her drunken limits.

“Ugh… I-it’s coming back up again… Wh-where’re the restrooms…?”

“How is it even possible for the president of a pharmaceutical company to have as little self-restraint as you do?!”

“I shall accompany her,” said Laika. “Bear with your suffering for just a moment longer, Miss Halkara.”

“S-sorry…for the…trouble…”

Laika and Halkara went off to find the restrooms…and a little while later, Halkara came back feeling much better after puking her guts out. I really had to wonder why she hadn’t just done that in the first place.

Yeah, this settles it. If a family of people who aren’t even her fans can get this worked up, it’s safe to say the so-called Pecorists in the crowd are losing their minds right about now.

Around the time the twelfth song of her set came to an end, Pecora made an announcement.

“Seeing as this is the lucky thirteenth song of the night, I’d like to perform it as a two-person unit with a very special guest star! ”

Pecora flashed a perfectly brilliant smile, and I was completely unsurprised when a moment later, Beelzebub stepped onto the stage clad in a classic idol’s outfit.

You sure got the short end of this stick, huh, Beelzebub?

“I never should’ve sent someone to check in on that wretched training camp…,” Beelzebub moaned. Her consideration had come back around to bite her in the rear.

Of course, the moment the music kicked off, Beelzebub’s attitude pivoted. I had no clue when she’d found the time to practice her dancing, but she pulled it off without a hitch. There were even parts of the choreography that involved her flying, which I couldn’t imagine was easy to coordinate well.

Oh, hey! I think I’ve heard this song before.

“Miss Beelzebub and I will be singing this one together! Get ready for ‘Love Triangle, Black Magic Circle’! I made sure to pick out a song we’ve sung together in the past, seeing as she didn’t have much time to practice it!”

“Your Majesty, please! You didn’t need to tell them that!”

Yep, she’s one hundred percent messing with Beelzebub!

It was astonishing how well-polished and coordinated Beelzebub’s dancing came across, considering. Her physical abilities were pretty strong, so maybe that made dancing easier for her?

Beelzebub stuck around for three songs in a row before she finally got to make her exit. With that, it was time for Pecora to move into the latter half of her set list. From that point onward, it felt like the songs got even more intense and enjoyable than they’d been before.

I had a feeling this was the answer Pecora had found for herself:

She would do everything she possibly could to enjoy herself on stage.

That, it seemed, was the direction Pecora had decided upon after learning from her training camp.

And, when the concert was nearing its final stretch…

“Now then—I have an announcement for all the Pecorists out there in the crowd!”

The excitement in the venue was at its peak as Pecora spoke to her audience.

“The truth is, I’ve been thinking of putting my idol career on hold and going on a temporary hiatus! ”

Pecora’s cheerful tone struck a sharp contrast with the restless stir that ran through the crowd. That was only natural—any artist would get a reaction like that if they announced they were stepping back mid-concert. That said, she had to tell her fans somehow. Pecora wasn’t the sort of performer who’d leave them in the dark.

The one thing that struck me as strange was how cheerful she’d made the announcement sound…and my confusion only lasted for a moment.

“Buuuuuut, things happened, and I realized there’s no need for me to go on break after all! I’ll be shining on stage for you just like always, as long as you turn up to see me!”

Oh, so that’s her angle! I thought as the loudest cheer of the evening rocked the concert hall. Pecora had overcome the wall she’d found herself up against!

When Pecora finished her final, twenty-third song of the day, I gave her such a long and loud round of applause my hands hurt by the time I was done. The whole venue joined in, and the sound of our clapping was deafening.

I’m so, so happy for you, Pecora!

Before long, however, another idol-related problem would arise. One day, Beelzebub arrived at the house in the highlands looking utterly exhausted.

“Here. Her Majesty bade me give you and your family these tickets…,” she said as she handed over a massive sheaf of papers.

“Isn’t this a little too many of them?” I asked. “Does she want me to resell them or something?”

“Nay—she’s dramatically expanded the number of performances she’ll be putting on this year! Our government work is at a standstill! Please tell her to cut back!”

I guess in the end, good things only stay good in moderation…

WE WENT TO A LEVIATHAN LICENSE RENEWAL

It was already a cloudy, gloomy day, but suddenly, the sky grew another thirty percent darker than it had been. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve thought that night had fallen early for some reason, but I had a pretty clear idea of what was actually going on. One glance at the sky later, I knew I was right: We had a leviathan visitor hovering overhead.

“I think that’s Vania, probably?” I muttered to myself.

Fatla and Vania were really hard to tell apart when they were in their full leviathan forms. They weren’t like cats where you could tell them apart by color scheme—there was no such thing as a calico or tabby leviathan. Of course, they were sisters and looked pretty similar even when they were in human form, so maybe it was a given they’d be hard to tell apart as leviathans as well.

I was on my way to Flatta to do some shopping when I caught sight of the leviathan, but when I made it to town, I found the villagers weren’t making a big deal about their gargantuan visitor. The people of Flatta had gotten totally used to leviathans stopping by from time to time, and eventually, the massive presence in the sky simply vanished without fanfare.

I finished my shopping, returned home, and found Vania sipping a cup of tea while she waited for me. Halkara, who’d taken the day off from her work at her factory, was sitting across the table from her. I figured the two of them had been chatting.

“Oh, Miss Azusa! It’s so nice to see you!” said Vania.

“You too,” I replied. “That’s an interesting tea you’re drinking, isn’t it? I don’t think I’ve ever smelled anything quite like it.”

“Oh, yes! Seeing as I’m about to ask you for something very inconvenient, I decided to bring some nice tea along to make up for it.”

Is it just me, or did she slip something very important into an otherwise innocuous line just now?

“What exactly are you here for today…?” I asked apprehensively. Vania never stopped by to visit unless she had business with one of us, and the fact that she’d outright told me it would be inconvenient this time had me pretty on edge.

“Seeing as this is going to be such a hassle for you, I went ahead and brewed the tea myself!” said Vania.

“Forget the tea. What’s this about?” I pressed.

“Oh, it’s nothing too major! You won’t get hurt or injured at all, I can promise you that!”

“That leaves so much left for me to worry about!”

Why is she acting so carefree when she’s the one openly telling me she’s going to drag me into trouble? She could at least act a little apologetic! I think Beelzebub’s shamelessness is starting to infect the other demons who work with her…

Vania set what looked like some sort of official document down on the table. “This should explain everything,” she said.

I gave the papers a look. They were written in the demons’ language with stiff, formal phrasing.

“This is pretty tough to read, and I can only get the gist of it…but it looks like it’s about getting permission for something? Is this asking me to come to another award ceremony? No, that can’t be it—it feels way too unfriendly for that. This is like something you’d get from a governmental bureau, not a letter of invitation.”

That being said, I certainly didn’t think I’d done anything that would get me suspected of committing a crime. Plus, you’d think Vania would be way more panicked if she’d been sent to deliver a subpoena to me. If I had to guess based on her attitude alone, I’d say the letter was about something incredibly pointless.

“Well, you see, this is an official summons for a license renewal.”

“A license renewal?” Halkara repeated with a blank stare. For once, she was giving the baffled reaction before me.

“Wait, but I don’t even have a car! And even if I did, why would the demons be calling me in for license paperwork?” I protested. I didn’t live in the demon lands, so you’d think the human government would be the ones who’d be handling that.

“Oh, no—I meant a leviathan license,” said Vania. “In other words, it’s asking my sister and me to come in to renew our licenses!”

“That makes so much more sense!”

Leviathans really were vehicles, in every functional sense, so at first I accepted the explanation at face value…but as my surprise faded, I realized it was actually still very strange. People rode leviathans, sure, but it’s not like they drove them. Leviathans, obviously, drove themselves—if “drove” was even the right word for it. That’s like saying that people were driving themselves whenever they walked around.

Halkara seemed to realize how strange this all was as well. “Wait,” she said, “if these are your personal leviathan licenses, why would you need anyone else to go with you for the renewal process?”

“It’s recommended that anyone who rides a leviathan on a regular basis go with that leviathan to the licensing center for their renewal, just for good measure,” Vania explained. “Considering how often the residents of the house in the highlands ride us, you fall into that category.”

She was certainly right that we traveled by leviathan from time to time. It was one of the more practical ways for a group as big as ours to get around together. Considering that most people spent their entire lives without riding a leviathan even once, our family were probably considered frequent riders.

“Oh, I see! So it’s like how people who work aboard ships need to go through training courses, even if they don’t get an actual pilot’s license?” Halkara said with a nod. Apparently, she’d finally reached an understanding of what was going on.

“It’s not compulsory, of course, and even if you do decide to come, it’s perfectly fine for just one of you to attend as a representative of your family,” said Vania.

“I mean, it’s probably not going to be a superlong process or anything, right? I guess I wouldn’t mind tagging along, but do you really think it’s going to be helpful…?” I asked.

“The more you know about leviathans, the less likely you are to get caught up in a freak accident!”

“What would a freak leviathan accident even look like…?”

“You know…when you put it that way, that’s a very good question. I guess they might teach you how to not fall off?”

“That’s way too basic to be worthwhile!”

If not even an actual leviathan like Vania can come up with a good hypothetical, then maybe this is going to be totally pointless after all…? I guess the only way to find out is to go see for myself. What do I have to lose?

“All right, I get the picture,” I said. “I’ll come along as our family’s representative.”

I was sure the license renewal procedure itself couldn’t possibly take longer than a day. This would be a nice, quick, there-and-back sort of trip.

“In that case, I think I’ll come along as well! I have the day off anyway,” Halkara said as she raised her hand. “Sometimes unusual experiences like this can inspire new and innovative ideas for your business, after all!”

“Ooh, you’re sounding like a real company president now!” I commented.

When she put it that way, it was all but certain only a very small number of people had gotten to spectate a leviathan’s license renewal. Maybe it would give her the spark she needed to come up with a new product.

That settled it: Halkara and I would be tagging along with Vania.

“So, when are you going to get the renewal done?” I asked.

Vania glanced away awkwardly and took a long, loud slurp of her tea. She was definitely stalling.

“Well, the deadline is actually quite close, so if at all possible I was hoping you’d be able to leave for the demon lands immediately,” she finally said.

“You really need to be more responsible about this stuff, you know that?!”

“Yeaaah, I really should’ve gotten it done on one of my days off a while back, honestly! I just kept putting it off and putting it off until I didn’t have a choice anymore…”

I guess every world has its fair share of people who procrastinate on renewing their licenses until the absolute last possible second…

That same evening, Halkara and I set off for the demon lands aboard Vania.

“Oooh, look, the town’s all lit up! It looks so pretty from up here,” said Halkara. She was gazing out over the landscape below us as she sipped from a wine glass. I had to admit it was a strangely fitting look for a company president like her.

“You sure are taking it easy, aren’t you?” I commented.

“I am! You can’t just work and work forever without taking a breather now and then. This was actually perfectly timed for me.”

Considering she was actually drinking moderately this time, I was more or less convinced. Halkara was enjoying herself in a truly carefree sort of way.

“Plus, riding on a leviathan means you don’t have to worry about sinking mid-trip! It’s so much safer and more relaxing to travel this way!” Halkara added.

“I really wish you wouldn’t tempt fate like that…,” I grumbled.

“Come on—the whole point of this license renewal is to make sure accidents don’t happen, right? Plus, we’re not even the ones piloting right now!”

I couldn’t argue with that, but it didn’t stop me from feeling a slight touch of anxiety. I’ll just be over here, praying it really isn’t possible for a leviathan to end up shipwrecked…

Just then, the ground began to tremble.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Halkara yelped as she tottered around, just barely staying upright.

“What the heck?! What’s going on, Vania?” I asked.

“Ding-dong!”

A noise rang out through what almost seemed like a PA system. That was how Vania always talked when people were riding around on her. That “ding-dong,” by the way, wasn’t a real bell—Vania had just said it herself.

“Sorry about the turbulence! I just remembered some work I was supposed to have gotten done, and the shock made me jump a little. Rest assured that nothing’s wrong!”

“Oh, well, that’s reassuring—No, it’s not! If nothing’s wrong, then don’t start shaking out of nowhere!”

I’m starting to understand why having people go through this license renewal process from time to time is actually pretty important…

In the end, we arrived safely at what I presumed was the license renewal center. The center itself, by the way, was located quite nearby to the place where Pecora had gone for her recent training camp. In other words, it was in a wasteland. It was less featureless than the region the camp had been in, though—it was way hillier here, and I could even see a few mountains.

I guess you wouldn’t put a license renewal center in the middle of a bustling city. Makes sense it’d be located out in the middle of nowhere.

Before we touched down, we were treated to a stunning spectacle: several other leviathans circling in the air, dominating the sky around us.

“Oh, wow, this is incredible! I feel like I’m losing all sense of scale!” Halkara exclaimed. She was so excited, she almost sounded like a little kid. The sight had taken my breath away as well—it was like witnessing a school of whales all breach the surface of the ocean at once.

“Lots of leviathans gather up here, which is why the office had to be built in such a wide-open place,” Vania explained through the pseudo-intercom.

“That makes sense,” I said. “If there’s one thing this place has, it’s open space…”

“There sure are a lot of us here today, though… The others must have waited until the last second to get their licenses renewed, too.”

“I guess some things are universal, no matter what race you are or what world you live in…”

Vania touched down and let us off near the license renewal center. As we approached the building, I saw a crowd of demons—mostly leviathans, I assumed. There were a few other demons in the group as well. Most likely, they were frequent leviathan riders like us.

When we made it to the renewal center’s entrance, we found a familiar face waiting for us: Vania’s older sister, Fatla.

“I hope you had a pleasant journey,” Fatla said as we approached her. “I agreed to renew my license along with my sister, so I will be going through the procedure today as well.”

“Oh, I see,” I said. “I guess if Vania had the day off to come handle this, it’d make sense for you to be off, too.”

Knowing Fatla, I’d figured she would’ve handled her renewal far sooner than her sister. I assumed she’d only waited in order to deal with it on the same day as Vania.

We headed inside, following signs that had what I assumed was LICENSE RENEWAL SITE written on them in the demon language. Eventually, we ended up in a classroom of some kind.

“Do they teach lessons here? Like, about safe driving and stuff like that?” I asked.

“I’m impressed you’re aware of that part of the procedure, Miss Azusa,” said Fatla. “Before the lessons, however, we’ll have to take a simple written exam.”

“Ugh… Those are a thing here, too?” I grunted dejectedly. I was here voluntarily, so it wouldn’t matter if I bombed the exam, but taking a test wasn’t an exciting prospect.

“Ahhh! The written exam!” exclaimed Vania. “I forgot all about it… This is such a drag…”

“Why are you surprised by this?! Haven’t you had to get your license renewed before?!” I asked.

“I have, yes. We’re required to renew our license once a century, and I always end up forgetting about the exam by the time a hundred years pass by.”

Considering how long of a time span that is, I guess that’s actually a pretty understandable problem to have.

“Rest assured that no matter what score you receive on the test, the two of you won’t be stripped of your right to fly, Miss Azusa and Miss Halkara,” said Fatla. “Oh, and the test is also available translated into the human tongue, as of recently.”

“Understood! Though seeing as we’re doing this at all, we might as well aim for a perfect score!” said Halkara. She seemed weirdly motivated, considering it didn’t matter what score she got.

I guess it’s important to find the fun in life, no matter what you’re doing.

We each found our assigned seats and were given our test papers.

All right, let’s do this!

For the following questions, please write “T” if the statement is true, or “F” if the statement is false.

Even if you feel tired, it’s still perfectly safe to fly as long as you’re only traveling a short distance.

Oh boy, here we go! This is one of those questions where the right answer’s obvious the second you read it! It’s always gonna be the answer that makes you look like a Goody Two-shoes! There’s no way they’d teach you it’s okay to fly a little bit even if you’re exhausted in a state-sponsored driving school, after all.

I marked my answer as “F” without hesitation.

If you encounter another demon mid-flight, there’s no need to yield to them.

You’re definitely supposed to give other demons right of way, so this one’s false, too. Is it just me, or is this really easy? Anyone could ace this test so far!

The next question was accompanied by what looked like a drawing of a dragon in silhouette.

Huh. Is this one gonna be about dragons?

Identify the silhouetted creature from the following options.

1. Dragon

2. Wyvern

3. Drake

And suddenly, it’s not so easy anymore!

How are you even supposed to tell those three apart? I feel like there’s usually a pretty big size discrepancy between wyverns and dragons, but some dragons are pretty small, too. And what even is the difference between wyverns and drakes in the first place? Are they really different at all?!

I had no clue what the right answer was, so I just circled three. Gotta be a drake. Yep.

The next question once again featured a dragon-like silhouette.

Identify the silhouetted creature in flight from the following options.

1. Forest Dragon

2. Pearl Dragon

3. Blue Dragon

It’s getting even harder!

I don’t even know where I’d start telling the difference between those three… Is there some difference in how they move their wings while they’re flying…?

Any answer seemed as good as the next to me, so I picked number two arbitrarily.

From now on, whenever I don’t know the answer to a multiple choice question, I’ll just pick the middle one. At least I’ll have a one in three chance of lucking my way into getting it right!

Choose the name of the organization that was founded to ensure the safety of leviathans in flight.

1. The World Leviathan Organization

2. The Leviathan Flight Society

3. The Leviathan Central Committee

………

Nope. No clue. Number two it is. Only a leviathan could ever get that question right on purpose.

Choose the name of the leviathan who served under the previous demon king.

1. Ephesais

2. Griviwessop

3. Niisai

And now it’s turning into a history test?!

Choose the first line of the song “Leviathans Soar the Skies.”

1. “Sailing across Nidden Peak”

2. “O passionate youths of Macoree”

3. “Cutting a path through the stormiest skies”

What is this, the leviathan anthem?! Guess I’m going with number two again…

Eventually, the sound of some sort of gong rang out, signaling the test was over. Halkara glanced over at me with a look of desperation on her face.

“Did you know any of the answers, Madam Teacher? It got much, much harder about halfway through, didn’t it?”

“Forget hard—no one who’s not a leviathan would know the answers to any of those questions…”

I was pretty curious how an actual leviathan would feel about a test like that and glanced over at Fatla to find out. She looked completely unperturbed—apparently, it had been a piece of cake for her.

“So, how did you do? I’m a little worried I didn’t make it past the seventy percent cutoff—I might have to retake the written test…”

Vania, on the other hand, seemed to have struggled. Apparently, it took a little more than just being a leviathan to make the test trivial. Was the leviathan license renewal test really that difficult?

“Especially the questions in the second half about the name of a leviathan organization, and the name of that one leviathan who served the last demon king, and the one about some song’s lyrics. Oh, and the one where you had to figure out what a flying creature was just from its silhouette! I had no clue how to solve that one!”

“Those are all the same questions that I got stuck on!” I exclaimed. If an actual leviathan couldn’t answer them, then there was never any hope of me getting them right!

“Every leviathan should know enough to answer questions as simple as those. If you failed, you’ll just have to study up and come again later to retake the test,” said Fatla.

“Ugh… My precious days off… My plans to tour all the most famous shops downtown…”

It doesn’t pay to take a license renewal lightly, that’s for sure…

“By the way, what was the right answer to the one about the lyrics?” asked Vania.

“It was number two, ‘O passionate youths of Macoree,’” replied Fatla.

“Oh! I guess I got it right, then,” I said.

“Oh, what?! That’s amazing, Miss Azusa! Does that mean you’ve studied leviathan culture on top of everything else you do?!”

Vania was astonished, but seeing as I’d just lucked out, all her praise did was embarrass me. “No, no, it was just a lucky guess! I had no clue what the answer was, so I picked one at random,” I admitted.

“Ugggh,” Vania groaned. “I picked number two on most of the problems I didn’t know, but for some reason that was the one question where I decided to pick number one instead…”

That always seems to happen on written exams, doesn’t it…?

At that point, Fatla stood up from her seat. I hadn’t realized up until then, but all the other leviathans had started filing out of the classroom.

“We’ll be moving to a separate room for the training course,” Fatla explained. “I don’t imagine it will be a particularly interesting lecture for you, but it should also be quite short, at the very least.”

Chalk up another item on the “some things stay the same no matter what world you find yourself in” list.

We arrived and took our seats in another classroom-like chamber, and before long, a leviathan who seemed to be the course’s instructor arrived.

“Good day, everyone,” said the instructor. “I’ve been dispatched from the Leviathan Flight Society to teach this lesson today.”

All right! I thought. That’s another lucky guess—number two was right again!

Vania, meanwhile, muttered, “I got that one wrong, too…” as she slumped over onto her desk. Hopefully this would be a good chance for her to memorize the society’s name, at least.

“Now then, I’d like to start by discussing the principles of safe flying. I’m sure all of you remember the classic safety mnemonic you learned when you first started flying? When in doubt, think back to ‘Leviathans Soar the Skies’ and remember Nidden Peak.”

So that’s why that question was on the test!

• N: Never fall asleep
• I: Increase the Association’s budget, please, Your Majesty Pecora
• D: Don’t fly dangerously
• D: Don’t drink and fly
• E: Eyes on the sky
• N: Never fall asleep

“You’ll note ‘never fall asleep’ is listed twice. Take that as a sign of just how dangerous falling asleep mid-flight truly is.”

They really forced that acronym, didn’t they…? Especially the “I”! Though considering whoever wrote the song definitely wasn’t thinking about its traffic safety applications, I guess they had to work with what they were given.

Vania tilted her head to stare listlessly up at the ceiling.

Oh, right. She sure got that question wrong, didn’t she…?

“Now then—thanks to recent advances in magical technology, we have been able to develop a brief training feature I will now play for you,” said the instructor.

A screen was projected onto the front wall of the classroom, displaying a title card that read HOWTO AVOID LEVIATHAN ACCIDENTS. Next, it transitioned to a video of a leviathan flying through the sky.

“Every day, countless passengers soar through the skies in comfort and security atop the back of a leviathan,” said a narrator who sounded an awful lot like the sort of middle-aged women who tended to manage local bars where I came from. “However, on very rare occasions, one careless leviathan can be all it takes to cause a terrible accident.”

Yep. I’ve definitely seen videos just like this back in my old world…

“This is such an interesting way of teaching a lesson, isn’t it, Madam Teacher? Huh…? Madam Teacher? Why are your eyes so wide? Are you listening?”

“It’s nothing, Halkara. Just had some old memories come back to me all at once, that’s all…”

This really is just like the old educational videos they had us gather up in the gym or the auditorium to watch in elementary and middle school…

“Oh, no,” the leviathan in the video said in such a stiff, wooden monotone, it was obvious they were reading straight from a script. “If I don’t pick up the pace, I’m going to be late! I should fly faster than I usually do… Barely any other demons fly through this region, so I’m sure it won’t be a problem if I speed a little!”

Now there’s some blatant foreshadowing!

The video transitioned into a scene of the leviathan flying closer and closer to a rocky mountainside. I knew right away it was going to crash, and sure enough, the leviathan plowed right into the mountain. I knew it was just a PSA video, but the impact still looked painful enough to make me wince…

“Although the leviathan was entirely unharmed, a portion of the mountain was destroyed. Never forget a leviathan in flight is a lethal weapon under the wrong circumstances!”

The mountain was the casualty in that scenario?! Leviathans really are ridiculously tough!

Next, the video transitioned to an image of a leviathan flying through a clear sky with no obstacles in sight. Just as I was wondering what sort of accident could happen this time, a blue dragon flew onto the scene and started drifting perilously close to the leviathan’s face.

“When flying in certain regions, blue dragons may attempt to harass you. It is very important to ignore their provocations.”

Boy, blue dragons really have awful manners! Who knew leviathans would have to deal with road rage…?

“Remember: Always obey the traffic rules, and your flights will be safe and comfortable, no matter where you go!” the narrator finally concluded, wrapping the video up.

The instructor clapped to reclaim everyone’s attention. “Well then, that brings an end to this course. I’ll be passing out the results of your test momentarily, so please step up to the front when you hear your name. If you scored less than seventy percent, please come back to retake the test at your earliest possible convenience.”

Vania was soon called up to collect her test results. She took one look at the paper, then pumped her fist—apparently, she wouldn’t be retaking it after all. I just barely managed to eke out a score above seventy percent as well, proving that it really was designed so you could make it through by picking the obviously safe answers.

With that, I thought we’d finished up the whole license renewal process…but it turned out there was still one item left in the day’s curriculum.

“This brings us to our final examination of the day. All leviathans in attendance will now proceed to the crash test,” said the instructor leviathan.

Hmm? I’m sorry—“crash test”?

“Each examinee will find a cliff face in the vicinity to collide with at a moderate pace. Everyone who manages to do so without seriously injuring themselves will pass,” the instructor continued.

Now that’s an out-there exam!

“Rest assured that our medical staff is ready and waiting to treat you. Also, any attendees who have accompanied a leviathan for their renewal today should climb aboard and act as passengers during the collision. This will prepare you to react in case of a real accident.”

“Are you crazy?!” Halkara shouted as she shot to her feet. “What if this turns into a real accident?! This is ridiculous!”

Yep. I’m with you on that one…

“Hence the presence of our medical staff. There’s no cause for concern,” said the instructor. “Well, as long as you don’t stand somewhere you might be thrown overboard, that is! Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

That’s not something a licensing renewal official should be saying out loud!

I really had to question what the point of this whole safety check even was if being on a leviathan during an accident was as safe as the instructor claimed…but in the end, Halkara and I got pressured into climbing aboard Vania for her crash test anyway.

“Ugh… I never would’ve come along if I’d known that this would happen,” Halkara said with a weary sigh.

“I know, right…?” I agreed. “It’s times like these when I understand why demons are called demons.”

I never thought I’d end up getting wrapped up in a big leviathan accident like this. To be fair, the leviathan in the video they’d showed us hadn’t seemed particularly bothered by its head-on collision with a mountainside—for them, this wouldn’t be a big deal at all. That being said, knowing the leviathan would be fine didn’t make the prospect of being aboard them for the collision sound any more appealing…

“Ding-dong!” a voice rang out—Vania’s signal that she was about to say something. “Boy, this sure came out of left field, didn’t it? I guess it’s true it’s better for people who ride leviathans to know what being in an accident will be like in advance, though! I’m sure this will be worthwhile!”

“I’d still rather not get involved at all…but I guess it might be an experience worth having, when you put it that way,” I admitted.

“Trust me, it’ll barely be dangerous! You’ll just feel a little jolt, that’s all.”

That jolt’s the part I’m really not looking forward to, actually…

“Okay, I’m gonna run into the cliffside now!”

I knew we were drawing closer and closer, but standing somewhere where I could actually see it would be dangerous, so Halkara and I had retreated into the dining room. Halkara was currently ducking and covering beneath a table.

“This is going to be just like an earthquake, isn’t it? People always say beneath a table is the safest place to be during one of those!” she explained.

I mean, that’s true for ordinary earthquakes, anyway. Will it really work that way in this case, though…?

I wasn’t convinced, so instead of going for a table myself, I decided to cling to one of the walls.

“Here it comes! Three, two, one!”

A dull roar reverberated throughout the dining room, and at the same time, a powerful force seemed to pull me forward. It felt like being in a car when someone slammed on the brakes, and a moment later, the room shuddered. The shuddering itself wasn’t that bad, thankfully.

Yeah, okay—I guess that was pretty safe after all… Wait. Huh?

It took me a moment to realize the table was moving—and Halkara, still hiding beneath, was moving along with it.

“Is it just me, or am I sliding downhill right now?!” exclaimed Halkara.

“It’s definitely not just you! But why…?”

“I feel like I’m on a sinking ship!”

“Now that you mention it, it does feel like this whole place is on an incline all of a sudden…”

I took a few steps forward and nearly fell over.

“Ding-dong! Whoopsies—my bad, everyone! I bounced off the cliffside just a little and got a bit tilted! If it feels like the ground’s facing the wrong direction for you two right now, that’s why!”

Oh, okay… So the deck really is literally on a slant right now. I could levitate whenever I wanted, so it wasn’t much of an issue for me, but Halkara was just going to have to deal with it. In the end, she slid all the way to the door before she managed to stop.

“You okay, Halkara? Do you need healing magic?” I called out.

“I’m fine! Just terrified!” Halkara called back. “I think I’d rather stick to safe rides from now on, thanks!”

“Ding-dong!” Vania’s voice rang out once more. “All right, that’s a wrap, everyone! I’ll be tilting back to my usual orientation now, so watch out!”

A moment later, Halkara tumbled back in the direction she’d just fallen in.

“Gaaah! First up was down, and now it’s up again! Oh no, oh no, oh nooo!”

Before I could reach out and grab her, Halkara had fallen—well, stumbled, really—past me. She was acting exactly like a passenger on a boat that had just been hit by a huge wave.

“You still okay, Halkara?” I asked.

“Yes… I’m not hurt at all…but… Urp…,” Halkara moaned as the color drained from her face. “I think I’m going to be sick. Seasick, I guess…”

“Yeah, no kidding… It really felt like we were on a normal boat for a minute there.”

“Can I be honest? It feels really unfair for me to feel this sick when I haven’t even been drinking.”

“I get that, but there’s not much you can do about it now…”

She’ll have to be extra careful if she ever ends up piloting a sailing ship one of these days.

The license renewal process came to a close, and Vania and Fatla invited us to stop by their house on our way back.

“Thanks so much for coming along with us today! And now, here’s your first course: a nice, light salad, and a cold but spicy soup!” said Vania, who had offered to treat us to a meal.

“Oh, wow, this looks great! Thanks, Vania!” I said.

“Ahh, now this is more like it! Food like this makes life worth living!” said Halkara. She’d been weirdly upbeat in the wake of her near-disaster during the cliff collision incident—apparently, the intense stress had provided something of a mental reset for her.

“I’ve made a few more courses than I usually would today. Look forward to it!” said Vania.

“Will do! Keep ’em coming! Who cares if I eat too much? That’s what Halkara Pharmaceuticals’ stomach medicine is for!”

Yep. She really is in a good mood now.

“I think Miss Halkara could use a training course on moderation,” Fatla muttered with a quiet chuckle.

“C-come on, cut me some slack!” Halkara wailed.

In the end, Halkara didn’t throw up or drink herself into a stupor. Maybe that’s why she had the presence of mind to discuss a relatively serious subject with Fatla, around the time Vania was serving us dessert.

“So, would you happen to know any stores or botanical gardens that deal in medicinal herbs in the demon lands? If there’s anywhere you could introduce me to, I was thinking of stopping by there tomorrow,” Halkara asked.

Fatla’s eyes widened with shock. Apparently, she hadn’t imagined Halkara could be that zealous about her actual job.

After we arrived back at the house in the highlands, Halkara spent a period of time at home instead of going into her factory. It wasn’t that she’d gotten sick of her work—rather, she’d shut herself up in her room, experimenting with some sort of medicine.

I guess she did spend a while looking into medicinal herbs in the demon lands. Maybe the license renewal gave her some inspiration for her work after all?

I didn’t want to risk breaking her concentration, so I tried not to bother her too much, aside from stopping by to bring her a cup of tea every once in a while. Halkara called me her teacher, but the truth was that I’d barely taught her anything at all. She’d been a pro at medicine making since the day we first met, so neither of us tended to pry into the little details of each other’s work.

A few days later, I heard Halkara shout “I did it!” from across the house. I went over to her room to check in on her right away.

“Did what?” I asked as I stepped inside. “Did you finish a new product?”

“Yes!” Halkara excitedly replied. “Riding Miss Vania around gave me just the inspiration I needed! Take a look at this—ta-daa!” she said, holding out a plate with a single, small pill resting on it.

“Okay, first off, ‘ta-daa’ doesn’t tell me much, and second, I can’t tell what medicines do just by looking at them,” I replied. “What’s it for?”

“In short: It’s a medicine that prevents seasickness!”

I clapped my hands together in realization. Suddenly, it all made sense.

“Oooh, I get it! Vania’s flying did make you sick to your stomach…,” I said. Her collision with the cliffside and the way she’d rocked back and forth afterward had been just the sort of motion to induce terrible seasickness.

“I’ve always thought I’d never have to worry about getting sick as long as I kept from drinking too much, but it turns out that even if you’re in perfect health, riding a ship that rocks all over the place can still make you sick! I knew right away I’d have to do something about that—I was determined to find a solution!”

She got weirdly worked up about this, didn’t she…?

“I figured since so many leviathans live in the demon lands, people who ride them might have herbs they use to help keep them from getting sick in the air. I looked all over, and I eventually found an herb of that nature that was mentioned in demonic folklore!”

“You didn’t cut any corners this time, did you?!”

“And after I mixed that herb with a few others, this medicine was the result! I’ve done it again—there’s no traumatic incident I can’t turn into a profit!”

“That’s incredible! You’re seriously amazing, Halkara! Talk about making the most of your experiences!”

If Halkara had managed to develop a new product thanks to her Vania-induced airsickness, it seemed safe to say the whole trip had worked out for the best. Sometimes trials and tribulations were just the thing to spark a new innovation. At the very least, I couldn’t imagine Halkara would’ve ever thought to make a medicine like that if she hadn’t experienced that airsickness herself.

Yep, yep! This really did all turn out perfectly. I should tell my daughters all about it and let them learn from the example, too.

“There’s just one little problem left over…,” Halkara said as she awkwardly broke eye contact.

“What? Does the medicine have side effects?” I asked.

“No, no. I only used simple ingredients with no adverse effects, so there’s nothing dangerous about it. The problem is that if I want to test it and make sure it actually works, my only choice is to have someone take it and ride a vehicle that could make them sick…”

Oooh… I guess you can’t put a medicine on the market without going through some clinical trials first, huh…?

“Umm, Madam Teacher? I really hate to ask this…but would you mind, say, riding a boat across a stormy sea sometime soon…?”

“I could do that, but I think I’m probably too tough to get motion sick in the first place. I can’t remember ever getting sick during a carriage ride, or anything…”

I paused to consider which members of our household would be likely to get motion sick. Laika and Flatorte could both fly long distances, so needless to say, I’d never seen either of them suffer from it. Falfa and Shalsha didn’t seem to have any trouble during carriage rides, either. Maybe them being slime spirits—a subset of water spirit—had something to do with that? Sandra never got motion sick either, and of course, Rosalie never had that sort of problem at all.

“I think you’re the only person who’d ever actually need that stuff,” I said.

“Oh. I guess I am… Right…”

Soon after, Halkara deliberately booked passage on a few rather rough boat rides and proved her medicine was effective after all. She may not have always looked like the most serious person, but her willingness to put her own body on the line for her work showed deep down, she was pretty diligent after all.

A MAGICAL GIRL APPEARED

One night, I had a dream about Pecora.

Specifically, Pecora showed up in my dream dressed in her idol costume. This wasn’t long after I went to see her concert, which was probably why that look was at the front of my mind. Even in my dreams, she sang and danced with enviable enthusiasm.

It was honestly pretty incredible she could do such a good job as an idol while she was keeping up with her work as the demon king. It was like a really intense side hustle—though I guess the nuance of that term probably didn’t quite fit her circumstances perfectly. Oh—not to confuse the issue, but I mean to say that’s the impression I ended up coming to in my dream. I’d thought something pretty similar during her real-life concert, so it was probably only natural dream-me had gone through the thought process all over again while watching dream-Pecora onstage.

Anyway, once the dream concert was over, dream-me had gone to see Pecora in her dressing room, which had also seemed pretty realistic as far as dreams went. The two of us chatted, and at some point, I’d made a certain comment.

“You know, that outfit makes you look like a magical girl!”

Dream-Pecora had cocked her head.

“What’s a magical girl?”

And that’s when I woke up.

Looking back on it, there was a lesson to be learned from that dream. Many aspects of the world I’d been reincarnated into were strikingly similar to the world I used to live in. Sometimes they were so suspiciously similar, I had to wonder if someone had set it up that way on purpose. Needless to say, however, they were totally different worlds at the end of the day, and if I went around bringing up concepts and terms from my old world willy-nilly, nobody would have any clue what I was talking about.

That was something I knew from experience. Sometimes I’d fall back on old habits and bring up a concept from my old world while I was calling out some bit of nonsense or another, only to confuse my family members. That was a problem; calling things out was no fun when nobody understood me, after all. At worst, it made conversations awkward.

And so, as a general rule, the safest option was to not bring up any concepts that didn’t seem like they would exist in this world.

Say, for instance, I happened to run into someone who looked exactly like a magical girl. If there’s one thing I wouldn’t do, it would be to shout “What are you, a magical girl?!” at them.

I mean, even in my old world, I bet relatively few places even know what magical girls are. Like, I’d say more than ninety percent of people on Earth probably had no clue about the concept, I thought to myself as I got dressed for the day. I took a moment to shake off the dream, then headed into the dining room for breakfast.

When I stepped into the dining room, I found Dekie hanging out inside.

“Okay, what’re you doing here?!” I yelped—quite reasonably, in my book.

Dekie—or Dekyari’tosde, to use her full name—was a god. She’d been let out into the world from underground just recently, and she had spent so long trapped beneath the earth, she wasn’t super up-to-date on the standards of modern common sense. Despite that little hiccup, she seemed to be getting along pretty well with the other gods like Nintan and Goodly Godly Godness so far.

“She said she knew you, so I let her in, Madam Teacher!” said Halkara, who was also in the room. “Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I saw her around during the Dance Festival as well.”

“Oh, right. I guess you haven’t formally met Dekie before now, have you, Halkara?” I replied. We hadn’t had the chance to have a family meal with her so far, or anything along those lines, so it made sense Halkara wouldn’t be acquainted with her.

“I haven’t! Though for some reason, I did have the strangest dream once where I was something like a demon king and ended up fighting a hero, which she was somehow part of.”

That’d be her remembering Godly Godness’s training program… I’d almost forgotten Halkara had ended up being picked to play a boss monster back then. Part of me wondered if her being a business’s boss had something to do with her assignment as a dungeon boss, but it probably wasn’t actually that deep at the end of the day.

“Hey! It’s BEEN a while! The truth is, I’m HERE because I wanted TO ask for HELP with something!” said Dekie. Her attitude tended to slip past “carefree” and land somewhere closer to “thoughtless,” and judging by her tone, today was no exception.

Oh, boy… This is going to turn into another huge problem, isn’t it…?

I was dealing with a god, and when gods came to me asking for help, there was a real danger the scale of their request would turn out to be outrageously huge.

“Well, umm, what did you want help with…?” I asked.

Please let it be petty and stupid! Tell me you’re looking for the perfect secret ingredient to put in your stew or something!

“It’s not that BIG of a DEAL! It’s NO PROBLEMO!” said Dekie.

“Oh, good,” I replied. “Honestly, that’s a relief to hear.”

“Another GOD just MADE its WAY to the surface FROM underground!”

“BIG PROBLEMO!”

I’m definitely sensing another stupidly massive-scale problem incoming! Things were pretty crazy when Dekie came back to the surface, but this couldn’t be as bad as that, could it…?

“A god came up from underground…? Ha-ha-ha… I guess I must be hearing things! Ha-ha-ha…,” Halkara muttered from the kitchen. She’d chosen the path of ignorance, which was the right way to cope with a problem like this, as far as I was concerned.

“No, NO, it’s really NOT A big deal,” said Dekie. “It’s so NOT a big deal, I HAVEN’T even told the OTHER gods about IT yet!”

Suddenly, Nintan appeared in the dining room.

“You imbecile!” Nintan shouted. “We are to be apprised of such matters immediately! How dare you neglect to keep Us informed!”

Yeah, no kidding… This is the sort of problem the gods really can’t afford to turn a blind eye to.

“WHY?” Dekie asked, cocking her head. “A PROBLEM like this is basically OVER the moment I NOTICE it.”

“What is this drivel you speak?! How could that possible be true?! Come with Us, now!”

A blink of an eye later, I found myself standing in a space that was more or less the same as the one where I’d first met Nintan. Dekie had been brought there right along with me. It was a strange, disconcerting place where you couldn’t quite tell whether you were standing on solid ground or not. Floors, apparently, weren’t a relevant concept in the realm of the gods.

I’m skipping breakfast today, aren’t I? Should’ve seen that coming. Not like I have much of an appetite anymore after having the god-making-its-way-to-the-surface news dropped on me out of nowhere, I guess.

“To start, We must confirm no harm has come to this world as of yet. Ost Ande! Come!”

A giant hair ball materialized in the space Nintan had brought us to. Of course, it wasn’t really a hair ball at all—it was Ost Ande, the god of death.

“Ost Ande,” said Nintan, “We bid you search the world for regions in which an unusual number of mortals have recently died of unknown causes.”

Oh, I see. If a malevolent god showed up, they might’ve caused a bunch of casualties somewhere, and a reaper would have access to all the data we need about the recently deceased.

Ost Ande poked her head out of the mess of hair that made up her form just long enough for her to shake it. “…None,” she said. “No places like that. Everything’s nice and quiet.”

We’re not in a worst-case scenario yet, then. That’s good.

“So peaceful, there’s no material for my novel. It’s a problem.”

Please pick better problems.

“Peace so uneventful it prompts boredom is precisely what We desire! Now then—it seems this is not a crisis so great as to cause massive fatalities. This is a positive sign. Next—come, god of fate Caven!”

Another god arrived on the scene. The god of fate, Caven, presided over the forces of fate and destiny…whatever that actually meant. I was still pretty fuzzy on the details.

“Yes?” said Caven. “Are you that excited for me to explain to you the workings of fate?”

“No. We care not about such abstract matters. We only wish to ask whether fate has been thrown into disarray in any particular land.”

“Well, to start, you’ll have to understand the common conceptualization of ‘fate’ is actually—”

“Do not ignore Our request! Cease your exposition! This is no time for prattle—state your answer and be done with it!”

The god of fate was rather pretentious, which probably had something to do with why she didn’t seem to have many friends. Being a kind of cringey poser probably wouldn’t make a god lose face in the grand scheme of things, but it certainly wasn’t doing her relationships with the other gods any favors.

“The thing is, the people of this world have all unconsciously come to their own conclusions regarding what is and isn’t ‘normal,’” said Caven. “When you look at the world in its totality, however, it’s actually far less common to find a region in which nothing that would be considered ‘abnormal’ per common standards is transpiring. In other words, the abnormal is, in fact—”

“We ordered you to stop talking, so stop talking! Moreover, do not digress from the topic of fate! Whenever you say ‘the thing is,’ your speech is certain to drag on for an eternity, so that phrase is hereby banned!”

“She’s just TALKING as much as she CAN since SHE doesn’t get many chances.”

It’s so obvious, even Dekie figured it out in no time at all…

Caven kept rambling on and on with such abstract, roundabout ideas that I almost forgot what Nintan’s actual question was, but finally, she got to the point.

“Hmph. Nothing strange is going on as far as I can tell.”

“That was all We wished to know. In the future, know it is polite to pose your conclusion immediately! Listening to a lengthy explanation when the conclusion remains unclear causes Us nothing but stress!”

I guess even the gods have their own standards of business etiquette, more or less.

“So, then—nothing is unusual. We understand,” said Nintan. “You may return to your business, or you may remain here, so long as you stay silent.”

Nintan really knows how to deal with all the other gods’ quirks, doesn’t she…? It sort of feels like her biggest role is serving as a manager for all of them.

The god of death and the god of fate ended up sticking around even after their dismissal—clearly, neither of them were very busy. Then again, if the gods of those particular aspects of reality were incredibly busy, that’d be unsettling in its own right, so knowing they didn’t have much on their plate was sort of reassuring.

For the time being, it didn’t seem like the problem had caused any open fighting or anything like that. I knew if I said it seemed like things were all right for now, Caven would probably say Technically, it’s theoretically impossible to reach an actual, definitive conclusion regarding how matters like this will develop or whatever, so I kept it to myself, but I was definitely thinking it. I breathed a sigh of relief—I might get to eat breakfast after all.

“You WORRY too much, Nintan! Of course THIS isn’t a PROBLEM,” Dekie said with an air of exasperation.

“An excess of concern is the only proper amount of concern there can be,” Nintan countered. “Tell us, Dekyari’tosde—what sort of god has entered this realm? We cannot recall any gods other than you having been sealed away beneath the earth. Did you not reign over all forms of intelligent subterranean life alone?”

So not even Nintan was super clear on what all had gone on beneath the surface. The surface world and the underground had been treated like totally different worlds for such a long time, it would’ve been hard for her to keep up to date.

“Like I said, YOU’RE jumping to CONCLUSIONS,” said Dekie. “Sure, I said a GOD came to the SURFACE, but it’s not the SORT of god I HAVE to report to you ABOUT.”

“Do not invent new rules out of whole cloth! Matters involving a god must always be reported upon! The influence of a god’s actions is so vast, they must always be kept under watch!”

As I stood on the sidelines listening in to the exchange, all I could think was that Nintan and Dekie were talking past each other. Ost Ande and Caven seemed to be in the same boat, and both looked a little concerned. Nintan and Dekie had such fundamentally different understandings of the rules about this sort of thing, they couldn’t even begin to debate them. This happened from time to time in human-on-human debates, too.

Still, it’s hard to believe Nintan just has the wrong idea about this…

“Dekyari’tosde, your words contradict themselves,” said Nintan. “We shall explain Ourselves once more, in the clearest of terms, and make the conflict known to you. First, a rule: If a new god arrives in this realm, all of us our duty-bound to report their presence to our fellow gods. There are no exceptions.”

“This GOD is only a god in the UNDERGROUND world, though,” said Dekie. “I didn’t REPORT about it because it’s NOT a god ABOVEGROUND.”

“In other words, you believed that because We have yet to acknowledge this god as a god, it was thus exempt from the rule? Surely you can see how that is only splitting hairs?”

It feels like Nintan has the upper hand in this debate, at least for now.

“No, NO! The god that CAME to the surface is one I MADE underground. That MEANS even THOUGH they call it a GOD down there, it’s a LOWER rank than gods LIKE you and ME!”

“Wha—?!”

Oh, wow—Nintan was so shocked, she sounded normal for a second!

I still didn’t understand what Dekie was trying to say, but Caven stepped in to clarify for me.

“Beings created by a god are, by definition, their creator’s servants,” she explained. “In other words, they can never be that god’s equals.”

“So basically, this means it can’t be all that powerful?” I asked.

“I would expect it to be as mighty as a particularly powerful dragon or a spirit, perhaps,” said Caven.

“I get the picture…I think.”

Come to think of it, don’t the elder gods in the Whatever of Cthulhu Mythos tend to make horrifying minions to serve them or something?

From the perspective of an ordinary person in one of those stories, both the gods and their spawn would be overwhelmingly powerful, terrifying entities. Even the minions would be feared as malevolent gods by humans, but to the gods themselves, such creatures would always just be minions—hardly a threat at all. That’s the best comparison I could come up with, anyway.

Maybe an easier metaphor would be to say that to an amateur soccer player, both a professional player from the pro leagues and a student who’s a regular player in their school’s soccer team would appear to be really good at the game. The amateur player probably wouldn’t be able to judge how much of a gap there was between the student and the pro’s skill levels.

It would’ve been a huge problem if a god like Dekie had come up from the underworld again, but if the new entity was no more powerful than another random spirit, it wouldn’t be a big enough deal to merit bringing all the gods together for a conference, even if the people of the underworld worshiped that being as a god. The way Nintan was scowling let me know she’d realized Dekie had a good point.

“Is that the way of it…?” said Nintan. “In that case, you should have simply said so from the start…”

“So, you really WERE jumping to CONCLUSIONS!”

“Silence. In any case, a servant created by the likes of you could never be anything other than sinister. What sort of misshapen abomination have you unleashed upon us this time?”

Oh, right! Dekie’s sense for designing things is so terrible, it’s not just disastrous—it’s downright apocalyptic!

“Oh, it LOOKS like THIS,” Dekie said as she produced a piece of paper to sketch on. I had no clue where she’d pulled the paper from, but seeing as she was a god, it didn’t feel worth questioning something that petty.

As expected, Dekie’s drawing didn’t look even remotely like a normal human being. That said, it also wasn’t the muddled mess of lines I’d been expecting—it was, at the very least, clearly defined. If I had to describe it, I’d say it resembled a little sausage with stubby arms and legs slapped onto it. If I wanted to be nice I’d say it almost looked like a penguin, if you squinted just right. It also had what seemed to be a single, string-like hair growing out of it.

“What’s that string supposed to be, Dekie?” I asked.

“That’s its TAIL,” said Dekie.

Oh. Then I guess the part it’s growing out of is its rear end? I can’t tell this thing’s front from its back!

“It’s a god that PART of the UNDERWORLD worshipped,” Dekie continued.

“Wait,” said Nintan. “Continuing to call it a god will only confuse the issue. Let us refer to it by a different name. If it is a different form of being than gods such as us, it ought to be called by a different title as well.”

“Belowground, they CALLED it the Slender Simple ONE,” said Dekie.

Not exactly a name fit for a god, if you ask me…

“That is utterly unhelpful! For convenience’s sake, we shall refer to this half-baked excuse for a god as a demigod.”

Okay, now that makes this much easier to understand! On the other hand, that means now we can finally start the actual conversation we all came here for.

“Okay, so what’s this demigod doing now that it’s on the surface?” I asked. After all this time, we still hadn’t addressed what the demigod’s current state of affairs even was.

“Well, it probably WANTS people who’ll have FAITH in it on THE SURFACE,” said Dekie.

Makes sense, if they treated it like a god in the underworld.

“Most LIKELY, it’s hoping to FIND someone who’ll work as its PRIEST and CONDUCT rituals.”

So it wouldn’t be satisfied with someone just believing it’s a god—it wants actual, active worship?

“It’ll probably GRANT wishes for SURFACE people in exchange for THEM becoming its PRIESTS and conducting RITUALS.”

Right, okay. That pretty much makes sense.

“Those special PRIESTS are CALLED magical gurus. Magical gurus are TOTALLY normal PEOPLE until they become able to USE magic to GET their WISH granted.”

Yeah, makes sense. So they’re perfectly normal people who get contacted by a mysterious otherworldly entity that grants them the ability to use magical powers?

…Wait.

“You’re just describing magical girls!”

I couldn’t stop myself. I just had to call it out.

“YES! Magical GURUS!” said Dekie.

Clearly, she wasn’t familiar with the concept of magical girls. Considering there was no way magical girls were a thing underground, it would’ve been weird if she did know about them. The rest of the gods were staring blankly at me as well—none of them seemed to understand the magical girl concept either.

Aww, nuts. I threw off the flow of the conversation and made things super uncomfortable in one interjection…

There was, however, one person who did know what I was talking about: Godly Godness, who appeared on the scene without warning.

“Aren’t you just describing magical girls right now?!”

That’s exactly what I just said!

“Ugh… Godly Godness… We knew you would be an obstacle in the path of resolving this matter, so We chose not to call you,” Nintan said, not even trying to pretend she hadn’t excluded Godly Godness on purpose. I’d noticed she wasn’t present, and now I understood why.

“Wow, mean!” said Godly Godness. “You should know every conversation needs at least one person to make up gags and one person to play the straight man. Nobody here’s telling jokes, so I had to step in to fill that role!”

“We cannot deal with this right now. Become a frog.”

A beam of blueish-white light shot from Nintan’s hand, striking Godly Godness and turning her into a frog on the spot. I was way too used to this by now to be surprised by it, and considering how well-acquainted Godly Godness was with her frog form by now, I had to wonder if there was even a point anymore.

“Woo, I’m a frog again, ribbit! But anyway, you were saying the people chosen to become magical gurus are given magic so powerful it could grant any wish, right? In that case, wouldn’t it be a really big problem if the demigod made someone nasty into a magical guru?” Godly Godness asked.

“Why is it you only choose to share a serious perspective after you’ve been made into a frog?” asked Nintan. “Regardless, that is a troublesome problem indeed…”

No kidding. What happens if a magical guru wishes for the world to be buried in darkness and despair? That’d certainly complicate things.

“That won’t HAPPEN,” said Dekie. “The demigod won’t GIVE magical guru POWERS to anyone wicked—ACTUALLY, it CAN’T! It can ONLY give powers to PEOPLE who are QUALIFIED.”

“How terribly convenient,” Nintan quipped.

“Heh-heh—well, of course! Someone who isn’t pure of heart could never become a magical girl. We’re talking about a concept targeted straight at kids, after all! It wouldn’t work if it got too dark. Magical girls only throw down with each other in stories that are aiming for the adult market.”

We’ve got a real split in opinions between the gods who don’t know about magical girls and the god who does!

I, meanwhile, was actually pretty prepared to take Dekie’s explanation at face value. It only made sense for almost unnaturally pure little girls to be the ones who were granted magical powers, in my book. If absolutely anyone could end up wielding that sort of power, then little kids would stop wishing to be magical girls when they grow up.

“I can appreciate that argument, too,” said Caven. “This demigod has the right to choose those it empowers, and it’s hard to believe it would entrust its holy rituals to, say, a washed-up alcoholic gambling addict. It’s only natural that honest and purehearted individuals would be chosen as a matter of practicality.”

For once, Caven’s argument was actually very straightforward. How would a demigod possibly benefit from picking someone dangerous to work as their representative? It made no sense and wouldn’t offer the demigod any benefits at all.

“…Honest people lack impact. If it were me, I’d make a few people with wicked desires into magical gurus and make them fight. Much better story that way,” said Ost Ande. It was a kind of horrifying premise, but then again, I think everyone has a twisted idea or two like that every once in a while.

Fortunately, Ost Ande’s premise only made sense as an idea for the plot of a novel. It didn’t seem to apply to reality at all—a real demigod would surely choose someone it could trust instead of making a play for maximum drama.

I guess we probably don’t have to worry about any immediate, world-ending disasters, then. If the demigod wants to pick someone purehearted to be their magical guru, I bet they’ll choose a kid. Kids would be more likely to have blind faith in the offer, anyway.

“The people MOST qualified to be MAGICAL gurus are WOMEN in their TWENTIES who’ve lived totally ordinary LIVES so far.”

“In their twenties?! Those aren’t magical girls anymore—they’re magical women!”

“Psst, Azusa!” said Godly Godness. “Dekie’s been saying magical gurus this whole time. That means they don’t necessarily have to be girls at all! You should probably stop bringing up magical girls, or this is going to get really confusing!”

“Ah! You’re right, yeah…,” I admitted. I’d let myself get distracted by the magical girl concept, so I’d been viewing the whole scenario through that lens. There was no good reason why a magical guru couldn’t be any age—or any gender, for that matter.

“Ordinary people… Even if the premise claims that everyone’s normal, most characters end up having something about them that makes them special anyway. Characters that are too normal are boring and disappointing,” said Ost Ande. She really was coming at this from an author’s perspective.

“True. Even the most seemingly normal of individuals may be caught in an endless struggle with the irresistible forces of fate,” Caven added, making me wince.

“We suppose it is, in truth, rather difficult to say what a perfectly ordinary human would look like specifically,” said Nintan. “In any case, it would seem for the time being, this demigod is unlikely to cause great harm even if left to its own devices?”

“YES!” Dekie replied with a spirited thumbs-up.

“In that case, We shall refrain from spreading knowledge of its presence among the gods, for now. That said, it seems more and more beings like this demigod—beings that should not exist in this world—have been appearing of late. Thus, if you find the demigod, you are to report to Us about it at once. This would seem to be a matter in need of careful oversight.”

“If I FIND it, I’ll send IT back underground! The underworlds’ gods DISAPPEARING on them isn’t a GOOD thing!” said Dekie.

On that, at least, it seemed she and Nintan saw eye to eye. The fact Dekie herself was still out and about on the surface weakened her argument, but I could imagine the residents of the underworld caring a lot more about entities like the demigod sticking around than Dekie herself.

For better or for worse, Dekie was profoundly disconnected from the mortal lifestyle. That wasn’t a surprise, really—she was a god, after all—but it meant she was the sort of god who wasn’t likely to give you much in the way of blessings, no matter how much you prayed to her. A slightly more humanlike entity would probably be more inclined to listen to its subjects.

“Azusa,” said Nintan, “if you encounter this demigod or one of its so-called magical gurus, contact Us at once.”

“Can do,” I said, “but I can basically promise you that’s not going to happen. I barely ever leave the highlands, after all.”

Generally speaking, I was a real homebody with a very narrow range of places I visited. I went out to the demon lands or the kingdom of the dead every once in a while, but those weren’t exactly the sort of places where I’d be likely to run into a twenty-something-year-old woman living a perfectly ordinary life.

The next thing I knew, I’d been returned to the house in the highlands’ dining room.

She really put me back here abruptly this time! Sure feels weird being zapped from place to place without any travel time involved.

“Good morning, Mommy!”

“You appeared out of nowhere. That was an entrance befitting a god.”

Falfa and Shalsha greeted me with two wildly different reactions. In Falfa’s mind, my sudden appearance was just par for the course. I’d been placed back in my dining room just as everyone was getting together to have breakfast, it seemed.

“I was called away by the gods, actually,” I explained. “It wasn’t anything super important this time, though.”

“Are you sure everything’s all right, Madam Teacher? This isn’t going to turn into a mess for the whole family, is it?” asked Halkara. Just the thought of the gods getting together had put her on edge, which was probably a reasonable reaction.

I paused to take a look at each of my assembled family members, then decided to just come out and ask.

“Hey, everyone? Raise your hand if you’re in your twenties.”

Not a single hand was raised…obviously. The youngest people living in my house were probably Falfa and Shalsha, and they were both more than fifty years old. Not one of us was young enough to qualify for the twenties requirement.

Okay, but are any of us perfectly normal people?

One of my family members could breathe fire. Another could breathe freezing cold. One ran a company and managed a museum, while two others were slime spirits. One was a ghost, and another a plant. Even if we counted our pet, Mimi, it definitely wasn’t an exception—by human standards, mimics were definitely not perfectly normal creatures.

Yep. There’s no chance whatsoever that anyone in my family could become a magical guru!

It was a big, wide world out there, and even if a mysterious demigod was making women into magical gurus off in some far-flung corner of existence, it had nothing to do with any of us. If a perfectly normal human like me could accidentally work her way up to max level without realizing it, then why wouldn’t it be possible for an inconspicuous woman in her twenties to become a magical guru?

Later that afternoon, Falfa, Shalsha, and I went into Flatta together to do some shopping. Before we went to the stores, though, I decided to drop by the guild to sell the magic stones I’d obtained through my slime slaying. I could sell them off any time I wanted to, but if I put it off for too long, my collection started getting heavy, so I tried to take care of it whenever it was convenient.

When I stepped into the guild, I found Natalie, our usual receptionist, wasn’t around. The guild itself was still open, so I assumed she was on break. Flatta was a laid-back village, and it wasn’t rare for the owners of stores to head out in the middle of the day to do their own shopping or take naps without warning. None of the locals would get upset about it, either.

In the end, I decided to kill some time by taking a look at the job postings hung up on the guild’s wall.

“Looks like there was another long-hammer boar infestation, but they already found someone to take care of that. Must’ve been an adventurer, I guess,” I muttered.

“Mommy, look! This says everyone should watch out for a weird monster that’s been appearing lately!” said Falfa.

“Weird in the sense it’s so rare, it’s proven impossible to categorize,” added Shalsha.

I quickly found the warning my daughters were talking about. It seemed the monster in question had been making occasional appearances around the vicinity of Flatta.

“Hmm. I’ve never seen anything like that in the highlands, but I guess we should be careful. You watch out, too, girls.”

Just then, I heard a crash from somewhere deeper in the guild’s office. A moment later, Natalie burst into the room.

“I’m sorry! I was doing some cleaning in back,” Natalie frantically explained.

“Oh, it’s fine,” I replied. “It’s not like these magic stones are gonna spoil if you keep us waiting for an extra few minutes. Anyway, I was hoping to trade them in, like usual.”

“Certainly! And I really appreciate your patience.”

I traded in the magic stones without issue, then headed out again to get my shopping done.

As we were going about our perfectly normal shopping trip, we ended up having a perfectly normal experience: We ran into a slime wandering through the village.

“This one is an evil slime. It needs to be defeated,” Shalsha said, stooping over to investigate the monster.

Even in the middle of the village, slimes showed up from time to time. They were harmless, as far as I knew, but I still usually took them out since I didn’t have any real reason not to.

Just as I was about to kill the slime, however, I caught sight of a mysterious woman standing atop the local bakery’s roof. She was wearing an outfit that vaguely reminded me of the dresses magical girls tended to favor.

“Cute Underground, apostle of the most sublime of divines, is on the scene! Beware, slime—I, Cute Underground, have decided you’re a problem and will now punish you!”

“Okay, she’s definitely a magical guru!” After a speech like that, she’d really better be!

The slime, meanwhile, didn’t react to the magical guru’s entrance at all. Assuming it wasn’t smarter than the average slime, that’s about what I would’ve expected from it.

“All right, slime! Prepare yourself!” shouted the magical guru, who for some reason was holding a loaf of bread in her hand. She must have bought it from the store she was now standing on. “In the name of Cute Underground, I command you: Defeat that slime!”

Suddenly, the loaf of bread swelled up, growing to a size about twice as big as the largest boar I’d ever seen. It also developed a pair of eyes that really looked like they were glaring, somehow.

“That looks more like a monster than a loaf of bread now!” I exclaimed.

The loaf of bread—or, well, former loaf of bread—started making its way toward the slime, growling “Bread, bread, bread, bread! Breaaad!” in a really weird voice.

What is even happening here…? This is going to send the village into a panic! I thought…briefly.

“Honey, look—a bread monster! Not every day you see one ’a them critters.”

“Oh, what a strange spell!”

“Is someone advertising a new product?”

The villagers of Flatta are way too desensitized to inexplicable magical nonsense!

That was at least partially my fault, of course. Whoops. I couldn’t even count the number of times someone who defied common sense in one way or another had come to visit me. If you asked me which was weirder between a leviathan blotting out the sun and a bread monster showing up in town, I’d have to pick the leviathan.

Falfa and Shalsha were no more worried about the bread monster than the townsfolk. In fact, they were studying it with keen interest. That was better than them flying into a panic, I guess, but it still didn’t seem quite like the ideal reaction.

“Hey, you two, do you think that, uh…bread monster, I guess…? Anyway, do you think it’s safe?” I asked.

“Falfa’s never heard of a spell that could do that to bread, so I’m really curious about it!”

“One of the villagers speculated it could be a publicity stunt, and Shalsha acknowledges that possibility. The prospect of an unknown form of magic is fascinating.”

Oh, I see—they’re stuck on the idea of it being magic. Come to think of it, most magical girl anime are set in worlds where society at large doesn’t think that monsters and magic are real, but this world has both of them as things you can easily encounter in your day-to-day life. Of course this wouldn’t be as shocking as it would if it happened on Earth.

Meanwhile, the bread monster had made its way right in front of the slime.

“Breeead, bread, bread, bread! Breeead, br-br-br-breadbread!” the bread monster roared at the slime—apparently, that was just the noise bread monsters made. “Breeead! Bread! Bread, breadbread! Br-br-br-br-bread!”

The bread monster roared in a variety of different rhythms, none of which bothered the slime in the slightest. It totally ignored the monster and just kept bouncing away.

“Isn’t it going to, y’know, attack the slime?!” I shouted. All it’s doing is shouting! At least try to step on it or something!

“M-magical gurus are part of the clergy, so we’re required to abide by a vow to do no harm to animals,” Magical Guru Cute Underground helpfully explained from up on her rooftop. I was standing pretty close to the bread monster, so she must have noticed me while she was watching it harass the slime.

“That’s nice and all, but if you can’t hurt the slime, then what’s even the point of the bread monster?” I asked.

“I made it to drive a problem out of the village!” said the magical guru.

Oh, really? Disregarding the results for a second, I couldn’t fault her intentions, at least. There was just one problem.

“You know the bread monster’s probably going to be a problem for the village, too, right…?”

The villagers seemed perfectly comfortable watching the bread monster from a distance, but nobody was reckless enough to get close to it. In other words, it had shut down a whole section of the village just by existing in it. Oh, and as a side note, picking up a random object that happened to be lying around and turning it into a monster was a classic move for the sort of evil organizations magical girls fought, not something magical girls themselves were supposed to do.

Just then, the bread monster began to tilt to one side.

Oh? Is it finally doing something?!

The slime bounced into the air, and the bread monster tilted forward, interposing itself between the slime and the ground. By pure luck, the slime ended up landing right on the bread monster’s head. “Bread, bread, breaaad!” the bread monster chanted as it sprinted its way out of town, carrying the slime along with it.

Wow… That’s the most boring way of dealing with the problem possible.

“The evil slime has been purged! Rest easy, everyone—your village’s peace has been protected!”

Cute Underground struck what I figured was probably her signature pose. I didn’t think the village’s peace had been in any danger at all, to tell the truth, but that wasn’t the first thing on my mind at the moment.

“Hey, Miss Cute Underground?” I called out.

“What is it, great Witch of the Highlands?” Cute Underground replied. She knew who I was, clearly.

“Some sort of mysterious entity turned you into a magical guru recently, right? Would you mind telling me about it?” I asked. If the demigod was going around making a ton of magical gurus it could mean trouble, so I’d have to report back to the gods about it.

“H-h-huh…? N-no, I haven’t seen a-a-anything like that,” Cute Underground replied. So she definitely knew exactly what I was talking about.

“Okay, but you said you were an ‘apostle of the most sublime of divines’ when you made your entrance, right? That means you must worship something—what is it?” I asked. Her entrance speech had been so distinctive, it hadn’t been very hard for me to remember it even after only hearing it once.

“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Cute Underground. “I subjected myself to sixteen days straight of rigorous ascetic training and awakened to my magical guru powers on my own…”

“Pretty short training period, huh?!” You’re telling me it takes about as long to become a magical guru as it takes to get your driver’s license…?

Anyway, her reaction made it really obvious she was hiding something from me. It was so obvious, I almost couldn’t even accuse her of seriously trying to lie at all.

Just then, a creature that looked sort of like a sausage with little arms and legs attached to it climbed up onto the roof beside Cute Underground.

Okay, that’s definitely the demigod! It’s nothing like the humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, or any of the other races that live up on the surface! That is one hundred percent the sort of creature that’d ask you if you wanted to become a magical guru!

“You’re still pretty bad at using your Imamon, Cute Underground, cheep! If it takes you that long to get a single slime out of a village, you’ll be herding slimes for the rest of your life, cheep!”

And it’s even got a weird verbal tic!

“I’m so sorry! It took a really long time for me to transform!” Cute Underground wailed.

“Just remember if you do your job as a magical guru and do it well, you’ll get a wish granted, cheep! You’d better get your head in the game, cheep!”

I crouched down and sprang upward, reaching the roof in a single leap.

“Umm, hey! Sorry to interrupt,” I said. The demigod jumped with surprise and looked over at me. “You came up from underground, right? I get that you’re not up to anything nefarious, but just to be safe, would you mind coming along with me to see the gods?”

“Wh-wh-what’re you talking about, cheep…? I’m just a perfectly normal bird, cheep! Cheep, cheep, cheep…”

“Sorry, but you don’t look like any sort of animal I’ve ever seen in this world, much less a bird. That excuse really isn’t gonna cut it.” Also, this world might have magic, but I’ve definitely never met a bird that can talk as fluently as you!

“I don’t wanna, cheep… Nobody had any faith in me underground, cheep… They said I was a swindler who tricks little kids, cheep! And even the little boys all said I was embarrassing to be around, cheep…”

It’s aimed at little girls; that’s exactly the reaction I’d expect!

“I’m gonna make more and more magical gurus here on the surface, and build up a faith dedicated to me, cheep!” the demigod declared as it turned to look at its magical guru. “Cheese it, cheep! You’re transformed right now, so nobody knows who you are, cheep!”

“Right! Good idea! Let’s run!” Cute Underground shouted. She scooped the demigod up in her arms and then leaped from rooftop to rooftop, fleeing off into the distance.

The magical guru’s athletic abilities were way beyond anything that an ordinary human could achieve. Making the bread monster had seemed to exhaust her, but apparently being a magical guru had granted her power in all sorts of ways.

“Mommy, Falfa’s pretty sure you could catch up with her! Aren’t you gonna chase her?” asked Falfa.

“She likely intends to hide in the forest, then return to the village on foot. If we stake out the forest, we should be able to catch her in the act,” noted Shalsha.

My daughters were both confident we could catch the magical guru if we wanted to. She was clearly no trained spy, and even considering her physical abilities, the way she moved told me she was an amateur when it came to running away. It really wouldn’t be hard at all to catch her if we made the slightest effort.

“Nah,” I said. “It’s not like she’s a criminal, so I don’t think we need to go that far. All she’s done so far is carry a slime out of the village, after all.”

“So we’re letting her run free while we put together her rap sheet?”

“That makes it sound a lot nastier than I meant it, Falfa…” Plus, to tell the truth, I already have a pretty good idea of who our magical guru might be. “For now, let’s go talk with all the people who might be the magical guru.”

“Do you already know who it is, Mom? If so, you’re a master detective,” Falfa said, eyes wide with surprise. I didn’t think I had what it took to be a detective at all, honestly.

“Assuming my instincts are on the right track, I think when she turns into her magical guru form, her hair grows longer than it usually is. In other words, all we have to do is imagine Cute Underground with shorter hair, then think about who fits that general image.”

It’s super common for magical girls to have their hair grow when they transform, after all. Growing more hair when you transform makes you look stronger in a way the opposite just doesn’t quite capture. Maybe it’s because longer hair makes you look bigger and more imposing, in a physical sense? Of course, if your hair grows too long when you transform, you’d think it’d get in the way in a fight…but I guess that’s just something magical girls have to learn to live with.

“That’s true…,” Shalsha said. “Assuming she was wearing a disguise, it would make sense for her to use a wig to make it look like her hair was longer than it really is… Your powers of reasoning are finely honed, Mom…”

“That’s, uhh, really not what’s happening here at all, actually. Let’s say it’s less reasoning, more experience, okay?”

I just know what magical girls are and can extrapolate from there, that’s all. There’s really no high-minded deduction going on here!

Soon enough, the village of Flatta returned to its usual tranquility, and its people moved back into the area where the bread monster had been. It seemed the ruckus was over with, so I took Falfa and Shalsha and headed back to the house in the highlands.

That wasn’t the last time Cute Underground made an appearance in Flatta. She showed up repeatedly, in fact, each time stepping in to prevent some sort of monster from attacking a human. She would also turn a nearby flower, carriage, or other random object into a monster herself.

I got to witness her in action a number of times, and while part of me wanted to call her out on using monsters to deal with monsters, it seemed that technically wasn’t quite the case. To borrow the demigod’s terminology, the creatures she made were called “Imamon.” My best guess was that was an abbreviation of “Imaginary Monsters,” or something along those lines.

There’s definitely nothing wrong with what she’s trying to do, at least. At the bare minimum, she’s not aiming to plunge humanity into the depths of despair, and she doesn’t seem likely to do so on accident, either. She hasn’t even damaged the village of Flatta at all, so far.

The one problem was if word started to spread about her Imamon-based methods, it could be trouble. If people started talking about how mysterious monsters kept appearing out of nowhere in Flatta, it could wreck the village’s reputation.

All right—I think it’s about time I went over and had a chat with our local magical guru herself.

I paid a visit to Flatta’s guild.

“Oh, great Witch of the Highlands! Hello!” Natalie called out as I stepped inside.

“Hey, Cute Underground. How’re you doing?” I replied.

A bead of sweat dripped down Natalie’s cheek. Is it even possible for humans to start sweating that quickly…?

“I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about… Ha-ha-ha…,” Natalie replied.

She is trying to keep it secret, right?

“Look, Natalie—your magical guru form is barely any different from your normal look. It’s really, really easy to tell who you are,” I explained.

Natalie may have thought her identity was a carefully kept secret, but that really wasn’t the case. Magical girl transformations weren’t full-blown shape changes, like turning a mouse or a pumpkin into a carriage—they were more like little tweaks and adjustments to your usual form. That meant it was perfectly possible to reverse-engineer a magical guru transformation, if you just gave it a little thought.

“No, no, no… You have the wrong girl,” said Natalie. “I wish you wouldn’t imply that I was the sort of person who’d do those crazy things! Ha-ha-ha…”

I didn’t say a word. I just set the latest issue of Nascúte’s local newspaper down on her desk.

I covered my face with my hand and shook my head. “It’s just so, so obvious… Even some of the Flatta locals know. They’re just pretending not to…”

It was true. I wasn’t even close to the only one who had suspicions about Natalie. A ton of people had put the pieces together—it was a small village, after all. You could tell she was a woman in her twenties just by looking at her, and that alone narrowed the list of potential suspects quite a bit.

“Wha—ah, wha, oh, ah, oh, ah! Ahh, wha, ah, um, oh, ah, um, umm!” Natalie babbled incoherently. Apparently, she was the only one who hadn’t realized her cover had long-since blown.

“At this rate, you’ve got about a week or so before Halkara Pharmaceuticals decides to start producing a magical guru-branded manju or something,” I said. “Everyone else is adapting pretty quickly to your secret identity.”

“Oh no! What do we do now, great Proti’pyutan?!”

At the same moment Natalie shouted, the demigod hopped up onto the countertop. Apparently, it had been hiding behind the reception desk.

Not exactly the cutest name…

“Never thought word would spread that quickly, cheep. And nobody’s asking me to make them into a magical guru even though they know all about me, cheep! They all just stare at me like I’m some sorta freak, cheep…”

Yep. That’s a talking mascot character, all right. And no wonder they look at you like a freak—as far as they know, you’re just some stranger who rolled into town and started turning flowers and loaves of bread into monsters… No purehearted youngster would see someone acting like a two-bit villain of the week and think That’s what I want to do with my life!

That wasn’t even the only reason why I had a hard time seeing the demigod gaining a following. The other big factor was magical girls were only cool because they had clearly defined villains to defeat. Cute Underground and the demigod would be lauded if they took down a monster that was attacking the village, sure, but so far, all they’d done was take on wandering slimes that couldn’t have been more harmless. They hadn’t done much of anything the villagers would actually be grateful for, so nobody looked up to them. All that was left was the fact they were acting like a couple of weirdos!

“No choice, cheep! You’d better transform, cheep!”

The demigod spun about to look at Natalie, who immediately began to chant.

“Okay, here I go! Natalie, transform! Anvenvi, hoihee, heifufuura, horima…”

“Why’s your transformation chant so long?!” She hasn’t even started to actually transform yet!

“At the end of the day, magical gurus are part of the clergy, cheep!” said the demigod. “She has to recite a piece of sacred scripture dedicated to me if she wants to transform, and that’s final, cheep!”

Well, that’s just inefficient. I know faith isn’t something people usually expect efficiency from, but sometimes a magical girl needs to transform ASAP, y’know?

“I’m finished chanting! Time to transform!” Natalie shouted. Her body began to emit a golden light, which gradually began taking the form of pieces of clothing, starting from her arms and legs.

Yep, that’s a classic magical girl transformation scene, all right! Just one problem.

“Kinda slow, isn’t it?!”

“I—I can’t help that… This is just how it works,” said Natalie.

“Hey, talking to a magical guru while she’s transforming’s a huge faux pas, cheep!”

Magical girl transformations felt natural in shows because they were, well, shows, but it turned out watching a lengthy sequence like that play out in real life was just plain surreal… Anyway, eventually, the golden light fully changed into a flashy, cosplay-like outfit. Natalie’s hair had also grown several times longer than her usual style.

“Oooh, now that’s a real transformation!” I said.

“Cute Underground, apostle of the most sublime of divines, is on the scene! I’m hoping to use this power to fight to preserve peace in this world! I appreciate there’s relatively little I’m capable of doing to help, but I still intend to fight as hard as I possibly can in spite of my lack of ability!”

She kinda started sounding like a politician making a show of her humility during a campaign speech at the end, there…

“Okay, great Proti’pyutan—what should I do now? There aren’t any nasty monsters for me to fight here, right? Just someone who knows our secret identities,” asked Cute Underground, immediately looking to her mascot-esque demigod for advice. It seemed she didn’t transform much when there weren’t any enemies around. “You’re not going to tell me to beat her up and make sure she doesn’t spread our secret around, are you? There’s no way I could defeat the great Witch of the Highlands… I could take her on a thousand times and not even win once! It wouldn’t even take her a second to wipe the floor with me…”

Whoa, there! Getting kinda violent, aren’t we…?

“It’s all right, cheep—just leave it to me! First things first, we have to run off somewhere where there won’t be any people around, cheep!”

“Understood! ‘He who fights and runs away,’ right?!”

Cute Underground and the demigod dashed out through the guild’s back door. I knew I could just get in touch with the gods without bothering to chase them, but I didn’t really feel like it, so I decided to follow along instead.

Cute Underground took to the rooftops once more, leaping her way from house to house. Natalie was a perfectly ordinary person who could never possibly pull off a feat of athleticism like that, so there was no doubt her magical guru transformation had powered her up considerably.

You know, if they made a concentrated effort to emphasize that part of the arrangement, I bet they’d get a lot more magical guru hopefuls than they have now, I thought. Then again, since the whole purpose of a magical guru’s strength was to help them fight with troublesome creatures, the demigod might have viewed transforming to work with a moving company or whatever to be a breach of contract.

Well, not my problem. I’d better take chasing them a bit more seriously.

I raced along the ground, following in Cute Underground’s wake. She picked up her pace once we were out of the village, and she seemed to be headed into the nearby woods. I had no idea what the two of them were plotting, but in a sense, I was right there with them when it came to wanting to have this encounter in an unpopulated area. Everything would get more complicated if word spread about the demigod’s nature.

Every once in a while, Cute Underground would glance over her shoulder to look at me.

“Agh!” she yelped. “I’m running at full speed, and she’s keeping up without breaking a sweat! I thought I was running really, really, fast, too! The Witch of the Highlands really is the monster everyone says she is!”

“That’s the rudest compliment I’ve ever received!”

“You do have a plan, right, great Proti’pyutan? Because we’re in really big trouble if you don’t! Also, you’d better actually find someone for me to marry, or I’ll stop worshiping you in a heartbeat!”

Oh. I guess that’s why she became a magical guru. There was that whole thing about the demigod granting their wishes, after all…

“No worries, cheep! I may not look it, but I had over a hundred magical gurus on my side in my heyday, cheep! I know what I’m doing, cheep!”

I had to wonder what you’d even need that many magical girls for, but on second thought, considering magical gurus were technically an organized religion’s priests, it didn’t seem like that outlandish of a number after all.

“Okay, but I’m the only magical guru here right now, aren’t I? It’s a little hard to believe you have this under control…”

“Don’t be like that, cheep! Sure, I’m past my prime underground, but I’ve got a chance to make it big up here, cheep! My second heyday’s coming right up—I’ll make it happen, cheep!”

I was putting together a picture of what had happened: The demigod had decided to make its way to the surface after losing all of its followers in the underworld. It reminded me a little of the pine spirit Misjantie, actually—especially since I’d already heard a demigod’s position in the world get compared to the one spirits occupied.

Cute Underground charged into the forest, then finally slowed to a halt and turned to face me.

“Okay, so what happens now?” I asked as I jogged up to her. A light run like that wasn’t even close to enough to make me break a real sweat.

“What does happen now…?” Cute Underground repeated, glancing at the demigod. “Don’t even think about telling me to fight her, because that’s not happening! Give me a better option, please!”

What options are even left at this point…? Trying to cry their way out of trouble? I really can’t think of anything they can do other than beg me not to let their secret out, and since said secret’s totally out in the open already, that wouldn’t even help much.

“I told you I had a plan, and I meant it, cheep! This is the greatest crisis we’ve ever faced, but I have a secret weapon that’ll turn it around before you know it, cheep! You’re gonna be so surprised when you see it, cheep!”

This demigod’s really raising the bar for itself, isn’t it? That doesn’t seem like the greatest idea to me…

“Okay, then let’s see it,” I said. “What’s your move?”

The demigod began reciting some sort of invocation. It wasn’t a style of spell I was familiar with, so I assumed it was either something characteristic of the underworld, or otherwise something the demigod itself had invented. One way or another, I had no reason to believe it was trying to attack me, and I figured I wasn’t in any serious danger.

It’d make sense for a demigod to have a few handy spells in stock, right? Maybe it’ll make me fall asleep or something.

The demigod finished chanting, then pointed its hand in my direction.

“Now—transform, cheep!”

Huh? Transform? Don’t tell me it can turn me into a frog or something…?

“Witness the birth of Magical Guru Cute Abyss, cheep!”

“Uh…?”

Suddenly, my body began to glow with a golden light. It didn’t feel unpleasant—more like I was soaking in a lukewarm bath than anything else—but I still had a horrible feeling about where this was going. Soon my usual witch’s robe vanished and was replaced piece by piece by a set of very frilly clothing.

Oh, no—I knew it…

And suddenly, I’d transformed into what could only be described as a magical girl!

“Slow and steady wins the race—persistence is power! Magical Guru Cute Abyss!…Wait, where’d that weird catchphrase come from?! I didn’t mean to say that!”

“It worked, cheep! I still have enough power left to turn a few more people into magical gurus, cheep!”

I could tell the demigod was celebrating, but that’s about as far as my understanding of the situation went. “Are you kidding me?!” I shouted. “What’s turning me into a magical guru supposed to do to help you?!”

“Heh-heh-heh! It’s simple, cheep: When someone uncovers your secret, you just have to make it their secret, too, cheep!”

W-wait, what?! Like, as in, Literally, what are you even talking about?!

“Now that you’re a magical guru, too, you can’t spread Natalie’s identity around without implicating yourself, cheep!” the demigod followed up with absolute confidence.

Come to think of it… Whenever a girl learned about a magical girl’s secret in the shows back in my old world, she usually ended up being the next person who turned into a magical girl and joined the team, huh…? I guess the demigod thinks this would work out in basically the same way? It sure seems convinced its logic’s airtight, at least.

“Oh, wooow! You’re so cool, Cute Abyss!” Cute Underground squealed with admiration. It seemed she was going to call me by my magical guru name, now that we were, uh…coworkers, I guess? Not that it really mattered.

Guess I’ll call her Cute Underground for now, too.

“Let’s drive back the forces of evil together, Cute Abyss!” Cute Underground continued.

“Umm… Look, Cute Underground—I’m not actually planning on doing any of that stuff at all, okay?” I replied. Also, shutting me up doesn’t even solve the problem you have on your plate right now. “Hey, mascot character?”

“Don’t you go giving me some messed-up nickname, cheep! I’ll have you know my name’s Proti’pyutan, thank you very much, cheep!”

Okay, but that’s really hard to say. It’d make a mean tongue twister—I don’t know if I could say it quickly three times in a row.

“Hey Proti’pyutan,” I said, “you know I’m not the only one who knows Natalie’s a magical guru, right? Even if you did get me on your side, you’d still have a pretty big problem to deal with.” The issue’s way, way bigger than just me noticing!

“I’m taking that into consideration, cheep,” said Proti’pyutan.

Oh? I wasn’t expecting that, actually! Does she have a plan, then?

“All I have to do is turn this whole settlement into my believers, cheep! Then there’ll be no risk of anyone’s identities getting exposed, cheep!”

“Theoretically, I guess, but good luck making it happen!”

At that point, I decided to try chanting a random incantation, just for the heck of it. I ended up firing a beam of light that slammed into a nearby tree, causing it to sprout a menacing pair of eyes and transform into some sort of monster, its branches morphing into legs!

“Oh, wow… I guess that’s a thing I can do now,” I muttered to myself.

“Wooood! Wooood!”

And it makes the laziest noises that a tree monster could possibly come up with!

“Hey, tree,” I said, “think you could grab Proti’pyutan and hold her still for me?”

The tree monster did just as I asked, lashing out with its whiplike limbs to bind Proti’pyutan in place.

“Oh, it actually obeys my orders! I guess the monsters the bad guys in the shows made did always obey their commands.”

“Aaahhh! What’re you doing, cheep?! Magical gurus aren’t allowed to rebel against me, cheep!” Proti’pyutan shouted. She started thrashing and flailing about, but her limbs were really short compared to a normal human’s, and it didn’t really accomplish much.

“There’s not much left I can do about this, so I’m gonna contact the gods and let them sort it out.”

Though I’d really rather not let Godly Godness and Nintan see me like this if I can help it. Guess I’ll just have to bear with the shame…

Proti’pyutan was whisked away to the world of the gods, and I was brought along with her. Presumably, they needed me there to explain what exactly had happened. Natalie, meanwhile, may have been a magical guru but was otherwise just a normal human, and as such was left behind in the forest. There was no telling how nasty the shock of getting plopped down in an extradimensional space with a bunch of gods would be, so it was probably for the best.

The moment Proti’pyutan saw Dekie, a look of dread came across her face. “I’m so terribly sorry, O great and mighty Dekyari’tosde,” she said. Dekie had only assumed her current form after coming to the surface, but Proti’pyutan had still realized who she was instantly.

Dekie wasn’t the only one present, of course. Godly Godness and Nintan were there as well, and they were both staring pointedly at the demigod. Very pointedly, in fact—Godly Godness definitely had her face closer to Proti’pyutan than she needed to.

“Hmm, hmm,” Godly Godness muttered. “Now that’s an interesting look! It’s pretty similar to the humans, but it’s way more comical on the whole!”

“No I’m not, cheep… People like me aren’t rare at all underground, cheep,” Proti’pyutan replied.

I didn’t have any reason not to believe that, but from my perspective, Proti’pyutan’s general form was pretty comical, yeah. She was shorter than us, for one thing, and she looked like a character straight out of a kids’ cartoon.

“If people like you aren’t rare down there, then does that mean they all look like you?” Godly Godness asked.

Right? I was wondering that, too. I’d always pictured the underworlders as creepy, crawly creatures, but if they all looked like Proti’pyutan, then I wouldn’t be even remotely scared of them. In fact, I’d just barely be willing to call them cute.

“Some of them are like me, but some are spheres, or triangles, or rhombuses, or circles, or even icosahedrons, cheep!”

When did this become a geometry problem?! And wait, didn’t Nintan already ask Dekie all about the underworld?

“Hey, hasn’t Nintan already asked about all this underworld stuff?” I asked, just to double-check.

Nintan threw her arms up into the air, as if to say she’d completely given up. Huh. I guess gods use that pose, too.

“Of course We questioned Dekyari’tosde on the matter, as well as many others,” Nintan said. “Her explanations, however, were so profoundly poorly stated that they communicated next to nothing of substance to Us!”

Oooh… Yeah, considering how bad Dekie’s aesthetic sense is, I guess it’s not surprising she wouldn’t be much of a wordsmith either…

“Our official divine standpoint on the matter is the underworld is ‘replete with distinct and individualistic organisms.’ In other words, We might as well say We know nothing at all!”

“When you put it that way, I’m actually kind of curious what an organism that isn’t ‘distinct and individualistic’ would even look like,” I replied. In other words, we really don’t know much in specific about the underworld at all yet. Considering what we do know, though, I have a feeling that might actually be for the best.

“Now then,” said Nintan, “regarding how We shall deal with this Propyu’titan—”

“It’s, umm, it’s Proti’pyutan, cheep!”

“Your name is far too difficult to pronounce… Regarding how We shall deal with Proti’pyutan: What are your intentions, Dekyari’tosde?” Nintan asked, her expression notably more serious than before. “This Proti’pipiputa—”

“Ah! Nintan just tripped over the name! She totally stuttered! You heard it! You all heard it!” Godly Godness shouted. She really didn’t need to, though—it had been such a pronounced stutter all of us would’ve noticed.

“Silence! It is a word We are not used to, and We shall not suffer your mockery over it! Ahem!” Nintan roared. “This demigod was created by Dekyari’tosde, and as such, We shall entrust her with the duty to decide how it is dealt with. If you wish to ask the other gods’ counsel, then so be it, but as its creator, the final decision shall fall to you.”

That explained why Nintan looked so serious. She was placing Proti’pyutan’s fate in Dekie’s hands.

“If you wish for it to be returned to the underground, then We shall make it so,” Nintan added.

“Cheeeep! Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep! Anything but that, cheep!” Proti’pyutan wailed. “Just looking at the creatures down there gives me anxiety, cheep… If I stay there any longer, I’m gonna have a mental breakdown, cheep! I can’t go back, cheep!”

This demigod has some serious baggage about the underworld for being one of its big shots!

“Plus, everyone down there hates me, cheep! They treat me like a washed-up old fogey, cheep! Nobody has any faith in me at all, cheep!”

Right, she mentioned that earlier. I guess when enough time passes, even gods whole societies have faith in can end up down on their luck eventually. Sometimes, they’ll fade from the public eye and get forgotten entirely.

Dekie, for her part, had a completely blank look on her face. Part of me almost suspected she wasn’t listening at all, but this was also more or less her usual attitude. Her experience of reality was so far separated from mine, it made her impossible to read.

“I’d really like to stay on the surface if I can, cheep!” said Proti’pyutan. “A-and my creator, the great and mighty Dekyary’ry’ry’ry’sde is here, too, cheep…”

Even underworlders stumble over underworld names! And that was the worst possible moment for her to screw up Dekyari’tosde’s name, too! Why would she wait until the most essential moment of the whole conversation to make herself look terrible…?

“OKAY, then. You CAN stay!”

Dekie gave Proti’pyutan the okay so easily, for a moment, the demigod didn’t even seem to understand what she’d just heard.

“C-can I, cheep? Really, cheep?”

“Sure. DO whatever you WANT to. I don’t like DECIDING on stuff like THAT. If you don’t cause ANY TROUBLE, that’s good ENOUGH for ME!”

Dekie actually had a point there: It only made sense for the deciding factor to be whether or not Proti’pyutan had caused any actual trouble. If she hadn’t, then there was no good reason to force her to leave.

“Yippee, cheep!”

And so, Proti’pyutan’s deportation to the underworld was put on indefinite hold. Speaking as the person who’d found her and brought her to the gods, I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. It turns out when you get involved in someone’s business, you end up feeling a lot of responsibility for their fate!

“Now I can make more and more magical gurus in the surface world, cheep! My goal is to recruit at least four or five new ones a year, cheep!”

“Such dramatic behavior is precisely the sort of problem We feared! Step too far over the line, and We shall banish you without hesitation!” Nintan snapped, shutting Proti’pyutan’s ambitions down before they could even get off the ground.

Yeah, having too many people who can transform like Natalie running around would definitely be an issue…

“All right, cheep. I’ll play along and keep their numbers as low as I can, cheep…”

“Very good. Do so, and We shall turn a blind eye to your presence,” Nintan said with a nod. She seemed satisfied, but I had to wonder: Would Natalie be able to keep operating as Cute Underground under this arrangement…? It didn’t seem like Nintan had outright rejected magical gurus on the whole.

I guess if the gods say it’s fine, I don’t have to go out of my way to stop it!

“All right, great! Sounds like that’s settled!” I said. “Boy, who knew something this crazy would happen in a boring little countryside—”

“By the way, Azusa—what is that outlandish garb you are wearing?” Nintan pointedly asked.

Yep. I sure was still dressed in my Magical Guru Cute Abyss outfit!

“Ahh!” exclaimed Godly Godness. “That’s right! You’re dressed like a magical girl, Azusa! And it looks pretty great on you! C’mon, strike a cool pose!”

“Agh! Godly Godness noticed, too!”

The last person I’d wanted catching on to my transformation had wised up, and my attempt to make a clean getaway was a failure. My appearance had changed so dramatically that I really should have seen this coming… In retrospect, I should’ve told the gods about what was going on the moment I confirmed the magical guru’s identity…

“This is a magical guru form,” I explained. “I was about to get roped into being one, too, which is why I contacted all of you…”

I absolutely, under no circumstances, want to end up in this costume and run out to fight monsters every time disaster strikes. I don’t want to snitch on the demigod, exactly, but I definitely don’t owe it that much dedication!

“So, yeah, Proti’pyutan? Think you could turn me back to—”

“Seeing as you’ve already transformed, you should let us watch you fight as a magical girl at least once!”

Godly Godness talked right over me, and my fate was sealed. This wasn’t one of her practical jokes—the look in her eyes was full of very genuine hope.

Oooh, no. She really, honestly wants to see me do a magical girl fight…

“I’d, umm, really rather not, personally,” I hopefully explained.

“But it’s just the once! Pleeease?! I’ll never ask again! Just the one time!” Godly Godness begged.

“Why not? Once could hardly hurt,” Nintan chimed in. There was nowhere left for me to run.

“Please, Azusa, please! I’ll never ask for anything ever again as long as I live!”

“That’s way too much commitment coming from a god! I’ll do it, okay?! I’ll do it!”

Suddenly, I found myself back in the woods again, where Cute Underground was still waiting for me. From her perspective, I’d probably vanished into thin air, only to reappear just as suddenly. “Ah, Cute Abyss! Where were you?” she asked.

You’re still calling me that, huh? Then I guess I’ll be sticking to Cute Underground instead of Natalie, too.

“I just had something important to talk to some people about,” I explained, glossing over the details. “Also, it looks like I’m gonna have to get in a fight in this form at least once.”

I wouldn’t have a huge audience, so I could live with it, more or less. If there’d been a ton of spectators around, though, there wasn’t a chance I could’ve followed through. At the absolute least, I would’ve had to have Proti’pyutan give me a form that made it a little less obvious I was the Witch of the Highlands.

“You have to fight something? But what will—” Cute Underground began, but before she could even finish, a giant bread Imamon stormed out from the deeper woods, making its way right toward us!

“Oh! That’s the Imamon I summoned the other day!” said Natalie.

“Yep,” I replied. “Apparently it absorbed a bunch of evil energy and got corrupted, and now it’s on a rampage.”

At that point, Proti’pyutan reappeared as well.

“That Imamon’s planning on clear-cutting the forest and planting wheat fields in its place so it can make more bread, cheep! We have to do something or the forest will be destroyed, cheep!”

I wanted to shout that if Imamon could go berserk that easily, they shouldn’t be using them at all, but I knew this was all just a performance, so I held back. The truth was that Proti’pyutan had deliberately made an enemy Imamon for us to fight.

“So…we’re supposed to fight that, Cute Abyss?” asked Cute Underground.

“…Yeah,” I sighed, “that’s right. And wow, I am not used to being called that.”

“Huh? But, wait…,” Cute Underground said. It looked like she’d found some sort of problem with the scenario. “If we make an Imamon to fight it with, then isn’t there a chance new Imamon will end up getting corrupted, too…?”

“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” I grumbled. See? This is exactly why magical girls shouldn’t be using fighting styles that are usually exclusive to their enemies!

“And that’s why you’ll be fighting hand-to-hand this time, cheep!” Proti’pyutan declared, raising both of her arms in the air.

“Well, you heard her,” I said. “We’re taking that thing down together.”

“Y-you mean I have to fight it personally…? But I’ve never beaten a monster with my bare hands before,” said Cute Underground.

Yeah, a guild receptionist wouldn’t get very many chances to have that experience, would they? Bare-handed monster slaying is more of an adventurer skill set.

“I don’t think it’s gonna be as dangerous as it looks. Give it a try! If things start looking bad, I’ll back you up,” I said.

“Understood! I’ll do my best!”

Cute Underground timidly stepped up to face the bread Imamon.

“Bread! Breaaad! Bread, bread, breaaad!” the monster bellowed. Clearly, it hadn’t learned any new words—though on the other hand, it would have been harder to bring ourselves to defeat it if it could speak a human language. Its single-word vocabulary was probably for the best.

“Take this! Puuunch!” Cute Underground shouted as she threw a pretty unimpressive punch at the bread monster, leaving a minor dent in its side. All of a sudden, I could smell the fragrant aroma of fresh-baked bread.

“I guess I should’ve expected that from a bread monster. I’m starting to get hungry,” I commented. All right, Cute Underground! Follow it up!

“And next, a kiiick!” Cute Underground bellowed, once again announcing exactly what she was going to do. Her leg slammed straight into the bread monster, sending bakery smells all through the forest. As far as fights went, this was a pretty entertaining one!

The monster, however, wasn’t going to just sit there and take it forever. It raised its bready arms and started battering Cute Underground with them.

“Breeead! Breeead, bread, bread!”

“Ahhh! Oh no, oh no!”

Cute Underground crossed her arms in front of her, shielding herself from the bread monster’s punches. I’d been told she’d be just fine, but I was still a little worried. She was at a disadvantage, at least in terms of size.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before Cute Underground let out a surprised exclamation. “Huh? Wait, this doesn’t hurt very much at all!”

“Magical gurus’ bodies are tough as nails, cheep! You’ve got magical resistance for days, too, cheep!”

Looks like she really did get a power-up, then.

“All right—I think it’s time for me to join the action!” I said. I’d promised Godly Godness I’d let her watch Cute Abyss go into battle, after all, and you didn’t want to break a promise to the gods. “Take this—Cute Abyss kick!”

My foot sank deeply into the bread monster, leaving a huge dent in it and prompting another intense burst of its deliciously bready, appetizing aroma! I’d never been in a fight that smelled so good before.

I threw a punch, too, and…yeah, honestly, I didn’t feel all that different at all post-transformation. Actually, I might even be a little weaker now than I was before I transformed? I guess that helps me look more like a real magical girl, though, so it works.

“Okay, Cute Underground, let’s finish it off together!” I shouted.

“Together? You mean by kicking it at the same time?”

“Nope. We’ve got a secret weapon we can use instead.”

I stepped over to Cute Underground and held a hand out before me. Just like that, an enormous bow materialized in my grasp. It had to be at least five feet long from end to end, and its arrows were just as oversize.

“That’s the Bow of Justice, cheep! Only magical gurus can use it, cheep! Draw it together and shoot that Imamon down, cheep!”

“But I can’t use a bow like that!” Cure Underground wailed. “It’s way too big! I don’t care if being a magical guru makes me stronger, that’s still impossible!”

“Yeah, but the two of us can use it together—or that’s the idea, anyway. Let’s try it!” I replied.

The two of us pulled at the bow’s string together. Surprisingly, we managed to draw it pretty easily just by putting a little strength into it. Now all that was left was to aim as carefully as we could.

Before we could let our arrow loose, however, Proti’pyutan came up to us and whispered in our ears.

“…So it’s basically a catchphrase? All right, I’ll say it.” After everything we’ve done already, no point getting embarrassed by a little catchphrase.

““Arrow of faith, pierce and purify the heart of evil!””

Cute Underground and I let out a synchronized shout as we released our arrow! It sailed right at the bread Imamon and scored a direct hit.

“Breaaaaaaaaad! ” the Imamon cried out. At the very end, the look of rage on its face melted away into one of blissful joy before it vanished…replaced by a regular loaf of bread that thudded to the forest floor. The monster had returned to its former, perfectly ordinary form.

“All right! I’d call that mission accomplished,” I said.

“Excellent work, cheep!” Proti’pyutan shouted as she threw her arms into the air. My best guess was it was supposed to be a victory pose.

Cute Underground, meanwhile, looked sort of dazed—almost like she was half asleep. A hint of moisture began to gather in her eyes as she turned to face me.

Huh? What exactly was tear-jerking about anything that just happened?

“Umm… Cute Abyss? My heart feels all warm and fuzzy all of a sudden… What is this feeling…?”

“I think you’re the only one who can answer that for sure…but I get the sense it’s not bad, at least, so you’ll probably be fine,” I replied.

“Yes, you’re right,” said Cute Underground. “It’s not that I’m happy at finally becoming a real hero, per se, but I do feel very accomplished…”

This was just speculation on my part, of course…but I suspected going from a desk job as a guild secretary to her first real battle had lifted her spirits. Natalie may never have consciously wished she could get out there and beat monsters up like a real hero, but that desire may have lurked within her on some level or another. She wouldn’t have decided to work for the guild if she wasn’t at least a little interested in the adventuring life, after all. Even if she hadn’t been aware of it when she first took the job, watching all the adventurers drift in and out day after day had probably fostered her latent desire to get out there and do battle herself.

Of course, Natalie was the only person who could say what the real reasoning was. She could take all the time she needed to figure that out after she’d changed back from her Cute Underground persona.

“Great job, cheep! This was your biggest success yet, cheep!” Proti’pyutan chimed in, praising her as well.

“It really was, wasn’t it? We protected this whole forest!” said Cute Underground.

“But, uhh… The thing is, my boss might come down on me if you go too crazy, so maybe we could be a bit more subtle in the future, okay, cheep?”

“Of course! I’ll keep working as hard as I can to have my wish granted!” said Cute Underground, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

“So go find a real hunk for me to marry, okay?!”

Proti’pyutan spun a hundred and eighty degrees around on the spot.

“I’ll do what I can, cheep…”

“Hey! Why won’t you say that to my face?! What’s going on?!”

As I watched their antics, Dekie appeared right beside me. She did it without any warning at all, by the way, and once again scared the living daylights out of me. Also, she knows Natalie’s still here, right…?

“I THINK this is one OF the REASONS why nobody has FAITH in Proti’pyutan ANYMORE,” said Dekie.

“What do you mean? What is?” I asked.

“She’s just NOT powerful enough TO ACTUALLY make WISHES come true at WILL.”

“You mean, sometimes her magical gurus’ wishes don’t actually get granted at all…?”

“That’s RIGHT!”

Cute Underground—who’d been listening to that whole exchange—started to tremble. “You should know,” she shouted, “I will absolutely take you to court if this all turns out to be a scam!”

By that point, Proti’pyutan had already taken off at a sprint into the woods. “Faith isn’t a currency you can buy wishes with, cheep!” she shouted as she fled.

I’m not gonna disagree with that, but also, that’s exactly why nobody has faith in you anymore…

“Should I NOT have SAID that?”

“I mean, it’s better than if Proti’pyutan never got held accountable, so it’s probably fine…?”

In the end, it took a full thirty minutes for us to calm Cute Underground down again.

This why you want to be careful about the contracts you sign, so they don’t come back to bite you later.

“Okay,” I said to Proti’pyutan, “that’s my quota done with. Could you undo my magical guru transformation now?”

Nobody had taught me how to change back into my normal form, and there was absolutely no way I was going to go back to the house in the highlands looking like that.

“Oh, right, cheep!” said Proti’pyutan. “Here, I’ll teach you how to—”

Before Proti’pyutan could even start her explanation, my body began to glow—and the next thing I knew, I was wearing my usual witch’s robe again.

“Oh, thanks! That was quick,” I said.

“Wasn’t me, cheep,” said Proti’pyutan. “Your transformation wore off on its own before I could do anything, cheep. What’s going on here, cheep…?”

“Wait, so it was dispelled for no reason? That’s a little creepy, but I guess it won’t be a problem if I just don’t transform anymore…,” I muttered.

Proti’pyutan took a moment to stare intently at me. “By the way,” she said, “how old are you, cheep?”

“Like, my actual age? About three hundred.”

“That’d do it, cheep! The people most qualified to be magical gurus are women in their twenties, cheep! I can use my power to force you to turn into a magical guru, but it won’t last if you’re that ancient, cheep!”

“Now that’s a hard explanation for me to accept!”

Also, I don’t wanna hear that from the person who turned me into a magical guru without asking!

And so the magical girl incident came to a close.

One evening a few days after I became a magical girl, Falfa and Shalsha were watching one of the demons’ magical streams in the dining room after dinner. I, meanwhile, was watching the girls while I washed up the dishes. They really did look just like a couple of kids glued to the TV.

I guess magical streaming’s still pretty new, and it’s not a bad thing for them to be interested in new things.

The magical stream they were watching at the moment seemed to be dedicated to discussing recent events of interest in the demon lands. In other words, it was basically a news program.

“In other news, mysterious entities known as ‘magical gurus’ have appeared in the human lands recently.”

I jumped with shock, then rushed across the room to get a better look at the screen.

“We’ve sent our reporters all across the human territories to investigate the story, and we managed to successfully capture footage of two magical gurus battling a bread monster! Watch, and be amazed!”

And just like that, I found myself watching a video of me and Cute Underground firing a magical bow together…

“Aaaaaaugh! Why couldn’t they have picked anything else to report on?!”

“Huh? You know, that magical guru looks a little like you, doesn’t she, Mommy?”

“Her face and Mom’s are identical. They are, in fact, the same person.”

“I was unaware you ever dressed that flamboyantly, Lady Azusa.”

“How would you like to star in an ad for Halkara Pharmaceuticals, Madam Teacher?!”

“Those big, frilly clothes look really hard to fight in!”

“Your soul looks exactly the same as always in the stream, so I knew it was you right away, Big Sis.”

“Humans are so strange.”

One scream was all it took for my entire family to catch on to the fact I was Cute Abyss. Natalie was terrible at keeping her identity secret, and it turned out that was something we had in common. Of course, reacting to the stream like that would blow my cover wide-open…

Pecora will never, ever let me hear the end of it if she finds out about this, so I’ll just have to pray that none of the demons ever figure it out. Like, seriously, please let that never happen…

SOMEONE MADE KNOCKOFF EDIBLE SLIMES

The moment I spotted a wyvern flapping its way through the sky, my first impulse was to wonder just who had come to visit us this time. Much to my surprise, the answer turned out to be Pecora, all by herself.

“Good day to you, Elder Sister! ” Pecora said as she walked up to me.

“Hi, Pecora,” I replied. “I wasn’t expecting you today, so I’m not really prepared for guests, but I could at least make some tea, if you want?”

To be clear, Pecora stopping by to visit wasn’t rare at all. The surprising part was her being alone. She lived a remarkably casual lifestyle, but she was still the demon king at the end of the day. Even stranger was how oddly on edge she was; her whole aura was different from usual. I didn’t get the sense she was here to pull me into an elaborate practical joke—it was more like she was upset about something.

Is she here to vent, maybe?

I figured it had to be something along those lines. Knowing Pecora, if she did have something to vent about, she’d be all-too-willing to tell me the whole story in complete detail. I’d only seen her put on a tough front once, after all, back when she was training to get her idol groove back.

To make a long story short, I brought Pecora inside and served her tea. This was more or less our usual hospitality routine, and we carried on normally as well, making inoffensive small talk. I told her about all the mundane events in my life recently, and she shared not-particularly-engaging stories about the demon lands as well. She seemed a lot more frank than usual, but she still wouldn’t cut to the chase and tell me what she actually wanted to talk about.

Well, this is probably the right way to deal with her for now, at any rate. I can tell something’s bothering her, but I can’t come out and say that. If I ask what’s wrong and she asks for a favor, it’ll be way harder for me to turn it down, and I’ll be way more likely to get dragged into the sort of trouble I’d prefer to stay out of.

We kept chatting away until eventually, Pecora drained the remainder of her tea. “Oh! I suppose I’m out,” she said.

“I can brew you another cup, if you want,” I offered.

“Oh! That reminds me—I brought some sweets along. I thought they would go well with tea,” Pecora said, producing a small box she set on the table.

Oh, well, that’s nice of her. I’m certainly not saying no! I wonder what she brought?

Pecora opened up the box, revealing an assortment of suspiciously familiar-looking sweets. In fact, it looked exactly like a box of soft, appetizing manju. Not only that, but the manju-like sweets had a distinctive, face-like mark branded on them…

“I bought these in the demon lands! They’re called ‘sweet slimes,’” said Pecora.

“They look an awful lot like edible slimes, don’t they?!”

“Yes! That is exactly the problem! And it gets worse—look inside!” Pecora shouted. She picked out one of the sweets and tore it in half, revealing it was filled with what looked distinctly like bean paste. “These are identical to the edible slimes you make, Elder Sister! I’m convinced they’ve ripped off your signature product!”

Oh, okay. I guess that explains why she was acting so irritated.

“All right, calm down,” I said. “We don’t know that for sure. They might taste totally different!”

I gave one of the edible slime sweets a try. It tasted exactly like a manju.

“Okay, I think they’re using a different type of bean, but otherwise, they’re making these in basically the same way… Tastes like they went with a slightly wetter, semi-smooth paste for theirs,” I commented.

All I tasted was manju. There was no other way to describe it. Their exteriors were a little dry, but since the bean paste was on the wet side of the spectrum, that dryness was more or less balanced out.

“It’s a bit too sweet, too—kinda cloying. I think they should cut back on the sugar just a little. That aside—yeah, I guess they are pretty close to edible slimes.”

“Exactly! They’re very close! Some nefarious curs have ripped off your invention, Elder Sister!”

“Whoa, wait up a minute! It’s not like the recipe’s a trade secret or anything! Even if they did use the exact same methods, there’s no law against that, is there?” I asked.

Pecora seemed way more impulsively angry about this than she usually would be. Maybe it was because I was involved? In any case, when she was this upset, it was my job to keep a clear head. Fortunately, nothing about the situation would have made me particularly upset in the first place. Even if they had deliberately imitated my edible slimes, it wouldn’t have bothered me much—so staying calm was pretty easy, all around.

“True. When you eat something delicious, there’s nothing unusual at all about trying to recreate it,” said Pecora. “And there’s no reason to think they sent spies to steal the recipe from you or anything along those lines.”

“Right?” I said, a little surprised by how easily she’d admitted that. “So even if they did base their sweets off our edible slimes, I don’t see why it’d be a problem.”

Edible slimes weren’t even my invention in the first place. All I’d done was use some knowledge from my previous life to recreate a sweet I already knew about. You could buy identical-tasting manju from different stores all across Japan. One store’s bean paste usually didn’t taste all that dramatically different from the next, and you couldn’t shape manju to look like twenty-sided dice, or cows, or horses, or whatever, so they were pretty homogenous in that sense, too. Even if every region had its own special name for their local manju, they all more or less looked the same.

Who could even say what the original manju was, at this point? They’d been around since before copyright law was a thing, at least. Actually, did copyright even cover dessert recipes? I sure didn’t know.

“Correct. Legally, there are no issues. They’re not selling spoiled sweets, after all. As far as the law is concerned, they’re completely in the clear,” said Pecora. Once again, we seemed to be on the same page that this wasn’t an issue.

Okay, so isn’t this problem solved already? Or really, doesn’t it mean there was never a problem to begin with?

“However, I still can’t tolerate it! Ahmnh, mnh, mnh, mnh!” Pecora exclaimed as she shoveled sweet slimes into her mouth.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen somebody sullenly eat sweets before. That sure is something…