Re: Zero -Starting Life in Another World- Vol. 1 Page 3

  “The reason I healed your wounds, and the reason I had Puck serve as a pillow until you woke up—all of that was for me. So I’m going to have you make it up to me, okay?”

  “I know you’re trying to build this up and everything, but if you just have something to ask, go right ahead,” said Subaru.

  It looked like she was one of those people who took the saying “helping others isn’t just for their sake” to heart.

  The girl looked sternly at Subaru and shook her head.

  “I’m not asking, I’m commanding. You know something about my stolen badge, don’t you?” asked the girl, dropping the tone of her voice. However, as this wasn’t any different from what she had asked before, Subaru had to tilt his head in confusion.

  They had gone through this once already, right before Subaru had passed out.

  She keeps calling the thing a “badge,” Subaru thought. So is it something like what police and detectives keep on themselves to prove what they are? I haven’t seen anything like that.

  “You didn’t hit your head real hard or anything while I was passed out, did you?” Subaru asked.

  “You were only out for about ten minutes, and no, nothing like that happened. Answer the question.”

  “Well…if that’s the case, I’ve got to say I really don’t know. Ha-ha…”

  You can’t do anything about what you don’t know. Subaru’s answer was no different from before. However, the girl didn’t look particularly crestfallen, but instead nodded.

  “Well, if you don’t know, you don’t know. But, the fact that you know absolutely nothing itself is information you have provided to me, and enough for me to justify healing you,” the girl replied, using twisted enough logic to baffle any swindler to describe her complete loss.

  As Subaru looked on, dumbfounded, the girl clapped her hands together as if to finish things.

  “Well, I’m in a hurry, so I’m going to get going now. Your wounds should all be healed, and I threatened those other guys so much I doubt they’ll go near you again, but it’s still dangerous to enter an alley like this all alone. Oh, and I’m not saying this because I’m worried about you; this is a warning: If I see you in a similar situation again, there won’t be any merit to me saving you, so you can’t expect me to do so again,” said the girl with machine-gun rapidity. She took Subaru’s silence as affirmation, nodded to herself, and turned around to leave.

  The girl’s long silver hair swayed as she moved, and sparkled fantastically in the dim light of the alley.

  “I’m sorry about that. She’s not really honest with herself. Don’t think too strangely of her, okay?” said the cat with a laugh as, having returned to its original size, it jumped up onto the girl’s shoulder.

  The girl patted its back as if to affirm its touch, and the cat disappeared, slipping behind the curtain of her hair.

  Without once looking back, the girl continued to walk on. As he watched her go, Subaru thought about what the cat had said, about her not being honest with herself, and her intentions.

  She had something stolen from her, and even though she was in a hurry to get it back, she saved Subaru. Then, after Subaru had passed out, she healed him, and when he woke up, she used terrible reasoning to try to show him that she wasn’t worse off for doing so. “She’s not really honest with herself” was not going far enough. Her efforts were coming up negative in everything, and it was hard to watch.

  The girl had every right to blame Subaru for getting in her way, but she hadn’t complained even once, and she didn’t even look for an apology.

  That’s because to her, the only reason she saved Subaru was for her own ends.

  “If you live like that, you’re just going to keep losing until there’s nothing left,” said Subaru as he got up, patted his dust-and dirt-covered tracksuit and started running.

  Sure, his beloved tracksuit was in pretty bad shape, but on the inside, almost all of his pain was gone. That’s after being kicked and punched as much as he was. Again Subaru was reminded of the otherworldliness of magic, as well as the generosity of that girl who, despite going on and on about having Subaru pay her back, took nothing from him in return.

  “Hey, wait!” Subaru called out to the girl just as she had reached the entrance to the alley and was in front of the main road, looking unsure of where to go next.

  The girl touched her silver hair and looked a bit troubled as she turned around. “What is it? I’m going to tell you right now, I only have a bit more time to spend dealing with you.”

  “So a little’s fine, then?! Anyway, what you lost is really important, right? Let me help you look for it.”

  The girl blinked a few times, surprised. “But you said you don’t know anything…”

  “It’s true that I don’t know the name of the girl who stole that badge from you, or where she’s from, but at least I know what she looks like! She’s got blond hair, is sort of like a kitten, and has this canine tooth that sticks out that’s hard to miss. She’s shorter than you and her chest is pretty flat so she’s maybe two or three years younger than you! How about that?!”

  When he got flustered, Subaru had a bad habit of speaking fast and not really even knowing what he was saying.

  Right now that bad habit was running at full blast, and even Subaru wanted to distance himself from his own words.

  The ensuing silence was painful. A cold sweat drenched Subaru’s back, not to mention his hands and armpits, which was followed by heart palpitations, shortness of breath, as well as dizziness, and in addition to feeling faint, his nose stuffed up in an allergic reaction accompanied by a migraine, such that there were problems on every front. However…

  “…You’re strange,” the girl said with a hand up to her mouth, tilting her head to the side as if she were looking at some rare animal.

  With a finger still at her lips she stared at Subaru, sizing him up.

  “I should say up front that I can’t offer you anything in return for your help. I might not look it, but I don’t have a copper piece on me.”

  “Don’t worry, that makes two of us,” replied Subaru.

  “Three of us, if you count me… Pretty terrible for us as a group,” added a voice jokingly from the girl’s silver hair, but Subaru ignored it and pounded his chest.

  “I don’t need anything in thanks. I’m the one who should thank you. That’s why I want to help.”

  “I haven’t done anything deserving of your thanks. I’ve already gotten something in return from healing you.”

  She just won’t give it up, will she? Subaru looked at the girl and her stubborn attitude with a weak smile.

  “If that’s the case, then I’ll help you for my own sake. The reason is…yeah, that’s it. I’ll use you for my ‘one good deed a day’ project!” said Subaru.

  “One good deed a day?”

  “That’s right. Once a day you do one good thing. If you do that, after you die you’ve got a one-way ticket to heaven! If I can do it, then a wonderful life of just eating and sleeping is waiting for me—so I hear! So that’s why I’m going to help you for my own sake.”

  Subaru felt like turning to himself and asking what the hell he was going on about, but at least he’d managed to make his point.

  The girl stood in thought, considering Subaru’s words, when her cat poked at her cheek with its paws.

  “I don’t sense any evil intentions from him, and I don’t really think it’s a bad idea, you know? With how large the capital is, it’s way better than going on no clues at all.”

  “But if I get him involved…”

  “You’re cute when you’re stubborn, but it’s foolish to let your stubbornness get the best of you and make you lose sight of your goals. I’d really rather not think of my own master as a fool.”

  The cat added its support in favor of Subaru, but the girl was still hesitant. In response, the cat dropped its expression and continued in a serious voice.

  “Plus, the sun is starting to set. If night
falls, I won’t be able to help you. I’m not worried about you handling a thug or two, but…it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  “Well, it sounds like you’re the one to call if there’s danger! But, wait—according to what you said, you can’t come out at night? Is that one of the deals of your contract or something?” Subaru asked, taking a step closer.

  The cat flicked its whiskers with its front paw and said, “It’s more like, I may look cute, but I’m a spirit, you know? I use a lot of mana just by materializing. When night falls, I return to the crystal that is my vessel and prepare for when the sun is out again. I suppose you could say it’s the perfect nine-to-five job.”

  “Nine to five? That sounds like a government job… The conditions to hire a spirit sound more severe than I expected…!”

  Subaru was able to talk naturally about spirits, but that was only because of the analytical power he had as a modern otaku, poisoned by anime and games. Even traits looked down on by the public come in handy sometimes.

  While Subaru and the cat continued their conversation, the girl continued to anguish over her decision. However, that last point seemed to have tipped the scales, so after much moaning with a number of buts and stills and ifs she finally conceded.

  “I’m telling you, I really can’t give you anything in return, okay?”

  6

  After Subaru’s first friendly interaction in this different world—a pleasant, heartwarming episode—one hour had passed.

  “What is the meaning of this?”

  Their investigation had stalled.

  As Subaru faced the girl’s cold stare, he scratched at his face, trying to find a way out.

  “Even with all of my experience, I never thought that it would be this difficult…”

  “You seem to have a really high opinion of yourself, but I haven’t seen anything from you to prove it. No matter how you slice it, things aren’t going well!”

  “Nobody says, ‘no matter how you slice it,’ anymore…”

  Pointing that out only made things worse, and the girl’s stare grew sharper, at which Subaru shrank away.

  Even though they had been searching for a little under an hour, for some reason, Subaru and the girl were back in an alley. Of course, there was a really good reason for this. There were several factors Subaru had discovered that made their search difficult.

  First, Subaru didn’t know his way around town. Given that he had just been summoned from another world, it was hard to blame him for wanting a pass on this one. Additionally, it seemed that the girl was unfamiliar with the area as well, and at least ten minutes were wasted with both having full confidence that the other knew their way around. It was pretty funny, actually, or so Subaru thought. But the way the girl was staring at Subaru, she didn’t seem to find it funny at all.

  Second, the characters and symbols written here and there…were completely illegible to Subaru. Given that Subaru didn’t have any trouble communicating by speech, he hadn’t thought all that much about it, but after a second look he saw that all around, here and there were handwritten symbols. Unless they were all some kind of “mystic charms to protect against evil magic” that tended to be popular, those symbols were probably letters for the common language. And because he couldn’t understand them, he couldn’t even read the road signs.

  In other words, while a miracle common in most otherworldly summoning works of fiction is “for some reason our words and writing are mutually understood!”, in Subaru’s case, only half of that came true. But given that if Subaru hadn’t been able to communicate through words he would have been as good as dead, it was hard to call his situation unlucky.

  “Still, why do you have to raise the difficulty like that on me…? The world’s not kind at all.”

  Rather than exhausting all options, it was more of a case of finding a series of critical problems before you even get started.

  While despairing at making absolutely no progress over the past hour, Subaru noticed that his companion, that girl, was standing up by the wall of the alley with her eyes closed, paying absolutely no mind to him. Seeing her lips move as she muttered something a few times, he tilted his head in confusion.

  “Wonder what she’s doing…”

  “Oh that? She’s communicating with lesser spirits.”

  Subaru raised his eyebrows in surprise as the girl’s gray cat suddenly reappeared right in front of his eyes.

  “I thought that I hadn’t seen you in a while, but you hadn’t gone home or anything; you were here the whole time?”

  “There’s still a bit of time left before I have to go. Unlike those minor spirits she’s talking to, I take my job seriously.”

  “Well that’s quite honorable of you. …But, what are these uh…lesser spirits again?”

  Going by the name, I suppose they’re a rank down from regular spirits? Subaru thought.

  As if agreeing with Subaru’s musing, the cat, floating in midair, waved its long tail back and forth. “Lesser spirits are beings that, in a state prior to becoming real spirits, start to develop some knowledge. If, over time, they gain power and self-awareness, they’ll become spirits like me.”

  As he nodded, listening to the cat’s explanation, Subaru noticed that the area around the girl began to glow. The silver-haired girl was surrounded by faint lights that looked as though they were fireflies.

  It was the kind of scene that most people would subconsciously hesitate to interfere with. It was like holy ground, whereby the influence of the supernatural, only what was sanctified was allowed to be.

  In response to the scene, Subaru…

  “Wow! That’s so cool! Are all of these glowing things spirits?”

  “Ah!”

  …intruded on it without a second thought, breaking the fantasy of it all as he started talking to the girl.

  As the girl cried out in surprise, you could see droplets of tears that formed in reaction, sparkling in her eyes. Then the girl’s flustered state spread to the lights around her and…

  “Oh, look at that. They’re panicking.”

  The many lights started to flee this way and that before finally scattering and disappearing into the air.

  “…Umm…”

  Both Subaru and the girl opened their mouths, dumbstruck, searching for where the lesser spirits had gone. Quickly the girl tried to continue what she had been doing, but it didn’t appear the lesser spirits were heeding her call anymore.

  “Just look at what you did! They’re gone! What are you going to do about this?!”

  “Ah… Um… I’m sorry! It was my first time seeing spirits like that and I got a little excited. I mean, it didn’t look like they were dangerous or anything.”

  “It was only safe because I had them under control. If you had done that to an inexperienced spirit mage, it would have been awful. In the worst case, the spirits could have gone berserk and…BAM.”

  “‘Bam?’”

  The girl was trying to admonish Subaru for not taking his actions seriously, but using the word “bam” wasn’t exactly helpful.

  “Oh, come on. There’s no way those little sparkly things could be dangerous. Do you really expect me to believe that?”

  “Well, to put it one way,” Puck said, “I may look pretty cute…but it would only take two seconds for me to turn you into a pile of dust.”

  “Damn, spirits are scary!” A shiver went down Subaru’s spine in response to the cat’s peaceful-sounding death threat, and he looked back at the girl. “I definitely hope you don’t happen to be so upset you set that cat on me or anything…”

  “I would never use Puck for something like that. If I were going to be violent with you, I’d handle you myself… Ugh, it really looks like they aren’t going to answer me anymore.” Failing to establish a second contact with the lesser spirits, the girl, depressed, shook her head powerlessly.

  “I suppose it’s not helpful to ask this after the spirits have already gone, but what is it exactly that you were
trying to do?”

  “I was trying to see if I could get any information from them about what I’m looking for. They disappeared before I was able to ask, though.”

  “What, really?!” Subaru was struck speechless by the gravity of his mistake. Seeing that, the girl jumped in.

  “Um, b-but… It did take some time and lesser spirits don’t have the kind of clear awareness that regular spirits have, so I wasn’t really expecting much, but… Okay, I’m sorry, that’s a lie.”

  The girl’s hesitancy to lie was in conflict with her desire for a positive outlook, so while she tried, she was unable to soften the blow. In fact, her struggle with herself only highlighted to Subaru his own stupidity. At this rate, he wasn’t going to be able to do anything but slow her down.

  This is bad, both considering the debt I owe and the fact that she’s my one precious connection in this world… I’m gonna do my best to cling to this relationship and not let go…!

  “From the look on your face, it looks like you’re up to no good, but…did you think of something? Um…” In front of Subaru, who had found a questionable new sense of determination, the girl hesitated. Subaru tilted his head and stared at her for a while as she furrowed her brow, but it was the cat that came to her rescue.

  “Ah, now that I think of it, we haven’t told each other our names yet, have we? Should we introduce ourselves?”

  “Oh, you’re right. Well then, I guess I’ll go ahead and go first!”

  In an overly energetic fashion, in part to help cover up for his previous mistake, Subaru struck a pose and pointed to the heavens.

  “My name is Subaru Natsuki! The ignorant and unintelligent, forever and everlastingly penniless! Nice to meet you!”

  “Well, that doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence, does it? Anyway, I’m Puck. Nice to meet you, too.”

  As Subaru put out his hand, Puck leapt into it with his whole body for a handshake. An onlooker would probably think Subaru was trying to squeeze the cat to death.

  The girl blinked in surprise at Subaru’s bold interaction. “It’s rare to see someone who’s willing to approach a spirit so easily…and your name is just as unusual. With black hair and dark eyes like that—just where did you come from?”