Side: Amahashi Kakeru

It had been a worthwhile weekend.

Weekdays were days that never changed from one to the next. Which, of course, was the best thing in the world.

The weather was nice today, so I decided to eat lunch in the courtyard. Same as ever, my lunch was two onigiri I'd made myself. But that was the best way to do it.

When I left the classroom and went outside, I caught sight of several men in work clothes coming out of the prefab hut that hid the dungeon entrance.

"Those guys…"

They were probably the people doing the dungeon survey. I didn't have any insight-type Skill, so I couldn't say for certain, but somewhere along the way I'd gotten to where I could tell from the atmosphere.

They obviously weren't carrying weapons, but they had a few largish bags and boxes. Were their main weapons guns, I wondered? Apparently the other world had gunpowder firearms too, in some places. They just weren't used all that much — too lacking in stopping power to serve as a main weapon, and the raw materials for gunpowder weren't cheap.

Monsters with resistance to physical attacks, enemies that wouldn't take a fatal wound from something on the order of an assault rifle — that sort of thing was all over the place.

Their level was so-so, I'd say. Not beginners, but not veterans either. Honestly, since you supposedly couldn't manage a dungeon without using Skills and magic well, level alone wasn't enough to judge by.

In a dungeon, you could occasionally find an orb¹that let you acquire a Skill or spell. Skills and spells that normally required training or study to learn could be obtained in an instant, so they fetched high prices back in the other world.

I myself learned several of the Skills I needed as the Hero over there using orbs. The humans over there were old hands at raising Heroes, after all. They must have bought up the orbs that dungeons produced and kept them ready.

The men went off somewhere just like that.

Well, none of my business. Time for lunch.

In the courtyard there were others eating lunch the same as me. Not many people eating alone, though.

That was just how students were, I supposed. It was the effect of having lived over in that other world. I'd gotten used to being alone.

Over there I was always in an environment with people around me, but those people weren't friends, and they weren't close to me either. I was always being watched, always having to keep on being the Hero.

To avoid any misunderstanding — they were considerate of me, and they showed me appropriate respect, I think.

But there was no one I could open up to, no one I could speak my true feelings to. Pricia and the others included.

When I considered that saying something careless could get me killed if they decided I'd failed as the Hero, I couldn't even let a complaint slip.

What I was getting at was, after spending years in an environment where you couldn't even crack a joke, loneliness stopped mattering to me, and there was a wall between me and the people around me that I could never cross.

Once you got used to days like that, going on for three years and more, you even started to think that being alone — nights by yourself and the like — was your one and only peace.

Japan really was great. As long as you didn't do something seriously weird, no one watched you, and no one cared if you were on your own.

All right then. Food, food.

"I'd love to get a look at that basement everyone's talking about."

"I heard you get attacked by some weird animal, though?"

"It'll be fine. There aren't any wolves in Japan. The most that'd get into a basement around here is a dog or a tanuki."

As I bit into one of the foil-wrapped onigiri, I caught a snatch of conversation from the third-years nearby.

Curiosity, huh. Well, a natural enough reaction. With an old basement like that, anyone into history or cultural heritage would want a look, and it was human nature to want to expose what had been hidden.

There were plenty of people just like them all over the world, no doubt, filming videos and posting them on the internet.

Sure enough, it felt like it was only a matter of time before it all got exposed.

Well, none of my business. I wasn't about to make a move over some idle chatter from upperclassmen whose names I didn't even know, and tattling to a teacher was out of the question.

Besides, it should've been locked up so no one could get into the dungeon in the first place.

After lunch, I dozed off in the courtyard. I obviously couldn't let myself fall fully asleep, so I shook off the drowsiness a little and headed back to the classroom.

"Hey, Amahashi. Got any plans for Golden Week?"

Kitamura and a few of the other guys called out to me. Yeah, I didn't have a good feeling about this.

"Well, a few…"

"Let's have a get-together with Filia-san and the others!"

Knew it. Kitamura was easy to read. He wanted to get friendly with them. And if he could, get one of them to go out with him — that was about the size of it. Or, no, was this just normal?

"Oh, that sounds fun."

"Horii-san, you want in too?"

"Is that all right? I'd love to join, since it's come up."

A supporter had turned up from an unexpected direction. For her, there weren't any ulterior motives — she just wanted to do some genuine cross-cultural exchange, probably.

But unlike Kitamura, I couldn't quite read what Horii-san was thinking. Then again, it wasn't like I had that much life experience myself.

"Yeah, I'll ask, I guess. I don't actually know their plans."

It was a hassle to have them get all worked up on their own, but I'd hold off on a real answer for now. I'd already told them when the Golden Week holidays were, so they were bound to be thinking about things they wanted to do and places they wanted to go.

"Yes! This is gonna be fun! Maybe I'll take 'em to an amusement park, or out sightseeing somewhere!"

…When the angle was this transparent, it almost came back around to being refreshing. The slightly exasperated looks from the girls nearby seemed to do zero damage to Kitamura.

Would Filia and the others go for it? Still, it wasn't a bad thing for them to widen their circle of acquaintances.

In the first place, they were only staying at my place temporarily. Once they were in a position to stand on their own in Japan, I figured each of them would go off and live separately.

There were still problems we had to clear first, though…

Kitamura aside, getting friendly with Horii-san and the other girls might be a good thing.

"Kitamura, please, don't go doing anything that'll embarrass the Japanese. It'd be a problem if your ulterior motives made everyone hate us."

"I don't have ulterior motives! It's pure goodwill!!"

The one who'd boldly voiced what everyone had been thinking was Aizawa-san, who'd fallen into the basement along with us.

"Besides, it's not fair! Why does Amahashi get all the chances?!"

"…What exactly do you think a homestay is?"

I wanted to send a round of applause to Aizawa-san's spot-on retort.

I mean, there it was. Some of the guys had been picturing it as living it up day after day with beautiful foreign women.

I wanted to lay out for them in detail what those days in the other world were like, and what the girls' positions and standing had been.

The world wasn't that sweet a place.

I'd gotten pretty used to it by now, but here I was working hard every single day just so they could have an easier time living.