Side: Amahashi Kakeru

At lunch break, I was about to dig into an onigiri in the courtyard the way I did every day when Horii-san came over.

"Mind if I join you?"

Uh… lunch? With me?

"Oh—yeah. Of course."

It wasn't like I could say no. We were friends. Though we did stand out a little. Horii-san was a beauty from a rich family, which made her a school celebrity in her own right.

Unlike me, with just my onigiri, Horii-san had brought a proper girly bento, and there was no way she could sit on the grass to eat. We moved over to one of the courtyard chairs and sat.

The distance between us was a delicate thing. Not too close, not too far.

"I learned something interesting. Looks like it was the teachers who let the upperclassmen in on the underground business."

Spreading out her cute little bento, Horii-san pinched up a tiny bit of rice with her chopsticks, and before she put it in her mouth she told me that much.

"Huh. Well, rumors do get around. Or rather—how'd you find that out?"

"I've been at this school since the Elementary Division, so I have a lot of connections with the upperclassmen and teachers. Apparently the teachers had been arguing that if there's a space underground, maybe they could renovate it and put it to educational use. But then the police barred the teaching staff from going down there too, and they were grumbling about it. The upperclassmen probably overheard that."

Nothing particularly strange about that. The school sat on grounds so vast they were rare these days, and I hadn't heard they were short on space—but wanting to make use of something that's already there is only natural.

"So this 'weird monkey'—that was the teachers' take on it, huh."

"Seems like it. They apparently think that thing we ran into was a monkey."

It didn't look anything like a monkey, but anyone who hadn't actually seen it would interpret it that way.

So, what to do. There was no question the upperclassmen who'd stirred up trouble and the teachers who'd leaked it were the ones at fault, but the real question was what the government would do about the dungeon and the school now that it had come to this.

We didn't have many cards to play.

"Did you tell your old man?"

"Yes, just a little while ago."

"Then I guess we wait and see."

Sticking my nose in and making the situation worse—that'd be a disaster I couldn't bear to watch. With no read on how the government was moving I couldn't say much, but in Japan, even when things got messy, a sense of balance usually kicked in and people found some kind of compromise.

"Hey, why do you think they keep it hidden? I think they'd be better off just going public quickly. It's not like there'd be riots in Japan. They can keep it under control, can't they? I don't know what's down there, but still."

Looking over at me as she said it, Horii-san—still with a youthful look to her—was beautiful.

"It's the rest of the world that's the problem, I'd guess."

Dungeons. Even with them in Japan, the world wasn't going to change dramatically. The fundamentals of humanity's science-based social structure wouldn't be shaken. But there was no mistaking that the scramble over dungeon rights had already begun.

"By the way—we're getting stared at a lot, you know?"

I figured I probably shouldn't bring it up, but it slipped out anyway. Maybe because I was with Horii-san, the students around us kept sneaking glances our way.

"Is it a bother? I'm only having lunch with a friend."

"No—a bother, not at all. It's just… I'm not really used to it."

"You'll get used to it soon. Besides, people look at you too, Amahashi-kun. It's a little late to worry about it now."

"Me?"

"You're the one who tried to save me and fell underground with me. Your name and face at least are well known by now."

Ah, right. I'd been thinking how peaceful things were compared to my days as Hero, but I'd been getting my fair share of attention after all. Since there was no malice in it and none of the looks were strange, I hadn't paid it any mind.

I see—so it was because of that incident, and the fact that we were together now, that we stood out. Then again, Horii-san didn't seem to mind standing out—or rather, she understood it and didn't care.

Pricia was the same way. Live in that kind of environment and people's stares probably just become a given.

Side: the Man from the Bureau

I'd braced myself to be turned away at the door, but the Chairman agreed to see me right away.

That said, he wasn't as cordial as he'd been the time we met before.

"My deepest apologies for the discourtesy of the official in charge this morning."

I bowed deeply in apology. I didn't expect it to settle anything. But there'd be no negotiating at all unless I started here.

"I rather thought the police might come instead. To arrest me on some charge or other."

There was poison and a barb in the edges of his words, though at a glance he seemed mild. This was a different matter entirely from the activists and the crowd making noise on social media these days. Just facing him one-on-one made me want to bolt.

This old gentleman was the real thing.

Do this job long enough and now and then you run into a person like this.

"Out of the question, sir. We have nothing but gratitude for your cooperation, Chairman Kusanagi. If I myself am not satisfactory, my superior will come another day to offer his apologies."

In all honesty, if this soured, a superior—or, in the worst case, someone around the level of the Chief Cabinet Secretary—coming forward wouldn't be out of the question. Even if he didn't oppose keeping this matter secret, he was a gentleman who could cause trouble if he turned to anti-ruling-party, anti-government activity.

"Will you leave the children's discipline to me?"

"Yes. That isn't a matter for us to involve ourselves in."

The very first thing he'd pinned down was the students' discipline. Before protecting his own position…

"I haven't long left in this life. All sorts of things weigh on me. For my part, I'd even be willing to make an ugly spectacle of myself. If it meant I could protect this school."

"I understand your concern. The world has somehow become a place where tolerance is steadily being lost."

Was it the tide of the times? Or had humanity never had any tolerance to begin with—I couldn't say. At the very least, compared to when I was a child, the world had become a harder place to live in.

Foolish students aggravated me, but at the same time there was a part of me that figured that's just how students were. In the old days you'd scold them, they'd push back, and you'd scold them again. We never used to crush a student over one or two mistakes—but now, the moment something goes public, they're crushed at once.

"Tell me what you can. What's it like in there? Is the government acting with the long term in mind?"

After a brief silence, he'd asked me a question that was hard to answer. Landowners whose property held a dungeon went along with it obediently at first too, but the moment it looked like all they were getting was stopgap measures, they'd voice their distrust and dissatisfaction as a matter of course. This was a common thing too.

"Please understand that this is confidential before you listen. If it leaks, my head rolls at the very least. The truth is, we still don't have a full grasp of what's underground. It's recognized as Paranormal Space—something that can't be explained by science or physics. At present there's nowhere, domestic or foreign, that has determined how deep it goes. As for the underground here, personnel seconded from the Self-Defense Forces descended as far as the fifth underground level, but they gave up surveying beyond that for reasons of time and equipment. That said, going by precedents with similar Paranormal Spaces, we've judged the threat level to be low. This has been established through global surveys and research."

I really wasn't supposed to tell him any of that. But it was all a matter of internal regulations. The whole thing was too deeply classified to even have the constraints of formal law. So by laying my neck on the line and giving them enough information, I built relationships of trust with landowners everywhere and kept the present situation in hand.

With this man, there was nothing left to do but hand over information and earn his trust.

Because there was no way I could rein him in.