Side: Amahashi Kakeru

Golden Week. Out in the world, everyone was busy with trips and outings.

It was the first day of the long weekend, but I had something to do, so I stayed home.

"So you put it together with your own hands."

With Pricia and the others watching me with open curiosity, I started by unpacking everything.

I was assembling the furniture that had been delivered a few days back. A bed, a table, chairs, that sort of thing. Up until now everyone had just been laying futons out on the floor, but given the kind of lives they'd had in the other world, beds were the better call.

"They're not exactly high-end. Sorry about that."

There was no end to it once you started aiming higher. Still, Pricia and Noctia had lived at the very top of society in the other world. I couldn't just hand them the same living conditions they'd had there. That was the part that got to me.

"I have no attachment to life at the royal castle. Every move you make is watched, and the moment something happens, they drag out some past precedent and nag you into stopping. The instant they realize you won't act the way they want, they'll come to resent you—even their own child."

Maybe I'd let a slightly self-deprecating smile slip out. Pricia's subtle reaction to it, and the words that followed, left me with no idea what to say.

"A daughter with power and talent beyond his own. A different way of thinking, a different way of living, and deep trust from the officers and soldiers because she goes to the front lines herself. Your royal father must have been terrified. It might have been different if you'd stayed quietly inside the castle, or hurried up and gotten married…"

Sanctina and Filia stayed silent, but Noctia was the one who spoke. Sanctina, Filia, and I all had at least some history with the human kingdom. That was exactly why we couldn't say it—whereas Noctia, having no such history, could say what she pleased.

Well, I'd vaguely gathered that life at the royal castle didn't suit Pricia. But there was one more thing I picked up on.

"So the demon race isn't all that different, huh."

I knew I shouldn't ask, but I asked anyway.

"That's right. And being long-lived as we are, plenty of them get so twisted up over time they're past saving."

No wonder war never went away. I didn't really know what happened when a long-lived race lived a long life. It'd be nice if they accumulated experience for the better—but the ones who accumulated it for the worse struck me as nothing but a blight.

"Elves are much the same. We think ourselves wiser than the other races, which only makes us more of a handful."

I think I was a little surprised. It was that rare for Filia to talk about elves, or herself, of her own accord.

"Same everywhere, huh. I figure this world's no different."

The way people acted around authority and power varied surprisingly little from race to race—which was both interesting and intriguing.

Well, if they'd built a society that surpassed the human race, that endless, barren cycle of conflict wouldn't have happened—so it was more or less what I'd already guessed.

"All right, one down!"

One assemble-it-yourself bed was complete. I'd bought a proper mattress made for the bed, so I figured it wouldn't be a bad night's sleep even like this.

Once there was a bed, it actually started to look like a room someone lived in. There still wasn't much furniture—just cases for clothes and the like.

The interior decorating came next. Curtains, a carpet, all of it—Pricia and the others already understood there were plenty of options, and I'd asked them to pick out whatever they liked.

How to put it. Getting new furniture together had me genuinely excited. A new life was starting here. Maybe that was why.

I wondered what Grandpa and Grandma would have thought if they'd seen this.

The two of them loved looking after people, so they'd probably have been pushing all kinds of "you need this too, and that" on us and gathering it all up.

I kind of wish I could have seen that too.

Side: Filia

With the furniture in place in the room, it struck me all over again that we'd be living here—and I was surprised to find a part of me glad of it.

Calm days that went on unchanged for years on end: that was the way of life most elves wished for. Many of them lived in their own domains, never mingling with the human or demon races.

On rare occasions, some went out into the world, and now and then there were those who took humans, demons, dwarfs, or dragonkin as comrades or partners—but their numbers were few.

It wasn't that mingling with the outside world was forbidden. It was simply that most elves didn't much care for change.

I'd been more or less of that mind myself, too…

"Filia-san, what should we do about the curtains?"

Together with Sanctina, my roommate, I settled where to put the beds and thought over everything else alongside her. This sort of thing was actually a first for me. For elves it was a given that you lived in the room you were born and raised in; you only set up a new home when you married.

"Let me see. I'd like to look at the real thing and see what kind would be good."

"Right. Shall we go out later, then?"

Now that Sanctina had shed the title of Saint, she was growing more like a human her own age. Enjoying cooking and meals, finding everyday life stimulating. The very picture of a young person of the human race.

"Filia-san, you look like you're having fun."

The words she offered out of nowhere made me smile. Over there I'd tried not to let much show on my face. Among the humans around Kakeru and Sanctina and the rest, there'd been those who could, at times, be harmful to an elf.

"Yes, it's fun. Just as you cast off the title of Saint, perhaps I've cast off the elven way of living."

"Was it… a burden for you too, Filia-san?"

"Not so much a burden. It's just that being freed from the way of living laid down for me as an elf is thanks to coming here, I suppose. There are times when not knowing what tomorrow holds is so much to look forward to that I can hardly stand it."

The gladness I'd felt the moment I learned Noctia had come over to this side—I'd only lately come to understand it.

At the time I thought how selfish she was, but living out these days here, perhaps I understood it because I'd realized I had become free.

"My only worry is whether we'll be a bother to Kakeru-san."

"You don't need to worry about that much. Kakeru's started to enjoy his new days too. Though it seems the grief of losing his grandmother is still great…"

I thought the sight of Kakeru happily putting that bed together said it all. He had people to live alongside, and he was glad of it.

"You think so?"

"I won't let him say he's unhappy with us right here beside him."

"Hehe, that's true. Maybe it's better to carry ourselves with that much confidence."

It galled me a little that it was exactly as Noctia had said before, but I did think we ought to live together in this world.

Noctia, whom I'd known the shortest time and who still held her mysteries, was the one whose true heart I couldn't read.

But Sanctina, Pricia, Kakeru, and I—at the very least, we were glad we could live alongside one another.

What would become of our relationship, honestly, even I didn't know.

And yet that, more than anything, was what made me happy.

Because I'd come to know the joy of things changing.