Side: Amahashi Kakeru

It was Monday. That magic item was supposed to be finished sometime today, but I'd already left the house to head to school.

Going by how it felt, this was my first time attending in three years. …That had been one long weekend.

There was a kind of nostalgia to it, but surprisingly there was nothing strange about it either—just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill walk to school. I tried to recall what I'd been thinking the last time I went, three years ago, but honestly, the only thing I could dredge up was that it hadn't been a good memory.

Grandma had just passed away, and I still hadn't sorted out how I felt about it.

I was worried about my companions and the Demon Lord I'd left at the house, but over the course of yesterday I'd taught them how to use the running water, the toilet, and the electrical appliances. They shouldn't run into any trouble.

At the bus stop near the house, people heading off to work and school were lined up in a queue.

It was mid-April now; I'd only just started high school, and not even a month had passed since I moved. So there were a few people I recognized by sight, but nobody I was close enough with to call out to.

Some had wireless earbuds in, listening to music; others were staring at their phones. Maybe it was just my imagination, but it struck me how many of them weren't trying to interact with anyone around them.

This was normal, though.

It suddenly reminded me of when I'd first been summoned to the other world and wandered around the royal capital. The way people looked, the lives they led. Some things were different, but some things didn't change at all.

I wondered what had become of the people of that world. The human race, the demon race, the other peoples too…

Well, it was a world where strife and war were a fact of daily life. I figured they were getting by, more or less.

My high school was private. Kusanagi Academy, High School Division. The reason I'd picked it was that I figured its free-spirited atmosphere would make it easier to attend than the local public and private schools. I'd talked it over with Grandma and chosen it from a handful of candidates.

"Morning."

"Yo."

I exchanged greetings with the guy in the seat next to mine, who'd gotten there a step ahead of me, and sat down. My relationships with people were neither good nor bad. It hadn't even been half a month since the school year started, so I figured that was about how it went.

"Hey, Amahashi, you decide on a club yet?"

I'd been thinking back on three years ago and on the three years since, when out of nowhere the guy I'd just greeted spoke up.

"Nah, haven't decided."

What was his name again? We'd at least made small talk before, but…

"Amahashi-kun, Kitamura-kun. Morning."

Right, right—Kitamura. The classmate who walked in jogged my memory. It was Horii Asuka-san. Her, I remembered. Apparently her parents were rich and she was a proper young lady. A textbook beauty.

Naturally, I had no memory of ever talking to her beyond greetings.

"Yo."

"Morning."

There was nothing awkward about the way she and Kitamura traded greetings either. I had a vague memory of thinking he must have been well brought up and good with people.

Still, you know what? So this was what being a high schooler was like.

How to put it… it was easygoing. Nobody paid me any attention; they all just saw me as another guy who happened to be there.

Back in that world, being the Hero meant there were always people around me, always eyes on me. If you looked at it kindly, it was special treatment. Seen another way, it was surveillance of a dangerous individual.

What reached my ears now was the voices of classmates chatting about nothing in particular.

Maybe it was because I'd spent so long living a life where I had to keep my guard up at all times, but I felt genuinely relieved. So a life where no one paid you any attention could be this easy.

There were parts of going to school that were a pain, but I thought I just might be able to enjoy it.

Side: Sanctina

Hero-sama had gone off to school.

There wasn't anything in particular for us to do. The Demon Lord was making a magic item in another room, and Hime-sama was training indoors. And Filia-san, saying she wanted to understand this world, had been watching that thing called a television the whole time.

I'd been offering up prayers to god, but would my prayers reach the god of that other world? Or the god of this one?

"As I thought, my physical abilities have fallen off considerably compared to over there."

Hime-sama, who'd been training, looked uneasy for once.

Still, this was supposed to be a world with no monsters, where people could live free of worry. Hime-sama was wary of the Demon Lord, but if anything, I thought it might be all right to trust her.

Now that she was free of being the Demon Lord, that woman had no reason to make enemies of us. If anything, it seemed to me that it would be less trouble for the Demon Lord to send us back to the other side as quickly as possible.

"Sanctina, has there been no Oracle?"

"No, Hime-sama. There has been no Oracle. And… this is strictly confidential, not to be shared outside, but among those who possess the Oracle Skill, there are some who never receive a single Oracle in their entire lives. Whether an Oracle will come at all regarding our situation… I myself have never received one."

The truth was, I'd heard that the last Oracle had come several hundred years ago. If the accounts handed down from one Saint to the next were correct.

"What is that supposed to mean? A Hero summoning is only ever performed after an Oracle is received… This time as well, you were the one who received the Oracle, were you not?"

"I…"

"Pricia, that's just the official line."

Filia-san, seeing that I was at a loss for how to answer, spoke up in my place. She really did seem to know all sorts of things. The Archbishop had told me to be careful of the elf race, but if anything…

"That can't be…"

"To begin with, was there even any point in defeating that Demon Lord? What would have happened if she'd gotten serious? You know that better than anyone. I've heard that this Hero summoning was carried out to suit the human race's convenience."

That was something I didn't know either. I knew that the Hero summoning had been carried out without an Oracle, but I'd never been told the reason behind it.

"Tch…"

"The Elder said as much. That this time's sacrifice would be a young woman."

A sacrifice, was it. To call the Demon Lord that.

The elf race was long-lived, so you couldn't trust their appearance. They were treacherous. I understood the meaning of the Archbishop's words just a little now. Filia-san had been fighting the Demon Lord knowing all of this.

Though of course, the same was true of me.

"You're having quite the entertaining conversation."

I hadn't sensed her at all. To think the Demon Lord had come out of the other room without my noticing…

"It's the truth, isn't it? I wasn't certain myself, but with those words of yours—that you became the Demon Lord without ever wanting to—everything fell into place."

"Spilling things you didn't need to—I can't say I admire that. There are things everyone's better off not knowing. You're all going to return to your homeland, aren't you? Don't worry. I'll see to it that you make it back to the other side, no matter what."

From beginning to end, she neither hated nor resented us. She looked far more noble than the people back at the church.

Perhaps I no longer had the qualifications or the abilities to be a Saint.

Return? There was a part of me that wasn't honestly glad to hear that word. I didn't know this land well enough to want to live here, but even if I returned, there was not a shred of freedom there for me.

Was my training lacking?

Or else…