Side: Amahashi Kakeru

Class let out. Maybe it was from sitting in the same position the whole time, but stretching felt great.

"Hey, you wanna go check out some clubs?"

Kitamura called over to me while I was packing up to leave. Seemed like he was a little worried about me.

"Sorry, I've got something to take care of today. Some other time."

Clubs, huh. Sports clubs were out. Holding back my physical abilities would be tough, and it'd be unfair to the guys who took it seriously.

Our school was private, but it didn't put much weight on sports recommendations, so it wasn't what you'd call a powerhouse. Though I'd heard there were a few people good enough to make nationals in individual events.

I'd actually been kind of looking forward to it. Clubs, I mean.

I left school and walked a while. Near the school there was a main road lined with supermarkets and drugstores. I planned to do the dinner shopping there.

I'd only started living on my own about two weeks ago. Before that I'd lived further out in the countryside, the three of us—me, Grandpa, and Grandma.

I remembered how back when Grandpa was alive, we used to drive out to stock up on groceries. Well, this place was far from home, so it wasn't like I had any memories of Grandpa and Grandma here.

"Welcome~. Bento again today?"

The supermarket was probably one of the bigger stores in the area. There were plenty of staff and customers, but a woman who looked like a part-timer, college-age maybe, called out to me.

"Nah, ingredients today. Thought I'd cook for myself a bit."

Right… she was the one who'd recognized my face from coming in to grab the discounted bento in the evenings, and we'd chat a little. She was an older onee-san type who liked looking after people, and the fact that I'd enjoyed talking with her was a slightly embarrassing memory.

"You've gotta eat your vegetables too, okay~?"

"Yes, I will."

I'd thought about getting bento for everyone, but figuring it might look weird to suddenly buy five portions when I always bought just one, I couldn't bring myself to say it, and headed for the food section.

Five people's worth of meals, after all. Even just the shopping was a chore.

The truth was, I'd lived with Grandpa and Grandma, so I wasn't great at proper Western cooking. Home-style stuff like hamburg steak¹or curry, sure—Grandma could make all kinds of things, so I'd learned from her.

I wanted to feed them food they'd like as much as I could. Maybe I'd go with hamburg steak today. The sashimi was cheap too, but over there they basically never ate fish raw, so I was worried whether it'd suit their tastes.

When I stepped outside, the western sky had turned orange.

"Whoa…"

I didn't know why. For no reason at all, tears nearly welled up.

I hadn't cried even when Grandpa and Grandma passed away, or the whole time I was over there.

It wasn't that I'd remembered something, or gotten lost in sentiment.

…Maybe I was just tired. I'd spent all those days on edge over defeating the Demon Lord.

I shook it off and hurried home.

"I'm home~."

My companions and the Demon Lord were at the house, with no sign of any particular fighting.

The mood was, well, about what you'd expect. You couldn't call it having fun or relaxing, but it'd be stranger if they could settle in and relax after coming to a world they had no ties to whatsoever.

"Kakeru-san, welcome home."

"Sanctina? What's the matter? Calling me by name…"

I was putting the groceries in the fridge in the kitchen when Sanctina came to help, and I was caught off guard by suddenly being called by my name.

"Ah, we decided we'd stop calling everyone Hero, Demon Lord, and Princess."

I see, that made sense. So everyone was thinking things over too, to live here for a while. I needed to pull myself together more.

"Kakeru, you're back. This is yours."

Just as I was about to start on dinner prep, the Demon Lord abruptly handed me a plain, slender bracelet. That magic item she'd mentioned.

"I don't need one, though?"

"I talked it over with Filia—transformation magic, translation, and the magic that keeps people from getting suspicious, which is mental magic, by the way. It has those effects. Plus, I added a magic seal, a Skill seal, and physical-ability suppression."

I was dumbfounded by the Demon Lord rattling it off so casually. I knew a few magic items myself, and I had the ones I'd been given when I became the Hero, but none of them were anywhere near this multifunctional.

"A magic seal, a Skill seal, and physical-ability suppression? The kind of thing you'd use on a criminal?"

"Yes, originally. I made it so you can switch it off and on by willing it. I calculated from the mana density, so it should be about the same as when you were living here before."

That was the Demon Lord for you, I guess. And the materials must've been limited, too.

"That's a big help. Thanks."

Reading what people need and acting on it. Why had a Demon Lord like this been cornered all the way back to her own castle? Or was that whole setup something the Demon Lord had wanted to arrange herself?

"Oh yeah, around midday my Danger Sense Skill seemed to trigger from a small earthquake. Does the Danger Sense Skill go off for natural earthquakes too?"

When I brought up the daytime incident, like it had just come back to me, the Demon Lord—no, Noctia, I guess. She and Filia, who'd been watching TV with her in the living room, both looked surprised.

"Kakeru, is that true?"

Filia came over with a slightly grave look. When I told her the Danger Sense Skill had gone off at school, where there were no monsters and no one with any hostility, she fell into thought.

"The Danger Sense Skill doesn't trigger for a pure natural phenomenon. Is it possible you were mistaken?"

Hearing Noctia's words, I lost my confidence.

"I'm not sure. It was faint. If you tell me I imagined it, then maybe I did."

"You should have Sanctina take a look at you. There are quite a few cases of people who went to war young being plagued by trauma after returning home. I'm sure there were cases of someone making a fuss that their Danger Sense Skill triggered when there was no danger at all. You're keeping yourself too tense."

I'd been relieved, thinking it'd be fine if it was just my imagination, but Filia ended up worried about me instead. Sanctina was looking at me the same way.

In the midst of all that, Princess Pricia came over too.

"Kakeru, I'd been meaning to tell you when you got back. You don't need to be so considerate of us. I've decided to forget about being a princess too. I don't know how long we'll be in your care, but while we're here, let's forget about Hero and princess… and Demon Lord."

"Hime-sama…"

It seemed Princess Pricia had calmed down over the course of the day. That mental fortitude of hers really was something.

"I'm fine, really. More importantly, I'm going to get dinner ready."

It'd be fine if it was just my imagination. I just wished they'd stop talking about me like I was a PTSD patient. Though it was true I was tired, what with everything.

"I'm thinking of making hamburg steak today. It's a signature dish from my country."

We were all equally tired and bewildered, probably.

It wasn't as if this world was inferior in living conditions or cooking. If anything, the variety and quality of ingredients you could get normally had to be better.

As long as the food suited their tastes, I figured their stress and anxiety would ease up.

After that I'd need to talk to them about going out. How to use money, and maybe they'd need smartphones. Looking at it this way, this world really was complicated in a lot of ways.

I'd barely seen the neighbors face-to-face since the moving-in greetings. I'd just say the girls were long-term homestay guests.

First things first—I'd better get our stories straight on that.