I’m Kobory, the Spirit of Earth. I work at Elementario (formerly Aquario). Do you believe in fairies? Well, of course, I guess you’d have to... Muse-san, Salama-san, Sylphie-san and I are spirits of the four basic elements, and we come from magical lands just like Moffle-senpai and his friends.
By the way, apparently there’s been a strange rumor going around in our cast lately: They say there’s a fairy in the park. I don’t really understand what they mean, of course... We’ve always had fairies here, working their fingers to the bone! The first time I heard about it, I’m sure a big question mark appeared over my head. It would be like someone at a normal company saying, “I hear there are humans working here.”
“C’mon, girlie. Don’t go looking so confused.” I was talking to the head of the maintenance department, Wrenchy-kun-san. We were on a break from work, shooting the breeze in a corner of the underground passageway.
He and I weren’t especially close, but for some reason, we tended to see a lot of each other. Whenever he needed to talk about the Elementario facilities, I was always the one he seemed to come to first, and this time, I just happened to say hello to him in the break room while he was enjoying a can of coffee.
“‘Fairy’ is just a figure of speech. What I mean is, there’s somethin’ strange goin’ on around here.” That rough Tokyo dialect was how Wrenchy-kun-san always talked. He looked like a large wrench with arms and legs, wearing a headband, and he spoke like your typical workman. He looked after all of the park’s facilities—the power, the air circulation, the water pipes, the sound system, the lighting—and he was very reliable, to the point that even Kanie-san respected him.
“What do you mean, ‘something strange’?” I wanted to know.
“I wouldn’t be callin’ it a fairy if I knew!” he insisted. “I’m just sayin’, there’s some strange things afoot that a man can’t explain.”
“Do you mean like a gremlin?” I wondered.
“The hell’s that?”
“It’s a mortal legend about imps that sabotage machinery... World War II bombers and things like that,” I explained. “Inexplicable breakdowns they suffered would be said to have been the work of gremlins.”
Wrenchy-kun-san just stared at me. “You know the strangest things, girlie.”
“Well...”
“But, fine... it’s somethin’ like that, then. The fairy plays pranks, but nothin’ bad like that. It only seems to do good things, matter of fact.”
“Ahh. Is that so?” So it’s like a reverse gremlin, I thought, A fairy that only does good things—that sounds nice.
“It happened to me once, y’see. I’m sure it was the fairy behind it, any rate.”
“Did you see it?”
“Naw, I didn’t see it,” Wrenchy-kun-san admitted. “It was... ah, back in March. You remember the stadium in the second park?”
“Yes, I do.” Of course I did. Using that stadium to host a soccer game was what had gotten us to our minimum attendance quota, allowing us to survive for another year. The land of the second park had since been sold to a mega-corporation called Malmart, but that stadium was AmaBri’s savior in a way.
“Something happened when we held the soccer game there... Something that don’t quite add up.” Wrenchy-kun-san went on to explain: Just before the soccer game, there had been a problem with the lighting. They’d spent all night working, and early in the morning, the lighting went out; it wouldn’t respond to any of their efforts to get it back on.
Naturally, Wrenchy-kun-san and the rest of the stadium staff tried desperately to find the source of the problem, but it was an old facility, and progress was grueling. While they tried one thing and another, the park opened its doors. That meant there were eight hours left until the match started.
“I do remember that...” I mused.
“Had us in a cold sweat, I tell you. Just before noon, we finally found the source of the trouble in the control room PC...” The PC was an extremely old model, which Wrenchy-kun-san explained was beyond even him. “It wasn’t even a Windows system. It was a PC-98, y’know? Ever heard of it, girlie?”
“Oh... From NEC?” I guessed.
“Oh... so ya do know it,” said Wrenchy-kun-san, sounding surprised.
Before Windows PCs became popular, such machines were used widely throughout Japan. There was even a time when the country was dominated by NEC’s PC-9800 series, but that was about 25 years ago.
“The company that made the control system folded ages ago, and nobody knew how to use PCs from that era... so what were we supposed to do?” Wrenchy-kun-san’s gaze became distant. “I went at it about thirty minutes. Then I left for a bit, and when I came back a little bit later, I found it fixed, right there.”
“Ahh...”
“I’m telling you, two or three lines of code were rewritten,” he insisted. “Seemed like it was an issue with the number of lights and their output... after testing, see, we’d swapped out about 50 old light bulbs, and that’s what was causing the problem. But there’s no way that anyone but me knew about it.”
“So, you think it was a fairy?” I asked.
“What else could it be? Stranger things’ve happened. Anyway, those’re the kind of things they’re talkin’ about.”
“I see. That is quite mysterious.” I tried to sound neutral, without a trace of sarcasm, but Wrenchy-kun-san still seemed hurt by my phrasing.
“What, girlie, you don’t believe me?”
“No, I do...”
“That’s a pretty indifferent response if ya do,” he mumbled.
“I’m sorry. This is just how I am.” I was able to smile when I was on stage, but generally speaking, I’m fairly inexpressive. My second most common expression is probably looking put out when Salama-san and Sylphie-san go too far.
“Well, never you mind. ...Sorry to bother you with an old man’s shaggy dog stories.”
“It didn’t bother me,” I insisted. “It was very entertaining.”
“You don’t look so entertained to me... But, well, so long.” Wrenchy-kun-san left, sighing to himself.