Bonus Short:
Amiche and Luffie’s Everyday Life
AMICHE’S PERSPECTIVE
I LOOKED OVER THE VILLAGE as I headed to the dump where I worked. Three days earlier, a high-level monster had appeared near our village, throwing it into disarray. However, the adventurers quickly went into the forest to put the monster down before it could attack. Nobody died, and any wounded adventurers were healed and ready to go back to work, so the entire village was elated today. Later tonight there would be a big banquet to celebrate the monster’s subjugation, focused on the adventurers who had put it down.
“Puu?” Lulu sounded a little uneasy about the different atmosphere in the village.
I smiled. “It’s okay, Lulu. Everyone in the village is just very happy today.”
Lulu looked around, then bounced up into my arms. “Puu.”
Are you still anxious? Or you did you not understand me…?
“Hi, Amiche!” The shopkeeper of the bakery I often visited waved at me.
“Good morning,” I called back.
“On your way to work?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, they may have put down the monster, but be careful. The forest is still a dangerous place.”
“I will, thank you. But the village watch and guards are out in full force today, so I’m sure I’ll be okay.”
Four months had now passed since I decided to improve my relationship with Lulu, and now I spoke with Lulu not only at the dump but also in town. Sometimes we’d laugh, sometimes we’d play, and sometimes we’d even fight in the middle of the street. As this became our daily routine, the villagers started looking at us differently.
Before, I’d been a useless tamer who couldn’t do her job well. None of the villagers ever told me so to my face, but as our ability to digest the trash got weaker with each passing year, they would trash-talk us behind our backs. But before I knew it, people were greeting me with smiles again, and there were more of those smiles with each passing day.
“Puu?”
Lulu looked at me curiously, still oblivious as to why the villagers were acting differently. I mean, how could Lulu know when I still hadn’t—
“Puu!”
Huh?!
I looked at Lulu, and a pair of slightly angry eyes stared back up at me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Puu.”
Lulu looked around, so I did the same.
“Ack!”
I’d been so lost in thought that I hadn’t noticed we had passed through the gate.
“Sorry, Lulu. Thanks for telling me.”
“Puu,” Lulu said smugly.
I hugged my slime tight. Lulu had been much more talkative lately and pointed out a lot of things to me. Ugh, what a cutie!
“Hi, what’cha doing?” Luffie asked.
I finally looked at him and saw a strange expression on his face. “Sorry, I was just thinking…”
“So, are you going somewhere?” Luffie asked.
Huh?
“I called out to you at the gate, but you walked right on by without a word.”
“Agggh, I’m sorry. I was just lost in thought.”
Luffie laughed quietly. “Oh, good. You had such a grim look on your face, I was afraid something was wrong.”
I giggled. “Thanks for caring, Luffie.”
Ever since I improved my relationship with Lulu, I’d been speaking from the heart more. After all, Lulu seemed to understand me better that way.
“Let’s go,” Luffie pointed outside the gate.
“Off to work we go.”
“Puu.”
“Peh!”
Oops, I almost forgot!
“Good morning, Ponyu. Let’s put in another good day together, okay?”
“Peh!” Ponyu happily replied. It was neat to see how its cuteness was so different from Lulu’s.
We greeted the gatekeeper and headed into the forest, closely watching our surroundings as we made our way to the dump.
“Since the high-level adventurers went out to fight, there was a chance the monsters on the village outskirts might feel provoked and run rampant, but the response was quick enough this time that it looks like the forest will be pretty safe.”
I nodded at Luffie. “Good to hear.”
Whether it was because of the veteran adventurers’ intimidation or their sheer presence, any monsters in the area often got excited and rampaged after a subjugation force was dispatched. But since the task force had acted quickly this time, the other monsters weren’t impacted much. This was truly a relief. Monsters were terrifying when they went on rampages.
“Good morning,” we called out to our fellow tamers already working at the dump.
“Good morning,” they replied.
Up until recently, there had been a sort of guilt associated with the word “tamer.” Because of that, a dark cloud always seemed to hang over the dump.
But not anymore. Everyone was starting to gain confidence in themselves as tamers, and maybe that was why I thought the dump felt a lot cheerier now.
“Puu.”
“Peh!”
When Lulu and Ponyu headed into the dump, they bounced over to their fellow tamed slimes and sang at them. They were probably saying “good morning.”
“Puu.”
“Peh!”
But their fellow tamed slimes didn’t speak, so the drawback was that it looked like Lulu and Ponyu were carrying on by themselves.
“Puu.”
“Peh!”
Lulu and Ponyu spoke once more, only to be met with silence yet again, and then they merrily jumped under the trash. I was sure they would do a great job disposing of it, just like they did every day.
“Anything to report?” Ashra asked us.
“No, nothing. What about you, Luffie?”
“Nothing from me, either.”
Ashra made a few check marks on his paper when we answered.
“So you’re on duty today, Ashra?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m on records duty.”
We’d started keeping records one month earlier so we could all track the health and overall condition of our slimes. And one week ago, we’d also started keeping track of how much trash they were digesting.
“Any news about Stalice?” Luffie asked.
Ashra shook his head.
“Okay.”
Two weeks ago, the tamer coordinator Stalice had gotten violent with one of the new tamers. Before, the worst she had done was harass me and Luffie, but she had finally resorted to physical violence. The masters of both guilds had been keeping a wary eye on her for quite some time, but Stalice never changed until she was finally stripped of her position as tamer coordinator. She hadn’t been to the dump since.
“Well, guess we’d better get started,” I said.
The Stalice problem could only be solved if she decided to change, so we were holding space for her until she returned. We believed that even Stalice could surely turn over a new leaf.
“All right, I’m gonna tidy up the area with all the magic items,” Luffie said.
While Lulu and Ponyu digested the trash, Luffie and I cleaned up the dump. At first, only the two of us did the work, but now everyone shared the load. Because of that, the dump was so tidy it was hardly recognizable.
“All done?” Luffie asked.
After a while, we finished our maintenance work on the dump. Since we did it just about every day, the task ended faster than we expected. And now that the dump was nicely organized and maintained, everyone was more careful where they dumped their trash—well, almost everyone.
“Puu.”
“Peh!”
I looked over at the sound of Lulu and Ponyu’s satisfied voices just in time to see them returning from the dump.
“How’d it go?” Chase asked, eyeing the paper in Ashra’s hand.
“We’re definitely dissolving more trash than last week, and Izu has been dissolving more today than yesterday, too.”
Chase smiled. Izu was Chase’s tamed slime, so he must have felt very proud. I knew that because I was very proud when I learned that Lulu had started dissolving more trash. After all, that meant our bond was growing even stronger.
“Izuuu!” Chase wailed happily as he ran over to Izu, who shrank back a little.
“Hee hee! I get that you’re happy, buddy, but you’re making Izu uncomfortable,” Ashra chuckled.
“Awwww, Izuuuuu. Come on, let me share my joy with you!”
Izu bounced away from Chase’s looming embrace, and the banter escalated into an all-out game of tag around the dump.
“Go, Izuuu! You’ve got this!”
“Puu.”
As Lulu and I cheered Izu on, the slime slammed right into Chase’s face.
“Agh! Izu, don’t be like that.”
For some reason, Izu looked pleased at Chase’s sour expression, which gave us all a good laugh.
“Here.” Ashra handed me the paper documenting all the trash that had been dissolved in the past week, and Luffie peered at it next to me.
“Our total’s gone up,” I remarked.
“Yup.”
Little by little, we were getting rid of more and more trash. It was only a slight improvement, but I knew it was still a great thing.
Once we had the numbers we wanted, we hoped the tamers in other villages and towns would embrace change, too.