After getting ready, I had a light brunch, then relaxed in my room for a bit. When the appointed time arrived, we moved as a group to the hotel lounge.
“Looks like they just got here too,” I noted.
“That’s them?”
“Yeah. No mistaking it.”
At the same time we entered the lounge, the granny from the previous evening entered along with a young man and a woman, both dressed in mercenary attire. Behind them trailed three Koga Services employees. They wore uniforms printed with the company name and seal, making them immediately identifiable.
Looking at the group, Mimi cocked her head in puzzlement. “Hmm? That woman… I feel like I’ve seen her before.” She was studying the granny I’d fought yesterday evening.
Oh, you’re kidding me. That’s what this is? So that granny is…? Damn. No wonder she’s so skilled. “She’s probably someone you know, Mimi.”
“Hm?”
My words seemed only to confuse her further. She was clearly trying her best to remember, but she seemingly couldn’t recall anything. Elma, though, had apparently figured out the meaning of my words; she began to compare the faces of Mimi and the granny.
“You’ll probably remember once we start talking,” I told Mimi.
“I…see…”
I pulled the pondering Mimi with me into the lounge, and the granny pointed at a table and sofa.
“Is there good?” she asked.
“Sure. Mimi, Elma, come with me. Everyone else, sit in those chairs over there so you can hear. Mei, stay behind me.”
“Aye aye,” Tina responded.
She moved toward the chairs I’d indicated; Wiska and Dr. Shouko followed. Kugi, however, came over and whispered something to me.
“They are hardly leaking any thought waves, my lord, so they are likely wearing some sort of specialized equipment.”
“Seems like it. If anything happens, I’ll count on you.”
Kugi nodded in response before quietly heading over to Tina and the others. The granny and her group silently watched—well, the young man was looking over each of the girls in turn, his expression agitated.
“Nice to meet you again. I’m Captain Hiro.”
“I know who you are,” the granny replied. “I spent a lot of time looking into you, so I’m already tired of seeing your face.”
“Sorry for the trouble, but you could just have asked me directly. I would’ve answered what I could. So do you mind telling me your name? I already get the picture overall, but…”
“Hah…” the granny sighed in disappointment. She’d apparently been looking forward to surprising me. “Sure, I’ll tell you my name…after you answer my questions.”
“You… Fine. I know to respect my elders. Ask away.”
In the end, I just wanted to learn their objective. As long as we could resolve the issue in a way that stopped their coming after us, that’d be enough for me. If some concessions were necessary to achieve that, then fine.
“I won’t hold back, then. Who are you?” she demanded.
“Who am I…? Not an easy question to answer. You looked into me, didn’t you? I’m a platinum-ranker with the mercenary guild, and by a stroke of luck, I was awarded a gold star and became an honorary viscount of the Grakkan Empire. So just your average guy.”
Tina waved her hands in protest, but I pretended not to see her. I was a normal guy.
“I’m not interested in that kind of surface-level information. Where were you born, how were you raised, how did you acquire that ship, and why did you suddenly appear in the Tarmein System? Those are the things I want to know.”
Hearing her inquiries, I fell silent. Now, those are some tough questions. This granny really homed in on the critical issues. “Those aren’t answers I’m willing to give. Everyone has secrets about their past that they’d rather not divulge, right? To be perfectly honest, I’m not entirely sure of the answers to those questions myself.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how I ended up in Tarmein. I woke up one day and found myself in the cockpit of the Krishna—my ship—with the generators shut off. I got them back online, but then space pirates attacked me. I managed to defeat them and salvage their ship’s data, and from that data, I found Tarmein Prime’s coordinates. When I arrived there, the star system army interrogated me. When I finally got back to my ship, I tried to investigate what was going on. I still couldn’t figure anything out, so I decided to become a mercenary. Fortunately, my body remembered how to pilot a ship.”
Backing me up, Elma added, “When he got to Tarmein Prime, Hiro was like a lost child who didn’t know left from right. I can attest to that.” She shrugged. “Not that he’s any better now, to be honest.”
The sharp granny raised her eyebrows in suspicion, chewing on what I’d said. “Not a very convincing tale. You want me to believe that someone with unclear origins rose to platinum rank? Since when is the Empire liberal enough to accept that?”
“Don’t ask me. The powers that be might’ve decided behind closed doors, or maybe I just got lucky. Regardless of how it happened, I currently live an unfettered life in the Empire as a mercenary. Why do you want to know about all this, anyway? I still have no idea what your goal is.”
“The answers are important to me. Still, I guess I’m beating around the bush. I’ll just ask directly.”
“Go for it.”
“What was your motive in approaching Mimi? Who are you working for? If you lie, I’ll cut your head off.”
The granny’s piercing and intimidating tone was quite impressive. But as for how Mimi and I reacted…
“Why are you two just looking at each other? Answer me!”
“So, uh…I wasn’t working for anyone when I met her. As for my motive… Well, we met completely by chance. And if I had to give a reason for saving her… I guess it was because I couldn’t abandon her. Mimi’s really cute, after all.”
“It was fate!” Mimi said with a smile, hugging my arm.
Excellent. I’ll never get tired of this feeling. Under those circumstances, I’d probably do the same thing every time—still, I’d like to pat my past self on the back.
“Give me a real answer.”
“That was a real answer… If thugs are dragging a cute girl like Mimi into an alleyway, any normal guy will try to save her despite the obstacles.”
“Yeah. Putting aside whether the guy’s capable of deciding and acting that fast, that is theoretically true,” the man in the other group agreed. He’d just been quietly listening until now.
“Right? I admit that I might’ve had ulterior motives—such as thinking that she and I might get closer if I saved her. If you asked me to break it down, though, I’d say I helped her 30 percent out of indignation, and 30 percent out of potential regret if I didn’t act, with 40 percent ulterior motives.”
“Aren’t you’re fudging those numbers a bit? Your ulterior motives making up 50 or 60 percent sounds more likely to me.”
“Well, I guess. You might be right. But my reaction on the spot was mostly fueled by indignation and not wanting to feel bad about abandoning her.”
I glanced over at Elma, who looked away uncomfortably. Back then, I hadn’t been the hero I was today, and Elma had assumed I was just some guy with a ship. Thus, she’d told me that I’d be better off not sticking my head into other people’s business. We’d been strangers back then, so her reaction was completely natural, but having been in favor of abandoning Mimi probably made her uncomfortable in retrospect.
“So you’re saying that you didn’t have any particular motive, nor were you working for anyone; you really just happened to meet Mimi by chance. You rescued her, then took her aboard your ship…?”
“Yeah. Back then, I wasn’t even aware of the custom regarding what happens to women who board a man’s ship. I only heard about it after I’d finished the paperwork to take her with me, and I was completely shocked.”
Mimi blushed a little in embarrassment. “Eh heh heh… How nostalgic.” This conversation was really a bit suggestive.
“Satisfied?” I asked.
“Hang on. I’m thinking.”
The granny placed her hand against her forehead as if nursing a headache, then hung her head with a sour expression. She’d thought that a suspicious man was preying upon her granddaughter, so she’d gone out to beat him up, only to find that nothing was particularly wrong with the man, and that her granddaughter was with him by choice, not force. Yeah… That’d be one bitter pill to swallow.
“Master Hiro, just who is this person?” Mimi asked.
“You can’t tell? If you lay it all out, that should be pretty obvious.”
“Lay it all out…?”
“She’s obviously a mercenary. A veteran mercenary at that. She knows who you are and values you. She uses a sword, and she’s had extensive physical enhancements. But she looks younger than she is, which could cause confusion.”
“I’m going to kill you,” the granny threatened, still hanging her head. It wasn’t as if I’d said that she was pretending to be younger. Still, I supposed that youth and age were topics best left alone. Seemingly having gathered her thoughts, the granny then lifted her head. “Hah…I thought that man sent you.”
By “that man,” she was likely referring to the emperor. “Nope. If possible, I’d rather not have anything to do with that guy. That’s why I try not to get too close to the capital… Oh—I see. That’s why you were waiting here?”
It wasn’t that my pursuers had a vast net encompassing even the Arein System; it was more that they couldn’t set up a net until they were as far from the capital as Arein. They didn’t want to get too close to the center of the Grakkan Empire, because they didn’t want the emperor to discover them.
“That’s how it is,” she confirmed. “There’s plenty of work here, and although it’s on the outskirts, you can still find cutting-edge technology. It wasn’t a bad place to wait.”
Then the accursed granny took off her visor and looked at Mimi. You really can see some of Mimi’s facial features on her. No, wait. It’s the opposite: you can see some of the granny’s facial features on Mimi.
“We haven’t met for over ten years, Mimi. I’m Celestia.” Lady Celestia’s mouth curved into a smile. “I’m the mother of your father, Folto.”