Early afternoon, the same day.
At long last, after two years without returning home, Tigaro arrived in the royal capital, Section Three. She was back in Hybrid Town. Walking once again the streets where she was born and raised, she was stricken with pangs of nostalgia.
Something feels different, she thought to herself, feeling somehow out of place. The home she knew felt like a shady, dangerous back alley no matter what street you were walking on. Strangled by economic strife, it was a place where no one was certain of their next meal and no one—whether young or old—saw a future. It was a place where everyone spent their days under a gloom so thick that even the clearest days were, somehow, still shrouded in shadow.
That was the Hybrid Town that Tigaro knew. But now...
“Race me to that spot!”
“Okay! Let’s do it. Ready, set, go!”
“Hey, be careful, now! Running is dangerous!”
“Ah, hello, mister!”
“Hello. Nice weather we’re having today, isn’t it?”
Voices, full of energy, filled the street. From the youngest children to the oldest elders, everyone exuded a bright aura. Of course, there had always been strong hybrids like Frieze who refused to give into despair and maintained a sunny disposition, but never before had Tigaro seen so many of the town’s residents happily going about their day like this at the same time. No one had had the energy for it when hunger was ever present.
What on Earth is going on here? Did food start falling down from the sky or something?
She knew all too well that it hadn’t, but she could think of no other reason that Hybrid Town would be so unusually lively.
“Hmm? It really is her! It’s Tigaro!” a kind male voice said to her, interrupting her bewilderment. It was the man who lived next to her parents’ home. He wore, as ever, an animated smile.
“It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen you!” she said.
“It sure has! Are you off work for a bit, then?” he asked.
As soon as the question struck her ears, Tigaro was at a loss for words. She had only returned home to catch up once since being scouted by Monstro. Her family and neighbors had all been happy to hear it, congratulating her on finding good, safe work. She could hardly bear the thought of telling them she’d lost the job for talking back to her boss.
“No, actually, I, uh... Some stuff came up and I decided to quit!” Tigaro said. Then, before the man could ask any further questions, she decided to change the subject. She wanted to find out why everyone was so abnormally full of life, but to directly ask, “What happened to the usual gloomy mood?” seemed to her a tad rude.
“That aside...has something changed lately?”
“It certainly has!” the man said, taking the bait right away and excitedly continuing. “Remember how last month a level A monster attacked the city?”
“A level A monster?!”
“Huh? Isn’t that what you were asking about?”
“No, that’s the first I’ve heard about it,” she said. So a high-level monster had attacked the royal capital, home of the entire country’s ruler... News like that would certainly have been well-known not just to those inside the country but even to those in neighboring nations. Certainly, word of the attack would have reached the harbor town where Tigaro had been living.
That being said, she had spent all her time on the grounds of Monstro’s mansion. Being that her boss was in charge of the town, he was surely aware of the news, but she hadn’t been close enough to him for small talk or gossip. In any case, Monstro didn’t bother himself with informing the hybrids he employed about anything.
“But...this doesn’t feel at all like a place that was attacked by an A level monster just a month ago,” she said. When she worked as a pack mule for adventuring parties, she had seen D level monsters with her own eyes. Even those had been so terrifying that they’d made her conscious of her own mortality. The strength an A level monster must possess was unimaginable to her. Despite that, the streets around her seemed to be unaffected by the attack. She hadn’t yet seen anything more than what lay between the river anchorage and the entrance to Hybrid Town, but what she had laid eyes on so far seemed perfectly peaceful.
“That’s all thanks to Kaito,” the man said in a loud voice. As he did, children began to gather. Each of them wore new, clean clothes and shoes that were actually to size. She couldn’t think of where they would have obtained such things.
“Are you telling the story about Kaito again?”
“I wanna hear too!”
“Hey, where is Kaito and what is he doing now, anyways?”
This Kaito person, whoever he was, seemed widely adored. The man looked a little annoyed at all the children hounding him to recount the tale.
“No no, you all know as much as I do about all that. It’s just that Tigaro doesn’t know about Kaito. I’m filling her in.”
“You don’t know about Kaito, miss?” one of the children asked. They were looking at Tigaro like one might examine a curious, unknown object. It was clear that this was supposed to be common knowledge.
“Until just recently, I lived far away,” she told the children. “This ‘Kaito’ saved everyone, is that right?”
“Yeah! There was a huge ka-boom in the sky!”
“And then, like, a huuuge flash of light!”
“A ‘ka-boom’ and then a bright light, huh?”
The children were gesturing as they spoke. They tried their best, but their explanation was just about useless to her.
Seeing that she was lost, the man jumped in to supplement their story with some detail. “In other words, Kaito defeated the monster and then used magic to heal everyone who had been injured.”
“Magic, huh...” She had already realized it once the man said Kaito had defeated an A level monster, but hearing that he’d used magic to heal people afterward confirmed it: Kaito was a human. A human would never go out of his way to defend Hybrid Town. In endeavoring to save the city itself from destruction, Kaito had protected Hybrid Town as an incidental side effect, surely.
Still, I guess protecting everyone merits some gratitude, she thought, conflicted about feeling anything of the sort for a human.
“And, and Kaito also gave us all food!”
“A whooole bunch of it, like this!” said one of the kids, widely gesturing with a huge smile on his face.