Nito immediately launched into an explanation.
“They transport things for people. They’ll take anything anywhere, quickly and with guaranteed delivery. They were regulated by the country, so there aren’t many of them.”
“Regulated? Whoa.”
Although, from what she’d said, it didn’t sound much different than a mailman or delivery driver.
“Couriers have giantics, and using those requires permission from the country,” Nito added.
“Sorry, what’s a giantic?”
Nito let out a short gasp of realization. It must have been fairly common knowledge.
“It’s a common name for magical artifacts—masterpieces crafted back when magic was flourishing. Couriers’ bags are the main type of magic that still exists.”
“So, what, they can fit anything inside them?” I asked with a laugh.
“That’s right,” Charolles interjected with a nod. “Courier bags have space-compression magic cast upon them. There’s more space inside my bag than in this whole room, and anything that I put inside it won’t degrade.”
“Huh, so it’s a 4D Pocket.”
“Fourdee...?”
Nito looked blankly at me. I couldn’t spare the attention to explain, though, as my mind was full of ideas. I finally understood why Charolles had been so lightly equipped when we’d met. That fresh apple must have been in her bag since long before the world ended up like it was. What a convenient thing to have. But, wait, that makes her...
“Charoemon...”
“I don’t exactly like that name. Could you not use it?” she asked, her voice much sharper than before.
Well, apparently that wasn’t going to fly, but I’d really thought it was the best name for her.
“You don’t know about giantics, and you used that weird nickname. Are you an otherworlder, by any chance?”
“Ten out of ten,” I said with a smattering of applause.
“What a surprise,” she said, her expression as far from surprise as could be. “So you really do exist, just like my ancestor said.”
“Your ancestor?”
“It was almost a family legend. Around two hundred years ago, perhaps, a member of my family worked as a courier, and they knew an otherworlder.”
I nodded with an acknowledging hum. If that was true, the otherworlder would have landed here when magic was at its peak. It must have been far more thrilling than this dead world.
“Did they learn magic and advance the world with their knowledge, then?” I asked.
“Who knows? There wasn’t that much detail to the story. I just know they ran a restaurant or something.”
“A restaurant?”
They came to this world and ran a store? Who’d do something like that? I thought that surely they’d have done something more exciting like using magic or whatever.
“Was it a café, by any chance?” Nito murmured.
“A café? Like a place that sells coffees, cakes, and stuff?” I checked.
“Yes. There’s a theory that cafés originated with that restaurant. Coffee is seen as an everyday thing now, but people didn’t used to import it to this continent very much in the past,” she told me.
I scratched at my temple. I couldn’t really imagine that.
“So...they wound up in another world, where magic was the norm, and they opened up a café and normalized coffee drinking? I don’t get it. Why coffee?”
“Who knows? There aren’t many records from that time. I only know what was in Forrozes’ novel.”
It seemed that otherworlders all had their own paths to tread. Some of them ran cafés, others traveled the world with an elf woman and painted the scenery in a notebook, and still others followed their predecessor’s tracks through a dead world.
“Why are you here, Charolles?” Nito asked, as if suddenly realizing that she’d been excluded from the conversation.
“I wanted to stop here,” she answered.
“In the temple?”
“In the library, specifically. I’m looking for a book.”
“What kind of book? I read a lot, so I might be able to help,” Nito offered eagerly, her already-wide eyes opening even further.
Of course, Charolles could only smile ruefully.
“I don’t know the title, and the pages were damaged last time I saw it, so I don’t know whether it even really exists anymore.”
“Oh... What kind of story was it?”
“It was a story about a mouse-knight rescuing a princess.”
Nito hummed, thinking deeply. She was still holding the apple in both hands, so it looked almost like she was examining it. She must have been racking her brain, but apparently nothing came to mind, and she suddenly deflated. Even her ears drooped.
“I’m sorry, I can’t think of anything...” She apologized.
“I’ve been searching for ages, and I haven’t found it either, so don’t worry about it.”
Nito nodded in quiet agreement. I was actually worried about how down she seemed over it. She must have wanted to offer her own thanks for the apple.
“Why not help her look?” I suggested. “You can search for the map at the same time.”
“That’s a great idea!” she exclaimed, her energy suddenly returning. “I’ll help you look!”
Nito made to stand, but then abruptly grew much more timid and looked at Charolles with upturned eyes.
“Um...if I won’t be in the way, that is,” she added.
Charolles covered her mouth with her fingertips and smiled slightly, then nodded.
“That’d be a real help. I’ll let you know if I find a map too.”
“Right!”
Nito’s smile was just as innocent as the smile of a girl her age ought to be. Now that I think about it, all the people we’ve met so far have been adults. Maybe Nito can relate to Charolles better, as an older sister figure.
We’d only ended up stopping here by chance, but it wasn’t like we had a packed itinerary for our journey, and we didn’t have to pay to stay here either. A truly free journey meant being able to go wherever you liked and just stop when you felt like it.
Nito helped with the tidying up and then set about searching the library. I did my usual routine—I sat down on the floor and took out my phone. There was no signal in this world, obviously, or power for that matter. The reason I could still use my phone for music and as a flashlight in such a world was the hand-cranked lantern in my bag. Night after night, I’d connect my phone to the lantern and convert man power into electrical power. It was horribly inefficient, obviously, so the process took a long time. While Charolles and Nito deftly looked through their books, I focused on winding the crank.