The Satyrus Delivery Service was the biggest courier company in the Notre Empire. One feature of the company that set it apart is that most of its employees were demi-humans, each of whom filled their downtime between deliveries with other jobs. Some even worked as part-time adventurers. According to the company’s policy, the employees could do whatever they liked, so long as their delivery work didn’t suffer.
Among such employees, Miach Bastetos—the assistant branch manager of the branch in this city—was well-known as an especially diligent worker. On top of her delivery duties, she juggled multiple part-time jobs, including ad hoc opportunities and anything else that came up. But in her private life, she was rather frugal. None of her friends or colleagues knew why she put in so much effort to earn extra money...
♢
One afternoon, Miach was visiting The Golden City, an enchanted objects shop downtown. It stood some distance away from the high street, but it offered the widest range of high-quality enchanted objects in the town, so there was never a slow day. And of course, the shop was one of the patrons of the Satyrus Delivery Service.
“Hullo there,” Miach called out. As usual, she was holding a huge pile of packages as she pushed open the door. “Meow?” She stopped short and widened her eyes in surprise.
From outside, The Golden City looked like a small, ordinary house, but since the rooms inside were made spacious by magic, rows and rows of shelves continued almost endlessly through the shop. There was a counter for the shop’s staff right inside the front door. Today, a peculiar meeting was underway there.
A motley group of various ages and species was gathered around a low table and sipping tea. Despite all their differences, the atmosphere was rather laid-back. Miach was staring at them when one of the party looked up and waved at her with a warm smile. It was Flora, the witch who owned the shop.
“Oh hello, good to see you, Miach. Thanks for the delivery as always!”
“Glad to see ya too, Flora.”
Flora was a tanned woman who appeared to be in her twenties. She was a shrewd businesswoman, running not only The Golden City, but also a thriving chain of ramen shops in multiple locations.
Miach walked over to her and said, “I see you’re having the usual gathering... Meow?”
“Hey, it’s you...the delivery girl,” a man familiar to Miach, but new to the group said.
“Oh? You’ve met already, Miach and Groh?” Flora asked.
Groh sat next to Flora, and Miach recognized him as the serpent master. He used to be a fairly infamous thug in the city, but ever since Allen had beaten him to a pulp, he’d been living an honest life. The giant serpent wrapped around his neck seemed to be taking a day off; it was completely relaxed, with its eyes closed.
Flora clung to Groh’s arm and gave Miach a thumbs-up. “Groh is one of us too,” she explained. “We found him just the other day and pulled him into the group!”
“Tch...I don’t remember agreeing to join,” Groh grumbled.
“Hunh. It’s funny to see ya together,” Miach remarked, looking at Flora the witch next to Groh, who, despite living a different kind of life these days, still looked like a gang member. And it wasn’t just those two; to a stranger, the whole group looked like they had nothing in common. But Miach knew what brought them together. She put a hand to her forehead, looked around at the dozen people around the low table, and sighed in wonder. “Ya got quite a big group now, Flora—you and your reincarnated friends.”
“Not just any reincarnations. We’re all from the isekai Earth, and used to be Japanese!” Flora clarified.
“Why are there so many of us in one place? Doesn’t make any sense...” Groh sighed wearily.
They were a group of reincarnated people—in other words, they had memories of their past lives. In this world, reincarnation wasn’t such a rare phenomenon. It had been known for centuries that souls were reborn in a cyclical process, just like water or mana. In most cases, people would forget their past lives when they were reborn, but sometimes, they could have vivid recollections of who they’d been before. In some cases, this triggered multiple personalities. Reincarnation was such an ingrained part of common knowledge that there were even laws concerning the rightful ownership of one’s property from previous lives.
But when it came to reincarnation from isekai, or alternate worlds, the number of cases was much lower. It was said that countless other worlds existed in the universe, so the chances of encountering two reincarnated souls from the same world were as low as finding a single speck of diamond in a desert.
Yet somehow, Flora had managed to gather this whole group. She laughed proudly. “My tenacity really paid off. I just wanted someone to talk to about my home world so badly!”
“That’s terrific, Flora,” Miach said. “Who woulda thought Groh is another one? Ya never brought it up.”
“Well, it never came up, I guess... It’s not the sort of thing you laugh about over drinks,” Groh said bluntly.
Something about the awkward way he said it intrigued Miach. She drew closer and asked, “So tell me, what kind of past life did you have, Groh?”
“Huh? Just an average—”
“Listen to this, Miach!” Flora cut in with a grin before Groh could answer. “Groh used to be a delinquent, but one day he jumped in front of a truck to save a child! That’s how he died.”
“Hey! You promised you wouldn’t tell anyone!” Groh looked flustered.
“Another truck story? There’s so many of ’em,” Miach said with a wry smile.
For some reason, one of the most common causes of death among the reincarnated from Earth was getting run over by something called a “truck.” Miach had never seen one before, but apparently it was some sort of steel vehicle. The other members of the group sympathetically jumped into the conversation.
“It was a truck for me too. I was so exhausted from working at an exploitative company that I just staggered out into the road... I feel sorry for that driver.”
“I got hit by a train. I was trying to save a high school girl who’d tripped onto the tracks...”
“I’m jealous you all died outdoors... I’d been bedridden ever since I was born.”