I’d brought them from the Gandakia Dungeon, of course. They were grape nuts, one of the many strange dungeon foods. And as the name implied, they were nuts that looked just like grapes. I’d brought too many for my family this time, so I’d decided to share some with Hiro. They were delicious, and they fetched a high price in Freida. The demand for them was so high that Ashley had kept pestering me for the source of the nuts. My dad had been snacking on them while drinking, and they seemed to be very good for his health, especially his liver. When he’d asked me where they were from, I’d given him made-up names that sounded close to real places, like Nicronesia or Lithoania. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t figure it out, so it was fine.
Hiro chewed on the nuts, making satisfying crunching sounds with each bite.
“Om nom.”
“You’re eating them now?!” I said.
“Oh! Aki, these are delicious!” said Hiro, ignoring my comment and holding up the nuts with a gleeful look on her face.
“You know—”
“It’s your fault for giving them to me on the way to school. A crime so heinous you’d make kaijins go pale,” she said before eating some more.
“Are you comparing me sharing food to acts of terror?” I asked.
“Yes. Unforgivable. Om nom. Got any more of these?”
“Nope. I gave you the last of them.”
“This isn’t enough at all. They’ll all be gone before class even starts.”
“They weren’t meant to be breakfast, you know,” I pointed out.
“It’s fine, this is just a morning snack.”
Why did everyone around me have such a huge appetite?
“Don’t eat them during class, okay? Seriously,” I said.
“That’s too difficult of a request,” said Hiro.
“More difficult than beating kaijins?” I asked.
“Resisting the urge to eat is harder. No kaijin in this world is more powerful than hunger.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that. It cheapens the peace in our country.”
The kaijins were meat and seafood themed, so she should probably just eat them if she was so hungry.
And stop doing those hand movements and striking your pose!
Suddenly, Hiro looked down at herself with a quizzical expression.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Nothing, I just— My body is suddenly full of power.”
“Ah.”
Ingredients from the dungeon that were difficult to acquire tended to be extremely nutritious. They probably included nutrients that couldn’t be found in our world too. Maybe they even had similar effects to Senzu Beans. Though, on second thought, potions were definitely the miracle healing items of Do-Melta.
“That melted away all my daily fatigue. I can keep fighting again,” said Hiro, full of fighting spirit. Maybe my childhood friend was a battle maniac.
“Anyway, Aki, there’s something I’ve been wondering about,” said Hiro.
“Huh? What is it?” I asked.
“Well, behind us...” she said restlessly.
“Behind us? What?” I wondered if some suspicious person had been following us. They’d get clobbered by Hiro if that was the case.
We turned around, but there was no one there—or so I thought, then I caught a glimpse of a small creature with emerald-green fur in the corner of my vision. Carbuncle was walking leisurely on top of a wall, and it cocked its head at us when we noticed each other.
“Mew?” said Carbuncle.
“Waaaaaaaaait a minuuute!” I couldn’t help screaming.
I remembered it’d followed me up to the front door of my house to see me off, but I’d thought it’d stayed there. When had it escaped?
Carbuncle jumped onto my head. Oof. It was having a hard time balancing there, so I picked it up in my arms.
“You followed me?!” I asked.
“Mew, mew!” it said energetically. It sounded kind of happy for some reason.
Anyway, Carbuncle was a strange creature that didn’t exist in this world. It was kind of—no, very problematic for it to be walking around outside. I really didn’t want it to be seen by others, particularly the person standing right next to me.
But Hiro’s reaction was rather unexpected. “Aki, you know this cute little creature?!”
“Uh, well, it’s been visiting my home lately...”
“Really?!” asked Hiro, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “How did he get such an adorable creature to visit his house?” she wondered aloud.
She then reached her arms out toward me. She reminded me of a child asking for a stuffed doll, but I couldn’t tell her that, of course.
“Let me hold it!” she said.
“I thought you’d say that.”
I handed Carbuncle over, and she hugged it tight.
“So soft...” she whispered contentedly.
“Mew,” said Carbuncle.
Hiro giggled, her expression purely blissful. Carbuncle then gave her a nose kiss like a cat.
“Nngh!” she grunted, staggering from the cuteness overload.
“Hiro?!”
Luckily, she didn’t fall over, but her excitement was completely out of control now.
“Aki! Aki! Can I take care of this cutie at my place?!” she asked.
“No, I can’t let you do that,” I said.
“It isn’t fair! I want an adorable creature visiting my home too!”
“Well, Carbuncle has a right to choose.”
“I see. So you let it run free, huh...”
“Huh? Oh, well, I guess you could say that.”
In my mind, I didn’t really “own” Carbuncle. I let it choose whether to stay in Do-Melta or in Japan whenever it felt like it, so it might have been more accurate to say I just picked it up from time to time.
“This little guy’s name is Carbuncle?” asked Hiro.
“That’s what I call it, yeah.”
“Then I’ll call you Car!” she proclaimed.
Why did everyone call it different names?
Carbuncle jumped out of Hiro’s arms, went onto my school bag, then started fidgeting around. It opened my zipper with its paws, then went into the bag as flexible as an octopus settling into a pot. Was it planning on going to school with me?
“Now listen here,” I started.
“Mew!”
I looked at Carbuncle with a troubled expression, but it just averted my gaze. It seemed to have no intention to go back home. What was I supposed to do?
“Hiro, can you tell everyone that Carbuncle is your team’s new mascot? We’ll call things even for the last ten or so times I did you a favor by showing you my homework,” I said.
“That’s fine! But I want this to negate more of those favors! All of them, if possible!”
“No, that’d be too much.”
“Oh, come on! Don’t be so stingy!” complained Hiro.
“Who’re you calling stingy?! Do you know how many favors you owe me? You’re repaying me one way or another!” I shot back.
“Ugh...”
She’d brought this on herself. If she didn’t like it, she should make more of an effort to handle things herself.
Afterward, we did take Carbuncle to school, and everyone doted over it, but that was a story for another time.
Hiro looked at what I was carrying in my left hand and asked, “I forgot to ask, but what’s that thing you’re holding?”
“Oh, it’s a gift for my uncle,” I said. “I’m gonna visit him after school.”
I was talking about my uncle who owned an antique shop. As a student, my options for converting things into money were limited. I couldn’t sell gold coins from Do-Melta at precious metal shops all the time, so I’d been slowly exchanging them for porcelain and other works of art and selling them to my uncle. I wished there was a way to easily exchange things for money in bulk, but it was a rather tricky issue to navigate. My uncle had mentioned he was afraid of dealing with tax officials, so I couldn’t push the issue.
“Where do you find things like that?” asked Hiro.
“Oh, you know, places,” I said vaguely.
“Humph. You won’t tell me?” she pouted.
“Uh...maybe next time. I’ll take you there when our schedules line up.”
“Okay, I’m busy too. Promise me you’ll tell me when the peace settles down here.”
Taking Hiro to Do-Melta might be a good idea. God had said it was fine for me to bring friends over. Hiro was always putting out fires in our world, so adventuring in the dungeon could be a nice change of pace for her. Plus, she’d probably also take out the great evildoers of Do-Melta while she was there. Not that I even knew if such evils existed there. Lion-Maru had already defeated the Demon Lord, so maybe that wasn’t a thing anymore.
Wait a sec, what does “when the peace settles down here” even mean?
“Oh!” I said.
I suddenly remembered that I’d encountered a terribly evil entity recently—other than Sensei, that was. It’d been a few days ago when a new product had arrived at the dining hall in the main hall...