Chapter 73: The Bath

We arrived at the large bath, which was nearly empty, perhaps because it was still early.

“Do places like this have fewer customers than they used to?”

Riku asked.

“Who knows? There are probably fewer tourists, but the population itself may have increased. Yamaguchi, Hiroshima, and Okayama are occupied, so people must have evacuated here.”

We’d heard that many evacuees lived near the prefectural border, but since we didn’t know the original population, it was hard to judge.

“There must be a lot of problems.”

“Probably…”

I stared at Riku’s body.

“What? That’s creepy.”

“Sorry. You’re more muscular than I expected. You’ve developed a pretty solid build.”

I’d never seen him naked before, so it surprised me.

“The same goes for you. We didn’t spend ten years in another world for nothing. And we’re adults now, not high school students.”

“True. Ayaka looks like a grown woman now too.”

“When did you see her naked? So you did…”

No, that wasn’t what I meant.

“You can tell through her clothes.”

And not only Ayaka. The same was true of Takamiya-san and Kitaura-san.

“That makes you sound like a pervert. If I have one criticism, Yuu, it’s that you stare at Ayaka too much.”

Sorry about that.

We entered the bathing area, washed ourselves, and sank into the hot spring.

The only other people nearby were elderly men, so we could relax.

“Ahh… This is nice.”

“It really is… Paradise, paradise.”

The way the heat spread through me from my very core truly did feel like paradise.

“Riku, where do you think Minato is?”

“I have absolutely no idea. If only he’d been sent back to Tokyo, where we originally lived…”

It was easy to imagine Minato being in Tokyo.

“I have a theory. We had moved far away from the place where we first arrived in the other world and settled in Reste, right? Maybe that’s why we returned somewhere far from Tokyo.”

“That might be true. You appeared in Beppu, Takamiya-san and Kitaura-san in Kokura, and I appeared in Hagi. Those places are relatively close, so Minato could be somewhere in this region too.”

Everyone who’d been living in the same town had appeared in western Japan.

“On the other hand, those locations are still awfully far apart for people from the same town. We don’t know who Jack the Ripper or the Savior in Tokushima are, but Yamane, at least, wasn’t near our town. That’s a contradiction.”

There shouldn’t have been any other classmates around Reste.

“True. Since that god transported us, we can’t assume anything. Still, I think there’s a fairly good chance Minato is somewhere in western Japan.”

I agreed.

Finding Riku in Hagi made it more likely.

Of course, we couldn’t rule out the possibility that our locations had been random coincidence, but I suspected there was some causal connection.

“He isn’t the kind of person who would rampage or cause trouble, right?”

“He can get carried away, but no. And he’s alone, so he’ll probably act cautiously.”

That was what I thought.

The problem was that if he moved cautiously, it made him harder for us to find.

We were trapped in that dilemma again.

“Do you think he’ll try to reach Tokyo?”

“No. I’m the same, but he doesn’t have the drive to travel alone in these circumstances.”

Neither did I.

We continued enjoying the hot spring, visited the open-air bath as well, then left and returned to our room.

We sat at the table and toasted with juice we’d bought at the drugstore.

“Cola after a bath.”

“Was cola always this delicious? It’s incredible.”

Riku’s eyes widened as he drank it for the first time in ten years.

“Good, isn’t it? Food and drinks in this world really are better.”

“They are.”

“I thought alcohol was delicious when I first came here too. And I’ve just realized something amazing: if I drink while I’m tiny, one can is all-you-can-drink.”

Elvis was hugging a can of beer as he drank.

It was one of the cans we’d bought for him and Sis Linda at the drugstore that morning.

“Good for you.”

I watched in mild exasperation until a knock sounded and the three women entered.

“Excuse us.”

“That was a nice bath.”

“Oh, you already started the party.”

The three of them came over and sat at the table.

Ayaka sat beside me, while Takamiya-san and Kitaura-san sat beside Riku.

“Where’s Sis Linda?”

“Relaxing in a massage chair in the changing room.”

“It was shaking her like crazy.”

That sounded intense.

“She really does whatever she pleases.”

Bold didn’t begin to describe it… We were in a human town.

“That’s just how Linda-san is. Let’s have something to drink too.”

The three of them took out juice, so we toasted again and ate snacks while drinking.

“Chocolate is delicious!”

Riku reacted to the chocolate snack as though he’d never tasted one before.

“Right? It’s dangerous!”

“Super dangerous.”

It really was.

“We demons feel the same way. I doubt any demon wants to return to the demon world. There’s plenty of alcohol and food here. It’s heaven.”

The demon world, huh?

“Elvis, what is the demon world like? It’s another world, right?”

“It’s a truly boring place. It has oceans and forests. Mountains too, and villages and towns. But compared to this country, they’re worlds apart. There are also lots of monsters, so death is always close.”

I see…

“Maybe it’s similar to the other world where we lived.”

“There’s one major difference. The demon world is always dim. The sun must be small. It’s cold and unpleasant.”

So that was what it was like…

“This is a bit late to ask, but don’t you know why you were transported? A god kidnapped us, then sent us back without permission.”

Ayaka asked.

“No idea. The next thing I knew, I was in a human town. We didn’t hear a god’s voice or anything like you did. No one knows why we were transported.”

Maybe it had been an accident…

“What if the theory about humans being sacrificed to summon demons was true?”

We’d seen it on social media.

“Surely not. I certainly hope not.”

That would make it seem like this was our fault.

“You said the demon world has monsters. Are there goblins that can’t speak?”

Takamiya-san asked Elvis.

“There are. It isn’t that they can’t speak; they have no intelligence. We call those creatures monsters. They’re probably the same as the monsters in your other world.”

I see…

“Those monsters weren’t transported?”

“I haven’t seen any since coming here, so I don’t think so. Judging from social media posts about other countries, it’s the same elsewhere. If monsters were here too, there would’ve been even more panic.”

No doubt…

Depending on the monsters, countless more humans might have died.