Chapter 22: Uneasiness
We discussed our route, and as evening arrived, we headed to a convenience store to buy dinner.
Thinking about the days ahead, we bought a larger amount of food than usual and ate it back at the hotel.
“Oh? Ramen is delicious.”
“Seriously, it really is.”
“I’m genuinely impressed…”
For dinner, we chose the cup ramen that Elvis had been wanting to try.
The result was absolutely the right choice—it was incredibly delicious.
“Right? We ate fish and meat too, but something like this definitely doesn’t exist in the other world. Let’s have some chocolate later.”
There really hadn’t been any sweets over there either.
“Still, cup ramen and chocolate both exist here. I don’t know about cup ramen, but isn’t chocolate usually imported from other countries?”
“Maybe the human side is still continuing imports? Japan relied quite a lot on imports, and most of the towns on the human side seem to have been located near the sea, right?”
Kumamoto was also facing the ocean.
“Well, I guess we should be grateful. I’m curious about what happened to other countries, though.”
“Does it really matter? We should just move forward according to our own plans.”
“That’s true.”
We finished dinner, but the cup ramen wasn’t quite enough, so we waited while snacking on chocolate and potato chips.
“What time should we go?”
Hmm…
“What time do you think those places are open until?”
There was no way we would know.
We had been high school students before all this.
“Who knows? But there’s no point going too late. How about around 9 PM?”
That should work.
“Ayaka, are you coming too?”
“What? Do you want to go alone?”
No way.
“No, I’m just confirming. Honestly, I want you to come with me. It feels kind of scary.”
“Then let’s go together. If it looks dangerous, we’ll retreat. We can probably handle ourselves, but I don’t want to get held up because of some trouble.”
That was true.
Getting caught by the military or police would be a pain.
“Elvis, come with us too.”
“Sure.”
While looking at our phones, we waited until after 9 PM before leaving the room.
When we went down to the first floor and stepped outside, the atmosphere was completely different from during the day.
Somehow, it felt noisy.
“What happened? Is something going on?”
“I don’t know. But it’s dark.”
There weren’t many streetlights on.
For a city of this size, it felt a little strange.
“It is still an end-of-the-world situation, after all. Hmm… The noise is probably coming from the entertainment district.”
“Let’s check it out.”
We suppressed our magic power and headed toward the entertainment district.
When we arrived at the same street we had visited during the day, the atmosphere had clearly changed.
The gloomy feeling was gone, and men were looking at shops or walking around while being approached by men in black suits.
In one word, it was an adult world.
“I don’t like this…”
Ayaka would naturally feel that way.
But unfortunately, I could somewhat understand what those men were feeling.
“Maybe it’s because the world is like this now…”
“Hey, is it really okay for me to be walking down this street?”
Probably not…
“Let’s walk quickly with our heads down. We’ll just look like a couple who took a wrong turn.”
“Got it. Anyway, let’s hurry.”
Ayaka took my hand, so we continued walking down the street together.
Then the men in black suits and the well-dressed gentlemen clearly started looking displeased.
Still, we had our own reasons for being there, so we continued forward while searching.
“…How is it?”
“…There are more people than during the day, but I don’t sense anything unusual. What about you?”
Hmm…
“…I feel magic power coming from inside some of the shops. But it’s not very strong.”
Probably not one of our classmates.
“…A miss, then. Let’s go back to Beppu after all.”
“…Yeah.”
We kept walking, and just as we were about to leave the street, I got a bad feeling.
“…Ayaka, look down.”
“Huh?”
I pulled Ayaka closer by the hand and put my arm around her shoulder.
Then, while avoiding looking to the side as much as possible, we continued forward.
A young man coming out of one of the shops entered my field of vision.
However, I kept walking without reacting. Once we passed through the street, I grabbed Ayaka’s hand.
“…Run.”
“Y-yeah.”
We ran through the relatively busy drinking district.
After going a fair distance, I glanced back.
We had already left the drinking district behind, and there was no one following us.
“What happened?”
“I’ll explain later. Let’s take a detour and head back to the hotel.”
“Okay.”
We continued through the drinking district, turning at various places as we walked.
About thirty minutes later, we returned to the hotel and entered the room that Elvis and I were using.
“Hey, what happened?”
Elvis jumped out of my pocket, returned to his original form, and immediately asked.
“So? Was there someone there in that red-light district?”
During the thirty minutes we spent walking, I had thought about whether I should tell them or not.
The conclusion was that I should.
“Elvis, sorry, but sleep on the floor tonight.”
“Hm? That’s fine, but…”
Elvis nodded.
“Ayaka, sleep on that bed.”
I pointed toward the bed near the window.
“Well, okay.”
Ayaka nodded and sat down on the bed by the window.
“What I’m about to tell you, I want you to tell Takamiya-san and Kitaura-san later.”
“Okay.”
“Five years ago was when I met up with Ayaka and the others and we started acting together. This happened about two years before that… It was when the four of us were traveling together.”
Of course, Shota was still alive back then, and despite everything, we were enjoying ourselves, joking around and messing with each other.
“That was a long time ago.”
“Yeah… We were traveling on our journey to defeat the Demon Lord, defeating monsters and taking on tasks requested by the gods.”
The god would occasionally give us quests.
Since we received rewards for completing them, we did quite a few.
“We were doing that too back then…”
Ayaka looked into the distance.
She had probably enjoyed those days in her own way, just like we had.
“Then, one day, we found a certain corpse.”
“A corpse…”
“It was Sakashita-san.”
Our classmate, Sakashita-san.
“Sakashita-san… I didn’t really talk to her much, but I remember her as the girl who was always reading books.”
That was my impression of her too.
The phrase “literary girl” suited her perfectly.
But she had died.