Private Matsuki Academy-affiliated Oomichi Kindergarten.
That’s the kindergarten Mia and I would be attending. Being a private school, the grounds were ridiculously spacious. The playground was big enough for a baseball game, and all the playground equipment had this oddly luxurious, wooden look to it. The “activity room” was practically the size of a gymnasium, while the classrooms were equipped with air conditioners featuring Plasma Cluster technology. There’s even a library absolutely packed with picture books.
What is this, bourgeois heaven?
Despite all that, the children themselves weren’t particularly stuck-up, and fitting in is surprisingly easy. Kids weren’t all that different from the fairy folk I’d known in the other world. If you started doing something that looked fun, they’d naturally come running.
We dig up the sandbox and build enormous tunnels, or make robots out of cardboard boxes.
I am thoroughly enjoying what you might call “childhood.”
My little sister Mia, however, was not.
“Mia, got a minute?”
“What is it, Oniisan?”
“We’re all going to play hide-and-seek. Want to come with us?”
“I appreciate the invitation, but I’m not very good with children.”
Mia had become completely isolated at kindergarten.
She’d cast cold looks at the other kids as they ran around squealing and shouting, and whenever someone invited her to play, she would simply give them the same answer,
“I’m not interested.”
During free time, she holed herself up in the library and spent every day reading picture books. Apparently, even the kindergarten teachers were at a loss over what to do with their “quiet little problem child.”
“Uh, you’re a child too, you know? At this rate, are you planning to spend the whole time until graduation as the library’s resident librarian?”
“I can’t help it. My mental age is just way too far ahead of everyone else’s.”
Mia sighed and closed her picture book.
Apparently, she had been searching for Wally today.
Oh, I see—so this is what they call “You Can’t Escape the Demon Lord(or His Daughter)!”
In that case, I had a response of my own.
“Too bad. The Demon Lord can’t escape the Hero either. …Come on, let’s go.”
“Nooo! I don’t wanna!”
Mia threw a full-blown tantrum like an actual child. I dragged her out of the library anyway.
“Who wants to play hide-and-seek? Grab my finger!”
I put out the call for players. Fortunately, I am already some kind of a celebrity at kindergarten, so we had a group together in no time.
“I said I didn’t want to…”
Mia grumbled under her breath, but by the end, she was having a perfectly good time.
After I dragged her into our games a few more times, she gradually began opening up to the other children, too.
Thank goodness.
It’s all good now.
—Or so I thought. Until one day,
“You two are always all over each other!”
One of the boys came over and started teasing us.
His name is Kousuke Orise, one of the boys in our Rose class. He had considered me his rival ever since we first entered kindergarten, and he’ll find any excuse he could to pick a fight with me.
“You’re like a married couple! Married couple! Hahaha!”
Wow. Now that was a painfully cliché taunt.
Personally, I figured it was best to just ignore him and let it slide.
But—
“W-wha—whaaaaa…?!”
Mia’s ears turned bright red as she completely lost her composure.
“Come on, say something! Husband and wife! Husband and wife!”
“Uuugh…”
I wanted to give him some leeway. He was just a kid, after all. But Mia already had tears welling up in her eyes.
Okay. This had crossed the line.
“Hey. That’s enough.”
I put just a little force behind my movements and closed the distance to Orise in an instant.
“W-what the heck?!”
“You’re just jealous, aren’t you?”
“I-I am not!”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re jealous of Mia, right?”
I reached out with my right hand and lightly caught Orise by the chin.
Then I declared, at the top of my lungs—
“ORISE! IS! ABSOLUTELY! CRAAAAAAZY! ABOUT! MEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
For the record, this was during free time in the Rose class. Almost all the boys were outside playing, leaving mostly girls in the classroom. There were also the kindergarten teachers, along with several female college students who were there for their teaching practicum.
In other words, the female-to-male ratio is very much in my favor.
Feeling all those eyes turning toward us, I continued.
“Sorry about that, Orise. From now on, I’ll make sure to give you plenty of attention too, okay?”
I grabbed Orise around the waist with my left hand, shifted his center of gravity, and sent him tumbling down. Then I leaned in close.
From the outside, it probably looked exactly like some sort of “bridal carry and kiss” scene.
“Senpai, that’s amazing!”
“W-we have to get a picture!”
“So precious…”
Apparently, both the teachers and the student teachers at this kindergarten were hopelessly rotten.
“Woooow…!”
“Orise-kun, you’re so lucky!”
“So precious…”
And apparently, a few of the kindergarten kids were already beyond saving, too.
The world has truly come to an end.
No, wait.
The world is truly doomed.
Although, when you consider the phrase’s origins in the Buddhist concept of the Latter Days of the Dharma, maybe “the world has come to an end” actually would be more etymologically accurate. Whatever. Who cares?
“Wah—w-wait, whaaaaaaat?!”
Orise was even more flustered than Mia had been.
His cheeks were bright red, not just his ears.
I win.
I had probably just given Orise a trauma that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
And, just to finish him off, I threw out a line I used to rely on back when I was the Hero.
“—Never forget what happened today. I’m always watching you.”
Orise bolted. He ran away at absolutely top speed.
＊ ＊ ＊
“Oniisan… do you, by any chance, have that kind of preference?”
“No. I like girls, perfectly normally.”
“Really? My dad—well, my father from my previous life, anyway—kept not only women around him, but men too.”
“The Demon Lord was really something else…”
And, frankly, that was something I really could have lived without knowing.
Every now and then, I’d noticed the Demon Lord giving me some rather suspicious looks.
Was he actually trying to get at me from behind? Not in battle. But in the sexual sense.
Hiiiiiiiiiie! Nope. I was not thinking about that.
Still shaken with terror, I made it through the rest of the day. Then, toward evening, Mia and I boarded the bus home. As usual, we got off at the park near our house.
…Huh?
“Yuko-san isn’t here.”
She was supposed to be waiting for us. I wondered what had happened.
“Should we just go home by ourselves?”
“If we miss each other, that’ll be a problem. Let’s play on the swings for a while.”
It was while I was talking to Mia that—
“Hey there, Yoshito-kun.”
A brown-haired woman suddenly called out to me. Her features were Western-looking, but her Japanese pronunciation was perfectly fluent.
She was wearing a thin dress with a plunging neckline. The contours of her curvaceous figure were clearly visible through the fabric. She looked incredibly provocative—but it certainly wasn’t the sort of outfit one should be flaunting in front of children.
What the hell is with this woman?
Is she some kind of pervert?
A kidnapper maybe?
Keeping my guard up, I stepped forward and positioned myself protectively in front of Mia.
“Fufu. There’s no need to be so scared, you know.”
With a syrupy, coaxing voice, the woman gave me a quick little wink.
She looked like she was in her mid-twenties, but every single one of her gestures somehow had this unmistakably old-fashioned, Showa-era feel to them.
“I’m an acquaintance of your papa’s. Well… perhaps ‘acquaintance’ isn’t quite the right word. We’re a little closer than that you see.”
“Shuji-tousan?”
“No, no. You have a real papa, Yoshito-kun. Wouldn’t you like to meet him?”
I said nothing. Keeping my silence, I stared at her suspiciously.
At the same time, I activated my [Appraisal] skill.
| [Name] Manya Rafild [Gender] Female [Race] Succubus [Age] 33 years old [Title] Drifter [Contractor] Naoki Ishirogi [Stats] ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ Level: 42 ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ Attack Power: 46 ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ Defense Power: 34 ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ Vitality: 75 ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ Magic Power: 105 ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ Mental Strength: 80(-65) ∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙∙ Agility: 54 [Abilities] Unknown [Skills] Unknown [Magic] Unknown [Status Ailment] Unknown |
Manya Rafild, huh. I vaguely remembered her coming up in my previous conversation with Suika before. She was Old Man’s mistress. I never expected her to actually come looking for me.
So I—
“Help! Police officer!”
—I ran crying to the police officer who always patrolled the park around this time of day.
“There’s a weird lady trying to take me away!”
(With the pure, innocent eyes unique to children.)
“W-Whaaat!? Hey, you there! Why don’t you come down to the station with me for a little chat?”
“W-wait! I really am one of Naoki-sama’s lovers—”
“She’s lying! If you really know my real papa, then why don’t you come to our house and talk it over with Shuji-tousan!?”
“We’ll hear the details at the station. All right?”
“Ah, a-aah…”
With nothing left she could do, Manya was escorted away by the police.
Mia and I watched her go with warm, sympathetic smiles.
This is translated by Yume Neiji. Kindly read at yumeneijiworks.com
Previous ⚜ Table of Contents ⚜ Next
