Fold a paper airplane, then pour some magic into it.
Connect your vision and hearing to it, and voila—you’ve got yourself a familiar.
See? Easy, right? Why don’t you all give it a try?
Just kidding.
Though, as a toy, this thing is ridiculously fun. Since it’s being kept aloft by magic, it basically never falls. You can just sit back and enjoy a leisurely stroll through the night sky.
The city where I live, Matsuki City, is a regional city with a fair amount of bustle. The area around New Matsuki Station, in particular, is lined with department stores, large bookstores, fast-food joints, and the like. Even late at night, you can still spot the occasional young person wandering around. Watching them go about their business can be surprisingly entertaining.
Like the four blond guys with piercings playing a hunting game at McDonald’s. Or the woman walking around in nothing but a coat, trying her best not to attract attention.
Well, I guess you can find weird people even when it isn’t spring.
It’s while I am gentlemanly keeping an eye on the coat woman from high above that I heard an intriguing conversation coming from the direction of the park.
“Talking to you two is a waste of calories and oxygen. For the sake of the planet, why don’t you disappear already?”
“Huh? What the hell did you just say? You looking for a fight, punk?”
“Hehe. Masaru-san here used to train at a boxing gym, you know. He even took the pro test once. He failed though.”
“Shut the hell up! Don’t go saying unnecessary crap!”
“Ow! Why’d you hit me, Masaru-san?”
There’s one girl and two men.
I am not sure if it is a good idea for a girl to be wandering around alone at this hour, but it looks like she’s being hassled by some troublesome guys.
“Impulsive and violent. Put mildly, you’re both a scum. I was wrong to think I could gather information from monkeys like you.”
“You called Masaru-san a monkey because his name is Masaru, right?”
“Saburo, I’m killing you later.”
Both men had that distinctly Shibuya sort of look to them—the kind of guys who seemed like they might have whispered to Gaia at some point.
Faded-colored jackets. Ripped jeans. The jeans were oddly short, leaving their ankles completely exposed.
Is that actually fashionable these days?
I really didn’t understand young people. Still, compared to the girl’s fashion, the two men’s outfits were downright normal.
A bandage was wound around her head, covering everything from her forehead to her right eye, and she wore fingerless gloves on both hands. She was dressed in a black overcoat resembling a military uniform, with a “Cracked Inverted Cross” embroidered across the back.
It was an excruciatingly edgy outfit. Just looking at her was enough to shave years off my soul. The only saving grace was that the girl herself was quite beautiful.
With a fearless smile on her face, she turned to the intimidating men and said,
“I’ve lost interest in you. Go somewhere far away and live your utterly unproductive lives.”
If she wasn’t actively picking a fight, I didn’t know what was.
“Damn it, this bitch thinks she can look down on us! We went easy on her ’cause she’s just a kid, and now she’s gotten all cocky!”
“Masaru-san, let’s beat her up and drag her into the bushes. We can show her what a truly productive activity looks like.”
“Oh? You intend to defy me? Very well. Then let us have a little warm-up. —No one who has laid eyes upon my magic wand has ever lived to return home.”
The girl slipped a hand into her coat pocket, exuding the kind of presence you’d expect from a final boss.
And then—
“…Huh?”
She tilted her head.
“What’s going on? I swear I put it in my coat before I left the inn…”
All the dignity she had been projecting moments ago vanished. She frantically patted herself down, searching every inch of her body. But apparently, this so-called magic wand was nowhere to be found.
“Well, that’s unfortunate. It seems the stars aren’t in my favor today.”
She spun around and tried to make a run for it.
“Oh, no you don’t.”
“Anyone who tells me to wait should know that I— Gugyaaah!?”
Thud!
The fact that her overcoat covered her legs all the way to her ankles had come back to bite her. Her feet tangled in the hem, and she went sprawling face-first onto the ground.
“Heh. That’s what you get for making a fool of us.”
“Man, she really ate dirt there.”
“Well then, how about we have some fun? Saburo, make sure you get all of this on camera.”
“Of course!”
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
At some point, this had started to feel like I was watching a comedy skit, but wasn’t this actually a pretty serious situation? The man called Masaru reached down toward the fallen girl.
In a situation like this, there was only one thing I could do. I couldn’t just stand by and abandon a girl in trouble.
And, more importantly, she was about to meet her doom because she had forgotten something. I couldn’t help but feel a profound sense of kinship with her.
So, yeah. Time to move out.
Paper Airplane Squadron—charge!
“Come on, kid. Put up at least a little resistance—Gaaaaah!”
“Oh no! A paper airplane has flown out of nowhere and struck Masaru-san, who prides himself on having 20/20 vision, right in the left eye!”
“W-what the hell is this—GAAAAAAAAAH!”
“Whoa! Another paper airplane just hit him in the right eye!”
“What the hell is going on—NGAHHHHHHHHHH!”
“Paper airplanes are diving in one after another! It’s a kamikaze attack! Hooray!”
I’ll set aside the henchman and his bizarre habit of narrating everything.
The paper airplane I was controlling wasn’t the only one. Thanks to practicing parallel control a little every night, I could now operate around twenty of them simultaneously. So I gathered them all up and sent them charging straight at this Masaru guy.
Oh, and I didn’t actually hit his eyeballs. It’d be a shame if his precious 20/20 vision got ruined.
“…Hoh?”
Suddenly, the girl picked up one of the paper airplanes lying on the ground.
『A rather unusual familiar. Whoever you are, you have my thanks.』
Eh!?
A voice echoed inside my head.
Telepathy. No way.
Could this girl actually be a real magician?
『My name is Shizuku Aitori. And you?』
Should I give her my name?
Nah. Better not. Keeping your identity a secret in situations like this is the height of coolness.
『I’m hardly important enough to give you my name, lovely young lady.』
『L-lovely!? M-Me? You think I’m….?』
Was she just not used to receiving compliments? Her face instantly turned bright red, like someone had flipped a switch. Though, I suppose in the world I came from, a compliment like that was practically a form of greeting.
『This is no time to get embarrassed. Hurry up and r—』
Run. I was just about to tell her that when—
『…!?』
An ominous presence made me catch my breath.
Shizuku Aitori, as she had introduced herself, sensed it too.
『Of all the times for us to run into it…』
Her mutter carried even a hint of despair.
—Clang. Clang.
From somewhere in the distance came the sound of metal striking metal.
—CLANG. CLANG.
Closer. Whatever it was, it was steadily making its way toward us, approaching the park.
“W-What…?”
“Masaru-san, this is seriously bad.”
The two men must have sensed it too. Their faces had gone deathly pale, and they were trembling.
—CLANG. CLANG.
And then. On a moonless night, beneath the feeble glow of a streetlamp barely illuminating the ground, it appeared. It was a sight you simply wouldn’t encounter in an ordinary provincial Japanese city.
A suit of pitch-black full plate armor. Its shape was deeply sinister, resembling some snarling beast baring its fangs. A blood-red scarf was wrapped around its neck. An oppressive killing intent radiated from it, dominating the entire area. Violent, overwhelming magic churned beneath the armor.
I stood there, dumbfounded.
Fight or run?
My mind was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t even make that decision.
Because—
I knew this thing. I had never met it in person. I had never spoken to it. Never fought it. But I had seen it before.
What the hell was going on?
I genuinely couldn’t make sense of any of this.
The figure standing before me was exactly the same as I had once looked, back when I was suffering from Chūnibyō in another world, in my previous life.
This is translated by Yume Neiji. Kindly read at yumeneijiworks.com
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