She had something stolen from her, and even though she was in a hurry to get it back, she saved Subaru. Then, after Subaru had passed out, she healed him, and when he woke up, she used terrible reasoning to try to show him that she wasn’t worse off for doing so. “She’s not really honest with herself” was not going far enough. Her efforts were coming up negative in everything, and it was hard to watch.

The girl had every right to blame Subaru for getting in her way, but she hadn’t complained even once, and she didn’t even look for an apology.

That’s because to her, the only reason she saved Subaru was for her own ends.

“If you live like that, you’re just going to keep losing until there’s nothing left,” said Subaru as he got up, patted his dust-and dirt-covered tracksuit and started running.

Sure, his beloved tracksuit was in pretty bad shape, but on the inside, almost all of his pain was gone. That’s after being kicked and punched as much as he was. Again Subaru was reminded of the otherworldliness of magic, as well as the generosity of that girl who, despite going on and on about having Subaru pay her back, took nothing from him in return.

“Hey, wait!” Subaru called out to the girl just as she had reached the entrance to the alley and was in front of the main road, looking unsure of where to go next.

The girl touched her silver hair and looked a bit troubled as she turned around. “What is it? I’m going to tell you right now, I only have a bit more time to spend dealing with you.”

“So a little’s fine, then?! Anyway, what you lost is really important, right? Let me help you look for it.”

The girl blinked a few times, surprised. “But you said you don’t know anything…”

“It’s true that I don’t know the name of the girl who stole that badge from you, or where she’s from, but at least I know what she looks like! She’s got blond hair, is sort of like a kitten, and has this canine tooth that sticks out that’s hard to miss. She’s shorter than you and her chest is pretty flat so she’s maybe two or three years younger than you! How about that?!”

When he got flustered, Subaru had a bad habit of speaking fast and not really even knowing what he was saying.

Right now that bad habit was running at full blast, and even Subaru wanted to distance himself from his own words.

The ensuing silence was painful. A cold sweat drenched Subaru’s back, not to mention his hands and armpits, which was followed by heart palpitations, shortness of breath, as well as dizziness, and in addition to feeling faint, his nose stuffed up in an allergic reaction accompanied by a migraine, such that there were problems on every front. However…

“…You’re strange,” the girl said with a hand up to her mouth, tilting her head to the side as if she were looking at some rare animal.

With a finger still at her lips she stared at Subaru, sizing him up.

“I should say up front that I can’t offer you anything in return for your help. I might not look it, but I don’t have a copper piece on me.”

“Don’t worry, that makes two of us,” replied Subaru.

“Three of us, if you count me… Pretty terrible for us as a group,” added a voice jokingly from the girl’s silver hair, but Subaru ignored it and pounded his chest.

“I don’t need anything in thanks. I’m the one who should thank you. That’s why I want to help.”

“I haven’t done anything deserving of your thanks. I’ve already gotten something in return from healing you.”

She just won’t give it up, will she? Subaru looked at the girl and her stubborn attitude with a weak smile.

“If that’s the case, then I’ll help you for my own sake. The reason is…yeah, that’s it. I’ll use you for my ‘one good deed a day’ project!” said Subaru.

“One good deed a day?”

“That’s right. Once a day you do one good thing. If you do that, after you die you’ve got a one-way ticket to heaven! If I can do it, then a wonderful life of just eating and sleeping is waiting for me—so I hear! So that’s why I’m going to help you for my own sake.”

Subaru felt like turning to himself and asking what the hell he was going on about, but at least he’d managed to make his point.

The girl stood in thought, considering Subaru’s words, when her cat poked at her cheek with its paws.

“I don’t sense any evil intentions from him, and I don’t really think it’s a bad idea, you know? With how large the capital is, it’s way better than going on no clues at all.”

“But if I get him involved…”

“You’re cute when you’re stubborn, but it’s foolish to let your stubbornness get the best of you and make you lose sight of your goals. I’d really rather not think of my own master as a fool.”

The cat added its support in favor of Subaru, but the girl was still hesitant. In response, the cat dropped its expression and continued in a serious voice.

“Plus, the sun is starting to set. If night falls, I won’t be able to help you. I’m not worried about you handling a thug or two, but…it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

“Well, it sounds like you’re the one to call if there’s danger! But, wait—according to what you said, you can’t come out at night? Is that one of the deals of your contract or something?” Subaru asked, taking a step closer.

The cat flicked its whiskers with its front paw and said, “It’s more like, I may look cute, but I’m a spirit, you know? I use a lot of mana just by materializing. When night falls, I return to the crystal that is my vessel and prepare for when the sun is out again. I suppose you could say it’s the perfect nine-to-five job.”

“Nine to five? That sounds like a government job… The conditions to hire a spirit sound more severe than I expected…!”

Subaru was able to talk naturally about spirits, but that was only because of the analytical power he had as a modern otaku, poisoned by anime and games. Even traits looked down on by the public come in handy sometimes.

While Subaru and the cat continued their conversation, the girl continued to anguish over her decision. However, that last point seemed to have tipped the scales, so after much moaning with a number of buts and stills and ifs she finally conceded.

“I’m telling you, I really can’t give you anything in return, okay?”

6

After Subaru’s first friendly interaction in this different world—a pleasant, heartwarming episode—one hour had passed.

“What is the meaning of this?”

Their investigation had stalled.

As Subaru faced the girl’s cold stare, he scratched at his face, trying to find a way out.

“Even with all of my experience, I never thought that it would be this difficult…”

“You seem to have a really high opinion of yourself, but I haven’t seen anything from you to prove it. No matter how you slice it, things aren’t going well!”

“Nobody says, ‘no matter how you slice it,’ anymore…”

Pointing that out only made things worse, and the girl’s stare grew sharper, at which Subaru shrank away.

Even though they had been searching for a little under an hour, for some reason, Subaru and the girl were back in an alley. Of course, there was a really good reason for this. There were several factors Subaru had discovered that made their search difficult.

First, Subaru didn’t know his way around town. Given that he had just been summoned from another world, it was hard to blame him for wanting a pass on this one. Additionally, it seemed that the girl was unfamiliar with the area as well, and at least ten minutes were wasted with both having full confidence that the other knew their way around. It was pretty funny, actually, or so Subaru thought. But the way the girl was staring at Subaru, she didn’t seem to find it funny at all.

Second, the characters and symbols written here and there…were completely illegible to Subaru. Given that Subaru didn’t have any trouble communicating by speech, he hadn’t thought all that much about it, but after a second look he saw that all around, here and there were handwritten symbols. Unless they were all some kind of “mystic charms to protect against evil magic” that tended to be popular, those symbols were probably letters for the common language. And because he couldn’t understand them, he couldn’t even read the road signs.

In other words, while a miracle common in most otherworldly summoning works of fiction is “for some reason our words and writing are mutually understood!”, in Subaru’s case, only half of that came true. But given that if Subaru hadn’t been able to communicate through words he would have been as good as dead, it was hard to call his situation unlucky.

“Still, why do you have to raise the difficulty like that on me…? The world’s not kind at all.”

Rather than exhausting all options, it was more of a case of finding a series of critical problems before you even get started.

While despairing at making absolutely no progress over the past hour, Subaru noticed that his companion, that girl, was standing up by the wall of the alley with her eyes closed, paying absolutely no mind to him. Seeing her lips move as she muttered something a few times, he tilted his head in confusion.

“Wonder what she’s doing…”

“Oh that? She’s communicating with lesser spirits.”

Subaru raised his eyebrows in surprise as the girl’s gray cat suddenly reappeared right in front of his eyes.

“I thought that I hadn’t seen you in a while, but you hadn’t gone home or anything; you were here the whole time?”

“There’s still a bit of time left before I have to go. Unlike those minor spirits she’s talking to, I take my job seriously.”

“Well that’s quite honorable of you. …But, what are these uh…lesser spirits again?”

Going by the name, I suppose they’re a rank down from regular spirits? Subaru thought.

As if agreeing with Subaru’s musing, the cat, floating in midair, waved its long tail back and forth. “Lesser spirits are beings that, in a state prior to becoming real spirits, start to develop some knowledge. If, over time, they gain power and self-awareness, they’ll become spirits like me.”

As he nodded, listening to the cat’s explanation, Subaru noticed that the area around the girl began to glow. The silver-haired girl was surrounded by faint lights that looked as though they were fireflies.