“Who’re you calling a dragon thief? It’s time for you to give up and admit he’s just a chick. If you’re home, why the hell is the door locked? I’ve been sitting outside for ages, convinced no one was here!”
Aqua looked at me intently for a long moment.
. . . . . .?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she finally said. “After consultation with Megumin and Darkness, we’ve decided this mansion belongs to the gorgeous and very beautiful goddess Lady Aqua. Darkness has a house in town, and Megumin has one in Crimson Magic Village, so they said I could have this one. This is my house now. I thought you were going to live at the castle, weren’t you? So scram. Get out of my yard!”
. . . . . .
“I always knew you were an idiot, but you’ve really stepped up your game today. I’ve never heard something so stupid in my life. You better cast some healing magic on your own brain. But it probably won’t work, so I’ll take you to the hospital.”
That caused Aqua to slam the second-floor window shut.
. . . . . .
I went around to the front and pounded on the door. “I’m hooome! Darkness, Megumin, if you’re there, let me in! That stupid Aqua locked the door!”
A window by the second-floor patio, directly above the front door, opened. I thought it might be Aqua again, but it was Megumin and Darkness who poked their heads out. Boy, was I glad to see them.
. . .Or so I thought, for about two seconds.
“Well, look who decided to show up. Enjoy your week at the castle, Kazuma?”
My how long at what?
I was still puzzling over that when Megumin, sounding uncommonly agitated, said, “Oh-ho-ho, quite a good job you did of turning your nose up at us! You put on such a good show to get us to go home, just so you could have the castle all to yourself! Even I didn’t expect you to have us going like that!” She shook her staff out the window.
Okay, we all needed to take a few steps back, here.
“All right, hold on. You’re saying I was at the castle for a week after you went home. But I don’t know what you’re talking about. I only stayed for one night—last night, right? So why. . . . . .? Huh?”
I felt something nagging at me. It was very strange. There was something barely outside my mental grasp.
What I said only seemed to make Megumin more upset. “You’ve got some nerve, playing dumb at this point. Perhaps you’d like to be part of an experiment—we’ll test how far Explosion can send a person flying!”
That didn’t sound pleasant at all, but meanwhile, Darkness cocked her head at me, puzzled. “. . .Kazuma, I don’t even want to know what you did at the castle. But it looks like it was bad enough that they gave you an amnesia-inducing potion, one that’s normally forbidden. In the right dosage, it can totally eliminate your memories. They stopped letting people use it because sometimes it reduced the victim to a complete idiot.”
“Well, at least there was no fear of that, because in my opinion, this man is already a complete idiot. . . A memory-erasing potion, though? I grant that his behavior has been unusual these last several minutes. You don’t suppose he’s only pretending to have lost his memories in order to fool us, do you? If he truly does have potion-induced amnesia, though, I would feel bad blaming him for what he’s doing. . .” Megumin sighed. She didn’t look completely happy to have to give up on this.
I couldn’t be sure, but if Darkness was right, it was possible my memories had been tampered with.
. . .Hmm.
“I remember seeing you guys off and then a little bit from immediately after that. I’m pretty sure Iris called me to her room, and then. . .”
It was true: I’d gone to a girl’s bedroom—okay, so it was just my little sister’s, but still—and yet, I didn’t remember what had happened there.
Amnesia. Naturally.
Maybe my tremendous Luck had caused me to stumble onto a state secret, and then they’d argued about what to do to me. Normally, a random adventurer who learned something that crucial would be considered disposable. But when I was the random adventurer in question. . . They wouldn’t have been able to let an outsider walk away with state secrets; that much was clear. But to just rub out an adventurer as brave and accomplished as I was wouldn’t be in the country’s best interests.
They must have settled on erasing my memories as a compromise. Yeah, that had to be it. I grew more convinced with each passing second.
“Listen, guys, I can’t be sure, but I think my Luck may have gotten me involved with some kind of state secret. They must have spent days in emergency meetings trying to decide what to do with me—they couldn’t just get rid of me, after all. They must have cooked up fake letters to send you so you wouldn’t worry about why I wasn’t coming home. . . After all that debate, they decided they couldn’t kill me, so they chose to wipe out my memories and send me home. That’s my guess—what do you think?”
Saying it aloud made me absolutely certain: That was what had happened. And I was pretty convinced I knew most or all of the people behind it.
“Hrmm. . .,” Darkness said, crossing her arms and shaking her head. “I feel like he’s onto something. . .maybe? But I can’t think of why anyone would want to make him take an amnesia potion. . .”
Megumin was equally exercised. “I—I wonder. Knowing this man, he may have simply gotten altogether too comfortable with Iris and decided to stay forever. . . But I guess that wouldn’t be a reason to erase his memories. Hmm. . .”
I offered the two of them my best guess. “I know Claire was there. I’m not sure why, but I get the feeling she’s at the bottom of all this. I know she and I are on the same page about Iris. But for some reason, I feel like I have to get her back for something.”
That made Darkness’s expression even more grim. “I see where you’re coming from. Yes, House Sinfonia would be powerful enough to have the right to use a memory-erasing potion. On top of that, Claire is a central player in this nation’s government. And I know the two of you were getting closer. Hmm. . . You’re starting to sound rather credible.”
Megumin followed up. “I suppose we can count it as good enough that you came home at all. You can repay me by accompanying me on some Explosion walks starting tomo—”
But she never got the word out of her mouth.
“What are you two saying? Are you both idiots? That moron of a NEET has been a smooth talker all his life, and you’re taking him seriously? This loliNEET—I’ll bet a little ‘I love you, Big Bro’ would be enough to make him say he was going to stay at the castle forever! I’m sure he simply got too comfortable having butlers and maids attending to his every need, and he decided to forget about us.”
Dammit, and I’d almost had everything wrapped up neatly. I turned to Aqua, who had appeared as if on cue from the second-floor window, and said, “H-hey, watch it. There’s no way I. . . I. . . What?”
Something she’d said made me feel like I was on the verge of remembering something important.
When Aqua saw me that way, she said triumphantly, “Just look at that! I forbid you from coming into this house. If you really want to come in, get down on your knees and say, ‘I’m so, so sorry, Lady Aqua!’ and promise to worship me three times a day from now on. Then I might think about letting you come inside. If you’re not interested, then scram! Go on, get out of here! And don’t harass my poor Darkness and Megumin anymore!” Then she slammed the window shut.
“Screw you! We’re not done here!” I exclaimed, but she was gone, obviously not interested in talking to me anymore.
. . .Ooooh, that woman!
I went up to a first-floor window with the intention of smashing it and getting into the house by force. . .but then I stopped in my tracks.
“Wait, what the hell?”
I glanced along the facade of the house and discovered that all the first-floor windows had wooden boards over them. Getting in through the windows wouldn’t be easy. Between the time it would take and
the noise it would make trying to get them off there, I would probably find myself on the receiving end of something unpleasant from Aqua.
Grrr. . .
This wasn’t fair; I was the victim here. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to get down on my knees and apologize to that moron. I hadn’t done anything wrong or even anything questionable.
As I stood there ruminating, something small dropped at my feet. I glanced down—whatever it was had come from the second story—and I thought it looked awfully familiar. . .
Ahhh, I remember.
It was Megumin’s beloved purse. I guess Megumin, knowing I had used all my money in Elroad, had taken pity on me and dropped some cash down to me. I remembered then that even my bankbook was inside the house, and I found myself flat-out grateful for Megumin’s act of kindness.
Megumin herself left, though, without looking at me and in fact without looking very happy at all.
I picked up the purse and noticed a dark shadow. When I looked up, something covered in a cloth was thrown at my feet. At the window, I saw the sunlight glinting off locks of golden hair. I guess Darkness had given me something, too. I was grateful to both of them, I really was, but if they were going to do all this to help me, why not go all the way and try to bring that idiot around?
I picked up the bundle Darkness had dropped and found one of my favorite bows. It was one that had seen a lot of use: the one with an arrow with a hook on one end and a rope on the other. Immediately, I knew what Darkness was thinking. Megumin’s cash would let me get something to eat, and then after it got dark, I could sneak in the second floor using the bow and arrow—it was practically an invitation.
. . .I had to admit, though, I never expected to be breaking into my own house.
2
What to do, what to do?
“That comes to nine hundred eris, please.”
Break into my own house? I’d gotten into Darkness’s mansion once, but I owed a lot of that to the strengthening buffs Aqua had given me. Yes, Darkness had slipped me the bow and arrow this time, but with my normal, completely non-magically-enhanced physical abilities, would it even be possible to sneak silently into the house?
I had finished my meal at the tavern and was just about to settle the check. I opened the purse Megumin had given me. . .
“. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .”
It was bulging with point cards and coupons. I extracted a thousand-eris bill and paid up, but. . .
“One hundred eris is your change. Thank you very much; see you again!”
For some reason, I felt a profound resistance to paying with Megumin’s money. I mean, the abundance of cards and coupons suggested she would make a conscientious wife, but my conscience couldn’t quite live with outright spending her cash.
Actually, she normally gave me the bulk of her income. Most of that I sent home to her family—if I got back to the mansion in one piece, I would have to be sure to give her some money, whether she wanted it or not.
. . .But speaking of getting into the mansion in one piece, this time I was going up against Aqua, which seemed like bad news. She was normally such an airhead, but she had a disconcerting habit of turning sharp at the most inconvenient times. Not to mention, she could see in the dark even better than I could.
I hoped she would drink a lot of wine and go to bed early, but another thing she was good at was failing to figure out what people wanted, a trait I was sure would be out in full force tonight. I had no proof of that, only the evidence of long acquaintance with her. If I could just get inside, I was confident Aqua would never beat me, but if she caught me while I was still climbing, that would be the end.
I passed the time until I figured Aqua and the others would be asleep by wandering around town, thinking over the best ways to get into the house.
“Well now, it has indeed been a while. O man who has filled his belly on the money he received from the girl who is infatuated with him, who is dependent on his sugar mama and is quite content with it, are you awake at this hour? And a fine hour it is, for tonight is a full moon, when magic is at its zenith. I’m considering having a little constitutional myself, during which I mean to climb to the spire atop the Axis church and replace the symbol there with an especially sexy radish I found. Want to join me?”
“. . .No, no, I don’t. Watch out—you know they’re gonna catch you one day, and then they’ll tear you limb from limb.”
Who should I run into but Vanir. He was carrying a large radish that really did have a pretty suggestive shape. Demons don’t sleep, so he had time to kill every night.
. . . . . . . . .
“Hey, Vanir. You’ve got a few minutes, right? Mind if I ask you to help me with something?”
I was going to borrow the power of this demon to break into a mansion protected by a goddess. I had to admit, it didn’t feel like the most virtuous thing. . .
“Oh-ho? Are you quite aware of what it means to ask a favor of a demon? We always have our price. And the price of a great demon like yours truly is higher than most, eh?” Vanir’s lips twisted nastily, looking very demon-ish.
Normally I would have been pretty intimidated, but it was sort of hard to take him seriously with that sexy radish in his arms.
“I promise to buy lots of expensive stuff I don’t need the next time I’m in Wiz’s shop.”
“Ah, my dear high roller, just leave everything to me! . . .Say, shall I throw in this radish as well?”
“I’ll pass.”
It was past midnight—not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. But this was the hour when demons and NEETs came alive.
“Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Bwaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
“H-hey! Geez, don’t laugh now! I can’t believe you’re suddenly excited right at this moment, of all times!”
While everyone else in the immediate vicinity was fast asleep, Vanir and I stood in front of my mansion.
“Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, I am in fine spirits this night! Attacking a goddess on the night of the full moon! It would be enough to make anyone eager!”
I was starting to think it hadn’t been my best idea, turning to this guy for help.
In any event, this was the plan: First, I would try to get in the normal way. I didn’t have any buffs, but if I could somehow manage it, then it was mission accomplished. If I couldn’t climb up by physical strength alone, or if I was noticed in the middle of my attempt, then Vanir would begin attacking the mansion.
I was sure Aqua would have set up an anti-demon barrier, like the one that had kept my succubus out. The moment Vanir got anywhere near it, Aqua would go running to him. That would be my opening. My goal would be to get inside, then subdue Aqua. If Vanir happened to break through her defenses, that worked, too.
Phase two would be to get to my room and retrieve my bankbook. As long as I had my money, I could stay at an inn until things blew over. In fact, considering how that would allow me to spend every day just having fun, maybe it would be better that way.
Anyway, that was the plan. Vanir looked on while I fired my hooked arrow at the roof above my room. . .!
“. . .Huh?”
I was suddenly seized by the sense that something was wrong. There was a wooden board pounded over the window of my room from the inside. I was sure that hadn’t been there earlier. I did a quick check, and sure enough: Every room on the second floor was the same.
I could think of only one person with the sort of free time to board up all the windows in a house this big. I was just starting to sweat with the realization that my plan was in shambles when I noticed something else.
Not all the windows were completely blocked. Not the ones that the other girls were using. Darkness and Megumin must have objected to having their windows totally closed off. What with them giving me money and a bow and arrow, I figured it was safe to think of the two as coconspirators.
“Vanir, could you look at me with your all-seeing eye for a second? I need to know which route I should take—Megum
in’s room or Darkness’s.”
“Mm. As ever, I am somewhat blinded when I look at you by the repugnant light that surrounds you, but. . . Let us see here. The outcome is the same regardless of which way you enter, but I think going into the room of the girl from the bizarre clan will be luckier. There may be a little something in it for you. Go find out.”
So there I had it. Something in it for me, huh?
“Megumin’s window it is. Okay, here I go!”
3
I stood right below the window of Megumin’s room and aimed my arrow at the roof. I shot for the tip-top to minimize the noise as much as I could. At this distance, my Deadeye and Second Sight skills made it all but impossible to miss. My aim was true: The arrow hooked onto the roof, after which I gave the dangling rope a couple of tugs to be sure it was secure.
I waited for a moment, but no one showed any sign of waking up. I glanced back at Vanir, giving him a look to let him know I was going to start climbing. Then I grabbed the rope and started making my way up to Megumin’s room. . .
Megumin’s room. . . . . . . . .
“Hff. . . Hff. . .!”
Man, climbing a rope without any magical buffs is hard!
Maybe the rope was slippery, or maybe I simply didn’t have the muscles, considering I had to climb using almost entirely arm strength. Even so, I somehow managed to cling to the rope and finally got a hand on Megumin’s windowsill. I clung to the rope with my left hand and the windowsill with my right, trying to catch my breath.
When I finally managed to get my breathing under control a little, I tapped on Megumin’s window. Then again. And again. Finally, the curtain opened; Megumin smiled when she saw it was me. Was it just my imagination, or was she actually happy to see me? I could hear the lock rattling when it happened.
“I’m on patrol! Megumin, are you staying awake? If I know that man, he’ll try to break in through your or Darkness’s room right about now! We’re going to be living the night-shift life for a while, so bear with it, okay?”
The Arch-Wizard’s Little Sister Page 5
