Prologue 0-1: Chelsea Margaret
For Chelsea Margaret, setting foot on the soil of a foreign land inspired no special feelings. She and her little brother had run away from home when they were little, and ever since then, they’d traveled from one strange country to the next like migratory birds. East, then west. North, then south. If you were to draw out the entire distance she’d traveled in a straight line, it would probably be long enough to circle the globe five times.
This was her third time in Japan. But this time, she wasn’t here for business or sightseeing. She was here to see a world-renowned specialist about a surgical treatment for her sick brother. But...
“What do you mean, he’s not going to get better?!”
When the doctor delivered the news to her in the dimly lit examination room, she got so mad that she grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up.
“C-Calm down.”
The elderly doctor must’ve expected this kind of response because he just kept moaning “calm down” again and again in pain.
“...Tch.” Once her initial explosion of emotion subsided, Chelsea pushed him away. “Wh-What are you saying...? My brother’s not going to get better? Is it the money? What? Do you think I can’t pay? I may not look it, but I’m—”
Maybe the doctor didn’t think she could afford the hefty bill for the procedure... Or maybe that’s just what she was telling herself. She leaned forward like she was about to grab him again.
“That’s not the problem,” the doctor explained in as calm a voice as he could muster.
Her brother’s disease was too advanced. At this late of a stage, the surgery would be in vain. And...
“I think, at most, he’s got another three months...”
He said the last thing Chelsea wanted to hear.
“...!”
There were no words to express the feelings that welled up inside of her now. She realized there was no point in listening to any more, so she stood up and turned to go.
“...Miss Margaret?”
“...”
Just before she left the room, Chelsea uttered a few last words.
Not a few seconds after she walked out of the door to the exam room, there was a commotion from inside. It was the doctor, whose height had shrunk to that of a child. He was screaming.
Chelsea didn’t even look back.
I have to do something...
She couldn’t count on doctors anymore. But she couldn’t go back to her family, either. Even if the Margaret clan was famous for the skill of its mages, she’d long since cut all ties with it. Besides, magic might be able to heal wounds, but it couldn’t cure illnesses. Only saints and Christ could do that.
I have to do something... Anything...
Practical measures like medicine weren’t working. Even more fantastic measures, like magic, wouldn’t work. The only thing left... was a miracle.
There was one option she’d looked into, just in case everything else failed. If it was really true, she might be able to save her brother. But the odds of that were close to zero.
Could she really make a miracle happen in just three months?
I have to try. I’ll make my own miracle.
And then Chelsea, who had hardly been paying attention to where she was going, slammed straight into a young girl.
“Kyah!”
Chelsea was the one who’d been moving faster, and her momentum sent her tumbling to the ground.
“I’m sorry. Are you all right?”
The person she’d hit had only been knocked back a single step, and they offered Chelsea a hand up. The girl was just a black silhouette against the setting sun, but Chelsea could see that the hand she held out was wearing a fingerless glove.
Prologue 0-2: Rosalind C. Bathory
Somewhere out at sea, a girl in a white dress was standing aboard a pirate ship.
“...Hmph.”
The girl—Rosalind C. Bathory—sighed as if she was bored. She was surrounded by men lying on the deck. They were the pirates who owned this ship.
These pirates were ruffians who made their living by plundering, kidnapping, and sometimes looting valuables from sunken ships. But right now, every one of them was lying unconscious on the deck.
It was almost as if they’d fallen at the frail, tiny hands of this little girl. It seemed impossible, but given that the girl was unhurt and every last pirate was out cold, there was hardly any other conclusion that could be drawn from this scene.
“...”
Rosalind raised her right hand. She curled each finger in turn, slowly forming a fist... and then sadly let it go. She drew her hand back to her chest.
There was a tear there in her dress like a blade had cut through it, complete with the smear of a bloodstain around it. But the blade that must have pierced her chest had left no scar behind, and the bloody stains on the white fabric were faded, indicating that a long time had passed since they were made.
“...Re...”
Rubbing the bloodstains, Rosalind’s mouth moved just a little... before breaking into a bitter sigh.
“Even this small bond is to be taken from me?”
Heh...
She tried to laugh, but her voice stuck in the back of her throat and disappeared.
“...!”
Then her eyes shot wide open as if she’d just realized something. She patted down her clothes before dropping to the deck on all fours, kicking and pushing the unconscious men out of her way as she crawled around.
“It’s not... It’s not here!”
The air of boredom about her just moments ago was gone now as she searched frantically.
After she’d spent some time scouring the deck, she suddenly raised her head as a new possibility occurred to her. She ran across the ship, again knocking the unconscious men aside as she made her way to a rectangular box.
The soaking wet box was covered with algae and barnacles. It looked like something the pirates had brought up from the bottom of the sea. Although the cover had been removed, she could see that the inside of the box was completely dry. It must have been sealed very carefully.
The girl stuck her head inside the box and ran her hands from one corner to the other, checking every inch of it. Her eyes lit up when her tiny hands touched something small.
“!”
She took what looked like a single piece of paper out of the box and sighed with relief. It was an old photograph, torn in the middle just like her dress. The damage made it impossible to see the face of the boy standing next to her in the picture.
“...”
She was disappointed, but still she held the photo close to her chest as if it was very dear to her. As if it was the most important thing she’d ever owned.
“I hate you... Namidare...”
Drops of clear liquid began to fall from Rosalind’s red eyes.
Prologue 0-3: Silver Slayer
A homunculus is a servant of its master.
Homunculi are one of the greatest secrets of alchemy: artificial life-forms that are capable of independent thought, but exist only to obey their masters.
Homunculi have no other purpose.
This homunculus in particular, Silver Slayer, was watching a line of ants traveling along the side of a dirt road when suddenly she raised her head.
“Confirmed revival of lost target signal,” she whispered mechanically and froze for a moment. She looked like she was thinking deeply, or perhaps wasn’t thinking at all.
She appeared to be extremely beautiful from what little you could see of her underneath her bulky jacket. Her hair was closer to the colo
r of ash than silver. Her eyes were the same hue. Her whole body was wrapped tightly in dirty bandages, but the gaps in them revealed her alabaster skin. She seemed almost too beautiful to be a living creature, and her expressionless face only made her look more like a doll.
“Delayed order will now be executed in accordance with signal’s restoration.”
She then closed her eyes, as if listening for something.
...Creeeak.
There was a squeaking sound like groaning gears. It was coming from inside her.
“Confirmed extension of unit lifespan beyond planned parameters. No hindrance to objectives.”
As she stood up, Silver Slayer coldly analyzed the fact that her end was near.
“Attempting to communicate with master before resuming activities...”
Silver Slayer closed her eyes for a moment.
“Failure. Trying again... Failure.”
But no matter how many times she tried, she just kept repeating the same word. Failure.
“...Deleting check-in task. Selecting next action from queue...” Her flat voice droned on as she stood perfectly still. “...Highest priority directive selected from queue. Highest priority directive is the execution of master’s will.”
Her master’s orders were more important than anything else. That was the one absolute in her life. It was written into her upon creation. Her master’s will was her moral compass.
She started to walk down the road, ready to execute her orders... but suddenly stopped. It was because of the line of ants that she’d been staring at earlier. The ants were clever and intelligent. They were carrying food back to their nest.
“Why did I stop? My actions are incorrect.”
An error had occurred in her priority list.
It wasn’t of much consequence when her target had vanished, but now it was time to fulfill her master’s orders. And with the limits of her lifespan approaching, she didn’t have a second to waste.
Yet she’d stopped anyway. For some reason, she wanted to watch the ants as they were hard at work once more. It was almost as if there was a bug in her thinking task. This wasn’t an action chosen as the result of a logical process. It was more like a new priority had just popped out of the void and overwritten her previous one.
“...”
Silver Slayer raised her foot to stomp the ants below her. She didn’t know what was going on, but if these insects were interfering with the execution of her primary task, they needed to be eliminated.
...Creeeak.
Another creaking noise came from within her. But this wasn’t the scream of some old, rusty part. It seemed to be something else entirely.
“...”
After a moment, she lowered her foot. Not on top of the ants, but on the road she’d meant to travel. She began walking again.
“Repeating highest priority task: My master has ordered the annihilation of Rosalind C. Bathory,” she whispered as if to remind herself of her duty.
Prologue 1
Wednesday. The middle of the week. The bomb was dropped during morning homeroom...
“Rekka, take me to an amusement park this Sunday.”
“Huh?!”
One sentence from Iris’s mouth was all it took to completely wake me up from my drowsiness.
“You will, right? Right?”
“Umm...”
I averted my gaze from Iris, who had slammed both of her hands down on my desk and was leaning over it... If I hadn’t looked away, her two large breasts—looking even larger squeezed between her arms—would have distracted me too much to even speak.
“Why?” I asked, feeling my cheeks turn red.
“Well, I was watching TV yesterday, and they said on a commercial that some huge entertainment facility called an ‘amusement park’ is opening soon! It looked like a ton of fun! So I want to go with you!”
Iris brought her smiling face (and her breasts) closer to me.
“O-Oh, I see...”
I turned away from the approaching mountains of temptation and tried to think.
I’d seen that commercial too. The place was just a few stops down on the train line, and it was opening this weekend. So Iris saw it and thought it looked fun, huh?
Well, it was true that amusement parks could be fun places, but it was only half as much fun if you went alone. It would be a shame if Iris had to go by herself. I didn’t want Earth to disappoint her.
“Well, I don’t have any plans, so if you want...”
But before I could finish my sentence...
“Rekka!”
My childhood friend Satsuki Otomo, who was sitting in the seat next to mine, slammed her fists down on her desk and shouted my name.
“Wh-What? Wait, why are you glaring at me?”
“I am not glaring at you!” she yelled back, but she was still glaring daggers.
Wh-What? Had I done something wrong?
As I sat there, confused by my childhood friend’s anger, she took two slips of paper out from her desk.
“I-If you’re going to the amusement park, go with me!” she said, her voice cracking a little.
Not knowing what to do, I looked down some, but my eyes gravitated towards what she was holding. It looked like a pair of tickets to the amusement park Iris and I had just been talking about. In the corner of one of them, I could see the words “Grand Opening Preorder Ticket.” That made me wonder...
“Where did you get those things?”
And why are you bringing them out now? I asked, but not out loud. I was too scared.
“Well... um... now that I’ve got all these new rivals, I felt like I needed to try harder...” Satsuki’s voice trailed off like she was making an excuse. I wasn’t sure what for, though.
Anyway, now that Satsuki had interrupted, a certain someone was extremely upset.
“I asked Rekka first. Butt out.”
“But I was the first one to invite him! Do you know how long it took me to figure out where to go, or what it took to work up the courage to ask him?”
“Not my problem! First come, first serve!”
Sparks were flying between Iris and Satsuki, and I was caught in the middle. Yup. I thought that it might go down like this.
I sighed a bit... but suddenly Iris grabbed my head and pulled it to her chest, giving me an indescribably happy feeling directly on my face!
“Rekka, you want to go with me, right?”
“Mmfff!”
I couldn’t breathe, much less answer. There really are breasts that can smother people!
“Stop it! Rekka can’t breathe!” Satsuki’s voice was almost a scream as she ripped me away from Iris.
No, no... I wasn’t a little disappointed. Definitely not. That could’ve been fatal, after all. So I really wished the other boys in the classroom would stop gnashing their teeth. And stop scowling at me like that. Well, I guess if I were in their shoes, I might’ve done the same thing.
Anyway, putting that aside... I had more important matters to deal with.
“Rekka, you’re going with me, right?” asked Iris.
“You’re going with me, aren’t you?” asked Satsuki.
What was I supposed to do?
“Oh my. Isn’t this getting interesting?” R had been watching the whole thing, of course.
I was on the verge of getting an ulcer, and she looked like she was having a grand old time.
“So, what will you do, Rekka?” R asked mischievously. There was no expression on her face, but I could tell she thought this was hilarious.
But it was true that I had to do something...
I suddenly came up with a brilliant plan.
“You know...”
I grabbed one of the tickets in Satsuki’s hand...
“Couldn’t you do this instead?”
And handed it to Iris.
“...”
“...”
...Why were both of them looking at me with such cold eyes? The tension that had filled the air vanished in
an instant and was replaced with a sense of disappointment.
What was going on here? Iris wanted to go to the amusement park. Satsuki had two tickets. It only made sense for the two of them to go together.
“And how, exactly, did you arrive at that conclusion after everything you just heard? Rekka, is your head as hollow as a balloon?” R asked, seemingly serious.
▽
After that, I somehow managed to get them to agree to both go with me as a group of three. Of course, I would buy my own ticket on the day we went. It was pricey, but... it was well worth it to get out of that mess.
“I’ll have to ask Harissa only to buy the cheapest groceries for the next week...”
I sighed as my thoughts turned to the young wizard in charge of housekeeping at my place. Come to think of it, both Iris and Harissa were adapting to life here really well, weren’t they? Harissa wasn’t even from Earth, but when I left the house this morning, she was telling me how meat was cheaper at the supermarket if you bought it in the evening. At this point, she was basically a Japanese housewife.
It did feel like I was relying on her a little too much, but for some reason, I just couldn’t stop. I figured I should come up with some way to thank her. But as I tried to think of various things that Harissa might enjoy, lunchtime rolled around.
“Rekka, are you going to eat in the classroom today?” Satsuki asked.
“Hmm, yeah, I guess.”
“I’m going to get something from the cafeteria! Don’t start eating without me!”
Iris bolted out of the room the moment class ended. Satsuki and I pushed our desks together. I took a boxed lunch wrapped in a cloth napkin out from my bag. It was Harissa’s turn to make lunch today, if I remembered right.
“...”
Satsuki was staring as hard as she could at my lunch, but I decided not to say anything. Satsuki and Harissa were taking turns making my lunch, and it felt like they had some kind of weird rivalry going on over it. Maybe they were competing to see who could make the better lunch or something. But both of them were good, so I didn’t care.
“I’m back!”
“You’re always so fast at that, Iris.”
“Really? I’m not even using close to my full speed, you know.”
I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse: Volume 4 Page 1
