“That’s the thing with you freelancers. You say you’re fighting to protect, but you can think of nothing but destruction. We’re the one that has worked so hard to stockpile dungeons and ancient superweapons. If it wasn’t for our efforts, the legend of the hero would have been really boring.”
“Sigh. If only I was the demon king. Then things would be more…”
“If only I was the hero. Then by now, I’d be…”
“…”
“…”
According to the bards, the hero and the demon king made a bet on some kind of prize and began the final battle.
It is unclear what that prize was.
But…
Despite it being the “final” battle, both the hero and the demon king survived.
And no one needs the songs to remind them that the history of the world then underwent a change great enough to make the prophets faint.
File 17: Attribute Colors for the Palette
The positions of punishment and reward were swapped.
Basically, instead of criminals being punished under criminal law, those who worked for the sake of society or another individual were given a proper reward. That was the essence of the Karma Equilibrium Law.
In that world where everyone supported everyone else, not being kind to everyone effectively meant you would lose your means of living, so the crime rate really did lower.
“So, master!! That is why I, a super schoolteacher tsundere childhood-friend small-animal-type gothic-lolita household fad-follower assault maid, have come here to repay you!!”
“That was a hell of a lot! What are you!? Something like a ramen with everything on it!?”
I had a feeling that having her before my front door would cause issues with the neighborhood, or with judging me, or with rumors, or something destructive! My confusion was putting me at a loss for words, so I could not come up with any concrete ideas, but you get the picture.
And before my thoughts could recover, the ramen with everything on it continued speaking.
“The world is not so kind as to allow you to simply be a maid these days. To survive, you need to add on more attributes. That’s why I am a maid with 10 different attributes! Feel free to tremble in fear at just what kind of dream life awaits you!!”
“Isn’t childhood friend impossible?”
“I can forge as many memories and home videos as you like.”
She was quite the professional.
And so I decided to go with yet another question!
“What kind of attribute is ‘super’?”
“I think it has to do with being a reporter that transforms into full-body tights.”
“Oh, I thought it meant your whole body would glow gold.”
Anyway…
“I don’t recall doing anything worth being rewarded by the Karma Equilibrium Law. What did I do and who did I save?”
“Well, master, you dropped a 100 yen coin in front of the drink vending machine the other day, remember?”
“Yeah. I lost it when it fell into a manhole.”
“That 100 yen coin turned into a horse racing ticket that paid back 100 times. That money grew even further via pachinko, but was then robbed. When a brave youth stopped the robber, the attaché case it was in slid down a slope. It ended up being used in day trading. Half of the fortune made off of it was donated to poor children in a certain country. In its use, oil was discovered and now all the hunger and poverty issues of that country are resolved.”
“That kind of chain of events can happen in reality!?”
“At any rate, master, your karma has come out on the plus side at the level of permanently saving the lives of 5 million people. According to the calculations, your karma could never be brought to equilibrium in your lifetime unless a super schoolteacher tsundere childhood-friend small-animal-type gothic-lolita household fad-follower assault maid was sent to you.”
I sighed.
To be honest, nothing could have made me happier than to have a maid, but what was she supposed to do? She would finish cleaning my small apartment in no time at all.
“So please have me fight.”
“Hmm!? Where did that dangerous term come from!?”
“I belong to you until your karma has been brought into equilibrium, master. That also means that my own karma is yours to bear….and (I did a lot of things I am not proud of and that earned me a lot of grudges while working to become a super schoolteacher tsundere childhood-friend small-animal-type gothic-lolita household fad-follower assault maid.)”
“What was that you just said so quickly!? Are you saying I’m now liable for your debts!?”
However, shouting about it would not help. When criminal punishments declined, those who had established proof of their right to revenge had gained the right to take vengeance.
And so….
“Fwa ha ha ha ha!! So you are that super schoolteacher tsundere childhood-friend small-animal-type gothic-lolita household fad-follower assault maid’s new master!! I am a cat-ear dog-ear rabbit-ear bear-ear monkey-ear rhino-ear cow-ear mouse-ear panda-ear koala-ear reindeer-ear kangaroo-ear gothic-lolita girl! I am here to take vengeance!!”
“That’s too many types of animals!! You’re like some kind of chimaera! And why stick with ears for all of them!? You could have at least used the horns for the reindeer!! You don’t have some disturbing fixation with ears, do you!? Also, didn’t this maid already take gothic lolita?”
However, the super schoolteacher tsundere childhood-friend small-animal-type gothic-lolita household fad-follower assault maid seemed shocked by the appearance of this strange visitor.
“T-twelve attributes!? This is no normal girl…!!”
“Heh. I have so many I could try for a Guinness World Record before long if I was an ice cream shop. This is the way the world is headed.”
“N-not good. She might be the unparalleled type!”
I started wondering if this maid could even handle the basics like cooking and cleaning. Battle ability was not what you looked for in a maid.
“Th-this is bad. She simply has too many attributes. I can’t win against this!!”
“And what happens if you lose?”
“Isn’t it obvious? She will take vengeance. She might take a vegetable grater to my ankles and make grated radish out of them. …And she will do the same to you as you are liable for my debts now.”
“That’s too heavy to get someone wrapped up in as a joke!! And another thing, you super schoolteacher…Jugemu Jugemu! What did you do before coming here!?”
“Please do not abbreviate it because it is a pain to say, master! Our attributes are the symbols of our lives!!”
“Here I go!!” shouted the other girl.
The cat-ear dog-ear rabbit-ear bear-ear monkey-ear rhino-ear cow-ear mouse-ear panda-ear koala-ear reindeer-ear kangaroo-ear gothic-lolita girl quickly took a meaningless pose.
“Take this universal special attack that corresponds to the 12 constellations!!!!!!”
“Then at least use the animals corresponding to the constellations as your attributes!!”
“Some of them are things like scales, so that’s impossible!”
As I did not want to be turned into grated radish, I had to join in the battle whether I wanted to or not. The rules seemed to have the battle decided by the number of attributes you had, so the super schoolteacher tsundere childhood-friend small-animal-type gothic-lolita household fad-follower assault maid had the buttons of her top burst off, exposing her chest, had some thick medals removed from her military-looking hat, and chicken blood sprinkled over the knife set she had.
“Umm, I’ll add lewd, bus driver, and yandere. That gives me 13.”
“Dobashaaa!!!!!!”
While letting out that meaningless shout that might have been some kind of sound effect, the super schoolteacher tsundere childhood-friend small-animal-type gothic-lolita household fad-follower assault lewd bus-driver yandere maid blew away the cat-ear dog-ear rabb
it-ear bear-ear monkey-ear rhino-ear cow-ear mouse-ear panda-ear koala-ear reindeer-ear kangaroo-ear gothic-lolita girl.
She (I’ll just stick with that. It’s easier) flew surprisingly far before hitting the ground. Blood trailed from the corner of her mouth, but she gave a pale smile as she gathered up the last of her strength.
“G-gbh… Heh. I am actually a boss on the side of good who is only pretending to oppose you in order to help you grow…”
“Wh-what!?”
“And that gives me 13 attributes, so I can fight evenly once more!! Attack!!”
“At least stick with the ear theme! And that adds the straight man attribute, giving me 14!! Attack!!”
I could hear nothing but explosions and see nothing but flashes of light.
All the glass in my apartment had broken, but I was not sure who I was supposed to charge for the damages.
But then I started to be able to see what lay behind the billowing smoke.
“Huh? I had more attributes, so I should have won!”
“No, I used my boss-on-the-side-of-good attribute to get in a surprise attack. That gave me the traitor attribute which gave me a total of 14 just like you. And by fighting against an even opponent, I gained the rival attribute! And this long-winded explanation has added on the exposition character attribute! I now have sixteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!”
“Then I gain the unfortunate character attribute for having the situation turned around on me like that. That’s 15. Being the type of character that meets the enemy in combat no matter what gives me 16. And coming up with these ideas to turn around such a desperate situation makes me a mystery-solving character. That’s seventeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!”
After that, the two girls continued to add on more and more attributes. There was waitress, nurse, race queen, flight attendant, sailor uniform, cheerleader, shrine maiden, nun, fundoshi, sexy swimsuit, school swimsuit, buruma, bike shorts, samba, hula girl, cowgirl, bunny girl, princess, student council president, stage magician, reverse trap, fairy, goddess, dominatrix, ninja, samurai, china dress, ao dai, android, cyborg, AI, and many more. The wind was sliced, gravity was thrown out of order, dimensional holes were opened, something like a black hole appeared, and ridiculous explosions occurred.
“…Are neither of you going to claim the battle-type attribute?”
When I said that, the battle calmed down a bit.
I stared through the dust and smoke to see what was going on beyond it. What I saw was a girl wearing a completely normal maid uniform and a girl wearing a completely normal gothic lolita outfit. They were seated in the seiza style and facing each other. Wait, could you really call either of those “normal”? Everything that had happened may have thrown my idea of “normal” out of whack.
“What happened?”
“We circled around back to the starting point.”
“No matter how many ice cream flavors they make, vanilla will never go out of style.”
File 18: Chef Koitarou's Insatiable Challenge
“Hey, grampa. I got that lady to do an authentic ‘nandeyanen’[1].”
“I see. I see. Did you make sure to thank her?”
“…Nandeyanen.”
“Ha ha ha. You got your grandfather!”
“Yanen yanen!”
The pair who seemed to be grandfather and granddaughter (it would have seemed creepy if they weren’t) left the sushi shop with a smile. …Was a Kansai dialect really that rare a thing?
They had been the last of the lunchtime customers, so the sushi shop now contained only myself and the stubborn old sushi chef. The stubborn old man gave me an annoyed look as I stood there with a lab coat worn over a cheap suit.
“I admire your politeness for waiting until the last customer left, but nothing else.”
“Then can we get down to business?”
I placed a business tablet computer down on the counter and the old man’s eyebrows lowered in suspicion almost immediately.
His face seemed to say that he hated me and my lab coat that smelled of ethanol.
Well, those who made incredible advancements along a certain path would always be in conflict with those who did not understand and who refused to head down that path.
Surprisingly few people had the abnormal determination needed to get the general public to accept you the way Koitarou-san had. And yet it was always that determination that allowed this small nation to advance the way it had.
“I’m sure you know that I loathe the likes of you,” he said. “Yours is one of the biggest rotating sushi chains around. What I hate most of all is that you have the gall to put ‘Edo-style’ on your signs.”
“Oh, come on now. Edo-style merely refers to the form. It isn’t called Edo-style because someone from Tokyo made it. It’s the same as how Japanese chefs can make French food.”
“The form of food changes daily. Pizza started to be delivered by bike and sushi started to rotate on conveyer belts. But Edo-style refers to this. Everything that goes into this shop is what makes it Edo-style. I’m not complaining about whether the shop is located in Osaka or Tokyo. What I don’t like is your method of sticking a dropper into a test tube to look into the makeup of the flavor or the effects of preservatives, you food development researcher.”
“You say that, but sushi was originally a method of preserving fish. It was a type of fermented food. Trout sushi and the like were developed from that. When Edo-style sushi first showed up, it was treated as an inferior imitation just the way you are treating rotating sushi, was it not? Koitarou-san, I believe it was your ancestors who skillfully worked long months and years to raise it to the accepted position it is in now.”
“That may be, but I draw the line at calling that ‘Edo-style’. I don’t care what you do, but there needs to be distinction. Quit calling it ‘authentic’ or ‘Edo-style’ and then work to see if you can outdo real Edo-style under its own name.”
“Koitarou-san, do you like salmon or cheese rolls?”
“If you can outdo quality tuna with that, then I will not complain. I would prefer to have you challenge me with something new rather than by taking cheap tuna and trying to hide the flavor by adding lard.”
From that exchange, I am sure you have seen just how stubborn Koitarou-san could be.
And how softhearted he could be.
At first glance, he looked like a formidable enemy who was armed with his ideas, but when you broke through his ideas, he was often softhearted enough to be unable to abandon others.
For example, he was the type of old man who would complain about a festival but at the same time create a lavish assortment of chirashizushi for the occasion. And he would tell the neighborhood children that their smiles were enough to pay for their sushi.
“But, Koitarou-san, we are running a business, so I did not come here for something I do not think has a chance of succeeding.”
“Are you going to use your tears in an attempt to get me to develop a product for you?”
“Something like that. After all, Koitarou-san, you may have complained about the last job I brought you, but you still helped me through to the end.”
“…That was because you said you wanted to develop sushi that was just like the real thing but could be eaten by those with fish allergies. You asked me to mix together things like soybeans and potato starch to perfectly recreate the flavor and texture.”
“Yes, yes. We may just be a rotating sushi restaurant, but we managed to take over a large portion of the medical care indus-…Cough, cough. No, I mean we managed to let many patients eat sushi with a smile for the first time.”
I had to quickly change what I was saying because Koitarou-san was glaring at me with eyes sharper than his knife.
“In other words, Koitarou-san, you are willing to swallow your personal pride and join forces with a chain restaurant like us if it will help the world at large, correct?”
“…Wait. So what is at stake today?”
&nb
sp; “World peace. Or to be more specific, demonic beasts. Do you understand now?”
Koitarou-san’s gaze grew even sharper.
Well, you could hardly blame him.
For those creatures, the path of evolution had become so twisted that they had overturned all common biological knowledge. In fact, it made them almost seem like they had come from “somewhere else”. They did not understand human language and all methods of communicating our thoughts to them had been ineffective. Also, they were overwhelmingly strong. The militaries of the 8 major countries of the world had quickly given up trying to suppress them, and now civilian groups were in control of making sure they were provoked as little as possible.
Due to those horrible creatures, calculations had predicted that humanity’s destruction would likely come from them rather than due to oil sources drying up or global warming causing food shortages. Naturally, the demonic beasts could only see humans as another food source.
“What is a single sushi chef supposed to do about it? Are you telling me to slice them up and place them above some sushi rice?”
“No. We humans cannot kill these demonic beasts in the first place. The most we can do is cause slight injuries that only drive them into a frenzy. That is why we must stop thinking offensively with ideas of how to ‘defeat’ them. That is why I have turned it on its head. That is the only way.”
“Ahn?”
“Demonic beasts view humans as food. But that does not mean they eat only humans. …That makes this simple. If we give them some kind of food that is more delicious than humans and make sure they instinctually realize that they can only continue eating that food as long as we remain alive, they will no longer view us as targets.”
“Will it really work quite that well?”
“It’s similar to the symbiotic relationship between ants and aphids. Neither side is truly in control. Also, it does not require a mutual language. As long as we can teach them via experience that they will receive ‘delicious honey’ from us, we will be on equal footing.”
A Simple Survey - Volume 01 - A Simple Survey Page 9
