ch21-ch40 · 038-ch32
Chapter 32 — Part 2 Opening
Sai's parents currently live under the care of Sai's younger sister and her husband.
Even though the eldest son of the Yamana family had returned, the topic of living together with him never came up. The family had always been close, and Sai's mother and sister especially got along well, so it never became a discussion.
It was also the result of the three of them living together and doing their best during Sai's absence.
Sai's parents worried about their son taking on the dangerous job of being an adventurer.
But at the same time, watching Sai's exploits in the dungeon on stream, they also felt that their son seemed to be doing alright.
A mix of half anxiety, half relief, perhaps.
However, that assessment had been changing recently.
"Hey, Mom. Could you at least not watch this video in front of me?"
"What? But... don't you think so?"
His mother turned to his father with a delighted expression.
"Honestly, I couldn't really picture him being in another world, but this is the result of Sai working hard over there, right?"
Both parents smiled as they said this.
Even Sai's nephew Kenji and his sister's family were watching with interest.
"I watched it too, but my brother-in-law really is amazing, isn't he?"
His sister's husband also praised him.
'Magical power can be trained. You can even do it at home, so remember that before you leave today.'
On the screen, Sai was speaking to several dozen young adventurers.
He was shown teaching the basics of magic control.
"...Was this really a good idea?"
Some time ago, the three university students — Soma, Gakuto, and Tetta — had asked him for instruction.
Sai had readily agreed.
It was to pass on the magic control training methods and the ropes of being an adventurer that he'd learned in the other world.
Since he hadn't shared his secret with Hiyori and Mio in the same way, he was hesitant to teach other-world magic. So he didn't plan on teaching things like Hexa Shield.
But magic control and adventurer know-how had nothing to do with the other world. If this could train newcomers and reduce the risks of adventuring... with that thought, he'd accepted.
However, the teaching day ended up being after the new year, thanks to the battle with the Majin and the year-end holidays.
A few days before the lesson.
The members of the university's adventurer club that Soma and the others belonged to also wanted to participate, and Sai agreed to that too. He didn't have much experience teaching a large group all at once, but he figured around thirty people would be manageable.
And then the day came.
One of the participants asked if they could film with a camera.
Apparently they wanted to upload it to the adventurer streaming site, Tower Tube.
Tower Tube was essentially a site designed for the adventurers fighting at Shinjuku Tower. Since it seemed you could upload videos for educational purposes, Sai thought it might serve as reference material for the increasing number of rookie adventurers and gave permission.
The lesson itself was a resounding success.
The participants took it seriously, and his experience as an instructor in the other world proved invaluable.
On Earth, various methods for training magical power had been proposed from the past to the present — setting aside the fraudulent ones — but all of them were inefficient.
The most well-known established theory was that continuing to fight in the dungeon increases total magical capacity. No, actually, just being in the dungeon increases total magical capacity. If you stay in a magic-rich dungeon, your magical capacity increases, albeit by a tiny amount.
This much was true, but of course, it was inefficient.
Then came the training method Sai taught this time.
It was apparently quite revolutionary.
For one thing, there had never been a systematic way to teach magic control.
It seems people had previously thought of mana consumption like in a video game RPG — if a spell cost 10 MP, that 10 was fixed.
No one had ever suggested that magic control could improve mana efficiency.
Sai's lecture targeted that very point.
By controlling your magic, you can suppress mana consumption — using it efficiently allows you to wield magic without wasting magical power.
What's more, continuing the training also increased total magical capacity.
There was no way people wouldn't jump at that.
Afterward, the participants soon realized their magic control had improved. The ropes of adventuring he'd taught as a bonus were also well-received, being more substantial than the lectures run by the Adventurer's Guild.
It went well, and Sai was satisfied. He really felt good that day.
Some time later, Soma contacted him to say the video had been posted.
Watching himself on Tower Tube acting as a teacher, Sai felt a bit embarrassed — "Is that really what my voice sounds like?" — but figured it was fine.
He talked while fighting at Shinjuku Tower too, and that was on stream.
And yet, his voice sounded different when he was giving a lecture compared to when he was clearing floors.
He was thinking about that when the trouble came from a different direction.
A different direction. Namely, the lesson video was re-uploaded without permission to video sites other than Tower Tube. By the time he noticed, the lesson video posted on a globally popular video site had already blown up with an enormous number of comments and video clips.
It went massively viral.
Even though Sai himself wished they'd take it down, neither he nor the university club members could deal with it anymore. It had been translated into various languages, re-uploaded, and clipped to pieces.
There were even comments from overseas and reaction videos of people trying it themselves — the situation was completely out of control.
Some people were absolutely delighted by this situation.
His parents and his sister's family.
◇
According to his parents:
Their son had been missing for thirty years. Those days had truly been painful.
They had made flyers searching for their missing son and even appeared on TV trying to find him.
And so those painful days continued.
But his parents had another child.
Sai's younger sister.
His sister was also shocked that her brother had disappeared, but seeing her parents only preoccupied with searching for their missing brother — a brother whose whereabouts were unknown — was painful for her.
A few years later, when they saw her as a grown adult, his parents realized they hadn't been properly looking at their daughter. They apologized, and apparently started the family over.
Then his sister got married, her husband joined the family, a grandchild was born...
There were difficult times, but even so, they decided to keep doing their best together.
As they lived their days with that feeling, their son suddenly came back.
Their son who had been missing for thirty years, who they thought was already dead... Saito had come back.
When asked where he'd been, he said another world.
There was a possibility he was lying, but given the circumstances — he'd suddenly disappeared — and when shown the large amount of gold coins and various items from another world that he'd obtained there, they had no choice but to believe him.
Besides, when he hesitantly asked them, "I'd like to turn the gold coins into ingots for immediate funds," that tentative way of speaking was just like Saito as a little boy.
Even though he'd grown big and strong, he was still the same son from back then.
And so their son started going to Shinjuku Tower.
He had no work history or anything in Japan, but apparently he'd been an adventurer over there, so he decided to make that his job here too.
They knew Shinjuku Tower could earn money but was dangerous. Since 2000, there had been news related to Shinjuku Tower every single day, so they knew about it whether they wanted to or not.
They couldn't help but worry about their son heading to a place like that. But they also couldn't suggest any good jobs to introduce him to.
However, their son was doing great there.
One time, they heard he'd even helped a senior from their grandson's high school. Being able to watch their son do his best on his stream was worrying, but also made them happy.
◇
And then came this recent video.
Seeing their son acting as a teacher for young university students apparently hit his parents pretty hard. They were overjoyed — "Our son is working hard!" "Sai-kun is amazing!"
When they're this happy, Sai doesn't know how to handle it.
Despite wanting to avoid causing a commotion for his parents' sake, they were the ones happiest about it.
He couldn't very well say "let's take it down because it's causing trouble" now.
Besides, he knew he'd already caused them enough hardship with the whole other-world transportation incident. Since returning to Japan, he still hadn't properly repaid them.
He wanted to make them happy, but he hadn't done anything that would bring them joy.
He'd given them a hot spring trip before, but that probably wasn't what his parents wanted most.
That was what made him hesitate.
He watched his family relaxing in the living room of his sister's house, watching videos of Sai.
The peaceful, harmonious scene brought Sai a quiet sense of relief.
...If it makes them happy, maybe that's enough.
That's what he was thinking.
"Now all that's left is for Sai-kun to find a nice partner..."
Sai's mother looked his way and murmured that softly.
In other words: "When are you getting married?" and "I want to see my grandkids."
Sai decided to quietly ignore that murmur.
He pretended to be focused on the monitor showing himself.
That was one thing he couldn't say anything about to his parents — something difficult to respond to.
A middle-aged man has one or two secrets he can't talk about, after all.
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Thank you for reading.
This marks the beginning of Part 2.
I will be posting daily until Part 2's epilogue.
I hope you enjoy it.