ch61-ch80 · 074-ch61

Chapter 61 — Part 3 Opening

Lately, Sai had a small worry.

Right now, Sai was at his sister and brother-in-law's house.

While Hexaria was out on fieldwork, he figured he'd check in on his parents' faces.

You could also say it was about wanting to show his face to them, even just a little, since he hadn't been able to see them for so many years.

Besides, there was something he wanted to discuss with them.

But the things his parents were watching were just... not ideal.

'This is the Hexa Shield. A shield with fast deployment and high defensive capability, very effective as—'

On the TV screen was Sai in the middle of an instructional stream, explaining things to his young students.

Sai usually didn't bother rewatching streams he appeared in.

He'd looked back at last year's streams a little while ago for his tax return, but that was a special case.

If he had time to rewatch, he'd much rather train so he wouldn't repeat the same mistakes in his adventures.

And yet, apparently whenever his parents had free time, they watched his streams or Hexaria's lectures. Honestly, he heard they didn't really understand most of the content.

But it seemed they were happy seeing their son and his wife working hard.

Even so, though.

"Could you at least look at me when I'm here? Hey..."

He couldn't help thinking that.

"Hehe, sorry. It was right at a good part, so I just..."

On the TV screen, Sai had just been explaining the Hexa Shield to the young adventurers.

"This is that thing, right? The magic Hexaria made, isn't it?"

His father asked happily.

The defensive magic "Hexa Shield" was developed by Hexaria.

Consulting with Hexaria, they'd decided to release it to the general public under the pretense that Sai had learned it from her.

If this reduced adventurer casualties even a little, that would be more than enough.

It couldn't be used by everyone right away since it required a certain amount of magical power control training, but if it gradually showed results, he'd be happy.

"It's amazing, really. Your old man too, but being able to create things from scratch — that's real talent."

The "old man" his father referred to was Sai's grandfather.

A classic stubborn man who ran a small neighborhood factory in Tokyo.

During the bubble era, his grandfather's factory never lacked work thanks to the real estate bubble, but it was constantly plagued by a shortage of workers. It was an era where companies used sweet talk to snap up young, talented people.

The neighborhood factory was run by just a few old men, and it seemed there were clashes (which Sai hadn't known about) between his then-young father and grandfather.

But even from his father's perspective, his grandfather was apparently "a shitty old man in his personal life, but amazing at his job." To Sai as a child, his grandfather was scary in some ways but doted on him as a grandchild, so hearing his father's stories had surprised him quite a bit.

These were stories he'd learned during drunken conversations after returning from the other world to Japan, filling in the gaps of thirty years.

Stories he never could have known while he was in the other world.

"I get that Grandpa and Saria are amazing, but at least while I'm here, stop watching my streams."

He paused the TV image of himself and faced his parents.

"Got it, got it. So, what's this consultation about?"

"I want a driver's license."

Originally, the reason Sai had come here was to discuss this with his parents, his sister, and her husband.

This was also a small worry.

Since Hexaria came to Japan, Sai's daily life had changed.

A peerless beauty. A High Elf. A person from another world.

Whenever he traveled long distances with her, it was almost always by taxi.

Hexaria could use concealment magic, or rather, illusion-type magic that altered her presence.

Simply put, it was magic that made it impossible to realize the woman in front of you was a High Elf, or to associate her with Hexaria. With this, she could ride trains or buses.

But please, imagine Hexaria on a packed rush-hour train.

She was not the kind of woman who would calmly accept being groped and squeezed in a crush of people.

If it wasn't too crowded, trains and buses were an option, but once he actually tried putting Hexaria on a packed train as an experiment, the aftermath was terrifying.

He wouldn't be forgetting that expression for a while.

So the easiest way to get around was by taxi, but taking a taxi every time honestly felt wasteful. It gave him an uneasy feeling, like he was wasting money.

He explained all that.

"Ah, for with Hexaria-chan..."

"I see. So Saito's finally reached the point where he wants a car too..."

His parents reacted like that.

Incidentally, for some reason he didn't understand, Hexaria and Sai's mother got along astonishingly well.

Probably something like tea-break buddies during research and development.

Just the other day, Hexaria had made miso soup for dinner, and it tasted exactly like his mother's cooking, which surprised him. If asked whether he objected — of course not.

If he could eat delicious food, that was actually a welcome thing.

He trusted that Hexaria wouldn't do anything harmful, and he knew that poking a bush would only bring out snakes. An adventurer's iron rule.

Besides, Sai was genuinely happy that Hexaria had made a good friend on Earth.

Either way, he wasn't sure whether to praise his mother's skill (?) at charming the misanthropic High Elf who declared "don't interfere with me," or to be amazed at Hexaria for clinging (?) to Sai's mother when she didn't get along with her own biological parents.

Either way. No one had ever called Hexaria by '-chan' before.

If this got out in the other world's trade city, Sai's mother would be treated as a hero. Probably.

Putting that aside, he listened to the talk about driving schools.

His brother-in-law started chiming in partway through.

"If you're looking at driving schools, this area's good."

"Oh, Father-in-law, nowadays this place might be better. It includes highway lessons too."

And so they taught him all sorts of things.

Grateful for his kind family, Sai gathered information about driving schools and headed home.

◇

When he got home, Hexaria was already there — he wasn't sure when she'd returned — drinking coffee and reading some difficult-looking book, so he told her about the license.

In response, Hexaria glared at him with half-closed eyes.

"Aren't you being unfair, going alone? I want one too. A driver's license. And I'll need a car that I'm allowed to modify, one of them."

The thoroughly Japan-adapted High Elf said that with a composed expression.

...He understood wanting a license.

He also understood wanting to drive a car.

But needing a car she could modify — what was that about?

Had her engineer's soul been ignited?

He just hoped it didn't end with an explosion punchline.

Now then. When these kinds of official matters came up, Sai made a point of consulting with Ichijō Hayato.

He'd said to contact him if anything came up regarding Hexaria living in Japan, and he was sure Hayato would settle things in a good way.

So Sai contacted Ichijō Hayato.

Receiving the consultation over the phone, Hayato replied in a voice like he'd bitten into a bitter bug — "Hexaria-san wants a license... I'll think of something... yeah. Just wait a bit."

...Just because a man was capable didn't mean you could dump anything on him.

◇

Now then.

It had been several months since Sai and Hexaria started exploring Shinjuku Tower together.

With that, many people wanted to know about their relationship, and both Sai and Hexaria were fed up with it — but they'd actually decided to use this situation to their advantage.

Take the Hexa Shield, for example.

A magical shield said to have dramatically reduced adventurer casualty rates even in the other world.

They would make this widely known to the public.

Take recovery magic, for instance.

On Earth, it was still said that only a limited few could use it — but that wasn't true.

Of course, some people were better at it than others, but low-level magic was something anyone could use (with effort).

And neither Sai nor Hexaria wanted to see adventurers getting hurt needlessly.

Thus, what Sai did remained unchanged.

Keep standing as an adventurer. Teach and guide young adventurers.

Whether in the other world or in Japan, a middle-aged adventurer's work was the same.

But each day changed little by little.

The season was spring.

April had arrived, and these days, a warm breeze was starting to flow in.

There would be new encounters, too.

There would be deepening bonds with others.

Even if what he did stayed the same, the world kept changing moment by moment.

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Thank you for reading.

We apologize for the wait.

This marks the beginning of Part 3.

Updates are scheduled daily at 8 PM.

We hope you'll continue to enjoy the story.