V1C22

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“However, I am amazed that he can’t even catch slimes appropriately at that age. Even accounting for his sickness, the only word that comes to mind is pitiful.” Zappy mutters, her face the picture of bemusement, and looks at Tarō like you would a truly helpless and pathetic child.

Tarō doesn’t miss the comment. “I am not! Can’t we just drop it? There weren’t any slimes in my world, so of course I don’t know how to catch them.”

Looks like he’s back to his old self.

Zappy raises an eyebrow. “A place with no slimes? Tell me, Tarō, where are you from? As far as I know, there shouldn’t be a single place on the surface of this world that isn’t crawling with slimes.”

This little fairy knows an awful lot of things. Part of that, of course, is because she’s lived for more than a hundred years, but the greater part is that the fairy network is very powerful, apparently. You see, while fairies have tiny bodies, they can do something amazing—fly. And, by flying, they can cover several times more ground in a single day than a horse and cart possibly could.

According to Zappy, there are some fairies who, just for fun, fly all over the place to the different fairy villages. With enough information shared from enough wandering fairies, other fairies can learn what’s going on in every corner of the world.

If Zappy says that there are slimes everywhere, then that’s almost definitely true.

Tarō sighs pointedly. “Listen to what I’m saying. I’m. Not. From. This. World. I’m from a country called Japan in another world. In my world, both slimes and fairies are fictional creatures, not things that actually exist.”

What does he mean ‘another world’? There’s one world. There are different regions in the world. Is that what he meant? I struggle to understand what he means, but I can’t make it make sense.

Zappy, however, sounds intrigued. “Oh? ‘Another world’, huh? That sure is an interesting thing you’ve just said. Why don’t you tell me about that in more detail?”

“Well, in the world I came from, there aren’t monsters or fairies or slimes. You exist only in fiction, but you all play a big role in our stories. We have like games and manga and light novels and a bunch of other types of entertainment, and you guys show up in them all the time.”

It seems like Tarō has a lot of pent-up frustration from being called ignorant and foolish again and again, because once the words start coming out they just don’t stop. An endless deluge of things that barely make any sense.

He says there’s a thing called ‘science’ in his world that’s much more advanced than it is here; that there are carts that fly through the air and carts that hurtle along the ground at improbable speeds; that there’s a form of entertainment popular in his world called ‘video games’, in which it’s normal to kill slimes with a ‘cypress stick.’

I’ve heard about the flying and speeding carts before from Old Man Japan. They always showed up in his make-believe stories.

“… So you see, it’s not that I’m an idiot and I don’t know things. It’s that what I know doesn’t apply to this world.” He claims, finally taking a break to catch his breath.

Okay, yeah, sure, whatever you say. No matter how you slice it, I don’t understand how a flying cart or an iron bird or whatever you want to call it can be anything but make-believe. It must be his chūnibyō again, causing him to talk about his delusions as if they were real.

Zappy listens to everything he says, the intrigued look never disappearing from her face as she looks him over intently.

*****************

After a brief pause, she opens her mouth. “Hmmm. You say that there’s another world with rules that differ from ours, and that you came from that world. Now, I don’t know—more accurately, it’s impossible to say—whether what you say is true or a delusion caused by your illness, but one thing is clear. At the very least, it’s true that you’re not a human from this world.”

“Hm? How can you tell?” I can’t help but ask. How can she say that with so much certainty?

“How should I put this? His soul exists differently than the souls of this world’s humans. You could say that he both is and is not a human.” She taps her chin thoughtfully. “Maybe this will help? Tarō has the same outward appearance as all the other humans here, but, were he to pair up with a woman from this world, they could not produce a child.”

Zappy once told me that fairies can see the shape of a person’s soul. Now I understand—when she was looking at him earlier, she wasn’t looking at him but at his soul. And that soul is apparently different from my soul and the souls of all the other people who live in this world.

Am I supposed to be surprised here? I’m not sure what to think or how to feel. Hearing that doesn’t do much to change the fact that, to me, Tarō just seems like a problematic and pathetic person. And what does she mean he is and isn’t a human? Is he or isn’t he? Is this some kind of puzzle?

The not-human human interrupts my mental—and accompanying physical—contortions with a strangled cry.

“Hold the phone! Are you saying that I can’t shack up with a beautiful princess and raise a bunch of kids?!” The shock of that revelation seems to have been too much for him. He sinks down to the ground, hunching over his knees and running his fingers through his hair.

What I want to know is where he got the idea that he’d even be able to get close to a beautiful princess even if he were a human human and not a not-human human. Commoners like him and me don’t generally have any association with nobles.

He spends a few minutes like that, squatting close to the ground with his head hung low, before a disturbing cackle bubbles up from his hidden lips.

“Gwa ha hah haa!” He springs up. “Actually thinking about it, isn’t it actually kind of lit that I can screw around as much as I want without having to worry about having a kid? I can sow my seeds to the wind without a care in the world! This is, you know, like a goddamn eroge! It’s like I can hear it, the world telling me to become the protagonist and build my own harem! Alright, I’ve got you, world! I’ll become the freaking harem king, damn you!”

Eroge? Harem? More words that I’ve never heard before. But it’s actually kind of impressive how quickly he managed to get back on his feet, figuratively speaking.

More importantly, though, I don’t know what kind of king you’re trying to become, but, before you waste any effort on that, why don’t we focus on making sure you can eat two meals a day?