Good morning.
Yes, I have mappingool.
In the morning, yes. Yes, see you then.
Yes, I won’t be late!
Yes, see you later.
After finishing the call, I sip coffee as I look up at the building of the Honto Corporation.
It’s eight in the morning, and I’m here around the same time as the average salaryman goes to work.
Fuuma is down there near me like that’s where it should be, yawning with boredom. I toss it a manga I got in the convenience store, and it happily places it on the floor to read.
I’d believe it if you told me there was a human inside this thing.
So why am I here? As I said on the phone, I’m going to deliver mappingool. The agreement was to explore the dungeon with it a few times, but since I’ve been in it a lot, I want to check if that’s enough.
Ten minutes later, Ai arrives with an exasperated expression.
I tell her happy new year, and her expression flips to a professional one as she says it back.
And now I’m exasperated by how her behavior shifts so violently.
I’m taken to a waiting room, where I wait.
Of course, she has a morning meeting to attend, and an emergency meeting, so I have to sit here.
I’m not mad about it or anything, I worked for a company and I understand how busy bosses are.
So I don’t complain, but what are these documents she gave me to hash out problems?
I’m going to return mappingool to her, but we didn’t agree that I’d give feedback and ideas on how to improve it.
She said I have the time, and yeah, I do, but when she said she’ll pay me extra, I immediately accepted. And now I have to do paperwork for the first time in a while, but my mind won’t move.
Not to mention that I haven’t written anything by hand in a long time. I have to keep looking kanji up on my phone to see if I have it right. It’s an even bigger pain.
I look at the ceiling, thinking I shouldn’t have accepted.
I see a surveillance camera, and face the desk, feeling like I’m being watched.
Fuuma is lying on the carpet, reading manga. I’m jealous of how it doesn’t have to think about anything.
I laugh at myself for wanting a horse to think, as I write.
I keep on doing it, thinking it’s going surprisingly well, and I even write down some unreasonable requests.
With this sort of thing, it’s more efficient to just write numbers and extract things from there.
That might go in a bad direction, but that’s okay because others will check it. If they even use what I’m writing at all, they’ll probably just toss it.
And so, I write things, not really thinking about it.
Just write, it doesn’t matter what.
I end up remembering something unpleasant, that I was scolded in the company where I used to work for being wasteful.
It’s been a while, but I wonder how my old workplace is doing. It was a black company with a high staff turnover, and everyone who joined at the same time as me quit after half a year, except me and one other guy. And I quit last year.
It was understaffed anyway, so it might have gone belly up.
I know a company won’t collapse just because I quit, but it will if it keeps happening.
I don’t feel any resentment at this point but it would feel nice if it went down.
That would mean my former coworkers would have to seek new employment, but I feel like they’d be better off that way. The salary was low anyway.
From that point of view, I’m making a whole lot of money now.
Not all seekers make a lot, because the profits are offset by the high expenses, but a single treasure chest can easily be worth more than a salaryman makes in a year.
I unintentionally spent the new year in the dungeon, but I did get something out of it.
I got a scarf, and found another treasure chest. I haven’t appraised them yet, but I think I’ll sell them.
The scarf will depend on the ability, but the other treasure chest contained something like chakram throwing discs with blades on the outside. They’re meant to shred my opponents when I throw them at them, and there are ten of them.
I haven’t gotten a weapon from a treasure chest since the beginner staff, but I don’t think I’ll use it.
I think I’d be fine with practice, but the problem is that seekers fight monsters. Chakram have low killing potential, so even if I wounded monsters, they wouldn’t die.
Of course, they came out of a treasure chest, so I could use them depending on the ability, but I have magic. And if it’s just about sending blades flying, I can use the ability of the greatsword of fortitude, so they won’t be useful for me.
Maybe I could take them as a collector, but that’s not my hobby, and they would end up being put away in the Storage Space.
So I’m thinking about selling them
◇ ◇ ◇
I’m getting off track, but as I’m about to write, I hear a knock on the door.
The door opens, and in comes the president of Honto, Ai, with Hacchou, who I met in the dungeon and is wearing a suit.
Why are you here, I ask in my head, and Hacchou says it’s been a while.
Hum, yes.
So, why are you here?
A contract with Honto?
Really?
I ignore Ai and talk with Hacchou. Please don’t think much of it.
Hacchou says their party disbanded at the end of the year, and the members all went their separate ways.
That said, most of them formed contracts with companies. Hacchou and two others joined Honto. Incidentally, it was her, the mage girl, and the guy that launched an arrow at me.
She says she’s here because she heard about me from Ai and wanted to see me.
Eh… Small world.
She points at Fuuma, asking if it’s my pet, and the vague expression she makes when I tell her it’s my summoned beast makes me wonder if she knows what it is.
She whispers the words summoned beast a few times, and then opens her eyes wide while saying it louder. It’s not a big reaction, but she seems surprised.
Yes, so?
Is what it sounds like when Fuuma snorts.
I ask her if summoned beasts are rare, and apparently they’re very rare.
There are skills that let people summon them, but there are fewer users than Healing Magic. The types are also limited, so most either retire or switch to support roles.
She asks if I have a skill, and I say it’s an ability of the armor I wear.
She says that’s an amazing armor, asking if I summon regularly. I say I can’t send it back and I’ve given up on trying, as I look at the stupid horse.
I ask how I can force it back, and Hacchou apologizes because she doesn’t know much about summoned beasts.
It’s okay, I don’t think it’s useless or anything.
With this conversation winding down, the focus moves to Ai. I hand her what I wrote, and mappingool.
I think that’s enough testing, but should I do more?
The contract said one month, so I have no complaints, but can we change the contract? This mappingool is useful, so I’d like one.
Floors get wide from the thirty-first onward, so it would help quite a bit.
And portacool? No, I don’t need that one.
Portacool served me well, and I have some fond memories, but it reminds me of them.
I still see it in my dreams.
Putting them inside portacool, the feeling of their cold bodies, it’s all vivid.
I’m not trying to forget what happened, but I don’t think I can bring a portacool with me.
I say no to Ai, and she doesn’t press the issue, sensing there’s something else.
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