Chapter 1: The Shopgirl and the Dark Matter

It had been five days since I’d awakened to the bloodline of the Namidare, and saved three stories and three heroines.

I hadn’t been caught up in any new stories since school started, so I was living a safe, peaceful high school life... Or, at least, that was the theory.

“Sir Rekka, you’re looking a little tired today, aren’t you?”

“...Huh?” Before I left for school, Harissa Hope had asked me that, and I wasn’t sure how to respond.

Harissa had smoky blond hair and blue eyes that made her look like a foreigner, but she was actually a sorcerer from another world. She was currently unable to get home, so she was staying with me.

Harissa always volunteered to do the chores, and she’d been diligently working all morning in a bunny apron. Underneath that, she wore some of my old clothes because my mom’s didn’t fit. I thought she might not like wearing boys’ clothing, but she seemed more okay with it than I had expected.

So yeah, Harissa was a good, hard-working girl. Sometimes she could be clumsy, but I found that cute.

Most guys would love to have a girl like that looking up at them and worrying... but I just looked away. “Nah, I just didn’t get enough sleep. A little rest a little at school and I’ll be fine,” I said, hoping she’d drop the subject.

“I see. I’m glad to hear it. See you later, Sir Rekka.” She seemed to believe the lie I fed her, and smiled radiantly.

I waved a cold, sweaty palm at her as she bowed, and then made my escape out the front door.

As I headed down the road to school with my classmate, Satsuki Otomo, she peered at my face.

“Rekka, are you tired?”

“...Huh?” It was the second time that day I’d gotten that question, and it took me a second to respond.

I tilted my head awkwardly and looked at her as she walked next to me. I still wasn’t used to seeing her in her high school uniform, and it made my heart flutter a little.

On the day of the school entrance ceremony, I found out that she was a mage, but things hadn’t changed that much between us since then. Evidently our relationship as childhood friends wasn’t going to change so easily.

She stood up straight, with her long, black hair blowing a little in the breeze, and looked at me like an older sister worried about a little brother who wasn’t taking care of himself. I was glad she was concerned, but... I looked away. “No, it’s just some sore muscles. I pushed myself a little too hard in gym class yesterday.” I just made up a reason, hoping she’d let it go.

“I see. If it hurts, you should get a heat pack from the nurse’s office.”

“Yeah...” I nodded halfheartedly, still looking away.

“Good morning, Rekka.”

“Hey. Morning.” The first person to greet me when I came into the classroom was the pretty girl in the next seat, Iris.

Her name was Iris Fineritas Cyphercall. The reason it was so long was that she was what you’d call an alien. She normally hid it inside her body so that no one could see it, but she actually had a pretty silver tail coming out of her butt.

There was a reason she was sitting here in my class as an “Earth exchange student,” but it’s a long story.

“Looking kinda tired, huh, Rekka?” Iris’s long twin tails bounced as she tilted her head and moved her face near mine.

“...Am I?” After the third time that morning, I didn’t have the energy left to look away.

“Yeah, that’s right. Like you’re pushing yourself too hard.”

“...” I knew exactly why, but I just avoided her gaze and stayed silent.

Iris must not have liked my response, because she leaped out of her seat and hugged me.

“H-Hey!”

“Aww, come on! Why are you making that face when you’re lucky enough to get to see me?”

“No, we’re both students. We see each other at school every day...”

“Rekka, don’t talk back to me.” You could tell she was a princess. Her selfishness shone through.

But when she grabbed onto me like that, other parts of her pressed against me... I won’t say what, but two soft things! Even worse, everyone was staring at us! “Rekka! Iris! Get off of each other!” Satsuki yelled, slamming her hand down on the desk. Then she glared at Iris.

Satsuki sat on the other side of me. And each and every day, my stomach cried out in pain from being trapped between the two of them.

“Oh, shut it. I was just worried about Rekka’s health.”

“It didn’t look that way to me.”

“Don’t get so upset. That’s why even if you drink milk, none of the nutrients go to your breasts.”

“I don’t think enough nutrition’s getting to your head, Iris.”

All these two ever did was yell at each other.

“...Don’t you think we need to have a talk soon?” Iris said with a cheerful smile on her face.

“Sounds great to me. I was thinking you and I needed to settle things.” Satsuki’s smile alone sent shivers down my spine.

Sparks were flying between the two of them, and I was still caught in the middle. If they were going to try and start a fire, I just wished they’d do it somewhere else.

“Let’s take this outside,” Iris taunted.

“First one who can’t ever stand up again is the loser,” Satsuki replied.

“Wait! Hold it, you guys!” I’d wished they’d do it somewhere else, but I kept trying to intervene anyway.

Both of them were starting to scare me, for one thing. What kind of discussion ends with one person never being able to get up again? The point of a conversation is to talk things out and find a peaceful solution!

And so began another psychologically taxing day for me.

▽

I knew exactly what it was. The reason I was feeling so tired all the time was...

“YOU GUYS!”

I screamed toward the mountains from the roof of the school. As I stood there panting, an echo came shouting back at me: “...guys!”

“What are you doing, Rekka? You look like a crazy person,” said R, the girl in an army uniform floating next to me.

She looked like a young girl, but she was actually an artificial life form from the future sent to observe me. She was almost always expressionless, but she could be absolutely nasty.

“Don’t call me a crazy person. If you had Satsuki and Iris and Harissa bugging you every day, you’d want to scream, too!”

“If one of the other boys heard that, they’d rip you apart.”

“I don’t care!” I ran both of my hands roughly through my hair.

“Then just choose one of the heroines already,” R sighed.

R was here to stop the “War of All,” a large-scale calamity that would occur in the future between the “heroines” I saved. In order to prevent it, I allegedly needed to pick a heroine to fall in love with.

And she never hesitated to remind me of that, either.

“It’s not that easy.”

“Oh, my. So you’d prefer a polygamous relationship?”

“Shut your mouth!” I turned to the fence and screamed again, but quickly got bored and started to roll along the roof. To be honest, I was reaching my limit.

My last name is Namidare. Namidares have a special bloodline that causes us to get caught up in “stories.”

This special bloodline activates at the age of sixteen, and because of it, I’ve already fought ultimate mages, otherworldly demon kings, and galactic tyrants... Just thinking about it was enough to kill my mood.

I thought I’d somehow managed to make it through and regain my nice, normal life... But I realized the day after getting back how wrong I was.

For instance, who was going to make my lunch? Satsuki or Harissa?

Who would I pair up with in gym class? Satsuki or Iris?

Was it okay for me to sit on the same sofa as Harissa and watch TV?

“The lunch thing in particular was awful...”

“You mean when Satsuki and Harissa almost got into a duel?”

“Yeah...” Originally, Satsuki had been coming over every morning to make sure Harissa and I weren’t “doing anything weird,” but she also made us breakfast and packed lunches. Once Harissa started to figure out how to do chores, however, she decided that she wanted to make lunches of her own. That’s how it had all started.

Man, neither Harissa nor Satsuki was willing to back down an inch... The two of them almost had a magical duel right then and there.

Well, the most dangerous part was that they’d both expected me to eat what they made and tell them whose was better...

In the end, I got them to agree to switch off: if Harissa made breakfast, then Satsuki would make lunch, and if Satsuki made breakfast, then Harissa would make lunch. But by the time they reached a compromise, I’d almost given myself an ulcer.

That’s basically how these five days had been for me.

“Don’t tell me you’re not enjoying the harem life.”

“The only things I’m ‘enjoying’ are injuries and mental exhaustion...” I sighed and leaned against the fence.

My lack of sleep and sore muscles were all from dealing with the girls every day. If they didn’t let me get some rest soon, it might actually kill me.

This bloodline of mine was turning out to be a real hassle.

“If I get caught up in another story, I’m going to be screwed...” I looked up at the partially cloudy sky and whispered.

“You should know better than to tempt fate.”

...I hate people from the future.

It was just then that the sun ducked behind the clouds.

▽

Lunch break was almost over, so I decided to leave the roof.

R was bent over in the shape of a boomerang, flying in a circle around me and shouting, “My head is spinning!”

It was extremely aggravating, but supposedly she couldn’t get more than five meters from me, so there was no helping it. I ignored R as best I could and hurried down the hallway.

I’d gone to the roof of the special classrooms building in hopes of avoiding everyone, so I needed to book it to make it back to my classroom in time.

“Hey, hey, hey! You! You! You there!” I heard a very fast-talking voice behind me and stopped.

I turned around to see a girl in a slightly messy school uniform pointing a chopstick at me.

“Wh-What?”

Judging from the color of her tie, she was a first-year student like me, but something about the way she looked made me wary.

“Did you eat lunch yet?”

“Huh...?” I was caught off guard by her sudden question.

The girl’s hair came down to her shoulders, and she had it tied to the left. She tapped her foot against the floor impatiently.

“I asked if you’ve eaten lunch yet,” she reiterated.

“...I haven’t eaten today, no.”

I had rushed right out of the classroom to blow off some steam. If I’d waited any longer, Satsuki and Iris would’ve both grabbed me and demanded to know who I was eating lunch with. The thought was too horrible to contemplate.

“You haven’t eaten, right? You’re telling the truth, right?”

“Yeah, but... isn’t that a weird question to ask at the end of lunch break?”

It was pure happenstance that I hadn’t eaten that day. Normally, I would have long finished my meal by then. In a sense, this girl had gotten extremely lucky...

“Then eat this,” she said as she poked her chopsticks into something on the plate she was holding in her other hand.

“...No, wait... What is that?”

It was black.

And not a natural black, like sesame seeds or seaweed. It was more like somebody had splashed all the colors on their palette against a canvas, then mixed it with potato starch soaked in sulfuric acid... I’m not sure where I was going with that simile, but it was that kind of putrid black.

And this suspicious black ball was being brought right in front of my face. My survival instincts screamed at me to flee. If I didn’t flee, I would die.

“S-Sorry, I’m not hungry. Bye.” I tried to run—but she got in front of me.

“That’s all the more reason to eat it. I put in dried plums and lemon and grapefruit and chili paste... Oh, balsamic vinegar and spicy miso, too, so it should stimulate your appetite.”

“That doesn’t make sense! That doesn’t make any sense at all!”

“Sour foods stimulate saliva production and make you hungrier. Spicy stuff does something similar. So I put in curry rice, too. Everybody loves curry rice.”

“That’s too much stuff! And where is there curry rice in that black ball?!”

“I just mixed it all up, kneaded it, fried it, steamed it, froze it, added in a secret ingredient, combined it—and this is how it turned out.”

It’s not a stew or a salad, so you can’t just mix everything together! And that part about the secret ingredient worried me even more. Did she mix in some mud or something?! My survival instincts screamed even louder.

“...!” I turned around, speechless.

I tried again to flee as fast as I could, but she reacted quickly, tripping me and knocking me to the ground. She then climbed on top of me and straddled me. Was there no escape?!

“Now give up and eat it!”

“Wait, wait, wait! I actually don’t like spicy food!”

“I see. But there’s chocolate and Mont Blanc in it, too, so you’ll be fine.”

“That’s even worse! I-I know! If there’s curry in it, there’s beef, right? I can’t eat beef for religious reasons!”

“Fine. What’s your religion?”

“Um... Uh...” What religion was it that couldn’t eat beef again?

“I knew you were lying. Why does everyone lie to me?”

“...Everyone?”

“Whenever I try to feed this to someone, they all lie and try to run away. It’s so rude. I stayed up all night making this new menu item for Nozomiya. You should be happy that you get to eat it.”

“...Just out of curiosity, what happened to the people who lied?”

“They’re all sleeping in the nurse’s office.”

“Gyaaahh!” This was way too dangerous!

Just then, I saw a girl appear in the hallway of the special classrooms building.

“Tsumiki! What are you doing?!”

“Tch!” The girl she called Tsumiki panicked and tried to force open my mouth.

“I won’t let her stop me this time! Now eat this!”

“GYABUH?!”

When the black mass hit my tongue, I tasted something I’d never tasted before—and I suddenly started to remember things like the picnic I went on with my parents when I was a kid, and playing in the park with Satsuki...

“That’s your life flashing before your eyes,” my survival instincts said. “You won’t be needing me anymore.”

And then everything went black.

“UGWAH!”

I had a dream that a giant, black pill bug crushed the entire world. It almost crushed me, too...

When I woke up, I found myself in the nurse’s office. I could see the sheets I had flung off the bed when I’d leaped up, as well as a sweat-soaked pillow.

“Rekka, I’m glad you’re okay. You’re really awake, right?” Satsuki asked as she came through the curtains.

She dropped the damp towel she was carrying and sobbed with joy.

“I’m glad... I’m so glad... We did everything we could, but they said you might never wake up again...”

“...What? I was that bad off?”

I remembered that Tsumiki girl forcing a black ball down my throat... but I couldn’t remember anything after that.

Satsuki put her hands on my forehead and chest. She still looked worried.

“What happened? It was like you’d taken a cursed poison so vile that it must have been made from hundreds of sacrifices...”

“A cursed... poison?” I knew it was bad when I heard what was in it, but evidently it was far worse than I’d thought.

“Fortunately, it wasn’t magical, so I was able to break the curse.” Satsuki gravely reiterated that it had been a close call for me.

All I could do was flash a forced smile.

If her cooking could scare even a magic expert like Satsuki, then, in a sense, wasn’t she a genius?

Apparently there were plenty of other victims of this girl—Tsumiki, her name supposedly was—but Satsuki had healed them all. None of them were forced to eat the whole ball like I was, so they’d all woken up and left already.

“Hey, where’s Iris?” I would’ve thought she’d be the first person to show up for a fuss like this, but I didn’t see her anywhere.

“Um, well... She...” Satsuki went on to explain that when her anti-curse spells had failed to work at first, Iris had said she was going to get “the most advanced medical technology in the universe” and left school—that is, she had left Earth.

“So she’s headed for planet Finerita?”

“Probably... Thinking back on it, I should’ve stopped her, but I was panicking, too. I just couldn’t...” Satsuki looked regretful.

Maybe she was upset that she hadn’t been thinking clearly.

“Nah, it’s okay. Both of you were worried about me, right? Thanks for that.”

“Y-Yeah...” Satsuki looked away, embarrassed for some reason.

Anyway, Iris was in space, huh? That meant that there was no way for me to get in touch with her now. If I could have told her I was safe, I’m sure she would have hurried back, but...

As I thought to myself, someone opened the door to the nurse’s office and came inside.

“Oh, you’re awake. I’m glad.”

It was the girl who’d tried to stop Tsumiki earlier.

Tsumiki’s friend, Sato, apologized to me and explained the situation.

“Food Champion?” I asked for clarification.

“Yes. It’s a big event they hold every year in the next town over. Lately there’s been a big junk food boom, so now it’s broadcast on TV nationwide,” Sato continued.

I wasn’t really into that sort of thing, so it was all news to me.

“I see. So she wants to win there and help save her family’s cafeteria?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“And that’s why she’s making this creative food and feeding it to everyone?”

By “creative food,” I meant that black mass she force-fed me. But in all honesty, there was no way that “food” was going to work out for her. The only thing she was going to win was a free ride in a cop car.

“Um, her dad’s the chef at this Nozomiya place, right? Can’t he enter Food Champion?” I asked.

But Sato shook her head, “No offense to Tsumiki’s dad, but... Nozomiya makes the kind of stuff you could get at any old restaurant. I really don’t think he could make anything that would impress the judges.”

So that was it. It wasn’t just that they needed to enter the competition, they really needed to win it.

“Then can someone teach her to cook?” I continued to question.

It was then that Satsuki interjected. She had been following along, too, and had come up with a different idea. There was no guarantee it would make Tsumiki win, but it would certainly give her better odds than what she had now.

But Sato looked a little perturbed.

“Once Tsumiki makes up her mind, she’s the type who never relents. Who knows if she’d even listen to anybody...”

“That’s...”

“That’s a difficult personality to deal with...” Satsuki and I both whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Sato apologized, even though it wasn’t her fault.

Hmm... Now, this Food Champion tournament and a restaurant in danger of going out of business...

Wait, isn’t that...

“Hey, R.” I whispered over my shoulder when Sato wasn’t paying attention.

“Aww, that tickles.”

“It’s not sexy when you say it in a flat voice. So I’m guessing Tsumiki is a heroine?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Turns out I was on the money.

But good grief... That meant I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I was just an ordinary guy who hated trouble, but I wasn’t cold-blooded enough to just abandon a girl to her fate when I knew it was going to be a sad one.

Sometimes that got me into trouble... but it’s what anyone would do, right?

“Okay, I understand. I’ll work something out.”

“What?!” Both of the girls shouted at the exact same time.

▽

After learning what class Tsumiki was in from Sato, I set off down the hallway.

By the time I left the nurse’s office, sixth period was over, meaning we had a short break before homeroom started. I had to use this brief window of opportunity to find Tsumiki and get through to her.

“Rekka, how are you going to convince Nozomuno?” Satsuki asked as she followed me.

It was good question. Based on what I’d heard about Tsumiki from Sato, she wouldn’t be easy to persuade of anything.

“I’d like your help with that.”

I turned around to look my mage friend in the eyes.

“Me?”

“Yeah, more specifically...”

Tsumiki’s classroom was three rooms down from ours. I knocked on the door before I went in, but nobody really seemed to notice. It probably had something to do with the fact that people were always coming and going during break. Besides, the school year had practically just started, so it’s not like anyone knew the faces of all their classmates yet.

But I spotted the girl I was looking for and walked straight over to her desk.

Tsumiki’s eyebrows twitched when she saw me.

“...Hmm? Who are you?” She didn’t seem to remember the person she’d almost poisoned to death just now.

Although, I’d wandered the threshold between life and death for at least an hour, so maybe it wasn’t really “just now” anymore... But still, that didn’t mean it was okay to force food down someone’s throat and then forget about them right after they collapsed, right? ...Well, whatever.

Anyway, I decided to talk to her.

“Um, I’m Rekka Namidare. I heard your family’s cafeteria was in trouble, and um... I was wondering if there was something I could do to help.”

“...Who told you?”

“Sato.”

“Sato, huh...? Well, it’s not your problem. Get lost.”

Grr... This wasn’t getting anywhere.

“A-At least listen to me, okay?”

“Shut up. And leave me alone! I’m busy coming up with a new recipe.”

Was I supposed to assume that she meant she was developing a new kind of poison? No, no. It wasn’t the time to worry about that. A girl’s fate was on the line here.

“Tsumiki. Do you have any more of that black... I mean, that creative dish you made?”

“God, you’re still here? I guess I do. But what do you care?”

Yup. I was right.

“Let me have some.”

“Huh?” Tsumiki perked up. She had been looking away with disinterest, but now she turned to me in surprise.

“You’re working on new recipes, but you still need someone to taste them, don’t you?”

“...Not really. That’s not an issue.”

“Liar. You were just forcing people to eat your cooking.”

“...Did you see me?”

“No, I was one of those people.” There was a note of anger in my voice, but I didn’t care.

“It’s gotta be time-consuming to find someone to try it every time, right? That’s time you could be spending on other things.”

“Sure, but...” Tsumiki looked a little uncertain, but pulled a piece of tupperware out of her bag.

She opened the lid, and I saw the black balls inside.

“Ugh...”

“If you pass out every time you eat it, it won’t save me any time. Just so you know, everything I cook turns out like this.”

“...So you knew it wasn’t good?”

“Shut up. Sato got really mad at me for that. Listen, are you going to eat it or not?”

Why did she sound so bossy about it? Well, whatever. I only had to take that black ball—maybe it would be best just to call it dark matter—and manage to eat it all without passing out.

“Okay, give it to me.”

I moved the dark matter up to my mouth.

“...” I could see Tsumiki gulp a little bit.

Chomp.

“Mmwarraaggghmm!” It was a strange taste: bitter, spicy, and salty, but just a little sweet and creamy, yet crunchy and teeth-chattering at the same time. Mostly, it was hard to describe.

Satsuki was sitting next to me. All I could do was look at her as I tried to hold back the tears. She nodded, a bead of sweat running down her face.

That meant the anti-curse spells she’d put on me were doing the trick. She had said that her healing magic worked after I’d passed out the first time, so I thought that maybe defensive magic might work as well.

Thanks to that—just like I’d hoped—I didn’t pass out.

But there was still a terrible explosion of tastes going off in my mouth. Maybe without the defensive magic, it would have been even worse.

“Mgghh...! G-Gaaahh!”

...The spell was working, right?

It’s probably rude to be so blunt, but this thing was so disgusting that it was dangerous. If she took it to the tournament, it might get treated as some kind of weaponized food. The SDF or even the UN might have to get involved.

Even if things didn’t go that far, Nozomiya would go out of business and her story would end poorly. I had to stop that, no matter what. But it didn’t change how revolting this was!

Down the hatch!

I somehow managed to swallow the whole thing. My head drooped to the desk.

“B-But... I didn’t pass out?!”

I was feeling a little woozy, but I was able to endure it all. I really owed Satsuki for this one.

Tsumiki’s eyes went wide for a moment, but then she started to smirk.

“Hmph. Fine. I’ll let you be my taste tester for a while.”

She offered me her hand.

“So? What’s your name?”

“I told you, and you already forgot... It’s Rekka Namida—?!”

I went to take her hand, but she suddenly pushed me. I lost my balance and fell backwards onto my butt. Oww...

“I’m Tsumiki Nozomuno. Just so we’re clear, you’re nothing but my taste tester. Don’t think that you’ve got a girlfriend or anything now, okay?”

“...I’ll keep that in mind.” I nodded weakly.

“Looks like you’ve got a long way to go, huh?” R looked down at me, seemingly unconcerned, as she floated upside down in the air.

▽

After school, I headed straight for Nozomiya to taste test (poison test?) Tsumiki’s latest creation. As I sat at the empty counter, a bored R peeked into kitchen to see what she was doing.

“Rekka, don’t die here, okay?”

Saying it like that, I wasn’t sure if she was concerned about me or just being a jerk.

I put my elbows on the countertop and sighed, really starting to worry.

It was just me, R, and Tsumiki in Nozomiya. Her parents had a shopping street meeting and wouldn’t be back until late.

I thought Satsuki might agree to come, but she had to go to the mountain behind the school to pick herbs for her potions.

“I’m going to make you some simple stomach medicine. And get some materials for anti-curse and anti-poison spells,” she’d said.

I definitely owed Satsuki big time. No joke. Without her, I might not have even survived this storyline.

But she couldn’t come soon enough with those potions! I was desperate! Tsumiki emerged from the kitchen, dressed in short sleeves and wearing a bandana on her head.

“It’s done.”

So it was finally time...

I prepared myself to fulfill my duty as taste tester, but I wasn’t anything close to ready for what followed.

“ZzzZZOOGHH?!”

Once again, there was a terrorist attack in my mouth. I fell out of the chair and hit my head on the floor. My whole body twitched.

Tsumiki looked down at me, annoyed, but then she patted my shoulder with her ladle.

“So? How does it taste?” she asked, as if nothing at all was wrong.

“IT TASTES AWFUL!” I screamed, my head still hurting from the impact, and worse, the food.

“That’s because you have bad karma.”

“The tortures of hell would be better than this!”

Afterward, I chugged several glasses of water and decided to get a firsthand account of how this mess was made. There was obviously something going very seriously wrong.

As it turned out, it wasn’t just one thing...

“Wait! Why are you mixing all those spices together?!”

“I’m making a new sauce.”

“But you’ve already mixed in a few dozen! The bowl’s overflowing!”

“Shut up. Just have a taste and see if it’s good.” “Mmm... GWAAH!”

Or...

“Wait. What are all these weeds doing here? They’ve still got dirt on them!” “There’s no plant that’s named ‘weed.’ Maybe one of them is edible. Let’s start by tossing them all into the blender.”

“Gyaah! Wait, why are you putting grass in there?”

“It’s a plant, too. Maybe it’ll go nicely. Here goes.”

“Grass doesn’t go nicely with anything! And wow, that smells awful... Hold on, did you shake the dirt off?”

“They say it’s fresher if the dirt’s still on it.”

“That’s how you tell if it’s fresh when you buy it!”

“I see. Then I’ll put this in some gelatin. But if I’m making a dessert, I should add something sweet. Do you prefer chocolate or cotton candy?”

Or...

“Do you know why everything you make always ends up becoming dark matter?”

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s because you mix it all together! If you mix a bunch of paint together, it all turns black! It’s probably the same thing! Please, try and make something more normal!”

“I can’t win Food Champion with normal food! What I need is something with impact!”

“You’re not a new celebrity trying to get people to remember you by making funny faces! You need a lot more than just impact.”

“...A theme song?”

“Are you a pro wrestler now?!”

Or...

No, this really was turning into a comedy sketch that had less and less to do with the culinary arts. Tsumiki’s cooking was so bad on such a fundamental level that I started to question what she was doing here at all.

“Aww, jeez! Just shut up already! I’m doing all of this by myself after all!” At last, she started to snap.

“...” I didn’t have the energy to say anything back, so I just collapsed into a chair.

An awful silence filled the kitchen.

“...I’m gonna go throw out the garbage,” Tsumiki said as she took a huge plate full of the black balls out the back door.

“...Hahh.” I sighed and ran my hands through my hair.

We had a week to go until Food Champion. I needed to find some way to bring this to a happy ending before then.

But I wasn’t any good at cooking either. There was no way I could whip up something that would win a professional competition. The same was probably true of Satsuki, Iris, and Harissa. And R wasn’t going to help me resolve any of the storylines I got myself into.

“...”

I needed to calm down and think things through. Tsumiki had always worked as a waitress at Nozomiya, but she had no practical cooking experience. As bad as she was at it, her parents probably stopped her when she tried.

The best cooks I knew were my dad and Satsuki. If I was going to ask one of them for help, it would probably be Satsuki. But even then, I couldn’t see her winning Food Champion.

In light of where we stood, however, having Satsuki teach Tsumiki to cook was likely the best option.

When I suggested that to Tsumiki, she had replied, “You really are stupid, aren’t you? I mean, if we had some famous dish the town was known for, like Utsunomiya gyoza or Sanuki udon, then maybe I could go with that. But this town doesn’t have anything like that! And we’re just a plain old cafeteria! If we do this any old way, we’ll never win! So we need to come up with something that nobody’s ever seen!”

She followed up by lobbing a pineapple at my head. It hurt. Now all I had to show for this was my bandaged face.

Still, there was some truth to what she said. Nozomiya didn’t have anything going for it. If she wanted to win, she needed to aim for a grand slam. That’s why she was breaking all the rules and trying to come up with new, bizarre ways of cooking. But it was a bad bet.

“I know how to defeat evil demon kings and mages... but this is just as hard in a different way, damn it.”

Even so, the weight of what hung in the balance was the same. If I didn’t do something, both Tsumiki and Nozomiya were going to meet with a bad end. It was my job to keep that from happening.

“But still... Cooking, huh?”

And not only did we need to win Food Champion, we needed to breathe life into Nozomiya. Maybe we could somehow use magic to trick the Food Champion judges into thinking her food was great. But even if that got customers to come back to the restaurant, if the food wasn’t any good, they’d just leave again.

“Now then, can you save this story, Rekka?” R asked mockingly as she lay down and flailed her legs in the air.

“Grr... It’s gonna be tough.”

“Oh, giving up already?”

“Cooking is all about practice, right? I don’t know... If we can’t come up with a special way to cook, maybe we should find some new ingredient that no one’s ever had. That’s all I can come up with.”

But where would you even find something like that? If Iris were around, maybe she could have gotten us something from another planet, but that didn’t help us now. If only there were some way to get in touch with her...

“By the way, isn’t Tsumiki taking her sweet time?”

“You’re right, actually...”

R and I looked out the back door.

Since she’d taken the whole tray, she was probably using the dumpster out back behind the store. She wouldn’t take that giant platter of dark matter too far.

But there’d been more than enough time to take care of that. Maybe she’d done something else when she’d stepped out. I was a little worried.

“I guess I’ll go take a look.”

“Probably a good idea.”

I stood up, and R swam along beside me as we went out the back door together.

The taste testing session must have gone on longer than I had thought. The sun had already set.

“Hm?” I found Tsumiki quickly.

She was kneeling down in the corner of the backyard, doing something quietly.

“...?”

Suspicious, I got closer to her.

“What are you doing?”

“Kyaaah! D-Don’t scare me like that!” Tsumiki dropped the shovel she was holding in surprise.

Why did she have a shovel?

“You weren’t planning on burying the dark matter you made in the ground, were you? That would pollute this area so badly that nothing would grow for centuries... Huh?” I looked down at where her hands had been only to see a mysterious hole.

A shovel and a hole.

There was nothing unusual about the combination, but there was nothing usual about this hole.

For starters, you couldn’t see the bottom. It was only about the size of a small dinner plate, so digging any deeper would mean sticking your arm into it. But there wasn’t any dirt on Tsumiki’s clothes.

Stranger still, the surface of the hole was pitch black. Even the deepest hole should let you see into it at least a little at the top.

And weirdest of all, little black tentacles of darkness crept from edges of the hole.

Conclusion: This was no normal hole.

“What... What is that hole?”

“It’s where I always throw away my garbage. Why?”

“No, no, no! I’m not asking what you do with it. It looks like a black hole or the entrance to the abyss to me!”

“Huh? Do you have fairy tales for brains?”

Ugh. Maybe it wasn’t the best analogy, but...

“No, seriously, what is that hole?!”

“I found it by chance when I was a kid. I tried to fill it with dirt, and I couldn’t, so normally I just put a cover on it and then hide it with dirt.”

“Why do you hide it?”

“I told you before, right? This hole swallows everything, so it’s really handy. It’s small, so you don’t have to worry about falling in, either.”

...Ah. So she’d been throwing the dark matter down there, huh? Well, I guess she couldn’t let her parents see it when they got home from their meeting.

“Hey, are you sure you don’t at least want your dad to help?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Mom and Dad are trying really hard to keep me from worrying, so I’m pretending not to notice. Besides, I started this, so I have to do it myself...”

I sighed, but softly so that she wouldn’t hear me.

Maybe she was just headstrong. She seemed to think that once she’d gotten herself into something, she had to take responsibility for it. That was a generally a good thing, sure, but it could be taken too far.

She only seemed to think of me as a taste tester, and since she wouldn’t listen to my advice, I had no way of helping her. At this rate, it was going to be extremely difficult for me to help her achieve her goal.

I might’ve even said it was impossible. That was how grim things were looking.

“...”

“...”

Tsumiki and I stared at the mysterious hole for a while. As I looked at it in the starlight, it started to feel like I could fall down it forever...

“...” It was a scary thing to imagine.

I shook my head.

In front of me, Tsumiki was shaking her head, too. Maybe she’d been imagining the same thing I was.

Eventually she turned around and looked up at me.

“...Hey.”

“What?”

“Why did you agree to help me?”

Crouched down like she was, she looked smaller than usual. Almost like she’d gotten younger.

“Well, I... I just couldn’t leave you alone.”

Tsumiki was a heroine, but she was also just an ordinary girl. Since telling her about the Namidare bloodline would only make her think I was a weirdo, I decided not to mention it. But she looked surprised at my answer, then curled herself into a ball like she was hiding something she didn’t want me to see.

“...Tsumiki?”

“Sh-Shut up! I don’t know how you can say something so embarrassing with a straight face.” “...?” Had I said something embarrassing?

Tsumiki was the one who looked embarrassed. She’d gone red up to her ears. Was I imagining it? For a while after that, she’d just tell me to shut up whenever I said something, but then there was silence.

“You’re weird. You passed out eating my food, yet you still want to help me.” Tsumiki whispered as she buried her head in her knees.

“Sorry I’m weird... Wait.”

Wait a second. Did I hear what I thought I just heard?

“So you do remember me. You pretended like you didn’t!”

“Shut up. It was right after everyone else I fed had come to complain to me. So I just decided to pretend to forget.”

Come to think of it, I wasn’t the only victim, was I?

I understood not wanting to get yelled at, but couldn’t she have responded some other way? She was so obstinate.

“...Hey,” Tsumiki said again.

“What?”

“You think I can win the Food Champion tournament?”

“...”

“I-I’m not getting down or anything! I just want an impartial opinion, you know? Or a third-party opinion, or whatever.”

They were the same thing, but I didn’t correct her.

What was I supposed to say? To tell the truth, there was no way she could win. I was certain of it. There was no hope. But it didn’t seem like she was reaching for someone to comfort her.

What she wanted was a way to win. She wanted a plan.

“...” But I couldn’t give her the answer she wanted.

“I can’t cook, but I love this restaurant. I love the elderly folks who come here all the time, too. So I want to win, no matter how bad things look. I want to try and try and try all the way to the bitter end.”

Maybe she was steeling herself in the face of impossible odds, or maybe she just wanted someone to listen to her feelings...

Either way, I realized it again.

Even if there were no space empires, no other worlds, no mages, no meteors, and no demon kings, this “story” was still very important to her.

“Let’s do our best and make this new dish. I’ll help you.”

“I asked you before, but why are you being so supportive?”

She seemed suspicious again. But there was only one answer.

“Because I want to help you.”

“That again...?!”

“Hmm?”

Had I say something weird again? Tsumiki was taking deep breaths and trying to calm herself down. When she finally turned around a moment later, she stuck her finger right in my face, pointing at me with new-found composure.

“Hmph! You’re just a mouth to taste things for me. All you need to do is eat what I give you and tell me how you like it.”

“Right, right.”

Sheesh. She was really and truly stubborn. And I wished she wouldn’t blush so hard just to say thank you. It was embarrassing me.

Having collected herself, Tsumiki stood up and brushed herself off.

“We wasted a bunch of time. Let’s get back to work.”

“Right, whatever.”

“Show some enthusiasm!” she called, running off towards the back door.

“Hmm, for you, I guess that was a passing score.”

“For what?”

“I wish you could get to the point where you understood that.”

I didn’t know why R was grading me, but as I started to head back to the cafeteria...

“Rekka!”

“...Satsuki?”

Satsuki had said she wasn’t going to come today, but she showed up in a panic. And it wasn’t just her.

“Hey, who’s that?”

Satsuki was carrying a small girl on her back.

“I don’t know. I found her passed out on the mountain. I gave her some first aid, but she’s still not fully awake...”

“Then take her to a hospital.”

“I thought about doing that at first, but she might not be human.”

“What...?”

Satsuki wasn’t the type to joke at a time like this, so I took another look at the girl on her back.

She had a unique appearance. Her hair was white with a bit of green at the tips, and I could tell how marble-white her skin was, even in the darkness. She was wearing a cloth robe, but it was a little dirty.

She was so pale that she almost looked sickly, but it wasn’t enough for me to think she wasn’t human... Or at least that’s what I thought until she gave a weak moan and opened her eyes.

“!” Beneath her eyelids, I saw shining eyes. They flashed like a cat’s. They definitely weren’t normal.

“Help me... The Monster is...”

When I heard her quivering voice as she looked at me and begged for help... I knew I’d been caught up in another story.