Extra Story: The Bear Teaches Magic

Extra Story:
The Bear Teaches Magic

 

THE SHOP WAS going great. Since I didn’t have any plans for the day—for the first time in a long while—I decided to drop by Brandaugh’s place. Last time I went was before going to the capital, after all.

Since I was curious about village news, I asked Helen about it. Apparently, the new adventurers who went over there successfully defeated the wolves. They seemed a little unreliable, but it looks like they really went for it.

When they came to report their quest completion, they even talked about me! They all were really excited as they said stuff like, “That bear was amazing,” “The bear was so strong,” “It was exactly like you said, Helen,” and “Even the bear’s bears were strong!”

My first impression of them was that ridiculous boy who’d bop people in the head. Once the kid found out how strong I really was, though, he gave me a meek apology so I knew they couldn’t be all that bad…though if they tried that again, I wouldn’t be so forgiving.

 

When I got close, the wall I created was standing there looking great as usual, protecting the village and all that good stuff. There wasn’t even anybody guarding the entrance—no need, I guess? When I went in, still riding Kumayuru, some villagers came over.

“Are the chief and Brandaugh around?” I asked. They both were in, so I headed over to see them. The chief and Brandaugh were expecting me by the time I got to them, so they came right over.

“Yuna, you came at a good time.”

“Miss, it’s been so long.”

“Yeah, I popped by the capital and was away for a bit,” I hopped off Kumayuru and greeted them. The village kids were looking at Kumayuru since earlier, so I told my bear to play with them.

“The capital! You traveled that far?”

“It doesn’t take long on my bear.” I pointed at Kumayuru, who was running around with the kids now.

“Mm. What brings you here today?”

“I’ve got something for Yuuk— or rather, for Marie. Gotta make sure they get their nutrition and such.” I brought something healthy for Marie in my bear storage. I heard raising a kid took a lot out of you.

“Thanks to you, miss, the baby has been growing up healthy. He just loves the tigerwolf’s fur. He barely ever lets it go!”

“Glad I gave it to you, then.”

“He even cries while we wash it!” Brandaugh laughed.

Well, they needed to keep it clean if they were using it for the baby, so I guess they couldn’t help that. “So no changes since then?”

“Things have been fine. The tigerwolf is gone, and there are fewer wolves, too. Those rookie adventurers really gave it their all.”

“Oh, really?”

“I thought they weren’t all that reliable at first, but they really worked their butts off to defeat those wolves.”

And again, I remembered how those rookie adventurers bopped me on the head. I had gotten an apology, but if they did it again…vengeance. They were scared of me, so I don’t think they’d do it again. Right?

I handed off a gift to the chief, told him to prioritize the houses with babies when handing it out, then went to go see Yuuk and Marie.

 

Over at Brandaugh’s house, I found Marie carrying Yuuk.

“Yuna, welcome!”

“Heya, Marie. How’s Yuuk been?”

“Thanks to you, he’s been growing up nice and healthy.” Again, this ‘thanks to you’ stuff. All I did was fight a giant boar and tigerwolves. Normal adventurer stuff! It made me feel weird when they talked like I was the reason they were able to raise their baby.

Little Yuuk really was the picture of health, though. When I flapped the mouth of the bear puppets in front of him, he burst into giggles.

It was contagious; now Marie was giggling. “Maybe he’s happy to see you, Yuna.”

Nah, he was just happy to see the bear puppet. I doubted that I had anything to do with it. Still watching the little guy, I handed Marie my gifts.

“Thank you, but I don’t have anything to give you in return.”

“I don’t really want anything. I just want Yuuk to grow up healthy.”

“Ha! You’re a lot, Yuna. But thank you.”

Brandaugh gave me a little more info about the rookie adventurers before I left the village behind: It seemed that the rookie adventurers were able to defeat the wolves thanks to Brandaugh himself. Brandaugh found the small group of wolves and took some out, though the rookie adventurers were the ones to defeat them.

Well, it was a basic principle of fighting to defeat enemies in small numbers to shave ’em down over time.

 

The day after I visited Brandaugh’s village was a nice one, so I washed the sheets and aired the bedding—all of it, even the sheets at my bear house in the capital. My morning passed by like that and, since I was hungry, I decided to go to the Bear’s Lounge to have a bite. Sure, I had the bread Morin made in my bear storage, but eating alone seemed sad. I’d rather look around and see if I could share a meal with someone.

When I got to the shop, there was a girl looking at the bear ornament out front. I couldn’t remember her name, but I did remember her face. She was one of the rookie adventurers who was at Brandaugh’s village.

 

“What’s up? What’re you doing here?”

“Miss Bear?”

“It’s Yuna,” I said.

“Sorry, Yuna.” The girl bowed her head several times.

“Um, and you were…?”

“I’m Horn. Thank you so much for your help, earlier.”

Right, Horn. The only girl in their four-person party.

“What’s up, Horn? Did you come to see the shop or something?”

“Yes, Helen said that this place was really good and I should go at least once. When I got here, I couldn’t stop looking at that weird big bear…”

“I knew it was too much.”

“No, it’s cute, just like you are.”

Hmm. Was that really a compliment?

“What happened to the other three adventurers? Are they looking for other girls to bop in the head?”

“Oh, we’re all doing our own thing today. I came here to eat on my own.”

“You did? In that case, do you want to eat together? I was just on my way here to eat too.” If I went inside, it was likely there’d be people in there, but there was also a chance I wouldn’t find anyone. Also, I was a little curious about what happened after I defeated the tigerwolf.

Horn looked surprised at my suggestion, though. It was a little sudden, I suppose. “If you don’t want to eat with me, no worries.”

“No, it’s not that. Do you really want to hang out with someone like me?”

I folded my arms. “You just said you were thankful to me. Did you mean that?”

“O-of course. I’m very grateful to you, Yuna.”

“Then will you have a meal with me?”

“Yes…”

I won the friendship conversation. Awesome.

 

Horn and I went into the shop together and found the kids bustling around the floor. They were taking plates up and wiping the tables down. There were even some taking orders at the counter.

“Yuna!” A kid cleaning up the plates on the tables noticed me.

“Keep up the hard work, kiddo.”

“Okay!” The girl nodded, took the plates, and headed to the back room.

Horn watched her go. “Wow, it really is your shop.”

“Technically, sure. But they’re the ones doing the work.” All I did was kick things off. Morin and Tiermina were the real heart of the place. “Horn, is there anything you don’t like to eat?”

“No, not really.”

“I’m going to grab some stuff, then. Wait here.” I sat her at the table that the girl had just thoroughly cleaned off, then headed to the back kitchen to grab a few loaves of bread. I had them bake a pizza, too. We were low on pudding, so I pulled some from my bear storage. When the pizza was done, I thanked Morin and went back to Horn.

“Sorry for the wait,” I said.

“Not at all, I wasn’t waiting long.”

“You don’t have to be so nervous.” Her shoulders looked so stiff. “Anyway, you can eat whatever you feel like.” I lined the tablet with the pizza and some of my favorite breads.

“Thank you,” she responded. But she didn’t try reaching for anything.

“What’s wrong?”

“They all look so good… I don’t know which to choose.”

“That’s pizza, and this is the bread I recommend. Oh, and I thought you’d want to try pudding.”

“Pudding?” She looked at the dessert uncertainly.

“You might want to save that for last,” I added.

Horn nodded. Stared holes into the bread, wavered, and didn’t reach for a single one of them.

“Um. Do you want to split them all?”

“Split them?”

“If we do that, you’d be able to try each one, right? Or do you not want to split with me?”

“O-of course not! That means…I won’t need to choose?”

Yep. I pulled out a knife and cut all the breads in half. Finally—finally—I started to eat with Horn.

“Ohmigosh,” she whispered, “it’s delicious.” She really was savoring it. It was Morin-made bread, so of course it was delicious! I even brought out my favorite kinds. “This pete-sa is good too.”

“There we go.”

The food seemed to melt her nerves away. The conversation began to flow at last.

“Have you been friends with those three since you were kids?” I asked.

“Yes. We’ve been together since we were born. We were always together. Since the three of them wanted to become adventurers, I became one along with them.”

I wondered if it had turned into some kinda macho thing where they competed for Horn. Horn was pretty meek, after all, but she was still pretty cute. A little indecisive, sure, but she seemed like the kind of girl boys wanted to protect.

“I’m surprised that your parents would let you become an adventurer.” It was dangerous work. If Fina wanted to become an adventurer, I think I’d definitely stop her, and she wasn’t even my daughter.

“They said it was fine as long as the other three were with me. I didn’t want to cause them trouble and I can use magic, but…I’m weak. I can’t use a sword or bow. Sometimes I think I just slow them down…” and with every word, her voice grew smaller and smaller.

“You can use magic, though, right?”

“Yes, but it’s not very strong.”

Hmm, what did that even mean? Did people just naturally have different amount of mana? Was it a lack of imagination? Willpower? I had no idea.

“Yuna, how is your magic so strong?”

I couldn’t tell her it was because I’d been given overpowered items by a god, so I changed the subject. “Who did you learn magic from, Horn?”

“Another magic-user from the village taught me. But they can’t use large amounts of magic either.”

Maybe she just had a bad teacher? “In that case, how about we check out your skills?” I wanted to see whether my knowledge was useful too.

“D-Do you mean it?”

“Yeah. Just because I teach you stuff, though, doesn’t mean it’ll actually work.”

“Yes! Yes, of course!”

“In that case, let’s practice after eating.”

“Okay!”

Horn broke into a wide smile and dug into her bread. She saved her pudding for last, and if anything, seemed even more satisfied once she’d eaten it too.

 

We left the shop behind and came to a point on the outskirts of the town. There weren’t people around, so using some magic shouldn’t cause any issues.

“This area okay?” I used earth magic to create a wall.

“That’s amazing.” Wow, she sure was easily impressed.

“Okay, try a little magic. Something you’re good at.”

“Yeah, I’m on it!”

Horn picked up the short staff she had at her hip, gathered wind around it, and sent wind blades flying at the wall. But when they hit the wall, they vanished.

“You’re good at wind magic, then?”

“It’s more or less easy to use, but it’s weak.”

“Can you cast anything else?”

“A little,” Horn said, then gathered magic in her staff and summoned flames. She waved her staff, but the fire disappeared before they even hit the wall. Next, she tried water magic. A glob of water about the size of a baseball hovered over her staff. When she waved the staff, it splashed onto the wall and broke apart. Her earth magic was about as powerful—or, uh, not.

Maybe this was an issue of how concentrated it was? Her water and earth weren’t hard enough. They were just the same as normal, nonmagical water and earth. As for fire, maybe she just didn’t have a good mental image to work with? Perhaps wind was easier for her to visualize.

At this rate, all she was doing was converting her mana into stuff and hoping that was enough.

“You think it’s really no good?”

“Hmm, it’s not really that, so much as…” I pulled the beginner magic book from my bear storage. I only read it once and hadn’t touched it since. “Visualizing stuff is important when casting magic.”

“Visualizing it?”

“When you use magic, you have a mental image of what you’re trying to do, right?”

“Mmhm.”

“I’m going to use earth magic to explain, since that’ll be the easiest to understand.” I invoked earth magic, creating a baseball-sized clump the same size as Horn’s. “Try picking it up.”

“Okay. Oh, i-it’s heavy…”

“No, it’s more that it’s…compressed? I’ve made it by pressing the earth together tightly. That’s why it’s heavy and hard. By throwing this at a monster, I can do some damage. If I juice it up with extra mana and throw it, I can amplify that damage.”

She returned the earth lump to me, and I used mana to hurl it at the earth wall…and knock a hole through it. “That’s amazing, Yuna!”

“Figure this trick out and you can change its shape and put it to practical use for tons of stuff. You can make walls, defend against attacks from opponents, or even manipulate your opponent’s actions. If you do that, you can force them to head toward a spot where your allies are waiting.”

“Whoa…”

“Also, if you change its shape like this, you can give it even more attack power.” I shaped earth into a spear and sent it flying. It went through the wall like the ball from earlier. “If it has a sharp point, it’ll stab into your opponent more easily. Make sure to harden it, though, or you won’t do much damage.”

“I’ve got it. I’ll try it out.”

Horn took a deep breath, gathered mana in her staff, made a clod of dirt, and hurled it at the wall. This time the clod made a massive thump as it hit the wall before thwacking into the dirt.

“Yuna, I did it!”

“Looking good. If you also make it go faster, it’ll be even more powerful.”

“Okay!”

Emboldened, Horn tried it again and again. When it hit the wall, over and over, it would make a massive thump. The clumps were getting harder.

I really wanted to teach her more stuff, but she used too much mana and was out of breath. “Now you just need to practice.”

“Th-Thank you so much. I feel more…more confident!”

“Yeah, but I wanted to show you more than this.”

“No, no! For now, I’ll try to learn the earth magic you taught me. Even if you teach me all kinds of things, it would be a waste with what little I can do.”

“Gotcha. Now, magic can be used to attack and protect, so make sure you check what’s going on behind you before you use it.” I puffed up my chest as I tried parroting some half-remembered dialogue from the old game. “By creating a wall, you can let your allies escape or fortify your position. If you increase your accuracy, you’ll be able to attack even while your allies are fighting. Even if you learn some magic, you have to be careful since it might not be as useful in a given situation.”

“Okay!” So enthusiastic!

“Also, be careful of how you distribute your mana. When a mage runs out of mana, they’re dead weight.” If you didn’t have a mana recovery item, you were in trouble.

“Okay!” Even more enthusiastic!

“So! Make sure to take a nice break today and recover your mana. When you practice next, make sure to memorize how many magic attacks you can use. It’ll come in handy to know when you’re in a battle.”

“All right. Thank you very much for today. I feel like I can really make my way as an adventurer.”

“Just don’t push yourself too hard. You’ve only got one life.”

“Okay!” And after her answer, she gave me a long, careful look.

“What’s wrong?”

“Um. Could you teach me again sometime?”

“Hmm. Sometimes I’m not in town, but I guess we could do it occasionally.”

“Okay, thank you so much.” She bowed her head low. “Also, can I call you my master?”

“Err. Master?”

“If you don’t like that, then it’s fine! But you taught me so much.”

“Know what? Sure.”

“Yes, Master Yuna!”

…That felt weird.

 

As I headed to the orphanage several days after our special training, I spotted Horn walking a little way ahead of me. Maybe that’s where she was headed too? I didn’t think there was anything other than the orphanage out here.

When I followed her, though, she didn’t go to the orphanage at all. She went to the place we practiced magic at earlier.

Horn looked around, stood in front of a rock and started practicing.

She invoked earth magic and—crack!—hit the rock. Good sound, but the rock itself didn’t break. Maybe it didn’t have enough speed? It definitely didn’t have enough power.

“Horn.”

“Yuna?!” She jumped halfway to the sky. Why was she so shocked?

“Practicing magic?”

“Yes! Thanks to you, my magic has gotten stronger. I can cover everyone now! But it’s still not quite strong enough for me to finish someone off. Shin drew some baddies over, but I couldn’t defeat them with magic. Sure, I did some damage and I’m making progress, but I keep thinking of how things could’ve gone if I did just a little better.”

So that was why she was practicing. “I got time. I can teach you a little.” She was really working hard, which always made me want to cheer someone on.

“You mean it?”

“Mmhm. It looks like it needs more…oomph, I think.” She had more attack power than before, but she was still pitching the magic about as hard as a decent baseball player. If she aimed well, she could defeat monsters, but otherwise she’d just bruise them. “Let’s practice making it spin.”

“Spin?”

I created a clod about as big as a baseball using earth magic and set it spinning so fast that you could feel the air coming off of it. “You get it?”

“Whoa, it’s like a little round tornado!”

“See that branch over there? Try touching the clod with it.”

Horn plucked it off the ground and gingerly—half-covering her eyes—touched the branch to the orb spinning atop of my bear puppet. The moment she did that—“Ahh!”—the branch snapped.

I lightly tossed the orb to the ground, and it bored into the earth.

“That’s amazing.”

“Everything’s cooler with spinning. Try it out.”

“Okay!” Horn created an earth sphere and made it spin…gently. Like a kid’s globe.

“Too slow. Spin it faster.”

“Um, it’s really hard…”

“Then you can practice when you’ve got extra time. The faster you spin it, the stronger it’ll be.”

“Yes, Mas—I mean, Yuna!”

Was this the “right” way to teach magic in this world? Maybe not, but who cares? I had empirical proof that this worked.

“Yuna,” said Horn suddenly, in the middle of a drill, “why are you being so nice to me? All I’ve done is cause you trouble, I haven’t been any help to you at all!”

“I dunno. You’re a girl and you’re trying hard. Maybe that’s why.”

“I’m trying hard?”

“What, did you not notice? Yeah, you’re really putting the work in. I admire that. And I like you. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt or die. I don’t know why you became an adventurer, but it’s dangerous work. If you’re going to keep it up, I’d like you to become strong enough that you won’t die, even if you end up injured.”

“Yuna, I don’t know what to say…”

“Plus, there are tons of men in adventuring, right? Totally unfair. Let’s lift each other up when we can, yeah? Give it your all and get as strong as you can. Promise me that.”

“I will…”

“Oh, but not so much that you get reckless.”

“You got it!” Horn shouted, seeming downright gleeful. I stayed with her until she ran out of mana.

And you know what? I could hear it in her voice: maybe she really did have what it took.

---

Extra Story:
Deigha’s Chronicles Worrying About the Bear

 

I’M DEIGHA. I manage an inn at the seaport of Mileela, and if ya get hungry there? Don’t worry, I’m a fine cook too.

Up until about a month ago, ship passengers, adventurers, merchants and all sorts would sail their way to us, but right now? We didn’t have a soul at the inn. See, a real nasty monster called a kraken appeared in our ocean. Even the coastal road didn’t bring any visitors, what with the bandits that showed up there.

All we could do now was pray for the kraken to disappear, but there was so much more to worry about than that. We couldn’t get food—no going out to sea for fishin’ and no traveling to get food from neighboring hamlets. The mayor ran out on us, and what food we got is in the hands of the trade guild. And oh, they’re happy to give you a crumb or two…for an arm and a leg.

If the kraken remained in our sea, we’d need to abandon the whole seaport…and no matter how hard we prayed, that kraken wasn’t going away.

 

As I sat at the counter with nothing to do, my acquaintances Damon and Yuula came in. Something black came in behind them.

“Muscles?” she blurted.

“Bear?” I blurted back.

A girl in a bear outfit came in behind the two. Come on, what? A…bear outfit?

Apparently, the girl in the bear outfit saved Damon and Yuula when they almost died on the Elezent mountain range. I simply couldn’t believe that girl crossed over such a steep mountain, but I didn’t think the two of them would lie about it, either. Besides, how else were you gonna get to the seaport these days?

It really was the only route. So strange.

 

The two asked me to let the girl in the bear clothes stay at the inn. I didn’t have any issues with that, but the only food I had was for my family. I told her I couldn’t feed her. But get this—when I told her I’d cook if she gave me the ingredients, she pulled out mountains of stuff. On top of that, she told me that since she had so much to spare, my family could eat it too. Maybe this girl really was something special?

If she was going to bring the ingredients, then I’d make her a feast to die for. I cooked up something spectacular with what she had, and she said (rightly, I’d say) that it was delicious. She seemed to want to eat seafood, though. In fact, that’s why she crossed the mountain! I wanted to feed her some, but the kraken made that sightly difficult. Guess I’d try asking old man Kuro.

 

The next morning, the girl said she’d head to the adventurers’ guild and left the inn. Before long, Yuula came in to see her.

“That little miss? She’s headed to the adventurers’ guild.” Yuula promised to show the girl around town, she said, but looks like the little scamp ran out on her own. “You want to wait here?” I offered.

“No, I’ll head over to the adventurers’ guild. I might be able to catch her there.”

“If she comes back, I’ll let her know you came by.”

“If you could.”

I decided to split the food I’d gotten from her with my friends and neighbors. You gotta help each other when things get rough like this, after all. Me and my daughter Anz butchered the wolf bodies, and my wife and son took it to the neighbors.

“Dad, did you really get all this food for free?” Anz asked me as we worked. And yeah, it shocked me too. It wasn’t just wolves, but also vegetables and flour and all kinds of other stuff. It was mostly wolves, the girl said, because she mostly had wolves. If that’s not the sign of an adventurer, I don’t know what is.

While I was prepping dinner for the girl, rumors of still more food being distributed filtered in. The adventurers’ guild passed it out to the townspeople. More wolf meat, and a whole lot of it too. Who could it be but our weird little bear girl?

 

Just as I was finishing up dinner prep, the bear girl came back to the inn. She’d met up with Yuula after all, and worked up a real hunger to boot. She enjoyed the dinner I made her, which was well and good, but I just wished I could do something more.

 

The next morning, when I started prepping the inn, I heard a groan from upstairs. Not particularly girlish, either. Strange. Worrisome? Well, when I went up to check it out, I found a bear—no, a real bear, and two of them—a black one and a white one. In my inn! How on earth had they gotten here, of all places?

“Is the girl bear okay? Bear girl!” I yelled through the room of her door. I was a little worried about spooking the real bears beside me, but they didn’t seem interested. Damn it, was the girl all right?! She had to be alive…right?

For all my fretting, the girl came out of her room looking just a little groggy in a white bear outfit. The bears were her summons—my first time seeing such a thing. When I asked her about the men who were groaning under the bears, she told me she was attacked.

Unbelievable. Unforgivable! They’d sneak into my inn and, on top of that, attack a little girl? Oh, I was furious.

I had my son head over to the adventurers’ guild to relay the message and tied up the attackers with a rope. Tightly, with an especially rough rope. Since they weren’t necessary anymore according to her, the girl made the bears just…disappear for now. Incredible.

Before long, the adventurers’ guild’s staff came by and took away the men. Good riddance.

 

As if things weren’t preposterous enough, the girl then promised the guild master Atola that she was going to defeat the bandits. C’mon now, that was far too dangerous. Although Atola seemed worried at first, she still agreed.

“Miss, are you really going out to apprehend those bandits?” after eavesdropping on them, I asked the girl. But she just smiled.

“C’mon man, I’ll be all right. I’m an adventurer, and didn’t you see my bears? Big burly bears?”

I promised her I’d make her a delicious meal once she came back. I hoped she would.

 

But, wonder of wonders, she did come right back. And not only that, but she did manage to capture the bandits. The townspeople thought that the four adventurers with her had done it at first, but nope. The bear girl herself had singlehandedly defeated them.

Who would believe something like that? I’d seen tons of adventurers in my time, strong ones and weak ones. Calling this kid adventurer strong seemed…well, if it was true, it hardly covered it.

 

To fulfill my promise, I decided to go all out with my meal that day. I headed to the harbor and implored old man Kuro, who watched over the ocean: “I’d like to make a meal for the bear girl who took out the bandits. Would you please let me have some fish?” I knew it was no use, but I still bowed my head. I had to try.

“Take as much as you want.”

“Hold on, are you sure?” I could hardly believe it.

“Of course I’m sure, and not a soul in town would disagree. She got rid of the bandits. She even exposed the foul deeds of the trade guild. We can afford to give her fish. That’s the least of what she deserves, I’d say.”

Gods, though, the old man was decent. I thanked old man Kuro profusely and took some delicious-looking fish that was caught just that morning for a nice fish dinner. Though I didn’t have much left in stock, I prepared rice. It normally came in from the Land of Wa, and they knew how to prepare a good fish dish. Personally, I like rice even more than bread, and only the best would do for our little hero.

I also made a nice, hot miso soup for the girl. Fresh vegetables, the works! If I had more ingredients, I could’ve made it even better, but that kraken was still in the way.

When she saw the meal I made, the girl looked surprised, even as she ate it.

And she started to cry.

Had I done something wrong? Was it bad? No, she told me. It was the flavor of her home, and she cried as she savored it. She cleaned her entire plate. My cooking was good enough to make her cry? What could I even say to that? What could I do but smile and try not to cry myself?

Damn that kraken! If it weren’t around, I’d be able to make an even more delicious meal for her.

 

The next day, my son told me that we weren’t supposed to go near the sea the day after tomorrow. Why? Well, old man Kuro told him so.

Something about the way the girl was acting lately made me feel uneasy. I went to old man Kuro. “Old man Kuro, about the day after tomorrow and the sea. This hasn’t got to do with the bear girl, has it?”

“Hmph.” He spoke slowly. Carefully. “Now don’t you go telling anyone, you hear? If you can’t make that promise, I can’t tell you a thing.”

I agreed, but the things old man Kuro told me were absurd. The bear girl was going to fight the kraken? “Do you really believe that, old man Kuro?”

“Atola herself asked me about this, and there was nothing funny about the way she asked. And it’s that same bear girl who defeated those bandits, isn’t it?” He almost smiled. “Or are there other bear girls I haven’t been told about?”

Hmm. But even if she could defeat bandits, that didn’t mean she could defeat a kraken. “Old man Kuro! Are you really planning to let a little girl fight the kraken by herself?!”

“Yes, yes, it’s very frightening. Now the girl claimed she could defeat the kraken, but she said that she can’t do it if we’re too close to the ocean.”

“So the bear girl is…”

“You hear me? While she fights, she asked that we not go near the ocean so none of us are put into danger.”

So the bear girl was… “I understand.”

But I didn’t have to like it. Why did the bear girl have to fight the kraken? Why couldn’t there be anyone in our little town who was strong enough to help? Made me furious, that I couldn’t do anything. That none of us could.

 

It was the day she’d fight the kraken. I asked her what her plans were for the day.

“I’m going for a walk. What about it?” she answered, like she was just gonna go for a nice, peaceful stroll instead of going out to slay a kraken.

Was it really all right to leave fighting the kraken to such a tiny thing? And damn it, the only thing I could do was basically make food.

“I’m going to have a meal ready for you, so you better come home.”

And a delicious one. So she better come back alive.

She ate the breakfast I made, and just…left the inn, like it really was nothing more than a walk.

 

I don’t know how much time passed after that. I paced the inn. My wife and daughter asked me about that, but I just couldn’t stop. I was just too worried. I didn’t need her to kill the kraken. I just wanted the kid to come back safe!

Then there was a commotion at the entrance. Atola came in, and behind her trudged a bear…with the girl lying on its back.

“Miss!”

When I ran over to her, she looked exhausted. I was relieved she wasn’t injured.

“I’m cool. I’m fine. Need sleep. Lemme sleep. Thanks.”

 

At least she answered back, even if she was slumped on top of the bear. But at that, her bear squeezed itself up the stairs with the girl still slumped over.

“Atola, is she all right?! If she’s hurt, I—”

“Calm down, she’s fine. She just used too much magic.”

“She did?” What a relief. “What about the kraken?” I wouldn’t blame her if she failed. Just seeing her state, I could tell she worked hard at it.

“You knew about that?”

“Yeah, old man Kuro told me.”

“I see. Yuna defeated it.”

Ah, must’ve misheard her. I dug a little earwax outta my ear. “Repeat that?”

“Yuna defeated it?”

“She…did?”

“Yes, she defeated it for us.”

“And you’re serious?”

“She put her all into it too. It’s no wonder she’s so tired. She’s the town’s savior, so make sure she gets lots of rest.”

Of course I would! It was my job as innkeeper to make sure that the girl got all the rest she needed, especially after all she went through. I wouldn’t let anyone bother her rest.

 

Word spread around town about the kraken, and before long I was dealing with townspeople trying to barge into my inn and make a fuss about it. They filled the inn’s entrance and overflowed outside.

“Be quiet!” I roared. “She’s exhausted and asleep!”

“Dad, you be quiet,” my daughter warned. “Yuna is sleeping.”

“But…”

“I know, I know. But Dad, what are you going to do if you’re the one who wakes her?” She had me there.

“I understand where you’re all coming from,” I said, lowering my voice a little, “but could you let the girl rest? She fought with a kraken—you know, that kraken we had for a while?—and she’s tired. You would be too.”

“But, Deigha, we want to see her and thank her.”

“Yeah! She saved the town.”

I understood how they felt. I wanted to do something for her too. What was the thing that made her happiest?

“Hrm. All right, then. If any of you have leftover rice, could you lend me some? Every little bit helps. She likes the rice from the Land of Wa. I’ll make it for her when she wakes up.”

“You sure that’s enough?”

“Yeah.” I thought of that joyful smile and those tears. “That’ll make her the happiest.”

“All right.”

They finally left, but new people came in. We ended up having the same conversation.

Everyone who stopped by was all smiles. The lucky folks who actually saw the defeated kraken were excited as they talked. When I heard their stories, the fact that the girl defeated the monster started to finally feel real.

Some people even started to pray toward the inn room, which was nice, but… maybe a little much. I got it, though. Even my son was overwhelmed with joy: he’d be able to go out to sea again.

Before long, we had enough rice to fill a big barrel I’d prepared.

It was going to be exactly the feast a hero like her deserved, and I couldn’t wait to see her face.