Chapter 1 — A Temporary Return

The next day, Zenjirou awoke in a guest room in the palace. His bleary eyes were filled with the sight of a luxurious canopy over the bed.

He started at the unfamiliar view, but his memories from the prior night soon came rushing back, reminding him of where he’d gone to bed, and he relaxed.

“Oh, right... This is another world, yeah,” he mumbled to himself.

Zenjirou climbed down from the bed, which seemed bigger than his entire apartment back home, and stepped onto the carpeted floor. He donned a pair of slippers that were waiting for him and walked across the wide room before realizing he’d been scratching at his side.

“Argh, the bugs have gotten me everywhere. I kinda jumped in and agreed to the marriage yesterday, but maybe that was a bit hasty...” he muttered, a bit after the fact.

A single day had made him well aware of how uncomfortable this world could be compared to modern Japan. However well seasoned the food had been yesterday, the water and booze with it had been strangely lukewarm.

Zenjirou didn’t have a refined enough palate to distinguish standard and low-malt beers but proclaimed like any proud Japanese that “ice-cold low-malt is justice.” So the lukewarm wines served with dinner the night before were unbearably bad, regardless of how they tasted.

Speaking of warmth, the actual temperature was a problem as well. His impressions from Aura the day before led him to believe that the Capua Kingdom was a rather warm place, even compared to Kanto in Japan. It was extremely rare to see people walking the streets in long sleeves, even during the coolest time of the year. During the warmer seasons, temperatures rose well above normal body temperature, so people would pack themselves into small rooms and “enjoy the coolness” of each other’s bodies.

Actually, he thought as his face twisted slightly, I remember hearing some similar things about summers in India.

Thermometers didn’t exist here, so he wasn’t sure of the exact numbers, but it sounded like he could expect winters with lows of 20°C, and summers with highs of over 40°C.

Furthermore, this world obviously had no air conditioning. Zenjirou had only ever experienced summers with that luxury available, so the heat would probably be a formidable hurdle. It had actually stopped him from sleeping well at night. They weren’t even at the height of summer yet, but it had still taken him more than an hour of tossing and turning in the king size bed to drift off.

Of course, the heat wasn’t the only reason for his poor rest. The other issue interfering with a good night’s sleep had been the bugs. This world seemed to have no such thing as glass window panes, and the windows were covered with wooden shutters instead. These shutters were left open during the day to let light in, and the bugs essentially had free rein to enter. The canopy seemed to act as something of a mosquito net, but it wasn’t perfect and couldn’t keep them all out, so when he woke up that morning, he found himself all but eaten alive.

What got to Zenjirou more than all of those problems put together, however, was the inconvenience of the night itself. He’d honestly never thought that a night without electricity would be such an ordeal. The dining room he had eaten in with Aura had been fairly well lit by many candles in a chandelier, but when he walked along the corridors later on, all he’d had to rely on was the oil lamp the maid guiding him had been carrying.

Even in his room, the only source of light had been a single oil lamp on the desk.

“I knew people used to go to sleep early in the old days, but now I get it. I mean, you can’t do anything but sleep at night like this.”

He got himself changed as the litany of complaints continued to pour from his lips. He’d refused the customary dressing aid provided in palaces and estates the night before. His current outfit was a pair of loose pants that fastened with a string at his waist, and a baggy, knee-length top that was almost like a nightgown. Apparently, these were what royals and nobles alike used for nightclothes, but having tried them, Zenjirou would take a T-shirt and boxers any day of the week. These items were less comfortable to sleep in, and considering he didn’t rest as well here to begin with, he’d gotten tangled in the nightgown with all his tossing and turning.

Yes, this was the royal palace, and even if it wasn’t official yet, Zenjirou would be the prince consort. The food, clothing, and accommodations would all be of the highest quality, but they couldn’t even satisfy someone who had grown up as an ordinary commoner in modern Japan.

The gulf between eras, and indeed cultures, was vast.

Once he had changed out of his borrowed pajamas into his own familiar clothing, Zenjirou sat on the edge of the bed and waited for the maid to come and fetch him.

“Thinking about it, Japan’s pretty blessed. Most houses have a fridge and air conditioning. They don’t even have electricity here. It’d still be nice not working, though. And the queen is super pretty.”

The attraction for Zenjirou, even after the warm booze, uncomfortable room, and dark night, was the beguiling Aura Capua, who he was now, albeit informally, engaged to. She had joined him at dinner wearing an evening dress with a daring slit. Her charming smile and sensuous body had once more mesmerized her fiancée from another world.

Zenjirou had been charmed by her audacious figure and directed his gaze, though with enough moderation to not seem unnatural (or so he believed) at the valley of her voluptuous breasts and towards the slit where her thighs were visible.

Even considering it now, that ass, along with those breasts and thighs, seemed plenty enough reason to abandon his modern life back home.

“Actually, my bike came with me when I arrived. So I should be able to bring some other things back with me in a month, right? Okay! I’ll write up a list of necessities for this marriage once I get back home!” Zenjirou said, clapping his hands together. At the same time, there was a knock on the door.

“Yes?” he called.

“Excuse me, but breakfast is ready,” came a familiar young woman’s voice from the other side.

“Right, I’m on my way!” he answered loudly.

Zenjirou stood and jogged over to the room’s entrance.

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆

Yamai Zenjirou was a special guest to the Capua Kingdom, but his presence was also top secret and known only to Queen Aura and her confidants. Because of that, all three meals, yesterday’s lunch and dinner, and now today’s breakfast, had been conducted with only his fiancée joining him at the table.

To describe the country with Zenjirou’s meager vocabulary, “it was like a combination of a typical fantasy kingdom based on the European middle ages and an untamed southern land.”

Amazingly enough, the long dining table was a single huge log that had been split down the middle, with the top polished to a sheen. The table could have easily seated thirty people if needed.

Zenjirou couldn’t even imagine how old the tree must have been. Using a single log like this would probably cost even more than a marble slab. The huge table had silver bowls filled with soup and a basket piled with buns. Chatting amicably with Aura, he began to eat the very foreign-feeling breakfast.

“The preparations for your return are complete. The stars will remain in alignment well into the afternoon, so the choice of when you return is yours. Please inform us of the most convenient time for you,” Aura told him once she’d finished wiping the bottom of her bowl with a chunk of bread, daintily placing it within her mouth and slowly chewing it. Her voice was as calm as ever.

Zenjirou, on the other hand, had no way of knowing this world’s standard table etiquette, so he took the bowl in his left hand, mimicking the way Aura had eaten, then used a silver spoon to carry a mouthful of the amber liquid carefully up to his mouth.

Aura wasn’t the kind of person to be overly fastidious about manners in a private setting such as this, but as her spouse, he would have opportunities to sit down to formal meals in the future. She was happy to see him making an effort to learn the correct manners, and swallowed her suggestion not to worry about it and eat as he wished, simply smiling back at him instead.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said. “Let’s see... I can leave at any time. I do have one thing I wanted to ask, though. How much can I bring between worlds with the transferal magic?”

“Hm? Fundamentally, summoning magic is for transferring people, so it should only be able to bring a person and what they can reasonably carry. The strange contraption you happened to be riding is probably the limit.”

Aura’s answer dashed his hopes, and Zenjirou slumped down in his seat. “Ahh, really? Man, I can’t bring much then...”

“Was there something in my palace that caught your eye?” she asked curiously.

“Oh, no,” he said, quickly correcting her misunderstanding with a wave of his hand. “I don’t mean ‘to take with me.’ I’m talking about when I’m summoned back in a month. I’d wanted to bring several things from my own world...”

“Oh, I see,” she nodded.

Aura knew that he must have led a very different lifestyle in the other world, and would have assets there that he valued. If he was a noble or wealthy individual there, it was hardly surprising that he’d have more than an armful of items he wanted to keep.

“That would indeed be something to consider in your position. Let me think...” The queen had always intended to meet his desires to the best of her ability, and therefore tried to come up with a solution. “Ah, yes. That may be suitable...” She brought her hands together, having thought of an idea after racking her brain for a moment.

“So, there is a way?” Zenjirou asked, half rising from his seat with a joyous expression.

Aura gave him a nod as she answered. “Indeed. There is a tool in the form of a carpet that is imbued with the fundamentals of space-time magic, which is called boundary magic. When you return to your own world, take it with you. If you then create the boundary just before you are to be summoned a month later, the contents should be brought along with you. That is to say, whatever fits within the bounds of the carpet. You may not be able to bring all of your riches, but it is far better than having nothing, no?”

“I should be able to bring plenty with that! Although, I might have the potential but I don’t actually know the first thing about magic right now...”

Aura smiled reassuringly at him as his mood swung from one extreme to another. “Worry not. Magic tools activate with a simple influx of mana. If in the worst case you cannot do that, you need merely drip a small amount of blood onto the carpet. Blood has a high concentration of mana.”

Her reply made his expression swing back to joyful. “Even I should be able to manage that! Thank you for everything, ma’am.”

“You need not thank me. It is a trifle compared to everything you are offering me,” she replied with a composed smile.

Zenjirou didn’t know the value of a magic tool here and could only take her kindness at face value. If he had known its actual cost, he would have far better understood just how well she was treating him.

Magic tools were made with bestowal magic, which was like space-time magic in that only one particular royal family could use it. Such abilities were referred to as inherent magic. Zenjirou, of course, had no way of knowing that there were very few items made using that kind of magic, or that their prices were therefore sky-high.

And that was to say nothing of the small amount of space-time magic that was also within the carpet. In essence, the item was a confluence of two royal families’ specialties, proof of the friendship between the Capuan royals and those who possessed bestowal magic. It was, without exaggeration, a national treasure.

It was at this point that Aura seemed to have a realization as she added nonchalantly to her earlier words, “At any rate, I am glad it makes you happy. Is there anything else you desire? You are to become my husband; there is no need to be reserved at this juncture,” she said softly, slaking her thirst with some diluted citrus juice, having finished her breakfast at some point shortly before.

Zenjirou lifted a metal cup of the same drink to his mouth and luxuriated in the sharp sweetness passing down his throat—while thinking that it would be just perfect if it were to be chilled by an ice cube beforehand—then replied after some thought.

“Let’s see... Well, there’s nothing partic— Actually, we’re engaged and we’re going to get married. In that case, do you have a ring that fits your left ring finger? I’d like to borrow one if you do,” he suggested.

Zenjirou associated engagements and marriages with a wedding ring, although the concept of engagement and wedding rings might not exist in this world, as Aura was looking at him quizzically.

“Hmm, I should be able to find one rather quickly if I look. What do you need it for?”

“It’s, well... something to look forward to in a month,” he answered evasively, with a smile.

If she didn’t know of the custom then he’d prefer to keep it a secret and give it to her as a surprise. Then again, even if she was unaware of the custom, with the combination of “lend me a ring that fits” and it being “something to look forward to next month,” it was rather easy to surmise that he wanted to give her a ring from his own world.

Aura gave him a strange smile, one that, although it was given with feeling, had no air of temptation within it as she looked him in the eyes and nodded once. “Very well, I shall look forward to it. I assume I can also expect to find out what significance a ring on the left hand holds in your world in a month?”

“Ah... yeah, definitely,” he replied, returning a strained smile as he realized his plan had almost certainly been seen through.

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆

The first transference had been over before he’d even noticed, but the second left Zenjirou a bit unsteady on his feet.

“Whoops...” he said as he stumbled forward.

He shook his head to get rid of the sensation of his vision warping and looked around. The road was paved with asphalt, and there were countless cars driving along it. Both sides of the road were lined with concrete apartment buildings.

The familiar sights and the stench of exhaust fumes made him truly feel that he had come home. Then again, the lack of change in scenery from the previous day made him wonder if the entire experience hadn’t merely been a vivid daydream.

But... he had proof. He had left on his bike but was now on foot and carrying a rolled-up carpet in both hands. There was also the golden ring that he’d received from Aura, which was currently on his left pinky finger. This physical evidence set his mind at ease and confirmed that it had indeed been real.

“It felt like it happened so fast, just one thing after another, but I was there for more than a day, wasn’t I?” he muttered to himself, losing confidence in his own sensations partway through.

He’d spent more than a day and night in the other world and assumed that it was simply Sunday now, but there was no guarantee that time moved the same way in both worlds. It might still be Saturday, or several days might have gone by.

Well, there were no significant changes that he could see around him, and the temperature and angle of the sun were much the same, so it should be fine. Then again, he wasn’t sure.

“Crap, I need to check first,” he mumbled with a shudder as his thoughts ran away from him.

He hurried home, still clutching the carpet.

“Phew, looks like it was about the same amount of time,” he sighed in relief.

He’d returned to his apartment, a single occupancy affair that was about ten square meters, and checked the date and time on his LCD clock. The clock in question and his watch both showed the same thing, so it seemed that time was synchronized between the two worlds.

That was a relief to him. It had been a passing thought, but if time in each world moved at different rates, Zenjirou’s plan would have been fundamentally flawed. After all, the date of his resummoning was in thirty days their time, so if there had been a real difference, he wouldn’t have been able to get everything done while worrying about when he would actually be summoned. And in that case, bringing his own things into that world would have been a pipe dream.

It was therefore with a much brighter expression that Zenjirou sat down in front of his computer and switched it on, his greatest fear assuaged.

“Right, I don’t have much time, so let’s get to it,” he urged himself, slapping his cheeks to rev himself up.

It was a little past 10 AM, and his room had filled with the early summer heat and humidity. Still sitting in his desk chair, he used the remote for the AC and lowered its temperature to 20°C.

“Finally...” he breathed with a sigh as the mechanical chill of wind blasted across him. He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants and put his right hand on the mouse.

A month seemed like a long time, but it was deceptively short. It was the same period of time during which you would make an appointment with a client, gather the necessary materials for the presentation, and the deadline would be on you before you knew it.

Zenjirou didn’t want to waste a single second, so he opened a search engine and put every keyword he could think of into it.

“Ah, damn it! Guess I’m screwed,” he complained less than a hour later, scratching his head as he stared at the collection of open tabs he’d accumulated.

One of the few benefits of such a small room was the fact that in the short space of time during which he’d been on his computer, the temperature had dropped significantly and he’d just bumped it back up to 25°C.

With the room now artificially cooled, he rocked in his chair as if tormenting the cheap rug beneath while muttering to himself, “You know, even when something as unrealistic as an alternate world turns up, reality itself sure is cruel...”

During his two days in that world, the things he’d missed most were his electrical appliances. Air conditioners, fridges, lights, and so on... Not a single one of them would work without a constant supply of electricity. Therefore, Zenjirou’s first goal had been to acquire a small residential generator. Of course, as one might expect, there wasn’t anything he could take that would provide decades’ worth of electricity so simply.

“The easiest option would be a diesel or gas generator. But then there’s the fuel...”

Such generators were sold for camping, so they didn’t take a lot of effort to set up and would supply him with power without much difficulty. However, they ran on specific fuels like gasoline or diesel. He’d heard about people making their own biodiesel before and had looked into it himself, but it didn’t seem like something that could simply be replicated by a layperson like him in another world.

Broadly speaking, such fuel required vegetable oil, methanol, and lye. Among those, the only thing that would be easily available in the other world was vegetable oil. Zenjirou would have to make the methanol and lye himself. He thought it might be possible to create methanol by distilling the wood vinegar produced when making charcoal, and the lye was doable if he had an ion exchange membrane splitting a salt-water tank with an electricity supply, but both would be far too much for him to manage on his own.

Of course, there was the option of running to a pharmacy and buying ethanol and lye in bulk, but it would be quicker to just buy the fuel itself from a gas station and store it in jerry cans. With the limited amount of cans he could fit on the carpet, though, he wouldn’t have power for more than a month. And the same held true for taking the methanol and lye himself.

“Guess combustion’s a no-go. So that leaves wind or solar, then?”

Wind power was fairly realistic. There was certainly wind in the other world, after all. But his worry was that the output would be unstable. He’d literally be leaving it to chance, so a calm and humid night would be unbearable.

Solar power was obviously out of the question with one of his main goals being nighttime lighting. Lights that you could only use during the day weren’t half as appealing. There were some that had large batteries, but those were consumables with minuscule lifespans. They wouldn’t be reliable as a long-term power supply.

“There’re also the hybrid wind and solar generators that are getting popular now. I guess they might work,” he mused, sipping at his tea for a moment before returning his attention to the computer.

Thinking things over, a hybrid system of that sort would probably be the safest best. The manufacturer’s site boasted, “Easy to set up, done in half a day, use it the same day.” If he could trust the sales pitch, he should be able to set it up on his own in the other world without much hassle.

But his attention now was drawn to yet another system he had found by chance while scouring the web.

“A residential hydroelectric generator? I didn’t know those even existed,” he murmured, enraptured by the idea.

Unlike wind and solar panels, they required specific locations and therefore weren’t as widespread, but home generators were indeed starting to trend towards water power. The “Small Residential Hydroelectric Generator” that Zenjirou discovered could be found in two versions, a 0.5 kW or a 1.0 kW unit, and used a differential in water to generate electricity.

From his research, generators that produced less than 10 kW were classified as “general electronics” and could be purchased relatively easily by even an ordinary household if they were in the right place. Of course, there were laws like the Waterways Act and other formalities that he’d have to navigate for purchase and installation, so it wasn’t as easy to obtain as a fuel generator that he could simply pick up from a local hardware store.

Its main attractions were without a doubt its ability to operate constantly and the output being far more efficient than other options. With wind and solar generators, it was hard to produce enough power for a normal household even under the best possible conditions, but that wasn’t the case with hydro generation. If he could expect the same performance as the manufacturer’s specs in the catalog, then even the smaller model came close to meeting all of his consumption needs. That meant he would be able to simultaneously use all the appliances that were currently in his room, including the air conditioner, fridge, computer, and so on without a problem.

But even the tempting hydroelectric generator had its issues.

“I wonder if there’s even a river or canal near the palace?”

Zenjirou hadn’t had a chance to step out onto the grounds during his stay. Not knowing if there was a water source suitable for the generator was a fundamental problem. Logic dictated that there would have to be a water source given the hundreds of people who were living in the palace, but on the other hand, there was also magic in that world. The possibility of being told, “Yes, water is created each day by a mage who specializes in doing so” was by no means nonexistent. He considered buying both the water and hybrid generators for a moment, but his budget wouldn’t allow for it.

Zenjirou had worked for a company whose one saving grace was properly paying overtime, so his savings stood at just over three million yen. That wasn’t bad at all considering he was still in his early twenties, but it couldn’t be called plentiful when taking his current goal into account. The hybrid generator he had narrowed his choices down to cost about five hundred thousand yen, and the hydroelectric generator cost a cool one and a half million.

There were many other things that he wanted to spend his money on as well, like a large air conditioner, a fridge, proper lighting, and so on. When he factored in underwear, toothbrushes, soap, towels, bath towels, and gauze handkerchiefs in place of tissues, it quickly became an insane amount of money. And once he added in a wedding ring for Aura, spending two-thirds of his budget on only the generators was impractical.

Until he’d settled on a generator, however, he couldn’t choose which appliances to take.

“Argh, I guess I’ve got to just pick one or the other. Do I go with the safe bet but low output, or the high output but with a risk of nothing? Hmm...”

It was a difficult question to answer immediately, but he didn’t have tons of time to spend on it. It wasn’t like buying meat and vegetables from a supermarket. It was a product that would take some time to deliver, and he’d need additional time to learn how to set it up and use it.

“Actually, will they even sell it to me if I request only the generator to set up on my own?”

Zenjirou let out a brief sigh, having come across a fundamental problem with his plans. The information he had read earlier stated that the safety issues weren’t the responsibility of the buyer but of the company that installed it. So would that mean the possibility of them actually selling him the generator was a long shot?

After a bit more research, Zenjirou found some awfully inconvenient information.

“Yeah, figures. All the companies have mandatory consultations, surveys, and price quotes for installation before they’ll even sell hydroelectric generators,” he mumbled, slumping down with a sigh in front of his computer. He could probably assume they wouldn’t sell him the generator unless he had a set location for it, and that was on top of the required consultations and surveys. Apparently, he couldn’t just buy one in a single easy step.

“So, basically I’d need to get them to install it in some river, watch and learn how to do it myself, and then secretly take it apart and bring it with me to the other world?”

As the words left his lips, he remembered the village he’d been raised in.

“There’s that old hut in the mountains. I’m pretty sure there was a quick-flowing river by it. I should still own that bit of land, right?”

If Zenjirou remembered correctly, the small mountain hut, even more isolated than the village—which itself deserved a “very rural” designation—belonged to the Yamai family. When he had graduated university and decided to find work in the city, he’d signed the main properties, the fields, and house away to his aunt and uncle, who had taken care of him, but the hut and the area around it were still under his name.

Perhaps fortunately, the rundown shack had no electricity and was little more than a storage shed. If he said that he wanted the generator installed in the nearby brook, with electricity running to the hut, there should be no reason for anyone to doubt him.

Either way, there was no time like the present, and time itself was his most precious resource right now. Zenjirou quickly picked up his phone and called the company selling the micro-hydroelectric generators. The call connected after three rings, but the voice on the other end was recorded—an answering machine.

“Good day! You have reached the sales and executive offices of Technotek PLC. We are currently unable to take your call. If you would like...”

“Ah, yeah, it’s Sunday. Obviously, they’re not in,” he said with a groan as he hung up. “Oh well, I’ll just send them an email. I’ll link the address to my phone and computer, just to be safe.”

He turned back to his PC and started typing out an email with the subject heading, “Purchase Inquiry.”

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆

The next day, a Monday, found Yamai Zenjirou heading to work and offering his letter of resignation. He stood there meekly as his boss looked it over with a hard-to-read expression on his face.

“You’re leaving...?” he asked shortly, looking bitter.

Zenjirou gave a deep bow of his head. “I am. I’m sorry.”

Working conditions were tough at the company, so it wasn’t rare for people to resign. Zenjirou had worked there for several years, though, and had recently become a “valued employee,” only to now resign. His boss couldn’t simply tell him to do as he liked the way he did with newer staff.

The wrinkles on the older man’s face, along with his thinning hair and protruding stomach, gave him the stereotypical image of a middle-aged boss. Still seated, he glared steadily at Zenjirou.

“You’re going home to take over the family business, then. Didn’t you choose this line of work because you hated that lifestyle?” he frowned as he skimmed over what Zenjirou had listed as his reasons for leaving.

The letter Zenjirou had given his boss was the result of him wracking his mind the previous night to create a story that would allow him to quit smoothly.

“Yes, well. I had a bit of a change of heart, I suppose,” he answered humbly, feeling a cold sweat down his back. He could hardly write something like, “I’m going to marry a queen in another world and live off her,” so he’d had no choice but to lie about his reasons for leaving.

“Hmm... Well, I can’t force you to stay if you want to resign. You wouldn’t put in enough effort. Fine,” his boss said eventually, after a long period of glaring at Zenjirou, who let out a slight sigh of relief. Then, as if to rain on his parade, his boss continued loudly, “But I expect you to finish your short-term projects! Of course, I’ll transfer the longer-term ones to someone else. Oh, also, put together a handbook for whoever takes your place. I won’t tell you to write up something good enough to make them a pro, but I expect it to teach the newbies who don’t know their left from their right how to do things on a minimal level. All right?”

The man clearly wasn’t looking for an answer, so there was no point in refusing. Zenjirou was preparing to move to another world, so every second counted. He didn’t want to cause offense and leave a bad impression, and it would be far more of a hassle if his departure went poorly and his boss investigated more thoroughly, maybe even catching him in the lie.

“I understand; please excuse me,” he said, left with no choice but to work hard right up until the end.

Regardless of having given his notice, the task of creating that manual ultimately left him with less time than expected. Zenjirou didn’t feel like he could waste a single second, so at lunchtime he took a quick meal at a gyudon stall and then hurried over to a nearby jeweler.

“Right, this ring would be about a fourteen or fifteen, and your own ring size would be seventeen,” the middle-aged woman told him after measuring the ring and his finger, her service smile fixed in place.

This was the first time Zenjirou had ever set foot in a jewelry shop, so her comments didn’t really tell him if his or Aura’s fingers were particularly fat or slim.

The place was lit by a fancy chandelier, and the floor was covered with a short-pile carpet that looked brand new. There were also display windows showing off countless pieces of merchandise. Frankly, it wasn’t an especially high-class shop, but he was unaware of the intricacies of jewelers and felt supremely out of place in his suit still reeking of gyudon.

“Right, I see,” he answered, his demeanor indicating to the assistant that he was completely out of his depth.

She offered a straightforward explanation in response. “Your partner has a somewhat large ring size for a woman. There are only a few products that are quickly available in this size.”

“Ah, well, height-wise she’s taller than me,” he said somewhat haltingly after the simpler explanation.

“Oh, my, and you’re by no means short, either. In that case, a wider band would likely suit her better. Please wait here for a moment,” she said, heading into the back to fetch some sample rings.

“Ah, right,” he answered, naturally starting to think of Aura as she left.

The queen was solidly built, with a sensual body. Her face was strongly emotional, and her fiery red hair seemed to reflect her personality. Her skin was a natural light brown, different from skin that had tanned.

What kind of ring would look best on her hand? Zenjirou hadn’t the slightest idea about precious metals, but the clerk’s idea appeared to be right; a reserved ring didn’t seem like it would suit her.

However, he was mistaken about one thing. She was not, in fact, taller than he. He was the taller of the two, although just barely. He was 172 cm in height, and she was probably about 170 cm. He’d thought she was in the latter half of the 170s, but that was nothing more than a misapprehension due to her overwhelming presence.

“Thank you for waiting. These rings can all be resized within a few days,” the clerk said as she returned, showing him several options laid out on a tray.

“Oh, there’s a fair selection,” Zenjirou commented, but his gaze fell first to the price tags hanging from them.

He knew it was miserly, but he knew nothing of the quality of rings, so the biggest thing on his mind was the money leaving his wallet. Whether she knew his thoughts or not, the saleswoman launched into a practiced explanation of the wares.

“If you are unsure, I recommend starting with the metal of the head. Platinum is the norm for wedding rings in Japan, but with your skin tone, a gold might look better on your finger. If you feel that yellow gold is too gaudy then we also have rose gold rings. Of course, the most important thing is striking a balance with your fiancée’s ring.”

Usually, people with paler skin went for platinum and silver bands, but those with darker skin stuck with gold. Zenjirou, perhaps because of the blood of the otherworlders in his veins, had relatively dark skin for a Japanese person. Of course, Aura was completely of that ancestral stock, so her skin color was naturally a tawny brown.

“Right, she has even darker skin than me, sort of a light brown,” he said thoughtfully.

“In that case, I would recommend a yellow gold. For the stone, you might find a colorful ruby or sapphire more to your liking than a colorless diamond. Is she perhaps a foreigner?”

“Ah, yeah. She is. She’s not Japanese,” he answered vaguely, unable to tell her that his fiancée was actually a queen in another world.

“Overseas, people often choose a stone that matches their eyes or hair. If it matches, then it’s easier to get used to wearing, and it gives a message that you look at them often.”

“R-Right, I see,” he answered, just nodding along with her overwhelming sales pitch, still feeling ill at ease in a place such as this.

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆

An even busier afternoon of work awaited Zenjirou once he had finished his gyudon lunch and ring shopping. He returned his suit jacket to a hanger in his cubicle and quickly loosened his tie enough that he could get a hand between it and his neck. He also undid the top button of his short sleeve shirt and sat down sloppily in his seat.

The company he worked for was taking part in the recent Cool Biz campaign, but being a smaller company meant that it wasn’t applied perfectly. Zenjirou worked for the Service and Planning department, so in theory he would normally be working strictly within the company and should therefore be able to wear casual clothes. In reality, however, there was a high probability of him working outside of the office with sales, so he had to wear a suit to work just in case. Because of that, on days like this where he had no external business, there was tacit approval of him relaxing a bit and looking more a bit slovenly as he set about his work. Honestly, Zenjirou’s approach was on the milder side, merely loosening his tie and undoing a button on his shirt. His direct superior, the section chief, would often have no tie, and even take off his shoes and socks to walk around in sandals.

“It’s better than toughing it out and getting athlete’s foot,” he would excuse himself bluntly.

Zenjirou couldn’t be so bold, though. He placed the half-liter bottle of tea next to his mouse pad as he woke the computer from sleep mode. The monitor lit up. It was a CRT screen, almost an antique these days.

“Right, back to it...”

He was currently working on the new employee manual that he’d been instructed to create this morning. There was no such thing as a job easy enough to do after reading through a single document, but his boss had told him to make something that could be a “light in the dark” for new hires.

“Not like I had one when I started,” he muttered, halting his typing.

He didn’t really have a tendency to engage in schadenfreude, but it felt a little unfair that whoever replaced him wouldn’t have the same difficulties he had first faced... particularly when he was being made to create the document after he’d already given his notice.

Work was work, though, and he’d just have to do it properly so that he could resign in peace.

“Uhh, that about does it for the general stuff. Now...”

Having finished the outline for the “handbook,” Zenjirou stopped for a moment and took a gulp of tea.

As he clacked away at the keyboard, he referred to various documents for smaller details that he couldn’t remember, adding them in as he went along. He was essentially writing a summary of his three years of work there, so the majority of the details were stored on his computer.

Some things, however, were not on the computer or within his filing cabinet, so he had to go ask his coworkers. After about an hour of additional work, he couldn’t find what he needed on his hard drive, so he stood up and walked over to his superior.

“Excuse me, Yoshinaga, do you have the proposal from when we won the Yamaguchi contract two years ago?”

“Hm? The Yamaguchi one from two years ago?” asked the skinny man, stopping his typing and turning his head to look at Zenjirou over his chair. He was in his late thirties.

“Yes. You know, the one you took the lead on and I subbed in.”

“Hmm? Ah, yeah. Wait a bit, I’m busy at the moment. I’ll email it to you if I find it. You need it today?”

“Yes, please.”

“That reminds me,” Yoshinaga said as Zenjirou turned to leave, “I heard from the chief that you’re resigning?”

He hadn’t particularly intended to hide it but was surprised it had already gotten around, and gave a vague affirmative with a guilty smile.

“Huh, so you are leaving. You’ve had a lot of projects recently... Hopefully they won’t end up with me.”

“Yes, sorry. I’ll get them as finished as I can,” Zenjirou answered with a deep bow.

It occurred to him that his resignation was a completely different matter from a total newbie leaving. He’d become a real asset to the company somewhere along the way, so it meant that a lot of his work would now fall on someone else’s shoulders. Well aware that his true reason for leaving was hardly something to be praised, he couldn’t help but feel somewhat guilty about that.