by Hirukuma,
Shui puffs out her chest and brags as though it were her personal accomplishment. Next to her, Lammis nods in an exaggerated manner. The children’s eyes sparkle as they peer inside the spinning washing machine.
“Oh my. I don’t quite understand it, but it certainly is amazing. Magic items these days are so helpful.”
Miss Director’s response reminds me of an old-fashioned mother faced with the latest electronic device. She doesn’t get it, but if nothing else, she knows it’s amazing. Er, not that I’m amazing but that Japanese technology really is impressive.
“It’ll be finished washing soon, so let’s all get into the bath before then. Come on, if you don’t hurry, I’ll catch you and slurp you all up!”
“Waaaaah!”
Shui, while sticking her tongue out and waggling it up and down, chases the children around. The children shriek and flee, but they seem like they’re having fun.
If Shui were a man, this would 100 percent be a crime. Actually, even a woman would be out of the question if the children felt uncomfortable.
“If we want to wash our underwear, too, I guess we should bring Boxxo near the bathroom.”
“Welcome.”
You’re right. I’ll finish drying them in just ten minutes, so it should be done while you’re in the bath.
“Oh, wait. He’s heavy, so I wonder if he’ll break the floor.”
“In that case, if you would be so kind as to bring him around the back, you can put him behind the bathroom. There’s a back door.”
“Okay, then I’ll go around the outside and come in that way.”
Lammis hoists me onto her back, and we go around the outside wall until a door comes into sight. That must be the back door.
After she puts me down with my back against the wall, she quietly opens the door. On the other side is the changing room for the bath, packed full of half-naked and fully naked children.
Are they all going to get in at once? If they are, it must be a considerably large bathtub.
“Hey now, don’t fight it. You’re all in for a wash!”
Shui, naked as the day she was born, lifts up a small child and disappears into the bathroom. She has short-cut hair and favors food more than romance, but I guess she really is a girl.
“Ahh! There’s no water in the bath!”
“My, my. Who was on bath duty today, I wonder?”
Miss Director, who came to the changing room to see, puts a finger to her cheek and tilts her head. As the children look around at one another, wondering who it could be, two girls raise their hands and step forward.
“W-we’re sorry. We were playing with Shui, and we forgot.”
As they try to make themselves look small, Miss Director gently places her hands on their heads. They give a start, then look back up and meet her gaze.
“It’s not good that you forgot your chores, but thank you for being honest. Everyone makes mistakes. What’s important is not to lie about them but to admit to them and learn from them.”
With so many parents always scolding their kids without giving them a chance to say anything for themselves, it seems to me like it’s more natural to admonish them properly—and not all that difficult, besides.
Even among my friends and relatives, some yelled at their kids so much that I felt sorry for them, and I’ve tried, on numerous occasions, to tell them they didn’t have to get so mad. They’re better than parents who don’t get angry at all and leave things be, but it seemed like they overdid it at times… Still, I guess this is nothing I can get so high and mighty about when I was a single man who didn’t know anything about the hardships of raising kids.
“But what will we do now? It will take time to collect water and heat it with firewood. We’ll have to give up on baths for today.”
If they’re not taking a bath after getting so chilled from playing in the water earlier, I worry that they’ll catch a cold. I wonder if there’s anything I can do for them. Is there a feature of some kind?
“Oh, it looks like Boxxo’s done washing. I’ll take the clothes out.”
It looks like even the drying is finished. As Lammis takes the clean laundry out, I skim through my features list.
Nothing to do with baths, huh? Let’s see, it’ll take time to heat the water, so hot water… Oh, right. I could do that.
After making sure there’s no laundry left inside me, I do my third form change of the day—into a hot-spring vending machine.
As its name would suggest, this machine can automatically sell you a hot spring. It says so right here on my quadrangular prism body in Japanese: HOT-SPRING VENDING MACHINE. A hose comes out of the side, and it’s set up to give hot-spring water for two minutes for a hundred yen.
I’ve seen this vending machine once in a blue moon at hot-spring locations, and while I’ve used it before, the water cools off before getting back home, so you need to reheat it.
“That’s another shape I’ve never seen, Boxxo. How many different forms could you possibly have?”
I wonder how many there are. I’ve never taken the time to count, but I think just the ones I can change into number close to twenty.
“Um, this long thing is… If it’s like how the other things work, something comes out of here, right? And in this situation… I got it!”
Lately, most of the figuring out of how to use machines has fallen on Hulemy, but Lammis’s intuition is also quite impressive.
Hulemy tries to figure out my abilities based on the situation and my shape, but with Lammis, it’s like she reads my mind to understand—as though making assumptions based on my personality.
I honestly couldn’t be more grateful to Lammis for being so earnest with a mere vending machine.
She throws open the bathroom door and sticks the hose in the tub. Then she glances back at me with a wink— Is that a signal? All right, I’ll release all the spring water.
The hot water rushes out, and possibly thanks to my speed stat, it fills the tub within moments.
“Wow, awesome!”
“It’s a bath; it’s a bath!”
“Jump in!”
“Hey! It’s bath time, not playtime!”
The voices of the children and of Shui scolding them echo through the bathroom. I’ve finished my job of supplying the hot water, so I decide to change back into a washing machine and finish the rest of the laundry.
Lammis takes off all her clothes, too, and, from the sound of it, helps wash everyone in the bath.
“You’re Mr. Boxxo, correct? Thank you very much for this. You’ve helped us in so many ways.”
The next thing I know, Miss Director is standing right next to me.
I’m still not sure exactly how she feels about me, but she does bow her head deeply to a vending machine.
“Welcome.”
“Um, that’s an affirmative, right? I’ve been worried about Shui. She’s been brooding over something recently, but seeing her like this today puts me at ease. Please continue to take good care of her.”
What a benevolent person, to thank a mere vending machine and find it in herself to entrust Shui’s well-being to me. Although she’s acting nice, I’m really not used to situations like this—if I had a body, I’d be cringing.
Anyway, what could Shui be worried about when she has such a warm place to come home to? It probably takes a lot of funding to maintain an orphanage, so maybe she’s after money. Hmm. It would be rude to pry in a situation like this.
After laundry and baths, I end up treating everyone to dinner. Figuring everyone would like foods they’ve never had before, I provide frozen meal sets and cup ramen. The nutritional balance bothers me, though, so for dessert I give them fruits and crepes.
The floors in the cafeteria as well as the rooms are still of dubious durability, so they decide to keep me next to the front door of the orphanage. It’d be too risky to have me on the floorboards, after all.
I thought I’d have a moment to myself to relax while the kids ate, but they said I’d be lonely by
myself, so they ended up bringing the chairs and tables outside to eat in the yard.
There are a lot of empty houses around this orphanage. They probably wouldn’t get that many complaints, even if they were rowdy. Immediately upon putting a forkful of food in their mouths, they shout their praise to the heavens.
“Don’t eat so fast, guys. The food’s not going anywhere.”
Shui briskly takes care of the kids’ needs. She’s playing the responsible older-sister role. I know how much of a heavy eater she is, but she’s putting her own meal last and prioritizing the kids.
The children’s clothing is all rather plain… No, I’m being too ambiguous. They’re all wearing shoddy clothing, and not one of them has much in the way of fat. Still, I can’t see any overly skinny ones, either, so it seems like they’re managing to eat enough food to survive.
Maybe I’ll give them some underwear, T-shirts, and towels later.
I could also donate money, but would it be right to accept charity from a vending machine? At times like this, I don’t know how much I should really be getting involved or how much to give. If I had the ability to talk normally, could I give aid without rubbing anyone the wrong way?
I’ve been thinking only of accumulating money in order to gain points, but when I look at these kids seeming so happy despite being in poverty, I start to feel like a bit of a lowlife.
“Your lights are blinking. Is something on your mind? Boxxo, you can just be Boxxo. You can afford to give everyone food for free and put smiles on their faces, right? You should be more confident in yourself.”
At some point, Lammis came over to stand next to me, and she offers me words that get right to the heart of what I was feeling concerned about as she smiles sweetly.
Lammis is incredible. She takes the time to understand what a mere vending machine who can’t speak is thinking, and she’s so considerate. I’m truly glad she was the one who found me.
And she’s right. I am me—and nothing more. I don’t intend to stop saving up money for points, but from now on, I’ll spare a thought for the world around me as well.
A Night in the Origin Stratum
After eating so much dinner that their stomachs seem fit to burst, the children have all settled down to sleep. We’re inside a cave you can’t see the sky from, so the distinction between night and morning tends to be vague, but it is apparently night right now.
Living here would probably throw off your sense of night and day.
At night, I could go into energy-saver mode, but my surroundings are just as bright, so I should be able to stay like this without problems.
Light is still coming from a window of the orphanage, the renovated former mansion; does that mean Miss Director or Lammis and Shui are still awake?
“Thanks for today, Boxxo. Everyone was super-happy and grateful and excited.”
Shui sits down next to me cross-legged, and she sways, as though using her entire body to express how happy she is.
As a vending machine, I’m honored that I was able to contribute to her happiness.
Her cheeks are somewhat flushed, probably because she guzzled the cocktail I provided for the table. She thought it was just juice, so she drank quite a lot.
“I bet today wasn’t cheap. I’ll definitely pay you back, so just wait a little while longer.”
“Too bad.”
“What? You don’t wanna wait?”
No, that’s not it. I wanted to say she doesn’t have to pay, but it sure is tough getting the subtler nuances across. Lammis and Hulemy are still the only ones I can have a smooth conversation with.
Besides, if I was going to demand money, it would be from the eatery owners. There’s no need whatsoever for Shui, who won me as the victory prize, to pay.
“Too bad. Thank you.”
“Um, do you mean I don’t have to pay?”
“Welcome.” I managed to get the point across. I’ll give her a cola as thanks for understanding me.
I drop a two-liter bottle of her favorite cola drink into my compartment. For someone who eats so much, she didn’t have a lot tonight for dinner, so she’s probably far from satisfied. She was giving her own portion to the kids, too, so I think she’s still got plenty of room left in her stomach.
“Ah, the fizzy drink! Thanks, I wasn’t quite full yet!”
She opens the lid, then puts the mouth to her lips and heartily gulps down the contents. It’s heavy on the carbonation, so if you drink it all at once like that, you’ll—
“Whewww! Hicc— Uuuurp.”
Her burp echoes far and wide in the dark of night. It seems to have embarrassed even her, and she looks down, her face red.
What should I say in order to soften the mood at times like this? Okay, I got it.
“Get one free with a winner.”
She blushes even harder. Must have been the wrong choice of words.
“A-anyway. Did you know that the Origin stratum is a place everyone always visits when they come into the dungeon?”
Oh, really? They were calling it the first stratum, so I’d figured it was the first floor of the dungeon.
“Too bad.”
“It’s set up so you have to enter this stratum first and get to the transfer circle at the end, or else you can’t move to other strata. Basically, people who can’t even make it past the Origin stratum don’t have the right to advance to other ones.”
I get it. I’d heard movement between strata via the transfer circles was free, but I guess when it comes to this one, that doesn’t fly. Wait… If that’s the case, does that mean innkeepers and businesspeople conquered the Origin stratum, too?
I wonder if there are hunters whose job it is to be bodyguards so other people can get through the Origin stratum.
“But if you reach the transfer circle at the end just once, you can jump to wherever you want next time.”
So you don’t have to get through the first stratum every time you go back to the surface? The attention to detail makes me feel like I understand the dungeon’s inner workings even less now.
“A lot of the folks who couldn’t make it to the transfer circle at the end of the first stratum decide to stay here in this settlement for some reason. The same goes for people who ended up having kids and couldn’t advance. The kids who are born without knowing the outside world, the ones who were abandoned because they were tying people down…end up here.”
So the kids at the orphanage don’t know of anything outside the dungeon. In fact, they’ve never even moved from this stratum, either, so they’ve been raised without experiencing the sky, or weather, or fresh air. Hmm. That seems like it would negatively affect a child’s growth.
Shouldn’t they feel, at least once, the sun’s light, the winds blowing around them—a world abundant with nature?
“My wish is to make everyone at the orphanage hap— Ah, I feel weirdly talkative today. Just forget I said that. I’m going to sleep! Good night!”
She swings her arms and, with an unsteady gait, disappears behind the door. Thanks to the alcohol, I was able to learn quite a lot.
All sorts of people are living their lives, with as many problems as there are Origin stratum residents. It’s stating the obvious, but lately, I haven’t thought about anything except my business as a vending machine and my own points.
I mean, I think that’s the proper stance for a vending machine to take, but I can’t quite grasp how much consideration to give. If I provide things at cheap prices or offer gratuitous service, then the eatery owners will be in a bind, and I won’t get any more points. I’ll have to keep the difference between business and volunteer work in mind.
“Hey, is it here?”
“Yeah, bro. Word on the street is there’s a rare magic item here.”
I hear the voices of men who sound unmistakably like hooligans. To appear with an explanation that revealed their motive in a single sentence—they don’t leave anything to the imagination, do they?
There may not be man
y people around, but I certainly can’t call this stratum lawful, even as a kindness. We must have been too rowdy. We should have kept it down a little more.
For the first time in a while, I’ve encountered potential thieves. I’m kind of interested in what sort of action they’ll take. Before I can see them, I put out my lights and change coloring to blend in with the dark.
“You sure? It gives you food for free?”
“Yeah. One of my guys said he saw it with his own eyes, bro.”
I peel my eyes to look at the figures steadily growing closer. There are four men, big and brawny like pro wrestlers. They seem prepared to carry me—they even brought a handcart.
I’m known pretty much all over Clearflow Lake, but I’m a no-name in this stratum. Of course they’d come after me.
These men could likely carry me, too. What shall I do? If I shout and wake up Lammis and the others, they’ll probably run away. But that might put the girls in danger. I’ll handle things myself this time. Let’s pick useful-seeming features from the ones I already have.
This one, and this—and this will be useful. I’ve got both Force Field and a high toughness stat. As long as nothing crazy happens, I don’t think I’ll be kidnapped like last time.
First, I change into a dry-ice vending machine and spread piles of dry ice on the ground near me. Next, I turn into a pressure washer and scatter water all around. When the water hits the dry ice, it creates a white mist that covers the ground in a thin layer.
After that, I turn into a jukebox and start the music.
“Hey, anyone else’s feet feel awfully cold?”
“What’s that sound I hear…?”
“Strange music…”
I play a song commonly heard in horror movies, and the men restlessly look around. Combined with this stratum’s dimness, the atmosphere is perfect.
What should I do now? Spreading kerosene and starting a fire would obviously be going too far. If I just need to make them retreat, what would be best?
They came to kidnap—rather, steal me, so they didn’t bring any light. They might be able to see in the dark, but probably not very far. In that case, I think I’ll manage if I threaten them.