And so, I showed them the cure for beriberi. The answer Azur had longed and waited for. While I was at it, I even provided them with a refinement method for sugar, which would bring boundless wealth for the country. Yep. That was enough. No reason to keep me alive. They had the knowledge they needed. All that was left was taking care of me before I became too famous.
“Incredible calculation. How smart of him.”
I crooked my lips.
“There’s no point in throwing your malice at me, Eiji Kazama.”
“...I’m sorry.”
“In any case, let’s talk about what happens next.”
With that, the Inspector began to tell the story. After I (aka Eiji the Hermit) was killed, the official story became that the cure for beriberi was developed by the hero-king’s descendant. Anyone who knew that to be false was someone the kingdom wanted gone. Directly following my death, assassins were sent to Mister Milon’s business and the Adventurers’ Guild. As a result, both Mister Milon and Mister Garish, along with their wives, perished.
Miss Millia, who barely made it out alive, managed to escape Lishua guarded by Syfer’s team, with Baze and Hieronymus in tow. After their daring escape, they met up with Tiamat, who had caused a storm at the castle. They turned to the neighboring Noura. Noura was another country that, thanks to the rice introduced by the hero-king, had experienced a boost in their quality of dining but was suffering from an outbreak of beriberi.
Meanwhile, after monopolizing the knowledge for it, the Kingdom of Azur became the sole provider for edamame and sugar. The medicine for a mysterious disease and a new sweetener. Those were meant to bring wealth in historical proportions to Azur. But they didn’t. This was because Syfer, who had usurped the throne of Noura with the aid of a dragon, Fenrir, and Cait Sith two years later, attacked Azur.
That was the beginning of a war that spanned decades. The continent was thrown into chaos, and many lives were lost. There was no time to spend farming anymore. Food supply, along with rice production, drastically decreased, to the point where people couldn’t afford to decrease the amount of it by refining the grains. In order to eat as much as possible and consume as much nutrition as possible, people began eating brown rice.
“And so, the threat of beriberi disappeared from the continent, and the entire world.”
“Thanks to war?”
“Thanks to war.”
“What sort of ending is that!? Even more people died because of war!”
“Most likely. Millions died from the war, either directly or indirectly.”
“No...”
“But those deaths weren’t caused by a disease that was never supposed to exist. Millions and billions have died on Earth from warfare.”
The Inspector paused for a moment.
“Congratulations, Eiji Kazama. You saved that world.”
10.
I didn’t know what end result would constitute my actions as a success. That was how I felt when I first embarked on my journey in that world. Now, the Inspector had provided me with the answer. How to eliminate an ailment that never should have existed, and revert the course of history. In the midst of war, the culture provided by Shizuru the Hero-King and the knowledge I had provided would be forgotten and lost. A ridiculous ailment called beriberi, which didn’t exist on Earth during its fifth century or so, would be eliminated.
“...What the fuck?” I squeezed out in a whisper.
Now they were saved? Dying from a disease that shouldn’t exist was taboo, but dying from war was A-okay? Those were people, dammit. How much mockery were we supposed to endure?
“It’s only natural to be offended. Cleaning up someone else’s mess can’t be a fun job.”
“You knew that much, and you still...!”
“I told you in the beginning, Eiji Kazama. I don’t like inter-world travel.”
...That’s right. She had said so. And I didn’t like it either. A world we toyed around with and destroyed. In order to fix it, there had to be even more bloodshed than before?
“...Can you give me one more chance, Inspector?”
“Oh? I believe your job is done here.”
“...”
“Besides, I don’t understand why you are so passionately concerned with that world. What drives you so?”
The beautiful lady wanted an answer. Somehow it felt like she was smiling a little. That was exactly why I could respond with confidence.
“Inspector. You lied to me, didn’t you?”
“Oh?”
“The role of correcting that world, of cleaning up the hero’s mess wasn’t given to me, but to Tiamat. Am I wrong?”
The Inspector’s lips formed a crescent. She was clearly enjoying this.
“Let’s hear the reasoning for your deduction. This is very intriguing.”
“Her powers are way too strong for her to be the assistant. At no point was I needed.”
“I believe I told you that I specifically chose an average Joe.”
“I doubt that.”
I was an ordinary, average Joe. That much was irrefutable. However, there were literally billions of people like me. I wouldn’t be average if I was a rare specimen. Still, if I was someone completely unrelated to the hero, I wouldn’t have been able to deny random selection for sure, no matter how low the odds were. But I’m not. I have a connection with the hero, albeit not directly.
Shizuru Mishima was the younger brother of my fiancée, Ayano Mishima. He ended his own life six years ago. I had never met him in person. In fact, I had only met my fiancée after his death. She had only told me about her younger brother who was bullied at his high school and ended up killing himself years after his death. I imagined that that was the amount of time required for the leaves of her heart to turn, for her to tell that story to another soul, even though I was already her boyfriend.
“Tiamat wasn’t my assistant, but I was hers.”
Pausing here, I stared down the Inspector straight-on, with an intense gaze.
“And Tiamat is Ayano,” I declared after a deep breath.
“Oh? You’ve figured out that much?”
“Come to think of it, there were a lot of things that didn’t make sense.”
She suggested Ayano as the first potential name for her. That alone could have been explained by her knowledge packs. Even when we slept in the same room, or right next to each other, Tiamat showed no sign of aversion. Because we were different species? Because we didn’t see each other in a romantic light? True, and I thought those were the reasons at the time.
However, she said that she had read my favorite series. Not that she knew of it through a knowledge pack. If Tiamat had always existed in that world, there was no way that she could have ever read a book from Earth. Prime delivery didn’t cover inter-world shipping, after all.
The icing on the cake was when she was asked where she was from. “The realm of dragons,” she’d answered. In other words, she was from modern-day Japan. A Japanese woman named Ayano who had read my favorite series and felt no aversion toward sleeping next to me.
“There isn’t anyone else that meets those criteria, Miss Inspector.”
“...Amazing. That was amazing, Eiji Kazama.”
After my conclusion, the Inspector let her mouth hang open for a moment before beginning to applaud.
“I knew I couldn’t underestimate Earthlings. You recognized your lover, even with a completely different appearance.”
“A pathetic lover that didn’t notice until he’s dead.”
Of course, there were many other things that didn’t make sense. Like, despite being a dragon, not knowing how much damage her breath would deal. There were hints along the way, but I was only sure of it at the moment of my death. At the very end, it hit me from how she lost her temper. Her lover? Her fiancé? How could I still call myself that?”
“Your deduction is correct, Eiji Kazama. The one summoned to that world as a repairperson was not you, but your fiancée. The god on-site att
empted to have the blood relative of the culprit who ruined the world take responsibility for it.”
Stopping her applause, the beautiful lady became straight-faced.
“What...!?”
Adding insult to injury to a woman who lost her brother to suicide. It was the god of that world who summoned a hero in the first place. If anyone should be taking responsibility for that, it was that god. Forcing a relative of the hero to clean up the mess? The audacious thief, indeed. I gritted my teeth, with nowhere to direct my rage.
“I opposed it too. I objected to the very thought of it. But, according to policy, we must accept the requests of the god on-site. So I proposed that someone who could share her load accompany her as an assistant as a stipulation, and pushed it through.”
“And I was chosen for it.”
“Are you unhappy about it?”
“No. Thank you. I can’t thank you enough.”
Her saving grace. That should be me. It had to be me. I would never pass this torch to anyone else.
“I thought you’d say so, Eiji Kazama.”
“With that in mind, I beg of you.”
On my hands and knees in the void, I scraped my forehead on the ground.
“Please give me one more chance. One more chance to help her.”
“Please get up, Eiji Kazama. If you grovel so easily, you’ll devalue yourself.”
The Inspector smiled. Her expression was filled with compassion.
“Incomplete job description. This is clearly a mistake on our part. Therefore, I will accept your request.”
She winked. This woman...! She had knowingly kept this excuse up her sleeve, so she could grant me a re-do if I pointed it out.
“But, Eiji Kazama, this is the only card I have. There won’t be a next time. You die again, and your job really will be done.”
With no cheat codes, and below-average abilities, I had to survive.
Bring it on.
I welcomed it. I wanted to protect her for the rest of my life. That’s why I proposed.
“Just watch your back, Eiji Kazama.”
“I’ll keep it in mind, Inspector.”
As I replied, my body was enveloped in light. I wasn’t surprised, since I had already experienced it once before. When the light would fade, I would be back in Azur. The beautiful lady faded out of my vision.
“Huh?”
I crooked my neck. The Inspector had disappeared just like last time, but someone else had appeared. This effect was new. The person appeared to be high-school-aged. A boy with kind eyes. I didn’t recognize him, but he looked a little bit like my fiancée.
“...Are you Shizuru?”
No answer. I didn’t even know if he had heard me. Probably for some vague reason like ‘we’re not existing on the same timeline’ or something. My interpretation was too sci-fi-esque to know for sure. I didn’t mind it, though. He was my dear brother-in-law.
“It’s all right, Shizuru. They’re your descendants. I just missed a button last time, that’s all.”
Although he may not have heard me, I tried to tell him in a comforting tone.
“They’ll understand. Trust me. And Ayano.”
The boy began to fade. I thought I saw the faintest smile on his face.
I nodded again. I wasn’t going to have the story my brother-in-law told conclude with a bad ending. I wanted the people he saved to be happy. So... I jumped, one more time.
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Copyright
Isekai Rebuilding Project: Volume 1
by Yukika Minamino
Translated by Adam Seacord
Edited by John Thorne
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 Yukika Minamino
Illustrations by Kotokan
All rights reserved.
First published in Japan in 2019 by Kodansha Ltd., Tokyo.
Publication rights for this English edition arranged through Kodansha Ltd., Tokyo.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
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The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Ebook edition 1.0: February 2020
Isekai Rebuilding Project: Volume 1 Page 14