by Dojyomaru
“Hey, that sounds like it could end up bein’ fun, too,” said Lucy, who had decided to lie down on Vela’s bed at some point. Out of everyone present, she was the one living the most normal life.
“Isn’t it easier being able to commute from home every day?” Velza asked.
“No, no,” Lucy replied, waving her hand at the idea. “If I’m at home, I get dragged into helpin’ at the shop, and that means havin’ to be the lovable poster girl for all our customers, y’know? ...Well, I do get an allowance for doin’ it, so I don’t really mind.”
“Well, aren’t you crafty?” Yuriga shrugged.
“You wanna try workin’, too, Yurie? I think ya’d be popular.”
“...Training for club is too much already. I can’t do work on top of that,” she replied with a serious look on her face. Members of the Mage Soccer Club were often subjected to harsh training.
“Oh, uh, sorry.” Lucy backed down.
Tomoe clapped her hands and said, “But it’s great being able to earn money for yourself. I think it’d be lovely if I could give Big Brother and my big sisters birthday presents with money that I earned myself.”
“If you started working, a third of the customers at the shop would be your bodyguards.”
“Ohh, you’ve got a point there, Yuriga.”
Tomoe smiled wryly as she imagined the faces of the guards who were always so concerned for her. They wouldn’t just be watching from the shadows, there would likely be plainclothes bodyguards mixed in with the customers, too.
“If they’re payin’ customers, I’m more than happy to welcome her bodyguards.”
“You really are a crafty one,” Yuriga retorted again with a shrug.
Velza quietly raised her hand. “In that case, I would like to try working. It seems the Cooking Society doesn’t meet every day.”
“Do you mean it? We’d be thrilled to have ya, Velie,” Lucy said gleefully and hugged Velza’s arm. “We can be the poster girls for The Cat’s Tree. We’ll take the world by storm.”
“I don’t really want to take the world by storm... just make money.”
“Is there something you want?” Tomeo asked.
“I want to give a present to the people who’ve taken care of me, too,” Velza responded shyly.
Who was she imagining? The way her cheeks flushed and she smiled a little made the other three curious.
“A present? Who for? Who for?”
“Could this be for the person you were saying you wanted to serve?”
“I’m not lettin’ go of this arm until you tell us.”
“I-It’s a secret.”
As the three pressed in closer, Velza turned her head to the side. They kept at it until Velza could take no more and exploded, and the girls’ talk continued from there.
Making Goods for the Ghost Festival
“Your Majesty, I have come at your behest,” Sebastian said with a reverent bow upon arriving.
I had called Roroa and Sebastian to the governmental affairs office today. In putting on the Ghost Festival, I was going to be leaning on Roroa’s company, which Sebastian was the public face of, so I needed to talk to the two of them quickly.
“I want to create some things that will make it easy for ordinary people to dress up for the Ghost Festival.” I laid a piece of paper out on the desk where it was easy for them to see. It was a simple sketch of a hairband with cat ears on it. “I’d like for your company to develop and mass-produce items like this one, which lets people dress up with just one part of their body.”
I was thinking of something like the mouse ears sold at a certain “land of dreams” in order to help guests enjoy the park. (Or was it to subject them to peer pressure from their fellow guests?)
“We don’t have much time before the event, but could I ask you to take care of it?”
“Let’s see...” said Sebastian, who looked like the sort of gentleman who should be drinking Earl Grey tea and stroking his mustache. “If we can gain the cooperation of companies with the right connections, mass-producing simple things should be possible. Though, that assumes we have decided on what will be produced from the start.”
That meant we wouldn’t make it in time if we started by just rattling off ideas. That was within the realm of expectations.
“I want to narrow down the number of items, and decide what we are going to do here. I plan to put a lot of detail into the loreleis’ outfits, but for the people’s costumes, cheap, simple, and plentiful is what we want.”
Besides, there would be a sense of taboo around dressing up in any monster costume that was too involved. I had talked this over with Bishop Souji and the higher-ups of the other state religions, but it was the first time we were doing this, so I needed to carefully watch the people’s reactions.
“I’ll be having the loreleis wear demon-like costumes, but we’ll need other ghost costumes, too.”
“Ghosts, huh...? I can’t think of any.” Roroa crossed her arms and cocked her head to the side.
...Oh, right. This world doesn’t have a lot of different ideas of what ghosts are like. There was just the traditional ghost, and the will o’ wisp. Because zombies and skeletons actually existed, they were categorized as monsters instead. The flame pierrots I had invented had been treated like a new kind of monster, too. It had to be the fact that you couldn’t see them that gave ghosts and youkai their flavor.
“So, I was thinking I’d fill in the gap with ghosts from my world. Using the ones that can be made the cutest... For a start, there’s this.” I showed them a cutesy drawing of a ghost I’d drawn from memory.
“Darlin’, what’s this?”
“It’s a jiangshi. They’re a type of ghost from my world.”
“What kind of youkai is it?”
“It’s a reanimated corpse... I guess. Some sort of mage puts a talisman on them, and then is able to control them freely... Basically, it’s like a remote control zombie. This one’s foreign to me, too, so I couldn’t go into detail about the origins of it and whatnot.”
“Hmm... Is there anythin’ a bit more distinctive about it?” Roroa asked.
“Well...” I wracked my brain. “Because of rigor mortis, they can’t bend their arms and legs, so they hop along like this, with their arms outstretched.”
I stood up and imitated the child jiangshi from an old movie my grandpa had, doing the jiangshi jump in time with a children’s song about pigeons. That caught Roroa’s attention, and her eyes sparkled.
“What’s that all about?! It’s an awfully cheerful ghost.”
“No, scary jiangshi are properly scary, though...”
Hrm... I feel like I’m not communicating this right. The only image I had of jiangshi was that movie, and I lacked the information to correct it. Maybe this was what it was like when foreigners got the wrong idea about samurai.
“Got anythin’ else?”
“Well, there’s this one ghost that’s a giant single eye that says, ‘You damn lolicons’...”
That was how I ended up explaining the ghosts of my old world to Roroa. Because my tastes were a tad eccentric, I may have gotten riled up and given her some wrong information, too. The result of all this was some simple costumes for the jiangshi, tengu, wolf man, wolf woman, among others. But in addition to those costumes, Roroa’s company also sold an encyclopedia of Earth’s youkai, which was well-received. That caused a ghost story boom in the castle, and...
“Souma! Would you stop trying to turn the royal capital into a den of demons?!”
In the end, I ended up getting another lecture from Liscia.
The Ghost Festival (The Republic Team’s Perspective)
“Ookyakya! This is getting exciting!” Kuu was enjoying himself as he looked around at all the hustle and bustle of the festival.
The trio of Kuu, Taru, and Leporina had come to the first Parnaam Ghost Festival, which was being sponsored by Souma, as regular attendees. Leporina, who was wearing a short black dress with bat wings growi
ng out of the back of it spun around in front of Kuu.
“Hey, hey, Master Kuu, does this suit me?”
She was wearing a devil girl costume. The thin dress accentuated her figure, making Kuu avert his eyes awkwardly.
“W-Well... I guess it’s okay?” Thump! “Ow!”
He turned around in the direction of the blow to his head, and there, wearing a pointy witch’s hat and black cape, looking a little dissatisfied, was Taru.
“Wh-What’s the big idea, Taru?!”
“You don’t understand how women feel, Master Kuu. You have to look at her properly.”
“You can say that all you want, but Leporina’s...”
“Not just your bodyguard anymore?” Taru asked him with unswerving eyes. Kuu was speechless.
A little before Souma’s wedding ceremony, Kuu had gotten engaged to his childhood friends Taru and Leporina. Basically, that meant that this Ghost Festival was his first festival date with his two fiancées. Up until now, because of his feelings for Taru, even if he noticed his own affection for Leporina, he had done his best not to look at her as a woman. But now that he had accepted her as a fiancée with Taru’s blessing, he had to see her as a woman.
I tried to ignore her all this time... Can you blame me for being confused?
Leporina smiled, as if she could see right through what Kuu was thinking. “I get it, Master Kuu. You’re feeling shy, right?”
“D-Don’t be stupid. Why would I feel that way towards you...?”
“Hee hee, you can look more, you know? I dressed up to get you to compliment me, after all,” Leporina said, striking a pose.
“Oh, yeah? Bring it on! In that case, I’m gonna look!”
Kuu stared hard at Leporina. She had the beauty of a model, with her arms and legs being long and slender, but the rest of her body sticking out in all the right places...
“Take that!”
“Ow! Again, Taru?!”
Taking another smack upside the head, Kuu’s eyes watered a little as he protested the abuse, but Taru held her staff tight as she looked away peevishly.
“When you only look at Leporina... it kind of makes me mad.”
“Isn’t that kind of unreasonable?!”
“...I dressed up today, too.”
“You dressed up, huh?” Kuu said as he rubbed his head. “Yeah, I think you look cute, too, of course. You usually dress like a boy, but today you’re dressed up as a girl, even if it’s as a witch. There’s no way you wouldn’t look cute.”
There was a moment of surprise, then, “...Thanks.”
Taru remained expressionless, but there was something not unpleasant about her expression as she thanked him. When she saw the look on Taru’s face, Leprina’s cheeks puffed up with dissatisfaction.
“Murgh... How is it you can be so forthcoming with praise for Taru? You didn’t even hesitate.”
Kuu let out his trademark monkey-like laugh. “Hey, I’ve been trying to woo her for way longer. How could I be embarrassed about it now?”
“Whaaaa, is that how it works?”
“Yeah. Complimenting you, on the other hand... I feel like you’re going to give me a smug look, so it feels complicated doing it.”
“Wait, what does that mean?!”
“...I kind of get where you’re coming from.”
“Even you, Taru?!”
The unexpected betrayal from Taru left Leporina the one on the verge of tears this time. But seeing Leporina with tears in her eyes, Kuu and Taru both agreed that it was kind of unfair how cute she looked.
They looked at one another, then each offered a hand to Leporina.
“Come on, don’t mope forever. Let’s go, Leporina.”
“We don’t get to have a festival every day. We’ve got to enjoy it.”
Looking at the hands she’d been offered, Leporina wiped her tears and smiled.
“Okay! I wouldn’t want you leaving me behind, after all!”
With that said, she grasped both their hands firmly.
The relationship between the three childhood friends seemed unchanged, and yet maybe a little different... Well, that was about how it was.
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Copyright
How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Volume 11
by Dojyomaru
Translated by Sean McCann
Edited by Meiru
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 Dojyomaru
Illustrations by Fuyuyuki
All rights reserved.
Original Japanese edition published in 2019 by OVERLAP, Inc.
This English edition is published by arrangement with OVERLAP, Inc., Tokyo
English translation © 2020 J-Novel Club LLC
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: April 2020
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