Rumors

Perhaps it was because Tana reconfirmed that I had succeeded in saving people this time, unlike before when I tried but couldn’t save anyone.

The aftermath of revealing fragments of painful memories to someone else took quite a long time to subside.

I’m not sure if it’s because my body has become younger, but things I thought I had become numb to now felt vividly real again.

A bitter feeling unfamiliar to a child’s body.

Nevertheless, instead of forcibly swallowing these emotions, I let them flow outward.

Simply because there was someone there to watch over me.

Because there were only quiet silences surrounding me instead of the pointing fingers of people who wanted to blame something.

I let everything flow out until nothing remained.

It was only afterward that I voiced a belated question.

“But how did you know… that I went to the dungeon?”

The answer that came back was incredibly simple.

Among the various functions of the device, there was also a location tracking function.

I only then realized I had already heard this fact from Asha once before.

“Th-then does Asha already know everything too?”

“The location tracking function doesn’t work well around dungeons, so she probably can’t know exactly where you went.”

His voice told me I could just make up a story about visiting a restaurant in the outskirts of the city, as I had told Diaz earlier.

I was slightly taken aback by the fact that even such trivial details had already been reported to Tana, but there was no point in hiding it now anyway.

“It would be good for you to look up what menu items the restaurant is famous for.”

I could only nod at Tana’s advice for a more plausible lie.

After quietly watching all the video recordings on my device being deleted.

I headed back to the still-empty home with Tana and obediently returned the transformation potion I had obtained under the pretext of a non-existent request.

From Tana’s perspective, this was only natural, so I couldn’t raise any objections.

However, I realized there were a few more things I needed to give to Tana.

I asked him to wait a moment at the door, then brought and handed over the potions I had set aside from the workshop a few days ago.

To the puzzled person, what I added was not an accurate prediction of a situation that had not yet occurred, but a possibility just in case.

“I heard that the emergency potions in the measurement room are all gone. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.”

I didn’t specify one by one how and where these various potions would be needed.

There was no particular benefit in showing that I knew about the future.

I had already been doing things far from normal, and if it were to be revealed that I was even preparing in advance for a small commotion that would happen soon…

Anyway, it was better to be taken as a coincidence.

It needed to be thought of as potions I had bought after remembering something a request office employee had merely muttered, not something I had prepared in advance by foreseeing the future.

Fortunately, it seemed there would be no issues since he accepted the potions I handed over without further questions.

However, when the device with all video recordings deleted was returned to me shortly afterward.

“It would be better not to mention the clothes Ms. Lua borrowed. That outfit was quite precious to Asha.”

Because I heard a fact from the person who served as both Vice Guild Master and secretary that I wouldn’t have known in my first playthrough.

And then finally learned of its price, which exceeded imagination.

“As much as I’d like to help, it’s a brand that can no longer be obtained. Well then, goodbye.”

Having been dealt the finishing blow that it was impossible to even procure the same type of clothes, I felt like crying for a different reason than before.

…What should I do?

Really, what should I do…?

“If what Tana says is true, then there’s one, two, three, four zeros… Aaaaaahhh…”

The price for borrowing someone else’s clothes without permission and then reducing them to rags was too great.

In the end, for quite a long time after that day, I found myself unconsciously being wary around Asha.

Although I couldn’t go back to the dungeon anyway, now that I knew everything I did was being recorded.

At most, I could only run small errands like before.

But since I spent all my time beside Asha except for requests that had to be done for a better future, I tried to accommodate Asha as much as possible.

It was a kind of precautionary measure for the day when she might finally discover that I was the culprit who made her beloved clothes disappear.

“Hey, Lua. Don’t you get bored just watching your sister work? You said you wanted to go around here and there before.”

“W-well, I think I like being next to you the most, Unnie… I’ve already seen all the places worth visiting…”

“Huh…? Really?”

True to my nickname as “Asha’s attachment doll,” I felt I needed to stick close to her to minimize her anger later.

In the end, this was all my karma.

Of course, I knew that being petted or having my face squished was nowhere near enough to pay for clothes of such an absurd price… but what could I do? This was all I could do right now.

So, during the days when I tried my best to keep Asha in a good mood, I viscerally understood why people shouldn’t live committing sins.

Some people might be able to act brazen about it, but that wasn’t the case for me.

“Hey, Unnie. Do you want to… eat together after a long time? At the restaurant we went to before?”

“No, I’ll make you a delicious omelet today. By myself!”

“Wooow…”

I simply couldn’t refuse anything she wanted to do with me or for me.

While there wasn’t really any reason to refuse, unlike before, it felt like the option to refuse had disappeared entirely.

The omelet I tasted about two or three hours later, while gripped by guilt and regret, was unfortunately extremely delicious.

To exaggerate slightly, it was a taste that completely overturned the concept of omelets as I had known them.

“How is it?”

To her literally expectant expression, I showed a thumbs up instead of answering.

What I immediately saw was a face that looked happier than ever before.

The only regret was that it would have tasted much better if I had tried it without any worries.

“Hello~.”

“Oh, Lua’s here!”

Perhaps because quite some time had passed since the particularly childish voice began to mingle in scenes far from tranquil.

Among the people who frequented the Lunatic Guild headquarters, there was no one who didn’t know about the child named Lua.

After all, even without waiting for her to appear, one could easily encounter her wandering around various parts of the guild headquarters.

In fact, her name had been well-known for quite a long time, so it wasn’t easy to be completely unaware of her existence.

However, whether the child had qualities as a hunter.

Whether she possessed any special abilities was not known at all.

This was because there had been no occasion to witness the child’s combat abilities.

There had been a rumor briefly circulating that she had clashed head-on with the Vice Guild Master from her first day at the guild headquarters, but it was an unfounded rumor without much credibility.

“I guess she’ll become a magic-type hunter like the Guild Master?”

“She could also make a good healer. Those soft hands could probably heal most wounds just by caressing them.”

“…Why does that actually sound like it would work?”

The request office employees’ speculations without any real basis were abundant.

However, a little less than two months from when the child first set foot in the guild headquarters.

She began disappearing somewhere with a retired hunter who was said to have been specially brought in to be in charge of her education.

Additionally, for some reason, the sight of her small body covered with band-aids and bandages here and there kept catching people’s eyes.

“Um, Lua. Is that teacher person hitting you…?”

“N-no! Nothing like that ever happens. I’m really fine.”

However, even to the carefully voiced question asked out of concern, she waved her hands excessively and insisted she was fine.

Coincidentally, this was one of the typical patterns seen in abused children.

Eventually, a strange rumor began to spread that she was being dragged to secluded places and subjected to beatings.

The teacher’s rough and fierce appearance also contributed significantly to this.

Decisively, because no one dared to speak to that fierce hunter, what was clearly a rumor at first somehow became accepted as fact.

“Maybe it’s because the Guild Master has been so busy lately. She doesn’t seem to be paying attention to Lua.”

“But before, she said she was watching all the class recordings… Would she just stand by and watch Lua suffering, no matter how busy she is?”

“…You never know. She might have that kind of preference.”

“Come on, surely not…”