Bonus Story:
What Would You Take to a Desert Island?
“Hey, everyone, if you were going to wash up all alone on the shore of a desert island, and you could only have one thing with you, what would you take?”
“Here we go again with the out-of-nowhere nonsense …”
As usual, Mile had brought up some inscrutable line of questioning out of the blue. And as usual, Reina and the others went along with it. Truth be told, Mile sometimes asked these sorts of questions specifically as reference for the books that she secretly wrote under a pen name. Her knowledge from her previous life, combined with the far too many novels she had read, made it well-nigh impossible for her to craft plausible stories entirely on her own.
And so…
“A sword!”
Who could have expected any other response from Mavis?
A sword was the obvious choice for the swordswoman, but Reina and Pauline were mages, and did not actually need their staves for casting magic. The staff was nothing more than a weapon for beating away approaching monsters or enemies who fought at melee. If they wanted a staff, they could just cut down a tree branch on the island and make one.
And so, Mile wondered what the pair of them would choose…
“A boat!”
“ Bzzt! Bzzt! Pauline!” Mile waved her hands around in front of her chest in exasperation.
This phrasing was one that Mile used often that everyone had come to understand that this meant something along the lines of, Out of bounds, try again.
“The Kingdom of Balmore!”
“ Bzzt! Bzzt! Reina! If you bring along a whole country, that’s a populace of hundreds of thousands—millions! Then it’s not a desert island anymore! You wouldn’t be surviving, you’d just be living normally and could buy whatever you wanted in town!”
Before her reincarnation, Mile herself had read novels where the main character was reincarnated in a fantasy world. In some of those books, they could do whatever they wanted from the get-go, regardless of only being able to take one thing with them through their reincarnation. Sometimes, they were even reincarnated with an intergalactic heavy cruiser, controlled by humanoid computers—which of course came with androids shaped like cute girls to serve the main character as navigation terminals.
“The night is heavy. Er, shut up! Morning and noon are heavy, too!”
The other three stared speechless as Mile carried on her one-woman routine.
Just then…
“Oh, I know!” said Mavis, hitting her forehead in a d’oh gesture. “There’s one single thing you could take, that if you had it, you would never want for anything…”
“Huh?” asked Reina and Pauline, while Mile peered at Mavis, intrigued.
“So, what is it?”
“Mile!” Mavis replied.
“Huh?”
“It’s you, Mile. If I had you, I’d never have to worry about food. If my sword broke, you could fix it, and if I got bored you could tell me fairy tales. You know so many stories and games, and I wouldn’t even have to worry about stray dragons. It’s perfect! You only need one Mile per household. With the right preparations, she never causes any trouble, she’s compact, so there’s never any difficulty finding somewhere to store her, and she’s light and easy to carry,” Mavis explained.
“That’s true!” Reina and Pauline agreed immediately. It was pretty brilliant.
However…
“Gaaah! I said you’re going there alone. Alone! Also, are you saying that I’m a ‘thing’ you can just take with you?!?!”
“I mean, we always say it’s ridiculous how useful you are…”
“Shut up!”
Mile was fuming.
A month later…
“Oh, hey, Miami Satodele’s got a new book out… Something something… My Life on a Deserted Island with an All-Powerful Sorcerer Gir l ?”
Mile had adopted the plotline wholesale.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login