TRYING A DAY OFF, DEMON-STYLE
Beelzebub’s insistence about bringing the girls to the demon lands was getting annoying, so the whole family decided to go to the town around Vanzeld Castle.
I also brought along Wynona, by the way, as a special guest.
“Wow… Demon towns are so developed…” Wynona the adventurer was simply shocked.
“I was surprised when I first came, too. There are some eerie-looking storefronts here and there, but it’s peaceful here. Almost carefree.”
“Mm, Stepmother, could you please be a bit less motherly?” Wynona objected.
“Well, I might be your stepmother, but I’m still your mother, which means I have the right to be motherly!”
She was way too strict with me. I wished she were a bit sweeter and easier to understand. But the fact that she’d come along at all was a huge step.
“The candy shop over there is really good!”
“Miss Beelzebub often buys us gifts from there.”
“Is that so, Sisters? I would like to visit, then.”
She was obviously much closer to Falfa and Shalsha… She was so salty to me…
Then, I wondered what would happen if you sprinkled salt on a slime. Would they shrivel up like a slug?
But both Falfa and Shalsha ate salty foods with no trouble; I guess slime spirits were different. They wouldn’t be the same as regular ol’ slimes on the ground. Maybe I’d try it on one of the neighborhood slimes next time…
Wynona seemed to thoroughly enjoy our stroll around the city, which I was glad for.
And since Falfa and Shalsha mostly took charge of showing her around, I could put my mind at ease and do shopping in other stores. I think Wynona was being a good influence on them.
When we ended our stroll around the city, the family and I went to Beelzebub’s manor.
“You are late! You were to arrive early in the morning! Are you taking the girls from me?!”
“Quit talking like these are your daughters!”
Beelzebub was getting way pushier than before. I hope she knows I’m doing this entirely out of the goodness of my heart!
And I also wanted to introduce her to Wynona, since she was a slime spirit, too.
“Hello, my name is Margrave Wynona of Idell…” Wynona shrank a bit when she met Beelzebub.
“I see, I see. Azusa has told me about you. Well, I hope you relax today.”
Beelzebub would never dismiss Wynona as a daughter because she was taller than the others. She was going to treat her courteously.
“Since you are Falfa and Shalsha’s younger sister, you are essentially my daughter. Make yourself at home.”
“Hey! What the heck is that logic?!”
It really felt like Beelzebub was going to walk away with my daughters. Yikes!
“Indeed. I would not be who I am today without my sisters.”
“Don’t just accept it, Wynona!”
Rrrgh… If Beelzebub and Wynona end up working together…
“Now, Miss Beelzebub. Please take me to your whitest room.”
“What is this you speak of?”
“I find the most peace in rooms with white decor.”
I was used to her shenanigans by now, but Beelzebub’s odd expression was the typical response to this.
“I have no white room. I do have a black obsidian room, though.”
So she has a black room… Very demon-like.
“Well, I’ll leave the girls with you. I’ll go back to my shopping.”
“Aye, shop for as many days as you please. The five of us shall have a wonderful time together.”
When she said “five,” she was also counting Sandra.
“I’m not going to be shopping for that long. Wait… Where’d Sandra go?”
Sandra had vanished—I was absolutely sure she’d been with us when we got to Beelzebub’s manor, though.
“Sandra has buried herself in front of the garden.”
I looked out the window to find her body submerged in the dirt, relaxing like someone enjoying a nice hot bath.
“Right, I guess you could say that this is her hometown.”
“It seems so. I see no problem here, so you may go to into the city or to the ends of the earth or the moon for all I care.”
“We actually had plans to go to the moon, but we gave up on that.”
Spending time with the girls seemed to bring Beelzebub some peace of mind, so I decided not to bother her so much. I wanted her to think of it as my gracious gift to her.
“Ah yes, Fighsly has opened a training gym. ’Twould be nice to take a peek if you have the time.”
“She has, huh? This just smells like a moneymaking scheme, though.”
Meanwhile, the two dragons reacted at the word gym.
“Let us go to the gym, Lady Azusa!”
“I want to spar! I want to grind the gym to smithereens!”
I really hoped she didn’t break the gym first thing—that would just be mean-spirited. Fighsly wasn’t running a gym because she wanted to taste defeat or meet people who were stronger than she was.
But I didn’t have anything else I needed to do, so maybe it’d be nice if we stopped by.
“Sure, we’ll head straight over.”
The dragons and I made our way over to where Fighsly’s gym was.
Meanwhile, Halkara and Rosalie weren’t particularly interested, so they went on their own into the city. I was confident they knew the streets by now, so I wasn’t worried.
We found the gym immediately. We could see the sign from far away.
“Another weird sign, I see.”
This world tended to have too much information on its signs.
But on the inside, it was all normal—there were demons punching sandbags that hung from the ceiling or demons wearing protective gear and practicing receiving kicks. The place seemed legit.
“Oh! Everyone is training so earnestly! I wish to spar with them!”
“I wanna destroy this gym! I want to battle!”
“Laika, Flatorte, please don’t start too many fights…”
Also, I spotted a framed print of the phrase Money is not vulgar. It wasn’t wrong, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Her obsession with money was almost pure and respectable, considering how consistent she was with it…
Both Laika and Flatorte donned some practice gear and started training, so I headed farther into the building by myself. I was hoping to say hello to the master of the gym.
At the end of the hall, there was a room with a plaque that read CEO. I wasn’t sure if I’d call her a CEO, but this was probably what I was looking for.
“Are you in, Fighsly?” I called as I knocked.
“I know that voice—is that Azusa? Yeah, I’m here.”
I was right, so I opened the door. There, I found Fighsly and…a slime, cradled in her arms.
What’s the deal here…?
I couldn’t suss out an answer, so I had to ask.
“Hey, Fighsly, what’s with the slime? It’s not your kid or anything, right?”
Fighsly wasn’t a slime spirit like Falfa and Shalsha, but an actual, genuine slime, so maybe she could produce baby slimes. Although I always imagined slimes splitting off to make more of themselves.
“Ha-ha-ha~ This isn’t my child~ This is a slime I picked up off the street.”
The way she described the slime wasn’t the kindest, but she was still cradling it gently.
“Why are you hugging the slime? Is it one of the rules of your gym? Like, One must not kill slimes?”
“No, our five rules are: ‘If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.’ ‘No money, no life.’ ‘A full wallet, a full heart.’ ‘Anyone who asks to see your bond is looking to scam you.’ ‘When you lend money to a friend, be prepared to lose both.’”
“They’re all money-related!”
None of them were particularly wrong, but in my opinion, rules that were more spirit-oriented would fit a gym better. Or maybe this was the type of gym that didn’t use philosophical phrases to temper body and soul, and did science-based training instead?
“I found this slime in front of the gym the other day. It wasn’t bothering anyone. I left it alone, but it stayed there for a week, and…I think you just grew accustomed to me, didn’t you?” Fighsly stroked the slime.
Slimes didn’t meow like cats, so it didn’t react or anything—it just blubbed in place. I had a feeling it had more water content than the slimes in the highlands.
“Did you start keeping it as a pet, then?”
“Ha-ha-ha~ Martial artists don’t keep pets~ Too much work when you want to travel.” Fighsly laughed at my idea, still stroking the slime. “This slime isn’t a pet. It’s just a little attached to me, that’s all.”
Well, nebulous definition of pet notwithstanding, it was fact that Fighsly had taken a liking to it.
“It probably got attached to me because I was a slime once, too. It was starting to look lonely, so I let it in. That’s all.”
Fighsly gave the slime a little smack. She wasn’t attacking it, of course (it would turn into a magic stone if so), but that probably counted more as playing.
Why was this so touching?
I could feel my heart warming at this precious little scene.
Was this that thing where you catch a rough kid feeding a kitten some milk and your heart totally explodes?!
I thought Fighsly would only ever think about money, but now that I caught sight of her giving love to a common slime, the sheer difference in attitude made her seem almost kind.
“Slimes don’t ever randomly decide to stay in one place, you see, but this one decided to stay in front of the gym. So even when I keep it like this, it won’t go anywhere— Hey, Azusa, why are your eyes watering?”
“Gosh, I was just thinking…even misers have hearts…”
“Please don’t call me a miser to my face!”
Yeah, maybe that was a harsh choice of words.
“I also don’t want any pets since they cost money, but slimes don’t cost a single koinne.”
“Oh, yep, that’s you all right.” I bet she wouldn’t have even let in a cat.
“But it is true that looking at it gives me peace of mind. The whole process of getting this gym built was so stressful, I didn’t have time to rest.”
“So it heals you.”
“No matter how much you pay, contractors will always give you a building full of defects, or say their company went bankrupt and then run away. It was the worst, to put it lightly.”
“Your stinginess affected this, too?!”
“My heart softened, and I forgot my mantra: People will betray you, but money never will. I tried to keep it cheap, but then the people betrayed me. I am a failure of a martial artist.”
“I’m pretty sure that has nothing to do with the martial arts.”
She was starting on the money-related proverbs.
“But I believe we’re on track now. I have eight people in my thrice-a-week course, fourteen people in my twice-a-week course, and ten in my once-a-week course.”
“Can’t you just say you have thirty-two pupils?! You’re calculating this through money, aren’t you?!”
I shouldn’t have been as touched as I was before. Fighsly was still Fighsly.
But I’d never seen a slime as a pet in my life. I killed a few of them every day, so of course I had a hard time seeing them any other way.
Imagine keeping a slime as a pet while I went out and killed twenty neighborhood slimes a day… Frightening stuff.
“Hey, Fighsly? Does it have a name?”
“Free Tuition.”
I almost wished it didn’t have a name at all.
“Do you think I could hold it?” I stepped forward toward Fighsly.
“Oh, sure. It’s not a pet, just a slime I picked up off the ground, so do as you please.”
She was being surprisingly stubborn when it came to this. I guess acknowledging it was her pet went against her mottoes or whatever. But when I got closer, the slime (excuse me, Free Tuition) started shaking violently.
“Hmm? Is it scared of me…?”
I guess it had to be… I’d killed innumerable slimes, so…I held the world record of slime killing…
Maybe even slimes—or maybe especially slimes—knew through instinct. When Fighsly and I first met, she was terrified of me… She knew how many of her kind I’d killed.
“It’s all right, Free Tuition, nothing to be scared of. I won’t hurt you so long as you don’t fight back…”
“You sound like a mugger, Azusa.”
“Oh, y-you’re right. Uhhh… D-don’t move!”
“Still sounds like a mugging!”
My body’s instinct was to kill slimes!
The slime’s shivering was getting worse and worse.
Boooiiing!
The slime leaped energetically from Fighsly’s arms—and out through the open window!
“What?! It escaped…?”
“Hey! Free Tuition! Free Tuition!”
It definitely wasn’t a good name, but now wasn’t the time to be thinking about that.
It was my fault that her pet (or whatever) ran away…
“Sorry, Fighsly! I’ll chase after it!” I leaped out of the window after Free Tuition.
“Oh! No need to look too hard!”
“It’s okay! Slimes don’t go very fast, so I’ll find it right away!”
Maybe find was the wrong word here. I just had to grab it from beneath the window. I knew a lot about slimes.
“You won’t! There’s water outside the window!”
“—What?”
I looked down to find a little river beneath me.
Oh, I’m not going to cast my flight magic in time…
With a big splash, I landed on my butt in the water. “Oooh… Shoulda looked before I leaped there…”
I didn’t care too much about getting wet, but…Free Tuition was nowhere to be seen.
Oh no, did it flow down the waterway? The water could whisk away small, light things like slimes.
“This is worse than I thought!” I rolled up my long skirt and raced down the creek.
I think this was the first time I’d been so hung up over a single regular slime.
The silver lining here was that the waterway was clean, apparently used for chilling vegetables and stuff, so the water was cool.
There was an embankment on the other side where the houses were, with stairs at periodic intervals leading down to the water.
The current wasn’t flowing very fast, so I thought I would find Free Tuition right away, but another problem soon arose.
“It sure is hard to spot slimes in the water…”
The transparent slimes were so well camouflaged here that it was hard to tell where they were. And the worst part of this was that Free Tuition wasn’t pink or green, but a light blue. That was the color that would be hardest to find in the river.
Had slimes evolved to protect themselves in the water? No, it had to be a coincidence. They lived away from water, too, and they came in more colors than just light blue.
If I ran too fast, I might pass it by without realizing or end up stepping on it somehow.
“This is an actual pain…”
I widened my eyes as big as I could and carefully searched for the slime. I would’ve created a spell that could highlight slimes or something if I knew this would happen… But who would think to develop a spell they’d have no use for normally…?
I walked down the waterway, splashing with every step.
“I wonder if they can breathe in the water… Is breathing even a thing they do…? This is starting to make me nervous…”
I can’t believe I discovered a new weak point of mine. Even though I was the most powerful person skills-wise, I was still far from being an all-powerful, all-knowing being.
I’d decided I was going to do all I could to live an unassuming life. Without that effort, I’d probably end up stepping off my path. People rarely failed when they knowingly boasted about themselves, but they did make mistakes once that attitude unconsciously transformed into vanity.
At last, I felt something soft and squishy make contact with my foot.
Startled, I picked it up.
In my hands was the slime, Free Tuition!
“Gotchaaa!”
I raised a victorious cry.
But the slime tried to wriggle out of my grasp—and succeeded, thanks to the fact that it was wet.
Gah! Catching slimes was seriously difficult! They’d get squished if I held too hard, too…
But then, Fighsly appeared on the path along the waterway’s embankment.
I guess she’d come around from the front of the gym.
“Free Tuition! I’m over here!” She reached out.
Free Tuition shivered in my arms, then leaped up toward Fighsly, having finally found its owner.
What a dramatic reunion!
Fighsly was giving so much love to the slime, and the slime was responding in kind!
But at that same moment, something strange happened.
One slime after another started hopping out from the water, three in total. They were all light blue.
All three of them—
Boooiiing.
Boooiiing!
Booooooiiiiiiiiing!
—leaped right at Fighsly at once!
“Oh, whoa, whoa!”
Fighsly deftly caught the one I’d been chasing with her head, then caught the other three with her hands and her back. Her movements were so smooth, like a real pro martial artist.
As a result, Fighsly ended up covered in four slimes, one of them being Free Tuition.
“…Slimes can live in the water, too, y’know.”
“I didn’t know that…”
I’d had no idea slimes were amphibious… But I guess they were supposed to live everywhere.
There was also one thing I had to know.
“Fighsly, which one of these slimes is Free Tuition? Is it possible it wasn’t the first one I found…?”
All four slimes were nearly identical, and I couldn’t tell them apart. It was possible that one of the three that jumped out after could have been the one I was trying to find.
“I’ve been a slime for a long while, but I can say I don’t know.”
“Oh no…”
And now we had another problem.
How were we supposed to pick out Free Tuition?!
We decided to return to the gym for the time being.
But I was worrying to myself the whole way back.
This is bad… If Fighsly doesn’t know which one was Free Tuition, then I feel even worse about all this…
Fighsly might say she didn’t mind so much because she found it by the side of the road and it wasn’t her pet, but that wasn’t the problem here. The slime she’d named was one of them, and we couldn’t pick out the right one.
“Um… Does Free Tuition have any distinct features? Like a birthmark or something…?”
“Slimes do not have birthmarks.”
“Fingerprints? …Probably not.”
I tried using methods for telling human twins apart, but that wasn’t going to work.
“I wonder which one it could be. But we have a one-in-four chance of getting it right. Each slime has a twenty-five percent chance of being Free Tuition.”
“I don’t think that’s a good way to do it!”
That was still a 75 percent chance of whiffing it!
Fighsly was talking as if it was no big deal, but she was staring hard at each slime, trying to tell them apart. Even when we came back to the gym, she lined up the four slimes in her office.
“You think you can tell which is which?”
“No, they are frighteningly similar. And even if I call ‘Free Tuition,’ the same spot on their body responds.”
“Sheesh… This is a thousand times more difficult than trying to see if a baby chick is male or female…”
Maybe I should go to Wizly, the mage slime, and have her teach me a spell that can tell slimes apart?
“Mm, I think I’ve got it… Yes, that’s it, that’s it!” Fighsly raised her voice. “I’ve got it, Azusa!”
“Really? What a relief! So which one is Free Tuition?”
That was one less thing to worry about now.
“In a way, they are all Free Tuition.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
Even if they had similar characteristics, only one of the four could be it.
“Azusa, Free Tuition divided into four! They look the same and respond to me the same way—this has to be the answer!”
“It divided?!”
What Fighsly was saying was that they were all the same person (?).
Now that she mentioned it, all the slimes were snuggled up close to her.
“I think what happened is that when it leaped into the river, its body divided into four. That’s why they all remember me.”
“They can proliferate that quickly?! I had no idea…”
“I wonder if it’s in part because of the waterway. A slime is made up mostly of water, so I think that’s a good place for them to reproduce.”
“Oh yeah, Falfa and Shalsha are also considered water-element spirits. But I hadn’t heard that way of them making more of themselves before…”
“The demons don’t seem to know very well how slimes proliferate, either. But isn’t it too much of a coincidence for four entirely separate slimes to act like this?”
The four slimes were clinging close to Fighsly, almost as if they were snuggling her.
“I…get that.”
I doubted slimes were intelligent enough to tell each other, That demon over there is very nice to us.
“I understand now. Free Tuition was afraid of dying when you approached it, leaped into the water, then used that water to split into four. I suppose its animal instinct to reproduce kicked in.”
“So I’m a murderer, huh? But I guess that’s how this works.”
That was a very strange experience—chasing an escaped pet to find it had made three more of itself.
“From left to right, I’ll name them Free Tuition 1, 2, 3, and 4, and keep them here in the gym.”
Fighsly was taking this awfully well.
I guess it was safe to call this all settled.
“By the way, Fighsly, do you know which one’s the original Free Tuition 1?”
Fighsly smiled at me. “No idea!”
“Thought so!”
Oh well. They looked so alike; really, it was impossible to tell if they were different at all.
The slimes busily clung to her, sliding this way and that across her.
“And now I am totally unable to tell 1 and 2 apart.”
It wasn’t easy to find unique differences in slimes.
I now understood how much of a miracle it was that the likes of Fighsly and Wizly had appeared in this world.
It would be bad if the Free Tuitions got scared of me and tried to run again, so I decided it was time to go. If four became sixteen, it would definitely be beyond Fighsly’s control.
“Laika, Flatorte, I was thinking about going somewhere else—”
Both of them were in the middle of hard practice. At some point, they’d changed into training gear; they were practically just students now.
“Please train with me, Flatorte!”
“Laika, I’m hoping to do some blocking exercises next, so may I have some punches?”
The demon students had completely accepted them into the group, too.
Humans probably wouldn’t be able to practice properly with them (they’d just die), so demons in the middle of training were probably a great match. The dragons would probably win in a real battle, but at least they had some powerful people to train with.
“My apologies, Lady Azusa, but I have another thirty sets!”
“If you’re doing thirty sets, then I, the great Flatorte, will do thirty-one!”
“I’m not sure exactly how many reps are in a set, but I get you’re not going to be done for a while. It’s fine; I’ll go on my own.”
Well, it wasn’t a horrible thing to walk around the city as I pleased, and I could go back to Beelzebub’s manor if I wanted.
I was playing everything by ear today. I might even run into Halkara and Rosalie, who were off on their own in the city, during my stroll. It was nice to walk around without a destination every once in a while.
Fighsly and her gaggle of Free Tuitions came out from the office. One was riding on her head. It reminded me of the stuff I’d sometimes seen from Paris Fashion Week—outfits that were just totally impossible to walk around in normally.
“If you have nowhere to go, Azusa, why not drop by the leviathans’ house?” she suggested. “Oh, and it’s not a workday today, so they won’t be at work.”
Which meant that if I went to their house, there was a good chance at least one of them would be there.
“I’ll take you up on that, then. If they’re not home, then I’ll just deal with that when I come to it.”
“Okay. I know where they live, so I’ll draw you a map.”
A few minutes later, she returned holding a piece of paper with this on it:
Proceed north on this road (Cyclops Road) until you come to a four-way intersection with a general store on the left—turn right. Walk for a few minutes until you come to a stream, where you will turn left and walk along the river. Cross the third bridge and proceed straight down that road. At some point, you will come across a small park, where you will turn right just after it. At the second corner, turn left, and after about three minutes, you will see a small hill. Walk along the hill and proceed another three minutes after going down the hill. There you will find a spacious yard—it stands out. That is Fatla and Vania’s house.
“Why did you write it out?!”
I’d be hard-pressed to call this a map. There was no picture. Just reading it was starting to make me panic.
“Sorry, but there are so many little roads here that I thought it would be easier to spell it out rather than draw a map. But I wrote it in the human language; you can read it, right?”
Fighsly could apparently write in the human language, too, probably because she spent a lot of time in the human lands entering tournaments. She really was an incredible slime when you accounted for all that.
“Yeah, this is all right, but… I guess I’ll follow your instructions…”
It wasn’t like I had an invitation I could be late for; if I couldn’t get there, I’d just cross that bridge when I came to it (metaphorically).
I carefully walked according to the directions, but when I started to get confused, I just asked a passing demon about the neighborhood with the park and the small hill.
I somehow managed to find the hill and the path that led down, so I knew I was on track. Finally, I arrived at a house with an unusually large lawn, big enough to play soccer in.
“This must be it.”
They must have secured a plot of land big enough for leviathans to turn into their true form.
But there was no interphone, so I wasn’t sure how to get their attention. The entrance was some ways away from the other side of the gate—but then I spotted a bell at the top of the gatepost. I guess that’s what I was supposed to ring.
Kala-kalang, kala-kalang.
I wish they’d install something a little easier to use. Now that I thought about it, what did big estates on Earth do long ago? They had guards, right? Or did they just not let anyone without an appointment in?
“Hello, who is it?”
Someone from across the street came out! It was a lady centaur.
“Oh, I’m just here to see someone in this house!”
“Ah, the leviathan sisters.”
This time, a demon man with dog ears emerged from the house next to the lady’s. “Ah, she’s visiting the house next door~ So hard to tell whose bell is whose~”
“This isn’t a very convenient system! Would you consider changing your bells?”
“Well, it would just be a waste if we got a good-quality one and it was stolen. And the cheap ones with a good ring are all done by the same maker.”
“Exactly. It’d be embarrassing to set up a bell that’s too cheap, you see~”
Sounded like some demon societal problem.
And the leviathan sisters in question…still weren’t showing up.
In the meantime, the neighbors were all appearing in droves. These things carried more of a ring than I thought.
“Ahhh, it’s the leviathans’ house.”
“It’s hard to hear outside sounds in there.”
“Hello there, would you like some vegetables from our garden?”
I felt like a whole TV crew that had come to a quiet neighborhood.
“Um… Is this what happens whenever someone rings a bell…?” I was getting super uncomfortable.
“Yes. Almost everyone comes out, but that means all those rotten salespeople get spooked and never come back.”
“When I see those salespeople on the verge of tears, all my stress melts away. Once they know they’ve made a mistake, we all come out for a chat and ask all kinds of questions.”
“It’s the perfect way to keep crime low, you see.”
I didn’t know it needed a purpose.
But I could clearly see how it could traumatize scammers and keep them out… Getting surrounded like this was psychologically distressing.
Meanwhile, the man with the dog ears was yelling straight at the leviathan manor. “Leviathan sisters~! You’ve got a guest! Are you home?!”
So yelling was what I should’ve done, huh?!
That primitive method proved to be a success, and Vania emerged from the house. “Oh, Miss Azusa! Why are you here?”
“No reason, really. I was just in the city and decided to drop by because I had nothing else to do.”
“I see. Well, I don’t want to keep you outside forever, so come on in. Wow, you sure brought a lot with you.”
“Oh, your neighbors just gave me all this.”
They’d handed me sacks full of fruits and vegetables I didn’t recognize.
I didn’t know what any of them tasted like, but in the worst-case scenario, I’d just leave them with Beelzebub.
“Your neighborhood gatherings get kinda…intense…” I waved to the neighbors and followed Vania.
“You’re right~ But not all demons are like that. This is unique to this neighborhood. Everyone here is very relaxed. They like to all come out when someone rings a bell. Welcome to our home!”
We’d just come to the front gate, but it was a very fancy manor.
A mansion like this would easily cost a million dollars in my past life…
“Leviathans must be rich, huh?”
“I think it was like that long ago, but we’re humble bureaucrats now. The real rich live in expansive estates out in the country. Anyone who lives here in the city isn’t that rich.”
I had a feeling I’d heard the same thing in my previous life.
“Please come in, Lady Azusa.”
The inside was incredible, too—refined, not some eccentric’s lair with tons of weird little knickknacks everywhere. It felt like going to a friend’s house that was fancy to the point of being slightly uncomfortable.
The leviathans were like Tokyo-resident celebs.
“I’ll go whip up some sweets for you, so please have a seat in the reception room.”
They had a room specifically for receiving guests.
“I guess Fatla’s out? Shopping?” I said.
“No, she’s around. I think she’s in the greenhouse.”
Now that she mentioned it, I spotted another building in the distance from the window. They had to be rich with a building like that. The greenhouse alone had to be bigger than my house in my past life.
“Would you mind if I went there?”
Exploring other people’s homes was exciting. I’d be bored out of my mind just sitting here waiting.
“Oh, sure, go on ahead. Explore as much as you like.”
Vania was quick to give her approval, so I decided I’d explore freely.
I came out to the garden and glanced back at the house again—Yep, it’s huge.
It didn’t seem like their parents lived with them, which meant that the two of them lived alone in a house of this size. It was fair to say they were well off, although cleaning seemed like it’d be a handful.
As those thoughts went through my head, I reached the greenhouse.
These were meant for cultivating plants, right? I guess since Vania’s cooking was more than just a little hobby, they had a greenhouse so she could grow her own ingredients, but why would Fatla be inside?
Well, I’d just open the door and find out.
Due to the nature of the building, there were two sets of doors leading to the inside.
When I opened the second door, I was greeted by thick air and a sight that sent a chill down my spine despite the warmth.
The walls, ceiling, and of course the floor were all covered in green.
But it wasn’t a uniform green; some parts were dark, almost black, and some parts were more yellow. Some were a pale green. Either way, all of it was green.
“This…is moss…”
The only spots I didn’t see any moss were the stepping-stones on the floor.
I guess I was supposed to follow these inside?
From the outside, the greenhouse was in the shape of an L, so after proceeding straight forward, the building bent to the left.
I could tell this didn’t have anything to do with Vania’s hobbies, at least. This wasn’t food.
“Oh yeah, I think someone said that Fatla likes moss at some point… But I didn’t know it was this much…”
This was absurd. This wasn’t just a little hobby. It was basically the house of a moss artisan.
I wondered if all demons’ hobbies reached unbelievable mastery like this, considering their long lives.
“I feel like I’m in the underworld. I want to find Fatla quickly…”
I walked forward, being careful to step only on the places with no moss. I couldn’t spot her, so she was probably around the one corner in the building.
That was when a figure in the distance peered at me.
“Oh, Fatla—”
A chill ran down my spine.
Standing there was a large humanoid figure covered in dark-green moss. Despite the shape, nothing indicated that it was human at all. I had no way of telling if it had a face, or even if it had any bones at all. The precise outline of its figure was all fuzzy.
The way it shambled was unsettling, like the undead. No one walked around town like this.
Logically, it should be Fatla, but this figure seemed much too big for that. Whatever it was that stood before me was practically twice her size.
“Aah, aah… Aah… Haaaah…”
The monster sounded like it was trying to say something, but it didn’t mean anything. This wasn’t a creature that could communicate!
It turned to face me fully.
Its face was, of course, all moss; I couldn’t see any eyes or a mouth. I didn’t even know if that was its actual face.
“Gah! It’s a monster! A real monster!” I screamed.
I shouldn’t have seen this thing! It was something made of pure evil!
Was it a moss-covered golem? Or something actually undead? I only knew undead that weren’t scary like Pondeli, but that did seem to be what this was.
Luckily, it didn’t make any move to attack me.
I gotta get out of here! I don’t wanna fight something I don’t understand! Doesn’t matter how strong I get—what’s scary is scary!
“Stay away, stay away! Stay there! You can chase after me, but do it slowly, like an undead! No breaking into a run or anything, okay?!”
The moment I was about to whirl around—
The monster’s handlike appendage reached up and brushed at its own face—and Fatla appeared from behind it.
“Miss Azusa? Why are you here?”
“You’re the real Fatla, right? You’re not possessed by moss or anything, right?”
“I apologize for frightening you. I cannot speak very well with moss on my face.”
Well, at least she wasn’t a monster I shouldn’t have met.
“Hey, have you always been that big, Fatla?”
“I look bigger when I adhere the moss to me.”
Now that she mentioned it, her silhouette seemed way too big for her face. Like her outside was all moss.
“By the way… Why are you all…fuzzy and green?”
“I was moss bathing.”
The answer didn’t really explain anything.
“What’s that?”
“I believe it would be easier for you to understand if you saw it for yourself. Come this way.”
Fatla vanished into the back of the greenhouse. All the moss was causing her to move slowly, like she wasn’t really alive.
I had a feeling I was going to see something else shocking, so I really wished she would give me a quick verbal rundown instead of showing me, but I didn’t have much choice but to follow after her.
When I rounded the corner, I found even more of the fuzzy green stuff—it was practically up to my knees.
“I will demonstrate for you now,” Fatla said, and then dove into the moss.
Thwump went her body, as if she had fallen into incredibly viscous liquid. Then her weight slowly dragged her down beneath the surface.
After about ten seconds, she vanished completely from view.
“I don’t have to save you, right…?” I asked, but there was no answer.
After about ten seconds, Fatla slowly sat up, her face now completely covered again.
“Uhhh… Uhhh…”
“Gah, this is terrifying! You’re scaring me! At least take off the moss when you talk!”
Fatla removed only the moss on her mouth, which was scary enough as it was.
“You submerge your whole body into the moss and become one with it. That is moss bathing.”
“Gotcha. Pretty sure I can say it’s not my cup of tea…”
“Before, I simply cultivated the moss, but I grew to love it more as I did so. Eventually, I wanted to become one with it, which is when I arrived at this stage.”
Her nonchalance as she talked about all this only made me even more frightened.
“All my exhaustion from working vanishes when I am here. I often moss bathe on our days off.”
“You sure have an interesting hobby…”
“Since you’re here, why not give it a try yourself, Miss Azusa?” She pointed to the moss.
“I sincerely apologize, but I must decline.”
“That is what Vania said before she did it.”
“Vania did this, too?!”
I guess it was hard to say no when your older sister told you to do it. And Vania apparently had a good time, so maybe it wasn’t all that bad.
“According to her, you will briefly feel as if you are floating, then as if you are sinking deep into the inescapable void of a bottomless ocean abyss.”
“That’s a terrifying experience!”
“She did say she would never do it again. I find the vanishing feeling to be quite nice.”
Today, I learned that Fatla is a surprisingly scary person.
The real serious types were able to stay that way by balancing it out with something super weird.
“Miss Azusa, pretend as though I’ve deceived—”
“I will not do it! No matter what happens!”
When I returned to the reception room, Vania laughed at me.
“You must have seen the moss woman. It’s so creepy, isn’t it~? She visits me in my nightmares sometimes.”
“You should’ve told me that beforehand! I felt like I lost a few years off my immortal life span!”
“Well, she only ever does that in the greenhouse, so just let her do her thing. She seems to find it relaxing over there.”
Did demons really need a way to relax like that? It was probably best for myself and my family if we kept our lives low-stress to begin with.
About ten minutes later, Vania came back with the sweets she’d made.
At about the same time, Fatla returned free of moss. I didn’t see any of it on her—she must have taken a shower or something. She had a good handle on getting clean after all that, apparently.
“Sorry for intruding so suddenly. I went to Fighsly’s gym, then wondered where I could go next, and that’s how I ended up here.”
“Ah, I see Lady Beelzebub must be with your daughters today.”
“That’s right, they’re my daughters.” I had to be really careful that Beelzebub didn’t snatch parental authority away from me while I wasn’t looking.
The three of us had a little tea party. It was a nice way to spend a day off.
“Vania, these are really good. They look sweet, but they’re a little spicy, too.”
The baked snacks tasted kind of like okaki snacks from back in Japan.
“I’m always making something on my days off~ It’s how I reduce stress~”
“How on earth do you get stressed with the way you work?” Fatla retorted flatly. She did not go easy on her little sister when it came to work.
“This has been quite a full day; I learned more about both you and Fighsly.”
The only times I’d ever seen the leviathan sisters so far had been while they were working.
“I am certain you can discover a new side of yourself if you decide to take a dip in moss.”
“Stop trying to persuade me.” I was fine living life ignorant of that!
“Fighsly has seemed much happier ever since she opened her gym.” Fatla spoke well of Fighsly. “She now takes money more into consideration, always thinking as a business owner how she may keep the gym running.”
“She’s exactly the same as she has been!”
But considering how she had the affection of those wild slimes, I was certain her students looked up to her, too.
Everyone’s really grown in these past few years.
I dropped by the gym to pick up Laika and Flatorte, and we went back to Beelzebub’s manor.
“Oh, Mommy! Welcome back!”
“Do we look okay, Mom…?”
Surprisingly, Falfa and Shalsha were wearing dresses I’d never seen before.
Yes, they were lovely. That was fact. But—
“Magnificent, no? I had these prepared for them ahead of time to suit their sizes.”
“Why do you know their sizes, Beelzebub?” Don’t measure them without my permission.
“Why would I not know their sizes? How many times do you think I’ve been to the house in the highlands?”
It was hard to argue with that logic.
“Indeed, I was hoping to dress up Sandra as well, but she told me she is much calmer when in the dirt. She refuses to put it on…” She saw Sandra completely as her daughter, too.
Later, Wynona would say to me quietly, “This woman is much too blinded by her affection for my sisters…”
“I guess after a week of work, she has to relieve her stress on her days off somehow.”
Beelzebub had taken on the role of doting parent in such a short period of time. Was this growth? Probably not.
Personally, this turned out to be a very colorful weekend for me; I got to see a new side to many of the demons on their day off.
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