You named Mimi, for crying out loud, and that more or less makes you its parent! If you act happy about it biting you, it’s never going to stop!
Around that time, I noticed a pair of figures off in the distance, walking up into the highlands. Our house was the only landmark in the vicinity, so I immediately assumed they were some of our acquaintances, and as they drew closer, I was proven right. That said, they turned out to be a rather rare pair: For some reason, Fighsly and Misjantie the pine spirit were heading our way.
“Ah, hey! You all out for a walk? Good to see you, man,” said Misjantie.
“Boy, running up this hill would make for a pretty good lower body workout! It’s always nice to find ways to train that don’t cost anything,” said Fighsly in what I figured was the closest thing to a greeting I’d be getting from her.
“Okay, I get why Misjantie would be walking around here, but what about you, Fighsly?” I asked. “I don’t think there’s anything for you to make money off anywhere near here! Don’t tell me Beelzebub and the others are here, too?”
Misjantie had been running a nearby café called the House of the Pine Spirit since shortly before the most recent Dance Festival, so she was more or less a local at this point. I even saw her around when I went down into Flatta, every once in a while.
“Nah, I came here from the demon territories alone this time. She footed my travel bills,” Fighsly said as she pointed at Misjantie.
“Yeah, ’cause I heard if there’s one person who knows how to make money hand over fist, it’s a lady named Fighsly. I basically hired her as a consultant, man.”
“I went from being a dead broke slime to the manager of a training gym all on my own, after all! You might say sharing my wisdom’s my way of sharing the wealth!” Fighsly said with a smirk I found really irritating, for some reason.
She’s definitely charging for this, isn’t she? Not that there’s anything wrong with making money off your specialized skills, I guess, but still.
“Right. So I get why Fighsly’s in the area now, but why are you two up here? This isn’t the right direction to get to your café or your shrine, is it?”
If Fighsly was acting as a consultant for Misjantie, I would’ve expected her to head for one of the establishments the pine spirit ran. The shrine or the café would both make more sense as destinations than my house.
“Oh, we’re heading for the pine tree, man. Y’know, the big one that’s growing right by your house?” said Misjantie.
“Oh, right. The one you gave to me as a sapling, yeah.”
That sapling, which I’d planted beside my house, had grown into a tree so massive it served as a pretty good landmark. The remarkable thing, though, is I’d only planted it just recently. Misjantie had given it to me as a memento of a sisters’ wedding she’d officiated between Falfa and Shalsha, and it had grown into its full, massive form over the course of just three days. I was convinced she’d used some sort of pine spirit power to make it happen—it would’ve been a literal miracle for it to grow that quickly, otherwise.
“So what about that tree? How’s a pine tree supposed to do any business with you?” I asked.
Misjantie awkwardly broke eye contact. “Well, um… Y’see, we were thinking it’d be nice to plant some more trees and make a pine forest there, if that’s cool with you…? We thought if there was a pine forest with some real impact nearby, it could give all my other businesses a nice boost…”
I flashed Misjantie a bright, friendly smile and crossed my arms in front of my chest.
“Absolutely not!”
Oh, this was way too close… If I hadn’t caught them, they might’ve ruined my life of peace and tranquility. Being able to clearly say no is such an important skill at times like these…
“Huh? No?” repeated Misjantie. “But I thought we’d be able to turn it into a real tourist attraction, since it’s right by the house in the highlands and all…”
“That’s exactly why I’m saying no! I knew you were trying to profit off my fame! You’re not even trying to hide it!”
I’d figured they were going for something like that. Misjantie and Fighsly were hoping to pull us into their money-making scheme, whether we liked it or not.
“Look, you already have a café and a little shrine in the area! Plant your forest near one of those, okay? We have to actually live in this house, so it’d be inconvenient in all sorts of ways to have a store or whatever opening up right next to us!”
“Couldn’t you give it a little more thought, at least?” said Fighsly, rubbing her hands together hopefully as she tried to talk me into it.
You look more like a sleazy merchant than a martial artist right now, Fighsly.
“If everything goes well, we’ll even be willing to pay rent for the space!”
“I said no, and I mean it. And if you decide to plant your forest without my permission, I won’t hesitate to chop it down myself if it comes to that.”
I knew I had to draw a very clear line in the sand, and judging by the look of panic that came across Misjantie’s face when I brought up cutting down the trees, I had a feeling I’d done a good job of it.
“Oh, all right, then,” said Fighsly. “We’ll give up on this line of attack. These things never go well if you can’t get the locals’ permission, after all.”
Well, she backed down surprisingly easily. That’s nice, at least. Anyway, did she really expect to “get the locals’ permission” for this? Surely she didn’t think she could tell me she was planning on using my name and home for publicity and just get away with it?
My best guess was that Fighsly had known it was a doomed effort, but just didn’t care since it wasn’t really her problem. She’d get her consulting fee whether her plans worked out or not.
Misjantie, on the other hand, seemed to be reeling a little from her failure.
“I really thought if we just took a stab at it, we might get permission… Guess it’s never that easy, man… We’ll have to think up a new way to make money now…”
I wish you wouldn’t act quite that distraught. You’re making me feel like I did something wrong… But anyway, no more plans that put my life of leisure at risk! I’m not budging on that! If I let this one little project slide, then for all I know, the Witch of the Highlands Village will have sprouted up around my house just a couple years from now. I really wouldn’t put it past those two…
At that point, Misjantie and Fighsly’s business with me was, in a certain sense, concluded… But before they could say their goodbyes, I noticed something hopping toward us from behind them. Four somethings, specifically, and when I took a closer look, I realized they were slimes.
They looked like the sort of perfectly average slimes you could find literally anywhere, but for some reason, they struck me as oddly familiar. There were only a small number of slimes I was personally acquainted with, and considering the context, only one explanation made sense.
“Oh, hey—if it isn’t Free Tuition 1, 2, 3, and 4!”
The four Free Tuitions lived at Fighsly’s training gym. They were, for all intents and purposes, her pets.
“That’s them, all right,” said Fighsly. “Seeing as we came all this way, I thought I’d take them out for a walk.”
“Well, someone’s certainly taking good care of her pets!” I said.
“I can’t really walk them around my gym, after all. Too many waterways. I might lose one of them again, or end up with even more…”
“Right, yeah… It’s tiring when you can’t take your eyes off them for a second.” And no matter how much she loves her pets, even Fighsly would hit her limit eventually if she ended up with a new one every single week.
“Plus, if one of them does end up going out and getting lost, there’s no way for me to tell which one it was. It’d suck to lose one of them and not know which, right?”
So even Fighsly, a slime herself, can’t tell the four of them apart? I really have to wonder if there’s any difference between them at all, at that point…
“But when I’m traveling, unless we happen to go somewhere with slimes that have a really similar color scheme to theirs, I can go out and about with them and have a nice, leisurely stroll without worrying about them getting lost,” Fighsly concluded.
The Free Tuitions were all bouncing around very enthusiastically (as far as I could tell). They seemed like they got a lot more exercise than the wild slimes that lived around here (again, as far as I could tell). If the disclaimers aren’t making it obvious: It was really hard to tell what sort of physical condition a slime was in.
“And hey, I bet the Free Tuitions like having the chance to get out into the countryside and take it easy sometimes,” I said. “They’re from Vanzeld, so I bet they get those city-slicker urges from time to time.”
“True enough. They’re not my pets or anything, but taking them with me doesn’t cost me, so no reason not to,” said Fighsly. She was always very stubborn about insisting the slimes weren’t her pets, even though she clearly lavished them with affection in her own sort of way.
Around that time, I heard a noise that was somewhat similar to the slimes’ bouncing, but slightly distinct. It was a bit duller, overall. I turned around to find Mimi was jumping around with its mouth—or, well, box—wide open.
Suddenly, I had a very bad feeling. “Mimi, no! Stay over there!” I shouted.
Oh no—it’ll be a disaster if Mimi decides to attack the Free Tuitions! Slimes like them can’t survive a mimic attack!
The only reason why we were able to let Mimi walk around freely was because nobody else ever came to the highlands, meaning there was nobody around who it biting would be a huge problem. If outsiders were present—and, worse still, present with very fragile pets in tow—then the situation was suddenly much more dangerous!
“Oh? You’re keeping a mimic as a pet? You have pretty weird taste in animals,” said Fighsly.
“It could make for a good security system if you keep it next to your valuables, man,” noted Misjantie.
The two of them were taking the mimic’s presence very casually, but I didn’t have that luxury. The situation was getting worse and worse by the second: the Free Tuitions were bouncing their way directly toward Mimi!
“Free Tuitions, no! Not that way! Don’t you have any sense of self-preservation?!” I shouted, but my cries fell on deaf ears. The Free Tuitions drew closer and closer to Mimi…
…and jumped right into its open mouth!
A second later, Mimi’s lid snapped shut with a clunk.
“Gaaah! Mimi, no! You can’t eat them! Spit them out!”
How am I supposed to make it up to Fighsly if my pet eats hers?! I have to save them, before it’s too late!
“Oh, it’s fine. No need to panic,” said Fighsly. True to her word, she seemed completely unconcerned about the situation. Maybe her slime status gave her some sort of insider information? Regardless, I wasn’t about to calm down until I had a very good reason to.
“How am I supposed to not panic?! For all we know, the Free Tuitions are getting digested as we speak,” I moaned.
“Nah, it wouldn’t try to eat them,” said Fighsly. “I mean, monsters turn into magic stones when they die. Other monsters know that, so they don’t bother eating each other.”
“That makes sense, actually!”
“Some people claim mimics like eating precious stones, magic stones included, but that’s just an old wives’ tale. The truth is they sometimes keep precious stones and items in them to make themselves look more like real treasure chests, and people got the wrong idea as a result. I bet your mimic’s never tried eating any gemstones, has it?”
“Now that you mention it! That’s such a reasonable explanation!”
Maybe there were monsters that really did eat gems out there somewhere, but I’d never seen Mimi eat anything other than dust. I had no reason to believe it could eat gems. That left one pressing question, though.
“Okay, so then why did the Free Tuitions jump into Mimi?” I asked.
“Who knows?” Fighsly said with a shrug. Even a slime like her couldn’t tell what the other slimes were thinking. “By the way, is Mimi what you call it? Nice name.”
I’d really rather not talk about its name right now, thanks. But now that you’ve brought it up—is it a nice name, really? Slime naming standards must be naturally simplistic.
At that point, Halkara came rushing over to Mimi’s side. I suspected Halkara felt a certain responsibility for it as the one who named it.
“Would you open your mouth for me, please, Mimi?” Halkara asked as she reached out toward the mimic.
Oh no. Please don’t let this turn out as terribly as I think it’s going to! Please don’t let us find four freshly generated magic stones inside in place of the Free Tuitions!
“Oh, look at that! It’s like you’re a real treasure chest, all full of gems!” Halkara exclaimed.
A chill ran down my spine. Oh. Oh no. Does that mean…the Free Tuitions are no longer with us…?
There were tons of mimics out there in the world, and for all I knew, some of them attacked monsters and ate magic stones. The only reason why I wasn’t totally convinced the slimes were dead was Halkara’s voice seemed weirdly cheerful and unconcerned, considering.
No, there’s no point thinking about it. I just have to look and see for myself, right away! Just go!
I rushed over to the mimic, which still had its mouth wide open.
Please, let it not really be full of gems! Let this be a weird misunderstanding!
I wasn’t far away from the mimic at all, but for some reason, it felt like it took an eternity for me to run over to it. Finally, I was close enough to peer into it…
…and see all four Free Tuitions packed neatly inside the treasure chest.
I had to admit: when the light of the sun hit them just right, they did maybe look just a little bit like gemstones. Slimes were translucent, after all.
“O-oh, thank goodness… They’re safe,” I said, so relieved I slumped to my knees on the spot. That almost gave me a heart attack.
“I think they’re just playing treasure and treasure chest, don’t you? Or maybe the slimes just like fitting into tight spaces? Either way, it’s downright adorable, isn’t it?” Halkara said, her voice bright and cheery as could be. “Isn’t it, Mistress Teacher?”
“Yeah. Sure is,” I said with a forced smile. Internally, I was fuming. “They’re adorable, but you need to learn a thing or two about being careful with your phrasing! Do you have any idea how badly you just freaked me out?!”
“Ah… Sorry, Mistress Teacher! I didn’t mean it like that! It was an accident!”
Mimi and the Free Tuitions spent quite a long time just sitting there, not moving a muscle. I had no idea how a mimic and some slimes could possibly be friends, but one way or another, they seemed to get along fabulously.
“Do you think Mimi would like having actual gemstones inside it, too?”
Halkara pondered out loud as she gazed affectionately at the mimic.
“Maybe it would. But, I mean—a mimic with gems in it…?” I said, cocking my head. “Wouldn’t it just be a normal treasure chest, at that point…?”
I’d like to propose a new theory regarding the origin of mimics: Maybe they’re just the monster form of a perfectly ordinary treasure chest.
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