492 This Restaurant Owner is So Cool! (1/2)
Then, Seiji looked towards Koushi Nomura.
”Nomura-san, how are you currently feeling?”
”I'm alright now,” Nomura responded tiredly. ”Where is this place? Harano-san… Hashimoto-san… what exactly happened?”
”None of us really know.” Seiji checked Nomura's condition. ”At any rate, it's good that you're alright. Take a rest here and catch your breath. I'll explain what's going on to you after you rest up.”
”No… please tell me right now.” Nomura sat up straighter in the chair. ”I would like to know immediately.”
Seeing that he insisted, Seiji sat down across Nomura and explained what was going on.
Nomura accepted Seiji's explanation and told Seiji and the others about what he'd experienced in his own novel's storyline setting as well.
”I feel better now, knowing that none of it was real. But… I still feel like I did something wrong.” Nomura sighed as he leaned back against his chair.
”You didn't do anything wrong. Any normal person would choose to escape from such a scene,” Miyabi consoled him.
Nomura fell silent for a few seconds.
”I know the plot of my own light novel, and I know exactly what the main character was going to do in that situation. However, I was unable to become the main character,” he stated softly. ”I'm only the author, not the main character… although I was clear on this already, I still feel like that shouldn't have been a reason for me to abandon someone that I should have been able to help. I'm relieved that what I went through wasn't real, and that nobody actually died there. But… that doesn't change the nature of my actions. I… am a coward.”
The silver-haired boy lowered his head.
Seiji and the others didn't know what to say.
”Let him calm down by himself,” Matsutani spoke up. ”Loser dogs should lick their own wounds.”
”…Senpai, I feel that there's a problem with how you're wording things.”
”What problem? That's just the simple truth. He abandoned his own story's female lead. What else could he be other than a loser dog?”
Seiji wanted to comment on this somehow but didn't know how to do so.
He decided to forget about this topic.
”I'm a bit interested in what the restaurant owner just did.” Seiji turned around as he talked to everyone else. ”The power he just used was one that Hashimoto-san never wrote about in her light novel. And, since he used his power to help Nomura-san without us even asking him to do so, that gave me an idea. Perhaps we can request this restaurant owner who used to be a 'hero in another world' to assist us. Hashimoto-san, could you please try telling him that we're all people from another world that have accidentally arrived in 'this world,' and that we want to return to our 'original world'? Tell him that we would like his assistance…”
Yuuko nodded upon hearing Seiji's words.
Yuuko headed towards the restaurant's kitchen.
Seiji and Miyabi watched her leave.
”Will it really work?” the cat-eared girl asked him in a soft voice.
”I hope so.”
”If something goes wrong… will we have to fight?”
”Most likely,” Seiji told her. ”If that's what ends up happening, Matsutani-senpai and I shall do battle. Ishihara-senpai, you and the others should do your best to avoid the fighting.”
Miyabi fell silent for a moment.
”Be honest with me. Aren't you afraid at all? Harano-san.”
”Eh?”
”Although you've been acting quite calmly, this should be a mysterious incident for you as well, filled with unknowns. Aren't you even scared in the slightest?” The cat-eared girl looked at Seiji.
Seiji blinked upon hearing this.
”Although many things are unknown, I've experienced something similar, which is why I'm not really afraid.”
”Are all Spiritual Ability users' lives so filled with danger?”
”No… but things do sometimes involve danger.”
”How scary.”
”That's not something that an author who writes about mystical, scary events should say, is it?” Seiji chuckled.
”I think it's fine for me to say it. Real life and fiction are different, after all.” The cat ears on Miyabi's head twitched. ”Although my story is about the mystical, I don't want my real life to become that way as well.”