Chapter 2: Excitement, a Dog, and a Phonetic Code
Two days had passed since the day when a present – a fantasy treasure box, a man’s dream – came floating into my junkyard. During that time, Princess had conducted a thorough non-destructive inspection, fearing that there might be traps set in the treasure box. Only after confirming that there were no metals or poisons planted inside, was I finally about to unveil this mass of a boy’s dreams.
“Oh man, I’m so excited!”
“But you probably already know what’s inside, don’t you?”
“Hmm, maybe. From the shape, I think it’s probably some kind of document.”
“I’m excited!”
Ignoring the conversation behind me that threatened to ruin a boy’s dream, I undid the clasp on the huge treasure box placed on the kotatsu table. By the way, the junkyard’s description of this treasure box was [a shoddy box], which was an apt name. The junkyard’s descriptions used to be pretty useless, but for things sent from what seemed to be another world, they had become almost meaningless.
“Here goes!”
Steeling myself with those words, I opened the lid with a pounding heart…and inside the treasure box was a thick piece of paper about the size of an A4 sheet, with something written on it in gold letters.
“Ah, it really was just documents.”
“Somehow, it’s not very dreamlike…”
“What are you saying? Safety comes first, right? What if the contents had been a bomb?”
Well, I understood that rationale…but I thought they could have let me dream a little more. Still, I regained my composure and unfolded the thick paper, revealing geometric patterns drawn in a reddish-purple ink.
“Whoa! It looks like some kind of magic circle is drawn on it.”
“A magic circle? Isn’t it some kind of code?”
“There are letters written around the edges too.”
As I brought my face closer to the paper to get a better look at the letters surrounding the geometric pattern, something wet suddenly touched my cheek.
“Huh?”
What appeared before my eyes was black, had two holes, and was twitching…It was a wet dog’s nose, sticking out from the center of the geometric pattern, at the end of an elongated muzzle.
“Uwah!”
The paper I instinctively let go of fluttered to the floor…and without a pause, a dog’s neck emerged from the surface.
“A…dog! A neck!”
“Eh?…What kind of mechanism is this?”
“A transporter device?”
“No way! It’s a summoning circle! A summoning circle!”
“Tonbo, this isn’t a game, you know.”
While we were having that conversation, the neck was looking around with narrowed eyes…and then, a hand emerged from the gap in the geometric pattern. Bracing its hand on the edge, it pulled its body out.
And what came out was a creature with a skeleton like a human child, covered in pure white dog fur. It seemed that what I had thought was a dog was actually a kobold or a werewolf. It stared intently at us with string-like narrow eyes, and then spoke in a childlike voice.
[Where are we?]
“Wah! It talked! It talked! An other-world language! An other-world language!”
“It’s English! Tonbo, what do they even teach you at school?”
While pointing something gun-like at the one who emerged from the geometric pattern, Princess calmly said that, from who knows where.
“English!? Wasn’t this a treasure chest from another world?”
“How would Princess know that?”
[Where is my Alchemist?]
“Alchemist?”
Oh no, at this rate, my English ability won’t let me keep up with the conversation…
“Wait a sec, I’m gonna open a translation app!”
“Tonbo, Princess will translate, so just calm down for now.”
Princess grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me toward her with a tug, then spoke something in English to the other party. Hearing that, the white dog gestured with its small hands and feet as it responded to Princess.
“Uh, this person is Sierra. The nineteenth Sierra. She was created by an alchemist, apparently.”
“Eh!? An alchemist!? So…she’s like a homunculus?”
“A homunculus…ah, I see.”
When Princess spoke to her again, Sierra responded with more gestures. This dog-person seems lovely in a different way from the cool Mars.
“She’s asking what your purpose was for waking her up, since she was created with a purpose in mind.”
“A purpose?”
“Yeah, she’s asking you. Do you need something from her?”
But she’s the one who came out from there…
“Ah, maybe…”
“What?”
“It’s like Aladdin’s lamp and the genie? Like, by opening that paper, I formed a summoning contract with Sierra?”
When I said that, Princess spoke to Sierra again. Sierra, who had sat cross-legged on the floor, listened with a snort while Princess spoke, twitching her ears, and then responded.
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“She says she was designed to follow the instructions of whoever summoned her, and had been in standby mode until now. She’s asking if you summoned her because you need her for something.”
Those words seemed to ease the atmosphere a bit. At least, the other party had stated that they didn’t intend to be hostile. I squatted down to meet Sierra’s eye level and pointed at the paper at her feet.
“It was just a coincidence that this paper came to me. I didn’t open it expecting you to come out.”
Saying it was a coincidence might be misleading, but I couldn’t very well explain the details of my skills to someone I had just met.
“So, what should she do now?”
“Huh? Well…she can do whatever she wants, can’t she?”
When Princess relayed that to Sierra, she tilted her head a bit, then stood up on her hind legs and came over to me. She circled around me, sniffing my butt scent and snorting, then patted my thigh with her paw before speaking again.
“Eh?…Ah…”
“What did she say, Princess?”
“Basically, she’ll look after you for now.”
“Eh? Not ‘please look after me,’ but the other way around?”
“Yeah, she said she’ll look after you.”
Had I just been evaluated in that brief moment? While I was lightly shocked, Sierra was wagging her tail excitedly as she looked around the room with interest. She was now sniffing curiously at the rice crackers in the snack basket.
“Want some of those?”
When I asked that while opening the bag of rice crackers, Sierra let out a delighted “Gyawah!” and nodded vigorously. I could probably manage this level of communication, even with my [pass] grade in foreign languages…
But what did “look after” mean? Would she take me for walks…? As I pondered that while munching on rice crackers next to the crunching Sierra, I met eyes with Mars.
“Ah, well…at least she seems friendly, huh?”
Ever since Sierra appeared, Mars had been hanging back, and now spoke with an air of awkwardness, like a borrowed cat.
“Mars, what’s wrong?”
When I asked, Mars scratched behind her protruding ears and continued in a hushed tone,
“That person…seems really strong in a fight…”
“Eh? Really?”
“Yeah.”
To me, she just looked like an adorable fluffy puppy, but…was there something only those with long fur could sense? As I pondered that, I watched Sierra continue eating the snacks with a smile on her face.
“This is a hair growth potion.”
Sierra, the likely kobold in the form of a white dog who had come from the junkyard, was now wearing Princess’s custom simultaneous translation choker as she sat on the kotatsu table. She said that while swishing the red bottle, held in her shaggy hand, from side to side.
…Yes, her. Sierra was female.
“For now, we can’t do anything but look after her here, can we?”
Following Princess’s words, since I couldn’t just abandon the kobold that had emerged from my skill somewhere, Sierra would be living together with us in this 1LDK for the time being. It was during the process of going to the municipal office to file for her naturalization and filling out the paperwork that her gender finally became clear.
However, it’s not something you’d be able to tell at a glance. Since kobolds and werewolves are fully furred in their delicate areas, you honestly can’t tell from appearances. And now, she was translating the text written on the labels of Leah’s latest batch of mixed potions that kept piling up at the junkyard.
“Hair growth potion, huh? What kind of thing is that?”
“Don’t know.”
Narrowing her already narrow eyes with a smile, Sierra said that nonchalantly.
Apparently, the simultaneous translation choker automatically adjusted the sound field around her…Sierra’s English speech could only be heard by bringing your ear right up to her mouth. Thanks to that, there was no suspicion raised during the procedures at the municipal office.
“Hmm, you don’t know, huh?”
“Doesn’t seem like there are any instructions on the label either.”
Mars said that while squinting at the label on the bottle in Sierra’s hand.
“Well, just being able to read the letters is a big help. We’ll probably be able to make a decoding software once we get more letter and reading samples.”
As Princess said, just being able to read the letters on the bottle was already a blessing.
“So Sierra can understand both English and the other-world language, huh?”
“Other-world language?”
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