Chapter 8

Drinking with Kengo had become part of my daily routine, or rather, every place that served food was without exception a tavern, and because there were dangerous-looking types wandering around who seemed even worse than drunk beastfolk, I had no real choice but to show up at Kengo’s usual place.

Kengo had influence with the beastfolk, and since he himself was practically like a small beastman, he was perfect as a bodyguard.

Still, that day I absolutely had to talk with Kengo.

I threw myself into work as if running from something, and as soon as I heard the bell announcing the closing of the town market, I left the company. I sat in a corner of the tavern clutching a sour ale and drinking it, but even though I was bad with alcohol, I could not get drunk at all.

So when Kengo finally arrived, I practically tore him away from the beastfolk he had come in with and dragged him over to my table.

“Ahh, so you finally went through it too, Yorinobu.”

When I told him what had happened at the company, Kengo said it painfully and patted me on the shoulder.

“I get it. It’s a shock, isn’t it?”

I could not say how reassuring it was to have my shoulder shaken like that.

Just knowing there was someone who understood the way I felt was enough to make me feel this relieved.

“But, well, the reality is that you just have to get used to it.”

Kengo ordered more alcohol and crunched noisily on roasted beans.

“In the mines, even the beastfolk, who are tough to an unbelievable degree, get badly hurt or end up dead. Back when I first started working there, it was basically slave labor straight up, and even though it obviously benefited no one, it was common to make beastfolk keep working while holding broken arms. It was insanely hard just to improve things a little around there.”

At first, I had thought Kengo got along so well with the beastfolk because he looked somewhat like one himself.

But Kengo actually served as something like an intermediary between the beastfolk who worked in the dark pits of the mine and the people outside the mine who freely sucked up all the profits for themselves.

While improving the mine’s productivity as a mining supervisor, he was also improving the treatment of the beastfolk.

The reason beastfolk constantly brought food and drink when I ate with Kengo was because they were being helped by him.

“Kengo… um, what do you think?”

“Hm?”

“I mean, this is what we ourselves could become tomorrow too, right?”

If you got hurt, that was the end.

For that matter, even just getting sick could be enough.

There was something I had found a little strange myself. There were people who had been working at the company normally, and then suddenly they would no longer be seen there at all.

This world really was rough, after all.

An employment contract was no more binding than a handshake, and if you got fed up, you simply quit. Even aside from that, stevedores came and went constantly, so I had assumed they were just loafing around somewhere or working elsewhere, but there were probably also many who had gotten sick and could no longer come, or who got injured and never returned.

“It is scary,”

Kengo said.

“In a hole like that, cave-ins are scary, sure, but the air is bad too, plain and simple. My lungs will probably be ruined someday. Magic stone mines are said to be dangerous even aside from that. I mean, corpses come back to life in them.”

Since the two very dead men in question were sitting here face-to-face, it was hard to tell whether that was something to laugh at.

Magic stones, which served as catalysts for magic, contained some kind of eerie power like that.

It was said that besides reviving the dead, strange creatures called monsters, clearly different even from beastfolk, sometimes appeared near magic stone veins.

And there were even rumors that if you kept working in such a mine, you would slowly become contaminated and turn into a monster yourself.

That was why it was beastfolk, who were regarded as lower than humans and oppressed, who worked in the mines, and why the post of supervisor there was a semi-official job with high pay.

“But there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Kengo was a superhuman: a graduate of a top university, someone who had worked in the glittering consulting industry, a bodybuilder fit to compete in contests, and the kind of man who could master the language in no time even after being thrown alone into another world.

And that Kengo said it weakly.

“The best we can do is save up a little money and get along well with the people around us. Even if you get hurt or sick and can’t work, you need to make enough companions that, for a while, someone will bring you bread in turns each day. We’ve got no choice but to rely on that spirit of mutual aid.”

Kengo, who was likable and could get along with anyone.

That was what I had thought, and there was probably no lie in it, but apparently it was not without calculation.

“It might be hard to imagine in modern Japan, but… in my previous job, I once helped out with an international NGO. I saw how people lived when they were below the poverty line, the kind of people living on less than two dollars a day. From that experience, I could more or less picture how I should conduct myself here. Even without money or state guarantees, if everyone around you is in the same situation, there are ways people somehow manage. If you have about ten companions, then even if one person can’t work, someone else will have a bit extra in their pocket and can help. And that role changes from day to day. It’s like treating one another as insurance.”

Kengo set down his drink and sighed.

“That said, it’s still unstable, and in the sense that there’s no room to choose, it’s a harsh way to live.”

The usual Kengo, who laughed everything away with jokes and muscles, was nowhere to be seen; instead, the man before me looked like an adult who had seen enough of the world to realize that all you could do was settle where you were meant to settle.

“And besides,”

Kengo said, showing a small, somehow refreshed smile as he glanced around the tavern, and then finally looked back at me.

“The atmosphere of just enjoying today because there’s no point worrying about tomorrow is kind of easygoing in its own way, isn’t it? There’s no doubt it’s better to have stability in the future, but that doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness either. We already learned that in the previous world, didn’t we? It’s complicated, though.”

Just being born in a developed country was, globally speaking, luck on the level of a cheat ability.

What was that? A power-harassing boss? There were countless people in the world living in conflict zones that could only be called hell.

But that did not make our own suffering any lighter.

“So with that in mind, don’t think too hard about it. Just enjoy life in moderation. Right now we don’t have the faintest clue how to get back to the old world anyway… and you’ve saved up a fair bit, haven’t you?”

He switched to Japanese for the money talk.

If people knew you had cash, this world was not safe enough that it would not attract troublesome people.

“Not that much…”

Lately I had loosened up too, and there were many days when I spent whatever I earned.

And I had started to think this carefree life was not so bad.

But it did not look carefree because nothing terrible happened. It looked carefree because so many terrible things happened that they were passed over in an instant.

“You mentioned wanting to make games too. Honestly, I think doing something handmade would be good too.”

The dream I had originally been too embarrassed to tell anyone about, but had let slip while drunk.

Kengo had probably said it without any deeper intention, but it stabbed into my chest far more sharply than I expected.

If I died here, would I return to the previous world again?

But what if that was not the case?

A kind of pain ran through the back of my mind, which had grown drowsy from gradually getting used to this new world.

Back when I had first come to this world, before I had forgotten to be on guard.

Back when I had clearly felt anxious about only being paid enough to live from one day to the next.

Back when I still vividly remembered the feelings I had in that instant when I was being cast out of my previous world and realized what I truly wanted to do.

I had never been especially ambitious, nothing ever lasted long for me, and my life had been relatively flat, but there had long been one dream in my heart: I wanted to make games. In college, I had actually founded a game development club and even served as its leader.

But here, anything I wanted to do required a substantial amount of money.

And with only the copper coins handed out each day as if out of pity, it would take an absurd amount of time to save enough.

And now, on top of that, I had come to understand that it was perfectly normal here to end up dying in a ditch over something trivial.

If that was the case, then I could not afford to keep working forever under Nodon for miserable wages.

Even Kengo was surely uneasy, deep down, about continuing to work in the mines.

We needed to break out of our current situation as quickly as possible.

There was something I had been thinking the whole time as I rushed from Nodon’s company to this tavern and sat there drinking alcohol I could not even handle.

In this world where we had no cheat abilities and no amazing equipment, how could people from another world, who had been ordinary nobodies in the previous one, somehow claw their way upward?

“Hey, Kengo.”

“Hm?”

The way he tore into the meat was like a beastman.

But beneath the beard was the face of an extraordinarily capable former consultant.

“Want to start a business?”

If penniless men wanted to strike it rich, whether here or in the modern world, there were only so many ways to do it.