You’re Pretty Smart, Huh.

“So then, Kikori?”

“Yes, what is it?”

“Are you staying at my place again today?”

“Uh… I’m grateful, but wouldn’t that be a bother?”

“Not at all. You know where it is, right?”

“Yes. Uh, but—”

“Then come back tonight, okay?”

Pushed along, Kikori went up the stairs… but he ended up muttering,

“Is it really okay?”

He was happy about the kindness, but it also left him unsettled. He had no idea why she liked him so much.

He didn’t know… but it still made him happy. And yet the memory of being scorned as “demon-possessed” resurfaced.

If he got too close, and she said that too…

Just imagining it made his body go stiff.

“…Stop it. I have to stop thinking about it any further.”

He finished climbing the stairs and looked at the requests posted on the wall.

Herb gathering, obtaining horned-rabbit meat, obtaining bighorn meat… It felt like there were a lot of food-related ones.

“Can you even eat monster meat…?”

“Hm? Oh, it’s the near-dead kid. You’re not near-dead today.”

Maybe he’d heard Kikori’s mutter. The man who’d been looking at the requests next to him spoke up.

“‘Near-dead kid’…?”

“Hahaha, there were even guys betting on when you’d die, you know?”

It was a pretty awful story, but since it was true he’d been near death, Kikori couldn’t say anything and fell silent.

“Hey, don’t get so mad.”

“I’m not mad.”

“Haha! So you’re wondering if monster meat’s edible? Not like that, it isn’t.”

“Then why is it on the requests?”

“Well… hey, you do know why it’s called the Contaminated Region, right?”

“No.”

“Oh, you’re starting from there, huh. Well, basically, there’s this thing called magical-energy contamination. High-density magical energy does something, and it becomes an environment humans can’t live in… apparently. I don’t know the details either.”

“So the magical energy is too dense and it affects humans badly?”

“Probably. And monsters are also called ‘contamination-adapted organisms.’ Basically, if humans eat that meat, it wrecks their bodies.”

By that logic, Kikori thought, didn’t that mean monsters were creatures with high magical energy?

Or maybe it just meant they weren’t affected by magical energy. That seemed more likely.

And the reason herbs grew easily in the Contaminated Region was probably because of the high-density magical energy too.

“…I think I kind of get it now.”

“Oh? You do? You’re pretty smart, huh.”

“No, it’s not like that.”

“I heard it five times and still didn’t really get it. Hah!”

Laughing, the man roughly ruffled Kikori’s head and walked away.

Watching him go, Kikori returned his gaze to the requests.

Horned-rabbit meat, 500 yen per head.

“…What a waste. How much did I lose out on?”

He nearly started calculating, then stopped.

Because he realized it would only make him sad.