Chapter 508: A Journey for Two with Sage Noshima

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"Take care!"

"..."

Sage Noshima and I watched Lady Sonya’s procession depart. In front of others, she kept her usual sharp demeanor, so there were no tearful goodbyes. I’d kept smiling until the very end. From her perspective, did I look like a cold lover?

Once the procession had shrunk into the distance, kicking up dust as it went, I turned to Noshima.

"Shall we head back to the Royal Capital?"

"Yes. Please take care of me."

He bowed his head. A sense of unease began to rise.

"Noshima, you have a mana bag, right?"

He’d been part of the Hero party, so it should have been obvious, but I asked anyway.

"Yes, I do. Why?"

He looked puzzled.

"What’s inside it?"

Asking about something so personal was rude, but I was worried about the journey ahead.

"Inside the mana bag? Let’s see... my high school uniform, bag, shoes, smartphone, wallet, cola, gum..."

What?

"Hold on. Do you not have anything you’d need for traveling in this world? A change of clothes, underwear, that sort of thing? Even if you don’t, do you at least have money?"

Noshima clapped his hands.

"Oh, that! No, I don’t have any of that. I wasn’t given anything at all! I’ve never once used money since being summoned to this world, so I don’t even know what kind of currency they use. Wherever we went, there were always attendants who paid for everything."

He said it so casually. That meant—

"Clothes and underwear were all prepared by the attendants too. So I really don’t have any of that. Ahahaha!"

Was that something to say proudly?

He continued.

"After we set out on the journey, the woman assigned to me changed all my clothes for me. I didn’t have to do anything! It was way more comfortable than being in Japan. I wonder why she left me behind?"

I wanted to say "How should I know!?", but I held it in. In short, the Heroes had lived completely pampered lives and never done a single thing related to daily living. They hadn’t just been raised in a greenhouse—they’d been raised in a clean room. I’d suspected as much, but the reality was even worse.

Which meant that if I traveled with this guy from now on, I’d have to take care of everything. That was ridiculous. A kid who was only eleven years old looking after another kid all the way to the Royal Capital? Impossible.

What should I do? I thought for a moment. There had to be survivors from the group that brought this guy from the Royal Capital somewhere. When Zhu Biao and the others fought them, some of the people from the capital must have escaped. I should find those people, dump this guy on them, and go back alone. Yeah. That was the way to do it.

Once I decided, there was only one thing to do.

"Let’s go to the capital of Lord Itsuki Margrave’s territory!"

That was the only option. I didn’t want to travel all the way to the Royal Capital while staring at this guy’s face.

"Eh? Why? Aren’t you going to take me with you, Lord Marie?"

He said it as if that were the obvious thing to do.

"No, I can’t look after you by myself. I thought it would be better to find the people who came with you from the Royal Capital and return together with them."

I tried to sound reasonable.

"You’re right! It’ll be easier if there are people I know."

"Exactly! The only place the people who ran away could have gone is the capital, so let’s go there and look for them. I’m sure we’ll find them!"

Noshima seemed to warm up to the idea. Then let’s get going.

The two of us started walking toward the capital. It was right in front of us—though still about a kilometer away. We should reach it in around fifteen minutes. However, Noshima started complaining almost immediately.

"People don’t normally walk this much. We usually go by car. I always just take the car to the convenience store right over there, so walking this far is..."

I’d heard that people living in Tokyo walked one or two subway stations without a problem, but was this guy different?

"Aaah, my feet hurt! Don’t make me walk on a road this bumpy! And these shoes don’t even fit! Do something about it already!"

He kept complaining nonstop. It was getting annoying. When I looked at his face, he said,

"No! I wasn’t saying that to you, Lord Marie! I was saying it to whoever made this road! Still, why aren’t there more comfortable shoes that don’t make your feet tired? These are stiff leather, sweat builds up inside and feels gross, there’s no cushioning so my feet hurt, and they’re hard to walk in!"

All he did was complain and grumble.

"Can’t you do something about that with your Sage abilities?"

I didn’t think it was possible, but I asked anyway.

"Impossible, impossible! I feel like you’d need to bring an alchemist for that. Ah, or maybe a dwarf? Then it’d be a blacksmith? This is difficult. We should have brought production classes with us... There were light novels where people paid money on their smartphones and ordered things from Japan, you know."

Handle it yourself! I wanted to say, but I held it in.

Noshima was the type who, once he started complaining, never stopped. I wanted to cry.

We finally reached the gate of Lord Itsuki Margrave’s capital. I was already deeply regretting this. Assuming the other person could handle something just because I could was dangerous—I’d been taught that lesson thoroughly. I’d thought that since Noshima was a companion of the Heroes, he’d have at least a little physical stamina. I’d completely forgotten that his Hero correction was gone. Zhu Biao had still shown above-average ability even after losing his Hero status, so I’d assumed Noshima could manage something even with low base stats. In the end, he was just an ordinary modern Japanese person. Thinking about it that way, Lily and Stevie, who had followed me from the Marie Kingdom into the Mainz Kingdom without a single complaint, were truly precious. They’d probably been fighting beyond their natural abilities to protect me. Lily had never said anything and always acted as if it were normal.