chapter six: the itsy bitsy spider
"Yo, Jucchan."
Jun had long stopped his attempts at resisting the nickname. "Shiracchan," he acknowledged dryly, and his friend rolled his eyes.
"What am I, hot sauce?" the other boy joked, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. Jun rolled his eyes.
"I tried."
Laughing, Shiratori Tawakeru hooked his thumbs under the straps on his backpack, strolling backwards along the pavement and tossing his overgrown mop of hair out of his eyes. "You finish Shibata-san's paper?"
"Are you implying the top of our year would miss an assignment?" Jun shot back, raising one eyebrow into an arch so high it disappeared into his blonde bangs. He neglected to mention the math he'd had to complete that morning.
"Me? Never!" Shiratori feigned surprise, and Jun groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Nah, but I almost didn't finish. Our cat didn't come back in last night and I was out kinda late looking for her. She's done it before, so I'm not too worried." A shrug.
"I've heard of cats eating homework, but never eating the time you had to do it," Jun yawned.
"That joke was so bad it hurt."
They bantered back and forth on the way to school, rain-soaked petals sticking to the pavement beneath their shoes. He'd known Shiratori for a couple of years now - they'd actually sat next to one another in their first year - but they'd only really become friends since Naofumi's disappearance. It had been all over the news, so of course the first thing his classmates had tried to do was badger him for details about Naofumi. Shiratori, however, hadn't: he'd asked Jun how he was feeling, and Jun had learned about the person beneath the jester's mask.
Rain flowed over the edge of a clogged shopfront gutter, hammering on the downspout under it. Jun, watching the water splash over the jagged aluminum at the bottom of the pipe, noticed something moving in the wet darkness inside; he slowed his pace and squinted, trying to get a better look at it -
...Is that a spider?
Ordinarily, a spider wouldn't have concerned him very much, but the thing that was bothering him about it was that it had taken up most of the pipe, and from the size of each square of pavement underfoot, the downspout was something like fifteen centimeters wide. To top it off, the spider had been a peculiar blue-grey that he'd never seen on any spider in his life - if it had been brown, he could have written it off as a flaw in his spatial perception, as some Japanese spiders did grow to fair sizes, but it was the color of an evening stormcloud, and for the life of him Jun couldn't remember ever seeing a spider that color.
Nothing itsy bitsy about it, either.
The spider scuttled backwards up the spout, vanishing from view.
"Jun-kun?" He suddenly became very aware that his friend was calling him, and the look on Shiratori's face said that this wasn't the first time he'd said Jun's name.
"Sorry. Just thinking about the project tomorrow," he improvised, and Shiratori paled so fast it would have been funny if Jun's mind hadn't been racing a mile a minute.
"Project? What project!? Oh, shit, nobody told me about a project. You knew!?"
This continued all the way down the road and through the shortcut they usually took down an alleyway between two storefronts before Jun finally admitted he'd completely made up the project (much to Shiratori's mixed relief and irritation at Jun for "playing such a cruel prank"). When they reached their classroom, Jun - still distracted - shot his brother a quick text:
when you get back, you're telling me what happened last night
"Looks like we've got eleven days until the next one," Naofumi sighed. "Counting yesterday, that's twelve days here, times two-point-five...thirty days in Melromarc. That matches up pretty well with what I remember from being summoned the first time around."
"If it were just from our world, I wouldn't be worried about it, but…" Raphtalia bit her lip, watching Naofumi scroll through the news on his phone. (He'd left Jun's message as unread to remind him to reply, and the icon blinked irritatingly at the top of the screen.) "What if this next wave is from a parallel world instead? If we don't have our levels? If all the waves end up being from different worlds, we're going to need to find a way to level up in this one so we can fight them."
"Didn't that mage girl say that other Melromarcs had sent over vassal heroes to fight?" he asked, crossing his ankles on the arm of the sofa.
They were seated in the living room, bathed in yellow lamplight - the outside world was too dark and gloomy to leave the lights off. Katai was still at work, Jun was still at school, and there wasn't very much to do around the house courtesy of Naofumi, Raphtalia, and Kokita, so the latter had departed to pick up some groceries for that night's dinner and left the former two alone in the faintly dust-scented den.
"Even if we could find them, I don't think we're going to be able to travel around this world so easily. There aren't any Dragon Hourglasses, are there?"
"Nah. Nothing like that." Naofumi shook his head, craning his neck to glance at Raphtalia. He'd sprawled comfortably across the sofa, and she'd taken a seat next to his head, sitting quietly with her hands folded in her lap. "Ow," he added, feeling a sharp pain shoot up from between his shoulders. Raphtalia frowned.
"Naofumi-sama, you shouldn't move your neck like that," she scolded. She still hadn't broken the habit of calling him sama, at least in private, and he wasn't sure if his lecture about certain types of relationships had gotten through to her. If it had, and she was still doing it...the thought alone made his heart race. "You'll injure yourself."
"Sorry." Returning to a more comfortable position, he stared up at the swirl-stucco ceiling, studying a particularly prominent whorl. "How are we supposed to level in this world, anyway? Short of killing every bug in Japan."
"We could ask the others the next chance we get." Raphtalia held up the Leystone's pendant, the smooth, ocean-blue surface of the stone glittering darkly against the pale, creamy skin just below her collar. "Maybe there's...some method of transferring experience? It would be extremely useful if we could store our experience in our weapons and take it with us between worlds, like those men from S'yne's world could do…"
"If Melromarc was destroyed, that would work," he sighed. "The energy we've accumulated there would stay with us permanently. I'm not sure how it would work with the fact that we've reached the level cap - so far, the only way we've been able to exceed it is by being at a wave event so the power from two worlds hits us at once." A pause, to gather his thoughts. He knew what he wanted to say next, but actually finding the words to give it voice was proving exceedingly difficult. Raphtalia, sensing that he wasn't finished, simply watched him a moment, eyes soft and tail flicking contentedly.
"Something about having a world destroyed 'unlocks' a weapon's ability to store experience," he finally got out. "I don't actually know if all earned experience is then re-routed into the bearer's body or whatever, or if it's just temporary to store the experience from that world and preserve the bearer's life...but if we could, I don't know, find some way to unlock the function without destroying Melromarc, that would be extremely useful, especially since we might be able to level past the cap." Thinking on it, the fact that they'd been intent on destroying Melromarc hinted at the latter theory - a world would have to be destroyed for the user's experience to be stored in the weapon.
"That sounds scary," Raphtalia admitted. "Imagine if someone wicked were to get ahold of a sacred weapon...I mean, that's already happened, but if they could gather experience from multiple worlds without destroying them, what would stop them from hopping between worlds to take advantage of the faster growth at low levels while keeping their stats from every world they'd been to so far?"
Naofumi thought about this for a moment. "Hopefully, storing all their experience in one place would make that impossible. If you take fifty independent levels into another world, it's not going to make you level up any faster, right? It would just mean you don't have to start over from scratch, which is what we need in a world where we can't level up...at least, not ethically or legally. We're still coasting on the passive stats from all the weapon forms we unlocked and powered up" - and there were a great many of these indeed, from two and a half years and an entire world of resources, not to mention the fact that the Shield of Compassion had amplified the effects of every single other shield he owned - "but relying on that isn't going to do us any good."
Raphtalia didn't respond immediately. In the silence that followed, the only sounds were their breathing and the steady tick, tick, tick of the grandfather clock in the corner of the room, an heirloom passed down through several generations of Iwatani men.
Each tick synchronized perfectly with the loss of another second on the timer hovering in front of him.
"Could we level up by killing the monsters that come out of the waves?" Raphtalia's voice cut into the clock's.
Naofumi grimaced. "I want the waves closed as quickly as possible. These are human lives we're talking, and the larger the city, the larger the danger. In this world, the government tries to cover up things that people think are outside the realm of possibility...and they're pretty successful. Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but you heard how they described the wave. They were so desperate to cover it up in the face of concrete evidence that they shot themselves in the foot and said it was the result of top-secret experimentation on animals to create bioweapons."
"Bioweapons? Like what Rat was researching?"
"Sort of. But we both know those were just monsters."
Raphtalia gazed down at her own thighs, one ear twitching. "Yes. It would be dangerous and selfish to try and use the waves to our advantage, and we don't even know if it would work. I'm sorry…"
"Nothing to apologize for," he shrugged, sitting up and scooting over to sit next to her. "It wasn't a bad idea, but there's just too much at risk to try it out. Though, with your katana, we should be able to get a fair amount of experience just from the monsters we'll kill hunting down the, uh, the whatsit."
"The conduit?" Raphtalia asked, a small smile gracing her lips.
"Yeah, that."
Silence, not uncomfortable, fell once again.
Then, just as Raphtalia reached for his hand -
Thunk.
The front door opened. Naofumi recognized Jun's footsteps instantly; his younger brother always took a step to the left to take his shoes off, rather than taking them off and stepping aside. Checking the time - four fifty-three in the afternoon - Naofumi hauled himself to his feet, putting his phone to sleep with the quiet click of a button. Raphtalia, one ear drooping, called after him. "Naofumi-kun? Where are you going?"
"Oh, I…" He'd completely forgotten to tell her about Jun's message, even though it blinked in his face every time he looked at the phone. "I told Jun I'd get him up to speed on a few things. He was there when you had your...nightmare, last night."
She paled. "Should I come, too?"
"If you want." Naofumi wasn't certain what he was going to say; he'd assumed that Jun would simply pepper him with questions, but if his brother sat him down and demanded a blanket explanation, he wouldn't even know where to begin. "I might need your help."
Dutifully, she rose in a far more dignified fashion than his ungraceful flop, following him out into the hallway to meet Jun on his way to the stairs. The two brothers didn't need to say anything to understand the other's intentions - the expression on Jun's face said everything for him, and Naofumi's approach stood for his acknowledgement.
"Let's talk in the living room," the blonde suggested, without so much as a greeting. "I've got some news for you this time, too. Just give me a minute to unpack."
"Got it."
Raphtalia, feeling very much sidelined, trudged right back into the living room alongside Naofumi, and the pair returned to the exact same position they'd been in a mere minute prior. "He seems very...serious," she offered, for want of something to say.
A grunt. "That's Jun for you. When he thinks something's important, he'll do anything and everything to make sure it goes well."
"I would say that's admirable, but if I'm honest, it reminds me of Itsuki-san back when we first met," she sighed. "What if he's wrong about something?"
Naofumi shrugged. "He's self-conscious enough to reevaluate his decisions in real time. I think that's what sets them apart. Itsuki-kun would get some sort of laser focus on his own decision and refuse to sway from his position no matter what happened - that's how he ended up with the Pride curse, remember?"
"All too well. He really doesn't deserve Rishia, you know," Raphtalia went on, surprising Naofumi with her boldness. "Ah - I know it's been less time for you, but her and I have spent a lot more time together in the ten months you've been gone, so I've seen more of Itsuki-san than I ever wanted to."
"No, he doesn't," Naofumi agreed. "Especially considering what a shithead he was, and it's not through any virtue of his own that he stopped being one. She just kicked his ass hard enough to knock the curse out of him, and then he turned into some kind of asshole-shaped marionette." Raphtalia couldn't resist a giggle at this, and even Naofumi cracked a wry smile.
"He's more like a dog than anything now," she chuckled. "Some part of his sense of self has come back, I think, but just enough to stop him from obeying anyone who gives him an order. I seem to remember a certain someone trying to make Itsuki-san drown himself," Raphtalia added, eyes narrowing darkly, and Naofumi looked away, scratching at the back of his head.
"Sounds like a real piece of work," Jun drawled from the doorway, strolling into the room. He still wore his uniform, minus tie and with the top button undone. "Nii-san, that wouldn't have been you, would it?"
"There's a possibility. But I wasn't serious!" he argued, trying to defend himself. "I would've stopped him!"
Jun laughed. "Raphtalia-san, thank you for keeping my brother in check all this time."
"It wasn't easy."
"Hey!" Naofumi protested. "I thought you came here for an explanation?"
"I'm just teasing," his brother prodded, and Naofumi sighed, defeated.
"Alright, alright. So what do you wanna know?"
The smile slid off of Jun's face in a heartbeat.
"This morning, I saw a spider."
"So did I. It was in the sock drawer, what about it?" Deep down, Naofumi knew there was a reason his brother started off with such a benign statement; there was definitely more to it, like telling someone they had water in their carburetor when in reality you'd driven their car off a bridge and into a river. Not exactly a lie, but a hook to catch their attention and prepare them for the real bad news.
"It was sitting in the downspout by Tatsujime-san's ramen stand," Jun went on. His frown deepened, grabbed hold of his eyebrows and dragged them down into something between concern and frustration. "Do you know how wide those are, nii-san?"
"Not offhand."
"Fifteen centimeters. And the spider had its legs folded."
Raphtalia was unperturbed. "That's fairly small, isn't it?"
"No, Raphtalia, it's not," Naofumi sighed. "That's very large here. Are you sure you weren't seeing something stuck in the pipe? Something like...leaves? Or petals?"
"Do either of those crawl backwards up pipes?" Jun deadpanned.
"That's a fair point. So what are you saying?"
Naofumi leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees and leaving his clasped hands to hang in the air between them. What Jun described sounded like a young monster, if he was honest, but hadn't he just talked with Raphtalia about how there were no monsters in this world…? Still, far from sending chills up his spine, the thought that some had escaped and might even be reproducing on Earth got his blood pumping.
We can level up. We can stand a fighting chance once our passive stats stop being enough to get by.
Furthermore, couldn't average people also stand a fighting chance against weak monsters? Melromarc's adventurers came from all walks of life, as base stats weren't tied to class or social standing - if Jun had truly seen a monster, then it might even be possible, given time, for people to gain the strength to protect themselves, right?
Not that he wanted to slack off; it was his job as the Shield Hero to protect all that he could, after all. Still, every person that could fight for themselves gave him room to fight for someone else, and a reasonably selfish part of him desperately wanted his family in particular to level up if at all possible. He'd never had to worry about civilian family in Melromarc, considering that those closest to him approached him in power (and three had even become vassal heroes), and now that the waves threatened his brother and parents, he understood on a much deeper level than empathy just what the people he'd protected had felt for their loved ones.
"Nii-san."
"Naofumi-kun?"
With a jolt, he realized that his train of thought had run entirely off the rails and was now rumbling dangerously down the metaphorical mountainside. Dragging himself back into the moment, he shook his head, mop of dark hair flying. "Sorry. What you said got me thinking," he apologized.
"What about?" Jun's frown went as deep as it could go.
Instead of speaking, Naofumi plucked the shield from his waist, slapping it onto his arm and shifting it before his brother's surprised eyes into its default "small shield" form. Unblinking, Naofumi scrolled through the menu that projected itself into the air above the shield.
"Look at me."
Jun looked.
Naofumi's irises flared a cool, natural green, and something akin to a hologram unfolded in front of Jun's face.
Party invitation: Naofumi Iwatani.
Accept | Decline
His brother didn't accept immediately. "Why?" was all he said.
"We're going to kill the itsy bitsy spider," Naofumi declared dryly. "I'm pretty sure Raphtalia could kill it by looking at it hard enough, but I want you along for the ride."
"And why is that?" Jun repeated, but he accepted all the same, allowing Naofumi to do something he never thought he'd do: pull up his brother's status window.
《Iwatani Jun - Lv1 》
HP 《50/50》
MP 《0/0》
SP 《10/10》
ATK 《4》 | MAG《8》
DEF《5 (+2)》 | RES《7》
DEX《15》
All in all, his brother's stats weren't terrible; his physical stats weren't great, but he seemed like he might have some magical promise. Briefly, Naofumi wondered what stats he might have had he never become the Shield Hero…
"I want to see how ordinary people grow when they level up," he shrugged. "It'd help me figure out how long it would take for someone to become a threat to their surroundings." In reality, he was hoping that - with enough training and experience - Jun would be able to protect himself, but Naofumi knew that if he told the truth Jun would tease him about being overprotective. Maybe I am.
"This reminds me of when we met," Raphtalia mused. "Do you remember, Naofumi-sama…?"
She'd let the sama slip again, but Naofumi figured it didn't matter around Jun. "How could I forget?"
Raphtalia, curled in a cage, small and weak, her stats worse than Jun's...Raphtalia, coughing feverishly, screaming in the middle of the night…Raphtalia at a restaurant, eating good food for the first time in christ-knows-how-long…
"Isn't it strange that he has this, though?" she went on, pointing at the screen hovering in front of him. Following her finger, he saw that she'd indicated the little "10" beside "SP". "Jun-kun isn't a spirit. Plus, his dexterity is yellow…"
Naofumi himself had noticed this - the "15" next to "DEX" glowed a soft gold, and he couldn't for the life of him figure out what it meant. Neither his nor Raphtalia's stats had ever changed color.
A distant rumble of thunder shook the sky.
"Are we going now?" Jun cut in. "I'll get changed if we are."
"Nah." Naofumi shook his head. "People are starting to get off work now. By the time we got there, it'd be way too crowded to go poking around in drain pipes and not attract attention."
He hadn't been to the ramen stand in question since the last semester he could recall attending - it was directly on the way to his university - but he could still recall the traffic it garnered from tired office workers making their way home in the evening. The owner had even set up a standing bar for those who were afraid they'd be unable to get up if they sat down to eat and got too comfortable. Naofumi himself had tried it once, but all he'd been able to think about was how sad it was to see everyone around him trying to cram down food like it was an afterthought and not a meal.
Jun agreed, and Naofumi and Raphtalia spent the next hour answering a myriad of other questions, ranging from what monsters were (having lived in Melromarc her entire life, Raphtalia had a far better understanding of this than Naofumi, and she did most of the talking on that one) to how magic worked (Naofumi strongly cautioned his brother against even trying, as it would attract far too much attention and raise far too many questions) to -
"What happened to Raphtalia-san last night, and what was that shield?"
In retrospect, Naofumi supposed he should have seen it coming. Jun had asked to talk about what had happened immediately after the Shield of Compassion fended off whatever had plagued Raphtalia.
In the simplest terms he could manage - not because Jun was an idiot, but because Naofumi was getting tired of talking and he really didn't want to provoke further questioning - he described the concept behind the curse series, skipping over the finer details and moving right to how the death of one of his companions had been the driving force he needed to grow past the Shield of Wrath. He admitted that no, he didn't know what had happened to her last night, and Raphtalia stepped in to describe the nightmare she'd had.
Predictably, Jun made the connection quickly and dared to say it out loud.
"So what was happening to Raphtalia-san last night...was the same thing that would happen to nii-san when he used the cursed shield too much?"
Naofumi didn't want to consider it. He didn't want to believe that his curse was somehow affecting Raphtalia all this time later. He didn't even want to entertain the thought of it.
Raphtalia squeezed his hand, and Jun pretended not to notice.
"Yeah," he whispered hoarsely. "It's the same thing."
"I'm fine," Raphtalia reassured Jun, though Naofumi had an idea that she might have been talking to him as well. "The shield that Naofumi-sama used can dispel curses."
Then -
Thunk.
"Kokita? Jun? Naofumi?" Naofumi heard his father calling from the other side of the door, evidently unable to open it himself.
"Coming," he returned on instinct; when he tried to get up, his legs were so stiff that he nearly fell over, and it was Jun who rose from his seat to answer the door as Raphtalia immediately leapt to stop Naofumi from falling over. (He didn't actually need the help, considering the「Balance Up」 attribute one of his shields granted him, but he appreciated the gesture nonetheless.)
As it turned out, Katai had brought home groceries, which struck Naofumi as distinctly wrong for reasons that weren't clear until his father asked where his wife had gone.
"She...went to get groceries," he murmured, half to himself. "Shit, shit, shit. Jun, she should have been back half an hour ago at the latest, did she message you?"
Typically, if Kokita didn't have time to pick up groceries, Katai would do it on the way home from work, sparing his wife the trip. If she did pick them up, she'd always leave him a message saying so, and the bags a suddenly tense Jun and Katai held were testament to the fact that she hadn't sent one. It was possible she'd gotten sidetracked, or she'd run into a friend somewhere, but wouldn't she at least have let Katai know…?
"I'll give her a call," his father decided, leaving Naofumi with the remaining groceries as he set off for the kitchen landline at a brisk stride. Biting his lip, Naofumi followed, glancing over his shoulder at Katai every few seconds even though he knew that if his mother picked up, his father would say something, so why was he, Naofumi, watching the receiver like this…?
Jun tossed a leek haphazardly into the vegetable drawer as Raphtalia watched, fascinated by the entire process even as she wrung her hands with worry. Naofumi knew, as he restocked some herbs they'd run low on, she was just as concerned as he about his mother. Raphtalia was kind like that.
A clack sounded through the kitchen as Katai dropped the receiver back onto the base far more roughly than was necessary. Jun's head whipped around, curly hair flying. "Nothing," the older man sighed. "I'll try again in a few minutes. Maybe she just can't hear her phone ringing right now."
Naofumi supposed that was the logical conclusion, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. Apart from Jun's story about the spider, he and Raphtalia had lost track of a man whom they suspected of murder, and he didn't need Filo-level perception to match those lingering threats with his mother's radio silence; he did need Naofumi-level paranoia, but as he'd told himself before, it would be better to make sure she was alright than to assume it only to regret his inaction later.
"I'm going to go take a look around," he heard himself say. "I'll be back in a little bit."
"I'll go as well," Raphtalia offered immediately, at the same time as -
"I'm coming, too."
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Naofumi asked, bluntly. Jun didn't stand down, and after a moment's tense silence, Naofumi sighed and shook his head. "Alright. Fine. Just don't get in the way." Turning back to his father, he ordered: "Stay here. Call Jun if she comes home or contacts you in the meantime, alright? I can't guarantee I'll answer my phone." He'd gotten pretty bad about picking it up in the two and a half years he'd not had it.
A sigh from Katai. "Alright. I can't say I'm not worried, but if it's the three of you, it should be fine. Jun, make sure you listen to your brother. And Raphtalia-chan…"
"Yes?" Her ears perked up.
"Thank you for your concern."
After saying their goodbyes, the three of them dashed out into the falling dusk, shoes and hearts pounding. Naofumi's plan was to simply follow the path they typically took to the market and have Raphtalia's keen senses strain for any sign of Kokita, keeping Jun out of as much danger as possible.
He was surprised to see that his brother wasn't having any issues keeping up with the two of them, despite the fact that both ran with stats boosted by their weapons; it was true that neither were moving at top speed, and that even he couldn't see Raphtalia when she activated some of her abilities, but the fact that Jun was keeping up at all wasn't something that he'd expected.
Raphtalia didn't say a word until around the halfway point between their home and the store, whereupon her ears twitched and her tail began to bristle. Not missing a beat, Naofumi glanced back at her over his shoulder and was met with a single sharp nod. They stood by the alleyway where, several days prior, a man had attempted to mug Naofumi and was promptly knocked unconscious by a shield bash to the head; the area wasn't well-traveled, and now that he thought about it, when was the last time he'd seen these stores open…?
"What's wrong? Did you pick up on something?" Jun asked Raphtalia, expression grim. He was, Naofumi figured, likely thinking of the "true crime" shows they'd watched on television before the summoning. Bodies did tend to turn up in areas like this one, and while Naofumi hadn't heard of it happening here…
If kā-san is here, then there are only two possibilities...it's a monster that nests, or a human took her with the intent to do something shitty. If nobody were coming to save her, it would actually be better if it were a monster, because at least then it doesn't have anything more in mind than senseless violence. He bit his lip as Raphtalia's head swivelled side to side, then nearly drew blood when she began to speak.
"I am the Katana Hero, source of thy power," she murmured. "Decipher the laws of nature and reveal my target: Detect."
"You can use magic here?" Naofumi blurted out. "I thought Earth wasn't connected enough for that…"
"To be honest, I was going out on a limb there," Raphtalia sighed, peering down the alleyway to their right. "I was relying on the fact that we have access to our status magic. Down here," she added, leading the way into the alley as she drew the umbrella at her waist - only it wasn't an umbrella anymore, it was a katana, and it shone the pale yellow of a reflected streetlamp for a brief moment before the three of them moved entirely into the shadows. A light flared from behind Naofumi and Raphtalia, and both turned to see that Jun had switched on his phone's flashlight.
"If I can't do anything else, at least let me do this," he sighed. "I hate feeling useless."
"Works for me," Naofumi shrugged, turning back to inspect the alley. "Raphtalia, what did you see down here?"
Ears flicking again, she surveyed the area illuminated in the harsh glare of Jun's light for a moment before striding to the far wall and poking at a crumbling section with the tip of the katana. To Naofumi's surprise, it jiggled, and it took him a moment to realize that he was looking at some sort of adhesive cloth covered in the remains of shattered brick. It was a facade, nothing more, and a surge of dread shot through him as Raphtalia paced over to the metal door of what he could only assume was the storeroom of the abandoned shop.
Bang.
Without a word, Raphtalia kicked through the door, buckling the frame as the metal slab slammed into the wall opposite. Her blade was drawn before her boot hit the floor, and Naofumi rushed in after her, instinctively falling into position as the defensive frontline that he was -
Jesus fucking Christ what the fuck -
"Jun, stay back!" he commanded, right hand flying out to the door where his brother stood. "Just - don't even come in here." There must have been something in his tone that turned away any questions the blonde might have had, as Jun stood obediently just outside the door, watching the entrance to the alley. The flashlight shook violently.
There, in the dusty, disused storeroom, something had made its nest, its horrible webbed nest, and as they watched, it raised its head to stare dead-eyed at them, forelegs still spinning silk around the prey sheltered beneath its bulky thorax.
It screamed.
Not from the face - no, that would be too normal. Instead, a series of vents opened up along either side of its bloated, pale abdomen and the spider released a sound eerily similar to a human scream, followed by something that sent chills down the brothers' spines.
"Here, kitty. Are you okay? What's wrong? Are you stuck in there?"
"Raphtalia!" Naofumi heard himself bellow. "Don't hit the thing under it!"
The spider kept making sound, regurgitating everything it had heard in reverse. Now it was gurgling, then yowling, then meowing -
"Got it!" Raphtalia barked back. They'd dealt with things like this before - monsters that could imitate human speech were uncommon but not unheard of - but what sent waves of nausea through Naofumi's body was the fact that it screamed in his mother's voice, talked to a cat in her voice, and a quick glance around the room revealed several lumpy, webbed sacs ranging in size from a rat to a large dog, with the one exception of what was clearly a human being slumped against the opposite wall.
In an instant, Raphtalia had darted out from behind his shield and bisected the massive spider with a single, clean stroke. There had never been any contest of strength between the two of them, but Naofumi couldn't help the fear that made his hands tremble as he rushed forward to kneel before the webbed-up body on the floor, shoving the spider's lower half roughly enough to send it tumbling across the tile. It wasn't himself or Raphtalia that he was afraid for - it was the person he now knelt in front of.
"Shit, shit, shit," he cursed under his breath. "God - damnit - Raphtalia, can you - ?"
"Hai." She understood him immediately, and - crouching beside him - gently pierced the loosest piece of the silken cocoon with the tip of the katana, sliding the weapon slowly along its length until Naofumi was able to peel it off of his mother in one piece. From the little he could see of Raphtalia's face, she was absolutely horrified, but there was no time to comfort her. Two uncomfortably large puncture marks were visible on Iwatani Kokita's twisted ankle, and he raised both hands to hold them over the injury. Her eyes were closed, but she had a weak pulse - the poison was most likely a strong paralytic that would keep her alive long enough to be fresh for when the spider wanted to eat her.
Deciding it was safe to do so, Jun stepped inside just then and immediately went even paler than he already was. "Kā-san?" he blurted out. "Oh, no. Oh no oh no oh no. Nii-san, what - ?"
"Quiet!" Naofumi hissed. "I, the Shield Hero, source of all power, read and decipher the laws of nature. Purify my target and repair their body: Zweite Cleanse! Fast Heal!"
Warm relief surged through his chest like an electric shock as the magic took effect, soft green light weaving its way through the air to wrap itself softly around Kokita's twisted ankle as her entire body glowed a pale aqua.
"Nii-san…" Jun breathed. "Is...is she alright?"
Naofumi let himself lean back on his palms, trying to calm his nerves. "She should be. If the venom was strong enough to require a higher-level cleanse, she'd probably already be dead."
Raphtalia, next to him, placed a hand over his, ignoring the unpleasant sensation of spider silk beneath her fingers. "It's okay," she murmured. "We did it, Naofumi-sama. She's safe."
Jun rose, casting the flashlight over the walls. He seemed to be in shock, and Naofumi couldn't blame him: if he hadn't gone through what he had, he'd have been paralyzed with fear at the sight of a three-meter-long spider wrapping his mother up for dinner. When he got home, he'd have buried himself in whatever manga helped him relax the most and tried to forget about it.
For just a moment, he was very glad that - out of every version of Iwatani Naofumi possible - he was this Naofumi.
"I...I think I found Shiratori-kun's cat," his brother stammered out with a humorless laugh. "Let's just...call the police and let them handle everything else here."
"We should cut them down first," Raphtalia argued. "I wouldn't want to stay wrapped up like that. Naofumi-sama, do you think you have enough mana left to heal the rest of them?"
He glanced up, counting the shapes along the walls. There were a total of nine, but two - the dog and a rat - were fighting valiantly to escape, and he figured he wouldn't need to cleanse them. The spider had likely not injected enough venom into the dog's vascular system, and it probably hadn't even bothered with the rat. Wait, why am I concerned about a rat anyway? "Save the smaller ones for last," he ordered. "Let's get this other person first, then the cats, then the dog."
"Got it."
The other human was one Naofumi had seen before: the man who'd tried to mug him just a few days prior. "How the hell didn't you get tossed into jail?" he grumbled, raising his hands for the spell anyway. "You're lucky I don't hold a grudge, asshole."
Raphtalia snorted. "Naofumi-sama, no offense, but I've never seen anyone hold a grudge as long as you."
"I was joking. Still, we can't just leave him full of poison."
Jun helped them take down the animals from where they'd been webbed to the walls or hung from the ceiling, then stepped outside to dial emergency services. Out of the eight animals, there were four rats and three cats, along with the dog, but only one of the cats was still alive, and three of the rats had suffocated. He wasn't sure whose cat it was, but he upped the level of healing to try and repair the venom's damage to its small body.
"Alright," he sighed, once they'd finished; the dog and rat had both run off, and Kokita - along with the man and cat - was still unconscious, propped up in a folding chair they'd found. "Let's clean this thing up and go."
"What? We're just gonna leave them here?" Jun appeared dumbfounded. "We're going to leave kā-san here?"
"They'll take her to the hospital," Naofumi countered. "We can go see her there and pretend we didn't know anything about it." As he spoke, he held out the shield, changing it to his newest acquisition: the Trash Can Shield. "Let's try this out."
This particular shield possessed an ability called garbage disposal, which Naofumi had never actually tried, but which would be extremely helpful if it worked the way he hoped.
Requirements met. 《Gaian Mimic Spider Shield》 unlocked.
Unique Ability: 「Mimicry」
Locked Abilities: DEF+2, RES +2
When he and Raphtalia had finished feeding pieces of the spider into their weapons, he stood, feeling quite foolish as he declared: "Garbage Disposal!"
The noise that followed was absolutely revolting, but Naofumi couldn't deny that the ability was efficient: the remainder of the spider was vacuumed into the shield amidst a series of loud squelches and slurps, leaving absolutely nothing behind. Raphtalia retched.
"Naofumi-sama, in the future, warn me before you use that shield."
"Sorry."
He took a moment to check Kokita's pulse again - it felt stronger now, and her breathing was calm. Then, beckoning to the other two, he led the way back out into the dark alley.
"I'm really not comfortable just leaving," Jun admitted, casting a glance back into the darkened storeroom. "Nii-san, are you sure this is alright?"
Before Naofumi could respond, Raphtalia butted in. "If you're worried about it, I can hide us in the shadows here and we can keep watch on what your soldiers do."
"They're police officers, Raphtalia," Naofumi corrected her, resigning himself to his role as her guide. "And paramedics. Those are like emergency healers."
"But you already healed the people in there." She sounded confused. "Why do they need another healer?"
"It's just a precaution."
Three hours later, the entire Iwatani family plus Raphtalia found themselves crowded around a hospital bed.
As far as their parents knew, Naofumi and Jun - with Raphtalia's help - had simply run across evidence of a struggle by the alleyway and called the police. The responding officers had undoubtedly run across the nest, from which they'd retrieved the three unconscious survivors, but there'd been no news about it so far. Naofumi figured it would stay that way - as far as the government knew, no civilian had seen the nest or its creator. They themselves hadn't seen the creator, and he wasn't entirely sure they'd have all survived if they'd run across the spider: it was, according to the message printed in his experience log, level ten, and while he couldn't check its stats, they were clearly high enough to easily overpower two adults. If guns now worked based on the user's stats rather than the way bullets could destroy flesh, he wasn't sure how effective they'd be against even a low-level monster.
Speaking of which, the spider had provided enough experience to get Jun to level two, and his stats had risen. What had Naofumi concerned was that his dexterity had doubled - and while the absolute increase was only 15 points (up to 30), the relative growth was a whopping 100%, much higher than the typical 10-20% growth seen at low levels. His other stats stayed true to this trend, having only grown one or two points each.
"Do you know when you're getting out?" Katai asked his wife, both hands clasping one of hers.
"Tomorrow morning. According to the doctor, there's nothing wrong with me, but they want to keep an eye on me overnight just to be safe."
"We can come get you, then," Naofumi offered. "Tō-san has work and Jun has school, so Raphtalia-chan and I can make sure you get back safely."
His mother smiled wanly, head sinking back into the sterile white pillow. "Thank you, Naofumi. And thank you, too, Raphtalia-chan."
"It's no problem. I'm glad I could be of assistance." Raphtalia dipped her head respectfully, and Naofumi could tell from his parents' expressions that there was no longer the matter of their approval to worry about, even if her ears and tail came across as a little strange. The thought brought the ghost of a smile to his own lips.
Non-emergency visiting hours ended fifteen minutes later, and the four of them bid their farewells, departing for the closest subway station. The trip back home was uneventful, and they stopped at a noodle shop on the way, carryout boxes steaming in the rain.
"Kā-san seemed to be okay," Jun told Naofumi, falling into step beside him. "Do you think she remembers seeing...it?"
"The spider?" Jun nodded. Naofumi stared down into his noodles. "She didn't say anything about it. All the doctor said was that the police said she'd been attacked. Part of me hopes she does remember, but I'm still wary about people figuring out what's going on. You think what you saw this morning was the same kind of monster?" he added, and Jun frowned.
"I hope not, but there's no denying it was the same color. Where did it even come from?"
Something tugged at his memory, something from Melromarc, but Naofumi couldn't quite articulate just what it was. "I'll ask Raphtalia later. If she doesn't know, we'll have to get back in contact with the other world when the next wave occurs and ask the mages there."
"Mages, huh." It wasn't a question. "If I hadn't seen that spider and your shield in action, I'd think you were an overgrown chuunibyou."
The comment caught him off-guard, and he actually laughed out loud. "I sort of was, a couple of years ago," he admitted. "It wasn't on the level of a middle-schooler, but I used to wish I had the power to do something about how aimless everything felt. I figured if I had magic powers or whatever it would at least give me a purpose again."
"Did it?" Jun asked him, expression serious and gaze fixed on some point in the distance. Naofumi didn't have to think about his answer.
"Yeah. Without a doubt."
Raphtalia's hair swayed gently back and forth in front of him as she walked, engaged in some conversation or other with Katai. Following his gaze, Jun smirked a little. "You really got lucky, nii-san."
His first thought was that Jun was teasing him about Raphtalia, but Naofumi figured he'd take the bait anyway. "Lucky? How's that?"
"The odds of you, of all people, getting - well, isekai'd. I was pretty upset about how much you'd changed when you finally got out of that institution, but you're a lot more dependable than the nii-san I remember."
"I wasn't that bad!" Naofumi scoffed, feigning outrage. "Give me a little credit, would you?"
"Well, you did save me from being disowned," Jun mused, still with that smirk. "Alright, a little credit is in order."
A pause, in which Naofumi took a deep breath of garlicky steam. "Honestly, I've felt more alive in the past week than I have in the last four months," he said. "But it's reminded me just how useless I am without something to fight or protect."
"You're not useless!" Jun snapped. "Didn't you just save our mother from a giant spider?"
"That was mostly Raphtalia," Naofumi returned. "All I did was heal her."
"And if you hadn't, then it wouldn't matter whether or not we'd found her. Give yourself a little credit, nii-san."
Naofumi stared into his noodles again and didn't respond. Jun had a point, but he couldn't shake the nagging realization that - were it not for the impending destruction of their world (presumably, at least) - he'd still be more or less an aimless loser, for all the effort he'd put forth in Melromarc. Hell, his college applications still hadn't come back, and the only thing keeping him busy the past few days had been trying to help Raphtalia adjust to modern Japan.
When they got home, Jun excused himself to go do his homework; he hadn't had time at all since coming home between his talk with Naofumi and Raphtalia and the events that followed. Following suit, Naofumi announced that he was going to have a quick bath and get changed.
He was pretty dirty from the storeroom (and so was Raphtalia, but he trusted her to decide her own bathing needs), but more than a chance to wash himself, he wanted a few minutes of silence and solitude to clear his mind. That, he reflected, sinking into the silky bathwater, is the true purpose of a bath. If he'd simply wanted to get clean, a shower would have sufficed, but there was something peaceful about leaning back and watching puffy, lavender-scented clouds of steam roll across the water's surface.
"Naofumi-sama?" he heard Raphtalia call through the door, sounding very far away. "I brought our food upstairs. I hope that's okay."
Wait, what? "What about Katai-san?" he asked her.
"Ah, he said it was alright if we wanted some time alone."
You sly old bastard, Naofumi thought. Are you suggesting I'm going to do something indecent with Raphtalia? In some ways, he and his father really weren't all that different - actually, now that he thought about it, he'd become much more like his father in Melromarc, and he wondered if perhaps something had happened to his father to make him the man he was. Before everything, back when every day was tense and he felt more tolerated than anything, he'd resented Katai his lack of tact, but coming home with a fresh pair of eyes to a family who'd had time to think about what he was to them...it was really -
"Raphtalia, please let me know when you're going to open the door," he groaned, both hands shooting up to cover himself before he registered that she too wore a towel. "Oh, no you don't."
"What? We bathed together yesterday. Isn't that normal here?" She seemed genuinely confused, which was somehow worse than her past attempts to slip into the same bath.
"For lovers and family, sure," he replied patiently. "But outside a public bath, it's very odd for two unrelated people to bathe together, especially if they're the opposite sex."
Raphtalia closed the door behind her and stepped into the bath anyway.
Naofumi sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he moved to make room for her. "Look, I'm not responsible for what happens if someone walks in on us."
"Which one are we, Naofumi-sama?"
Her question didn't make sense, and he could tell from the look on her face that she wasn't joking. When all she received in response was a blank stare, Raphtalia huffed, turning so that her back was to him. "Never mind. It'd be faster if we could help each other wash, right? Our food will get cold if we bathe one after the other."
He conceded that she had a point, and after soaking together for a few minutes, they took turns washing the other's back, Naofumi finding it very difficult to look directly at hers. Something quite aside from how exposed they each were was bothering him, and it wasn't until after they'd gotten dressed that he figured out what it was.
"Hey, Raphtalia?"
She glanced up from her food, ears perked and eyes wide. "Yes?"
Swallowing the bite he'd just taken, he struggled to find words for what it was he meant to say. In the end, all he managed to do was gape soundlessly for a solid six seconds before letting out a hoarse "thank you" and lowering his head, feeling some powerful emotion well up inside of him.
He'd been thinking of what he had told Jun on the way home, about how he'd still be drifting through the debris of his former life with no plan in mind had fate not had other ideas, and realized that the sense of purpose he'd rediscovered was in no small part thanks to the girl now sitting cross-legged on his bed, the tip of her tail twitching. Raphtalia, of course, could not have known this, and assumed he was thanking her for something else.
"You don't have to thank me," she pointed out mildly. "I would never let harm come to someone innocent - especially someone who's precious to you, Naofumi-sama. I'm really happy I was able to make a difference today."
"That's...not exactly what I meant, but thank you for that too," he admitted. "If we hadn't had your detection abilities, I don't think we'd have found my mother in time."
"I'm sure you'd have figured something out," Raphtalia tried to reason. "Do you think it would be a good idea to have your parents as party members, too?"
"I don't think they'd believe it, although that might actually be best for us if they don't. I still don't think it's the best idea to let anyone else in on what's happening right now. I think the government has some idea, but they're certainly not going to tell the general populace. Anyway," he went on, before she could respond, "that's not what I wanted to talk to you about. When I thanked you, I was...glad you're here."
Surprise flickered across her face. "But you don't have to thank me for that."
"That doesn't mean I can't be grateful. Even with the waves coming back, I'd probably still be lost if you hadn't showed up."
He met her gaze then, willing his eyes to say what he lacked the eloquence to, and after a second, she got up, striding over to his chair with purpose -
She plunked down in his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck, and buried her face in the crook of his shoulder.
"Then thank you, too," she whispered, and he knew her words carried far more weight than simple gratitude.
Awkwardly, he put his arms around her, and they sat in silence for a very long time afterward.
The next morning, Jun went to school alone.
As it turned out, one of the cats they'd found had indeed been Shiratori's, though Jun didn't know if it was the one that had survived or not; his friend had simply texted him that morning thanking him (Jun attempted to correct Shiratori on the details, namely that he'd just been the one to call the police, but had received no response as of yet) and saying that he wouldn't be at school today.
The incident itself had been played off as a string of ordinary abductions, and since one of the human victims was homeless and neither remembered anything about the incident, there was no indication otherwise.
Naofumi had been relieved. Jun was concerned. He understood his brother's desire to keep quiet the information surrounding the changes taking place in their world, but if things kept up like this, those left in the dark were going to be hurt, and badly. I mean, kā-san was nearly killed already. How is Naofumi able to just sit back and watch? If I could do anything about it, I'd at least try to get the word out there…
Passing Tatsujime's ramen stand, he noted that the downspout was empty this time around, both of water and spiders (the rain, to everyone's relief, had finally stopped, leaving only racing gray clouds and a warm wind in its wake). He was glad; even though he'd only seen the spider after Raphtalia had sliced it in half, it was still terrifying, and he'd still been able to hear the noises it made. Seeing another one, even a smaller version, would have probably given him enough anxiety to last the whole day. Just the knowledge that there were likely more of them had him on edge.
What did nii-san call it - a Gaian Mimic Spider, right? Gaia is the Greek name for the goddess of Earth, and people tend to use it interchangeably as a fancy name for the world itself...I'm pretty sure I played a game where the setting was called Gaia, too. The other parts of the name are self-explanatory...but does the "Gaian" part mean it originated here? I can't see why it would be called that if it came from the other world that nii-san and Raphtalia-san described, and they said themselves yesterday that monsters would only cross over during a wave event. So how did it form…?
Lost in thought, Jun didn't notice the man standing in the alley shortcut until he was within arm's reach. He didn't even have time to cry out as a gloved hand clasped itself over his mouth; the man was thin but unnaturally strong for his build, and no matter how much Jun fought, there was no way he could break free. It wasn't like he carried a weapon to school or anything - he'd never even heard of a student being abducted here, and he always walked with a friend anyway, so why was today the one day he was alone - ?
I don't want to die.
He knew he couldn't win this fight. He'd forsaken athletics for academics, and his assailant had taken him by surprise. In every possible respect, this man held the upper hand, but Jun couldn't simply give up. There were too many things at stake for him to give up.
I want to live. I want to be my own person. I want to stop clinging to my family so much. I don't want to feel like a burden to my brother anymore.
Realistically, Naofumi had never seen him as such, but all the same, there was something about both him and Raphtalia that told him: you're out of our league. It clearly wasn't the message they intended to convey, but their very presence was powerful.
He wanted to be able to stand next to that one day.
So why?
The man's other hand clamped shut on his throat. Soft yellow, the color of sunshine, bled into his vision, staining the dull grey of the world around him.
Why does it have to end here?
He struggled to breathe. His consciousness slipped.
There was so much more ahead of me, and this bastard wants to take it away.
Anger began to boil in the pit of his stomach, and something heavy dropped into the palm of his hand.
For what?
The man let out a surprised grunt, and his grip loosened enough to give Jun room to breathe. Choking and gasping for air, Jun swung the object hard into the man's knee, then shifted just enough to ram it into his stomach with all the force he could muster as he pulled away, managing to throw his assailant off. Fury still seething in his bones, the yellow tones faded as he stared down at the thing that had saved his life.
I'm not going to die today.
Six blocks away, Naofumi - who'd taken off running from the front door the moment he saw Jun's health start to drop - saw his brother's class icon change.
The name "Tatsujime" comes from a very English portmanteau of "tatsujin" (達人, master) and "men" (麺, noodles). In Japanese, "tatsujime" (立つじめ) apparently translates roughly to "I will stand" (though I have no source for this other than Google), which is also a play on the fact that he owns a noodle stand (which goes right back to English). Thanks, I hate it.
This chapter brought to you by headaches and fatigue.