The next weekend, following the weapon registration at the Association for the gear Juzo-san had given us, I invited Yuji and Hiiragi-san to my house. I needed to tell them the truth about my drawer before we ever set foot in a dungeon.
We sat on cushions, facing each other across a low folding table in the center of the room.
“...So? What is it you wanted to talk about?”
Yuji took a sip of his tea, then broached the subject after a brief pause.
I hesitated for a split second, then steeled my resolve.
“The truth is, there’s something I’ve been hiding from you two... no, from everyone. I felt I had to tell you both before we went into a dungeon.”
I looked them both in the eye, speaking with absolute sincerity. Sensing from my gravity that this wasn't just idle chatter, they both straightened their posture and mirrored my serious expression.
“Before I say anything, I need you two to make a promise.”
“What is it?”
“...I need you to never tell a soul about what you’re about to hear. Not the authorities, and not even your families.”
I knew it was a selfish request, but if the existence of the dungeon in this room became public knowledge, things would get very complicated very quickly.
“...Is it really that dangerous to keep secret?”
“Yes. Extremely.”
“...I can agree to the promise, but only after I hear the details,” Hiiragi-san said. “If it’s something truly beyond the pale, I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to keep it.”
That was a fair point. In essence, I was asking them to become my accomplices. They wouldn't agree to share a secret without knowing if it was something they could live with.
“That’s fine.”
I took a sip of tea to wet my dry throat and began.
“A dungeon appeared in my house.”
““...Huh?””
They both stared at me, looking like they had been struck dumb.
It was the exact reaction I expected. Anyone would be stunned to hear a dungeon had suddenly manifested in someone's home.
“When the dungeons first appeared six months ago, for some reason, the entrance to one of them was connected to my desk drawer.”
““...””
“And it’s still connected, even now.”
Seeing them both sitting there in a dazed stupor, I felt a twinge of guilt.
Hiiragi-san was the first to snap out of it. She glared at me with sharp eyes, and while she didn't raise her voice, she interrogated me in a flat, cold tone.
“...Kokonoe-kun. Why didn’t you report it to the authorities six months ago? We know now that monsters don’t leave the dungeons, but back then, a dungeon was considered an extreme hazard that might spew out violent, hostile organisms at any moment. Did you never consider the risk?”
I knew that question was coming.
“The main reason I didn't say anything was that I simply missed the window of opportunity.”
“Missed the window?”
“Yeah. I noticed it right after the Government Broadcast. I opened the drawer to get ready for school, and there was a dungeon with a monster sitting right there.”
“...If you saw a monster, wasn't that all the more reason to report it immediately?”
“I panicked. I never imagined a dungeon would be in my house, let alone inside my own desk. So, I convinced myself that it wasn't real. I looked away and went to school like nothing was wrong.”
“...So that’s why you were acting so weird that morning. It wasn't just because of Mika-chan,” Yuji said, speaking up as if he’d just had an epiphany. He was likely remembering our interaction from that day.
I had used Mika as an excuse to dodge his questions back then...
“I was definitely worried about Mika, but it's true that my head was spinning because of the dungeon in my drawer. Later, talking to you and Hiiragi-san at school helped me calm down a bit, but...”
“But?”
“I tried to look up info on my phone during the breaks. And after what I saw, I started to have second thoughts about calling the authorities.”
“...Was it because of that?”
“Yeah. That.”
Yuji knew what I meant. He was referring to the TV footage of the evacuations from the urban dungeons—the sheer chaos of it all. Seeing those scenes had made me hesitate.
People fleeing with only the clothes on their backs, the massive police mobilizations, the media swarming like vultures... I couldn't bring myself to be the one who pulled the trigger on that kind of upheaval.
“You both know where I live, right? This is the middle of a residential district. There are huge apartment complexes nearby. If I reported a dungeon here and an evacuation order went out...”
“It would have been a disaster,” Yuji finished. “Probably worse than what we saw on TV.”
“Exactly,” Hiiragi-san added. “At a rough estimate... you’d be looking at two or three thousand evacuees.”
“Thinking about that made it hard to commit. That was one of the reasons I kept missing the chance to speak up.”
If I hadn't seen those broadcasts, I might have reported it instantly.
As I sat there dejectedly, Hiiragi-san continued her line of questioning.
“But that’s still not a strong enough reason to stay silent. I understand wanting to avoid chaos, but there was still the possibility that your family and neighbors could be attacked.”
“She’s right. Why didn't you report it then?”
“...”
They were right. At the time, the chance of monsters emerging wasn't zero. For the safety of my family, the logical move was to call the authorities and evacuate.
The reason I didn't...
“...I think I was desensitized.”
““Desensitized?””
“The monster in that dungeon... it was a slime.”
““A slime!?””
Both of them shouted in shock. It made sense; as the public became more aware of monsters, the reputation of slimes had undergone a complete reversal.
Before the dungeons, everyone thought slimes were the weakest possible enemies because of video games. But in reality, they were considered the most difficult foes on the upper floors. Physical attacks from guns or swords were barely effective, and their amorphous, viscous bodies had claimed many lives. Defeating them required rare magic skill users or specialized equipment like liquid nitrogen. Even professional explorers and special forces teams preferred to avoid them.
“Then it was even more critical that you report it!”
“Exactly, Daiki! What were you thinking!?”
They both leaned across the table, shouting at me. Watching them, I realized once again that this was the normal, sane reaction. I felt a fresh wave of regret.
I hung my head and waited silently for them to calm down.
When they finally regained their composure, they looked awkward and offered their apologies.
“Sorry. I got a little too worked up.”
“My apologies, me too.”
“...No, it’s the right reaction. Entirely natural...”
A heavy, gloomy atmosphere settled over us. The two of them were wallowing in self-reproach for losing their tempers, and I was drowning in the weight of my own past mistakes.
The room was suffocating with negative energy.
“...So, what did you do?”
“...?”
“About the slime.”
“Oh.”
Yuji spoke up, cutting through the leaden air. I took a slow, deep breath and answered.
“I killed it.”
““What!?””
“Slimes aren't actually as hard to defeat as everyone says.”
They both gaped at me, completely caught off guard.
Ignoring their stunned expressions, I pressed on.
“The reason they’re hard to kill is that physical attacks don’t work, right? But there’s actually a very simple way to handle them.”
I shifted my gaze to a cardboard box in the corner of the room. Their eyes followed mine.
“What’s in that box... is salt.”
““Salt?””
“Yeah. If you want to kill a slime easily, you just sprinkle salt on it.”
Their eyes were now glued to the box.
I stood up, took a small bag of salt from the box, and set it on the table.
“Taste it. You’ll see it’s just normal salt.”
“Uh, okay.”
“Y-Yeah.”
They both dipped a finger into the bag and tasted it.
“...It’s salt.”
“...Definitely salt.”
“Told you.”
They both grimaced slightly at the saltiness, their fingers still near their mouths.
Once they had confirmed it, I took the bag and walked over to my desk.
“Both of you, come here. I’ll show you the proof.”
““...””
They stood up and approached until they could see into the drawer. I checked their faces once more, then reached out and slowly pulled the drawer open.
““!!””
“As you can see, it’s a dungeon. And there’s a slime sitting right there.”
They both gasped. There it was, right in the center—the wriggling, amorphous mass of viscous fluid known as a slime.
While they were frozen in shock, I tilted the bag of salt over the drawer. A stream of white crystals fell directly onto the creature. The moment the salt touched its body, the effect was instantaneous. The slime began to writhe and contract violently as if in agony, its volume visibly shrinking. Once its body had shriveled to less than half its original size, the black sphere at its center shattered, and the monster vanished into a cloud of light particles.
This time, they were truly speechless.
“Like you just saw, slimes vanish if you use salt.”
I stated the plain fact as they stared at the empty floor of the dungeon. They slowly turned their heads to look at me.
“This was the other reason I didn't report it. It was just so easy to kill them. I thought that if I could handle it myself, there was no need to make a scene—no need to report it or evacuate... That's what I convinced myself.”
I lowered my gaze, feeling miserable. Looking back, I was appalled by my own stupidity. No matter how much I talked about the danger, I was acting just like those people who had become obsessed with the dungeons.
The monsters left no bodies behind; they just scattered like game data. Killing them raised your level and gave you drop items. Unconsciously, I must have been playing the part of a game's protagonist.
“In the end, I was in a position where I could safely and unilaterally kill them through a drawer without any risk to myself... I thought I was being realistic, but I wasn't seeing reality at all.”
““...””
“And now, nearly six months later, I can’t exactly go to the authorities and tell them I’ve had a dungeon in my house this whole time. I missed my chance, and now... Sigh.”
I let out a self-deprecating laugh. The two of them looked at each other with expressions I couldn't quite read.
“Getting that sword from Juzo-san woke me up. It made me feel the weight of reality. I realized that what I was doing was a fight to the death—and that everything I’d done up until then was just one-sided slaughter.”
““...””
I heard them both catch their breath at my confession. The sound snapped me back to the present.
Yuji’s eyes were wide, and Hiiragi-san had turned slightly pale.
“...Sorry.”
“No. You don't need to apologize, Daiki,” Yuji said. “...I think I was being optimistic, too. I’ve been training in martial arts since I was a kid, but I never really had a chance to use them. When Gramps told me to go to the dungeon, I complained, but deep down... I think I was actually happy. Happy that I finally had a place to use what I’d learned. I gave in to the temptation. But you’re right. We call it ‘conquering a dungeon,’ but at the end of the day, it’s a fight to the death.”
“...You’re right,” Hiiragi-san added. “Even with my family’s situation, if I had truly refused, my mother would never have allowed her daughter to become an explorer and risk her life. She would have found another way, even if it meant standing up to my father. But I didn't push back hard enough... Thinking back, I was caught up in the hype. I was being optimistic, too.”
An awkward silence descended upon us.
My monologue seemed to have forced them to confront the reality hidden behind the excitement of dungeon exploration. The two people who had looked so exhilarated while registering their weapons at the Association were gone. Now, only a heavy, painful silence remained.
In the end, we were all the same. We feared the dungeons in our heads, but we hadn't truly felt that fear in our hearts.
We returned to the table and took a moment to breathe over our tea.
“...Those are the two main reasons I never reported the dungeon. In the end, it was just my own selfishness. I missed the timing, and now I’m stuck with a secret I have to keep. It’s too late to go public now...”
“Yeah,” Yuji sighed, looking exhausted. “Well, you seem to have it under control for now. Until something changes, maybe we should just keep things as they are.”
“I agree,” Hiiragi-san said, her expression equally hollow. “There doesn't seem to be a better option.”
It was no surprise they were worn out; this had been an incredibly heavy conversation.
Oh, that’s right. I should double-check one more thing before I forget.
“You’ll keep the dungeon a secret, right?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“I will, too.”
They both agreed, looking thoroughly drained.
I felt bad for leaning on them while they were down, but I was relieved that I could count on their silence.
Phew.
Humans rarely reflect on their own actions unless they're forced to.
For me, it took holding a lethal weapon like a Japanese sword to finally understand.