Mika-chan’s older brother walked me to my front door again today.
And he did it while carrying two massive bags of gear.
"Thank you for always walking me home, Daiki-kun."
"Don't worry about it. I couldn't let you walk home alone at night, Saori-chan."
"But you’re even carrying these heavy bags for me today..."
"It would be impossible for you to carry this much weight on your own. Besides, I’m an explorer, remember? Thanks to my level ups, carrying this much is a piece of cake."
As he spoke, Daiki-kun didn't show the slightest hint of struggle despite the heavy load. I had tried holding one of the bags before we left Mika-chan's house, and even one was so heavy I couldn't have walked more than a few steps...
"I see..."
"Yeah. Well, shall we get these inside?"
"Yes, please."
Usually, we would part ways at the gate, but with the heavy luggage, I had Daiki-kun come inside. I simply wouldn't have been able to get them up to my room by myself.
I opened the front door and called out to announce my return.
"I'm home!"
"...Welcome back, Saori-chan."
A voice called back from the rear of the house.
A moment later, my mother, Akane Kishida, appeared in the hallway. She looked stunned to see Daiki-kun and me standing there with such massive bags.
"My, Daiki-kun. Welcome."
"Hello. It's been a while, Akane-san."
"It certainly has. But goodness... that’s quite a lot of luggage you two have there."
My mother eyed the bags we were holding with a look of pure curiosity.
"It’s all the equipment I need to be an explorer, Mom."
"Oh... is that so?"
As if she couldn't quite believe me, she turned to Daiki-kun for confirmation.
"Yes. There are some spares included, but this is the bare minimum required. If she stays with it, the gear might even increase from here..."
"I see..."
Seemingly convinced by his explanation, my mother let out a small sigh. The current amount was already overwhelming, so hearing that it would only grow was enough to make her worry, I suppose.
But more importantly...
"Mom, I want to get these up to my room. Can we go up? I can't keep making Daiki-kun hold these heavy things."
"Ah, right. I'm sorry, Daiki-kun. Please, come in."
"Thank you. Pardon the intrusion."
Prompted by my mother, we headed upstairs to my room.
With Daiki-kun’s help, the gun locker was assembled and installed in the corner of my room in no time. However, the grey-painted locker looked rather ominous and out of place. I’d have to get some decorative wallpaper or stickers later to make it blend in with the rest of the furniture...
"Thank you so much for the help."
"It was no trouble at all."
"But thanks to you, I finished organizing everything way faster than I expected."
While Daiki-kun had been putting the gun locker together, I had managed to put away almost all the other gear I’d brought home.
All that was left was...
"Now for the spear storage."
"Right."
I took the spear—identical to Mika-chan’s—and the kaiken I had received from Juzo-san out of the transport bag.
That was when we hit a snag. The kaiken was fine, but the spear was a different story. It was longer than the gun locker was tall. How was I supposed to fit it inside?
According to the storage regulations, leaving it out in the open was a serious no-no.
"Daiki-kun, how should I store the spear? It won't fit in the locker like this."
"Oh, that's easy..."
Daiki-kun took the spear from my hands and began to demonstrate.
"Look at the head. If you grip it here and here and twist, the spearhead and the shaft separate."
"Oh, you’re right! It’s moving."
Daiki-kun held the spearhead steady with his right hand and turned the shaft with his left, creating a gap between the two. In the faint light, I could see screw threads like those on a bolt.
"Be careful not to cut yourself on the blade while you're taking it apart, okay?"
"I will."
"It's a bit of a hassle, but if you keep turning the shaft, the head will come right off."
After a few more turns, the spearhead detached. It was about thirty centimeters long, and once it was removed, the shaft was the perfect length to fit inside the gun locker.
Daiki-kun handed the two pieces back to me.
"There. Just break it down like this when you put it away."
"I understand. Thank you so much."
I thanked him again and placed the disassembled spear and the kaiken into the locker.
"One more thing. It takes a fair amount of strength to tighten the spearhead back onto the shaft properly. Until your level goes up a bit, you might want to keep some combination pliers handy."
"Combination pliers...?"
"The adjustable pliers you find at hardware stores. Once your level is high enough, you won't need them anymore, though."
Now that he mentioned it, when Daiki-kun first started turning the shaft, I’d heard a stiff, metal-on-metal creak. He made it look easy, but that was probably only because of his superhuman strength as an explorer.
Taking his advice to heart, I closed the gun locker and turned the key.
"Well then. Now that you're all sorted, I should probably head home."
Seeing that the locker was secure, Daiki-kun stood up. I checked the wall clock; it was nearly six o'clock.
Time had flown by without me even realizing it.
"Daiki-kun, thank you for everything today."
"Don't mention it. More importantly, Saori-chan, tomorrow is an early start. Make sure you get to sleep early tonight, okay?"
"I will."
He was giving me the same advice as Yukino-san. Maybe they both had personal experience with being too excited to sleep before a dungeon dive. That was probably why they kept nagging Mika-chan and me to rest.
"Well then, see you tomorrow."
"Yes. I’ll be in your care again tomorrow."
"I'll do my best to live up to your expectations," he said with a small smile before heading out.
After he left, I ate dinner, took a bath, and started my final preparations.
"Let's see... this and this go with me, and these are spares, so they stay here. And then..."
I packed my large backpack with the tracksuits and protectors I’d be using inside the dungeon. Since Daiki-kun had told me exactly what I’d need, the packing was finished in no time.
All I’d have to do tomorrow was take the weapons out of the locker and move them to the transport bag. I had thought about doing it tonight, but Daiki-kun had warned me that keeping weapons in a bag overnight was a security risk, so I left them locked up.
"Phew. It really has been a long road to get here..."
I set my backpack down in front of the gun locker and let out a long breath, reflecting on how far I’d come. It had already been a year since the dungeons first appeared.
I was in my third year of middle school back then. I still remember it vividly. We were all having breakfast together when a Government Broadcast suddenly interrupted the morning news. A spokesperson had reported the appearance of dungeons with a look of absolute, terrifying seriousness.
"That really was a shock..."
No matter what channel we flipped to, every station showed the same thing. I remember my parents staring at the TV, paralyzed, waiting to hear what would happen next. When the word "dungeons" finally left the spokesperson's mouth, they both just sat there with their mouths hanging open.
I lay down on my bed, letting the memories wash over me.
"And then there were the rumors... about monsters overflowing into the streets."
Less than a month after the dungeons appeared, while accurate information was still scarce, those rumors sparked mass panic. People tried to flee cities before the "outbreak," others held massive protests against the police and Self-Defense Forces who were blockading the sites, and criminals took advantage of the chaos to loot and steal. I remember the news being nothing but images of the police and military deployments.
In the end, the chaos only subsided when everyone realized the rumors were baseless.
"But the craze when people found out magic was real... that was something else."
Once videos of magic demonstrations started hitting the internet, the public’s perception of dungeons flipped overnight. Except for Japan and a few other countries with strict regulations, civilians around the world rushed into the dungeons without any preparation. The news was filled with reports of massive casualties every single day. Even so, the flow of people never stopped. I remember seeing images of the aftermath from all over the globe—literal mountains of corpses.
A later report estimated that at least several thousand people had died during that initial gold rush.
"And then Japan established the Dungeon Association to answer the public's outcry. Though Daiki-kun said that wasn't the whole reason..."
I tilted my head, trying to remember his explanation. It was something about a "Tri-lemma" or "Tri-angle"... I’d only been half-listening, so the details were fuzzy.
But I remembered how grim his expression had been. He didn't seem to think very highly of the "explorer" profession back then.
"But in the end, Daiki-kun became an explorer himself."
And he was one of the best among the civilians.
The minotaur meat we had for my high school graduation party... looking back, only a top-tier explorer could have gotten their hands on that. It wasn't just about the price; minotaur meat was so rare back then that you needed serious connections to even find it. The fact that he and his party could provide so much of it was proof that they were elites who could hunt minotaurs themselves.
I also remembered how Mika-chan had reacted when Daiki-kun decided to take his explorer exam. She’d looked happy, frustrated, and worried all at the same time.
And when he got his passing notice, she had been as overjoyed as if it were her own achievement. They really are the closest siblings I know. I wonder if I would have been like that if I had a brother or sister?
"Wait... the day after Daiki-kun's first dungeon dive, Mika-chan was... really down."
I had wanted to ask her for stories, but the atmosphere had been too heavy to even bring it up.
Thinking about it now, Daiki-kun probably told her some of the harsher realities of the dungeon. He’s shown me videos of the interior a few times, and the first time I saw the reality of combat, I nearly threw up. My resolve to become an explorer didn't waver, but I stopped believing the sanitized versions they showed on TV or in magazines. I realized just how much they glossed over the truth. They weren't lying, exactly, but they weren't telling the whole story, either.
The media from that period was full of that kind of "half-truth."
"Oh, right."
I remembered one last thing and sat up. I moved my backpack and unlocked the gun locker. Inside sat the disassembled spear and the kaiken.
I carefully picked up the spearhead and slid off the sheath.
"It really is beautiful. It’s every bit as striking as Daiki-kun’s sword."
The blade caught the light of my room, shimmering brilliantly. Before meeting him, I hadn't been interested in blades at all. But from the moment I saw his katana, I was enchanted. I wanted a blade of my own.
And now, by becoming an explorer, I finally had one. To be honest, there was a part of me that felt a twinge of regret at the thought of using it on monsters. It felt like a waste to stain something so beautiful with blood and filth.
However...
"I really want to see how well it cuts..."
With an edge this sharp, I couldn't help but wonder.
It would probably slide through flesh with almost no resistance at all. Not that I could ever test that theory on a person, of course.
Well...
"Unless those idiots lose their minds and attack us. Then I won't hold back."
I thought of the unpleasant group I’d encountered since starting high school, and my mood soured instantly. They really were a nuisance. Even when they weren't in front of me, they managed to be annoying.
I slid the sheath back onto the spearhead and returned it to the locker. It wasn't safe to hold a weapon while I was in a foul mood. I finished tidying up, turned off the light, and crawled back into bed.
"Early start tomorrow. I need to sleep. Goodnight."
My voice drifted into the darkness of the room.
Tomorrow would be my long-awaited dungeon debut. I couldn't afford to look pathetic because of a lack of sleep. With that final thought, I closed my eyes.