I’ve always had a personal fondness for hot springs. Perhaps it was just part of being Japanese. I had done a fair amount of walking for the Founding Anniversary Festival today, and the lingering fatigue made the prospect of a long soak sound heavenly.
Of course, enjoying the scenery and a cup of tea before heading in was one of the true pleasures of the experience... though I wasn't exactly on a trip. I hadn't come here for a vacation; I was here for the festival. The inn was just so authentic that I’d inadvertently started feeling like I was on a proper hot spring getaway.
"Come to think of it, we’ve visited hot springs together quite a few times, haven't we, Shiro-san?"
"The first time you came to visit the God Realm, it was a hot spring as well," she replied.
"The inn back then was incredible, too. But now that I think about it, we only used the spring; we never actually went inside the building."
"Well, the objective at the time was the Heart-pounding! Steamy Mixed Bathing Operation, so..."
"That was the name of the operation!?"
As Shiro-san spoke while sipping the tea I had brewed, she appeared expressionless at a glance, yet I could tell she was in high spirits. In fact, the corners of her mouth had been turned up slightly all day. She had seemed genuinely happy throughout the festival, and that made me glad.
Of course, her excitement had led to a few... incidents, but thanks to the support of everyone around us, things had worked out. Well, mostly. There was still the Mount Fuji problem to deal with, but I decided to leave that in Kuro's hands for now and put it out of my mind. If it turned out that I needed to be the one to persuade Eden-san, Kuro would surely call for me. I’d just have to do my best when the time came. In this specific case, I didn't quite understand Eden-san's motives. If she was helping Shiro-san just to get some kind of reward, that was actually a rather worrying thought.
"Actually, it's quite the opposite."
"The opposite? What do you mean?"
"The Earth God was secretly conducting interventions that were practically gray-zone breaches of contract. I simply made her cooperate in exchange for overlooking her actions."
"Ah, I see. So Eden-san was the one in trouble."
I had a sneaking suspicion that those "gray-zone interventions" involved me. If Eden-san was going to overstep her bounds, it was almost certainly for my sake. The only problem was that I had... far too many ideas about what she might have done. Since she was prone to running wild quite frequently, I couldn't rule out the possibility that any number of her recent antics had pushed the limits of her contract.
"Still, as expected of something the Earth God created, this place is very authentic. It's quite fascinating."
"Now that you mention it, it felt so natural that I didn't even notice at first... but there are actual mechanical products here."
Take the electric pot I used earlier, for example. There was even a television in the room. The fact that these were mechanical appliances rather than magic tools really drove home the feeling of being in a Japanese inn. I wondered if the TV actually worked. And if it did, what would it even show?
Mechanical products seemed to be a novelty to Shiro-san, and she was looking at them with great interest.
"The pot you used and that television over there... I have knowledge of them, but this is the first time I've seen them in person."
"I wonder why she used mechanical products instead of magic tools? I'm sure she did it on purpose."
"I imagine it's because I requested an authentic hot spring inn from your world. Using mechanical products over magic tools was likely her way of fulfilling that. It certainly feels fresh and interesting to me."
"I see... Well, I wonder if this thing even receives a signal? Let's try turning it on for a second."
I planned to head to the bath after a short rest, so I didn't intend to sit and watch for long, but my curiosity got the better of me. Ordinarily, turning on a television here in another world shouldn't result in anything but static, yet a regular news program flickered onto the screen.
I had no idea how the physics of it worked, but it seemed to be receiving actual Japanese broadcasts.
Still, I wondered... did that mean there were other mechanical appliances scattered throughout the inn? If so, it would be a novel experience for Shiro-san, and perhaps that wasn't such a bad thing.
Serious-senpai: "I have a question. What's going to happen to that inn after Kaito and the others are done with it? Is it just going to vanish when they return to the original dimension?"
Machina: "I could do that, but it seems like a waste after I went to the trouble of making it. Oh, I know! Since she seems to have been working quite hard lately, maybe I'll give it to Lilia as a 'present for Lilia.' I'll just swap the mechanical parts for magic tool components before I hand it over. I'll throw in Mount Fuji, too."
Serious-senpai: "Do you have some kind of personal grudge against Lilia?"
Machina: "...Hmm?"