20 Sarche Meets a Magical Girl

Author: Kumanano
Raw: https://ncode.syosetu.com/n7313mj/20/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Having finished the meal, I go back to my room and collapse onto the bed.
The food Yuna made was delicious.
And on the bed, I think back on today.

I finish patrolling the forest and come out onto the meadow. I look at the meadow and notice a small girl being attacked by bears.
Why is there a girl here?
This isn’t the time to think.
I immediately loose magic at the bears, but the girl easily blocks my magic.
And the girl gets angry that I attacked the bears, and looses magic at me.
I’m surprised by how sudden it is, but I can block it.
What is this child?
The girl asks if I came to kill her.
Come to kill a child this young?
From the look of her, around ten.
I say, “That’s not it.”
But the girl doesn’t believe me.
The bears seem to have been the girl’s bears.
Attacking the bears without checking was a mistake.
But I thought the girl was being attacked by bears, so it can’t be helped.
I raise my hands and convey that I have no will to fight.
The girl’s movement stops, and I can talk with her.
Even so, the girl’s wariness is strong, and she’s on guard against me.
And the sight of her trying to protect the bears with that small body makes my chest tighten.
The girl’s eyes are red; I can see traces of crying.
What on earth happened to this girl?
I have to somehow undo the girl’s wariness.

To undo the girl’s wariness, I decide not to ask questions from my side, and to answer the girl’s questions.
The girl lists place names and country names I’ve never heard.
I’ve never heard any of them.
But the girl doesn’t look like she’s lying.
The girl turns my words over, one by one.
She’s trying her hardest to confirm the situation she’s in.
She’s so solid I can’t think of her as a child.
While I’m watching the girl, she suddenly bursts out laughing.
Then she asks something strange. It’s about a connection to a god.
For an instant I don’t understand what she’s saying.
I don’t know whether gods exist.
And yet she asks if I came here on a god’s orders.
From the way the girl puts it, gods exist, and this is her checking whether I came here on a god’s orders.
So I clearly say I have never met a god, and that I did not come here on a god’s orders.
Perhaps because she believed my words, the girl gives me her name.
The girl’s name is Yuna.
The black bear is Kumayuru.
The white bear is Kumakyuu.

This time I decide to ask from my side.
When I ask where she came from, she says it’s far, a place no one knows.
Maybe she came from the place names she asked about earlier.
But I hadn’t heard any of those place names.
Next, when I ask how she came from a place like that, she says someone sent her flying.
So she doesn’t know where this is either, she says.
Is there someone who can do that?
The only one who could do that would be about a god.
Do gods really exist?
Don’t tell me a god is after her life?

But the girl in front of me doesn’t look like a bad person.
There’s nothing but things I don’t understand.
From talking, her wariness eases a little, but there’s still wariness left.
While I’m wondering what to do, the bears start moving, and the black bear and the white bear come over to me and sit in front of me.
The girl is surprised by the bears’ action.
I’m surprised too.
According to the girl, the bears are saying it’s all right to believe me.
I attacked them, and the bears still believe me.
I’m glad, but can bears understand something like that?
And when I look closely, they’re adorable bears.
Thanks to the bears, her wariness looks like it’s undone.
I can’t just leave the girl.
I ask if she has somewhere to go, but the girl’s mouth closes.
From her expression, I can tell right away she has nowhere to go.
So I invite her to my house.
There’s a house deeper in the forest, so when I invite her deeper in, she gets suspicious.
She seems to have thought I was taking her deep in the forest to kill her.
What kind of upbringing makes a child this suspicious.
I didn’t mean to say it, but I had said it.
The girl says people she trusted killed her father, and she was almost killed too.
Then I understand the feeling of wanting to be suspicious.
On top of that, she says she lost her mother too when she was little.
I apologize for being inconsiderate, but—

“You had no way of knowing my parents died, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

—she says.
Is she really a child, the way she looks?
When I ask her age, she says she’s ten.
When she’s this solid?

Thanks to the bears, the girl ends up coming to my house.
And she looks at the inside of my cluttered house and makes a surprised face.
No one ever came, so I hadn’t tidied lately.
The girl looks at the inside of the house and says she’s going to clean.
At first I tried to stop her, but she says it with a grown-up look on her face, so I end up permitting it.
The girl starts gathering cloth—clothes and towels—and says she wants soap.
When I hand her the soap, the girl takes the clothes and towels and moves outside. And when I watch, wondering what she’ll do, the girl creates a large water ball with mana.
Then she shaves the soap, puts it in the water ball, and spins the water ball.
She makes that whole flow look easy.
If I think back on her counterattacking me with magic, she’s a mage of considerable ability.
That’s surprising enough, and then the girl asks if she can make a hut next to the house.
A hut? I think, but I agree.
I wanted to see what the girl would do.
When I agree, she easily builds a fine hut.
And the windows have glass.
No, no, I’ve never heard of making glass with magic.
To begin with, there hasn’t been anyone who tried to make glass with magic.
The girl goes into the building and starts making bookshelves on the walls.
Watching her make them in that flowing way, her magic is so refined I can’t think she’s ten at all.
While I’m impressed, the girl calls the building an archive and says, “Sarche, please line the books up on the shelves.”
I’m surprised.
She called me Sarche, by name.
I get a little glad.

The girl leaves the building.
Left in the archive, I line up the books.
The archive the girl made for me is wide, and I can line up a lot of books.
The bears carry the books that were in the house to the archive one after another.
Because two of them are carrying them, books pile up on the floor one after another.
There are books in my room on the second floor and in empty rooms too, but I decide not to say so.
If they get carried here, it will become a disaster.

“I’ll put magic-related ones on this shelf, and novels on this one.”

There are a lot of bookshelves, so I can put them by type.
Then I decide the shelves while picturing the books on the second floor: books on history, herbalism, technical books, biology books.

I pick up about five of the books the bears left and put them away on the shelves.
They go onto the shelves smoothly.
Sunlight comes in through the windows, and the inside of the building is bright.
If I put a desk and chair by the window, it might become the best place.

“Ah, this book. So it was here.”

It’s a book I bought a little while ago, set down however, then couldn’t find where I’d put it, and couldn’t read.
I sit in a place the sun hits and start reading the book.
And as I’m reading, the bears start pushing my body.

“Kuuun.”

It feels good.
They feel good to touch.
And they’re warm, and it feels good.
I lean against the bears.
I have the best cushions, and I can concentrate on the book.

“What are you doing?”

While I’m reading, I hear a voice with an intensity I wouldn’t think a girl has.
I lift my face from the book, and the girl is looking at me with an incredible face.

“Yuna!? Um, this is…”

The face is so scary I can’t think of an excuse.

“And here I made dinner.”

Dinner!?
Is it that time?
I look at the window, and it’s dark.

“No dinner for all three of you!”

Even the bears who’d been serving as my cushions take damage.
The girl leaves the archive, and I and the bears apologize.
Somehow forgiven, we go into the house.
The inside of the house has gotten so clean I can’t think it’s my own house.
But I think the second floor is still dirty.

And the girl tells us, the way you tell a child, to wash our hands and then sit in the chairs.
I feel like I’ve become a child.
The girl tells the bears to get small, and the bears get small.

“The bears got small…”
“Bears get that small.”
“No they don’t!”

There’s no way bears get small.
And they understand the girl’s words and mine too.
Strange bears.
And I eat the food the girl made, and it’s very delicious.
Ten years old, and good at cleaning, laundry, and cooking too—that’s too all-purpose, isn’t it.
And an excellent mage on top of that.
Maybe she was envied by friends, and almost killed.
People put others down out of envy.
The girl doesn’t think of herself as excellent.
She can do it, so she just does it, ordinarily. That’s all it looks like.
But from another person’s view, that becomes a reason to envy.
So I told her that if she has nowhere to go, she can stay here.