Unexpected Fortune Always Makes the Heart Race
Maybe it was because I'd carefully marked the path on the way there.
After recovering the bag I'd left near where I'd taken down the mimic, I made it home without a single hitch.
If the rope connecting the scrapyard to the house had snapped, it would have been a real headache—but nothing seemed to have happened in the meantime, and the rope was still securely in place.
That was a relief. I was so mentally drained right now that even the acrobatics of climbing a rope felt pretty exhausting.
"I'm home…"
Anyway, after climbing the rope back to the house, I was reunited with Noise—who'd been quietly watching over the place—for the first time in roughly six hours.
The moment I did, the realization that my outing was finally over hit me, and the tension drained out of me all at once. Home really is the best.
"Noise, did you look after the house okay…?"
"Yeah. Welcome back."
When I greeted her the moment I returned, Noise, sitting up on the bed, welcomed me.
When I asked what she'd been doing, she said she'd been reading the book I'd made for her, right there on the bed.
What was that book about again? I vaguely remembered it being some kind of family comedy—funny, heartwarming, with a moral to it.
Maybe it was because of that enjoyable content. Noise's face was as expressionless and blunt as ever… but I could tell she was enjoying herself. Kind of like a cat.
"Was it fun?"
"Yeah."
"That's good…."
If her mood had been similar to before I'd gone out, I might have asked a little more to advance our relationship—but right now I was exhausted, worn out, and completely drained in every way.
So I asked Noise, who was up on the bed, for permission, and threw myself onto the mattress just like that.
Oh right. I sweated a bit earlier.
But almost the instant the soft bed fully enveloped my body, I belatedly realized I still hadn't washed up after coming home from outside.
Normally my body never sweat no matter what I did—but this time, between the unexpected fight with the refrigerator mimic and holding my breath while watching that terrifying monster hunt, I'd ended up sweating without meaning to.
Which meant… I'd dived onto the soft, clean bed with my whole body still damp with sweat.
Wow. Absolute worst.
…But what could I do? I'd already thrown myself onto the bed.
I'd have to fix it somehow later with my Creation ability. Make new sheets or something… waste of CP, but still.
"Uwbwbwb…."
"Was going out hard?"
As I buried my face in the soft blanket and made weird noises, Noise, who'd been reading beside me, spoke up.
"…Yeah. It was incredibly hard."
…Of course it was hard. Just walking around a pitch-black place relying on a flashlight was enough to chip away at my mental state. And on top of that, I'd run into a grotesque monster that made me want to scream. Body tired, mind tired.
Maybe it was because I was mumbling like I was whining—Noise, who'd been quietly watching me, suddenly and carefully placed her hand on the top of my head and started gently patting it!
"There, there…"
"Eh? Noise?"
"…I read it in the book. You're supposed to do this for someone who worked hard."
"Ugh…!"
What an incredibly thoughtful thing to say.
But maybe because I imagined how I looked from a third-person perspective, my ears burned and a wave of embarrassment welled up.
Of course, Noise was cute enough to be an idol, so it wasn't unpleasant or anything I disliked at all… but getting my head patted with a "there, there" by a little kid was way too embarrassing for a perfectly normal adult!
"S-stop…"
"Nia, do you not like it?"
"I-I don't dislike it at all! It's just… weeeell…"
But when she actually asked if I hated being patted… I couldn't easily say no.
Maybe what had happened earlier had been more of a shock than I'd realized, because her comfort was gradually helping me regain my mental composure.
Being patted by a kid smaller than me was embarrassing, but it helped. So I didn't really have a reason to refuse.
No—if anything, I should be the one asking for it. For purely rational reasons!
"…Could you do it a little more?"
"Okay. There, there…"
So I didn't refuse Noise's comfort and accepted it as it was.
But this was absolutely not for my own selfish desires. This was an action to keep myself from developing long-term mental issues.
My ultimate goal was still to revive Nia's streams. And for that, I could endure this much embarrassment.
Of course, I didn't dislike it at all.
Waaah.
Having recovered my physical and mental composure through Noise Therapy and come back to life, I brought over the bag stuffed with items and started taking out its contents one by one.
Maybe my movements had caught her interest. Noise, who'd been reading, quietly came over near me and pointed at the items scattered on the floor.
"What's this?"
"This side is pizza, hamburgers… fast food that was popular worldwide in the 21st century. And this side is fruit—apples, tangerines, bananas, that kind of thing."
"Heeh."
Noise was looking at the food I'd brought back after defeating the refrigerator mimic with a thoroughly curious expression.
But the real surprise was still coming.
I held a tangerine in my left hand, nothing in my right… and lightly spoke a certain word.
"Copy."
Flash.
Light flickered over my right hand in a lattice pattern, like a net. Then, as a certain amount of CP disappeared, something appeared on my right hand.
It was a tangerine in exactly the same form as the one in my left hand. Just like the word "copy" I'd spoken, an identical object had been duplicated!
Normally this would be the kind of situation that would make someone jump up with their eyes wide open in shock. But this wasn't some newly discovered technique or anything.
Analyzing the data of the object in my left hand and Creating it in my right. I wondered if this would work… and it does.
This was just another application of my Creation ability. I'd simply expanded how I used the ability, similar to when I'd Created a status window on the computer before. Nothing particularly amazing.
Yeah. That was true, but—looking at how much less cost it took to make things through copying, it seemed like from now on, when making identical objects, using Copy would be more efficient than Creation.
Learning something new again. Just how far did the limits of my Creation ability go? The fact that it was basically omnipotent as long as I had CP was honestly terrifying.
"Noise, want to try this?"
"What is it?"
"This is a tangerine. You peel it like this and eat the flesh inside."
Well, worries for later. I handed the perfectly ripe, appetizing tangerine to Noise.
Unlike Noise, I didn't feel hunger with this body, and I thought it would be nice to let her taste fruit while I was at it. It still had a bit of a cold chill to it, but fruit tastes better cold anyway, so that was actually a plus.
"Mnyam…"
Noise took the tangerine I handed her without the slightest suspicion, peeled it, and put the fruit in her mouth.
And maybe she felt that sweet, refreshing sensation from the cool tangerine—Noise, who'd been diligently chewing the fruit, widened her eyes and let out a sound of wonder.
"This is good."
"Yeah? First time eating fruit?"
"Yeah. Eating food at all—the sandwich was my first time."
"Ah…. Right, of course."
…I felt like I'd said something thoughtless.
Thinking about it, until I'd created Noise's body for her, she'd been a formless existence wandering around this area. Of course this would be her first time eating fruit. I felt oddly guilty for some reason.
"Ahem! Then from now on, you'll have to eat lots of delicious things. There are so many tasty foods in this world."
"…Really?"
"Of course. They say there are as many kinds of food as there are human stories. Even roughly speaking, there must be thousands, tens of thousands of varieties."
I didn't know exactly how many kinds of food there were, but it was clear that even if you ate a different menu every day for your whole life, a human lifespan would run out before you finished them all.
I hoped Noise would get to experience lots of joy going forward.
"Alright, then let's sort the rest out slowly. For the next stream, maybe a cooking stream? Analyzing the ingredients used in the pizza and hamburgers…"
As I looked at the food and ingredients from the bag and continued thinking about future content—maybe she was bored, because Noise, who'd been watching me, suddenly started rummaging through the bag.
"Ah."
And suddenly that sound came from Noise. It was the kind of voice a programmer might make after coding for hours straight, only for the computer to freeze without saving.
So naturally my head turned toward her.
"Something wrong?"
"…This."
In answer to my question, Noise pulled something from the front pocket of the bag.
It was a pure white fragment. One side was smoothly polished, but the other was ugly and gouged out—a strange shard.
I studied the object that felt vaguely familiar, then blinked and asked Noise.
"Hmm… it must have gotten into the bag somehow. Why?"
"This is a mimic's shell. …Nia, did you meet a mimic?"
"Huh?"
At Noise's question as she tilted her head, I was so flustered that words failed me for a moment. Because her asking if I'd met a mimic… flooded my mind with a rush of thoughts all at once.
That's… a fragment from the refrigerator mimic I ran into earlier. Wait, but Noise, who doesn't even know her own name, knows about mimics? No, more than that—is the name actually "mimic"?
How had that fragment gotten into my bag without me noticing? Why was the real name of the refrigerator mimic I'd arbitrarily named also "mimic"? And how could Noise… know that just from this?
"I-I did meet one. But how did you know? That this white thing is a mimic fragment."
"I've run into them a few times. But I ran away because I didn't want to get eaten."
"Get eaten…"
No way.
Through this series of exchanges, a possibility I hadn't considered at all peeked its head into my mind. I'd figured it wasn't that important since she couldn't even remember her own name…
Could Noise know what kind of place this is?
As I stared at her with trembling eyes, holding that thought, Noise looked back at me with an innocent gaze of her own.
If that were true—this would be… nothing short of an unexpected stroke of fortune.