Chapter 217: Being VIP Is Always Better
I waited for the hours to pass. Today was the day we were going out to see the fireworks, and Maru was coming with me. Once it grew a little dark outside, it would be time to get ready to leave.
Still, if you want to watch fireworks properly, a good seat is essential...
People liked to say you could fire them into that vast empty sky and watch from anywhere, but the seat still mattered. Where you sat decided how well you could see them burst. That particular worry of mine ended the moment Maru walked into the room.
"Hana, shall we start getting ready? It's a bit of a ways from here, so we ought to leave early."
She said it as she came in, a white paper bag in hand.
"Okay. But Maru, do we have seats?"
"Right here. Our Starlight Guild prepared a really wonderful spot, just for you."
Maru held up a gold ticket as she spoke. Printed across it, in letters too large to miss, were the words—
One look, and I knew I didn't have to worry. Seat anxiety, gone. To think they'd prepared everything this perfectly! A moment later, though, what Maru did next left me no choice but to turn away.
"Ah!"
She pulled clothes from the paper bag, locked the door, and started changing. The outfit she'd worn in to the office was hardly suited to an evening out, so changing made sense—but I had never imagined she would do it right here.
I flinched and squeezed my eyes shut. She was changing into something meant for going out. She wasn't stripping all the way down to her underwear, so part of me wondered whether I even needed to look away, but not looking still seemed like the polite thing.
"Hana. You've got to change too."
She said it while she changed. I wanted to ask what on earth she was doing, not putting her clothes on any faster, but she didn't seem to spare my nerves a single thought. Well—from her point of view we were both girls. Changing in front of me wouldn't feel strange at all.
Wasn't it the same as getting dressed at the bathhouse?
"Urgh... o-okay..."
Grateful, at least, that she wasn't changing her underwear as well, I started moving so I could get dressed. If she had gone that far, I wouldn't have known where to put my eyes. As it was, she only swapped her outer clothes.
"Hana, hurry! Want me to help?"
She had already finished and was standing behind me. Determined not to end up a dress-up doll, I started putting on the outfit she had coordinated for me. Getting dressed didn't take long anyway, and before I knew it I had managed my going-out clothes too.
"All right, let's go, Hana!"
The Maru who had looked like any other office worker on her morning commute was gone. In her place stood a woman in her mid-twenties who had only just shed the look of a college student, bright and stylish as a girl fresh out of university—and she was beaming at me. I hesitated, taken aback by the transformation. She didn't look like Maru at all. They say clothes make the person, and once she was properly dressed to go out, it was no joke. Walking down the street, she was the sort of woman men would turn to look at at least once.
If I had still been a man, I wouldn't even have been standing beside someone like her. I would have been stuck wondering whether I dared say hello. That was how striking she was. It hardly mattered now, though. Things had changed since I ended up in this pint-sized child's body.
Men and women alike looked at me with fondness. In a way that was a good thing, and yet being treated like a little kid still stung. Was this what it felt like to become someone's pet? An adult mind dropped into a child's body—maybe that was why it happened.
Even so, once I took Maru's hand and stepped outside, I felt better. I wanted to see the fireworks already. Just picturing those brilliant bursts stitching themselves across the sky was enough to send a thrill through me. Not a cloud in the sky today; I would be able to watch every explosion in perfect clarity.
The weather was lovely, and it wasn't all that hot either. This was no sweltering tropical night, so we could watch the show in the cool air. And so I climbed into Maru's car. She buckled my seat belt for me and pulled away. I could fasten a seat belt by myself, thank you very much...!
"Wow, look at all these people~"
Maru said it as she took in the line of cars stretching out of sight. I was worried too. At this rate, wouldn't the show be over before we even parked? I had never imagined the traffic would snake on like this. Maru, though, didn't seem to care. She looked nothing like me, wound tight with nerves. Was she content just to watch the fireworks from inside the car?
No—if that were the case, there would have been no reason to get tickets today at all. I soon found out why she was acting so sure of herself. A little farther on, at the entrance, she showed the golden ticket to a staff member. The moment he saw it he startled, then hurriedly opened not the lane the other cars were crawling through, but the road beside it, the one barred by a boom gate.
"Ooh..."
Because the gate had been holding it shut, the road beyond was completely clear. A VIP-only lane, if I had to guess. Setting aside a whole separate space like this, it was more than possible. Seeing me glance around in bewilderment, Maru spoke up.
"We're VIP, so we've got our own parking lot. This ticket is seriously hard to get, you know. Way harder than reserving seats for the biggest trot star in the country—you know, those old-school ballad singers everyone lines up for. The price is one thing, but they don't even sell these to ordinary people."
"Really? Then how do you buy one, Maru?"
"Oh, that's a method our Hana doesn't know about yet~"
She said it with a bright little grin, humming to herself as we pulled into the lot. The parking area set aside for us was certainly unusual. There was space for only a few dozen cars, and people stood posted all around, keeping watch. Every vehicle parked there looked expensive. The cheapest of them had to be well over a hundred thousand dollars.
"All right, out we get, Hana!"
Maru said it after sliding the car neatly into a space. I opened my door with exquisite care, terrified of scratching the car beside us. One door ding, and an absurd amount of money would go flying. We could have bought dozens of cars like these, sure, but there was still no harm in being careful.
"Hmm..."
Maru stood for a moment, looking down at her phone. Probably searching out our reserved seats. Soon she switched it off and caught my hand.
"Let's go, Hana!"
"Okay!"
I didn't refuse her hand. The sun had already slipped behind the mountains, and the night was dark. A little sunset light still lingered, though, so they wouldn't be setting the fireworks off just yet.
Fireworks shone so much brighter against a pitch-black sky. We still had plenty of time. Of course, without this VIP ticket we probably wouldn't have parked at all, and we would have ended up watching the bursts from the side of the road. Starlight Guild really was something. Even an event like this bent under their influence.
Rinea opened her eyes. A room of pure, unbroken white greeted her.
Have I been taken...?
The scenery around her was utterly unfamiliar, and her wariness climbed by the second. She tried to draw up her mana, but the bracelet on her wrist interfered. It wasn't perfect, though. Magic on a very small scale still seemed possible.
Part of her wanted to blow herself apart and be done with it. To fall into a dimension she could not begin to understand, and then be kidnapped on top of it—what a disgrace of a shrine maiden, unfit to stand before the World Tree.
But then, as she gathered her strength, Rinea felt an energy she knew all too well.
...Huh?
An energy she had felt every single day. A trace of the World Tree. The moment she understood, her eyes filled with rapture. Was she about to behold the World Tree not as a spirit, but incarnate in the flesh—the dream of every shrine maiden?
In their own world the World Tree had possessed no body, nothing you could touch. Here, though, the World Tree who had crossed into another dimension existed in the flesh! Rinea abandoned the urge to destroy herself at once. If this was where the World Tree was, she absolutely could not cause a scene. Her only goal now was to cooperate, no matter what, and make her way to where the World Tree waited.
Having beaten odds that should have been impossible, she almost felt like bowing in thanks to the mysterious humans who had kidnapped her.
Coming to the very dimension where the World Tree resided was a probability that made no sense. Rinea did not know it, but if you wanted a comparison, it was like hitting the Powerball jackpot ten times in a row. Considering the infinite number of dimensions, meeting at all was closer to a miracle.