Life in Another World as a Maid Mage

In the still faint light of the sun immediately after sunset, Zach was walking along the street sewing between the people who were rushing home. Warm light leaks from the windows of the houses, and the smell of evenings that stimulate hunger floats around. It's the end of a peaceful day.

Stuck in a square along the street with stalls selling stuffed intestines, skewers, hot wine, and more, Zack looks for the right place to cook. I bought hot sandwiches with freshly roasted smoked meat and a beautiful red berry jam, and started walking again whispering, "Betty's bread tastes better... it's the other way around."

The familiar four-story apartments, the destination, seem to have already brought home most of the residents, and all the windows are lit.

"... oh, Mr. Zack. A sympathy?

Larsch, the manager, who seemed to have just come back to his room after a day's work, asked as he glanced upstairs.

"Well, that's it."

After that, Alec secretly took Shiori home from the back door, who began to cry tirelessly. After all, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to appear in public with my eyes completely wet.

I told Annelier and the others that they had returned home from a mild illness. I was worried, but I could tell something from Cili's appearance during the meeting. I entrusted Zach with the words of sympathy and turned back to the inn.

"Please tell your sister (...) to take care of her. I'm not alone anymore, so I'm sure I'll be fine."

"Oh, thank you. I'll tell her."

This discerning man probably noticed Shiori's weepy eyes, but he dropped me off with only words of concern without asking too deeply.

I went to the upstairs room as usual and said, "Whoa, I moved." It's dangerous, it's dangerous, "he whispered, rushing back to the stairs and heading to the room for the top floor. Standing in front of the door, I heard a voice from inside. If it still seemed to be resting, I would have just left the slip and left, but fortunately Theori is awake.

"It's me," he said, knocking on the door, and Ruli peeked at her face from the gap below. Quickly pull in with a fluttering tremor, and the door opens slightly later.

Siori, who was lying on the sofa, woke up behind Alec and Ruli, who welcomed her.

"Hey, I was hoping I could talk to you... are you okay?

"... brother. Yeah, it's okay. I'm fine because I'm not sick."

I'm sorry. Siori lowered her eyebrows and buttocks saying she was worried. She smiled sorry with her face still slightly swollen. However, the expression seemed to be clear or heartless.

Until now, I smiled, but there were some distressing signs like a little bran rain in the clouds. I guess that's all the secrets I had.

Zach lay his eyes down for a moment, but soon he got back to laughing.

"Please let me talk to you for as long as I can. Don't worry about it. Don't talk to me like that."

"... yeah, I got it."

I wonder if she felt like being interrogated, but her hardened expression relieves.

Alec was somewhat uncomfortable at first with Siori, but seemed to have decided that she would be able to get rid of her hard work if she told her what she could.

After he told him to sit in the right place, he glanced at the breakdown of the souvenirs and went to the kitchen. They were planning on adding dishes, and after obtaining Ciori's permission, they removed some bottles from the freezer and cupboard and served them on a large plate with street food. The rustic sausages and skewers quickly transform into a small, stylish dish served in a slightly sophisticated tavern with vegetable vinegar and mushroom salad accompanied by mashed potatoes. Alec makes a portable onion soup with hot water for a small number of people and sprinkles with dried parsley.

"This portable food. It's really convenient."

I'm sure Alec is the main beneficiary, but it looks like there's a treasure to cook just by pouring hot water when you want another dish or when you're hungry.

There is a line of street food that Alec added a lot of effort to the table, as well as handmade Shiori preserved food.

It's quite a sumptuous match.

The shops and shops with strong taste for takeaway are delicious of course, but even if they are made there, the table looks bright with no heart if handmade cuisine is added. Maybe that's what it feels like to know who makes it and who it is.

"Alec, you seem to be eating well every day."

"Oh, I can't go back when I'm done pouring hard dried meat and biscuits in with ale. I didn't think it was normal back then."

Zach knows very well that buying street food instead of cooking is going to cost him a billion dollars if he lives alone for a long time. As a result, it is not uncommon to keep the preserved food that I have bought in my mouth.

But now Alec seems to have learned to put more effort into street food. Zach secretly laughed that it would change if it changed.

Life with the woman I love seems to have even changed the way this man lives. Perhaps it was originally of that nature, but it was difficult for Zach, who didn't know Alec until he was brought to the royal castle, to judge.

(Even so, well... you look happy, above all else.)

If you look at that person's table, you can tell whether he is happy or not.

The two of them smiling and cooking in front of each other were so calm and happy that it turned into a single picture.

― ― An orphanage table sacked Zack's brain from a soup that was like a supernatant that had no name for it. And a fun, warm dining table surrounded by my father, my adoptive mother, and my young half-brother.

There were a lot of people around who thought Zach was negligible, but my adoptive mother, who was not connected to blood, and my half-brother, who was only half of the same blood, as well as my birth father, whom I met for the first time at the age of six, loved me. The time spent in the Duke's house was by no means long, but that decade certainly fed Zach's heart.

Alec and Ciori must have regained the warm table they lost once.

Zack prays that this sight will continue forever.

"--So, brother. I don't know what to say."

I was reluctant to ask Shiori, who reused it with a water splash of berry wine.

"Well... let's start with your country. What country was it? It was a rich island country."

"Yeah, but the richness may not be much different from Stridia's. It didn't seem that way in the past, but it has grown rapidly in the last 70 years or so. I feel a little stagnant right now."

"Heh? You mean the politicians are better?"

"Hmm... I honestly don't know much about politics. But after losing the big war, we all tried so hard to regain our lives and make it better than before, so I think there is Japan now."

"A diligent citizenship...? Looks like there's something going on with this country."

Siori nodded with a smile at Alec's words.

After that, the "interview investigation" proceeded in the form of pinching the cooking and poking questions, and Shiori returning them.

What I learned as I went along was that, except for the absence of magic and beasts in the world that Theoli lived in, the way people operated and the way the country lived were roughly the same. That's why Theori laughed when she said that she got used to life early, but even so, the efforts to get here weren't very much.

If you ask me, the standard of living in this world will be about a hundred years ago in the other world. A hundred years ago, there were almost no useful life magic devices like Stridia today, so if you look at the details, it would be different, but I didn't know if I could do the same even if I was thrown into the kingdom a hundred years ago.

That's what happens when you don't even have the edge of a silk thread.

I can't imagine how much it is to live in a place where nothing exists - the roots of a human being and everything that has lived until then.

"... well, I understand the whole story. But is it common to cross the world over there? It's like you're flying to another world."

"Maybe, but... I don't know. I've heard stories of going to other worlds from time to time, but I don't think there were many people who really interacted with me because there was no evidence just from the testimony of the person. Some of them were working on parallel worlds, but just because they still exist in theory, it could take decades, hundreds of years, more time to prove it."

"Parallel world?

"Well... to put it simply, another world that exists in parallel with this world. The idea of another world with a different history from one point in time."

"Another world with a different history?

"Yeah."

I can't explain it in much detail because I'm not an expert, but she kept saying that her real brother was interested in the story.

"The world has repeatedly divided history, and we are in one of those divided worlds. For example... this country was once ruled by the Empire, but for some reason there may have been a world that split and was not ruled by the Empire."

"Well... on the contrary, there may be a world where the Kingdom ruled the Empire or where the Empire itself was not born in the first place. It's funny."

"Yeah, it's like that."

"Is that what this is about? You come from one of those parallel worlds that has followed a different history from ours?

"... yeah. I'm just guessing... the ecosystem doesn't really change, the sun and the moon are usually the same, and the stars are arranged in the same way, so I think the original roots were in the same world."

"I see. But there wasn't any magic out there, was there? And yet you can use magic. What do you think about that?

"Hmm... maybe, but I think the other people also had magic. I just couldn't use it because I didn't have the magic elements I needed to activate it."

No matter how much magic there is, magic cannot be activated without magic elements. A place called zero has not been discovered at all, but it is speculated from the fact that in places where the magic elements are thin, they are less powerful and rarely activated by low magicians.

"There are no magic elements...? Honestly, I can't imagine."

"At best, I think that if you are a strong magician, magic can be activated in some kind of clap. But I don't think there were any magic elements because I've never heard of them. So maybe... this world and the other world branched off around the time the magic element occurred. This is entirely my imagination....."

The fact that Ciori is normally arguing that research in these fields has been carried out and that they were civilians can be said to be much more advanced in technology and academics than herself.

"Hah... parallel worlds, hey..."

Zack thought it was an incredible story.

There is no such concept in this world. Sometimes it is featured as a subject in stories and so on, and the idea of the heavens where the gods live and the hell where the wicked fall may be similar.

But no matter what you take, you don't get out of the fiction zone.

To be honest, I couldn't count on how much I could believe Siori's story. But it didn't seem like she was lying.

In the middle of the conversation, I repeated the same question with a few clever changes of language, but there was no rupture in Shiori's response. He answered the same question over and over again, and said he didn't know how many times he asked about things that he couldn't answer.

No matter how much "setup" she made, there was some contradiction in her story. There was no roughness in the story that it was specific but there was no detail, and there was no unnatural thing that could be done.

Zack's testimony against Theoli is "white." However, as a royal ex-military officer and a man secretly involved in national defense, it could not be assumed to be perfectly white, as there was no way to prove them, and even the black part of the fragments remained.

--- Gray as close to white as you can see. That was the conclusion Zach finally reached. I don't know how Olivier or Christopher perceives her as much as Alec or myself, but there's nothing more to tell.

After asking all the questions, Zach sipped Siori's soup. Delicious. It's a hearty soup made by a bloody human.

(... I'm eating what he made in the first place without a doubt. I trusted him a long time ago. That's fine.)

I think so as I look at the two people who are discussing the other world in front of me.

After that, I stumbled on cooking while having a conversation. When most of the dishes were empty and Louis, who seemed to be completely satisfied, began stretching on the floor, said Shiori.

"... thank you both for listening. I don't think you can believe it all, but I'm glad... you recognized me."

Now I can finally be with you. That's how she smiles.

I have memories of being born and raised in the other world, and there are people who recognize them. She said that it was a great pleasure.

Nothing is sadder than not being recognized for one's roots. She would have kept her mouth shut until today because she knew that.

"- I don't understand. I know because I have similar experiences. My past was classified in the castle. My mother, who was a bastard, was told that if she knew what she was, it would be like her home. It wasn't that my mother's uncle and grandparents were unlikely to make unwanted desires. That's why it's hard for your mother not to tell you how stuck she is with an undisclosed whore or something."

"Alec...."

Everyone gathered here for some cause or effect was in an undisclosed position. Of course, Louis was excluded, but Theori was born, Alec knew everything about her mother, and she had to keep her identity secret.

"... me too. It's similar to yours."

Alec poured me some hot wine and whispered it.

If there is only one difference, it means that at least I have no feelings for my mother that I have to hide.

As long as she could get rid of the engagement she didn't want, it seemed good. The man who was willing to spend the night together at the night club was not obsessed with knowing that he was the first-born son of the prestigious duke, and he lightly lowered the huge silence fee in his hand.

The woman abandoned herself. As if it were a fact that it should not have happened, I left my newborn baby in an orphanage in a hostile environment just to die, and afterwards I had nothing to do with it. I wanted to make sure Zach didn't exist.

Thus, he was abandoned as he thought, and he married a man who was secretly remembering, and lived happily surrounded by gentle husbands and children. I didn't even know that the first child I abandoned was starving to death in an orphanage.

If my father, who knew Zach existed, hadn't come to pick him up, he would have ended his short life resenting even him. It was such a miserable environment. It doesn't even have a name, only the name "redhead" indicates itself.

It's not that I don't have anything to think of my father, but he broke my heart until Zach grew into an age appropriate appearance with a nutritionally deficient and age-appropriate body, and he loved me as if he would make up for it afterwards. On top of that, I can't thank Zack enough for giving him the education he wanted. Of course, it was for my adoptive mother, who took care of me as much as my real child, and my half-brother, who I often missed.

"--Well, I can only say I'm sorry that the result is that I left the house and ran an adventurer."

"... brother"

Zack smiled bitterly at his sister and disciple who looked at him carefreely.

"Originally I was supposed to inherit my father's trail. But after my half-brother was born, the subordinates made noise saying that he had a legitimate right. My parents still wanted me to succeed them, but they weren't so obsessed with me, so I didn't mind. Rather, the Duke was succeeded by Eddie, my half-brother, and I even thought it would be more convenient for me to focus on Val's assistant."

"Val?"

Siori leaned her neck against an unfamiliar name, but Alec made a subtle expression. Because it's his second half-brother's name. And he died without looking face-Valentin Eurius Stridia. He was my lord and my best friend.

"Second...."

"Oh, yeah. But in an unfortunate accident, Sieg - his brother died, and he ran into the woods. All of a sudden, I was upset, but eventually I decided to support him as king. Until he died in an accident... in a daze."

At that time, Prince Siegwerd was sixteen. It was still fifteen years before Valentin came of age.

The continuous loss of the man who was supposed to serve in the future, and his two best friends, was enough to defeat a boy his age. In addition, the wife of Valentin, who was lovely as her sister, disappeared during the civil conflict in her homeland and received reports that her life and death were unknown.

"All three of them disappeared in front of me at once. I'm completely... broken."

"... I heard it for the first time. I heard it was because it was hard being a bastard."

Alec murmured in the middle of the day.

"I can't say that. I mean, you're pathetic."

Zach smiled bitterly.

"I'm not ready to serve the royal family. If you frustrate me with that (...), I won't be able to take command on behalf of you when something happens. But it's pathetic, and I... completely broke my heart."

Valentin fell down in front of him and died in a daze. On the return of Siegwerd's grave attendant, who was somewhere over the sky, he suddenly fell off the horse without being able to hold the bird in front of him, hit his head, and passed away to Siegwerd without regaining consciousness.

I didn't think a royal escort like that would kill him. I didn't think the samurai would die outside the battlefield.

People die easily. It's easy to die for some end-of-life reason, regardless of identity, gender, age, etc.

In the orphanage in the corner of the ghetto where I grew up, it was not uncommon for children to die of hunger and disease. Although death was everyday, I completely forgot about it, being protected by a gentle family and being the duke's rightful son - my sweetness and weakness were unacceptable.

That's why I chose to risk my life as an adventurer. I wanted to refine myself.

--Half of the two princes who served at that time remained close to Olivier, but half left the castle just like Zach. Most people have the same reason as themselves. Some have since succeeded to the throne and are committed to the administration of the territory, while others, like Zach, have worked hard to contribute to the country in other ways.

"That's right...."

Siori gently approached Alec, staring at the royal chaos of more than twenty years ago.

Three people with each circumstance - who would never have met if only a little bit of history had been different - are gathered here to make an encounter of some kind of cause and effect. I don't know if it was a coincidence or a necessity, but Zach silently bites into the joy that led him to talk to them about his past as a friend and as a brother.

--The wind blew out the window. A cold snowy wind is blowing outside that window. But this place the three of us talked about was as warm as the spring sun.