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I went back home on my bike.
It was almost time for my part-time job to start, but I still had to go back home to change my clothes first.
Because of my sprained ankle, it took me longer than usual to get home.
“I’m home.”
I said as I unlocked the door to my house.
Saying that was just out of habit more than anything since no one was currently at home.
Both my parents were working. My dad worked in another city and my mom wouldn’t be back until late at night. I have an older sister, but she was living on her own since she was a college student already. That was why whenever I went back from school, there would be no one to welcome me home.
I climbed the stairs and walked to my room in the corner of the second floor.
Compared to the witch’s room, it was just a normal boy’s room.
There was a bed, a study desk, a chair, a drawer and a small bookshelf inside. There were only five or six manga and novels lined up in the bookshelf, a stark difference between the witch’s numerous book collections.
Oops, I needed to stop thinking about such things.
I picked up a uniform for my part-time job and rushed out of the house.
My current destination was a family restaurant in front of the station. I had several part-time jobs, but I had the most shifts there because it paid better than my other jobs.
“Heya, Shiraishi-senpai~”
While I was on my way, I suddenly heard someone calling my name.
I turned around to see a girl in glasses waving at me. Her chestnut colored hair was tied neatly in a ponytail.
“Kawasaki? You have a shift today?”
The girl was Kawasaki Saya, a senpai at my part-time job and a kouhai at my school.
“Yes? Didn’t I tell you about this yesterday?”
She pouted, placed her hands on her hips and proceeded to reprimand me. Her gesture seemed like she was trying to seduce me or something and I was aware that she was the kind of girl who’d actually do it.
“You think I’d remember everything that you told me?”
Yesterday, she talked to me all the time during work.
I was too sleepy to listen to her properly, so it was a given that I didn’t remember everything.
“Y-You’re so mean, senpai! You’re going to make me cry! Boohoo, I’m crying! You’re making your kouhai cry, senpai! Now, you have to comfort me!”
“If you’re really crying, sure, I’ll do it.”
“I’m crying! See? There are tears in my eyes!”
“Wow, you could actually cry on demand like that? You should try to be an actress, you’ll make it big.”
“Actually, it’s just my hay fever.”
“Okay, I’ll take my praises back. Come to think of it, it’s already summer, huh?”
“Right. By the way, senpai, do you know that if you have a severe hay fever, no matter what the season is, you’ll still burst into tears?”
“Uwah, that sounds horrible…”
“I made it up just now though, I don’t actually have hay fever.”
“So, this conversation is a waste of time.”
“Hahaha, this is why I like you, senpai. You always go along with my jokes~”
Kawasaki laughed as she teased me.
Being teased by someone younger like her put a dent to my pride, but seeing her smile made me just want to let her off.
Curse that pretty face, it was so unfair. It was the same with the witch too.
“By the way senpai, don’t you think you have too many shifts these days?”
“How so?”
“Don’t you need more time to study? Final exam is just around the corner, you know?”
Ah, right, I forgot that was a thing. It will start next week too. If I didn’t want to get red marks, I needed to study properly this week. Ugh, what a pain.
“What about you?”
“This is my last day. I’ll be taking a break until the end of the exam!”
“You got it good, huh?”
“What do you mean, senpai? Can’t you just do the same?”
“Can’t. The manager asked me to. I mean, there are a lot of students like us working there, right? We’d be short-staffed around this time, so I had no choice.”
The truth was, I just forgot that we’d be having our final exam soon.
I shrugged my shoulders as Kawasaki looked at me, clearly unconvinced.
“You can just refuse him like I did, though?”
“Unlike you, I don’t really care about my grades. So I don’t mind doing it.”
I literally just remembered about the exam.
“…Jeez, fine, do whatever you like, senpai.”
While we were having our conversation, we entered the family restaurant building.
Suddenly, Kawasaki stopped as something came to her mind.
“…By the way, senpai, is your leg okay?”
“Huh, you noticed? It’s nothing big, I just bumped into something. Laugh at me if you want to.”
…She was surprisingly sharp, huh? So far, only the witch noticed it, but that was a given since she was THE witch.
Kawasaki then fell into silence for a while before eventually sighing in frustration.
“…Please don’t overdo it, senpai.”
“Stop overreacting. ‘Tis but a scratch, I can handle this, no problem.”
I was happy that she was concerned about me, but I had never pushed myself ever since I reincarnated to this world.
Unlike back then, I only did whatever I could do.
*   *   *
The work at my part-time job was divided into two, the kitchen and the front side. Since I could do both, my role was to fill in whichever of the two that was short-staffed. Today, it would be the front side, meaning I would be the waiter.
As expected, the number of people started increasing as soon as dinner time started. Since the restaurant was located right in front of the station, we got more customers than normal restaurants did. It was hard dealing with so many people at once, especially since we were always short-staffed, but since the pay was so good, the job wasn’t so bad. One thousand yen per hour wage was rare in this prefecture.
“Welcome. Table for how many people?”
Because of my previous life experience, I could actually guess from their footsteps how many people would come into the restaurant. In this case, there were four people. By the way, I could still do this even when this place was crowded.
On the battlefield, there were countless times when I had to fight while being deprived of sight, so I had to understand the situation around me using my other senses, mainly hearing. The reason why I was so strong back then wasn’t because of my strength, swordsmanship nor exorcism, but because of my unnaturally sharp five senses.
Even though I was reincarnated, my five senses still retained that sharpness, which was quite a curious thing to happen. You’d thought that you wouldn’t retain your senses if you moved to a different body, but here we are.
I continued to serve the customers while thinking about such things. There were more people than usual today and sadly, we weren’t able to serve them all because of the lack of manpower. Gradually, the number of customers who were waiting in the waiting area had increased.
“Thank you for waiting, here’s your order.”
Both Kawasaki and I did our job well, but there was a newcomer who did a rather poor job in comparison. Though, she did quite well for a newcomer. I believe her name was… Takase-san?
“…Senpai, things are looking quite bad here.”
In the middle of the chaos, Kawasaki approached me and talked to me.
“There are so many customers waiting… And some of them seem dangerous…”
Right, there were some nasty-looking people waiting in the waiting area looking annoyed. I understood their feelings though, I hated waiting too. Imagine waiting for dozens of minutes just to eat at a family restaurant, couldn’t be me. Well, if it was a delicious ramen shop instead, I would wait for it even if it took hours.
“Well, we can’t help it. The kitchen is having a hard time too.”
No matter how good we were at serving the customers, it wouldn’t make the situation in the kitchen any better. They were currently overwhelmed with the huge number of orders. I could go there to help them but, if I were to do that, the front side would be overwhelmed instead. Like I said many times, we were short-staffed.
When I was thinking about that,
A crisp, high-pitched sound echoed through the room. When I turned around, I saw the newcomer fall to the floor. It seemed like she was in the middle of carrying an order as the floor around her was filled with scattered food and broken plate’s shards.
“You f**k…”
Not only that, some of the food was splattered on the pants of someone who was waiting in the waiting area. Unluckily for her, he was one of the nasty-looking guys Kawasaki mentioned earlier.
“I-I’m truly sorry!—”
“Do you think an apology is enough?! You’ve made me wait for so long and now this!—”
Takase-san was apologizing desperately, but the customer was having none of it.
“T-This is bad, senpai.”
Said Kawasaki with a pale face.
I ran over to Takase-san’s side to help her apologize to that customer only to see him kicking one of the intact plates on the ground toward her direction.
I managed to catch the flying plate right before it hit her. Thankfully, I was able to read his action before he actually did it. Takase-san stared at the scene in front of her in a daze.
“My bad, my foot slipped, just like that woman over there.”
The man looked surprised over the fact that I managed to grab the plate, but he casually acted like he didn’t do it on purpose.
…Was this guy for real? Did he realize that if it actually hit her, we could charge him for assault?
If this was the other world, this kind of behavior would be acceptable, but pulling something like this in this world? I could only see people who did this as idiots. Having this behavior in a world with established laws was foolish, the risk was too high.
“…I’m sorry, but this area is dangerous because of the broken plate shards. For some reason they can fly around on their own too, so can you sirs move to another place for a moment?”
Still, I couldn’t treat him roughly since I managed to stop him and he also claimed it as an accident. Besides, the first mistake was from our side, not theirs.
That was why I gave him some concessions by saying that… But it seemed like this guy was dumber than I thought.
“F**ker, don’t get carried away!”
Either he was pissed because of my dismissive attitude or was just blinded by his rage. Whatever the reason was, he grabbed my collar and pulled me close to him. In that instance, the surroundings started to buzz loudly.
“O-Oi, Masato… I-I think you’re going too far…”
His friends stepped forward, trying to stop him. They looked like a dangerous bunch, but at least they knew that they were really pushing it by doing this. The only idiot in their group was this Masato guy, apparently.
Then, Takase-san, who had been in a daze, stood up and bowed her head again.
“U-Um, I-I’m really sorry, everything is my fault, s-so if you want to blame someone–”
What a good girl. If I was in her shoes, I wouldn’t even bother apologizing to him. But I guess she was trying to make him release me.
But, if things proceeded to what she wanted, his anger would shift back to her again and I didn’t want that to happen. It was fine if he were to attack me, but if he were to attack Takase-san instead, it would be troubling. Who knows what kind of things this idiot would do, so I didn’t dare to take any risks here. I snorted at him to agitate him.
“You–”
That action managed to make him lose all his patience. He punched me as hard as he could.
I could dodge it easily, but that would be counterproductive. So, I decided to take the hit, deflected the impact and threw myself on the floor to turn this into a bigger scene. As soon as that happened, the female customers around us started screaming.
“S-Senpai?!”
Kawasaki was about to come over, but I stopped her with a gesture and told her that I was fine.
The man who punched me realized what happened and his expression turned really ugly, as if he chewed a bitter pill.
“Tch, you…”
Then, he immediately stormed out of the restaurant.
His friends followed suit not long after.
Well, that was that. Problem solved, I guess…
I let out a sigh of relief and called out to Takase-san.
“Are you okay?’
“Y-Yes!”
She nodded her head, tears welling up in her eyes.
Immediately after that, she said,
“R-Rather than me, are you okay, Shiraishi-san?!”
I smiled to reassure her that she didn’t need to worry about me.
“I’m fine. I’m quite strong, you know?”
That punch didn’t even hurt me in the first place. I just made it seem like a big deal to make them leave the place quickly.
“What do you mean you’re fine? Look at this.”
While I was thinking about such things, Kawasaki grabbed my hand in frustration.
When I looked at my hand closely, I could see blood dripping from it. A cut? Did I hit a shard when I did that act? Great, I made a fool out of myself then.
“‘Tis just a scratch. Don’t worry.”
However, I still had to treat it quickly or else it’ll be a hindrance for my job.
“W-What do you mean?! Y-You’re bleeding a lot!”
Takase-san shouted with a face that looked like she was about to cry soon.
It really wasn’t a big of a deal though. I wouldn’t die from this much. I knew exactly how much blood you’d need to drain to kill someone, thanks to my previous world experience.
“Senpai… Doesn’t it hurt?”
Asked Kawasaki in a worried voice.
“This much pain is nothing, I can barely even feel it. I’m fine, I’ll fix this up real quick.”
I smiled to reassure her and went toward the office.
My words were true. I received a much more grievous wound than this back in my previous life.
Compared to those, this kind of wound was nothing.
Anyway, it was great that everyone was okay after all that.
Finally, my experience from my previous life could come in handy this time.
If I could use it to help other people in this world too, I couldn’t be happier.