Chapter 49 – A place Fuuka wants to protect

“Daddy!!”

Ririi jumps from the counter and into my chest, before holding me tightly and burying her face in my chest. Sorry for making you worry.

I shake my upper body a few times to fix my position and hold her properly, and Fuuka speaks to me with a worried look in her squinted eyes.

“H-hum… Is it all right now…?”

“It’s fine. And I don’t think those people are coming back.”

“Eh?”

She sounds surprised.

“After what I did to them, they’d have to be real idiots to come here again.”

Well, there are always people in this world that are much bigger idiots than you can imagine. I can’t say for sure that they won’t come back looking for revenge… But Anheim is going to have to deal with them if they do. Or I can deal with them, if they come back within the three days I’m going to be spending here.

“E-eh… What do you mean…?”

Fuuka sounds perplexed, but I see a small glitter deep within her eyes. But she holds back from showing a big smile.

It’s like she’s holding back her happiness to mitigate the shock from things not going the way she expected.

“You can go outside and check if you’re still feeling unsure. They’re probably still on the ground.”

I’m sure their leader’s not going to move for a while, after I shot the others against his back.

That perplexed look stays on Fuuka’s face for a while, until she’s finally ready to accept the good fortune that suddenly fell on her.

She puts her hand on her chest, and a small smile forms on her face. I see that, and sit back down on a chair near the counter.

“…Having to move like that made me thirsty. Can you get me something to drink?”

I order something, and this time Fuuka shows a big smile.

“Yes, coming right up!”

◆

“I see, so they were regular customers from back when your father ran the place.”

“Yes… They used to come here and have fun drinking, but the moment I took over, they started to get more unruly…”

I drink while listening to her. It looks like Ririi is enjoying her milk too. Fuuka opened a bottle to drink with me too, but I’m guessing she can’t hold her alcohol very well, because her cheeks are a little red.

To summarize, here’s why Fuuka is running the bar despite not really wanting to.

First, her father used to run this place.

He was an excellent sorcerer, and fear of his skills was probably what kept his customers in line. This bar is rundown now, but it wasn’t at the time, and it was pretty popular.

But one day, all of a sudden, he disappeared.

Fuuka was left behind wondering what to do with the bar, and she decided to take over running it. Their regulars, mostly people her father knew, started coming here more frequently too, as a way to help her.

But her father’s absence led to the nastier regulars becoming more emboldened, and they started acting like they owned the place.

Eventually, the other regulars stopped coming, and Fuuka was threatened into not closing the bar.

“Hey…”

“What is it, Weiss?”

Fuuka asks while holding her glass with both hands and tilting her head like a drooping flower.

Then she lets out a big smile. This girl actually smiles more than I thought.

“…Is this country lawless? Usually when something like that happens, you go to your country’s institutions and have them handle it.”

In the capital for example, the ministry of magic takes care of all trouble in the city. Other cities and countries have things like chivalric orders too.

But the story Fuuka told me is like something that would happen in Zenith. It goes without saying that Zenith doesn’t have institutions like those. The one rule of Zenith is that you have to look after yourself.

“About that… There’s a reason why I didn’t run to the security office.”

“What reason?”

I’m assuming that security office is the institution that protects the peace around here.

Zennia, the fairy that brought us here, also said we needed to speak to someone else if we wanted to live here indefinitely. I’m sure Anheim has several institutions for different purposes. It’s like the opposite of the capital, where the ministry of magic handles everything.

In the capital, everyone from an officer in charge of managing the city like Sieglinde, to a new professor in a magic school, are affiliated with the ministry of magic.

Fuuka looks around the empty bar, and then speaks like she made up her mind about something.

“Actually… This bar wasn’t my father’s. I checked the deed, and saw the name of someone I don’t know.”

“…What does that mean?”

Fuuka dejectedly shakes her head.

“I don’t know… But if this comes to light, I’m going to have to let go of it. My father is the one who rented it from that person. I don’t think the security office knows about this, but…”

“I see.”

I’m not an expert of Anheim law, but I see Fuuka has to deal with some shady circumstances.

But if that’s the case…

“Didn’t you want to close the place anyway? Then you could’ve blabbed everything to that security office. It doesn’t matter how much they yell for you to keep the place open if the country itself stops it.”

Things never go completely well in this world. To gain something, you have to let something go. In Fuuka’s case, she had her daily peace and the rights to the bar on a scale. The world wasn’t nice enough to let her have both. If she still wanted both… She’d have to get stronger. Strong enough to not have to yield to anything.

“You’re probably right… But I have great memories of my father in this place.”

Fuuka brings her hands to her chest, and closes her eyes like she’s running through her memories in a far away place. Time is more distant than distance itself.

“It’s all rundown now, but still… I love this place.

I’m jealous of Fuuka. I don’t have a place that’s important to me like that. I don’t feel that attached to either the capital or Zenith.

Will I ever find a place like that?

“…Then you should solve that problem with the deed. You can’t keep running away forever.”

What I’m saying is the most basic thing I could say, but I hear a surprising response from behind me.

“Fohfoh, there’s no need. I own this place after all.”

I turn around and see an elf with white hair and a long unkempt beard standing near the entrance.

Fuuka’s eyes widen as she immediately responds.

“You’re one of our regulars…”