I Run the Protagonist’s Favorite Café in a Hopelessly Depressing Game World - V1 Chapter 2

A Chill Ran Down My Spine

A chill ran down my spine.

Goosebumps prickled all over my skin, and my legs started shaking on their own.

I felt an emptiness in my left eye socket. When I held my palm over it, there was nothing there.

In short, my left eye had been taken.

The price for using magic.

“Aoi!”

“…Yeah. I’m fine.”

I shook my head at my companion’s voice.

No good. Focus.

I straightened my crooked mask and put strength into my legs.

I could mourn the loss later.

Right now, the only thing that mattered was taking down the monster in front of me.

“I’m definitely coming back alive.”

──Eighteen years since I reincarnated.

That was the fourth time I had ever used magic.

◇

This world is on the brink of crisis.

…Or maybe that’s putting it too mildly.

It’s right on the edge of the edge.

The place I’m living in right now is a world that’s basically already destroyed.

Apparently monsters first appeared thousands of years ago.

They were beings that used devil-like power and came to wipe out humanity.

The moment those things showed up in the world, the source of their power—“magic power”—appeared too.

In other words, that was the birth of magic.

Was it really a blessing for humanity?

Thanks to the women who could use magic—in other words, the witches—people could fight the monsters and buy some more time.

In that sense, it might have felt like a gift from the gods.

But magic power was the power of monsters.

To ordinary humans, it was nothing but poison.

Humans without the aptitude for magic—not just men, but also women who didn’t have the talent—died one after another from the magic power spreading through the air.

It was like the whole world had been covered in poison gas. There was nowhere to escape, and humanity faced extinction once again.

That’s when the leaders of the time decided to divide the world.

They set up territories with barriers and tried to restore only those spaces to their original form without any magic power.

Of course the barriers couldn’t possibly cover the entire world. It was basically a declaration of defeat. They abandoned more than ninety percent of their territory and built walls to escape the terror of monsters and magic power.

How many witches were sacrificed when they put up those barriers? We can only guess now, but scholars say at least several thousand must have worked on it.

When you hear “worked,” it sounds like some touching story of effort, but the main theory is that the witches were forced to use magic against their will.

Back then slavery was in its golden age, and life was cheap.

…Well, the practice of sacrificing witches to keep humanity alive is still going on even now.

Anyway, outside the barriers there are still monsters crawling everywhere, so it’s fair to say this world is almost completely on the verge of destruction.

“Man, it really gets me down.”

I pressed an ice pack to my forehead and sighed.

If I had to reincarnate, I wished it had been into a brighter world. You know, one of those harem worlds where I could spend my youth giggling and flirting with cute beautiful girls.

Not this serious world where death is always right next door.

I stroked the eyepatch over my left eye and let out another sigh—I’d lost count of how many.

Ever since reincarnating I’d been sighing nonstop.

There’s a superstition that sighing makes happiness run away, but if that’s true, I probably won’t even get the tiniest bit of happiness in this life. An unlucky life. A tragic ending. Bad end.

I was sick of how familiar that sounded.

And just recently I’d started suspecting I might be under some kind of mind control, which made me even more sensitive.

“Haa…”

“Boss, you’ve been looking gloomy lately.”

Shikiko Komuta, wearing her apron, tilted her head.

“Is it because no customers are coming?”

“I’m not really bothered by that.”

“Oh, good—wait, no, that’s not good. You can’t be like that. You’re the owner, after all. You have to worry when customers don’t show up.”

Otherwise this shop will go under.

Shikiko said something I felt like I’d heard somewhere before.

“Yeah. I’d be in trouble if my part-time job disappeared.”

“…You’re already talking like you got the job, but I haven’t given you the result yet.”

“You’re not gonna reject me, are you? I’ll fight with everything I’ve got.”

“Don’t pull out your staff. Put it away.”

I held my palm out toward Tamaki Omuta, who had already taken her staff from her pocket.

What’s wrong with witches these days? Trying to use magic so easily makes me doubt the academy’s education system.

After the super-bad Napolitan incident the other day, Shikiko and Tamaki had sort of reconciled, but it looked like they still had some rivalry left. When Tamaki heard Shikiko was working here, she immediately said, “If Shikiko’s doing it, then I will too,” and applied for the part-time job on the spot.

Honestly, this café almost never gets customers, so even Shikiko alone was already more than enough labor.

If I hired Tamaki on top of that, from a cost-wasting point of view the auditors might come knocking.

Back when I was a witch, my companions used to scold me all the time for wasting money.

“You shouldn’t be selfish. The boss’s wallet is lonely. It’s dead silent in here. I’m already more than enough on my own—there’s no way we can afford to hire you too, Tamaki.”

Shikiko puffed out her chest with a little snort.

Her eyes looked kind of proud.

“Grr…”

Tamaki burned with rivalry.

Was it my imagination, or did I see flames roaring behind her back?

If I turned her down now, she might hold a grudge pretty soon.

…Actually, I had quite a bit of money saved up. I earned a lot during my witch days. I spent a good chunk on the café’s land and other stuff, but there was still plenty left. Specifically, adding one more part-timer wouldn’t be any problem at all.

So I tossed an apron to Tamaki.

“Ask your senior about the job details.”

“This means…”

“You’re hired.”

“──!”

Thank you! Tamaki immediately turned a smile toward Shikiko right after. She must have been really happy about getting hired—her usual sharp expression melted into a smile like a snowman melting in the sun. But the words that came out of her mouth were anything but gentle.

“Now I’m standing on the same stage as you, Shikiko.”

“It’s just a part-time job, no need to brag.”

“You’re saying I can’t even stand next to you!?”

“Paranoid incarnate… Aggressive paranoid…”

Shikiko usually had me wrapped around her finger, but when she faced Tamaki, she seemed to be the one getting wrapped around instead.

She looked unusually tired and let her shoulders drop.

“Boss… are you sure about the money?”

“I’ve got enough funds.”

“Where does it all come from? I’ve been wondering for a while.”

“From my pocket.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve got a fourth-dimensional pocket? An endless money mine…?”

She started muttering nonsense to herself.

Once she got like this it would take a while. I decided to talk to Tamaki first.

“By the way, Tamaki. Why did you want a part-time job too?”

“Shikiko has no sense of taste, and the boss is a total disaster with flavors. A café with no one who has a proper tongue is obviously going to go under soon. I’m kind, so I can’t just abandon people in that kind of crisis.”

I couldn’t exactly explain that I didn’t taste my cooking because I lost my sense of taste as an after-effect of magic, so I just fudged it by saying my taste was completely shot.

She took it seriously and apparently wanted to work here out of worry.

She actually had a pretty kind personality.

“…That’s only part of the reason.”

Tamaki grabbed her own wrist and looked down.

“──Pretty soon I’m going into a dungeon too.”

“A dungeon…”

“Yeah. A monster nest that pierces through the barrier. If we leave it alone it’ll cause humanity’s extinction—a monster that drinks the lifeblood of witches.”

It sounded like something straight out of a game when you called it a “dungeon,” but the reality was anything but cheerful.

Its true identity was a hole in the barrier.

A long time ago, an incredibly powerful monster opened a hole, and they forcibly covered it with magic.

It looked like a tower-shaped building, but because it was created by magic, it automatically repaired any damage. Depending on how you looked at it, it was basically a living monster nest.

Monsters were constantly pouring in through the holes in the barrier.

If we left them alone, humanity would be wiped out in just a few weeks.

“Training witches to subjugate monsters—that’s the academy’s policy. We’ve learned plenty about how to fight monsters. Pretty soon, as part of class, we’re going into a dungeon.”

Tamaki’s voice was trembling.

But her expression stayed firm.

She seemed to be trying to hold back her own fear.

“Shikiko already went into a dungeon once. This time it’s an official class. I might have to use magic too.”

And… I might lose my life.

She whispered it in a voice that was almost gone.

“I’ve never done a part-time job since I was born. I wanted to try it before I die. If possible, at the same place where Shikiko works.”

“…Why that?”

“I can’t tell you the details, boss, but Shikiko has always been walking ahead of me. Anything I could do, she could do. On the other hand, there were lots of things she could do that I couldn’t. Magic was like that. Killing monsters was like that too. But—at least something like a part-time job, I can do it too.”

It might sound rude to you, boss, saying “at least a part-time job.”

Tamaki shrugged her shoulders awkwardly.

“…I see.”

I couldn’t say anything.

For every human who wasn’t a witch, this was a sin they couldn’t close their eyes to.

The sin of living a fake everyday life by sacrificing girls who could only use magic.

You could even call it original sin.

Humanity was standing on top of countless witches’ corpses.

“You don’t have to worry about it, boss. This is my duty as someone born a witch, and if I can fight monsters and die to protect the world, that’s all I could ask for.”

As if to break the serious mood, Tamaki waved her hand lightly.

“Besides… you were talking like I’m definitely going to die. I have no plans to die. What was the point of all that harsh training otherwise? I’ll just pop into the dungeon, pop the monsters, and that’s it.”

She relaxed her cheeks into a smile.

That expression overlapped with Shikiko’s.

They really were sisters—even if they weren’t blood-related, even if their births and genetics were different. That’s how it felt when I saw that face.

“…………”

I clenched my fist where Tamaki couldn’t see.

I understood it deep in my bones.

The girl in front of me wasn’t just a game character.

She was a real living, breathing human being standing firmly on the ground.

──That’s exactly why I had to lead the future to a happy ending, no matter what it took.