Majo no Tabitabi - Volume 9 - Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

A Country Girl, a History Addict, and a Potion Dosing

I’ve heard it was around seven or eight years ago, or thereabouts, when news of the mysterious place known as The Giants’ Kitchen began to spread among travelers.

Pamphlets claiming that a certain traveling witch—the Ashen Witch, who had traveled the world over—had given it a rave review started circulating among tourists. Eventually, for a certain segment of the population, these pamphlets became quite valuable.

Even now, the pamphlets seem to have retained their value, considering that even my own traveling companion was clutching one to her chest like a precious object as she said, “This pamphlet, I can’t believe it… I finally got my hands on one at an auction… I’m in love…”

“By the way, this Ashen Witch…could that be our teacher, by any chance?”

I pointed to the bottom of the pamphlet that my companion was holding. There was a silhouette printed there alongside the Ashen Witch’s endorsement. It was a figure I had seen before.

“I have the same feeling.” My companion nodded.

And then she looked up at the dilapidated building rising before us.

There was a sign hanging on the front door that read, CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS, though the state of the place gave off the sense that, far from being closed for renovations, it was closed for good.

“Huh? But the pamphlet says they’re open every day of the year, doesn’t it…?”

How strange. What on earth could this mean?

“Hmph!” My traveling companion smiled unexpectedly. “It looks like they made arrangements so that no one would enter the restaurant by mistake. But that’s fine. I’m sure that this sign is a lie,” she said, before tossing the CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS sign away.

“Should you do that?”

“It’s fine. The pamphlet was right after all.”

Apparently, my companion placed a great deal of confidence in this pamphlet that she had worked so hard to acquire (all she did was win it at an auction).

“I’m sure they don’t want random travelers wandering in here. Nobody is even supposed to know about the existence of this restaurant unless they have the pamphlet… Heh-heh…heh-heh-heh-heh…”

My traveling companion, a girl named Linaria, who had her purple hair tied up in a single ponytail behind her head, placed one hand on the door.

Standing behind her, watching her with very cold eyes, was the chestnut-haired Alte.

“……”

…By which I mean myself.

We were currently right in the middle of a history hunt, exploring the history of various countries.

What on earth is a history hunt, you ask?

And what awaited us on the other side of that door?

Before I tell you how Linaria went even crazier after touching a genuine piece of history, I suppose I must tell you how we wound up in a place like this.

Let me wind back the clock to around one week earlier, when all of this began.

Latorita State University has a long vacation period, from late winter until early spring.

Most students visit home during the break, and I’d also made plans to go show my smiling face to my family in the countryside as usual; however, this year I had no choice but to abandon that plan. It had nothing to do with suddenly needing supplemental lessons because I’m not too clever, or with being busy at my part-time job, or anything like that.

There was something else going on.

“I’m going traveling.”

Late at night, the day before the start of vacation, my friend Linaria suddenly appeared at my dorm room, waking me from a deep sleep to happily tell me some urgent news.

“I’m using the long vacation to set out on a journey and go on a history hunt. A history hunting trip…heh-heh-heh…”

Linaria was so excited that she didn’t seem to care what time it was.

When we’d first met, I’d thought that she was really cool and awesome. But apparently, when it came to history, she became a bit unhinged.

At first, the sudden changes that came over her had perplexed me, but eventually, I got used to them. Now she was suddenly barging into my room at all hours, rambling on about who knows what. But we were friends, so I didn’t want to shut her down.

“Ah, come to think of it, you’ve been saying something like that for a while, haven’t you…? Fwaah…” I let out a yawn.

Still dazed, I thought back on the past, almost as if I were slipping into a dream.

I recalled a moment between classes.

Linaria had come to show me a weathered old pamphlet that was obviously suspicious.

“Listen, apparently there’s a strange restaurant not far from here called The Giants’ Kitchen. The tiny women there view us humans as their enemies and try to attack the patrons. Despite them being tiny, the place is called The Giants’ Kitchen. Doesn’t that strike you as a contradiction? I think it is. It’s awfully mysterious.”

And another time, when the two of us were picking at our lunches, she had held a one-sided conversation.

“Apparently there’s a certain country where there are plaster busts lining the walls of the historical archives, including one of a goddess. I’ve heard that the goddess was repaired about seven years ago and the new bust is simply stunning. Don’t you think it would be worth visiting?”

Or once, when we were on the way home from school, she had talked with great excitement about something.

“I heard that there is a country where they’ve been holding broom races for ages. Apparently, many travelers gather there from all over, hoping for their chance to strike it rich by betting on the outcome of the race. Honestly, I don’t care too much about the race or the money, but historically speaking, countries that hold such races are quite rare. Wouldn’t you like to go see that?”

I remembered one time when the two of us were soaking next to each other in the dorm baths, and she was jabbering on.

“This reminds me, speaking of baths, I heard that in a place fairly far from here, there’s an underwater city called the Sunken City. Until recently, it was thought to be a ruin, but actually, the people of the Sunken City had cut off contact with the outside world and continued living in isolation. Don’t you think that’s incredible?”

She had been carrying on about such things quite often recently, and for my part, I had been giving perfunctory answers like “I see” and “Sounds interesting” during Linaria’s impromptu history lectures. She seemed satisfied enough just having someone to talk at and didn’t really seem to mind my clipped responses.

“And listen, and—”

Her eyes glistening with excitement, she would speak at length, recounting tales from yesteryear.

That’s what had been going on lately.

I knew her well enough that I could guess just how Linaria would make use of the long school break.

“When do you leave…?” I asked with another unsteady yawn.

“What a silly question… Right now, of course!”

Apparently, she was leaving right that minute.

When I rubbed my sleepy eyes and took a better look at her, I could see that Linaria was dressed in her usual school uniform, but she had a huge rucksack on her back.

I see—so she stopped by my room after she got ready.

“Is that so…? All right, I expect souvenirs…fwah…”

I let another yawn slip out and started to close the door.

“Huh? Wait. What are you saying?”

I tried to close it, but Linaria stuck her foot in the crack and stopped me. She even put her hand on the door and forced it open again.

“Why aren’t you ready?”

Huh?

Ready for what?

“Huh? What do you mean?” At that moment, my drowsiness suddenly fell away.

Huh? Ready? What am I supposed to be ready for?

I couldn’t hide my bewilderment. Linaria narrowed her eyes at me in dissatisfaction, then said, “You’re coming with me. On my history hunt.”

“……”

“……”

Huh?

What is she talking about?

“You promised, didn’t you? Have you forgotten?”

Linaria puffed her cheeks out angrily.

Did I promise?

I had just woken up from a deep sleep. My hazy mind went into overdrive, fumbling through past memories just like when we used the time-reversing pocketwatch.

I clearly remembered Linaria talking passionately at me about her history hunt idea whenever she got the chance, but not one instance of getting an invitation.

“I want to go on a history hunt, but…well, it’ll be lonely all by myself.”

“I see.”

Hm?

“So…if it’s okay with you, I’m just asking, but…if you want to, how about coming with me?”

“Sounds interesting.”

Hmmm?

“……”

“……”

I managed to recall a scene in the baths.

We had been talking and soaking for much too long, and I hadn’t really been paying attention when I answered. Now I could see that Linaria had assumed that I was accepting her invitation to join the history hunt. I had even nodded in agreement.

Thinking back, it had seemed like Linaria had been in an unusually good mood ever since then. Now I knew why. She was in high spirits because she’d found a partner for her expedition.

I see, I see.

……

“And I suppose it would be bad if I didn’t get ready right now…?”

“That goes without saying.”

That was all she said before closing the door.

It was guaranteed that I was going to have a rough time if I wasn’t prepared to set out traveling the next time that door opened.

“……”

Dear Father and Mother:

Circumstances dictate that I will not be returning home this year during winter break.

Instead, I will be embarking on some kind of “history hunt,” so please expect some nice souvenirs.

So that’s how Linaria and I ended up setting off on a history hunt together, touring other countries and visiting historic sites.

The first place that we visited on our trip was this cottage that served as the location of The Giants’ Kitchen.

Welcome to The Giants’ Kitchen. You must be tired. Please remove your footwear.

Apparently, this restaurant had some unique rules in place. I expected to go straight into the restaurant when we passed through the front door, but that wasn’t the case. First, we had to take off our shoes.

Apparently, there was already one other customer here before us. A single pair of shoes was placed neatly in the shoe box.

Judging from appearances, they belonged to a woman, but—

Your clothes may get dirty during your stay. Please leave any baggage here before entering. Customers wearing coats and hats, please remove them.

After the shoes, we had to leave our luggage behind. I wondered whether our bags might get stolen if we abandoned them in a place like this, but I figured we had to follow the rules of the restaurant.

Actually, the other customer had left her bags, too, so we followed her lead and set our rucksacks down before opening the next door.

Aren’t you thirsty? Before entering our restaurant, please drink this.

That’s what we saw when we opened the third door. There was a bottle sitting atop a pedestal with a label attached that read, DRINK ME!

Wow, this Kitchen is really demanding.

I had no real reason to be suspicious, so I picked up the bottle and imbibed some of the contents.

“…Blech!” It had a strange taste. For a clear liquid, it was awfully bitter, and tasted more like medicine than like plain water.

It was absolutely disgusting.

“…Here you go, Linaria.”

But it was the restaurant’s rules, so we had to drink it.

I expected the history-loving Linaria to drink it down happily and say something like, “Ah! I can taste the history!” I held the bottle out with the mouth of it toward her, but she didn’t take it.

“Linaria?”

I tilted my head to the side in confusion.

She wasn’t acting like a high-spirited history buff. Instead, she was acting cool and distant.

“That’s weird…” Her cold gaze was fixed on the bottle.

“Hm? What’s weird?” I was puzzled.

She answered me, “I had heard that you have to pass through three doors to get into The Giants’ Kitchen, but the instructions written on this third door are different from the stories I’ve heard. If I remember correctly, there is supposed to be perfume sitting in front of the third door…”

Oh?

“Then does that mean I might have just drunk perfume…?”

Eww, no wonder it was gross!

“…………”

But Linaria slowly shook her head. “Probably that wasn’t perfume. The words on the door are also different than in my research.”

Huh?

“So then, what on earth…”

What did I just drink?

I took another look at the bottle, and that’s when it happened.

“Wah!”

A shock of pain ran through my chest.

My heart was pounding hard, and my breathing grew heavy. I crouched down and dropped the bottle, letting the contents spill out.

As I watched the clear liquid spread out over the floor, I sucked in a deep breath to try to calm my ragged breathing.

But that didn’t fix the pain in my chest.

“…! Alte! Are you all right? What’s wrong…?”

The sudden throbbing in my chest was so painful that I could only just barely make out the sound of Linaria’s panicked voice.

“Ugh…it…hurts…”

I could tell immediately that this pain was eating my body up, worse than any food poisoning. Along with the pain in my chest, I was steadily losing all of my strength.

And then I collapsed.

My body and my clothes got soaked as I fell to the floor.

“Wait, I’ll fix you up with a spell!”

Linaria had realized that whatever I had swallowed was not water or perfume, but something more dangerous.

In a panicked rush, she went back to get our bags, and immediately after she’d left…the door to the restaurant opened.

As my vision dimmed, I saw someone appear from the other side of the door, grinning widely.

“Oh-hoh-hoh…welcome to my ideal world!”

Then she picked me right up off the ground and walked back inside the restaurant.

As we moved inside, I noticed something strange.

Somehow, I fit entirely within her cupped hands.

I was snug inside the hands of this girl, who was as big as a giant.

When I opened my eyes, I could tell right away that something was amiss.

Apparently, I had been fast asleep in the kitchen, because there was a frying pan and all sorts of cooking utensils lying beside me.

But the strange thing was that all these kitchen utensils were ridiculously huge. For example, the frying pan was big enough that I could easily fit inside it. The knives could have sliced me right in half, and the pots and plates and everything else were all just enormous. The sight made me suspect that I was about to get cooked.

It was literally a giant’s kitchen.

“……”

Wait, but maybe…

“Did I…shrink…?”

That was the only answer I could come up with.

I looked up and saw bars. I looked to the front and saw bars. Actually, everywhere I looked, my whole field of vision was covered by bars.

I felt like I was in jail.

Well, it was less like a jail cell and more like a birdcage.

“You’re awake.”

I sat up and saw someone beside me.

It was a pretty young woman with glasses on.

“Who are you…?”

“I’m Acre. The record keeper.”

Record keeper…?

I tilted my head in confusion, and the girl who had called herself Acre said, “So you met with misfortune, too, huh? Ever since that woman came here, this kitchen has changed… This is the punishment pen. When entering our cottage, your body was shrunk down, clothes and all, and she captured you.”

She suddenly launched into an explanation.

No…no, no, no.

“Sorry, you’re suddenly telling me all these things, and I can’t really keep up. Would you mind explaining it from the beginning, step by step?”

“……” Acre wordlessly puffed out her cheeks.

“First of all, where am I?”

“…Don’t tell me that you came here without knowing anything about the place?”

“……”

All I could do was nod.

To be honest, Linaria had charged in without inspecting the place or anything, and for my part, it wasn’t as if I had been longing to come here out of some passionate interest like Linaria. I didn’t really know what kind of establishment this was supposed to be.

Linaria had probably told me all sorts of things about this place before we came here, but since I was in the habit of completely ignoring her when she launched into one of her long talks, I really didn’t know anything. I was starting to regret not taking her history lectures more seriously.

“…Sigh.” Acre the record keeper let out a sigh. “Well then, read this. I’ve been acting as the record keeper here at The Giants’ Kitchen for a long time, so you ought to understand most everything about this place when you’re done.”

As she said this, she handed me a book.

She said it contained a record of everything that had happened recently.

I opened the cover.

X month, X day

Compared to how things were several years ago, it seems like our “Giants’ Kitchen” has really started thriving. I suppose it’s all thanks to those two giants we confronted a little while ago.

From time to time, travelers have been showing up at our doorstep. They gladly present us with the acorns and leaves and flower petals—our favorite foods. In return, we offer them building materials.

This new relationship benefits both parties.

If I had one complaint, it would be that very few humans bring my personal favorite with them.

X month, X day

My favorite is something smooth and shiny called “money” in the outside world. But apparently, it’s quite valuable, so despite how readily travelers hand over leaves and stuff, they almost never offer us money. They’re so stingy.

Day after day, I perform my duties while rubbing my cheeks against the smooth, shiny piece of gold that the ashen-haired giant gave to me before…eh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh…so smooth, so shiny, I love it—

“You don’t need to read that part.”

I got a kick in the shin when I was in the middle of reading.

“You love money…?”

“Don’t look at the parts that have nothing to do with the main story.” Acre was huffy with anger. She grabbed the book forcefully from my hands, flipped some pages, and handed it back after opening it to a page with more recent dates.

“That woman came here yesterday.”

X month, X day

Today a strange woman came to our restaurant.

She completely ignored our three rules, “remove your shoes,” “leave your bags,” and “spray yourself with perfume,” and marched right in.

When she saw us, she shouted, “Ah! How cute!” and started breathing heavily.

In the course of our work, we have grown used to encountering strange customers. We weren’t happy that she hadn’t followed the rules, but we started to serve our customer as we always do.

Serve the customer.

In other words, we launched an attack.

The captain roused the troops as usual, and we began preparations for an all-out offensive. If things had proceeded normally, the customer would have observed our oncoming attack and offered us some leaves or something, but on this day, the situation was a little different.

“Oh no, I’ve been defeated!”

Before we even launched our assault, the woman fell down right on the spot. Then she writhed around in a strangely erotic way. “Go on, do your worst…take my treasure and go…!” From her pockets, she pulled out leaves, acorns, and flower petals, and scattered them all over the floor.

“…What is she doing? We haven’t even attacked yet…” The captain also couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable about this customer’s strange behavior.

“Well, whatever! We win!” But the captain gave in to excitement and declared victory, taking her soldiers along with her to crowd around the leaves.

They were fools.

I greatly prefer the stuff called “money,” so I didn’t participate in the charge. I just watched from a distance, observing my compatriots’ behavior as a record keeper should.

That was how I was able to notice the change coming over them faster than anyone else.

Usually, they would just swarm the offerings and kick up a big fuss, shouting with excitement.

But on this day, everything was different.

“Urk…!”

“What’s…happening…?”

“What on earth…?!”

One by one, my compatriots collapsed.

Then, immediately afterward, they abandoned their weapons and staggered back to their feet. Their bodies were limp, and they looked just like they were being hung up by invisible strings.

They stood back up like marionettes.

“Heh-heh…looks like my potion took effect quickly.”

Potion.

I’m sure that’s what I heard the woman say as she politely reseated herself.

Then she looked down at the soldiers before her.

“From now on, you all work for me. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

They kneeled. The captain and all the other soldiers and the lookout, they all bowed their heads to the woman in unison.

I immediately understood the situation. All of my comrades were being manipulated by her hand. The leaves and flowers the woman had offered us were having this effect. They had been laced with a potion.

I immediately ascertained her objective.

“Heh-heh-heh…I’ve already investigated and found that every customer that comes here is rich… They can’t get ahold of the pamphlet without winning it at an auction, after all… So if I swindle money off the people who come to this restaurant, I can become very rich indeed…! Ah…what a perfect plan…!”

When I say I “ascertained” it, I mean she just announced it herself.

“Understood, mistress! From now on, we shall extort money from all the invaders!” With tottering steps, my comrades began to clamber up the woman’s body. It was impressive how exactly they followed her instructions.

“Ah, wait…! You’ve got it all wrong! You can stay where you are. Don’t move.”

“Roger!”

I had no doubt that the effect of the potion didn’t extend to me because I hadn’t taken the bait that the woman had offered us. However, now that everyone else was under her control except for me, I wasn’t safe.

It was clear that if I didn’t escape as quickly as possible, that woman would do something to me, too.

“What’s this…? One of your little friends is still hiding over there, isn’t she…?”

Uh-oh.

As soon as I took a step toward escaping, the woman caught sight of me.

“If you won’t listen to what I have to say, I guess I have no choice. Seize her!”

The woman snapped her fingers.

Immediately after that, the others rushed on me, and that pretty much brings us to the present. I was placed here in the punishment pen.

“Heh-heh-heh…with this, the initial preparations are complete.” The woman looked down at me now that I was her prisoner and smiled.

That terrible woman’s name is Priscilla.

Apparently, she’s a young mage.

“You two, there in the punishment pen, how are you doing?”

Immediately after I’d finished reading Acre’s long, long record, “that woman” appeared before us.

She had on a soft and fluffy black hat, round with a flat top, and her glossy, golden hair hung down out of the hat in flowing waves. She was dressed in a very distinctive black robe with an elaborate design like a gothic dress.

From the look of her face, I figured she was about the same age as me. But her unusually mature way of talking and her ample figure, which was noticeable even under her thick clothing, made her look less like a lovely young lady and more like an elegant and beautiful adult woman.

I looked up at her from inside the cage.

At the girl dressed in thick, black clothes.

“Isn’t that hot?”

Those were the first words that came to mind.

It’s early spring now.

You know, spring. And you’re dressed for the dead of winter?

When I asked, Priscilla snorted haughtily.

“What a foolish question!”

“Is it a foolish question?”

“Of course it’s hot!”

“Oh, it is?”

“But I won’t take it off!”

“……”

“Because this is who I am!”

“……”

Priscilla tossed her long hair back. “I’ve taken custody of your baggage.” She hoisted my bag into the air for me to see. “So you’re a student? Are you traveling over your long vacation?”

“…That’s right.”

“Oh-hoh-hoh…but too bad for you! Your journey ends here!”

Priscilla put on a smug look of triumph. She looked mature, but her behavior was certainly appropriate for a girl her age.

“Umm…I’d like you to release me right away…”

“I will not honor that request!” she answered decisively. “If you really must get out, you’ll have to steal the key from my minions! By the way, they’ll give you a quiz, and if you pass, they’ll hand it over!”

“Huh…?”

Priscilla presented me with an unusually specific suggestion for acquiring the key. The little women whom she had already declared to be her “minions” were on standby in front of the cage. She even suggested a difficulty level that seemed way too lenient, by adding, “You can fail the quiz as many times as you need.”

“Also, I don’t really have any money… Could you please return my bag?”

It makes sense to try to steal from rich customers, but the premise that only rich people would have a pamphlet in the first place is a little bizarre. After all, even a self-supporting student like Linaria managed to save up and win one at an auction.

“I will not honor that request!” As expected, the answer to my proposal was a hard no. “If you really must have it back, try and steal it back from me! By the way, I’m going to take a nap now! Are you listening? Don’t you dare steal the ‘growth potion’ that I have in my pocket! If you stole that, you could return your body back to its original size!”

“Why do you keep presenting me with solutions like that?”

It was almost like she was asking me to steal the potion.

“Silence, you! Anyway, I’m going to sleep!”

Priscilla didn’t seem the least bit interested in what I had to say. She left the kitchen and went into the dining room, where she huffed as she spread a blanket out on the floor, slapped her pillow several times to puff it up, and stretched herself out for a nap.

Ignoring me as I watched in stunned silence, she did exactly as she had announced and drifted cozily off to sleep.

She looked just like Sleeping Beauty, lying faceup and dozing peacefully.

……

Uh…

“What on earth…?”

At a complete loss, I looked over at Acre, the record keeper. “Can you believe that I have to take a quiz…?!” I balked. “There’s no way that I’ll be able to answer with the little I know…!”

“You became really dumb all of a sudden, huh?” my caged companion replied. Acre grabbed me by the arm, a little forcefully, and dragged me over to where one minion was standing in front of the cage.

“All right, customer!” the tiny woman outside the cage said. “First of all, you must answer this quiz!”

That’s when it happened.

Someone tapped gently on the kitchen window.

When I glanced over, I saw Linaria, looking down at us through a pair of binoculars she held in one hand…from the outside of the dilapidated Giants’ Kitchen. The way she peered stealthily through her binoculars at us made her look like she was bird-watching or something. Though her target wasn’t a bird; it was just me, in a birdcage.

She stared fixedly at me.

She was holding up a memo pad on which she had written, You shrank down really small… What happened?

Of course, right in the middle of all that, the rules of the quiz were being explained to me. The minion who was standing in front of the cage said, “I’m going to give you a quiz now, so please write your answers on this memo pad. If you answer correctly, I’ll let you out of the cage. Also, Miss Priscilla said this earlier, but you can retry the quiz no matter how many times you fail.” Then she handed me a memo pad and a pen.

……

This is perfect. I can write on here.

I don’t really understand what’s going on, but for now, I apparently have to take a quiz. I held this up facing the window.

“Ah-ah! I haven’t even given you the questions yet! Why are you writing without permission!?” The minion was upset by the interruption.

Quiz…? What do you mean? I don’t get it. Linaria cocked her head to the side.

There’s a mage named Priscilla here who is trying to take over The Giants’ Kitchen, and apparently, she’s the reason why this place has gotten so weird. It’s her fault I’m like this. I gave a succinct explanation of the situation.

“I told you already! I haven’t even asked any questions! Stop writing whatever you want!” The minion was still angry.

I don’t really understand, but for now, I just need to take out this Priscilla woman, right?

Please stop saying such unsettling things…

“Unbelievable! You did it again! How many times do I have to say it before you understand?! Wait until I give you the questions! I’m going to get really mad if you do it again!” the minion said, even though she was already fuming.

Behind the minion, Linaria held another piece of paper up for me to read. Wait there, Alte. I’ll come up with something. You take their quiz or whatever and kill some time.

“All right then, here’s your question! Actually, this came up once in Acre’s records already. What exactly was the final line that I shouted out in the records she kept? Heh-heh-heh, you got a hard one right off the bat, huh? Well, do you know?”

Paying no attention to what the minion was saying, I held my memo pad up to answer Linaria.

Roger.

“Yes! That’s correct!”

The birdcage door opened with a clank.

Huh? What the heck is going on all of a sudden?

I was extremely confused, but I seemed to have unwittingly passed the quiz.

Behind me, Acre seemed impressed. “You’re actually quite perceptive…”

The minion also looked pleased. “You’re the first one who’s ever given the right answer so suddenly, and on your first time taking the quiz, no less…”

“…Huhhh?”

When did I…?

I was totally bewildered, but the other women impatiently began pulling me by the hand before I had fully grasped the situation.

“All right then, proceed to the next stage.”

I had been told to wait where I was, so I wanted to remain inside the birdcage until Linaria got to me, but both Acre and the minion insisted that we didn’t need the cage anymore, and ultimately, without understand anything that was happening, I was driven out of the cage and then driven out of the kitchen entirely.

At any rate, the only thing I could be sure of was that I had immediately broken my promise to Linaria.

“Now that you’re out of the cage, all that’s left is to steal the potion from Priscilla.”

I wanted to go back to the cage, but it seemed like I didn’t have that option. With Acre tugging me along by the hand, I wandered around The Giants’ Kitchen.

But I knew that Linaria was outside working on some sort of plan, so now that I had left the cage, I couldn’t sit around idly doing nothing.

I very much wanted to solve this predicament myself.

To that end, I set off on an adventure, heading toward Priscilla, whom I could see off in the distance, a slumbering giant in this tiny world.

But my journey would not be an easy one.

“Be careful, okay? My comrades are going to come confront you one after another,” the minion told me.

Except for Acre, all the tiny women were under Priscilla’s control, after all.

It was only to be expected that they would jump in to stop me if I tried to cause any harm to their mistress, Priscilla.

I was first confronted by a single girl, small and cute. She was little enough to fit in a human hand, just like Acre, the first minion, and me.

“Humph…you’ve done well to make it this far. Now it’s time for you to face me in a little game. If you win, I’ll let you move on.”

Wearing a self-satisfied expression, she challenged me to a game of Othello.

“……”

Othello?

They have Othello in the world of tiny ladies…? Well, I don’t mind playing, but…

At any rate, if she’s going to bar my path, I suppose I’ll have to fight. If I don’t, I can’t progress.

And if I don’t win, of course, I won’t be able to make it over to Priscilla.

Which means…

“……” I immediately took the corners.

“…Ah.” The girl fell into a panic.

“……” I mercilessly colored the top of the board black.

“…Waah.” The girl’s eyes filled with tears.

I won by an overwhelming margin.

“I could have won even without taking the corners…”

I gave the sobbing girl back to her friends and started walking again.

The next one to block my path was a girl holding a deck of cards.

“Face me in a game of Concentration! I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve never lost before!”

Never lost a round…? Well! She must be a really tough opponent!

…Or so I thought.

“……” I mercilessly collected every pair of cards.

“…Huh?” The girl watched, dumbfounded, as I snatched up the tricks, one after another.

“……” I kept on turning over cards, in spite of the fact that I was already holding the majority in my hand, meaning the match had been decided.

“…Wahhh!” The girl’s eyes filled with tears.

Another crushing victory.

I grew up in the country, which meant that we didn’t have much to do for fun. I had been playing these sorts of games my whole life.

I had loads of experience.

You could even say I was confident in my abilities.

And so…

After that, the tiny ladies came and challenged me to every conceivable type of game, but I relentlessly defeated every single one of them, made them cry one after another, and worked my way toward Priscilla.

In response to this state of affairs, Acre stared at me. “You heartbreaker…,” she muttered, in a way that could have easily been misinterpreted.

Don’t look at me that way…

At any rate, after defeating an endless stream of tiny women, there was only one final person standing in my way. She appeared to be a very dour knight.

She didn’t tell me her name.

But she was the one whom all the others called “Captain.”

“Tch…so you made it this far, huh…?”

The little captain, perched atop Priscilla’s enormous chest as it rose and fell with her sleeping breaths, looked down at me with a triumphant expression that didn’t waver.

“But this is where your steady advance ends! I doubt you will win so easily against me.”

Then, with a heave-ho, she produced two pieces of paper and one lottery machine.

After that, she handed one of the slips of paper to me and said, “Here, take this.”

“Uh, thanks…” I accepted the paper coldly.

There were rows of numbers on it.

……

It’s a BINGO game.

Then the woman started turning the lottery machine with a clatter.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Your strengths won’t help you in this game! I can triumph through good fortune alone—”

“BINGO.”

“Aaaaaaaaaaaahhh!”

Another crushing victory.

After emerging victorious over every one of the tiny women who stood in my way, I climbed up Priscilla’s sleeping body and claimed the “growth potion.” It was surprisingly anticlimactic, perhaps because humans are fairly defenseless when sleeping. Priscilla didn’t show the slightest sign of waking. The whole time I was climbing on top of her, she just kept snoring away.

It was a good thing that she didn’t stir in the slightest. I grabbed the potion bottle with the DRINK ME! label on it and immediately pulled off the cap.

She told me…

“If you dash that potion all over your whole body, you’ll return to your original size. That’s what Priscilla said,” said Acre before adding that if I didn’t pour it on my clothes, too, only my body would grow larger, which would lead to some unfortunate results.

She seems awfully knowledgeable about Priscilla’s business…

“…Um, what is your objective here?”

The whole sequence of events, from when I was placed inside the birdcage up until this very moment, had been indescribably weird. All of Priscilla’s minions had given up quite easily after losing their various parlor games.

Wait, actually…

None of this seems necessary to steal money from people. Priscilla could have just tossed me back outside the moment I drank the shrinking potion.

It’s like some sort of game…

Whenever one of the girls had challenged me, the mood in the air had been like we were just playing a game together.

“…?” Acre tilted her head at my question. “You’re very dull, aren’t you…?”

“…Dull?”

What on earth is that supposed to mean?

“Our restaurant is called The Giants’ Kitchen,” Acre told me.

The reason why Priscilla had made me drink the potion. The reason why Acre had been with me the whole way, almost like a tour guide. The reason why the other girls had challenged me to relatively lazy games.

I put it all together.

“This whole thing has been a demonstration,” Acre said.

“……”

“……”

“Demonstration?” I cocked my head.

“Yeah.” Acre nodded. “We recently developed a program where customers can experience the world as we see it. We even hired a mage as a part-time employee. That’s what’s going on.”

“……”

“……”

“Part-time?” I gazed at Priscilla, who was murmuring in her sleep.

“Yeah,” said Acre. “Priscilla’s a part-timer. She’s just a regular mage.”

“……”

“……”

So that means…what, exactly?

That Priscilla wasn’t actually planning to try to steal money from the customers who came to this restaurant? That she was just a regular girl playing the role of an evil mage? And that the majority of the tiny ladies who inhabited The Giants’ Kitchen weren’t actually being manipulated or anything; they were just playing games with me so that I wouldn’t get bored in their tiny world, because it was their job? Is that what this means?

……

Huh? So doesn’t that mean that I was never actually a captive at all?

So there was no need for me to ask Linaria to save me?

“Oh.”

Uh-oh.

These thoughts and more occurred to me, but it was too late.

“You must be Priscilla! Give back my Alte!”

Crash!

Linaria made a heroic entrance by smashing through the window, landing right on Priscilla’s sleeping face.

……

Umm…

“An ‘Incredible Shrinking Adventure Course’?”

The day that the mage Priscilla happened upon our restaurant, she tilted her head curiously at the proposal that we presented to her.

Her reaction wasn’t surprising.

After all, she’d come with the usual pamphlet in hand, curious to see how we lived our lives in The Giants’ Kitchen.

But we hadn’t treated her with hostility or entertained her in any way. Instead, we’d all lined up before her and presented our proposal.

“Recently we’ve decided to start a new enterprise…and we’d like to borrow a mage’s power to do it.”

That’s right—it was a new business venture.

To tell the truth, we had been operating The Giants’ Kitchen for a long time and had faced off against many travelers, but every time we battled, our resources were depleted.

Frankly, we hardly had anything left. Talk was circulating among the junior soldiers. People were saying “This isn’t worth it” and “We object to this exploitation.” There were even some who issued near-threats, like “I’ll inform the labor union.” Not that we have a labor union anyway.

With no better ideas, the captain had spoken up: “How about we just start a new business?”

And so we had devised the “Incredible Shrinking Adventure Course.”

“Basically, we were looking for something more sustainable. So having guests shrink down to our small size works out well in several ways. If the guests are small, so are their stomachs, so they won’t be able to consume as much, and the cost per guest will stay low.”

We had approached the visiting mage with our proposal.

At the time, we didn’t really know much about magic users, but we had figured that it should be pretty simple for one of them to shrink people down to our size.

“Hmm…”

Priscilla the mage had puzzled over the question with coquettish gestures. “I understand the situation. In short, you want me to provide you with potions that will make people and objects small; is that right? Well, I think I have something here…all right, now, where did I…”

As she talked, Priscilla pulled a potion bottle out of her bag.

Then she dribbled a little bit of it onto a bundle of paper (which was apparently called a “deck of cards”).

Then something amazing happened. The bundle of paper shrank right before our eyes, until it was small enough to fit neatly into our hands. Priscilla presented the deck of cards to one of my comrades and explained that she was a mage who specialized in making potions.

It was clear that our proposal was a perfect match for her skills.

However…

“But I’ve decided that I won’t engage in such business any longer…”

Priscilla frowned at our plan. Apparently, she had once been involved in certain dishonest enterprises but had since decided to turn her life around. She explained that when it came to her potions, she kept them on hand so she could give them out to people in need. I really wanted to ask if there were actually ever any circumstances where someone would need to shrink down to our size, but I decided to stay quiet for the time being instead.

“Well, please reconcile it somehow. We’re counting on you!”

The captain bowed her head. I followed suit.

“If things remain as they are, our race will surely die out!” the captain told her tearfully. In her arms, she was cradling a girl on the verge of death—Liscia, one of our own.

Liscia had been suffering from a chronic lack of leaves, probably because customer traffic had been waning at The Giants’ Kitchen lately. As a result, her mental state had become quite unstable.

“Oh…Captain…my Captain…when I die…wash me down the sink drain with some leaves…”

“Here, see for yourself! She’s at death’s door, isn’t she?!”

By the way, Liscia had always been a bit of a drama queen.

But the mage Priscilla seemed shocked at Liscia’s wretched state.

“…! My goodness!”

Liscia, of course, had always been wretched.

But Priscilla began to cry.

“I’ll help you…I’ll…I’ll save all of you…!”

“Thank you.” The captain grinned.

The most underhanded person of all had been with us the whole time.

After that, the mage Priscilla visited us almost every day. She came to have detailed meetings about the new business venture we were starting, of course, but more importantly, she had turned out to be more kindhearted than we’d ever imagined.

“This is called a BINGO game. You turn this clattering thing round and round, and punch holes in your card that match the numbers that fall out. When you complete a row, you win!”

Nearly every day, she brought some new plaything for us, who’d hardly had any decent entertainment. She would douse every new game in her shrinking potion and offer it to us.

She had all the benevolence of a goddess made flesh.

There were more than a few soldiers who said, “I want to marry that girl in the next life…,” or something similar.

She had come to the cottage nearly every day to refine our business plan, and then, at long last, our scheme reached completion. Fortunately, since we had hung out the CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS sign on the front door of The Giants’ Kitchen, we hadn’t had any customers in some time.

Then, that morning…

“All right, first thing tomorrow, we’re switching over to the new business model.”

We all agreed.

The details of our new enterprise were as follows:

There were three doors on the way into our restaurant. The first two would stay the same as always, directing people to remove their shoes and outerwear. But in front of the last door, we placed a bottled potion with DRINK ME! written on the side.

Customers who drank this potion would shrink until their bodies were the same size as ours. Then Priscilla would stuff them into a birdcage.

The record keeper, Acre, would be waiting inside the birdcage, and she would explain what was going on in the restaurant.

Then the customer would sneak out of the birdcage in order to recover the antidote from Priscilla. And essentially, along the way, my compatriots would each use their own methods to waste the traveler’s time and get in their way.

After overcoming those obstacles, the customer would recover the antidote from Priscilla.

“Do you think I should also do something to block the traveler’s way?”

Priscilla only appeared at the beginning of the scenario and then the rest of her role was spent sleeping.

The captain shook her head at the question.

“Don’t worry. We’ll put an end to everything while you’re sleeping.”

That seemed like a strange way to phrase it. An expression like that was just begging to be misunderstood.

The following day, we were busy with our final preparations.

“Bad news, Captain!”

The lookout was wearing a grim expression when she appeared before us with news.

“What is it?” The captain stayed quite calm.

Tears welling up in her eyes, the lookout answered, “Intruders have entered the restaurant! They took down the ‘Closed for Renovations’ sign and forced their way in!”

“What did you say?!”

It was an unforeseen situation. This was the first time that the giants had ever been so callous and rude as to break into a restaurant that was still setting up.

But even so, the captain kept her cool.

“All right, don’t worry. We’ve been changing things around the restaurant, but the perfume should still be there in front of the last door like it always has been. There shouldn’t be any problem with handling them like we always have.”

However…

“About that…!”

The lookout shouted.

A brief but terrifying announcement.

“The potion! Is already! In place!”

The potion bottle with DRINK ME! written on it was already in its spot in front of the final door.

“Which one of you idiots left it in a place like that?!” the captain shouted furiously.

“Eh-heh-heh…” Liscia cackled.

“Why, yoooooouuuuuu!” The captain grabbed her by the collar.

Ultimately, we wound up rushing to entertain the travelers without being fully prepared.

“So in other words, The Giants’ Kitchen is no longer the place where tiny women will treat customers with hostility and attack them, as it had been in the past… Is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Priscilla answered Linaria.

After Linaria had come crashing through the window, I had doused myself in the antidote potion and returned to my normal size. Linaria seemed to have finally regained her composure after I thoroughly explained the situation to her, and she confirmed the facts with Priscilla again.

“What a terrible ordeal that was…” Priscilla let out a sigh.

I think it went without saying that she had woken up in the worst possible way. That’s because not only had she been awakened by a sudden pain on her face, but she had been confronted with a stranger, an extremely angry girl, pointing a wand at her and yelling, “Hurry up and return Alte to normal! I told you, put her back—don’t you dare ignore me! What are you crying for? Stop messing around! If you don’t do as I say, I’ll break your fingers one by one!”

Fortunately, I had been there, right behind Linaria, and already back to my normal size, and I had managed to stop her from doing anything.

Linaria had glared at Priscilla before demanding to know what was going on.

Priscilla, on the other hand, had simply started crying.

After we went over the whole story again, and Priscilla and Linaria had gotten their composure back, I was finally able to tell Linaria what was going on with the restaurant.

I told her that the place had gone through a transformation since the pamphlets had originally been distributed. Linaria was quite despondent to hear of this state of affairs and just grumbled, “I see…”

Priscilla blew her nose loudly and responded to her. “It was awfully cruel of you to kick me out of nowhere…,” she sobbed, still sitting on the floor.

“That was… I’m sorry about that.” Linaria averted her eyes uneasily.

“Well, I suppose that just shows how magnificent my performance was!” A moment later, Priscilla was smiling as if nothing had happened. “So please, don’t worry about it too much. And please don’t apologize.”

Certainly, her performance had been excellent. A bottle of eye drops was lying on the floor by her side.

Those were fake tears…

But the tiny women of The Giants’ Kitchen had all clasped their hands and fixed their eyes upon her.

“She’s a goddess…”

“There is a goddess among us…”

“Marry me…”

They worship her…

“…But I would have liked an explanation at least, if The Giants’ Kitchen was changing,” Linaria said.

“That was always our intention!” Priscilla told us. “After all, we were planning to start our new enterprise tomorrow. We were going to put up a new sign and everything.”

As she said this, Priscilla showed us the newly made sign.

INCREDIBLE SHRINKING ADVENTURE COURSE

All the details were written there. By the way, the cost was one gold piece per person.

“It’s priced quite fairly, oh-hoh-hoh!” Priscilla laughed.

In other words, if we had shown up the following day, the two of us would have apparently received a normal, hospitable welcome.

“……” I looked at Linaria.

“……” Linaria averted her eyes. “…I mean, I figured there would be a lot of people trying to hog the restaurant for themselves on opening day, so…,” she squeaked out in an unusually frail voice.

“Well, that wasn’t so bad if we consider it like a rehearsal for tomorrow. Though I am rather bruised… But what kind of relationship do the two of you have?”

What?

“What kind of relationship? What do you mean?” What on earth is she talking about? I wondered. “We’re just ordinary friends…”

But Priscilla didn’t seem convinced by my answer and tilted her head questioningly. “Is that so?”

She kept going.

“It’s just, earlier, she was really quite angry—”

“Stop,” Linaria interrupted.

“And she called you ‘my Alte’—”

“Really, stop it.” Linaria smacked her.

Huh?

Linaria had burst in so suddenly earlier that I hadn’t really heard anything she said. I was very curious what this was all about.

“Did you really call me that?”

“I did not.”

“What on earth does ‘my Alte’ even mean—”

“I never said that.”

I got smacked, too.

It didn’t hurt, but I thought I could see red creeping over Linaria’s face, so I gave up on asking any more questions.

“My, my.” Priscilla smiled broadly as she watched our exchange. “What a lovely thing to witness…”

“Your nose is bleeding.”

“That’s from when I got kicked in the head.”

“Uh-huh…so you have brain damage…”

After that, Priscilla mumbled some nonsensical words for a little while—things like, “Two girls…how nice…,” and so on. It was enough to make me anxious that she had lost a few marbles when Linaria had kicked her.

Ultimately…

They were starting their new business enterprise the next day. For the rest of that day, however, the three of us humans enjoyed very courteous entertainment from the tiny ladies of The Giants’ Kitchen, in their own typical way.

This is something that we learned later on, but Priscilla was apparently attending a magic school in another country, and her school had a long holiday in the time between late winter and early spring, just like Latorita State University. That’s why she had taken a part-time job at The Giants’ Kitchen.

I see, I see.

“So you’re wearing those clothes on purpose, in order to give off a villainous vibe?”

Apparently, her true identity was that of an ordinary student. She seemed like a decent person.

“Incorrect!” Priscilla replied enthusiastically. “I’m wearing this because I want to!”

“But isn’t it hot?”

“It is hot! But I won’t take it off!”

“……”

“Because this is who I am!”

……

She’s probably just a weirdo after all.

Linaria and I left The Giants’ Kitchen and mounted our brooms together.

Our history hunt had only just begun.

“I figured that it would be a strange restaurant, but…I never imagined that the whole thing would be one big practical joke…”

As I think back on the experience, there had been several points along the way when I ought to have been suspicious of what was going on, but I hadn’t doubted a thing. I had just enjoyed my time in their little world.

I had a feeling that if I had been a little faster to realize that something was amiss, we would have never ended up meeting Priscilla, who seemed to have the wrong idea about us—

“Well, there was no helping it. They didn’t have their sign out, after all. That’s on them. Of course, it was partially on me, for throwing away the ‘Closed for Renovations’ sign, but…” She let out a sigh. “Sorry, Alte. This place was really different from what I expected.”

For some reason, she sounded remorseful. But I didn’t think she had anything to apologize for.

Besides…

I couldn’t help saying that actually…

“It’s my fault, too, for being so thickheaded.”

“……” She stared fixedly at me. “Couldn’t be helped. There’s no cure for your thickheadedness.”

“Huh…?”

I had been certain that she would contradict me, saying that I wasn’t dull at all. But instead, she had spit poison in my face. If anything, she even looked a little peevish. She had her cheeks puffed out and everything.

“…Why are you mad?”

“I’m not mad.”

“Yes you are, I can tell.”

“I said I’m not mad!”

Linaria looked away in a huff.

For a short while, a quiet atmosphere filled the air around us.

Finally, I said, “…What country are we going to visit next?”

I cocked my head at Linaria, who was directing our history hunt. I couldn’t tell yet where she was heading; I was just following her as she flew along on her broom.

I figured she must have a ton of places she wanted to go, since she was the one who had been going on endlessly about this trip.

She looked straight at me and asked, “Where do you want to go?”

Apparently, she also wasn’t sure of our next destination.

Just like me.

We had only just started our brief journey together. I was sure that there were many more encounters and partings in our future. Perhaps the next place we visited would turn out to be exactly as Linaria had envisioned it, or maybe it would be someplace we never could have imagined.

So I answered.

“All right, I want to go to another place like The Giants’ Kitchen.”

That was all I said.

“…………?”

Linaria tilted her head.

She didn’t seem to understand the meaning behind my words.

So I explained myself to the thickheaded girl.

I rephrased my request into something a bit more direct,

and said:

“I just want to go somewhere fun.”

Someplace that will blossom like a happy flower in my memories and make me smile whenever I think back on it. Whether it turns out to be how we expected or not. Somewhere amazing.