Chapter 93
“There are so many people.”
“It seems even more crowded because it’s Saturday. All the marts are closed this Sunday.”
I came to a big-box store with Professor Cheon to shop on Saturday morning.
Since I valued sleep over meals on weekends, waking up early like I did on weekdays was never easy.
“What time did you say your friends were coming?”
“Haru said she could probably come sometime after 6 p.m. We can pick Yuna up by car before then.”
“Is there anything you want for dinner?”
“Anything. Something fresh.”
“That blasted ‘fresh.’ Thanks to Name, there isn’t a dish I haven’t tried making. Still, I’m glad my appetite has come back.”
“Are the potions still a long way off? I’m getting so sick of taking this stuff that...”
“Approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety is taking a while. I know it’s hard, but bear with it a little longer.”
Products made by directly processing mana were often harmful to the human body.
With the technology available now, we could easily make and sell drugs that improved people’s intelligence using mana, but the side effects that followed were why we didn’t.
I happened to spot a section selling red ginseng extract aimed at students preparing for exams.
I could understand why the government strictly regulated mana potions for similar reasons, but I couldn’t help feeling disappointed.
After making a loop past the fruit and vegetable section and the meat section, we entered the snack aisle.
I handed off the shopping cart I’d been pushing and went to choose snacks to eat at the pajama party.
“How many should I get?”
“Just enough for everyone to eat. We need to have dinner, too.”
“Okaaay.”
Professor Cheon parted ways with me for a while to look at more groceries for dinner.
It felt like I hadn’t eaten snacks in ages.
My personal favorite snack was sfogliatine glassate, commonly known as Nunettine.
It was also disparagingly called “human feed,” but people wouldn’t call it that if it weren’t delicious, right?
‘Don’t they sell them here?’
Unfortunately, in the parallel world of 2051, it seemed that secret global organizations like the Illuminati had done away with them because they couldn’t stand by and watch humanity be turned into livestock.
It was all nonsense, of course. They’d probably just been discontinued because they weren’t commercially viable.
As I entered an aisle crowded with people, a conspicuous sign came into view.
[Unlimited Snack-Filling Event!]
They still held events like this?
As part of periodically clearing out inventory, the event had people enthusiastically trying to cram even one more snack into their bags.
Usually, fitting four or five was the best anyone could do, but skilled people seemed to manage seven.
I wished there had been a snack I liked, but unfortunately none of them suited my tastes.
Among all the middle-aged men and women, a little child was grunting as they tried to wedge snacks into their bag.
At this rate, the other side of the bag looked ready to burst.
When the precariously stacked snacks came tumbling down, the child plopped down on the floor and began to tear up.
“Want some help?”
“Sniff... huh?”
“Can you hand me the bag?”
Since they’d all be caught at the checkout anyway, I couldn’t exactly count on using magic or aura.
But there was no harm in keeping everything stable until the checkout and releasing it only at the moment of payment.
“Hand me the snacks you want one at a time, and I’ll put them in.”
“It’s not working...”
“Tsk, hurry up and give them here.”
I would use static electricity.
It was a method of keeping everything together by using aura with enough precision to induce dielectric polarization in the snack bag, allowing the snacks to adhere to one another.
After five snacks had been loaded, it looked like there was no way to stack any more in the bag.
“Should I keep giving them to you?”
“Yeah, I’m going to stack them on top.”
Each time I stacked one, I fed aura into its surface.
Before the child could set a snack down, it drew near on its own and stuck fast.
“More... No more is okay, big sis!”
When the fifteenth one went up, the child voiced their concern.
I could have stacked more, but what a shame.
“We set a new record, right?”
“Yeah!”
I carried the bag with its towering stack to the checkout, then returned to the snack aisle, where Professor Cheon was waiting.
“You still haven’t picked anything?”
“How about HomeRun Ball? It’d be perfect to eat while watching a movie.”
“If we have something sweet, we need something salty, too.”
“Then I’ll get this, too. Here.”
Our next destination was the clothing section.
I’d promised to buy them extra clothes for the approaching spring and summer. But that wasn’t the most important purpose.
“It would be nice if they had a variety of animals.”
“Since this is a mart, there probably won’t be that many types.”
I had decided to give Yuna and Haru animal pajamas as presents.
At first, I hadn’t been keen on wearing animal pajamas, but now I was so uncomfortable without them that putting on any other loungewear made me recoil.
Perhaps I’d simply grown used to the material itself. It was really hard to explain.
Just as it was difficult to fall asleep without one’s usual pillow, these could be considered a type of beloved comfort garment.
Anyway, I felt it was a shame to keep this comfort to myself and wanted to introduce the children to it as soon as possible.
“Are you looking for a particular product?”
“Hmm...”
I didn’t even need to ask about cats; the cat pajamas immediately caught my eye.
“Do you also sell bear or pig animal pajamas?”
“We don’t have any on the shelves, but I’ll check the stockroom in case. Please wait a moment!”
While the clerk was away, I picked through the items Professor Cheon had put in the cart one by one.
“Is that for tonight’s dinner?”
“I’m thinking of making tortillas and strawberry canapés with this. What do you think?”
“The kids hate bell peppers. Let’s leave this out.”
“Haha, all right, all right. So Name doesn’t like bell peppers.”
“It’s not me, it’s the kids...!”
“You still eat mushrooms, though, right?”
This man clearly had no intention of listening to me anyway.
I couldn’t exactly swear at someone laughing heartily right in my face, so I just laughed along.
Actually, I hated bell peppers, too.
* * *
[Then I’ll come out at five and wait for you!]
“Yeah—oh, Yuna, wait a second before you hang up.”
[What, what?]
“You don’t need to bring pajamas when you come.”
[How am I supposed to sleep without pajamas? Do I sleep completely naked?]
“That’s not what I mean. I bought you pajamas as a present. They’re animal pajamas, by the way.”
[Really? I’ve always wanted to try wearing something like that!]
“Then I’ll hang up. See you later.”
[Okay! I’ll finish all my homework ahead of time, too.]
Haru had her own phone, so I left her a text message.
After finishing my call with Yuna, we got ready to head back home.
“What memories. I had pajama parties at school when I was young, too.”
Professor Cheon took his hands off the steering wheel and spoke with his eyes closed, lost in memories.
He had originally insisted on manually driven cars, but ever since I came to live in this house, he’d driven only autonomous cars.
“So you spent the night at school?”
“That’s right. It was fun staying up late, playing with my teacher and friends while watching movies. That was already forty years ago.”
“That sounds nice in its own way. But I think my class might have a harder time. The boys and girls don’t get along at all.”
“That’s the same everywhere. Once they actually play together, kids your age have fun getting along.”
“Maybe.”
“When we get home, let’s have lunch first, then clean the oven. It’ll be filthy since we used it last time and didn’t clean it. And we should take this opportunity to clean the bathroom, too.”
Perhaps because he had lived alone for so long, Professor Cheon was an extremely domestic person.
They say a single man’s home is usually a disaster. Even before I came along, he must have lived quite contentedly, spending cozy little tea times.
“Name, I looked at your bank account, and you have a truly enormous amount of money. What sort of streaming do you do that makes people donate so much?”
Professor Cheon occasionally took an interest in my broadcasts, too.
Every time, I clamped my teeth shut and refused to tell him my stream nickname or platform.
“A game about raising cats...? Something like that...”
Since the game’s direction had shifted to raising Adela.
“You play a game like Nintendogs + Cats?”
“Nintendogs...? What’s that?”
“Ah, you don’t know it. It was all the rage when I was young. It was a handheld game where you raised dogs and cats.”
“Ah... I think I know what you mean.”
I felt like I vaguely remembered it from my life before my previous one.
“What did people find fun about things like that before virtual reality even existed?”
“No, when you actually played it, it really did feel like raising a pet, and it was fun. You’d take them for walks and enter competitions. Still, I never thought it was a game worth watching someone else play. I suppose modern trends are hard to understand.”
“The desire to keep a pet must be the same now as it was then. Have you ever had a dog or cat, Professor?”
“I did. A Pomeranian named ‘Choco.’ Want to see a picture?”
“Yes, I’m curious. But your dog’s name was Choco?”
“Why?”
“Because that’s weird. It’s like naming a person ‘potassium cyanide’...”
“Hahahaha. Now that you mention it, I suppose it is.”
Professor Cheon took out his phone, opened a file saved in his gallery, and showed it to me.
There were more than a thousand photos related to him alone, enough to show how dearly he had cherished the dog.
“It’s already been over ten years since he crossed the rainbow bridge. Saying goodbye to a pet you spent so many years with isn’t easy. That’s why I never raised another one besides him. So, Name, you have to outlive me, all right?”
Having lived alone for so long, he had accumulated a great many memories with Choco.
Even after scrolling and scrolling, I couldn’t see the end, so Choco must have occupied a huge place in his life.
If anything, it was harder to find a photo in which Choco wasn’t the subject.
The only other things were screenshots related to magic circles or academic papers, and photos from hikes with graduate students from the lab.
I couldn’t find any family photos at all. I’d heard he had a younger sibling, but they didn’t seem to be close enough to keep in touch.
“Professor Cheon, did you ever consider getting married?”
Apparently, this world too had once gone through a bleak period when the birth rate fell as low as 0.6.
If Professor Cheon belonged to that generation, there was nothing particularly unusual about his not marrying.
“I did. There was someone I loved, and I thought about marriage, too.”
“I guess it just wasn’t meant to be?”
“It wasn’t so much that it wasn’t meant to be as that it wasn’t our fate... Anyway, Name, aren’t you hungry?”
“Huh...? Yes.”
“Since we need to eat lots of delicious food tonight, let’s keep lunch simple today and have grilled yellow croaker and seafood scallion pancakes.”