“Once again, please open—! Please refrain from literally closing the door, like you are closing the door to your heart, Toorubro-sama! I assure you, I am not a suspicious person!”

Her voice carried quite loudly through the closed door, so Tooru had no choice but to open the front door once more.

Standing there were, as expected, the young lady and her butler.

He had hoped this was all some kind of mistake, but apparently not.

The young lady was… a blonde with drill curls, wearing a pale blue day dress. A boldly emphasized bust, neatly shaped eyebrows like they had been drawn with a single stroke of a brush, and large eyes that were oddly friendly.

She looked like the very definition of a stereotypical rich young lady, as though she had stepped straight out of a comic.

Standing slightly behind her was a slender man in a black suit. He was tall—probably over 180 centimeters. Despite being a butler, his hair was messy and his expression carried a strange, constant grin. Depending on the suit, he might have passed for a host or a low-level thug, but he was probably a butler. After all, he was wearing white gloves.

“Uh… who are you, and what do you want…?”

He didn’t like it, but he asked anyway.

The young lady’s reaction was, predictably, over the top.

“O-ho-ho-ho! I am most grateful that you have opened the door once again! I am Kujou Reiko. I am an A-rank explorer, and having witnessed Toorubro-sama’s exploits, I intruded here expressly because I wished to speak with you!”

Intrude—to “push one’s way in and arrive.”

A word meaning to show up uninvited and force oneself upon the other party.

In other words, this young lady did know words.

Whether she knew common sense was another matter.

“Uh… yeah. For now, could you maybe lower your voice a bit?”

“Oh my, how rude of me. My butler, Jouichirou, scolds me about that quite often as well.”

She bowed her head and apologized quite normally, which made things oddly awkward for Tooru. If she had just been blatantly rude, he could have shut both the door to his heart and the front door without hesitation.

“An A-rank explorer… is this about Anthem? If you’re here for the elf, she said earlier that she was answering a summons and headed out.”

“No, I am an independent explorer, so I have no connection to Anthem. When you say ‘the elf,’ do you mean Irselia? Has she been visiting Toorubro-sama’s residence until now…?”

“…Anyway, standing around making a racket at the entrance would be a problem, so if you don’t mind a poor guy’s rundown apartment, would you like to come in?”

At this hour, the neighbor cat beastman, Mika’s mother, should have been asleep. That earlier “O-ho-ho-ho!” might already have woken her, but dealing with complaints later would be a pain.

Besides—somehow, while the young lady’s attitude and demeanor were certainly pompous, he didn’t feel any sense of being looked down on.

“By all means, I would be delighted if you allowed us to intrude. Ah, yes—Jouichirou, would you present the item we discussed?”

The moment the young lady—Kujou Reiko—finished speaking, the butler called Jouichirou produced a paper-wrapped box from inside his jacket as if performing a magic trick and held it out toward Tooru.

“They are dungeon cookies currently on sale from Nine Line. They are quite delicious, you know. Please accept them as a token of our acquaintance.”

“…Ah. Well, thanks.”

This was awkward.

Even if it didn’t quite rise to the level of being looked down on, Tooru was accustomed to being treated lightly as a matter of course, so Kujou Reiko’s attitude struck him as rather strange.

Perhaps this woman acted like this toward anyone. That was just an impression, but it was the sense he got. Whether it was Tooru or the prime minister standing in front of her, she would probably be the same.

◇◇◇

For the time being, Tooru had invited Kujou Reiko and her butler Jouichirou inside, but having no idea how one was supposed to deal with people who so blatantly screamed “rich,” he hesitated for a moment before deciding there was no need to go out of his way to entertain them.

Tia, who had been relaxing at the table that doubled as a dining table, tilted her head with a blank expression at the sight of the young lady and her butler coming in. But since there was nothing Tooru could really explain, all he could do was give a rough shrug.

“Well, sit wherever. If there’s something you want to talk about, go ahead.”

He poured himself a glass of bottled coffee from the fridge and gestured toward the two of them as they looked around the shabby apartment living room with obvious curiosity.

“Let me see… yes, first, a proper introduction is in order. I am Kujou Reiko. An A-rank explorer and a daughter of the Kujou Zaibatsu. And this is Kashizaki Jouichirou, my butler and secretary. Toorubro-sama, and Tia-sama, wielder of the holy sword—please do remember us!”

With one hand held lightly near her cheek, Kujou Reiko declared this with absolute confidence. The way she carried herself possessed a radiance different from that of the Anthem members.

Saitou Megumi and Kagurazaka Chizuru… they seemed to shine brilliantly as they received the goodwill and curiosity directed toward them. That was probably what it meant to be an “idol explorer.”

Kujou Reiko, on the other hand, shone from within.

She had not the slightest hint of shame about being herself—an air of presence born from that kind of absolute self-confidence. It was a brilliance that even the S-rank elven explorer Irselia did not possess.

“Um… hello, I guess? I’m Tia. You want to talk to Tooru, right?”

It was rare to see Tia getting swept up in someone else’s pace, so Tooru was a little surprised.

“Exactly so! I witnessed Toorubro-sama’s exploits through Anthem’s stream, and I felt I absolutely had to make contact before anyone else did!”

“And why is that?”

“After achievements like those, the world will not leave Toorubro-sama alone. Therefore, I wished to speak with you before anyone else could. However—yes, there is something I would like to propose, if I may?”

She paused as if thinking, then raised her index finger with and smiled as brightly as a flower in bloom.

Despite clearly being a rich young lady, there was not a hint of unpleasantness about her, and Tooru found himself understanding why Tia was unsettled, forcing him into a wry smile.

There was no malice.

He had no strong evidence for it, but that was his gut feeling. After all, in Tooru’s life, the only people he had ever known who radiated this level of unguarded openness were small children. No—if anything, there was a chance that Mika actually possessed more guile than this woman did.

“—Shall we do a stream? I believe it would be better for many people to learn about Toorubro-sama’s current situation. And moreover, it would serve as proof that I have nothing to hide as I speak with you.”

“I see…?”

He couldn’t say he didn’t understand what Kujou Reiko was getting at, but the idea of broadcasting a conversation to the entire world was still hard to wrap his head around.

“Ah, the young lady’s a dungeon streamer too,” the butler chimed in lightly. “Not really an idol type like Anthem, but she’s pretty popular. She also does product promotion for companies under the Kujou Zaibatsu umbrella. Those Nine Line cookies from earlier are one of our group’s products too. They’re pretty good—I recommend ’em.”

“Uh, is that so…? Yeah, I can see why she’d be popular.”

“Oh, you get it? The young lady’s kind of airheaded and cute, you know. That’s what the viewers like about her. She says she doesn’t care about being popular herself, though.”

When Tooru nodded vaguely, the butler leaned in more than expected. He probably liked Kujou Reiko. Not romantically, but as a person. Or maybe it was romantic—Tooru had no way of knowing, and frankly, no interest either.

“What do you think, Tooru? I think streaming’s a good idea,” Tia said.

“You really like being on stream, don’t you? I don’t really mind… yeah, well, maybe it is better to put everything out in the open sooner or later.”

He didn’t know what Kujou Reiko wanted to talk to him about, but it felt like it might be better to expose exactly what kind of person he was to the public as soon as possible.

In the wake of the stampedes at the Sugai Dungeon and the Noumi Dungeon—defeating monsters said to be on the level of high S-rank threats—the public image of the “Cursed Sword wielder” was probably already set.

Being hailed as a great man or a hero because of that would be deeply troublesome.

Because—Hayasaka Tooru’s personality was hardly something that deserved praise.

Before a public image could fully take shape, it would be better to expose his uglier sides as soon as possible.

Preferably without causing too much backlash.

“Sure. I’m fine talking on stream.”

“Thank you very much, Toorubro-sama. Then—yes, Jouichirou, please handle the setup.”

“Roger that.”

With a crisp clap of her hands, Kujou Reiko gave the cue, and her butler Jouichirou replied in a tone that suggested minimal motivation. Despite that, his movements were anything but sluggish.

First, he shoved Tooru’s table and various odds and ends to the edge of the room. Then, from somewhere inside his suit, he produced a white cloth and began attaching it along the wall and near the window. He spread an additional rug over the carpet, returned the table to its original position, tore open the package of the cookies Tooru had set aside, and dumped the individually wrapped cookies into a wooden bowl he once again pulled from his jacket. As an afterthought, he laid out a tea set for three on the table.

In no time at all, a makeshift filming studio was complete.

“That about does it. Camera’ll go around here… and Hayasaka-sama and Tia-sama can sit on that side of the table. The young lady’ll be over here. I’ll make some tea now. Oh—Hayasaka-sama, sorry, mind if I use the kitchen?”

“Uh… go right ahead.”

Faced with such smooth efficiency, all Tooru could do was nod in stunned resignation.

Tia seemed just as surprised. She came over to stand beside Tooru, careful not to get in Jouichirou’s way, and whispered, “That’s amazing, Tooru.” It was clearly a different kind of awe than when she admired a parfait.

Well, yeah—it really was amazing.

Amazingly weird.

“Now then, Toorubro-sama, Tia-sama, please take your seats on that side of the table. I’ll be over here. Do help yourselves to the cookies. They’re quite delicious, you know?”

Kujou Reiko sat down first with a beaming smile and opened one of the individually wrapped cookies. As always, there wasn’t a trace of malice to be found in her behavior.

…What exactly did these people come here for?

Thinking that, Tooru followed her lead, sat at the table, tore open a cookie wrapper, and popped it into his mouth.

“Whoa—this is really good. What is this?”

It was about three times better than he’d expected, and the surprise slipped out honestly.

He was just as surprised to see Kujou Reiko, sitting across from him, smiling with unmistakable delight.