The sun dipped below the western hills, and the sky grew dark.
The setting sun reflected in Satella’s blue-purple eyes, giving them an almost bewitching glow.
It was a level of beauty fit for an anime cover illustration… if you ignored the surrounding environment, that is.
The drainage ditches alongside the street constantly gave off a damp, acrid stench.
The buildings were low, their originally clean walls covered in grime.
Most of the people walking the streets were sallow and emaciated.
While their clothes weren’t quite reduced to mere rags, they were far from refined or beautiful.
If forced to make a comparison—they were about on the same level as Subaru’s own outfit.
“This must be the place that apple guy was talking about,” Subaru said, his hands stuffed in his pockets as he looked around naturally, acting as if he’d lived there for over a decade.
“The slums… Felt…”
“Mhm.
It seems the child who stole my things is quite famous around here.” Satella rubbed the emerald pendant hanging at her chest.
“If we ask around, do you think anyone will be willing to tell us about her?”
“Probably not,” Subaru shook his head.
“No one’s going to sell out their own associates to a stranger without getting something out of it.”
“Besides…”
Subaru had been keeping a close eye on the locals.
The way they were looking at Satella was downright hostile.
It was probably because her attire was just too glaringly out of place here.
“Um—”
Puck flew out from Satella’s silver hair, interrupting their conversation.
“Regardless of how you plan to search, please try to wrap it up quickly.
My time is just about up.”
“What do you mean, your time is up?” Subaru asked.
Puck flicked his whiskers with a front paw and looked up at the sky.
The two followed his gaze, finally noticing that most of the sky visible between the buildings had faded into a beautiful orange-red.
“I may be cute, but I’m still a spirit,” Puck said, looking rather fatigued as his head bobbed up and down like a pecking chick.
“So at night, I have to return to the crystal I reside in to rest and recover my energy until the sun comes up.”
“Sorry, I’m already at my limit.” Puck forced himself to focus, shaking off his drowsiness.
He stood on Satella’s shoulder, his small blue cat eyes locking onto the girl’s blue-purple ones.
“Don’t do anything reckless.
If something happens, summon me, even if it drains your od.”
“I’m sorry for pushing you so hard, Puck.” Satella cupped the emerald pendant from her chest in her hands.
“I’ll do my best from here on out.
Get some good rest.”
Puck walked down Satella’s shoulder to her palm.
Once he reached the crystal, he stretched out his tiny body and gave it a big hug.
The emerald in the girl’s hand began to emit a faint glow, and Puck’s small body gradually started to dissolve into particles of light.
Puck turned his head one last time and waved at Subaru.
At the very end, Puck cast a fleeting glance at Satella before his form vanished entirely from the world, scattering into green specks of light that funneled into the emerald in her hand.
Phew—I haven’t been alone with a girl since I graduated elementary school…
Wait, now is not the time to be thinking about that!
Subaru shook his head vigorously, discarding the totally inappropriate thoughts.
“Anyway, do you have a plan for what to do next?
I’ve got a bit of an idea.”
“I do,” Satella said, surprisingly coming up with her own course of action.
“I’m going to ask the minor spirits.”
“…Minor spirits?”
“Minor spirits are beings that haven’t fully developed into proper spirits yet,” Satella explained.
“As long as they spend time growing and developing their power and consciousness, they eventually become full-fledged spirits like Puck.”
Subaru made an Oh, I get it!
expression.
This was probably one of those exclusive isekai settings.
Satella closed her eyes and bowed her head, looking like a devout monk in prayer.
Her lips parted slightly as she murmured in a language Subaru couldn’t understand.
Pale blue motes of light, like fireflies, materialized out of thin air and began to orbit the girl.
One, two… until there were too many for Subaru to count.
Satella looked as if she were swimming through the Milky Way.
Canis Major and Canis Minor brushed against her silver hair; Orion floated right beside her blue-purple eyes, and Lyra nestled against the emerald pendant at her chest.
—And at this moment, that galaxy of stars was reflected in the boy’s eyes.
Beautiful.
It was too beautiful.
Forgive Subaru Natsuki, whose education ended at middle school—even after exhausting his entire vocabulary, he couldn’t accurately describe the girl’s beauty.
Breathtaking?
Too cliché.
Sexy?
Too vulgar.
Divine?
Too generic.
Pretty as a picture?
It just didn’t do her justice.
“Getting to see this… it’d be worth the price of admission even if I died right now…”
“Subaru, did you say something?”
Subaru had been staring so blankly that he hadn’t noticed Satella approaching at all.
He didn’t know when she had finished talking with the minor spirits, nor when she had walked right up to him, and he definitely didn’t know how much of his creepy, slack-jawed staring she had just witnessed…
“—Nope!”
Subaru shook his head in denial, his face blushing profusely.
His eyes darted everywhere, turning his head away to avoid looking Satella in the eye.
“Let’s go, Subaru.” Satella tilted her head and pointed toward a nearby alleyway.
“The minor spirits said they saw a girl with blonde hair and red eyes heading that way.” Find the original chapter at g.com.
But as the two of them advanced down the narrow alley, their surroundings grew increasingly desolate.
Is it really this way…?
Subaru glanced around and happened to lock eyes with a stubbly-faced man not too far away.
“Yo, brother!” Subaru waved with practiced familiarity.
“Is that little girl Felt’s place up ahead?”
“Huh?
Felt?” The man was a bit confused as to why Subaru had stopped him, but quickly put two and two together.
“Up ahead is just Old Man Rom’s loot house… Did she nick something of yours, little bro?
If you talk to them calmly, you might be able to buy it back.”
Perhaps it was Subaru’s slum-chic outfit working its magic, but either way, the man’s initial impression of him was quite high, and he handed over the intel without any fuss.
“Thanks, brother.”
“Good luck, little bro.”
Subaru bid the man farewell.
The sky had grown completely dark, the last remnants of the sunset vanishing without a trace.
Satella reached into her robe and pulled out two white crystals.
She tapped them against the wall, and they began to emit a faint glow.
She handed one over to Subaru.
“Whoa!
This rock is super convenient!” Subaru fiddled with the white crystal like a little kid.
The slightly warm stone gave off a hazy light, roughly as bright as a candle.
“Lagmite ore is everywhere, you know.
You really are out of touch with the world, aren’t you, Subaru?” Satella sounded genuinely bewildered.
Subaru felt like he had just asked another incredibly stupid, common-sense question.
By the light of the Lagmite crystals, Subaru and Satella examined the abandoned building in front of them.
“It’s bigger than I thought.
Looks like even thieves have some gutsy people among them.” Subaru held up his crystal, letting out a heartfelt sigh of admiration.
“But we’re just getting back what was stolen.
Why should we have to pay money for it?” Satella was still thinking about what the man had said earlier.
“I want to walk right in, state that our belongings were stolen, and ask them to let us search inside.
If we find it, they have to return it.”
Subaru let out an almost imperceptible sigh.
Satella’s personality was just too straightforward; she completely lacked the flexibility to navigate the gray areas of social interactions.
If they went with her logic, the chances of getting rebuffed were extremely high.
But then again, it was exactly because Satella was this kind of person that she had stopped a total stranger like Subaru from self-harming earlier.
If it had been Subaru seeing some fierce-looking guy aggressively carving up his own arm with a knife in a dark alley… he absolutely wouldn’t have stepped in to stop him.
Who knew if the guy was some kind of psycho?
From the bottom of his heart, Subaru really admired people with a personality like Satella’s.
Drop stones guys, Early Push is very imp for fics!