The violent sense of weightlessness nearly robbed Sawada Tsunayoshi of control over his body.
Before he could react, the exit of the spatial tunnel flashed across his vision—he was already about to hit the ground.
"Maximum Impact Slime!"
Terror at the brink of life and death pushed his survival instinct to the limit. In his mind, a huge slime appeared—the best cushion he could imagine for absorbing impact.
A blue slime, roughly four meters across, materialized exactly where he was falling.
Duang!
The slime swallowed the force of the fall completely, giving him a real chance at survival.
It wrapped tightly around him, keeping any rebound from flinging him away. After a long moment, the slime stabilized, finished absorbing the remaining energy, and then vanished.
Sitting on the floor, Tsunayoshi looked a little pale.
He couldn't fly—falling from an unknown height like that, if not for luck, he might have ended up as a smear on the ground.
"Something like this… once is enough to shave years off my life."
Who knew how much vitality that instant summon had cost him?
"Whether it did or not, I do know you just pulled something incredibly reckless."
A sudden female voice made Tsunayoshi look up. The moment he registered the situation, he spun around quickly, facing away.
"Sorry, I—"
"Hey—dropping out of the ceiling into my bath and seeing me like that… do you think 'sorry' is enough?"
Tsunayoshi knew a single apology wouldn't resolve this. He had inexplicably fallen into someone else's bath and been seen in a compromising situation. Intent aside, it looked terrible—no judge would buy a story about accidental dimensional travel.
…Right!
He snapped his head up, but there was no hole in the ceiling. His spirits deflated—then, an instant later, a familiar tug of a coordinate gave him hope.
"The coordinate! Right, I still have the coordinate!"
Despair flipped to excitement. With his eyes closed, he could sense a distant anchor—but the distance made the signal faint, unstable, like a phone wavering between zero and one bar.
It flickered between sensed and unsensed, superimposed and shifting.
"…Better than nothing. If I can feel it at all, there's a way."
"Even if I can guess what you're thinking, shouldn't you first consider where you are—and how you look right now, like some kind of peeping creep?"
Her reminder from behind pulled him back to the immediate problem.
A girl in the bath had watched him drop from the ceiling and witnessed him conjure a slime to break his fall.
While he was wondering how to deal with this, soft, unhurried footsteps approached—bare feet on the floor, making no attempt to hide.
They stopped just behind him.
"Traveler from another world, you wouldn't want me telling everyone about you, right?"
Tsunayoshi's eye twitched. The phrasing sounded very… local.
"And about the fact you looked earlier. Whatever the reason—you did see, didn't you?"
He couldn't deny it. The image was burned into memory with unsettling clarity.
"…I did."
"See? Then how about it—what's your evaluation?"
There was a trace of excitement in her tone—not simple anger, but curiosity, even teasing. That rattled him more than the fall.
He forced himself to keep his thoughts in check. Saying anything careless now would only make things worse.
Before he could answer, the girl spoke again. "Go on—say what you really think. I promise I won't get back at you later."
That sounded exactly like someone planning to get back at him later. Tsunayoshi exhaled.
"You say that like you're preparing to get revenge."
"Oh? So you do get it. I thought you might be clueless."
"…I'm not that dense. There's no point trying to reason this out the wrong way."
From everything he'd learned, this wasn't a situation logic alone would fix. He needed to de-escalate and buy time.
"Look—this was an accident. I didn't come here on purpose."
"Hm. Then let's discuss what can be discussed. For instance—if I'm 'threatening' you, why don't you just silence me and run?"
Her tone was dangerous and playful at the same time. Tsunayoshi's mind raced. He hadn't come here to start trouble, and escape wasn't simple when he was far from home with only a faint anchor to guide him.
Now that the shock had passed, he resolved to keep things calm and stall for time—if he could hold the thread of that weak coordinate, there might yet be a way back.
(End of Chapter)
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