Yuusha no Segare

Short Story 02 – The eyes can be just as expressive as the mouth

Yasuo came into the living room after finishing his bath, and he saw that Diana was watching TV.

He had finally gotten used to the sight of a Magitech Knight from another world watching television in the living room of his house.

“What are you watching? The news?”

He couldn’t tell what show she was watching because commercials were currently playing, so he asked her that question while opening the door of the fridge. The fact that a wristwatch commercial was playing was slightly bad for his heart because of the events the other day, but…

“…Yasuo…”

The fact that Diana’s face after she turned around was as pale as a ghost was even worse for his heart.

“W-What’s wrong?”

“Yasuo… It’s terrible.”

“W-What is?”

The fact that the watch being shown in the commercial was a high-priced model with several functions made his worries go off on an entirely different tangent, but Diana’s next words went over even that.

“Aliens…”

“Huh?”

“It appears that… aliens are investigating this world.”

“……Huh?”

Yasuo had no idea what Diana was talking about, and he stood there with his eyebrows furrowed until the fridge made a sound, warning him that he had left the door open.

How many years had gone by since he had last heard that word?

It took Yasuo around five minutes to confirm that Diana was indeed talking about creatures from another planet.

“Umm… they were saying on TV earlier that aliens are investigating this planet, so… I’m from a different planet myself, so I can’t really complain, but maybe because of that, there is a chance that we might run up against each other…”

It was the same during the incident with the wristwatch the other day, but seeing Diana seriously thinking about such things and becoming confused really made him remember that she is from a different world after all.

The reason why he couldn’t just think of her as a foreigner with no idea about life in Japan was because she could speak Japanese perfectly.

After finding out why Diana had suddenly brought up the topic of aliens, Yasuo burst into laughter.

“Y-Yasuo!?”

“You’re talking about one of those, right? A canned coffee commercial…”

He should have realized it the instant she said the phrase, “aliens are investigating the Earth”.

She must have been talking about the canned coffee commercials that featured a famous Hollywood actor.1

“It’s okay. He’s not really an alien. He’s from Earth.”

“B-But he fired energy beams from his eyes, you know!? Also, his ears seemed to have some sort of barrier ability that is impossible for humans…”

Where had she learned how to say “barrier ability” in Japanese? Come to think of it, she also knew the term for the Halibut fish. Yasuo sometimes felt like he couldn’t gauge the depth of Diana’s Japanese vocabulary at all.

“That’s all CG.”

“Shee-Jee?”

The sight of Diana drawing out the syllables while learning this new word could only be called adorable.

“CG. Computer graphics. It’s an artificially created image.”

“So it’s all just made-up imagery? It really didn’t look like that…”

“Well, we all watch it while being aware of the fact, but I guess it looks that way if you don’t know about it. That person who plays the part of an alien is an actor from abroad. They just use CG to add on all sorts of effects.”

“I see. I was really surprised. After all, I had heard that the people of this world cannot use magic or sorcery…”

“There are a lot of movie DVDs in the shelf below the TV, you can watch them if you like. I’ll teach you how to play them.”

As they had been talking about CG, Yasuo selected a number of CG anime and movies that were known for VFX, and showed Diana how to use the DVD player.

Since it was already late, he didn’t expect her to watch them right away, but he picked a number of movies for her assuming that she would watch them when she had free time.

The next morning.

“W-What is that? What happened!?”

“I’m sorry I’m sorry please don’t look at me I’m sorry I’m sorry It’s nothing!”

Diana was sitting down at the dinner table wearing sunglasses that didn’t suit her at all.

If he was not mistaken, those were the glasses without any degree that his father occasionally wore while driving, but they didn’t suit Diana’s face at all, and it looked like she was wearing a disguise that made her stand out on purpose.

Although he didn’t want to believe it, could she possibly be imitating that movie he recommended last night that was known for its VFX and had a lead character who wore sunglasses?2

Besides, how could she expect people to not look at her when she was wearing something so conspicuous?

At this point, Madoka, his mother, made a harried expression and said,

“Yasuo. Leave her be.”

“Ehh… ah, okay.”

Yasuo really wanted to ask for more details, but he realized that nothing would come from it even if he did, so he silently ate his breakfast. After he was done, he sent a message to his father who had left earlier, and went to school.

After confirming that Yasuo had left, Madoka let out a small sigh and sat in front of Diana.

“Listen, Diana-chan.”

“Yes…”

Diana’s face had turned bright red beneath the sunglasses, and she hung her head.

“There might be no point in telling you, a Magitech Knight, about this, but the eyes are delicate. Someone must have told you when you were little to not stare directly at the sun, right? If you fire energy beams from such a place, in the worst case, you might even go blind, you know? You’re lucky that you only ended up with slight burns on your eyelids, and I was on hand to heal you right away.”

“Yes…”

“Firing beams from the eyes only happens in CG and special effects movies. You’ve never seen anyone in Resteria do something like that, right? Why did you do something like that all of a sudden?”

“Umm… I was unable to resist my curiosity…”

“In any case, don’t ever try to fire magic from your eyes again. Understood?”

“Yes… I’m really sorry.”

Diana answered while looking like she wanted to disappear.

“Ah, so that’s what it was.”

Nodoka had refrained from entering the room because she sensed the serious mood, but she nodded after looking at the flowerpot near the main door which was broken in a weird way, with the cross-section of the pieces appearing as if they had melted.

She also felt slightly disappointed that even a Magitech Knight from another world was incapable of firing beams from her eyes, and then,

“It’s really hot, you know? When I tried doing that a long time ago, my eyebrows and eyelashes were completely burned away.”

“Madoka!?”

“Mom!?”

After hearing her mother’s incredible confession, Nodoka couldn’t hold back anymore and burst into the living room.

– The End –

Notes

1 ‘Boss’ canned coffee commercials starring Tommy Lee Jones. Some examples: Boss commercials

2 I’m almost certain that this is a reference to The Matrix, but it could also easily be any number of movies like Men in Black, The Terminator, or some Japanese movie that I haven’t heard of.