Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for my Retirement (Light Novel) Vol. 1 Read online

  Chapter 1: Mitsuha Goes to Another World

  The girl stood atop a steep cliff, her hands resting on the weathered wooden railing that separated her from the depths below. Her gaze was cast over the distant horizon. Oh, but don’t worry—suicide was the last thing on her mind.

  Her name was Mitsuha Yamano. Her straight, shoulder-length black hair framed a youthful face without a hint of makeup. Standing at merely four foot eleven, the eighteen-year-old was often mistaken for a child in middle school or, even more offensively, elementary school.

  Six months ago, Mitsuha had lost her beloved family—her mother, father, and older brother—to a freak accident, leaving her without any close relatives. She had some distant ones, sure, but you could count the times they’d met on one hand, and it was likely they would never meet again.

  Following the funeral and other relevant matters, Mitsuha had been left with a hefty sum of inheritance and insurance money, and along with it, no shortage of enemies. A particularly greedy uncle and his wife sought to wrest the money from her with cruel words and intimidation. A couple of undesirables from Mitsuha’s school even loitered outside her home to try to squeeze out whatever they could. By the time Mitsuha was able to drive away everyone pursuing her wealth, the mental burden had led to her failing her college entrance exams.

  Losing her entire family would have been bad enough on its own, but Mitsuha’s brother—two years older than her—had been her idol, so she felt his loss the most. The hurt, the stress that had come with handling the aftermath, and the profound dejection that followed had made it far too difficult for her to focus on her studies. By now, at least, she had mostly recovered from the pain of flunking her exams.

  Craving a change of pace, she’d decided to visit a local tourist destination. Actually, to call it such might’ve been too generous—the “lookout”, as it was known, was little more than the tip of a jagged coastline. A smattering of modest conveniences, such as wooden fences, coin-operated binoculars, and public toilets, decorated the area. But Mitsuha didn’t need anything more. All she wanted was to stare out at the sea and enjoy its tranquility.

  On such an unremarkable weekday afternoon, the only other visitors to the site were a college-aged couple, a pair of elderly spouses, and a trio of thick-headed hoodlums whose intelligence rivaled the rocks below. Mitsuha, on the other hand, had the academic potential to enter any of countless colleges across the country. Unfortunately, only one was within commuting distance of the home her parents had left her, and its standards of entry were extremely high. Perhaps she could have met them if she’d been able to perform her best, but this feat had proved too much for her in her dire state.

  Originally, Mitsuha had nothing against attending a college away from home, but now that she was alone, she didn’t want to leave her parents’ house. They had built it from the ground up, and with the absence of her family members, the memories they’d left behind were too precious for her to let go. It was this attachment that influenced Mitsuha’s choice to take only the entrance exams for her local college.

  Oh, man... What do I do now? Mitsuha contemplated whether she should give the exams a try again next year or focus on securing an income instead. The remaining mortgage on the Yamano home had been paid off when her father died, and her parents’ life insurance payout had made her pretty wealthy. Four years’ worth of college and living expenses, however, would tap heavily into this supply.

  For this reason, Mitsuha weighed the option of entering the workforce right away. While she wouldn’t make as high of a salary as she might with a college degree, there weren’t any companies within commuting distance that were all that generous in the first place. Furthermore, a degree hardly guaranteed a well-paying job in this day and age.

  Mitsuha also considered the possibility that she might marry and have children in the future. It would be hard enough to juggle a family and a full-time job; the debt from college would only make things worse. All things considered, college just didn’t seem worth it when the other, more viable option was to start working and saving.

  It’s not like I have a dream job or anything, she thought, staring out at the beautiful sea.

  “Well now, who do we have here? You skippin’ school, little lady?” An oily voice from behind derailed her train of thought. Mitsuha turned and found herself cornered by three sinister grins. The delinquent who’d spoken had bleached hair and looked to be about twenty. “Wanna hang with us? We’ll show you a good time, take you somewhere nice, getcha somethin’ to eat... then see where it goes from there, huh?”

  Here we go again. They clearly think I’m some kid cutting class, Mitsuha thought, thoroughly unamused. While many women enjoyed appearing younger than they were, Mitsuha was an adult and thus found no joy in being treated like a middle schooler. Then again, revealing that she was actually eighteen would only make them more assertive, so she chose to keep this fact to herself.

  But did it really matter? The group of men before her was trying to pick up a girl they assumed to be in middle school; maybe they wouldn’t have cared one bit about her age. While Mitsuha’s opinion of these skirt-chasers was low to begin with, she didn’t want to accept an even more unsavory alternative: that they would actually go after an elementary schooler.

  Regardless, they weren’t people she wanted to deal with, but it would be a tough situation to escape. The three leering delinquents blocked her way forward, and only a plunge to her death awaited behind her. Trapped against the wooden fence, she had no advantage to use beyond her wits.

  Putting on the youngest-sounding voice she could muster, she piped, “Sorry, mister... I can’t go with you. Mommy and Daddy are coming to pick me up!”

  Mitsuha hoped the act would convince them that she truly was just a child waiting for her parents—a target way outside the acceptable range of these hoodlums. Against her wishes, however, the blond scanned the perimeter to confirm the absence of her parents.

  He then marched forward, grabbed her by the arm, and growled, “Just come with us!” His sidekicks also advanced, sending Mitsuha into a panic. She glanced around, desperate for one of the passersby to lend a hand, but they were all making a valiant effort to see nothing.

  Go figure, no one wants to be a hero. Guess I’ve got no choice. I’ll deal with them myself!

  Despite her pint-sized frame and cherubic looks, Mitsuha’s intelligence and physical strength were nothing to laugh at. And above all else, Mitsuha had guts. It was this quality that had enabled her to protect her inheritance from those looking to seize it.

  Her body moved before she could think, sending an upward kick directly into the blond guy’s groin. Without so much as a peep, he buckled to his knees, writhing in pain. Froth bubbled at the corners of his lips, and he quickly collapsed, lying immobile between his comrades.

  “THE HELL’RE YOU DOIN’, YOU BITCH?!” The textbook gangster line erupted from one of the remaining delinquents, and in his rage, he shoved Mitsuha backward with full force.

  “Ah...!” she gasped as her back made contact with the wooden fence and an ominous crack reached her ears. Next thing she knew, she found herself in midair, at the mercy of gravity.

  Huuuhhh?!

  “AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

  Falling! I’m falling! I’M FALLING! I’M FAAALLLIIINNNG! I don’t wanna die! I don’t wanna die! I DON’T WANNA DIE!

  While screaming at the top of her lungs, Mitsuha prayed from the bottom of her heart for someone to help her.

  I DON’T WANNA DIE! I DON’T WANNA DIE!

  “WAAAAAAAAGHH
H!”

  Mitsuha heard a strange cracking sound, accompanied by a scream that wasn’t hers, just as her consciousness left her.

  ◇ ◇ ◇

  “Where am I?” Mitsuha looked around.

  Bark, leaves, grass, lots of trees... Yep, I’m in a forest. Hey, wait, hold on a sec! I totally just fell off a cliff! It was all waves and rocks at the bottom, right?! she thought, bewildered. But far be it from her to complain about this new development. Waking up in some random forest ain’t great, sure. But it’s way better than turning into a red smear on some rocks!

  With such thoughts in her mind, Mitsuha reflexively stood up and checked her condition. Yes, “reflexively”. Whether it was habit or some sort of adaptation, Mitsuha had been like this for as long as she could remember. In most situations, she prioritized action—thought would come later. She didn’t feel it was entirely normal, but cursory research attempts to label the condition had not been fruitful.

  Imagine, for a moment, that there was a ball flying toward you. You’d generally have two choices: dodge or catch. You wouldn’t waste time thinking, Oh, look, there’s a ball coming. What should I do? Do I catch it? Or dodge it? To the left? Perhaps to the right?

  On the other hand, you would never reflexively make a purchase. The way Mitsuha saw it, time was a luxury that allowed careful thought and strategy. In a pinch, you could rely on nothing more than intuition to process the information available to you and choose the best course of action. In her own words, reflexes were the first aid of movement. Such reflexes were generally limited to basic physical movements, but in her case, they seemed to apply to a wider range of actions, though she hadn’t entirely figured out why.

  A friend had once told Mitsuha, “You only think about why you do stuff after you do it, don’tcha?” This led to our dear protagonist receiving the nickname “Spex”, short for “Spinal Reflex”.

  Take away one letter and it sounds lewd, damn it!

  If one truly considered it, the decisions made out of reflex and those that were the product of critical thinking didn’t seem so different. Perhaps all humans had the capacity to think and make decisions in an instant but defaulted to more thorough thought processes to understand why they had made them.

  Ah, but we’ve gone off on a tangent now. Time to rein it in and get back to what really matters, shall we?

  Okay, I’m not hurt anywhere, and I look pretty much normal. Got my wallet, my house key... But what about the student ID card I’ve had for three years straight?! Oh, right. I graduated. Mitsuha also checked the large shoulder bag that had fallen along with her and found it still packed with her umbrella, tissues, and a plastic grocery bag. The latter, she felt, was a particularly undervalued item.

  After ensuring she had all of her limbs and belongings, Mitsuha checked her surroundings. The forest was relatively dense, and the area she had landed in revealed no signs of human activity. She couldn’t see any footpaths or detect people nearby.

  Guess I’ll walk, she thought, already walking.

  Two hours passed, and Mitsuha was rapidly growing exhausted. A scant few rays of light trickled through the canopy overhead, barely enough to illuminate her path. With no idea where she was headed, all Mitsuha could do was walk onward, avoiding any trees and rocks in her way. She felt it entirely possible that she was walking in circles, so she began marking some of the objects she passed. When she didn’t encounter them again, she interpreted it as a good sign.

  I have to get out of here before it gets dark. Who knows what kind of predators live in these woods? I guess I could sleep in a tree if I had to, but I can totally picture myself rolling over and falling right out of it. I’ve also gotta find some water... Is there a stream or something nearby? A couple of juicy fruits would work, too.

  “Boy, am I tired.” Mitsuha had been walking for around four hours. That span of time wouldn’t have been so strenuous on a proper, man-made pathway, but she was trudging through the forest’s wild undergrowth. Her muscles strained to move forward and her feet throbbed. The sun was also beginning to set, so she decided to climb into the first acceptable tree she encountered and stay the night.

  Sure, I probably won’t sleep very well, but walking out here overnight is suicide. My body won’t make it, I can’t see jack in the dark, and I’d be a sweet little treat for any nighttime hunters lurking around.

  In the morning, Mitsuha oozed with fatigue. She had resumed her walk at sunrise, three hours ago, despite being unable to sleep all night. Not only was she terrified of falling out of her chosen tree, but she’d possessed no blanket or anything even remotely helpful to pad out the hard, knotty branches.

  “Ah!” She let out a sharp cry upon hearing an unpleasant sound from her left ankle.

  Her bodily fatigue and drowsiness had made her absentminded, so she’d made a misstep and twisted her ankle on some roots. Damn, that hurts, she cursed internally.

  She endured, however, as she had no other choice. To remain in place wouldn’t improve her situation, and it wasn’t as though she would miraculously heal if she rested. No, she wanted to push herself to keep walking until she found either a settlement or, at the very least, a man-made trail. It wouldn’t be an ideal choice for her leg, but it was better than death.

  A few more hours came and went. Mitsuha didn’t stumble upon any food or water to ease her hunger or thirst, and the pain radiating from her left ankle only became more intense. She had spent so much time thinking about her situation she’d gotten sick of it.

  I’ve got all the time in the world, after all.

  Yesterday, she’d only been unconscious for about twenty minutes, maybe half an hour. She had checked the time on her wristwatch the moment she’d woken up. What made this fact peculiar was that, from the cliff where Mitsuha had started, there was no forest of this size you could reasonably get to in such a short amount of time. Furthermore, Mitsuha had fallen off a cliff, so it was improbable for her to have come out unscathed. This led her to three possible conclusions:

  One: I died, and this is the afterlife.

  Two: I’m in a hospital somewhere, in a coma, and this is all a dream.

  Three: I got abducted by aliens and taken far, far away... Hey, I’m into my sci-fi too, y’know!

  After a brief moment of contemplation, she thought, I-I’d really like it to be the third one! I’m not a fan of the other two!

  Setting aside the mystery of her arrival, Mitsuha reaffirmed her desire to reach civilization. If she discovered she was still in Japan, she would seek out the police; if not, she would go to the nearest Japanese embassy.

  On her third day in the forest, Mitsuha was very, very weary. She had awoken in the afternoon on the first day, and it was still morning, so only about a day and a half’s worth of time had passed. Desperate and deprived of food and water, she had taken a gamble by eating some plant leaves. The hunger she could tolerate, but the thirst was defeating her. At this rate, she felt that death was not far behind.

  Man, I’ve had to rest way more than I did yesterday. I’m staggering so bad I feel like I’m tripping on every other rock or root. My arms and legs are covered in bruises, and the pain in my ankle is driving me crazy. Feels like it spread to the rest of my body. Despite it all, she mustered her willpower and kept moving. If she did not, she would die.

  Finally, when her sense of time had long since left and her consciousness was growing dim, she came across a path. It spanned just wide enough for one person, so she almost doubted it had been paved by humans.

  Please don’t tell me it’s an animal trail, I’m begging you... The discovery caused her to relax so quickly that, after three days of near-constant motion, her legs gave in at last. She collapsed to the ground and instantly lost consciousness.

  ◇ ◇ ◇

  “I don’t recognize this ceiling,” Mitsuha murmured. Despite her confusion, some small part of her was elated at being able to utter one of the top thirty lines she’d always wanted to say.

  Let me thi
nk... If I’m not totally bonkers at this point, I just spent days wandering around a forest that should’ve never been there in the first place, and then passed out as soon as I found a path. Now I’m lying in a stranger’s bed, looking at a ceiling I’ve never seen before.

  After setting her thoughts—bizarre as they were—straight, she took in her surroundings. She was in one bedroom of a homely cabin decorated with shabby furniture. Humble as the room may have been, everything appeared to be clean and in order.

  Did someone save me? she wondered. Her mind was still hazy, but she was aware of her strongest and most immediate need—sustenance.

  “Water! Can someone please give me food and waaater?”

  Just after raising her voice, Mitsuha heard hasty footsteps approach from the other side of the door. It swung open, revealing a small girl. She appeared to be no older than ten, with bright blue eyes and a shimmering crop of silver hair. Her dress, while plain, did nothing to diminish her simply adorable countenance. She lit up with a smile, and shouted in a language Mitsuha couldn’t understand.

  Big bro, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Japan anymore, Mitsuha thought. Doesn’t seem like I’m in the Anglosphere, either. So maybe I failed my college entrance exams, whatever! I can still tell when somebody’s speaking English, as well as a couple other languages. As the girl chirped her way, Mitsuha quickly ruled out Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, German, French, and Italian. The girl’s exotic appearance was the only clue she had, and it merely told her she was nowhere in Asia.

  First, however, there was a more pressing matter to attend to: Mitsuha was starving, and her throat was so dry she could hardly speak. She would take care of her needs first, and communication could come after. After motioning for the girl to stop speaking, she mimed out what she wanted. She cupped her hands, pretending to drink from them, then pointed to her mouth while rubbing her stomach.

  There, that oughta do it. Even a monkey would get the message! Uh, maybe I shouldn’t make that kinda comparison when this girl probably saved my life.