Person With Inferior Ability Vol.3-Chapter-6-Part-2


Part II

Before Hiroto’s group departed, from the third floor, Nina was looking at the car in which Mathew’s group was riding. Then, as she saw the car drive past the compound, she turned to Mizuho and Marion, who had visited Nina in her room to escort her.

“Mizuho-san, Marion-san, I have a request for you!”

 Mizuho and Marion were surprised at Nina’s sudden request.

“What happened? Nina-san”

“I want you to come with me!”

“Are you going out now? Where exactly are you going?”

“To a hill with a big tree, you don’t know about. The car is ready, let’s hurry!”

 Mizuho and Marion looked at each other at Nina’s serious expression.

 As soon as Mathew departed, Nina hurried Mizuho and Marion to the car prepared in front of the entrance.

“Depart at once, Arokaune! Follow my father.”

 Nina got in the passenger seat, while Mizuho and Marion sat in the back seat.

“I understand. Young Lady …….”

Arokaune responded with a strange expression.

For Arokaune, this also meant that he had broken his master’s word.

 But last night, Arokaune promised to accept Nina’s request.

 After dinner last night, before Mizuho and Marion arrived, Arokaune was summoned to Nina’s room.

 Nina asked him to take her to that hill where Mathew would be going tomorrow. Of course, Arokaune politely refused and advised her not to do so.

But Nina asked him with an earnest look on her face, and he sensed that even if he stopped her here, she might still go after him alone.

And this time, Arokaune stared back at Nina’s face for a moment, as if comparing it to someone else’s.

Then he quietly shut his eyes and …… opened them again and looked prepared.

“I understand,……, I’ll get the car to you as soon as Master Mathew leaves.”

“Thank you, Arokaune! I really want to know. I knew that when my father would come back here, he would always visit the hill with the big tree, alone. Ever since I noticed that, I couldn’t help but wonder what my father was doing there. In fact, I even went there alone once when he was not there. Nothing was there. But, you know, I just can’t help but feel that something is there!”

 There may be no logic to what Nina is saying. But for Nina, who had always respected and watched her father Mathew, it was a place she couldn’t help but be curious about.

 And for some reason, Nina could not believe that it was a place that had nothing to do with her at all.

“After all,……, Young Miss Nina looks a lot like her.”

“Eh?”

“Yes, Nina-sama’s mother, …… Sunaina-sama.”

“Yeah, …… father always tells me that.”

“Nina-sama, whatever the case may be, this Arokaune has accepted your offer. I will take Nina-sama there, even at the cost of this job.”

“Yes, please. But I will never let Arokaune be kicked out. If that were to happen, I would leave too and trouble my father.”

“Fufufu……… You are just like Sunaina-sama in that way too, Nina-sama.”

 Nina, who was sitting in the passenger seat as Arrokaune’s car departed, bent over and rummaged around, and pulled out a machine with a small speaker on it.

 Marion and Mizuho, who were looking at it suspiciously from behind, tilted their heads and looked at each other.

“Nina-san, what is that?”

“Fufufu, this is a high-performance wiretap that I planted in my father’s clothes this morning. I borrowed it from the army. It can receive signals over a great distance.”

“Eh!?”

 Mizuho and Marion raised their voices unintentionally.

Arokaune was surprised and looked indescribably troubled.

“I thought that if I went there straight, I might be misled and anything that happened would be hidden.”

 Nina’s point was understandable, but Mizuho and the others thought that it might be too much. 

“Nina-sama ……”

“It’s okay, of course, I did it all on my own. Ah, I don’t have any earphones! It can’t be helped,…… Aroukaune is tight-lipped, and Mizuho-san’s group are outsiders who will go back to Japan once their work is done, so I’m going to turn it on now.”

“Eh? Is that okay!? If it was something important that they were talking about, ……”

“I can’t listen to them otherwise, and there is Hiroto in the car, so it’s all the same anyway.”

 Both Mizuho and Marion learned a surprising aspect of Nina’s personality: she was an unexpectedly bold and appropriate girl.

 When Nina turned on the wiretap, it started receiving signals and small noises could be heard.

“Um, is the volume too low?”

 As Nina adjusted the volume, she heard what sounded like a conversation in Mathew’s car. All right!  She thought and put the speaker on a stand in the middle of the car.

{Ummm …… I’m going to meet someone now. No, would it be more correct to say that I’m going to pick them up?}

“Ah, it’s my father’s voice!”

{Fufufu, your face looks like you’re onto something, Hiroto-kun. Or is it the agency? Your information network is not to be underestimated. Well, do these ability users have some information-gathering methods we can’t imagine?}

{Eh! No, that’s not  ……. General Mathew, is this certain person …… Prime Minister Guaran?}

Everyone in the car with Nina, who had been listening silently, was taken by surprise by Hiroto’s statement.

And also to Mathew’s response to it.

{Yeah, that’s correct. My life-long best friend, and also my half-brother. Being here for less than a week, I’m surprised you recognized him. How could you have known, even though no one had ever noticed it before ……}

Nina was half absent-minded at the startling revelation she heard as soon as she turned on the wiretap. For Nina, Guaran is her father Mathew’s biggest political enemy. She could not understand the meaning of the words that Mathew had used to describe Guaran as his half-brother.

The car carrying Nina’s group was filled with silence because of this scene.

 Mizuho and Marion were in a similar situation for a different reason.

 As with Guaran’s case, they both wondered, how Hiroto knew about this? They could not imagine how he had gotten the information.

 In the midst of all this, only Arokaune was looking forward and gripping the steering wheel without changing his expression.

Mathew’s group conversation was going on through the speakers.

{–but you have to believe me on this, it was all for Miramar’s sake. My and Guaran’s vows also began where we are going.}

{General Mathew, the information I just gave was obtained from my own sources So the Agency, as well as Mizuho-san and the others, do not know about this.}

 Mizuho and Marion looked at each other seriously at Hiroto’s statement.

His own source of information… the heck.

 Not that there is anything wrong with that.

The information that was being discussed in Mathew’s car was in no way, if at all, closely related to escorting Mathew from the enemy ability users. This was a highly political backstory, so to speak.

 Nevertheless, …… why? Mizuho and the others wondered.

{Well, I should say that’s good to hear, right? Well, all will be revealed this evening. However, I will tell the two of you who know so much ahead of time. The fact that we are going to pick up our friends today is a deviation from the original plan. Our meeting was really supposed to be much later.}

Nina cleared her expression and was listening to the speaker now.

 And Arokaune was looking at Nina with concern.

“Nina-sama, ……”

“I’m fine, Arokaune. I was a little surprised, but it is natural that …… father has a long past. If you think about it, in just a few years the situation in Miramar has changed so drastically. It’s just not a coincidence that my father was always at the center of it all. Though it was indeed unimaginable that Prime Minister Guaran was conspiring with him.”

{So, General Mathew, where are we going?}

{Oh, not too far. It’s an unnamed hill halfway between Minra and Zigon, Guaran’s hometown. That’s where I used to play with Guaran and …… Nina’s mother, Sunaina, when I was a child. We named it Nina’s Hill and referred to it as such. In fact, we had hidden a letter in the hollow of a tree there as our only means of communication. It was a treasure stash known only to the three of us, and it was surprisingly useful.}

Then Nina was surprised as her name came out there. Even her father Mathew had never told her about such a story.

{Nina’s Hill ……. Then Nina-san’s name is …….}

{Yeah, that’s where I took it from. The word Nina is an old word in this region, and it means ‘to be joined, to be united’.}

Nina listened quietly and closed her lips tightly with force.

(Was that place …… the hill that my name came from? What feelings did father leave behind in that place ……?)

Hiroto looked out the window in the car with Mathew in the back. The car was going along a road near the mountains.

 From his side, he could see the beautiful countryside of Miramar and the mountains behind it, dotted with small forests in places, sunlight pouring from the blue sky, and a gentle wind blowing through the countryside.

Hiroto thought to himself that this must be the original landscape of Miramar.

 Ahead of the car, he could see a mountain forest spreading across the plain, and he could see that the road he was now on was leading into the forest. It was not that deep forest.

 Beyond the tops of the trees, he could see the top of a large hill, and on the top of the hill, he could see a large tree with its roots down.

Hiroto saw it and intuitively knew that that was the hill of Nina that Mathew had mentioned.

“……mu!”

 At this moment, Hiroto suddenly looked nervous.

He then opened the car window and turned his face toward the front where the car was headed.

 Matthew gave Hiroto, what happened?  look to his side. Then Hiroto immediately turned his face back to the car and shouted to Tientan.

“Tientan-san! Stop the car!”

“Eh!?”

“What’s wrong? Hiroto-kun!”

“I hear what sounds like gunshots from up ahead. Moreover, numerous ……”

Both Tientan and Mathew’s expressions changed. The three of them got out of the car and stared in the direction Hiroto said.

“I don’t hear anything, and you …… Teintan?”

“Same here …….”

But Hiroto looked even more convinced as he stepped out of the car. And then Hiroto stared at a space further beyond the hill, too far away to be seen by human eyesight.

A shiver instantly ran through Hiroto’s face and his complexion changed as he appealed to Mathew.

“T-There! General Mathew, there are enemy demons! T-There are so many of them, what’s going on over there …… No, more importantly, General Mathew, let’s turn back immediately!”

But Mathew was taken aback when Hiroto told him so.

“Tientan!”

“Yes, sir!”

“Let’s hurry to the hill!”

“Understood!”

Hiroto’s eyes widened when he heard Mathew’s words.

Tientan quickly got back into the driver’s seat following Mathew’s order, and Mathew jumped into the car. Hiroto reflexively got into the car as well.

Tientan sped up the car and drove at a breakneck speed toward the hill ahead of them.

“General! What the heck! It’s too dangerous!”

“If what Hiroto-kun is saying is correct, it is …… Guaran who is behind that hill. Our troops are not deployed in a place like that.”

“Ah, ……”

“Why, Guaran must not be …… killed by the enemy demons, no, more importantly, we can’t let him die here!”

“B-But, General Matthew! That number is extraordinary! If those demons attack in waves, all I can do is protect General Mathew! I can’t cover a wide area! At least if …… Mizuho-san and Marion-san were here ……”

“I’m sorry, Hiroto-kun. From your point of view as a guard, I’m sure I’m a huge idiot. But this is not just our problem. Meeting with Guaran is also about the future of this Miramar!”

Mathew’s voice was powerful and heavy as he kept his face forward.

“Hiroto-kun,…… in the worst-case scenario, leave us and run away. No, you may leave the car here. This is my fault for not following your advice. No matter how much of an escort job it is, there is no reason for you to follow us here. Don’t worry, the agency will be paid in full. This is not your fault. ……”

“What nonsense! Even if Prime Minister Guaran is gone, if General Mathew is still alive, we can still ……!”

 Hiroto was about to continue but was at a loss for words.

 Because …… Mathew was laughing.

He quietly turned to Hiroto with a smile that was not the smile of someone who was about to die.

He had an expression that said he was prepared and accepted everything and was still going to pick up the things he couldn’t throw away. 

 Hiroto was speechless. ……

He had seen people with this look before, even in the Demon World.

He stared back at that face for a while and …… closed his eyes and returned Mathew’s smile with a wry smile.

“I understand, General Mathew. I won’t stop now. But I will do my best to protect General Mathew.”

At Hiroto’s words, Mathew’s smile turned into a look of surprise, but he looked into Hiroto’s powerful eyes and face and …… now smiled wryly.

“Fufufu……… what the heck, you are also very …… crazy.”

 Tientan also let out a laugh while driving.

 Then, the radio in Mathew’s car suddenly beeped.

 Teintan picked up the radio to see what was going on.

{General Mathew! This is Shitenji and Shurian. We are on our way there as well. Avoid any rash actions until we get there. Also, Hiroto! Don’t be stupid, in times like this, call us immediately! Understood?}

Hiroto was surprised to hear Mizuho’s voice coming from the radio.

Hiroto couldn’t help but wonder why she was so well-timed and aware of the current situation

—–Part II end—


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