Chapter 2: Report

After a touching reunion with my beloved younger sister, I was filled in on everything that had happened while I was in another world.

“Um, what year is it right now?!”

I even asked a question that ranked about seventh on my list of things I’d always wanted to say someday.

Even before reuniting with Koichiro, I had a grasp that I was like Urashima Tarō, but I hadn’t fully come to terms with the reality of it.

—I understood it, but I hadn’t really felt it.

My sister, who was a whole school year younger than me and whom I had doted on endlessly, is now what they call a *bimajo*—it was the first time I’d heard the word, but apparently, it means a beautiful, youthful-looking older woman—and is quite popular.

—She used to be so tiny, and now she’s 56.

Koichiro, who should have been my classmate, is 68 years old.

He used to say things like, ‘All politicians over 60 should retire,’ yet here he is, nearing 70, serving as Chief Cabinet Secretary.

I thought that, but then I realized that the situation then and now is completely different.

By the way, the reason Nao is called a *bimajo* is that, in addition to being naturally beautiful, her body is clearly young.

And that’s because she continued to hunt monsters as an Explorer—in other words, because she kept leveling up.

In this world, there’s a popular belief that ‘leveling up slows down aging?’, but in that world, it was common knowledge.

To begin with, it was a world where there were long-lived races of people who lived for 500 or 1,000 years as a matter of course, but high-level individuals of any race were clearly longer-lived—compared to the average of their race.

Here, it’s only been 50 years since the dungeons appeared, so the verification hasn’t progressed much, but it will probably become common knowledge in the future.

After all, it’s not just living longer as an old person, it’s slowing down the aging process itself.

If a person levels up from a young age, it’s even possible that they will look about as young as he does now even after they’ve passed their 60th birthday.

Since there is a method of anti-aging that is so obvious, even if we don’t understand the scientific—or magical—reasoning behind it, there is no reason for humanity not to jump on it.

In the other world, there were quests in every town—as long as the settlement was large enough to be called a town—for noblewomen who weren’t warriors to level up just to get that effect, and to escort them.

Well, even though it was called an escort, in reality, the noble house that the woman belonged to would send out soldiers and whatnot to protect them, and the quest participants were so-called beaters, whose job it was to drive the monsters towards the noble group.

The other-world beauty method is to have the soldiers of the house weaken the monsters, and then have the women deliver the final blow.

I digress.

So, a considerable amount of time had passed in this world.

My sister had become an old woman, my childhood friend had risen to the position of Chief Cabinet Secretary, and there were many other things I didn’t understand, such as smartphones and streamers.

And my parents had already passed away.

Because I was summoned to another world at the same time the dungeons appeared, my parents thought I was trapped in one of them, and regardless of their age, they went into the dungeons themselves or asked other explorers to look for me.

Apparently, earthquakes always occur at the same time a dungeon is created.

Moreover, since multiple dungeons were created simultaneously all over the world, the damage caused by the earthquakes was also enormous.

In addition, each dungeon caused an overflow of monsters as soon as it was created.

Various infrastructures collapsed due to the major earthquake, and on top of that, swarms of incomprehensible monsters appeared, creating a situation that was, simply put, hellish.

In a narrow sense, this is apparently called a dungeon disaster.

After such dungeon disasters, the so-called Explorer Guild was formed as an organization to manage and control the daredevils who were diving into the dungeons at their own expense and risk.

As a subordinate organization of the Dungeon Ministry—the official name is the Special Disaster Countermeasures Ministry, but no one in the public calls it that—its main duties are the management of explorers and dungeon resources.

After such an organization was established, they inquired at each branch to see if there was any information about him.

And in the end, they couldn’t find a single one of his belongings, and apparently died in despair.

—Of course, they wouldn’t find any of my belongings, since I wasn’t dead.

Instead, *I* was the one who was given my parents’ belongings.

It was a letter.

Every year, on the day I disappeared, they wrote about what had happened that year.

Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so’s son died in the dungeon disaster…

Koichiro-kun went to Tokyo University, you should have been there too…

Mitaka-kun is also looking for you…

Koichiro-kun, after graduating, became a bureaucrat and apparently went to the Dungeon Ministry…

Nao-chan became an explorer after graduating from junior high school, she won’t listen, saying she’s going to find her big brother…

Nao-chan is being talked about as a too-beautiful explorer, she doesn’t like it…

It’s been getting harder to move around lately…

They tried to give up many times.

But they couldn’t.

If they gave up, it would be like their son really disappeared.

Like they, his parents, were erasing their only son.

Where are you now—-I want to see you.

After reading the forty-two letters, I put my hands together on the gravestone in front of me.

The ancestral grave was apparently destroyed during the dungeon disaster, and after my parents died, Nao built a grave in this small cemetery in the mountains near her workplace.

After returning here, I went through various procedures and whatnot, and then came here in Nao’s car.

“Nao.”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Everything.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I have one more favor to ask.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll be there soon, so go ahead and get in the car.”

“…Okay. Take your time.”

The presence behind me fades away.

She’s a good woman, worthy of being called a *bimajo*.

That was as far as I could go with pretending to be strong and calm.

Like a dam bursting, tears and unspeakable feelings overflowed.

“Ah, ah, aaaaaaaah.”

“If, If, I, had been, one year, earlier.”

“Dad, Mom, I’m, sorry.”

Tears fell on the letter in my hand, and the letters, which were already blurred and distorted in places, became even more faded.