The moment Andrew spoke her name, any doubt about the visitor's identity evaporated completely.
Hoshimi Miyabi had been standing motionless at the center of the workshop, deep in meditation — but the instant Andrew's voice reached her, that pair of elegant fox ears atop her head swiveled instinctively toward the sound. When she registered the familiar cadence of Andrew's footsteps, her ears gave two small, involuntary twitches.
Only then did she surface from her meditative state, turning to look toward the staircase where Andrew stood.
But rather than answering his reflexive question, she furrowed her brow slightly, a trace of visible displeasure crossing her face as she spoke first.
"Miyabi."
"Huh?"
Andrew blinked, genuinely thrown off by the non-sequitur, and let out a vague, uncomprehending sound.
Seeing that he still hadn't caught on, Miyabi's frown deepened by another degree. She repeated herself, more deliberately this time.
"Call me Miyabi."
"Ah..."
It clicked. Andrew smacked his own forehead with his palm, the pieces finally falling into place, and corrected himself with an awkward laugh.
"...Miyabi. What are you doing here?"
The moment he said it right, Miyabi gave a small, satisfied nod. Then, with characteristic directness, she answered.
"After completing my scheduled morning training, I came to the address you gave me intending to find you — only to discover the place hadn't opened yet." She paused just a beat. "I knocked and received no response, so I simply came in through the window."
As she said it, her expression carried something that, in anyone else, might have been called a hint of pride. Andrew couldn't quite shake the impression that she looked like someone privately congratulating herself on having found the perfect solution to a minor logistical inconvenience.
It's only six-thirty in the morning, isn't it?
And yet, Miyabi had apparently already finished her morning training and been sitting in his workshop in silent meditation for a good while before he'd even come downstairs.
What time does this woman even wake up?
At a momentary loss for words, Andrew turned his head to glance at the workshop windowsill — the one he normally used for growing crafting materials. The unlocked window hung wide open, its curtain swaying softly in the morning breeze, silently confirming that Miyabi's account of her entry route was entirely truthful.
"That's not actually what I was asking about... but never mind."
There was no point belaboring the details at this stage. Andrew turned back to face her and scratched his head, tilting toward the question he actually cared about.
"So — what did you come here for?"
Surely she wasn't here to settle the score over the whole Legiana incident? Yanagi had said she wasn't going to pursue that anymore, hadn't she?
Miyabi didn't answer immediately. Though her expression remained composed, her chin lifted slightly — an unconscious, almost imperceptible movement — before she spoke, her voice carrying the weight of absolute conviction.
"You helped me so much during the Nineveh interception battle. Now you're the one heading into danger — so it's only right that I help you in return!"
Andrew stared at her.
...Heading into danger?
Okay, yes, going back to his original world was technically an adventure. But framing it as 'danger' felt like a bit of a stretch. More pressingly — this was something only a handful of people even knew about. So who on earth had told her?
He gave up trying to work it out on his own and just asked.
"How do you know about this? And what exactly are you planning to do by coming here?"
Miyabi didn't hide a single detail. She started from the very beginning and laid it out plainly.
"Due to a certain... unexpected development, I learned through the Mayor that there might be some danger during your return journey. So I went directly to the upper leadership of the Hollow Special Operations Department and formally requested to accompany you during that period."
"With my father's support, they approved it."
"...?"
A storm of question marks erupted inside Andrew's head simultaneously. He opened his mouth to say something, got as far as drawing breath, then stopped — unsure where to even begin.
He almost said something. Then he almost said something else. Then he almost said the first thing again.
Finally, he landed on the one question that outranked everything else.
"How exactly did you 'accidentally' find out through the Mayor that I was planning to return — and that the return might be dangerous?"
He had only told the Mayor about this last night. And now, first thing this morning, Miyabi already knew?
An 'unexpected development,' she said.
If anyone genuinely believed that wasn't deliberate, they'd have to be spectacularly naïve. But Miyabi was many things — and lying was not one of them. Her personality was so straightforward it practically short-circuited social deception entirely. If she said it was accidental, she believed it was accidental.
Which meant, in Andrew's estimation, there was a nine-point-nine out of ten chance that the old fox himself — the Mayor — had engineered every single bit of this.
Miyabi's subsequent explanation confirmed his instinct with perfect precision.
"Last night, since Wuwei had just been fitted with its new scabbard, I was meditating in the Hoshimi family courtyard to help Wuwei acclimatize to it," she said, recalling the sequence of events. "That was when I heard my father receive a call from the Mayor in his room — the Mayor said he wished to discuss a new matter."
She paused briefly, then recited the topic of that discussion verbatim from memory.
"'For a certain period ahead, New Eridu will temporarily lose two Void Hunter-level combatants. During that window, how should things be arranged to ensure the safety of New Eridu to the greatest possible degree.'" A small furrow appeared between her brows. "Although I still don't know who the other Void Hunter the Mayor mentioned is."
Andrew understood the moment she said it.
He didn't even let her finish. He picked up the thread directly.
"And then — after hearing that the person about to leave was me — you went to the Mayor and volunteered to come yourself?"
Miyabi didn't answer out loud. But the look on her face — pure, unguarded surprise at being read so accurately — said everything that needed to be said.
Confirming that his guess had landed dead center, Andrew let out a slow breath and covered his face with one hand.
Is it possible... that you yourself are the other Void Hunter the Mayor said New Eridu was about to temporarily lose?
The way Miyabi had described that conversation — it had 'bait' written all over it in enormous letters. That old fox Mayor had been dangling the hook with complete deliberateness. What should have been a situation where the Mayor went to Miyabi and asked a favor of her had been flipped entirely through one carefully framed phone call — until Miyabi was the one coming to him, requesting to be included.
The Mayor had even managed to walk away with a debt of gratitude owed to him in the process.
The hook was practically neon-lit, the bait practically radioactive — and Miyabi, a woman whose social perceptiveness could generously be described as 'robotic,' had walked straight into it without a moment's hesitation.
Actually — no. That wasn't entirely fair. The reason the Mayor had used such a blunt, obvious method was precisely because she was like that. The straightforward trap was calibrated for the straightforward target.
But then there was the matter of Hoshimi Soichiro.
From everything Andrew knew, Miyabi's father was far from a simple man himself. He was on the call. He had heard the whole thing. And from the sound of it, he had not only failed to intervene — he had supported Miyabi's subsequent request.
Which could only mean one thing: Hoshimi Soichiro had been part of the scheme to bait his own daughter all along.
What on earth do they all stand to gain from this?!
The entire situation was so bizarre that Andrew found himself at a genuine loss, unable to make sense of it no matter how he turned it over.
But he set that aside. There were things that could be puzzled over later. Right now, the most important thing was to try — even if the odds looked grim — to talk Miyabi out of coming with him.
Because the Monster Hunter world was vast, and it was full of the unknown. This trip was, at its core, an adventure — and Andrew had no desire to be the reason someone else walked into danger on his behalf.
He tried a different angle.
"This return trip has a highly uncertain timeline — the bare minimum is half a month. Miyabi, you're the Section Chief of Section 6. Leaving your post and New Eridu for that long — are you really sure that's fine?"
Miyabi looked at him with the expression of someone utterly unbothered by the concern being leveled at her, and answered without a beat of hesitation.
"Don't worry about me, Andrew. Since joining Section 6, I have never once taken leave." The ghost of something that might have been confidence passed across her face. "Add to that the fact that Section 6's leadership granted me a three-day holiday for the complete victory in the Nineveh interception battle — I have more than enough accumulated leave to take a full month off without any issue."
"As for the daily work..."
She looked entirely at ease as she continued.
"I've always delegated that to Yanagi regardless. Section 6 will function perfectly well without me for a while. You don't need to worry on my account."
— — —
Over at Section 6 headquarters, at that same moment.
Tsukishiro Yanagi stared at the leave application form sitting on her desk — an impressively lengthy document that bore their Section Chief's name. The overhead lamp's light caught the lenses of her glasses and reflected back two sharp, unreadable white gleams, making it impossible to see her expression beneath them.
Behind her, two figures — one tall, one small — had also read the form. The moment they grasped its contents, they both shot to their feet simultaneously and broke into barely restrained cheers.
With the Section Chief gone, the operational intensity of Section 6 would inevitably drop by a significant margin. In fact, with her absent, the higher leadership of the Hollow Special Operations Department would often find it awkward to exceed their own authority by directly dispatching Section 6, and would simply grant the unit a rest period instead.
Setting others aside — Asaba Harumasa was, at this moment, genuinely over the moon.
What could possibly be more satisfying than getting paid to do absolutely nothing?
His eyes drifted to the reason for leave that Miyabi had written on the form. He read the name 'Andrew' there, and quietly, solemnly, committed it to the deepest vaults of his memory.
He had a feeling.
This man was going to be the single greatest patron saint of his slacking-off career in Section 6 going forward.
Unfortunately for both of them, they had barely managed thirty seconds of celebration before the previously silent Yanagi slowly turned around from her desk.
The lamp light still bounced off her glasses. What it revealed beneath was a smile that reached her lips — and absolutely nowhere else.
The two of them wilted instantly. They shuffled together into the corner of the break room and huddled there, side by side, like a pair of startled quails.
But Yanagi showed them not the slightest mercy.
Their Section Chief had been lured away by some man she had only just met — and had gone willingly, no less.
Knowing that there was no force on earth capable of changing a decision Miyabi had already made, Yanagi chose to redirect her attention to something she could actually do something about.
Can't change it — so at least I won't have to see it.
As for where to redirect that surplus attention...
Well. As it happened, there were one or two things conveniently ready to receive it.
Soukaku found herself staring at the towering stack of elementary-school-level written assignments that had materialized on her desk, her eyes going glassy as she slumped face-first against the surface.
Asaba Harumasa, meanwhile, found himself staring at the dense, minute-by-minute training schedule Yanagi had personally compiled and placed before him — a schedule so thoroughly packed it left no room for anything resembling free time. He looked at it the way a student looks at a mountain of holiday homework: unable to decide whether he wanted to laugh or cry.
— — —
Back at the Seliana Smithy, Yanagi might have written Miyabi off as a lost cause — but Andrew was still trying.
He pressed on, his tone serious.
"Miyabi. Think carefully about what you're agreeing to. The world I come from is genuinely dangerous." He let that land before continuing. "The Nineveh that caused so much chaos here yesterday? By the standards of my world, it was nothing more than a regional apex predator — and that's after it was augmented by the Frenzy Virus."
"Beyond regional apex predators lie the Elder Dragons — embodiments of natural calamity themselves. And beyond even them, there are existences that can only be described as the very end of the world — the Forbidden Ones."
"In the world I came from, these things can appear at any time. They have, throughout history, brought humanity to the brink of extinction more times than anyone can count. Their level of danger is—"
He stopped.
Because his words were not having the intended effect.
Not even close.
With every sentence he spoke, Miyabi's eyes were growing brighter. Visibly, unmistakably brighter — like flames being fed.
By the time he reached the part about 'brought humanity to the brink of extinction,' her eyes were no longer just bright. They were shining.
She looked at him, a thread of barely-contained excitement running through her otherwise composed voice.
"Brought to the brink — but overcame it? Are you saying humanity faced all of those catastrophes... and won?!"
The embodiments of natural disaster. The end of the world itself.
Miyabi could tell, just from the way Andrew spoke, that these were not metaphors. They were descriptions. Literal descriptions.
Only a true martial arts fanatic could hear the same sentences that would make any sane person pale — and respond by lighting up like a festival lantern.
Faced with the very obvious blind spot he had just walked straight into, Andrew first shook his head, then — reluctantly — nodded.
"No, no, no — 'won' is the wrong word. A Hunter never 'wins' against nature. At most, we manage to resolve the crisis at hand."
"...A Hunter," Miyabi murmured.
She had long since guessed that 'Hunter' was Andrew's identity in his original world. But she was only now beginning to understand the true weight that identity carried — a weight that was, it turned out, far greater than anything she had imagined.
With Andrew's words, something quiet and new took root in the deepest part of Miyabi's heart — like a seed pressed into fertile soil.
And predictably, inevitably — Andrew's attempt to dissuade her had achieved the precise opposite of its intended effect. Rather than cooling Miyabi's resolve to come with him, every word had stoked it hotter and made it more unshakable.
Not just for Andrew's sake anymore. Now it was for her own sake too.
After absorbing the essence of every sword style New Eridu had to offer — after reaching the threshold of Void Hunter through nothing but her own hard-won insight and intuition, without the guidance of a master or school — Miyabi had already begun to feel, with increasing clarity, that the pace of her growth was starting to slow.
It was the reason she had gradually shifted toward devoting more and more of her practice to spiritual cultivation rather than pure physical training.
But now — a whole other world's worth of nourishment, a perspective she hadn't even known to search for, was right in front of her.
And on top of all that, it was Andrew's home.
There was simply no version of herself that could refuse.
Having thoroughly shot himself in the foot, Andrew recognized that the situation was now irreversible and conceded.
And just like that — the two-person party for the return journey was officially formed.
No Meow-Da this time. But now there was Miyabi.
Andrew honestly wasn't sure yet whether this was a good thing or a bad thing.
He supposed he'd find out.
____
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