“Anyway, if you’re here to buy clothes, feel free to look around and pick anything you like.”

Roger broke the slightly awkward mood. “But if you want recommendations, I’m not really your guy. You can ask… huh? Where’d that girl go?”

It had been almost ten minutes since the three of them came in. Only then did Roger realize the clerk who should’ve been watching the front had vanished at some point.

“Tsk, she’s slacking off again!”

“You actually hired staff? I thought you were the kind of gloomy shut-in who can’t talk to people at all,” Tiran said, a little surprised.

“Calling me a gloomy shut-in isn’t exactly wrong,” Roger shrugged, “but I knew her from before, so I let her work here to make some cash. And I get an extra pair of hands.”

He lifted his shoulders again. “You saw it yourself though, she sneaks off all the time. Good thing this street’s pretty safe. Otherwise we’d probably lose more than we make.”

Just then, rapid footsteps sounded outside—light, quick, with a kind of body-technique precision… or maybe the owner of those steps was just really light.

Judging from the silhouette on the frosted glass door, the newcomer was pretty small.

The footsteps stopped. The door was pushed inward, just a crack. A small hand reached in from the top of that narrow gap and neatly plucked off the little bronze bell that was supposed to ring when the door opened.

After confirming it was “safe,” the figure clung to the doorframe like a cat, dropped lightly to the floor, then slid the door fully open like a ninja, not making a sound.

And ended up completely exposed to the gazes of all four people inside.

“Eh– Boss, wh-why are you out here?”

Two long ahoge strands on her head twitched twice from sheer shock. The owner of the ahoge had a crispy sausage in her mouth, letting out a muffled yelp. Then her tongue bumped into the still-scorching meat, and her whole expression twisted up. Even so, she stubbornly refused to let go, keeping her teeth clamped on the sausage until she grabbed the skewer with her hand and moved it away.

Once everyone got a clear look at each other’s faces, Tiran, Aya, and the slacking clerk who’d just been caught all showed equally complicated expressions.

“Blond Boss Lady?”

“I told you to call me Moros, you damn flat-chested princess!” Little Mo’s hair puffed up on the spot.

“Didn’t think you had this many friends, little Tiran.” Vivian leaned over Tiran’s shoulder, hands on her daughter, sounding genuinely surprised.

Tiran let out a dry laugh. No, no, no, this is totally just a coincidence. I am absolutely in the “I have very few friends” category.

“Your Majesty… Princess Vivian?”

Only now did Moros notice the silver-haired woman behind Tiran who looked seventy, eighty percent like her. After thinking for two seconds, she realized who it had to be.

“…So Mom’s that famous? She barely shows up anywhere. I was planning to keep some mystery, maybe pretend to be the older sister who never appears in public,” Vivian mumbled, lowering her head in mild disappointment.

“No, no, Your Highness, you’re overthinking it. It’s just because you’re here with Tiran, and this girl,” Aya smoothed Vivian’s hair as she spoke, “just happens to be an information broker…”

Then she glanced at Moros, confused. “So why are you here?”

“Part-time job,” Moros answered with complete confidence, same as the shop owner. “Gotta earn my food money.”

“Don’t you have your own tavern? And you do intel work on top of that. Don’t tell me it’s because of the war…” Aya still remembered the first time she’d met Moros. Honestly, if this girl didn’t blow all her money on otaku stuff, with her assets she could’ve lived very comfortably.

Can’t be helped, can’t be helped.jpg

“It’s not that…”

Moros scratched her head, a little embarrassed. “During the war, both the tavern and intel business actually did better. But I recently bought something big, so I’m a bit short on cash. I left those businesses in someone else’s hands for now and came here to work for extra income.”

“Business got better and you still need a part-time job. What on earth did you buy…” Tiran couldn’t help raising a brow.

“GENERATION UNSUBDUED NUCLEAR DRIVE / ASSAULT MODULE COMPLEX…”

“Why does that sound so familiar…”

Aya frowned slightly. The name definitely rang a bell. It felt like the title of some big franchise—manga, novels, endless merchandise.

The princess, on the other hand, nearly spat blood.

G.U.N.D.A.M. Oh wow. You basically bought yourself an X-dam.

“It’s a project in the City of Magitech,” Moros explained. “After the incident you were involved in, Your Highness, they started developing giant magitech puppets alongside magitech armor. Eighteen meters tall. The idea is that a bigger body can carry more weapons for the battlefield.”

“And… you bought one?” Tiran’s eye twitched hard.

“How could I? It’s still at the prototype stage. And even if they finished it, I couldn’t afford something like that.”

“Then…”

“Let’s call it an investment, okay? One million standard gold coins. In return, I get the naming rights for the first finished unit, plus control over its paint scheme and some degree of customization. And… five minutes of piloting time.”

Moros lifted her chin proudly.

No, no, no, how is that a good deal? What are you supposed to do with five minutes?

“Seriously? That’s a thing? That’s… insanely worth it!”

Tiran immediately started wondering if she should go talk to the City of Magitech people herself. If she shuffled the castle budget around a bit, then sold off some of the rare figures, cosplay outfits, and limited-edition manga in the vault, she might scrape it together. If that wasn’t enough, she could drag Aya to the Adventurers’ Guild, take a few high-level quests, and earn the rest.

“So I’m the weird one here?”

The maid-dragon started questioning her entire existence.

Tiran patted Aya’s shoulder, speaking with grave sincerity. “No, Aya. You just can’t understand our romance. If I could pilot an X-dam for five minutes, forget a million gold—I’d die for it.”

Don’t just casually die for things!

“By the way, what did you name it?” Tiran was curious.

“Barbatos Wolf King.” Moros gave a big thumbs-up.

“…Do you have a grudge against the pilot or something?”

Tap tap tap tap…

Once the excitement cooled a little, Moros finally noticed the impatient sound. Roger was leaning against the fitting-room mirror, face dark, tapping the floor with the tip of his boot over and over.

“Hey. You’re a part-timer, and you ditched your post and left your boss hanging this long. Don’t you think you’re getting a bit full of yourself?”

“Uh, s-sorry.”

Moros apologized in a hurry and offered the half-cooled sausage up to Roger with both hands like tribute.

“Don’t think you can bribe me with this.”

Roger snatched the sausage anyway and took a bite. “I want one minute out of your five-minute piloting time.”

“In your dreams!”

The blonde loli shot him down on the spot, not a shred of hesitation.