Chapter 84: An Ordinary Shopping Trip
In a place where there was nothing, a sudden gust of wind blew by. A fallen leaf landed on Shirou's hair.
"...?"
Shirou skillfully plucked the leaf from his hair and set it aside. Right now, Shirou was facing a very serious problem.
That problem was—
Should he buy some fruit from the supermarket in front of him as a peace offering to appease the female group of the Emiya household and negotiate for a lighter sentence?
He had boldly claimed he would be back before lunch, but in reality, he was now significantly past lunchtime; this time, he wouldn't even be able to fool Saber. Shirou looked at the promotional board at the supermarket entrance that read "Watermelon 4.1/Each, then looked at the fruit bins inside, feeling utterly conflicted.
He wanted to buy one. An instinct honed by browsing thousands of vegetable markets was acting up.
Before stopping here, Shirou had at least reported to Rin that the business was finished and received her reply, so he wasn't currently in a desperate rush to return and face the inescapable "Asura Field" (bloody domestic drama).
A 4.1 George watermelon...
Based on the exchange rate, 4.1 Georges could be exchanged for about 300 yen back home. Given that watermelons back home had a median price of 2,500 yen, it could be inferred that the price of watermelons back home was severely inflated. If calculated by purchasing power rather than exchange rates, the gap would widen significantly.
One could even make the outrageous claim—simply by purchasing a watermelon here, he was making a net profit of 2,200 yen!
"No, surely it's not that extreme..."
Money spent is money gone; making a customer feel like they've made a "net profit" is a consumer trap. Shirou was very used to dealing with salesmen.
However, he hadn't bought a watermelon lately. He felt Saber would probably want to eat some. And unlike his sister, the eldest daughter of the Tohsaka family, Rin, would genuinely feel like they'd turned a profit. Though the shrewd and capable Sakura wasn't "disappointing" like her older sister at all, she likely wouldn't object to purchasing fruit for after-dinner. As for Illya and Rider, they were always indifferent.
Thinking this way, the scales in Shirou's heart gradually tilted. While he had dodged the consumer trap, he hadn't dodged the desire to use a clever trick to escape the domestic battlefield.
Unconsciously, his steps led him into the small supermarket. Shirou, with great solemnity, began to judge the quality of the watermelons using his life experience, listening to the thumping sound of the rinds.
From the pile on the right to the pile on the left, the "champion" seemed to be in the corner on the left. However, currently, among another bin of 5.5 George watermelons on the neighboring table, the contestant at the top of the middle section was equally matched.
There was no need to hesitate. The 5.5 George contestant suffered a crushing defeat in cost-performance against the 4.1 George champion.
Shirou reached out to take it, but as he touched the watermelon, he felt another strange force. Another hand had touched the watermelon at the same time. Shirou followed the white arm and looked to the side.
It was a girl he didn't recognize. A white ribbon was tied in her curly blonde hair.
After freezing for a second, she consciously withdrew her hand: "Sorry, sorry! You take it!"
Her voice was quiet and shy, but her first instinct was to yield the watermelon to Shirou. It felt like he'd been meeting good people like this quite often lately.
Thus, Shirou felt a bit troubled and said to her as well: "You first. Ladies first?"
She blinked. After a long pause, her momentum for apologizing dissipated, and her hand instinctively reached forward slightly.
Before she could even realize if she had regained her senses, Shirou had placed the watermelon into her shopping cart. He then decisively took the runner-up champion from the neighboring 5.5 George table, simply pulling out an extra two Georges from his pocket as he left.
He wasn't a stingy person, and he didn't particularly lack money. The watermelon was for the Emiya household to eat, so the quality absolutely could not be compromised. However, compared to making a person he'd chatted with feel good, the concept of cost-performance or a "househusband's" penny-pinching views was relatively trivial.
They should have just parted ways like that, but there was still the hurdle of queuing for checkout before taking the goods away. During the checkout, Shirou's intuition noticed that the girl queuing behind him was frequently casting her gaze over.
She looked at Shirou's face, observing him, and when she noticed him looking back, she pretended nothing was wrong and averted her gaze.
'Surely it's not because I have something on my face?'
Shirou tried feeling around; sure enough, there was nothing on his face but normal skin.
Without lingering, Shirou left.
The place where Shirou was located was similar to the first-floor plaza of a shopping mall—a central corridor shaped like a "1." He had originally intended to cross through this central corridor to reach the other side, only staying for a short while due to a temporary whim.
While carrying the plastic bag from the supermarket, Shirou glanced around. There was no unusual aura, but there were few people. The shops in the latter half of the route were practically deserted, completely different from the first half.
...A bit too few.
With a click, the feeling was suddenly reversed. Shirou crouched down, letting go and placing the plastic bag containing the purchased watermelon steadily on the roadside. He would have to come back for it later.
He began to walk quickly—not retreating toward the likely safe origin, but diving deeper toward the likely dangerous destination.
Sure enough, as he moved forward, the people passing by became fewer and fewer until they vanished. Turning a blind eye to this non-obvious anomaly, he continued to step forward, finally stopping when no one could be seen at all.
He could have chosen to avoid it, or even not come here. But the ones who would bear the risk for that would be the other people passing by Shirou the next time the opponent launched an attack. While it wasn't a question of whose responsibility it was, at the very least, Shirou was unwilling to let that happen. Limiting the battlefield to an uninhabited zone was Shirou's wish; since the opponent also had a consensus for the sake of concealing Mystery, that was for the best.
Though rare, magical attacks specifically targeted at Shirou weren't something he'd never encountered. Acting like a moth being lured in, he deliberately entered the opponent's home field.
Between the cold walls covered in promotional slogans and the grid-patterned floor tiles, the light from the corridor entrance ahead gradually faded. The cool air from the air conditioning, which had served to soothe the feeling of the world being inverted, gradually thinned out behind him.
Standing in place, he waited for the invisible magus to make a move.
Shirou waited for approximately three seconds.
Three seconds later, the entire floor beneath his feet suddenly flashed blue. Across a rectangular area of flooring exceeding ten meters, a highly luminous color tried to dazzle his eyes without warning. At the same time, Shirou moved instantly, the twin swords of Yin and Yang—Kanshou and Bakuya—manifesting in his hands.
It wasn't a direct attack type, as the spinal cord linked to his thoughts felt no premonition of needing immediate action to evade death.
So, it was—a Bounded Field.
A massive square boundary enveloped Shirou, a hunting net appearing in the shape of a cube. Shirou was inside the cube, his figure appearing blurred through the glass-like substance to the outside.
Is that all?
Just as Shirou was slightly dumbfounded and, thinking this magus was finished, decided to destroy it immediately, the appearance of the Bounded Field changed.
The outer shell of the large cube divided into many small cubes, carved with a "tic-tac-toe" pattern. Immediately following this, like a Rubik's Cube, they began to rotate—left, right, up, down—scrambling in a completely irregular pattern until they stopped in a distorted mess.
The original cubic Bounded Field now looked like a pile of rubble made of numerous small cubes, parts of which had fused together.
From outside the Bounded Field, a strange gaze carrying magical power was projected inward.
In principle... from the glass windows on all sides with no blind spots, Mystic Eyes were scattering their gaze into every part of the interior.
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