Chapter One: “Tangerines, Cats, and Space Pirates”
Have you heard of an item box before?
Once something only found in the realm of fiction, it’s now a reality. These are caves scattered throughout the world that lead to alternate dimensions, commonly known as dungeons. Even now, with the discovery of skill orbs excavated from these dungeons, the item box remains out of reach for ordinary folks—a dreamlike entity.
An item box is essentially a handy storage space where you can put anything and retrieve it anytime, anywhere.
Whether it’s a sword, a gun, or even your ID, once it’s in there, you can access it whenever needed. It’s the kind of super-convenient skill everyone dreams of, thinking, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have?”
One day, out of nowhere, I found myself with this ability.
It wasn’t like I suddenly grew a hole in my head for things to go into. It was more like a grid-like game item screen that appeared in the corner of my mind. Rows of square frames lined up like lockers or shoeboxes, where I could store things.
Only I could see these square frames, and each frame could hold one type of item. Even miscellaneous items like stationery or random pieces of junk would neatly fit into one frame if stored in, like a pencil case or trash bag.
“Welcome!”
“One order of Red Fried Chicken, please.”
“Just one Red Fried Chicken, okay….”
I wanted to use this handy skill, but using it without knowing much about it was a bit scary. So, for experimentation, I bought tea, onigiri, and fried chicken from the convenience store in the morning and received a bag from an elf girl with pointed ears who seemed utterly unenthusiastic about her part-time job.
I then put the items directly into the item box and tried retrieving them on a bench at the university during lunch. Yep, the fried chicken was still warm, as if I had just bought it. It seemed that the power bestowed upon me could stop the passage of time for the items I stored—a time-stop item box, so to speak.
I continued experimenting, storing whatever caught my eye and trying to see if I could store bugs I caught like a child with a net.
Eventually, I realized that this power was exactly like what’s known as an item box skill. I could store items I touched with my body but living creatures couldn’t be stored.
I didn’t know why I was blessed with this power, but since I had it, I decided to go with the flow. I wasn’t causing trouble for anyone, and there was nowhere to return it to. So, I embraced this sudden stroke of luck and began living the best life, going out every day without a care in the world.
It was about three months after I started using the item box that an unusual event occurred on a winter day. Even on this day when a bone-chilling cold wave was hitting, I continued my part-time job at the pizza place, came home to my unheated room, and ate leftover pizza while watching TV.
“Then, Mr. Kobeyama, you started your own company with the budding healing skill?”
“Yes, that’s right. I had always planned to start my own business someday, so I saw it as an opportunity and immediately dropped out of college to start my own business. Fortunately, I was able to set up my first store near the Yotsuya Dungeon, so adventurers started coming, and I was able to get the business off the ground successfully.”
“Must be nice…”
Living in Tokyo with the same skill, but our situations are worlds apart.
Living alone in Tokyo, attending university, sounds good on the surface, but in reality, it’s a sad life—no money, no dreams, no girlfriend. I get some allowance from my parents, but with the ongoing recession and skyrocketing prices, no matter how I live, I’m barely scraping by.
And to top it off, my university life isn’t going too smoothly either. I have only a few friends, and despite not really hanging out much, I’m barely passing my classes. I don’t even know why I came to Tokyo anymore, but I can’t bring myself to go back home and give up on college.
I’ve thought about using my newly acquired item box skill to make money, but as a college student, there’s not much I can do with it.
“I wish I had skills like healing or fortune-telling, easy skills to make money quickly.”
Since the item box is a skill for storing things within me, I can’t do business without trust in myself. Even people who want to utilize the item box probably wouldn’t trust a poor student like me with their products.
But even if I wanted to store seasonal or limited edition items and sell them at a high price, I don’t have the initial funds, and I’m not very knowledgeable about those things. In the end, I’ve been stuck in this situation, afraid to risk the little money I have and just maintaining the status quo.
I found part-time job listings targeting people with skills, but perhaps it’s because of the great recession since dungeons started appearing all over the world… There are only full-time listings or ones that pay about the same as working at a pizza place. So, it’s easier to stick with my current pizza delivery job, which somewhat suits me.
“Things just aren’t going well…”
READ THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATION AT GADGETIZEDPANDA.COM
I turned away from my life’s uncertain future and, somehow, it was already 2 a.m. after turning on the game console. I paused the game I was playing and tried to take out some oranges and tea from the item box for a break… That’s when I realized that something significant, something that would shake up my life, had silently begun.
“Huh? The oranges are gone, whole box and all.”
The box of oranges sent from my parents to prevent them from rotting in the item box. It was nowhere to be found. Instead, in the item box, there was a completely unopened orange can of juice, which I had no recollection of putting there.
I work a job running around outside in the winter, so there are usually two or three hot cans of coffee. But this can of juice had a soda-like color, something I definitely hadn’t bought or seen before.
When I took it out of the item box, the orange can with unfamiliar writing on it was surprisingly heavy, and strangely, there were no openings on either the front or back.
“What’s this, canned juice instead of oranges?”
I thought about translating the mysterious writing on the surface with my phone and placed it on the table… Suddenly, there was a light click. I thought the cap of the juice can had opened due to the impact, but it hadn’t. It had transformed. A blue pistol grip popped out from the belly of the can, and a blue muzzle popped out from the drinking spout.
“Huh? A toy…?”
I grabbed the can-turned-gun grip and pointed it towards the wall. I remembered seeing a toy gun with similar colors on an internet video site. It shot suction cup bullets, right? Thinking that, out of curiosity, I pulled the trigger.
[Bang!]
With a motor-like sound, the gun vibrated for a moment.
“Oh, it just makes noise…”
I sighed in relief and let the toy gun roll on the desk. It must have slipped in among various items I threw into the item box. As I leaned on the desk and tried to remember, my gaze fell on the wall.
“Huh? Was there a stain there before?”
One point of the ivory-colored wallpaper seemed to have turned black. I didn’t feel like a bullet had come out of the gun, but maybe I just didn’t notice it flying.
“Uh oh… Did a bullet get stuck?”
I panicked and crawled to the wall, but there was no sign of any bullet. No… there was no bullet.
As I nervously crawled closer to the black stain on the wallpaper, I saw a hole about two centimeters in diameter, twinkling with the stars of the night sky.
“What!? A hole!? Just now!?”
I felt scared and immediately put away the can juice gun in my item box and shivered under my blanket. I had no memory of obtaining such a gun. So, where did it come from into my item box? Did someone put it in there instead of the missing oranges? If so, then who…?
“This, isn’t this bad…?”
When I searched online before, it said that an item box was a space that nobody else could touch except the owner. If that was true, then perhaps someone was peeking into my item box. With that thought in mind, I couldn’t sleep and kept fiddling with the Item Box (Temporary) screen.
“Oh!”
In the darkness under my blanket, clear as day in the item list, when I moved things around to organize them, the screen suddenly changed. Beside the item image in the frame, a description popped up. Next to the tea I bought at the supermarket, it showed [Country Blend Brown Rice Tea]. And when I shifted my attention away from the tea, the description vanished.
“When did I buy this tea again? It showed up when I was thinking about it.”
Murmuring to myself, next to the bread, [Kawasaki Mayotama Sausage] appeared. It seemed that when I focused on wanting to know about the items in the item box, descriptions would appear.
Using the same method, when I focused on the can juice gun from earlier, [Paras Molecular Replacement Wave Emitter] appeared next to it.
“Emitter…? It’s not a gun? Is there more information…?”
As I wondered if there were more detailed information folded away somewhere, buttons popped up from below the description.
“KEEP? Why is this part in English?”
Staring at the button labeled KEEP, the black button turned red.
“Umm… I don’t know.”
I hadn’t read anything about this function of the item box in my online research. Perhaps… was mine different from a regular item box?
Lost in thought, a buzzing sound interrupted me. Startled, I peeked under my blanket… to see the screen of my phone lighting up, letting out a big sigh of relief. It seemed I had just received a newsletter from an overseas game retailer.
Looking at the clock, it was already three o’clock, and I had an early class tomorrow. I forcefully closed my eyes, ignored the item box screen, and tried to stop thinking. My heart was pounding loudly, but my body, tired from work, eventually succumbed to sleep.
◆
A week after the terrifying SF gun incident. Three boxes of discounted oranges from an online purchase were placed at my doorstep. Even though they were all discounted, buying six kilograms of oranges was a bit… well, it was quite expensive, honestly. But I couldn’t help but want to unravel the mystery of this Item Box (Temporary).
There was no doubt that the oranges had disappeared and the gun had appeared. So, if I put oranges in the box again, perhaps they would disappear, replaced by something else. That’s what I thought.
“I should have gotten smaller ones… but I need to keep the conditions the same to understand.”
Curiosity about the unknown aside… to be honest, I was afraid of continuing to use something I didn’t understand. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and first put one box into the item box and pressed the KEEP button. Then, I put another box in the item box but didn’t press the KEEP button this time.
“Alright.”
Finally, I opened the last box, took out five or six oranges from it. These were for me to eat.
Well, but since I put oranges in the item box, it was fine for about five days last time, so maybe there won’t be any movement right away even if I prepare like this. Even though I understand it in my head, I can’t help feeling excited. I started monitoring while watching a TV showing a comedy sketch by a duo of kobold female comedians and the screen of the item box floating in the corner of my vision with two windows.
I peeled and ate oranges nervously, feeling like when bidding on items in online auctions. To my surprise, there was movement in the direction of the item box in about thirty minutes.
“No way!”
One box of oranges was missing from the item box, and in its place was something unfamiliar in a rectangular shape.
“What is this…?”
It looked like just a colorful stick on the item box screen, but when I stared at it, the description “[Yapabrinka (34g)]” appeared. What on earth is this?
With doubts, I took it out on the table next to the oranges. Dozens of colorful plastic sticks like mahjong scoring sticks came out and made a dry sound. I examined them closely, but they looked like mahjong scoring sticks. I tried reading the unfamiliar characters engraved on the surface with a translation app on my smartphone, but unfortunately, it didn’t recognize them.
“I wonder if it’s valuable or not.”
I moved the plastic sticks to the item box and also put away the orange peels on the table. The item box is unlimited, so if you store garbage like this, it won’t smell bad. It’s easy because you just have to put it in a big garbage bag when it accumulates. This was one of the lazy ways I came up with to use the item box.
I checked the inside of the item box again, but the other box of oranges was not missing. It seemed that the “KEEP” button indeed had the effect of keeping things in place.
“Oh!”
My relief at solving one mystery was short-lived. I noticed again that there was something unfamiliar in the item box.
“What’s this time…?”
What was missing was the orange peels I had just put in. In their place was… a frozen tabby cat with the label “[Popte Male (frozen)]”.
“Huh?”
Before I knew it, I was taking out the frozen cat on the table.
“Is this for real?”
I felt my heart pounding. I wasn’t surprised by the consecutive exchanges themselves or by the frozen cat.
Its appearance looked exactly like the cat I used to have at home until a few years ago. Its orange fur and the swirling pattern on its back looked just like those of Mars, the cat I had at home.
“Mars…”
Suddenly, it felt like the sound from the TV was distant. I instinctively stroked the frozen cat’s back. Its frozen fur pushed back my hand, but only the shape of its back felt soft.
“Poor thing…”
I stroked its cold back again. The expression of agony on the frozen cat made me feel sorry for it.
Before I knew it, I was reminiscing about the warmth of Mars lying on my lap, the feeling of its wet nose rubbing against my fingertips, and the weight of it lying on my stomach while I slept. I was crying silently alone.
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