A woman whom I met by chance seems to be someone who used to play the role of Hero. She's a little petite, about 150-ish cm tall, and wears clothes similar to kappogi.
She has black semi-short hair and wears a headscarf. At a glance, she looks like the proprietress of a set-meal restaurant or a tavern.
If she played the role of Hero back then, she must be older than me, but she looked younger with her baby-faced appearance. I would believe her even if she claimed she was 20 years old.
[Uwaaahh~~ I see, a child from my homeworld finally came to my store... Come on in, come on in, let's not talk while standing around here.]
[Eh? Arehh? I thought you weren't open yet...]
[That's right, but if you're Japanese, then that's a different story! I've always wanted to talk to a child from the same homeworld... Ahh, I was running my mouth off here, but are you busy perhaps?]
[N- No, there's no problem.]
Even when one looks at her from the side, the woman saying this with a bright smile on her face was clearly excited. Indeed, even if she were the one who played the role of Hero in the previous decade... the decade before Mitsunaga-kun, it would be her first time in 12 years or so that she would meet someone from the same world, so it may be inevitable that she would be excited.
As I had such things in mind, the woman urged me into her restaurant. The interior of the restaurant was somewhere between a set-meal restaurant and a tavern, with counter seats and the like.
She recommended that I sit at the counter, so I did, and the woman placed a glass of water in front of me.
[Well then, let me introduce myself again. My name is Mizuhara Kaori, and as you may have already noticed, I am a Japanese who was invited to play the role of Hero at the Festival of Heroes 12 years ago.]
[I'm Miyama Kaito. Pleased to meet you, Mizuhara-san.]
[Ahh, you can just call me Kaori. Many people in this world don't have family names, so it's more often that I'm called with my first name. I'll call you Kaito-kun too.]
[I understand, Kaori-san.]
Kaori-san was cheerful and felt pleasant, and I could tell that she was sincerely happy to see me, even with the emotions conveyed through Sympathy Magic.
[...Rather, with the atmosphere you have, I just called you Kaito-kun because I thought you were younger than me... but you didn't play the role of Hero before me or something like that, right? As expected, you don't look like you're in your 40s...]
[Ah, yes. I'm 22 years old.]
Well, I feel a bit iffy regarding my age, since I've been back in my world for 2 months, which was equivalent to a year and 8 months in this world, so the number of days that have passed since my last birthday is oddly off, so I feel like I can say I'm 23 years old already... Well, for the time being, I guess I'll just say I'm 22.
[Ahh, good, you really are younger than me... but, hmmm? Arehh? That's strange... As I recall, the last person who played the role of Hero was different from Kaito-kun, wasn't it? N- No, my store was busy when the Festival of Heroes happened and I only managed to watch the events a little bit, so I'm sorry if I'm mistaken.]
[No, you aren't wrong. I wasn't the one who played the role of Hero...]
When I told her that I wasn't summoned to play the role of Hero, but that three people, including me, were summoned by accident, besides Mitsunaga-kun, the one that was originally summoned to play the role of Hero, Kaori-san had a look of deep astonishment on her face.
[Ehhhh, t- there was a summoning accident!? S- So that happened... M- Must be rough.]
[Arehh? You didn't know about that huh.]
[Unnn. Commoners like me won't be able to hear stuff like that.]
I see, now that she mentioned it, even if the story about us may have been passed on to the nobles and people with high status like them, I suppose ordinary people wouldn't know that there was a summoning accident that happened in the first place.
[Well, I'm really having fun in this world, so I'm rather glad that I was caught up and got summoned.]
[I see, I'm glad to hear that.]
[Ahh, Kaori-san. Since we've gotten acquainted, why don't we register each other's magic power in our hummingbirds?]
[H- Hummingbird?]
Kaori-san had a gentle smile on her face, but as soon as she heard what I said, her face stiffened.
Arehh? Was I being too sudden...? Would it have been better to ask her that when we got to know each other a bit better?
[...Kaito-kun, you see, you do know it, right? That Magic Tools... They're expensive.]
[E- Errr...]
[Even though they only had an SMS function, Hummingbird magic tools are more expensive than smartphones...]
[...You're right.]
[Moreover, almost no one I know here has that Hummingbird magic tool, so I don't have it either.]
It seems like I had perceived it wrongly. Because I didn't know anyone around me who didn't have the Hummingbird magic tool, or didn't have it and couldn't use the Hummingbird magic tool, I thought it was common for everyone to have it, just like how everyone had smartphones back in my former world.
However, just as Kaori-san said, considering the cost performance, it may be a magic tool that's rather out of people's grasp.
For example, among the people who are close to me that were like commoners, there are Sieg-san and Luna-san... but thinking about it again, one is a former Deputy Commander of the Knight Order and now the Head of a Duchess' Guards, while the other is a former top adventurer and now the personal maid of the Head of a Duchy... both are definitely in a position that makes them more than just average people.
Even when she's like that, Luna-san seems to have a lot of money, and as for Sieg-san, she may have been sending "about 70% of her monthly salary" to Rei-san and Fia-san, but I don't remember seeing her in any situation where she is in need of money outside of the Six Kings Festival.
Well, from Sieg-san's point of view, she started sending money to Rei-san because she felt guilty about the fact that Rei-san had to quit his job as the Court Mage. Rei-san and Fia-san think it's unnecessary, but Sieg-san is also quite stubborn about this matter, so she continues to send money to them.
...Even then, Rei-san and Fia-san had secretly told me that they had been saving that money without touching it.
"It'll be used at Miyama-kun and Sieg's wedding", or so Rei-san told me.
Well, leaving that aside... It seems that we need to correct the discrepancy, as there's a subtle discrepancy in our financial sense. Kaori-san's financial sense is probably the sense of an average person.
[No, of course it's not that I can't afford it, but there are lots of magic tools I'd rather have than those.]
[Ahh~~ You mean like a magic box?]
[Unnn, that's right. As expected, as a restaurant owner, acquiring a magic box is my top priority... but they're expensive. Well, I did manage to have one though.]
Saying this, Kaori-san took out a pale orange magic crystal... which from the looks of it, seems to be quite low in purity.
[This is only about the size of a small wooden box, but it's still more expensive than that fridge-like magic tool they have here. I really want one big enough to hold all of my ingredients, but I can't afford it.]
[I see.]
[...By the way, do you have a magic box, Kaito-kun?]
[Y- Yes, well...]
[Can I see it?]
[...Here you go.]
I had no reason to refuse, so I brought forth my magic box from my palm and showed it to her, to which Kaori-san backed away with a look of astonishment on her face.
[A- A- A- A black one appeeeeeeared!? Eeehhhh, this is the first one I've seen one of these outside of a magazine...]