After conversing quietly with Shouko's grandmother, Yuto learned the painful details of the Nishimiya family's situation.
Listening to the old woman's gentle weary voice, he couldn't help but let out a heavy sigh.
Shouko had lost her hearing at the age of three due to a severe illness.
While other children were joyfully learning to speak and mimicking the world around them, Shouko was plunged into a terrifying, total silence.
Unable to hear herself or others, she gradually grew silent, eventually stopping her attempts to speak altogether.
Her father had abandoned the family shortly after, unable and unwilling to accept the reality of raising a disabled child.
Now, the entire family relied entirely on the fragile shoulders of Shouko's mother, Yaeko, to keep them from going under.
Shouko was now five years old, the age when she should be happily attending kindergarten.
Instead, she had been transferring schools repeatedly.
Why? Because she was subjected to relentless, cruel bullying!
It was a dark ugly truth of human nature: people instinctively single out and torment those who are different and weaker than themselves.
When Yuto gently asked why they didn't send Shouko to a specialized school for the deaf, the grandmother simply shook her head with a sad defeated smile.
The special needs schools in this country were vastly different from the inclusive systems Yuto remembered from his previous life.
Here, they were exorbitantly expensive.
Even the most basic special education program cost many times more in tuition and living expenses than a regular public school.
For a single mother already working herself to the bone just to put food on the table, it was completely unaffordable.
"Is there... any chance Shouko might regain her hearing?" Yuto asked softly.
He received no spoken answer.
The elderly woman merely shook her head again as a long trembling sigh slowly escaping her lips.
Yuto felt a crushing wave of helplessness wash over him.
He looked down at the little girl sitting quietly and obediently on the sofa beside him.
She couldn't hear their conversation, but she knew her grandmother was talking with the big brother who had saved her.
She just sat there, swinging her little legs, her hands folded politely in her lap.
The sheer unfairness of it all made his chest ache.
"It's getting late. I really should be going," Yuto said, finally breaking the heavy silence.
He still had errands to run for his restaurant before the evening rush.
"I won't keep you, but thank you again, truly. From the bottom of my heart," the grandmother said, bowing to him formally.
She didn't offer the usual empty polite attempts to make him stay, her gratitude was raw and genuine.
"It's nothing. Just a small thing," Yuto replied hurriedly, feeling entirely unworthy of such deep gratitude for doing what any decent human being should have done.
Just then, a small tug on his sleeve caught his attention.
Shouko held up her notebook.
[Big Brother Yuto, are you leaving?] Her big expressive eyes looked up at him, looking incredibly fragile and shimmering with a deep quiet reluctance to let him go.
Yuto took the pen and wrote back.
[Yes, big brother still has things to do today. I can't stay with Shouko any longer.]
Reading his words, Shouko's bright expression visibly dimmed into sadness.
A child's emotions are simple, yet overwhelmingly intense.
To Shouko, Yuto wasn't just a stranger, he was the brave big brother who had chased away her tormentors and bought her a mountain of candy.
She didn't have a father or a brother of her own, but today, Yuto had made her feel incredibly safe.
She desperately wanted to take the pen and beg him to stay.
But she was a sensible child. Her mother worked so hard and had always taught her to be polite and well-behaved, not to be a burden on others.
She couldn't let her mother's exhaustive teachings go to waste.
So, swallowing her sadness, she wrote down one final, hopeful little wish.
[Big Brother Yuto, will you come to see Shouko again?] She handed the notebook back to him, her moist eyes eagerly tracking his hand as he gripped the pen.
When Yuto showed her his reply, the little girl's face broke into a brilliantly happy smile.
[Of course. And when that time comes, big brother will buy Shouko even more candy, and maybe some toys too.]
Yuto patted her soft hair and Shouko beamed at him, her smile wide and utterly adorable.
"Please, you really mustn't do that," the grandmother said, having leaned over to read the notebook.
"You've already done more than enough. I don't want you going to such trouble or expense for us."
"It's really fine. Shouko is a very sweet kid; she deserves to be treated well," Yuto shook his head, his voice calm.
He usually had plenty of free time during the day anyway, so dropping by occasionally would be no trouble at all.
Besides, their apartment building was only a short walk from Ichinosuke Street.
They were practically neighbors.
"...Thank you," the grandmother whispered.
She fell silent for a moment, her wrinkled lips parting several times, struggling to contain her swelling emotions before she managed to utter her thanks.
Yuto stood up, and the old woman immediately rose to follow, walking to the front door to open it for him.
Shouko trailed closely behind Yuto like a little shadow.
Before stepping out, Yuto crouched down to her eye level.
He ruffled her hair affectionately, looking directly into her wide, innocent eyes with a warm, unwavering smile.
"Shouko, don't worry. Things will definitely get better," he said.
He didn't write it in the notebook this time.
Instead, he leaned in close right beside her ear.
And somehow... perhaps through the vibration, or perhaps through the faint trace of magical youki he possessed... this time, Shouko heard it.
The little girl's eyes widened, sparkling with a bright light, as pure as morning dew on early spring grass.
She nodded vigorously.
Yuto bid farewell to the grandmother once more and began descending the dim concrete stairs.
Halfway down the flight, a strained desperate sound reached him from above.
"B-Big... bro... ther... come... back..."
She struggled, forcing the words out of her throat one excruciating syllable at a time.
Yuto looked up.
Shouko was gripping the railing, her tender face flushed red with the sheer physical effort of trying to speak aloud.
Faint blue veins were visible on her small neck as she fought her own silence just to say goodbye to him.
The sight made Yuto's heart ache!
He swallowed the thick lump in his throat, raised his hand and waved at her with a reassuring smile.
This time, he didn't need a notebook to understand exactly what she was saying.
...
After visiting the local agricultural supply store on his bicycle, Yuto successfully purchased eight different varieties of high-yield crop seeds for Rimuru, sealing them safely in small paper bags.
He hadn't managed to find any industrial blueprints, however.
But that didn't surprise him; detailed architectural and industrial blueprints were highly specialized, confidential documents.
It would be bizarre to find them sitting on a shelf in a corner hardware store.
He would have to figure out another way to source those for the slime's goblin village.
He rode back to the restaurant and placed the seeds in the backyard, ready to hand them over when Rimuru inevitably bounced in for dinner later that night.
Looking around the spacious enclosed yard, his earlier idea of keeping a pet briefly resurfaced.
But he quickly dismissed it.
He had already committed to expanding the restaurant, bringing a pet into a construction zone would be entirely irresponsible.
The dog or cat would just have to wait.
He walked out the front door of the restaurant and strolled over to the neighboring storefronts in his alley.
Apart from Yuto's restaurant, which was slowly breathing life back into the secluded path, all the other tiny shops were dead and closed.
Right next door to the Kamisaka Shop was a small failing flower shop.
Its doors and windows were tightly shut, and the heavy metal roller shutter was pulled all the way down.
Taped haphazardly to the corrugated metal was a single piece of printed paper.
[Available for Lease/Transfer] Phone: 090-XXXX-XXXX Owner: Nishimiya Yaeko
It was an incredibly concise straightforward transfer notice.
But that was fine—it actually saved Yuto a massive amount of investigative trouble.
However, as his eyes locked onto the owner's name printed at the bottom of the flyer, Yuto froze.
Nishimiya Yaeko.
He couldn't help but think of the fragile pink-haired little girl he had just walked home, and the exhausted mother who worked from dawn until dusk to pay for her medical care.
'Could it really be the same family?' Yuto chuckled softly to himself, shaking his head at the impossible coincidence.
Surely he was just letting his thoughts wander.
Tokyo was a massive city, after all.
But as he stared at the flyer, a quiet determined smile touched his lips.
Either way, he was going to make that phone call.