Time passed quickly. In the blink of an eye, three months had gone by.
Kariya Matou stayed at the Matou residence, starting from scratch alongside Sakura and Shinji as they learned Magecraft.
You two better work hard, Shinji and Kariya.
You're carrying the pride of the Matou men on your shoulders…
Well, at the very least, don't fall too far behind Sakura.
Meanwhile, Shirou continued as usual, cramming knowledge about this world while getting used to life in the city.
Each day felt full and busy, yet lately, he found it harder and harder to settle his mind.
As night fell, an unexplainable sense of loneliness would creep in.
He couldn't exactly go hang out in Shinji's room every night. After thinking it through for a long time, Shirou finally realized the problem.
It was this house.
This was the Matou home, not his.
It wasn't that he had grown tired of the Matou family.
Shinji and Sakura were his only two friends in this world, even if taking care of kids could be a bit tiring.
Byakuya was surprisingly capable at work. If asked to look something up, he would have results ready by the next day.
Kariya had an unshakable will. He was straightforward, upright, and hated evil, exactly the kind of person Shirou respected.
They were all good people, but this still wasn't a place he could truly call his own.
"Shirou-nii-san, are you leaving us!?"
Shirou had only casually mentioned ending his stay, yet Sakura's tears immediately began to fall.
"Did I do something wrong? I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…"
"No, Sakura, it's not your fault…"
"Hey! Shirou! What's going on here?!"
Shinji gritted his teeth, his face flushed bright red.
"Didn't we say we'd go to nationals together? What about our promise to compete in the national karuta tournament? You're not allowed to leave!"
"We never made a promise like that."
With both siblings clinging to his arms, Shirou shot a pleading look toward Byakuya Matou.
The middle-aged man, the nominal head of the household who usually deferred to Shirou, fell silent for a moment before speaking.
"I understand. If Shirou wants to leave, we have no reason to stop him. However…
Wait until you've found a suitable place before moving out."
...
Early in the morning, Shirou walked quietly through the streets of Fuyuki.
There were no classes today, so he had slipped out early to wander around.
"Housing in Fuyuki is really expensive… ah, crap."
When he came back to his senses, he realized he had wandered into an unfamiliar street.
Where am I?
Shirou looked around, trying to recall which direction the Matou house was in.
"Did you get separated from your mom?"
A hoarse voice suddenly came from behind him.
Shirou turned around and saw a thin, disheveled middle-aged man.
"Ah! No, no! Kid, I'm not a suspicious person!"
The man waved his hands frantically in denial, though the more he tried to explain, the more suspicious he seemed.
He wore a dirty tracksuit. Beneath his wrinkled cap was hair that looked like it hadn't been washed for months. The glasses on his nose clearly didn't fit, and his whole body carried a sour smell.
A homeless man, Shirou concluded.
"I… I can take you to find a police officer, okay?"
The man clearly knew how he looked, so he tried to offer something a child would trust.
Forcing a kind smile with his cracked lips, he said, "I'll take you to the police station to find your mom, alright?"
"…"
Shirou felt extremely reluctant. Sorry, but I don't have a mom.
Just as he was wondering whether to use Magecraft to deal with him, his stomach let out a loud growl.
He hadn't eaten breakfast before leaving, and he'd been so distracted by his thoughts that he hadn't noticed. Now the hunger hit him all at once.
At that moment, the homeless man pulled a wrapped hamburger from his dirty coat and gave him a genuine smile.
"I just got this from the back of a fast-food place. Want it?"
...
Fuyuki Park lay in silence in the early hours of the morning.
Not far away stood the tents where the homeless gathered. Shirou Amamiya sat on a bench, quietly eating a cold hamburger, while the man who had offered up the food stood nearby, smiling as he watched him eat.
If a patrol officer saw this scene, the homeless man would probably be treated like a criminal and hauled in for questioning all night.
"My name is Shirou."
"Huh? Ah, right! I'm Sato!"
With Shirou taking the initiative to speak, the two of them started chatting.
The homeless man was called Sato. He had apparently once been an office worker, with a fairly respectable job and a happy family.
Then, during the financial crisis a few years ago, he got laid off. On top of that, he lost money in stocks and ended up buried in debt. Too ashamed to go home and face his wife and children, he fled to the park and had spent the last five years drifting there as a homeless man.
To put it bluntly, he was a loser, a scumbag. Most of the people gathered in this park were the same.
"Living as a drifter… maybe that would suit me too…"
Shirou looked toward one of the shabby tents patched together from scraps of cloth.
"Maybe I should live here too. All I'd have to do every day is pick up bottles and beg for food, right?"
"What are you talking about!?"
Sato's expression suddenly turned serious, and he slipped straight into lecture mode.
"Shirou-kun, people like us are beyond saving. We're society's trash.
But you're different. You're still young. You shouldn't…"
"Yeah, yeah, I got it. I'll leave after I finish the burger, so spare me the sermon, old man."
Sato bared his yellow teeth in a smile.
"Yeah. Go back and study hard."
And with that, their conversation came to an end.
"I'm going."
Shirou jumped down from the bench and tossed the burger wrapper into the trash.
"O-okay."
Sato watched the boy leave, but halfway there, Shirou suddenly stopped.
"Come to think of it, I forgot to ask. Mister, why did you call out to me in the first place?
You're not really the type who helps people just because they're in trouble, are you?"
Faced with the boy's question, Sato could only answer honestly.
"Because you're about the same age as my son…"
"I see."
Shirou nodded thoughtfully.
"Sato, even though you're total trash, you really aren't someone who should be staying in this park after all."
"T-trash!?"
Shirou said, "You still have somewhere you can go back to, so… go back home."
Sato fell silent at those words, and his face darkened.
"Go home… How am I supposed to show my face there now? I abandoned my wife and child for more than five years. I don't have a home to go back to anymore. They'll never forgive me."
Shirou gave him a glance.
"Whether they forgive you or not is their business.
But asking them to forgive you is still something even trash like you can do."
"I can't… I can't go back…!"
Sato clutched his head in despair and shouted hysterically,
"I owe too much money. I've been hiding all these years. There's no way I can go back now…!"
Watching his pitiful display, Shirou could not help but sigh. Trash really was trash.
But even trash like this still had a place to go back to.
The boy walked over and placed a hand on the man's drooping shoulder.
"Sato, make me a promise. Get a haircut, shave your beard, and then go home and see your family, alright?"
"…"
Sato looked up through his tears.
Staring at Shirou's childish face, the man found himself unable to say a word.
He looked like a cute boy, yet his expression and gaze carried an inexplicably powerful force of persuasion.
Charisma.
It was said that only an extremely small number of people possessed that trait.
Many of history's great heroes and kings had this genius-like quality that could not be explained by science or Magecraft.
As the Fairy Knight King who established the Fairy Round Table in a foreign land, Shirou had naturally cultivated that miraculous trait over time.
It had nothing to do with Magecraft. His words themselves carried a sacred power to move people.
And depending on the person, charisma took different forms.
In Shirou Amamiya's case, it would probably be classified, or rather described, as "leadership in desperate situations."
"Hmm…"
After a long silence, Sato finally nodded as if he had made up his mind.
"O-okay, I'll try! After being encouraged by Shirou-kun, I feel like I'm full of strength. I want to work hard, pay off my debts, and earn my family's forgiveness!"
"Good. Then I'm off… oh, right."
Before leaving, Shirou casually asked one more question.
It seemed Sato's creditor was a yakuza family called the Fujimura Group.