The Man Called Demon Lord in Another World Has Returned! - chapter 3
Chapter 3: Return 3
The next morning, as I came down from my second-floor room to the dining room cum living room, I found Dad having breakfast of grilled fish and miso soup at the dining table.
“Morning, Dad.”
“Morning. Seiichiro, I hear you’re getting glasses. It can’t be helped, but be careful. When you’re young, wearing glasses can make your eyesight deteriorate faster. Though you can’t exactly not wear them either.”
“I’ll be more careful once I start high school.”
“That’s right. Well, do your best.”
“If you’re up, -chan, wash your face and come eat. Is dried fish and miso soup okay for you too?”
“Yeah. I’ll go wash my face.”
“Wake up -chan before that.”
“Got it.”
“Hey, Midori! It’s morning. Wake up!”
Come to think of it, Midori was always bad at waking up. As I lightly knocked on Midori’s door and called out several times,
“I’m getting up now. I’ll get up soon. Definitely getting up…”
A sleepy voice came from inside the room, gradually getting quieter. Well, I’d done my duty.
After brushing my teeth and washing my face, I sat down for breakfast. Dad, who had finished eating earlier, said,
“Well then, I’m off.”
He put on his jacket and left for his job at the city hall.
“Have a good day,” Mom and I saw him off.
Finally, Midori came down from the second floor.
Half of her strawberry pajama top was sticking out, and her bed hair was sticking up in a cowlick. My sister, honestly…
Well, she had been an elementary school student just a few days ago, so I guess it’s to be expected.
“Midori-chan, wash your face before eating. And change out of your pajamas.”
“Okay~”
With a dazed expression, she trudged towards the washroom.
At last, I’d regained this daily life. A smile naturally formed on my face.
“Thanks for the meal.”
As I finished breakfast and was taking my dishes to the sink, Midori, now changed into casual clothes, came to the dining table and sat in her chair.
“From tomorrow, you’re a middle school student, Midori. You need to wake up properly.”
“I know. But if I oversleep, you’ll wake me up, right, big brother?”
Midori said this as she picked up her chopsticks and started eating.
I’m a big softie of a brother who can’t say anything when Midori smiles at me like that.
I moved to the living room sofa and turned on the TV, idly watching the news to kill time until the optician opened at 10 AM. Just after 10, I went to the optician at the entrance of the shopping district to have my glasses made.
Assuming a visual acuity of about 0.5, I answered the store clerk’s questions to have the lenses made, but honestly, it was all rather arbitrary.
Since I planned to modify them myself soon anyway, I chose the cheapest black, thick plastic frames. Of course, I also chose the cheapest lenses. They said it would take three hours, so I decided to go back home, have lunch, and then return to pick them up.
Three hours later, I went back to the optician, picked up the glasses, and wore them home. This should make my intense gaze less noticeable.
When I got home and showed my bespectacled self to Mom and Midori, Mom didn’t react much, but Midori laughed.
“Big brother, you look so smart~ Ahaha!”
It was obvious she didn’t think that at all.
Now, let’s modify these newly bought glasses. I’ve already thought about how to process them.
Back in my room, I held the glasses I’d taken off in my left hand and activated alchemy with my right hand, slowly removing the prescription from the lenses. Since they were concave lenses, I slowly inflated them, restoring the concave part to its original shape. After flattening out the concave part completely, they were just plain glass, which wouldn’t hide my gaze.
I took out a thin mithril plate engraved with a tiny magic circle for spells from my item box and attached it to a corner of the lens surface.
The plastic frames also seemed unreliable, so I left only a film-like surface and replaced the interior with mithril from my item box. I charged the mithril with sufficient magical power to continuously supply power to the magic circle on the lenses. Since both the strength and range of the concealment magic are quite small, this should maintain the concealment for about 10 years.
Full-fledged engraving magic for concealment would be more efficient, but it seemed a bit troublesome for something this minor, so I did it this way.
I put on the finished glasses and looked at myself in the mirror, raising the glasses slightly with my right index finger.
Sharp!
The perfect image of a capable man.
Wait, wait, this is just like those troublesome guys from the shopping district yesterday that I educated for their future. It’s embarrassing to do this myself.