Just Staring at the Bankbook.

The person on the inside of Karona Ryutanji, Saya, was staring at her bankbook.

"Fuhe."

A weird laugh slipped out.

The bankbook, naturally, had her savings figure printed on it. And would you believe it, the number had cleared 500,000 yen.

"No way… doesn't this mean I'm totally loaded?"

This was well past the point where buying meat to eat on a normal day was allowed.

It's easy to forget, but Karona was, quite casually, a working adult — technically a sole proprietor in her capacity as a B-Caster. For a regular working adult pulling a regular income, socking away around 500,000 yen over the stretch of time Karona had been B-Casting wasn't all that unreasonable.

"That's it. Today I'll buy a bento! A not-half-off one!"

"Ojou-sama. Why not simply dine out, the normal way?"

"Hmm. D-Dine… out?"

Kokuyou's voice came through the VR headset.

"Dining out, as in, Material-do's hamburgers or Yoshiya's gyuudon or the like?"

"Ojou-sama. Junky fast food is fine and all, but surely there are actual restaurants, are there not?"

"…! Gastzeriya!? N-No way, Deny-host's too expensive, right?"

"A family restaurant, is it… well, I suppose that's very much in keeping with our thrifty Ojou-sama."

"The fruit of this old man's upbringing, to be sure. From her earliest years I drilled into her never to spend money frivolously. Ho-ho-ho."

Sebas's voice came through the VR headset too.

"On the battlefield, a single mouthful of water can decide victory or defeat, so it cannot be helped." With that line, Sebas had retroactively become responsible for raising Saya into a penny-pincher.

"Hmm. More than that, I'd like to expand Kokuyou and Sebas's range a bit…"

"Hm. For this old man, the manor inside BCD is more than sufficient."

"The sentiment is lovely, but AIs come with all manner of restrictions, so it's rather a tall order."

"Restrictions? Huh."

Setting aside the low-order AIs of old, high-order AIs built with Debris technology can end up generating even more Debris than human beings do. Because of that, there are regulations on running them.

As things currently stood, Karona keeping her VR headset on at all times to make use of Kokuyou and the others was skirting a gray zone that leaned awfully close to black.

"As a workaround, perhaps purchasing a second VR headset to set up elsewhere? With headsets in two locations, I could converse with Ojou-sama in two locations as well."

"In a one-room apartment, there's not really much call for that."

Besides, immersive VR gear was expensive… True, at her current savings it wasn't quite out of reach, but it still ran around 100,000 yen.

"… Ah, but the one I'm using now is an older, out-of-production model, so if we're talking about investing in tools of the trade, a new one might not be a bad idea."

"Oh? Is that so, Ojou-sama? This VR headset seems to me to be of quite fine performance."

"Isn't that just because this is the only one you know, Kokuyou? I'm sure the latest model is amazing! Like, it runs at twice the speed!"

"I rather doubt that, to be frank."

"This old man finds this headset more settling, personally… Ahh, the coffee is exquisite."

Sebas, apparently, was drinking coffee inside BCD.

"Sebas, you drink coffee too?"

"On the battlefield, coffee suits the occasion better than tea. Another advantage is that substitute coffee is relatively easy to come by, from roasted grass roots, scorched sliced bread, and so on."

"Heeh, like dandelion coffee? I'd kinda like to try that."

"Well, what I was drinking was in truth simply water with burnt crumbs dissolved in it, so I cannot exactly recommend it. 'Atmosphere coffee,' shall we say."

Realistically, at Saya's standard of living, that grade of substitute coffee might well suit her just fine, but given the choice, she'd rather sip tea inside BCD, Saya thought to herself.