Blade directed his force elsewhere, deftly destroying Earnest’s body from a different angle.
“Kekh!”
Another strange cry from Earnest’s throat. She wasn’t trying to make these sounds—the air simply rushed from her mouth, forcing out all sorts of noises as it passed through her spasming vocal cords.
This isn’t a massage! It’s a wrestling hold!
Earnest wanted to protest, but she couldn’t even speak anymore. Her body was completely under Blade’s control, like she was fighting against the greatest grappler of all time. She couldn’t move a finger, much less form words.
Blade kept digging into Earnest’s body, subjecting her to an assortment of strange techniques in a variety of strange positions, causing disturbing noises to sound from all over her. Bones and joints were seemingly pushed out of place—parts of her body that had no business moving at all.
“Hey, whoa, guys. Don’t come up here. And don’t go there, either. That’s a dangerous angle. You can see everything from there.”
Yessica shooed off the boys who kept gathering in a certain spot around the rock.
I don’t care about them! thought Earnest frantically. Stop Blade! He’s going to kill me…
“Okay! All done!”
The torture came to an abrupt end. And the moment Earnest was free…
“What the hell?! You think you can just play with someone’s body like that?! I thought I was going to die! That you were gonna kill me!”
“I wasn’t playing,” replied Blade, without a hint of remorse. “I was being completely serious. What do you think? Doesn’t your body feel lighter now?”
“‘Lighter’?! No, it doesn’t! You’ve destroyed it from head to… Wait. Huh?” Earnest pumped her arms and twisted her waist. Then she lifted a leg and delivered a quick three-kick combo. “Whoa! I do feel light…?! What the…? How?!”
Her body barely felt like her own any longer.
“Yeah, I rebuilt it. Practice and training are all good, but you’ve been really punishing your body. It was all out of alignment, so I fixed it up. If you feel lighter, that just means you’re back to your original state. There’s nothing all that special—”
“Wow! Blade, you’re amazing!”
“Huh? Amazing? …Me?”
Earnest thought Blade looked a little childish as he cheerfully rubbed the bottom of his nose.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Aghh!”
“Nhhh!”
“Hngh!”
Screams that barely sounded human echoed throughout the thermae. Earnest was soaking in the bath beside Yessica.
“You know,” she said, scooping up some water and pouring it over her shoulders, “those screams seem so…intense, right? Like someone’s strangling a chicken.”
“Oh? You think so? I thought they sounded more like those kinds of screams.”
“Those? What kind do you mean?”
“Oh-ho. You don’t know, huh? More evidence you’re squarely in the never-done-it camp…”
“What are you talking about?”
It didn’t take long for Blade’s massage skills to become famous. To be honest, though, you couldn’t really call what he was doing a “massage.” It was closer to chiropractic work. Regardless, having their bodies “rearranged” by Blade had the same effect on his clients as an intense round of training, except it all happened instantly.
“Hwaaah…! I’m dying, I’m dying, I’m… Stop! Kill meee!”
Another victim—or rather, test subject—now lay on the rock. Earnest understood exactly how they felt. When it was her turn, she’d practically seen the grim reaper coming for her.
“See? I knew it,” she said. “You only scream like that when you’re about to be killed.”
“Sure, but…I mean, it’s kinda close to another kind of scream, you know?”
“Again, what kind are you talking about?”
“It’s hard to explain to someone who has no…experience.”
“…You’re not making any sense.”
Yessica’s face was all red for some reason.
All that screaming was simply the price Blade’s clients had to pay for the extraordinary boost in physical ability they received. To be specific, it was caused by the intense pain of having their joints dislocated, then put back in place again.
But how had Blade become a skilled chiropractor so suddenly? Apparently, it was the result of his intimate familiarity with the structure of the human body. He was well-versed in anatomy, which gave him intuitive knowledge of how to most efficiently destroy it—er, that is, how to make it function with peak efficiency. Even if Blade’s test subjects felt like they were dying, knowing the process would boost their power rank made everyone desperate for treatment.
As a result, the open-air bath now rang with hellish screams every evening after school.
“Ghrehhh!”
“Girls really shouldn’t make sounds like that.”
“Oh, I dunno…”
Earnest still had no idea what Yessica was on about. She scooped up some water and poured it over her shoulders, letting it flow down her chest. She wasn’t the biggest fan of how hands-on Blade was being with so many girls, but he wasn’t touching them that way, at least. Besides, his clientele was pretty evenly divided gender-wise.
“Why worry?” she muttered to herself. “It’s Blade, after all.”
Yes, this was Blade, the boy with the mind of a five-year-old child. Fretting about it was pointless.
“Hm? Why worry about what?” asked Yessica.
“Hee-hee-hee! Not telling,” said Earnest as she poured more water on herself.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Sooo I think I’ve been doing it wrong.”
One day, at the height of his new business, Blade suddenly made a shocking confession.
“What do you mean, ‘wrong’?” asked Earnest. She was holding a fork in one hand, a sausage skewered on the end.
“Like, what I’ve been doing… It’s not actually a ‘massage,’ apparently.”
“Huh? Where is this coming from?”
“In a massage, you’re supposed to manipulate a person’s muscles, not their skeletal structure.”
“Right… But that’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?” Earnest bit into her sausage as she spoke.
“I-it is…? It was that obvious, huh…?” The realization seemed to deeply depress Blade.
“Oh, but, but they’re still kind of similar! It’s fine if you got it a little wrong! Don’t be so down on yourself! It’s okay! It’s totally normal! Anyone could’ve made that mistake!”
Earnest tried to cheer up Blade, though her arguments sounded a little too enthusiastic.
“You’re so kind, Anna,” said Yessica, elbowing Earnest in the side.
“It’s okay, Blade! Your massage was really good!” said Claire, Earnest’s other best friend.
“I’m telling you, it’s not a massage…” But their words had the opposite effect. Now Blade was even more depressed.
“Ah… I’m sorry. But your…adjustments worked really well, you know. I can move my body better than ever!”
“Yeah… In your case, Claire, your pelvis was out of alignment, so I fixed it up for you.”
“My pelvis…? Oh. So that was why you were touching my butt the whole time…”
Huh?
“Do you really need to go around touching girls’ butts, Blade?” demanded Earnest.
“Huh? What’re you talking about? I can’t fix someone’s pelvis otherwise. Her butt’s really big, so…”
“Big…?” muttered Claire. “Is it really that big? I—I always thought it was average sized…”
“Hey, Yessica, say something,” said Earnest.
“Say something, Yessica,” Blade chimed in.
“Yessica, is…is it really that big?” Claire asked desperately. “It’s not, right? Tell me it’s not!”
“This is chaos,” murmured Yessica.
“What do you mean, ‘chaos’? What’s chaotic about this?” asked Blade.
“What does ‘chaos’ mean?” Earnest demanded. “Are you even listening to me?”
“Huh? What?” said Claire, startled. “Um… It’s…that much? Awww…”
“Chaos,” Yessica said again.
“So wait, Blade,” said Earnest, turning back to him. “When did you touch it? How did you touch it? You didn’t do it in a dirty way, did you?”
“‘Dirty’…? Uh… I dunno, but it was kind of like this…” Blade began to demonstrate.
“Ahh! Hey! N-no! Blade!” shouted Claire. “Everybody’s here!”
“Hey, Claire,” said Yessica. “You realize you’re basically asking the rest of us to leave, right?”
“Why do you want to demonstrate? On me, no less?”
“You just said you wanted me to touch you,” said Blade.
“No one said that!” shouted Earnest. “Die, you stupid, insensitive super-being! You’re a perverted freak!”
“What does any of this have to do with being perverted?”
“Chaos,” Yessica said between laughs.