“Yumiella’s left side is the strongest!”
“Yumiella’s left side is so cool!”
I can’t believe my left side is going to lay down her sword after getting a couple little compliments. How pathetic.
I knew they didn’t actually mean the things they were saying, it was obviouououououououous. Even mentally, my right side was ririririright, my right sidedededed my, my, myyyyyggggrrraaaagh.
“Yumiella’s left side is the strongest! Yumiella’s left side is the strongest!”
“Sir Patrick! Oh no, Yumiella is in trouble!”
“Grrrggggaaargh!”
“Calm down, Yumiella! Your right side is strong too! Your right side is stronger!”
“That’s right! Your right side is the strongest!”
Hmm? Um, I, uh, what was I doing? I think Left Yumiella lost control and is floating in the sky or something. I looked up and saw it emitting an even more violent aura than I thought it had earlier. At this rate, the world was really going to be destroyed.
“What about your surefire method? You said you had a way to beat it, right?”
“It’s over.”
“Huh?”
“It’s over. The surefire method didn’t work.”
What happened to your confidence when you first said you had a way out of this? Patrick seemed sure that there was nothing more to do.
“What do we do about it, then?” I asked.
Even if we can’t use the previous method, Patrick can surely figure a way out of this.
Patrick looked me right in the eyes and said, “What do we do?”
I really wonder. I thought the surefire method guaranteed that we’d win. I guess we run for now? The carriage had stopped near the Dolkness estate, and we were only several steps away from the garden.
“Should we run inside for now?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter if we run—it’s all the same,” Eleanora said.
She’s right. I just stood there and looked up at the sky, when suddenly a black dot appeared.
“Something’s falling from the sky! I think it’s something separate from my left side... A person?”
It looked like it was the size of a person, and they weren’t too far, so they probably weren’t going to land right on top of us. Anyone would be able to dodge them if they just looked up.
“What do you see?” Eleanora asked.
There’s someone right here who would totally get hit. I need to carry her into the house. I moved quickly, but I’d forgotten that my left half wasn’t working. I brilliantly tripped right by Eleanora’s feet with a loud thud.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“It seems this is the end for me,” I said. “Don’t worry about me, Lady Eleanora. Just run.”
It’s all over. I’m going to play the part of a female lead who sacrifices herself for her best friend. I hope that Eleanora, as kind as she is, isn’t able to leave me behind and stays there as if to say it’s her turn to work hard.
Still on the ground, I looked up and saw that Eleanora hadn’t run, but was looking at me as if to say, “What are you doing?”
Okay, acting time over.
“Something is going to fall from the sky, so please evacuate the area and head inside the estate, Lady Eleanora.”
“Don’t you need to run too?”
She’s worried about me after all. Acting back on.
“I’ll be fine, just save yourself, Lady Eleanora...”
“You seem all right!” Eleanora gave me an energetic nod before she trotted away and into the estate. Playtime is over. That’s a wrap.
I watched Eleanora, who had put in as much effort as a grade schooler during emergency training, run off as I lay there on the ground. Patrick then slid his hands under my arms and pulled me up. The way he picked me up made me feel a bit like luggage.
“Now’s not the time to sleep. That thing is going to fall near us.”
I looked up as he instructed, and the object was headed straight for us. Now that it was closer, I knew it was the size of a person, but I still couldn’t tell who it was.
“How troublesome. What if they destroy the estate or leave a crater in the garden?”
“It’s Yumiella...”
“Don’t bring up my name just because they’re causing trouble by falling out of the sky. Don’t name the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs ‘Yumiella,’ okay? People will just judge me even more.”
I’d thought Patrick was on my side, but he started calling this act of annoyance “Yumiella.” Even if I was the only one whose reputation was being hurt by it, people might eventually think that people who are destructive are usually black-haired, and then it would be actual discrimination.
Patrick, who was in Discrimination Man’s reserve army, squinted at the falling person as he said, “That...isn’t Yumiella. It’s a black-haired person.”
He just went from being in the reserves to the main forces. He said it was a black-haired person who wasn’t me, but he was probably mistaken.
“How could that be possible? Any black-haired person falling out of the sky has to be Yumiella.”
“You seem incredibly biased towards yourself.”
If they’re falling, it’s probably me. I took another look at the falling person and saw that they had long, black hair. They had gotten closer since Patrick first noticed, so there was no mistaking it.
The one falling through the sky was Yumiella, the one floating in the sky was Yumiella, and the one standing here, me, was also Yumiella. Wait... That’s three. I was Yumiella (Right Side), who could only move her right side. The one with the wings only had its left side, so it had to be Yumiella (Left Side). The person falling through the sky wasn’t missing half their body, and they were frantically moving all their limbs.
What a riddle. What Yumiella isn’t the left side, isn’t the right side, and panics while falling through the sky?
“I think it might not be me...”
“That’s what I’ve been saying.”
Oh, in that case, should we help them? By the time that thought had crossed my mind, it was too late, and the mysterious person had crashed right in front of us into the garden of the Dolkness estate in the Royal Capital.
“Hey, Patrick? Should we have helped them?”
“Oh.” That was the sound of someone who’d made an oversight. It seemed that even while knowing they weren’t Yumiella, it was difficult to be worried about someone with long black hair. This discrimination towards black hair, or perhaps Yumiellas, was quite the serious issue.
I heard someone coughing in the middle of the dust cloud. It seemed they were alive. They continued to cough as if they were in pain, then I heard the voice of a man.
“Where am I? What happened?”