He paused. “Just a touch of humor.”
“It’s not friggin’ funny!” If barging into a sick person’s house uninvited, splattering a durian all over their room, and forcing a kiss on them counts as “humor,” then our society needs to start making laws to keep the comics of the world in check! Urge to kill: rapidly rising! I bet the price of rage is going through the roof in my internal stock market!
“Would a watermelon have been better? They are in season.”
“One: not the problem; two: why a watermelon; and three: of course that’d be better! Hello?!” Something about his blockheaded, fundamentally nonsensical sense of humor reminded me of one of my old party members back in the other world. He was a handsome man with a perpetually surly look on his face, though, and just the thought of comparing him to this disgusting old pervert made me want to snap on the spot and beat the crap out of him.
“Anyway,” I said, changing the subject, “how long were you listening, Kazuki?”
“Huh...? Ah, not long! I just got here, yup!”
“Look me in the eye and say that again.” She couldn’t. In fact, absolutely everything about her body language screamed dishonesty. “Kazuki?”
“L-Like I said, I didn’t hear anythi— Eek?!” I sandwiched her face between my palms and forced her to look me in the eye. She froze up, tried her best to look away, then gave up and finally met my gaze. “Umm, so... I started listening around the time you were saying something about having your first kiss with that guy over there.”
“That was basically the very beginning!”
“I-I’m not the type to judge, y’know?! If you’re, umm, into people like him, that’s fine by me! I’ve heard that sort of thing’s considered totally normal in other parts of the world these days!”
“Nooo! He forced it on me! Right?!”
“Wh-Why are you bringing me into this?!”
“Isn’t it obvious?! Back me up here! It’s your fault we’re even having this misunderstanding!”
“Ugh... I suppose so.” He didn’t look satisfied with the situation, but he nodded in agreement and turned to face Kazuki. “Young lady?”
“Y-Yeah?”
“I’m a woman.”
“Like hell you are!” I screeched. “Oh my god, if you were gonna lie, you could’ve at least tried to come up with a believable one!”
“Oh, you’re a lady! Wow, yeah, I totally misunderstood this whole thing. Sorry about that.”
“She bought it?!” If he tried that line on ten random people, I could basically guarantee that all ten of them would call him out on it, but Kazuki accepted it without a second thought. I had seriously mixed feelings about the whole matter, but she’d just accepted the situation as totally normal, for whatever reason, and I didn’t feel like pushing my luck.
“By the way—Senpai?”
“Yeah?”
“What was all that ‘fantasy land of swords and sorcery’ stuff about?”
AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!!
Oh god, that’s right! She was listening from the very start! That means she heard all of the conversation, including those bits! I reflexively glared at the old man, and he shot me a “boy, just look at the mess you’ve gotten us into, she totally heard us” look in return. How is this my fault?!
“Then there was that stuff about the world, and about him assaulting someone, and something about Ayase Hikari-chan... I didn’t really get most of it, to be honest.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t, and you’re better off that way. Trust me. Just go home, have a nice evening, and go to bed.”
“No way! I’m waaay too curious to sleep!” She seemed really excited. Is she enjoying this? The old man and I exchanged a glance with each other. We wouldn’t be on glance-exchanging terms under normal circumstances, but we shared a single common opinion: having a serious conversation would be impossible with her around.
“I’ll explain it all later, okay?”
“Aww, c’mooon...”
“Allow me, young lady. We were discussing a video game.” I completely failed to come up with an excuse that would convince her and was verbally flailing, but the old guy stepped up to do so instead.
“A video game?”
“Yes, that’s right. The two of us play the same online game together, and our discussion just happened to get a touch heated.”
For something he came up with on the spot, it was honestly a pretty solid lie. “Swords and sorcery” did describe a majority of that sort of game’s settings, after all. Kazuki didn’t look like the sort of girl who would have much know-how when it came to games, but as long as she was vaguely aware of their existence, she’d probably get the gist of it.
“But what about the kissing thing?”
“That’s a game mechanic.”
“And the thing about assaulting a girl to get at Senpai?”
“An event in the game.”
“I thought I heard you mention Ayase Hikari-chan, though...?”
“‘Ayase...Hikari’? You must have misheard something.”
“Oh, okay. I guess that makes sense.” It sorta fell apart at the end, but Kazuki gave a satisfied nod anyway. This old dude’s more of a fast-talker than I expected him to be...
“Oh, can I ask one more question?”
“What?” I replied.
“Why do both of you smell so bad?”
We froze. The construction site fell into deathly silence. I still didn’t even understand why he’d felt the need to blow up a durian with his bare hands in the first place, and thanks to that incredibly random decision, both of us reeked of that distinctive week-old-garbage smell. It was so horrifyingly pungent, I was sort of astonished that Kazuki hadn’t already fled in disgust.
There was no way he could write off the stench as part of the game. At the rate things were going, it seemed inevitable that we’d be filed together in her mind as partners in stench, and I didn’t want to be thought of as any sort of partner with that lunatic!
“It’s because of the game.”
“Seriously, dude?!” How the hell does he think he’s gonna spin this?! Kazuki might be a pretty dim bulb, but she’s not burnt out!
“The more you play this particular game, the more you end up emitting this scent. The two of us are hopelessly afflicted.”
“O-Oh, wow, that game’s crazy! I’ve heard that video games have been getting super advanced lately, but I didn’t know they could even make smells!”
“You believed me?!” This time it was the old man’s turn to be horrified by her credulity, in spite of the fact that he’s the one who came up with the excuse in the first place.
“Well, y’know, I don’t really know much about anything other than track and field... Wait, you were kidding?”
He hesitated for just a moment, then replied. “N-No. I was completely serious. Video games are really something these days.”
“Thought so! I know, right?!” She was so stupid, it was almost cute. I mean, she was cute to begin with (it comes with the heroine territory), but still. “Well, it still feels like you two have some real beef with each other. Are you fighting? Even though you both play the same game?”
“F-Fighting?” I stammered. “Nah, we’re not really—”
“Yes, that’s right, young lady.” Suddenly, something about the old man’s aura changed. His words were laced with anger, and that anger was very distinctly directed towards me.
He’s not seriously planning on having this conversation right in front of her?! “Hey, don’t even think about it!” I warned, to no avail.
“You see, he gave up on the game halfway through. Some of us tried to be understanding, to let him go—but not all of us could be so accepting...” He was smiling, but there wasn’t so much as a hint of amity in his voice. The contrast between his expression and tone was so stark, even Kazuki seemed a bit frightened, grabbing on to the hem of my uniform. “That’s why I came to see him. To bring him back. To make him play the ‘game’ with us once more.”
“The game...” He obscured the true meaning of his words in a metaphor on account of Kazuki’s presence. I knew that he was a denizen of that other world, and with that fact in mind, he could only mean one thing.
“I’m an outsider, so I’m not really sure it’s my place to talk,” piped up Kazuki, “but, I mean, everyone’s got their own reasons for playing games and quitting them, right...?”
“Yes, you’re quite right. You are an outsider, so you’d never understand. You can’t appreciate how serious we ‘game-folk’ are. You can’t imagine how sincerely we live our lives, and how difficult it was to accept it when he tossed us away like we were nothing.”
“Ugh...” Kazuki bowed to the pressure of his words. It was starting to get to me as well—I was sweating, and not as a result of my recent sprint. It was a cold, clammy sweat that clung unpleasantly to my skin.