The moment Baba came here, our world had become closed off. Never again would Earth have another visitor from another world. At the same time, that also meant that there would be absolutely no traveling to another world. Fantasy itself had shredded the dreams promised by fantasy.
This is just the worst. The worst circumstances overlapped with the worst outcome to create the worst outcome ever. However, let me say this. Even though I’m a young brat who hasn’t even lived a tenth of what you have, please let me say my point in my young, bratty way.
“I’m pretty sure nothing I say would get through to you right now, but......” I held Baba’s face with both my hands as she continued to weakly pound my chest while muttering curses nonstop, having tired herself out screaming and raging. I looked straight into her eyes, which had gone all puffy from crying, and said, “This is what reality is like. No matter how long you wait, no matter how much you cry, nothing will change. There’s no other way but to accept it and push forward. Everything you want, you have to win it for yourself.”
Once again, poisonous-sounding words flowed from Baba’s mouth, and she glared at me fiercely. If she possessed the power to kill someone by staring at them, I reckon I would have died at least three times already.
However, as I continued staring into those eyes while shaking in fear and trying my best to push back a sense of nausea triggered by powerlessness and heartache, I noticed the strength leaving her eyes, until finally she hung her head.
After a long, long silence, Baba got off from on top of me, then returned to her sofa. “It is as you say,” she muttered, while fiddling with the leaves on the branch stuck in her hair.
While keeping an eye on her, I also timidly returned to my own sofa.
“Perhaps I indeed have been running away from reality.”
“Running away? No, you stood against it,” I retorted inadvertently to her fainthearted admission. Discarding one’s home and social status and fortune to go to another world was not something that most people could do. Baba had also stood up against shitty reality in her own way. What she had done was worthy of commendation.
However, Baba shook her head. “No, that is not so. If I really did mean to stand in opposition to this, then I would have made the effort back in mine own world. If I couldn’t find anything interesting, then I should have searched for companions, and made something interesting to do together. However, I merely abandoned the world, betrayed everyone I knew, and threw them away. I ran away. Never once did I try to change the world like you’re doing.”
“That’s—”
“Don’t be modest. Compliments are to be accepted gracefully. Sigh, to think that I would have my own mistakes pointed out to me even at this age. I suppose this is what it means when they say that there are lessons to be learned even from young saplings.”
I could not detect any more anger in Baba’s earnest tone. She could very well be just hiding her anger very skillfully. However, if I wasn’t a complete idiot at discerning people’s emotions, then that meant Baba was indeed coming to terms with her anger and grief with incredible speed and was already trying to move on.
“It appears that the time has come where I, too, face and acknowledge reality. I offer my apologies for all the things I said. Allow me to be the one to ask you: May I be allowed to join you and Kaburagi in the set-up team?”
“Baba......!”
I was thoroughly touched as Baba wiped her tears away. She wasn’t a former queen for nothing, I suppose.
The older one gets, the harder it becomes to admit one’s wrongs. While telling children “when you do something wrong, say ‘I’m sorry’,” there are so many people who become unable to put that into practice themselves. Children don’t apologize earnestly, and adults don’t apologize at all. The idea that people would “learn to be better when they grow up” is a lie. There are heaps of people who, the more knowledge they accumulate, the more they would try to hide behind convoluted logic and semantics, getting defensive and doing whatever it takes to worm out of admitting to being in the wrong. Adults are absolute pros at pushing blame around. However, Baba was able to look back and reflect on herself. Even though I did not think that she was in the wrong, she was the one who remonstrated herself.
Being able to self-reflect and change even at 905 years old? She’s incredible. I hope I can be just like her when I get old.
As I superimposed my idea of the perfect grandpa onto the silver-haired elf loli baba sitting quietly on her sofa, the sound of the doorknob being tried abruptly pulled me back to my senses.
A beat later came the sound of the door being unlocked. It swung open, revealing Kaburagi-san standing there in a red dress decorated with an abundance of frills and lace. Her previously haggard face had completely returned back to normal.
“So this is where you both were. I’m sorry, I ended up taking two wee—”
The resurrected Kaburagi-san took a look at the room and froze. I also froze.
Locked room with only the two of us. A loli baba with disheveled clothes and eyes puffy from crying. The sofas and table in unnatural positions after having been kicked around by Baba in her rampage. There was a lack of comprehension on Baba’s face, as she probably thought herself completely beyond that age, but I could feel my own face twitching uncontrollably.
The circumstantial evidence was...bad. This looked completely like the aftermath of a round of impure fraternization between two people of opposite genders (from different worlds to boot).
Kaburagi-san almost backed up a step, but she made a clear effort to stand her ground. “Lolic—no, I mean, surely there’s an explanation...?”
“Y-Yes! Yes there is! Listen to this!” Pheewww! I’m so glad that Kaburagi-san is a calm person. Oh god, so glad.
I quickly explained what had just happened. Then the three of us shared information with each other, after which Kaburagi-san closed her eyes and rubbed her glabella.