What was that supposed to mean?
“What should I do, Yuri?” she asked.
“Turn into a strawberry?”
“You…you are making fun of me, aren’t you?” Filia’s cheeks were puffed up, but she didn’t seem angry.
“Am not. There, there, cutie pie.” I stroked her head and tousled her hair.
“You absolutely are!” Filia glared, her long silver hair now thoroughly ruffled.
I took my hands off the grumpy-looking Filia and pulled open the curtains in the room. “Anyway, get a load of this: Even if you’re so full of energy this morning, Filia, it looks like we’re stuck with a rainy day.”
In fact, the rain was just starting. Soon it fell harder and harder, and in almost no time at all, it turned into a violent downpour. And to think that just a little while ago, rays of sunshine had been pouring in through the window.
“Um. To be clear,” said Filia apologetically, looking up at me, “this isn’t my fault, okay?”
“I know.”
We decided to have some breakfast and see if we could wait it out. But even after we’d finished eating, the rain didn’t let up. I put my hand up on the window and looked outside.
“This really is dreadful weather, isn’t it?” Filia lamented. “There I was, so excited about those strawberries, and now it’s raining so hard that I don’t even see the point of going outside. How depressing…”
“But when the weather’s bad, that’s exactly when you should be going outside to train, you know?” You can’t always fight under ideal conditions, after all. Whether or not you’ve put in the daily training to handle that kind of stuff? That truth always comes out in actual combat.
“Sorry, but I just can’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Yuri, the truth is…I dissolve in water.”
“What, are you made of paper or something?!” I snorted. She was lying so audaciously, but with such a meek expression on her face.
“Maybe I am, what of it? I want to rest. Let’s just rest, okay? Please just let me rest.”
“Okay, so now you’re asking that I treat you like you’re made of paper? Well, all right, if that’s what you say, Filia. I guess we’ll take today off. I suppose it’s also important to explore your relationship with your partner in order to strengthen your bond.”
By increasing the amount of trust you had in one another, you could fight even stronger opponents, which meant that I could become stronger too. That’d be a plus for me. Besides, if I pushed her too hard, then Filia might catch a cold like she had once before. It would have been wrong to put too much pressure on her.
It was always difficult for me to tell what Filia really wanted, but she rarely ever outright said if she wanted to take a break. As her partner, the responsible thing to do was to at least listen to her requests once in a while.
At that, Filia hopped up and down happily. “I knew it, Yuri, you do understand what I’m saying! Muscles are simply the coolest!”
“Oh, yeah, speaking of which, how about it? Wanna touch ’em?”
“Deepest apologies, Yuri, but it appears that I said that muscles were ‘cool.’ It was a bit of an overstatement, I’m afraid. From the bottom of my heart, I’m truly sorry for making a statement that is so thoroughly incompatible with reality.”
“No way, my muscles are unmistakably cool. Check it out!”
I released all of my muscles and showed them off to Filia. There was no such thing as a person who was completely ripped from birth—no, these bulging muscles were a symbol of my training. If you listened very carefully, you could even hear my muscles speaking to me. Give it a listen: Thank you for training us, Yuri!
Were there any words more beautiful? Of course not! Which was why I said back, “No, no, I should be the one thanking you. Thank you, muscles.”
Ahh! And would you look at that? Now those muscles were smiling…somehow. I had no idea where their mouth was, though.
I gently stroked my biceps, which had grown to be even thicker than a log, treating them with tender, loving care—
“Yuri. Yuuuuuuuri?” The voice was as clear and sharp as a bell. Oh, right…Filia.
“Oh, hey. When did you get here?”
“I’ve been here the whole time. Exactly how much daydreaming are you planning to do?”
I’d gotten sucked into my own little world before I even knew it. Hadn’t I originally released my muscles to show them off to Filia? But there I was, mesmerized by my own muscles in the blink of an eye. For crying out loud, how thoughtless was I?
“Well, whatever,” said Filia. “You know what, Yuri? Let’s play a game! A game!”
“A game?”
“Don’t you know any? Gimme something new, something original! I want to play something!” Filia grabbed onto my arm and gently rocked it back and forth.
I felt a little bad about how I’d just slipped into a daydream right in front of her, so I decided to go along with her. But still, a game, huh? I’d lived alone in the woods for ages, so I didn’t know too many games for more than one person.
I nodded to myself. “Hm, okay. Yeah, there is one game that I’ve been thinking about.”
There was this game I’d come up with when I was a kid, but it was a competitive one. Needless to say, I’d never had a chance to play it back then, but now Filia was here!
“The fact that you came up with it,” said Filia, “is terribly worrisome, but I suppose I can at least listen to your explanation.”
Jeez, did Filia have to have so little confidence in me? Well, no matter. If I told her what the game was about, her confidence levels would rise for sure!
I gave her a broad grin and a thumbs-up. “Okay, the game I came up with is called ‘Power of the Fist.’”
“Denied.”
“Hey!” I hadn’t even said what it was about yet!
“The name speaks for itself; it sounds like a hobby for cavemen! I suppose it’s the kind of game where people just punch each other and the one who knocks the other down wins. Am I wrong?” Filia asked.
“Look, it’s way more complex than that. Just hear me out!”
“Okay, I’ll listen, but…” Reluctantly, Filia went silent.
For crying out loud, I was an intellectual muscle man! No way a game by me could be so simple. “Okay, listen up: first, we gotta get the cards.”
“Ah, so it’s a card game? That’s…a relief.”
What was that supposed to mean? She could be so vague sometimes. “Anyway, you shuffle a bunch of cards and place them between the two players. Then each player takes turns drawing five cards.”
“Mm-hm.”
“Next step, you check those numbers on your cards. You keep the card with the lowest in your hand and return all of the other cards to the deck.”
Filia raised her small hand. “What if you have multiple cards with the same lowest value? A two of spades and a two of hearts, for instance.”
Hmm. A good question. More importantly, it was encouraging that she was taking this seriously and listening along, even if she had questions. “In that case, you can just keep whichever card you like more. Now, finally, we get to the next phase—and this is what the ‘Power of the Fist’ is really about!”
“So, at last, the game’s about to begin,” said Filia, her silver hair hanging over her ears. “What then?”
“Then you each throw all your cards away and start punchin’!” I exclaimed. “The one who knocks the other down wins!”
Filia’s eyes widened. “What?! That’s insane!”
“Huh? How so?”
“The punching, Yuri? That last part is unhinged! I mean, even if you reversed the order of the phases, don’t you think it’s weird? The previous steps in the game become completely meaningless!”
I sighed. Filia was gonna be Filia about it, huh? I had no choice: I’d just tell her as gently as possible, like I was explaining to a whiny kid throwing a tantrum. “All right, Filia, but think about it this way, you know? Meaning, absurdity…what’s the purpose of anything, you know? Like, why are we even born into this world?”
“You’re arguing for argument’s sake, and I am not interested in the least!”
“For me, there is a reason for my existence. I was born into this world to become stronger, to train. So that’s why, in Power of the Fist—”
“I’m not doing it. In the end, it’s just people beating each other up!”
“Filia, listen: That is…the Power of the Fist.”
“Power of the Fist, my foot! I will never, ever play a game of that sort!”
Dang. She was pretty firm about it. “Come on, no need to be a stick in the mud.”
“Okay, I am not a stick in the mud. The stick has left this dimension. I am the stick, your game is the mud, and I am soaring as far away from the mud as possible because I suspect that getting punched by you would make me explode. You would explode me, Yuri, and I am much too beautiful and pretty to die yet, thank you very much.”
In the end, my attempts at persuasion were in vain, and Filia didn’t play Power of the Fist with me. Unfortunate.