Chapter 91: Equipping It Inflicts the Curse of Chuunibyou
“Mmph! Mmmph!”
“Mmmmph! Mmmmph!”
When Taketsuru and I hurried back to the villa, two people were hanging from the clothesline pole.
One was its original resident, Kikkōryū Junna, who was shedding streams of tears and losing moisture because she couldn’t close her eyelids.
The other, hanging beside her with her limbs bound in black bandages while ordinary tears streamed down her face, was Kuwajima Taeko.
Because you liked black clothing and black accents despite it being summer, you might actually be suffering more than the kunoichi.
When the roasted chuunibyou known as Kuwajima noticed Taketsuru and me, she rocked her body while appealing to us with muffled noises.
A healthy young man might have focused on the breasts swaying along with her, but I truly wasn’t in the mood. I was tired—of Kuwajima.
For an ordinary university student you could find anywhere, the odds of reacting here would be about half and half… No, probably tilted slightly toward not reacting.
“Can the clothesline pole support this much weight? I think each pole is rated for around fifty kilograms.”
“That’s your first concern?”
Taketsuru retorted to my quiet murmur.
There were many other things one might say in this situation, but…
“Taketsuru. Even I have moments when I want to look away from reality.”
“So you were human after all.”
What a thing to say about an ordinary university student you could find anywhere.
Thus, Taketsuru and I naturally ignored Kuwajima.
“!? Mmph! Mmmmph!”
Kuwajima continued trying to attract our attention, but I already knew some of the circumstances.
If I’d seen this scene without any prior information, I might have rescued her, but for now, I couldn’t release her.
I left Kuwajima where she was and entered the villa.
“What did I possibly do to deserve this…?”
“I’m terribly sorry. First my daughter, and now…”
In the living room, Meiko was clutching her head and wondering how things had come to this. Kikkōryū Hōtoku was comforting her sympathetically, despite the emergency of his daughter hanging from a clothesline pole.
For some reason, he was diligently wiping the soaked floor with a rag.
On a nearby sofa, Niwashita-san slept peacefully beside several pieces of ice that gently emitted cool air.
What exactly was happening here?
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“Me @ Apparently an Appraisal Skill★”
Comment: “Um, do you need an explanation?”
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Not from you.
“In Tae-chan’s defense, she didn’t disobey your instructions.”
When she noticed we’d returned, Meiko’s face lit up as if she’d seen salvation in hell. Then she cleared her throat and began explaining.
In this case, “the instructions” presumably meant my order not to eat the first watermelon we’d harvested.
“Could you explain what happened again, just to be safe?”
“Sure.”
And so Taketsuru and I heard from Meiko what had happened at the villa while we were away.
Though Taketsuru was watching the sleeping Niwashita-san with a warm smile from the sofa, so he might not have been listening.
It began with an innocent remark from Kuwajima.
“How long does it take for a watermelon to get cold?”
Kuwajima had been craving watermelon ever since we arrived at the villa and had remained preoccupied with the one we’d placed in the refrigerator immediately after arriving.
However, the first watermelon we harvested had been declared off-limits. At my direction, we’d begun cooling another watermelon around noon.
Apparently, the delay concerned her.
A brief internet search showed that a large watermelon needed roughly six to eight hours to become thoroughly chilled in a refrigerator.
Our homegrown watermelon seemed a little too small to call large, but it wasn’t small either.
After seeing that, Kuwajima realized something.
“Considering the time now, doesn’t that mean the new watermelon won’t be cold by supper?”
It was shortly before two in the afternoon. We’d planned dinner for somewhere between six and seven, leaving four or five hours. Slightly too little.
For that matter, the six-to-eight-hour figure probably didn’t assume a watermelon harvested directly from beneath the blazing sun.
For Kuwajima, the possibility that she couldn’t enjoy the watermelon she’d been anticipating today was a crisis.
There were numerous things she should’ve worried about more—the ninja attack and Taketsuru’s auditory hallucination, for example—but to Kuwajima, this was a major emergency.
Then inspiration struck her.
She understood that a large watermelon took time to chill.
So why not cut it in advance to help it cool faster?
Even Kuwajima didn’t touch the watermelon I’d forbidden her from handling.
After checking with Meiko, she took out the new watermelon we’d only just harvested and cut it with a knife.
She first cut it in half, then split each half again.
She sliced the quartered watermelon into pieces shaped like watermelon ice bars, wrapped them, and returned them to the refrigerator.
This way, the watermelon would be cold within an hour. By her calculations, it would be ready for a snack around three.
For Kuwajima, it was a clever course of action.
But then Meiko looked away.
And Kuwajima took further action.
Even knowing it wasn’t cold, wouldn’t it be wasteful not to taste the watermelon she’d gone to the trouble of cutting?
For that matter, wouldn’t it still be delicious even if it was somewhat warm?
Apparently overcome by that impulse, Kuwajima stole one piece of the sliced watermelon and ate it.
“And then she turned into that.”
“What in the world is wrong with you, Kuwajima?”
By the time Meiko noticed, Kuwajima had transformed into Lady Goetheschwarz Sanzen Sanbyaku Sanjuuin.
At that point, Meiko contacted me, received my instructions, and attempted to secure Kuwajima.
Kuwajima’s excitement had been strange despite her not wearing the bandages, but something even stranger happened.
Like a ninja using Water Release, she began manipulating water and ice.
The ice emitting cool air beside Niwashita-san was one manifestation of that power.
Looking closely, it wasn’t melting at all.
Still, Kuwajima was Kuwajima.
This was the same Kuwajima who’d been caught as though it were inevitable during the Fushijishi Village game of tag.
It was easy to imagine that, against a serious Meiko, she lasted less than a second before being captured.
However, tying Kuwajima’s hands and feet with ordinary rope had apparently failed to stop her Water Release. The flooded room was the result of her resistance.
Surprisingly, what proved useful was the black bandage that had symbolized Kuwajima’s Curse of Chuunibyou.
Once bound with it, Kuwajima could no longer use Water Release, leading to the roasted chuunibyou now hanging in the garden.
“There are truly many things I want to question, but I understand most of it.”
“You figured it out from that situation alone?”
“When I consider everything the textbooks—light novels—have taught me, the answer becomes clear.”
First, why had the watermelon other than the spirit-power watermelon done this to Kuwajima?
The answer was probably that the Sea God’s sacred orb’s power moved inside the refrigerator to some extent.
Judging from the legends, this power could originally inhabit grapes.
If an object was vaguely round, the power could probably move into it easily.
Whatever the sacred orb itself might be, its power was highly likely conceptual rather than physical.
“The watermelon originally harboring the orb’s power had been cooling in the refrigerator. It was probably cold. Then a fresh, warm watermelon was placed beside it, so the orb’s power may have moved in search of somewhere warmer.”
“Is it really okay for such a special power to behave like a migratory bird? And isn’t the bottom of the sea colder than the refrigerator?”
“It happened, so it can’t be helped.”
Rather, if we didn’t interpret it that way, the pieces wouldn’t fit.
I wasn’t a detective, so it didn’t matter if my deductions were wrong. I merely needed to satisfy myself.
For that matter, I had no idea how much power remained in the original watermelon or how much had transferred into Kuwajima.
Our only result was that Kuwajima had become strange.
“As for why the black bandage could seal Kuwajima, I can imagine the answer to that too.”
“Could the bandage have become a real magical item and acquired sealing power?”
“…No.”
For some reason, Meiko’s eyes sparkled slightly at that suggestion, but my intuition told me otherwise.
That black bandage was an item exclusive to Kuwajima that transformed her into the embodiment of chuunibyou.
It carried a curse, and what dwelled within it was nothing more than chuunibyou Kuwajima’s grudge.
In other words…
“My guess is that, regardless of what abilities Kuwajima possesses, putting on that bandage turns her into ‘Kuwajima, who has no powers and only spouts chuunibyou delusions.’ It isn’t so much sealing as overwriting one curse with another.”
The bandage possessed no lofty power like sealing.
Equipping it was probably a cursed tool that forcibly overwrote any version of Kuwajima with “chuunibyou Kuwajima.”
If I remembered correctly, the hallucination’s description had merely said that equipping it inflicted the Curse of Chuunibyou.
Yes, no matter how magnificent the ability, if middle-school Kuwajima was the one boasting about it, it would be reduced to a mere delusion.
“…Why is this world so cruel specifically to chuunibyou?”
“I’m not familiar with the Kumamoto dialect, so I couldn’t say.”
Well, it worked perfectly on this occasion, so we could consider it a good thing.
Wasn’t that wonderful, Kuwajima?
You could even play out the part where removing the bandage restored your power.
Though depending on circumstances, we might immediately tear that power out of you.
It didn’t seem like you could fight a monster, after all.
When I looked toward the garden with those thoughts, Kuwajima groaned muffledly.
…Now that I thought about it, Meiko, once you’d bound Kuwajima with the bandage, you didn’t actually need to hang her up too, did you?
“…Oh well.”
Now the options we had to choose from had increased.
What should we deal with first? I spent some time considering the question.
“No, start by releasing her…”
In place of the hallucination, which had grown slightly quieter, the auditory hallucination said that.