Chapter 98: It Isn’t Much of a Misplaced Grudge
“…Is it over…?”
“Good morning, Gouto-kun.”
After finishing the various “procedures,” I finally awakened.
Though subjectively, I’d remained awake the entire time, so that description wasn’t entirely accurate.
My body sat on a sofa beside Kuwajima. Meiko, who noticed me awakening, stood before us.
Glancing around, I saw Kikkōryū Hōtoku somehow being made to prepare summer vegetables. Kikkōryū Junna looked thoroughly exhausted in the garden.
Taketsuru and Niwashita-san were nowhere to be seen.
“Where are those two?”
“Gouto-kun took longer to wake than expected, so they went on a walking date.”
“Heartless.”
Was that how you treated a best friend diving into a mental world, Taketsuru?
Still, considering Niwashita-san, I would overlook it this time.
“Meiko, how long was I asleep?”
“That’s an unusual question from punctual Gouto-kun. Just under two hours.”
“Damn it…”
I’d clung to the faint hope that time hadn’t passed inside the mental world, but that wasn’t the case.
Every moment I’d spent in Kuwajima’s mental world had passed without mercy in reality.
I… wasted two entire hours?
“Meiko.”
Without another word, I extended my right hand.
Meiko replied, “Here,” and handed me a paper fan with the speed of someone who understood everything.
It looked handmade, almost as if constructed from newspaper.
…No, it was ordinary newspaper. Had it originally been homemade paper for draining oil, made while preparing dinner?
Don’t suddenly advertise your poverty when I’ve nearly forgotten it, Meiko.
Never mind. As expected of Meiko. She understood what I wanted.
I accepted the fan and struck Kuwajima, who was still drooling happily beside me, over the head with all my strength.
“Owww!?”
“Good morning, Kuwajima. It’s a lovely evening.”
The paper fan made an excellent smack and awakened Kuwajima.
However, like an insufficiently wary house cat, she looked around and tilted her head.
“Huh? Why was I asleep?”
“More importantly, Kuwajima, do you know why I’m angry?”
“…?”
I swung the fan.
Another excellent smack rang from Kuwajima’s head.
“W-Why are you hitting me!?”
“Don’t you know? An ordinary university student you could find anywhere generally never strikes a woman outside battle. However, an exception permits him to strike a fool with a paper fan when delivering a retort. That’s the reason.”
“I didn’t ask why you’re allowed to hit a woman!”
“Let’s thank our predecessors. Without paper fans, I would’ve denounced you using every available nonviolent means.”
“Why!? I haven’t done anything!”
Kuwajima truly sounded as though she had no idea.
At that point, I realized the truth.
Apparently, Kuwajima remembered nothing that happened inside her mental world.
…Very well.
Events inside mental worlds had a reasonable probability of failing to carry into reality.
It was common for the person who was entered to forget while the visitor remembered.
But even if it was pointless, I had to tell Kuwajima.
No—if she’d forgotten, I had even more reason.
“Kuwajima, organize your belongings. How can both reality and your mental world be disorganized? I planned to be rejected within five minutes or finish my objective and return within ten. Why did I spend two hours searching for treasure? Worse, because you remained useless even inside your mental world, I couldn’t cut things short by getting ‘expelled.’ Don’t test me, Kuwajima.”
“Why do those words stab my heart so deeply when you’re angry about something I don’t remember at all?”
“Probably because I lectured you identically inside your mental world.”
“Then isn’t that enough!?”
It wasn’t enough because I still wasn’t satisfied. And you’d forgotten.
After the last scene, I’d dragged middle-school Kuwajima around, dug up every suspicious place, performed little skits before the residents of her mental world, tore suspicious objects apart, performed more skits, and pried suspicious places open.
Her remembered middle school had far too many suspicious locations.
Incomprehensible items littered the place, and whenever I asked Kuwajima, she answered things like, “Um, it’s one of those… cool things. It doesn’t particularly mean anything.”
And at those exact moments, the hallucination insisted on looking in the wrong direction.
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“An After-School Moment”
Mood: Slightly Poor
Comment: Let’s leave them alone for now.
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It kept spouting useless observations while time passed and nothing advanced.
For two hours. Two entire hours.
For two hours, I’d searched the school for treasure while dealing endlessly with fictional middle-school students—mostly second-years.
Toward the end, Kuwajima screamed, “Stop! Don’t violate my mind!” while I destroyed every suspicious object in sight.
The conclusion we finally reached—after Kuwajima declared something like, “The true answer was inside me all along”—was her own pocket.
A key chain depicting a dragon wrapped around a sword had been the sacred orb’s power vessel.
Don’t test me, Kuwajima.
That was why I’d said to let me search every inch of her body at the beginning.
She’d turned bright red and absolutely refused my body search, only to end with, “Oh, I had it after all.” Don’t test me, Kuwajima.
What had I done with those two hours?
We’d merely gone in pointless circles around the middle school together.
After releasing the dragon and confirming that Kuwajima’s hose ability had disappeared, I finally returned from the mental world.
It might’ve been faster to torture Kuwajima in reality and break her will. If there was ever a next time, I’d strip her without asking.
…Still, never mind.
Two hours was a major loss, but not an unrecoverable one.
“Whether that satisfies my anger is a separate question.”
“Why have I earned so much resentment!?”
“Tae-chan… I don’t understand anything, but it’s probably your own fault.”
“I only ate a watermelon! I only ate a watermelon! This misplaced grudge is ridiculous!”
Perhaps that was how it began.
But when the consequences were terrible, one earned resentment regardless, Kuwajima.
And mine wasn’t much of a misplaced grudge.
“Gweh…”
After hitting Kuwajima with the fan until I was satisfied—not hard enough to leave a lump—I finally addressed the main issue.
“Meiko, what happened to the sacred orb’s power? Did it return to the watermelon as planned?”
“About that…”
Meiko looked extremely uncomfortable at my question.
We’d expected the orb’s power, which apparently inhabited round objects, to return to the original watermelon.
From her reaction, had it gone somewhere else?
That could become troublesome again.
“The sacred orb’s power… might’ve been tired of the watermelon.”
“And?”
“It floated right into Kikkōryū Junna.”
“…”
It was shortly before five in the afternoon.
At last, the sunlight was beginning to fade.
What had become of Kikkōryū Junna, the kunoichi we’d been roasting since midday?
“Gweh…”
She was so dried out and close to rolling back her eyes that nobody could believe she’d acquired the Sea God’s water power.
…Did it truly enter this woman?
Certain that matters would become more complicated, I felt a slight headache.
Perhaps it would’ve been better if the power had remained inside useless Kuwajima.
No, from the perspective of fighting strength, leaving everything to Taketsuru alone would be difficult, so it couldn’t be helped. However, we’d now entered a persuasion phase with someone practically hostile to us.
It couldn’t be helped.
We would handle it somehow.
“If only my chest were a tiny bit rounder…”
Beside me, Meiko glared resentfully at the kunoichi’s chest. I didn’t know what to tell her.
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“Nekoyanagi Meiko”
Measurements: B72, W56, H81
Cup Size: AA Cup
Future Prospects: None in particular
Compatibility With the Sacred Orb: Insufficient data to establish a correlation with cup size
Kikkōryū Junna’s Measurements: B85, W59, H83
Comment: Would a tiny bit really change anything?
──────
Stop.
Didn’t I say I didn’t know what to tell her?
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Author’s Note:
Kuwajima doesn’t remember the mental-world segment, and from a speedrun perspective, its contents had no highlights, so it was skipped at double speed.
It would’ve only shown Kuwajima crying and screaming from partway through.