by Ko Hiratori
He stacked the money on the table. Of course, I wasn’t happy about being bought, more like, Uuuugh. I felt like I’d been ordered to stay after school—by that teacher I hated.
“Thank you...”
I trudged up to the second floor, holding my hands against my butt so my panties wouldn’t show—I didn’t want him to get mad again.
He glared at my ass the whole time, grumbling, “Don’t get any crazy ideas.”
＊
“...Don’t misunderstand. I just wanted to try something. I knew what would happen. It’s the same as before... It’s not your fault.”
I thought I was going to get a lecture, but instead he told me to strip, so I stripped. Oh, so we’re gonna do it after all, I thought, but then he just sat on the bed and hung his head in his hands.
“I bought Shequraso before, too. It was the same way then. I’m what you call impotent. Maybe I’m sick. But you better not tell anyone. If you tell anyone, I’ll sue you!”
“Uh, okay...”
I won’t spread it around, but probably I’ll tell Lupe and Shequraso over lunch. That’s about the only place I really could talk about it, anyhow.
Customers like this aren’t actually so uncommon. I mean, it’s a pub downstairs, so there are definitely guys who get wasted and buy a girl but can’t get it up.
We call those guys “take ’n runs”—because we have to give them their money back. We have no value if we don’t satisfy the customer. It’s a laugh, right? The misogy-fucking-ny of this shitty male-dominated society.
What a day. First a lecture, then he’s a take ’n run? I got caught by the worst customer in history. As I put on my clothes, I sighed in my head and asked, “Did you drink too much?”
“Does that have anything to do with it?”
“It seems to. Also, do you ever do it yourself?”
“Wh-Why should I have to tell you something like that? But of course not! Do I seem like that kind of man to you?”
“Err, sorry. I just heard that if you can jerk yourself off, then you’re not a limp-di— err, impotent.”
“Is that so?”
He looked a bit surprised.
He’s totally jerkin’ it.
“Are you, by any chance, a virgin?”
I seized an opening and threw a fastball. He didn’t know what to say for a moment and averted his eyes.
“N-No, why would I be? I even had a lover before. But, the thing is, I was busy with my research, so we broke up right away!”
Aha. Gotcha.
Some virgins are like this. Their pride is so high, they’re incapable of shaming themselves in the course of either seducing women or having sex, so when things don’t go their way, they panic.
They think too hard and then get limp when it’s go-time. Use your instincts, man—this is sex!
“So you’re a researcher, hmm? So that’s why you seem so smart. Well, take care on your way hoooome.”
And never come baaack.
I opened the door to my room and shooed him out with a wave.
“...Well, I have some degree of confidence in my area of study. I may not look it, but I have an associate doctorate of history. I teach at a school, too.”
Huh? Aren’t you leaving? All of a sudden he was chatting.
“My father and grandfather both had full doctorates. Of botany. So at first I thought to go that route, but I was also interested in magic and alphytemy. Then when I was thinking I’d like to gain a broader range of knowledge overall, one of my grandfather’s acquaintances, a doctor who is an authority in the field of history, reached out to me, so I joined his research office. Well, he’s a bit of a delinquent who’s not around much, but...”
I heaved a sigh.
“What we do is take a cross section of our colleagues in different disciplines and have them study the evolution of their fields. As you know, the verticals in the scholarly world are fairly well-established. Certainly, that makes it easy for incoming students to understand. But more than a few young scholars harbor a sense of crisis regarding the status quo. We need to preserve the structure of our learning, but if we don’t allow knowledge to flow, it will become rigid. The way things are now, people are just creating more and more meaningless walls. It’s because they’re all old people whose brains and bodies have gotten stiff. Ha-ha-ha.”
“Ah. Ha-haaaa.”
Maybe “you seem smart” was the trigger? I guess it’s like when adventurers boast about how far into the forest they’ve been or what kind of monsters they’ve hunted.
But it was even more boring, and the laughter timing was really a mystery. Well, what he was even saying was a mystery.
“I’m sick of politics in the scholarly world. All everyone thinks about is protecting their authority. We young researchers want to create a free discipline where—”
All it sounded like to me is that he and people around his age got together to make fun of the old men at their office. The young craftsmen who come to the shop are the same way. I wonder if he studies stuff like that. I mean, the history of the culture of salarymen must be super long.
I’m blessed to have such great older coworkers.
“Of course, studying history is fun, but I also teach. For example, how much do you know about the history of prostitutes?”
“Huh? They have history?”
“Don’t be stupid. Obviously everything has history. I guess I’ll have to teach you. Even prostitutes need the bare minimum of an education. All right, take your seat.”
“Umm, I don’t really...”
For some reason he was suddenly full of enthusiasm, and he started scratching away on my wall with a piece of chalk.
I’m not interested in the history of prostitutes, though. Actually, I have no interest in this world’s history at all. I hate studying, and this guy seems like a college-level expert, so give me a fucking breeeeak.
“Once upon a time, there was a country where the gods lived.”
“Is this kindergarten?!”
I slipped off from where I was sitting on the bed.
Even I had to do a double-take at how ridiculous that was. I can’t believe even Tokyo JKs take pratfalls, I thought.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“N-Nothing. I’m fine. Please continue!”
Well, this is that God’s world. Even the history is half-assed.
Great! I’ll be able to follow fine at this level.
“These first gods didn’t have life spans, didn’t require food, and possessed knowledge of everything. In other words, there was nothing they wanted. Without ever working, they stopped progress, and went to sleep. To the omnipotent, perfect gods, only silence existed in that world, right? But then one day a rock fell from the sky and made a little noise.”
The gods all realized something.
This sleep is death. We’ll die out in our sleep.
“Fearing silence, the gods changed their eternal lives into all the things around us to create a world in constant motion. The god with strong arms became fire. The god with icy eyes became water. They decided on fire, water, wind, and earth as the elements, gave the world fluidity, and created spirits to supply and transport the four elements in order to stabilize it. Well, every child knows up to that point.”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard it!”
“Huh? Your parents didn’t even teach you this much? You were born into an uneducated household.”
My parents gave me an edumucation that included proper science!
But this world is so far behind—I mean, and we’re out in the country where God shows up on earth whenever he feels like it—so I guess this is the level they would have to be at.
From what I heard, even in my world up until a while ago, no one believed that the Earth was revolving, and up until more recently, people thought the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter was three.
This felt less like a lecture and more like a fairy tale, so it was getting kind of inter
esting.
“Then the world began to move. But if you think the gods were satisfied with that, you’d be wrong. The gods, burning up with creative passions, decided to make living things besides themselves. They made birds in the skies, fish in the seas, and beasts on the land. The gods especially liked the beasts, so they made a big one and called him the beast king. The god with a beautiful voice became music, and the talkative god became writing; these gave the beasts education. That was when culture and individuality were born within them.”
Back then, beasts could talk and write.
The gods made plants for them to eat and the forest for them to live in.
“The number of gods was decreasing, but creating life was so fun they couldn’t stop. Seeing the surface so full of life and hope, the gods decided to make a creature in their own image. That was us humans.”
The first human was a boy. The gods were all men, so that was only natural.
The boy had been given intelligence, but he didn’t talk or make facial expressions, and he didn’t try to move around. At that rate, he would have been the same as the gods used to be, so they gave the boy’s mind curiosity, hunger, and other motivations.
Then the boy started to move on his own. But his expression still didn’t change.
They had him meet the beasts to see how he would react, but they couldn’t move the boy’s heart. The human declared the beast king a “boring animal.”
The gods fretted. They fretted for the first time ever. And the conclusion they came up with was their first and last mistake.
“The gods created a creature called a girl. They tried putting this creature that would pair with the creature based on them next to him. And when they did, the boy’s expression changed for the first time since he was born. He smiled at the girl and greeted her all on his own.”
Then the boy made so many different expression you could hardly recognize him.
He laughed, he sang, he wrote poems, he told jokes. He talked all day long, trying to get the girl’s attention. At first the girl didn’t have any expressions either, just like the boy, but little by little she started to show her emotions too.
The boy talked even more, and sometimes even cried about the girl.
The girl thought that was amusing, so she treated him like a toy, playing with him and manipulating him.
Finally, as the result of a game the girl came up with, the world’s first great anomaly occurred.
The girl got pregnant.
“The gods were angry with the girl for creating life without their permission, so they took her away from the boy forever. She bore a set of twins, male and female, on her own. Those children had children, and the people of the earth multiplied. Then the birds, fish, and beasts copied the humans’ method and multiplied as well. Every time the number of lives increased, the number of gods decreased. And the more that were born, the duller their minds grew, and they began to forget their intelligence. The beast king vanished, and the gods, realizing it was too late for the surface, fell into an eternal slumber inside the earth. The lonely boy inherited a fragment of the gods’ intelligence and talent and became a young man and later, a god in heaven.”
Oh, that idiot?
And hey, don’t totally abandon the girl you knocked up so easily! At least acknowledge what you did!
“Now then, after that came the era of humans, but having said this much, you understand, right? The one who seduced the boy who would be a god and brought ruin on the earth, humanity’s first woman, was a prostitute. After that, God’s grandchildren, the humans, were each given some of God’s power and intelligence at birth, and we were able to construct civilization fine. But only the women, shaped differently from the gods, have the ability to bear children. History shows that women are different creatures from men, born as prostitutes and—”
“Teacher, can I ask a question?”
“T-Teacher? Ahem. What is it?”
“What happened to the first girl?”
I thought it would be interesting, so I listened, but this guy wasn’t very good at storytelling. It didn’t really have an ending, and more than anything else, it was damn long, so I didn’t care anymore.
But there was one thing bugging me.
Did that girl even do anything wrong? Why was she made into the villain?
All she did was invent love.
“There are a few theories. One says that after bearing her children, she wandered the earth looking for the boy until she exhausted herself and was finally eaten by beasts. Another says she married the beast king, had children, and died. The ideas have beasts as a common element, but we have no record of the details.”
“What? That sucks. No hope, no dreams.”
Don’t stop at the good part, history!
“History is built up of facts. Hopes and dreams only exist in the world of stories. Well, but if you take that to mean there is no hope for women, you’d be wrong. God continues to think of the girl, so he allows some women, and only some women, to have the power of healing pain. Those are the Sisters—women’s redeemers. They’re also very important if you’re talking about magic from a historical point of view.”
Sisters. Kiyori is one of those.
So that’s why she’s always so servile. She’s saddled with that incomprehensible history of women...
Oh, right.
“Teacher, I don’t really get magic. How come people can use it?”
“I told you before, didn’t I? There are spirits in each of the four elements that keep the world stable. As long as their power reaches us, we’ll be able to use magic as a blessing. Of course, you know that to be able to, you need talent, training, and the guild’s permission, right? For example, the reason blacksmiths can use Hellfire is not only generations of talent, but because by belonging to the guild, they were able to get permission to use it only in their workshops. And canners use the wind spell Vacuum.”
Relamap from the Kickin’ the Can team was from a family of canners.
I can totally get how he would be a child of the wind.
“It’s no wonder women don’t have a detailed knowledge of magic. There aren’t that many places of work that require it, and on top of that, the only examples of women who can use it are the Sisters I just mentioned. In the average household, alphytemized plants are enough to get by on.”
“That reminds me, in this world—err, in this area, people rely on grass. Every time I hear some other issue has been solved with grass I feel like I must be high. Why is grass so powerful?”
This world has more types of vegetables than the other one, too. They’re cheap and packed with nutrients. At first I couldn’t get used to the food here, and my stomach got messed up, but even the medicine was more grass, so I started to feel like I was being fed on a cow’s diet.
Soap, detergent—pretty much anything you use in daily life is all-natural plants. I might be living a healthier life here than in the other world.
“I’m pretty sure I gave you a hint earlier. Weren’t you listening?”
“Sorryyy.”
“I told you the first gods went to sleep inside the earth, right? In other words, the nutrients in the soil are included in the four elements, so magic has powerful effects on plants. By adjusting the composition of the elements, you can get it to evolve in more peculiar ways. The first thing you do when you cook is use the shell of the corona nut, right? That will quietly burn all day long and give off a great amount of heat.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“And if you need even stronger flame, you put in a bundle of eneo stems—because those have lots of the fire element and oil. We know this from botany and alphytemy.”
“I need that to make fried rice.”
“Fried rice?”
“Ack, nothing. So? What else?”
“In this city near Demon Lord Forest, botany and alphytemy research flourishes—because that forest is a treasure trove of unique plant evolution to study. But if you think that means our resear
ch proceeds smoothly, you’d be wrong. It’s very difficult to get our hands on the precious plants. In particular, there’s one type of mycelium that only grows deep in the forest. The only team that has been able to gather it is Widgecraft’s.”
“Teacher, what’s the demon lord?”
“The demon lord? You’re interested in the demon lord?”
“I dunno if I’m ‘interested,’ but...”
“It’s actually a very good question! The demon lord is history’s greatest mystery!”
The teacher’s eyes sparkled with delight as he basically said, I have no idea either!
“Since God can’t stop the demon lord, he must be some kind of mutation that has existed since the divine era. It’s estimated that he has power equal to God, but no one has ever seen him...”
“Teacher, what about the hero? What does it mean when the hero from another world defeats the demon lord?”
“Mm, that’s a bad question. The story of the hero contains many mysteries, but it’s only word of mouth, so it can’t really be trusted. Besides, it’s a terrible story, so I can’t imagine it would be the word of God. We don’t know what the other world is, so this material is hardly worth verifying. I say ‘materials,’ but I mean ‘garbage.’”
But two high-schoolers actually came from another world!
Well, but neither of them are very heroic. I don’t feel like God is thinking very hard about how to handle the demon lord...
“The demon lord is the far more important being in the study of history. Once you start talking about him, you can go on forever. I’ve written a number of papers on him, myself, including one published with illustrations, Even I Who Have Insisted All This Time That The Demon Lord’s True Form Is A Beautiful Little Girl May Not Be Wrong—abbreviated MaoZon. It came in 14th in last year’s Annual Journal Betsu and the other day, the much-anticipated second volume—”
I got the feeling that in this world, history was the simplest genre.
It’s all vague, and anything actually important is a mystery, and there’s no rap or dance to help you remember it, and there aren’t any anecdotes you’d want to give a Like to.
Come to think of it, why is history always just the worst stories? Take the people who have to learn it into consideration!