Love, Witches, & Other Delusions

by Natsume Akatsuki

  7

  I had no idea how long I had been sleeping when my eyes opened. It was still dark out.

  A deep stillness lay over the house; it must have been well into the wee hours.

  I need to go to the bathroom.

  I made to get out of bed…

  …and found my body wouldn’t move.

  What was going on here? Sleep paralysis…?

  I tried to speak, but only a grunt came out; I couldn’t even call Aqua for help.

  As I lay there, a terrible realization came over me. I really needed to go to the bathroom.

  No! You can hold it! You’re an adult!

  The only times you didn’t have to hold it as an adult were at some very specific business establishments or if you were a really old man!

  I gritted my teeth, trying to endure, unable to move—when I heard a sound from one corner of the room.

  Thunk.

  The noise seemed extremely loud in the silent house.

  My eyeballs, at least, could move; I looked in the direction of the noise. In the shadows in the corner of the room…

  …there was a small Western-style doll. Huh? When did that get there?

  “…!”

  I swallowed involuntarily. I was covered in an unpleasant sweat.

  What’s going on? Why is that doll there?

  I didn’t remember leaving anything like that lying around. Had Aqua put it there as a prank while I was asleep?

  Yeah. That had to be it.

  That useless goddess. She was gonna pay for this in the morning. Once I’d concluded this was Aqua’s doing, I proceeded to squeeze my eyes shut and attempt to escape reality.

  Thunk.

  The sound was impossible to ignore. Nonetheless, I kept my eyes shut even as my sweating intensified.

  Right. Right. It was silly to blame all this on Aqua. She always worked hard. Maybe I could try being nice to her every once in a while.

  Thunk.

  She was a goddess, after all, you know? And she was living in this house now.

  Evil spirits? Whatever! We could just set our dear Aqua on them and she’d blow them away like a gust of wind. Our Aqua could even send a Lich to the next life, couldn’t she?

  Thunk.

  Thunk.

  Thunk…!

  You know what? In the morning, I’m going to apologize to Aqua for everything I’ve done until now. I’ve hardly treated her as a goddess deserves. But I’ve seen the error of my ways! Really!

  Thunkthunkthunkthunk whumpwhumpwhumpwhump!

  Yaaaaaaahhhh I’m so sorry for everything I’ve dooone!

  I’m sorry, Lady Aqua, so please save meee!

  …Maybe someone heard my desperate prayers and repentance, because the noise from the corner of the room stopped.

  Phew. I knew there were no evil spirits.

  I relaxed a little.

  At the same time, a need welled up in me.

  I want to open my eyes.

  I had to know what had happened to that doll. It was a move my intuition opposed with all its might.

  What should I do? I really wanted to know, but I was afraid to look, but I was afraid not to look…!

  After arguing back and forth with myself for a minute, it occurred to me that with my eyes shut I would never be able to get to the bathroom.

  So I steeled myself and ever so slightly opened one eye…

  My eye met those of the doll, which was staring at me from inches away.

  “Gyaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!”

  I screamed so loudly I thought I would scream the life right out of me, and with my suddenly mobile body, I shoved the doll away.

  8

  “Aqua! Milaaadyyy!”

  I dashed down the hall to Aqua’s room, my feet bare.

  I could hear something following behind me.

  I was scared out of my wits! What was going on here? Why did this have to happen to me?

  Thunk! Whuuump, thunkthunkthunk!

  With that awful noise behind me, I found the door to Aqua’s room and burst in without so much as a knock.

  I slammed the door shut again and locked it. A second later, something thumped against the door.

  There was no sign of Aqua.

  Sitting in the middle of the dark room was a girl with black hair and two glowing red eyes.

  “Eyaaaaghhh!”

  “Yaaaaahhh!”

  At my scream, the black-haired girl let out a shriek of her own.

  I recognized that voice. On closer inspection, it was Megumin, sitting there in her pajamas.

  After a moment’s yelling, both of us were able to calm down a bit.

  Outside, something was scratching at the door. Terrified, I tried not to think about what it might be.

  “G-geez, don’t do that to me, Megumin, I almost wet myself!”

  “The same to you! Why did you come storming in here? I thought you were Aqua coming back…”

  Suddenly, I had a thought.

  “What are you doing in Aqua’s room, Megumin? And where is she?”

  “Oh, uh, there’s a—a doll,” she said. “It’s been moving around the house…”

  So Megumin had run into the same thing I had.

  “And so I thought…for my safety, maybe Aqua could t-take me to the…the toilet…”

  “You too, huh…?”

  Megumin caught my murmur and seemed to realize the same thing had happened to both of us.

  “Was a doll chasing you, too, Kazuma? I think that Aqua and Darkness are likely patrolling the house to drive out the evil spirits.”

  “Aqua, sure, but Darkness… Well, I guess she is a Crusader, at the end of the day.”

  Darkness was a Crusader, even if she didn’t always look it, and Crusaders were holy Knights, servants of the gods. As such, she was a pious follower of her religion. She was no Priest, but she had a measure of holy power.

  I doubted that our Defense-nut Darkness had taken any magic skills, but at the very least she could make a show of praying to the gods.

  That left Megumin and me in a tough spot, though.

  I’d fled my own room in such a rush that I’d left behind any weapons. Megumin didn’t seem to have her staff, either.

  Even if she had, she could hardly use Explosion here.

  Just as I was fretting about what to do, Megumin seemed to notice something. “Kazuma. The sound outside the door has stopped. Perhaps the doll is no longer there?”

  She was right; I couldn’t hear the noise anymore. But honestly, I was still scared to go out.

  I was pretty sure there was no way the Lich-banishing Aqua could be done in by some doll. Which meant that if we just sat tight, eventually she and Darkness would come back from their patrol and deal with it.

  There was just one teensy problem.

  “Hey, Megumin…face the door and cover your ears for a second. I’m gonna do something kind of inappropriate on the veranda…”

  I put one hand on my belt, eager to solve that problem as soon as possible, and made to head outside…

  …but Megumin grabbed me by the belt from behind and refused to let me leave.

  “Hey, what’re you doing? Let me go! Let me go, or my pants and this rug are in big trouble!”

  “I will not let you go. What are you thinking, trying to go off on your own? Are we not comrades? Be it the toilet or wherever, let us go together…”

  She had a strange smile on her face.

  “Nah, lemme go! The bonds of friendship totally don’t count when it comes to the bathroom! Didn’t you say members of the Crimson Magic Clan don’t use the bathroom, anyway? If you need it—there’s an empty wine bottle right there!”

  “What a thing to say! What are you suggesting I do with that wine bottle? I shall not let you go! At the least, I can guard your back while you are taking care of your bus…i…ness…”

  I felt Megumin press up against my back. That was odd. I looked at her.

  She was staring out the window to the veranda.
r />   …I looked with her, even as I got a very bad feeling…

  What I saw there was shocking, if not really unexpected.

  A whole crowd of dolls was pressed up against the veranda window, looking in at us.

  “Yaaaaaaahhhh!”

  The two of us screamed, and then—sticking together like good comrades should—we dashed out of the room.

  9

  “Oh… Kazuma, are you still there? Please don’t leave me…!”

  “I’m here, I’m here. I won’t leave you, not even if those creepy dolls show up. Just hurry.”

  Megumin and I had run around the mansion until we found the nearest bathroom.

  Both of our bodies were at their absolute limits.

  I’d done my business first, and now I was standing by the door waiting for Megumin to come out. She’d been babbling to me nonstop since she went in there, maybe afraid I would go off someplace.

  “…Um, Kazuma, I do find this somewhat embarrassing. Perhaps you could sing a song? …Loudly?”

  “Do you know how pathetic it is to stand outside a bathroom singing in the middle of the night? As if this is the last time we’ll be in this situation—think of all the wildernesses and dungeons we’ve got ahead of us!”

  Much as I teased Megumin, I was actually feeling a little awkward myself standing right there—so I started to sing.

  For better or for worse, I knew only Japanese songs, though, so I just sang whatever, loudly, completely a cappella.

  “…Phew. Um, you can stop now, Kazuma. What a strange song. I have never heard anything like it. I have been wondering for some time now—where is it you come from?”

  “A wonderful land called Japan, where our traditional activities include singing outside of bathrooms in the middle of the night. Come on, let’s go. We’ve got to link up with Aqua.”

  Megumin scampered after me and my ridiculous explanations.

  As it stood, Megumin and I had no defense against any evil spirits.

  I wanted to find Aqua and Darkness as soon as possible.

  That was when we heard it.

  Megumin and I were just about to leave the vanity room attached to the toilet when…

  Thunk… Thunk… Thunk…

  It was that awful sound again. I stooped down near the door to the hallway.

  Megumin clenched my sleeve and drew close to me, trembling.

  Those dolls were scary as heck.

  They probably couldn’t kill you—I figured—but being chased by them in the middle of the night was a whole new level of fear.

  Quivering, Megumin let go of my sleeve. She held both hands in front of her and began quietly…

  “Hey! What are you chanting? You’ll blow this whole house to Kingdom Come!”

  In an excess of terror, Megumin had been about to intone Explosion. I slapped one hand over her mouth to stop her, then held her back with the other to keep her from fighting me.

  At some point, the thunk-thunk noise near the door had stopped.

  Megumin, still shaking, grabbed my hand and looked up at me.

  Dammit, nothing to it but to do it…!

  “Megumin, when I open the door, you run! I’ll use my new Drain Touch to get any magic power I can from the dolls. They might attack me, but I don’t think it’ll be fatal!”

  Megumin, still gagged by my hand, nodded.

  “Heyyy! Come and get it, you evil suckerrrrs! Just wait’ll I sic my rabid goddess on youuu!”

  I flung open the door as I bellowed. There was a whack as it hit something. It was probably one of our pursuers being thrown back.

  I grabbed Megumin’s hand and dashed out the door, ready to run like hell………!

  “Aqua! H-hey, Aqua, are you all right?!”

  As I made to run, I discovered Aqua, crouching on the ground and clutching her face. Next to her, a doll, its power gone, had tumbled to the floor. And there was Darkness, calling out to Aqua. I stopped in my tracks.

  10

  “Phew! That ought to just about do it. There sure were enough of them. It’s already morning,” Aqua muttered. She looked out the brightening window as she sent the last of the evil spirits on its way.

  As expected from our undead expert, she’d cleared out all the spirits from this huge mansion in a single night.

  “Hmm, we should make a report to the Guild. We may not have taken a quest or anything, but this is the sort of thing they normally deal with. They might give us a reward anyway, for cleansing a haunted house. And I do want to know why the number of hauntings in this town went up so suddenly…”

  We all nodded at Darkness’s suggestion.

  I left her and Megumin to clean up the mess in the house, while Aqua and I went to inform the Guild.

  On our way there, the two of us talked about the house’s ghostly residents.

  “Hey, whatever happened to that story about the bastard daughter of some nobleman? Didn’t you say she meant us no harm and wasn’t an evil spirit?”

  Aqua clapped her hands.

  “Oh yeah! There was a little girl, wasn’t there? Don’t worry—the stuff we dealt with this time was all caused by feral ghosts who just wandered in. But I think it was the little girl who drank my special wine! Say, Kazuma, how about we count that wine as an expense for our ghost-busting trip…”

  I ignored Aqua’s babbling and put my hand on the door of the Guild…

  “Good morning! I know it’s a little early, but we’ve got something to report. Is that okay?”

  Even at this hour, a receptionist was already at the desk.

  “Yes, please, what is it?”

  We explained the request from the real estate agent and what had happened at the mansion. The receptionist looked at Aqua’s Adventurer’s Card and nodded.

  I’d almost forgotten that your Adventurer’s Card listed the type and number of monsters you’d killed.

  “It’s true there’s been an outbreak of evil spirits lately, and a number of people have raised concerns with us. Since you defeated some of the monsters in town, there is a reward, albeit not a very large one. Good work!”

  Aqua and I struck victory poses.

  But the receptionist wasn’t finished.

  “Incidentally, we’ve learned why the number of hauntings has increased so dramatically. You know the town’s common graveyard? It seems some prankster erected a huge holy barrier around it. So spirits spawned in the graveyard have nowhere to go, and instead they’re settling in vacant houses around town…”

  Aqua stopped cold and trembled a little at that.

  …

  “Excuse us for just a minute.”

  Taking leave of the receptionist, I silently dragged Aqua to a corner of the Guild Hall.

  “Do you know what’s going on? Spit it out.”

  “…All right. You remember how Wiz asked me to stop by the graveyard once in a while to help the spirits there reach the next life? But I totally didn’t want to have to go all the way out there every time, right? So I thought, maybe if I got rid of their habitat, eventually they’d just…go away.” She laid out the whole thing for me, unusually subdued.

  In other words, the spirits had shown up in town because she was too lazy to do her job.

  This goddess had caused this problem, and now we were giving her kudos for solving it? No way was that going to fly.

  “We’re not going to take the Guild’s reward, okay?”

  “…Yeah.”

  She nodded, looking apologetic.

  “And you’re coming with me to apologize to the real estate guy. We basically swindled him.”

  “…Right. I’m really, really sorry.”

  The two of us left the Guild Hall and headed for the realty shop…

  Wait, I thought. First we should let Darkness and Megumin know what was going on. But when we went back to report, the real estate agent was there, too.

  “Look at this! I was worried what might have happened, so I came to check on you. But it seems you’ve exorcized all
the evil spirits!”

  He greeted us with a wide smile. I felt even worse knowing he’d been worried about us.

  Aqua and I explained the situation and told the real estate agent we would let him have the now-ghost-free house back.

  But…

  “I see. Actually, though, I’d like to have you all continue to live in this house, if possible. It’s an especially large place, so it had an especially large number of spirits haunting it. And that gave it an especially bad reputation…”

  “We’re very sorry about that!” Aqua and I chorused, and got down on our knees in a show of contrition.

  “Not at all, not at all!” the man said hurriedly. “Please get up. Erm, listen, here’s what we’ll do. You all go on living in this house for the time being. You must be pretty powerful to have gotten rid of so many evil spirits. And it’s the duty of the citizens of this town to help take care of you adventurers. And then, if you live here long enough, the house might finally outlast its reputation for being haunted…”

  Hearing the man’s generous offer, Aqua and I threw ourselves on the ground again in gratitude.

  “Oh! Please, don’t do that! Get up—!”

  11

  There were two conditions for our living in the house.

  And they were a little strange…

  “When we get back from an adventure, over dinner or something, have a lively conversation about what happened… What a weird request. Not that I mind,” I muttered, bent over in the garden.

  The guy seemed to have a thing for unusual requests.

  The other condition was…

  “Hello, Mr. Kazuma! Looking after the headstone?”

  A voice came from behind me as I stooped there, weeding.

  I turned to see Wiz was standing there, her color considerably better than it had been the day before.

  “Feeling better now? I’m sorry about yesterday. Our resident idiot sure knows how to cause trouble.”

  “Oh no, not at all. In fact, I’m quite happy with how things turned out. This way, she won’t be lonely.” Wiz smiled at me, but I didn’t really get what she was talking about.