by Ao Jyumonji
She understood. Thank goodness. Haruhiro closed his eyes and let out a sigh. That’s a load off my shoulders.
You know, my body’s not that big, and my belly isn’t either, so there’s a limit to how much I can carry. I can only carry so many responsibilities. I lead the party, and I do my job as a thief. That’s the limit for me. I don’t have the time to think or do anything about other stuff.
That’s right. Like romance. I don’t have time for it. The same goes for Merry. If I’d had the room to do so, I’d have said something. Yeah. Maybe not. No way. It wouldn’t have happened. Never. I couldn’t have done it.
It’s something to be grateful for, he realized. Despite his inadequacies, Mimorin had fallen in love with him. This kind of good fortune probably didn’t come along often. It might never come again. This could be the last time. Rejecting it might be a terrible waste.
But what else could he do? It was true he didn’t feel that way for her now. He really couldn’t lie about that. He didn’t want to deceive himself, or to deceive Mimorin. He couldn’t.
“Well, there you have it,” he said.
“But I love you.”
“...Come again?” he asked.
When he opened his eyes, Mimorin was staring at Haruhiro. Without a speck of doubt in them, her eyes were serious and filled with sincerity.
“Right now, I love you. I love Haruhiro. Is that wrong?”
“Whew...” Anna-san whistled, shrugging to the point that her shoulders touched her head. “Mimorin sure is stubborn. Like a rock, yeah? No, like steel, maybe?”
Haruhiro looked down at the ground and scratched the back of his head. No... Is it wrong? I’m not the one to ask. It’s not a matter of it being wrong or not. I have no right to tell her not to. That’s Mimorin’s choice. I have to respect that.
In the end, saying, Thank you for understanding. Well, let’s be friends, then would be just a convenient way of handling it for Haruhiro. Whether Mimorin accepted it or not was up to her.
In the same way, whether Haruhiro accepted Mimorin’s feelings or not was up to him, but Haruhiro couldn’t change Mimorin’s feelings. Mimorin’s feelings belonged to Mimorin alone.
“It’s not wrong,” he said.
4. Paths Diverging Beneath a Different Sky
When everyone met back up, they went shopping. Kuzaku bought a new shield and helmet to replace the ones that had taken a considerable beating. Merry bought a staff with more attack power. As for Ranta’s Betrayer Mk. II—a name that, of course, stupid Ranta had given his new sword—he haggled the price down as low as it would go. For the rest of the group, they just bought their daily necessities.
It was way more fun than they had been expecting. They could get their hands on a lot of stuff at the Lonesome Field Outpost, and they hadn’t been left wanting for much, but Alterna had the better selection of goods. It was no contest. Just looking around at all of the stuff got them excited.
Even for Haruhiro, who was always being criticized for being boring, a downer, a wet blanket, and miserly... the experience of browsing the stock here was overwhelming, and there were times he felt like he might end up buying all sorts of things he didn’t really need, but he desperately restrained himself.
When they left Alterna, they missed it a little.
They traveled west across the Quickwind Plains. Along the way, they camped out once, traveling roughly 35 kilometers on foot to reach the Lonesome Field Outpost at around two o’clock in the afternoon. If they entered the Dusk Realm and reached the settlement today, they would be able to start work as soon as tomorrow morning. Haruhiro’s party and the Tokkis had intended to do exactly that, but...
In the Lonesome Field Outpost, they ran into Shinohara.
“Hey, Haruhiro,” the man said. “Tokimune, too.”
Shinohara hadn’t changed a bit since the first time Haruhiro had met him. He had a gentle-looking face, an easygoing demeanor, and he wore a white cape. The cape had a crest with seven stars in an x-shape. The mark of Clan Orion.
Haruhiro had noticed other men and women wearing Orion’s white capes scattered around the Lonesome Field Outpost. Shinohara wasn’t alone; he had the short-haired, narrow-eyed warrior Hayashi with him, as well as a bespectacled man with a crew cut.
Hayashi nodded to Merry, who returned the gesture with a slight nod and a smile. Hayashi looked surprised.
“...Wait, huh?” Haruhiro was startled, but pleased to see Merry able to greet her old comrade with a smile. He suppressed the cynical thought, Yeah, and I’ll bet that’s thanks to him, too, huh, rubbing his cheek with his fingertip. “Shinohara, are you guys pulling out of the Dusk Realm?”
“The truth is, we’re not sure,” the man said.
“Huh?! Huh?! Huhhhh?!” Kikkawa’s eyes went wide. He jumped into the air and waved his arms around. “What, what? Did something happen? Was there a pening-hap?!”
“What’s a pening-hap?” the guy with the crew cut and glasses asked.
“Wow, you’re gonna call me on that?! Really?! Like, totally?!” Kikkawa yelled.
“Kikkawa, you annoying, yeah!” Anna-san slapped Kikkawa upside the head.
“Erm, well...” Haruhiro thought it was a pain, but that he ought to explain, at least. “A pening-hap is a happening... It’s like he’s scrambled the word, I guess...”
“Ohh.” The crew cut guy suddenly started chuckling. “I get it, I get it.”
He thinks it’s... funny? It’s really not.
“And?” Tokimune asked, flashing his white teeth. “Did something happen, Sheeno?”
“‘Sheeno’?” Shihoru repeated under her breath dubiously.
“Because he’s Shinohara!” Ranta (the piece of crap) shouted. “That’s why he’s Sheeno, huh!”
“Give him a -san, at least. He needs a -san,” Haruhiro told them off, appalled.
Ranta (the piece of trash), who kissed up to the powerful and crushed the weak, quickly got down and did a kowtow. “I’m sorry! I got carried away! No, y’know, it was just the way we talk, or the spur of the moment, you could say! Like the way you talk about famous people without honorifics!”
“I’m not bothered by it.” It was the mature response you would have expected from Shinohara.
“Heh...” Inui’s one eye shone ominously—well, not that he actually had just one eye, he was just hiding the other one with his eyepatch. “He’s just Shinohara, but he gets to be called Sheeno, huh...”
Whoa, Inui, you’re being even ruder than Ranta, you know? Haruhiro thought.
“I’ve never heard it before,” Mimorin said, blinking.
Huh? She’s never heard that nickname before?
“I just came up with it now,” Tokimune said with a wink and a thumbs-up. “It’s the perfect nickname for him, am I right?”
“There’s no denying it, yeah?!” Anna-san gave him a beaming smile and returned his thumbs-up.
“It’s cuter than Shinoharadon and Shinoharacchom, at least,” Yume added nonsensically, crossing her arms and nodding to herself.
“What?” Tada frowned. “Are you all stupid? Every last one of you? Shinoharaiden is better.”
Kuzaku and Merry looked to one another with awkward smiles, then quickly looked away.
What, what, what? Why’re you looking away? Go ahead, I don’t mind. Why not just go off in your own little world together? You’re not gonna? Hmm. Oh, I see. Not like I care.
“I’m fine with anything, really,” Shinohara said. Even after all this nonsense, he was an adult, and he was laughing along happily with a smile that wasn’t forced. “Now, as for the answer to your question... Yes, something happened. To cut to the chase, the Dusk Realm is becoming less appealing.”
“Allow me to provide the rest of the explanation,” the man with the crew cut and glasses butted in.
Wait, who is this guy? I’ve seen him before—I have, right? I don’t know his name, though.
While Haruhiro was tilting his head and looking at the guy questioningly, t
he guy with the crew cut turned in Haruhiro’s direction and grinned. “My apologies for the late introduction. I am Kimura of Orion.”
“...Oh.” Haruhiro reflexively bowed. “Thank you. That’s very kind of you.”
“I know who you are,” said Kimura. “You are Mr. Haruhiro. The one there is Mr. Ranta. Ms. Yume. Ms. Merry. Ms. Shihoru. Mr. Kuzaku. Mr. Tokimune and Mr. Tada, Mr. Inui, Anna-san, Ms. Mimori, and Mr. Kikkawa. Am I correct?”
He sure likes addressing people with Ms. And Mr., but he still addressed Anna-san with a -san, like he ought to. This Kimura guy is no ordinary customer, I guess, Haruhiro thought.
“Kimura-san and Shinohara-san are bosom buddies,” Hayashi explained.
“Possum buddies?” Yume asked.
Yume, that’s wrong.
“Moron, it’s boobie buddies, obviously!” yelled a piece of trash.
Ranta, that’s wrong, too.
“Chest friends, huh... Heh...” Inui was wrong, too.
“They’re syrupy friends, yeah?!” Anna-san’s was way out there.
“Whoa?! Like, they get into all sort of juicy and sticky situations together?!” Kikkawa shrieked.
What was Kikkawa getting so excited for?
“Gyudon is juicy,” Mimorin nodded.
There is one of those, though. A gyudon place. In Alterna. But there’s no beef in it, for some reason.
“Bosom buddies...” Merry seemed to be thinking about it deeply. “What’s that mean?”
“Oh, um...” Kuzaku didn’t seem to know either.
Bosom buddies, huh. Yeah, that’s a bit tough to define. You don’t really use the term often. I’m not surprised they wouldn’t know it.
Incidentally, Haruhiro had heard it before, and he could sort of guess at the meaning. Probably, it meant they were close, or something like that, right? Close confidants, that sort of thing? Shinohara and Kimura were? They made a bit of an odd couple.
“Heh heh heh.” Kimura let out a mysterious laugh that caused his shoulder to shake. “Me, Shinohara’s bosom buddy? You exaggerate. We’re simply friends. Of course there’s none of that BL stuff going on between us. Isn’t that right, Shinohara?”
“Yeah.” Shinohara’s response was still completely friendly. “If there were BL-stuff going on between Kimura and me, that’d just be gross.”
“Uwah ha ha ha!” Kimura laughed so hard, he had to grasp his belly.
“BL is short for ‘boys’ love,’” Hayashi was quick to explain.
“I know that much already, dummy!” Anna-san shouted at him.
What a chaotic mess, Haruhiro thought to himself. This conversation is going nowhere...
No, it would be more correct to say it had been going nowhere. After a good long laugh, Kimura efficiently and logically explained what had happened.
It was thought to have started five days ago when Iron Knuckle had attacked another cultist base and massacred the cultists there.
The assault itself had been a success, but two days later, which was to say three days ago, there had been a change in the Dusk Realm.
Incredibly, a giant god, a humanoid creature so massive it seemed to touch the heavens, had come and begun to chase after humans wherever it found them.
There had been sighting of the giant god off in the distance before. Haruhiro and the others had seen it a number of times themselves. However, the giant god had never approached them, and it had seemed to be a fair distance away from the initial hill.
They had heard that far to the southwest of the initial hill there was a basin, the Great Cauldron of the Gods, and the giant god wandered around in that area. They had also heard that the ones who’d discovered the Great Cauldron of the Gods and given it its name were Lala and Nono.
The giant god was so huge that it felt like it couldn’t be real, and it was clear that messing with it would be dangerous. That was why, naturally, no one had been dumb enough to try, and even if it saw people, nothing really came of it. It was seen as essentially harmless.
However, that had suddenly changed—apparently.
It was “apparently” because no one had actually fought the giant god yet. That was why they couldn’t decide if it seriously wanted a fight or not.
It was hard to imagine anyone was reckless enough, or rather, stupid enough to challenge a creature that huge to a fight. The moment they realized, Oh, crap, it’s here, anyone would run away. Once they got a certain distance away, it wouldn’t pursue, but what the exact distance was wasn’t clear. If they had to be on guard against it at all times, that made hunting for cultists and giants all the more exhausting.
Oh, this is getting bad, they had decided, so Orion had temporarily withdrawn from the Dusk Realm.
The situation might change, so it wasn’t permanent. They’d decided to leave just one party behind while Shinohara and the others went and made money elsewhere for the time being.
“Iron Knuckle, again?!” Ranta shouted loudly. “Those assholes! Don’t they think about how their actions affect everyone else?! It’s a pain in the ass, that’s what it is, dammit!”
“You’re one to talk,” Haruhiro muttered.
“Huhhh?! What’d you say about me, Parupiroooo?!”
“Ah...” Shihoru pointed off into the distance. “Someone from Iron Knuckle...”
“I’m sowwy!” Ranta immediately jumped into the air and did a kowtow. “I didn’t mean it just now. Seriously, seriously, it wasn’t me, our Haruhiro was saying it before, so...!”
“There he goes, subtly shoving the blame off on me... subtly, though,” Haruhiro muttered.
“Whaaaa?!” Ranta screamed. “They’re not there?! No Iron Knuckles! Shihoru, you tricked me! You secret, saggy titty bomber!”
“Don’t call me weird names!”
“Shut up, saggy tits! For your crime, I sentence you to publicly change your clothes!”
“Heh...” Inui wore a smile of irredeemable evil on his old man face. “I, too, would like to burn that scene into my memory... However, I alone should be the one to see it!”
“Nobody’s going to be seeing anything.” Shihoru wrapped her arms around her body defensively, glaring at Inui like she would something filthy.
“You sure are a lively bunch.” Shinohara was all smiles.
“They’re just annoying.” Tada adjusted the position of his glasses with his index finger. “What a bunch of dung beetles.”
The dung beetle insult was a bit much, but Haruhiro couldn’t have agreed more.
“The giant god, huh...” Tokimune looked to Haruhiro. “What do you want to do?”
Was there anything they even could do?
Considering the nature of the volunteer soldier trade, there was no way they could get by without taking any risks. That said, for Haruhiro’s part, he wanted to avoid every avoidable risk as much as he possibly could. They were, technically, the discoverers of the Dusk Realm, so it was disappointing to have to do so, but it might be best to consider other options.
That was his opinion, and he said as much.
Now, as for the response he got, here’s how things turned out.
“Whewwwww!” Up on top of that initial hill, Ranta let out a strange cry, his eyes wide.
It was the time of day when normally the sun would be setting, but here in the Dusk Realm, there was no morning and no night. It was always the same, the many-colored sky that spread out as far as the eye could say.
Beneath that indescribable, otherworldly dusk sky, a supermassive, lanky giant god was taking a leisurely stroll.
“How far away do you figure that thing is?” Kuzaku asked with a sigh. “It’s hard to get a sense for distance.”
“Hrmm.” Anna-san was riding on Tokimune’s shoulders. “I say eighty kilometers? Around that?”
“Can’t be that far,” Haruhiro couldn’t help but point out.
“Five kilometers... maybe, y’think?” Yume squinted at the giant god. “Ten kilometers, maybe? Twenty, maybe? Yume’s havin’ a hard time figurin’ it
out, too. Whoooo. It’s small, but it’s real big, huh!”
“That’s contradictory, but it sure does feel that way,” Shihoru said with a nod, standing next to Yume.
Yeah, seriously.
Taking Yume’s theory and assuming that it was a maximum of twenty kilometers away, that was pretty far off. If it was twenty kilometers off in that direction, even an extra-large, two-hundred-meter-tall giant would be a speck in the distance. Even that giant god wasn’t so large that they had to look up at it from where they were.
But it was huge. That wasn’t a size any living creature should be. It was a mountain. Not just a hill, it was a mountain.
He recalled the first time they had seen the giant god. It had been when they were returning from rescuing the Tokkis after they’d tried to steal a march on them.
At that time, Haruhiro had thought it was awfully large, given that it had to be several hundred meters away from them.
Several hundred meters?
Hardly. That time, it easily had to have been at least this far away.
No, farther.
It was like Kuzaku said. The giant god was so big, it messed with your sense of distance.
“It’s pretty fast, huh,” Tada muttered.
“It’s got some loooong legs...” Kikkawa sounded impressed for some reason. “Like, way too long. Its movements are surprisingly sharp, too. Wow, wow...”
The giant god was south of the initial hill, moving east to west. Its movements didn’t look all that sharp to Haruhiro, but they could make out the movements of its legs even from here, so it was by no means slow.
“Ah!” Mimorin sucked in her breath, pointing to the southeast. “There’s something there.”
“What is that?” Merry had a grim look on her face.
Kuzaku was looking sideways at her.
“That looks like a big one, too.” Tokimune licked his lips.
“Well, yeah,” Haruhiro said. I’m sure it is.
Haruhiro rubbed his belly. His stomach hurt a little.
This goes for all the Tokkis, but why does he sound like he’s having so much fun? Why is he so blatantly excited?
I know. That’s the kind of people they are. I know that, but I still get fed up with it. I’m used to that, though, y’know? I mean, we have Ranta.