Chapter 53 – 53 – People Who Are Scary to Be With
A place where you can at least be free from the noise of dragons. A quiet sandy beach in the shade of the island.
Because the noise of the festival was often heard through the walls of the guest house that Nidroga had built, this place became a shelter and hideout for our extermination party.
The Succubus Queen, who was like a time bomb, has left our hands, and worldly problems such as Mithraism and the like are now just stories thousands of kilometers away across the sea.
Our party members completely let go of their tension and soaked up the vacation atmosphere for the first time in a long time. Because he had been spending his hectic days on the front line of the cannabis water, he wanted to play but had no cause, so he seemed to be starving.
A few days spent grilling meat, tanning, and playing in the water. Like Eshen, who had dissolved in the Chechenyi hot springs and roared with satisfaction, the party members’ eyes were filled with life as if they had been revived.
There was only one exception. Villena was dragged out by Nenya and Leni to see some sunlight.
Even if I grill a barbecue, all I do is force myself to eat a piece or two, and I just drag a sunbed to the shade of a tree and bury my nose in a book. Even if a drop of sea water touched my toes, I was disgusted.
···That’s why the sight of me in a swimsuit feels unfamiliar and scary. It feels like there is some intention.
I tried not to think deeply. Of course, it could be that he is trying to appeal to something, as you might guess, but there is no way that the target will necessarily be me. Speculation can be, in some ways, overly self-conscious.
In the first place, hadn’t they made a deliberate effort to avoid being left alone? Sometimes, when our eyes meet, Villena awkwardly avoids our gaze.
Two facts can be inferred from there. Naturally, Villena is conscious of what has happened between us, and at the same time, she is very disturbed.
Just as much as me.
As I lay down on the sunbed, pretending not to see anything, Villena twitched and walked out from the shade.
And he vaguely lay down about three squares away from me. Choose a position that is comfortable for conversation without touching your body.
That’s why the long silence is more awkward. I’d rather be far away and not worry about it.
Suddenly worried, I glanced back at Villena. Fortunately, the imprint on her Villena’s lower abdomen had faded quite a bit.
The white sunbed blended in with Villena’s skin like a protective color. A pale color that suggests that you have lived away from the sun. And white hair without a single trace of pigment. Even the swimsuit is white, as if out of compulsion.
It still looks just as unfamiliar and rough as it did at first, but at the same time…
“What you looking at.”
Instead of lying down next to her and flipping through her pages, I slid down her hard cover and glared at me.
I quickly turned her head and closed her eyes. Bile I adjusted her shirt so that it properly covered the imprint of her lower abdomen. Even then, the pattern seemed to bother him so much that he even turned over.
If I did that, the pattern wouldn’t be visible, but I couldn’t help but think that if I were Villena, I might have been more embarrassed by her lying down.
The moment I saw her butt, I noticed that the swimsuit looked a little small and went up to her chin. Of course, looking back on the crisis of the past, it seemed unwise to spit it out as is.
Since I was keeping her mouth shut, I, who was reading a book, must have been rather bored. Ville I closed her book so that her words wouldn’t catch her eyes.
“I’m asking this straight because I have no idea what your identity is. Are you an expert hired by Tena?”
“That somehow doesn’t sound like I’m asking if you’re an expert at porter work. What do you want to say?”
“Well, I guess Tena is trying to manage morale for the party members who are sexually frustrated…”
What on earth is that pink dream-like setting of puberty?
“Is that possible?”
“So, just like I first guessed, is he just using hypnosis or aphrodisiacs to conquer each person one by one out of personal greed? He’s targeting young, naive party members who don’t know much about men…”
Of course, it is not unreasonable for at least one person to misunderstand it that way.
Artifacts that cause visual illusions, pine needle-scented odor suppressants, and sunscreen. What would other porters think of me, pretending to be a female comrade and collaborating with female-only party members? You’d think he must have made up his mind to get into trouble with that bastard.
But no matter what.
“No, Villena. I have never been hired for sexual reasons, nor have I plotted against fighters who could turn a tan banh thai into meatballs with just a reason and ten seconds to spare. Some of the recent events have not been my intention. “I’m embarrassed because it’s not. I just signed a contract to be a porter.”
Villena’s shoulders shook slightly. And then a faint murmur was heard.
“Believe.”
“Yes, I’m really grateful that you trust me.”
“Thank god.”
···Relief?
I looked back towards Villena with doubts again. The nape of Villena’s neck was stained suspiciously red.
Was he embarrassed to voice his embarrassing doubts, or was he?
“I-I mean, after ‘that’ happened, you didn’t really talk about my backstory. That’s a good thing.”
Villena’s hasty addition. It’s an excuse and doesn’t sound convincing.
But a chill ran down her spine.
“How do you know whether I was talking about you behind your back or not?
“Ah.”
“And how on earth did you find out that I was a man in the first place, and prepare the equipment to turn me into a woman in advance? Did Tena tell you?”
“···Not Tena. There are only two people who Tena told about your identity to. Nenya and Leni, who are loud-mouthed close associates. Even those two guys didn’t even notice that you were in a relationship with Eshen or Monica or anything like that.”
Villena rolled over and groaned. As if she was forcing a topic she wanted to avoid.
“Of course, Monica is your neighbor, so Tena probably thought she couldn’t hide it anyway. It was just an accident that Eshen came to see you first. And none of them told me that you were a man.”
“Then how?”
“At least I didn’t find out through speculation and suspicion based on paternal love like Captain Tomko. Unlike that guy who caught a stray cat by kicking a dragon, I prefer more empirical information.”
A bee-sized bug was buzzing and wandering around my bedside, so I waved my hand to shoo it away. However, rather than running away, the bug flew very unnaturally through the air and had a snowball fight with me.
Just as I thought it was strange and was about to observe the bug, the bug flew away and headed towards Villena.
Villena reached over her shoulder with her left hand, which had been lying on her back, and made a gesture of catching her in the air.
Under the circumstances, it seemed like he had caught a bug, but his hand movements weren’t fast enough, which was strange. Should I say that it was as if a bug had been sucked into his palm on its own?
“This is mine.”
“···Okay. I won’t take it away.”
“I’ve placed listening bugs all over the party camp. This is a precise surveillance device. It transmits sound to me remotely.”
“······What does that mean?”
“It means that I heard everything from the beginning about the porter Tan Bantai. The reason why Tena snatched you up like lightning and hired you when you were drunk and lost your judgment. The reason why that wary and prickly Eshen seduced you first and played with you. . He also turned the plain and ordinary Monica into a bitch.”
Villena wiggled her knees and folded them inward to her body.
I stared at its shrimp-like bent back with eyes filled with astonishment.
“Of course, in Monica’s case, it was just a noise like a jammer, so I didn’t even notice it before ‘that incident.’ But you’ve already made two people into your sexual partners.”
When I say ‘that incident’, I probably mean the incident that put Villena down, who had gotten me into trouble. I didn’t expect that Villena would bring up that story first.
It is also said that he may have a hobby of eavesdropping on people. I feel like I stepped on a land mine.
She seemed to know that she had done something wrong, so she flinched.
“Yes, I know you’re not the usual stereotype of a porter. You’re sincere and quite resourceful.”
According to my data from dealing with all kinds of socially awkward people, including Adamantone.
“Does that mean ‘I’m sorry for eavesdropping’?”
“···I know. Do you feel bad for this guy?”
“It’s more creepy than bad. To think that someone was watching me even go to the bathroom.”
“…I didn’t even eavesdrop on that. I was just too scared to think that someone was talking about me behind my back…”
She couldn’t even guess how she made the bug, and Villena squeezed it tightly, shivering. You can’t believe you’re wasting your genius on something so stupid that it ruins your reputation.
After the initial shock wears off, I even feel a bit of sympathy. It would be difficult for a person to break down like that on their own, and I thought there must be some great twists and turns and stories, but that’s why it’s so difficult to ask questions.
At the moment I was wondering whether I should get angry and listen further, or put it off until later.
Villena’s tremors became unusually strong. I flinched and stood up.
“What, what’s wrong?”
“I-I’m trash.”
“···Are you okay?”
“I was worried about what you would do to us, and I even suspected that everything you said about being a goddess was all hypnotized by you. If it weren’t for you, we would all have died because of that crazy guy named Adamantone.”
I sighed. It is not unnatural to shudder at the thought of almost dying.
Crouching, I held onto the hem of her shirt as if it were her lifeline. I once again realized that we were not experiencing an ordinary crisis.
She took her blanket out of her backpack, which she had left on the sunbed. And her billena covered her length from her shoulders to her hips.
“Sister and Eshen were very responsible. There was nothing I could do other than run around and beg for help.”
“No one would think that.”
Bile shook her head as if it was nothing at all. I decided to pretend that I heard him properly say sorry.
I shyly scratched the back of her head, patted her shoulder once, and turned around.
Then Villena turned around noisily. And she hurriedly grabbed my wrist.
“Go, don’t go.”
“···If I go, where should I go? I have to lay the grill and set up the barbecue in a little while. I’ll just go back to my seat-“
“Don’t go.”
It’s like a child waking up from a nightmare looking for his father.
Her hands were covered in sweat. A tearful tone. It was hard to shake off the sweet thought, considering what had happened, but I nodded and sat down on the bench next to him.
Villena, in this warm weather, with her blanket up to her nose, looked at me with her wet eyes, trying to catch her breath.
“Say something. Don’t be so quiet.”
“Say nothing.”
Villena cried. I calmly showed her a gesture telling her to take care of it.
“You said earlier that you prefer empiricism, right? I’m speaking based on my own experience, but it’s usually better for those who are having a hard time thinking about the material.”
“Why?”
“You might end up saying something that would be painful for you to hear. You will be able to avoid such topics yourself. And if you think about things to talk about, it will be easier to forget what is scary.”
I succeeded in persuading her to do it. As if her suffering had subsided, I relaxed my brows and immersed myself in her worries.
“That hero.”
“Warrior?”
“Adamantone Sunstorm. Do you know that warrior? The way he was glaring at him seemed bitter. Did something happen?”
“You chose well. It’s something that will make the story longer.”
Ville I succeeded in avoiding material that would distress her own mind. But I ended up choosing a story that was painful.
But I also had no intention of avoiding the topic. Because.
“Because when people get angry, they naturally have a lot to say.”
———–
Mancellarion Sunstorm was a man with thousands of strengths, minor flaws, and one fatal and irreversible tumor.
A good personality, a loud laugh, and reliability and uprightness. Among all the advantages that make many people follow him, the most notable one is that he is so generous that no one will point out his inconsiderate aspects.
“For example, when he recklessly chased after an enemy, when the young me got caught in a goblin trap and almost got my leg chewed off. Instead of apologizing at length and saying that he was stupid, he gave me a huge performance bonus.”
“How much did you give me?”
“After following three or four mission expeditions, it was enough to enroll his younger brother into the Empire’s Magic Academy.”
Villena opened her eyes wide.
“To the Empire? The competition rate and tuition must be no joke.”
“My younger brother was born with the aptitude to be a wizard, and was so talented that anyone could see that he was talented. Even after studying in that small town, he was able to enter school with a scholarship, although it wasn’t the full amount, so I couldn’t help but be greedy.”
I just need to earn a little more in the future. Then, not only can I pay my younger brother’s tuition and living expenses, but I can also retire early and live a happy life envious of the warriors who ignore porters.
With that thought in mind, Tan Bantai, a teenager, eagerly followed in the footsteps of Hero Mancellarion. Who wouldn’t follow a man who, far from treating people poorly or swearing at them, pays them double the amount of pay he would get from powerful warriors?
I think Mancellarion also praised me quite often. ‘I’m proud that at that age, I know a lot and have a lot of responsibility.’ ‘It is normal to lift two or three times as much weight at most, but an apt porter who can support ten times the weight is a rare talent.’
‘I like how he follows me through all kinds of difficult places and performs the training with great tact.’
Okay. I think I really liked it.
And that was the beginning of my disaster.
‘This guy is my youngest son. Doesn’t he look just like me?’
