I heard Aqua outside Megumin’s door.
Curse her! Normally she couldn’t think her way out of a paper bag, so why now. . .? Did she even know how much pain it would save me if she would use that ability to think ahead on a regular basis?
Megumin quickly pulled the curtains shut. “I’m up, Aqua. Don’t worry—no problems here. How about you get a little rest? Anyway, I shouldn’t think it would matter so much if he broke in. Kazuma appears to have been forced to drink a memory-erasing potion; surely we could forgive him eventually. . .”
This was followed by the sound of the door flying open. “No, Megumin, we couldn’t! You must not baby a NEET! I know you, Megumin—you’re the type who would run herself ragged for the man she loves, even if he’s a worthless pile of crap! The type who’d forgive him for anything, even if he cheated on you again and again, just because you love him! My unclouded vision is never wrong!”
“Wh-wh-wh-what are you talking about?! I swear that’s not true. . .!” Megumin protested.
“Hmm?” Aqua responded with a knowing murmur.
Please, girls, let it go. Normally I would love to eavesdrop on this sort of talk, but right now, just let it go!
“Megumin, Megumin, don’t tell me. . .”
“Don’t tell you what?! Wh-what shouldn’t I tell you?!”
While Megumin and Aqua chatted, my hand got sweatier and sweatier and started to slip down the rope. I struggled and strained to hold on, my arms trembling and shaking. . .!
They couldn’t have picked a worse time for their little romantic-comedy routine!
“Megumin, I see now. . .! It’s you and that no-account Dust, isn’t it. . .?!”
“It is certainly not.”
Oh, for the love of—!
With my hands sweating and slipping, I couldn’t keep holding on to the rope and the windowsill at the same time. I started to lose my balance.
Arrrgh, somebody help me!
Someone heard my prayer.
Not the freak who kept insisting she was a goddess and not even the really-for-real goddess I always met when I died.
“Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Bwaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Behold, I appear, O goddess of toilets! Tonight, the blessed full moon grants me the greatest extent of my demonic powers! I, the great demon, the Duke of Hell, shall get you to cry uncle at last!”
The guy who normally spent his days as a part-timer at the magical-item shop worrying about how far in the red they were was out in front of my mansion, bellowing a challenge.
4
“Quickly, Kazuma, now is your chance! Aqua went pale and rushed off to the front door—here, grab on!”
Megumin stuck her hand out the window, and I took it with one of my own, using the other to pull myself up by the windowsill. Megumin, with a better Strength stat than I had, dragged me into the room.
I could hear shouting from a ways off.
“So you’ve finally shown your true colors, you weirdo demon! You’re the one who’s going to be crying!”
“You’ve been all talk so far! Show me what you’ve got! Take this—Vanir-style—!”
I mostly ignored them, though. “Ahhh. . . Haaah. . .!” I was too busy huffing and puffing, slumped on the floor, still holding Megumin’s hand. Megumin leaned close, as if to hug me, as she closed the window.
Having somehow managed to make it into her room, I could hardly move; I crouched there almost in her arms, breathing hard, my hand in hers.
“Hff. . . Hff. . .! Megumin, M-Megumin— Hff. . . Hff. . .!”
“Watch it. . .! K-Kazuma, the way you’re breathing is so wrong! To pant like that and call my name when I’m holding you in my arms? It’s the definition of trouble!”
I had been trying to say Thank you to her, but I couldn’t get my breathing under control and the words wouldn’t come out. But I definitely agreed that at the moment, it looked like we were having a naughty little midnight tryst.
“Aqua, what in the world is all that noise. . .? Vanir, what are you doing here at this hour?! And when we’re all so upset already. . .!”
“Oh-ho, pardon me very much. O young woman who has been racked with loneliness over being unable to see the young man who torments her at every turn for more than a week, tonight—”
“Nggghaaaaaaa!”
Darkness and Vanir sounded like they were having fun out by the front door, but I didn’t have time for them right now. I forced myself to breathe more evenly and sat up, moving away from Megumin. But I felt her arm around my back stiffen; she wouldn’t let go.
. . .Uhhh.
“Perfect! You hold him there, Darkness! Sacred Exorcism!”
“Grrraaahhhh?! I-impossible that yours truly should. . . On this night of the full moon, when my power is at its zenith, am I defeated. . .?!”
““W. . . We did it. . .!””
I could hear the commotion outside. The way Darkness and Aqua were out there screwing around as usual, while Megumin and I were in here practically embracing each other, gave me the feeling that we were doing something really, really wrong. It felt somehow as if I had cut class to sneak off with a girl and hide in the gym supply closet or something. . .
Not, of course, that I had any idea what that was like.
“Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Did you really think you had struck me down? What a shame! That thing you took to be yours truly was really just a sexy radish! You can keep it as a consolation prize—it might be delicious boiled!”
““. . . . . .””
“Oops, let’s refrain from silently chasing me down, shall we? I’ve had a taste of those wonderful, wonderful awful emotions, which I’ve been without for so long—and I see that my goal here is achieved, so I’ll be showing myself out!”
“Darkness, go around that way! Stop him! Tonight of all nights, I’m going to make him regret the way he lives to mock people!”
“A-Aqua, what about this sexy radish I grabbed thinking it was Vanir? What. . . What do we do with it. . .?”
Completely apart from the ruckus outside:
“Welcome home. Life in the castle was all right, but what I really wanted was all of us here at the mansion, shouting and being stupid like we always are. Please don’t leave us again, okay?”
Megumin patted me on the back. Somewhere deep inside my heart, I felt a flicker of warmth.
5
Once I had my breathing under control, I went to pull myself away from Megumin.
. . .But she still wouldn’t let me go.
“H-hey, Megumin, I promise I’m not leaving again. I’m back now. You can let go of me.”
If I just let her hug me like this, things were going to get out of hand sooner or later.
Still clinging to me, though, Megumin said, “It might have been easier for you had you chosen to break in via Darkness’s room. She would have been strong enough to pull you up so much more readily. Yet, you chose my room. Surely I may hold fast to you for a few moments.”
She giggled a little; I figured now wasn’t the time to tell her that I hadn’t had any deep reason for choosing her room but had been following Vanir’s instructions. Was this what the all-seeing demon had meant when he’d said there would be something in it for me?
I would definitely have to buy lots and lots of stuff the next time I was at his shop.
One thing I really wanted to know, though: What was the relationship between Megumin and me at this moment? Yeah, she’d told me. . .what she’d told me, but we hadn’t exactly advanced a lot since then. Maybe there just hadn’t been a chance—we had spent a lot of our time since then going to Elroad and generally getting ourselves in trouble—but it seemed to me like we could take another step anytime now. In the end, after all, nothing had happened with Iris; I thought that qualified me as a pretty faithful guy. It looked like Megumin figured a hug was all right, in her own way, so maybe we could go from here.
I was steeling myself to return the hug when. . .
“Hurry and make up with Aqua, okay? Without you
around, she just spends every day sitting on the couch, asking, ‘Isn’t our prodigal NEET back yet? When is he coming back?’ She seems rather lonely.”
. . . . . . . . .
“She makes enough food for you at every meal. She says, ‘This is for our wandering NEET who hasn’t come home yet.’ And then Darkness has to finish it in your place, whether she’s hungry or not.”
Maybe Darkness should have run away, too.
Megumin accompanied her words with a squeeze of my shoulder. I couldn’t believe what a good place I was in right at this moment, but. . .
“. . .Okay, I’m gonna go settle things with that nutjob. When I get back, let’s pick up right where we left off.”
“We won’t. We won’t, understand?” Even as she said it, Megumin sounded a little disappointed. Still, she cared about her friends enough to look happy with my decision. “See you in a few minutes!”
It was the last thing I heard from her as I left the room and headed for my reckoning with Aqua.
“Ahhhh! Villain! Darkness, there’s an intruder in the house of this stunningly beautiful goddess! Capture that villain for me!”
I headed for the front door but ran into Aqua along the way, and she promptly started shouting. She was barefoot, wearing some weird hat and her pajamas, so I wasn’t sure where she got off claiming to be a stunningly beautiful goddess.
Darkness, meanwhile, looked from me to Aqua and back, disturbed. “. . .Listen, Aqua. Maybe it’s time you made up with Kazum— Aaahhh! Ow-ow-ow! S-stop that—don’t pull my hair! Sheesh, Kazuma is gone for a week and you develop this weird fascination with my hair. . .!”
Aqua answered the weeping, hair-pulled Darkness: “Darkness, are you so eager to be abandoned by our betrayer of a NEET here? When he sent that letter saying he was going to live with Iris from now on, I know you panted and puffed and said something about being cuckolded, but if we all just let this go, it’ll be too late to keep Kazuma from becoming a completely worthless lost cause. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion it may be too late already!”
Why, this smart-mouthed—
“All right, I’ve had it up to here with arguing with you. But let me make one thing clear: I didn’t betray anyone. I mean, think about it! Am I really that faithless? You really believe I would take Iris over you, whom I’ve known for so long? I’m not that easy, and by the way, I’m not a lolicon, either. Yes, I care a lot about Iris but only as a little sister. No way I would actually fall for a girl her age, you hear me?”
That seemed to put Aqua back on her heels for a moment, but she quickly recovered. “Listen, Mr. Man-Whose-Only-Skill-in-His-Past-Life-Was-Playing-Rock-Paper-Scissors. Think back, just think back, on why you died. You would have walked right past some old lady about to get hit by a truck, but you got sent to this world because you were killed trying to save someone from a traffic accident. Do you remember who it was you saved? Swallow your pride and say, ‘I, Kazuma Satou, am an unrepentant loliNEET.’”
Aqua’s taunting was crossing the line; I couldn’t hold back any longer. “How does helping a high school girl make me a lolicon?! You’ve got a lot of nerve, stealing my own mansion from me—today I’m finally going to make you pay for everything you’ve done!”
“Darkness, save me! Save me from the dangerous intruder!”
“Huh? What?! Wait—!”
Aqua hid behind Darkness; I advanced on her, flexing my arm. “Just you wait! I’m going to Drain Touch you dry, and then I’m going to ball you up and shove you in Emperor Zel’s chicken coop! Here I gooooooo!”
“Go ahead and try it, you ugly, stupid NEET! Undead skills will never work on me, and it wouldn’t matter if they did, because I never let down my guard for even an instant, you hear? It’s two on one—you’re not going to win this!”
“Wait. . .! I haven’t agreed to fight Kazuma y—!”
I was on Aqua before Darkness could finish.
“N. . . No way. . .!”
I found myself on the carpet where Aqua had grabbed my chest and shoved me to the ground. Darkness was lying there, too; I had tied her up and Drain Touched her HP clear out, and she wasn’t looking so good.
I’d tried using Bind on Aqua, but her magic let her break out of it easily, and when I tried to physically restrain her, she hid behind Darkness to get away from my attacks. Finally, Aqua buffed herself with strength boosts and overpowered me.
It was partly my fault: I’d forgotten that for all her numerous, glaring flaws, her base stats were higher than anyone else’s here. Not to mention, she seemed to have a knack for close-quarters fighting, what with her God Blow and Holy Squeeze or whatever she called them.
Seriously, I wished she could show this sort of competence on a daily basis.
Incidentally, Darkness was on the ground because she’d had the misfortune of getting between Aqua and me.
“Hff. . . Hff. . .! Y-you know how to put up a fight, Kazuma. But this is over! Now, say you’re sorry! Say it just once, and I’ll forgive you!” Aqua crowed. She was straddling me and holding fast to my arms.
And to her, I said: “. . .This time, this one time, I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m a victim whose memory got erased even though I was doing just what Iris wanted, and I have nothing to apologize for! You’re not the only one with an ace up their sleeve, you hear me? I declare that tomorrow morning, you’ll be the one weeping and apologizing.”
I was completely innocent for once; I had nothing to be embarrassed or apologetic about.
“Huh, so that’s the attitude you want to take! I thought we could settle our differences amicably, but if that’s how you want it to be, then I can be stubborn, too! On my name as the water goddess, I swear I won’t let you into this house until you’ve apologized to me! I’m going to boot you outside now! And we’ll see who’s weeping and apologizing tomorrow morning!”
The gauntlet was thrown down.
6
Morning arrived.
I was observing the mansion from a distance and thinking.
You know how in manga, main characters are always getting in trouble with female leads over some ridiculous misunderstanding where she thinks he’s cheated on her when he totally hasn’t? Or when circumstances conspire to give him a peek of a girl character in a state of undress, and he gets beaten up even though he was totally innocent? Or when a heroine takes totally unjustified revenge on him simply because some other girl shows him a little affection, and the leading lady gets all jealous even though she and the MC aren’t dating?
Yeah, those are all fun and games in manga. Hilarious when they’re happening to someone else.
But this was what I thought:
“Kazuma! Kazumaaaaaa!!”
If I’d been any of those MCs, I would never have put up with crap like that from a female costar. I’d get even.
“Waaaaaaaahh! K-Kazumaaaa! Kazumaaaaaa!!”
In this world, there was a power that stood against outrageous acts of violence and injustice. It was a power that good, law-abiding citizens should have no shame in turning to; if anyone should be ashamed, I thought, it was people like this, who believed they could do whatever obnoxious, unjustified things they wanted and that they should and would be forgiven just because they were a woman.
“Kazumaaaaaa! I’ve been thinking for a while now, Kazuma; you know, you’re truly, extremely, by far the nicest guy I know! And we’ve known each other for so long, and it’s so important that we talk to each other. . .!”
Thus, Aqua shouted between her tears from the second-story window. I pointed at her.
“That’s her, Officer.”
“We asked at the real estate office and found that the name Kazuma Satou really is the one on the deed. It seems that’s you, sir. All right, we will now commence the operation to dislodge the unauthorized occupant.”
It was my duty as a citizen to report the person who had stolen my house.
“Kazuma! Kazumaaaaa!! Waaaaah, my dear, sweet Kazuma!!” Seeing the police preparin
g to attack, Aqua was properly panicked.
“M-m-m-m-me, I’m just Kazuma’s housemate, you could say. . .!”
“Is that right? It would be quite a scandal if a member of the Dustiness family was found to be consorting with criminals.”
Darkness, having been slow to get out of the house, was currently being interrogated. As for Megumin, she had smelled danger and had fled the mansion before it was surrounded. So much for my assumption that she was the one I was closest to.
And then. . .
“Waaaaaaaaaahhhh! Dear, sweet Kazuma! Please, Kazuma! Forgive me! I’m sorry; I was wrong, so forgive me. I beg you! I’m begging youuuuu!” Aqua kept weeping and apologizing, obviously about to be arrested by the police.
I took a few steps closer to her. “Hey there, water goddess. Can I come back in the house even though I haven’t said I’m sorry yet?”
“I’m sorry, Kazuma! From now on, I swear I’ll take you seriously; I won’t doubt you anymore, so call them off!” Aqua cried as two officers dragged her out of the house.
I watched her go by. “It’s out of my hands nooooowwww!” I exclaimed and fixed her with a big, triumphant grin.
7
Back in my living room for the first time in a long time, I was napping in my usual spot on the sofa.
“O most honored Kazuma, your tea is ready!”
I was sprawled out on the couch, one hand tossed over the backrest and both legs wherever was most convenient, when Aqua approached with my tea.
“Sure, thanks.” I rewarded Aqua’s obsequious delivery with two curt words. Then I went to take a sip. . . “You worthless maid! Tea, my ass—this is just hot water! I’ve already told you a million times: You know as well as I do that if you so much as dip a finger in the water, it turns pure, so you have to be careful! Do it over! Come on, chop-chop!”
The Arch-Wizard’s Little Sister Page 6
