It is harder to work up motivation for this than it is when I am thinking up settings. But this is an unavoidable development in my work, so I even tried reading romance novels to prepare for the heroine’s sake. The hurdle is high...

This took longer than coming up with scorpion settings.

Chapter 422: I Punched a Curtain and Got Nailed by a Flashy Counter

[Subject: Vocabulary Blown to Bits]
[From: Sunraku]
[To: Takeda Ingen]
[Body: Fuuun Prejiden... this is nice.]

[Subject: Re: Vocabulary Blown to Bits]
[From: Takeda Ingen]
[To: Sunraku]
[Body: Good...
That aside, indeed. It was the sort of work you would want to display on your shelf even after clearing the game!]

[Subject: Re: Re: Vocabulary Blown to Bits]
[From: Sunraku]
[To: Takeda Ingen]
[Body: Seriously, though, you had it sent all the way from Zimbabwe. I can’t thank you enough, Mr. Takeda.]

[Subject: Re: Re: Re: Vocabulary Blown to Bits]
[From: Takeda Ingen]
[To: Sunraku]
[Body: No, no. This is pocket change. Now then, I am about to board a plane for Australia, so I shall drop off for a bit~]

[Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Vocabulary Blown to Bits]
[From: Sunraku]
[To: Takeda Ingen]
[Body: Mr. Takeda! Saying you are going to “drop” before boarding a plane is an extremely dangerous flag!!]

Rakuro: "Damn, that’s cool..."

I wanted to say a line like that too.

And he casually flew to the Southern Hemisphere... Even though he seems insanely busy, how does he find time to play games?

Mr. Takeda truly was a man of many mysteries.

All right. I had beaten the hidden boss, the “Goddess’s Chosen,” and completed the trophy collection. That meant I could return to SLF without any reservations.

GH:C? I heard it was getting pretty good reviews. That could wait until later.

All right. School, school.

Rakuro: "Huh? The decisive-battle flag went up for this weekend?"

Rei: "Ah... You really did not know..."

Rakuro: "The way you said that... Ah, those guys told you, then. Well, I did spend about two whole days completely cut off from the network."

I had been busy emailing Mr. Takeda after clearing the game and sleeping, after all.

When you went deep into full-dive gaming, the relationship between sleep and games changed.

Put simply, it became a matter of “sleeping is a waste of time.”

A first-rate gamer needed the ability to sleep like the dead in a short time and restore brain cells instantly. Your body might rest while you played, but your brain was still running.

If your brainwaves got too bad, the system handed down a twenty-four-hour login ban. Proper manners meant finding the red zone and skating right along its edge.

Rakuro: "Wait, all the Color Dragons—including Siegwurm—are gathering at the frontline base?"

...Was that not strange?

I could understand one of them showing up. I could even understand them attacking the frontline base one after another.

But there was no reason for all of them to arrive at once.

Even boss rushes lined bosses up in sequence. Encountering them simultaneously was just a trash game.

No, but would this management team really put out a story that sloppy...?

No. Was it more natural to assume that something had distorted the route away from its original form for some reason?

Rakuro: "If a butterfly’s wings can change the future, then a route splitting off for some reason is not impossible either...?"

Rei: "...Um?"

Rakuro: "Ah, nothing. Just nonsense. More importantly... it looks like visiting Vash before challenging a Unique Monster unlocks individual dialogue."

Rei: "Is that... so?"

Vash kept saying things that sounded suggestive, and it felt as though Vash might reveal more detailed information once the World Quest advanced.

Sunraku, Psyger-0, and Akitsu Akane... The paths that had brought each of them there, and their current positions, were all different.

Vash’s ability to see through things was a little absurd. I had no idea how it worked, but since the WIMP situation had been exposed immediately, it felt as though Vash could practically consult our action logs.

Rei-shi seemed to be carrying something connected to the origin. Akitsu Akane was an ongoing source of trouble. And I was the one whose hidden trouble had already been found out.

I wanted to collect every possible conversation, but Vash was apparently moving toward the frontline base while keeping out of sight...

Wait, someone is going along with that Noirlind guy’s logout-login cycle?

Rakuro: "...A lot has been happening while I had no idea."

Rei: "It seems other players have been making various moves as well..."

So should I start moving too, in preparation for the decisive battle?

Now that Emul had rejoined me, I could fast-travel practically without limit between the villa, Tiaplaten, and the frontline base.

In that case, the important question was what to bring with me.

Rakuro: "...Hm, we’re at school already."

Rei: "Ah... Um, we’re here already..."

Time really did seem shorter when a conversation was going well.

Then—

Rakuro: "Hm?"

Was someone coming this way?

There was no reason to leave through the main gate during the time when students were arriving at school...

More importantly, that person was staring straight at us.

Rakuro: "Who’s that...? Is he someone you know, Saiga-san?"

Rei: "Huh? No, it is not exactly that we know each other... But, but..."

That was an oddly hesitant answer.

As I tilted my head, the man walking toward us came close enough for me to see him clearly.

How should I put this...?

He looked like someone had asked thirty different people what they considered handsome, then turned their answers into a composite photograph.

When you played games all the time, you naturally saw plenty of beautiful and handsome characters.

He somehow looked like them, yet did not. It felt rude to think this about someone I was meeting for the first time, but...

He was the kind of handsome man who seemed difficult to remember.

When you tried to recall his face, other character designs would surface in your mind and blur his features away.

Ishido/Isurugi: "Hello, Saiga-san."

Rei: "H-hello... Ishido/Isurugi-san."

Ishido/Isurugi: "The moment I saw you, I simply could not remain where I was..."

Was I being ignored here?

Well, we had never met before, so this was normal. It would be creepier if he suddenly started talking to me.

Also, his attractiveness score was absurdly high.

Even taking into account that Saiga-san was a serious gaming addict, her overall human specs were still top-tier. But this Ishi... Ishido/Isurugi guy had high specs too.

He was taller than me. Was he over 180 centimeters?

Ishido/Isurugi: "It is rude to ask first thing in the morning, but... you still have no intention of reconsidering?"

Rei: "...I have been refusing that request for quite some time."

Rakuro: "All right, I’ll head on ahead, then."

Ishido/Isurugi: "No! Someone as capable as you—"

Ah.

In that instant, my hand grabbed Ishido/Isurugi’s wrist before it could reach toward Saiga-san.

???: "...Ah."

Ishido/Isurugi: "...What do you think you are doing all of a sudden?"

Rakuro: "Don’t move, unless you want to die."

Oops. I had been role-playing as the President for so long that I came off a little threatening.

Whatever. This was urgent.

Keeping hold of Ishido/Isurugi’s wrist, I stiffened my expression and slowly, carefully reached my other hand toward Ishido/Isurugi’s neck.

Without provoking it.

Without showing hostility.

And while gently trying to make it leave a place where it did not belong...

Ishido/Isurugi: "Let go of me...!"

Rakuro: "Ah."

Ishido/Isurugi’s body tensed, and he forcibly shook free of my hand.

Maybe moving suddenly had been the problem. Or maybe it had recognized some tiny change imperceptible to humans as hostility...

Either way, the yellow-and-black striped creature—about as dangerous as nature got—switched into attack mode and used force on Ishido/Isurugi’s neck.

Ishido/Isurugi: "Ow!!?"

Rakuro: "There was... a wasp..."

I drove off the buzzing insect, clearly different in shape from a honeybee or bumblebee, then turned back.

Ishido/Isurugi’s face had gone pale.

Ishido/Isurugi: "A-anaphylactic sho-shock... It hurts!"

Rakuro: "Have you ever been stung by a wasp before?"

Ishido/Isurugi: "A hospital! Call one, now!!"

Rakuro: "You’re overreacting. Have you ever been stung before?"

Ishido/Isurugi: "N-no...!"

Ah. Then he was probably fine.

Apparently, bee venom only entered the death zone from the second sting onward. And from what I had seen, it looked more like a paper wasp than the king of danger—the hornet.

Both were bad, but it was better than a poison cocktail.

Rei: "You are... knowledgeable about this?"

Rakuro: "Huh? Ah, yeah. Well... various reasons."

There had been a period when my mother got obsessed with collecting wasp nests.

There really was a hornet nest bigger than a bowling ball at our house. And stopping my mother’s drunken ambition to install beekeeping equipment in the yard had required the entire family.

Not that those were good memories.

My mother had absurdly high burst damage. She was the most dangerous person in the household.

Rakuro: "You should probably go to the nurse’s office just in case. The pain will most likely be gone in a day or two... Don’t cry. You can walk normally, can’t you?"

Ishido/Isurugi: "U-uuugh...!"

Watching Ishido/Isurugi wobble away, I noticed the shocking fact that I was already having trouble remembering his face.

Rakuro: "He was kind of interesting... No idea who he was, though."

Rei: "That person... is the student council vice president."

Seriously? I do not even remember what the student council president looks like. Was she a woman?

If Iwamaki-san had been here, this would have been a fist-pump moment.

Q. Why does she keep turning him down?
A. Because then she could not stalk him.

Writing romance is way too hard...

Even when I try to create rises and falls in the story, the happy-ending yakuza living in my heart rejects it...

This hurts...

I cannot deal with this anymore. Time to stockpile Fil.